Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 63
I hated that she used my name in front of everyone else. I hated how startling the contrast was between her and Rylan. I hated the way she smiled pleasantly as he raged, for Katja’s calm lashed out at me worse than the stomping of Rylan’s boots. I had seen her at her lowest, when control was truly lost to her, and knew what she could do.
I did not dare think of what she was capable of, draped in power, having had months to prepare.
“Why are we letting Northwood go?” Akela asked. With her next to me, I wasn’t afraid of what Rylan and Katja were planning. “Why are we saying yes, you are taking our friend and this is fine?”
Rylan placed a fist against the wall, and then his forehead. Katja wasn’t particularly concerned. She waited for him to return, and after a series of deep breaths, he gathered himself and strode back towards us.
A spark of confidence lit up his eyes and brought the colour back to his face.
“Perhaps father was right to name you as his successor. Perhaps you were always meant for this task,” Rylan said, nodding to himself. “But I was always on your heels. Always second-best. And being second-best to you, sister, is no slight. I am more than capable, and if you believe you have done enough to force me to surrender then you are sorely mistaken.”
Irritation creased Claire’s brow and she bit back her initial response.
“What is it, Rylan?” Claire asked. “What am I missing?”
Rylan and Katja shared a smile. The satisfaction rippling between them twisted in the pit of my stomach and rose as bile. They’d been building up to this. They knew that the entirety of Agados descending upon Thule wouldn’t be enough to force Claire to hand me over and were confident regardless.
“The gunpowder explosions from earlier were a fine way to gain access to the castle and spread chaos throughout all of Thule. Getting rid of the barracks didn’t hurt our cause, either,” Rylan said, fingers twisting together and breaking apart in anticipation. “Do you truly believe that I would not utilise such a weapon elsewhere? Do you truly think that my soldiers were out there merely to starve the city; to starve my people? Do not be ridiculous, Claire.
“There is gunpowder yet, sown throughout Thule. Tens of thousands may be gathered outside the gates, but there are hundreds of thousands in their homes. Crowding public spaces. Do you wish to see the entirety of Thule destroyed to protect a single necromancer?”
Rylan spurned the idea of letting his people starve and threatened their lives in the next moment.
None of us breathed a word. My heart thudded in my empty chest and I heard a creaking in the back of my mind, feeling the scales shift in Rylan’s favour.
It wasn’t true, I desperately told myself. It wasn’t true, because if it was, there was no way out of this for us. Claire would never allow harm to come to the people of Thule, in the same way she’d never hand me over. It was an impossible choice. And yet no matter what she did, something had to give. Either I went or the city was left as much rubble as Isin was.
It was happening again. I was being chased out because of what I was.
My home was being threatened and I couldn’t let Claire make this decision. She couldn’t live with it.
I had to go with them. If it was true, I had to surrender myself to the Agadians.
“A simple choice,” Katja said, hand on Rylan’s elbow. “You hand over the necromancer and your crown and Felheim goes free. Thule survives. We pour all of the gunpowder in the lake, if it makes you happy.”
The necromancer, Katja said. My name was gone again. I was nothing to her. Nothing, nothing. Just another bargaining chip.
“And suppose I kill you?” Kidira asked Rylan.
She caught my eye and I nodded. I was ready. Ready to do whatever I had to.
“Oh, by all means. Imagine that I have no contingency plan, if that entertains you so,” Rylan said, laughing dryly. Aren rushed over to us, having no idea that his poisoned weed of a plan had burrowed so deeply into Thule, but he raised his hands before she could speak. “If I am to die, then my power passes to Kouris. It has all been laid out rather neatly. Our soldiers trust her as they trust me. I never would’ve made it this far without her guidance.”
“And if I kill the both of you?” came Kidira’s next question.
“Don’t get any ideas. Should word spread that both of us have fallen, that our army is without its leaders, then the Agadians have very clear instructions to do as they wish with Thule and take whatever remains, necromancer and all.”
That couldn’t be our only choice.
Trading Rylan for Katja couldn’t be the best we could hope for.
Kidira scowled, sorry to have asked the question. With her usual method of dealing with things futile, Akela said nothing and Claire looked to Kouris, to her mother, desperate for someone to tell her there was a third option.
“Do you understand?” Katja asked me, ever mocking to the end.
I said nothing. There were no words left inside of me. Once more, Katja had drained me dry.
“Well?” Rylan asked, but I couldn’t look away from Katja. “What is your decision, dear sister?”
“I…” Claire began. Her mouth moved but didn’t form words. What good would fighting for me do now? “I cannot. This is no choice, Rylan. I cannot tell you what you wish to hear.”
“Cannot or will not?” Rylan asked. “Don’t dawdle. I fear the Agadians will think me prematurely perished and enact our plans without waiting for word from the castle.”
Rylan wasn’t bluffing.
I’d been in Isin. I’d seen the castle fall and fires spread. I’d seen the bodies lining the streets and I’d spent long years aching for Claire.
He’d do it. He’d take Thule out with him, and neither Felheim nor the territories would stand a chance.
“I’ll go. I’ll go to Agados,” I blurted out. “Just don’t hurt anyone else. Don’t destroy Thule.”
Claire reached out but I moved before she could grasp my shoulder.
“Northwood,” Akela snapped. “We are not letting you go with those people. We are finding another way.”
But what else was there for it? What other way did this end for me?
It ended as it started: with what I was isolating me. I had never escaped my village, not really. I had only delayed the inevitable.
Claire called my name but I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t stand to see her heartbroken, couldn’t take the sight of Kouris with all her strength and cheer drained.
Instead, I turned to Katja. I expected her to grin, endlessly endeared by the paths life forced me down, but she was not marking this as a victory over me. Her face had paled and her lower lip trembled, and Kidira and I were the only ones who noticed. Everyone else’s eyes were fixed on Rylan.
One of Katja’s hands slipped behind her back. She placed the other against the line of Rylan’s jaw. When he turned to meet her eye, she didn’t smile. Her face darkened like the sea before a storm and with all the strength she’d once driven into me, she pulled my dragon-bone knife from the small of her back and thrust it deep into Rylan’s throat.
He bellowed in pain until the blood in his lungs muted his screaming. Katja retrieved the knife and struck him clean through the chest.
“You bastard,” she seethed, and death struggled to rush into all the holes Katja had stabbed into Rylan’s chest. “You heartless, heartless man.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Blood soaked Katja's dress. I trembled not for Rylan, but for myself. I'd been there and I couldn't go back. I couldn't. Katja's blood-splattered arms grew heavy and Rylan was dead the moment he hit the ground.
Because she could not sense death as I could, and because rage ran through her still, Katja knelt and plunged the knife – Claire’s knife, my knife – in one final time. I saw myself sprawled out on her apartment floor, felt everything in my chest tangle as my heart begged me to keep it safe. Kouris wrapped an arm around me and pulled me back.
Rising to her feet, Katja trembled as I did. Tears ran down her face, dripped from her chin and mixed with the blood on her hands.
All of her composure was gone. Months of planning were lost to a single moment.
Aren howled for her son, knees hitting a pool of his blood, but the rest of us didn't have a syllable to share.
“Mother...” Katja began, words weak and raw. “Did you honestly believe I'd ally myself with the many who destroyed our Kingdom? He took everything from us. He destroyed all that you had built, all I had worked for. He burnt our people alive and toppled our towers. He took you from me for years and he tried to take Akela from us.”
I'd been right. She'd known I was on the balcony above her. Akela was family and she'd risked Rylan's trust to save her from the fire.
I hated myself for wanting to thank her. I hated that it wasn't an unfamiliar sensation.
I hated how certain I was she’d taken my knife for a reason.
“Oh, Kouris,” Kidira murmured slowly as she climbed the steps towards her. She held out her arms and Katja fell into them, sobbing. She clung to the back of Kidira's shirt and wailed. “It's over, Kouris. I'm here.”
Kidira placed a hand atop Katja's head and rocked her in her arms. She looked over her shoulder at us and there was no relief in her expression. Nothing that said she was glad to have her daughter back, no matter the cost. She shook her head and gestured for us to step back, lest the worst was yet to come.
It was the first time she'd embraced Katja since thinking her dead and blood bound them together.
“You heard what he said, didn't you?” Katja asked. “It was the only way for it. I had to spend so long, so very long with him. I had to ensure he trusted me, because we could not take down his forces from the outside. Power passes to me, now. It is all in writing. Oh, I made certain of that much. I know where the gunpowder is hidden. We can end this now. I can tell my soldiers that the necromancer is ours, that the Queen has abdicated. The gunpowder kegs will be removed, and... and...”
“Hush,” Kidira said, not daring to close her eyes. “We will see it done.”
But we couldn't let Katja speak to her soldiers drenched in their King's blood.
Katja's plans were extensive. She was crying and shaking but driving that knife into Rylan wasn't something that had happened in the heat of the moment. A second dress was neatly folded beneath the throne Rylan had sprawled across and Kidira helped Katja strip off the bloodied clothing. She used the patches of her first dress that weren't stained red to wipe Katja's face and hands as best she could, and we stood as statues, not saying a word, waiting for Katja to stop crying.
Not to say it was silent in the rest of the hall. Aren was wailing on her knees, beating the floor with a fist and sobbing no, no, no. Finally, I thought: finally, she was showing something genuine. Rylan remained as stubborn in death as he was in life.
“Should I...?” I murmured.
Claire closed her eyes.
“He went too far. This was the only way he'd ever stop,” she whispered. “Why should we save him, after all those he has sent to their graves.”
With Kouris' help she knelt at her mother's side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“No,” Aren hissed, pushing her away. “This is your fault. Had you not betrayed us, had you never fled to Kastelir, Rylan wouldn't have become this. You did this to your brother, Claire. You did this.”
Even Akela flinched.
“Mother,” Claire said gently, and reached for her again.
This time Aren clung to the front of her shirt and sobbed into her shoulder.
I leant against Kouris, dizzy, and told myself it was over. We'd won. But if this was to be our victory, I longed for the unease that had choked us these past weeks. Months. Years. I was numb in more ways than one, unable to feel what I ought to: relief that I didn't have to leave, agony for Claire and her mother, and fear, in the face of Katja.
After all this time, it was still there, clutching at my heart like a fist and turning my thoughts against me. Katja sniffed, jaw trembling as she held Kidira's shoulders for balance, and my wrist ached down to the marrow.
I pulled at my fingers, dug my nails into my knuckles, and without a word, Kouris took both of my hands in her own.
“Goodness me. I believe the worst of it is out of my system,” Katja said, putting on a brave face. Kidira wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “I'd better get on with it, hadn't I? Rylan was not merely bluffing when he said the Agadians might assume the worst and act without our say so.”
Kidira nodded and Katja made for the throne room doors.
“I always forget how heavy these doors are,” Katja called to the soldiers outside. “That's something I'll have to change, isn't it? Dear me, please, don't trouble yourselves,” she quickly added when the soldiers tried to open the doors all the way. “Rylan and I have reached an agreement with his sister. Have the Agadians round up the gunpowder kegs, would you? As expected, she only agreed to the trade once Thule was safe. Not that Rylan or I ever truly intended to harm any of his people, of course.”
“Yes, ma'am,” one of the soldiers said. “We're relieved this is finally over.”
“As are we all,” Katja agreed. “Now that the situation is under control, you needn't waste any more time standing guard. Rylan has his sister thoroughly detained—not that much in the way of shackles are needed with her condition. I'm sure you're all eager to do your part for Thule, though. You're both from here, aren't you? Do have the gunpowder brought to the lake, if you would.”
Katja closed the doors before they could answer.
“They'll be gone in a matter of moments,” Katja said, bouncing back to her old self. “We ought to collect Prince Alexander and Lady Eden. They're being held in chambers close by.”
“It's wise that I'm not seen in the castle,” Claire said. Had she wanted to leave, her mother wouldn’t have let her. “I'll remain here until the gunpowder has been gathered, then address Thule.”
Putting together a plan helped us regain some of our momentum.
“I am thinking, it is best if I am also staying, yes? If anyone is trying to get through the doors, I am stopping them,” Akela said.
“And I'd better be making certain the people know to let the Agadians through,” Kouris said. “Last thing we need is a scuffle with gunpowder in the middle.”
I thought of the torches the people held high and pressed my fingertips to my forehead.
Something possessed me. I heard myself say, “I'll go with Kidira to find Alex and Eden,” and though everyone looked at me, no one said that it meant going with Katja, as well.
As much as I hated to admit it, some part of me was hoping Katja would betray us yet. That this was only a small fragment of her plan and she wasn't our saviour after all. She hadn't saved me. I couldn't let myself think that, let alone believe it. This was about getting revenge for Kastelir and that's all it had ever been about.
Anything involving me was incidental at best.
Claire managed to break away from her mother for a moment. She took an unsteady step and put her arms around me.
“You were going to give yourself up,” Claire whispered. I wanted to cling to the back of her shirt and never let go, but my hands were too heavy to lift. “Why, Rowan?”
“They were going to destroy Thule,” I murmured. “I couldn't let them do that.”
“We would've found another way,” Claire said, and because she believed it, I did too.
I left with Katja and Kidira amongst a thick, stifling silence. The soldiers were gone, off to retrieve the gunpowder kegs, and I had never seen Kidira so blank in the face before. There was no anger swelling beneath her expression, no rage circling behind her eyes; no relief, no sorrow.
We came to a chamber a short distance from the throne room and I moved to Katja's side, determined to finally look at her.
I'd plastered my hand against her throat and beaten her in a way that would've left anyone else dead, the last time we'd been this close. Her blood had stained my hands and face and though it didn't make me feel any better in the least, I never would've been able to stop, if not for Varn.
She'd been afraid. For a single, solitary moment, Katja had been afraid of me.
Now, she stood smiling, distantly proud of what she'd done.
“Do you think this is going to make the others trust you?” I asked. “Don't you see the way your own mother is looking at you?”
Katja sighed her practised, dreary sigh.
“Rowan, dear. Do you think things would have ever reached this point, had you listened to me? You remember the day you first saw Rylan at my side, do you not? I tried to tell you that I was on your side – that I am always on your side – but you were too blinded by your anger. You have to learn to let go,” she said. “Had you killed Rylan then as I know you can, none of this would've happened. Thule wouldn't have been taken and the Agadians never would've been allowed into Felheim.”
It wasn't true. Couldn't be. If I'd killed Rylan, power would've fallen to someone else, and it wouldn’t have been Katja, back then.
“Stop it,” was all I could say.
“I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of one another, dear. It wounds me that you cannot bring yourself to trust me, after all the secrets I've kept for you,” Katja said, lowering her voice. Leaning close, she whispered, “I never did tell anyone what you did for Uncle Jonas, did I? Do keep that in mind.”
“Stop it,” I repeated, and Kidira caught up to us.
Placing a hand on Katja's shoulder, she eased her back. She didn't move us away from one another: she moved Katja away from me. I tried to catch Kidira's eye but she only stared at the door and said, “We've wasted enough time.”
Katja unlocked the door without further delay. To say that Eden and Alex stopped what they were doing to look at us would imply that they’d been doing something but waiting endlessly. They looked at us, took a moment to process what was happening, and leapt to their feet.
“Rowan!” Alex said, voice brimming with more hope than he’d allowed himself to feel.
