Thorn

by Intisar Khanani

  I open my mouth and then close it again, unsure what to tell him. Would he punish Corbé, or bring the blame back to me? I cannot let myself trust his smiles or the tenor of his voice. I know that he can play games.

  “Or were you running to something?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “Away.”

  “You might be safer in the palace,” Kestrin suggests.

  “I doubt it,” I say. And then, belatedly, “Your Highness.”

  I risk a glance at him. He watches me, dark eyes shrewd. If he knows, wouldn’t he force the question?

  “As you wish,” he says. “If you need anything, you will let me know.”

  I bob my head and retreat to the servants’ door, grateful to escape him.

  The woman tries to usher me back to my room. When I tell her haltingly that I wish to return to the stables she raises her eyebrows and then acquiesces, as if I had requested a great favor. She leaves me at a servants’ exit onto the side road skirting the palace, nodding towards the gates before striding off to other duties.

  The walk to the stables is longer than I remember. I stop at intervals to rest against the buildings, my legs weak beneath me. By the time I reach the temple, I have neither breath nor balance to take me farther. I stagger through the door and sink down on the mats, my cheek pressed against the coarse straw. I’ll let myself rest a little and then go on.

  Something scuffles against the straw. I open my eyes to see a young boy looking down at me, hesitating just within the temple door. He is a slight, bony creature with great brown eyes and stringy hair. I close my eyes; when I open them again he is gone.

  Voices wake me, echoing into the little temple from the street. The temple is shadowed now, filled with evening gloom. Gradually, I become aware of a second presence: a man sits against the opposite wall, wrapped in a cloak, unmoving. I watch him, and some part of me tells me I should run, that this might be Corbé or another like him, but I have not the strength to fight this.

  “Are you awake?” the man’s voice rumbles from the depths. I consider not answering, but if he meant me ill he would have acted by now. I lever myself up. The temple tilts as I move. I take a gasping breath, my eyes trained on the straw mat. I do not want to be ill here.

  He stands up, a fluid rippling of cloak and shadow, and crosses the temple to me. “I will escort you home,” he tells me, putting a hand under my elbow. I stumble to my feet with his help.

  Outside, the men whose voices I heard straighten from where they lean against the opposite wall. Two head for the street, the other two watch us leave: a quad that has nothing to do with the king’s guards. I lean heavily on my companion, keeping my gaze on the cobblestones. As we near the stables, the two men who had left before us pause to speak with a cobbler, allowing us to pass. I wonder if I could spot the other two if I looked back.

  My companion stops at the edge of the road. “Can you go the rest of the way on your own?”

  I consider the distance: I will have to walk the length of two practice rings and the first stable between them to reach my room. Falada’s stall is much closer. I look up at the hooded face of my helper and realize I know him, know the scar that runs from lip to chin. He would not want to set foot in the king’s stables.

  “I will be fine,” I assure him. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome.”

  I start forward, striving to walk steadily. By the time I reach Falada I have only the strength to pull the stall door closed before I sink into the straw in the corner.

  “Alyrra, are you well?” A great brown eye regards me from barely two hand spans away. I reach up a hand to run along his cheek.

  “Fine, Falada. Just tired.”

  “Where have you been?” His voice is gruff with worry.

  “Is it safe to talk?”

  “You may speak with impunity,” he replies. “Only I must beware.”

  “Yes.” I lean my head against the wooden wall, breathing in the smell of horse and sweat and sun-sweetened hay. “I went out to watch the geese as usual,” I tell him. “Corbé had taken them to the lower pasture. When I got there he came over to me and—I spooked as a colt might, I suppose. I hit him with my staff. And then I ran and lost myself and part of the hunting party found me and brought me back.” I gasp as I finish, as if I have not breath enough left in my life for this short story with its shadow truths.

  Falada sighs, and in that simple exhalation I hear the rest of my story. “Child,” he says softly, and that is all.

  ***

  I wake with a jerk from murky dreams to a grim realization: Filadon. It had been Filadon who had kept Kestrin’s watch, and returned me to the city. I scrub my face wearily. So. He must know Kestrin’s secrets, or at least the prince’s study of sorcery. Does he know about the Lady as well? Regardless, now I know why Filadon was chosen to meet us at the border: he may not have great holdings or a fine title, but he has the confidence and trust of the Family.

  I force myself up, for it is near dawn. My chest aches and my throat is raw; thrice during the night I woke coughing. Still, I feel more rested than I was. I had better not miss any more work.

  Laurel smiles when she sees me standing in the common room doorway and hurries to bring me a bowl of porridge. I sit at the table, watching her pretend not to watch me eat. Her brow is furrowed, and her eyes when they meet mine are anxious. She puts my lunch in a new cloth bag and sits opposite me.

  “Where were you?” Her voice is quiet, gentle.

  “I—” I stop, not sure how much to tell her, if I even have the words to tell her.

  “Corbé came back alone with the geese. We ilakina.” I shake my head, and she tries again. “We waited and waited. Ash and Rowan went to the pasture to look for you. Then we heard from the palace that you were ill and would return later.”

  I nod. “I was ill.”

  “Corbé would not tell us anything.”

  “He does not like me,” I say haltingly, aware of how terrible an understatement this is, that it does not begin to catch the darkness that lies between us. I try again. “I am afraid.”

  Laurel reaches across the table and closes her hand over mine, squeezing gently. “Corbé is not bad. He is very angry and hurt.” She hesitates, searching for a simple way to speak to me, that I might understand her words. “His father is a lord. His mother is a gierana—like you and me. We work. He hates his father because his father left him here. Perhaps he does not like you because you are a lady; you had what he could not.”

  “His father is a lord?” I repeat, shocked.

  “Yes.”

  I look down at Laurel’s strong, callused hand holding my own newly work-roughened hands. “But I work too. I am a gierana.”

  “Hate is a strange thing, Thorn. We do not always understand it. You are here, but you are still a lady, and the people of the palace still ask about you.” I look at her sharply. “They ask and different people tell. We here,” she tips her head to indicate the common room, “we do not talk about you. We say only that you do good work, and that you are learning Menay. But others watch you and report what you do. You should know that.”

  “Thank you.” My words are so quiet I think that they could hardly have reached her, but she gives my hands one last squeeze and stands up.

  “Corbé will be waiting for you.”

  I nod, feeling sick to my stomach. All the way down the hall and out the doors I can feel her eyes on me. I take Falada with me to the goose barn, standing by his side while Corbé drives the geese out. Corbé seems no different to me than before, but for a scabbed cut and a fading bruise below his eye. It is only when he looks at me that I see my brother in his eyes; it is a look that takes the breath from my lungs and leaves my throat so dry I cannot find my voice.

  I think of Laurel’s revelation but I find that my fear overpowers my pity. I do not want to care about Corbé’s past, his half-noble lineage. I do not want him near me. Falada watches me covertly, staying by my side. He steps away only a fe
w times to usher back geese to the flock that have slipped my notice. I nod to him gratefully but do not call out; my throat aches fiercely, and I wonder if I will yet catch my death of cold.

  On the way back from the field, Falada says, “Have I told you the history of my people?”

  I glance at him curiously. He has never mentioned anything of the sort. “No.”

  “I want you to hear it.” Falada lifts his head, looking out over the plains, and when he speaks again his voice is deep and fluid. “There was a time when all the thinking creatures lived in harmony. Men and Horses shared an equal space as companions and caretakers of the earth, for neither race yet called themselves rulers, nor cared for power.”

  Falada’s words spin a path into a history so long past no human has recorded it. I sink into the comfort of his knowledge, the depth of his voice. “Then Men began to take a different course from Horses, using our lesser cousins, the unspeaking horses, as beasts of burden and breeding. Where the Horses had once taught humans how to venerate God and eulogize the world about them, the humans now used those songs to glorify themselves. Corrupted by greed and wishing for glory, the humans grew power-hungry. They thirsted to be remembered by future generations, to gain a measure of immortality. They became warlords and princes, calling others to fight for them, continually killing for a piece of land over which they might have absolute control for a little time. The Horses these humans drove from their lands, wanting neither their honor nor their peaceful example.

  “It was the Horses that pushed humans to develop writing, for writing allowed humans to politic and communicate without our knowledge. Here humans could exemplify their superiority without question, proving once and for all their right to master the earth.

  “In the end,” Falada tells me ruefully, “it came down to our hooves versus your fingers. Not to mention your opposable thumbs.”

  I look down at my hands.

  “If one of my brothers were found, whether Horse or horse, so long as they were caught in the wild, they were put to death. We became hunted, a danger to society, for we created an imbalance in a world where only Men were to rule. We were the seed of revolt, the possibility of another option. That is why you had never heard of us; we have learnt to keep away, to stay out on the empty plains or wander only those lands left untouched by Men.”

  “I am sorry,” I whisper.

  “It is no fault of your own.”

  Isn’t it, I wonder. But I ask only, “Why did you stay with me when I am part of what has exiled your people?”

  “Did I not tell you that in you I saw some hope for humanity?”

  I grin. “Right.”

  “It is because you did not want your power, nor treat those around you as chattel.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “How could you have seen all that in just a few days of traveling?”

  “You wished to free me, and you treated the soldiers with respect.”

  It sounds like very little to put his trust in to me, but then Valka had done neither. Still, “Weren’t you worried about trusting me?”

  “I did not ask a hostler to call you the first time I spoke with you, did I?” Falada’s eyes gleam with humor.

  “Well, no, but…”

  “But nothing.”

  “Hmm,” I say, and stamp my feet against the cold. We have come to a stop some distance from the city gates. I look up at them, still far enough away that I cannot make out the separate figures of the guards, then turn and sit on the stone wall running alongside the road.

  “That,” Falada says, as if I had posed him a question, “is why I cannot teach you how to read Menay. We Horses are illiterate.”

  “Fingers,” I muse.

  “And thumbs.”

  “Do you think I should learn to read Menay?”

  “Perhaps. You will need to eventually. For now, since I cannot offer you that help, you must focus on learning to speak instead. Language is a weapon, Alyrra. You must learn to defend yourself with what you can.”

  I wrap my arms around myself, cocooning myself in my cloak. “I don’t think any words would have helped me—with Corbé.”

  “Perhaps not just then, but before, and now after, there are chances.”

  I think of Laurel, and how differently our conversation might have gone had I told her of Corbé’s attack. I wonder what she would have done, if anything might have changed. I wonder if I could have trusted Kestrin with what happened. With a sigh, I look up at Falada. He is beautiful in the dim morning light, his coat shining white, his eyes dark and kind.

  “How is it that you are magical?” I ask. “Why would you be created differently from humans?”

  Falada smiles. “Perhaps to offset the lack of thumbs.”

  “Falada!”

  “We believe in the same God as you, but where you are told that God created you from earth, we are told that He created us from both earth and fire. Each of our races has certain advantages over the other—these inborn abilities allow for mutual advancement, mutual rivalry, or mutually agreeable separation.”

  I consider this. “Then what of the Lady? How does she wield magic so easily if it isn’t natural to her?”

  “I did not say that Horses and humans were the only races, only that we two once lived together in peace.”

  “Then the Lady …” I stop, caught off-guard by a fit of coughing. I turn my head to the side and spit phlegm into the dirt by the wall. I have a momentary vision of Jilna’s face, of how her eyes would have widened, her eyebrows shooting up, at the sight of such behavior and I have to bite back a smile.

  “The Lady is not what you would call human,” Falada tells me, jerking me back to the conversation.

  “Then what is she?”

  “You have heard of—how do humans term them—the Fair Folk?”

  “Yes,” I say, and I hear Jilna’s voice once more in my chamber, discussing my nighttime mishap, recounting the rumors that the Fair Folk had come to steal me away.

  “They were created from fire alone.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The Fair Folk are created from a different element. They see the play of light and shadow around us in a way that we cannot begin to understand, and so they can touch the lifesong of everything about them to weave what you call magic.”

  “Which is why, even if the prince has studied magic all his life, he doesn’t stand a chance against the Lady,” I finish for him.

  “Exactly.”

  I hold myself perfectly still as if our words might fade into the plains, their meaning gently borne away by the morning breeze. Falada watches me, his breath misting in front of him. Finally, he says, “We should keep going. It is cold out here, and you are not yet strong.”

  We walk back to the city in silence. It takes me longer to clean the barn, my back and legs aching. I set the rake back in its wall bracket when I am done and wash my face and hands in a bucket in the back room. When I come back out to the main area, Falada nods towards the staffs that lean against the wall. I walk over to them. It seems to me that they are bars stolen from a prison, that I have seen their smaller brothers strung across my window at home.

  “Take one,” Falada tells me; it is not strange to me that his voice is both sad and stern. The wood grain is familiar to my hand, the roughness of it sliding easily against my callused palm. It is a familiarity that leaves me slightly nauseous.

  Falada walks beside me all the long way down West Road in silence. I wonder if I should ask him again about Horses and the Fair Folk, but I know that he has told me what he wished. He has given me enough to turn over in my mind to distract me from what I am afraid to consider.

  That night I take the blankets from my room and move them to Falada’s stall. The trunks I leave closed where Kestrin’s men have stacked them. As the days pass I use the room only for washing and changing. And every night Falada stands by the stall door, and raises his head to watch me when I cough.

  Chapter 18

  My days pass in
a haze of work and tiredness. I go to the palace only once, following the page Valka sends, and sit with her to compose another letter to my mother. Valka sneers at me but she cannot hide her discomfort with the contempt of my mother’s words. I find myself agreeing with my mother, studying her response carefully, then listening to Valka’s account of her life. Valka is indeed acting foolishly in choosing her companions and setting about her intrigues, yet I am not so sure of my mother’s advice either. She believes Filadon of little importance, never questioning why he met us at the Border. Surely that simple fact deserves her consideration.

  The letter is not ready until late, Valka cross with having to devote such time to it, but I am grateful to leave it signed and sealed on her desk. I meet no one else while at the castle—even Valka’s attendants are absent—yet I know that that means nothing: the prince will know of my visit and I wonder what he will make of it. Or rather, I fear I know exactly what he will make of it.

  I wake the next morning to find the world buried beneath drifts of snow, the usual sounds of the stables strangely muffled. Horses stand patiently outside, each with their own woolly horse blanket, their breath puffing forth like so much dragon smoke. When Falada and I reach the goose barn, I learn what I have occasionally wondered: that the geese will no longer be taken out. Instead, Corbé and I rake up around them, Falada watching silently from the gate. After we lay down fresh straw, we haul in buckets of grain to pour into the feeding troughs and then part ways, silent as always.

  With the change in weather, I spend significantly more time in the common room with the hostlers. Often, in their conversations, they glance at me, inviting me to speak. Remembering Falada’s advice, I join in, determinedly asking questions and making comments; while Rowan might sometimes duck his head to hide his amusement, or Violet discreetly rub the smile from her mouth when I say something particularly confused, mostly my friends listen thoughtfully and phrase their replies so that I may catch their meaning.

  It is Laurel who brings me an herb to steep in hot water to soothe my cough. And it is Violet who makes it in the morning and leaves it out for me to drink before I leave for the goose barn. Yet both, when I thank them, shake their heads as if they have done nothing at all or as if it is silly of me to mention so small a thing.