The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  Nikolas jotted in his notebook, Too bewildered to ask anything other than are the children in danger?

  Of course they are. Last count from the wards, how many don’t have proper roofs over their heads? How many more in the next weeks? she said within our thoughts.

  He shut his eyes, obviously resisting the urge to barb back at her. I meant from the plague. 18 children died last week. The registrar says that’s almost the average for a month.

  Oh, yes, the death toll will rise, she said with a tone so matter-of-fact, the hair on my neck stood on end. That’s what I meant by some won’t come back. To us, they’re gone.

  IN HIS WEEKLY ANNOUNCEMENT, SENT throughout Ailliath and to several kingdoms, Nikolas made a plea for volunteers to help before the third phase struck the rest of us and until the sickness ran its course. To this point, we had managed with neighbors helping neighbors. However, the children who’d recover and the healthy adults among us wouldn’t be able to care for the sick adults alone. As well, he wrote letters to specific ward and charity leaders requesting their guidance to prepare for volunteers and a system to assign them. To Dru Kai and Milan Visham, the Guardian leaders who contacted us in August, he sent a message to accept part of their offer.

  The Guardians’ reply wasn’t delivered by post, as expected, but in person, with a request to meet the three of us.

  At breakfast, a castle officer told Harmyn and me to report to the meeting chamber once we were finished. I arrived first. As the door opened, I noticed two people wearing black trousers and identical tailored coats, Guardian blue, with white turn-back cuffs, and gold buttons molded with the symbol in the center. The man had skin darker than mine, with light eyes and black hair cut close to his skull. The woman’s eyes were slanted with heavy lids, the irises black. Her hair was gray, cut straight over her brow and shoulders.

  Another man stood next to the woman, dressed in the same uniform. When he smiled, I stepped forward to embrace him.

  Naughton.

  Harmyn and Nikolas walked in as I released him. Nikolas’s eyebrows arched with inquiry, his expression both amused and suspect. When his attention turned to the guests, they didn’t bow. I hoped he remembered from Aoife’s manuscript that the Guardians had different ideas about authority and meant no disrespect. They accepted the offer of his hand. When Harmyn extended hers, they couldn’t hold back their stares when they touched her.

  Nikolas leaned toward Harmyn. Suddenly, a high-pitched ring pierced my ears. We clutched the sides of our heads. I heard a rattle of keys in the hallway and the flap of drapes moved by the wind.

  “I’m sorry,” Harmyn said. “The king asked if I could make it so you could speak without notebooks. I meant to with only thoughts, but that’s what happened.”

  “Is it permanent?” Nikolas asked.

  “I haven’t practiced this. I don’t know how long it will last,” Harmyn said.

  “Well, then, welcome to Ailliath,” Nikolas said, his voice a little deeper than it had been, the tone even warmer. “May I introduce Miss Secret Riven, and—Harmyn.”

  “Thank you for the audience. I am Dru Kai,” the woman said in our language with a pronounced but musical accent. Pointing to her right, she said, “This is Milan Visham and Connau Kess.”

  “I knew him as Naughton,” I said.

  “Ah, she’s told me about you, in good regard,” Nikolas said. “Shall we sit?”

  “Milan and I request a private meeting with you,” Dru said. “Connau wishes to speak to Miss Riven.”

  “We’ll go to my office, then,” Nikolas said. He opened the door to allow Dru and Milan to walk ahead. Nikolas paused with his fingers on the doorknob as he looked at Harmyn and me. “I get to wish you two a good day as I haven’t in months.”

  “Wait.” My cheeks blushed as I walked to him. “Harmyn knows and I don’t care if Connau does. I’ve missed the sound of your voice and I love you and—” I kissed him as quick as if I’d stolen it.

  “Miss Riven, such forwardness! I love you, too.” Nikolas gave us a nod.

  When we sat down, Harmyn rolled her eyes. Connau tried not to smile.

  “I know you Guardians are far more lenient about certain displays than we Ailliathans,” I said.

  “We are. I won’t pry, but I’ll remark I’m glad you share the mutual affection of a man worthy of you,” he said.

  I nodded with a grin. “Do you mind if Harmyn stays?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Why did Dru and Milan come instead of sending a letter?” I asked.

  “They wanted to discuss the arrangements for volunteers as well as the war, in person. We were also curious to see for ourselves what we’ve read in the announcements.” Connau studied the bruise on my cheek. “Although the King’s descriptions were accurate, I wasn’t prepared for what I’ve seen. This is hideous, Secret.”

  “You cannot imagine,” I said. My right ear popped. “We might not have much time to speak, and I have questions.”

  Harmyn curled herself on the chair as if she were about to listen to a good story.

  “Then ask,” Connau said.

  “Several days before the plague started, I went to the manor. Everything was gone. The collections, the library, Mutt, the servants. What happened?” I asked.

  “After the evening you met him, when you returned from your journey, he wasn’t quite the same. He told me he had an important trip to take soon, but nothing more. He ordered the rooms to be packed, and he arranged for everything to be moved, the sort of duty he typically entrusted to me. Around this time, the staff said they heard him scream in his sleep. The maids told of his sheets stained with blood and seepage, as if from wounds. I heard no complaint from him. Strange, because he’s prone to whine when he doesn’t feel well. After the ball, he went to the office every day, but he took his meals in his room and had no guests. It was painful to see him in that state. So quiet. Mutt his only companion, sitting in the library with his automatons, not even calling the musicians to play for him.”

  “The fire?” I asked.

  “I assume he knocked over a lamp and left the library. By the time someone smelled smoke, the fire had spread. The staff helped with buckets of sand and wool blankets. He worked beside us, but—I’d never seen him as he was—enraged, howling, and when the flames were out, he took the fireplace iron and beat the burned cabinets,” Connau said.

  “Why did he dismiss the servants?” I asked.

  “There was no one at all?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I have no explanation. In my case, a week after the fire, I received word I must resign without notice and depart immediately. Unusual orders, but I did, leaving a letter for him at his door.”

  “So, you’d been in communication with your people about him?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course. I admit I was reluctant to leave him, not only because he was sickly. Almost ten years I’d been in his service. It’s the strangest thing how, in time, kept secrets become shared secrets. The deference to him was difficult, that isn’t part of my innate constitution, but he wasn’t as harsh to me as he was to some others. And there were many fascinating and jolly moments in that house,” he said.

  “Do you know where he is?” I asked.

  “Officially, I’ve been told he’s no longer the threat he was.”

  “Do you know what happened?” I asked.

  “No.”

  Except for Harmyn and Nikolas, whom I told the night it happened, no one else knew how Fewmany had hunted me, that he asked for my help to kill the dragon, and that I’d pushed him into a hollow tree. I believed I could trust Connau with the truth, so I did.

  Connau stretched out his open hand. I accepted it. “You understand the magnitude of that one choice not to lead him there or, depending on one’s perspective, to follow. There will be tales told of you one day, Secret.”

  Tales of the keeper of tales, I thought. I held my breath but the tears came anyway.

  Connau looked
at me with those gentle brown eyes and wrapped my hand in both of his. I thought of Aoife, the tender moment she had with a Guardian the first time she visited the settlement, more than a thousand years before, not far from where we now sat.

  “What has upset you?” Connau asked.

  “I was truly happy in my position. I believed he cared for me, even though deep down, I knew he meant to use me for his ends.” The scar on my left hand, where Fewmany’s blade had cut me, began to burn. Harmyn placed her palm over it. “He flattered me with his trust. He talked to me as no one ever had before. I admired his ambition and intelligence and wit. I felt like a treasure to him, and I was, but not the kind that matters. He seduced me, and I allowed it. I feared him, and when that waned, that’s when I put myself in the most danger. How close I came to doing as he wished. I hate him now, with the visceral certainty I felt as a child, but I also—because I can’t deny the good times—I loved him, too. There is no peace being pulled between those extremes.”

  “Does it surprise you I loved him, too?” Connau asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “When he was filled with wonder and curiosity, he was impossible to resist. You understand what I mean,” Connau said.

  “I do.” The burn in my hand became a throb. I paused as I dared to ask the question. “How did he feel about me?”

  “I believe to the extent he could, he cared for you as well. Your affection wasn’t unrequited.”

  “It was wasted,” I said.

  “Not on him, lonely as he was. Besides, if you hadn’t had that bond between you, you couldn’t have achieved what you did. It’s both that simple and that compli—”

  I clutched my ears. Instead of silence, I heard the faintest rush of my heartbeat.

  He can still hear you, Harmyn said within my thoughts.

  “Thank you for listening. Thank you for everything,” I said.

  He nodded, the little bow familiar; his body had not forgotten Naughton. When he stood to leave, he reached out his arms. He held me as I cried for what Fewmany and I had done to each other out of love, grief, and greed.

  WEEK 19

  OUT OF GUILT, I FINALLY relented to Harmyn’s request to invite Father to dinner. I had no good reason to refuse for so long, other than the castle, like the woods, was a secluded place where certain memories, and those who embodied them, didn’t intrude. Since I learned my brothers’ names, I’d not seen Father except for a weekly obligatory cup of tea and jotted conversation.

  The night Father arrived, we greeted him in the front parlor. He walked slowly, bent forward, his head tilted like a turtle’s. He dressed more formally than the occasion called for. When he bowed to Nikolas before they shook hands, I was reminded of the flagrant exceptions Nikolas allowed Harmyn and me. Harmyn hugged Father around the waist. When he leaned forward to give me an awkward kiss on the cheek, I detected a whiff of my mother’s perfume. My temper riled. I lagged behind as they walked, wondering why Father had expended a precious drop. I froze when I realized that day was the seventh anniversary of her death.

  Harmyn asked Nikolas to have our meal without attending footmen so that we could talk together. She would give us respite from our deafness but didn’t want to draw undue attention. Dinner was as frugal as any Father might have at another house that night. I watched him for signs of disappointment—at the King’s table at last, but with no extravagance—but he seemed content. The conversation included us all, until Father mentioned the war. He and Nikolas leapt into an earnest discussion, which piqued me until I realized this was inevitable given their shared interest. Both were students of history in their own intimate ways.

  When talk turned to preparations for the third phase, Harmyn leaned toward Nikolas and said, “GrandBren can stay with us, can’t he? We have plenty of room.”

  I stirred my cooled leek and potato soup. One more person at the castle could be accommodated. The servants, staff, Council members from Rothwyke, and their families were to be kept within the walls, along with the volunteers who would tend us. Vacant rooms on the residence’s second floor, once used by the royal family, were reserved for Lord Sullyard and several advisers who would aid him in the coming months.

  “We will,” Nikolas said. He nudged me with his foot under the table. Through a few written conversations, he knew some of my recent thoughts and feelings about Father.

  “I recall Elinor’s daughter is coming soon from Clyton to care for her, and he considered hiring her to tend him as well. Perhaps he’d be more comfortable in his own home,” I said.

  “What do you want, GrandBren?” Harmyn asked.

  Father glanced at us, but his eyes rested on Harmyn. “I’d prefer to not be alone. There is room for you and Secret at the house.”

  “What do you want, Secret?” Harmyn asked.

  “I’d prefer to feel safe, and that will be here,” I said.

  “Then you can both have what you want, if Nikolas gives his permission,” she said.

  “Mr. Riven, the invitation is open. You needn’t answer now,” Nikolas said.

  “Thank you,” Father said.

  When Harmyn suppressed a triumphant grin, I wanted to smack her.

  After we finished our meal, Harmyn announced she’d planned a tour and presented Father with a hand-drawn map of the main buildings marked with Xs. His face brightened with delight. She was an enthusiastic guide, sharing facts and anecdotes she’d gathered from the staff in written interviews. Even Nikolas learned things he didn’t know. Father behaved himself by not asking too many questions.

  In the main meeting chamber, Harmyn didn’t reveal the secret room but did speak at length about the kings’ portraits and the crest of scales.

  “Nikolas, yours is the last one, correct?” Harmyn asked, her finger on the scale’s transparent edge.

  He nodded. Harmyn had meant the last scale on the row, but there was a double meaning. As Father and Harmyn turned back to the wall, Nikolas looked at me. In those eyes the color of myth was a resolute peace. His was the last and final. His son would pursue his own quest, if he chose one.

  The penultimate destination was the library. Nikolas allowed Father to see some of the kingdom’s oldest records—writs, deeds, treaties. Wax seals attached to ribbons, which served as signatures of venerable dead men, dangled from several of the documents. Nikolas unlocked a cabinet which held a portion of the kingdom’s chronicles.

  “You’re welcome to look at them,” Nikolas said.

  A fevered boyishness lit Father’s eyes. He laid a bound volume on a stand. Harmyn turned up the flames on the nearest lamps. Father traced the parchment edges with reverence as my fingers drifted over the text. I didn’t resemble my father, but in that moment, we mirrored each other. From the observant expressions on Nikolas’s and Harmyn’s faces, I knew they noticed this, too.

  Through my cold feelings came the thought, This love we share is truly in our blood.

  Father’s hands began to tremble. He cleared his throat. “I’ve read the translations, but to touch the original chronicles—the excitement overwhelms my nerves. This one is seven years before The Mapmaker’s War. What of the ones prior, and during?” Father asked.

  “All here,” Nikolas said.

  “And you could sign a pass so he can read them,” Harmyn said.

  “Yes, Harmyn, I could,” Nikolas said.

  “There are maps, too. I found an old one of Foradair,” she said as she pulled open a narrow drawer. Father hurried over to look.

  As they searched for the street where Father lived as a child, I leaned close to Nikolas. I thought of the treasured old map in Father’s study and the thin veils which covered it—of mines, ports, trade routes, battle sites. I wondered how he would respond if he saw Aoife’s map and I told him what it was.

  Quickly Father and Harmyn glanced at several other charts, and then she said, “We have one more place to see, which Nikolas is very kind to allow.”

  As we walked down the hall, Nikolas and Father la
gged at a snail’s pace behind in conversation. Outside the corridor to Nikolas’s private office, Nikolas acknowledged the guard’s bow. The guard pushed the pocket doors aside and allowed us through.

  I realized, even before Harmyn told me, why she led Father there. Within my father was the memory of a noble past, of a man who had been raised as Ciaran’s son but born first as Wyl’s heir.32 Aoife, his mother, hadn’t named him in her manuscript, but I was certain he was named, along with this title and deeds, within Ailliath’s chronicles after the war.

  “GrandBren will have deep feelings about this place,” she whispered. “He’s going to have profound dreams during the sleep. He’ll question them even as he believes what they show. Eventually, you need to give him a translation of Aoife’s manuscript and tell him the whole truth.”

  “In time,” I said.

  Dangling from the ancient torch hangers, oil lamps burned. Our shadows drifted across the floor. Along the way, Father touched the corridor’s gold walls and the doors, chained and locked. When Father stepped into the king’s office, he hesitated. He stared at the hearth, the desk, and the sword among the weapons. A shadow crossed his face not of darkness but of recognition.

  “I feel I know this place,” Father said.

  “Perhaps you met here with my father once,” Nikolas said.

  “No. I’m certain,” Father said.

  Father walked to the fireplace, stepped along the mantel’s length, and placed his hand on one of the stones. From where I stood, I could see the crack he touched, bold as a scar.

  When he turned to us, he looked at me in a way that made my skin ripple into goosebumps. Whomever was in our blood lived again.

  Harmyn reeled back with a yawn.

  “Hint taken,” Father said. “An expert tour you gave us, Harmyn. Very well done. My thanks, Your Majesty, for being a gracious host.”