by Anna Holmes
I don’t know what to do with all of this. Death threats, attempted kidnappings, duels—those I can handle and have handled. Not without anxiety, but nothing like the helpless hurtling feeling I have to hide from him, because gods know that he’s got enough helplessness on his own right now. So I find my way downstairs to get myself a glass of water and pull myself together before he wakes again.
I find his father in the kitchen, holding a kettle just shy of a trivet, staring into the fog out the window. I’ve often thought that looking at Therrick Flynn is like looking into the future at Alain in some decades would be. They’ve the same willowy frame, the same propensity to wander through their thoughts, the same eyes that are both younger and older than they actually are. Therrick is a touch broader, even in his oversized bathrobe, and grayer, but there’s no mistaking them for anything other than father and son. He turns, startled by my approach. The kettle goes flying, but I lunge forward and snag it by the handle before the steaming contents spill. “Your Highness,” he says, slapping a hand to his forehead. “Forgive me. I had hoped I was the only one up at this wretched hour. I hope my rattling around hasn’t, er…contributed.”
I straighten and give him as much of a smile as I can muster. “Caelin. And not at all. I’m an early riser.”
We stand for a moment in awkward silence. We both know what we’re doing up, and the polite lie is a little onerous. At last, he unfolds his arms and sighs. “The truth of it is—I heard him screaming, and I—well. A father can’t just go back to sleep after his child cries out like that. No matter how grown up he’s gotten.”
I nod. My own terrible truth is that I’ve gotten terribly used to that. It’s not every night, but often enough that Alain wakes up in a place and time other than where his body is. It’s stopped rattling me to my soul. It’s not always just when he’s asleep, either— a sound, a smell, a word can send him directly back to his worst battle, to the time he thought he saw his love die in front of him. He’s tightly controlled during most days, but there’s nothing stopping it in dreams. Therrick shakes himself. “I’m sorry; I’m being a poor host. The least I could have done is offer you a cup of tea, and I tried to pour it on the floor.”
I smile and pat his shoulder. “I’ll get it. Please, sit. I actually am an early riser. Which cupboard?”
He hesitates, clearly worried he’s failing some sort of test of propriety. It’s an expression I’m pretty well used to. I gesture with my head to the table with another smile, and at length his shoulders relax. “The third. To the right of the stove.”
I set the kettle on its intended trivet and fetch a pair of delicate teacups and accompanying saucers. They don't seem to fit what I know of Alain’s parents. “These are pretty,” I comment as I place a setting in front of him.
He chuckles a little. “Ellenore’s idea. She thought I ought to have something a little nicer to serve buyers than the same old mugs I’ve had since before Alain was born.”
I pour his cup, then fix mine and sit down next to him. “A good idea.”
“Girl has more business sense in one finger than I’ve got in my whole body,” he says. “I build the boats. She makes sure I can sell ‘em.” He pauses, takes a long sip of tea. As he sets his cup down with an abundance of caution, as though handling a baby bird, he admits, “I’m sorry—I’m not much good for the social graces. I don’t…exactly know how to talk to a queen.”
I turn to him with a smile. “Do you know how nice it is to have a normal conversation? You’ve made me more than welcome.”
“What, uh—what do you consider a normal conversation?”
“Well, you’re not issuing veiled death threats, trying to coax me into anything, or actively trying to anticipate what I want to hear.”
He laughs. “Goodness, no. Even if I wanted to, thinking that far ahead in a conversation is not something I can do.” Therrick pauses, flushing. “I—of course don’t want to threaten you with death. You’re so important to my boy, and even if you weren’t you’re a person, and I don’t kill people—”
I burst out laughing. “Mr. Flynn, that might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a long time. And I mean that.”
“Well, that’s a damn shame,” he declares. “Need to have a talk with my son if that’s the case.”
Not much embarrasses me, but I feel my face heat up, see the extra light at the periphery. “No—excluding Alain, of course.”
“Good,” he says, smiling over the rim of his cup. “I raised him to treat his dear one better’n that.”
“No, no, he’s wonderful. More than. Maybe too wonderful.”
“There such a thing?”
There is when he’s volunteering to do the sorts of things that set off those terrible waking dreams so that the rest of us are safe. “He’s…perhaps a bit self-sacrificing. I do wish he'd think of himself once in a while.”
“Good luck with that one,” he says with a laugh. “Habits o’ nearly twenty years are hard to break.”
I know it. Alain’s body knows it, too, it seems.
I go to fetch Nuthatch from the inn near the port after breakfast. Riley waits awkwardly in the lobby, swinging his arms. The second he catches my eye, he straightens up. “Good. You made it.”
I laugh a little in spite of myself. “Believe it or not, I can make it across a fishing hamlet on my own.”
“It’s not you,” he mutters, casting a glance over his shoulder into the crowded dining hall. “I’m not ruling out Legion people in advance of the envoy.”
I lean over and peek at the breakfasting throng. “That’s a bunch of sailors, Riley.”
“That looks like a bunch of sailors, yeah.”
“You’re getting paranoid in your old age.”
“And the second I stop being paranoid is the second I resign,” he returns. “You pay me to be paranoid on your behalf.”
“Fair enough. How’s Tressa?”
He shifts his weight uneasily. “Her legs are giving her trouble and her brother—well….”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “It was a lot for the rest of us to digest. I can’t imagine she’s feeling any more secure about the whole thing.”
“She got another round of whatever it is that put her out, so I have the Ryes watching Crow and Nuthatch for now.”
“Can I borrow the alchemists? You can keep the mage.”
“Oh, can I please? She's been such a delight so far.”
“You’re less likely to try to kill her than I am,” I confess.
“Also true,” he says soberly. “Back in a minute.”
I try to find myself a patch of sunlight and stand in it. The glowing is a little less obvious without shadow to contrast with. Even still, I can’t help but feel like every passerby’s eyes linger on me, maybe see straight through me to all the secrets I’m trying to keep. By the time Gavroth and Nuthatch get down the stairs, I am ready to bolt. I don’t just yet. I look over Nuthatch. “How many voices do you have this morning?”
“Just the one,” Simon Arrow’s voice answers.
He looks a little more like Arrow this morning, too, his hair a little lighter than I’ve known it to be, but otherwise mostly settled into the angular body, Nuthatch’s more muscular frame dwindled. “Good,” I answer, gesturing to the door with my head. Once outside under the cover of the noises of a port town that's been awake for a good few hours, I inform him, “Your patient this morning is a young girl. She's not scared of much….”
“But that might just do it,” he says with a nervous laugh, rubbing at the back of his neck. “A little girl?”
“Alain’s sister.” His eyes shut and he swings a fist into his leg. Gavroth swears under his breath. I know the feeling. The Legion’s indiscriminate trampling continues. I don’t know why it’s still a surprise that it might hurt vulnerable people, but it still feels like being crushed all the same. “Alain and his father are looking for any hints as to what might have been done to the mother. You two…get examining, I guess.”
And they do, after a bit of complaining and convincing on Elle’s part. Alain paces outside the door, rubbing at his jaw. “She’s seen a lot of doctors for a little kid,” he tells me by way of explanation.
I nod, leaning against the wall. After a moment more of watching him wear ruts in the hallway carpet, I comment, “You know, you could probably go in there.”
“I’m lucky she hasn’t yelled at me to get away from the door yet.” The knob budges, and he leaps away. Therrick emerges, flustered, and closes it behind him. He walks past us down the hall to the closed door at the end of it, pulling a ring of keys from his pocket and jamming one after the other in the lock. Alain sighs and follows after his father. “Did you get ejected?”
“I left before I could say something regrettable,” he mutters in response. “Couldn’t you get this thing open with magic?”
Alain shakes his head. “It’s a complex lock. Probably on purpose.”
“Well, can't you just— melt it or something?”
“It’s got several layers of protectives. Mother never did do anything halfway.”
“Of course she bloody didn’t,” he snaps. “Sorry, right, yes, was trying not to say anything regrettable….”
“About Mother?” Alain laughs incredulously. “Please, by all means.”
“She’s still your mother,” he sighs. “I ought not….” He jiggles the key in the lock forcefully, frowning. “Lock me out of the damned office; that’s just wonderful, Orillia.”
I bump my hip off of the wall. “That’s…not a terribly common name, is it?”
Alain and Therrick both look at me as though I’ve started speaking in a different language. “She’s the only one I’ve met,” Therrick says slowly.
My mouth goes dry. Nothing gets to be a coincidence anymore, does it? Alain prompts me for my thoughts with a slow tilt of his head toward me, and warm panic makes my long sleeves odious. Do I tell him? Could it hurt him?
He stands, waiting, and I take a breath to calm and cool myself. He deserves to know. Carefully, I say, “That’s the name of the envoy I’m set to meet.”
Alain’s head whips from me to his father. “And you’re quite certain she hasn’t written about a visit?”
His father pushes his glasses up his nose in agitation. “Lad, I am absolutely positive that your mother has no interest in visiting. The last thing she wrote me four years ago told me as much.”
Alain turns back to the door, that same vein standing out stark blue on his forehead. He puts a hand to the doorjamb, shuts his eyes, and focuses. Before I can reach out to stop him, he sends a concussive blast into the lock. The door bumps backwards, still not open. Alain sags a bit. "Well, that’s one layer down.”
I take his elbow. “Dearest. Please don’t cast large spells. We like you conscious.”
“Well, how else are we supposed to get it open?” he asks, flinging a hand in the direction of the door.
“Is it going to set us on fire if we touch it?”
“No, it’s just a very sophisticated lock designed to prevent picking on five different levels,” he answers, confused.
I look to Therrick. “How much do you care about the door?”
“Not more'n keeping him upright,” he says, looking at Alain.
I nod, steer Alain down the hall a little ways, and position myself in front of the knob. It's been a while, but I think I can manage it. I plant one foot on the floor, raise the other next to the lock, and ram my heel into the door.
It takes three or four good kicks for the wood to start splintering, and a few more after that to truly breach the door. It swings inward with a low groan, and I set my hands to my hips to breathe for a moment. The whole of my leg tingles, just on the edge of hurting, but it's a small complaint. Alain gives me a sidelong glance. “Do…I want to know how you know how to do that?”
The truth of it is the burning building that’s the backdrop to those nightmares of his. There were people who were trapped. I figured it out. I laugh a little sheepishly. “Locked myself in an outhouse once. Flattering, I know.” The earring shrills. Therrick pats me absently on the shoulder and hurries into the office. I take up Alain’s hand and we join him.
If it weren’t for the thick stringy cobwebs dangling from every corner and the layer of dust a half an inch thick, I would question if this room hadn’t actually been opened in four years.
It’s still meticulously arranged, as though by automaton. Book spines align perfectly with the edges of the shelves. On the desk, two pens sit parallel to a tablet and to each other. Even the curtains, wafting in a slight draft coming from a barely opened window, fold just so. Alain moves to the desk to unearth the tablet. Of course the room hasn't been touched. Rooms that have been lived in don't look like this.
Therrick heads straight for the bookshelves, pulling a volume at random and rifling through this. He scowls. “Boy, can you read any o’ this? Rosalian?”
Alain hands the tablet off to me and hovers at his father's elbow. “No, elemental,” he answers. “The shorthand for alchemists. It’s not my forte.” He frowns. “From what I understood, it wasn’t hers, either. Is it all in elemental?”
Therrick passes the book and pulls down another while Alain pages through the rest of the book. “This one is.”
I set the tablet down and cross the room to the set of shelves opposite theirs. One, two, four books from different shelves, all in looping dark green ink with scarlet symbols interspersed. Diagrams enclosed in blue circles hint at…something. This might as well be Folgian to me. “These are, too.”
Alain frowns, walking the length of the shelves on the north wall. He samples a few more, then turns on his good heel back to the desk. He reaches down to the drawers and pulls. The first and second drawers are filled to the brim with more books, unmarked cloth spines up. The third is a shambles. Some of the same books are shoved to the sides. Others have been blown apart, bits of pages scattered among the ashy crater in the center. Alain tilts his head up, and following his gaze, I spot a perfectly circular smoke stain on the wood beam above. “Oh, what the hells,” he murmurs.
“Magic?” I ask.
“Definitively. Look at the scorch patterns.” He stoops and points at smears of charcoal arching out from and looping back to a point in the center like petals of a flower. “And whoever cast it was in a hurry. Didn’t sustain the spell long enough to catch everything.”
Therrick growls something under his breath. “Your mother was on her way out the door when we had it out last.”
Alain fishes out one of the shreds of paper, dusting the ash away and holding it to the light to try to read it. I set my chin on his shoulder and my arms about his waist and look too. More symbols. He sighs. “Even if it were whole I don't think it would make sense to me.”
“We know a couple of people next door who might be able to make heads or tails of it,” I remind him gently.
He tries not to, but I still feel him bounce upward in surprise. “Right. Yes. Good.” I give him a brief kiss on the cheek and follow him back to Elle's room.
Gavroth and Nuthatch have taken up chairs now. When Therrick removed himself, for the briefest of moments I saw them standing, digging around inside bags, orbiting the bed. Elle sits on the edge of the bed with her legs crossed, her face flushed blue. Nuthatch says, “Well, not exactly. It’s more like her skeleton and the cryst were, uh…combined in a surgical fusion….”
Elle blinks, unimpressed. “You mean Mother’s a chimera. You can just say that.”
Gavroth chuckles. “Mighty big word for a kid your age. Are you interested in alchemy?”
Her head swivels, and she fixes him with a look. “Don’t patronize me. I’m at least the alchemist you are, and if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t bind things, I could make more volatile solutions in my bathtub than you could with a full kit.”
Therrick sighs behind us. “Ellenore,” he says warningly.
Gavroth, on the other hand, is delighted. He bellow
s a laugh, his cheeks flushing pink. “I like her,” he declares. “My specialty is solvents, so frankly, I don’t doubt you could, lass. We’ll have to compare notes sometime.”
Elle seems a little confused. “Do you mean that?”
“Aye, I do.” Nuthatch shoots him a look, and he clears his throat. “After all’s done, of course.”
Elle settles back on her bed, kicking her webbed feet absently as she looks up at the painting of the star chart on her ceiling. It’s complex; probably more complicated than the ones Nuthatch keeps on Fran, and he uses those to help find his way in the dark. “Which cryst type?”
“Type?” Nuthatch asks, scratching at his hairline.
“The effect pattern,” Gavroth fills in. “They’re slightly different in each location they’re mined. As far as poisoning goes, they pretty much do the same thing to people, but they have to be refined differently to produce uniform effects in drives.”
Elle sits up abruptly. “You were working on sticking this in a person and you didn’t know that? If you mixed two different types that’s probably why Alain’s broken right now. You could very well have layered a null energy pattern on top of a catalyst. Now they’re starting fistfights in his bloodstream like it’s a bloody tavern!”
Nuthatch pales. Therrick sighs. “We have talked about the language, dear.”
She holds out her hands in front of her. “I think this deserves some language, Papa! We’re lucky Alain hasn’t imploded and sucked the whole rotting island into his chest.”
Alain looks down at his torso, a little startled, then clears his throat. “Uh, well, there’s some formulae next door, if you want to take a look at that….”
Elle hops up from her bed and stalks past Nuthatch, fixing him with a look. “You’re damned—uh, darned right I do, before you lot make a bigger mess of my brother and the fabric of reality.”
Gavroth laughs again, clapping Nuthatch on the shoulder and steering him out into the hall. “I love this kid.”
I try to find ways to make myself useful in the flurry of reading and interpretation that follows, but quickly I begin to suspect the best thing I can do is stay out of the way. I repair to the kitchen, help Therrick with food and dishes as best as I can—cooking and scullery duties were admittedly not on the list of skills anyone ever thought I’d need. Then again, nobody ever thought I'd actively fight in battles, either. All my training was meant to be hypothetical, except diplomacy.