Ash Rising

by Katya Lebeque

  “Poison?”

  “Yes, your highness.”

  Rize wasn’t sure what to say. He had seen Pevann nearly every day for all his life and had spoken to him of things other than the king less than once in all that time. “Well, get this man a blanket, cover him and send for a shroud – one from the royal store.”

  “Rize?” came a smaller, older voice than should have belonged to his father. Rize went through to the royal bedchamber to find it.

  His father was leaning against the foot of the canopied bed in bedclothes, an ermine cloak hastily thrown over his shoulders to ward off chills. He still had his hair piece on, but other than that, all of his royal trappings were taken off for the night, everything that separated him from any other ageing man who could die in his bed, alone.

  “He was here Rize. He was right here… In the bedchamber! Right here. Right where I sleep…”

  “Who was?”

  The second steward stepped in. “An assassin, highness. A single man, masked and cloaked. When he failed to – when he failed, he slit his own throat with the dagger meant for the king. The body has been taken by the armed guard for searching, to see if anything identifiable can found.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. Well over an hour ago.”

  “Father! Why didn’t you send for me?”

  “What, while the ball was in play and alert others to the fact that something was wrong? No, Rize, that would not do. To show any more weakness is to bait the vultures that already gather around the throne.”

  The king began pointing his index finger rigidly at Rize, then at the room – a lifetime’s habit of being in command. It was a comforting sight for Rize, to see this return of the dictator he knew and not the scared old man who was a few minutes before.

  “An assassin in my own chamber! Hiding behind the drapery nearest the bed. Nearest the bed, Rize! And Pevann… oh, Pevann. It was largely just a ceremony, a precaution really, how he had started to taste the royal meals before I ate, about a year ago. Not one incident in all that time. But tonight… he fell down, grasping at his lace and there was nothing I could do to stop him, to help… But when a figure jumped out from behind the draperies I fought him and he ended his own life. By the time it had all happened, Pevann was dead on the floor.” For one terrible instant, Rize was afraid the king would cry, but rage took over instead.

  Rize turned to the quivering second steward, still trying to remember his name. “Have an extra armed guard posted at these chambers at once! As well as at the prince’s. The fact that a single killer could get so far into the palace is preposterous! Clearly the work of the excitement of the ball in part, but still!” The yellowed hair piece tuft on the king’s head waved around violently as he spoke, his face turning a shade of crimson to match the brocade draped of his own canopy bed. “And find out who that was, damnit!”

  As his father paused for breath, Rize took the opportunity to address he second steward himself. “Walters, can you leave me for a minute alone with my lord father?” As soon as he was gone, Rize asked the question that had been plaguing him. “Were there girls?”

  His father used to delight in doe-eyed, expensive-looking young girls that always seemed just about Rize’s age, but he had been strictly abstinent with all but the queen since the security threats had increased as the post-Expansion fallout had worsened. Now that the latest queen was dead, he was worried that his father had been entertaining teenagers again, but his father merely shook his head. “Alas! It would have been easier to bear a well-breasted, sweet young thing of an assassin than this.”

  “Well, how else could anyone have come into the king’s bedchamber?”

  The king wiped his hand over his face as if to clean the unpleasant experience away. “That is the question. It was no doubt intended to be menacing, threatening. And it is. If he had come to your quarters…”

  “… He would have had them all to himself. I was at the ball, remember?”

  “This time you were, yes. But this country is getting unhappier and unhappier and more willing to strike. There needs to be a change.” The king looked at Rize in the eye, measuredly, in the way he had. Many years ago, Rize had been fishing with his father and some of the courtiers in favour and he remembered his father looking at a worm the same way before he speared it on his hook.

  “Rize, a royal wedding will bring some joy to people – and I mean a significant one, not another of mine. I mean to follow the Pathfinder’s advice, dead though she is and make a marriage for you from this ball. And Rize, sometime after that, I mean to consider formally handing the crown over to you.”

  “Father!”

  “I have spoken, Rize. This is not the first I have thought of it, but this, this incident tonight has decided it. It will be best for the kingdom, Rize. These people associate me with the Expansion Project. We all know that it was not meant to end in disaster – giant agricultural produce in a country built on agricultural wealth and trade should have meant no one ever needed go hungry again – but it did end in disaster. You will be roughly the age I was when you come into kingship and you will do well.”

  “Father I cannot, I can not –”

  “You can and you will, my boy. Now, this all has shaken me. Call Walters back inside as you leave, for better or worse he’s my steward now. I will take my rest.”

  Like an old man, the king shuffled into his enormous canopy bed. He closed the brocade drapes in Rize’s face.

  The bird has never had a high like this one.

  It was flying at its new height when suddenly some strange wind had picked it up and lifted it higher still into the endless blue.

  To be free is everything. The bird stretches its wings wider.

  The bird looks down on the tiny world and warbles shrilly. Dopamines pulse through its head and chest as the wings beat hesitantly, unused to the thermals of this altitude that seem to not require the flapping that is as automatic as breathing. Intercostal muscles and lungs burst with the fresh, clean freedom of the thin air.

  Nothing can hurt the bird up here, it has sensed this. The grey, pulpy reward centre of its brain has exploded into living colour. It is like the thrill of killing prey to eat for the first time in days, but cool instead of hot, like the rain. The bird remembers the rain. It belongs to another time, when people were as big as trees and food was a challenging trophy half one’s own size. When things were tinged with awe – everything, not just flying – before the world became small and too easy.

  To be free is everything.

  At some point the bird must descend and land. Back to hunger and being hunted. But not yet. With its short bird’s memory this high wonder is all there is and that is enough. That is everything.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Long Live the King

  King.

  King…

  No.

  For the second time in a week, Rize was walking around the servants’ level of the castle. He hadn’t even meant to come here, had not even watched his steps as the word ‘king’ clanked around in his mind like some ugly gold ornament.

  He was not even sure why he was so surprised. All his life he had known that this would come for him sometime, must come, so why was he acting this way?

  It might not even be that bad…

  But, that word. King. It had a weight, like something falling to the floor. He could not even think about it, it was too big and bulky. And Rize felt heavy. He needed something simple, something same. He was stooping as he reached the stable doors.

  At least Mouse hadn’t changed. She tossed her head in the approximation of a nod when Rize walked into the stables and gave a soft whinny as he put his hand onto her flank. The muscles and the suede-soft coat reassured him some, but Rize’s mind was going over and over what his father had said in the same crazed circles Mouse was wont to make. Poor horse… cooped up in here so long, when each royal horse no matter how small used to be able to ride out at least once each day.


  “You want a bit of exercise?”

  Mouse tossed her head.

  “Okay, let’s do this.”

  It wasn’t something Rize had dared do too often and only ever before sun-up. While the servants were still sleeping off the exhaustion of cleaning up after the ball, Rize bridled Mouse, then took her for a speedy gallop – not towards the grounds or gardens, but into the lowest floor of the castle to trot around in the passages surrounding the kitchens, outer courtyard and great hall.

  Mouse for her part loved it. She tossed her grey mane this way and that with abandon. Riding bareback as he was, Rize could feel the graceful stretch and coil of her muscles beneath him and it was good to feel something so alive. Mouse even gave an ebullient neigh at the new sight of the great hall and Rize had to shush her while muffling his own nervous laughter. Some things, it seemed, would never change. When he was king, would he have time to ride like this?

  It was a calmer Mouse and prince both who re-entered the stables an hour later. The grey light of day was beginning to come in and the first stirrings of kitchens being readied could be heard. While his problems had not been magicked away, they seemed slightly less heavy to Rize after the simple, instinctual act of riding. It was only when a voice broke the gentle quiet that he realised he wasn’t alone.

  “Long live the king.”

  Rize started, then turned to face his cousin, annoyed. “When are you going to stop sneaking up on me like that?”

  The Duke merely smiled, toying with the bridle Rize had just hung. “Probably when it’s an act of treason. Quite the night last night.”

  Rize sighed, not answering and his cousin dropped the aristocratic swagger for a moment, as he stared at his oldest friend. “How are you, truly? What are your thoughts?”

  “Honestly?”

  Yes.”

  “My thoughts are that I don’t want to be king.”

  “I was afraid you may say that.”

  “My father was a third son of the second-in-line. He wanted to be a merchant, a royal envoy and he was perfectly suited for it. The Spring sickness struck only three days before he was due to leave on his first venture to France. His papers were all in order, his horses and men were chosen. And then he was king, at twenty years old.”

  “He was still himself though, Rize.”

  “Was he? How can either of us tell? We were not born and the Sir Derumpe, the aspiring merchant youth who wasn’t king, has all but been erased from everyone’s memory. All they see is the crown now and I think it may be all he sees too.” Rize sighed. “I just want all this weight removed from off my shoulders.”

  The duke pushed himself away from the wall he’d been leaning on, dusting off his morning breeches. “Well, there’s an easy fix to that,” he said lightly. “Simply go outside and make a noise like a horse, wave something shiny and be snatched by a carrior. Then someone else will have to be king.” He looked hard into Rize’s eyes again, the persona of a royal dandy slipping a second time. “It’s not your fault that you were born prince, Rize. Just like it’s not your fault that the carriors came… But it is your responsibility. This country needs a king who cares, a king who will try make things right. If you do care what happens to these people, there is no better way to ensure their wellbeing, even if it doesn’t quite fit with your plans.”

  His cousin nodded to him once more, then slipped out of Rize’s sight, back into his dukely life to leave Rize to his princely one. He sighed, kicking the unforgiving ground, cursing the Project and cursing his cousin a little for his rightness too.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Worse Things

  Ash was striking at the hard ground.

  After her late conversation with Old Merta and all the excitement of the ball, she had woken after sun had already risen, feeling emotion heavy in her chest. The combination of that and not needing to go foraging for food made her feel even more at sea. Last night’s dream was the first time in so many years she had seen her mother. Before, months would go by before Ash missed her long-dead mother and now she seemed to have had occasion to think of her a thousand times in just a week. Life had been turned upside down and she had forgotten in the festival-like whirlwind of the past two days just what life was like now. It was like survival, she reminded herself and nothing more.

  The pick was barely making a dent in the parched ground as Ash swung, struck, pulled and hoisted her forearm up again in a way that was second nature by now. Down again, into the hard soil, feeling the clash of it jar in her bones as iron met earth. This was real, this was life now. Don’t forget Ash and don’t dream. Survive.

  And yet, as she brought down the pick again, the prince’s face flashed through her mind. Images of the palace, the ballroom, the dancing all spun around her. Had the carpet really been that red, the lights that brilliant? The colours from the night before seemed almost too colourful for real life, like the garish bright colours from travelling puppet shows she had seen as a child. They made the world around her seem grey.

  “Stupid,” she said aloud to herself, her pick finally breaking far enough into the stubborn ground to force her fingers in and find yet another of the strange rough chunks of iron that the Expansion left behind. This one was close to the size of the palm of her hand. She did not need more arrowheads or harpoon-like shafts, not yet, but it would keep her hands busy.

  Trundling inside with her bounty, Ash found the knife Derrick had made her from the same ground-dug iron. Nothing else was hard enough to chip at it. Wedging the new rock in between her knees, Ash sat herself on the small step above the hearth and began to clumsily chip away at this thing that looked nothing like the white palace and its white-clad prince.

  “Ash?”

  It was Vanita, hovering tenuously in the doorway. Usually she couldn’t get up and dressed alone, but here she was, combed and everything. “Morning. What is it?”

  Vanita drifted a little closer. “I ju-just wanted to say sorry for last night.” She abruptly turned as pink as her gown had been. “In the carriage I – I had had wine and –”

  “There’s nothing to apologise for Vanita, don’t fret.”

  “Still, I shouldn’t have spoken so cavalierly about you and the prince… It wasn’t my place.”

  “The prince is harmless, from what I saw last night. It was more the ‘illegal to refuse an offer of marriage’ part that gave me concern.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t worry. When we were dancing Lorin – ah, the Duke of Novrecorte – he said that the prince wasn’t interested in marriage just yet.”

  Ash smiled at the near use of the duke’s first name but said nothing.

  “Well? Was it a successful evening?” Stepmother, downstairs and fully dressed too, in the kitchens. It was indeed a week of surprises. “Good morning, Stepmother. Yes, it was quite fun in fact.”

  Stepmother glared as if Ash had mentioned something as irrelevant as last week’s weather. “And the prince?” she asked with customary bluntness.

  “Oh, yes, the prince –” began Vanita but a warning glance from Ash silenced her. “The prince was very nice, very courteous,” she finished lamely.

  “The prince’s first cousin, the Duke of Novrecorte, took an especial liking to Vanita,” Ash put in smoothly. “He is third in line for the throne.”

  “Well, that is something…” said Stepmother, eyeing Vanita with renewed interest, while Vanita in turn sent a murderous glare over her shoulder at Ash, but before Ash could respond, Stepmother had turned and was facing her. “Will you go again tonight?”

  It sounded so simple when she said it that way. Ash had been thinking of the prince, the palace and the unlikely, transcendent amount she’d enjoyed herself the night before. She could go again – of course, it was so simple. The second night was bound to be more steeped in reality, she less girlish and it might prove the perfect antidote for all this mooning.

  “Well?” Stepmother repeated.

  “We haven’t got second dresses to wear and my aunt made it
clear that she won’t be around again. The pumpkin will stay a carriage until tomorrow’s dawn, but –”

  “You must go to that ball again,” Stepmother finished sharply. “Or find yourself another kitchen posting in these times. Vanita must go to the ball and marry the prince. Or at least duke whatever-his-name-is.”

  “Mother!”

  “No excuses.” With that, Stepmother swept from the room, leaving daughter and stepdaughter staring at one another, not trusting themselves to speak.

  It was Old Merta who came in from the larder, that put things in place the way she often did. “Don’t listen t’her, but if you have a carriage, if ye’d have fun, why not go in any case? Who knows how long any of us have to enjoy life – actually enjoy it, mind - before one of them birds makes off with any of us, before we’re dead an’ gone? Have fun now, dears and appease Ma’am all at once. Why not?”

  “Old M, I can’t go in the same dress!”

  “It will be fine Ash,” said Vanita. “I will go in the same dress too. You said so yourself last night – we are both marriageable and alive! Who cares if we are in the same dresses?”

  I care, thought Ash. I don’t know why but I do. Out loud, she said “well, you’re marriageable at any rate.”

  “So, will you think about it?”

  “I don’t know! All this thinking and dancing and, and… All I knew a few days ago was how to kill carriors. This… I don’t know.” Ash turned away from Vanita, turned away from Old Merta and back towards the outside world, where the carriors were. “I’m going to be alone.”