Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 27
It was hours before we made it back to the castle gates. Every citizen in the capital had something to say to Claire, and while they did not intentionally block us in, our impromptu parade crawled mere inches at a time. It was impossible not to notice the way so few openly mourned the King, but the people were right to look to the future, rather than dwell on the past. Claire was real. She was right there amongst her people – people, not subjects – while the King had toiled away in the castle, choosing the next village or town to be struck by a dragon.
They loved her. I loved her.
I loved her as a Queen, a Knight, a Marshal, and just as Claire. I loved her as the person who’d taken me from my old life and promised me a better one, but that did nothing to break Queen Aren’s icy gaze.
I was still a necromancer, and I would always be treated as such.
The castle gates opened for us, and the bells rang out for another reason altogether. All gathered forgot the threat of war. Courtiers tripped over themselves to express sympathies and assure Claire they’d always known she had the makings of a great Queen. Council members rushed forth, ready to spill their country’s secrets and accounts, now that the tide was turning. Dozens of people I couldn’t identify and didn’t care to sought Claire’s ear; they were already discussing when the coronation would be, and what she’d wear; and oh, would she be changing the royal family’s sigil to a phoenix, too?
“Please! Please! We are grateful that you are being so enthusiastic in your support of the Princess who is becoming a Queen soon, yes, it is as if you are saving up all of your loyalty for this very moment. Not that we are needing it before!” Akela said, clapping her hands loudly enough for it to echo down the corridors. “Now, if you are being so kind, we are needing a little time alone. Today, it is being a big day! All of us, we are needing a break and we are eating and resting and sleeping. Goodbye!”
Akela had no official role within the castle, yet nobody thought twice about questioning her. The masses broke away with scattered murmurs, and our friends bid us farewell and promised to come back soon, one by one. When we went into a great, ostentatious room, seemingly having no purpose other than to display towering portraits and house a piano, only Claire, Akela, Queen Aren and I were left.
“Where are your attack dogs?” Claire asked, cutting off whatever her mother had been about to say.
“Likely reassessing where they wish to place their loyalties,” Queen Aren said, watching as Claire took slow steps towards the piano and found refuge in its seat. “I never claimed to trust them as far as I could throw them.”
“I am trusting you as far as I am throwing you,” Akela whispered, nudging my side. “I am very strong.”
Making a show of not engaging with her mother any further, Claire tentatively pressed the piano keys. A few notes rattled from within, filling the chamber with the sound of a string being pulled taut. She played no particular pattern as she tested the waters, but after a minute, regained some familiarity with the instrument.
She picked up speed along with a rhythm I didn’t recognise, but it soon became oddly familiar. Every time she missed a note thanks to her missing fingers, the three of us tensed, though Claire did little more than tut and start again.
“Really, Claire,” Queen Aren said. Claire didn’t look up from the piano. “A necromancer.”
Claire didn’t answer. She played faster and faster, not caring when the music jarred awkwardly.
“As if the part about her being a farmer wasn’t scandal enough. You change but you do not change, Claire. What are you going to do when your subjects find out about this dalliance?”
“I’m right here,” I said.
“It’s true,” Akela said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I am looking around and Northwood, she is being right here! And not only this, but she is having a mouth and she is having ears, too. It is amazing, I am knowing this.”
“That was quite the performance you put on earlier. I almost believed that there was nothing more to you,” Queen Aren said. She drew closer in spite of what I was. In her mind, I was already in chains, knees never touching the ground. “You may be infatuated with my daughter, but try, for a moment, to think of what this will do to any future Queen. If she is known to associate with you, do you think the people will trust her? Do you think they will rally behind her, or be swayed to Rylan’s cause?”
“What should she do? Chain me up in the Bloodless Lands?” I asked.
“You saw what you wanted to see. You do not understand what our ways have meant for Felheim and its prosperity. You do not understand—”
“You don’t understand,” I snapped, letting light flood from my eyes. I grasped strands of it in my fists and Queen Aren paled. Claire continued to play, notes blurring together, mistakes seeming heavy. Intentional. “All you care about is being Queen. I know that. You blame Rylan for everything that’s happened, because it makes your… your watered-down version of what he’s done seem more acceptable. I knew someone who wanted to be King before. He decided it was his right, even though the throne was given to the Princess. Do you know what I did to him?”
My whole body was light. I was burning with it, eyes like the moon, like Kondo-Kana’s, and Queen Aren could not answer me. Gods, I wanted her to speak up. I wanted a word to tumble from her lips so I could roar that I would not be used, that I would never be held against my will again.
But she couldn’t find her voice. The light bled from me, turning the carpet and floorboards beneath my feet white. Part of me was convinced I could bring Iseul back if I invoked the Bloodless Lands.
“I made a corpse of him. One minute he was sitting there, threatening me. The next, his face thudded against the table. I made that corpse stand up, climb out of a window, and into the ocean. And once he was back on dry land, I gave his body to Akela, so that she could take his head with an axe.”
Akela crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. I stared at Queen Aren as she’d once stared at me, and saw that she was truly afraid. I told myself that this was just. I told myself that I was only ensuring she never dared to hurt me again, no matter what it took; I told myself that I was in control, and that the surge of power rippling through me didn’t feel good.
“Claire…” Queen Aren said under her breath.
It was a plea for help.
Claire had taken to using one finger to strike the keys in order, high to low, high to low.
“I love who I love, mother,” she said. “Akela. Take Lady Aren to her chambers. Place guards outside; guards you trust. Ash and Laus ought to do. Search the chambers first. Ensure there is nothing that could be fashioned into a weapon, and that there are no means for her to communicate with anyone. No one is to go in without my strict, prior permission beforehand,” Claire said.
She did not look up.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Akela said, bowing deeply.
She marched over to Queen Aren – just Aren now – placed a hand on her shoulder to turn her on the spot, and tied her wrists behind her. She had done so a hundred times with prisoners and pirates alike, and Aren did not resist. She couldn’t. The Mansels were gone, and her only other option was facing a necromancer.
They left the room. I tried to shake the light out of my system, but it didn’t fade. No matter how I rolled my wrists or clenched and unclenched my fists it clung to me, and with every second that passed, my chest became tighter and tighter.
“That is it,” Claire said, tinkering with the last few keys. “I am to become Queen. I ought to have never listened to my mother and kept the news of King Garland’s death a secret to begin with. I was blinded by grief. But now it is so. Now all of Thule knows, and soon, all of Felheim will as well. Rylan, too. I am to become Queen, and now I must find a way to fulfil all of the promises I have yet to make. But it is done. It is over.”
I looked up from my glowing palms to stare at her. Wisps of light made my vision clearer and tinted at the same time, and I willfully chose to take any exhaustion on her part as indifference.
“It’s over. It’s over?” I asked, holding up my blazing hands. “Your mum was right, Claire. No one’s going to accept you if you’re with a necromancer.”
“I will make them accept us,” she stated.
“That—that doesn’t matter, Claire. Even if you could, it wouldn’t matter! Don’t you remember what was happening a few hours ago, before Rylan’s supposed army saved me? She was going to hurt me, Claire. She was going to cut me open because she could, and… and I guess everyone but me can take that in their stride. What happened to make this a part of my life? For this – being hurt, being used – to be something that just happens to me?”
“Rowan. I understand—”
“You don’t! You can’t. You’re not like me. You’re not what I am. You don’t have to spend every waking moment constantly fighting back the thought that you could kill anyone, that you could do whatever you wanted, because you don’t want to be that person. All my life! All my life I’ve listened to the things they said about necromancers, and I learnt to hate myself. I convinced myself I had to work as a healer to prove that I was worth something, that I wasn’t what all the stories claimed I was, and as soon as people find out what I am…
“I’ve been outcast by my own village. After twenty-three years they just… they turned their backs on me. They forgot who I was, because suddenly, they could call me something else. It was like I’d never existed to begin with. I had to keep it a secret because they’d burn me otherwise, and in Orinhal they set fire to Sen’s home – they were willing to hurt Sen! – because of me. And that’s not even mentioning Katja. Do you know how I cried for you, Claire? Do you know that I sobbed out your name as I tried to cling to the hand that wasn’t there anymore? Do you know that she told everyone afterwards?
“She laughed. She… All I can think about is her. Not even her knives. Just the fact that she doesn’t want me anymore. But Rylan does. He’ll find a way to use me. Your mother would, if she could. All of them. All of this… it’s going to get worse. For me. And everyone can support me and defend me but it happens no matter what. And I don’t feel it any less.
“So how can you ask me to bring you into this, after this has been my whole life?”
Claire said nothing for a long moment. I knew what I said hurt her, but it was the truth; I needed to get it out or it would fester and I open a rift between us.
“I want to understand,” she eventually said.
“I know! I know you do, Claire, but you can’t. You’re not a necromancer. I need… I need to see Kondo-Kana. I need to leave.”
“You need to leave,” she repeated. Nothing in her expression betrayed any emotion.
“Yes! I need to go back to Canth. I need to get away from here. You don’t know what it was like for me there, Claire. The way they treated me. No one was afraid to look at me.”
“I don’t,” she agreed. “Because I was here.”
“And now you’re going to be Queen. You have Kouris. You have Akela. You have Kidira, Eden, Ash, Sen, Alex… You’ll be able to do what you set out to in the first place. But I can’t—I can’t breathe here.”
“My father is recently dead. My mother is imprisoned. My older brother is leading an army towards us, and I am to become Queen. It is all happening, all at once. I…” She paused, pursing her lips together. “I do not want to do this without you. I cannot.”
“I’m scared all the time, Claire!”
I hadn’t planned on saying any of it, and I didn’t understand how true it was until I had.
I needed to be gone. Gone, gone. Forgotten, more than that.
“You’re leaving,” Claire said, unable to process what she was saying.
“Yes! I need to. I need—I need to be somewhere I can just exist,” I said. I couldn’t stop throwing my hands out as I spoke, heart pounding, eyes stinging with tears.
“Do you not think I would like to leave this all behind?” Claire asked, voice almost a whisper. “That I would not like to cross the Uncharted Ocean and forget what my family have done, and the multitude of things there are for me to fix? That I would not like a new life with you, away from harm, where we did not have to worry about armies, but rather, what to make for dinner? We all want this to be over. We have all been hurt, and we all want to be away from this strife, free to live idealised versions of our own lives. But I cannot leave. It is my duty to stay here. I had hoped that you would consider it yours, too.”
“You think I’m selfish,” I said, swallowing a lump in my throat.
“I think you are afraid. I know you have been hurt,” she murmured. “I think you seek refuge in a dangerous woman because you do not understand yourself. I am selfish. I had hoped that I would be refuge enough for you.”
“Then why—” I could barely get the words out. “Why are you just sitting there, when I feel like this?”
The light was pouring out of me, leaving my body trembling. Tears streaked down the side of my face, catching on the corner of my mouth.
“I apologise,” Claire said, looking away from me. “My leg hurts. I can barely think, let alone stand. If I could embrace you now, if I could offer some small comfort, I would never let go. I hate that I cannot. Do not think that a lack of action on my part somehow dampens my feelings for you, Rowan.”
And for all my talk of how people had always treated necromancers, how they had instilled that loathing deep into my core, I had never hated myself as much as I did at that moment. I could not apologise. There were no words strong enough for how sorry I was, and so I did the worst thing I could think of: I left her alone in that room, stranded by the piano.
My boots slid in the slick mud of the forest long before I was aware of what I was doing. I’d left the castle and was charging between the trees, huffing and grunting every time I tripped on a root or caught my cheek against a low branch. Leave, leave, leave. That’s all there was for me to do. There was no taking back any of what I’d said, because I’d meant it.
Felheim was not safe, and it certainly wasn’t safe for me. Staying would be selfish. Claire had only just managed to pry the throne from her mother’s steely grasp, and if the people knew I was a necromancer – and they would find out – they would never accept her. It would add a whole new layer to our problems, and I was already losing count of all there was to contend with.
But Canth was a land of sweat and sea-salt, of scorching sand and the slow, blistering burn of the sun. It was pirates and chaos and broken bottles, and the only harm that had come to me there, the only thing that had stuck beneath my skin, originated in Kastelir. I could leave that all behind and become someone else. Someone new.
A pirate. A healer. The necromancer of Port Mahon.
All I had to do was find Kondo-Kana. She’d have answers to the questions I hadn’t yet thought to ask.
“Oak!” I called between the trees, when I could see the horizon beyond them.
He was hidden, but only so well as a dragon can hide. His going undiscovered depended on travellers sticking to the beaten path and not getting lost, and he jerked in surprise at the sound of my voice, too startled to realise it was me, for a moment.
Puffs of smoke rose from his nostrils and he leapt up onto all fours, growling before he could see reason.
“Whoa, whoa,” I said, holding up my hands. “It’s okay, Oak. It’s just me. We’re going, okay? We’re going to Canth, so… so just calm down and let me on your back so we can leave, okay?”
Oak’s fright turned to blank confusion. He tilted his head to the side, gesturing towards the castle, and let out a growl.
“It doesn’t matter! We’ve got to leave, Oak. I’ve got to leave.”
I wrapped my arms around one of his front legs and tugged on it, but it was no good. Oak was me and I was Oak, and the only difference was that he was clear-headed enough to realise how much I loved Claire. I pounded a fist against the hard scales covering his chest, and he growled, knocking me back with his shoulder.
He wouldn’t take me. Without him, it was eight weeks on a boat. Eight weeks alone with nothing but my thoughts, ocean open wide beneath me.
When I didn’t get back up, when I didn’t plead with him, he stretched out a wing and covered the damp ground with it. I crawled forward, curled up on it, and fell asleep remembering how it felt to be seasick.
CHAPTER XV
I awoke with Oak's scales imprinted on the side of my face. I scrubbed my cheek against the leathery wing he'd patiently stretched out all night for me, groaned in the face of a dawn that was too bright, too real, and reluctantly pushed myself into a sitting position.
“Morning, yrval,” Kouris said. There was a soft amusement in her voice that said she'd been watching over me for some time, and it told me the world hadn't ended in my absence.
“Nn,” I said, scrunching up my face.
Oak grunted, back muscles twitching. I shuffled off his wing but he did most of the hard work for me. He pulled it away like a rug from under my feet, and I went with the motion, slumping against Kouris' side.
“See, now that's why I didn't say good morning,” Kouris said.
I pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead. I was a necromancer: how did I still have a headache?
Bells rang out in the distance. Not only from the castle, but all of Thule below. I wondered if they'd stopped at any point during the night.
“Don't want to talk about it,” I grumbled.
“Don't suppose you do,” Kouris said, nudging me. “Claire didn't, either. All I got out of her was that you were probably already halfway to Canth.”
“Oak didn't want to go.”
“Aye. Rotten though his skull may be, he's still got half a brain left in it,” Kouris said, and Oak huffed in agreement. “What was your plan, yrval? Disappear overnight without saying anything to the rest of us?”
Kouris held out an arm to wrap around me, but I ducked away from it. I sat with my chin rested on my knees, arms holding them close to my chest, and came up with a dozen ways to explain myself. She'd seen what I'd had to do just to convince Queen Aren not to torture me, to use me. Like Claire, she could know what I'd been through but she would never understand it. I’d be the downfall of all we were trying to achieve. The premature end of Claire's reign.
