On the Wheel

by Timandra Whitecastle

  On the floor of the cave a body of water steamed, the rising vapor moisturizing the plants that grew lush and verdant on every surface, spilling over their terraces ever higher up the walls. The gardens had been his mother’s favorite place whenever they had come to Gimmstanhol when Diaz was a child. A strange familiarity took hold of him as he walked among the mists of his childhood, his father’s tall figure arm in arm with his mother’s smaller frame reflected through time in Nora’s shape. His mother used to talk more, though, especially with her hands, while Nora simply listened to his translation of his father, who was repeating most of the tidbits of information his mother used to rattle off. It was bittersweet that his father had memorized them. Nora gazed around, taking a step back and tilting her head, a hand pressed over her heart. Their arrival so early in the morning startled a pair of lovers from the crushed remains of their midnight tryst among the herb bushes, and they hastened away under the eyes of the amused High King, still muttering endearments and nuzzling each other as they went. Nora followed them with her eyes, a frown on her face. She looked over her shoulder, directly at him.

  “Is Diaz a common surname among wights?” she asked.

  He stiffened before asserting control over himself again, and she noticed.

  “Those two called each other Diaz,” she said, eyeing him closely. “And I heard it among the crowd yesterday, too.”

  To his father’s credit, he didn’t start laughing out loud as the warmth of a blush crept up Diaz’s face. That was the second time already this morning. As though he was still an awkward adolescent with his embarrassing parents.

  “Well?” His father spoke in wightish. “You better answer her question, son.”

  “I could lie and she would never know.”

  “You chose the surname for yourself.”

  “It was given to me long before I took it, Father.” He sighed and turned to Nora. He could think of no plausible excuse to leave now, hindering him from giving an answer to her question. Sooner or later, she would find out from someone else. Better to face the inevitable. “Diaz is the wight word used for humans in general, but half-wights are included, too. Translated it would mean…newly born or child. This, of course, refers to the short age span among humans that is in contrast to the wigh—”

  “I’ve been calling you ‘baby’ all this time, and you never said a word?” Nora tossed her head back, laughing. “Wait till I tell Owen. Oh dammit, Owen knows, doesn’t he? Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me the interesting stuff?”

  “Maybe it’s because of your inappropriate sense of humor.”

  She grinned at him and continued chuckling to herself all the way back to the palace, while Aellen and Diaz made small talk. In reality, though, he was hardly paying attention to what his father was asking of his travels. He ground his teeth together, staring at the back of her head as she walked arm in arm with the High King. He glanced around the city of Gimmstanhol, unseeing, her grin replaying in his mind over and over. Genuine mirth had glowed in her eyes. It had been a long time since he had seen that. Even longer since it had been directed at him. He rubbed the back of his neck, wondering again what his father’s intentions were with this charade. Parading this human girl and his half-human son around his city in plain view? There was no doubt in Diaz’s mind that there must be more at work than simply showing Nora the sights.

  She grew silent as they neared his father’s chambers, though, as a suspicion arose in her. Her eyes darted to and fro between his father and himself, then behind to the wight guards following them. He saw her hand twitch at her side before curling into a fist.

  Aellen had the guards position themselves outside of his chambers, and he opened the door with a friendly smile at Nora. She didn’t return it. Diaz hung back, but his father waved them both inside. The door closed behind them and there he was again, in his father’s chambers. Nothing had changed much since this morning, but Nora looked dubiously about the place as though expecting some unnamed horror, her gaze settling on the large bed. His father walked over to his closet, searching within.

  “I have something for your girl,” he told Diaz. “A gift.”

  “The High King Aellen wishes to make you a gift.”

  “Why?” Nora’s eyes narrowed.

  Diaz shrugged and looked to his father, who brought a thin wooden box out of the deepest regions of his closet, carrying it in both hands before him as though it held fragile treasures. He held it out to Nora, who simply stood there, face solemn. Aellen balanced the wooden box on one forearm, carefully placing his other hand on top of it.

  “This,” he said to Diaz, “holds all I have left of your mother. As I am about to remarry, it would be highly inappropriate for me to keep these things. There is no one else I can give them to. Not many humans come by here, and no wight women could wear these garments made for a human body. They’re not much, certainly not valuable from a business standpoint, but they are…well loved. I would pass them on to you, but I don’t know whether you’d have much use for these things. Possess nothing. Isn’t that the code you live by?”

  Diaz nodded. Nora cocked her head and listened while he roughly translated.

  “So I would be doing him a favor by taking them off his hands?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Diaz answered without needing to consult his father beforehand.

  She touched a hand to the black and flamed scarf she wore, chewing the inside of her cheek as she debated what to do.

  “Tell your father he honors me too much. I cannot take these…memories from him.”

  “I think he has to let go, and realizes it must be now.” Diaz looked up and met his father’s eyes. “He’d rather leave his heart in your keeping than bury it to please his new wife, whoever she may be.”

  Nora hesitated. Then she bowed her head low and took the proffered box, clutching it tightly. “I am very honored, Your Majesty.”

  “Tell her to try something on.” A smile played in the corners of his father’s lips.

  “He says you honor him.”

  Aellen snorted.

  “I didn’t say that. Tell her I want to see how the dresses fit her.”

  Diaz pressed his lips tighter together, feeling the heat rise to his face yet again.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he told his father, acutely aware of Nora’s frown. “She won’t take it well.”

  “Just ask her.” His father smiled broadly now. “Please.”

  Diaz turned to Nora, wishing he were far, far away in the snowy wastelands above them. Suddenly the room seemed stifling, not as vast and airy as he had found it in the morning, or yesterday evening.

  “Open the box, please, and take a look,” he said to her, forcing his voice and tone to stay calm if not smooth, willing his feet to stay where they were. But she knew him too well to be fooled. One eyebrow arched high.

  “Your father said only that?”

  “Please.”

  “Fine.”

  She fumbled the box open, eyebrows rising even higher, and carefully lifted a few of the costly robes to find even more beautiful ones stacked underneath. He saw her face soften, eyes glossing over for a moment as she fingered the fine material.

  “This is…I can’t…it’s too much.” Her face tightened, and he saw her jawline clench repeatedly. “What does the king want for such a gift?”

  Diaz licked his lips.

  “He’d like for you to try on one of the dresses.”

  Her eyes remained on the clothes, but her brows drew closer as her feet shuffled nervously and she took a fighting stance. Maybe unconsciously, but Diaz didn’t think so.

  “Now, huh?” Nora looked up and stared at a point just behind Aellen’s ear. At the bed, Diaz realized.

  “Er…yes.”

  For a moment, he tensed, readying himself to tackle Nora to the ground before she tried to punch the High King. She made a strangled sound at the back of her throat, then flashed his father a murderous look. He in turn clasped his hands beh
ind his back and gave her an innocent smile. She nodded once, then held her head high, though on her cheeks angry red blotches were spreading. She slammed the box into Aellen’s chest, and as he grabbed it, closing it against his body, Nora was already fiddling with the buttons of her shirt, tearing the ends out of her trousers to pull it over her head.

  “No. No. I didn’t mean—” his father hurried to say.

  “Stop! Wait!” Diaz called.

  Nora paused, midriff already exposed. She let her arms down.

  “What? I thought—”

  “She can go behind the curtain, into the changing area. She doesn’t have to, ah—” His father cleared his throat and pointed behind him to where a curtain partitioned off the washing area.

  “You can undress over there, behind the curtain,” Diaz told Nora. She followed his father’s pointed finger and swallowed hard.

  “That’s backlit,” she said icily.

  “What?” Diaz thought he had misheard something. He was sure she had said: that’s bullshit.

  “The curtained area is backlit. You’ll be able to see everything through the light fabric anyway.” Her face reddened, and she avoided looking at them both.

  “You don’t have to undress in front of us, though,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “This was not my idea,” she hissed back.

  Diaz rubbed his aching jaw. His father looked as though he’d start laughing any moment now. Diaz took the box from him and held it out to Nora.

  “Just take it and change into something.”

  She refused to take the box from him, but rather leaned back and folded her arms.

  “I can’t on my own.” Every word dripped with venom. “I’ll need your help.”

  “What?” He nearly choked on the images arising in his mind.

  “I don’t know how to wear those dresses, do I? You need to come with me and help.”

  He stared at her for a moment, mouth half opened. Then his eyes slid over to his father, who was sporting an inscrutable expression, and he clamped his mouth tightly shut. He opened the box and after a quick inspection took out a few things.

  “First this.” He held the robe out between two fingers and she ripped it from him.

  “Then this over it.” The dress was bundled together with the undergarment.

  “You fasten it with this.” A wide belt extended her collection.

  She stared at him over the clothes, nostrils flaring, chin held high. He stared back.

  “Need shoes to go with it?” He brought forth a pair of slippers from the box.

  She snatched them too and stormed off behind the curtain, muttering curses under her breath. She had been right, though. The dressing area was backlit. He could see her body angrily twist and turn as she yanked off her clothes. He quickly looked away, noticing his father lean in.

  “You can close the box now,” was all he said.

  Diaz snapped it shut.

  “For a moment there, I thought you might go with her.”

  For a moment, so had he. But then what would he do?

  “No,” he said simply.

  “Good, because that would have ruined our only chance to talk privately.”

  “Father?”

  “Gobann left yesterday with fifty warriors from his tribe, the Pines tribe, and the Hounds. Every one disgruntled by my rule has gone with him, every able-bodied man with a sword and a grudge. I’m telling you this because they will come after you when you travel on to remake the Living Blade.”

  Diaz stared at his father.

  “You knew?”

  Aellen sighed.

  “You think your group are the first humans who have come here looking for the Blade? About a year ago one of the patrols cut down a band of pretty young girls sent by the Queen of the South. They haven’t been the first, though I hoped they’d be the last for a while. The patrol was led by none other than Gobann. He’s a skilled leader, smart, too. I don’t know how quickly his men killed those girls, but I think he learned enough from them before they died.”

  Diaz’s mouth felt parched as his heart leaped. “The queen?”

  “Yes. Over the decades, that so-called queen Suranna has been the most dedicated person to want to get to the Blade. Though I never thought she’d send my own son against me.” Here he clapped his hand on Diaz’s shoulder and gave him a sad smile, while the world was reeling under Diaz’s feet.

  His knees felt like they would give way as the shame overwhelmed him, buzzing over the words his father continued speaking. His chest tingled painfully, as though he had been underwater for too long and desperately needed to breathe. Twenty years ago he had made a terrible mistake, one he thought he had already paid for in full, only to be mercilessly proven wrong when at the Temple of Shinar a few months ago.

  He heard a rustle as Nora slipped on the dress behind the curtain, watching her silhouetted in the light as his anchoring point. His father had been elected High King thirteen years ago. How the seeress must have laughed when she scried this new piece of information, pushing her pawns around the board. Pushing him back into her game? He had been so weak. In his failing, he hadn’t just failed Nora, but he had failed his father, too. His father’s people. His hands shook.

  “I—” He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

  Aellen glanced at Nora’s shadow form as she was doing up the belt, cursing softly at the complicated fastening in her usual foulmouthed way. Diaz forced himself to look at his father’s face to concentrate.

  “Your girl—she is a twin, yes? How extraordinary. In times of long ago, we would take such children in, raise them as our own, give our sons and daughters to them. Because the twin born, they carry the heritage of that double gift of life. Humans have never seemed to understand this gift. Their men are not slaves to the fertility cycles as we are. They see our longevity, our youth and strength, but they do not see how empty that life can be. Hollow. Restricted. It was not always so. We used to share our lives, our selves, with other races, creating and cocreating. Perpetuating. Passing on. But now, look at us. Counting out each cycle, desperate not to lose even one chance of fathering children. But in our self-imposed isolation, we have become barren.”

  Aellen pursed his lips, staring into the distance. “There are some warriors like Gobann who think our fight is not yet over, that we pure wights can still stem the tide of humankind and revert back to the wight empires of old on our own strength, by merit of the right breeding plan at the right time. And maybe this is true. But my heart tells me our fight is a different one, not for purity, not against humanity. Our people are dying a long slow death, and those old and wise enough to remember it was not always so, they look to me to help them—to reach out to those we have shunned so far, our half-wight children, the humans. That together we might be stronger, carve out a place to live and maybe thrive in peace over the span of the next few centuries. However, if humans have the Blade once more, I will be leading our people into a short and painful blaze before the final road.”

  He grimaced and cocked his head. “What do you think, Telen? How would you choose in my place?”

  “You…you’re seeking to make peace with the half-wight tribes in the south?” Diaz was surprised and made no effort to conceal it. All his life he had encountered the apprehension of the wights, their disdain for those like him. It was hard to imagine wight culture embracing anything foreign, much less actively seeking it. But in a cold rush, he remembered the touch of the gjalp, her longing, the texture of her skin as it brushed against him, her full lips parted, gaze fixed on his mouth—that flicker of recognition. Of course. It was not always so.

  “Not only those tribes,” his father said. “Any half-wight willing to stand by our side in the final fight against whoever wields the Living Blade.”

  So a war against Bashan and the Kandarin Empire? No, a war against Suranna, the Queen of the South. His hands curled to fists. If he stayed in the north, with the wights—she had no hold on him
here. He could rid himself of her influence without slaving under the hope that Bashan would deliver on his promise and free him from her curse. And his own vow to Bashan? He would hold true to his word. He would guide him to the location of the Blade. But if a number of wight warriors then attacked the prince before he remade the Blade…say fifty warriors…the Blade would remain hidden for a while and his vow would still be fulfilled. He had never promised Bashan that the prince would own the Blade, only that he would guide him to it. His fingers were tingling now, as though waking up from a numbness from unseen cords that had bound them.

  “And what would my role in this be?”

  “That of my son. A negotiator, perhaps. Or a formidable warrior leader. A tribe chieftain in his own right?”

  “The other chieftains would never accept me as one of them,” Diaz scoffed. “If I were the chieftain of a tribe, I’d be eligible to be elected High King as your successor, should you fall. That alone would most likely earn me a knife in the back in my first few weeks as a chieftain.” He trod the new paths his mind was making, as suspicious of the terrain as he had been in the marshlands.

  His father squeezed his shoulder once more.

  “You would never be eligible for election as long as you have a human wife.” His father nodded toward the curtain. Nora stood before it, waiting patiently for the conversation to stop, her hands folded before her. “Believe me. I know.”

  Diaz sucked in air through his teeth.

  “Go on,” his father said. “Tell her she looks beautiful.”

  He opened his mouth dutifully, but nothing came.

  She did look beautiful. Out of her usual charcoal clothes, she wore a dark blue dress with silver thread lining over a garment dyed blood red. His mother had been slightly taller, so the dress pooled around Nora’s feet where she stood. Half of her face was still burnt, of course, but her looks had never been what he admired about her. Her cropped hair stuck up, untidy from when she had tugged the dress over her head, but it did not distract from the brilliancy of her defiant eyes, her angular chin jutting forward.