by Sam Farren
Reaching out, Castelle took Eos’ hand, palms pressed together.
What would her fathers think of her, sitting on the floor of an inn, holding hands with a Yrician?
The very same thing her parents would’ve thought. The same thing she would’ve thought, months ago. Weeks ago.
Squeezing Eos’ hand, Castelle knitted their fingers together.
“Are you ready?” Eos asked, after a measured pause.
“Not really,” Castelle admitted. “But go ahead.”
Eos picked up Brackish by the hilt and rested her across her lap. The blue light skimmed across her hand and faded, sword falling silent now she had permission to scream.
But it wasn’t words Brackish wanted to share. Castelle hadn’t earnt those, yet. It wasn’t flashes of the past, either, wasn’t bright, blurry recreations of all that had befallen her, centuries ago.
It was nothing but what she was, what she’d become. The sensation of being a spirit, trapped in a sword. The melancholy time couldn’t erode, the days refusing to fall into one another, even after decades. They stood as testaments to themselves, sunrise, sunset, and all that was ever between.
Weeks wouldn’t be nothing to Brackish. Before Eos had torn her from the temple, Castelle had been convinced she couldn’t take another day. Something had to give, something had to change, else her bones would break from the strain in her head, her heart.
And she’d only suffered twelve years of imprisonment.
Brackish had two hundred years of isolation echoing through her thoughts.
Her body was long since gone, decomposed in the soft earth, and she had no fists to beat against walls, no nails to dig into her palms, no teeth to bite the inside of her mouth until her thoughts stopped raging.
The sorrow fell away. Eos’ grip loosened.
Castelle didn’t know what to say. Whatever point Brackish wanted to make didn’t touch her.
She’d felt it all before.
Letting go of Eos’ hand, she pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the ache in her leg.
“I think we are nothing but three very lonely people,” Castelle said, putting her cloak on.
She left the inn without catching sight of herself in any mirrors. She batted at her face, brushing the hair away, and froze in the middle of the street. The wind passed through her, freezing the tips of her ears, the back of her neck.
There was a lot more of the world to get used to.
Eos followed her dutifully to the dock. Her job was to get her to Layla, not run ancient errands for the sake of Brackish’s closure. She didn’t argue on the sword’s behalf.
Castelle hoped Layla was paying Eos well.
People’s eyes trailed after Eos, drawn by the sword on her hip. They muttered to those within earshot, but the world had changed enough in fourteen years that none were brazen enough to approach a Yrician carrying a weapon. Fél hosted an endless swell of people, from the ever-expanding cities of Caelfal and Yarrin to those from the lone buildings scattered across the outermost islands, all shades of black, white, and brown, but Yrician faces were still few and far between.
Her scars didn’t help Eos blend into the background, either. Going unnoticed wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
Castelle stuck to Eos’ side, amazed by the determination it took for Eos not to pull her hood over her eyes, a scarf over her mouth.
“Are we still being followed?” Castelle whispered.
“Yes,” Eos said. “He is more persistent than most.”
Try as she might, Castelle couldn’t tell the ill-mannered gazes of strangers from those with a purpose.
The docks reeked of fish, pulled onshore by the netful to feed hungry tourists. Their boat bobbed alongside a pier, queue already formed, and Castelle stared off into the sea, at the islands surrounding them.
Wayston and Aria were both in sight, and a smudge that may have been Yarrin ran across the horizon between them. The gaps between the islands were short miles, but without someone who knew what they were doing, setting sail was tantamount to throwing yourself at the mercy of the waves.
In truth, Fenroe was not thirteen islands. It was an archipelago made from hundreds of pieces, countless fragments pulled from the seabed by the gods. Most of the islands were too small for much more than a bird or two to stand upon. Still, the rocks rose above the waves and lurked beneath them.
There were few safe paths to take, and fewer still could be mapped out from a glance alone. Without the people who’d had the sailing routes passed down to them throughout the generations, the islands never would’ve come together as one nation.
Someone would’ve taught Ava Greyser those routes. Brackish would’ve known them, too. Together, they would’ve sailed the seas under the locals’ guidance, until they too were part of the archipelago.
The boat swayed under her feet as she stepped on it. She found a seat close to the back, and with so many people waiting to leave the island, Eos sat by her side.
“Out of question, how much is my cousin paying you?” Castelle asked.
“Paying me?”
Eos repeated the words, but hadn’t taken the question in. She’d watched each and every person board the boat and her eyes darted around each time they moved. Castelle was lucky Eos was there. She stood no chance of scouting for assassins herself.
“For… this. How much is she paying you for all of this?”
“I am not being paid,” Eos said.
“What? You mean you were willing to—” Pausing, Castelle lowered her voice and leant closer. “To abduct me from a forest full of spirits and drag me across the archipelago with countless assassins and mercenaries at our heels, not to mention your good friend Svir?”
“Your cousin is a priest. She is far from wealthy.”
The crew untied the ship from its mooring, benches filled by two dozen people, and signalled to set off. A man who’d run down the pier to make the boat skidded short of slipping off the edge and swore loudly as the sails picked up the wind.
“Then you’re doing all of this for nothing? Gods. What do you get out of it?”
“I already told you,” Eos said. “I want to give Fenroe the time it needs to flourish. I do not want to see it slip back into what it was, what Nor was. Your existence alone is precarious. I do not understand politics, but I understand how people would use your family name to start petty wars and territory disputes for themselves.”
Castelle had forgotten Eos had said that. No, not forgotten. She’d refused to take it in. Every word Eos spoke had been an outrage, every suggestion she put forward treason, but now as they sailed across the narrow stretch of sea towards Wayston, Castelle was forced to reckon with the fact that Eos cared for Fenroe, for its people.
She cared no matter what they thought of her and her people. She was doing it not for money, not for personal gain, but for the future of Fenroe.
It was what Castelle should’ve been doing all along. What her family should’ve been doing for centuries.
“I think I understand why I was so angry with Reed when we left Llyne,” Castelle said. “It wasn’t because she’d been there. Because she’d been a rebel, and she’d seen… well.
“When I was… twelve, I expect, because Marigold was seventeen and soon to be married, I heard her arguing with my mother. They often fell into heated debate and came out grinning, each challenging the other on matters of the Kingdom, but this was different. It stuck with me for a reason. Marigold kept asking my mother why we needed more sheep, of all things, and all my mother would say was that if Marigold had to ask the question, then she was decades away from being ready to rule.
“She said the castle was the only place you could see all of Fenroe from, the only seat on which you could see the ends, and how they would justify the means. Marigold kept arguing, and I remember being so angry with her. Our mother was Queen! She ought to have been listening to her! They didn’t talk for weeks, after that.
“My mother took me aside and expla
ined how there were thirteen islands, but not all were equal. Stalf was only a volcano, for instance. Tow only had a scattering of villages, and was otherwise uninhabitable. Why should they be given as much as Caelfal, where tens of thousands of people lived? There were more doctors, professors, lords, ladies, lieges on Caelfal than the rest of Fenroe combined.
“We needed the sheep. The other islands didn’t.”
She whispered her story, wind threatening to steal it. Eos leant forward so she could better hear.
“It seemed like nothing, at the time. Honestly, I didn’t even recall it when Reed told me those things. But now, sitting here, looking out over the sea, the islands, realising that there are those motivated by things other than money… gods. She was sowing the seeds my entire life, wasn’t she? Her, my father, aunts, uncles, the nobles, the courtiers…”
“There will be a lot more to unpack,” Eos said. “Still. Your sister was questioning your mother. That is something.”
“You’re right,” Castelle said, tilting her head back. “That’s something, isn’t it?”
The wind didn’t catch in her hair, didn’t send it flying behind her.
She was still smiling when they reached Wayston’s shore. Compared to Fél, the island was teeming with wildlife, flowers spilling over cliff sides and onto the pebble beaches. Castelle headed straight down the pier, knowing better than to linger, knowing not to make eye contact, slight limp already drawing attention to her.
From there, Yarrin was clear on the horizon. As Fenroe’s second-largest island, most of the archipelago’s harvest was yielded from its rich, fertile plains. Fenroe’s second-biggest city stood at its centre, alongside one of the widest rushing rivers the archipelago had to boast of.
Layla was in that city. In the biggest temple in the centre, never turning anyone away, working long days and longer nights, and still finding time to devise Castelle’s kidnapping.
Signs rose from the docks, above the heads of travellers and sailors milling by, merchants raising their voices to sell their wares.
FÉL S – YARRIN E – CAELFAL (VIA VERTIAS) W
“There is a ship ready to sail,” Eos said. “We will catch it, if we hurry.”
Castelle caught hold of Eos’ sleeve before she could get far.
“When I was in the temple, I didn’t think I could make it another day. I always did, of course, but each night, I was closer and closer to breaking,” Castelle said. Eos tried to tug her along, not thinking it an appropriate time for sharing. “And then I was taken from that old life, and it was the worst thing in the world, until it wasn’t. Even with my leg like this, with everything I’ve learnt, I wouldn’t give it up. I wouldn’t go back to waiting.”
“We will have to wait, if we do not hurry,” Eos said.
“Just listen to me, would you? I have followed you, believing I owe Fenroe something. And I do, I do, but… there are people like you and Layla, who make things happen. Who see through the ways of the world and make unimaginable changes unfold. And then there are people like me, who are only people. They are what they are.
“I was never meant to be Queen, was never smart enough to question my surroundings, but I can do this. I can take Brackish to Caelfal.”
The air around them tightened as Brackish fought back the urge to burn.
“Are you certain? What about Layla?”
“She’ll wait. She can wait,” Castelle said. “Brackish can’t. She shouldn’t have to. Not for a day longer. Come on. We’ll have to go through Vertias, won’t we?”
Chapter Eighteen
Vertias was another island of sheep, hills in the centre of the land uninhabitable to all but the most devoted shepherds and their flocks. A scholar whose name Castelle no longer remembered had written an entire paper proposing that Wayston and Vertias had been a single landmass, as few as two-thousand years ago.
Castell could see why. The stretch of water between Wayston and Vertias was less than a quarter of a mile wide. In the height of summer, the waters receded for a handful of days, creating a narrow path of sodden sand. People swam back and forth between the islands, weather permitting, but Eos opted to take a small rowboat.
The woman who ferried them across said nothing and didn’t stare at Eos’ scars.
The wind had taken care of most of the hair on her face, but Castelle kept reaching up to touch the short, uneven edges. She didn’t remember a time when her hair had been shorter than shoulder-length, and after that particular haircut, she’d cried for a week.
She’d been seven and had all the time in the world for tears.
The roads between Vertias’ ports were wide and well-travelled, with merchants pedalling wares from the backs of carts. Inns and taverns were scattered along the narrow roads. Save for sheep, Vertias’ only purpose was to forge a path to Caelfal.
A few hamlets rose in the distance, built into the hillside. The people within were content with their lives, with the dozen buildings scattered around them, faces ever-changing upon the roads. To them, Vertias wasn’t a path to anywhere. It was where they wanted to be, and Caelfal sounded like an awful lot of trouble and fuss over nothing.
They took a carriage for the five-mile trek along the coast. The only other passenger was a teenager, arms wrapped around theirself, dead asleep in the corner.
“It’s good of you to come with me,” Castelle said.
Two minutes, no fewer than ten furtive glances, and she’d come up with nothing better to say.
“This is only a detour,” Eos said, uncomfortable in the face of gratitude. “I have to get you to Layla in one piece.”
“Oh? So, you’re my bodyguard now, are you?”
“I do have a sword,” Eos said.
Grinning, Castelle said, “Remember the time you kidnapped me?”
“Remember the time you attempted to murder me with a rock?”
“Because you kidnapped me!”
The corner of Eos’ mouth twitched. She settled into the corner of the carriage, eyes closed like their fellow passenger’s.
A mile later, she nudged their foot, waking them.
“Look out the window,” she instructed. “Is there anyone else on the road?”
The teen blinked their way through Eos’ accent, jostled straight out of their dreams. Eos and Castelle stared until they complied.
“A-another carriage in the distance. Someone on horseback,” the teen reported, brushing their hair back into place.
Eos said nothing, eyes closing once more.
Brackish hadn’t glowed since they’d left Fél, hadn’t lit up in gratitude or indignation. She’d heard Castelle’s declaration to help. She must’ve. Castelle wasn’t doing it for thanks and would’ve been queasy with guilt to hear them, but confirmation she’d heard wouldn’t go amiss.
She considered asking Brackish if she knew where they were going, and spent the rest of the journey thinking her questions intently at the sword.
At port, Eos let Castelle pay for their fare. Eos fished the coins from her pocket and handed them to Castelle, but Castelle took the responsibility seriously. So much of the royal family’s wealth had been in other forms. Gold bars piled in vaults, cellars of aged wine, loans given to those who’d been frivolous with their own wealth, crops stored in guarded granaries, the labour of those who’d committed crimes across the archipelago.
Castelle had never had to pay for anything, had never scraped two coins together to buy bread to sate her grumbling stomach. She’d only ever had to ask.
Aboard the hundredth boat she’d taken in the last few months, Castelle could make out Caelfal. The port was obscured by its white-sailed ships, each big enough for a hundred passengers, plus cargo. Caelfal had a direct link to Yarrin, further north, and the port at its southernmost point led all the way to Nor.
So much of its pride rested upon the ocean waves.
Her family’s ship had been named The Ursa Major. The crew were picked from hundreds of applicants, and a special uniform had been designe
d to match the billowing pattern on the sails, the bear carved into the mast of the boat.
The ship had been in the family for longer than Castelle had been alive, and refurbished a dozen times. For all trips her family had taken, they’d never sailed far. They often spent summer days upon its deck, watching the sun play across the waves, listening to the music rise from the town square.
The first time Castelle fully felt the threat of the rebels was when she was twelve. A messenger brought word to the capital that The Ursa Major had been set alight and cast out into the ocean.
As they pulled into the port at Caelfal, their boat was engulfed by the ships around it. There were a dozen that could rival The Ursa Major, even though Castelle’s nostalgia made it a colossus it’d never been.
Few of the ships bore Fenronian names. Castelle picked the Norian apart, translating it clunkily, word-by-word. All royals were expected to be fluent by the age of five, but it’d been a long time since she’d had a use for the language.
She didn’t get the chance to take in anything more than the ships’ names. Eos took Castelle’s arm and led her onto mostly dry land, pier drenched in ocean spray. It was another grey day, the perfect weather for hoods pulled up and eyes cast down, and Eos made straight for the crowd.
Each of the cities upon Caelfal felt larger than the other islands. Castelle had forgotten there was so much to the world, that so much could flourish in such a confined place, buildings pressed together along the coast, intruding upon the hills and cliffs behind them. There were tens of thousands of people in that city alone, Fenronians, Amarosi, and Norians alike. Yricians too, blending into the crowd as though they’d never been kept out of the Kingdom.
“Gods. Half of what’s being spoken is Norian,” Castelle said, feet having no interest in matching Eos’ pace. “I heard we’d been cut off by them completely, trade snuffed out by the government, but you know the manner of things I was told. Has it been like this for long?”
“Yes. Somewhat. Since control of Nor was regained,” Eos said, weaving through the crowd. “We are being followed.”