Then I fell off the throne, collapsed to my hands and knees, trembling with weakness, and vomited onto the top step of the dais of the throne room.
Chapter 4
“But she’s been like this for two days!” The voice filtered through the darkness, followed swiftly by tremors throughout my body. But all of it was distant, coming from a farther shore, removed from me here, where I floated on the river. So I kept my eyes closed, let myself drift on the surface of the water, half submerged, and listened.
“I know, Borund.” A familiar voice, hard and soothing, weary and comforting. Erick’s voice. It made me want to open my eyes, to struggle from the river, but I felt too tired, the river currents too strong. “Remember what happened to her after the warehouse fire. You know it can take a while for her to recover.”
Borund grunted. “I can still feel where she kicked me during one of the seizures then. But I’m not sure how much longer we can wait. Decisions have to be made about how to distribute the food. We can’t just hand it out to whoever comes to the warehouses. And I have no idea how we’re going to include the people of the Dredge.”
Movement. Someone shifting closer.
“Are you certain this is the same as after the fire?” Borund asked, his voice concerned.
More movement. Then someone touched my forehead, brushed away a lock of my hair, the sensation faint and tingling, sending a shiver through me.
“Yes. She’ll be fine.”
Borund muttered a wordless agreement. “What about Eryn?”
The voices moved away.
“She’s fine as well. She woke yesterday, according to Avrell.”
“Did he say what happened? Did Eryn say?”
“No. Eryn refuses to discuss it. She’s waiting for Varis to recover.”
A pause. Then, in a softer voice, “You should get some sleep, Erick. How long have you been here?”
“Since it happened.”
A subtle shift on the river. When Borund spoke, I could hear a more significant question hidden behind the simple words. “Watching over her?”
“Guarding her.” Stiff and formal. Stubborn.
I smiled.
“If you insist,” Borund said. I heard humor in his voice, a shared understanding. And also an acceptance, tinged with regret. Their attention returned to me. I could feel it, like sunlight against my skin. “You’ll be a better . . . mentor to her than I will. You already have been.”
Silence from Erick. I stilled, caught my breath, part of me confused, but part of me shivering with an unexpected need, hard and tight inside my gut. I’d never known my father, my mother nothing more than a wisp of memory, killed when I was six years old. I’d survived alone on the Dredge since then, after learning what I needed from a gutterscum street gang led by a boy called Dove. I’d had no one since then. At one point, I’d thought that the baker who’d taken pity on me and fed me on a regular basis would be something more than just a face I needn’t fear. But no. He was dead now.
Which left Erick and Borund.
I’d never thought of either as being more than a trainer, or an employer.
Except that wasn’t true, was it? I’d always wanted something more, but had never realized what it was. Not until now, when Borund put it into words.
Breath held, I reached out toward Erick, felt a bitterness inside him, felt his self-hatred. “I trained her to kill,” he finally said, the words soft yet harsh.
“No,” Borund said, his words just as harsh, refuting Erick as strongly as he could. “You taught her how to survive. You never wanted her to kill, like me. You always gave her the choice, killed for her if she said no. You trained her so she could protect herself from all of the dangers of the Dredge. No.” Borund’s voice was emphatic. “I ordered her to kill, to make my life easier. I used her, like a tool.” He paused, a tremor of pain entering his voice. “She deserves more than that,” he added, the words thick with suppressed emotion.
Erick didn’t respond, but I could sense that the self-hatred he felt had been blunted, that he was watching me with a considering frown. The hard core of need inside me shuddered, and I relaxed, the held breath releasing in a slow sigh.
It was enough for now.
Borund stirred, his roiling emotions settled somewhat. I felt a surge of pity for him. He’d tried to think of me as more than a tool, especially at the end, when I’d returned from the fire in the warehouse district with seizures. But my usefulness as a weapon kept getting in the way, first with the merchant Charls, then Alendor, and finally with the Mistress. He’d never had the chance to think of me as anything else.
“I’ll have the servants send in something to eat,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
A pause. “I’m not certain. We need her, Erick. Somehow, she keeps everything balanced: Avrell, Baill, the merchants.”
“Eryn can help.”
A sigh. “Perhaps. But not for long. She doesn’t have the power of the throne behind her anymore. The merchants might listen to her for a time, out of remembered respect, but it won’t last. We need Varis. She’s more forceful than Eryn, more direct. And I think the merchants fear her.”
“Because of the throne?”
Borund snorted. “No. They fear her for who she is, for what they know she can do with that dagger of hers. They’ve seen her in action, protecting me from Alendor and the consortium. And they’ve heard the rumors of what she did on the Dredge.”
“Some of those rumors aren’t true.”
“But some of them are?”
A long, considering pause. A little of the self-hatred returned, but it was balanced by a shouldered responsibility. “Yes,” Erick finally said, his voice somewhat defiant.
“Then the merchants have reason to fear her.”
Silence, and then Borund heaved a heavy sigh. “I should return to my manse.” Shuffling movement, growing more and more distant. “I left William in charge of organizing the storage—”
The voices faded. Where I floated on the river, eyes closed, I felt a pang deep inside, followed by sudden heat.
William. Borund’s apprentice. I saw his tousled black hair, his eyes, green like the waters at the edge of the wharf, his smile, soft and tentative.
The heat in my gut turned fluid, spread to my chest. I smiled, stretched out in the sensation, arched my back.
Distantly, I heard the rustle of sheets as I moved, heard Erick returning alone to stand over me. I could feel him willing me to wake with a simple, direct stare. And I wanted to wake now, wanted to see him, wanted to see William. William must have recovered from the knife wound in his side if he was helping Borund at the warehouses.
But then I felt my own twinge of doubt, of regret and responsibility. William had been hurt because I’d failed to protect him, failed to anticipate the intent of the men who had ambushed us.
In my mind, William’s smile faded. His eyes darkened with accusation, then shifted again, grew troubled. Fear bled into his features. His eyes flew wide open. Muscles tensed around his mouth and jaw.
This was how he had looked in the tavern when I’d gutted the assassin attempting to kill Borund. This was how he’d looked when I’d almost stabbed him on the wharf. Afraid. Terrified of me, of what I could do, of what I had already done. I could kill, without remorse, viciously and bloodily.
It was who I was. It was what made the other merchants fear me.
The heat in my center curdled and I curled in upon myself, drew away from Erick’s presence hovering over me, away from the Mistress’ bedchamber where I lay.
I didn’t want to wake. Not yet. Not for Erick, nor for William. I was too tired.
Let Eryn deal with everything for now. All I wanted to do was sleep.
So I let the river pull me down into darkness.
* * *
I opened my eyes to b
right sunlight filtered through drawn curtains and saw the simple white canopy above my bed. The folds of cloth rippled in a breeze.
I blinked, felt the grit around my eyes, the tightness of my skin caused by too much sleep, and heard a low murmur of voices.
I turned my head, wincing at the twinge of fading bruises and strained muscles, and saw Erick and Marielle sitting on the settee that I used to work on my writing, their heads bowed down over my slate.
The initial surge of contentment that slid through me on seeing Erick was cut short by a thread of anger and embarrassment. I didn’t want Erick to see my work, my scratchings that were nothing like the smooth lines of Marielle’s writing.
“I don’t know what to do,” Marielle said, her voice hushed but carrying easily. “She’s trying so hard, but the letters don’t come naturally to her. It’s not a matter of her learning to read—she’ll master that with little effort; she remembers everything—but the writing . . .” She shook her head.
Erick frowned down at the slate. “She’s thinking about it too much,” he said. Then he pointed to the board. “You can see the strain of it in the lines of each letter. Here. And here. She’s trying too hard to do exactly what you do, to make the letters as smooth and flowing as yours are. But Varis isn’t elegant and meticulous like you. She’s blunt and direct. Forceful. You have to find a way to make the writing as blunt and forceful as she is.”
Marielle’s brow furrowed in thought. “How do I do that?”
I struggled up onto one elbow, tried to speak, the anger overtaking my exhaustion, but the words came out in a raspy cough instead. Both Erick and Marielle glanced up, then stood.
“Water,” Erick said sharply, and as Marielle darted to the side table where she’d left the pitcher and glasses, he moved to the edge of the bed. The slate was left forgotten on the settee.
I glared at him as he helped me into a sitting position, then took the glass of water Marielle offered. I swallowed carefully, my throat raw, but the water washed the sour taste away and made my stomach rumble.
“I didn’t want you to see,” I said hoarsely, motioning toward the slate.
Marielle harrumphed. “He’s been here for the last three days,” she said, taking the glass of water away before I drank too much and made myself sick. “He was bound to see it eventually.” She passed over a chunk of bread.
“You didn’t have to show it to him.” I switched my glare to Marielle, but she didn’t flinch.
“I’ll go tell the others you’re awake,” she said. “And get some soup from the kitchen. That’s probably the best thing for you right now.”
Erick waited until she was gone, then pulled a chair sitting next to the bed closer. He leaned back, made himself comfortable, then said, “She’s trying to help.”
I scowled and plucked at the sheets, ignoring the smile playing about Erick’s lips.
But the smile faded and his attention shifted. “What happened?” he asked, voice serious.
My nervous hands stilled. I thought about the vision of the city on fire, of the blood and bodies in the harbor. I shuddered, felt a twist of nausea in my stomach that echoed what I’d felt while touching the throne, but fought it back. The image was too real, too . . . visceral. I couldn’t keep it to myself.
I turned to Erick, frowned intently . . . and suddenly realized I wouldn’t be sending him out in search of any more marks. The last few weeks without him had been too lonely, and I hadn’t realized why until he’d returned, until I’d overheard Borund and Erick earlier. But now I knew what I wanted, without any doubt.
“I saw Amenkor,” I said. “The city was on fire, everything burning: the palace, the docks, the Dredge. Even the ships in the harbor. And there were bodies in the water.” My voice grew rough, cracked, but with effort I managed to control it. I swallowed down the horror, tasted its bitterness. “The harbor was filled with blood, a whole sea of it. And in the end it was too much to take, and so I shoved it all away. Hard.
“That’s when I fell off the throne.”
Erick nodded, his eyes thoughtful. “That’s when Eryn screamed and collapsed as well.”
I sat forward. I remembered the scream at the end, when the power I’d used to push the image away had rippled outward, a second before I’d fallen. I’d thought it had come from the shade of Eryn, since she’d been on the tower with me, witnessing the fire. But if it had truly been Eryn, not her shadow . . .
“Is she all right?”
Erick grunted. “She’s fine. She was a little shaken, but she says there was no harm done. None that she can see.” He stilled. “What do you think the vision means? Was it just an image, like in a dream, or was it something more?”
I thought back, tried to ignore the scent of smoke and ash, still sharp, making my nose itch and wrinkle in distaste. “I don’t know.” I thought about how I’d always used the river to see what could happen, to find the best time to snatch away the apple, or the easiest way to elude the guards. The vision had the same feel, viscerally real but also stretched somehow, not fully there.
I shook my head. “I need to ask Eryn. She has more experience with the throne. But I think I understand why she closed the harbor.”
“Why?”
“Whatever destroyed the city in the vision . . . it came from the ocean. I could sense it.”
We stared at each other for a long moment without speaking. Then Erick said in a tight voice, “So perhaps Eryn wasn’t as insane as she seemed.”
A hard lump closed off my throat as I realized that he was right. She’d had reason to close the harbor, reason perhaps to increase the guard in the city. I’d been sent to kill her—had agreed to kill her—on the assumption that she had gone mad. But what if that wasn’t true? What if there were reasons for all her actions? Avrell himself had said that sometimes the Mistress’ orders made no sense at the time, but were obvious in retrospect.
Then I shook my head, the lump in my throat easing. No. The vision still didn’t explain her order to let the warehouse district burn, or her wandering the palace talking to herself, speaking in unknown languages, as the guards claimed. And I knew she had gone insane. I’d seen it in the throne room when I tried to kill her.
No. Eryn had been on the verge of total madness when I’d seized control. There was no doubting that. She’d admitted it herself.
But I didn’t get a chance to explain to Erick. Someone knocked and a moment later opened the outer door. One of the guards outside leaned in.
“The First of the Mistress and a Master Borund are here to see you,” he said when he saw I was sitting up in bed.
I sighed and leaned back into the pillows. Erick stood.
“I could send them away,” he offered quietly.
I shook my head. “No, send them in.”
Erick nodded to the guardsman, who stepped in to allow Avrell and Borund entry, then closed the door behind himself as he left. Both Avrell and Borund moved up to the bed, opposite Erick.
“Mistress,” Avrell said with a formal bow of his head. “It is good to see you recovering.”
“Yes, it is, Mistress,” Borund said. “What happened?”
I glanced toward Erick, giving him a warning frown before turning back. “The throne was more powerful than I thought. I was too . . . forceful in my efforts to control it.”
Erick shifted uncomfortably.
“What have you done while I was recovering?” I asked.
Avrell cleared his throat, catching everyone’s attention. “We’ve managed to locate and secure the stockpiles of food that Eryn smuggled into the city, ten in all, by searching all of the buildings owned by the palace. There may be more, but Eryn couldn’t have hidden anything outside the city by herself and we can’t search every building in the city without rousing protests, so for now we’ve stopped looking.”
“Now we need to decide how to s
tore the goods we do have,” Borund broke in, “and figure out how to distribute them among the populace over the coming months.”
“I still argue for a single location that can be easily guarded,” Avrell said.
Borund frowned. “And I still say it should be at a few separate locations in case something happens, like a fire.”
As Avrell and Borund traded glares, I thought of the fires burning in the vision and sighed wearily.
“I’ve already decided,” I said, cutting the two off before they could launch into a repeat of the argument they’d had a few weeks ago. “We’ll put the food in separate locations.” Borund smiled and nodded in triumph. “Avrell, choose the locations and let Baill and Captain Catrell know so they can assign guardsmen. There should be one in the middle ward, another in the outer, and at least one somewhere in the slums. Find an empty building in each area, something that Baill thinks will be easy to defend and control, and use that. There are plenty of empty buildings. The buildings that remain in the warehouse district can be used to cover the wharf and the upper city.”
Avrell sighed disapprovingly. “Very well.”
I caught him with a hard stare. “I have my reasons,” I said sharply.
He frowned and straightened, looking questioningly at Erick, who didn’t respond, his face blank.
I turned to Borund. “Once you have the locations, distribute them among the merchants and let them know where they’re to store their goods. Some of it can stay in their own warehouses, of course, but any excess and anything from Alendor’s or the consortium’s supplies should be divided among the other locations. I expect the merchants to keep track of all of the supplies under their control, and to distribute them fairly when the time comes. Don’t store all of the grain in one spot. We don’t want to lose our entire supply of any one staple because of some accident.”
The Throne of Amenkor Page 42
