The Caged Queen

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  But Dax convinced her.

  It was that day at the cliffs when she realized her sister was a traitor, too.

  Dax begged Roa to jump with them, but Roa kept her feet planted firmly on the ground. So they left her behind. She watched them from the grass. The way Dax made Essie laugh . . . it was just like the way he made Roa laugh. Only Essie laughed louder and freer.

  Essie was like that. Uninhibited. She could tell a secret to someone she’d just met and not think twice about it.

  Roa didn’t know how to be like that.

  If she and her sister were two books in their father’s study, Essie would be the one lying open on the desk, enticing you to read it. Roa would be the one stuffed between a dozen others, high up on the shelf.

  It wasn’t just Essie’s laugh, though. It was the sight of Essie and Dax having fun without her, teasing and splashing and racing each other up and down the rocks. It made Roa realize something she didn’t want to realize.

  She got up from the grass and left.

  Essie came after her.

  “What’s wrong?” Her sister trailed her down the dirt path through the cliffs, dripping wet and shivering.

  “Nothing,” said Roa. “I’m bored, that’s all.”

  Since when did she lie to her sister?

  “Then come jump with us.”

  Roa thought of the way Essie flung herself from the cliffs. Of the way Dax flung himself after her.

  Roa kept walking.

  “Dax is right,” Essie said to her back. “You hoard your thoughts like a dragon.”

  The words hurt—not because they were untrue, but because they meant Essie and Dax were talking about her when she wasn’t there.

  Roa turned to face her sister.

  “I didn’t realize you were such close friends,” she said, her voice wobbly.

  Essie’s lips parted. Her wet curls dripped.

  “Roa . . .”

  She didn’t finish, though. She didn’t need to. Essie was that open book on the desk. Easy to read. Everything there on the surface.

  In her sister’s eyes, Roa saw the truth. It was like the day of their earning. Essie had been keeping another secret from her.

  Essie liked Dax.

  And it made Roa jealous. Not of Essie, though. Of Dax.

  It had never before occurred to Roa that she could lose her sister. And as silly as it was, the thought of losing her to Dax terrified Roa.

  She didn’t know how to say that, though. So she fled.

  It was an absurd notion. Running from her sister? Essie would find her. She always found her. It was like trying to run from her own self.

  “I’m not the only one keeping secrets,” said Essie, breathing hard as her bare feet padded the cracked dirt floors of Roa’s hiding place.

  Roa lifted her forehead from her arms, hugging her knees. Essie came and sat beside her, pressing her back to the crumbled wall of the ruined House of Shade.

  “I don’t keep secrets from you,” Roa whispered, hooking her chin around her arms and staring straight ahead at the abandoned fire basin, half-eaten by rust and sinking into the ground.

  Essie rested her head on Roa’s shoulder, soaking Roa’s dress with her wet hair. “This is a secret you don’t realize you have.”

  Roa frowned at her, not understanding. She shook it away. “We made a pact,” she said. “He’s not allowed to come between us.”

  “He’s not between us. Look.” Essie squished herself right up against Roa’s hip, until more of their bodies were touching than not. She grinned at Roa.

  Roa looked away, trying to stay cross. But her sister’s grin melted her anger and a smile touched her lips.

  “He’s not going to take me away from you,” Essie whispered, knowing Roa’s innermost fear. “Besides, you’re the one he likes. Not me.”

  Roa pulled away, staring at her. “What?”

  But she remembered the way Dax smiled at her lately. The way he loved to make her laugh.

  Maybe it was true. But even so, who cared? Certainly not Roa.

  “If he’s going to take anyone away,” said Essie, a little soberly, “it’s going to be you.”

  Roa shook her head. “You’re daft.”

  Essie bent her head toward her sister’s so that their temples touched. “Just wait and see,” she said, snaking an arm around Roa’s waist and holding her tight.

  Eleven

  Roa didn’t hear the footsteps crunching glass. Didn’t feel someone at her side, saying her name, until he started wrapping a torn strip of his own shirt tightly around her arm.

  “Are you all right?” Theo asked gently.

  Roa looked down to find slivered shards of blue and red glass scattered all around her on the floor. Blown out of the window.

  It was then that she felt the warm blood seeping through the cotton bandage tied around her arm. One of the shards must have cut her.

  Roa looked from Theo’s handiwork up into his eyes.

  His gaze swept over the shattered glass, up to the empty window and the red sky beyond, then back to the bloody strip of linen tied around Roa’s arm.

  “What happened?”

  Roa thought about that strange look in her sister’s silver eyes just before she flew through the broken window. As if she didn’t recognize Roa. As if she didn’t know her own sister.

  As if her time was running out.

  Roa and Essie never spoke about what it meant, about why Essie was trapped in hawk form. They never spoke about why Essie’s feathers had turned white after the last Relinquishing, or her eyes silver.

  But they knew.

  Uncrossed spirits couldn’t linger among the living forever.

  “I’m losing her,” she whispered.

  Speaking her deepest fear aloud undid something inside Roa. She remembered what it was like after the accident. The unbearable ache of loneliness. The chilling absence where her sister had always been warm and bright and alive.

  She couldn’t bear that again.

  Wouldn’t bear it.

  Roa didn’t know how to live in a world where Essie didn’t exist.

  After everyone else had gone to bed, Roa and Theo stayed up to snuff the lights.

  It was a household routine in the scrublands, usually performed at sunset in the month leading up to the Relinquishing. Uncrossed spirits were attracted to warmth and light. So the darker you kept your house at night, the less likely an uncrossed spirit was to visit you on the longest night of the year, when they resumed their true forms and walked among the living.

  Roa made an exception for Essie though.

  No one knew Roa kept a candle lit for her sister on the longest night of the year.

  No one knew she cherished those visits more than anything.

  But if she’s fading, thought Roa, what will happen this year?

  As Roa and Theo walked the house, squeezing out candle flames and turning down lamps, Roa whispered, “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

  Theo went still in the darkness beside her. “A mistake?”

  His gaze traced the silhouette of her as she walked the circular path around the garden, toward the window emitting an orange glow.

  “I thought he was a fool.”

  The air was cool and dry out here. Roa trailed her hand along the wall—still warm from the day’s heat.

  “And now?” Theo prompted.

  She remembered Lirabel crying on the floor, cast aside by Dax. “Now I think he’s worse than that.”

  Theo’s footsteps trailed her as she stepped up to the door of the next room. It was the study, where she’d found Asha’s letter. A letter still lying beneath Dax’s bed.

  “What are you saying?”

  “What if you’re right?” Her fingers curled into her palms. She looked back over her shoulder. “What if he’s no different from his father? What if he’s the kind of man who takes what he wants and doesn’t care who he hurts?” She looked to the twin stars in the northern sky. Essie’s favorites.

/>   She tried the latch on the door, which opened easily. Roa entered the room, scanning it to ensure it was empty, before turning down the lamps. When she stepped back outside, she found Theo waiting where she’d left him.

  “So you agree with me.” He took her hand in his, and she could feel the excited thrum of his pulse as they walked deeper into the garden, away from the walls of the house. Roa felt him look around, but the garden was empty and dark. “Dax must give up the throne.”

  Roa pulled her hand free, staring up at him. She hadn’t said that. “No. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “I have fifty men from the House of Sky. They’re ready for my command.”

  Roa’s mouth dropped open. “You won’t be able to get fifty men from Sky into Firgaard.”

  Theo looped his arms around her waist, drawing her against him. “I was hoping you could help with that.”

  A shiver coursed through Roa. With the sun gone, the temperature was dropping, but she wasn’t shivering from the cold.

  “I have contacts inside the city—enemies of Dax’s—who are on our side.” He reached for her hand again, running his thumb over her knuckles. “They want to help us.”

  Enemies of Dax’s . . .

  Roa shook her head. He had the wrong idea entirely. “There is no us,” she whispered, pulling free. “As much as I loathe him, Dax is the king. Plotting against him is treason. I would be betraying every scrublander who ever believed in me. Every scrublander who believed that my marrying him would make a difference for our people.”

  Theo scowled in the dark. “And what difference has it made?”

  Roa’s heart fell.

  None at all.

  But that would soon change. Once they arrived back in Firgaard, she would use the treaty to make Dax uphold his promises.

  “Listen to me.” He took her shoulders in his hands, gripping firmly. “Every Firgaardian king is a monster. If Dax isn’t one yet, he will be. We need to act swiftly. We don’t have time for you to give him any more chances.”

  Roa shook her head and looked away, into the dark garden around them. Anyone could be out here, listening. He would get himself killed saying these things. “Theo—”

  “Just . . . hear me out. It’s the least you can do.”

  Roa gritted her teeth, relenting. “Then the least you can do is keep your voice down.”

  Theo breathed in, then let out the breath. His hands fell away from her shoulders as he scanned the garden.

  “I told you I’ve located the Skyweaver’s knife.”

  Not this again, thought Roa, remembering their long-ago hunts for the blade that cut far deeper than flesh. For a weapon that could trade one soul for another.

  Roa was about to protest. To say once again that it was a myth. But Theo continued before she could.

  “I found the former owner of it. The woman who sold it to the baron in Firgaard. She, like you, lost someone she loved.”

  Roa paused, then nodded for him to go on.

  “Years ago, her best friend was convicted of a horrible crime: she’d poisoned her father in order to gain her inheritance. It was decided that her punishment should match her crime, and so she was sentenced to death by poison. Even though they burned her body and said the rites, she didn’t pass into the world beyond this one. Her soul stayed behind.”

  Roa stepped closer, enrapt now.

  Theo continued: “Year after year, she didn’t cross. Each Relinquishing, she became less and less herself. As if her death call was getting stronger, taking part of her with it each time. As if she were fading away.

  “Before she faded completely, she told her friend a secret: she hadn’t killed her father. It was her husband who wanted the inheritance, and so he framed her for the crime. It should have been him who took the punishment. It should have been him who died. This was why she was trapped.

  “The woman swore to avenge her friend. She knew the story of Sunder, and the knife that carved out his soul in exchange for his daughter’s life. She knew if there was any chance to save her friend, she needed to find that knife.

  “She tracked it down and found it in the posssession of a merchant who was happy to sell it to her. He told her how to use it, and that she needed to wait until the Relinquishing. On that night, if she plunged the knife into the one who’d eluded death, the Skyweaver would take his soul instead . . . and her friend’s life would be restored.”

  “And?” Roa asked. She’d been leaning closer and closer as Theo spoke. She was now a mere breath away.

  “And that’s what she did.”

  “Did it work?”

  The wind whispered through the garden. The night bugs chirped around them.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “It worked.”

  “And you’re sure the knife is in Firgaard?”

  He nodded.

  Roa stepped away from him, her feet moving in time with her thoughts. Back and forth, she paced. Thinking of what it meant: Essie, restored. And what it would require: killing the one responsible for her death, on the night of the Relinquishing.

  Roa stopped pacing.

  Could she really kill her own husband?

  Of course not. She pressed her palms to her eyes. What am I thinking?

  Theo touched her arm. Her hands fell to her sides and she looked up into his silhouetted face. “You can save her, Roa. You can save all of us.”

  She looked up at him miserably. “By killing the king.”

  “By removing the next tyrant from the throne.” He took her hands in his, warming them. “We can help each other. Help me smuggle my men into the palace, and I’ll help you obtain the Skyweaver’s knife and make the exchange.”

  She shook her head, feeling hollow. “And then what?”

  Roa wanted her sister. But at what cost?

  “And then you rule alone, as a just and powerful queen.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Think of how much good you could do for our people, Roa. Without him.”

  If the Skyweaver’s knife existed, if it really could save her sister the way the stories claimed . . .

  “No,” she said, her tone final. “I’m not a murderer.”

  And Dax had promised to hold an Assembly as soon as they returned. With the treaty signed, he had to uphold his oaths now. He had to lift the sanctions. Things would change for their people soon. Roa had all but ensured it.

  “Well then,” Theo said, stepping away from her. “Come find me if you change your mind.”

  I won’t, she thought, and put the notion out of her head.

  Before

  When Roa and Essie were eleven, the son of the king came to the scrublands early. It was late spring, after the big rains, and the rivers had swelled. With the swell came thousands upon thousands of fish.

  The day after his arrival, they were on the lake, mending nets while their parents helped the House of Springs bring in their catches. Roa sat with Essie, their small two-person reed boat bobbing on the water of the lake. Their heads were down, their fingers picking knots. Dax sat in a boat with Jas, and in between were other reed boats full of children untangling fishing nets.

  “Tell us, Dax, have you learned to read yet?”

  Roa’s head shot up. She looked to Theo—the one who spoke. Except for Dax, Theo was the eldest. The boys in the other boats sniggered at his question.

  Dax ignored them. But Roa saw his hand tighten on his net.

  “Is that a no?”

  “Stop it, Theo,” Lirabel said from the boat next to theirs, her gutting knife working out a particularly nasty tangle.

  Theo ignored her. “Here. Tell me what this says.”

  He traced the letters i-d-i-o-t in the air for all of them to see.

  Roa, Essie, and Lirabel looked to Dax, who gripped the slippery net tightly between his fingers, bracing himself for whatever was to come.

  “Theo,” Essie snapped, lowering her own knife in her lap.

  “What about this one?”

  Roa also lowered her knife, watching T
heo’s tanned fingers spell the letters i-m-b-e-c-i-l-e.

  Dax’s skin darkened with a blush.

  “Not that one either?” Theo shot a derisive look to the other boys. “Hmm. Do you think you inherited stupidity from your father or your mother?”

  Jas stood up a split second after Dax did—only to hold him back, though. The pale-yellow reed boat rocked beneath them. If they weren’t careful, they would tip, taking their nets overboard and down to the bottom of the lake.

  “He’s trying to upset you,” Jas said. “Ignore him.”

  Dax glanced to Roa, who held his gaze, wordlessly agreeing with Jas.

  Sit down, she thought.

  Theo saw the look passing between them. Like an arrow seeking out its next target, his attention moved to Roa.

  “She definitely draws the eyes. Doesn’t she?”

  “What?” It was Roa’s turn to blush.

  “That’s enough,” Essie warned, setting her knife down, her dark eyes flashing.

  Roa felt the hum flare up between them, bright and hot.

  But Theo wasn’t done.

  “Is that why you keep coming back, sandeater? Because you like the look of her?”

  Dax’s hands balled into fists.

  Roa reached for her sister’s hand, threading their fingers together as she narrowed her eyes at Theo. Why was he being like this? It was one thing to tease Dax—he was an outsider, and it was a favorite pastime. It was quite another thing to bring Roa into it.

  “Shut up, Theo.”

  “Or maybe you want to do more than just look at her. Is that it?” He made a rude gesture, thrusting his hips.

  Essie’s grip tightened on Roa’s hand.

  Dax grabbed Jas’s gutting knife and pulled the closest boat toward him—where two girls from the House of Springs sat talking to themselves, ignoring the fight brewing around them. He stepped into their small reed boat, which rocked and bobbed, earning him nothing more than a pause and a glance before they went back to talking. Theo’s boat was only a step away now. Dax leaned across the space, his face inches from the other boy’s. “Stop this. Now.”