by Callie Bates
She doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe she really doesn’t want to meet Finn. “You wouldn’t,” she says. “I only came to live here after you’d gone, when my mother died. Lord Ruadan and Lady Teofila raised me with the utmost kindness,” she adds, a warmth in her voice. “As if I were one of their own.”
The words strike me as hard as a blow. My parents raised Sophy. They replaced me with her.
Humiliating tears sting my eyes. Of course they’d replace the daughter who betrayed them with one who would obey. Who would owe them everything.
After all, I replaced them with Antoine Eyrlai. A man whom I seem to know less well every day.
Sophy’s noticed the tears. “Oh! I didn’t mean—” She digs in her sleeve to produce a handkerchief, large and sensible, like herself. “Here.”
I mop under my eyes.
“That’s going to be a horrid bruise,” she observes. “You poor thing. You looked so brave up there.”
I don’t feel brave now; I feel like a fool. I press the handkerchief back into Sophy’s broad, damp hand. She pats my arm. We both start to smile at each other.
“El.” Finn bangs his glass into my elbow. I jump. How many times have they refilled his glass since he went over to the fire? His usually perfect hair is rumpled, and his mouth has that vague look people get when they’re drinking. What’s the matter with him? My father took him to task about the black ships, so he’s drowning his sorrows?
He whacks me with the glass again. “Who’s your friend?” With the whiskey loosening his tongue, his faint Idaean accent is turning loud, drawing out the words, thickening them. It makes it hard to forget he was born in Ida, that he doesn’t know Caeris’s people or her customs, despite his father’s pretense of kingship.
“Sophy Dunbarron.” She stares into his face as she says it, then drops into a curtsy when he only shrugs and turns to me.
“El,” he says, “I’ve got to tell you, you look lovely tonight.”
“Finn…” I’m not sure how to even start. I lower my voice. “What are you doing?”
He blinks. “I gave you a compliment.”
“Yes, and I’m so grateful. You look very nice, too. But—”
He pats the glass against the brass buttons on his coat, letting out a tinkling sound. “The color of kings, this.”
“How is King Euan, Your Highness?” Sophy asks in a loud voice, evidently trying to change the course of our conversation. Thank the gods. “Does he do well in Ida?”
“Hates it,” Finn declares. A slow, deliberate wink. “But, mind you, he hates everything. Food. Sun. Books. Wars. He mostly hates that he’s not actually king of anything. What’d you call him, El? King of air? Ha, ha!”
Sophy and I stare at each other and away. This is awful.
“He must be proud of you,” Sophy says, her voice tight with diplomacy.
“Hmph.” Finn runs the glass over the buttons again. The sound makes me wince. “Well, I’m here, running his revolution for him. Just the way he wanted.”
I can’t look at Sophy. My ears are burning—I’m embarrassed for Finn’s sake. How many times did I want to numb myself with drink in Laon at Loyce’s parties, at which I was always an unwelcome guest? But unlike Finn, I never dared for fear I would say something that could be used against me. I flounder for something to say, something to calm Finn, to steer him back to safe territory.
Too late. “It’s the gout, I reckon,” Finn says. “That makes my father hate everything.”
Out the corner of my eye, I see Sophy catch her breath.
“Finn.” I try to hold his wandering, bloodshot gaze. “You’re drunk.”
“That’s right!” He examines his glass. “Get me another.” He thrusts the glass at Sophy.
For a moment, as her lips compress and her shoulders bunch, I think she’s going to hit him. I raise my arm. Sophy catches the movement and breathes through her flared nostrils. If I ever thought she considered herself of low class, I know better now.
“Of course, Your Highness,” she says, her voice sharp with politeness. “Let me take that for you.”
“Where does she get off so high and mighty?” Finn says crossly to me while Sophy walks away, the glass pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Dunbarron isn’t a noble name.”
“She’s my parents’ ward, you fool.” Exasperation wins out over sympathy. “You shouldn’t treat her like a servant.”
But he doesn’t seem to hear. His gaze has gone distant, and his fingers twitch. “We went on campaign last year. Chozat. I know what it’s like. I know, and I still agreed to lead this revolution. That’s all I was born for. Reclaiming Caeris for my father.”
The bitterness in his voice shocks me—perhaps the more so because it sounds so much like my own. I reach out to touch the brocade of his sleeve. Beneath the cloth, his arm trembles with nerves or anger, I don’t know which.
He looks at me, the skin pinching between his eyebrows. “I wish Jahan was here. We survived Chozat together. I figured we could survive this.” He drops his gaze. Then his hands fumble out, capturing mine in his warm, slightly damp grip. I jerk back instinctively, but Finn doesn’t let go. After a moment, I let him hold me there. He meets my eyes. “You. You’re the steward of the land. We can win this together.”
There’s a catch in his voice. I hear the desperate hope beneath all his fear.
I give him hope.
Me, Elanna Valtai. The hostage from the backwoods, the girl who trusts plants more than people. I look up into Finn’s blue eyes, and I can’t find my voice.
A bell rings.
“That’s supper,” I say, and draw my hands out of Finn’s.
—
WE ARE PLACED next to each other at the dining table. Everyone stands behind their chairs while my father smiles around, lifting a two-handled cup in his hands. “This is a cuach, a sharing cup,” he explains for the benefit of Finn and me. “An old Caerisian custom. All of us shall drink from it, to show there exists no animosity among us. And also in honor of Prince Fionnlach and my daughter Elanna, the steward of the land.”
Everyone claps. Around the cup goes, touching lips, passing from hand to hand. Finn drinks—not that he needs another drop—and passes the cup to me. It’s heavier than I thought, wide and silver. I see the flash of my reflected eyes in the liquor a moment before I drink.
The whiskey sears my stomach.
I hand it to the lord on my left, someone I don’t know but who remembers me as a child. As he drinks, I look around the table. These unfamiliar faces, these unremembered people, have welcomed me back to Caeris as if they believe I can save them.
My father is watching me. I see the pride in his eyes.
Mother watches me, too. Her lips tighten, but she smiles.
I want them to look at me this way forever.
Supper unfolds the way I might have expected, with talk of the harvest and the war. Just before dessert, Hugh stands up to recite a poem in Caerisian. The words travel, fleeting and cold, down to the small of my back.
“Beautiful,” Finn says, more to my breasts than to my face. He’s switched to wine. It’s certainly not helping to sober him up.
“Finn.” I point at my eyes. “Look here when you’re speaking to me.”
He sags his chin onto one fist and stares into my face. “I could look there forever.”
The lady on his other side titters.
“Get control of yourself,” I hiss at him. “You’re the king’s son—”
“That’s the problem,” he retorts.
“What’s wrong with you? They’re going to think you don’t want to lead this revolution. They’re going to think you’re not cut out to be king.”
Finn smiles—a real smile. Mocking. “Maybe I’m not,” he whispers back.
“Well, you’re here, so you don’t have much choice.”
He points at me, and his voice drops even lower. “And you don’t want to be steward of the land, do you?”
I open my mouth to
say No, but then I stop. My father’s face flashes in my mind’s eye, so proud, and I think of the way Finn himself looked at me before supper, as if I were the best thing in the world. As if all his hope rested on me.
Finn leans back, looking pleased with himself.
Maybe he’s not as drunk as I thought.
After supper, we retire to the drawing room, where my mother sits at the clavichord. She plays a few opening notes, and a warmth spreads through my chest. It’s the song she wrote for me. Her gaze lifts, finding mine.
“I wrote this song for Elanna,” she says, but though she’s addressing everyone, she’s speaking to me. Her fingers continue to move, stroking out chords. “When she was a child, the stones sang to her. I fashioned a melody from the sound they made. This is the land’s song.”
A knot has tightened my throat. I grip my hands together.
My mother nods at Sophy, who stands to sing. I didn’t remember there were lyrics. I just remember the melody.
It begins softly, the keys of the clavichord almost whispering in that troubling fall of notes that seems to encompass, somehow, all the grief and desperate hope I have ever held. My eyes drop shut, then fly open as Sophy’s voice alights above the soft melody of the clavichord, scraping the song I’ve known so long from the depths of raw emotion to a bright, angelic height.
When dawn overtakes the lone stars
And the heights of the misted mountains
The land still dreams in the light of day
And sorrow sleeps ever within her.
Yet even asleep to our blood she sings
And to our hearts she calls
Awake, awake, my people awake,
In dreams and silence we hear her.
I might have known the whole damned thing is about revolution—and the steward of the land. But a tear is drying on my cheek and I’ve lurched forward over my knees, as if to draw closer to Sophy and my mother, as if I can crawl into the music.
Finn stands beside me, a hand pressed to his heart. His face, when I look up at him, seems vulnerable, almost naked. His eyes shine. I think how overwhelming it must be, to bear the fate of an entire kingdom, and I have to look away.
Then my father drops down beside me. I see him follow my gaze to Finn. Watch him smile.
“It’s good to see you have a friendship with the prince.”
I think of what the Butcher said to me, back in Laon, when he asked whether or not Fionnlach Dromahair and I were betrothed. I remember my father asking me, when I was five years old, How would you like to marry a prince, Elly?
I sense Finn’s tension. Did he hear? Does he know what my father just said? I don’t know how to answer. I don’t want to marry Finn. I like him, but I hardly know him, and I certainly don’t love him. I hardly know my father, come to that.
So I give my father the smile I learned at Antoine’s court—a smile that could mean almost anything. And I turn back to listen to the song my mother wrote for me.
CHAPTER TEN
Finn isn’t at the breakfast table this morning; he’s probably hung over. My parents do a marvelous job of not really talking to each other about anything. Mother and Sophy discuss obscure musicians from the Ismae, while Father and Hugh pass letters back and forth. I study my porridge, wishing for The Journal of Botanical Studies, Guerin’s undemanding company, and a pot of steaming tea amid the earthy smell of the greenhouse.
Guerin. If Loyce has executed him, if she’s dared to believe he could be responsible for Antoine’s death…And Hensey is imprisoned as well. And what of Victoire?
Cold pinches my nose. I blink rapidly. I am not going to cry in front of these people.
“Father,” I say, when there’s a pause in his conversation with Hugh, “there are some people who helped me escape. My old nurse and the royal botanist. They’re in prison now. Is there any way you can—” I falter, but I do not weep. “—get word if they’re still alive?”
My father passes me a smile, but it’s Hugh who answers, as dependable as ever. “I’ll send for word with the post.”
“Can you get them out?”
The men exchange a glance. This time, my father answers. “If they are not in danger of execution, it may be safer for both them and our people to leave them where they are. The danger of an attempted escape is far greater.” A pause. Quietly, he says, “They understood the risk.”
“Guerin didn’t.” I’m growing angry. Is this what they tell themselves, when they lose someone, that it was inevitable? “You may have suborned Hensey, but Guerin is innocent.”
My father looks at Hugh, eyebrows raised. “Is that true?”
Hugh does not quite meet my eyes when he says, “I’ve sent men to speak with the royal botanist over the years, but I don’t believe he ever committed to our cause.”
Such anger clenches my throat that, for a moment, I can’t speak. At last, I manage, “You did what?”
Hugh leans across the table. “I sent men to speak with him because I wanted him to look out for you.” A glance at my father. “We wanted to be certain you had people to care for you.”
Tears and anger form a hard lump in my chest. Does this mean Guerin only taught me because he was pressured to do it? What of Hensey? Did she genuinely care for me, or only for my father’s cause?
And why, in the names of all the gods, did they send people to talk to Hensey and Guerin but not me?
The table has fallen silent. With sudden vigor, Sophy and Mother return to a discussion of overtones and fermatas. I sense my father watching me, but I can’t look at him. A sheaf of fresh paper, an inkpot, and a pen sit in the middle of the table. I tug the pen and paper over to me and begin to sketch a series of violent black lines.
Quietly, my father and Hugh resume their talk.
The sketching calms me; the black lines turn into the impression of trees. Since we crossed the Ard, I’ve noticed the forest composition has changed, the soft, spreading elms and poplars of the south giving way to pine and cedar. Though most flowers are past, even the mushrooms seem different. The Butcher once called Caeris’s forests dens of darkness, good for nothing but to be cut as timber. But I hold with Markarades, who talks of the knowingness in the deep silence of the forest and how trees, understory plants, flowers, mushrooms, and the creatures who inhabit these places form communities as much as human cities do. Markarades, though, has never visited Caeris. He’s never seen the golden pines, the legendary trees that now grow only in the Tail Ridge—or the Bal an-Dracan—having been cut from the lowlands of Caeris, where they once also flourished. Their sap supposedly sings. The trees are ancient, and legends claim that they hold great wisdom, for those who can understand their song.
I sketch a general view of the forest, making notes as to composition, the estimated height and girth of the trees, the cedars growing with twisting roots along the banks of the Ard. I note several trees that I have never seen except in books. Then I find myself drawing the Ard as it looked in flood, and birds that flew in the branches above us when we rode.
What did I do to make the Ard surge so? I made myself one with the water, somehow. I floated over the earth, and I felt both the land and the water within me. I frown at the marks of my pen. I don’t know how to put my magic into words—and even if I did, I don’t dare write it down. Though the whole world knows I’m a “witch” now.
In the old poems and stories Hugh told us on the way north, my oldest ancestors—the earliest stewards of the land—had the power to make water rise and mountains move. There’s a story in which Wildegarde makes an entire forest grow overnight; the next morning, the trees rip their roots from the ground and walk.
A shiver passes up my spine. That much power sounds terrifying—and thrilling at the same time.
A gentle cough pulls me from my absorption with pen and paper. Everyone else has gone, unnoticed, and I’m alone with my father, who leans an elbow on the table.
“May I see?” he asks.
I hesitate, my hand spreading prot
ectively over the top sheet. But it’s not as if I have anything to hide. Any natural philosopher could make these notes.
I pass the paper to him and watch as he studies each page, raising his eyebrows and murmuring to himself.
“It’s a wonder you didn’t dig up the soil and draw that while you were at it,” he says at last.
“I didn’t have time.”
He looks up, his eyes crinkling. “I meant that as a joke, Elanna.”
His ignorance irks me. “Soil is incredibly important. The type determines what kind of plants will be able to grow in it, and in turn what animals will live there. One should always look at the soil.”
He folds his hands on top of my notes, looking at me thoughtfully. “Hugh says you wish to be a botanist.”
I nod.
He smiles. “It is only fitting that the steward of the land should be well apprised of modern science.” He flips through my notes again. “These are quite extraordinary.”
“They’re just notes. Nothing special.” But still, this pleases me. I feel myself wanting to grow toward him, as if I am a flower and his approval is the sun. It’s hard to focus on the fact that I have been angry with him all my life, but it’s also impossible to forget. No matter how I feel drawn to this land, I don’t belong here—and I don’t belong at the forefront of his revolution. I stare at the way his mouth quirks as he studies my notes. The old anger pulses through me. At last I say, “Why didn’t you ever come for me, until now?”
My voice doesn’t shake. I’m proud of that.
He lowers the notes, lifting his brows. His lips part. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
I wait. I’ve been waiting a long time to ask this question.
“It was not easy to lose you,” he begins. “Your mother—we all suffered with you.”
I fold my arms. I don’t believe it. It’s hard to suffer with someone you scarcely know, still less to do so for fourteen years.
He must see the skepticism in my face. He says, “If we had tried earlier, we could not have guaranteed your survival, much less our own. Antoine Eyrlai left me with no choice. In order to save many more lives, I had to give up my daughter. And to keep the peace, I had to abide by his terms.”