Given to the Sea

by Mindy McGinnis

  “Cruel? No, not Cathon,” the Curator says. “Only ambitious, and in Stille that seed can rot before fruition. We live long and die easily in our beds. I am not surprised that some of the young have found violence to be the quickest route to ascendance.”

  The silence that falls after his words hangs heavily, and I raise my eyes to his. “Surely you aren’t accusing Vincent of any wrongdoing?”

  The Curator presses his lips together as if considering how much to say. “Vincent? No, I don’t believe so. But Gammal died with his grandson beside him in battle, and the Stillness befell Varrick while his son stood in his chambers. Rumors are whirling, and with the training field more used for gossip than swordplay and the Pietra bonded with Feneen . . .”

  He trails off, hoping for me to finish the thought on my own.

  “All of Stille is in upheaval. If the Given were to disappear and the last royal along with her, where would the people place their hope?”

  “Where indeed?”

  “I won’t be leaving,” I say, the words having lost their sting since my skin has known Donil’s touch. Known it and not pulled away.

  “I am sorry, Khosa,” the Curator says. “As much as I believe your sacrifice is a waste, I find my country with the threat of invasion from the outside. I cannot encourage instability on the inside as well.”

  “I understand.”

  “That being said, I believe Stille will have a new ruler shortly. And whatever the means were to his rise, I imagine you will find life in the castle much less threatening.”

  “A cage nonetheless,” I say, motioning to the books around me. “And I spend my time in the one that damns me the loudest, surrounded by the writ of the past, which calls for my blood in the present.”

  The Curator rises to his feet, his body creaking with the effort. “The past is inked darkly,” he says, “and cannot be changed. But the present can be smeared into illegibility, and the future is blank parchment.”

  I walk beside him, though I cannot bring myself to offer support. The scratch of his robe against my arm makes my skin prickle.

  “Cathon knew the weight of futility,” the Curator says when we reach the door. “He had a desire to make his mark, and a long wait before he’d even hold the quill. I cannot offer you my help, Khosa, or undo what has been done. But I know nothing better than ink and paper, and have five Scribes at work scouring Cathon from all mention. Stained out of existence, clipped from the pages, even his sign at the bottom of translations will be rubbed away.”

  The knowledge that the man who laid hands on me will have such an indignity visited upon him creates a heat that sweeps over my body. “Thank you.”

  “I cannot change what happened in the past, but I can alter what version the readers of the future will get,” he says with a wink.

  I laugh, a noise that makes both Merryl and Rook jump on the other side of the archway. “You sound like an Indiri now,” I say to the Curator. “Dara insists that the feral Indiri child raised alongside white Tangata was born during the reign of Philo, because that fits her version better.”

  The Curator brightens at my laughter, but his eyebrows pinch together in confusion. “She was.”

  My smile fades. “No, it was during Konnal’s time. I remember reading it.”

  The Curator crosses over to a bookshelf, his footsteps faster now that he is called to duty. His fingers trip over spines while he speaks, not needing to read the frontispieces to know what he touches. “You read it, or you heard it?”

  “I . . .” My words falter as I remember sitting at my worktable, books stacked around me while Cathon told me—

  I close my eyes, the familiarity of failure slipping through my skin. “I heard it. From Cathon, actually.”

  “Ah, well, we can lay much at that man’s feet, but a slip of the tongue on a Scribe’s behalf is no oddity. Our lives are lists of names and dates in columns. I wouldn’t know offhand the ruler at the time of the white Tangata, except for this.” The Curator pulls a book from the shelf, opening it before me.

  “I compiled it myself,” he says proudly. “A listing of the major events in the kingdom under each Stillean ruler. It’s much easier to sift through for reference than reading the daily journals.”

  His finger runs across the page, tapping when he finds what he wants. “There you are, the white kits and the feral Indiri child. Both in Philo’s time.”

  My head drops to the stone table, my hands buried in my hair. I feel the Curator’s hand on my shoulder and straighten.

  “Why should it trouble you so, the events long past?”

  “Because I deeply offended Dara, and wrongly, as it turns out.”

  “The Indiri girl?” the Curator asks, and I nod. “Well, then,” he sighs. “Perhaps you’re more threatened in these walls than I thought.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Vincent

  MY FATHER’S BRAIN BULGES FROM THE BACK OF HIS HEAD, artfully hidden from those who visit. Mother is the image of the perfect wife, staying by his bedside, hovering over his last days and dictating his care once the physicians have declared it hopeless. They never saw the hole in his skull, or suspected Mother’s bridal pillow beneath him was for anything other than comfort.

  Mother tore embroidery from the pillow while her hands were still streaked with soot from the poker, remnants of thread stitched years ago uncurling beneath her fingers as history came undone to aid us in the present. Half the sawdust stuffing went into the fire; the other half I pushed to the sides while she held his head in her lap, stitching the torn flaps of the pillow to his ruined scalp. His swollen brain rests inside, a linen beneath an opening in the back. We switch it for another when it is soaked through. No one questions that the queen and prince would want to be with the king constantly, or that we require privacy at times.

  She looks at me now as we repeat our story to the Curator, and I reassess the woman in front of me. Gone is the haunted look of her eyes that I have always known. She looks like her father, as if Gammal has returned to the castle. There is a grim determination in each movement, a plan behind each word. And all of them are for my benefit.

  I will have gone from twice-removed heir to king once my father’s life force leaks out under my mother’s watchful eye. The Curator comes to record Varrick’s fate, a lie that will go down in the histories.

  Mother and I calmly tell the agreed upon story—Father had woken unable to feel his feet, the first grip of the Stoning having closed around them while he slept. He called for Mother, who sent for me, but in his panic, Father had not listened to our pleas for him to wait for the physicians. He’d rejected our assistance, struggling to his feet only to fall forward, breaking his nose against the floor and rendering him senseless. That he’d not recovered his speech or opened his eyes was attributed to the fast spread of the Stoning, an easy claim, impossible to disprove.

  If the Curator has any qualms about the words he pens in the annals, he makes no indication, blowing our lies dry with a puff of his breath.

  “Now, then,” he says, “if I may speak with Vincent about plans for his coronation. I don’t mean to be indelicate, but—”

  “Of course,” Mother nods, eyes fixed affectionately on my father’s unmoving face. “But please, somewhere else. We do not know if he can hear us or not.”

  I follow the Curator to the hall, though a part of me hopes Father can hear us.

  “Vincent,” the Curator says, once he’s assured we’re unobserved, “I know of your plot, and Cathon’s betrayal. Whether your father’s imminent death is a part of that same plan I do not know, or care. It is Khosa whom I worry for, and the unrest of Stille.”

  I search his face for any sign of guile, any whisper of a lie in his eyes. I fervently wish for Khosa by my side; her lifelong study of faces would be priceless in this moment where a misspoken word could send us all reeling toward execution for tre
ason. But I see before me only an aged man, worried for a young girl and the fate of his country.

  “How will the people react to the news about my father?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “Not well, I fear. We are a nation against change. The motion for allowing the sheep to graze on clover year round took twelve moons to pass through the Shepherds’ Council. Now these same people have changed kings twice in a matter of short memory.”

  “So, not a good time to suggest we allow the Given to live?”

  “Breaking with a tradition in a time of unrest would not be wise,” he says.

  “To the depths with tradition,” I say, “and wisdom too, if it can even be called that when we send a girl to her death to keep at bay a danger that may not exist.”

  “The danger, my liege, now lies in the actions of the people, not the waves. You are a young king taking the throne during a war we are ill prepared for and under circumstances that are suspicious at best. The people must be willing to follow you, and that requires trust.”

  “And what do I require?” I ask, the image of Khosa on my mind. She does not want me, I know. To see her curled with Donil sliced my heart as deeply as any blade, and though the wound still gapes open, blood flows warmly beneath it. It will heal, I know, and the friend I’ve found in Khosa should be celebrated in the present, not only as a scar in the past.

  “I wish there were another way,” the Curator says. “But I do not see it.”

  A sconce reaches its end above his shoulder, the flame extinguishes, and the smoke wreathes his face, reminding me of another.

  “Perhaps you lack the vision,” I say.

  Madda hears my tread and enters from a side room, wry words already twisting her mouth. “Who is this boy who comes to me a king? Shortest one in lifetimes, I’m sure. Call the smithy to fashion a footrest for the throne; I doubt his feet will touch the fl—”

  Her words die when she finally looks at me, and at Khosa hovering behind my shoulder.

  “What is this?” she asks, all teasing dropped from her tone. “Why do you bring me the Given?”

  I feel heat radiating from Khosa as she comes closer to me, and I draw strength from knowing that if she cannot touch me, at least she wants to be near.

  “Read her,” I say to Madda, who flips her hand at me as if I am an errant fly.

  “For what purpose? Everyone knows her fate.”

  “Her name is Khosa,” I say, approaching the table and pulling a chair out for Khosa to sit. “And I will have her read.”

  Madda’s mouth is in a flat line, the wrinkles of laughter long spent slack to either side. I see her age around her eyes and in the crevices of her neck, and marvel that they have dug so deeply without me noticing until this moment. I see something new in her eyes too, something I never expected from her. I see fear.

  “What is it?” I ask her. “You’ve held the blank palm of a town boy, told my mother in her misery there is only one marriage for her, two children’s branches splitting away, and one quite short. How can you do those things yet not sit across from the Given?”

  Madda takes the other chair without a word and holds out her hands for Khosa, who glances at me.

  “It’s all right,” I tell her, and she slides her hands into Madda’s. The sound of their skin brushing together is like sand through a sieve.

  Candles flicker in the silence, incense clouds wrapping around them like a mantle made for two. I watch Khosa’s face tighten, tiny muscles in her neck tensing at the feel of Madda’s thumb rubbing across her naked palm. The Seer’s mouth turns down, and she releases Khosa, who pulls her hands back into her lap as if they’d been burned.

  “Madda?” I ask.

  Instead of answering me, she gestures for my own hands, and I give them to her, succumbing to the hypnotic push of her worn flesh against mine. The sight of her heavy braid, plaited tightly against her scalp, is familiar, and I focus on it, willing my own lines to have changed.

  Madda sighs, releasing me.

  “You don’t want to know,” she says, rising from the chair. “Either of you.”

  I come to my feet violently, giving no heed to the jars of herbs and flickering candles that are knocked from the table. “Tell us. We are not children afraid of the dark and what it holds.”

  “Not children, no,” Madda says, easing herself into a softer chair by the fire. “And the darkness is not what you fear. It is uncertainty that wakes you in the night, the anguish of not knowing that sends shivers down your spine. Knowing is one thing, is it not?”

  She looks to Khosa, who nods. “When my fate was settled, I had only to wait,” she says. “Now I see there could be a lifetime stretched in front of me, and I don’t know if I’m more terrified at the thought of losing it or of having it.”

  “And you, Vincent,” Madda says, “you’ll sit on the throne, your greatest fear come to you long before anyone imagined.”

  Tears prick my eyes, and I look away. “All my life, every time you’ve touched my palms, I’ve hoped for some other fate, an escape.”

  “I know,” Madda says, rocking in her chair. “There were times you would nap there in the corner, huddled into the rushes like a dog, and wake only to ask me to read you again, hoping that your fate had changed while you slept.”

  The tears overflow and drop from my face to the stone at my feet, stone more familiar to me than the paving in my own room. “I was happy here,” I tell her. “I sometimes wished I were the child you never had.”

  “Please,” Khosa interjects. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing surprising for you,” Madda says. “And no twist of fate on your part, Vincent.”

  Khosa looks to me, and I go to her, only a hand span between us as I breathe the words I know to be true. “We are both given to the sea, Khosa.”

  Her gasp fills the room, and she reaches for me against her own instinct, the rare meeting of our flesh a rash of fire on my own.

  “He speaks truth,” Madda says. “In part, at least. What makes you think I never had a child?”

  CHAPTER 65

  Witt

  DEATH HAS AN ODD WAY OF UNITING PEOPLE.”

  Witt looks up as Pravin joins him on the ridge, the army’s campfires dotting the land below.

  “I’ve seen it before,” the Mason says. “My uncle was in one of the scouting parties sent to look for the Feneen after the desolation of the Indiri. There were rains that year, water falling from the sky so thickly he said it didn’t come in drops but a wall. His party was trapped on a cliff as it washed away, the stone falling out from underneath their feet. Three of them went to their deaths before they found a cave—only a group of nomads had found it first.”

  Witt watches his men below. A shared fire is a sacred thing; the ring of people around it draw heat, food, and life from it together. Witt knows well that even one night at a fire can make friends for life. The people below him are shoulder to shoulder, but it isn’t armor touching armor. Feneen, ragged and unkempt, are gathered around the fires as well, their presence easily spotted by blank spaces between armored bodies reflecting the flames.

  “No one would have thought any less of your uncle and his men if they killed the nomads,” Witt says. “Tossed them over the cliff, claimed their fires, ate their food.”

  “No one except themselves,” Pravin says. “And I’m rather glad they didn’t, as one of them became my favorite aunt.”

  Witt tears his eyes away from the men below. “He married outside of Pietran blood?”

  “It happens. Bonds were made that night, and not just between the two of them. Food was shared, and stories about those both groups had lost to the rains. The nomads had little to nothing left, so the soldiers brought them back to Pietra, took them before the Lithos who served before you. He saw they were strong people, well built, fiercely proud. Adding their blood to ours would only stre
ngthen us. And so they became Pietra, one night of a shared fire mixing their blood with ours forever.”

  “I never knew this.”

  “It was never spoken of, once the Lithos recognized them. He called them Pietra, and so they were, as if they always had been.”

  “I hear you, Mason,” Witt says. “I know why you’re telling me this. But those were nomads, strongly built, as you say. Not Feneen, some with eyes that point two different directions or hands with eight fingers.”

  “They can be Pietra and not wear a ring,” Pravin argues, touching his own slim band of silver that gives him the right to breed. “There are Pietra who do not wear these; why not Feneen as well?”

  A burst of laughter rolls up to their cliff-side seat, Nilana’s high voice included.

  “Whether you have accepted them or not, the men have,” Pravin says. “They saw what the Feneen were willing to do to get our army to the other side of the river. Friendships will be built on this during the days of the march. There will not be many Feneen backs bristling with Pietra arrows littering the Stillean beaches, I think.”

  “Perhaps a few,” Witt says.

  “Perhaps, but not many, and if there are, you may hear grumblings among your men, even in the wake of victory. Unrest as brothers in arms discover there are those among them with less honor than they thought.”

  Witt picks up a stone and tosses it from hand to hand, thinking. “What would you have me do, Mason?”

  “Send the Feneen to the front gate of Stille,” Pravin says. “Don’t waste them in a charge alongside us where they take the brunt of the resistance. They’ve attacked Stille before, and their return will draw men to the gates, making our march up the beach even more of a surprise.”

  The stone warms in Witt’s hands, borrowing his heat. “They will break against those gates, lose many. Maybe more than they would fighting alongside us.”

  Pravin shakes his head. “Once we make our move from the beach, the Stilleans will be pulled in two directions. They are untrained, many unblooded, and a panic will send them reeling. They may open their own throats before our blades even find them. I’d wager we lost more men crossing the river than we will in the attack.”