Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 48
Kidira had no such encouragement for me.
“If you can’t stay on your feet, stay off the battlefield,” she said briskly. “I had rather thought you would have wanted to meet with Halla.”
I didn’t glower at her. I leant against Akela’s side and let it go, because Kidira felt Katja’s arrival as keenly as I did. I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t want to talk about it.
The council members poured out of the room and Claire followed, leaning heavily on her cane. She exchanged a few words with Akela and Kidira, referencing something about tomorrow, and Akela ruffled my hair before leaving. She headed down the corridor with Kidira, the two of them off to spend one last evening together before we were all thrust onto the battlefield.
“You seem unsteady. We can sit inside,” Claire said, tilting her head towards the chamber she’d just stepped out of.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I said, back pressed to the wall. “It’s been a long day.”
“Kouris told you she’s leaving, I take it? I urged her to do so weeks ago, but she did not become the person she is without some degree of stubbornness.”
“That’s not the half of it,” I murmured.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Claire asked softly.
The concern in her voice shouldn’t have made my skin crawl. I wanted to talk about it but I didn’t. In the same way that it would be a relief to get it out, speaking of it would mean spewing thick mulch from all the forgotten recesses of my mind. It was too much at once. How could I talk about Kondo-Kana and Katja and Halla as though they were three individual, sequential things? It had all become tangled in my mind. The thought of anyone holding me made my chest tighten and my skin blaze with the heat of Canth, iron tight around my wrists again.
I didn’t have to explain myself. Claire stopped mid-motion, refraining from taking my hand and squeezing it, and offered me a way out. She offered me time.
“Would you do me a favour?” she asked.
Exhaling shakily, I nodded.
“I have spoken to Queen Nasrin and her guards, but have yet to seek out Reis. Given the circumstances, it is only right that we offer the Canthian delegates some measure of safety. I have offered to move the Queen from the castle and have her back on a ship to Canth as soon as is possible, but need to extend the same offer to Reis,” Claire explained.
“Okay. Okay,” I said. I could handle that. I could talk to Reis. “What did Queen Nasrin say? Has she already left?”
“Queen Nasrin dismissed me quite bluntly. She claims that she has seen greater threats in the form of – and I quote – drunken pirates playing at assassins, and wants no part in a treaty where one ally runs for the hills at the mere thought of danger,” Claire explained with a wry smile. “You would almost think an army was not making camp beyond the city.”
Varn and Atalanta weren’t leaving yet. Queen Nasrin and Kondo-Kana weren’t going to rush back to Canth. That was something to be grateful for.
“I doubt Reis will want to leave, either. But I ought to make the offer,” Claire added.
“You should talk to Reis,” I said, suddenly. “Their parents were from here. Their parents and their birth parents. They all got into trouble. Reis’ parents went to Canth and their birth parents stayed in Felheim, and they’d adopted Reis a few years before that, so…”
Nodding sharply, Claire’s fingers whitened around her cane.
“Kouris said the same. It’s a familiar story indeed,” she said. “Life chose separate paths for us.”
I reached out and squeezed her hand.
“You look similar, too,” I said, fingers slipping free of hers. “It’s your nose.”
Claire huffed and said, “Go. Find them for me and deliver the message, that they might reject my offer. I shall have a bath drawn for you.”
I decided to start my search at Reis’ chambers. Having grown up in a house with three rooms upstairs and three downstairs, I was impressed with myself for not only knowing my way around the castle, but wandering to the right chambers without having to think where I was going. In a way, the castle was less of a building and more a village in and of itself. Mine and Claire’s chambers were our house, the corridors were dirt paths, and the kitchens were little stores. Knocking at Reis’ chamber was no different from knocking on someone’s front door.
No answer. I knocked again. I’d known Reis to be a heavy sleeper in the past and though it was late evening, Canthians were used to sleeping in short bursts throughout the day.
I knocked one last time. I was about to give up and go elsewhere when I heard clattering within. The chain was pulled from the latch and Eden opened the door from within, almost tumbling into the corridor as it swung open.
“Rowan!” she said, oddly breathless. I was about to apologise for knocking so many times and making her panic but she went on to say, “Is everything alright? I thought we had until morning, but if things are progressing at such a—”
“It’s fine. Everything’s okay. I just wanted to see Reis,” I said, leaning to the side to look around her. The room beyond was dim, curtains already pulled to. “Are they here?”
Eden paused, opened her mouth to say something, and closed it with a shake of her head. Peering back into the room for a moment, she smiled at me and said, “Yes, yes. Would you like to come in?”
She stepped back, nervously fidgeting with her loose hair.
Reis dropped theirself into an armchair and grinned lazily up at Eden.
I glanced between them and Eden immediately dropped her hands from her hair and clasped them behind her back.
“Where’s the fire, kid?” Reis asked.
“Claire wants to know if you want to leave. She said she can put you on a boat back to Canth, because of the whole, you know, war situation. But she also doesn’t think you’ll want to leave, so I’m only here to deliver the message and ask what you want to do,” I said.
Reis waved a hand dismissively and said, “Ain’t going nowhere, but thanks. You lot can have your war and I’ll keep out of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hard to believe you’re concerned about my safety when you’re smiling like that,” Reis said. “Besides, I don’t wanna cross the ocean if Oak ain’t leading the way. I don’t got months to waste.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I admitted. “I mean, I don’t want you getting caught up in a battle or anything, but there’s been so much going on that I haven’t got to see you as much as I want to.”
“It’s not just you, me, Kouris and that hut no more,” Reis agreed. “Hurry up and deal with this bullshit and maybe we can find five minutes to chat.”
Eden fidgeted as I said my goodnights, shifting her weight from foot to foot. I raised my brow and she turned bright red.
Back in my chamber, one of the servants had seen to running a bath for me. It wasn’t like the dented metal tub I’d dragged in from the garden, back at my house. It was a small lake in and of itself, built into the floor, and heated from the underneath by hot coals licking at the stone. The water was still steaming when I poked my head into the chamber. I kicked my shoes off in the living area, eyes fixed on Claire.
She didn’t look as I had expected her to, though I didn’t know what a Queen waiting to clash with an enemy army come the morning was supposed to look like. She was restless, but hardly at the point of grinding her teeth together. She tapped her fingers against her desk as I removed my socks one at a time, nodding as I told her that Reis wasn’t going to leave us any time soon.
“Come with me,” I said, hand on the doorframe. “There’s lots of room.”
That got her to grind her teeth. “Rowan—” was the only protest she could make, for we both knew why she couldn’t do all the things she wanted to.
“It’s alright,” I told her, squeezing her hand. “It’s alright.”
It wasn’t. It wasn’t fair, either, but we both knew that. And I knew we could not hold it against one another.
There were decades within me and I could wait as long as Claire needed me to.
CHAPTER XVI
I awoke before dawn and would've fallen straight back to sleep, had the outline of Claire next to me not made that impossible. My fingers hovered over her shoulder but I didn't touch her. I couldn't risk waking her.
I slipped out of bed as slowly and quietly as I could, gathered my scattered clothing and crept out of the room. Claire had grown up as a fighter. She was a soldier, a warrior, a Knight. Her own Kingdom was about to be thrown into the first battle of many, yet she had to stay behind. She had to stay in the castle, safe behind its thick walls, while her people died in the mud for her.
I knew she would've been on the front lines, given half the chance, and I knew she hated herself for barely being able to stand for more than fifteen minutes, these days.
Half of the city mulled restlessly around the streets, and no small number of them were drunk, angry or both. Some couldn't wait for a real battle to unfold and were looking for any excuse to start a fight. I headed to the barracks, where Ash and Goblin were stationed, and met them at the gates.
They weren't the last people to head out, but the open area with its hard, dirt-packed ground was eerily empty. Both of them were clad in Felheimish armour, all plate and mail, and I was ashamed to realise I didn't understand what the ranking on their shoulders meant. Neither of them were generals, not yet, but they were far from unimportant.
“Don't think you need armour, but Akela's saved some for you anyway,” Ash said, clapping a hand on my shoulder.
She kept it there for a heavy moment and dug her fingers in. She wasn’t trying to reassure me; rather, she was the one comforted by my presence. Half the people who knew what I was were probably hoping I would fell Rylan's army before it came to trading blows.
“I can still get stabbed,” I said, taking the offered armour. “It'd still hurt.”
“It'll be okay,” Goblin rushed to say.
“Did Kidira tell you to say that?”
“Commander Akela has a brilliant plan,” he explained. It wasn't a no. “You've never seen her on the battlefield. You've never seen her with an army at her back. Numbers don't matter when Akela's leading the charge.”
I chose to believe him, hoping it might help him believe it, too.
I was shown inside. I changed into my light armour, all leather and chainmail, pulling it on over my clothing as Ash helped with the straps. I put on a helmet, vision obscured for the way my nose was protected.
“Here,” Goblin said, holding out a sword and shield.
“I can't use that,” I said, frowning at the sword. It came back to me in a flash: Claire standing over me with a sword of her own, while mine was discarded somewhere in the dirt, as useless as a twig against a Knight.
I took the shield, light and round, and strapped it to my arm. Ash and Goblin still had preparations to put into place and I drifted over to the rows of soldiers waiting for the order to march out. I was uneasy, trying to find a place amongst them. They knew more of what was happening than I did. They'd been training for weeks, had been going over plans until they were dreaming of the formations that had been drilled into them, yet I was there by nothing but the virtue of my powers.
It was bigger than me. Bigger than my understanding. Akela, Ash, Goblin and all of those involved had worked tirelessly to ensure that our army stood a chance against one that was, in my mind, ten times its size. There had been so many other things for me to deal with. Agados. Halla. Katja. Kondo-Kana. The pane. It was almost as though I had stepped into someone else's story and presumed to take the lead.
I shook my head and repositioned the shield at my feet. We weren't going to move any time soon. I needed to stop acting as though I was the only one in the barracks with thoughts weighing down my mind. Every last person there had a dozen worries and few of them started and ended on the battlefield. The fact that their problems didn't involve necromancy didn't make them any less valid.
I shuffled on my feet. Two of the soldiers strolled over to me, faces covered by their helms.
They flanked me from either side and I pretended to watch the sky from the narrow barrack window.
“You're seriously gonna go out there with just a shield?” came a familiar voice.
“Varn?” I asked, almost kicking my shield over. “Should you be here?”
“Hell no! But there ain't no way I'm missing a fight like this. I hear we're outnumbered ten-to-one. About time I had a challenge.”
“What she means to say,” Atalanta said, from my other side, “Is that we have taken the sincerity of this alliance to heart and will not abandon our allies when we know we have both skill and bravery in abundance.”
She had a bow and quiver strapped to her back and a long, curved blade at her side. Despite having never seen her fight, I had no reason to doubt that she could take out a dozen soldiers with half a dozen arrows.
“Um. Does Queen Nasrin know you're here? Aren't you meant to... you know, be protecting her?”
“Her Majesty knows all things,” Atalanta said, tapping what I presumed was the nose of her helm. “And her wife is with her. Compared to her we are mere decorations, there to look attractive.”
“Anyway, we need you 'cause we know fuck all Felheimish,” Varn added.
“Mesomium,” I muttered automatically, but nodded. I was glad they were there. Between the two of them and Akela, we might've stood a chance.
When and Ash and Goblin finished penning a letter and had a raven send it battleward, they came to the front of the hall and made us stand in a formation my feet could not form quickly enough. All of my, Varn and Atalanta's movements were a few seconds out of sync with the rest of the squadrons’, thanks to my staggered translations, and quickly, too quickly, we were out in the fields, marching towards a battle.
My heart pounded. The feet of two hundred soldiers struck the ground in unison, armour clattering with each step, but my heart was louder. Armies, blades. Halla, Katja. This was it. This is what I had been waiting for. What I had been pushing away.
“Do not fret,” Atalanta whispered from my side, voice distorted by the metal. “I am not so powerful or indestructible as you are, and I have flung myself head-first into all manner of terribly dangerous situations. And yet here I am. No worse for wear.
“Battles are not so horrific as you have been led to believe. There is the initial surge, of course, far too much adrenaline on both sides, but the clash itself is rather lacklustre, outside of the moment. Blades will be swung, blood will be drawn, but ultimately, it is about who retreats first. And once the retreating is over and done with, there will be healers. And yourself, of course.”
I began to wish I'd brought a sword, if only to have something to cling to.
“Have you been in many battles before?”
Snorting a laugh, Varn said, “This one time, we pissed off Ridgeth – more than usual, I mean – and Lanta got to have her fun. But that was mostly just her firing arrows until they ran off.”
Deciding things were ever more eloquent in her own words, Atalanta said, “Battles by Canth's standards, indeed. Not that every day isn't a battle, in a land of the sort. You are lucky: you have only known Canth in the best form it has maintained for centuries.
“Where I spent much of my time before serving as Queen Nasrin's personal guard – to the far south-east of Canth itself – war is a thing of the past. Or so the people there like to believe. Instead of making camp on battlefields, the rich, powerful and influential gather in dark, luxurious chambers with marble columns and velvet-covered seats and play chess, to determine the outcome of the disagreement.
“Of course, it is all metaphor. I am taking your rook to remind you that my family owns every quarry in all the land, and how are you to build your towers and monuments without our masons; I take your Queen with my Knight to underline the fact that I have money enough to spend on decorative legions, and they would take up arms, if I gave the command; and here my Priest wipes out your pawns, that you might understand how your peasants would suffer, should you defy me; that sort of thing.”
“That sounds confusing,” I offered.
“No more so than all of this. We are the pawns here, and our Queens—oh, chess metaphors have worn awfully thin, by this point,” Atalanta said, lifting the visor of her helm. “Suffice to say, some of us are going to get stabbed.”
We trundled on in unease, air full of heavy breaths, murmurs of discomfort, and the strained silence of those trying to listen in on our conversation despite being unable to understand a word of Canthian. My heart beat itself into my throat when I wasn't talking or taking in Atalanta's words, so I quickly drew the conversation back around to her.
“You're Canthian, right? How do you know Yin Zhou?”
“This is a good story!” Varn said, nudging me with an armoured elbow.
“Ah. I should like to say that I know Yin Zhou as well as my own mother, but it simply isn't true. I don't know my mother half as well and did not learn nearly a tenth as much from her. Yin Zhou is a woman with a keen eye for many things: skill, connections, old money, and above all, loyalty. I believe the sharpness of her gaze has allowed her to hold her station in the world for as long as she has; she sees through people and intentions both,” Atalanta began, and I think she knew I needed the distraction. Her voice, while ever bright and clear, had a little more energy behind it than usual. “I met her by chance, as all meetings that mean something tend to happen.
“I was but a girl, then. No older than twelve—three decades ago, if you'll believe it. My family were well enough to do: my mother was a healer and my father owned a relatively large bitterwillow field. We had a certain part of the market cornered. Had I never have met Yin Zhou, I would've led a comfortable life and wanted for nothing but adventure. While there was money to be had, the same could not be said for opportunities. Not ever since my father had discovered that I was his daughter, that is. My beloved bow had been taken from me some years before, and I had been told to assist my mother in her clinic.
