by Callie Bates
“So why now?” I sound as collected as a lawyer.
He meets my eyes. “King Euan declared himself ready to make a bid for our freedom, and his son was old enough to lead the revolt. The time had come.”
“It’s lucky it came when it did.” I was wrong. I don’t sound like a lawyer. My voice is hard and angry. “Otherwise Loyce Eyrlai would have executed me for regicide.”
My father’s hand reaches out, almost instinctively, for mine. But he stops short of touching me. I stare at his fingertips; then I bring my hand back, beneath the table, away from his.
He leans forward. “We are lucky, yes, that it happened as it did—that Hugh was there with Finn and Jahan to smuggle you out. But we would never have let Queen Loyce—” His voice roughens. He shakes his head. “We would never have let any harm come to you. We would have brought you out, no matter the risk.”
I can’t speak. I don’t know whether I believe him, or whether he believes what he’s telling himself.
At least he didn’t kill the king. Did he?
After all this, I need to know. “Did you arrange for the murder of Antoine Eyrlai?”
He looks into my eyes. “Why would I do that?”
“Don’t answer my question with a question!” I flare.
He holds up his hands as if to pacify me. “I can’t pretend that Antoine Eyrlai’s departure from this earth has caused me any great grief. But no. I had no involvement in his death.”
A long breath exits my lungs.
“And,” he adds, “I would never have let you suffer on that false accusation. We were always going to come for you; it was only a question of time. You’re my daughter, as well as the steward of the land. All sentiment aside, our revolution depends on you. We would never have let you go.”
We look at each other. The years lie between us, and no matter what he says, he can’t erase them. They will always be there. I was sacrificed for the good of the people, and now I’m back to save the people again, as steward of the land, a destiny he’s had in mind for me since I was born. In my father’s world, there is no distinction between private lives and politics, between daughters and sacrifices.
“Elanna,” he says. “Thank you. No child should have to bear the burden you bore.”
Tears start in my eyes, even though I want to say I didn’t have to bear it. When Antoine Eyrlai put the pistol to my head, Father could have stepped forward. He could have offered himself.
But he didn’t. It was better to lose me, a child, even though I had the land’s power, than for Caeris to lose him, the kingmaker, the bringer of hope. As always, the good of the people came before any love he had for his daughter.
In someone else, it would be admirable. But I am that daughter, and I’ve had to live with the consequences of his actions.
He clears his throat and stands up. “Come out to the garden with me.”
I hesitate. My father does nothing idly, not even going for a stroll in the garden. Yet we are both here, and he’s told me that he always intended to come for me. I see the emotion still in his eyes. Like me, he doesn’t often show his deepest feelings. Perhaps I ought to give him the chance, give us both the chance to understand each other better. He did not willingly give me over to Antoine Eyrlai, after all.
“Very well,” I say, and get up from the table.
—
I FOLLOW HIM outside, into the gardens that border the house. The plants are drab with autumn, and they don’t seem to have a particularly skilled gardener, as far as I can tell. Several hedges grow untamed.
For a moment, I am overwhelmed by the desire to be a humble gardener—an ordinary person who only loves the earth—and not the steward of the land. I have to put a hand to my chest.
Father turns to me. “Do you remember this place?”
He’s mistaken my desperate fear for sentiment—but maybe they’re the same thing. I look at the rows of flowers, the brown-tinged hedges. A part of me still knows this place, deep in my bones. Some distance away sits a round stone building, its arched entrance open to the elements on two sides, so I see a gleam of light coming through it. I had opened my mouth to say No, but something about the building makes me pause.
“You were the most curious child,” Father says. “We could barely persuade you to come indoors, no matter what the weather.” He chuckles. “Once I had state visitors—from Tinan—and you ran inside all covered in mud and slathered your hands over one lady’s silk gown.”
This startles a laugh out of me.
“Your mother was furious,” Father says. “So was the lady. But you had a handful of seeds and, when you saw everyone so angry, you made the seeds grow into a bouquet of wildflowers. Asters, I think, and bergamot.”
My laughter fades. I suddenly remember trying to do this in Laon as a little girl—making things grow in my hands. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I tried anyway because I loved to do it. I remember thinking it should be easy. But it wasn’t; I couldn’t make a whole flower sprout from a seed. Not in Laon.
“We knew you were meant to be the steward of the land, even then,” my father says.
I study the fading colors of the garden, my throat tight. Another memory surfaces; I don’t know whether it’s from Caeris or Eren. I remember being outside, barefoot in the mud, about this time of year—making a fort, persuading the wildflowers and hazel bushes into a neat circle to hide me. Did I want to be the steward of the land as a child? I suppose I did. But I didn’t understand what it meant. I only understood how proud the words made my parents.
Yet even now, the land calls to me. I want to strip off my shoes and walk barefoot in the grass, feel each damp blade between my toes.
I wish I could be free to be one with the land, without having to hold the title and the expectations that come with it.
“Come along,” Father says. He strides off across the lawn toward the stone building. I hesitate. There is something about the building, some significance, but I can’t remember what. I remind myself that I’m supposed to be giving my father a chance.
Besides, even from here, the place feels warm. Warmth emanates from its old, mossy bricks, through the ground, up into my feet. I can’t stop myself from following him.
It’s dim inside, and I have to pause for my eyes to adjust. The building appears to be empty, except for a raised fount at its center. No, not a fount—a stone balanced on a circular platform.
“This is the Valtai Stone,” my father says, reaching out as if he’ll pat its seamed surface, but he drops his hand. “When a new steward of the land is named, they come here to drop their blood to the stone, so that they bind themselves to the land here at Cerid Aven and the land knows them. It’s said the stone speaks to the steward, if they have the ears to hear it.”
I stare at the stone. It seems to look back. Out of nowhere, a memory wings down: trying to persuade my mother to let me sleep out here. I loved this stone. I remember climbing over it, feeling its cool scratchy surface against my bare legs, leaning my ear to it so I could hear the faintest whisper coming from within. I tried to understand the whisper. I thought the stone was speaking to me—a language only I heard, a language only I could understand.
“The ritual wasn’t always blood.” Father hasn’t noticed that I’m struck still. “Before the Ereni invaded Caeris, it was an acclamation. The steward would shout their name to the stone, and the stone would shout back.”
“But it changed,” I say. A shiver is running up the backs of my legs. Part of me wants to run. The other, larger, part wants to draw closer to the stone—to touch its seamed surface. My fingers twitch. “Why?”
“Two centuries ago, when the Ereni conquered our kingdom, the last king of Caeris bound himself to the land by blood. You know the invasion story?”
A coldness seems to clench my chest. “In the south, they taught me that it was easy. Done in a day. But Hugh said it took months. That the royal family…” It sickens me too much to say it.
My father is nodd
ing. “The Dromahairs were slaughtered. Many Caerisians were. The last king, Ossian, was also the Caveadear—the steward of the land—and he brought the land alive. The Ereni had to fight their way through shifting forests and hills; they drowned in streams that appeared out of nowhere and valleys that seemed never to end. So by the time they reached Barrody, they wanted more than conquest. They were half mad. They wanted blood.”
I shiver. “But our family survived.”
“We did.” He pauses. “We survived by cunning and treachery—by giving up the secret of how to reach Barrody through the shifting land, so that the Ereni army could make its way there.”
I stare at him. We betrayed Caeris?
But it was two centuries ago. The responsibility is not ours. Yet I see by my father’s tightened shoulders that it weighs on him, this ancestral guilt.
He clears his throat. “King Ossian escaped the slaughter, but he was gravely injured. Near death. He knew the stewards were weakening—that his power was not as great as those who had come before him—and he knew that he did not have time to induct a new Caveadear into the mysteries. He believed that, without a steward, the borders would disappear and the magic that lingered in the earth of Caeris would vanish. So to protect his land for future generations, he began the blood rituals. Blood has power, you see, even if customs and knowledge are forgotten. So we offer our blood to the Valtai Stone in the hope it might waken the earth once more.”
He turns and holds out his hand for mine. “It won’t hurt. When my father brought me out here, nothing at all happened.” He gives a rueful smile. “I hoped it would shriek and break apart—something dramatic.”
I seem to be standing on a precipice—between the future I imagined for myself now, and the destiny I knew to be mine as a child. I have tried to hide my magic for so many years. But even so, deep within, I am hungry for it.
Maybe, for me, the stone will shriek.
Maybe I want it to. To prove the years of exile were worth something. To prove the magic that’s claimed as my birthright really does belong to me.
I hold out my hand to Father. He cradles it in his and smiles at me. My heart’s beating too hard for me to quite manage a smile back. What if nothing happens?
What if something does?
Father pulls a dagger from his pocket. With the most delicate movement, he scores the blade across my palm.
Blood drops to the stone.
Father curls my fingers over my palm to squeeze the flow of blood to a stop.
I’m holding my breath, but nothing has happened. Not even the faintest whisper. Father shrugs. I am shocked to find myself disappointed—almost angry. After all this, the stone doesn’t even make a sound? I should be relieved: I don’t want to be the steward of the land. But instead I feel almost betrayed.
I reclaim my hand and start to move away when an unholy noise shakes through the stones. I flinch backward. Father swings around to face the Valtai Stone, his lips parted.
The stone is crying.
All common sense tells me to get out of the building—to preserve my hearing, if nothing else. Instead I find myself crawling toward the stone, as if the cry is pulling me to it. The noise is almost unbearable, an endless throb. My ears seem to be bleeding as much as my palm. But all the same, I press my hands against the stone. I lean in to embrace it, just as I must have when I was a child. I rest my cheek against its surface, rough here and smooth there. I close my eyes.
The sound fades so slowly I almost don’t realize it’s gone. My father stands beside me, one hand on my shoulder. I look up at him. He’s wearing the expression I feared he would: astonishment, mingled with awe.
“Caveadear,” he whispers.
Steward of the land. The title that belongs to me, no matter how far I try to run from it.
The stone pulses under my fingers. I have a feeling that if I lean against it again, I will hear it whispering. I should be glad. After all, I wanted it to cry out. But my stomach clenches. I can’t look at my father. Now there’s no question of what I am, and no question of what he’ll ask me to do. I suppose it’s always been inevitable.
I study the stone. I stroke its seams and bulges, familiar to my touch as an old friend. I say, softly, “I’ve returned.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’m studying the forest composition of the Valtai Oaks when a branch snaps behind me and I look up to see Finn approaching. We haven’t spoken much since his drunken episode; I’ve spent the last days with my parents and, when I’m alone, haunting mirrors in the event that Jahan is looking for me. Once I even whispered his name. It made me giddy and flushed but nothing else happened. I don’t know how Finn has been occupying himself.
At first I’m not sure he means to find me, but when he gets closer, he calls out, “Any objection to some company?”
“No. I am working, though.”
“I’ll be very quiet.”
He props himself against a tree, watching me sketch, and though he does keep quiet, I’m too aware of his presence to concentrate. Finally I turn back to him with a sigh.
He springs upright. “Want to walk?”
The smile he offers is tentative. Real. I tuck my notebook into a pocket. “All right, then.”
We stroll in companionable silence beneath the massive oaks, the ground turning steep under our feet.
“I’ve not been to the top of this hill,” I say. “Shall we?”
Finn shrugs and gestures me forward. We thread our way up the hill, hauling ourselves over mossy stones and autumn-dry streambeds. When we pause to catch our breath under a pair of pine trees, he starts to talk.
“Father made me join the Paladisan army when I turned nineteen—the same military duty all the sons of Idaean nobles have to fill. I wasn’t under obligation, not being Idaean—or really anything. But still I did it.” I see his jaw clench. “Jahan and I knew each other from the imperial court. We’d become friends because we weren’t like the others; neither of us came from generations of blue-blooded Paladisan families. We rebelled together. Cut our hair short. Mocked our fathers and our teachers. Scorned our ‘comrades’ the same way they scorned us.” He stares down at the tree roots braiding the trail. “Then we went on campaign to Chozat.”
I say nothing—I don’t want to interrupt him—even though I know the story about Jahan single-handedly fighting off the two dozen tribesmen. But all the popular ballads I’ve heard don’t mention Finn, the son of a would-be king, living on the generosity of the Paladisan emperors. It reminds me how small we are. How, in the world of Ida and its court, Caeris seems like nothing.
“Jahan saved the crown prince’s life by magic,” Finn says. “The Getai ambushed us in the middle of a wood. They surrounded us completely. They had muskets and swords and bayonets, and what did we have? A few pistols. Some rapiers. We were stupid; we thought no one would come so near to the walls of the city. We were supposed to be scouting, but most of us had started making bets and shooting at squirrels instead. Then—bang!” His fist pumps into the air. “They were all around us. Shooting. Our comrades were falling, the horses were screaming…and I couldn’t do anything. I was frozen.”
I swallow hard at the look on Finn’s face. The memory of his shame.
“Jahan pushed me to the ground. We were at the back of the party, and the Getai were already swarming the crown prince. There was no way Jahan should have been able to get there in time. But I saw him. He…” Finn hesitates, as if wary of telling even me this truth. “He moved so quickly I couldn’t see it. Compressing space, he calls it. Then he was in front of the prince, defending him with his rapier and, when he lost it, his bare hands. With his magic. The Getai fell back; he was moving too fast for them to kill. He told me later he sent thoughts at them—reflected back their own terror. And then he broke their guns.”
“But no one recognized it for magic?” I’m baffled. It must have been obvious.
“They should have. But Leontius had taken a blow to the head. I think…” Finn
pauses again. In a quiet voice, he says, “I think Jahan did something to his memories. Changed them, so Lees thought it was a sort of miracle—that the Getai had bad guns, wet powder, and Jahan got there just as all of them jammed, and he was able to beat our attackers away. Leontius decided Jahan was like a hero of old, that he’d gone berserk, inspired by the gods. And the others accepted the story, because…” Finn purses his lips. “Because it absolved them of the shame of not saving Leontius themselves.”
I draw in a breath. I’d guessed that Jahan used his magic in that famous episode. And still, I can’t help wondering, did all the others accept the story? How secure is Jahan’s secret, really?
Maybe that’s part of why he came to Eren with Finn. To get away from the secret he’d exposed, then been forced to hide in plain sight.
“I don’t know if any of the others still have nightmares about it,” Finn says, “but I do.”
And who wouldn’t? The Getai could have killed them; their comrades could have killed Jahan, if they had realized he was a sorcerer.
He glances at me, as if to gauge my reaction. I look back at him steadily. “King Antoine put a pistol to my head when I was five years old,” I say. “I understand nightmares.”
Finn’s mouth quirks. “I suppose you would.”
“I haven’t had any since we got here, though,” I say, surprised to realize it’s true.
“Lucky,” he says. Unthinkingly, I reach out and touch his elbow. He manages a smile. “I wish—it’s a stupid, useless wish—but I wish our revolution wouldn’t come to battle. At least not so fast. I’d do anything to delay it, but I’m not supposed to say that. I’m supposed to be brave. Fearless.”
“Sometimes I wish we could just…act the way we really feel,” I say, fumbling for the words. “Not have to disguise what we really want.”
“I know. My father made it clear that coming to Caeris was my responsibility once I came of age. He didn’t raise me to do anything else but win his kingdom back for him.”