Aloren

  “What?”

  “And I asked where I’d hide it for a thousand years.” Had he gone mad while he was away? “Not in this world, she said. I’d have to find a guide to take me to another world.”

  “You got yerself a mad firebird.”

  He nodded. “So I asked her where I’d find this guide. She laughed, and said I was running backwards like the Pirnon Mireir.”

  I took a breath. The air went down and didn’t come back up.

  “What is it?”

  “What?” I shook my head. Floy hopped from a branch to my shoulder. “Did she know what it was?”

  “Said something about his––”

  “The Pirnon Mireir. What’s the Pirnon Mireir?”

  Andrei laughed. I saw nothing funny about it.

  “Your river. In Simargh. Not like you Girelden are the only ones in love with it.”

  I rubbed the back of my head. The boy was an ass, no question, but he was also some sort of genius.

  “Andrei,” called a girl. Natty peered beneath the willow, and Floy and I went over it: the brow of the Pirnon Mireir; the headwaters of the Cheldony; Avila; the northeast.

  “You’re with her?” said Natty. “I’m to remind you you’ve a letter needs writing. And your horse is eating the zinnias up the road.” I stood up, ready to set out in search of the ice asters that minute, when she rounded on me. “You silly girl. If he were seen just once in your company what do you suppose the mercenaries would think? Don’t you know it’s essential that they listen to him instead of Herist?”

  “Natty,” said Andrei, “shut up and leave.”

  “Not until you do.”

  “All right, I’m going,” he said. “Come on.” He crept out from under the tree, but Natty stayed put.

  “Aloren,” she said to me, “you’ve got to keep away from him. He won’t listen to me, but maybe you will. There’s a lot at stake––”

  “If you mean your family’s reputation,” I told her, still thinking of the river, “it’s already fresh as a turd, and he didn’t need any help with that.”

  “What about my family?” Natty drew herself up. “I still have my maidenhead.”

  The old suspicion grew in my mind. “He’s not your brother.”

  “Course not––” Her eyes widened. She looked into my face. “You still don’t know? What a nasty, dirty trick.”

  My ears grew hot. I immediately thought the worst. “He’d have to be younger than Leode,” I said to Floy.

  “He acts younger than Leode.”

  “Floy––”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Reyna.”

  “That broach, Floy. And the pendant––”

  In any case, one thing was made clear.

  “Aloren,” said Natty, “he’s told you lie after lie, and I don’t care what he says about it, he’s the late Queen’s son, and he’s got all that pile of her trouble on his head.”

  Somewhere in the back of my head I resolved to never let Floy forget this. Natty, ducking beneath the branches, said, “You haven’t given back my old gown, did you know?”

  “It sold for twenty-three silvers,” I said. She noted my murderous tone and walked away without saying more.

  “Floy,” I said, and sat back down.

  “He’s not her son,” Floy said stubbornly. “They looked nothing alike.”

  But I didn’t want to argue over the finer points of Andrei’s multiple identities––I’d thought of something worse. “That pendant, the little bottle Daifen hid down the well. How’d I not see it? It’s the Aebelavadar.” My body went numb.

  “The what?” said Floy.

  “It was.” I closed my eyes, and thought it through straight to the bottom. “Andrei’s mother? Daifen stole it off the sick Queen––right off her neck, and Andrei’s desperate to get it back, and then he sees a light that I can’t, then goes across the sea to a council, and talks to––God knows what a firebird is––about some thing he can use now. And I just gave it into his hands.”

  I squeezed my temples between my palms, and stood up. I was so angry I was shaking.

  I walked to where he sat on the wall next to the zinnias, scratching away at his letter. Sandal was still chewing on the flowers, and I thought of Max.

  “The prince gets in the way of Andy’s fun?” I said.

  He stood up, yawning. “What?”

  “Slipped yer mind, did it?” I said. “Who you was.”

  He stared, suddenly awake. “I’m a bastard.” He put down the parchment and got ink all over his fingers. “Not a prince. And I suppose you told me a whole lot more?”

  I wanted to take his stupid, long neck, and throttle it. “Why’d you hide it? Why’d you lie?”

  “Natty told you?”

  “What are you going to do? Throw her into the sea chained to a rock?”

  “Is that what princes do?”

  “You couldn’t have kept it hidden. Why’d ye even try?”

  He wiped the ink on his trousers. “Why do you think? Any other girl as clever could figure it out.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “It was such a pleasure,” he said sarcastically, “being insulted, told-off, slapped and kicked––”

  “There weren’t Gralde enough?”

  “Most of them are too craven to do it to my face.”

  “That in’t it,” I said. “Any other girl as clever would figure you’d been hiding your pile of horseshit. That’s what she’d figure. But you’ll always be standin up to your neck in shit, Andrei, no matter whose head you decide to screw onto your neck in the morning.”

  “Lord of Light, you are a hot-head. Calm down, think a little––your life could be a lot easier.”

  “It in’t so easy,” I said, “when you think about it.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t look at him. “Is that why you’ve stopped thinking?” I began walking away. “Did I say you could leave?” It was the old, sour Andrei behind me, and I ran. My legs were no match for his, and he caught me by the arm.

  I shook him off. “Don’t dirty yerself.”

  “Aly––”

  “You oughtn’t be touching a filthy Eldine rat.”

  He stopped, and I didn’t look behind, but I knew he stood there without moving because Sandal’s halter rang when the horse jostled his shoulder.

  ***

  His thin face, the eyes––I walked and walked, faster and faster, but still they burned before me. Though he wouldn’t go, I struck the Aebelavadar from my thoughts––after all, what could I do about it?––and tried to think only of the ice asters.

  I walked all the way to the weaving pool. I had one tunic to complete: my own. So I gathered armfuls of the flowers from the pool, and stuffed the flowers and shirts into my saddlebag for weaving during my journey north. But before I could begin this I had a last errand to run. I decided to deliver the letter to the tavern myself to ensure that it was opened by Hal. The other insurgents were too hysterical to respond with sense.

  ***

  I hid the saddlebag in the hollow log on the beach––it could wait there until I was ready to go north––and I came to the tavern around midday.

  The sun poured into the boathouse when I opened the door, and the lamps guttered. No one noticed. There was no sign of Hal or his fiddle, but Wille, Padlimaird, Sal, Bequen, and at least twenty others I knew among the throng, were deep in argument.

  “We starve this coming winter or we raise hell,” said a small man with a blue cap. Wille stole the cap.

  “What sort of hell?” He held the cap over a candle and smiled as a hole burned through. He was in his cups. “Fiery or rainy, Gwat? How about both––if we torch their ships they’ll have no place to run when we corner them with our brollies.”

  Gwat slugged him in the stomach and took back his cap. “Have a care, Illinla, or yer lass’ll get etted by the Ombens.” Wille made to rise, but Sal forced him down.

  “Are you all so hard by?” Bequen said. I inched into a corner and l
ooked around for Hal.

  “The same hambone can yield up lots of meals,” said a man philosophically.

  “My hambone’s white as a pickled haddock,” said Sal. “Good for clobbering noggins. And Daira’s at Goody’s house, screaming for food––we came to do something, not talk of waiting.”

  “Let’s raid a storehouse,” said Wille.

  “Not you, clobber-face,” said Padlimaird.

  “How do we get rid of em?” called a boy from the back.

  “I don’t know,” said Bequen. “No one likes them here, not even the court. Except for Herist.”

  “As he’s got the thing they want,” said Gwat.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Bequen, “and thank Machenan for it. Herist would get the whole black horde to go to war with.”

  “Oh,” said Gwat, grinning, biting on his pipe stem, “is Snakey letting you in on his war councils?”

  “She’s right.” I felt compelled to say it, hidden in my corner.

  “A puppet!” said Gwat.

  “It’s the bastard’s pet Gralde,” someone said.

  Chairs clattered, and Gwat stood up, and about five others, too.

  “Eager to dance off with news about us,” he said.

  “He’ll put a ribbon in her hair for it, I’ll warrant,” said someone else.

  “Or a coronet.”

  This was all too much. “That’s right,” I said. “You can all bow and go hang.” Wille studied me as he would’ve an old ewer, newly buffed.

  “Don’t wind yourself in a trawl,” said Bequen to me. “You’re no nark, we’re not stupid. But he chases after you the same. And as I was saying––if any of you would listen––now his mother’s gone the Aebelavadar’s his to give, not Herist’s.”

  Folk started squawking at this, and she yelled over them, “He’s reached his majority. I can hardly see him giving Herist control over the troops, they hate each other so. Maybe––”

  “If he wasn’t to give it to them?” said an old sailor named Gabe.

  “They want it real bad,” said Gwat sourly, “so they’ll stay, and take it by force, and take Norembry too, to shit on, as they like it so much here.”

  “Aye,” said another man. “They like it so much here, there’s nothing left for us to like.”

  “It’s lose-lose.”

  “Listen,” said Padlimaird. No one did, but he must have thought it important, because he began shouting. “Listen! If the weapon left––on a ship, say––the Ombens might follow it.”

  Gwat laughed. “Like women after Laerty Lace-Pants?”

  “Get it out of the country?” said Bequen.

  “And they’ll follow like a swarm of bees,” said Wille. He nodded at me. “Sweeten the bastard’s bed, Lally, or sting him if he likes, and maybe he’ll ship the thing to Noldecelah, or Miachamel, or Evenalehn.”

  I clutched a stool, preparing to throw it at him, and Gabe said, “It’s true, he’s smitten with her. It’s a running joke at Old Stolker’s.”

  “Aloren,” said Bequen in a voice both firm and fraught, “you’re in a rare position to help. He’ll listen to you. Tell him to send the Aebelavadar someplace else, or sell it to the Ombenelva, even, so long as he makes them leave the country. We need for you to at least try. Otherwise we’ll have to shed blood to survive the winter.”

  I kicked over a tool bench on my way out the door.

  Twenty-Six

  As I walked I brooded over Andrei, trying to undo the knots. They only seemed to wind into new ones.

  “That bottle thing, the Aebelavadar, it belonged to the Queen,” I said to Floy. “And it fits into that broach. Faiorsa was the one. From the journal, the woman who stole the baby. And Andrei’s the––like I thought––” I groaned like a ship in a storm.

  “Mordan would be proud,” said Floy.

  “Who is he, then?” I walked so fast I was almost running. I was confused as I’d ever been––the baby in the journal was supposed to solve problems, not make new ones. “What was she doing,” I said, “making him prince of two countries? Getting hold of that weapon and inviting all the Ombenelva in the world to squat over Norembry. Was that what she wanted?”

  “Yes,” Floy said sarcastically, “considering all the work she put in.”

  “Well she left a big pile, right enough.”

  “But there––I doubt she intended to die before sorting it out.”

  “Herist poisoned her,” I said. “That’s what happened, and now he’ll sort it out.”

  My feet had steered me to the belltower. I climbed the terrace and threw myself down in the shade at the base of a pillar. My legs grew cold and I stuck them in the sun. The wind chased locust leaves and cloud shades through the square, and a shadow grew firm and stayed in place over my knees.

  I’d half-expected it––the belltower was a sort of lodestone for him. “Well met, your High Royalness.” My blood boiled and I drew my legs back into the shade.

  “And you, sparrowshit.”

  “You listen,” I said. He didn’t move, so I tried to get it over with in one breath: “Ellyned needs for them Omben troops to leave straightaway, and the Aebelavadar belongs to you, don’t it? And they want it real bad. So send the weapon off somewhere and they’ll go after it. Or you can give it to them. But either way you’ve got to send em away. Norembry can’t support an army.”

  “What are you blabbering about?” He wiped sweat off his face. “Believe me, I hate them as much as everyone else. But I can’t send them away.”

  “Why?” I hugged my knees.

  “They’re the only thing keeping Herist at bay. And with Lorila like it is––”

  “The Queen was the only thing keeping Herist at bay, and now she’s dead. Poisoned by him, no doubt. Now he’s got rid of her, he’ll get rid of you next and use your Ombenelva to overthrow the government.”

  “Overthrow the government?” His brows knotted together. “You think he has the wits?”

  “You,” I said, “are vastly underestimating his wits.”

  “Alright.” He spoke as if trying to calm a nervous horse. “I’ll have him killed––then they’ll have to take orders from me.”

  “A sixteen-year-old boy?” I scratched my hair furiously. “And if you manage that, what then? Why keep them here? To march against Caveira? And after ye’ve plowed over Dirlan, were you gonna send a letter to the Lorilan Ravy-whatsit asking him to tea in his desecrated duchy?”

  “If he accepts the invitation,” said Andrei, who was working up a temper, “I’ll be happy to arrange with him his terms of defeat.” He took a good look at my expression, and said quickly, “Both countries only want stability and he’s on his sickbed with his cousins squabbling––”

  I stood up. “You’re going to invade Lorila?” The irony was too much. “D’you mean to be an emperor? Andrei the Terrible, Scourge of the West?”

  He didn’t say anything. I nocked the arrow on my heartstring, drew it back, and took aim. “Or are you too cowardly to send them troops away, too frightened Herist’ll resent it and let slip about those children he murdered? They probably thought it was their father coming. What a shock it must’ve been.” He still said nothing, and it made me cruel. “You’re nothing but a usurper.”

  He went very white. “I didn’t give those orders.”

  “Maybe.” I shouldn’t have said it––he definitely wasn’t going to listen now, and to hell with the whole country if it meant I had to get on my knees. “So why are you so scared of a letter? So scared of it you’re getting caught up in a fake war? You’ve got to get rid of the Aebelavadar, it in’t good. And the Ombenelva––get em out while they’re still obeying you, and send a message to Lorila about Caveira and Herist’s warmongering. And if Herist strikes back, who cares? Folk’ll know what he’s done by then. They’ll think it’s nothing more than slander. If you to go to war instead, Ellyned ain’t gonna sit by.”

  “Ellyned won’t sit by for much, will they?” he burst out. “Ellyned ca
n’t understand the quickest way to pull us out of the mud is an army and a war.”

  I couldn’t believe him. “Out of the mud?” I put a hand behind my back––the rock was damp. “Norembry don’t want to be important. Don’t you know what happens to important places?” I was yelling now. “Lorila, Virnraya, Evenalehn that used to be Eurlaire––they all rise with tricks, tyranny, war, and fall with the same shit again and over again in a hurtful, miserable cycle while everyone in this muddy nowhere goes about their slow, backwards business of being happy.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I suppose you have to be human enough.”

  “For what? Destroying everything?”

  “Forgive me, Aloren.” His voice shook. ”But I must compensate you for all your work.” He reached into his cloak. I thought of the handkerchief, but instead he pulled out a small sack of burlap. He slammed it into my hand. “It’s gold. Enough to buy a ship. Now get out of here. If I see you again I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  I dropped the sack. Coins clinked. He walked away and the void in my chest filled with the old hate.

  ***

  I left the gold beneath the belltower, and the hate stopped the flow of sense to my brain, so that by the time I’d retraced my steps to the tavern on the quay, the letter in my pocket, the one intended to stop the rebellion, was given not a thought when I burst in and upset the tool bench again. Hal was there this time, his back to the door, and he played a tune with Halfwit Tom.

  Bequen saw me first. She didn’t even have to ask, just took one look and threw herself out the door, probably to rally the west side.

  The room got quiet. “They’re staying,” I explained.

  Then one of them began shouting for building barricades around the warehouses, and another for igniting the Daldera ships and raiding the armories, and the room turned clamorous. Begley Turnip climbed up from the bench where he’d been lying with a bottle and leaped towards the tools I’d knocked over. But Sal and her table were there first, grabbing up wrenches and crowbars and hammers; and they began ripping crates apart in search of other things.