It was only as they made to go—buoyed by certain spoils of the battle, and an extra escort besides—that Charlotte’s uncle broached again the topic of Usuri. “The witch,” he asked, “has she been ended?” Disappointment was heavy in his beard as she assured him of the truth. “There is no master in that one. Remember that. And this last, I fear, in the timing…”
“Timing?” Sara said, perking. She had an ear for gossip, that one. Charlotte felt only a lump in her throat.
The presence.
But her uncle’s eyes swiveled to her cousin, and the boy, staring openly—and admiringly—at Sara, blushed at the sudden attention. The bearer of ill tidings. Amschel cleared his throat, but would not look above his sodden bread. “I found a rider on the road a few days past. He said…there had been an accident. In the south.”
“In the…” Charlotte felt the breath sucked from her. “Oh, no.”
Sara cast about. “What? What do you mean?”
Maynard sighed deeply. “The Empress Dowager.”
The sound of Sara’s choking rasp was all but deafening. Tears bulged in those beautiful green eyes before the addendum ever mustered itself: first among the witch’s victims, if victim she was, to have at least survived. A carriage had apparently broken away, as she delivered a speech. Before a crowd of southern peasants and Orthodox nobles…and one faithful knight.
Someone had spooked the horses—a loyalist, the crowd had decided, when all was settled. Ser Bidderick had run the man down himself, the rider claimed, and dueled him in the road. A riot nearly did the rest when he ran the poor fool through. Later that very night, however, Bidderick himself was said to have been killed, and all knew who to blame for it.
But the information had been held, at least, until they could confirm it. How any of this had eluded Boyce, Charlotte did not know, but one thing seemed certain at the telling. Even between Sara’s bitter—and relieved—sobs, she knew this was not the witch’s work. Mercy was not in Usuri’s bearing. She said as much, boisterously, when the princess made threat against the witch’s life. Why she mustered such defense she could not say. Death would certainly be easier.
“And how do you know?” Sara bleated back, sharply. The pitch in her, the raw emotion—it nearly unsettled Charlotte. “How do any of you know?” she repeated more softly.
But Charlotte kept her voice level, and the point drove home. “For I have seen her. And I tell you this: she would not do this.” Not entirely a lie.
It was, however, the death knell of conversation. After, it was hurried farewells and uneasy silence. Sara wished to be home. In recent months, she had seen too much tragedy far too close to bear. Charlotte wished nothing more than to let her sleep.
By the time they returned, light trickled down into points of window-side flames, and nothing more. Walthere had retired by then, so Charlotte handed her uncle’s trophies over to his steward. Then, parting at last from Sara’s company—though not without necessary assurance as to her own health—the Lady Lion took a pensive stroll through Vissering.
Everything was different at night. Halls, bustling and breathless by the golden bars of light, drew long and empty with the passing of that brightest star. She lit a lantern, and save for the guileless pair her father had left to lope after her, the only play about the halls were the shadows and her own sure-footed taps.
At last—quiet.
Almost.
At an apex of stairs, watched over by the hollow eyes—soulless, it seemed, where the lantern struck them—of her own painted family, Charlotte’s little group came upon a spider pacing from the other direction. With the shuffle of their steps, the man lifted toward them, but it held none of the disinterest, nor even the false smile that was his wont. It was an empty look. The bland bow that followed was every bit as lacking.
“My lady.”
“Boyce.”
They took the measure of one another, as they had a thousand times before. Yet this time, neither seemed to have the energy. The man’s body slid to a somewhat slumped posture.
“It is good to see you well.”
They might have left it at that. As it was, they ambled through the uncomfortable nature of their meeting a moment before Boyce himself made to brush past and leave it all be. She stepped aside to let him, cursing all the while for the words that would not come. There were a hundred questions she might have made of her father’s oldest pet.
And every one of them ended in a witch.
She hastened to catch him before he had gone too far. He was rounding the hall as her quick feet caught his ear. Mirthless, he half-turned, and was most of the way into another bow when she gasped, “What is to happen to her?” The phrase seemed to rock him, but as she breathed she did not regret it—there was no politick way to ask.
“You have read the Vorges,” he countered, wielding that stony phrase like a shield.
She knew what he meant, but it couldn’t be—not that. A moment wavered in indecision, broken only by Boyce’s sigh.
“Tell me, lady, have you seen Dartrek yet?”
“Dartrek?” She perked unwittingly. She nearly popped forward on the balls of her feet, but caught herself in time. More guardedly, she asked: “What of him?”
“If there is one thing we should take from the witch, it is that those things common to us—overlooked—may slip all too swiftly by. You should, you know.” His eyes lowered, as if toying with some distant thought. A hand reached out toward her, hesitated, and drifted back to its place behind his back. Then he made to go. “The witch will live,” he added in passing. “Much as I regret it, your father commands it. I but bleed her daily, to keep her wiles at their weakest.”
“And what of that other dark creature?” she called after him, drawing a stern review. “What of that thing you brought here? What is his purpose?”
The man’s tongue clicked disapprovingly, and then so did his head. “Loose ends. You should not worry so about the witch. I cannot understand the fascination. Not after all this.” Almost as an afterthought, then: “Pray the pair do never meet.”
“And why is—”
“The Vorges, my dear. Strike up your bedtime stories.”
Then he was around a corner and away. She did not pursue him, though his words sapped some of the fire from her. Will not one of you take me to confidence anymore? You would make a queen! Why then, do you take eyes to me as so much the pawn? Setting her jaw, she turned on her heel and started the way she had begun, breezing past her guards like they were not even there.
A name called to her from the lower levels of the keep, but she pressed past the stairs, headed for the nobles’ secluded wing. If pawn she was supposed to be, then she would show them what happened when one drew the leash too tight. Husband, dear, is it past your bed time? No doubt the boy-king lay curled in his blankets, swaddled in the plush security of one of their station. Never to want, that one. Never to hope, or care, and certainly not to think. Not for a king, oh no! But the question of the king was who would stand behind him, who would be the voice through which he spoke. It was a mother’s role, perhaps. But mother was gone.
Men would make a puppet out of her. Well, let them see how much more the puppet, they. It was the man who swaggered before the crowd, and the man’s voice that flooded the stage. Pity how few realized it was a woman who wrote the lines.
What she intended to do, she did not rightly know. All she knew was her wrath, and the feeling of it all slipping between her fingers. Usuri. Her father. And Boyce, too—thrice damn him to Hell! She saw it all, and what could she do? But this boy, this boy—as the boy’s door loomed—she could be as god and master. Life needn’t be something that happened, but rather, something that could be…
Controlled.
Three guards stood at the ready. They started at the sight of her, stood rigid and pious before the coming of the night. She loathed them. Immovable statues. Everywhere they worked, content in their nothingness, content to do nothing but serve. A penny for the dozen,
and they were there. They did not complain—to master’s face, at any rate—and took it all, for what meager reward they were given. Or worse: on faith. They came and they forced their way into another’s life, insinuating themselves into something irreplaceable, and then they…then they…
She vacillated on her heel, faltering to a halt. Men were such frail things. And women, no better.
“Sister?”
Charlotte turned but slowly at the sound, as though it stood so frail as to break at the sharpness of motion. By pale candlelight, the ghost of Ser Gerold looked sheepish and uncertain. His bright little eyes watched her, weaving between the flames and watering with sleep’s call. She stood before his friend’s door. Her future lord’s. And she had walked past his own unnoticing. Was this the duty of a wife?
Tresses dipped with her head, to hide her face. “Nightmares, little brother?”
The ruffled brown head shook vigorously. Tiny feet padded nearer. “Did you come to see me, sister?”
Opaque faces watched them. By morning, their father would hear everything. The statues that were her fiancé’s guards were intractable, unmoved. Every word sunk hollow, somewhere between the bodies and the act. It reminded her of another shadow, too long in the dark.
She reached a pale hand to him, and smiled. “Of course, Ser Gerold. What maid could resist?”
Together, they went away from that place, from all the glamour and pomp, and moved into the darkness of lower halls, where the servants dwelt. It had been so long since she had been here. The cloistered space, the heavy air—it stood familiar, and yet, it rang tinged with a voice that haunted ages. It spoke in father’s tones, though it was not one voice, but many.
This is no place for us. Man and woman. Master and servant. The Lord made all separate, and he made it thus for a reason. The voice always spoke in a high language, away from simplicity. What it really meant: There are lines, there are always lines.
Her brother’s eyes never left her, just as his hand. At last she leaned across the divide of them and made to speak, but he beat her to it. “If you came to see Lothen, that is alright,” he said seriously. “You don’t need to walk with me, just because…”
It was a tone she could not match. “Is that right?”
He smiled back, but said nothing more.
There was a certain door, though it stood indiscriminate from the rest. Their guardians looked as puzzled by it as her brother did. Yet she saw it through a little girl’s eyes, though she did not know she still possessed such things. Wide eyes. Fearful eyes.
Staving off any questions, she put a finger to her lips and shushed her brother forward. Then she asked their attendants to wait outside. Only because they lately realized whose chamber it was did they oblige.
Inside was a stale room, rendered oppressive by the dribble of smoke from dangling censers. Gerold wrinkled his nose but stepped onward all the same. The place was nigh bare, boasting little more than a bed and a stool, for it was little used. Dust, however, did not cling to the floor. Recently cleaned, no doubt, when the censers were carried in.
Charlotte followed her brother in and clapped the door shut behind. Only the points of their own light hung here, and they made phantoms of the smoke.
Charlotte stopped before the bed. It was a small thing, too small, with scarcely enough straw to support a chicken at roost. Spread across it like so much mulch was the pale form of one she knew well. The cheeks had hollowed and blistered, and the flesh drawn wan against so much sleep, but the lungs rose and fell in determined strokes. They pushed on. As they always would.
Dartrek was a husk, withered by flame. Not the shadow. Not the idiot hound. A human husk, perhaps finally unveiled.
Her protector.
“…like you did.”
She blinked. She had not realized her brother spoke to her. Her attention shifted to him, but he remained at Dartrek’s side, leaning over the edge of the bed to catch the man’s breathing. As though, in looking away, he might condemn him to cease.
“Pardon?”
“He looks like you did,” her brother repeated. “Like…like Kana does when she sleeps at night.” He blushed, and caught himself, quickly twisting back toward her. “Not that—I mean, you know, you all look so peaceful.”
She made a mental note to check in on the girl, but left it alone for the moment. Gracefully as she could, she slid forward to the stool and settled in, letting Gerold’s fear slip away with time.
Gerold looked warily back at the slumbering giant. “It was so odd to see you without him. We call him Ser Hollow, you know.” When Charlotte started, the boy added a bit guiltily: “He—he always looks so alone, you know. Like Lothen.”
A smile forced itself upon her. It had, perhaps, been too long since she’d had a serious conversation with her brother. Too easy to forget that even children were not always children. More difficult to think her stoic shield had anything in common with their emperor-to-be.
“What do you mean by that?”
The boy reached out and pressed a cold hand to Dartrek’s forehead. From whatever darkness held him, Dartrek shuddered, and Gerold shrank back swiftly, all but hopping to his sister’s lap. “He…” He trailed, haunted by the sleeping man. “He is very lonely here. And you—he talks about you like you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.” Then his nose scrunched. “Even when I tell him you’re my sister.”
She hesitated. Lothen, he surely meant. Why would Dartrek…? For a second, she considered laying a hand on her brother’s shoulder. Instead, she clasped it to her lap.
“And why should our young emperor be lonely? He has you, does he not?”
“Of course!” Then, proudly: “He said I could be one of his knights. Just like uncle. But…everyone else, he says, they’re always there to tell him what to do, but they never listen. Even when they smile and nod and go away, he knows they’re only pretending. I told him you’re not like that, though. How you listen, and you always try and, and…”
“You are a good friend.”
He blushed, losing his words to her praise, but gaining new life in them. As only children could. Then: “Do you think Dartrek will wake up?”
Would that she could say for certain. “In time, little one. It takes more than magic to slay a Kuric.”
But this did not seem to cheer the boy at all.
“Does this not please you?” She asked, sincerely puzzled.
“It’s just…when you woke up, Charlotte, we were there to see you. Waiting. But I don’t think—does Dartrek have a family?”
It was a thought, admittedly, she had not considered.
“No, Gerold.”
“No papa?”
“No, Gerold.”
“No mama?”
“No, Gerold.”
His eyes flickered down, and the sallow light made pools of them. Pools that dribbled over his feet, wondering. “Is that why we came here?”
Was it? She sat back on her haunches and twisted her eyes to the sunken picture of a man defined by his faith. Not in some faceless god, but in a simple ideal, and in flesh, set before him. Not a blade, but a shield, a watcher that never turned from those about him. She tried to picture him as the child had, so long ago, but it was impossible. This was Dartrek, as he had always been. But now…
It was a child’s turn to play the watcher. No one should ever have to wake alone.
Night stretched into the restless blackness of pre-dawn, but she came to Usuri again. A certain jumpiness—a heightened uncertainty of the world around them—seemed to possess this shift of guards, standing as they did in the very throes of the witching hour, and they did not wish to let Charlotte pass. But all things bend. Before the sun was a mote in the Maker’s eye, she bent them to her iron will, and walked as a lion would.
The witch knelt—what other choice did she have?—as if waiting for her. No doubt, it was exactly that. Yet the mind was elsewhere. It hung at the edge of a coin that Usuri cupped between her palms as tenderly as a new
born babe. Shoulders slumped, head bowed, it seemed there was no light at all left in this child of fire. Charlotte felt some of her own go out of her as she slowed before the somber figure, a sliver of torchlight all that stood before them and the dark.
“Father always said that pain schooled a soul. For that, he said, we Naran should be the oldest, wisest souls of all.” The chin lifted, though the eyes remained, as though Usuri could not pull herself away. “Yet the soul bleeds. A word can set it off again, where years of scarring sought to heal it. And you know what that leaves us with? I could die. I could kill. It’s nature—I’ve seen others do it.” She paused. “I’ve done it.
“And you know what I have realized? For all the hurts that come upon us, all the ends we come to face, so much of it leads back to our own self. A word unspoken. A deed unrealized. Visions whispered for the wrong eyes…” A shred of a tear bubbled in the girl’s eye, and threatened to fall. Instead, she blinked it into air.
“So…” The girl murmured, at least some of herself returning to that mouse-like body. “Your father knows of the lion?” Charlotte nodded, uncertain which aspect of the witch she now faced. “In earnest will he move, to make it so.”
“Self-fulfilling prophecy? Aren’t those a little tired?”
“Quite. But not all of it is so. Not all of it is a lion’s share, after all.”
“How do you mean?”
Usuri’s eyes sank, and the body with them. A tired sigh eased out of her like old wind. “Prophecy is words. No more. No less. Alterable. Lions, you should know, are indolent creatures. Self-indulging. They sit on the labors of others, even to their mates, and reap a kingly title from the bones. This vision—it is not about lions, lady, but the fairer cat.”
Charlotte betrayed no hint of surprise. Rather, she gently kicked the shoes from her feet and let the dew play between her toes as she stalked nearer to their so-called prophet. So soft, the grass. It carried her away from the walls raised about her. So frail. Like the witch’s mind. Like her own skin. She peered down at one dainty limb as she let it fold beneath her. None of the roughness of Dartrek’s hands, no. It lacked the experience.
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