The Shattering of the Spirit-Sword Brackish 1

by Sam Farren

  It was a city in itself, curving around ships as tall as towers. The streets had been filled, even at dawn, and merchants pulled their carts into the square while the smell of salted fish overpowered their cries. Like most of the archipelago, Laister was surrounded by rocks on all sides. Yaros was one of the few places the island could be reached by sea and thrived because of it.

  Gulls cried in the distance. Eos matched Castelle’s pace, but Castelle pulled away whenever they were side-by-side.

  She slipped down the hillside, bay coming into view before the city itself. Someone there would listen to her. Eos couldn’t force her to hold her tongue forever. No lies, no deception. She wouldn’t dignify them with a response, much less dwell on them.

  Fenroe was hers. She was its Queen. The land knew that. The sea knew that.

  The people did, too. She had not waited and waited, working from the shadows, for them to lose hope.

  The docks rolled into view.

  Castelle skidded to a stop. When Eos reached her side, Castelle didn’t take a single step away.

  Yaros was no smaller than it’d ever been, even through the amplification of lost time, but the docks did not spread as far as they once had. They had crumbled at the sides, wood falling into the ocean, edges left to rot. The tall ships with their billowing sails were gone, leaving dingy fishing boats and half-sunk rowboats in their wake.

  “This isn’t right,” Castelle murmured.

  The colours were gone. Her family’s banner did not hang from lampposts and high windows, bear watching proudly over the bay. No market stalls boasted baskets of bright fruits and vegetables from across the archipelago, and silks and spices were no longer sold.

  The people who passed through the streets, blind to the boarded-up buildings around them, didn’t bump shoulders. Yaros was not a ghost town, was far from its own grave, but its purpose had changed in such a short time. Castelle stared across the city, certain she was the only one who remembered what it’d once been.

  “What has happened here? What has become of Yaros?” Castelle asked.

  “I told you last night, Princess.”

  “Stop that!” Castelle barked. Lies, lies, all of it. It was the rebels who’d done this, the government that’d stripped the city of itself. They’d plundered the land. She’d always known they would, had read the reports her fathers received, but to see it with her own eyes was to feel her heart sink with the crumbled docks. “This was not my fathers’ doing. This was not any order of mine. This has been done to my Kingdom, the rebels have… they have reduced my people to this.”

  Eos took a step forward, hands clasped behind her back.

  “Then surely they will be grateful to see you, Princess,” she said.

  Castelle nodded.

  Eos held out a hand.

  “You want me to go?” Castelle asked, and Eos nodded. “What? Why?”

  “You do not believe any of the things I have said. Perhaps you will believe the Fenronians, Princess.”

  Last night’s fire churned in the pit of Castelle’s stomach. She didn’t give Eos the chance to take her absurd idea back. She stormed down the hillside and into Yaros, calling Eos’ bluff. Eos depended on her hesitance, on her crippling self-doubt, but Castelle could see clearly now.

  Eos had abducted her and demanded gratitude for not slaughtering her. Eos had taken her from her home and Castelle was following her, was letting the woman take her from Laister.

  What a fool she was. Her parents would turn in their grave, if they had one.

  Forcing down nausea, Castelle marched through the wide streets. Eos was close behind, but not close enough to reach out a hand and grasp her shoulder.

  All roads in Yaros led to the docks. Castelle came to a halt in the centre, eyes darting around wildly. She’d passed dozens of people without speaking up, but it didn’t matter who she chose. Someone. Anyone. They’d hear her out, and they’d remember what Yaros had been, under Greyser rule.

  “Excuse me,” Castelle called to a woman, creeping towards her sixties.

  She had a brown paper bag bundled under one arm and a bucket of fish in the other hand. She stopped with a smile, lines creasing around her eyes until she got a good look at Castelle.

  “You alright, love?” the woman said. “Look plenty shaken. What is it? Missed your boat?”

  Castelle shook her head. The priest would’ve turned on her this morning, but she couldn’t pass up the woman’s surface kindness. Eos might never give her another chance to speak her truth.

  Lifting her chin, Castelle said, “My name is Princess Castelle Marcella Adriana Greyser. I need your help at once, for I have been—”

  The woman clicked her tongue.

  “Very funny, lass. Hear that one a dozen times a year, I do, but I’ll tell you this for nothing—I wouldn’t go around pretending, not with a face like yours. Not with hair that red. This little game might get you attention on the other islands, but Laister’s still sore.”

  “But the temple,” Castelle blurted out. “The temple in the forest, and Lords Damir and Ira.”

  “Ain’t no one who calls ‘em Lords anymore, except for the poor saps that work there,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Those two drained the life out of this place because of whatever sick fantasy they’re living in. Go on. Out of the way. Got places to be. Make sure you watch your mouth, alright?”

  The woman took wide strides around her. Castelle screwed her eyes shut. No, no, it was wrong. It was all wrong. Yaros was wrong, and so were the people within it. The capital’s poison crossed the sea like ink through water, turning them against the people who’d built their city from nothing.

  Stepping closer, Eos said, “Do you wish to speak with anyone else, Princess?”

  “Stop that,” Castelle snapped. She opened her eyes, and Eos was before her, calm as the clear skies. If any emotion had ever stirred across her face, blades had long since carved it out of her. “Of course the woman didn’t believe me. Of course there are dozens, hundreds, opportunistic enough to claim to be the Greyser Heir. Why should anyone take my word? I have no proof. I don’t have Brackish.”

  That was it. Brackish. The sword was dozens of miles away, safe in her fathers’ chambers. With that in hand, none would doubt her. With the spirit kept at bay, all would understand the sacrifices Castelle had made, and how much of her life had been whittled away by mind-numbing patience.

  “Look at the city, Princess,” Eos said.

  “What of it? We have all made sacrifices. We have all had to go without. Do you think this proves your point, Eos? All I see is a once-prodigious city that has been left as a former shell of itself, thanks to those who stormed my castle and stole my throne.”

  “You heard what the woman said, Princess.”

  “She said what the rebels wanted her to say! That none of it is their fault, and that the royal family is still to blame, fourteen years on. Their words have poisoned the people of Yaros as they have poisoned you.”

  Eos took a step back. Castelle’s hands clenched and unclenched into fists. The run to the city caught up with her. Her shoulders rose as she took deep breaths, one after the other, but no matter how much air she took in, her chest pressed down, down. Her breathing quickened, her thoughts span, and Eos held out her hands, words smeared against the buzzing in the air.

  “—Princess—”

  Castelle shoved Eos back and turned from her, hand on her forehead. She couldn’t think. Not with Eos standing there, staring at her, smug and self-righteous.

  “—you need to—”

  The rebels’ corruption ran deeper than Castelle could’ve imagined. Her fathers were right. She needed to be in the forest, surrounded by dogs and spirits, that she could read every book, study every strategy, understand the Kingdom’s economics, and learn to wield Brackish, before she could begin to fix things.

  “—please—”

  It was too much. Too much. She was only one person, and she had never been intended for the throne.
That was Marigold’s burden to bear. Their mother had spent close to two decades preparing Castelle’s sister for her duty, and Castelle had only caught snippets of the lessons she taught, the values she preached.

  “—just—”

  “What, Eos?” Castelle demanded, desperate for her to shut up.

  “You need to breathe, Princess.”

  “I am breathing,” Castelle said, words stuttering on her lips.

  “Slowly. Here. Come.”

  Eos’ hand hovered over Castelle’s shoulder. She gestured to the side of the square. Castelle didn’t mean to follow her, didn’t want to accept anything like sympathy from her, but her feet betrayed her.

  There was a small café by the docks, the last of its kind. A dozen chairs were spread across a patio, surrounded tables covered in water stains and sticky trails. Castelle sat with her shoulders squared, her hands clasped together between her knees, skin turning white around her knuckles.

  Water and bread appeared. Eos ate in slow mouthfuls, eyes ever on Castelle.

  “I want to leave,” Castelle said. “I want to leave Laister.”

  “Our boat will leave in an hour, Princess.”

  “I want to leave,” Castelle repeated. Had her fitful breathing not exhausted her, she would’ve thrown herself in the sea and fought back the waves to reach Llyne. “I need to see the rest of Fenroe. I need to know what has happened to Llyne. Caelfal. Yarrin. All the islands. My Kingdom, it is…”

  “We are leaving,” was all Eos said.

  Castelle squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to gulp down mouthfuls of the tepid water but spluttered on it. Eos wasn’t right. She couldn’t be. She was a Yrician imposing upon Castelle’s Kingdom, a woman without the decency to smother her accent. It was all lies, lies, lies.

  But the state of Yaros. The woman’s words. It meant something. It had to.

  It meant something, but Castelle didn’t have to understand it. Not now. Not yet. She had spent half her life happily in Marigold’s shadow, and the rest running, hiding, waiting. There was too much for her to absorb in mere days. The situation was not what she’d imagined, but she’d make sense of it. Yaros was no longer its former self, but things changed. Places changed. Perhaps poor harvests had sent the people of Laister across the sea, to the ever-prosperous Llyne, sheep dotting its rolling hills.

  She opened her eyes. She couldn’t blot out the world around her. She’d spent so many years aching to return to it, and it wasn’t fair for her to cast her gaze away, now her Kingdom was in trouble.

  Waves lapped against the shore, blue under clear skies. Things had rarely been easy for her mother, but the Queen had not screwed her eyes shut and covered her ears at the first sign of a challenge. She had not run away.

  If Castelle were to be Queen, she would have to face what was left of her Kingdom head-on.

  “Come,” Castelle said, getting to her feet. “I don’t want to miss the boat.”

  Eos picked up her bag and followed at a distance.

  Yaros had a single pier worth speaking of. More than half was underwater, but what remained was enough for the fishing boats that floated alongside it, tied to posts and left unguarded.

  A man in a sea-soaked cloak stood at the end of the pier, smoking a pipe. The boat taking them to Llyne was the largest in the dock, good for two-dozen passengers, and less than a third full. Castelle stepped aboard when a sailor gestured for her to, planks groaning beneath her feet. She clasped the back of a seat in a bid for balance.

  Eos followed, making a straight line for the bench in front of Castelle. She sat alone, bag at her side. Castelle leant against the side of the boat, watching the sea rock it to and fro, to and fro. The sea was as much a part of Fenroe as the land itself. It kept the islands unified, despite the deluge of rocks that surrounded the land, making the knowledge of sailing routes invaluable.

  Castelle’s gaze only trailed away to stare at the back of Eos’ head. She was not concerned with the sea, with what laid ahead. She stared at her hands and did not bother taking in the few stragglers who climbed aboard. Eos knew they were not assassins, sent by Castelle’s fathers. She had faith in whatever it was she was doing, believed in the path she had been set on.

  It wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

  Eos had only spoken out against Castelle’s fathers. Rhea had claimed to work for her family, despite all that’d happened.

  As with all things, there was more to it than Castelle could conceive of.

  How much easier it would be for Castelle to repair her tattered Kingdom if none knew who she was, if no one could set their sights on her as a Greyser.

  The sailors climbed onto the ship, muttered something about there being enough people, and set off a full half-hour earlier than scheduled.

  Nothing ran to time, anymore.

  Stalf reared up, an ancient beast freeing itself of the ocean’s imprisonment. Castelle couldn’t look away. The heat would rise within it one day soon, sending lava into the ocean and smoke and ash into the air, coating the shore of Laister. That would be the end of Yaros, and no human would’ve played a role in it.

  No royal or rebel could do a thing to stop it.

  Castelle leant forward and said, “Eos?” over the rising ocean waves, rocking the boat along with them.

  Eos tilted her head back but said nothing.

  “You say you will not kill me and intend to take me somewhere,” Castelle said. “But what do you want? Why have you chosen to do this? Whatever this is?”

  “I only wish to protect you, Princess,” Eos said. “That is the role I have been given.”

  No matter what else Eos had said, or what she’d let herself believe, Castelle trusted those few words. Castelle would live, and Greyser blood would continue to flow through the land and rise with the waves. There was an honesty in Eos’ words, obfuscated by her accent, that Castelle had not felt in a long time.

  The winds picked up. Llyne was not far from Laister, a few miles at the ocean’s narrowest, and Castelle gripped the side of the boat as it began to rock. She looked back, but nothing like concern crossed the sailors’ faces. This was the sea at its tamest, its most forgiving, and Castelle could not demand it press flat for her.

  Something stirred within her. It had not been her and her fathers alone on that boat, desperate to reach Laister before the rebels caught up to them. There were more than soldiers surrounding them.

  Layla had grasped her hand, had promised the sickness would subside, that they’d be safe, as soon as they reached land again. The surviving dogs howled from the back of the boat, pulling at their chains, cowering from the saltwater that lashed out against them.

  When the storm clouds rolled overhead and she could no longer bear to watch the shore creep closer, Castelle buried her face in Layla’s shoulder. Layla had sung to her, a melody without beginning or end that had only risen on that boat, and once she fell quiet, they were on land.

  “Princess,” Eos said, drawing Castelle’s gaze from the sea. “No one on this boat is a threat to you.”

  Castelle raised her brow. Eos gestured to her hands, gripping the back of the bench and trembling, trembling.

  “That’s not it,” Castelle said. “I was thinking of something.”

  “You are often looking over your shoulder for threats. I misinterpreted the situation. But if anything, people are staring at me.”

  Castelle’s mouth twitched into a smile she didn’t feel.

  “Paranoia is expected of a Princess, isn’t it? I know how dangerous the world is, Eos. I know that looking for the danger does me no favours, but I cannot help but draw attention to myself. I…”

  “Princess?”

  “I was not always the last of my family, deep in the forest. My cousin Layla, she… She was not a Greyser. One of her mothers was my father’s sister, so we shared enough of the same blood. She came to Laister with me on a boat like this and was with me for four years after that.”

  Eos didn’t ask what happened, but sh
e didn’t turn away, either.

  The silence made it easier to speak.

  “She grew impatient. Disenchanted with the lives we led, safe in the temple. She wanted to help Fenroe in ways we couldn’t, so far from the heart of the Kingdom, and so she left. Despite my fathers’ warnings and my begging, she left,” Castelle said. “After a handful of days, bandits tore her apart. Some good leaving did her.”

  Eos turned her gaze to the ocean.

  “Did they return the body to you?” she asked.

  Castelle would’ve flinched, had the blustery winds not knocked it out of her.

  “Sans the head,” she muttered. Eight years. Eight years, and she hadn’t found another friend, until Rhea took up work in the temple. “Never mind that. Look. That’s Llyne, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Eight

  Llyne had been home to some of the most impressive cities in Fenroe. Situated on the shipping path between Caelfal and Yarrin, the largest islands, it saw trade roll in from both sides. The island was sloped, one side an endless, open bay, the rest a curve of cliffs that were near-impossible to scale.

  The rebels had infiltrated its cities years before striking the capital. Like all of Fenroe, it had suffered their greed, their desperate power-grabs in the guise of a revolution the common people never asked for. Yaros had lost so much of itself, under rebel control. The rest of the archipelago didn’t stand a chance.

  Eos stared off the stern of the boat. She didn’t have to strain her eyes as shore came into view. She knew what awaited her.

  Castelle’s stomach turned.

  She should’ve eaten more than an apple.

  White sails dotted the coast, broad and beautiful. The wind picked up for the sole purpose of rippling through them, and the sea was full of the ships’ shadows, engulfing their tiny vessel. Voices rose above the wind as midday approached, an unintelligible thrum from the docks, the market, the shops, libraries, open spaces, theatres, taverns, inns; Castelle had yet to set foot on shore and she could see it all.

  The boat rocked as she climbed onto the dock, moorings not yet tied. The sailors yelled something about her fare, but Eos paid them. No one rushed after her, no one grabbed her arm before she could disappear into the crowd.