Ember

by Anna Holmes

  His mouth quirks up. "I asked too many questions." He moves back to the console, patting the flask strapped to his belt at his side. "I have an antidote like yours, lad. It’s just more of a constant companion. I’d like it if your love didn’t have to carry hers always, too. It tastes like shit. Sit down and hold on."

  "What?"

  He reaches into a cabinet above his head and pulls out another box of the purple lightning. "Fran has something to show you."

  Somewhere along Fran's bumpy hurtling, I find myself given over to the same stupor I've spent the last day in, not asleep but not aware, either. Every time we sail over a cloud layer, my head sinks lower. I can feel the hum of my magic, swirling around me, close, but just out of my reach. In my sleep-induced stupidity, I start bargaining with it. Listen, you largely invisible, barely understood, barely controlled supernatural force, if you get me through All Kings' Day I'll sleep as long as you want, but so help me gods, if your temper tantrum contributes to losing her, I'm never casting again.

  All right, so that's more like threatening, and poorly. I do appreciate your help saving her yesterday, I add.

  If whatever lets me manipulate the physical forces of reality listens, it gives no indication. Instead the humming keeps up, blending with Fran's ticking and whirring, lulling me deeper and deeper, until—

  BUMP.

  I jerk my head up. Fran's rollicking, Tressa has her arm locked around the bar, and Arrow's swearing, grabbing at levers. "Report," I blurt out of habit.

  And there's Northshore, now that I don't need him. Surly, Arrow retorts, "Sit down, sir." He grits his teeth and steadies the ship. "No spots at the bloody port. Fine time for that princess to be getting married. I'm trying to put her down on a hillside, but something's jamming her. Is it raining?"

  It is, in fact, pouring. "You…can't tell?"

  "Poisoned eye," he snaps back. "The stabilizers don't like rain. They like nice, covered landing docks at civilized ports!"

  Tressa shakes her head and huffs in frustration, peeling herself away from the bar and moving to the hatch. She tugs on a lever and the platform starts to lower itself. She turns to me. "Go," she says.

  I look at her sideways. "Are you sure? I thought you were keeping an eye on me."

  She grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me to the gangplank. "Poison, prince. Go. I'll find somewhere to put your horse and then I'll find you."

  I catch her arm and clasp it for a moment. "Thank you."

  She looks a little startled by the contact, but she gives me an uneasy smile as I start down the platform. "Do me a favor and don't be dead when I get there. Neither of you."

  "Do my best." Fran lurches, and I have to jump or I'll disembark not by choice. The raindrops and I cross in midair as I fumble to slow my landing with a buffer of magic. I’m not quick enough. The landing sends a jolt up my bad leg, and I bite down on a groan as I pull myself out of the long grasses finally starting to grow out of the charred hillside surrounding the upper town.

  Of course we had to land here. Of all the blasted places…I stand slowly and crunch my way through my last battlefield, trying not to search for my personal landmarks as I slog my way through mud thick with ash. It's hard, not to feel the fire closing around me, even though this time it's rain and not smoke obscuring my vision, the scorched smell is old, and this time, it's eerily quiet. Just the slopping of fat raindrops and muffled early morning activity echoing from a tavern kitchen near the outskirts. No metal on metal, no screams, no lick of flame.

  It's different this time, I insist to myself. But the danger's not past yet.

  The castle looms in the distance, and once again, I don't have a plan. How do I even know if she made it back? I cup a hand over my eyes, trying to peer at the street between the gaps in the buildings. Guards go two by two at regular intervals. That's not normal.

  When I wrestle my way through the field to the tavern, I stop just behind the corner and lean out just enough to see the street ahead. Some of the guards are hoisting banners onto the iron lampposts, whose flames are just starting to peter out. I lean my head against the wall, swallowing hard. The wedding's still on.

  There'll be time enough to deal with that later. I need to make sure the bride is alive. It's harder than tromping through the mud, harder than swimming in a vat of molasses, but somehow, I pull enough magic in to flicker out of view. From there, it's a matter of not knocking into any guards and remembering which of the half-circular streets leads to the castle, somehow even more daunting than the first time I approached it.

  In my drowsy head, Caelin still laughs at me. You could have come up through the castle.

  And suddenly, I know how I'm going to find her. I steer left of the drawbridge away from the squadron of guards posted there and follow the wide gardens, past tree after well-kept tree to that stretch of dirt, the stretch of dirt for which I'd so hated her. I bless its existence now. It's easier to move here, to break into a run, ignore the protests of my ruined leg. I pass carts and horses and their drivers, all plodding their weary morning way to the same place—the stables.

  If she made it back, she'd have gone here first. I'm probably less careful than I ought to be to make sure my ragged breathing and dragging every-other-steps aren't heard by the stablehands and the townspeople making their deliveries, but I need to see. I duck around two men carrying an absolutely enormous cake dotted with yellow roses and a third trying valiantly to keep it covered with a massive umbrella. She'd hate it. I break away from it where the drivers and horses part with their wares and line up for their wages, checking row after row of stalls.

  There are too damn many horses, and all of them entirely too short. The run is starting to catch up to me, and my heart sags faster than my leg. He isn't here. She isn't here.

  I sink to the dirt and the hay and cradle my head in my hands. Now what?

  From a corner, I hear a stamp that seems to shake the very foundations of the castle and a wild huff. "Whoa, easy, easy," a young voice calls out.

  A familiar voice. I struggle up, clutching a post. There, in the corner nearest the door, blissfully himself with no magical interference, is August, and Navigator next to him. Relief floods the ash-parched lining of my lungs and my mud-slowed, throbbing legs.

  She made it.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Caelin

  I appreciate the guards at the port in Lakewood being ready and willing to take me home, and far less difficult than their counterparts at the hold at the Eastern Shore, but gods, if I have to explain the situation one more time, I might just scream instead. First it was the sentinels at Lakewood, then their captain, then the pilot, and now I'm looking into the uncomprehending face of the castle watch's morning captain in my own doorway. At least he’s let us move in here so we only got soaked by the rain for the first five minutes of this conversation. "I need to speak with Kelvin," I say again as patiently as I can, given that I can feel my pulse in my shoulder and it is not polite about it.

  It's been bad since Lakewood—since I left the prison, really. I shivered through the whole airship ride here, even in my sleep. The half-closed hole in my shoulder radiates heat to the rest of me, but the wound itself feels like it's about to ice over. The warmth seeps everywhere—my palms, my eyes. When the captain speaks to me, it's as if he's standing on the other side of a thick pane of glass fogging over with every breath. "Your highness. If you'll wait right here, I'll fetch him at once."

  I nod, rocking onto my heels to try to distract myself from the way the world feels like it's tipping. I need to settle this, and then there'll be rest.

  The captain walks down the hall a ways, pausing at the end to speak with another guard. For a moment, I imagine it's just the paranoia from the fever, that feeling that something is always hovering over me ready to crash, but then I notice the furtive glance from the captain. I saw the same look on the young 'guard' at the prison. I start moving away—slowly at first, to avoid drawing his attention, but when I hear armor
clanking behind me, matching me for pace, I break into a run.

  It isn't easy, with this gorget pressing into the wound and the poison pounding against it from the inside. I'm being choked and boiled internally and the guards are rushing after me. What a fool I'd been, thinking they were chasing Alain in that tunnel. I bite down hard on my lip. Anything to distract me from the screaming of my shoulder, make it a little easier to dive in between visitors and servants and guards who are apparently as in the dark about their fellows as I was. My boots seem to drag against the overly plush rug. They're gaining.

  I skid around a sharp corner and fumble for the groove in the dark wood behind the curtain. My mother had shown me this passage with a hope I'd never have to use it. I'd never forgotten the shape of it, the way the panel sinks soundlessly into the wall for just long enough to dart in. I swing the curtain around myself and pass into the wall precious moments before their clanking draws nearer.

  I struggle to confine my gasping to my chest so I can hear them while making sure they can't hear me. I don't know if the captain was apprised of the existence of the passage or not, so I reach around myself to start slipping my sword from its sheath. "Where did she go?" Someone pants on the other side of the wall.

  "Must be magic," the captain puffs in return. "Inform Lord Kelvin at once. Make sure she can't reach the princess."

  I start backing toward the stairs winding up the tower. I'm an only child, so if there’s another princess here, I’d really like to know who.

  The warning bell rings out across the upper town, and I let my sword slide back into place and set my hand to my knee and allow myself an unrestrained breath, stopping just short of the whimper I think would be appropriate about now. And then I gather myself, clench my teeth against the stabbing pain, and start climbing.

  The passage is just as I remember—dusty, full of spiders and burnt out torches. The easier door to find would be the one into my father's study, the floor beneath mine, but I don't know what the guard situation in the hallway looks like. I'm forced to feel around in the feeble light of my skin for the catch that throws open the panel behind my bed. The moment it opens, I hear hushed giggles, the unmistakable frip of a cord being pulled taut through a corset. I peer through the curtains. Sitting on the floor in a poof of silk and satin having flowers braided into her hair is me.

  "Oh, what the hells," I blurt aloud.

  All four handmaidens start screaming as they catch sight of my face through the curtains. I dive over the headboard, roll off my bed, and land shakily with the point of my sword extended. "Out, all of you," I eke out. The false me jumps up, and I swing the sword around to threaten her neck. "Except you. I have questions."

  She stares back at me with a whimper, fear in her eyes. It’s not exactly the way I’d like to face myself. Once the last of the ladies-in-waiting has hyperventilated her way out the door, I point to it with my sword, then bring it back to the impostor. "Bar it."

  She nearly trips over herself to do so. I sag against the bedpost, which is still battered from my attempt to stage the scene of my absence. Fat lot of good it did. Kelvin had a backup.

  I grasp my shoulder and pray for the sting to subside. As my stand-in turns back around, I pull myself back up to my fullest. She’s a remarkable copy, that much is certain. Every freckle, every stray hair is in place. The biggest difference is the ocean of tears welling up in her eyes. She sags to the floor at my feet. "I—I’m so sorry, your high—Caelin."

  Caelin. I frown deeply, steadying myself on the bedpost again. There are only five people in this world who use my name, and only two that seem to struggle with it. I hazard, "Alora?"

  "He told me this was the only way I’d ever be able to marry Riley," she sobs.

  Oh. I turn my face up to the ceiling, blowing out a breath. "It’s—it’s all right. Just get up and stop crying. It is really disconcerting watching myself do that."

  Alora sniffles mightily and sways to her feet, clasping her hands in front of herself. It’s a pretty dress, pearls and silver beads sprayed across it. It’s not for me. Never was. "What did Kelvin tell you about my absence?"

  "He—he said you abandoned the throne. That he needed me to pretend to be you so there wouldn’t be another war. I refused at first, of course, but he told me this was my only chance, and…and…"

  I hold up a hand before she devolves into blubbering again. "All right, enough. I’ll speak to him and get this sorted out. Get you your face and your groom back, yeah?"

  She hiccups and nods. Her voice is similar enough to mine, but she has some work to do on my mannerisms.

  From outside, a knock sounds at the door. "Your highness?" Kelvin’s baritone rumbles through the door. "Are you all right in there?"

  I nod slowly, and Alora heaves a few whimpering breaths. "Yes," she finally answers.

  "May I come in?"

  I move away from the bed a step at a time, to the wall just behind the door. "Let him in," I tell her.

  She wipes at her face with the side of her hand as she goes, heaving the big bar upwards. As soon as it’s free, he pushes the door open, knocking her back. I step forward, and he turns his steely eyes on me. "Close it behind you," I tell him. "This is my castle, not your barn."

  He spares a glance at the point of my sword, then reaches out behind him with a dismissive gloved hand. The door swings shut again, and all at once, the room falls into silence, save the wind gusting in through the gauzy white curtains. He tugs on the blue wool of his dress uniform and squares his broad shoulders. "If it is," he says, folding his arms, "why is it I’ve been here ensuring Elyssia doesn’t fall apart while you’ve been out rolling around in the dust?"

  "Kidnapped," I remind him.

  "Please." He scowls. "I’ve lived through enough of your tantrums to recognize them. You run away just long enough to make us worry. Then we’re supposed to be accommodating when you deign to show up again."

  "No, you’re right," I admit. "I wasn’t kidnapped, and maybe I started off intending to piss you off a bit. But it turns out that I needed to do a bit more sightseeing than you let me do." I step forward, staring up at the underside of his squared-off chin. "Slave camps, Kelvin?"

  He holds his ground, looking mildly down at me. "What about them?"

  "Those were not my orders. That is not what I promised the people."

  "You're not regnant yet," he returns, unfazed.

  "Yes, about that."

  "You are not ready."

  I take a step away from him. Alora sniffles again, and I pause to give her as much of an encouraging glance as I’m able before answering his accusation. "No, I wasn't. I didn't know enough about what rebuilding a country meant. But I wasn't taught."

  "We wanted to give you some time to settle in."

  I adjust my grip on my sword, still holding it low, away from him."But that was never your intent, was it? Not when you could keep me in the dark and a spare on hand in case I got tired of it."

  Kelvin looks back at me, completely calm. That was always the worst part of him. I could rail at him all I wanted, but he would just stare back as though he had nothing to add to the discussion. Now he shakes his head, ever the disappointed father, judging his many unruly children. His gray hair wafts in the still of the room, his hard features growing even harder. "This is how I know you are not ready. Alora was never meant to be a spare, but a failsafe. You are too concerned with having the power of a queen with none of the responsibility. If aught happened to you, what would befall Elyssia? The unrest would only return without an heir to take your place. It is precisely this sort of thing that a ruler must be prepared for before a country can be handed to them."

  "And I've thought about that recently. Been forced to, really. I am learning, Kelvin. Perhaps more than you'd like me to. We never discussed the keeping of slaves."

  "And what would you have me do with all them? People who plotted against your father, raised swords to kill you in the heat of battle? Set them loose to plan another Legion
uprising in a year’s time? Peace doesn’t just happen, Caelin."

  "How much peace do you think we’d have if this got out? Gods, Kelvin." Even as my lips stop moving, I feel the twinges of doubt. I shake myself back into resolve. "Is the need to prevent a war that's yet to materialize in more than a few pockets of scrubby trees and back alleys worth compromising what I set out to do—what we all said we set out to do when we took up arms?"

  He shifts his weight. "High-minded ideals rally people. Decisive action keeps them safe."

  "Safe—Kelvin." I shake my head. "They’re starved. Beaten. Broken. For no reason than the fact that they defended what they saw at the time as a homeland. The freedom to do so was everything the Resurgence stood for. Or in victory, have we become so much like the Legion that we can no longer tell the difference?"

  He sets his jaw, his gloved hands folded in front of him. That uniform of his, ever spotless. The many medals and the sash and cords afforded to him in light of his loyal service to Elyssia. I have never had a stronger urge to reach out and just muss them up. Childish? Certainly, but I grow weary of being spoken to like a child. "Do not think you have learned all that there is to know. I have seen more in my years than you have in yours."

  I want to scream at him, but he’ll only write it off as yet another childish outburst, and I need him to give me ground. I grit my teeth and though it pains me almost as much as my shoulder does, I tell him in a near growl, "I concede that. But I do trust in what I've seen now. I know how to speak to those who were lost in the Legion, to lure them back to an Elyssia free of that lurking evil. It isn't easy and it takes time, but we must show them that we are worth their trust, and using the same methods as the old oppressor will do nothing for that. Deceiving them…" I look at Alora. "Even with the best intentions will only break their trust when they find out."

  "They won't."

  "Someone will notice," I say. "Riley."

  "Riley will do what is asked of him by his country," he returns stiffly. Alora shifts her weight in the massive dress uncomfortably, looking back and forth between us as though watching a fencing match. "The same cannot be said of you, and as such, you are not fit to wear the crown."