The Waking Land

by Callie Bates

  He grimaces. “Oh, El. I’m sorry. Truly, truly sorry.” He leans over to put his hand on top of mine. “I wish there was something we could do. But he’s made his choice. They both have.”

  I can’t look at him. I grip my teacup. “You changed your mind awfully fast.”

  Finn draws in a breath. “I didn’t want to. But if I am to be worthy of leading this revolution, those are the choices I have to make.” He pauses. His hand tightens on mine. “I know you’re fond of Hugh.”

  “Fond?” The words pour out of me, thick as tears. “He taught me to read! He taught me the poem about Wildegarde! He was like a father to me! All my memories of Caeris, before I was taken hostage, all my best memories, have Hugh in them. And I—I—” I betrayed him. I can’t even say it aloud. “He brought me back here—to you, to my parents. He taught me the truth. He’s given me so much, and you would give him—You would give my father—”

  I choke on the words before I start to cry. Finn puts an arm around my shoulders; I shrug him off. The land rumbles under me, seeming to sense my distress.

  “I’m sorry,” Finn says. “I like Hugh. I like Ruadan. I don’t want to see Hugh die like this. I don’t want to see your father rot in prison.”

  “But you won’t do anything about it.”

  “I can’t afford to sacrifice more people in a mission that may be futile.”

  I glare at him through the tears blurring my eyes. “You sound like a pompous pig.”

  My words hurt him. “What do you want of me?” he snaps, but then he gathers himself. “I am trying to act like a king. I’m probably making a shambles of it. But I have to try.”

  “Of course you do.” I glower into my teacup. Neither of us says anything. I don’t know what’s right—is Finn being noble and self-sacrificing, or just taking the easy way out? I feel bruised with shame and grief. The steward of the land should put Caeris before herself. Maybe my father had that kind of self-abnegation, but I don’t. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to say, the way they all do, that Hugh or my father or Hensey knew the risk. Because after you’ve said it enough times, it simply means you’re giving up. I can’t give up on the people I care about. I won’t.

  But Finn is trying. So I say, “I see you’re doing your best.”

  “It’s all right. I understand why you’re angry.” He pulls in a deep breath, seems to brace himself. “But I’ve been thinking about something, El, and I need to ask you about it.”

  I sit upright, wiping a stray tear off my cheek. He doesn’t quite look at me.

  “With you being the steward of the land, and me being the crown prince,” he begins. A pause. “It’s good we have a united front. But I wonder—I think it would be stronger if—”

  He stops.

  Finally I say, “Yes?” in my most encouraging manner.

  He turns to me, pulling a smile onto his face. It’s meant to be charming, but I see the strain in it. He gathers my hands in his.

  “I think we should announce our engagement.”

  What?

  My mouth has fallen open. I’ve jerked my hands back to safety against my chest. I say, the words seeming to come from someone else, “I didn’t know we had agreed to become engaged.”

  His smile becomes fixed. “This isn’t quite how I hoped you’d react.”

  “Yes,” I explode, “because you never asked if I want to marry you!”

  “We’ve been betrothed since we were children.”

  “We have not.”

  Finn’s voice rises. “My father has a document, signed by your father, agreeing to our engagement and marriage once you turn twenty.”

  I stare at him. I’m gaping again; I must look a complete fool. I’d forgotten about what my father said to me as a child. How would you like to marry a prince, Elly?

  It seems he went ahead and agreed that I would. On my behalf. When I was five years old. And then let me be taken hostage. I calm my surge of rage only by remembering that Father is now in an Ereni prison, waiting for Loyce Eyrlai to decide his fate.

  Finn huffs a disgusted sigh. “Ruadan didn’t tell you.”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  Finn stands up, pacing the length of the cushioned bench. “Well. I’m not going to force you to marry me. I thought you knew. I thought you were agreed to it. I thought…” He pauses. “I thought you might not find it a bad thing.”

  A bad thing. I look at him. Finn is not a bad man; he wants to be good, and just, and strong. But I can’t imagine taking his hands and calling myself his wife. I can’t imagine binding myself to him for the rest of our lives.

  I get up. “It’s not your fault,” I tell Finn, “but I have to think about this.”

  My words seem to calm him. He stops pacing and looks deep into my eyes—so intent that I want to step back.

  Because I do not want to marry Finn Dromahair, no matter his golden charm or his hope or his desire to be a truly good king. Even though maybe I should marry him—for the future of my family and the future of Caeris.

  With the utmost gentleness, he touches his fingertips to my cheekbone. He says, softly, “I wouldn’t mind being married to you, El.”

  —

  I TAKE THE steps to my shared bedroom two at a time, throwing open the door so hard it rocks on its hinges.

  Rhia Knoll looks up from the writing desk, where she appears to be composing a letter. So reassuring to see she is literate; in Laon they’re always claiming Caerisians can’t read. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I shake my head. I wish I could talk to someone—Victoire or Hensey, or even my mother. Someone who could explain to me what I’m supposed to do.

  Someone who would tell me it’s all right that I want to run.

  Rhia Knoll is eyeing me askance.

  I fling myself onto the bed and glare up into the shadowed canopy, bordered in a knot-work pattern, trying not to mind when I hear the scratch of Rhia returning to her writing. It’s not as if she really wanted to know what was the matter.

  I need to clear my head. I need to make the right choice about marrying Finn.

  It is not a choice I want to make.

  I think of Hugh, in his prison cell at Barrody, and rage burns up in me again, because even if he made the choice, it is wrong to let him suffer the consequences. I think of my father, locked up in the Tower in Laon. It is so wrong. I am the steward of the land. I have the power to make decisions—without the king or the warden of the mountains, if the situation is dire enough. My father may not want a rescue, and the others may be right that we can’t free him, at least not yet. But Hugh’s execution is dire.

  Then an idea strikes me. A terrible and possible idea. An idea that might work. An idea that would, at least, avoid me saying no to Finn’s face—or worse, a coward’s yes.

  I sit up. Rhia is still writing, though to whom, I cannot guess. I watch her until she senses my gaze and looks around.

  “Do you think you could free a man from prison?” I ask.

  She draws herself up. I watch her consider the daggers tucked around her hips, the broadsword leaning against the near wall, me. “Perhaps,” she says.

  “If we did it together? If I used the land to cover our escape?”

  “Perhaps,” she says again, unmoved.

  I roll onto my knees. “Rhia Knoll, if you help me free Hugh Rathsay from the garrison prison, I will go with you to Dalriada and treat with your father and the mountain lords. If we free Hugh now, we’ll easily make it there before the Day of the Dying Year—and in time to come back before the first snow.”

  Her lips begin to form a word, but then she hesitates. I know she can see the sincerity in my face. The desperation. She taps the pen against her lips.

  Then she says, “How soon do we leave?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  This is not a good idea.

  Rhia and I lurk outside the gates of Barrody, which loom huge in the twilight, lanterns blazing at the gates and soldiers pacing the wall above, the tips of th
eir bayonets winking. The garrison squats just over the wall, and I recognize the neat square windows high on its tower that open to release cannons.

  I seem to be shrinking. The walls are very tall, and I am fragile and human and wanted. The dusky color of my skin alone could give me away; like the Ereni, Caerisians are lighter-skinned than my mother and I.

  The words let’s go back are on my lips, but instead I say to Rhia, “Do you think we can manage it?”

  She purses her mouth. I brace myself to hear her say no. But she says, “If luck is with us. Yes.”

  We dismount from our horses and walk through the gates of Barrody, into the capital city of Caeris, the heart of our country. A place I have never been. The walls stretch thirteen feet thick and, for a moment, in the cold dark underneath them, I seem to be suffocating. A guardsman will stick a lantern in my face. He will see past my wrapped scarf and lowered hat. He will recognize me.

  We emerge on the other side, onto a cobblestone street. It smells of food and damp.

  No one stops us.

  Rhia remounts her horse, taking the lead. I follow. The buildings are a jumble of timber, stone, and shadow, and the people we pass wear somber colors. My body is aware of the land beneath it, the gape of Lake Harbor off to our right, but my breath seems stuck in my chest. I have not been in a city since Laon. It should feel comfortable, tame after being in the woods, on the open road, on the run. But instead I feel trapped.

  In Green Square, just below the Queen’s Way that winds up to the castle, Rhia turns off into an alley. We thread among several tall buildings before emerging into a quiet square. A single bell tower occupies the middle of a greensward. Rhia slows. “The university,” she says. “It’s not much farther. I took the alley in case we were being watched.”

  I tighten my grip on the horse’s reins.

  Up the slope from the green, tucked in among a labyrinth of narrow streets, Rhia urges us through a small passage into a tiny, sheltered courtyard. Even in the damp, cool air, it reeks of food and waste. I tug my scarf over my nose. At least, in the embrace of the close, we seem less exposed.

  Tethering the horses to a hitching post, we climb the stairs to an inset doorway. Rhia knocks—an unsteady rhythm. It must be a code.

  A code for the underground system of Barrody’s rebels.

  We wait only a moment before the door opens and a girl ushers us inside. Her glance flicks over our shoulders, furtive, her lips pursed. She takes our overcoats without a word and gestures for us to remove our boots.

  I hand mine to her. “Thank you.”

  Rhia puts a finger to her lips and glares at me. The girl gives a shy smile, pointing us through the cramped, dim foyer toward a sitting room beyond. “I will see to your horses,” she says, and vanishes out the front door.

  “I wish you wouldn’t speak,” Rhia hisses at me. “Anyone will know you in an instant if you open your mouth with that awful Ereni accent. You sound as if you belong in the queen’s Diamond Salon in Laon.”

  She says it as if the Diamond Salon is, by nature, a despicable location. I grimace, but she did tell me to let her do the talking. “I only said thank you. I doubt she’ll know my whole history from that.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Rhia marches down the brief corridor to the well-lit room, made comfortable with carpets and paintings and well-used furniture. A young woman looks up from setting a pot of tea on the table, crinkling her eyes in a not-quite smile.

  “I must have had a presentiment. I just made tea. Will you have a cup?”

  It’s a large pot, and the room has the feeling of just being vacated. The ceiling squeaks overhead. There must be an attic above us. Whoever else stays here ran off just as we came in. The Barrody underground, indeed. I’m glad they take precautions, even with their own.

  Rhia has plunked herself on a settee, accepting a cup of tea and a chunk of bannock with enthusiasm. I lower myself onto a chair and take the food and drink as well. Our hostess wears her dark hair pinned back in a severe knot, and a sober, high-necked gray gown. Ink stains splatter her hands and, on a desk off to the side of the room, I spot a stack of recently written-upon paper. As she turns to pour herself a cup of tea, I peer more closely at the paper. It’s not secret letters, as I half expected. It’s drawings. Sketches.

  Anatomical sketches.

  I am out of my seat, pulled by curiosity straight over to the desk. The sheet on top shows a study of the nervous system, the notes interrupted in midsentence.

  “The prince is in Dearbann?” our hostess asks Rhia, then says hastily to my back, “Please disregard my work if it offends you.”

  I turn to her eagerly. “Your work? Are you an anatomist?”

  She looks me up and down, her eyes widening. “I’m training to be a surgeon, actually. But they say a woman isn’t fit to perform surgery, so I’m left to make the drawings alongside learning everything the boys are expected to.”

  “The same thing happens all the time in botany. Do you know no woman has ever been allowed to name a plant’s genus and species? As if we can’t even decline nouns!”

  Rhia Knoll is watching our exchange with full attention. But when I glance at her, expecting a scowl, she just rolls her eyes and keeps eating her bannock.

  Our hostess extends her hand to me. “I’m Sorcha Kerr.”

  “I—” I pause. This is probably the moment to use my alias, Islie Valmont, but surely we are among allies.

  She gives her not-quite smile again. “I know who you are, Caveadear. Though I have to say, I didn’t expect you to come yourself, with only one other.”

  “If any Ereni soldiers try to attack Rhia Knoll, they’re greater fools than I think,” I say.

  Rhia actually blushes, and Sorcha Kerr smiles this time—a real smile. She sits, and I move back to join them around the table. “What brings a Knoll and a Valtai here alone, with all of Caeris in such an uproar? I assume you wish to gather supporters?”

  Rhia points her gaze at me. I cough.

  “We must free Hugh Rathsay, the Ollam of Caeris. He’s due to be executed—on Lunedia, I believe.”

  Sorcha’s eyebrows lift. She hides her surprise behind her teacup. When she sets it down, she seems to have composed herself once again. “That may not be easy. The Ollam is a very public figure, now that they’ve captured him. The Ereni are making quite a stir about it. The execution is to be public, of course.”

  “You must have contacts within the garrison,” I say. “Supporters.”

  She nods. “But it is—I do not quite know how to say it, Lady Elanna—it is quite a risk to those who are there. It would put many people’s lives in danger to save one man.”

  It shouldn’t surprise me to hear this philosophy yet again, but I still have to unclench my jaw.

  “I don’t intend to put anyone but Rhia and myself in danger,” I say. “We will go in alone.”

  Sorcha looks at me. There seems to be pity in her eyes, and suddenly I feel young and rather foolish. “No one in this revolution is ever alone,” she says. But she does not try to argue us out of it further.

  —

  THE ATTIC IS reached by a trapdoor in the living room’s ceiling. We spend most of the next day up there, cramped in the narrow room with a sloping ceiling and single window, the two trundle beds leaving little space to walk around. Sorcha will not permit either of us out in daylight, so I can only guess at what Caeris’s capital city looks like by day through the smeared glass window. It shows nothing more than a gray autumn street: gray cobblestones, gray slate roofs, gray stone walls. Occasionally we hear the squeak of floorboards and sound of voices below, and the girl comes up around noon with some lunch. But otherwise, we seem almost invisible—forgotten—though I know we are far from it. Sorcha doesn’t need to say more for me to know we are putting others in danger with our rescue attempt, no matter what precautions we take.

  I try to put the guilt from my mind. I tell myself it’s too late for it.

  Rhia te
aches me how to play a Caerisian board game with flat wooden pieces and a bowl. It passes the time.

  Somewhere in the afternoon, she stands from the game and stretches. I realize I have been contemplating my turn for several minutes too long, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She paces to the window.

  “I used to think Barrody was the best place in the world,” she says, leaning her elbows on the window frame. “My mother brought me here once when I was a girl, after the Old Rebellion failed, when things had quieted down again. I remember she ordered me a new dress, and we went to the draper to take my measurements. I’d never had a dress made by somebody I didn’t know, especially somebody in a city. I thought it was the best thing.”

  I lean back against a trundle bed. “What color was it?”

  “The dress? Blue, with pink roses embroidered onto it. And ribbons. When I got home, my brothers stole all the ribbons to make me angry.”

  Brothers. I wonder what it must be like to have siblings, someone else to turn to, who knows your mind—a true friend for life. Then I think of the blue dress we made her wear at Dearbann, and how angry she was to put it on. She doesn’t look angry now, for once; she seems reflective.

  “I never wore the dress,” she says.

  “Why did your mother buy it for you, then?” I smile, trying to picture this stern young woman as an eager little girl.

  “I think she felt sorry about what she was going to do. It was her way of atoning.”

  “Atoning?”

  Rhia doesn’t look at me. “She left. I got up one morning, while we were here, and she was gone. She left a letter for my father, saying she couldn’t bear it anymore—the mountains, our way of life, the hatred and resentment of the south.”

  I try to contain my shock. No wonder Rhia didn’t want to wear the dress. “But where did she go?”

  “Back to her family, I think. She came from the south of Eren. The revolution upset her. She didn’t like violence.” Rhia pushes herself back from the window. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It was a long time ago. I think of it when I come to Barrody, that’s all.”