Reign of Mist

by Helen Scheuerer

  Chapter 26

  The pain always stopped for a while, before it got worse. The eye in a storm of agony. Dash was in a state of such temporary reprieve, and before he even opened his eyes, he knew he was somewhere far away from home. The air was drier, hotter. It settled over his skin, leaching away any moisture his body had left. He could smell smoke. But not the comforting, homely smoke of a stove fire. Here, wherever that was, it was more intense, as though there were a thousand fires burning outside. There was a subtle chemical tang to the scent that made his eyes water as he opened them. The room had an orange glow to it, and in an armchair in the corner, slept a stranger. A man, his sharp jaw shadowed with dark stubble, his long lashes resting on the tops of high cheekbones. His shirt and pants were threadbare, his chestnut hair unkempt and his exposed, dirty feet stretched out before him. No, not a stranger … It was the man who had spoken to Pa outside the healer’s. The same gold-toothed man who’d bumped into Dash at the fabric shop.

  Dash’s throat was raw and dry. Where is Mama?

  As though sensing Dash’s panic, the man stirred. He opened one eye.

  ‘You’re awake.’ His voice was smooth. He yawned widely and cracked his neck. ‘Was wondering when you’d come back to us.’

  Dash tried to speak, but all that came out was a weak, strangled sound.

  ‘Don’t talk just yet, little brother.’ The man stood and went to a side table, and he handed Dash a cup of water. ‘Don’t go drinking that too fast. Won’t agree with you,’ he said.

  As the liquid hit Dash’s dry tongue and sore throat, he felt the instant urge to chug the whole cup. But he did as he was told, and took only a small mouthful. He looked around the room.

  There was no sign of Mama – no cloak or string bag, none of her usual jars of tea and ointment that always made an appearance when someone was ill.

  ‘We’re in the Janhallow Desert,’ the stranger said, following Dash’s wide eyes around the room. ‘Got a firestorm raging outside in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  Dash near choked on the water.

  ‘Where is Mama?’ he finally managed.

  ‘Back in Heathton. The captain and I brought you here. But this is just a pitstop. It’s not over yet.’

  Captain? Not over? Dash’s breaths became short and shallow, making him clutch at the front of his nightshirt. It was too hot, too tight.

  ‘Easy, little brother …’ the man said, kneeling down beside him and resting a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘Your mama wanted this. We’re trying to save you, for her.’

  ‘Mama …’ Dash’s voice broke, and hot tears stung his eyes. It was too much.

  ‘I know,’ the man said softly. ‘It’s not been easy, has it? How about I catch you up a bit, and we’ll see if you can hold down some broth? You’ll need your strength.’

  Without hesitation, he wiped the tears from Dash’s cheeks with his own shirt, his touch surprisingly gentle. When Dash’s breathing had steadied, the man got up and busied himself over at the side table.

  ‘They call me the Tailor,’ he said, back still to Dash. ‘Or just “Tailor” if the “the” gets too cumbersome. I live in Heathton, like you. Though, I daresay I do a fair bit more travelling.’

  He returned to Dash’s bedside with a steaming bowl of broth. But Dash’s arms were weak. He could hardly move to take it.

  ‘Don’t fuss yourself, little brother. Here,’ Tailor said, positioning the bowl under Dash’s chin and placing a spoonful at his mouth.

  Dash slurped gratefully. He didn’t know who ‘the Tailor’ was, but right now, he didn’t care. The broth was good, really good.

  ‘How —’ Pain tore at Dash’s throat and his eyes watered.

  ‘Did we get here?’ Tailor finished for him.

  Dash nodded weakly.

  ‘I imagine you won’t recall a ship. And you’d be right. We didn’t come by sea …’ Tailor’s brow furrowed as he struggled to find the right words. ‘I’m what they call a “traveller”, a kind of Ashai that can travel from place to place within moments.’

  Dash wasn’t sure he was hearing Tailor properly. An Ashai? Admitting it openly?

  Does he know … Does he know I have magic? Should I tell him? But all at once, Dash’s eyelids were heavy. Fatigue tugged at him as the warm broth settled in his stomach.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a tale for another time, then?’ Tailor said quietly.

  There was a knock at the door as Dash fought to keep his eyes open. He thought he saw the bulky shape of Captain Murphadias stride into the room, before exhaustion pulled him under.

  The pain was back, and it racked Dash’s body with newfound abandon. He tried to scream, but he was a mute prisoner, trapped inside his own skin. His whole body seized uncontrollably, and the hot, wet warmth of urine soaked his nightshirt.

  ‘— think you can get both of us there, old friend?’ A faraway voice said.

  Dash latched onto it. Anything to stop him thinking of the pain.

  ‘Yes. That’s why we came here first. I couldn’t have got us the whole way from Heathton, but it’s a shorter distance now. I can make it. How did you go with the letter?’ Tailor said in his familiar smooth tones.

  ‘I couldn’t get too close to Belbarrow,’ the other man said. ‘They’ve got a bounty on my head. The guards have orders to kill on sight. But I placed it in the hands of a trusted source. If it makes it to the commander in time, we’ll stop a war.’

  ‘Or start a different one …’

  There was a sigh. ‘Or start a different one.’

  The men fell silent and a fresh wave of pain washed over Dash with such violence that he bit through his bottom lip. His mouth filled with a coppery taste, and warm blood trickled down his chin.

  A thick, cool hand gripped his arm. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up, little brother,’ said Tailor.

  A pair of strong arms lifted him from the wet bed. ‘Ethelda sent something for the pain …’

  Hundreds of dots floated before Dash’s face. Black dots, arranged in all sorts of patterns, on a white background. He could feel no pain; instead he was mesmerised because he knew what these patterns meant, deep down … But they seemed so far away. He watched the dots change, somehow soothed by their simplicity, and yet …

  Books for people like me – for people who can’t see, Olena had said. Written in an old language called quaveer.

  Quaveer! That was it, that was what the dots were. He had been studying Olena’s books, along with the alphabet she’d written him when he …

  Voices murmured around him. The same deep voices from before. The man who called himself the Tailor, and Captain Murphadias. Dash opened his eyes to a blistering brightness.

  ‘Morning, little brother,’ Tailor said, taking a pipe from his lips to smile at Dash, his gold tooth glinting.

  The smile broke something inside of Dash. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. He was so far from home. Despair grew tight around Dash’s chest, and the familiar sting of tears filled his sore eyes.

  ‘Am I going to die?’ his voice cracked.

  Captain Murphadias stepped into view. ‘Not if we can help it, old friend,’ he pulled the blanket up to Dash’s chin. ‘Not if we can help it.’

  Dash didn’t believe him.

  Princess Olena sat hunched over a dark oak desk. Dash could hear the scratch of the nib into the parchment. He moved closer, watching as she tucked her gold hair behind her ear with a frustrated tut. She was using a ruler to keep her puncture marks straight as she wrote in quaveer, slowly and deliberately. He peered over her shoulder. The patterns were as he’d dreamed them. He squinted at the dots, organised in neat individual cells.

  Olena cried silently, and then, in a moment of anger, she shoved the parchment away, knocking over a nearby bottle of ink. Black rushed from the confines of the glass jar, seeping into her piece of parchment and dripping from the edge of the desk onto the floor.

  ‘Olena?’ said an unfamiliar voice.

  Dash turned to see a young ma
n dressed in finery standing in the doorway. He had to be Prince Nazuri.

  Olena stood and faced the prince, a streak of ink smeared on her cheek. The young man’s face softened, and he went to her, taking Olena into his arms.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, his voice rough with emotion. ‘I would not wish this upon anyone.’

  ‘I cannot believe she’s gone. That I didn’t get to say goodbye. That I cannot be there with my brother —’ A choked sob escaped her.

  The prince held her tighter, allowing her tears to streak his pristine tunic.

  Dash stepped back, shock consuming him. This was not how he’d imagined the prince to be. How he’d imagined Olena to be …

  Glass smashed behind him, making him jump.

  The prince and princess whirled around, and the prince stared directly at him. No. Not at him. Somehow, Dash had knocked the inkpot from the desk. They gawked at the shattered bottle.

  ‘How did that …?’ Olena began.

  The prince frowned. ‘I don’t know …’

  The pair waited, as though they could feel Dash’s presence. As though they knew something wasn’t right.

  Dash’s heart hammered wildly, and he held his breath. What would happen if they discovered him? Could they discover him? Olena was now the future Queen of Battalon.

  The prince turned back to Olena, finally looking at ease. He cupped her face, and wiped the streak of ink from her cheek. Dash’s stomach squirmed.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ the prince said, his voice warm with affection.

  ‘Writing a letter,’ Olena said with a sigh.

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To my friend in Ellest,’ she said.

  ‘The stable master’s son?’

  Dash jolted at the mention. The Prince of Battalon knew of him? Olena had spoken of him?

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve made a mess of it,’ Olena said.

  The prince took her arm and led her back to the desk. ‘Let’s see if we can salvage it.’

  Dash was suddenly wrenched back into the present by the shock of bitter cold. He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t move his limbs, trapped as he was within his own body. And the cold … It was a cold that ran so deep, so icy, it burned.

  He was being carried. He could hear a crunch beneath a pair of boots, and he pretended that the thud of the heart pressed against him was Pa’s, and the second pair of footsteps he could hear belonged to Mama. He would see them again soon.

  ‘Hang in there, little brother,’ Tailor murmured, pulling Dash closer to his chest. ‘Not much further to Wildenhaven now …’

  Chapter 27

  In the days that followed the rebels’ arrival at Wildenhaven, the tension drove Bleak half mad. She sat in on yet another war council meeting, rubbing her aching temples as the room buzzed with the agitations and fears of twenty people. Her magic was strained, weighing her down like an anchor bound for the seabed. The threat of Ines and her forces had become a stark reality to all of them.

  ‘We have no proof that she’s taken hold of Qatrola,’ Jaida said, gesturing to the map sprawled before them. ‘Any reports we’ve received have been hearsay.’

  ‘We do have proof,’ Nicolai countered, his eyes dark.

  ‘How do you —’

  ‘Nicolai is our proof,’ Eydis interjected. ‘He was there. But he does not answer to you. You know what you need to.’

  ‘What say you, Casimir?’ Geraad asked.

  The Ashai remained on the outskirts of the debates, until he was dragged in like this, the questioning utterly insensitive towards whatever he’d been through at the conqueror’s hands. An ember of anger started to glow in Bleak.

  ‘She has Qatrola,’ he said quietly, forming every word with care. ‘A general called Farlah holds it for her. The cousin of Langdon, whom some of you had the pleasure of meeting at Freyhill.’

  Bleak’s breathing hitched at the name. Langdon. The man who’d held her captive. The bastard who’d dragged her through every painful memory, every sorrow she’d ever felt. Her eyes caught a decanter of wine being passed down the table, the rich, red liquid sloshing inside the crystal. The rest of the meeting muted as it got closer and closer, the thought of Langdon seeming much further away than before. She could smell the sweet, fruity aroma of it. Just as her fingers were about to close around the decanter, a leather-clad arm reached between her and Fletch, long fingers wrapping around the stem.

  Without a word, Henri took away the wine.

  No one noticed the Valian’s movements, except Casimir. Bleak couldn’t stop the crimson blush of shame that crept up her neck and across her cheeks.

  ‘What of Qatrola’s numbers, then?’ Eydis asked.

  ‘My information is likely outdated now,’ Nicolai said, a note of accusation in his voice.

  Queen Eydis glared. ‘I will never send you back there. Stop holding it against me.’

  Uncomfortable silence fell like a blanket across the table, forcing Bleak to forget her own embarrassment. She’d noticed a few times now that Eydis and her lover did not make a secret of their disagreements.

  It was Casimir who spoke. ‘Assume that the entirety of Qatrola’s forces answer to Ines now. She had the regent eating out of her palm years ago …’

  ‘Very well,’ Eydis said, gesturing at Jarel, who marked it down on the map. ‘Is there anything you can tell us that might help us win, Casimir? She outnumbers us, and with the support from Heathton and Qatrola, we need an edge.’

  The Ashai leader met her gaze. ‘Anything that we could have used is no longer possible.’

  The weight of his words fell heavily on them all.

  Geraad leaned forward in his chair and surveyed the room. ‘There is another matter we need to discuss.’

  Bleak’s stomach flipped as his eyes came to rest on her. He knows.

  ‘Casimir,’ he said, turning to the Ashai. ‘Do you intend to take back the Oremian throne?’

  The movements in the council chamber stilled.

  Casimir coolly studied the rebel. ‘It depends.’

  ‘On?’

  ‘If you remember, Geraad, Oremere was not ruled in the same way as the other continents. I was one part of a reigning force.’

  ‘The other parts of that particular system are gone,’ Geraad pressed, though Bleak could have sworn his eyes darted in her direction once more.

  ‘Like I said.’ Casimir placed his palms flat on the table. ‘It depends.’

  Henri cleared her throat. ‘Let’s break for the afternoon,’ she said, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘Your army’s not going to train itself, Eydis. And we could all use some fresh air.’

  Eydis gave a curt nod and gathered her skirts. She left without saying another word, with Nicolai hurrying after her.

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ Sahara said from beside Bleak, ‘that you had a problem.’

  So people had noticed.

  Bleak was suddenly sapped of energy. ‘I’ve got lots of problems.’

  Sahara stood, resting a hand on Bleak’s shoulder. ‘I meant what I said on the way here. If you do want to talk, I’ll listen,’ she said, before following Henri out.

  Bleak didn’t return to her rooms. Instead, she layered up with borrowed palma furs and wandered outside the towers with Rion and the pride. After being locked up in Freyhill, she just couldn’t stay in one place for too long. She had to get out, breathe in the clean, cold air. And it seemed she wasn’t the only one.

  Casimir paced the perimeter, hands tucked under his arms, hood pulled tight around his face against the cold.

  Bleak made up her mind. She approached him.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, falling in step beside him. ‘For your discretion.’

  His eyes slid to hers. ‘You’re welcome, Alarise,’ he said. ‘Though, I fear your secret won’t be yours for much longer. Geraad knows. The odd eyes, the teerah panthers … He was a young man when our reign fell, not an infant. He remembers well enough.’

  ‘Well, I don’t.’<
br />
  ‘I thought that might be the case.’

  They walked in silence. A thousand questions burned through Bleak’s mind, working her terror, her yearning for the truth, into a frenzy.

  ‘What did you mean before? When you said, “anything that we could have used is no longer possible”?’

  Casimir’s expression was grim. ‘There was an object, forged long ago, something I created in case … In case my suspicions proved accurate.’

  ‘A weapon? To use against her?’

  ‘Of sorts.’

  ‘We have to get it.’

  ‘There’s no use,’ Casimir said sharply. ‘It needs a member from each Oremian ruling family to come together and wield it. An Ashdown, a Thornton and a Goldwell. All three.’

  ‘What? Why? Can’t we —’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Ermias and the rest of the Goldwells are dead. It can’t save us now.’

  Bleak went quiet beside him. Their chance to find an advantage, an edge, as Eydis had put it, had slipped away as fast as it had arrived.

  ‘What is it that you want, Alarise?’ Casimir said her name slowly, deliberately, so that each syllable sank into her.

  Tears unexpectedly stung her eyes. Cursing herself, she blinked them back.

  ‘I … I want to know who I am. Who my family was. I want to know what happened at Freyhill all that time ago.’

  Casimir stared ahead.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘You’re the only one who was there. The only one who can help me.’

  The Ashai leader, or prince, she supposed, looked from her odd eyes to the pride of beasts who stalked through the snow behind them.

  ‘What do you remember?’ he asked.

  ‘Running,’ she told him, picturing the iron gates, blood dripping from their spikes. ‘The mist crept into our home, under the doors, through the gaps in the windows. My parents somehow got us to Heathton. But they were taken. I managed to escape, and was taken in by —’

  ‘Jeramyah Bleaker.’

  Bleak stopped in her tracks. ‘How do you know about Senior?’