“Excuse me?”
“Held. He can’t seem to tell us his name, but he drew us the ship when we asked.”
“So you named him Held?” Alarik asked.
“We did.”
“And who is we?”
Janez raised his eyebrows, and Alarik sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“And why,” he asked, “could you not have employed the skills of a physician, and not the royal surgeon? Doktor is too skilled for use on spies and sailors.”
“But not on the man who saved my life.”
Alarik paused again, and Janez pressed the advantage.
“I recognised him at once. And what spy would save an enemy life in the midst of battle?”
“A spy who wanted to secure passage into the palace.”
“There are easier ways to do, less risky ways.”
“And spies are averse to risk, in your experience?”
Janez tightened his jaw. “A spy would have been better to allow me to drown.”
The words were stark. He saw the colour recoil a little from the king’s face, some shadow of distress pass behind familiar blue eyes, and then it was gone.
“Unless you are not the target. By securing a place at your side, he secures entrance into our family. He secures access to me. To the children.”
“Then I’ll remain with him at all times.”
“That is not what I—!”
“It’s the perfect solution,” Janez interrupted. “I can ensure his—lack of spying. And you can rest easy, knowing he’s not roaming the palace for secrets.”
Alarik groaned. He leaned forward, placing his head in his hands.
“Janez—”
“Am I dismissed, Your Majesty?”
“No, you are not, and stop with that damned majesty nonsense.”
“Then you speak as—”
“As your brother.”
“My brother has no power to stop me leaving this room,” Janez said. “Only my king has that. And neither have the power to question my loyalty.”
“I do not. I question your judgement, perhaps, but never your loyalty. But others—”
“If others have concerns regarding my devotion to duty, perhaps they ought to speak to you.”
“You are smarter than to pretend this is not dangerous, Janez. I cannot have rumours about my own blood!”
“Then your blood may remove itself.”
“Excuse me?”
“I presume you plan to extend an invitation to Sigurd and his daughters to the Winter Palace, being more splendid and liable to result in an agreement. I can always remove myself to it early. I’m sure Mother would appreciate the extended visit, and I can leave you in peace.”
“And allow rumour to run rampant that you have been murdered by some spy, or run off with some sailor?” Alarik threw a filthy look at Held. “I think not—”
“It seems to me neither you nor I can win,” Janez said, loudly enough that the sentry outside would be able to hear. Alarik flinched, and offered him a powerfully venomous look. “If rumours will abound no matter the course of action, then what does either course matter?”
“Except for the course of action where you return him to the cells, and let the guards deal with him.”
“No.”
The refusal rang in the room, cold and sharp. Held took a step back towards the door, his shoe clacking loudly on the stone. Alarik narrowed his eyes. Janez fought the urge to hold his breath or avert his gaze. ‘No’ was not a phrase he uttered often to his brother—and never when said brother was seated on his throne, with the crown adorning his temples. It was a word reserved for the royal chambers, for laughing demands to let Ingrid plait his hair or paint his face. It was a word reserved for too many cups of wine and the dark privacy of the king’s study, exchanging stories of younger, freer days when they had given their tutors the slip and run rampant through the palace grounds.
It was not a word for here.
“He saved my life, brother,” Janez said, hoping to ease the sudden tension in the room. “He’s quite stupid, nothing more than some sailor pressed from a foreign port. He cannot even say mushroom correctly. He’s no northerner. If anything, he’s southern-born.”
Alarik’s eyes flicked to Held, still stood by the door.
“He is far too fair for that.”
“You and I have both seen fair southerners before.”
Alarik sat back at last, eyes still fixed on Held.
“I do not want him in the palace,” he said.
“Then I shall remove us to the Winter Palace.”
“You misunderstand me. I do not want him in any palace.”
Janez shook his head. “He’s lost and alone, and he speaks nothing of our language. I wouldn’t turn him out to fend for himself.”
“I would.”
“And what thanks is that, for preventing my death?”
Alarik fell silent. Janez simply waited. Those wide, enchanted eyes across the table on the kitchen balcony had been guileless and gentle. They were oddly adoring when they looked to Janez, and he had the strange urge to reach out and touch that thin face when Held turned his almost lamp-like gaze on him. There was something ethereally beautiful about Held, and Janez would be damned if he’d see him handed back to cell torture for having dared speak some other tongue.
“How many hands have we seen and heard in the harbour, brother, who speak nothing but nautical terms in our tongue, and everything else in theirs?” he whispered.
Alarik frowned.
“He can probably curse us both in seven different languages, but does not understand me when I ask for his name. Let me at least find his family or his shipmates, so he can be returned safely to them.”
Alarik’s jaw clenched.
“Fine,” he ground out, clearly incensed with the idea. “But you are to be armed at all times, Janez. He will sleep in a guarded room where he cannot reach anyone, and he is not to go unattended at any time. I will not hesitate to have him executed for a spy should he bring attention to himself.”
“He will not. I swear it,” Janez promised, but he promised, nonetheless. If necessary, he would take Held to the Winter Palace with him. Alarik would not come, not in the midst of war, and Mother would be too preoccupied with her painting to pay any mind.
“And one more vicious whisper, Janez, one more—”
“Have you sent word to Sigurd?”
Alarik sighed.
“Stop with this subject dancing—”
“Have you sent word?”
“Yes. I have.”
“Then I have things I must attend to. If you please.”
Janez snapped his boots together sharply and, without giving Alarik time to argue, turned on his heel. He took Held’s shoulder to steer him—still walking like a newborn foal, but somewhat steadier after a full meal than he’d been before—and only when they were clear of the throne room and halfway up the stairs to the east wing did he let go.
And rubbed his chin, thinking.
If Alarik was this suspicious, this soon, then Janez was going to have to take steps to protect Held, or allow Held to protect himself. If he could find his family or his service, then it would be enough. If he could find some mention of his name in a logbook—but how, when the Held was at the bottom of the sea, logbook and all? If the Ente had picked him up from the water, it would have been mere hours before her engagement with the frigate, and the Ente was not known for a captain or crew studious with their papers.
Or perhaps there was another way, Janez reflected, as Held stopped dead and reached out to stroke the curtains of one of the great windows, a look of rapture on his face. What man, of any land, could look like that at the mere touch of a curtain?
Janez snapped his fingers and beamed. Of course. Spies were clever, cunning crows. And yes, there was an intellect behind those pale eyes. There was a wit, in the swift capture of little words, and the quiet understanding of when to follow and when to remain out of si
ght and shy.
But Alarik need not know that.
“YOU WISH FOR me to declare a plainly intelligent man to be simple-minded?” Hauser asked.
From another doctor, it might have been an incredulous question. But Hauser said it almost absently, intent instead on administering exactly four drops of a foul-looking green liquid to a severed foot.
A foot that had been severed for some time, judging by the smell.
“Yes.”
“He isn’t.”
“You said he was before.”
“I was being facetious. He’s far too aware of language, and how to dress himself. I’ve worked in asylums, Janez, this man was not pressed from one.”
“Then I wish you to say it again.”
“It would be a lie.”
“Then I wish,” Janez said very deliberately, “for you to lie.”
Hauser’s gaze finally lifted from the foot.
“Why?”
“Because Alarik suspects him.”
“As do I. The man ought to be dead. I may leech him, and see if his blood has some property to withstand the cold…”
Janez grimaced.
“Alarik suspects him to be a spy,” he clarified, and Hauser snorted, returning to his foot.
“Rather an idiotic spy, if he is.”
“I did raise the point, but he wouldn’t listen. But if you were to declare him a simple-minded, harmless fool…”
“Then you think the king would not be so suspicious?”
“Yes.”
“And why are you not suspicious?”
“He saved my life, Doktor.”
“You are very certain.”
“Yes.”
“Half-drowned, half-frozen, and quite addled. You do recall, do you not, that you asked the king to hold your hand whilst I stitched that gouge in your leg?”
A dull heat crept up his neck. “That was your mixture.”
“It was not. It had not taken effect.”
“I have no fondness for your needles.”
The doctor said something rude to that idea, and Janez sighed.
“I am certain, Doktor. I might have been wounded and weakened, but I wasn’t out of my mind. And it wasn’t a fleeting glimpse, either. I tried to hang on to him, so they would drag him from the water alongside me, but he slipped away.”
Hauser hummed, finally looked up from his fetid foot, and glanced towards the open door. In the next room, Held was clearly visible, seated on the bed and staring back at them—at Janez—avidly.
“He is harmless, Doktor.”
“He watches you.”
“Well, yes…”
Hauser hummed again and looked back down to his foot.
“Anyone who stares in that manner at you is obviously simple.”
Janez frowned. “Wait—”
“I will go to the king shortly. And if you do not leave me to finish my work, I will declare him quite the genius, and tell Alarik he has been rummaging through my papers. Out.”
“You are an old cad, Doktor.”
“Proudly so. Now out.”
“What are you trying to prove?” Janez asked as he made for the door.
“Prove?” Doktor Hauser said and then smiled beatifically over the foot. A maggot wriggled free from a bloated, fleshy toe, and was sharply executed by the downward swing of the doctor’s scalpel. “Oh, I am merely interested. It is not at all about proof.”
Janez swallowed back the urge to vomit, and left.
Chapter Fifteen
HELD COULD NOT stop touching himself.
Every little movement of this body felt strange to his unused mind. The lack of weight against his chest. The strange, uninhibited roll of his shoulders. The legs—oh, the legs in their entirety—but also the simultaneous strength and weakness in them. They were skittish and ungainly, and he could not imagine they could swim well, yet how could such thin and fragile-looking things carry his weight above the water? Everything was so heavy here—the loss of his hair had felt…
He felt light without it. So—beautiful. He’d never understood, below the sky, why he’d been beautiful when he’d felt ugly. But he saw it now. Framed by the shortened locks, sharpened by the Witch and her craft, his face was pre—
Handsome.
And the word sounded deliciously sweet. He was handsome. Oh, but he’d never been handsome before. Held wanted to keep this face, this body—although perhaps not the legs and lack of gills, they would be quite problematic—after his three days were up.
And when Janez would touch his hand and guide him, speaking slowly in words that were made no clearer for it, Held wanted to never go back.
They stayed in the little room with the cold-eyed man for much of the morning, until Janez finally made a face—wrinkled nose, downturned mouth, and roll of blue eyes so strong Held wondered he didn’t do himself an injury—and steered Held into the cool passageway outside. Bright light, white and warm, was streaming through the great windows, and Held touched the curtains with wondering fingers. So like home—but the texture was different. Like his clothes, but heavier and rougher to the touch.
Janez seemed amused by Held’s fascination, lingering with a smile rather than towing him onwards. Their progress was thus slow: Held wanted to see and touch everything, feel the waterless rasp of the world above the sky between his now-separated fingers. Between the fingers of the very same hand, even. He slid a rope on a wall between the first and second fingers, and it caught and grated against skin that had never been there before.
These creatures, these skymen, they mustn’t be able to swim. What could possibly swim with limbs like these? So how brave they were, how mad, to swarm the clouds when the clouds might submerge and suffocate them beneath the waves.
The passageway came to a grand flight of stairs curving down into a white chamber of stone that was decorated with statues and plants in great white pots. Dark doors led off in every direction, and as they reached the bottom, one opened and a skymaid emerged. Held stared. Their fashions were very different above the sky: the maid had her hair piled in tight coils upon her head, in the male habit, exposing her long neck and the high collar of her coat. In fact, the fashions were reversed—Held touched his fingers self-consciously to the short tail he’d been left by the cutting of his hair. Janez had one too. And the guard who followed the maid, clad in bright clothes and armed with a sharp, sinister sword.
A shriek.
A child, a tiny skyling who came but hip-high to the guard and was a smudge of pink skin and bright blue dress under a mop of frizzy fair hair, followed the man and maid. Upon seeing Janez, she squealed and launched herself across the stone floor towards him.
“Onki!” she cried, and Janez swept her up in his arms with a deep laugh.
“Guten Morgen, Biene,” he answered, and she choked him tight in a hug.
Held’s stomach clenched with a painful twist. A daughter. Janez had a daughter. They looked much alike, never mind the affectionate greeting. The same crooked nose adorned both faces, and she smiled as he did, spreading from one side to the other and far too large for her face, as though all her humour and good grace could not possibly fit within her tiny body. And if there was a skyling with his blood in her veins, then there was a maid with his love in her heart, too. He loved another. Oh, but of course he did. Held knew nothing of how long a skyman lived, but Janez was full grown, that was for sure, and strikingly handsome. And important! Did Held not know, from his own world, that the handsome and important were married first? Of course, Janez had found love. Of course he had created this little life.
But then, was the maid the mother? Held doubted it. Her gaze was most distant; she made no approach to Janez, nor even spoke to him. When he set the skyling down again, the maid simply said, “Ingrid,” and held out her hand. The skyling pressed her mouth to her father’s cheek and bounced back with enthusiasm.
Nothing passed between the parents.
So—was she? Could she be? But why, then, woul
d Janez breakfast with Held and not with his wife and daughter? Did skymen have no role in their offspring’s upbringing, like fish or eel? Or were they like whales, or—?
The wondering was cut off when Janez turned back to him and led him through a set of double doors opposite the stairs—and onto more stairs.
Far grander stairs.
The stairs swept into an unmistakeable entrance hall. They met another flight in the middle, only for both to turn and form a single spiral, twisting downwards into an enormous cavern of gold and red. Huge paintings of skymen in uniforms and skymaids in enormous dresses adorned the walls. And below, just beyond where the stairs finally met the gleaming floor, an immense pair of doors were held wide open. They were nearly floor to ceiling, obscenely large, and could have fit the longest mermaid in the world if she walked like skymen did.
And beyond, Held could see nothing but light.
Nothing but a blinding, brilliant light. He stopped on the stairs, staring, and Janez laughed at him and tugged his wrist to urge him to move. But Held was reluctant. What lay beyond the light? Why had the skymen not drawn that beauty inwards, and controlled it as they did the clouds?
“Kommt,” Janez said and pulled. Held followed, transfixed by the light. It ricocheted off the walls and the floors. It shattered on the guards’ helmets and shimmered along their swords.
He stepped through the doors, and—
Oh.
Gardens. Fountains of water sparkling in the light. Paths that swept white and grey amongst the greenery. Bright bursts of colour, like coral and anemones, amongst the deep greens and gentler hues. And the smell! The smell was like nothing Held had ever known. Sweet perfumes crowded his face, a gentle hand upon the senses, and he stood still as stone, simply breathing for the longest moment on the white steps above the gardens.
They were not just plants, growing as they would on the reefs or in the shadows of nests, creeping and cautious. They grew in patterns. Rows. Great green walls lined the paths; a literal wall of pale brown stone was visible beyond a line of enormous plants that stood like dark brown towers. The corals were set by colour and height—one huge arrangement formed white and gold stripes, like a brilliant fish.
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