I don’t only mean the negotiation scheme. I have another idea sheltered inside, one that’s just for me. It takes me to the University and then to another city, like Norvenne, and Athan’s there, older, walking with me down the wide street arm in arm, no wars anywhere at all. The steps in between are hazy, the specifics not entirely sorted out, but the ending’s clear. He looks very good with a few years on him, broad-shouldered and handsome. Playful, still, and teasing me.
And every evening, when I’m drowning in his sketches like a lovesick fool, imagining where he’s touched them, I also imagine his hands on me. I kiss the side of his jaw, then his lips, and I feel electric all over, wondering at the idea of his bare chest against my skin.…
I blame Violet for these ideas.
And then, as the summer begins to turn, General Dakar’s eldest son stands before the Royal League, striking in his uniform, bold before a balconied room full of old men at desks, and destroys my impossible hope with his own impossible speech.
Reni’s still on tour, and Mother’s sequestered away in meeting with Havis. Lark manages to secure a reel for us to watch, since he knows I want to witness our tragedy unfold—and I know he wants to share his opinion of it.
I’m hoping he’ll have some practical solution.
Seated together in the quiet of his guest quarters, we watch the General’s son on screen as he adjusts his Safire cap and strides for the podium, a reflection of his father—straight-shouldered, focused, handsome. He appears not the least bit intimidated by the sea of impassive faces before him, leading with a brilliant smile. “Gentlemen, I stand before you today as one who was born in war. I knew it long before I ever knew peace. The struggle in Thurn is one familiar to me, the same struggle from which Savient was birthed, and this revolution is not an accident. It’s a reaction born of bitterness and frustration. For too long you’ve watched without mercy, choosing to intervene only when it has promised you reward.”
I glance at Lark, since on these points I think he’d be inclined to agree, but Lark doesn’t notice, fixated grimly.
The speaker from Landore objects. “You spent a week touring the territory, Commander, and now you’ve the nerve to pass judgment on us?”
“I do. Because I’ve seen Thurn with my own eyes, unlike most seated here, who read it all from a report.” There’s a momentary stir at the desks, but the Commander doesn’t stop. “Every day that you wait, the shadow of the Nahir spreads further, inciting them to violence. They won’t stop with Hady. Decisive intervention is the only answer.”
“We’ve tried, Commander.” That’s a speaker from Elsandra. “It’s never as easy as that, not in the South.”
“Easy?” He laughs. “If that’s what you’re waiting for, then I can see why things have reached this point.”
“You know his meaning,” the Landorian man retaliates. “And I’m certain you know as well as us what kind of suffering the South can bring.”
“As if any one of them knows what it’s like to suffer,” Lark mutters.
For a breath, there’s a waver of resentment on the Commander’s face, acknowledgment of this knifed statement. But he straightens, voice sharpening. “You’re right. I do understand suffering. My mother was innocent, had no quarrel with anyone. Whoever murdered her brought the fight to us, and they will be held to account.”
“You would go to war because of a personal vendetta?”
“I would go to war for a chance at saving the South.”
“And you think your army can do this?”
“Yes, because we will cut the roots that feed the Nahir and bring Seath to his knees once and for all.” The Commander swings his hand towards the representatives from Resya, facing them. “There’s a certain kingdom on Thurn’s borders that has pretended to be a friend of the North even as it works against us. They sit here now, claiming neutrality, yet their king supplies money and weaponry to the rebels who fight you at every turn.”
I knew it was coming, heard the rumours preceding the reel, that the General’s son had actually condemned Resya before the entire North.
But here it is before us, igniting my anger.
Ugly in its boldness.
Lark taps his foot rapidly, arms crossed. The Resyan representative on screen protests eloquently, but since everyone is in a flutter, no one entirely hears, and it’s the Landorian man who silences all with the incredulous question in everyone’s mind. “Commander, you’re accusing His Majesty King Rahian of funding the Nahir?”
“I am,” the General’s son says evenly, and I want to spit at him through the screen. “Our Safire forces conducted a raid near Hady,” he continues, unaffected by the rising controversy before him. “It was carried out with the approval of General Windom, and there we discovered proof of transactions between Rahian and Seath. Money, weapons, all of it. We’ve also secured evidence of arms exchanges on the Black Sea, done under cover of the Resyan flag.”
All eyes turn to the Resyan speakers again. The two men appear shocked, wordless.
“You’re sure this isn’t a ruse?” the Landorian man asks. He appears more concerned now than vexed.
The Commander nods. “We extracted confessions, have signed documents. The League will be provided with these. There’s no doubt in our minds, nor should there be any in yours, that Rahian is guilty. And when you agree to our campaign, we will overthrow this corruption that encourages unrest. We’ll see how strong the Nahir truly are without their allies.”
“We haven’t given consent to war,” the speaker from Landore reminds him, eyes narrowed again. “There are questions which must be answered first.”
Dakar’s son narrows his eyes right back. “I’m not asking for your consent to war. I’m asking for your consent to victory,” he announces, opening his arms to the entire League. “If you don’t choose to act now, your children will carry the burden and live their days in fear. I swear to you, I will defend Savient and the North. I will avenge my mother’s death, and to hell with any of you here who choose the coward’s way out!”
That elicits further shock from the room. Even the General raises his brow.
Then the Commander gives a perfectly winning smile and says, “Thank you,” as if he hasn’t just offended every leader in the North.
The film ends, jumping to scratchy darkness.
I want to leap into the screen and undo everything I’ve heard. I feel frantic, tormented between hating the Commander for daring to bring Resya into this and realizing he’s made a very compelling case, and what if it’s true? What if Rahian isn’t neutral? Here I am, presented, at last, with evidence which could condemn Havis for good, banish him from my life forever, but now his downfall is my downfall. And also, I have a cousin and ally in the Nahir.
I’m desperately confused by the world.
“Lark,” I say urgently, “do you believe King Rahian has aided … your cause? I’m asking you as your cousin, not as a princess.” He says nothing, and I grip his arm. “Please, Lark. Whatever you know, you must tell me.”
My desperation works and he shrugs. “Truthfully, who am I to say what one man would do when pushed? Seath doesn’t always request help kindly.”
“Then you believe Rahian’s been threatened into helping?”
Lark shrugs again, as if it’s beyond him, but I wonder if it’s actually a polite way to avoid revealing a thing he can’t, not as Nahir or as my cousin.
“Nothing will happen,” he assures me instead. “The League won’t approve a war against a sovereign kingdom. They leave their guns for the likes of us.”
His distaste is clear, but I’m not as convinced.
Seeing my expression, he says, “This damned General has at last stepped too far, Aurelia. He can’t wage war against a king without the League’s approval. They’d turn against him—and he’s worked too hard to earn their blessing.”
“But it was a persuasive speech,” I fret.
Lark snorts, gesturing at the blank screen, where the Commander was.
“That one I trust less than the General. He changes with the hour, and that’s dangerous.”
“I’m sure it would make him a good warrior, though.”
“A good warrior?” Lark’s laughter is more a hiss. “I doubt you’d say that if you knew the truth.”
As always, my cousin knows how to hook me. “Really?” I lean back, uncertain. “What do you know about him?”
“Things that wouldn’t make him look this pretty before the League.”
A residual of hope returns. “Enough to undo what’s just been said?”
“Possibly.”
“Lark!” I’m so delighted, I’m nearly grinning with relief, but his expression is entirely grave, and I calm myself, trying to match his practical frown. “Well, what is it?”
He glances at the door, calculating a long moment, then comes to a decision and disappears into his adjacent bedroom. I wait, a bit uncertain now. When he returns, there’s a leather briefcase in his hands, his expression familiar—rapidly earnest when wrestling with something big, trying to find its centre. He sifts through papers while I wait.
“My sister served as translator with the Landorian forces in Beraya,” he explains. “The city isn’t far from the Resyan border, and she speaks the local dialect there. When the revolt happened a month ago, she was called upon to help negotiate a ceasefire.” Lark pulls two photographs from a crisp envelope and pushes them before me. “She took these in secret. Now she’s distraught, unsure what to do with them, convinced she’s cursed herself for not saying a thing.”
I look down. The photographs are black and white, slightly blurry, indicating either an older camera or that they were taken in a hurry. In the first, there’s a line of men standing against a wall. They’re blindfolded, their shoulders hunched. Some are young, some are old, but the ones at the farthest end, nearest the camera, are thin and tiny, no more than thirteen. One child holds the hand of a man. My own hand begins to tremble. I slide the first photograph to the left and reveal the second. The bodies are sprawled on the earth.
Even the boys.
I hear a strange sound in my throat.
“This was only one of many executions in Beraya,” Lark continues quietly. “They slaughtered any boy who seemed old enough to carry a gun, then they starved the city. And it wasn’t the Landorian general who ordered it. It was Dakar’s son.”
Fresh revulsion threatens to make me sick. “He couldn’t…”
“They say he did the same in Karkev, Aurelia. And we know who raised him. I doubt the apple falls far from the tree, as you Northerners like to say.”
I stare at the crumpled bodies—an inky black snaking around them, spattered on the wall, on their pale, empty faces staring at the sky—and all of this feels suddenly much darker and more evil than any common war. This doesn’t look like a battle should. It looks like murder.
“This is the scourge of the Safire,” Lark says plainly. “The Landorians? They do what they must to keep the world functioning as they like it, permitting us to live in peace beneath them but never allowing us to rise too high. They like things easy and manageable. But the Safire? They’ll destroy our world and rebuild it again as they see fit. They’ll do to us what they did in Savient, removing anyone who’s against their code, until only the faithful are left. Forging their own version of a perfect nation. Well, it’s not. It’s simply not, and I won’t stand by and watch it happen.”
“This can’t be real,” I say.
“It is real,” Lark replies, sharp.
“You have no proof it was the Safire commander.”
“These photographs speak for themselves. He was there. He knows it.”
“But how can any of this be? It’s quiet down there. No fighting at all yet!”
Lark gives me a skeptical glance. “How do you know that?”
I open my mouth, then realize it’s an answer I can’t give. I stare at the photographs, a fierce new anger flowering in my chest, rotten and thorned, strangling me—anger at this injustice, at the world, at all the people who let this happen without objection. Whether it was the Commander or the Landorians, it doesn’t matter. Someone did this. They did this while a whole war was fermenting in the Southern heat, with real bullets, real attacks, and I had no clue.
Not a hint.
Furious, I stand and flee for my room.
* * *
“Good heavens.”
Heathwyn steps through my doorway, a hand to her mouth, staring at me on the bed. I’ve opened every letter from Athan, every single damn letter sent to me since the beginning of summer, and now they’re tossed across the coverlet in a righteous storm. Drawings of cities and sea birds and aeroplanes. Stories of drunken pilots and swimming in the sea and insects larger than my hand.
But nothing of war.
Nothing, anywhere, that speaks of it.
“He’s been lying to me.” I can barely speak, I’m so frightened and angry. “He said it was quiet and boring, only some drills and practice fighting. But it’s a lie. I saw the speech given to the League. I saw more than I ever wish to see, and it’s all—”
I choke on the words I can’t say, a place she can’t follow.
“Aurelia…”
I blink back tears. “I deserved the truth!”
“Yes, but what if it isn’t his to give? For heaven’s sake, he’s a soldier! They can’t write these things down. It’s a surprise to all of us, not only you.”
Her pragmatic observation stills my rage, slightly, but I’m not yet ready to surrender. She sits on the edge of the bed, stacking a few scattered papers. “I’m sure he didn’t wish to frighten you. He’s kindhearted, isn’t he? He must be or else I know you wouldn’t have adored him so quickly.” She picks up one of his drawings, studying. “These are quite exquisite, aren’t they?”
My head drops into my hands, aching with the weight of everything. With the knowledge that my Safire lieutenant wears a uniform that might conceal darkness and he doesn’t even know it. How can he? With the bright optimism he holds?
“You told me the war was young and didn’t yet know what it wanted,” I accuse Heathwyn quietly. “What if it’s already decided?”
“Nothing is ever decided.”
“Don’t lie to me. Please don’t.”
She sets down the page and looks at me for a long moment. She’s never looked at me like this, like she’s already regretting her words. “I do worry about what will come,” she admits. “I don’t know what goes on behind secret doors, the discussions in high places, and I never will. But I see those mighty ships with nowhere certain to sail, all those guns waiting to be fired, and I think that’s a lot of power to leave restless beneath men’s fingers.”
“But what if someone could make them see a better way?”
“Then pray it comes swiftly.”
It’s the first time she’s ever given me such stark words. She kisses me on the head, without apology, then walks for the door, leaving me alone.
I sit and stare at the letters. I finger one, then another, then the next. Wrinkled paper and familiar cursive words. I sit there and realize he’s very far away, and now that will never change. He’ll go to war with the rest—a dark war, where children are taken along with the guilty—and perhaps he’ll die in a place not like here, buried in a deep grave, forgotten, and we’ll never know what might have been. I’ll be asked to smile every day like there’s nothing the matter. I’ll be asked to go on and marry some other person, but I’ll still remember this darkness and these photographs. I’ll remember the days of early summer, when he was near me, full of life, laughter on his lips and living in a hopeful world.
No one will care that he’s dead, that his warm skin has been turned to dust and his laughter’s no more. No one else will give a damn about how very lonely it is to be trapped under the earth in a place far from home, to be buried forever beneath the banner of a cause you never even wanted.
No one will care about any of this, because he’s small and forgettabl
e.
But I will.
32
ATHAN
Havenspur, Thurn
The number of sorties we fly increases each week. Sometimes near Hady, sometimes over the distant villages of Thurn. We linger above the supply routes the rebel planes like to prey on, and while we wait, the Landorian pilots take potshots at sheds and empty vehicles, laughter echoing over the radio.
“Here’s what you get for Hady,” Spider says, and Baron follows close behind. Bullet holes appear from eight blazing machine guns. Twisted metal and clouds of dust rising.
I hang back.
This doesn’t feel right.
Gallop’s the first pilot shot down by the rebels. His green-winged plane spirals towards the Black in flames, then dissolves into a shower of metal and sea, disappearing beneath the waves. He’s lucky. He escaped in time to deploy his parachute, later retrieved by a friendly cruiser.
“Damn them,” he curses back at base, covered in dried salt water, life vest limp around his shoulders. “That was my favourite plane.”
Baron grins. “Poor girl couldn’t have saved you from that last move you made. Lazy ass.”
If there’s any fear, nobody shows it.
That’s one down for us, at least ten for the other side. Garrick leads the tally with three credited victories, then two each for Ollie, Greycap, and Spider. I’ve managed third place, thanks to my chase the first time up, but Cyar remains cautious. Nothing knocked down for him.
Though Garrick’s taken me back as his wingman, I still watch Merlant from the corner of my eye. Always the same—gaining altitude, then down out of the blinding sun like a devil. They never see him coming. But he’s also a gentleman. He wounds instead of securing victories, and when we come across a rebel plane with its engine already on fire, he orders us to pass it by. “Not a fair fight,” he says, and that’s that.
I’m sure he could overtake Garrick’s record if he wanted. If he felt like making a point.
He never does.
Dark of the West (Glass Alliance) Page 32
