by Meg Merriet
“Good morning—There you are, mate—Yes, you’re welcome—Nice to see you, gunny.” Unfortunately, my enthusiasm came off as insincere, and my brothers just glowered and snatched up their bowls. By the end, I’d given up. “Morning, you—yeah, sod off—your mother made the same face last night.”
When mealtime had ended, Dirk had everyone circle around him.
“Brothers, gentlemen, thank you for remaining beside me. You have shown inspiring allegiance. I have a secret, as all men have secrets, and I hid it because I, like many of you, had lost faith in this world. I was born a prince of the Luftberg bloodline.”
A shiver of whispers echoed across the room, but a hush fell as he began to speak again.
“What happens now is your choice. If you don’t care about politics and simply want to thieve and whore your way to an early grave, then you may abandon this cause. But this is the chance of a lifetime. I will retake my throne, and when I do, those who helped me will be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. Gold. Pardons. Dukedoms. Lands. Marriages to wealthy and well-connected brides.”
“Is that Miss Lily up for grabs?” someone shouted. The men laughed.
“Why yes,” he said. “She is looking to marry. So be cordial.” Their chuckling resounded through the room. “Our host Mr. Belle is revitalizing a network of Royalists who can help us. I know we just went through an ordeal. We lost a beautiful ship…”
As the men bowed their heads in a moment of silence, I sneaked away to find Lily. It made sense to try her room, but she wasn’t upstairs. I tried asking the servants. They said she’d taken Molly to see the chickens, and so down I went, and followed a row of rosebushes around the vine-covered house. A dirt road wound into a wooded area. I trekked along the trail until I came to a shed, a workshop and animals pens for goats and geese. Amidst them was a chicken coop, where Molly peered in, clucking at the hens.
“Molly!” I called. “Is Lily with you?”
Molly stood upright and came skipping over. “She’s not feeling so well. She went to lie down in there.” She pointed to the workshop.
I proceeded towards the log house. The door had no working knobs, only a twisted rag filling the hole where one should have been. I pushed it open and entered a studio rich with the aroma of tree sap and lumber. There were carvings all around, wind chimes of dragons and birds that hung from the ceiling. Their wood flutes jangled as I closed the door behind me.
“Lily?” I purveyed the rows of animal figurines perched on shelves and worktables. They all had the same signature carved into their hindquarters: LMB. “Are these yours?”
Lily sniffled somewhere in the shady heat of the shop. I discovered her behind a large sculpture of a ship climbing a wave. “I would like to be alone,” she said.
“Let me apologize.”
“Please just go. You’ve done enough.”
“No. I won’t go. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you! It’s hard to be sugary sweet when your whole world gets snatched out from under you!”
“I am sorry for your losses… your brothers… and the Wastrel.”
“You think that’s all I lost? They didn’t know I was a woman, and now that they do, they think I’m supposed to act like one. They all treat me like I’m useless, like I should just look after children and turn invisible.” My breath trembled as my emotions boiled over. I held fast to keep from bursting into tears.
Lily came around the sculpture, her eyes puffy and red.
“Have you been crying?” I asked.
“It’s one of the few things we’re allowed, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t, actually, or they’ll never respect you.”
She took me into her embrace. I resisted the urge to pull away. I let her hold me because I could tell it made her feel better. “I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m just so ashamed.”
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
“You were doing me a kindness.” She dabbed her eyes with her lace handkerchief. “I’m a daft ninny to encourage that man’s attention. Nobody ever pays me any mind and he saw that and tried to exploit it.”
“He’s not so wretched as that. He likely did take an interest. And much of what I said wasn’t true.”
“So then he doesn’t lie with whores?”
I chuckled at her innocence. “Oh, Lily. All men lie with whores.”
Lily’s face went white with aghast.
“Well, perhaps not all men.” My voice quavered on the lie. “Certainly all the ones I’ve known, but they might fly straight for the right woman. The thing is, you should be courting with men of your own social class. If anything ever happened between you and Baker, it would not be secret for long. Your father would find out, and the two of them might duel, and one or both of them would be dead.”
“But I hate my suitors! They’re stuffy and boring and they treat me like a child. Sandy says ‘good girl’ to me like I’m some toy bred dog. And he buys me dolls. Dolls!”
“That’s disturbing,” I said, remembering the prince’s chamber on the Crescendo.
“And Bartholomew is the worst. He comes just to smoke with father and he goes along with everything he has to say about art, no matter how subjective or inane. Then during the ten minutes he shares with me, no matter what I say, it’s wrong. I’m just another silly girl to him.”
“Huh,” I said. “Compared to this lot, Baker sounds like a prize.”
“He is. He truly is,” insisted Lily, taking both my hands in hers as if we were about to ring around the rosy. My whole body clenched up, but I forced myself to look amicable. “There is something so gentle about him,” she said fondly.
I remembered a time Baker skewered a man’s neck with his dagger. The blade jutted out the front of the fellow’s throat, squirting blood like geyser. “Hm,” I said. “In his own way, perhaps.”
There was a knock on the door, and Molly burst in. The wind chimes clonked together across the ceiling. “Clikk?” she called. “I found some sticks for swordplay. Would you teach me?”
I grinned at the child. “You want to play choppy-stabby?”
“Yes! Please!”
“All right, Princess,” I said. “Care to join us?” I asked Lily.
“I shouldn’t,” she said. “If you bruise me, father will be furious.”
“Everything fun makes fathers furious,” I said.
“Please, Lily,” Molly squeaked.
“I suppose if we’re careful…” Lily swept her hair back, weaving it into a long braid. “Just try not to hit me in the face.”
XII. Witching Hour
I stood at the helm, flying an airship through a cold, dark sky. A disembodied moan on the wind told me to brace so I hunched behind the wheel. Black feathers scattered like rain across the deck. The howling of the wind rose to a screech. Trembling and creaking, the wood threatened to give out under the force of the mighty gale. I started to lose hope, when I heard a voice.
“Little one?” It was my mother’s voice.
I looked down at myself, and saw I was a child again. I wore a worn farm dress and little ankle boots with heels.
Mother stood behind me, pristine with skin like marble. She knelt and brushed back my long strands of hair. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you,” she said.
“I never blamed you.” My voice rang clear and it surprised me. After years of rasping, I had forgotten the sound of it.
“No, but you throw hate at the world. This isn’t what I wanted for you. This isn’t what your father would have wanted.” Thunder rolled and my mother veered her head. “Remember our song, little one. It will protect you.”
An orb of crackling light flickered behind the brew of rainclouds in the night sky. The storm overtook the skies around our ship.
When I looked back at my mother, her hair was dark. She was Maive the witch. Filaments of black smoke and feathers danced on the air around her. They shrouded her in an amorphous set of black wings and then dispersed on the wind. My mother was gone.
“C
likk?” Maive said. “Were you dreaming about your childhood?”
“I suppose,” I said. “Hello, Maive.”
“I am on Rex’s counsel. The plan is so far a success.”
“Who is Rex?” I asked.
“A knight who has risen in the ranks. As General of War, he has assumed leadership. Rumors circulate that Prince Derek is still alive, and General Rex grows paranoid. He has placed Locwyn under martial law and imprisons his people for crimes as trivial as failing to hang or carve the imperial crescent over their thresholds.”
The smoky clouds took on the shape of a skull. That skull broke apart into hundreds of skulls, which broke down into thousands. Skeletal apparitions writhed in agony.
“He executes prisoners in droves, clearing out room in the dungeons for new offenders. Blue Dusk are permitted to exterminate any and all royalists on sight as such outlaws are now considered a terrorist threat.”
The skulls ignited and lit up the sky with their flammable vapors.
“A small fortune has been offered for Captain Dirk’s head. We must act quickly while the Blue Dusk are weakened, while the people still doubt their might. Travel to Windmark. Insurgents have taken the military outpost there and might be swayed to join our cause. Their leader was a former knight under the old monarch. The fortress of Windmark is the perfect site for building a rebel army.”
The fiery clouds cooled and took the form of a howling mountain the shape of a knight. The mountain wore a crown of jagged rock and spiked gauntlets wet with blood. He unsheathed his saber and tendrils of phantom mist curled about it as if soul-bound. As the smoke cleared, I saw his face, a visage deathly pale like snow with eyes like frozen water. His smile gleamed in the shine of the moon. Seeing him made my stomach twist into knots.
“This is General Rex,” said Maive. “His genocide of the poor in Locwyn must be stopped.”
I clung to Maive’s velvet skirt, hiding from the general’s soul-singeing stare. “I’ve seen this man before,” I whispered. “He is the Cerulean Knight.”
“We are out of time. I must leave you now.”
“Wait,” I said. “Just one last thing. May I see my mother again? Just once more?”
Maive frowned. “I’m sorry. This is only a dream. Whatever you saw before I arrived wasn’t real.”
I woke up then, nearly rolling out of the trundle bed. My heart pounded in my chest. I was so close to the Cerulean Knight, I could feel his presence humming in my bones. The moment of vengeance was at hand.
XIII. Millicent
Why risk our necks to liberate a city of people we care nothing about?” asked Jasper.
Sweat slithered down the back of my neck. I curled my shoulders in, glancing at Dirk for any assistance. He was too busy telling a rowdy bunch in the back of the ballroom to pipe down.
“Innocent people are dying,” I said. “Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but some of us care if Locwyn is reduced to an empty husk.”
The men eyed me strangely, as if they wondered why I had been allowed to speak.
Dirk intervened with all the charisma of a prince and the crowd’s expression changed from such that was skeptical to that which was captivated. “Every moment we waste, General Rex’s power is growing. If he aims to hunt us down, we will eventually be trapped in a battle we can’t win. We must destroy the Blue Dusk or we’ll all be hanged for terrorism. Clikk, are there any other details you remember about our enemy?”
“Just one,” I said, my voice fading. “He is called the Cerulean Knight.” Baker’s eyes met mine and I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me.
“How will we be rewarded after the siege?” a man asked. A clamor of approval in his asking lifted off the crowd.
I stepped out into the hallway where Lily waited. She set her hand on my shoulder and asked, “Are you all right?”
“Just fine,” I said. “Windmark awaits.”
“You’re going with them?”
“Of course I am.”
There was a twinge of something sad in Lily’s expression, a kind of misty yearning. “Might we go fence now?” she asked. For the last week, I had been going with her each afternoon to give lessons on swordplay, teaching her how to parry, thrust and side step. “I put a basket together for us,” she said.
“Certainly.”
“Until soon then.”
She checked the hall for her father before grabbing her basket off the table and heading out of the house. Someone grabbed my arm from behind. I yanked it away and whipped around to see Baker. He caught my wrist before I could strike him.
“What do you want?” I sneered, shaking him off.
“To keep my word,” he whispered. “Is Rex the man who killed your parents?”
“Doesn’t matter. You made that promise to someone else.”
“Now listen…” he said. Clasping his hands over my shoulders, he tried to move me out of earshot from the ballroom. His touch sent my skin crawling up my spine. I smacked his arms away.
“Bastard!” I hissed, knowing my words hurt more than hitting him ever would. “Don’t touch me again!”
Baker donned a mask of indifference. “Fine,” he said, walking backwards with his hands up. “Go play with your sweetheart.”
I went outside and sprinted to catch up to Lily on the forest trail. It felt good to run, to burn the feelings of anger and betrayal in a burst of energy. When I spotted my lady nearing the animal pens, I picked up a stray stick, and chased her. Lily yelped and quickened her pace. She found her own stick and twirled to face me, deflecting.
I beat the stick right out of her grasp. “Ow!” she cried, grasping her wrist.
“Don’t ever underestimate your opponent!” I gathered up her stick and handed it back to her. “Again!” Again I whipped my stick into hers, and this time it broke in half.
“Clikk! What’s the matter with you?”
“Did you see that? You’re strong. You cannot doubt yourself. You cannot hesitate. When the Blue Dusk come, there will not be time to think or consider; you have to kill them straight away. A woman your height and weight is already at a disadvantage. If you can’t kill every last one, they’ll…” My grief burned holes in my stomach. I couldn’t say it aloud, but I could see it in her eyes that she knew.
“I’ll kill them,” Lily said firmly. “Clikk. It’s all right.”
I nodded, dropping my broken end of stick. “I cracked my sword.”
“Yes, well, you got what you paid for.” Lily said.
I couldn’t help but show a slight smile. I had come to like her. She had a good sense of humor and knew how to handle a wretch like me. She put up with my berating her for backing away from me in battle. She never fussed over broken nails or torn stockings, and in spite of my low birth, she treated me as an equal.
We found another stick and started a lesson of blade work. I made her learn the response to every assault and perform the action over and over until it felt as natural as breathing. The breeze coming down from the hills smelled of lavender. It chilled the sweat on my clothing.
“Quite similar to ballet, isn’t it?” she noted.
“I wouldn’t know.” I thrust at her. She countered and tapped my arm. “Good.”
“Might we take a break?” she asked.
“We haven’t even begun.”
If my aim was to give this young woman a chance to protect herself, I had to be hard on her. We continued to practice, shuffling in the dirt, jumping over roots and sliding behind trees. Lily’s dress was soaked with sweat and her hair became a tangled nest.
She jabbed me hard in the ribs and shouted, “You’re dead, Clikk! It’s over, all right? You’re dead!” We both laughed deliriously, catching our breaths. I sat down on an exposed root and she took a seat beside me, reclining against the trunk.
“Oh my heavens,” she gasped, “Corsets should be illegal.”
“You’ve been wearing a corset this whole time?”
“My shackle,” she laughed. She kicked o
ff her pumps, which were sullied in earth. “I think they make us wear these to keep us from thinking clearly.”
“Makes sense,” I muttered. “Imagine what women might get up to if they could breathe.”
“Why do you say they?” asked Lily. “Aren’t you one yourself?”
“Surely, I am, but I’d rather people think I wasn’t. It gets in the way when you’re trying to find work outside of whoring.”
“In the new kingdom,” she said, “Women must have all the same rights as men. We should be allowed to work in all trades. Of course, to achieve these rights, we will first need to establish a stable political system, one that can be managed without bloodshed.”
“Nothing happens without bloodshed.”
“That is what they would have us believe,” she said. “If we stay quiet and subdued, we are already finished. We need to make our opinions heard.”
“And when they give us lashes?”
“A hundred lashes couldn’t silence me.”
“Have you ever been lashed?” I asked. “Each and every strike is a pain that bites you in half. A dozen is the minimum, and such a beating puts a man out for weeks. A hundred, Lily, that’s certain death. That would silence anyone.”
Lily sat up straight. “Martyrdom only makes a message louder.”
Her sheltered upbringing had made her naive. “What made a pretty thing like you care so much about politics?”
“I have seen too much injustice,” she said. “I grew up surrounded by it. My family lost everything to the Blue Dusk. We saw friends and relatives hanged like dogs and had to pledge fealty to their murderers, the stress of which claimed my poor mother.
“Our capital is so dangerous a place, and I’ve longed to return there, to see the steelwork fountains and the museums, but father would never let me travel, especially with insurgency so rampant in the cities. I envy you, having gone with Derek and seen so many places. I could never bring myself to board an airship.”
“Why, Lily? It’s the greatest thing in the world: that rush of joy when your ears pop and your stomach’s up in your throat. You must fly someday. You would love it.”