The Fourth Runi (The Fledgling Account Book 4)

by Y. K. Willemse

  Queen Arlene passed Rafen not long after this. Her cold gaze flicked to him for the fraction of a second.

  Rafen bowed, and she moved on as if he hadn’t been there. General Jacob wasn’t present tonight, and Rafen was glad. He couldn’t stand much more of this treatment.

  He stood in the corner and drank two chalices of wine, taking his time. His fingers were warm with kesmal. However, Richard was well-protected: thirty philosophers were at the back of the room near him. Besides, would Zion really have willed that Rafen attack the Runi? The dancing began, and the lords and ladies took to the open floor between the long tables, which were laden with sweetmeats, fruits, syrups, and compotes.

  Francisco stood by the darkened arched window, deep in conversation with Bertilde. Roger had moved off to ingratiate himself to some nearby lords. Rafen poured himself a quarter chalice more as Etana and Richard moved into the center of the crowd and began dancing slowly to the shrilling of strings and the plucking of lutes.

  He could have dashed his drink to the floor.

  “Rafen, old chap! What a pleasure,” Kasper said, helping himself to a sweetmeat. He pumped Rafen’s free hand enthusiastically. His red-brown hair had been smoothed for the occasion, and the only improper thing about him was his boyish green eyes, which were far too warm for those of noble blood. “Father is presently engaged, talking at the opposite end of the room, but he told me that if I saw you, old fellow, I should pass on his regards. Well, here they are: regards.”

  “Indeed,” Robert said, moving to Kasper’s side and smiling with thin lips. He was as skinny as ever, and pale enough to be luminous. “I hope you are enjoying the ball, Rafen.”

  “Yes,” Rafen said, lowering his chalice.

  His eyes were glued to the dancing couple in the middle of the room. Richard hadn’t changed much, not nearly as much as Rafen would have liked. His shining blond hair was tastefully swept sideways, and his slender build radiated both command and a nervous energy. His eyes were an extremely pale, fine blue, and they were bent on Etana with the fascination of a man who likes to see other people doing his will. His profile had become more austere: he had a noble brow and a square, manly jaw, and he was at least two heads taller than Rafen. He wore a knee-length coat brocaded with gold.

  Etana consistently avoided Richard’s gaze, staring vacantly into the distance as they twirled. When the music came to a stop, Richard released her and waved for the lords and ladies on the floor to step back.

  “Ladies and gentleman, the finest blood we have in Siana,” he said in a clear voice, his head perfectly erect, “now my betrothed and I shall show you what the word ‘dancing’ means.”

  Ladies murmured to each other behind fans as Etana and Richard took to the floor again, this time to a Sianian gigue. Richard moved with an easy grace, always catching Etana every time her moves took her from him. At the end of it, he clasped her in his arms again with a grip that looked altogether too tight and planted a long, fierce kiss on her lips. The nobility around the room tittered, and Roger looked entirely scandalized for a second before he too joined in the feverish applause.

  “I say,” Kasper said blankly. “That looked aggressive.”

  “Kasper,” Robert reproved.

  Rafen shoved past the two Selsons and left the hall through a side door, still grasping his chalice.

  “Rafen?” Robert called after him in his crisp Sianian accent. “Father wanted to speak to you.”

  Rafen took fast, angry strides. He reached the end of the corridor, pushed past a middle-aged maid who clucked disapprovingly at him, and burst into a sitting room that led onto a balcony. Once on the balcony, he hurled his chalice down into the palace gardens below. It hit something hard with a thud.

  Rafen closed his eyes and lowered himself onto a bench on the balcony. The spring night was chilly and entirely unclouded. The stars glittered like sequins.

  “That is the Old Frigate,” someone with a Tarhian accent said distantly, in a high voice.

  Rafen got up and moved to the railing. On another balcony not too far down the wall, Francisco was pointing out the stars to Bertilde. She was staring into his face with wonder, not paying the least attention to what he was showing her.

  “You are so very clever, Francisco,” she gushed.

  “Ah,” Francisco said, “and you are very beautiful, Bertilde.”

  “Oh,” said Bertilde, “you can’t mean it. All my sisters are more beautiful than I.”

  “I would not believe that,” Francisco said, and he leaned forward to kiss her.

  Rafen turned away, feeling nauseated. He hadn’t realized Francisco had a romantic side. He supposed he would have sensed it if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his own troubles. At home, Francisco spent most of his time poring over books he borrowed from Rafen or got cheaply at a fair in Smitton.

  Rafen gripped the edge of the balcony and looked down at the darkened gardens. The trees loomed out of the black, mushrooming and gigantic. They were flecked with the spirits that flitted through his vision.

  Etana had not even looked at him tonight. Maybe all she had ever wanted was friendship. After all, Rafen was human, and he wasn’t even really part of the family anymore.

  If only King Robert hadn’t written that stupid edict. It had said that although Rafen’s adoption had been unconditional, Roger was allowed to look after Rafen until his son came of age, which was in three months, in Ki Zion. Rafen didn’t plan to stay with Roger any longer than he needed to. However, for now Rafen had been completely excluded from the royal family and reduced to a peasant. Richard’s arrival was the final severing of his connection with the Selsons. It was common for girls in Siana to marry by the time they were fourteen or fifteen, and now that Richard was here, it would not be long before he made good his betrothal to Etana.

  Rafen tried lifting his thoughts to the Phoenix. Did Zion understand love? Rafen decided, no, he couldn’t. It was too foolish, too trivial for the Phoenix to care.

  He turned back to the glass doors he had walked through to reach the balcony. When he contemplated smashing them, he discovered he wasn’t really angry anymore. He leaned heavily against the doors, pressing his hands against the glass.

  “Yeh’re goin’ to leave fingerprints like tha’,” Sherwin said.

  Chapter Four

  Sherwin’s

  Revelation

  “How did he get the copper rod in the first place?” Sherwin had murmured to Adelphia. The picture of Alakil’s gleaming blood on the floor of the Ravine had still been vivid in his mind, as if he dreamed it yet.

  Adelphia leaned over the small black table that separated them, clutching her mug with both hands and inhaling the steam of her soup.

  “Thomas gave it to him,” she said. “Thomas didn’t know what it was. A merchant gave it to his father, saying it should be kept by one in authority. The merchant had had it traded to him and thought it cursed. Stafford gave it to Thomas, telling him to ask his kesmal tutor about it.”

  “Did he?”

  “No. Thomas, too, found it difficult to resist the rod,” Adelphia said. “The next time he traveled to Siana, he brought it with him. He intended to ask Alakil about it. Under the auspices of my husband, Alakil had been learning from the best kesmal tutors in Siana for some time, and Thomas was certain he would understand why the rod was so powerful and so hard to control. Alakil promised he would take care of the rod for Thomas. Thomas never saw it again – until the day he died.”

  Sherwin looked down at his own mug, filled with a murky soup that Adelphia had heated over the fire at her shabby hearth. For a previous queen of Siana, she lived in undeniable poverty. However, Adelphia had already explained to him that she enjoyed the seclusion of the mountains and the simple life she had chosen after the death of her second husband, Joseph.

  “I guess that was when ’e started servin’ Nazt,” Sherwin noted, swilling the soup around in his mug with one long, white finger.

  “No,” Adelphia said. �
��He started long before that. In his childhood, Alakil was aware of the voices in the East, partially because some Ashurite tribes are involved in Nazt worship. After his father was murdered at the hands of the Sartian conquerors of Siana, Alakil turned to the voices, the only refuge he knew. They helped him discover his phenomenal kesmalic abilities. At age fourteen, he received his phoenix feather in the Woods. At that time, he convinced himself Zion was a manifestation of Nazt. It was only much later when he lived with Fritz and I that he was taught otherwise. At age fourteen, he committed his first murder. The townspeople who knew the drowned child sought to avenge him, drawing the attention of my husband. Fritz couldn’t believe a fourteen-year-old would kill another boy, and he took Alakil into the palace with us.”

  Sherwin’s stomach twisted as he listened. “Couldn’ ’e tell? Couldn’ yer tell?”

  “Alakil knew how to please,” Adelphia said. “He never struck me as anything except innocent. Occasionally, something in his eyes would bother me though: a lack of emotional response, sympathy, or interest. Alakil never seemed angry, and to this day, I think he suppresses anger intentionally. He is philosophical – detached. And he kills in that manner.”

  Sherwin grimaced. “So yer taught him,” he said.

  “I didn’t,” Adelphia said. “Fritz didn’t either. In fact, he was certain that Alakil was the leader of the Eleven. He felt that Nazt’s day had come. Fritz had not received his phoenix feather at the time we took Alakil in. He received it eighteen months later. Alakil blatantly showed Fritz his, and that should have warned us. Fritz discovered later that the willing revelation of the phoenix feather to anyone else often aroused the fury of Nazt and made the Runi vulnerable to an attack from the Voices. However, at the time, we were impressed. We gave him eight different tutors who honed his abilities. By the end of the two years in which we had him, we had shaped him into a formidable enemy.”

  “And then he turned against yer,” Sherwin said. He took a long pull at his soup and waited. Adelphia was staring at the closed wooden door behind him, lost in thought.

  “Yes,” she said. “Two years later, Alakil came to Fritz and told him he wanted the throne. Fritz banished him from the palace, and to his surprise, Alakil left willingly, without a fight. Alakil wanted to humiliate him before his people. He raised an army without Fritz divining how or where. Then he marched toward New Isles. We met him on the Plain ki Naag and won a costly victory. One of Fritz’s officers told him Alakil had been killed in battle. Two months later, Alakil slipped back into the New Isles palace through the underground moat. He killed Fritz in his own library, easily breaking his kesmal.” Adelphia looked very old as she spoke. “He pressed his claims for the throne again,” she said, her voice hardening. “He knew he had to marry to have the throne, according to the law, and in those days, those things mattered to him. I think now he considers himself married to Nazt. At the time, I allowed him to believe I had agreed to him. Then at the marriage ceremony at the temple of New Isles, I had him ambushed with philosophers, and we drove him away.”

  “An’ he fled to the Mountains,” Sherwin whispered, “to tha’ ravine place. Why did ’e kill himself?”

  “I think you know already,” Adelphia said softly. “He felt the mortal body was hindering him as much as his phoenix feather.”

  “When ’e destroyed the feather… somethin’ weird ’appened,” Sherwin said. He tried to speak again, but his throat was too tight. He looked away. Everything in him had, for one second in time, sympathized with the Lashki when he had realized what destroying the feather would mean. Momentarily in the Ravine, Alakil had seen two of everything, as Sherwin sometimes did. Alakil had felt torn in two. “What ’appened after he killed himself?” Sherwin asked. He already knew the answer.

  “Why don’t you look for yourself?” Adelphia said. She took a long drink from her soup and met his eyes with a piercing gaze. “You have seen this much so far.”

  “I ’ate doin’ it,” Sherwin said fiercely. “I only did it because you told me I should.”

  “Yes,” Adelphia said, “because now, more than ever, you must know who you are and who you are not. You must know where your loyalties lie and what you are facing. Close your eyes, Sherwin.”

  Sherwin ground his teeth. “I’m finishing this first,” he had said, indicating his soup.

  *

  Rafen jumped. Sherwin’s tall, gangly reflection had appeared in the windows. He whirled around. Sherwin stood near the railing with a broad grin on his face. He glanced over at the balcony Francisco and Bertilde had vacated.

  “Never seen Francisco snoggin’,” he said. “’e makes it look gross.”

  “You’re back,” Rafen said flatly, even though inside, a faint hope was flaring.

  “If yer want a friend, I’m back,” Sherwin said.

  Rafen remembered the last time Sherwin had climbed over the edge of a balcony to reach him. It had been in Rusem, after Sirius had won the city. Sherwin had threatened to kill himself unless Rafen would escape with him. Rafen slowly met Sherwin’s gaze.

  “I was wrong,” he said. “You were right. I treated you like dirt.”

  “Yeah, yer did,” Sherwin said. “But I shouldn’ta left. That weren’t right either.”

  When Rafen opened his mouth to reply that Sherwin had had a right to leave, Sherwin raised a hand to stop him.

  “Look, I know somethin’ about yer that yer don’ even know about yerself,” he said, “and I’ve come to tell yer, because yer got a right to know.”

  Rafen stared at Sherwin. “What do you mean?”

  Sherwin stepped closer, and Rafen recoiled against the glass doors, his hand going to his hilt. Sherwin noted the motion. His face fell.

  “I’m not attackin’ yer,” he said. “Who do yer think I am?”

  His hand shot out and grabbed Rafen’s shirt near his chest, closing on the part of the hem in which Rafen’s phoenix feather was. Rafen flung him off with a yell. Sherwin nursed his fingers, stung by ruddy-looking kesmal.

  “What are you doing?” Rafen shouted. It was horribly reminiscent of the dream the Lashki had constructed during the Soul Breaker’s Curse. “Sherwin, please don’t do this.”

  “Shh,” Sherwin said condescendingly. “I’ve known yeh’ve ’ad it fer ages – before I even met yer. Besides, even if I ’adn’t, Etana got me to change yer shirt after the Soul Breaker’s Curse. I would ’ave found out then.”

  Longing came over his face briefly.

  “What?” Rafen said, his mouth dry. “What do you mean – you knew before you even met me?”

  “But yer don’t know what it means,” Sherwin said.

  “I do,” Rafen said quietly, looking through the glass behind him to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “It means I’m the Fledgling.”

  “So Fritz an’ Alakil an’ Thomas were all Fledglings,” Sherwin said sarcastically. “Even though there was only ever one Fledgling in the prophecies. Oh yeah, tha’ makes great sense.”

  “No,” Rafen said, with the patience of one explaining something to a small child. “In their case, it meant they were particular kings.”

  Sherwin laughed altogether too loudly, shattering the stillness of the night. “Raf, yer really don’ have a clue. Yeh’re the Fledgling and Sianian Wolf in addition to what that feather makes yer. And that feather makes yer—”

  “Don’t,” Rafen said, turning away from Sherwin.

  He had instinctively kept this knowledge from himself, never telling anyone that he carried a phoenix feather, never asking anyone what it meant. He had told himself it was because he didn’t want the feather stolen. Yet inside, he knew it was because he feared the truth.

  “Look, Raf,” Sherwin said, “yeh’re the Fourth Runi. That’s the big role, that’s what the Fledgling and Wolf thing were all pointing to. I know it for a fact. I don’t know why Queen Arlene never told yer what the feathers meant when she were educating yer. She was betrothed to a Runi, and her father was one.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe that’s why,” Rafen said through clenched teeth, his horror swelling in his throat like vomit. “They were both murdered, in case you didn’t remember.”

  “Look, Raf—”

  “Explain to me how a human can be the Fourth Runi,” Rafen cut in. “Runi are supposed to have noble blood. They’re supposed to be kings.”

  In his mind, he saw the Phoenix on the cave floor again, placing one talon over Rafen’s fingers, forcing him to accept the feather. There had never been any choice. This was the life he had been set apart for. Realizing it now, he chastised himself for never finding out what his future would hold. Perhaps he had lost valuable time.

  “I was wrong,” Sherwin said. “Yer knew somehow.”

  Rafen crashed down on the bench on the balcony and stared up at the swirling back sky above. He felt like it was going to swallow him alive. “Tell me,” he repeated, “how a human can be a Runi.”

  “Raf, I dunno!” Sherwin said. “If Zion gave yer what’s in yer hem – and I’m assuming yer didn’t steal it…” He looked suspicious for a moment.

  Rafen shook his head. “He gave it to me.” He leapt up again. “Richard is here to be groomed for the throne because he claims to be the Runi… the Fourth Runi, if I remember rightly.”

  “Yeah,” Sherwin said. “Yer know what this means, don’t yer, Raf?”