by Sam Farren
It wasn't enough for us to go unnoticed. We'd garnered the attention of two patrolling soldiers, and after a moment's deliberation, they set off after us.
Kouris glanced back, letting out a low rumble from the back of her throat. The horses charged closer, and though we could've out-paced them, the soldiers had bows strapped across their backs. Kouris had thicker skin than anyone I knew – and literally, at that – but I'd no doubt a rain of arrows would take their toll on her.
“Alright, yrval. They ain't gonna be causing a problem. What could they even want with us? Probably just feeling like bothering a pane,” Kouris said to me, skidding to a halt.
The soldiers' horses kicked up a cloud of dirt as they caught up with us, stopping either side of us.
Crouching down slowly, Kouris lowered me to the ground, and I stood with my chin up, doing all I could to focus on the soldiers, and not the bags. I'd no doubt they were looking for any excuse to rifle through our things.
“Good morning,” one of the soldiers said, remaining atop his horse so that he could match Kouris in height, if nothing else. “We received a raven this morning. Word is, an unauthorised party were seen leaving a Canthian ship in Ironash. A party containing – notably – a pane and a necromancer. Wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“I don't think pane can be necromancers,” I blurted out in an effort to buy myself time to think.
The soldier was far from impressed.
Someone at the docks – someone on the ship, someone who knew I was a necromancer – had betrayed us. No doubt Katja had delighted in telling her guards what I was. A disgruntled sailor had been convinced he hadn't earnt enough coin, lugging us across the sea for eight weeks while we shared their rations and did none of the work.
Luckily, Kouris thought faster than I did.
She leant towards me, bemused, and asked in loud, clear Svargan, “What are they saying? Translate for me.”
The soldiers shot each other nervous glances, reassured at the sight of three more soldiers hurrying over to join their ranks. It took a lot to confront a pane, and they hadn't accounted for a language barrier.
“He says they're looking for a pane who came from Ironash, all the way from... Canth, I think he said,” I told her.
Kouris nodded as I translated, then held her hands defensively in front of her, talking rapidly and covering her chest with her palms as a sign of sincerity.
“She says she doesn't know anything about that. It's only been a few weeks since she left the mountains, and she's yet to ever see the ocean, let alone go to and from Canth,” I explained to them, “Ironash is where we're heading now, actually.”
The soldiers' reinforcements gathered around us, and a woman wearing a helm that covered all but her mouth came the closest, and looked down at me.
“Ah,” she said, not needing to ask why we'd been stopped.
“What do you think, Captain? This one says the pane's only just down from the mountains and has never been to Ironash, but of course she would.”
The woman looked us both over and said, “Best to confiscate their things. We'll look through them, then question them. I'm certain they won't object, should they have nothing untoward to hide.”
I took a step back. How were we supposed to prove ourselves innocent of the very thing we were guilty of? I tried to catch Kouris' eye, desperate to climb onto her back and run, and all of the soldiers save the Captain dismounted their horses.
Claire's bags. They were going to take Claire's bags and dig through every inch of them before I'd the chance to even know what they contained. We could run, but they'd litter us with their arrows, following us all the way back to my farmhouse. There was no getting out of this, whether we stayed or fled.
The soldiers cautiously drew closer and Kouris snatched the bags from my back, holding them up out of reach, buying us a few more seconds. It was all for nothing. It wasn't enough.
Until it was.
From the wall, a long, low note dragged itself out into the air. I'd heard the cry of a horn more times than I cared to count in Port Mahon, and it never meant something good was coming. The soldiers turned, all eyes facing the mangled wall, and we stared along with them, gripped by curiosity and a little fear, as though we were all on the same side.
The cry faded like the last clap of a thunderstorm, and all was unsettlingly silent, until the eruption came.
Horses poured in through the gap, dozens upon dozens of them, riders gripping at reins and weapons alike. They weren't soldiers, not like the Felheimish in their gold-stained armour; their armour was mismatched, and though we were too far for me to make out the banners they rode under, I could tell they were crudely constructed.
“Rebels from Orinhal!” one of the soldiers declared, scrambling back up on their horse. “Captain, what should we... ?”
The Captain grit her teeth, glanced at us and back at the wall, not needing more than a second to make her decision.
“Don't just stand there,” she called. “After them!”
The Felheimish were our enemy, but they weren't. They thought they were protecting Kastelir and Felheim alike; they'd no idea that their King had been responsible for this all.
With what had to be the resistance pouring through, the wall looked more remarkable than ever. The stonework was jagged where it had been rent, like teeth rising up, a maw threatening to swallow the two Kingdoms whole. There were more of the resistance than the Felheimish, chasing the workers away and fighting soldiers, but those stationed along the wall were sounding horns one by one, gathering their forces.
Kouris and I saw our chance and took it. I leapt onto her back, feet already moving, and I watched the chaos unfurl as we charged away from the battle. The resistance weren't chasing any who fled and I knew the fight couldn't be as senseless as it seemed, from a distance. They'd planned this out. They were trying to keep their way to Felheim open, trying to send a message.
And then, when the shapes of people fighting were almost nothing but an indistinguishable blur in the distance, I saw her: a woman astride her horse, clad in the white of dragon-bone.
“Kouris!” I cried, “Kouris, stop.”
It wasn't that my heart had slowed, or that it had stopped. It'd been torn from my chest, and no amount of beating my fists against my ribs was going to entice what wasn't there to beat again. When Kouris didn't slow, I let out a garbled, unintelligible noise, tugging on her horns.
“Kouris, please, go back, go back!”
“Don't look back, yrval, don't look back,” she growled, breaking out into a sprint. “You know my eyes are better than yours. You didn't see what you thought you did.”
Her words meant nothing to me, nor did the way she charged forward. I let go of her horns, pushed myself off her back, and landed on the hard ground with a bone-breaking thud. I clung to enough momentum to roll to my feet and charged back to the battle, to the woman in dragon-bone armour, the woman fighting for Kastelir, and it took Kouris all of a few seconds to catch up with me.
She snatched me up as I ran, pinning my arms to my sides. I kicked out, dug my heels into her chest, but she didn't flinch. She pulled me to her chest and set off, not listening to me when I yelled, “Let me go, let me go. I have to—put me down!” not caring where I struck her.
For half an hour I screamed my throat raw. I cursed her, repeating the same plea over and over, thrashing until all the energy I hadn't truly had over the past two years was depleted. What I'd said to Kouris stuck in my mind, and what I'd seen became clear to me: it was an illusion and nothing more. I'd seen what I'd wanted to see. How many dragons had been slayed in the past two years? Anyone could have access to dragon-bone armour, and I hadn't been able to tell how crude it was, from a distance.
I went slack in Kouris' arms, unable to say anything. She felt the change rush through me and loosened her grasp, but continued to hold me against her chest. Slowing without stopping, Kouris ran back to my village without pausing for a bre
ak, without needing to eat, and the moon was full above us when Kouris finally came to a halt.
I groaned as she lowered me to the ground, and she placed a hand on my back, keeping me steady.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered, hand covering my mouth. “For what I said. I really thought...”
“It's alright, yrval,” she said softly, crouching down and stretching out her limbs. “If I thought I'd seen Kidira down there I would've cut through every one of those soldiers to get to her ghost.”
“I shouldn't have shouted at you,” I argued weakly, taking a step forward. My legs didn't appreciate it. Knee buckling, I placed my hands against a tree trunk, forehead resting against the knots of the wood for balance.
“Feeling okay there, yrval?” Kouris asked.
“Fine,” I murmured, waving a hand.
Just a little dizzy, I'd meant to say, but the tree was the only part of the world that hadn't stopped spinning. Shoulders hunched, I heaved, offering what little I had, what little there was, to the twisted roots beneath me. Bile followed when there was nothing else left inside of me, and I gulped down a whimper, forming ruts in the bark. Soft wood caught beneath my nails and I screwed my eyes shut, breathing deeply.
“Yrval...?”
“I'm okay,” I murmured, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. My stomach felt as though it was cutting into me, but the world had stopped spinning. “I'm okay now.”
“We'd best be getting you home and cleaned up,” Kouris said, rubbing my back. “I'll boil you up a hot bath. How's that sound?”
I looked down into the valley, but the farmhouse didn't catch my attention. One of the buildings beyond did, though I couldn't say which one, and all at once, a darkness the night couldn't account for swarmed my vision. I blinked and I saw chains, heard them rattling from behind me, above me, all around me, and though I was staring at my village, all of the wrong things were filling my head.
I knelt down, convinced I had to knock my temple with the heel of my palm until the right images flooded back in.
“I don't want to go down there.”
“Why not?” Kouris asked gently.
“Because Katja's down there, and I don't want her near me,” I mumbled.
Pathetic, pathetic.
Crouching down beside me, Kouris said, “Alright. We can stay here for as long as you're needing to. I don't mind camping out. It's a good night for it. But you need to understand that none of us are going to let her near you, not ever again. You're safe with us, yrval. Safe with me.”
Why did it matter that Katja wouldn't be allowed near me now, or in the future? She'd been near me, near enough to slip her blades in, and that's all that mattered. It wasn't the future I had to fear; it was the past she kept dragging me into.
“You'll feel better once you've taken a bath,” Kouris went on to say, “Then you can lock yourself in your room and look through those bags.”
The bags. I'd forgotten all about them when I hadn't seen Claire.
“It'll just be... books, armour,” I protested.
“It's just a key and a coin,” Kouris pointed out.
Kouris was good for being patient with me, I thought. She could've snapped, could've been angry at me for yelling at her, but she wasn't. She could've grown tired of all the things that consumed me, but she hadn't yet; but it wouldn't be like that forever. In hours or days she'd give up on me, and I'd feel keenly how childish I'd been.
I stared at the farmhouse, at the ground beneath my feet. What difference would it make if I closed the distance between me and Katja as little as I would by locking myself away in my own home?
I tried my legs, wincing when they worked. Without a word, Kouris followed me down the dirt path, bags slung over her shoulder.
Inside, the air was stained by the smell of tea. I'd expected the others to be sleeping, but my father and Atthis were sat up in the kitchen, talking over steaming mugs, surrounded by dim candle light.
“How was Praxis?” Atthis asked cheerfully, and my father didn't show a jot of the relief he was feeling.
“Never mind all that,” Kouris said, “Tell 'em what we saw. I'm gonna go draw this one a bath, if that's alright with you, Dad.”
My father nodded, content to let her find what she needed herself, and I sat down at the table between them. Atthis poured me a drink and I held it between my hands, considered taking a sip, but realised that they were both looking at me, expectant.
“There's a hole in the wall,” I said carefully, as though it'd been weeks since I'd seen it. “A dragon must've knocked it through, which means they're still using them, and they're losing control of them. But it's not all bad. We saw the resistance. They came charging through the gap in the wall, and...
“Orinhal. One of the soldiers – Felheimish soldiers, I mean – said something about Orinhal. I think that's where the resistance is.”
What I'd said felt like it amounted to nothing, but Atthis could barely hold back a smile.
“Rowan!” he exclaimed. “That's incredible. I didn't expect you to find out anything on this scale. Gods, we're getting closer and closer to being where we need to be. How did you find this all out? I hope you didn't have a run-in with the Felheimish soldiers.”
I told them what had happened without mentioning the woman in dragon-bone armour, tea cooling between my hands. Atthis and my father hung onto my every word, and it was a far cry from the mornings spent sat around that table, where Michael's tales would accompany every breakfast.
Kouris clattered around in the living room as I spoke. She'd found our metal tub and was working on filling it, fire no doubt stoked, heading back and forth in the dark to collect water from the well. Once I'd told Atthis all I possibly could and confirmed every question he had to ask, I sat and listened to him and my father slip back into their old conversation about something that didn't interest me at all, but made for soothing background noise.
“It's all yours,” Kouris said half a mug of tea later, sweeping an arm towards the living room.
I thanked her as best I could and dragged my feet in there, keeping the door shut by pulling one of the armchairs across it. There was just enough space for the bath tub in front of the fire, and a great pan of water was being heated over it. I peeled off my clothes, wishing I could've pulled more away, and sunk into the hot water, shivering from the shoulders up.
Kouris was right. I scrubbed at my skin and I did feel better. My body relaxed with the heat, and as the water lapped against me, I felt who I truly was seeping back into me. That hadn't been me, shouting at Kouris; I hadn't thrown up into the dirt, hadn't had things force themselves behind my eyelids; I'd slipped away for a moment and it had all unravelled.
I stayed in the bath until the water was cold and found that Kouris had left towels and clothes for me on the arm of the sofa. I dried in front of the fire, half-heartedly rubbing my hair, and changed into clean clothes. I could hear the others in the kitchen, talking about something broken up by bouts of laughter, and I slipped out of the living room, as light on my feet as I knew how to be as I darted up the stairs.
A tray of food had been left by my door, as well as Claire's bags. I took the tray in first, placed it in the middle of my room, and dragged the bags in after me.
I stared at them, pulling off chunks of bread and chewing slowly to appease my stomach, knowing that I wasn't ready to open the bags.
Knowing, more than that, that I never would be.
I pulled the larger one towards me. If I didn't look inside now, there wouldn't be a waking moment when my mind wasn't fixated on their imagined contents.
Carefully unhooking the straps, I pulled the flap back and opened the bag, peering inside. I'd been right: there was armour in there, and not the usual sort. Dragon-bone gauntlets were wrapped in a thick, rich blue length of cloth, far more intricately decorated than the ones Claire had worn. There were no sharp angles to them, nothing I could cut myself on. Patterns were scored into them like the scales of a dragon, no two t
he same, all of them fitting together.
I placed them next to my bowl of soup, and pulled out the next thing.
It was a dress, light-blue and flowing, and I hurried to fold it back up and slide it under the gloves. There was a book in the bag as well, and I immediately knew what it was; The Sky Beneath The Sun, in far better condition than the one I'd brought with me.
I folded it open in my lap, expecting to find it different, in some way, but if there were any discrepancies, they resided within the text. All of the pictures were the same, all of the diagrams of phoenixes, the detailed drawings of their feathers and bones.
I paused to dip bread into the soup, tearing a chunk off between my teeth before moving onto the next bag.
The first thing I pulled out was a decorative knife, blade and handle alike carved from dragon-bone. I turned it in my hands, thumb brushing across the phoenix carved into her hilt, and the next few things I pulled out were far less remarkable: there was another dress, dark blue, this time, as well as a handful of white-gold chains that were undoubtedly valuable enough to ensure that none of us ever went hungry again.
The last item was wrapped in cloth, held in place by thick leather straps. Using the knife I'd recently liberated, I cut through the restraints as though slicing the air itself, and carefully sheathed the blade, terrified it'd become unwieldy.
I peeled the cloth back layer by layer, and what started as something big enough to conceal a chest piece melted away until there was nothing in my lap but a small wooden box, no doubt filled with more trinkets. It was unremarkable; nothing was carved into its surface, and while there was a latch, there was no lock. I tilted the box to the side and something rattled within. Another chain or a ring.
Licking a stray drop of soup from my thumb, I opened the box, and found neither silver nor gold.
