Spark

by Anna Holmes

  Daryon sidles up to me. “Very fetching, both of you,” he says. “But haven’t I seen this frock before?”

  I wound up putting on the dress I’d worn on my birthday. It hadn’t been intentional. I just couldn’t really care less what I wore, as long as it wasn’t blue. “Surprise. Queens wear things more than once.”

  He wrinkles his nose, creasing his three sharp new scars. “I never do, if I can help it. I may as well, though. My hideousness is already affecting me.”

  “Yeah? How many girls danced with you?”

  “Only seven,” he laments. He seems to catch the strain in my smile, because he brushes off his doublet and straightens. “But no matter. Your announcement today. We make for Rosalia, then.”

  “Yes,” I blurt. “No—I'm not sure yet.”

  “I see. Your decisiveness is what I’ve always admired about you.”

  I send a fist into his arm. “Go chat up some unsuspecting pretty girl.”

  His face falls, morose. “As if there are any who’d take up with such a thing as I.”

  “Hey. Didn’t you hear? Girls love scars. Mysterious, brooding, all that.”

  He brightens immediately. “Benevolent queen, you give me new purchase. I shall make merry once more. To arms, ladies, for Daryon draws near!”

  Taking up arms is about how I’d feel about responding to the situation, but within seconds, he’s got a giggling new friend and sweeps off to the dance floor with her. Just past them, Tressa wobbles against the framework of Riley’s arms, and he, the walking shadow, beams. She manages a successful twirl, and he lifts her by the waist. I lean against a column and let go of a little laugh, the cold little bit at the center of me thawing a little for the first time in days. Riley isn’t much of a dancer, either, but in her company, I think he might just jig.

  The little moment of warmth ends soon after. A throat clears behind me. “Your Highness, a word?” Morris requests, already frowning.

  Wonderful. I sigh and push off the column, following him into the hall. The rest of my cabinet waits, dressed in their various finery, and yet dour as if this were an interrogation and not a fete. I expected this, but I'd hoped to get through this evening first. “Well, then?” I say, folding my arms.

  Hawke and Morris both open their mouths, but Jarven speaks first. “I believe they were hoping to dictate suitable grooms for you,” he says, his mouth twitching.

  “That is not—” Morris blusters.

  “Well, it would have been nice to get the chance,” Hawke puts in snippily.

  Moira looks like there are a dozen places she’d rather be. “Oh, let up. The pair of you aren’t marrying him, are you?”

  “We all are,” Morris snaps.

  “That is news to me,” I say dully. “Look. I understand the concerns, as I always have, but that doesn’t change any of it. I’m marrying Alain. Hopefully.”

  “And just how—?” Hawke starts.

  “Enough,” I get out.

  “I’d have to agree,” comes a voice from down the hallway. Instantly, the four of them are stunned silent, and I'm not far off. My mother, more as I remember her in her deep red gown, strides in between the lot of us. She fixes Morris and Hawke with a stare. “The boy’s not been gone a week. Give her time to find him, at the very least.”

  “And I’m to understand you suddenly approve, Your Highness?” Hawke asks, frustrated.

  Mother folds her hands in front of her primly. “That is not my title by rights, and to approve or not is not my place.”

  The way her eyes bore through them heavily implies and neither is it yours. Jarven clears his throat. “Well, I think in that case, all this can wait, don’t you?”

  Moira rocks forward on her toes. “There’s a ball on,” she says, smiling at me just a little. “I’m hungry, it’s drafty out here, and I do believe that’s two queens now who have told us to mind our own business.”

  I give her a nod, and a bit at a time, they bow and make their exits, some more churlishly than others. “How,” I ask my mother in the newfound quiet, “did you do that?”

  “Practice. Something you haven’t had much time for. You will.” She turns to me. “Thank you for the invitation. I apologize. I ought not have inserted myself.”

  “No, insert away,” I laugh incredulously. “But why did you?”

  She turns toward me and takes up my hands. I don’t know whether it’s being back in the castle, the absence of Thorn needling her poison into a new madness every few minutes, or just having an excuse to dress up again as she always loved to do, but she looks lively again. Her mouth pulls to the side as she takes in what's become of my hair, tucking a stray bit of it back in. “I perhaps forfeited my right to fuss when I let you run off to war, but still. There’s something about watching a group of people with inflated heads surround my daughter in a dark hallway on an already dark day that demands I intervene if I can.” She pauses, chagrin making its way into her features. “I am only sorry that I couldn’t more often.”

  I can’t help it. All that time spent distant feels like a string pulled taut, suddenly cut loose. I throw my arms around her, and she stiffens in surprise. Of course. A queen does not bury her face in her mother’s shoulder like a child. I’m about to pull away, offer an apology, but she presses my head to her. “There, now, my love,” she says softly. “You’ll have it sorted. You always do.”

  “How?” I ask bleakly. “What do I do? You know exactly all the reasons I can’t just march into Rosalia and demand him back.”

  She steps back, folding her hands in front of her. “That, I can’t tell you. It isn’t my place.”

  She’s right, of course. She doesn’t want to be accused of steering yet another Regnant without a title of her own, and she’s already made herself known to the cabinet once tonight. “If you were in my place,” I say slowly.

  She smiles slightly. “Were I in your place,” she says, “I would try to remember that marching is not the only way to get somewhere.”

  Mother places a kiss to my forehead and disappears once again, this time into the crowd in the ballroom. This time, I know where she's got to, and I don't think she’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.

  Which is good. I may need her help again.

  I turn abruptly and head away from the warmth of the ballroom, through the mostly dark, mostly empty hallways, and down into the cold.

  Before I can ask myself what I’m doing, I push past the guards too surprised to salute, through the cells, and stop in front of hers. “Oh, perfect,” Jori drawls, staring up at the ceiling, her leg dangling off the edge of her cot, swinging lazily. The wound is healing well enough. “You’re still alive.”

  “Thank you for that,” I tell her. “I understand the sun almost fell on me.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” she mutters.

  “I know. I’m thanking you anyway.”

  “What do you want?”

  What do I want? I came down here full of half—formed ideas, but mostly not marching. Crow doesn't march. She flits, dances. I could do with that. “How…?” I swallow. This is difficult. My difficulty in rising every morning is her doing. Every time my hair flies in my face, I think her name like a curse word. But she likes this dance of ours. “If I wanted to get into Rosalia, how would I do that?”

  She stops swinging her leg. “Don’t you have maps in this hellhole?”

  “I know where it is. I want to know how to do it. I know you know. The Sanctuary makes a business of knowing, doesn’t it?”

  She laughs—a short, unsurprised burst. “Examined my stolen jewelry, did she? I’d like that back, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Oh, please,” I tell her, smiling crookedly. “I know no one can take that from you by force. You wanted her to figure it out. I can’t begin to understand what a holdout like you is doing among the Legion, but I do know that if you gave up that necklace, you wanted me to know.”

  “Perhaps I’m tricking you.”

  I lift an eyebr
ow. “And perhaps telling me that is the trick.”

  “Even if I did know,” she says, an edge to her voice, “you’d never make it over the borders.”

  “I think I know someone who can help with that.”

  She stares at me. “Not too pretty, not too ugly, but certainly stupid. You’ll spoil that good deed of mine.”

  “I have to try,” I tell her.

  “No, see, look. I kept you alive for one reason, and one reason only. You had one thing right. If you die, Alain will find some reason to hang me for it.” She wraps her arms around herself. “I’m not telling you.”

  “Fine. Don’t. Come with me.”

  “Forget stupid. You’re mad.”

  “Tell you what. If you come with me to Rosalia, I will leave you there.”

  She scowls. “That’s….”

  “You were desperate to go back. You faked your death so you could try. You’re telling me you changed your mind?”

  “Things changed.”

  “Come on, Crow,” I laugh. “I am handing you an opportunity. Life at large in the biggest country in the world, or in a jail cell for the next twenty years." She doesn’t need to know that part of the plan is dismantling the biggest country in the world. But I’ll pardon her the same. Let's dance, Jori.

  She stares at me, jaw cocked to the side. “You are insane.”

  Maybe. Or maybe this is what hope feels like. “Think about it,” I tell her, moving away.

  “Choke on that ring of yours, valsht.”

  “Help me out, and maybe you’ll get to see that in person,” I sing tunelessly.

  “Spreschke,” she hisses. “Fine. You got that much of a death wish, I’ll help you along happily.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her again, and again, I mean it. “I’ll be back.”

  “Oh, goody. Let’s have a slumber party. I can braid your hair. Oh, whoops.” I just laugh. Again I can’t help but think that in another time, in another place, had she not tortured my fiancé and made my pain her life’s work, Jori and I may well have been friends. “Mad harlot,” she mutters.

  I sweep from the cells, take the stairs two at a time. I don’t care that the guards must share her estimation of me, that my side aches, that all this is still swilling around in my brain without a proper shape. The important thing is that after days of fog, days of questions, of searching and coming up with nothing, a plan is starting to actually have a shape.

  I need a few things—things, people, time, forgeries, someone to try to talk me out of this, and someone to go with me anyway. And a map. My hopes flag a little, but I push aside the gloom attempting to gather again and head for the room in this castle most likely to have such a thing.

  Every time I passed this room, I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to see it. I swallow hard and push open Alain’s door for the first time since that morning.

  It’s all still here, waiting for him to get back. Covers still rumpled, interspersed with books and papers. The alchemist’s fire on his desk burning even without him here to light it. Pens. So many pens scattered all over. The smell of his soap and dust on old books. I grab hold of the back of the chair that’s still pulled out where I sat, waiting for him to wake up.

  So much of him in this room, but he’s not here.

  My grip tightens on the chair. He will be. I told his students this, and it’s time I start believing it. More, it’s time I start doing it. I find my way to the ladder, start climbing, and pull down the long, narrow atlas, cradling it delicately between my arm and my battered side so I can use the good one to climb.

  There’s a knock at the open door. A guard peers cautiously up at me. “Your Highness? You haven’t returned to the ball, and I have something for you.”

  “Hmm?” I ask, distracted, turning yet another page. Gods, Rosalia is huge.

  She steps into the room, holding a small paper bundle. She cranes her neck. “Do you…require assistance?”

  I bat away the irritation. Of all the things I’ve faced this week, the bookcase isn’t the most harrowing, but she doesn’t know that, and I’m sure I look fairly mad besides. “I have it in hand, thank you.”

  “I have a letter for you. From someone named Simon Arrow?”

  Now I nearly drop the book and fall off the ladder. I scramble to recover myself, wincing with the effort, and set the book down. “Give—give it here. Quickly, please.”

  She bows her head and hands me the parcel, edging toward the door, uncertain of whether she should leave or not. I can’t speak to dismiss her, can barely even breathe as I shred the envelope. Something in a small leather pouch falls out. I set it aside and fall to reading the letter.

  Highness-

  I'll never be able to apologize for what I've done—even more so now. I can only hope my actions can set things right.

  I have taken the Prince to the Seat of Kings. I knew if I didn't, someone else would, someone who wouldn't write to tell you where. I have enclosed a compass whose needle points only to the Sky River in Rosalia. It is a violent, turbulent river where travelers never pass. It is also the only unguarded point in the home continent, as the Legion assumes any mad enough to brave it will die. Travel by boat is impossible. An airship, however, would suffice.

  I told the Envoy that I made a change to her formula. I substituted a harmless and ineffective base element. Any subsequent attempts at infusion will fail. As I am alive to write this, she has yet to notice, if she will at all.

  You will find me in the Market Square in Kenn. I am safely relocating my family, and then Fran and I are at your disposal, if you'll still have us. Burn this letter—alone.

  Yours,

  Simon Arrow (Kai Nuthatch)

  I lower the paper, my heart hammering against my rib cage. The Sky River. I retrieve my atlas, start flipping pages. There. I trace it with my finger, a curving line cutting through the wide swath of land that is Rosalia, all the way from the Central Sea to the Seat of Kings. The heart of their empire.

  That’s where we’ll find him.

  I slip back down the ladder and light the little-used fireplace. I finally think to look over my shoulder for the guard, who seems to have decided to give me space. Good. I set the letter alight and watch the edges blacken and curl. Smoke begins to rise and a series of pops emits from the fire.

  At first, I think I’m losing it. The sparks seem to flare in a pattern, rearrange themselves into something familiar. Letters, then words. I gasp. His handwriting. It’s from him.

  Hold on, I think, clutching the compass to my chest and stooping to touch the hearth in front of Alain’s words.

  We’re coming.

  Acknowledgements

  As always, the utmost thanks to my husband Jason, who edits, formats, cooks, cleans, comforts, deals with the spiders, and carries out other duties as assigned. There would be no Elyssia books and very little of me without him.

  To Stephanie, who has read so many iterations of Spark I think it made her eyes bleed a little. Her good humor and insightful commentary are crucial and cannot possibly be overstated.

  A million and a half thanks to Jason Nguyen, artist extraordinaire, whose beautiful work on Ember and now Spark make Caelin and Alain something tangible. His art can be found on ArtStation and Deviantart. Everybody should go look at it, because it is decadent.

  So much appreciation goes to Sabrina Watt for her cover design and patience with me as a whole. Paul as an entity is a delight to know and probably the best support an author could ask for at that awkward first-and-a-half draft phase. Many thanks also to Jen, Erik, Taryn, Jordan, Virgil, and my clone Alayna for stretching their imagination with me in ways that make storytelling new each week. To Joanna, for her support of Ember and encouragement.

  My family will be miffed if they don't get a mention, so Mom, Dad, thanks for encouraging me to write early, and Emily, thanks for being my first reader.

  The good folks in my library district work hard for their customers, and I am always indebted to them. Especi
al thanks to Carolyn, Mark, Danielle, and Jackie, who I still want to be when I grow up. The entire staffs at Mill Creek, Mukilteo, and the Service Center are lovely people, and I am so lucky to have worked with them.

  To everyone who read and wrote to me about Ember, I appreciate you very much. Your kindness propelled me through this book and will for more to come.

  Contact the Author

  Email: annaholmeswritesbooks@gmail.com

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