Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 14
“Labour?” Kidira asked.
The conversation went back and forth. It was meaningless, directionless. I tuned it out, and instead turned my mind to the framework around us. Like the buildings that made up Soldato, I couldn’t imagine life stirring in such a place; I couldn’t picture any rooms beyond the one we were in, or people dwelling within them. The fact that the King, if he did exist, was likely in the same building as me barely registered. He felt as far off as he’d been while I was in Felheim, or Canth.
But there was something in the building, in the same way there’d been something in that long forgotten temple, so far away. I hadn’t had to push my way through a thick forest and the Canthian heat alike, and in comparison, my head was clear. I knew I wasn’t the only one. I should’ve been able to trust what I felt, now that I understood it.
If I did understand it. It wasn’t the same, but it was: it was as though Kondo-Kana was the green of seafoam, and this was the green of a forest, sunlight filtering through the canopy. It came closer. Drew towards me and pulled me in.
“Prince Rylan needs soldiers,” Tirok said dismissively. “And so provides us with those suited to manual labour. Agados’ industry is vast, and our people expect – and deserve – a certain way of life.”
Eden furrowed her brow as she put the last of the pieces together, and Kidira’s silence said she’d already worked it all out. Eden’s mouth formed a silent oh, and though I knew I should’ve cared, all I could think was how right everyone had been. How there really was a necromancer in Agados, working for the King.
“Former Kastelirians,” Eden said. “Rylan razes the Kingdom, realises that he has made a grave mistake, and so trades survivors from his onslaught for yet more soldiers.”
“It isn’t nearly so bad an arrangement,” Tirok said. “We give them food, shelter. More than Felheim has offered. From my understanding, you are busy plugging the holes in your wall in order to keep them out.”
He was wrong, but he wasn’t. Felheim had refused to take responsibility for what its Prince had done. The King and Queen were busy pleading innocence, busy acting as though they were not heartless when it came to the former Kastelirians, but simply thinking of their own people first. Protecting them now, when in the past they had sent dragons after them. And Agados, they were doing the Kastelirians no favours: they were taking more from them than they’d ever provide, taking advantage of a tragedy that clung to each of them like smoke in their lungs.
I wondered how many had died. Millions. Millions were gone, yet we spoke of the former Kastelirians as though there had never been so many of them. As though they outnumbered the Felheimish ten to one, and we did not have enough land, enough shelter, enough food.
I gripped the edges of my seat under the table. Claire would be Queen, I told myself. She would be Queen and see that each and every one of the survivors had a roof over their heads and a lasting sense of safety. And to think, I’d once had the gall to believe I had it worse than anyone else.
Selfish, selfish.
“They join your legion of pane, then,” Kidira said, eyes fixed fast on Tirok’s. I don’t think she’d blinked the entire time we were sat down with him.
The pane had been driven out of Agados. There weren’t any pane in Agados, not anymore. Yet Tirok merely inclined his head and smiled as though it was a trivial matter, beyond his control.
“They are strong. Hard-working,” he explained. “Obedient, too.”
Of course there were pane in Agados. I knew how poorly they were treated in Kastelir and Felheim, and for some reason, we considered ourselves to be better than Agados. My stomach turned as I realised why the villagers led such leisurely lives in Agados, entrapped within it though they were. I would’ve sunk into my seat if not for the feeling seeping through the walls: closer, closer.
There were only two things in the world. Us, in that room, and the outside; blank, save for another necromancer.
“The deal is off. Rylan did not have the required authority to make such decisions for Felheim or Kastelir,” Kidira said, and it was all she would say. She would never rise to any bait, unless she could set someone to burn for it.
“Certainly,” Tirok said, spreading his fingers out across the table. “As soon as our soldiers are returned to us, we will be happy to rescind all past offers.”
Eden shot to her feet, hands slamming on the tabletop.
“You know very well that we cannot do such a thing, and yet—”
“Enough,” Kidira said. There was no bite behind her words, but Eden fell silent. “You will have your soldiers back in time, Tirok. For now, we agree on this much: no more deals will be made with Rylan. He does not move on behalf of Felheim. We do.”
Tirok bowed his head.
“If there is to be a change of power, it is in Agados’ best interest not to fall out of favour with the new monarch,” he said.
The meeting concluded. Everyone rose to their feet and Tirok’s personal guard ushered us out of the door. I wondered what we’d achieved. What the point in it was. All we had done was discover things I would’ve slept better at night not knowing. Perhaps we had hindered any future attempts Rylan might make for Agadian support, but I could not think to the future. All I could think of were the people trapped in Agados, human and pane alike, because we were not working fast enough. Because we would not offer them a home.
Rylan still had his army. Kidira had not asked for numbers because Tirok either would not tell her or would skewer the truth. We were no better off, and I was more confused about Agados than I ever had been. It was easy to feel nothing but contempt for it, to believe that it was all the things Akela wasn’t, but in going there, I had learnt that it was made up of people who had nothing to do with their King or politicians.
Nothing to do with Tirok.
Eden hooked her fingers around my elbow and gently eased me out of my seat. My legs worked automatically, and I let myself be jostled towards the strange, moving box of a room. Tirok waited for the doors to slide open, expression intolerable; he was doing his utmost not to smile.
But what happened when the ropes and pulleys weren’t working? When there wasn’t anyone to operate them, or the pieces jammed together? There had to be stairs. There were stairs. I could feel the King’s necromancer moving in a zigzag pattern, unlike the up and down jolts the lift would provide.
All of the doors down the corridor were identical, but surely one of them would take me to where I needed to be.
I began to sweat, and not with the summer heat. I couldn’t keep my fingers still. Couldn’t stop light from cracking around them. Kidira caught my eye, grounding me for a heartbeat. She knew what I was planning. Or she didn’t, but knew she would not like whatever I was about to do.
“Rowan,” she said in a low warning.
I took a deep breath. I was sorry, I truly was, but no part of me knew how to stand still. No part of me understood how to turn away, how to do anything but run.
I was halfway down the corridor before the guards began to yell. Tirok's voice rose above them, having expected trouble from Kidira before me, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter. Like the time I'd blindly torn through Queen Nasrin's palace with her guards at my heels, I knew where to go even if I didn't know the way.
Everything I was, everything that coiled and pulled within me, made a map from nothing. I skidded left, shoulder clipping the corner, and moved as though there was cannon fire behind me. What did it matter if one of the guards caught me? I could ensure they let go, that they never put a hand on me or anyone else ever again. I could do it. I could do it, and knowing I could meant I didn't have to.
The faith I had in being able to kill those who pursued me didn't frighten me. It only made my muscles work harder, and suddenly I was there. I was where I was meant to be. I grabbed the door by its handle, flung it open, and tripped and stumbled my way in.
And there she was, running towards me.
We didn't collide. I put my arms out, and when my palms bumped against her shoulders, she knew to stop. That it was safe to be still; that I was something like her, even if she didn't understand what that was.
My first thought was that she was young. Younger than I was. My heart tightened and I knew it wasn't because of what we were. I kept my hands on her shoulders and took her in. She was a young black woman who stood no taller than I did, and she was all softness: her cheeks, her blind eyes, her smile.
She opened her mouth to speak, quick and nervous and a little breathless, and my heart sank.
Agadian.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't understand.”
“Oh,” came her reply, hesitant but delighted. “You speak the simple tongue.”
I didn't get the chance to say anything more. The guards caught up with us and their booming voices filled the small room.
“Halla!” one of them called.
Halla. Halla. It must've been her name. I dropped my hands from her shoulders and she caught them in her own, skin warm. She didn't stop smiling and I couldn't stop looking at her. For all I knew, there were a dozen crossbows pointed at the back of my head. Let them shoot, I thought, and wrapped my fingers around hers.
Although her eyes had that same glassy complexion Claire's did, Halla was as transfixed on me as I was on her. She understood what I was. She understood that we were the same.
She said something to the guards, short and sharp and soft. She spoke to them not as though they were men with weapons, barking orders and far from hesitant to make use of any sort of force, but as though they were her brothers. If the King kept her there, then they were all she knew. This was her idea of kinship, of family.
The guards listened to her.
They did not leave, but I was distantly aware of them begrudgingly relaxing, weapons stowed but not forgotten.
“You're... like me,” Halla said. “Who are you? Did the King bring you here?”
“I'm Rowan,” I said, when I remembered that words were mine to control. “And nobody brought me. It was my idea to come here.”
“Rowan,” Halla said, forgetting the rest. She said my name as though there was nothing else worth speaking of in the world, and whispered it softly to herself. I expected I'd been the same around Kondo-Kana, and was embarrassed and humbled at all at once. I still repeated her name, sometimes, despite being an ocean from her.
Everything slid into place. This was why I'd come to Agados. Halla was the reason for it all.
“Then the King shared his power with you as well?” she asked.
Her Mesomium was fluent despite the disuse it had fallen to, and the edges of her accent spoke of northern Kastelir.
“What?”
Halla let go of my hands, only to find the edges of my jaw with her fingertips.
“I don't know how I know, but you're... we're the same, aren't we?” she asked, carefully tracing the shape of my face. “Rowan. He has chosen you, like he chose me.”
“What? No,” I said. I wanted to sound more determined about it, but everything inside of me was lulled into a false sense of security. I knew the guards were behind me. I knew Tirok was listening to every word I breathed. Yet I could not bring myself to shout, to protest. To feel anything like fear. “My power is mine. I didn't get it from anyone.”
Halla's mouth twitched at the corner. She'd once been as naïve as I was, but now knew better.
“Rowan, it's alright. I didn't understand at first, either, but—”
“Halla,” Tirok snapped. When he stepped forward, he spoke in Mesomium to remind Halla that he would always understand every word she said. “That's more than enough. You know you aren't supposed to be this far from your chambers. It isn't safe, my girl.”
Halla shrunk away from me, shoulders up by her ears. It didn't make any sense: not only did she think that her powers came from the King of Agados, but she flinched when someone as powerless as Tirok spoke down to her.
“But—” she protested weakly.
“You'd best return, lest the King find out,” he said sternly. He added something else in Agadian, something I wasn't meant to understand.
Halla reached out and brushed her fingertips against mine, but Tirok placed a gentle, possessive hand on her shoulder and eased her back.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, but I didn't know if the apology was meant for Tirok or me. “I just thought... I felt...”
“You're tired. You've been working too hard lately,” Tirok reassured her, fingers digging into her shoulder. “Come. The guards will escort you back to your chamber, and you may have whatever you wish for dinner.”
She let them take her away from me. She had no choice. Her fingers trailed behind her, as if reaching out to me, and we stood in silence until the sound of their footsteps dulled overhead.
“Doesn't need a weapon,” Tirok muttered with dry humour, finally looking at me, into me.
I left him with no room for doubt. I let the light tear up my arms until my eyes were alive with what I was, and I stared back at him so he knew I'd go through every door and guard in the building, if I had to. If that was what it took.
“Indeed,” Kidira said from behind me. If she was disappointed or frustrated, it didn't show. Eden's face had paled, but she wasn't quite at the stage of fainting. “Come, Rowan. Let us take this news back to Felheim.”
“Going so soon?” Tirok asked. “As luck would have it, there is suddenly more for us to discuss.”
“Another trade? More labour to be done on behalf of your King?” Kidira asked.
It was the right thing to do. If Kidira left me there to become as Halla was, perhaps Agados would withdraw its armies. I had to be worth more than anything Rylan could offer.
“Exactly,” Tirok said, inclining his head with a respect he hadn't thought to extend earlier.
Eden stepped forward, about to protest, but Kidira held out a hand, silencing her.
“Rylan has already tried to bargain for her. Rowan comes with me,” Kidira told him. “As long as there is breath in my body, I intend to keep her by my side. And as long as she is by my side, there will be breath in my body.”
Having expected Kidira's stubbornness, Tirok caught one of his guard's eyes. They all drew their weapons in unison, but Kidira didn't flinch.
“Are you familiar with the pirate Gavern? He has aspirations for the Canthian throne, and has funded himself, in part, through trade,” Kidira asked.
Thrown off by the question, Tirok paused, and said, “I am indeed. He has opened many doors for us in Canth.”
Nodding, Kidira said, “Sorry. He had aspirations for the Canthian throne, before Rowan convinced his men to allow her on his ship, marched into his quarters, and killed him.”
Tirok understood the threat, and did what he could not to react. He raised his brow and stopped his guards from stepping forward with a raised finger.
“Did she?” he asked. I lifted my chin, and he paused to calculate whether I'd kill them all where they stood or not. “Unfortunate. I shall have to find another contact in Canth.”
“You shall,” Kidira agreed. “Gavern's corpse was marched to Commander Ayad's blade. I do not need to tell you how that ended.”
Tirok's mouth curled into the start of a smile as he finally regained his footing.
“Commander Ayad? Well, if that—”
“Kidira saved my life before,” I quickly interrupted him. “So if you say anything about Akela, I'll probably have to do Kidira a favour.”
“In that case,” Tirok began slowly, hands clasped behind his back, “I wish you a hasty journey back to Felheim.”
I stepped towards Tirok, lifted my jaw, and let him take in the white fire I had become. The situation with Halla was likely precarious at best, and whatever means they used to control her were hanging by a thread: I was an unknown, unpredictable, and Tirok knew better than to push and pull me.
I followed Kidira down the corridor, and the three of us left in a silence that was not quite victorious. The guards followed at a distance, unsettled, tense. Let it make them clumsy with their crossbows, I thought: I could shrug them off.
Halla's presence left me like blood from a wound. The Agadians herded us out of the building and through the streets; out of the city, and beyond the horizon. We were a liability. A threat. They were scared of me, and I did not know why. I was nothing but smoke and mirrors.
What happened with Gavern had been a fluke. The result of circumstance piled upon circumstance. It was nothing but a bad dream. I wouldn't take Tirok's head, no matter how his smile made my skin crawl. I wouldn't knock the life out of his guards' chests. They were just people under that armour, people who'd been led to believe they were doing the right thing.
“If I were you,” Tirok said, by way of letting us go relatively free, “I would have King Garland track down the Prince as a priority.”
“Because he has done such an admirable job of that, these last few years,” Eden muttered.
“I trust you know your way out,” Tirok said, lip curling.
They marched back to their perfect, polished city, and the weapons on their backs went unused, unfired.
“Come,” Kidira said, placing a hand on my shoulder.
Not to comfort me. To pull me back towards Felheim and away from Soldato.
I brushed it off.
“We need to go back,” I said. “I'm not leaving her there.”
CHAPTER VIII
“They’ll be expecting it,” Kidira said.
She wasn’t shocked. She’d expected me to say that.
I was predictable. I was predictable and I knew it, but there was another necromancer in Agados. As much as I wanted to free her for my own self-centred reasons, there was more to it than that. Without a necromancer, without Halla, the King lost his illusion of immortality and his unquestioned, unchanging power along with it. For a while, at least. Long enough for Felheim to gather up the tattered scraps of its past and help those Rylan had traded away like coins at market.
“What if… what if it’s too obvious,” I said, throwing my hands out to the sides. “What if they know how much I’ll want to come back, but because I know that they know that, they won’t really expect me to be that stupid.”
