Hereditary

by Jane Washington

  “Call me John.”

  Hazen appeared then, looking moodier than usual.

  “I take it your practice didn’t go as well as ours?” I asked him, smiling a little.

  His scowl deepened.

  “Well,” my father scratched his head, looking at a loss, “I had a surprise for you Bea, but maybe I can show you later?”

  “Don’t be silly Dad, where are we going?”

  He flicked a look at the other two, and then sighed as Rose approached as well.

  “This is going to take some getting used to,” he muttered, which made Hazen’s lips twitch, probably because of whatever thought had accompanied the words. “Would your friends like to come along?”

  Twenty minutes later, we were outside my father’s other house. It wasn’t far from the barracks, which also meant that it wasn’t far from the castle, and Rose seemed delighted at this prospect. It was not a new sight to me, the large, three-story brick house with bay windows and a plain garden, but it was the first time I had ever looked at it as my new home. We followed my father through the front door, and Gretal would have scampered away at the first sight of me, except that she caught sight of Hazen and Rose, and almost stumbled over her skirts. When she fell to her knees, I wasn’t even sure if it had been deliberate, or an accident.

  “Prince! Princess!”

  Cale looked to be holding back a chuckle, but my father was decidedly uncomfortable.

  “There’s no need for that,” Hazen said smoothly, “we generally discourage the formalities outside of court.”

  Of course, he didn’t say that the housekeeper could use his first name, and even I knew that the servants of the castle always called him Prince Hazen, even outside of court hours. I guessed he was trying to make my father more comfortable. We went up the winding staircase and when we reached the top level, where I knew my father usually slept, we didn’t go to the right wing, but instead to the left. He threw open the door and I gasped as I walked through. My furniture was all moved in. My narrow little bed, the scuffed wooden desk and chair and the tall ornamental wardrobe that had once been my mothers, it was all there. I noticed a few new things too, peach-coloured curtains pushed to the side of the window seat, a matching peach chaise and armchair set, positioned around the large fireplace. There was a new bookshelf too, exquisitely carved and decorated with dancing creatures that looked to be half elven, half made-up.

  “Oh.” I touched my face, staring at it all wide-eyed.

  “I got a little carried away,” my father sounded embarrassed, “I was just so excited that you had agreed.”

  I quickly thumbed my tears away and turned to hug him.

  “It’s great Dad, thank you.”

  He awkwardly patted my back, his voice gruff, “well, you have all these fancy friends now, can’t very well entertain them in the old cottage.”

  Rose laughed delightedly at that, and Cale settled himself down on the chaise, throwing his arm across the back and giving my father a look that I knew only too well.

  “So,” he said, almost conversationally, and I felt the laughter bubble in my chest already, “when can we move in?”

  My father went still, and I couldn’t help it, I started laughing. Cale threw me a look for ruining his joke, but my father almost immediately relaxed, and then backed out of the room, mumbling something about dinner and giving me privacy.

  Hazen left soon after that, and I eventually had to kick the other two out, as they looked far too comfortable. I went down for dinner, trying to ease Gretal’s fear of me while refusing to let her serve me. She was uneasy, having me in the kitchen with her, but she would have to put up with it. After dinner, I changed into my usual shorts and over-sized hand-me-down shirt combination, and sat at the desk, flattening out the page that Harbringer had given back to me.

  There once was a little Siren. She lived all by herself out in the middle of the sea, singing to those who passed in their grand ships, desperate for the contact of another person. When one finally stopped, the crew captured the Siren, and threw her into a cage, deciding that her golden hair and golden skin would make them rich. Not wanting to be killed by the sailors, she sang her way free, enchanting them with a lusty, melodious song full of beauty and innocence. Her voice called to them, captured them as they had captured her, but as she stood on the deck again, the men kneeling at her feet, she found that she couldn’t stop. She sang and sang, until there was no more beauty or innocence, only hunger and violence. But still they crawled closer, held in thrall by her Siren magic. One by one, she devoured the sailors, until their bones scattered the deck of the ship, and she was alone again, out in the middle of the sea, singing to those who passed in their grand ships…

  You call that an ending?

  I picked up a pencil, tore out a fresh sheath of paper and began scrawling again.

  The Siren grew remorseful for what she had done, and the violent companionship that she had chanced and lost. She covered her golden hair, painted over her golden skin, and made a vow to never sing again. When next a ship stopped for her, she passed herself off as a sailor, and joined their ranks. But people are sneaky, and cruel, and mean. They saw through her disguise, and soothed her into sleep that night with music. They cut away her hair, tore away her clothes, and took what they wanted while she slept. When she awoke, she was empty. She couldn’t even sing her way free, because they had taken her tongue to protect themselves.

  I paused then, because I had nothing more to write. Instead, I skipped down a couple of spaces, and wrote a note below as he had.

  What does she do now?

  The next day, I left early for classes, deciding that I would visit the abandoned garden behind the barracks before I had to drop off my bizarre homework to Harbringer. My moods had been growing increasingly dark after the last week, and it took a long time to relax into the connection, but eventually I did. I sat with my back against one of the crumbling walls, my head tilted up to the morning sunshine and my eyes closed against the world. I could sense the life force of a person nearby, as I had learnt to do with Nareon, but this particular skill wasn’t good enough yet for me to decide if they were behind me or before me. It didn’t matter all that much, they were most likely in the barracks or the training yard, and while it was possible for them to be on the game trail behind me, I doubted it. When they didn’t move away, I wrote them off as one of the soldiers, and slipped back into a nearby plant being choked by weeds. I eased the plant-predator away, extracted it’s roots from the other, and urged it to keep to itself. I’d check up on it again in a few days to make sure it was behaving.

  Thwack.

  I twitched, feeling the stinging on my cheek, the rush of air through my hair, the searing pain in my thigh. Suddenly I was screaming, vaulted out of my connection to the forest by the pain ripping through my leg. A hand wound around my mouth, effectively cutting off any sound, and a voice growled low in my ear.

  “The next time you go to the King, I won’t miss, do you understand?”

  I tried to speak, but the hand was still covering my mouth.

  “Nod or shake your head, girl.”

  I nodded, tears leaking from my eyes as the pain began to make me woozy.

  “Good. One more thing…” and then he reached forward, grabbed the bloody arrow shaft and snapped the end off.

  I tried to scream again, the movement made agonising, but my captor didn’t seem to care. He lifted my leg up, grabbed the unbroken end of the shaft and yanked it through my leg. I saw spots flashing before my eyes, and barely registered the voice in my ear again.

  “I’ll not have you taking any evidence with you. You’ll tell nobody of this warning.”

  I woke up a short time later, and found a good portion of the bottom right side of my dress soaked through with blood, but there was a rolled bandage sitting in my lap. I picked it up with shaky fingers, and wound it about my thigh tightly, gritting my teeth against the pain. I attempted to stand, but it proved too difficult, an
d so I tried to blow a large enough stick toward me with my wind elemental. It flew too fast, almost striking me, but with it, I was able to push myself to my feet. The injured leg shook, and buckled when I tried to put any weight on it, so I used the stick to get back to the barracks. The house wasn’t far away, and the academy was further, but if I went home, my father would demand answers, and if I went to class, I could pretend that it had been an accident. Or I could just ignore the warning and cry for help.

  One of my father’s soldiers walked past me then, and threw me a smile, walking over.

  “You’re leaning on that stick awfully hard, Harrow, sprain an ankle or something?”

  I blinked, looked down at my blood-soaked dress, and bloodied, bandaged leg.

  Couldn’t he see?

  His smiled died a little, and he appeared confused, his eyes slid to my feet, flying right over all the mess in-between. He really didn’t see it.

  “Yes,” I managed, my voice shaking, “I twisted my ankle.”

  “Stay right there, I’ll fetch you a proper crutch.”

  He disappeared into the barracks, and I felt my apprehension grow. The stranger had put a glamor over me, which meant that he might just be powerful enough to keep tabs on me, and know if I said anything to anyone. And then a more pressing problem occurred to me. If I was supposed to stay away from Nareon, then how would I survive past the next week?

  Rendal returned then, handing me a wooden crutch, and I forced a smile, thanking him. Walking to the Academy was awkward and painful, but the stairs to Harbringer’s watchtower would have been impossible. I planned to slide my paper beneath the door and leave to seek out the others, but once I got there, I found that I couldn’t go any further, and lying down for a sleep seemed the most logical course of action to take.

  I woke again, with Harbringer’s face hanging over me, wavering in and out of focus.

  “I’ve sent a bird to your friends, they should be here soon.” Was all he said as he swooped down to pick me up.

  His hand slipped beneath my injured thigh and I screamed, batting him away. He let go instantly, and stepped back, staring at his arm, which was now covered in blood.

  “What the fuck?” Cale arrived first, eyes wide.

  Hazen was next, and he narrowed his eyes on my face, but whatever was in my mind, I gathered that he was blocked somehow from it, as his face creased in frustration. Rose was the last to arrive, and she turned a frightening shade of white, eyes flicking from Harbringer’s arm to my crumpled form, and apparently uninjured form.

  I opened my mouth to say that it was a glamor, but no words came out.

  “I can’t—” I tried again, but still nothing came, and soon tears of anger were mixing with those of pain, “I can’t say.”

  Harbringer knelt down beside me again, “we’ll just figure it out another way then.”

  He placed his hand against my ankle, and I wondered why everyone thought my ankle was the problem, perhaps it was part of the glamor. He brought his hand away, checked it, and then moved to the other ankle. It took him a few attempts before he reached the wound, and both Cale and Hazen stepped forward, looking as if they would object to where Harbringer’s touch had moved. They paused when I let out a low moan of pain, and Harbringer’s hand came away bloodied again.

  “Alright Harrow, hold tight. Cale, I think she’s wearing another glamor, see what you can do.”

  Cale jumped forward, knelt on my other side, and focused on me as Hazen stepped behind him, probably to step in should Cale fall into another one of his strange seizures. Several long minutes later, everyone gasped, and Harbringer manoeuvred me back into his arms again, this time ignoring my weak cry of pain.

  “Rose, go and get the Academy nurse, we need to bind this up properly before she bleeds out, whoever tied this up did a terrible job.”

  I should have been insulted, but I was fairly sure that I was slipping into unconsciousness again.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I was in Harbringer’s room, and the Professor himself was reading my paper, which I had managed to smear with blood. When he noticed that I was awake, he cleared his throat and sat up, placing the paper aside and moving to sit in a chair that had been placed beside his bed.

  “I sent the others back to class, I needed space to work on your mind.”

  “Someone shot me.” I said, more to test my ability to say the words than to actually inform him.

  I looked down at the wound, and saw a fresh bandage laced about my thigh, peeking out from beneath the bloodied hem of my dress. I couldn’t feel it at all, in fact, I felt wonderful.

  Harbringer smirked, “yes, I gathered that.”

  “You got the memory?”

  “I did.”

  “You’re good at that.”

  His smiled disappeared, and I felt a shudder pass through me, but thankfully it stopped there.

  “I’m so sorry Beatrice.”

  “Just Bea.”

  “I had to be sure that you had no conscious recollection of killing him.”

  “I wish I did.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care if he hated me, or if he was disgusted, or disappointed—

  “If he wasn’t already dead, I might have killed him myself.” He broke through my thoughts.

  My head snapped up, “Why?”

  He shrugged, a careless gesture that looked out-of-place, coming from him.

  “He deserved it. I think most people would have wanted to kill him, and not just because he was a worthless, despicable excuse for a human being, but I believe it’s also the effect you have on people. Once you get past the whole Synfee thing, there’s a vulnerability in you that seems to call to people.”

  Without waiting for an answer to that bizarre statement, he turned and grabbed my paper, tossing it onto my stomach.

  “This is terrible.” His mouth twisted into a sardonic frown, “you can’t see yourself that way.”

  “It’s fiction Harb—er, Professor.”

  He laughed then, and once again, I was reminded of his synfee beauty, the flash of brilliant white teeth, the perfect mouth pulling back in compelling mirth and those black eyes flashing with something that wasn’t cold and frightening for once.

  “How old are you?” I heard myself asking, though I was immediately swamped by embarrassment, realising that I sounded just like Kaylee or Kai.

  “Twenty eight.”

  “That’s absurd. You may look it, but there’s no way you really are.”

  “Oh? How do you come to that conclusion?” His eyes were amused again, and I had to draw my focus away from them to make the mental calculations.

  “I was only four when the tainted creatures revolted. If you’re twenty eight, then you would have had to have been fourteen when you supposedly won the war.”

  One of his dark, winged brows arched over now-guarded eyes, and I found my mouth falling open.

  “You were fourteen.” I said, numb.

  “I wasn’t the only fourteen-year-old in the war, Harrow. Some of the boys were as young as eleven. They held the King’s standard as we marched on the tainted creatures, or came as squires for the older knights. Besides, I was only a low-entry soldier. It was toward the end of the war, we had lost so many people that they just wanted to fill up the ranks again, and they didn’t really care who they used.”

  “Is there another war coming? Is that why your class was started up again?”

  He folded his arms, considering me.

  “We’ve had disturbing reports, of movement from the mountains, where the vampire clans are in hiding, and several renegade parties have been sighted by scouts, travelling between the known synfee border and the mountains. When you came and told us about Nareon, I passed the word on to one of the King’s advisor’s, and he ordered the class reinstated.”

  Something about that didn’t sit right with me, but I decided to keep it to myself for now, and carefully constructed a wall around my mind. Harbri
nger, who had turned to look out of a window, jerked his head back to me, but I faked naivety, and continued our conversation.

  “Do you think whoever shot me this morning knows that I spoke?”

  “No, there was no other presence in your mind. A glamor that powerful could have only been synfee-made. I’d say they’ve finally heard of your involvement in helping Nareon track down the Force-users, and if they were synfee, they wouldn’t have stuck around. It’s rare enough for them to cross their own border, let alone coming this close to the kingdom.”

  “Nareon does it.”

  “He what?”

  “He doesn’t hurt anyone, he only came when I was going through my transition. And a few other times, to speak with me.”

  Harbringer looked very disturbed by this news, and so I again found myself speaking to get him off the subject.

  “What do I do now? I can’t stay away from Nareon, I need his energy.”

  And if I don’t go back to him, he will come to me.

  “I think this is getting too messy for you to handle on your own. The King wants to become involved, and if he gave you a guard, you’d be able to go back to Nareon safely.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “Beatrice—”

  “Bea.”

  “Right. Look, we both know that you’re no criminal, but you’ve killed in both worlds now, you regularly visit the synfee king, on his own land, you’re in no position to refuse the King if he wants to get involved.”

  “I don’t understand, are you saying that he’ll label me as some sort of traitor, if I don’t do what he wants?”

  Harbringer’s face became cold again, and I found myself tumbling right into the unending, unlit depths of a gaze fraught with warning.

  Be careful, foolish little girl. It seemed to say.

  I drew in too much air on a gasp, and it all seemed to freeze in my throat, causing me to splutter clumsily, and put a hand to the flighty thud of my heart. He softened a little, and passed a hand over his face, the gesture uneasy.

  “The King is not Hazen,” he muttered, his voice low as if people might be listening behind his door, “you cannot judge the man by his son. Do you understand what I’m saying, Bea?”