The Shattering of the Spirit-Sword Brackish 1

by Sam Farren

  “What?”

  Castelle’s head shot around like an owl hunting its prey. Eos took her arm again and led her from the docks and through the market, familiar buildings covered in unfamiliar signs. The silhouette of the city was ingrained in Castelle’s memory, but it’d taken on a life she’d never known, had become something she’d never dreamt of.

  Tensions were there, beneath the surface, but things were not threatening to crack. People were not at each other’s throats purely because they were from other lands, because they didn’t understand each other’s tongues.

  “Is it the man who’s been at our heels all this time?” Castelle asked.

  “Yes. I believe he was following our carriage on horseback, and took the same boat from Vertias. Move quickly, but stop looking around. Do not draw attention to yourself.”

  The anonymity of the crowd meant attention was fleeting, quickly dissolved. People bellowed offers of tender meat and cheap wine, proclaimed their fruit was the freshest, their fabrics the warmest, and when Castelle showed no inclination of pulling coins from her pocket, the merchants turned their manufactured friendliness to their next targets.

  Eos led Castelle from the main street, down narrow residential roads, washing hung out to dry overhead in the hopes of missing the rains bound to return by the afternoon. She’d never visited this part of the city, of any city. Her family had stuck to roads wide enough for processions, so the common people could gather for the privilege of watching them pass, soldiers lining the way on horseback.

  Eos wound through alleyways and sideroads, treating the city as a maze only she had a map of. If they were being followed, Eos wasn’t going to make it easy for the would-be assassin. Castelle reminded herself that it was a new world. No one would draw blood in the middle of a city, no one would think there was anything political about her death.

  They surfaced in another busy district. The smell of salt lingered, but it wasn’t all the air was. Her family had once had a residence there, a manor house with a mere ten bedrooms and a statue to commemorate themselves in the centre of the square. That was long gone. Only the plinth remained, and where her parents should’ve stood, a dozen children gathered, kicking their feet over the edge as they ate lunch.

  “Well,” Castelle said, slowing to a stop.

  “Well?” Eos asked over her shoulder.

  They didn’t have time for wells.

  “Look at that,” Castelle said, pointing to the largest building in the square, in the city.

  The façade was the same, the windows had not changed, but curtains of a different colour hung from them, and the gates around the building had been uprooted. A garden replaced a once neat lawn, flowers as bright and varied as the people comfortably crammed into the city.

  “It is a temple. Perhaps we could take refuge in it.”

  “No, no,” Castelle said, uncertain which part she was objecting to. “That used to be my house. My family’s home.”

  “Hm. And now it is home to hundreds a year,” Eos said, hurrying on.

  There’d only been ten bedrooms, but there were so many chambers. Libraries, studies, parlours, music rooms, kitchens, servants’ quarters, bathrooms, storage closets. Even the bedrooms could be split into thirds and still serve their purpose.

  It had never seemed excessive. It was a home away from home, full of the absolute necessities. It was the bare minimum. Her mother always said that the port city was so crowded, that they ought to expand, not grow inwards, upwards.

  Her mother would’ve hated that the extravagance she considered ill-fitting of the family had been turned into the robust refuge of a temple.

  Castelle couldn’t name her own feelings towards it. She moved on, eyes on Eos’ back, not the city that’d distanced itself from her, over fourteen long years.

  In the south of the city, confident they’d lost their pursuer, Eos stopped at a small market stall and had Castelle pick out new clothes. Eos took a bundle for herself, paid without inspecting them, and stood watch as Castelle filtered through the racks.

  “Are you certain he didn’t make it this far?” Castelle said. “He’s been after us for a while, hasn’t he?”

  Everyone who cast their eyes upon her was a potential assassin, not another shopper taking in the goods on offer. The paranoia that’d served her so well fell flat. Hundreds of people filled the square and Brackish refused to push Castelle’s thoughts in any urgent direction.

  “He has. I did not consider him a threat, but he has been unfortunately persistent. We will be less recognisable if we change.”

  “We will be less recognisable if we get horses and charge across the island,” Castelle muttered.

  “He is not the first to follow us,” Eos said.

  “What? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I have been very careful. The others lost track of us before it became pertinent to tell you. Most people fancy themselves bounty hunters and find the reality to be less exciting and far more difficult than they expected.”

  Uncertain how it was supposed to make her feel better, Castelle picked out grey breeches and a forest green shirt, along with a dark green cloak made from something much softer than the one Eos had lumbered her with.

  “How do you have so much money?” Castelle asked as left with their purchases.

  “Brackish was not the only thing I took from the temple,” Eos said.

  “Good,” Castelle said, grinning.

  They took rooms at a nearby inn with a tavern built into the ground floor. Despite trying to prove otherwise, Eos conceded they wouldn’t get far without a decent night’s sleep. Reed’s cottage had been a welcome refuge of rest, spurred on by an injury Castelle wanted to faint at the thought of. Beyond that, sleep had come sporadically, washing over her in short, jittery waves.

  Castelle sat on the narrow bed in her small room, clothes piled next to her. Eos’ plan was concise and wonderful: go to their rooms, wash and change, then meet in the tavern for a lunch that would see them through the next week.

  There was no bathtub. The pail and pile of clean towels would have to do. Castelle stared at them intently, meaning to get to them in just a second. She laid down, getting a better view of them. She draped an arm over her new clothing, about to pick it up, but the pillows were so inviting. Blinking grew more of a challenge by the second.

  Give in, she told herself. She’d been fighting so much lately. Her injury, her mangled past, the misaligned present, a spirit’s song creeping through her veins. For once, she could give in and close her eyes. It would be alright. Eos would understand. It’d only be for a minute.

  A rapping at the door said more than a minute had passed. Castelle had rolled onto her side, arms wrapped around her pillow. She mumbled something incoherent for the benefit of any potential assassins.

  Rubbing the side of her head, she sat up.

  Assassins didn’t knock.

  “Did you fall asleep?” Eos asked through the door.

  “For a moment. I couldn’t not close my eyes. Sorry,” Castelle said.

  “It’s five o’clock,” Eos said.

  So much for meeting for lunch.

  Blinking her eyes rapidly, Castelle said, “And you only just came knocking?”

  “I may have also fallen asleep,” Eos said. “I apologise.”

  “Well, neither of us were murdered in our sleep. No harm has come of it. Wait there a moment, Eos. I need that meal more than ever.”

  Castelle hurried to clean and change, and found Eos in the corridor, arms over her chest. She leant against the wall, eyes heavy. Whatever sleep she’d succumbed to wasn’t enough.

  She’d put on clean breeches, a new white shirt, and a black vest over it. Clean clothes were a luxury Castelle would never again let go unappreciated; how different Eos was to the woman draped in a dark cloak, face hidden by a deer-skull mask.

  “Is something wrong?” Eos asked.

  “No, no. Still a little hazy,” Castelle said, heading for the stairs. “An
d utterly starving. Have you eaten here before?”

  Not only had Eos eaten there before, but one of the barkeepers knew her. They were Yrician theirself, and with a nod from Eos, headed into the kitchen and placed the order they anticipated. Eos led Castelle to a small booth in the back of the tavern. It was draped in shadow, but not so dark they’d have trouble finding the food on their plates.

  “You seem to know a lot of people,” Castelle said.

  “I am memorable,” Eos replied.

  Castelle frowned, almost nudging Eos’ side.

  “I am known, in some circles. After everything in Nor. But I do not know a lot of people. I know some people. A reasonable number.”

  It was easy to know people, to interact with strangers and turn them to acquaintances, when granted the freedom to come and go as you pleased, to be on the same level as others. It was harder to gather friends inside a temple, the last of the royal line, a Princess to a swathe of servants.

  Eos wasn’t the unusual one there.

  Castelle was.

  The barkeeper brought them two plates heaped with roasted vegetables, crispy potatoes, and mushrooms bigger than Castelle’s fist. Eos thanked the barkeeper in Y’vish, paid with yet more money pillaged from Castelle’s fathers, and the two ate in hearty silence.

  “Where will we head next?” Castelle asked, plate cleared.

  “Brackish wishes to move southwest,” Eos said. “There is no need to delay. We will leave first thing in the morning.”

  “Towards the capital, then,” Castelle said, fork scraping across the empty parts of her plate.

  “Indeed,” Eos said. Castelle thought that was to be all, but after spearing a chunk of carrot and bringing it to her lips without eating it, Eos said, “Will you be alright?”

  The port city was a holiday destination. Castelle’s heart had already broken over it when her family’s boat was set ablaze. For all it had changed, it had never been her home. She had been a visitor to its streets, or as much of a visitor as a Greyser would ever let themselves be.

  Torshval was different. She had looked out upon the capital from her chambers in a high tower, knowing the shape of its streets by heart. If the castle were still there, it would’ve been stripped down, fences melted for their metal, flags burnt, paintings stripped from the walls, carpets pulled up. It would no longer be the heart of Caelfal.

  The city’s veins would’ve changed. The flow of the streets would chart a new course, the temples would be bright and brilliant, and fear would be cast into the sea. It was all for the better, there was nothing dark or dank in it, yet the certainty of an assassin or twelve on her heels did nothing to make her want to charge ahead.

  “I…” Castelle bit the inside of her mouth. “You will be with me, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Eos said.

  Castelle held her gaze, but the sincerity in Eos’ dark eyes sent them both spiralling back to their dinner.

  That night, once dinner was done and they’d restocked on supplies, Castelle didn’t fall asleep so easily. Eos was in her own room, next to hers, and Castelle’s wounds began to torment her. She rubbed at her leg, at the graze on her arm and the lip that was still a little swollen, then watched the lights of the city.

  They burnt bright, now the days were shorter.

  Come morning, Castelle awoke without a single thought in her head. A lifetime had passed since she’d slept so deeply, for so long, and any nightmares that plagued her wouldn’t drift back for hours yet. Stretching, she hurried to pull her new clothes back on. It was the coldest morning of the year by a mile, and the thought of facing the bitter air was more foreboding than following Brackish to her family’s seat of power.

  Eos greeted her with fresh bread. They ate as they walked, Eos’ eyes ever scanning the thin morning crowd, and caught a ride on the back of a cart with a farmer and her twenty-something brand new chickens. Their clucking and squawking summoned the sun, and Castelle watched the land light up as it struggled to rise.

  She couldn’t say how much of Caelfal had changed. On her journeys across it, Castelle had been surrounded by her siblings in their carriage, and more interested in laughing and squabbling and singing than watching the landscape roll by. Edward had always sat in her lap, not quite tall enough to look from the windows and admire the soldiers’ horses himself.

  The farmer took them five miles Castelle found it difficult to express her gratitude for. Her leg screamed once her feet were on solid ground, but she grit her teeth and fought the stab of pain. The more she used her leg, the better it would become.

  “Wait here,” Eos said, once they reached Caelfal’s forest.

  It was large enough to rival Laister’s, though not overrun with dogs. The bears would’ve begun their hibernation for the year, and the foxes and hares would scurry into the undergrowth with the first snap of a twig.

  Darkness lingered between the trees. It was a beautiful sort, cutting the forest off from the rest of the archipelago. Time meant little, there. The forest was its own world, trapped in the perpetual dim of a warm embrace.

  Eos took a fallen branch from its perimeter and began hacking the offshoots off with Brackish. The sword glowed, more amused than angry.

  Eos held the now mostly-straight branch up against Castelle, measuring it for height, and passed it to her. Castelle wrapped her fingers around the rough wood, body aching with gratitude for the support.

  “That should make things easier,” Eos said uncertainly, when Castelle said nothing.

  “Oh,” Castelle said. “Oh, yes. Certainly. Thank you, Eos. I know it’s been months, that it must be easy to forget about my leg, but I do appreciate it.”

  “It is not easy to forget. I pried the bear trap open.”

  “Happily, I was in shock for that,” Castelle said, taking her first step into the forest.

  Best to let Eos guide her than rely on any of the well-travelled roads, the corridors that had been cut clean through the trees that’d spent hundreds of years growing together. A bounty hunter from Llyne or Yarrin wouldn’t be as versed in the forest’s paths.

  “Did I ever thank you for that? Properly, that is,” Castelle said, once Eos fell into step next to her.

  “There is no need to thank me. Thanks belong with Reed.”

  “It does indeed, but as you said, you pried a bear trap open. You got me out of there and carried me halfway across the island. You could’ve decided it was too much at any point. You weren’t being paid. You had every reason to despise me. Yet you told me about Layla, you comforted me, though I was nothing but a Greyser. There is a kindness in that which can’t be understated.”

  Eos said nothing, but slowed. She gripped a tree, shoulders arched.

  “Eos?” Castelle asked, stopping alongside her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  Eos shook her head. She lifted a hand, nails digging into the bark of the tree.

  “I…” Eos tried, jaw hanging open.

  She pointed to the back of her neck.

  A small dart had embedded itself into the muscle.

  Castelle’s staff fell to the ground. She grabbed Eos’ elbow as she went down, but it was too late. The force was too much. Eos’ knees slammed against tree roots as she collapsed, eyes open, showing only the whites.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Castelle had been so enthralled by the chickens she hadn’t looked back. The road could’ve been teeming with assassins, spreading out on horseback, forming a dark line across the horizon. She hadn’t looked back because there was no need to. Not with Eos there, ever watchful.

  Eos wouldn’t have missed something so obvious. She wouldn’t have travelled out in the open had there been the slightest hint of danger behind them, ahead of them.

  She wouldn’t have, but she had.

  She was sprawled out in the dirt, dart protruding from the back of her neck. Castelle’s hands hovered over it, hesitating between pulling it out and leaving it where it was for too long. T
he man on horseback would be upon them within seconds. Shaking Eos’ shoulders wasn’t going to wake her.

  Brackish glowed bright, flashing out a warning. Run, run! the light screamed, and then: wait. The spirit could help Eos. The spirit could burn the poison from Eos’ veins in the same way she’d given Castelle the strength to sprint across an island. The spirit could help. All Castelle had to do was pull Brackish from the sheath, place her in Eos’ hand, and, and—

  A twig snapped, intentionally so.

  Castelle’s eyes darted up, hands hovering over the blade.

  It wasn’t the faceless man on horseback standing over her.

  A woman dressed in an extravagant, unnecessary red and gold coat knocked Castelle’s hands back with her boot and placed it squarely upon Eos’ back. The blowgun that’d hit Eos hung from her hand and a dagger the size of Brackish was strapped to her thigh. Castelle pushed herself back through the dirt, but didn’t get far without hitting a tree.

  “Oh, Eos,” the woman said. She knelt at her side and brushed her hair back to get a better look at the dart embedded in her neck. “You deserve so much better than this.”

  The woman’s voice hit Castelle like a second dart. She blinked and she was back on Llyne, in Reed’s cottage, pressed against the wall in the dark.

  “I, you—”

  Castelle stuttered her accusation.

  “Yes indeed. Me!” the woman said. Plucking the dart from Eos’ neck and discarding it in the dirt, she held out a hand in greeting. “Svir. What a pleasure it is to finally meet you, Princess.”

  Castelle stared at the hand with confusion adrenaline couldn’t clarify. She’d spent so long imagining an abduction, an assassination, but had only scratched the surface. She hadn’t delved deeper than fear and screaming.

  “I—” Castelle’s eyes darted between Svir and Eos. “There was a man following us. Others, too, but a man—a man on horseback. He, he’d been on Fél, at the very least, he…”

  “Fél? Gods, I had the good sense to come straight from Llyne,” Svir said, laughing. Her hand lingered between them. “You know, it’s quite simple to put two and two together. A lost Princess, the capital of Fenroe; no need to traipse across those dreary little islands. Still, I hate to disappoint. I am not the gentleman poorly pursuing you.”