Thorn

by Intisar Khanani

  “Why do you fight for him?”

  I pause, remembering that even when Kestrin had played his games with me, he had stopped short of ever hurting me. In the pity I had glimpsed in his eyes, before he found me out, there had also been regret. “I did not believe he would fail your tests.”

  “He has been very close often enough.”

  “He has.”

  “You did not doubt him last night?” she asks with a slight smile.

  “I knew if I could make him pause long enough to think, he would not harm me. I do not doubt the power of his anger and hatred, but I believe there is that in him which is better and stronger.

  “I do not know what your third test will be, Lady.” I close my eyes. “I have tried to imagine it, and I think the only way he would fail is if he reached that pitch of helplessness and rage I saw in him last night, and then was called upon to save me rather than let me go. I think perhaps he would let me die, tricking himself for those few moments into believing he did no wrong. But I do not doubt he would regret it, even if he never learns who I am. That is the only test left which he might fail.”

  I look back at the Lady. “Which of us has not made mistakes when faced with more than we can handle?”

  “Go back, child,” the Lady says gently.

  “I am not a child to be sent home, Lady. I will not go without the prince.” Her hands flick over her skirts, then come to a rest clasped together in front of her. “Lady?”

  “He is yours,” she says, her voice heavy with weariness. “I will return him to the plains.”

  “What of the third test?” I whisper.

  “You are right,” she says simply. “So I will test him with his life. Let us see what he has learned these last few days. I put him in your keeping, princess.”

  “And then?” She raises an eyebrow in an eloquent, arched question. “What of the rest of the Family?”

  “You will not give them up, will you?” She smiles wryly.

  “They are as innocent as Kestrin.”

  “You know what your king has planned for Valka.”

  “I know.” I look down to the gravel walk. “They say it is justice: she has been found a traitor and passed her own sentence.” I swallow hard. “It is the law that a traitor must die, Lady. And it was you who made her into that traitor; made her so convincing that the king would not have suspected her. No doubt, one by one, she would have given them over to you as she could. For that, she cannot hope for forgiveness … it is justice, but a cruel and ugly justice. I wish that it were tempered by mercy, that she might have an easy death.” I think of the Lady herself, her mother’s death. Perhaps, had the woman been cleanly executed, far from the eyes of her child, the Lady would not have become who she is.

  “Do you argue for the lives of men who cloak cruelty in the guise of justice?”

  “Lady, you condemn them without fair trial. You saw the taint in Kestrin, but when he was put to the test, he passed.”

  “What trial shall I set them, princess? Will you put yourself into my hands to pose them their tests?” She raises her hand quickly, “Do not offer. I am sending you home because in this case you are right, and I do not want you dead because I wish Kestrin dead.”

  “Lady, you will not give them up because you are afraid to.”

  “Afraid?” Her lips curl in amusement.

  “What would you do if you had no more princes and kings to hunt down? You’ve been fighting for this one thing so long; what will you do when you achieve it? There’s no one here with you, is there? You’re alone, and without your oath you have no purpose. You’re afraid of that.”

  “Enough.”

  “No, Lady. Do you think I can’t see how tired you are? You are weary with the things you have done and seen. Can’t you let go?”

  “It has been too long,” she says quietly. “I have been living this oath since I saw my mother die. I hardly remember anything else. What is there for me but this?” She gestures towards the garden, the myriad hidden squares with their stone people.

  “Go back to your people, Lady.”

  “No, Alyrra. The time is too far past for settling down on some quiet mountaintop.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  “I will send you back, and with you your prince.”

  I rise to meet her as she walks towards me. “And what of his family? And you?”

  “Let us both keep watch on them.”

  “Lady?” She holds out her hand, and I clasp it in mine, ignoring the pain of my wounds. “What if I should need to speak with you again?”

  “Call me by my name and I will come.” The gardens melt away, the hedges rising up into walls, the Lady illuminated by a fall of morning light through shattered shutters.

  “Your name,” I echo.

  “Sarait.”

  I let her hand go and she fades into the sunlight.

  ***

  The king’s mage-healer tends to me silently, his face still and stern, accented only by a small line running deep between his eyebrows. He asks no questions I cannot answer, and gives me only a cream for my burns and a strict admonition to watch my cuts for purulence. He promises to return in the afternoon, leaving me under the watchful eyes of a handful of women.

  After the Lady returned me to my room, I had made my way out into the hallway, accosting a passing servant with a message for the king. The servant had run for all that he could not have understood it: Look for the Wind on the plains. It was only when I returned my room and caught my image reflected in a mirror that I realized his true reason: my shift was dark with dried blood, the front and sleeve stiff and black with the stuff. And so, the mage-healer.

  I close my eyes when he is gone, lying back in the bed. I do not know who the women are, their names, their stations, why they are here with me. In a few moments, when I regain some small part of my strength, and before I succumb to the call of sleep, I will open my eyes and ask them. But first I will lie here, listening to the faint rustle of skirts as one of the women crosses the room. I will breathe slowly and lightly, so as not to wake the pain that slumbers in my chest, and I will remember all that I have lived, so as not to lose it in these first hours of wakefulness.

  ***

  The mage-healer is true to his word, returning regularly to see to my injuries. They heal well enough, the stitches closing up without his help, the burnt skin slowly peeling away, new skin growing in pink and shiny.

  “You do not have to see anyone until you are ready,” he assures me, and I let myself savor the solitude his offer affords me, sending away my attendants to stay in the adjoining room, coming only when I call.

  But I cannot hide forever like a she-wolf licking her wounds deep within her den. So, after a handful of days, after listening to the murmured news passed among the women of the strange return of the prince, met walking back to the city by the king’s quad, I leave my bed. I call in one of the attendants to help me dress. It is not until I am ready to leave my room that I realize that these are the clothes from Valka’s trunks, left for so many months in my room in the stable.

  My other attendants flutter around me, helping me to a low couch, spreading a light blanket over my lap. “I’m not dying,” I say, flapping my hands at them. “I’m getting better. Sit down and talk to me.”

  They glance at each other surreptitiously. Of course. Attendants are meant to attend, not accompany. I try again, “I need to know what has happened while I have been ill—surely you can tell me the news?”

  With widening smiles, they settle around me like a flock of jewel-hued songbirds and tell me the gossip of the palace. I listen until I can no longer think straight, then have them help me back to my room.

  “Perhaps a change of rooms would do you good, Your Highness,” one of the attendants, Mina, suggests as I sink back against the pillow. I look at her in consternation. I had thought she had more sense than that.

  “Why would that help me?”

  “You are always watching the window h
ere, Your Highness. I thought perhaps you would find greater comfort elsewhere.” Good sense and a keen mind; I wonder who holds her greatest loyalty.

  “It can’t hurt,” I concede.

  I am wrong. With Mina’s help, I move into my new apartments; they are Valka’s old ones. As with my last visit, I explore the rooms. The writing desk still holds the letters from my mother and Daerilin, though the portrait sketches and Kestrin’s notes are missing. All of Valka’s personal belongings have been removed, the chest of boards bare. I wonder what became of the clothes I had brought with me, the wedding dress and trousseau. In the wardrobe, folded on a shelf, I find a dark traveling cloak lined with fur; I lay my hand on it and know that I will wear it again come winter, showing my appreciation for this first gift from the king. For now I am grateful to leave it here, close the doors upon it and forget.

  I sit on the bed wishing for the little room in the stable I shared with Laurel: the two small straw pallets, side by side, and the wooden pegs on the wall to hold all we need. The sheer volume of my new belongings oppresses me: the huge, empty bed, the veritable forest of chairs and tables cluttering each room. I will change it, I think. In a few moments I will join my attendants in the sitting room and decide with them what will stay and what will go, how to arrange the furniture so that I can think again in straight lines and clean curves.

  I glance around from my perch on the bed and notice a small inlaid wooden box on the bedside table. I open it, then dump the contents into my palm: a thin silver chain looped through an oval pendant. I turn the pendant over, knowing already what I will see: a delicately carved rose. I close my fingers over the pendant and chain, holding them tightly. Kestrin had watched me very closely indeed. I wonder if Joa had sent the pendant directly to him, or if he had to send someone to buy it back from the knacker afterwards.

  “Your Highness?” Mina stands in the doorway.

  “Yes?” I ask, watching her. Though she stands straight, she somehow still manages to fade into her surroundings. Perhaps it is the way her face tilts down, how even when she reaches to pick something up, her manner is confident yet unassuming. I am not sure if it is humility or a great cleverness.

  “Will you dine in company tonight?” she asks, as one of my attendants has asked every night since I first left my room.

  I glance down at my closed fist. “Yes.”

  Chapter 34

  The lords and ladies outdo themselves in their distress at Valka’s betrayal, and their ambiguous comments on my disappearances and injuries, speaking in shocked tones and shaking their heads. Only Lord Garrin approaches close.

  “You seemed quite well the night the impostor was exposed,” he remarks. We stand in a tiled foyer, awaiting the last of the guests before proceeding to dinner.

  “It was a long night,” I temporize.

  “And yet there were no flying daggers or hidden knives that I heard tell of.” Garrin raises an eyebrow, his eyes lingering on my bandaged wrist.

  “I am glad you are so sheltered,” I reply blandly. “I hope you never meet with such yourself.”

  “We are pleased that the Princess Alyrra has recovered so quickly,” the king says from behind me. I turn towards him, encountering the same hawk-like features and hooded eyes, but I also detect a slight twinkle, the faintest movement of his cheeks in the ghostly memory of a smile.

  “I thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “How could we fail to be pleased?” Garrin asks, and with a courteous nod moves on to more fertile hunting grounds.

  “Ah, there is Kestrin,” the king murmurs.

  Kestrin scans the room as he enters. I know from the way he finds me at once, the way his eyes fasten on the bandage at my wrist, that the Lady explained the whole of his ordeal to him.

  He crosses the room to us with barely a nod to the other guests. The last week’s rest has helped him, easing the tension and exhaustion from his features, but his face is eerily gaunt, as if his youth has been bled away, leaving a faint gray tinge to his skin. I wonder how much the Lady’s spell took out of him, the effect of his inner exile on his body so long turned to stone. “My lord father,” he says. “My lady.”

  “My lord,” I say, aware of the eyes on us. I smile and curtsy prettily to his bow.

  “Let us go in,” the king says, gesturing for the servants to open the doors to the dining room. Kestrin offers his arm, and I find myself taking it. What a strange game we play, I think. One would think we had barely met at all, and then only at court.

  At dinner I sit below the king, Kestrin across from me and Melkior at my side. When I look up, I see a wide band of wood carving where the walls meet the ceiling; Kestrin catches my speculative look and smiles guiltily, making me wonder if someone else might be observing our dinner tonight. The king asks me only a few questions, but they are questions of some substance and I take my time answering them: what have I learned of his city while living outside the palace? Was I treated well? Would I be averse to keeping the wedding for when it is set in a month’s time?

  The rest of the evening I maintain a friendly discussion with Melkior, asking after his daughters and revisiting the topics first mentioned at his dinner. I am careful not to mention Red Hawk or Violet. It is too soon, yet, to venture there. When we rise to leave, Kestrin offers me his arm, circling the table to escort me out after his father.

  He leads me to a marble square with a fountain playing at its center. I drop my hand from his arm as we approach it, taking a seat on a stone bench. Kestrin sits next to me, watching me covertly. I do not speak, engrossed in the play of moonlight on water.

  “Lady,” he says softly. “Are you well?”

  It is a strange question, for it has none of the court in it, though it should. “We are both here, are we not?” I ask.

  “It has been a week.”

  “Yes.” A week in which my arm healed enough to no longer require a sling, and my chest wounds closed enough so that each breath brings only a whisper of pain. I wonder how long it took for Kestrin to recover; perhaps his wounds were deeper, being cut into his soul and not his body. In the moonlight his face still has the look of stone upon it, only his hair, smooth and shining, softens his aspect. “Are you truly the Wind?”

  “Yes.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I used to plan how I would tell you, what I would do. Stupid.” The word is laden with contempt.

  “Childish,” I amend tactlessly, but he only laughs. “Why did you wish to marry me?”

  “Can you ask?”

  I do not answer.

  Kestrin bites his lip, then speaks. “When I first found you, I was a novice testing my abilities and you were a child hiding in the forest from your brother. I could not help returning to check on you, and with my father’s tutelage I learned to send words on the Wind to you. I waited for your stories; I wished to get you away from your brother; and more than any of that, I wished I might see you with my own eyes.” He clasps his hands together. “When it came time for me to seek a wife, I knew it would be you.”

  “I did not know what you were.” It is a small betrayal; there are so many other greater things between us, yet this seems the deepest.

  “I know. I am sorry.”

  I trace the embroidered design along the hem of my tunic, my finger running over the perfect stitches. “You have heard Valka’s sentence?”

  “I have.”

  I wait, but he says no more. “Is that how all traitors die?”

  “Traditionally, a traitor is hung until dead. Then his body is left for the crows to pick and the rain to rot for a month before being thrown into a ditch and forgotten.”

  “Then why must she be tortured to death?”

  Kestrin rubs his chin. “I believe that Red Hawk saw your friend’s attackers executed, did he not?”

  “Yes,” I admit, wondering where his questions will take us.

  “Was that your doing?”

  I consider him carefully, weigh the risks. “It was.”

  “I th
ought as much. They were flogged before they were hung. Why did you agree to their ‘torture’ before their deaths?”

  I try to swallow but my mouth has gone dry. “I didn’t,” I begin and then stop. Kestrin watches me keenly. I hear Red Hawk’s voice discussing the flogging: that their punishment not go too easily with them. I had not paused to consider this addition to the punishment. They had caused physical harm, and I wished it all back upon them. There had been nothing of mercy in the justice I had sought. “I did not think,” I whisper.

  “They were made an example of to deter others from their path. This is much the same; the greater the offense, the greater the punishment.”

  “No,” I say. “Even what the thieves did—it was their justice. Every man in this city knows the punishment the thieves exact for such a crime; it is the same for all. What you would do to Valka goes beyond the punishment for treason. It will only haunt the rest of us.”

  “Valka’s deeds will die with her.”

  “Her memory will remain. Those who liked her will remember not just that she died, but that she was made to suffer. That will create hatred in their hearts where there was none before.”

  Kestrin sighs. “My father—”

  “Is the law,” I say, cutting him off. “But is his decision just?”

  “I will speak to him on your behalf,” Kestrin says. “Perhaps I will succeed where you have not yet.” I look at him curiously. “My father said you spoke for Valka at once.”

  “I don’t know what justice really is,” I tell him. “But I am trying to get what I can right. The death she chose lies beyond all law. Her thoughts were cruel and the power that carries out such a sentence would be equally cruel.”

  “I will speak to him,” Kestrin assures me.

  I pick at the bandage around my wrist, fraying the cloth with my fingers, but he does not speak again. “It’s late,” I finally say.

  “Your wrist—what happened—it’s the same,” he stumbles, his voice anguished.

  “Yes.”

  His hands curl into fists and he crosses his arms quickly, as if to hide his fists, though his anger is directed towards himself now. He holds himself in tightly; I know the look, know the way he trains his breath, and I am sorry for him. This will remain between us the rest of our lives: a legacy of hidden identities and shadow truths and violence left to us by the Lady. I do not know what to say to comfort him, and I am not sure that I should speak comfortingly when I can still feel the burn of his magic, the iron-backed bite of his anger. Yet he had not known, had been forced into the most difficult of situations. I had failed to prevent a flogging when nothing threatened me and I stood safe in the company of a friend—a flogging that, by the King’s Law, should never have happened. How much more terribly might I have failed in Kestrin’s situation?