Twenty-Six
As I walked I brooded over Andrei, trying to undo the knots. They only seemed to wind into new ones.
“That bottle thing, the Aebelavadar, it belonged to the Queen,” I said to Floy. “And it fits into that broach. Faiorsa was the one. From the journal, the woman who stole the baby. And Andrei’s the––like I thought––” I groaned like a ship in a storm.
“Mordan would be proud,” said Floy.
“Who is he, then?” I walked so fast I was almost running. I was confused as I’d ever been––the baby in the journal was supposed to solve problems, not make new ones. “What was she doing,” I said, “making him prince of two countries? Getting hold of that weapon and inviting all the Ombenelva in the world to squat over Norembry. Was that what she wanted?”
“Yes,” Floy said sarcastically, “considering all the work she put in.”
“Well she left a big pile, right enough.”
“But there––I doubt she intended to die before sorting it out.”
“Herist poisoned her,” I said. “That’s what happened, and now he’ll sort it out.”
My feet had steered me to the belltower. I climbed the terrace and threw myself down in the shade at the base of a pillar. My legs grew cold and I stuck them in the sun. The wind chased locust leaves and cloud shades through the square, and a shadow grew firm and stayed in place over my knees.
I’d half-expected it––the belltower was a sort of lodestone for him. “Well met, your High Royalness.” My blood boiled and I drew my legs back into the shade.
“And you, sparrowshit.”
“You listen,” I said. He didn’t move, so I tried to get it over with in one breath: “Ellyned needs for them Omben troops to leave straightaway, and the Aebelavadar belongs to you, don’t it? And they want it real bad. So send the weapon off somewhere and they’ll go after it. Or you can give it to them. But either way you’ve got to send em away. Norembry can’t support an army.”
“What are you blabbering about?” He wiped sweat off his face. “Believe me, I hate them as much as everyone else. But I can’t send them away.”
“Why?” I hugged my knees.
“They’re the only thing keeping Herist at bay. And with Lorila like it is––”
“The Queen was the only thing keeping Herist at bay, and now she’s dead. Poisoned by him, no doubt. Now he’s got rid of her, he’ll get rid of you next and use your Ombenelva to overthrow the government.”
“Overthrow the government?” His brows knotted together. “You think he has the wits?”
“You,” I said, “are vastly underestimating his wits.”
“Alright.” He spoke as if trying to calm a nervous horse. “I’ll have him killed––then they’ll have to take orders from me.”
“A sixteen-year-old boy?” I scratched my hair furiously. “And if you manage that, what then? Why keep them here? To march against Caveira? And after ye’ve plowed over Dirlan, were you gonna send a letter to the Lorilan Ravy-whatsit asking him to tea in his desecrated duchy?”
“If he accepts the invitation,” said Andrei, who was working up a temper, “I’ll be happy to arrange with him his terms of defeat.” He took a good look at my expression, and said quickly, “Both countries only want stability and he’s on his sickbed with his cousins squabbling––”
I stood up. “You’re going to invade Lorila?” The irony was too much. “D’you mean to be an emperor? Andrei the Terrible, Scourge of the West?”
He didn’t say anything. I nocked the arrow on my heartstring, drew it back, and took aim. “Or are you too cowardly to send them troops away, too frightened Herist’ll resent it and let slip about those children he murdered? They probably thought it was their father coming. What a shock it must’ve been.” He still said nothing, and it made me cruel. “You’re nothing but a usurper.”
He went very white. “I didn’t give those orders.”
“Maybe.” I shouldn’t have said it––he definitely wasn’t going to listen now, and to hell with the whole country if it meant I had to get on my knees. “So why are you so scared of a letter? So scared of it you’re getting caught up in a fake war? You’ve got to get rid of the Aebelavadar, it in’t good. And the Ombenelva––get em out while they’re still obeying you, and send a message to Lorila about Caveira and Herist’s warmongering. And if Herist strikes back, who cares? Folk’ll know what he’s done by then. They’ll think it’s nothing more than slander. If you to go to war instead, Ellyned ain’t gonna sit by.”
“Ellyned won’t sit by for much, will they?” he burst out. “Ellyned can’t understand the quickest way to pull us out of the mud is an army and a war.”
I couldn’t believe him. “Out of the mud?” I put a hand behind my back––the rock was damp. “Norembry don’t want to be important. Don’t you know what happens to important places?” I was yelling now. “Lorila, Virnraya, Evenalehn that used to be Eurlaire––they all rise with tricks, tyranny, war, and fall with the same shit again and over again in a hurtful, miserable cycle while everyone in this muddy nowhere goes about their slow, backwards business of being happy.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I suppose you have to be human enough.”
“For what? Destroying everything?”
“Forgive me, Aloren.” His voice shook. ”But I must compensate you for all your work.” He reached into his cloak. I thought of the handkerchief, but instead he pulled out a small sack of burlap. He slammed it into my hand. “It’s gold. Enough to buy a ship. Now get out of here. If I see you again I don’t know what I’ll do.”
I dropped the sack. Coins clinked. He walked away and the void in my chest filled with the old hate.
***
I left the gold beneath the belltower, and the hate stopped the flow of sense to my brain, so that by the time I’d retraced my steps to the tavern on the quay, the letter in my pocket, the one intended to stop the rebellion, was given not a thought when I burst in and upset the tool bench again. Hal was there this time, his back to the door, and he played a tune with Halfwit Tom.
Bequen saw me first. She didn’t even have to ask, just took one look and threw herself out the door, probably to rally the west side.
The room got quiet. “They’re staying,” I explained.
Then one of them began shouting for building barricades around the warehouses, and another for igniting the Daldera ships and raiding the armories, and the room turned clamorous. Begley Turnip climbed up from the bench where he’d been lying with a bottle and leaped towards the tools I’d knocked over. But Sal and her table were there first, grabbing up wrenches and crowbars and hammers; and they began ripping crates apart in search of other things.
The breath caught in my chest. “There’s too many of em,” I shouted. “Ye can’t fight em. There’s too many.” But the din swallowed my voice. Tears began to roll down Tom’s cheeks; and I stole his fiddle and whacked it against people’s backs, but no one noticed. Haberclad snapped a lantern from the ceiling and swung it from the chain like a flail; and Hal pulled me under a table, where it was near black. He yelled that I could do no more about it, that I had best get myself hidden somewhere. I pulled away and saw Wille and Padlimaird headed towards the door, pokers bristling in their arms. I knew immediately where they were going: the forge, to hammer the metal into weaponry. I made after them.
Bequen had burnt trails through the streets. The lampposts along the quay were decapitated and folk had tossed the lanterns into warehouses, where fire sneaked about the wood and flowered. The sun sank and people ran amok, cramming their pockets with bread, and swinging chickens by their feet. Others were upturning carts, ripping up docks, and piling crates into the bones of a barricade. I narrowly avoided a few rolling kegs, and pushed through the crowds down a side street.
Smoke curled out of the smithy, and sure as the sun had gone, I could hear Wille and Padlimaird pounding and singing.
“These useless things ain’t for flattening iron, are they?” Wille threw a hammer handle into a corner.
“We’ve got enough to last the night.” Padlimaird reached for the tool rack.
“Where’s Nefer?” They turned to look at me and Wille tongued his cheek.
“You were a sight back there. Looked like you had a row with Fillegal or Paddy.”
“Where’s Nefer?”
“What d’you want with him?”
“He’d bring you to your senses. Ye’ve a daughter to look after, and Sal.”
“Don’t stick your nose in,” said Padlimaird. Wille had an ugly look on his face.
“What d’ye suppose she’ll look like in ten years, my little Daira?”
“Chains?” said Padlimaird.
“Shackles?”
“A collar?”
Frustrated, I turned and ran into Nefer, who was holding an empty coal scuttle.
“Not sure they need yer craftsmanship.” He slowly eyed the three of us. “The White-Ships’re gettin ready to tackle the armories.”
The boys whooped and ran past Nefer, and he shoveled hot coal into the pail. “Don’t know about you followin em, Al. Ye’re a bit smaller, after all. Good for stealth, but I don’t know about fightin––” He walked toward the door with his smoking scuttle.
“Where’re you going?” I said.
“To help them along.”
“You can’t.” I moved in front of the doorway.
“Can’t I?” Nefer picked me up and set me behind him. “Who’re you, then? One o’ them lost Lauriad princes?” And chuckling, he stepped out the door.
I watched him leave and my eyes fell on the shoe-bench. I stared at the silver dragonfly that had alighted there, wrenched at my hair for several minutes, and then slipped the broach into my pocket for safekeeping. And ignoring Nefer’s advice, I took up a big slag shovel and walked out the door toward the east armory.
***
The sky was thick with the smell of fire. I chose the darkest streets and came to a halt east of the barracks, at the edge of the old canal, and gaped across at the smoke. It was billowing from one of the northwestern towers of the palace.
Soldiers fled from the barracks by the dozens, across the bridge, and I had a keen idea about what Nefer had done with his scuttle of coal.
Movement below drew my eye––a few people weaving through the debris at the bottom of the canal.
They reached the side and I recognized a voice. Someone scrambled for handholds. Catching sight of Padlimaird’s white face, I walked over and gave him a hand. He pulled himself up, and grabbed his poker from a man I didn’t know.
“We’ll have better weapons than these soon enough,” the man said, hauling himself after. “I’ll go get more folk should the garrison come back overly quick. We’ll have at the both of them tonight.” He ran down an alley toward the quay. Nefer jumped over the edge of the canal like a great black cat, and dangled his leg down for the last of them, a boy too short for Wille.
“Go an’ hide yerself, girl.” Nefer’s forearms were grey with coal dust. “There’s wickeder men than I out tonight. You go with her, Paddy.”
“But it was my idea,” said Padlimaird in a furious whisper.
“You thought to light the palace afire?” I asked.
“Max’s bedchamber.”
“Gave you special permission, did he?”
“Yes.” Max threw back his hood and rubbed his nose, and before Nefer could spin more warnings Max grabbed Padlimaird by the shoulder, and they ran toward the armory. Nefer growled, waved me against a building, and walked after the boys, whistling like a happy thrush.
“That one’ll get his neck split for treason,” sang Floy from the eves.
“Which one?” My heart skipped and I walked after them.
***
The soldiers’ fountain murmured in the courtyard. Two sentries slouched unconscious against the wall, almost indistinguishable from each other. The lights had been blacked. I rubbed my sore eyes: it was a hive of silent activity, people handing off bows, pikes, swords and staves.
Nefer and the boys got lost in the crowd and I hung behind for a bit. I heard a voice calling through the arcade: “They’re here! Overtaking the bridge.”
“Those not in line,” said someone else, “move up. We’ll hold them off till Drebald comes with men from the quay––”
The voice was cut off with a gruesome noise. I saw a big man––Nefer––hurdle through the arches, followed by a swarm of other folk. I fought to look, and Max stood abandoned in the center, hood shrugged from his head.
Finally he threw his hood up and ran after the others, and likewise abandoning my senses I walked through the arches, slag shovel swinging.
The bridge writhed; everything was a muddle. A cudgel swung down. The breeze ruffled my hair, and seeing the uniform, I kicked the man in the knees and slammed his face with the flat of my shovel.
Head buzzing, I whacked my way past a silver-black cuirass and one more of the grey garrison, and then the shovel slipped from my sweaty hands.
Wood smashed against my mouth. I tasted blood, and the soldier swung back his club; and Sal appeared behind him, looking wild with her hair unwrapped and her arms bare. She clapped him on the side of the head with a skillet.
He fell over me, and Sal leaned forward. She got hold of my ear to make certain it was me. “Nefer’s sent me with a message and a safety procedure.”
“Where’s Wille?” I wiped my bloody mouth.
“The other armory, or maybe the quay by now, but don’t you fret. Drebald’ll bring him back with the others, and we’ll have this sorted by the time you’ve woken.”
“Woken?”
The last thing I saw was the back of the skillet.
Though it was a sleep of Nefer’s craftsmanship the corners corroded some.
After someone knocked down some of the arcade to block the barracks bridge, I was thrust beneath the collapsed roof, where the sound echoed: Many boots walking, unnoticed, over the old Llenad Bridge. The snap and rip of a knife under the dark lamps into the neck of a man named Drebald. Soldiers moving through the arches, a hard voice in the courtyard, the whine of the bows. Nefer’s laugh; Max’s small protest when his hood slipped from his head. Bequen singing.
***
My clothes were wet when light came, and my hair caught on a rafter. I ripped my head loose and slipped on my belly under the fallen eve. Fog curled over the pavement. There was a notched cutlass on the ground. I looked up and saw a man hanging from a lamppost. The fog cleared some, driven into the corners by a few needles of rain, and I knew him by his skin: dark as harbor water.
Bequen was there, too, spread out on another lamppost. And Sal, eyes wild, arms out and ready to fly. I couldn’t see Padlimaird. Somewhere Floy was chipping.
The streets loomed and thickened, blurred by water, water creeping through the paving stones and swilling round my ankles, filling my ears with slapping and dripping and wailing. The ground felt as though it were crumbling under my feet, and I fled.
The lower streets flowed with water, just as they had three summers back when Andrei opened the sluice. I ran south along the rushing canal to the old Llenad Bridge, where the rotten planks were certain to fall away beneath my feet. I had failed. I had failed everyone; everyone was dead, and I wanted nothing more than to join them.
Trid was already on the bridge, sitting where I’d last seen him.
He stood up. “You’re not dead?” He walked off the bridge and stopped a few steps from me. His eyes were red-rimmed. “Max is. His brother didn’t know who he was. Had his hood up, the idiot.”
“Who cares?” I was scarcely aware of talking. “Everyone’s dead.”
“What?” He seemed to come to himself.
I scratched blood from my shoulder. “Move.”
He stepped in front of me. “Aloren, you’re not right in the head––”
“Get out of the way. Go on, move.” I tried to push past him, but he stood like a wall. I knocked him aside and ran for the canal’s edge.
But before I could reach it, something sliced through my brain, burned down my spine and neck so that I felt half-gone.
I collapsed, head between my knees, feeling as miserable as when I’d first pulled the Marione. I wanted so badly to die. Trid raised me up; he was warm under my face, and I shook with sobs and dirtied his shirtfront. He dragged me from the edge, scraping my feet on the pavement.
“You are without a doubt the craziest piece of work I’ve ever––” He looked past me and pried me loose. His hands were hot and sticky.
Five of the garrison stood behind us, and Herist.
“My lord Natridom has proven hard to find this past week,” Herist said. “And the gutter rat. She was playing in the streets last night.” His voice was dangerously gentle. “She gave Kalka quite a bruise. Is she fraternizing with a fellow insurgent? A member of Caveira’s espionage outfit? Surely the Elden didn’t organize this all by themselves. As I recall, my lord Natridom, your father, before his untimely death, fostered you out to a foreign court because his brother had become very interested in Lorila’s line of succession, and your safety was in some jeopardy. Do you suppose Caveira has forgotten about his nephew? Would a hostage of your name fail to slip past his thick skull? Gershom, assist me––!”
This because I had run up and bitten his arm.
Gershom grabbed me from behind, and Herist took my arm and slashed it four times with his knife. The pitchfork figure that stood for treason.
I snarled, scraping at skin where I could find it; and Herist, spent in patience, grabbed hold of my ankle, pulled me from Gershom’s grip, and swung me out over the canal.
The man was a godsend, eager to do what I couldn’t. The wind caught my hair and slapped it across my face.
“Pointless savagery has resulted in your death a full day ahead of schedule, you stupid girl.” He sounded bored. “Think your last thoughts quickly.” My whole body pounded, screamed for him to end it. I was certain my thigh would tear from my hip.
Trid, upside-down, said, ”Put her down. Andrei won’t like it.”
Herist loosened his grip on my ankle. “Andrei’s opinion has no place here. Valiant though he is, he hasn’t the experience to deal with a crisis of this magnitude.”
“Where’ve you put him?” said Trid, and rain streamed down my nostrils, making the pain in my head nigh unbearable. “I haven’t seen him.”
“He would’ve done something desperate.”
“And so would you. Don’t drop her.” His voice became suddenly conciliatory. “Put her down. There’s something you should know.”
I knew right away what it was. “Just let it be.” The blood thumped in my head. “Trid––”
“You want to die?” he said. “I don’t give a whit for what you want.” He said to Herist, “Her father was Daonac Lauriad. I’m sure there’re people can vouch for it, and she’ll come in useful. The Girelden would do anything for their last Lauriad.”
Trid waited until Herist had set me on my feet. Keeping his eyes down, he turned and walked up the canal, shirttails dripping.
Herist scarcely noticed. “The waif with the thing in her fist.” He stared at me, twisting a button on his jacket. The movement of his fingers near drove me mad. “The thing lost in the harbor. Gershom, search her.” He pushed me amid his soldiers. “And not a word of this to anyone.”
I squeezed myself tight as they shoved hands under my tunic. A man found Father’s ring when he pushed it against my breast, and in their excitement they never found the broach and letter alongside my knee. Someone yanked the ring from its patch of cloth, and they tied my wrists and ankles. Then they threw me over a shoulder and traveled a minute, or an hour.