Fall of Thrones and Thorns

by Jennifer Ellision

  Medalyn, though, had hesitated on her way out the door today.

  “You know…you could come with us,” she suggests. Tregle glances up from lacing his boots. Medalyn’s expression is filled with doubt, as though she can predict my answer. She scuffs a toe over the door’s threshold, avoiding my eyes. “I’ve seen you fight. You’re not half-bad. You know. For a pr—” She catches herself. “For a pampered brat.”

  I resist the urge to bare my teeth. The insult is almost a term of endearment from her. “Perhaps another time.”

  She nods, accepting my refusal, and files out the door after the others.

  The last one in the room, Tregle finishes a knot and stands. “She’s right, you know.” He looks up at me from beneath his lashes in that manner that never fails to strike to the heart of me. There’s something more than bashful caution there now. There’s bit of—I hesitate to call it this, but—hope in his eyes.

  “Perhaps another time,” I repeat, managing a wan smile for him.

  Hesitantly, he approaches, arms extended, reaching for me. I rest my palms in the crooks of his elbows and squeeze them gently, wanting to offer him reassurance. He gently presses his lips to my forehead and I close my eyes.

  “Another time,” he repeats softly and follows Medalyn’s path.

  I could go with them. But after so many years of being still and devoting my mind to the contemplations of how to throw the King’s collar off of me and be my own woman, my own Queen, I can’t suddenly transform now. I have always wanted to forge my own path. That hasn’t changed.

  So I join the crowds in the city, where I can be alone, anonymous among them. I need not fear being recognized and my whereabouts reported. Lady Helen doesn’t care how I fill my days, and Langdon doubtless knows that I am here, but there’s not much that he can do about it now.

  Besides, I’m not really the one he’s after. It’s Breena he wants. Breena with her water abilities. Breena with her claim to a throne.

  I let my fingers trail over the fabrics in one of the shops, sighing as I wave off an eager merchant and turning for the door to move onto the next. The Nereid have been quite generous with us, even providing us with a modest amount of coin. But I’m loathe to use them.

  My stomach has no such reluctance. At its stirring, I’m reminded that I’ve yet to eat today.

  “Have it your way, then,” I mutter in Egrian. A Nereid woman starts at the unfamiliar tongue as I walk by, but I don’t stop to explain myself. I stride on, in search of a tavern where I might purchase a meal.

  When I find one, it’s empty and a woman’s voice calls, “Closed!” She mutters a curse, head buried deep within an oven.

  I nod, make to leave, and then hesitate. “Might you recommend another establishment?” My tongue fumbles the Nereid language. “Or advise when you may reopen?”

  “Whenever I can get these blasted coals to stay lit,” she mutters, emerging and wiping her hands on the front of an already filthy apron. Her hair is equally soot-smothered. “What were you after?”

  “I’d had a mind for some food, but I suppose—“

  “My, my,” she interrupts, batting her eyelashes at me in an exaggerated fashion. “Talk fancy, don’t we?”

  She speaks Nereid more quickly than any tutor I’ve ever had. I can scarcely match the words to their Egrian translations quickly enough to keep pace with her.

  “No food here today, Fancy,” she continues. “Can’t get the fire to stay lit.”

  An idea is forming, one I once would never have considered. “Suppose I could assist you with the fire? Would a trade of services for food be amenable?”

  “Amenable?” she repeats with an expression caught indecisive, halfway between twisted and amused. “Yeah, you could say that. So amenable I’d even pay you, too.”

  Pay. I start. I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t made it that far in my rumination over the future. I’d expected to be occupied with ruling a country. But if I’m not a queen, I will need some sort of a way to support myself. There’s a lump in my throat when I answer her.

  “It appears that we’ve struck ourselves a bargain.”

  ~

  It’s back-breaking work. After her first awe over my Torching abilities, the tavern-owner, Trycia, sets me to kneeling beside the oven, opening the tavern for business as she flings dough and meat inside, flying around the room slinging ale and taking orders. It’s a small, but busy establishment, and the ache along my spine from its angle builds, persistent and quick.

  “Don’t get many of your sort on the islands,” Trycia says, pausing during a lull in activity. I ease my hands from the oven and stretch my back. “Load of the water ones, though.”

  I purse my lips. “Just lucky, I suppose.” She doesn’t know me well enough to hear the bitter frosting that coats my words. “I had no trouble getting the coals to hold my heat. What’s wrong with your oven?”

  “Damaged in one of the quakes,” she says. She bangs open a tin door beneath the coals and points inside. “It’s s’posed to heat the coals from below, but its walls are bent. I can’t keep the flame going.”

  She flips me three coins. Their glint shines in the air as they fall through it to my palm. “For your trouble today. If you want, come back tomorrow and there will be more for you.”

  She stands back and surveys me, hands on her hips. “You’re not from here, are you?”

  I blink, swallowing hard. I should be from here. “No. I am not.”

  “Thought as much. You’ve got a way about you.” She looks at me harder. “We don’t get many outsiders. Not so long as I can remember.”

  I choose to remain silent.

  “Do me a favor and take that last pastry to the temple before you go home. Got a feeling about you,” she says. “Something’s coming, and I could do with a bit of favor from Kyrene when it does.”

  Six

  Bree

  I manage to beg off for the next visit to the city temple. Aunt Helen’s smile is sad, but understanding when she leaves to take her seat as Kyrene’s vassal. As she’s done so very many times in my absence.

  I’m becoming well-practiced at pushing down the twinges of guilt that come when I think of it.

  But I can’t avoid my aunt forever. She strides in one morning while I am dressing, with the aid of a woman who is helping me twist the fabric over my form properly. I tilt my head from side to side, trying to see how she does it. Perhaps one day, I’ll actually be able to manage dressing myself.

  Dream large, Breena Rose, I think wryly.

  Aunt Helen shoos the dressing assistant away with impatient hands, deftly assuming the job herself. The door closes behind her with a soft click. She meets my eyes in the looking glass.

  “It’s time, niece. The governors have arrived.” She tightens the knot at my shoulder as I suck in a quick breath, watching her expression.

  “When?”

  She pulls the top layer of my hair back, looking at it in contemplation as she skillfully inserts pins to hold it up.

  My stomach flips. Makers, I had a dream like this once. Only it was my mother helping me dress. And that dream had ended in screams and darkness. With the Egrian king’s victory.

  I put a hand on my stomach to still the restless flapping inside. This won’t be like that, I assure my ragged nerves.

  Oblivious to this inner discourse, Aunt Helen answers my question. “They’ve been arriving throughout the week. I thought to let your mind stay at ease until they were all here, but the time has come. They want to hear what we have to say.”

  She drops my clothing, fabric properly secured, and exits my room, correctly assuming that I’ll follow her.

  I whirl, gathering the long, draping skirt to hurry after her into the hall. “You told them?” I check, a little breathless after the quick movement. “About the Reaping and all of it, right? They already know that much?”

  She stops so abruptly that I nearly crash into her back.

  “Little Wielder,” she says wi
th a patient smile. “Egria has been unable to reach our shores even to find us for years. Our abilities are strongest here. We create fierce currents to capsize their ships. We bend the water to reflect only ocean around our shores so that they can’t see us even on approach. We have even managed to halt any connection that they might be able to obtain. When they spirited you away, we manipulated the abilities of any budding Egrian Water Wielders and blocked them. Our small revenge, you see. We never imagined that they might have a Nereid Wielder among them—that you had survived and would one day return to undo our work.”

  My brow furrows. She can’t mean to hide the state of things from the governors. Langdon will find a way to reach us eventually, and we can’t simply wait for that to happen.

  “Hold on,” I say, my mind catching up with the rest of her statement. “You blocked the Egrian Water Wielders? Why? How? Does that mean that there are a handful of people wandering around Egria thinking they aren’t Elementals who could Reveal—sorry, have the tide come in,” I correct in a growl at her soft tut. “—at any moment?” My voice is high with disbelief. How reckless. Quite simply, it seems just wrong. To have this connection to an element, but never be able to truly reach it…

  My body suppresses the shudder that the thought brings.

  It’s just not right.

  “Not until such time as you choose to let them.” A tired smile doesn’t reach Aunt Helen’s eyes. “It took days of meditation in the temple before I was able to find and tweak that bit of water in the blood that would tie up the abilities. But it was worth it for even the slightest vengeance I could take upon the Egrians.”

  Wonderful. More responsibility for me.

  But if she’d locked all of their abilities, how had I escaped unscathed? I voice the question, and she gives me a quick look, pride simmering in her eyes.

  “Caught that, did you? The best way that I can describe it is that geography gives the abilities a different…shape. I locked Clavish Wielders, Egrian, Aridan. I had no thought to do so for the Nereid.”

  We ride to meet the governors, and I offer a silent prayer that they won’t be waiting for us outside. I had never been an expert on horseback, and when dismounting from a mule, I feel very much like a fish flopping about on dry land.

  Aunt Helen slides neatly to the ground and smooths down her hair in a manner that reminds me eerily of Aleta.

  I am surrounded by women more graceful than I could ever hope to be.

  Wishes that Aleta could be with me now flit over my skin, clinging like ephemeral spiderwebs, but I brush them aside. Aleta would be able to handle this better, that’s true and certain. But it’s something that I have to do.

  My spine goes straight. My eyes lock on the doors ahead of me. I allow myself a single, heavy breath.

  The rest must be even.

  Show no fear, I remind myself.

  Whatever happens next will determine so many things. My standing in Nereid society and the outcome of this war.

  Let it come.

  Aunt Helen pushes open the doors, and I stride into the small, trapezoid-shaped building behind her, head held high.

  The crack of daylight upon the floor is enough to silence the growing din of voices inside. Five men and four women—outfitted in the same fashion that Helen and I are, with the crests of their city-states pinned at their shoulders—break off mid-sentence, hands still poised in the midst of whichever emphatic gesture they were using to better illustrate their points. As one, they turn, bowing at the waist first to Helen and then, less certainly, to me as Helen takes her place among them.

  A short man with a stub of a nose surveys me, making no efforts to hide the sweep he gives me with his eyes. Aleta would raise an eyebrow over his audacity, I think. So I do.

  “This is her?” he asks Helen, ignoring me.

  “No, Ogen,” Helen says glibly. There’s the barest undercurrent of annoyance in her words. “I am in the habit of bringing strangers into the Strategeion for the sole purpose of my own amusement.”

  The man sniffs, apparently not appreciating Helen’s cheek as I do. I duck my head, suppressing a smile that would be out of place here among their serious expressions.

  She continues, a bland hand extended in my direction. “May I present my niece, Her Majesty, Queen Aleta Daphoene Nephele Cyrene of Nereidium?

  “Queen Aleta—” Ogen starts, bluster already in his tone.

  I wince.

  “She prefers,” Helen says with a voice made of iron, “Her Majesty.”

  I’d prefer Bree actually, but the chances of that happening are about as likely as the Makers showing up for afternoon tea. And I do vastly prefer it to hearing a name that, in my mind, belongs to someone else.

  “It’s a pleasure, governors,” I say coolly. I lift my chin. “Let us begin.”

  ~~~

  My head swims with names of the governors after an all-too-brief introduction.

  “This…Reaping, you called it?” One of the women frowns as I rack my brain. What is her name? Karid? Charin? Caris, that was it. She looks to Aunt Helen, eyes searching. “It poses an imminent threat to our shores?”

  Helen turns to me, brows raised, ceding the question to me. She certainly doesn’t dismiss the idea of Ruin’s Reaping as Caden said the Clavish had—I bat away the image of smoke rising like a dark cloud over the city as we fled by ship—but she also isn’t as concerned about it as I’d like her to be.

  “Not…imminent,” I say. Their eyes lift, waiting for me as I swear inwardly and catch my lip between my teeth. That sounds like I’m minimizing the danger. I splay my hands, trying to grasp the right words. “They’re not here yet, but…listen, I know King Langdon. Something’s changed for him. He was content with waiting, but he’s not anymore. He’s not going to stop until someone makes him.”

  “I don’t understand.” That comes from Ogen, and I try not to let my lip curl in his direction. Ogen, I’ve learned very quickly, likes to hear himself talk. “I thought this meeting was to discuss the earthquakes. How our presumptive queen intends to appeal to Kyrene and the gods on our behalf by taking her rightful—”

  “Your presumptive queen,” I bite out, interrupting him. I’d tried to hold my tongue—maybe not hard enough, but I did try. “Is standing right here and would thank you to address her if you’ve something to say about what she should be doing.”

  Aunt Helen looks smug with pride, and I sigh. Well. That was as close to Aleta-like as I’m going to get.

  My mind turns around, folding over itself, trying to isolate which issue to address first. “What earthquakes?” I manage at last, turning to Aunt Helen.

  “It began a few short months ago,” Helen says. “At the time, we dismissed it as an abnormality. I have had the matter investigated. I thought perhaps some sort of island shift…or that one of the mountains had somehow turned to a volcano, bestowed with a twist of Earth Quaking and Fire Starter abilities.”

  Shaking and Torching. I mentally translate the Elemental terms to the Egrian I am used to.

  “But none of those have panned out, I take it?” I ask.

  “No. I am left to think that…” She coughs out a self-deprecating laugh, shaking her head at herself. “I was only moments ago assuring you that we are safe from your king’s reach here. But I do think that perhaps…”

  My stomach feels hollow. “An Earth Shaker.” Is that my voice? It sounds empty. “He’s found an Earth Shaker.”

  “That is what I have been forced to determine, yes.” Helen’s mouth firms. “One with Locus abilities if they’re able to wield their powers away from our shores.” She grasps my hand and gives a vigorous shake of emphasis, dropping her voice to a whisper in order to address me with some privacy. “Do not fret, little Wielder. If there was a way to follow the one who causes these quakes to our shores, I feel certain he would have done so.”

  I’m less convinced. It would be just like the King to let them hold fast to their confidence that they remain hidden, safe from his
eyes.

  And then to strike for them like the snake he is.

  “No one has been able to correctly chart our location.” Caris steps hesitantly into the silence and my eyes snap to her. “For Egria to use such a substance against us, they’d first have to find us.”

  “The king has ways of finding people,” I say, thinking fleetingly of being located with Da. Tregle said that he and the Elementals he’d been with had employed someone with the rare ability of using their element to see to new locations, to use it as a sort of…scrying tool. That’s how they’d found us. Someone had seen us in a fire or felt our location in the earth we tread upon, maybe.

  “I’m sure he has his methods. But we’ve sent every ship he’s sent our way to a watery grave. We’ve masked our presence so that he would not know he’d reached us even if he was staring right at us.” Ogen’s face is superior. Smug. The only way I manage to rein in my temper and the urge to smack him is to remind myself that looking temperamental in front of the governors won’t do any of us any favors.

  “I still think—”

  “I know, dear one.” The smile Helen gives me is fond and a little misty. I have to wonder if it’s me she’s seeing right now or someone else entirely. “Your prince needs to get home. You want to stop his father. All fair points, but you are safe here. Those things will come with time.”

  I tamp down the embers of frustration. If only I knew what Langdon was planning. “He’ll never give up, you know. He’ll keep looking for another way in. He’ll keep hurting people in an attempt to force our hand.” The thought turns my stomach. He’s been more than willing to burn his way through Clavins looking for us. To kill Lilia’s family as an example for any who dared to help those against him. Which innocents are to pay the price for this?