The Waking Land

by Callie Bates

  “Is that what all this is about, El?” he says. “Marriage?”

  What does he mean, all this? I’m getting flustered. Several fiddleheads fall from my hands to the ground. “That’s what I asked,” I say. “It’s a simple question.”

  Jahan stares at me. His lips tighten. Slowly, he says, “You want my position. You think I’ve got power. I don’t. I exist at the whim of a prince who believes I’m his friend, that I saved his life by some sort of miracle. But as soon as someone tells him the truth—that I’m a sorcerer—then I’m dead. No one will save me. No one will speak up for me.”

  “I don’t want your power.” How can he even think such a thing? Except maybe I do—I want his sorcery, his charm and courage. If I must have a dynastic marriage, let it be with him. I say, “I want you.”

  He’s already shaking his head. “I can’t marry you.” The words burst out of him. “I can’t marry anyone.”

  “Well”—I’m getting angry now—“as it happens, I’m engaged to Finn.”

  His head jerks up.

  “Oh, yes,” I say to the astonishment in his face. “Since we were children. I suppose I gave my father consent. I don’t remember. I was five years old.” I wait for him to speak, but he’s just staring at me. So I demand, “Why are you so surprised? It’s the logical thing to do, uniting our houses.”

  “I don’t know.” He yanks his hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up in spikes. I want to tame it down with my fingers. “El, Finn is my friend. I can’t—”

  I bite my cheek hard against saying, I’m not asking you to betray him. I don’t even want this betrothal!

  But Jahan’s not looking at me. He rubs a fist over his forehead. When he speaks, it’s hardly more than a mutter. “I can’t do to anyone what my father did to my mother. I can’t put you in that kind of danger.”

  Then he swings around and walks away.

  “That’s not what I’m asking you to do!” I shout after him, but he doesn’t answer.

  —

  I THROW MY plant samples at a tree trunk, but they only hit it softly and drop to the ground in the most unsatisfying manner. Finally I stalk after Jahan, though I know it’s too late to catch him. Maybe I should marry Finn! I am the steward of the land; I have an obligation to Caeris. Maybe the only responsible thing is to put my country first. Maybe it’s selfish of me to think otherwise.

  Maybe I don’t want to marry anyone! Let them say what they will about—

  “El!”

  I look up: Sophy leans out of a doorway, beckoning me. “Come quick.”

  I hurry over the churned ground of the yard. It’s a relief to leave my thoughts.

  “It’s someone from the south,” she says as I approach. “She claims to know you.”

  I frown. I don’t know anyone from the south who would pursue me to Taich-na-Ivaugh—at least, not anyone who’s free enough to come after me.

  “She won’t tell us a thing till she sees you.” Sophy hurries me toward the great hall, which still retains the old grandeur of a former castle. Under the vaulted ceiling, the people gathered before the fireplace appear shrunken. I glimpse Finn, Hugh, Alistar, and his sister Oonagh. No telling where Jahan is.

  Before them, her back to me, stands a woman in a mud-splattered riding habit, her black hair falling loose from under her hat. She plants her hands on her hips and declares in haughty, precise Ereni, “The last we heard, Lady Elanna was a captive of Denis Falconier. We will not treat with you if you continue to be so careless with her person.”

  I stop short. My mouth falls open. “Victoire?”

  She whirls. It’s her. Her face is less round than I remember, the dimple sharper in her chin. She looks fierce and stern. But then, when she sees me, she loses her composure entirely.

  “Elanna!” she cries.

  We collide in the middle of the room in a bruise of elbows and relief.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, and at the same time she says, “I thought that wretched Denis Falconier was going to have you killed. Do you know your people here have been interrogating me for the last half an hour in case I’m one of his minions? As if I haven’t spent weeks galloping all over the country trying to incite rebellion on your behalf!”

  So it was her Denis mentioned in Barrody. I feel myself break into a grin. “Interrogating you? But Hugh knows you.”

  “My opinion was overruled,” Hugh says drily. He has approached, along with the others. “The Connells are taking no risks.”

  I spare a glance for Alistar and Oonagh, who both look unrepentant. I look back at Victoire, who, I’m astonished to see, is on the verge of tears.

  “I thought I might not—I thought I might never—” She chokes, swallows. “I thought I might never see you again!”

  I squeeze her hand. My own throat is tight. “I thought the same about you.”

  We look at each other, the weight of the last few weeks heavy between us.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” I say.

  She straightens. Her chin lifts; the ferocity returns to her expression. She glances around at all of us with a commanding stare. “I’ve come from Eren to treat with the prince and yourself. People are rising across the south—rising in revolution against the Eyrlais. We want to aid your cause, if you will help ours.”

  —

  WE SIT TOGETHER in Oonagh’s green study, and Victoire tells me everything that’s happened in the last few weeks.

  “It’s all down to Count Hilarion, really,” she says. “Who would have thought?”

  His people saved her the night we abandoned her in his house—I still struggle to release the guilt I feel for leaving her there. They woke her from sleep and ran her through the dark rooms to a hidden chamber behind Hilarion’s study. She remained there, in the small windowless room, listening to the tramp of the royal guard outside her hidden door, praying the Butcher did not discover the latch disguised in the bookshelf.

  When the Butcher finally left, declaring he must have made a mistake to accuse Count Hilarion of conspiring, the count sat Victoire down and told her that she could not go home. Nor could she follow us north.

  “Both are too dangerous,” he said.

  He made her an offer. She could remain at Ganz, as his guest, troubled for nothing and wanting for nothing.

  “But I don’t want to do nothing,” Victoire told him. “I can’t bear sitting around.” She thought of running away from Ganz, taking a horse and riding for Cerid Aven—but even in her desperation, she realized it was a foolish idea. At best, she’d get lost; at worst, captured or even killed.

  Then Jahan returned without us, sick with his own anger at having to abandon us on our way north, at having to return to Laon and the court. He stayed for only a couple of hours, but those hours—Victoire says with a toss of her hair—changed her life forever.

  Because Jahan Korakides told Count Hilarion that the emperor of Paladis would help him to revolt against Loyce Eyrlai.

  “They got out maps, started making plans,” she says. “And I listened to them until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I stood up from my chair and I said, ‘I want to help. Let me help you.’ ” She smiles. “That was it. I’ve been going around the country with the count for the last four weeks, telling the people how my father falsified the country’s revenue, how the queen intends to lie and steal from them instead of letting them have a voice in her government. Then Duke Ruadan got captured, and Denis took you, and I knew I had to come here so the people who remained could consolidate our efforts—work together.”

  Tightness seals my throat again. Ereni and Caerisians could cooperate. It’s my father’s plan, which I forgot in the shock of losing him, my mother, and Hugh in the same day.

  Hugh is smiling at Victoire. “It was well done. Hilarion must be proud.”

  “But your father,” I manage. “Your parents support the crown. You’ve told people how he lied.”

  Victoire’s gaze drops. She picks at a loose thread on her ridin
g habit. “That’s a consequence my father must live with, for submitting to the king’s will. I sent him and Mama word. I told them to leave the city because the riots are going to get worse. Besides which, the queen’s people aren’t stupid. They’ll have sorted out that I joined your side, and they’ll go after my parents.” She takes a breath. “I only hope Mama and Papa listened.”

  Finn stands up. We all look to him. “You did well coming here, Demoiselle Madoc,” he says. “We will most certainly lend our aid to your cause.”

  Victoire lets loose a sudden, brilliant smile. The way she’s looking at Finn worries me, as if there’s a shine about him. “I thought you might have been the prince, when we met at Ganz. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance again, Your Highness.”

  I twist my ring. I know what it means when she wrinkles her nose like that. I don’t want her to get hurt.

  A noise from Oonagh disrupts Victoire’s meaningful stare. “Your Highness, far be it from me to remind you, but the decision is not yours to make. It must be put to council.”

  Finn bows his head, though I catch the tightening of the skin around his eyes. “Of course,” he says. “Let us put it to council. And delay further.”

  Oonagh looks at him. Finn stares back, his eyebrows slightly lifted in challenge.

  “We need five to make a council,” Oonagh says in her most lady-of-the-castle manner. “There are you, me, the Caveadear, and Chief Poet Hugh. We don’t have a fifth, unless Rhia Knoll consents to sit, which I do not wish to ask of her. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Falaon the Black is due to arrive. He will make a fifth.”

  “We can’t tomorrow,” Alistar says. “It’s the Day of the Dying Year. We can’t make any binding contracts. It’s unlucky to look to the future on the day when the dead walk. And then the Caveadear must lead the ceremony, along with the king. It’s the custom.”

  Oonagh nods. “It’s important to keep the traditions when we’re at war—to give the people some comfort.”

  Finn bares his teeth in an expression that is more grimace than smile. “I see custom, as ever, is not on our side. The day after, then. Surely Caeris doesn’t have a law against council meetings on the Souls’ Day. Especially when the matter is urgent.”

  Oonagh and Alistar exchange a glance. “It’s not a law,” Oonagh begins.

  “The revolution will wait another day,” Victoire adds, sitting up very straight and addressing Finn. “I’ll just have to stay here a bit longer.”

  Finn spreads his hands in a polite gesture.

  “Yes,” I say pointedly to Victoire. “We have much to catch up on.”

  —

  AFTER HER BATH, I drag her off to my bedchamber—the only place we have any hope of privacy. Victoire sits by the fireplace, brushing out her wet hair, which drips on the shoulders of a quilted dressing gown she borrowed from Oonagh. “I’ve grown quite accustomed to mud,” she says with a sigh, “but it does feel so delightful to be clean.”

  My chest tightens as I watch her slip the comb through her long black hair. It is such a familiar gesture, such a comfortable, ordinary thing to do. It’s strange to think, while we’ve been fighting for our lives, we can still return to moments like this: chatting beside a fire, the pleasure of being clean, the simple act of brushing one’s hair.

  How familiar it is, and how different. Victoire’s face is thinner, sharper. The last few weeks have turned her from the girl I’ve known for so long into a fierce, fearless woman. A woman who’s willing to tell the people her own father lied to them, for the sake of justice.

  “You look sad,” she says.

  I shake my head. “I was just thinking about—peace, I suppose. Before all this, I wanted to go to Ida because I thought everything would be so much simpler there. And now…I never will. And I wonder if we’ll ever have in Caeris what I imagined having in Ida—peace, and comfort, and no more fear.” I clear my throat. “It’s strange, that’s all.”

  Victoire’s brow wrinkles with sympathy. She starts to speak, but just then there’s a knock at the door.

  It’s probably one of the Connell girls, bringing us supper. I asked if we could have a tray in my room. I call for her to enter.

  Jahan steps in, his head bowed. My heartbeat lurches into my throat. What is he doing here? He doesn’t seem to notice Victoire: he’s too set on what he’s about to say. “I’ve been thinking. If you are betrothed to—”

  I cough loudly.

  He looks up. He’s frowning—but then he sees Victoire, and his expression transforms into politeness. “Pardon me. I didn’t know you had company.”

  “Lord Jahan?” Victoire is on her feet, performing a curtsy. “I didn’t know you were here. It’s such a pleasure to see you again.”

  He doesn’t seem to hear her. He looks at me. “You should do as your duty demands.” He adds, “We both should.”

  I feel my nostrils flare. “I did not choose this. I won’t be bound by a contract my father signed when I was a child. I just want a choice, Jahan.”

  “Then you may choose to tell Finn no. But I won’t be party to it, either way.”

  He backs toward the door—the coward. “It’s too late!” I shout as it slams behind him. “You already are!”

  Victoire is grinning at me. “I knew it. When he came back to Ganz, I knew it. He likes you.”

  I smack the bedspread. “I’m going to kill him.”

  She giggles, perching beside me on the bed, as if it’s all wonderfully romantic. “You’re betrothed?”

  I stare at the fireplace. “To Finn. Since we were children. I didn’t know. I’m supposed to marry him for the sake of Caeris.” I hear her intake of breath, and I wince at her. “I’m sorry. I saw how you looked at him today.”

  “I did not!”

  We sit in silence.

  Then Victoire says, “He’s the prince. He wouldn’t marry someone like me anyway.” Another pause. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her twist her fingers together and apart. “Are you in love with the Korakos?”

  “His name is Jahan.” I flop onto my back and stare up into the bed canopy. “And he claims he won’t marry anyone. I don’t know if I want to marry anyone. I’ve only played at love before.”

  Victoire spreads out next to me, propping her cheek on her fist. “Even with Martin Bonnaire?”

  She’s trying to make a joke, and I smile instinctively. We used to invite the boys we liked to our Soledia salons. Martin Bonnaire was a fixture for almost a year—intelligent, handsome, quick to laugh and quicker still to make a joke. Though we talked for hours together, he never professed any feelings to me, which I found an agonizing torture. “Today he’ll say something,” I would say every Soledia, and Victoire would agree.

  Then, six months ago, he announced he was going to the university in Tinan to study rhetoric. In the first letter he wrote back to us, he told us about the most marvelous girl student, one of the few girls admitted to the university, whom he hoped to marry. I cried for about a week.

  “Even if Martin Bonnaire liked me that way, and I’m not sure he did,” I say, realizing the truth for the first time as I say it, “he couldn’t have acted on it. Marrying me would have been suicide. He’d have spent the rest of his life under suspicion as a Caerisian conspirator.”

  Victoire swallows. “You’re right.” She rustles her hand over the coverlet. “We all knew it. But I could never bear to say it to you.”

  I nod up at the canopy, though my eyes have filled with frustrated tears. Not for Martin Bonnaire, but for the girl I was, and for the guilt clawing at me. Why is Finn willing to give up his body, his bed, his future children for Caeris, and I’m not?

  “You don’t have to marry anyone, either, you know,” Victoire says. “We’re in the middle of a revolution. You’re the steward of the land! There’s no time to marry. When it’s all over, you and the prince can decide what will benefit the kingdom most. It will be easier then.”

  I blink the tears away. “Yes.” There might not be
time for marriage—but there will be time to speak to Jahan again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “I’m going to be a hare,” Sophy says. She snatches up the mask and holds it over her face. It looks almost real. The soft fur ears seem ready to twitch; the black nose looks damp.

  I laugh despite myself. Sophy does not seem like a rabbit. “You’d do better as a nightingale.”

  Victoire rifles through the armful of masks that Oonagh deposited on the bed. “There aren’t any birds. Oooh! A fox.” She lifts it over her eyes. The pointed snout seems to grin at us.

  “Clever as a fox.” Sophy takes off her mask with a smile. “The Day of the Dying Year is my favorite holy day. The bonfires, the masks, the songs! You don’t wear masks in the south, do you?”

  “Costumes,” I say. “Not masks.”

  “Not animals.” Victoire selects a cow and hides her face behind it. “So barbaric—so beastly.”

  We all laugh at the bad joke.

  “I don’t think the cow suits you.” I pick up a wolf’s face. The masks are works of art—fur and felt sewn onto molded paper. They’ve belonged to the Connell family for generations—the collection added to and restitched and improved each year. I trace a finger along the markings on the wolf’s muzzle, then slip it over my face. The mask is hot, weighty. “What do you think?”

  Sophy wears a strange look. “You’re the Caveadear. You don’t have a mask.”

  I lower the wolf’s head with a stab of disappointment. “But what if I want to?”

  “It would be silly to wear a mask. You’re the steward of the land. You are all the animals—you see through all their eyes.”

  Victoire catches my eye and rolls her gaze skyward. She still thinks being the steward of the land is a quaint Caerisian custom. She hasn’t yet accepted that I, her friend of a decade, have always been able to do magic. She still believes some of the lies told in the south, that sorcerers are untrustworthy and Caerisians a bit mad. Of course, I believed many of the same things myself, until quite recently, and I still don’t know how many of the legends about Wildegarde are true. But maybe more is possible than I once thought.