The Tangled Tree

by S. K Munt

  ‘Our love is, but my servitude to you is not.’ I sat down on the edge of the spa and twisted, presenting Constance with my left shoulder. The weight of all of the reasons why I could not run weighted down on me, caused me to sink to the ultimate submission. ‘Do it,’ I said softly. ‘I will not fight you or blame you, your highness- seeing you crowned because of me is the only wish I have a chance of seeing granted now anyway. All I will ask after is that you let me sleep alone tonight.’

  ‘So you can hang yourself? Never! Kohén, look a her!’ the duchess cried. ‘Look at what your love has reduced her to! A subservient, terrified, resigned shadow of the girl she once was! Let her run and get that pardon to Lindy and Coaxley yourself! Together we will find a way to save them for her!’

  ‘Oh so now we’re a team?’ Kohén snorted and wiped at his eyes. ‘Great. All I have to do to earn your respect is give up everything, and all Kohl had to do to get it was break every law that he had the chance to! Ha!’ He lifted his hand and a stream of blue fire shot across the room and hot the end of the brand, making it glow orange immediately. Constance dropped it in shock, but not an electrical shock, thank goodness, and before she could back away more than a few steps, Kohén lifted it up off the ground by the stem and thrust it back to her. ‘We can only have three minutes left! Do it mother! Do it now!’

  ‘No! Don’t do it mother!’ Kohl panted. ‘I will go and find a way to barricade the door and buy us more time to talk some sense into him!’

  ‘You will do no such thing!’ Kohén cried, whirling after him, but Kohl had already vanished into the mist. ‘All you are doing is delaying her access to a healer!’

  ‘To Karol! He is delaying Karol’s access to her!’

  ‘This glyph will do the same!’ Kohén wrapped his arms around me and then turned my face into his shoulder. ‘Do it now, mother, because if my older brother walks in and finds her unbranded, every drop of blood that is spilled after will be on your head instead of a crown.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m sorry Larkin… you can’t run from this place and expect to disappear. I never told you this before but-’

  ‘There’s a tracking device inside me,’ I said sadly, and I heard both Kohl and Constance choke on shocked cries as his eyes brightened, not with happiness, but surprise and sadness. ‘I know. Cherry told me. Why do you think I’ve been so compliant?’ I rolled back my shoulder and stared at the duchess. ‘Go on,’ I said gently. ‘I already know how this ends, Constance. All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable.’

  The duchess sobbed and looked at me, and I saw the branding iron shaking in her hand, still bright orange- bright enough to hurt my eyes. Weeping but nodding as I saw her ask her permission to do the unforgivable in her eyes, I turned away from Kohén and opened my shoulder to her once more.

  ‘You’d better get it on the right arm,’ I said softly, sniffling. ‘I mean the left. I wouldn’t want to have to go through this twice.’

  ‘Lark…’ Kohén turned so that he had one foot in the water, straddling the edge, and then pulled my hair slowly over the other shoulder and out of her way. ‘I love you,’ he kissed the back of my head. ‘I will love you forever and I will find a way to make you happy despite this.’

  I smiled sadly. I believed him- and actually felt for how much he was going to hurt, because the girl he loved was going to be dead by midnight before she could be forced to bow even more before her prince.

  ‘Go on mother,’ I heard Kohén sob as he kissed the back of my hair again- my halo- and heard my wings rustle against his feathers. ‘You know that you must.’

  Constance sighed, and tear tracks were streaming down her face. ‘I know,’ she whispered, ‘because if people weren’t branded as whores, who would be able to tell the difference between them, and royalty, right? So I will do it…’ I closed my eyes and cringed when I felt the heat of the brand draw closer to my skin. Kohén was holding his breath, but I had not taken one in awhile and didn’t care to. ‘I will brand the whore and make myself a ruler, at long last- one that has earned that title, right?’

  ‘Just get on with it...’ Kohén said wearily. Kohl was shaking his head and begging me with his eyes to run still, but I closed my eyes, knowing that I could not bear the burden of his pain now. I had too much of my own.

  I love God. Please, take me into Heaven once I have taken this penance? And watch over these Barachiels, please? I refused Satan for you! Please, do one thing right by me, just one!

  And then Constance thrust forward the brand, and Kohén was the one screaming. ‘You’re the third-born, Kohén Barachiel!’ the duchess screamed, and I gasped as Kohén leapt to his feet, knocking me over onto my hands and chest on the side of the pool. ‘Not Kohl, YOU! No one in this room believed that changed the worth of a person but you do, so BURN for your lowly status!’

  Feeling like this had to be a nightmare, I craned my neck around and screamed when I saw that Kohén was yowling in pain and grasping at his chest, but Constance was still grilling him- still driving him back onto the foggy floor. He landed on his rump and then his back and yet still she pushed it into him, and my nervous system was shattered by the sounds of his screams.

  ‘Oh, Constance no!’ I cried, pushing up and awkwardly rising in my heels, but she was stabbing at him like a madwoman, trying to burn him elsewhere and everywhere while he bellowed and smacked at the side of the stick, attempting to knock it free before it could get him again. ‘I know you’re hurt and angry but this isn’t the solution!’

  ‘It is the only solution! Look at him writhe- look at him get what’s coming to him for once!’ Constance screamed as Kohén feebly sent a jolt of blue light her way, striking the end of the stick again and then travelling up the length of the rubber coated handle. That rubber would have prevented the electricity from earthing out but she dropped it anyway, then realised her error and scrambled after it again. Kohén lunged for it but the closest end to him was glowing brightly once more and he shrank back when she lifted the handle off the floor and advanced a second time.

  ‘Constance stop!’ I threw myself at her, hugging her and causing her to drop the stick in fright. It landed dangerously close to her feet and the long skirt of her gown but I drew her back, keeping her arms pinned. ‘Please stop! Please! You’ve done what you set out to do! You protected me! Please…’ tears were running down my face and when I pressed my cheek to hers, I felt her tears and heard her haggard breathing. ‘I can lose any one of them to the darkness mother, but not you,’ I whispered, kissing her cheek. ‘Please, stay with God and with me!’

  Constance doubled over, sobbing. ‘It’s not enough… it’s not! He should die!’

  ‘Mother!’ Despite the fact that she’d just tried to impale him with a heated element, poor Kohén still had the naivety to look shocked by her declaration, and I saw my sweet five year old friend in his tear-filled eyes and shattered countenance again. ‘What’s come over you?’

  ‘I’m suffering honesty, like the rest of you! Too little too late I know, but at least the secret I have been keeping for so long has the power to make things right once revealed!’ She pointed her finger at him. ‘You’re the third-born, Kohén, and I’m going to tell EVERYBODY! I’m going to scream it from Miguel Barachiel’s cottage by the ballroom, and see your brother crowned as the next in line while YOU rot in the corps!’ she laughed harshly. ‘Unless you can find a brothel that will take a male escort that wouldn’t know how to seduce a woman without cornering her first!’

  ‘You’re lying!’ Kohén winced and tried to touch his chest and I felt my fever returning at the look of horror on his face when he glanced down to see what damage had been done. The Companion brands- a simple glyph untranslatable to any other culture or language within a circle- was only supposed to be kissed against the skin and for the briefest of seconds, and the longevity of the scar was dependant on the metallic powder being used to harden and set it after. But Constance hadn’t done the job as carefully or as gently as required, and when I looked d
own at the end of the branding iron, I saw that clumps of skin and feathers had become stuck to it- from where she’d partially melted his necklace into his wound. It wasn’t a pretty symbol anymore- it was a gaping, bloody misshapen welt in her son’s perfect chest, and even if she hadn’t penetrated his heart physically, her words had certainly inflicted the kind of wounds that Kohén would never be able to recover from. ‘You have to be lying! You-’

  ‘I’m not! You’re not the rightful heir to the Pacifican throne and though I have been motivated to keep that fact to myself since the day you were born, I cannot let you brand her: you’re not going to brand any companion in gold- ever- because YOU NO LONGER HAVE HAREM ACCESS! I will see you stripped of EVERY entitlement you’ve ever been given! Including Kohl’s right to be released tonight too! You have not earned that with the other fourteen, and you will stay in Pacifica and out of my sight until you are twenty-one or I am DEAD!’

  I moaned when I saw Kohén’s face crumple. He’d already been in absolute agony and struggling to keep his balance, but when she denounced him, he fell to his hands and knees once more and shook his head. ‘It can’t be true…’ he croaked, and I released the duchess and ran to him, knowing that the only person in the world that had a hope of comforting him now, was me. ‘It just can’t be…’

  ‘But it is!’

  ‘Constance, enough!’ I guided Kohén up until he fell back against the side of the pool and then cupped some water in my hand, letting it trickles and sizzle a path down his chest. He hissed and ground his teeth together, but his hand cupped my knee and squeezed it gratefully, and I knew no human had ever needed anyone as much as he needed me right then. ‘You have shocked him and hurt him and scarred him- do not torture him too! He didn’t know, remember? You cannot punish him for the secret that you and Elijah have been keeping!’

  Kohén’s eyes widened and he looked at me, stricken. ‘Lark… you knew?’

  I nodded and sniffled, distraught now that I’d seen the damage to his chest up close. I plucked a blackened, shrivelled feather away from his peeling skin and cupped another handful of warm water, irrigating it as best as I could until Karol could arrive and give him the treatment he needed. ‘She told me in Pacifica, after I found you with...’ I screwed up my face, not ready to admit than instead of using the information to force Constance to make things right, I’d used it hoping to get myself out of there- with Kohl. I’d tell Kohl that in private to help him understand, if I ever got the chance to, but could not bear to blurt it out now and strike Kohén again. ‘She did not mean to tell me, but she did. And I…I’m sorry Kohén. I didn’t think you should ever find out, not even this way.’

  ‘How?’ Kohén turned to his mother. ‘How is this possible?’

  The duchess had the brand in her hand again and was staring at Kohén’s wound, eyes still dilated, face a serene mask that I knew was the result of shock or possibly even peace. Hadn’t she waited her whole life to get this off her chest?

  ‘The first child arrived was damaged,’ she said simply, staring down at the poker. ‘The second… perfect. I did not care, I loved both of my beautiful baby boys…’ her voice caught. ‘But your father could not stand to see the result of his abuse of me reflected in the next in line, so he told others that the perfect child had come out first.’

  ‘No!’ Kohén’s mask was sliding down his face, making his tears look black but not diminishing his beauty in any way. ‘You couldn’t have done that! Not you, and not father! That’s sinful! More sinful than anything any of us have ever done!’

  ‘And I have paid for it with a stain upon my once-perfect soul,’ she paused, smiled oddly, still staring at the glowing disc at the end of the stick. ‘Perfect… isn’t that a strange word? I don’t know if I’ve ever come across anything perfect that was perfect, inside and out. Everything is flawed…’

  ‘As God was,’ I said gently. ‘Constance I know you’re upset, but Kohén needs a healer-’

  ‘Kohén needs something?’ Kohl strode through the fog looking downright dangerous. ‘You just announced that my entire life has been a lie, and that I have been denied every birthright I deserved, and that I have spent my life breaking rocks and sifting through ruins while being treated like a third-class citizen, but what we’re going to talk about next is what Kohén needs?’ I flinched and Kohl glared at me. ‘I won’t say that I can’t believe that she and father would allow this to happen to me! To keep this secret from me for so long and let me suffer for THEIR shortcomings… but you, Larkin?’ Kohl looked winded. ‘How could you have not told me that I was living someone else’s life? That I deserved more?’

  Who doesn’t deserve more though? Why should I have told him anything, when he already had so much more than I?

  His imaged blurred as tears filled my eyes. ‘Because you were already more, Kohl…’ I whispered, and heard Kohén moan on the ground beside me. ‘I’m sorry, I knew you had a right to know, but I thought you were so much more perfect than any of us because you didn’t. Because you worked. Because you treated others as equals- and fought for what was right even while suffering every injustice as I had.’ I swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t want to see you trade in your halo for a crown- not when I knew that you were the kind of man that would find a way to have both- who would feed the Banished before he would fatten the nobility further.’

  Kohl’s eyes lightened immediately. ‘You did love me, then?’

  I nodded, shaking tears free. ‘As you were. I gave you up because I knew I would ruin you… as Kohén and I have ruined one another.’

  ‘He has ruined you,’ Kohl’s voice was strained. ‘A tracking device? Really? And yet you tend to him anyway?’

  ‘The tracking device has been around for generations- could no sooner prevent her from getting one than I could stop her from being sucked into this system,’ Kohén said feebly, and I silently cursed him for having eyes so blue, features so appealing, and a body that twisted itself into delicious patterns as it writhed beneath me. ‘Why do you think I went to such lengths to get her to fall into line? I could not bear to see her hunted like an animal!’

  ‘But that’s exactly what you did,’ Kohl said, then looked at me, distraught. ‘He’s not your true love, Lark, he’s your keeper!’

  ‘What should I do, Kohl?’ I asked, weeping gently. ‘Kill him? Kick him while he’s down? Laugh at his pain?’ I sniffled and shook my head. ‘This palace does not need more spite and anger and vengeance- it needs more light.’ I touched Kohén’s face, then looked up at Kohl. ‘If I can forgive him for what he has allowed to happen to me, then you can find a way to forgive him for what happened to you- to forgive the boy that once leapt into the ocean and tried to swim to Pacifica on your behalf, surrendering the crown that you have convinced yourself that he stole from you in your current anger.’

  ‘I know he didn’t steal it,’ Kohl said, looking down at Kohén, whose eyes were practically rolling back into his head from the pain. ‘But I know he wouldn’t willingly give it up now if he had the choice, the way I gave you up once.’

  ‘Brother, if I can’t have Larkin… then I don’t care.’ Kohén winced and bucked as I plucked a thicker feather from his wound. ‘Take my crown! Take it and do better than I would have, and better than that corrupted Karol and king will!’ Kohl’s eyes misted with tears, and Kohén touched his hand to my face. ‘I don’t care if I get shipped to Pacifica- I don’t care if I end up in Asiana, so long as you tell me that the paths that we both take will intersect again once we are both free and redeemed?’

  I almost laughed. ‘Downgrade from prince to Blue-Collar bum? No thanks. I think I’ll pursue T’are next. He’s very muscly, he already has a trade and he doesn’t talk shit like you lot.’ Kohén tittered, and we exchanged a smile. I didn’t know what would become of us, but I did know I’d make him push Lady Liberty by hand across the country before I trusted him with my affections again!

  ‘Larkin’s path is none of your business, and I commend her for not
kicking you in the balls for you even suggesting that she look your way again!’ Constance cried. ‘She’s leaving this continent as soon as she receives a pardon from a soon to be VERY apologetic king and I hope she never looks back! And I am putting an end to this ball nonsense right now!’ she threw the brand behind her. ‘Karol does not deserve a ball and he does not deserve Ora! What he needs- what you all need- is some good old-fashioned parenting! To learn that consequences and spontaneity go hand in hand! Let the kingdom watch us drag you all out there by the scruff of your necks and shake you, and we’ll win their respect back faster than with marshmallow wine!’

  ‘Parenting? From who- you?’ Kohl turned on her, and I saw her shrivel back when he laughed harshly. ‘You’re funny! I always knew you were beautiful, weak, spiteful, overwrought and over-dramatic, but I did not know that you had such a sinful sense of humour!’

  ‘I think it’s funny that you take an exception to her maternal instincts despite the fact that you benefitted from them twice as much as I did…’ Kohén groused, but no one responded to him.

  ‘Kohl!’ Constance’s face creased, making her look her age for the briefest of moments. ‘I know you’re angry that I kept this secret from you but doesn’t it count that I’m making things right now? Don’t you understand why I’ve always fought for you so?’

  ‘Because you felt guilty!’ Kohl snapped. ‘You didn’t do the things you did to make me feel better- you did it so you’d feel better! If you’d cared about me the way a mother should, you would have protected me from my father’s vanity! But you hid behind him and let me take the fall! So don’t scoop me up from rock bottom now and call it parenting!’

  ‘This isn’t rock-bottom!’ she protested. ‘Your life has only just begun!’

  ‘Seventeen years after my twin’s did!’ Kohl reached down and picked up the brand, wincing when he too saw the stuff stuck to the glowing tip, then dragged over the satchel with his foot, making to pack the awful stuff away. ‘I get the crown but I’ve already missed out on the education, the dancing lessons, the dinners with important people, the harem, the balls, the birthday cakes! Who’s going to take me seriously, stepping into Kohén’s shoes that have been stretched by advantages while I was barefoot and knee-deep in pumice stone? Kohén’s first job as a prince was to cut the ribbon on the library, but what will mine be?’