by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Thirty-Five
If Allara pretended she didn’t need to breathe, then everything was fine. She sat on the rumpled edge of her bed with her hands folded between her knees and her head bowed.
But the moment of reprieve stretched too far, and her empty lungs were forced to suck in a new breath and a new wave of pain. Her pulse throbbed in her head, her brain swelling against her skull, then receding.
Her rooms in the Glen Arden palace were completely different from the heavy shadows of her Réon Couteau chambers. Here, everything was blindingly white: the marble floors, the snow bear rugs, the bas reliefs on the walls, the bedclothes and pillows, the filmy bed curtains. Gray morning light blared through the wall of windows near the bed and ignited all the white in the room into a burn that stabbed her eyes every time she opened them. At this moment, Réon Couteau actually seemed preferable.
She didn’t even remember crumpling into bed last night. She’d slept in a black abyss and only woken when Esta poked her ten minutes ago to make certain she was still alive. Muttering threats against Koraudians and promising a hot bath, Esta had helped her shuck her filthy riding clothes in exchange for a dressing gown, then headed to the kitchen in search of a hearty breakfast Allara didn’t even want to think about.
Someone knocked on the door, and she forced her eyelids open. She’d had concussions before. She’d muscled through them then, and she could muscle through this one now.
“Come in.”
The ornate ivory of the doors swung inward, and Chris stepped around the corner.
Instinct yanked her backbone straight, and her head thudded in protest. Nausea swirled through her skull; her brain felt as though someone was stirring it into mush. She raised a hand to clasp the collar of her dressing gown. “I thought you were Esta.”
He didn’t look abashed. “I think I saw her downstairs, getting breakfast or something.” He left the door open a crack and stopped between her bed and the door. “I came to see how you’re doing before I left.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Trawler’s Waterfront. Thought today might be my only chance to see my family for a while.” He wore a sleeveless gray doublet, ruched and buckled in red, over a loose-sleeved white blouse. His appearance was decent and refined, but not to a degree that would draw attention on the streets.
She dropped her head to rest against the hand propped on her leg and tilted her face to look at him past the veil of her tangled hair. It smelled of smoke and grease and sweat and she didn’t want to think about what else.
“I’m sorry you haven’t had more time with them,” she said.
“Not your fault.” He shifted his weight and peered around the room, then broke the silence. “Your father left at daybreak.”
She raised her head. “Without seeing me?”
“He didn’t want to wake you, and he was in a bit of a hurry.”
“Where was he going?”
“Ballion. Mactalde has pushed through the hills there, but Quinnon was right about the Cherazii opening their dams and flooding the canyons. It will be awhile before the Koraudians can find a way through. For now, both armies are dug in. I’m planning to head out there myself tomorrow. I told your father I’d be there for the next battle, and, since I missed that, maybe at least I can get there in time for this one.”
“Ballion.” She eased a breath past her lips. “I need to come with you.” Just the thought of it was exhausting, but by tomorrow things would be better.
He clucked. “You’re not in much of a condition to do anything except sleep this thing off. Your head’s hurting bad, is it?”
“I can deal with the pain once the nausea stops.”
“You should just stay and get your health back together.”
“Perhaps.”
“If you give up that easily, I’m going to worry there’s something really wrong with you.”
She peeked up at him, and he gave her a grin that didn’t quite ease the lines of concern between his eyes.
“Don’t trouble yourself.” She made the words gruff. “In the overall scheme of things right now, my headache is a very small issue, hardly worthy of a Gifted’s worry.”
Just to prove it, she grabbed the edge of the night table and pulled herself to her feet. Dizziness scampered around inside her head like a rodent in a cage. Clamping her eyes shut, she concentrated on fitting the grooves of her top molars with those of her bottom. “I can take care of myself.”
“Oh yeah, I can see that.” His footsteps crossed the room. “Come here.” His hands took hold of her elbows and propelled her backward. The backs of her knees bumped the mattress and buckled. He caught her weight and eased her down.
She scowled enough to wrinkle the cut on her forehead and glared at him. “I don’t need to be in bed. I need to be up. I need to take care of things. And I don’t need your help.”
“Yes, you do.” He pushed her back against the pillows once, then once more when she tried to get up.
At the moment, she didn’t have the strength to try again.
“I want you to get in this bed and stay in this bed, hear me?” he said.
She opened her mouth and found she had no response. No one told her what to do like this, not even Quinnon. “You have no right to command me.”
“Oh, hush.” Without so much as a respectful hesitation, he scooped her legs onto the bed and pulled the bedclothes all the way up to her chin. “Here.” He dug a white pellet out of his doublet. “This is for you. It’s called aspirin.” He set it in her palm and closed her fingers over it. “When Esta gets back, tell her to bring you a glass of water so you can swallow it. It’ll help the pain.” He grinned. “I’ll see you later. Be good.”
She stared after him as he left and hunted for something to say that would show she had maintained her composure in the midst of this surprising onslaught of forceful tenderness. But the words refused to come.
The door opened just as he reached it and Esta swept in with a breakfast tray. She gaped. “What do you think you’re doing in here? This is scandalous!”
“Oh, deeply.” He bowed from the waist, held the door for Esta, then strode out.
“Well.” Esta tried to sound offended, but two little spots of color shone on her cheeks as she turned back to Allara. “Ah me.” She sighed. “I always did favor the rogues.”
__________
Instead of commandeering a palace boat, Chris took Parry along as a guide and rode on horseback to Trawler’s Waterfront. Yemas’s hasty shouts about Allara’s supposed treachery had spread like pollen. Nateros demonstrations crowded the streets the whole way. Deeper into the city, some of the demonstrations had turned ugly, with brawls in the streets and rocks hurled through windows.
Many businesses, including the Bowens’ restaurant, had been boarded up for the day. Worick had stayed home from fishing to be there for his family if things got out of hand.
His father greeted him with a broad grin and a handshake. “Now I’m glad I had to stay home. No princess today? And I don’t blame her.”
Chris pushed back his doublet hood and threw his half cape over the back of a chair. They sat around the big table in the restaurant kitchen while his mother bustled around frying croutie in a batter of flour, saffron, salt, and ginger. She served it with heffron nut milk and pea salad mixed with a salty dark meat.
He watched her cook and tried to find the memories of having watched her a hundred times before. Only the whispered déjà vu of dreams remained—that and the soft, spicy melting of the croutie on his tongue.
Sirra had to leave early to pick up the twins from Tielle’s house.
Parry, who had blushed from nose to ears at his first sight of her, knocked his chair over backwards and offered an elbow. “You’ll need an escort, my lady, to protect you. The streets are dangerous today, you know.”
With a wink at Chris, she threw on her cloak and took his arm.
Worick watched them go. “Seems a nice enough lad.”<
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“Yeah, he is. He’s been a good friend. Helped me a lot.”
For a few minutes, the only sound in the room was the clink of the utensils against the tin plates, the howl of the wind rattling the windows, and the clatter of passing wagons in the street.
What did you say to people you’d lived with all your life when you knew nothing about them? He caught his mother’s eye and saw his own thought reflected back at him. He smiled at her, and she returned it.
“This is very strange,” she said.
“You’ve no idea. I mean, I know it’s strange—and difficult—for you, suddenly having a son who doesn’t remember anything he used to. But, for me, it’s like you’re back from the dead.”
“I’ve wondered about that. I stopped dreaming a long, long time ago.”
“And my dreams turned to nightmares.” Worick spooned in a big bite of sopple and custard pie and thumbed a drop of custard from the corner of his mouth. “I dreamt the nightmares, but you lived them.” His head tilted to look at Lauria. “Can’t imagine. Don’t want to imagine.”
Chris’s throat closed down, and he lowered his forkful of pie back to his plate. “No. You don’t.”
“It was very difficult for you,” his mother said. She didn’t ask.
“Yes. Of course. But I moved on.”
Back home, he might have been able to say the words, swallow the lie of them, and change the subject. But, here, he was struck with the need to be honest.
“Actually, I really didn’t do that good a job of moving on. My life just sort of ran in circles after the car wreck that killed you and Sirra.” He glanced at his mother. “I don’t think I realized how true that was until I got here. This whole experience puts everything in a different perspective.” He tapped his fork against his plate. “Makes me see how many things I’ve done wrong.”
She made a demurring sound. “I’m sure you haven’t done anything wrong.”
His father watched him steadily. “What kind of things?”
He forced a laugh and pushed back his plate. Suddenly, this wasn’t where he wanted the conversation to go. His family here in Glen Arden was whole; he didn’t need to bring over the cracks from Chicago. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.” His father wasn’t demanding a response, but the firmness in his words woke faraway childhood memories.
Worick was a man who led his family, a man of patience and kindness, but also a man of bedrock authority. He was a man to respect.
Once, Paul had been that man.
His mother folded her callused hands on the table. “Tell us.” Her expression was soft and ever so faintly guarded, as if she knew she would be hurt by the pain he would share.
“Well.” He struggled to find the words. “There’s not too much to tell, really. The car wreck happened when I was twelve. After that,” he glanced at his father, “you sort of went missing in action. I mean, it wasn’t you, it was my other father.”
Worick’s heavy eyebrows, bleached from his long days in the sun, pulled tight. “We’re the same person.”
How could he put this into words they would understand? “No. You would never have done what he did. I know that. I can tell it by looking at you. You would have stood strong. You would have been there for Lisa and me. You wouldn’t have fallen into the bottle and left us fatherless as well as motherless.”
His mother released a shuddery breath.
Who wouldn’t be upset to hear their children had been mistreated in their absence? He deliberately didn’t look at her.
His father’s fingers steepled, then slid back to clasp each other, over and over. “You don’t know I wouldn’t have done that.”
“Yes, I do.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. “I look at you and see the father I wanted, not the father I had.”
“You did have me, Talan. I’m the same person. Only the situation, the surroundings were different.”
Chris shook his head.
His father lowered his hands to the edge of the table and leaned back. “If I had done the same in this world, if the Searcher had brought you here and you discovered your mother was dead here too and I was a sot, would you have given up? Same as you did in the other world?”
Chris frowned. “No.”
“And you know why not? Because you said yourself you were given a second chance, the opportunity to see your life anew and make your choices over. And that’s the key right there.” He pointed at Chris. “You make your choices, in this world as well as the other. Just as I do.” The creases in his jowls deepened. “I’ve made my own wrong choices, in both worlds. Mostly in the other, apparently. And I’m sorry for that.”
How many times had Chris wanted to hear those words from that mouth?
He shook his head. “It’s not yours to be sorry for.”
“Yes, it is.” Worick drew a tremendous breath. “And when I ask you to forgive me, I’m asking you to forgive all of me.”
What Worick was asking was something he had stopped trying to do years ago. He could forgive Worick with all his heart. But Paul was a different matter. He glanced at his mother, and she gave him a little nod.
He turned back. “I don’t know if I can.” His father wanted him to be honest, so he would be. “But I’ll try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Outside, childish voices shouted, and Chris caught Sirra’s laugh. The door opened on a cold gust of wind, and everyone clambered inside. The twins, excited from their walk and some confectionary canes Parry had purchased in a burst of gallant extravagance, ran around the kitchen, shouting, until their grandmother shooed them into the sitting room.
Parry had his chest puffed out and was regaling Sirra with some story about how he had single-handedly protected Chris from the mobs on their ride over. Her grin said she was thoroughly enjoying it, and the glances she threw at Chris said she wasn’t believing a word.
Chris didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay here forever. This was where he belonged. He was safe here. He was loved. But the day was already stretching. If he wanted to get back to the palace in good time and prepare for his journey to Ballion tomorrow morning, he needed to get a move on. He eased himself to his feet.
“Time to go then?” his father asked.
“Looks like. I’m off to Ballion tomorrow to join the army.”
His father lowered his voice, so the women wouldn’t hear. “It’s getting serious, isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“What would you say if I was to come with you? If it’s come to an invasion, then it’s time for every able-bodied man to fight for his home. Been awhile since my training with the militia. Don’t know as the recruiting centers here in the city would take an oldster like me.” He rolled his hulking shoulders. “But I can still throw a punch with the best of them. And, the truth of the matter is, if I’m going to fight, then I’d like to fight at your side.”
Chris took his hand and shook it. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“And neither I you.” His father gripped his hand and smiled. “When do you leave?”
The last thing he wanted was his father on the front lines, but a familiar face at his side and more time with Worick would improve that long lonely trip to Ballion considerably.
He smiled back. “Skycar leaves the palace midmorning. I’ll tell the Guardsmen to expect you.”