Spark

by Anna Holmes

  “How did you meet them, anyway?”

  “Rin came looking for me. Her spies heard there was a kid being looked at for a high level position near the end of the war. It took her a little while, since I was with the Wanderers, then hidden up in the mountains with Gav. But then I started my training, and she got wind of my last name, so she sent some people to grab me before I got home.” He shifts his weight, staring at the white center of the fire. “She asked me what they wanted with me, and she knew so much already I just…told her the rest. And then she introduced me to the others.”

  “What did they want you to do?” I ask, leaning my chin on a fist.

  “At first, it was just talking. About what I heard, what the kings asked me, about turning it down. But the more I heard, the more I—we can’t let them keep doing what they're doing.”

  “Obviously, I agree.”

  “Then why aren't you…?” he looks down. “Sorry.”

  “Why haven’t I joined Rin’s tea party of deposed monarchs? Well, the big reason is the one you already know. Apparently our treaty with Rosalia is on very thin ice, and I can swim pretty well, but not everyone in Elyssia can. I’d rather not shove them in.”

  “But Rosalia doesn’t care. They’re already working against us.”

  “I know. But they’re at an advantage. Armies of the devoted. Part of my job is staying aware of that.”

  “You won against them last time.”

  “It took nearly ten years, August. Our strategy was to make the island more trouble than it was worth to them, not to overwhelm them. And that’s still my strategy now.”

  “And the rest of the world?” he asks, his eyes flashing the same as the fire. “Is Elyssia the only place that matters?”

  “Of course not,” I answer. “But it is the only place that I’m in charge of, and one of the precious few places in the world they can get what they want to overwhelm the rest of it. I need to close off their cryst supplies here and keep our people safe.”

  “If they get what they want here or anywhere else, there won’t be such a thing as safe.”

  I nod slowly. “I understand. But with something like this, if you don’t work a bit at a time, you will wind up buried by the enormity of this. I need to handle here first.”

  August cocks his head, red hair flying. “First. So you’ll help us after.”

  “I didn’t— I can’t promise anything right now.”

  “But you want to help us.”

  The dull headache that’s been lurking just behind my eyes the whole day resurfaces. I pinch the join of my neck and shoulder and back just under the breastplate’s strap. “August, I can’t govern based on my wants. No matter how strong they might be. Like it or not, if I commit to a cause, I’m committing an entire country to it, and I just…can’t do that to them. Not after a decade of war.”

  He sits quiet for a moment, then picks up a stick and tosses it in the fire, watching the flames consume it. “If you could do anything,” he says slowly, “what would you do?”

  “If fantasies were reliable, I’d strike down every king and prince who stood in my way and bend the rest to my will, but we live in the real world, so if one were to have any chance of steering Rosalia in the right direction, it would be from inside.”

  “Inside?”

  “Installing oneself in the system and dismantling it using their own mechanisms.” August leans forward a little too intently for my liking, rubbing at the sparse hair growing in coarse little patches on his jawline. I stress, “And that’s incredibly risky at best. It would take an…enormous capacity for duplicity. If the wrong person were to attempt it and get caught, all they’d have done is alerted the kings that the strategy is a possibility.”

  August nods slowly, but I see his fingers still drumming on his elbow, his eyes still working over a line of calculations only he can see. “August,” I say, frowning. “Have I made myself clear?”

  He shifts his distracted gaze over to me at last. “Perfectly, sir. Your Highness.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him with a sigh. “I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear from me. But things are rarely as simple as we’d like them to be be in the planning or even in the retelling. ‘Small band of rebels overthrows tyrannical regime’ sounds a lot more inspiring than ‘rotating cast of rebels, some of whom were traitors, spend ten years annoying tyrannical regime into leaving them alone’. I doubt you’ll hear the latter story told around any campfires other than this one.”

  He nods, then yawns and stretches and stands. “This was just what I needed. Thanks, Your Majesty. I think I’m ready for bed now.”

  I can hardly say no, you stay right here until you promise me that you’re not getting any ideas. “Just—remember. Most fights are long and meticulously fought. Don’t get discouraged.”

  He nods again, but I’ve had enough experience by now thanks to my advisors to know when someone is pretending to listen. August’s gaze flickers from me to the ground a few times, and he swings his long arms. “O-okay, then. Night.”

  “Good night, August.”

  He retreats to the tent he and Riley and Gavroth are sharing, and I’m left to tangle with my discomfiture on my own. It makes it hard to keep my seat. I get up, wander the shore, edge right to the water’s terminus. The faint glow off at the other side of the lake, where the river feeds it from the sea, stirs in my chest a new uncertainty. After a moment of quiet observation, that uncertainty rolls into the old discomfort into a felted ball of anger scratching at the inside of my chest, and without even thinking, I reach down and retrieve a stone from the cold ground. I throw stone after stone at the placid surface of this lake that keeps this blasted magical rock sheltered.

  My most recent throw goes the furthest. I pause in my cycle of crouch-scoop-rise-throw to watch it skim over the lake’s surface, bouncing nearly clear to the other edge. Instead of plunking anticlimactically into the grasping lakeweed below like the others, however, when this one crosses above the cryst, it’s instantly vaporized in a bright purple flash. The blast blows my loose hair back as though I’m facing directly into a gale. What it doesn’t do is make any sort of noise, though I can feel something resonating in the hollows of my body in the spaces between my breaths. My next rock falls free of my fingers and thuds back to the dirt.

  Behind me, a tent flap flips open, and Alain comes staggering barefoot into the night. I hurry to catch him before he trips. He clings to my arms, his breaths shuddering, his face turned to the slowly fading glimmers of light. “What happened?” I ask urgently.

  He pulls for air. The slits at the sides of his neck open to assist, and his chest returns a bit at a time to a normal rise and fall. “It was— as if— something punched me in the gut,” he answers, trying to straighten his posture again. “A very large something.”

  “I—” I look back at the water. “I was skipping rocks and then one of them got near the cryst….”

  Alain sets his hands to his waist and captures another breath with a nod. “There’s a ward on it.”

  “Like a protective? So it wasn’t the cryst itself?”

  “A very large one. Most likely placed by several casters.” He shakes his head, blinking blearily at the last purple flickers in the distance. “No. That wasn’t natural. There were…whispers in the air.”

  I listen for a moment, but all that comes back to me is the rush of blood in my ears and the resettling of the water. I glance back at him, but strangely, the look in his eye is sharper now even after a rude awakening than it was when we arrived. He would be the expert. “Well. I’m sorry for the gut punch, but I’m very glad we found out like this rather than sending you and Elle down there like we were planning.”

  He nods, squinting around the lake. “Someone doesn’t want anyone getting into that.”

  “Any way of telling who?”

  “Not immediately. Too many voices to make it out. Whoever they are— they know we’re here, though. They may very well come looking.”
>
  Perfect. Me and my inability to sit still. Mother did always tell me it would get me in trouble. “We’ll double the watch. If we’re without a hint in the morning, we can check at the temple at the river mouth. The priests may know more.”

  Alain rubs at his neck. “Let’s hope it was them. It’s been a while since I went to temple, but they’re supposed to be protective of nature, yeah? Some gift of the gods thing?”

  I can’t help a little laugh. “It really has been a while. That’s children’s lesson stuff.”

  “I never was the most credulous kid.”

  “And I was too fidgety to pay much attention, so the morning could prove educational for us both.” I lean over and kiss his cheek. “Go back to sleep, my love. I’ll keep from provoking the lake in the meanwhile.”

  He catches my hand. “This is late for you. Perhaps we should trade.”

  “A fine try, darling, but I need you sharp tomorrow.”

  “And you? Rest isn’t only for us broken-down monsters. You should remember, Your Quarrelsomeness, that I never have tolerated hypocrisy well.”

  “We decently healthy ones need less.” I pat his face. “I’ll be along in due time.”

  He chuckles slightly. “Sure you will.” He starts off toward the tent. “You know, I don’t know how I ever fooled myself into thinking you could be two-faced back in the beginning. You have always been a terrible liar.”

  “I’m a fine liar, thank you.” I just never defined what due time looks like. Quite purposefully.

  I pull a face at him and he gives me that crooked grin of his, and it’s hard to stay even mock annoyed. Always has been.

  I go to get Riley up. He had the next watch anyway; we may as well overlap. I’m in the middle of explaining what happened to my ill-fated skipping rock when an enormous yawn overtakes me. Riley laughs. “I’ll get someone else to help. Go to sleep.”

  “I’m good, I’m good,” I answer. The tent seems larger in the foreground than it ought to be, as though it’s guilting me, too. “Anyway, unless we get ambushed tonight we’ll need to go check with the priests downriver.”

  “All right, if you’re sure.”

  I threw the rock. I might as well be around to reap the fruit of my anger. I’m not even sure why I was angry, which is what usually happens after I give into the occasional fit. Usually the target is a training dummy, but I’m fresh out, so instead I’m throwing rocks. “They may not know anything, either, but we can use any clue we can get.”

  “Even getting ambushed?”

  I shrug helplessly. “Maybe? If someone is staking out Elyssian resources, we’ll want to know. Damned rock is more trouble than it's worth sometimes.”

  “You want a world without airships?”

  “Maybe, if people keep getting hurt or killed over what makes them fly. Besides, Nuthatch seems to make it work just fine without cryst.”

  He shrugs. “More expensively. There’s a trade off to all things. But even if you get your wish and we go back to clockwork, I doubt the Legion will let go so easily.”

  No, likely not. I don’t say so, however, because he gets smug. Instead, I yawn again. He tilts his head, and I laugh slightly. “All right, I’m going.”

  “Good. I’ll wake the giant. You’ll definitely hear if something goes wrong.”

  I suppose that’s as much reassurance as I can ask for. Chances are if I stay out here I’ll fall asleep anyway. I may as well keep my word. “Good night. Don’t throw any rocks at the water.”

  He gives me a wry salute, then heads back into his tent to prod Gavroth. I go toward mine and loosen the straps on my breastplate, sliding it off before I go in to hopefully reduce the amount of clanking. It still sounds somewhat like someone kicking a collection of pots and pans down a staircase. I cringe and sit in the entry to remove my boots.

  Elle’s spread out amazingly far for a small kid, leaving Alain and me probably a third of the tent. She doesn’t stir as I crawl my way in. Alain, on the other hand, shifts slightly to let me pass. “Wonder of wonders,” he whispers with a sleepy grin. “Tonight you’re a terrible truth teller.”

  “Oh, shush. You’ll wake her.”

  “She sleeps like the dead. It’s led to some consternation in the past.” He slips his arm about my waist and helps pull me the last few inches completely onto the cushion. He reaches for the blankets folded at his his head. Neither of them feel the cold. I, on the other hand, notice it for the first time. He pulls the blankets over me and adds my cloak over the top of the whole trembling pile, tucking the fur collar around my neck. “Better?”

  His hand smoothes my hair from my face, and I can see him clearly again. He looks tired, yes, but heartier, more like himself. Smiling. Less blue. I smile, too. “Yes,” I answer. “Much better.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Alain

  The scrubby landscape around this temple is so thoroughly frozen, even I find it odd that I don’t feel the accompanying cold. My companions’ breaths come out in clouds in front of their faces, and the way they’re constantly shifting from foot to foot and making faces like their pants are slowly getting tighter makes me think it’s uncomfortable. Bannon shoulders his crossbow higher. “Shall we?”

  Caelin too fidgets with the sword at her hip. We’d figured three of us could handle chatting with some priests and left the others back at the camp. Now I can see in the appraising look she’s giving the darkened temple and my overall body she’s wondering if that was a good idea. “Yeah, all right,” she says, her mouth skewing to the side. “Keep your wits about you, boys.”

  Not like we needed to be told. Finding any building in a broken down state like this would be enough to set anybody’s teeth on edge, but this supposed house of peace carries a heavier sense of dread. Caelin steps over the corner of the busted-in door, still leaning askance in its socket. The toe of her boot catches on a cloaked figure carved in relief in the dark wood—already purposefully vague, only made more more so by whatever force employed to splinter the door. Magical or physical, it must have been massive to breach slabs so thick. From inside, Caelin reaches out her hands to help me over them and into the temple.

  The chamber is dark, but between the pair of us, we shed just enough light to make out details. Mine lends a sickly blue luster to the debris. Shattered pews lay in pieces next to downed candelabrum. The shadows swallow much in their dusky maw, but unfortunately, the faceless statues still stare at us from the depths as we go.

  This temple is fairly large, so there’s a lot of them, one set into each alcove lining the walls. Father used to joke that I’d likely catch fire the second I passed one of the little gods again. Maybe I’ve carried that like a superstition, or maybe the statues have always made my skin crawl. They’re meant to be ethereal, with no facial features, neither masculine nor feminine form, the same shapeless robes. They reflect the Elyssian belief that the gods can never be known, never be described. They do not fit within the confines of human understanding.

  The idea that there could be any sort of order to all this, that there are some invisible unknown magicians manipulating the facets of this world the way we manipulate ether—it felt entirely too tidy for me since I was Elle’s age. The alternative is frightening, and that’s why Caelin and Bannon still mechanically bow their heads in obeisance as we pass, despite our hurry, despite our mounting dread for worldly people. It takes the edge off the questions to act based on the idea that there’s something out there with more responsibility than we have. I can’t begrudge them, but neither can I join them. Even being here makes me feel like a liar.

  Even still, I spent enough time at my father’s feet, listening to the sounds and taking in the atmosphere of temples, to know that this one is wrong. No water runs in the basin at the head of the altar. No birdcalls from the aviary above. The eternal light is doused. Caelin keeps a hand on her hilt as we edge through, checking the shadows on the left, Bannon on the right. I listen. There’s some lingering magic here—most of it old, but
there is one fresh spell coming from somewhere in the darkness. There’s someone here, I tell them.

  The instant after, the shadows are suddenly banished. A bright light fills the chamber—only a flare at first, but soon a whiteness that renders everything but the hooded, veiled figures at the altar invisible. “DEFILERS,” a chorus of voices blares. “You profane this sacred place with your bloodlust. In the name of the almighty Nameless, the divine Faceless, the most holy Innumerable, we cast you out!”

  A blast of wind hits us from the front, shoving us away from the altar. I throw my arm in front of my face to shield it, scramble to keep my footing. The soles of my boots slip against the stone floor, and I begin the long slide to the door. The drag of my leg is a searing, twisting pain, shooting from the floor to my hip. There’s nothing for it. It might drop me, but I cry out to however many people standing there casting this gale, Please stop, it's only the queen!

  Instantly, the wind lets up and the light dims again to a bearable brightness. I drop to the good knee and let my head hang, gasping like a fish on a dock. The figures rush forward, and Caelin, a few paces ahead of me, plants herself between them and me, sword already drawn. “No further,” she warns.

  “It’s fine,” I pant. “They’re fine.”

  She glances warily over her shoulder at me for the briefest of moments before turning back to the priests. One removes her hood, leaving only the sheer green veil between us and her. If I look hard, I imagine I can see the outlines of features. “A thousand apologies, Your Highness,” she says, bowing her head and wringing her hands. “We've been beset upon by those Legion heretics for a full year now. We assumed they were back again.”

  Caelin shoots Bannon an alarmed look. “Did I miss something in the reports?”

  “Unless I did too, which is frankly unlikely, it was not reported, no,” Bannon answers, frowning deeply. Shadow pools around his face in the freshly brightened chamber. He’s pissed.

  “We are adequately positioned to protect ourselves and our temple,” the woman answers. “There’s no need to trouble the guard. I’m sure they already have much to do.”