Ferne lifted an eyebrow in a knowing way, glanced at Alistair, then winked at Arabel and turned away.
“Avery, did you ever go to that place in Alden Rock?”
Avery sat up straighter. “The one with all the books? Oh yes; did you see the fountains they had?”
“Amazing,” Charlotte said. “Ferne and I were there three years ago. Out visiting another potential suitor, of course.” She rolled her eyes.
Ferne added something about the suitor and they all laughed, which reminded Avery of another time, and they were off, lost in their drinks and conversation. Mentally thanking Ferne but dreading the grilling she knew she would be subjected to later, Arabel turned back to Alistair.
“So where are you from?” she asked.
“Aren’t you going to let me get a little drunker first? Before you interrogate me?”
She frowned. “No… I… Damn.”
He took a long drink. “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.” Then he grinned. The smile lit his face and the resemblance to the drawing she’d found became clearer. He leaned toward her. “How about we talk about you? I don’t know anything about you. Except that you like to follow people.”
“Just you.”
“I’m flattered.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“So…” he went on, “what brings you here?”
“You mean besides my plan to interrogate you?”
His smile widened. “I mean to the castle. Why’d you decide to become a guardian?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why are you here—at the castle?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ferne?” Alistair asked. “Why is Arabel here, training to become a guardian?”
“Oh, her father sent her to join the guardians against her will. She tried to escape on the way here.” Ferne lifted her eyebrows at Arabel, then turned away meaningfully.
Alistair set his drink down. “Really?”
Arabel picked at the table, then waved a hand in the air. “Yes. It’s not a big deal.”
“Is that why you wanted to learn how to pick locks? Doors generally just open from the inside you know.”
She glared at him. “If I wanted out of here anymore, I would be long gone.”
“So, it really was just so you could ransack my room.”
Damn. “That was just a bonus. Nice picture of yourself, by the way.”
His confidence wavered momentarily, but he folded his hands on the table. “So, what’s keeping you here?”
She couldn’t think of a glib reply.
“And how did you break into the vault your first night?”
“My mother made the door.” She blushed; she hadn’t been intending to give an honest answer, it had just slipped out. “And I didn’t mean to break in, I just opened it.”
He realized he’d touched a nerve and sat back. “Hey, sorry,” he said at last.
“It’s fine.”
They were quiet for several seconds. Alistair looked at her levelly, fingering the handle of his mug. Finally, he looked down at the table. “I’m from Sorcerer’s Reach,” he said.
Her gaze shot up. “That’s why you’re planning to kill some sorcerers?”
His eyebrows lifted, impressed. “How did you—” His grin returned. “Ah, you’re guessing again.” He laughed. “What did Arnold say?”
Arabel suppressed a smile. “He thought I was a spy for the sorcerers. He told me to tell them to get a better one.”
Alistair laughed. “I don’t know. They might not do much better than you. Although your methods are… unorthodox.”
Arabel laughed, too. “Sorry,” she said after a long moment, completely at a loss for what else to say. “I’m sorry I’ve been… following you around and… suspecting you.” God, that was the worst thing she could imagine, and she’d been doing to him exactly what everyone else had done to her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s OK. I understand why you suspected me. And I understand why you would want to prove it wasn’t you.”
“Everyone thinks I’m here working for Cecil,” she found herself saying. “My father,” she clarified, although a little bubble of joy welled in her chest at the word.
Alistair waited, and she continued.
“Except I just found out he’s not even actually my father. He’s an asshole. He definitely has something planned. I have no idea what it is, but I’m going to find out.”
Ferne whirled around. “I’m sorry, what? He’s not even your father?” She leaned in, the alcohol on her breath and her eyes wide. “Then who is?” she whispered.
“Ian. But don’t tell anyone.”
Ferne nodded solemnly. “I promise,” she said loudly.
“Promise what?” Charlotte demanded, then burped.
Ferne turned to her. “That I won’t tell anyone that Ian is… a woman,” she finished lamely.
“What?”
Arabel had to nip this in the bud. She didn’t think Ian would appreciate this at all. “That Ian is my father. Please don’t tell anyone. I just found out.”
“Oh, wow,” Charlotte breathed, leaning over her sister and patting Arabel roughly on the head and face. “How do you feel?”
“Awesome.”
“Yeah, makes sense. Your father—er, Cecil Fossey is—”
“A piece of work, yes,” Arabel finished.
“Sorry,” Ferne said. “That’s great, that’s so great.” She leaned back and tried to push Charlotte in the other direction. “Now go back to talking; sorry, you two keep talking.” She tried to turn Charlotte’s head away. “We’ll go back to talking. Charlotte!”
“Ferne, stop it! What are you doing?”
“Arabel wants to talk to Alistair.” She raised her eyebrows and elongated the next word for emphasis. “Alone.”
“Ohhh… but hasn’t she been making out with—”
“Shh!” Ferne clapped her hand over her sister’s mouth. “Avery! Tell us about… about… the ocean.”
Avery was suppressing a giggle. She looked to Arabel, then obliged Ferne’s request. Her mug was only a third empty, but there were somehow already four empty tankards in front of Ferne and Charlotte.
Arabel turned back to Alistair, who was grinning. “I haven’t been—”
“Been interrogating other people this way, too? You’d think you’d be better at it, if you’ve practiced this much.”
“Yeah, well, I suck at talking.”
“Yeah, you have an interesting way of going about a conversation.” He smiled. “Direct.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You know,” he added. “As much as I’m making fun of you, you actually did a pretty good job following me.”
“Yeah, not bad for someone who spent most of the last few years locked in a room, huh?”
“You spent the last few years locked in a room?”
“Oh.” She looked down. “Well, yes.”
“Whoa.”
“I mean, it was fine. Sort of.”
“So, everyone thinks you’re here working for Cecil Fossey, and you’re getting blamed for every bad thing that happens, and you just want to…”
“Find my mother, if she’s alive. Thwart whatever Cecil is doing. Like, anything he tries, I’d like it to not work out for him. Even little things. Like, I’d like to…” she took another drink, “find every bakery within a hundred miles of Myrefall and convince them to never sell his favorite cherry pastries again. Or maybe just burn down all the cherry trees.”
“Right. Straight to the source. More efficient.”
“Exactly.”
“Vindictive.”
She stopped. “No, wait. Shit.” She pressed her face into her hands. “That’s exactly what he would do. Punish his enemies in stupid, petty ways.” She groaned. “Alistair.” She looked up at him. “How do I get revenge on someone whose sole defining trait is revenge? That makes me just as bad as him. Then, even if I get reveng
e, he wins.”
“Hmm… that is tough.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully.
She continued, “You’re lucky. You don’t have this problem. The sorcerers—who for some mysterious reason that I am no longer asking about are your enemies—are known for stealing people’s souls. That’s pretty clear-cut.”
“Right. Not a lot to worry about there.” He smiled, but his gaze turned serious. “You don’t have to worry about that, Arabel.”
Arabel looked down into her mug, took a quick swig.
“Anyway,” she finished. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop hassling you.” When she looked up, he smiled, raised his mug to her, and changed the subject to something else.
Slowly, over the next hour, more and more people filtered into the bar; someone bought the musician a drink, and the noise level rose to a dull roar. Only when the bar began to empty again did they leave, stumbling their way home up the road. They had to turn around after a few moments, realizing they’d gone the wrong way.
Ferne stumbled up behind her, linking her elbow through Arabel’s. “I thought you liked David?” she whispered.
“I do,” Arabel hissed. “I mean, I don’t. I don’t like anyone.”
Ferne laughed and gave her arm a knowing squeeze. “This was great. We should do this every week.”
28
“What do you mean we have the afternoon off?” Charlotte demanded.
The four of them stood grouped on the practice field.
“Naomi is sick. No training today,” Rody said.
“Can’t you train us?” Ferne asked.
“No.”
“What about someone else?”
“Please, just take the day off. Take a nap or something,” he called over his shoulder, making his way in the direction of the forge.
Avery immediately left for the library, and Ferne and Charlotte went to take a nap, leaving Arabel alone on the field. She wished she had an eidolon to practice on.
She climbed the steps onto the ramparts, leaned out over the edge of the wall. Far below she could see the cliff face and the narrow path that led to the platform where the initiation test had taken place.
Absently, she fingered the pulsing gold threads, the three flickers of light stretching out away from her into the distance. What pieces of herself were out there, waiting? And was her mother out there alive somewhere, too? A captive of her father, just as Arabel had been?
Her feet took her along the wall, climbing the stairs to the new tower. The walkway narrowed here, the grey stones plunging down into thick forest on the right. Tree branches from the forest overhung the walkway. Not very secure, she thought, drawing her sword and hacking off the longest ones, the ones that looked like they could be shimmied across.
The walkway led down a steep incline, and she followed it across the top of the main gate; now she could see the rooftops of Norbury peeking out from between the trees a few miles down the road. The wall climbed up to the old tower and again skirted its circumference. A narrow staircase caught her attention, spiraling up the side of the tower. She climbed it and, coming around the curve of the tower, saw a platform with two booted legs dangling off the edge. She came closer, climbing the stairs until she was level with the platform. Naomi turned, her gaze sweeping down to Arabel’s boots and back up. Her face was puffy, her eyes red-rimmed, and her hand clutched a flask.
“You’re not allowed here,” Naomi said.
“I thought you were sick.”
“I am.”
“You don’t look sick.”
“Go back to whatever you were doing. Mapping the place out for your father.”
Arabel rolled her eyes and turned to go.
“You know,” Naomi called after her. “You’re not special. Oswald only agreed to take you in to try to get information out of you about your father. He doesn’t care about you at all. You’re no good, you know that, right? I’ve never seen such a talentless waste of space.”
“At least I’m not too drunk to work.”
Something bounced off the back of her head, but Arabel didn’t give her the satisfaction of turning around.
“What’s wrong?” David asked finally, after he’d managed to land three blows in a row.
Arabel kicked at the ground. “Seriously, what’s Naomi’s problem?”
David leaned on his practice stick. “Naomi’s all right.”
“No, she is definitely not.” Arabel paused. “She won’t train me. She berates me constantly. She throws me to the wolves at every opportunity. I mean,” Arabel examined the end of her braid, “I get disliking my father. I get she’s mad that I ran off and stole food. But this is insane. It’s completely out of proportion. How is she still in charge here?”
David pursed his lips and ran a hand across his chin. “You should give Naomi a chance. You have a lot in common, you know.”
“Oh yeah, what?”
“You’re both badass fighters.”
She grinned and started to move toward him, but then remembered they’d agreed not to.
“But… also—and I really shouldn’t be telling you this—Naomi isn’t herself right now.” David paused. “Her partner died a few months ago.”
“Oh.”
“I shouldn’t say ‘died’, either. Her partner was murdered. She was out on a patrol alone—which we’re not supposed to do—and ran into some vigilantes. Some of the many guardian-haters out there.” He didn’t go on, but the look on his face let Arabel guessed some of the things that might have happened.
“Whoa.”
“The antipathy towards us is getting worse all the time. And Naomi’s not making it any better. There’ve been a couple of times now she’s tried to force people to reincorporate their eidolons.”
Arabel lifted her eyebrows.
“Also something we’re not supposed to do, by the way,” David added.
“I just want her to leave me alone.”
“You just have to earn her respect. Naomi is the hardest worker here. She cares about what we do. Show her you care, too, and she’ll respect you.”
“She didn’t look like she was working that hard today.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes when you push yourself that hard, you fall off the path that hard, too. That’s the point. Balance. Don’t get too extreme either way, that’s the way you create eidolons.”
Arabel considered this.
“Really, though. Even if you don’t care about the mission of the guardians, you can at least respect that she does, and treat her accordingly.”
“I will if she does.”
David grimaced. “That’s not how it works. Sometimes you have to be good to people before they’re good to you. Otherwise you’re just angry at everyone and expecting them to change.”
That sounded familiar. But some people wouldn’t change and being nice to them just meant you were letting them manipulate you. “So I should just sit there and take it?”
“You’re the one that needs something from her.”
“So I’m going to be nice to her in order to get what I want?”
“I guess that’s how it sounded. You could think of it that way. Or you could decide that being respectful of people is a good way to be, and you could do that.”
Two weeks ago, Arabel would have dismissed this as idiocy. But the conversation she’d had with Ian flashed across her mind. Maybe there were different ways of being. Maybe she wasn’t an extension of Cecil.
“I guess I could give that a try.”
“Good.” He grinned, and her heart skipped a beat.
29
Report to Maureen.
Arabel squinted up at the chore board as she drained the last of her coffee from its mug. Who was Maureen again?
Archie appeared, glowing, at her shoulder, peering down into her empty mug.
“Archie, who’s Maureen?”
Moira was passing behind her carrying a stack of plates. “That’s the librarian, honey. Short. Great shoes.”
Right.
Arabel spiraled down the pitch-black staircase until it opened out into the grand, open chasm of the library. She leaned her elbows on the rail, hanging her head over and staring down at the flower in its steamy glass enclosure. She’d promised Oswald she’d try again. Maybe later today.
The sleet must have started in earnest above now, because water poured down through the oculus. She could hear it trickling down the inside of the staircase and saw it falling in a sheet into the glass enclosure.
The great room had a stillness to it; Arabel walked quietly, every sound she made echoed. Is the whole place empty? She passed an enclave with chairs around ancient desks. Ducking between a row of books, she examined their gold spines, reading off the handwritten titles. Common Eidolons and How to Recognize Them, Eidolon Incorporation for Children, A Short History of the Guardians…
At the end of one row, a pile of crumbled parchment lay under a thick layer of dust. Cobwebs hung over everything.
She passed a large marble room with golden shelves. The shelves were labelled with bronze plaques. Kieran Mellor, Archguard I; Ronan Mellor, Archguard II, all the way to Oswald Pembroke, Archguard LXXIX. Each shelf was filled with handwritten volumes. She started to page through one of the first archguard’s books, but the pages cracked under her fingertips and she hastily replaced it.
She found her way to the first floor, which was mostly filled with rows of dark oak desks and reading lamps. At one end, she saw a familiar face.
The Eidolons of Myrefall Page 17
