by Shannon Hale
“Lounging in a chair, doing all the easy jobs, and not nearly as pretty as me.” Pela put a cup of tea in his hand, stroking his fingers a moment longer than was necessary.
Huh, he thought, that’s a change. Her touch made him want to look serious and manly, and he downed the stinging hot tea in one gulp. To hide the pain, he turned to mount his horse and botched his whole image by having to scramble up just to stick his foot in the stirrup. Once in the saddle, he discovered his stirrups were so high, his knees were sticking up level with the saddle rim.
“What the—?” He had to dismount and adjust the length. By then Pela had moved off, serving tea to Tumas. They appeared to be chatting intimately.
“New saddle?” asked Finn, riding up.
“Finn, do you see the lias—whatever, the orange-haired girl?” Razo gestured ahead without looking. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
Finn glanced Dasha’s way, then returned his attention to his horse. “She’s all right.”
“Really? Just all right?”
Finn shrugged.
Razo rolled his eyes and tapped Bee Sting to a walk. “What am I saying? He doesn’t think any girl is pretty but Enna.”
“Are there any girls but Enna?” Finn called back.
“There’d better be.”
A memory of Bettin came unbidden—a night in Bayern’s capital four years ago. Isi had been sitting by the fire, telling a bed tale to all the animal workers. It had been a romantic one, the kind that usually made Razo sniff in boredom, but he’d liked it because Bettin had been sitting beside him. That night, all that stuff about a man and a woman and hearts and vows of forever had seemed as real as the fire in the grate.
“Stupid,” Razo muttered. Saying the word made him feel a touch better.
Bee Sting trotted briefly as they passed the palace gates. Razo gripped the hard rim of the saddle, anticipating an attack from angry Tiran citizens, but the streets of Ingridan were sleepy. The dawning sun polished the stones to a soft gold, making the city feel warm and friendly, and street after street, nothing jumped out at them. Still, Razo could not relax.
“Take a look at that,” said Conrad as they passed a palace a quarter the size of Thousand Years. “A feather bed and private room for every guard and maid, I’d bet, and fancy chairs for the dogs and cats, while they’re at it.”
“But what good’s a fancy house like that for the likes of you, Forest-born?” said Razo. “You’d get lost in the corridors and barely survive by eating leather chair covers.”
“That so, squirrel meat? Well, you’d mistake the kitchen for the privy and scare away the pretty maids.”
Victar rode nearby. “That is Lady Dasha’s home.” He wet his lips as he nodded in her direction.
Conrad wagged his eyebrows. “Lives like a princess, and pretty, too.”
“Yes, she is considered a more than adequate match for any noble bachelor of Ingridan.” Victar’s smile was mischievous. “Her father has extensive holdings.”
“With her father in Bayern,” said Razo, “you’d think she’d have plenty to do managing everything. So why’d she volunteer to stay at Thousand Years with the Bayern?”
Victar shrugged slightly, as if he did not know or care.
The party left the main avenue for narrow streets where the houses crowded on top of one another, and the air changed—it swept over Razo as though it were more river than wind, the smell sharp and so briny that it seized the top of his throat.
Then there was the ocean.
The white buildings of the city stopped just shy of the bay, as if afraid of getting their toes wet. In the distance, he could see the harbor and dozens of ships, some grand and long, their masts a forest of trees smoothed of their branches.
Dasha led them to a slim section of shore, as quiet and clean as the morning streets. Razo left Bee Sting at a post and walked across a field of sand.
He knew the ocean was huge because he had been told so, but he could see only the thin line of it before the horizon clamped down. There was no grandeur, not like seeing a mountain; nothing to surround him and make him feel changed, as when he entered a wood or stood in the midst of a snowstorm. Even so, the sea felt bigger than weather, older than ruins. The sight rustled at his soul.
He stared, and his unease lengthened inside him, as though it stretched after sleeping. Up the waves rolled, back they fell, like breath pushed out and pulled back in. The hushing noise made his bones feel soft, his eyes drowsy. He thought he could lie in the sand and forget who he was, let the water and the sound of water unstitch his soul from his body and send it floating away to see what the dead see.
“Do you like it?” asked Dasha.
The sound of her voice startled him. Something about an ocean made him forget he was not alone.
“I don’t know that it’s up to me to like,” he said. “It’s not really a people thing, is it? Not like a city or a farm. It’s got more wilderness about it than anything I’ve ever seen.”
He thought that was a very apt observation and congratulated himself, waiting for Dasha to agree. She was staring at the water, her lips parted, her eyes losing focus to the crumbling surf, almost as if she were trying to catch a glimpse of someone she knew far out on the waves. He watched her watching the sea and had the peculiar impression that she knew the ocean, the way he knew his sister, Rin, or the Forest, or his way around a roasted chicken.
He cleared his throat and spoke again. “It’s pretty, even though it’s so empty.”
She pulled her gaze back to him. “Just under the surface it teems with fish and plants.”
“So, it’s a forest for fish.”
“Exactly! Except, I’ve never seen a forest.”
“Never seen a forest?” Razo shook his head. Now Dasha seemed stranger than a sea. “There was a time I thought my Forest was the world.”
“All those trees. And animals, too, right? Is it beautiful?” She rocked on her feet as though too excited to hold still.
“It’s home, and I guess I think it’s just what it ought to be. Think of it as an ocean of trees, if you want.”
“And what do you eat from a forest instead of fish?”
“Sometimes red deer, but that’s a big quarry and rare to catch. I hunt some birds, but mostly rabbits or squirrel.”
“What is ‘squirrel’?”
“It’s like a chipmunk, but with a long, fat tail.”
Dasha wrinkled her brow, indicating she did not understand.
“Squirrel and chipmunk, they’re about this big, furry, kind of like, I don’t know, like rats that live in trees.”
“Rats? You eat rats?”
“They’re not really rats, I was just trying to think of something that—”
“You eat tree rats. That’s one rumor of Bayern habits I hadn’t heard.”
“They’re not tree rats really, they’re just . . . ugh, I shouldn’t’ve said rats, I meant . . . Wait, what rumors have you heard?”
“You eat babies,” she said blankly.
“No, you eat babies!”
“I do not!”
“I don’t mean you personally. I mean, that’s what I’ve heard about the Tiran, but I never believed it.”
“And I didn’t believe it about the Bayern.”
“So what are we hollering about?”
“What are you hollering about?” asked Enna as she and Finn joined them.
“We weren’t,” said Razo. “Well, maybe, but . . . Dasha, what was I saying?”
Dasha did not seem to take his question seriously. She turned to the newcomers and introduced herself.
“Finn of Bayern’s Own,” said Finn.
“I’m Enna, waiting woman to Lady Megina.”
Razo caught the barest flinch in Dasha’s expression, a dart of her eyes, a subtle indication that perhaps she did not believe what Enna had just said. But she conversed in a friendly manner with Enna, eagerly even, and did not seem the least aware that she was talking to Tira’s great ene
my the fire-witch. He discovered his hand was gripping the hilt of his sword and he slowly let go.
Enna said something Razo did not catch, most likely some disparaging comment about him, and Dasha smiled. The way the sun hit Dasha’s eyes, they were so light in color, they appeared translucent. Razo stared.
“Are you all right?” Dasha asked. “Your face looks pained. Did you bite your lip or something? . . . No? Well, we should return. It was a pleasure, Enna, Finn, tree rat.”
She walked away.
Enna and Finn looked at Dasha and then at Razo.
“Did she just call you tree rat?” asked Enna.
“Did she?” said Razo.
“I think she just called you tree rat.”
“No.”
Finn nodded. “She did. She called you tree rat.”
“Why would she—” Enna started.
“Because of squirrels, I guess,” said Razo, still watching Dasha walk away. Negotiating the sand, she took small steps, and her hips kind of swayed. He found it curious.
“Squirrels?” asked Enna.
“Rats in trees,” Razo said distractedly. Dasha seemed to find her walking rhythm from the sound of the surf, almost as if she were not a girl but water upon the sand. His soul whistled an easy tune.
When she had disappeared into the group of Tiran, Razo looked back at Enna and Finn. Both were staring at him, mouths agape.
“What?” he said.
Enna laughed and started back up the beach. “Razo, you’re a picture.”
“I am?” He turned to Finn. “Is that good or bad?”
Finn shrugged. “I’m still trying to figure out squirrels.”
On the ride back, Razo contemplated being a picture, and being a tree rat, and the way Dasha had walked up the beach, and the rustling of the ocean. He was feeling pretty good, which made the scene at Thousand Years all the more abrupt.
It was a hornets’ nest.
Clusters of Tiran citizens mobbed outside the palace gates. When they saw the returning Bayern soldiers, the excited shouting turned to anger. Fists pounded the air.
A mounted Tiran guard rushed through the gates and toward the Bayern. Razo loosed his sling and urged Bee Sting closer to Enna and Finn, saying, “I’m sorry,” because he had promised his horse that he would keep her out of another war.
Lord Belvan rode at the head of his own group of soldiers, holding up his bare hand. “Quickly! Captain Talone, let’s get your people into the safety of Thousand Years.”
Talone cantered his horse forward, shouting, “Follow Lord Belvan!”
“What’s happened?” Conrad asked.
No one answered. Lord Belvan’s soldiers surrounded the Bayern, separating them from the citizens on the streets, and led them through the gate. The sun, glaring above the horizon, fumed in its sizzling spring heat.
Inside the grounds, sentries stood with drawn weapons and courtiers and palace workers with unsheathed glares. The Bayern rode past the stable where Razo had followed Enna the day before. Amid a throng of watchers, three men carried something heavy wrapped in a blanket. One man was jostled by the crowd, and he leaned to the side to catch his footing. From beneath the blanket a blackened leg dropped into view.
10
The Captain’s Spy
Razo could not catch his breath, and his jaw tightened as if he would throw up. How can she do this?
Lord Belvan’s men led the Bayern to a back stable, where they tumbled off their mounts and fled into the palace. They ran down a corridor, Belvan barking commands, splitting the Bayern into smaller groups, stuffing them into various rooms and posting guards “until it quiets out there.”
“What do you think’s going on?” Enna asked.
“It’s pretty clear,” Razo whispered. He would not look at her. “Talone and I found the first two, Enna. Or were there more? I should’ve been watching better, but I never could stop you. You’d run off a cliff if the idea took you.”
“What’re you talking about?” asked Finn.
“That was another body they just found out there. Burned brittle.”
“And you think Enna—”
Razo glared. “Who else, Finn?”
Lord Belvan urged Razo into the next room. Razo glanced back at Enna—she was neither furious nor devastated. She was dazed. Stunned to silence. The door shut.
Razo sat on the floor. In memory, her look pierced him like the long, thin thorns that slip deep into skin. He knew now that if Enna had burned those people, she did not know she had.
Razo shared the space with three of Bayern’s Own, who spent an hour chewing over the ugly situation.
“If a war starts and we’re here . . . ,” said one.
“Prisoners for the duration, if not executed on the spot.”
“Do you think Lady Megina’s to blame? Who is she, anyway? I never heard of the king’s cousin till she was suddenly ambassador.”
Razo kept quiet, picking at the wood grain. Enna’s face had sent him tilting, and he seemed to rock as though unaccustomed to still earth after hours on horseback.
After a second hour, the noise outside their window lost its urgency and dwindled to the hum and rub of every day. When his three companions left to find Talone, Razo stayed.
He was sitting in an abandoned chair before the hearth when Enna burst into the room, slamming the door behind her. She set a fire blazing in the hearth, spitting sparks.
“Watch it, Enna!” Razo leaped from his seat and hopped about, slapping at his clothes.
“You think I didn’t know you were there? You think I’d burn you by accident?”
Razo brushed off his lummas, petulant that there were no burned spots to account for his yelping. “You could’ve—”
“You’re fine, Razo.”
He barely breathed the question. “Enna, are you burning again?”
“No.”
“I saw you sneak into that stable yesterday, and I thought—”
Enna put back her head and laughed, but it came out hard, as though the laugh burned her throat. “I was shortening the stirrups on your horse’s saddle!”
“My stirrups . . . that was you!”
“Of course it was, you dolt.” She tried to sound casual, the kind of voice she used for throwing around insults, but her words were strained. “I didn’t burn anybody.”
“Are you sure? Not by accident? Not in your sleep or . . . or anything?”
She sat on the floor before her fire. Her fingers rubbed the hem of her tunic, her eyes followed the flames, and Razo thought how Enna, like fire, like wind, could never hold completely still.
“What happened with me and Isi on our journey—I never told you much. Maybe if I had, if you’d understood, you’d know that I’ve changed, that I . . .” She paused as though she struggled with words. It made him feel proud, that Enna would care what she said to him, that she worried what he thought.
“Isi and I went to Yasid,” she continued in her artless voice. “We learned how to share our knowledge of fire and wind languages with each other, so that we’d have balance. I form fire out of the heat that rises off living things, and during the war, that heat was gathering around me constantly, pressing in, demanding. But now that I have wind speech, too, the wind’s always nearby to blow off the heat so it can’t overwhelm me. Same with Isi—the wind used to hound her with its speech, with the images of what it had touched. But now that she understands fire speech, too, the heat’s always there to break up the wind.”
Enna cleared her throat. The sound made her seem young, just a little girl. “What I’m trying to explain is, I’m not the fire’s puppet. I can’t lose control anymore. So if you still think I’m burning people, you’d have to believe that I’m doing it on purpose. That I want to.” She looked now at Razo, and he imagined that because she had been staring at the fire so long, her gaze was hot on his skin. “I don’t want to, Razo. And I’m not. And I won’t. Burn another person. Never again.”
Razo’s hands were ora
nge and strange in the firelight. He turned them over, looking for an answer. Something to say. He settled on, “I’m sorry.”
Enna frowned. “I guess if people suspect me, it’s my own fault.”
“But, Enna, if you don’t burn, if you won’t let yourself, then what good . . . I mean, why are you here? Why’d you demand to come when—”
“During the war, it took me just a few moments to burn down homes that took weeks to build. I ended lives like snapping a twig in two. That can’t be all I am, Razo! There’s got to be ways I can help without . . . without hurting.”
“Isi thought it was too dangerous.”
“She worries too much for me, but she believes I can do it, too.” She bit her lip. “Do you?”
I want you to, he thought. I hope you can. I’ll help you try. He just nodded. “If it’s not you burning people, that means it’s someone else.”
“Brilliant,” said Enna. “You always were the brightest sheep boy I knew.”
Razo gave her a playful knock with his elbow and tried to enjoy the moment, but he had just accused one of his best friends of murdering three people in her sleep.
Finn was waiting outside the door, his hand on his sword hilt, and Razo greeted him without meeting his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Finn. I’m a wooden-headed dummy.”
“Don’t be so hard,” said Finn. “You’re just a straw-brained scarecrow.”
Razo left hurriedly, claiming an urgent need for a privy, and went to find Talone on his own. It frightened him a bit to face his captain. What could he possibly do to earn his place among Bayern’s Own after being so wrong about Enna?
He’d turned a corner in the quiet corridor when he saw Tumas. Razo cursed into his teeth, wishing Finn and Enna would come this way, and in a hurry. He started to turn back, but Tumas grabbed his shoulder.
“Well, if it isn’t the knee biter,” Tumas said in his stuffed-nose whine. “Care for a rematch? Come on, right now, you with a sword and me with a feather.”
Razo kept his eyes down, as he would if running into a Forest wolf. He stepped to the side, and Tumas followed, blocking his way.
