by Zoe Marriott
“Why are so many of them... Are they foreigners? These dark-haired ones...” I began. But even as I spoke, memory rushed back. Those smiling, eager-to-serve people at the way-village, with their colourful caps and silver bells...
Beside me, Shell shook her head, trying to communicate something with a complex movement of her hands. Ralkin’s face twisted bitterly for just an instant before he smoothed his expression.
Hushed, I said, “They’re not foreigners, are they?”
“They are Llemanssers,” Katja said, her voice stifled. Her eyes were wide, scanning the ranks of Ice Breakers desperately. Searching. “They were here before we came, before the Silingans arrived on our great ships and named the islands for ourselves.”
“But – the book in the library – Uldar said it was all fairytales – ” I broke off. What had he said? Fairytales. Superstitions.And he had told me Llemansser was a bad word, one I shouldn’t use.
“Of course.” Ralkin’s eyes were not on me now. “How inconvenient it would be to acknowledge the existence of those whom you have murdered, and dispossessed, and stolen from. If you ever hear any Silingan speak of the people of Llemansse in polite company – which is unlikely – they will refer to them as a quaint feature of the past. An extinct species driven into the mists of time by progress and civilisation. By the will of Morogana himself. These people are afforded no status in Silingan law. Officially they do not exist. They have no claim on the lands that were once theirs, or the resources that belonged to their people. And of course, the good decent Silingans do not wish to employ them because it is believed they are dirty, dishonest, lazy, violent – take your pick of insults. But there is one thing they have that the King is interested in.”
“Their gifts.” Again, that was Katja.
“Indeed. The service contracts that poor mages are made to sign are universally iniquitous. But because the Llemanssers are disproportionately gifted with magic – and disproportionately poor – they are also disproportionately exploited.”
Katja let out a choked gasp. She pushed past me, muscled Ralkin out of her way and flew through the silent people to fall to her knees beside – a girl. A Llemansser, with wildly curling hair cropped close to her skull, and blank grey eyes that stared past Katja as if she were not there. She was slumped against the wall, leaning on it for support with both hands and one cheek ground into the granite. Her square, determined face looked clammy with sweat, and her gaunt cheeks were flushed an unhealthy, feverish colour.
This was why Katja’s father would not approve. Why they needed money to go away and find their own life. Not only because of class, and race. Because Katja’s sweetheart was a girl, and in Silinga only men and women could be together. And Katja didn’t know enough about Yamarr to realise I wouldn’t judge her and reject her for the same reason.
“Aerin.” Katja was crying, her hands hovering in the air near the girl’s face as if she was afraid to touch. “Aerin, what have they done to you?”
“She has been ill,” Ralkin said, leaving Shell and I frozen by the door to approach Katja and her lover. “Since arriving here, she is always ill. Her gift is more for Fire Stoking, but such work would require her to be above stairs, and of course the masters cannot have anyone seeing a Llemansser girl wandering about the palace. So she forces herself to do this work instead, to earn what she can – but it makes her sick. And she will not let us call for a doctor, for that would put her contract further into debt.”
“You’re a Royal mage – they pay you in gold!” Katja snapped, staring at him accusingly. “Can’t you pay for a doctor?”
“Katja,” I interrupted, distressed. “He is not responsible for this – ”
Ralkin shook his head, brushing off my defense. “All the gold I earn – all the gold most of the Royal mages earn – goes to try to buy out their contracts.” He gestured around the room. “We manage to free perhaps four, or five, in a good year. Four or five who can escape before this place bleeds them out. We usually pick the ones who have left children behind. It is not fair, it is not enough, and there are always more – but we do try.”
As if disturbed by the raised voices and turbulent emotions, Aerin and several nearby Ice Breakers moaned and stirred. Ralkin raised a finger to his lips. “Hush now. If we break their concentration and a wall above begins to soften or drip, they will all be fined.”
“Does Uldarana know about this?” I asked, keeping my voice as quiet and even as I could.
“I cannot tell you, Princess,” Ralkin said, crossing back toward us. Katja stayed where she was, wiping her eyes with one hand while the other curled, white-knuckled, around the frayed hem of Aerin’s tunic. I thought she was avoiding my gaze. “If he does, then I imagine it was explained to him in the vaguest possible terms. It was after his father saw this, saw the broken backs his Kingdom rested upon, that he began to drink and indulge in other – unhealthy pastimes. And so I think that the Queen and the Chancellor and the King’s advisors would have been very careful to break the news to Prince Uldarana – softly.”
“Then I will bring him here,” I whispered, voice shaking. “I will make him see this. Not so that he can hide from it in a wine barrel, but so that he will understand it must change.”
Shell, face haunted, took my hand in both of hers, offering comfort.
“You can’t do that,” Katja said, bleakly, bitterly. She still wasn’t looking at me. “They won’t let you. This is the way things have always been. Even my Father doesn’t think anything can ever change.”
“Always is not the same as forever, Katja. Rulers belong to their people. If we do not care for them, protect them, love them, what good are we?”
“This is a system which has benefitted those in power for a long time. It will be easier said than done to change it. Perhaps the work of a lifetime.” Ralkin said neutrally.
“Then it is good that the Prince and I are both young, and have a lifetime to spend on this Kingdom.”
Ralkin smiled. A small smile, a wry, cautious smile – but a smile nonetheless.
Shell tugged at my hand to get my attention and pointed upward. I shook myself. One thing at a time.
“I understand why you needed me to see this – but for anything to change, the Prince must survive. We’ve already lingered too long. Is this truly a hidden route to Uldarana’s chambers?”
“This door leads to the correct wing,” Ralkin said, crossing nimbly through the ranks of Ice Breakers to another dark door hidden against the granite.
“Katja – ” I began.
“I can’t leave her, Theo,” she said miserably, gaze fixed on the floor as we came closer, following Ralkin. “I let her go once; I can’t do it again. I’m sorry – I know you probably don’t understand – ”
Did I seem so remote, so cold to her, that she thought I couldn’t understand something so simple? Or did she still think I would judge her by the standards of this icy realm?
“You love her.” I leaned down to take her tear-stained hand, holding it as Shell had done mine to comfort me. “It will be all right, Katja. Maybe not immediately, maybe not even soon. But I promise: I will free her. When I am Queen, I will free all of them.”
Katja’s face creased, and she leaned her forehead against my silk-and-lace-covered knee for a moment, shoulders shaking. Then she straightened, sucked in a deep breath, and looked up at me with resolute eyes. “You will be the finest Queen we have ever had. Go. Save Uldar. Go!”
I released her hand and ran quickly away to where Shell and Ralkin waited by the door.
34
Save Uldar. Deal with Miramand. Fix this rotten Kingdom before it falls into the sea. One thing at a time, Theoai. One thing at a time.
Ralkin had left us at the top of the stairs that led to Uldar’s wing of the palace. It was just Shell and me now, hand in hand, fleeing through the silent night-time Silingana, through the dim light left by turned-low oil lamps, like trespassers in the echoing, hollow skeleton left behind by a dead dragon
. Had the dungeon guards noticed the long absence of their fellow and raised the alarm yet? Had someone alerted Miramand that her prisoner was gone? We had no way of knowing. Hearts thundering, feet pattering, we ran, hoping, hoping...
There. The door to the Prince’s suite, an armed guard before it. We peered around the corner, assessing. It was a different man this time than the one I had tried and failed to get past earlier in the night. Older, and tired looking. That might help. And the fact that the Silingans only seemed to hire male guardsmen would be useful too...
I exchanged a long look with Shell as we reluctantly untangled our fingers.
“You must wait here, out of sight,” I said, sighing when she looked mutinous. “Trust me. And come as fast as you can when I call.”
She pulled a face of smouldering frustration, but stepped back behind the corner again. I turned and, stately and unhurried now, approached the door, resisting with all my might the urge to look back and check Shell was still hiding, that Miramand or her minions were not in pursuit. He heard me coming, took a quick sidelong glance. My heart clenched as I waited to see if he had been warned that I had broken the Prince’s poisoner from her jail. If he had, and he tried to detain me, then Shell and I would have no choice but to fight.
The man nodded politely, and faced front again. No other reaction.
My tension eased back from battle readiness. The dungeon guard had not yet been discovered, or the other guards had not yet been warned. We had a little time.
I stopped directly before the door, not looking at the guard. After a few breaths I tapped my foot and raised an eyebrow expectantly, meeting his gaze. He looked back, impassiveness slowly turning into unease as I stared him down. He checked the shoulder-strap on his sword belt, then said, “Princess? Can I help?”
“Yes,” I said, drawing the word out in such a way as to make him clear his throat. “You may open the door for me.”
“Highness – ”
“Immediately.” I tapped my snow white shoe again.
“The Queen has ordered that none but her or her royal doctors may enter.” His face softened a little. “I am sorry.”
I blinked at him slowly, cat-like. “Why are you sorry? What can you be trying to say? That the Queen has barred the King from his son’s chambers?”
“Oh – no – but the King is not subject to the Queen’s orders.”
Now I allowed my eyes to narrow. “And you believe I am? I am not one of Miramand’s subjects.” I saw him wince at my use of her first name without its title, and pressed harder. “None but the King has the right to bar me from my betrothed’s side, and the King has not done so. Open the door.”
I reached out as if to take the handle – and as I had hoped, the guard reacted instinctively to block me. Except that I moved, thrusting my wrist into his path so that his quick reach turned into a blunt smack to my forearm.
Instantly I snatched my hand back, clutching it to my breast as if I had been stabbed. “How dare you strike me?”
The guard had gone ashen. “Princess – I – I didn’t – ”
“Open the door – at once!”
Without hesitation he moved aside and thrust open the door. He stared at me desperately, sweat beading on his upper lip. I allowed my ‘injured’ hand to fall, and smiled. “Thank you. Shell!”
The other girl washed past us like a crest of seawater, hair and gown flying around her. Her hand caught mine and dragged me with her into the room beyond the open door before the guard could do more than open his mouth in astonishment. I twisted to slam the door shut behind us, scrabbling for the key. It turned with a crisp click.
“Come on.”
Hands linked again, we marched through a grand receiving room, a breakfast room, a dressing room, and finally entered a darkened bed chamber. It was filled with the stifling scents of stale sweat, blood, vomit. The stench of sickness.
Two doctors – one young, one old, similar in every other way with their pale robes, eye spectacles and soft hands – started up from chairs by the large four-poster bed.
“Who are you? Get out at once!”
I ignored them, releasing Shell and going to the heavily curtained window. A quick mental tally of the time and which side of the palace we were on, and I reached out to rip the red velvet away.
Pale dawnlight spilled into the room, revealing Uldarana’s deathly still form sprawled limply on the bed. He was not even tucked under the covers. He wore a thin nightshirt that was translucent with sweat, and his skin was grey, wrinkled and dehydrated. Yellowish bile had bubbled over his lips and dried on his chin. His chest barely moved; when it did, his breath was a pained wheeze.
A death rattle.
“Shell! Quickly!”
She was already clambering up to kneel beside him, cupping his face in her hands.
“What in Morogana’s name do you think you’re doing?” the young doctor demanded, moving as if to yank Shell away. “Get off there!”
I stepped between him and the bed with teeth bared and shoved him back with both hands. He staggered and hit the wall, clutching at his glasses. “Hold your tongue. Your cures have delivered him neatly to death’s door. You will not interfere with the one who can help him.”
Shell had bent and laid her forehead against Uldar’s. For a blink I thought she was humming, crooning. Then I realised it was the air around her that was humming, vibrating with deep, soundless pulses that rippled through my ears. My bones. Deep down inside me.
As she leaned back, lifting her hands in supplication, a resounding crack shook the room. The older doctor let out a gasp of awe as the stern straight lines of the four poster bed began to twist and warp. Growing. Soft green shoots and pale new twigs pushed from the dark, varnished surfaces. The feet groaned and crunched as they put down curling roots into the carpeted floor. The humming of the air took on a joyous note, a note that made something golden and warm like laughter bubble inside me, even though I had never been further from mirth.
There was banging and shouting from the other end of the suite. I could hear, distantly, Miramand’s voice, incandescent with fury, demanding that the door be broken down. Neither of the doctors moved a step. They were both staring, spellbound, just like me, at the miracle unfolding.
The glass bowl of water by the bed shattered with a high singing note. The table which had held the bowl burst into bloom – tiny, sweet smelling white flowers opened and released a burst of yellow pollen. Strange lights began to float around Shell and Uldar, like those Morogana had drawn on the sky but in many more colours – indigo, violet, pink and purple, like the shades of a hummingbird’s wing. They danced, brightened. And then sank into Uldar’s body.
Shell’s arched back shuddered. She sucked in a deep, rasping breath. Slumped, catching her balance with one hand on Uldar’s chest.
Under her touch, Uldar coughed and opened his eyes.
Behind me there was a splintering crash. The doctors both started, shocked from their trances as Miramand stormed into the room, mid-tirade. “– cruel, wicked interlopers desecrating my son’s last moments on this earth! I will have all of your heads for this!”
“Oh Mother, please don’t fuss,” Uldar said sleepily as Shell flopped down next to him, spent but smiling. He blinked at her, then offered her a dopey smile. “Good morning, Shell – what are you doing here? By Morogana’s balls, my head aches. I don’t suppose there’s any breakfast?”
35
“...and so the Mighty Tharogan slew the Dread Ice Beast of the West Island and freed his people from its tyranny forever. And from then on, the days were as bright as the sunset gold of soft summer waves, and as full of sweetness as the first karem berries of the harvest. The End.”
I looked up from the page into Shell’s smiling eyes. She was perched at the end of Uldar’s rumpled bed, leaning back against one of the leafy bedposts. A chain of the small white flowers from the bedside table – which now resembled a squat flowering shrub more than a piece of furniture – was w
oven around her hair like a crown. She winked at me, her hands flickering furtively through a complex sequence of signs. I dissected it with a confidence that was growing daily as she taught me her language:
Strong Our Prince kills frightening middle meal?
Ah. Mighty Uldarana slays dread nuncheon.
I pressed my lips together to hide my smile as Uldarana sighed and pushed his empty tray aside with a clatter of silver cutlery and porcelain.
“If I never have to swallow gruel again it will be too soon,” he complained. “How is any man supposed to get his strength back eating baby food? Why under the wide blue sky I’m denied a good, nourishing plate of fried bloodwurst and potatoes, or baked ham and some buttered eggs on toast – ”
“Because you were taken embarrassingly ill the last time you tried to eat such rich things,” I interrupted patiently, before he could work himself up. Again. “You nearly died a week ago. Your stomach is still delicate.”
“Eight days,” he grumbled. Shell laughed silently, head tilted back, teeth flashing. Uldar nudged her with his foot, a pout on his lips.
“And,” I persisted, “It isn’t gruel. It is porridge made with cream, and brown honey, and cassia. I even had them put keram berries from the hothouses in it. You said that was your favourite.”
“Not three times a day!” he protested.
Shell grabbed his twitching foot to get his attention. Her hair swung forward to screen her hands from me as she made some slow, simple sign at him. Uldar had not picked up Shell’s language as quickly as I – in fact, he had fallen asleep during many of her lessons – but it must have been something simple. He slid down against his pillow, eyes rolling.
“Thank you for getting me delicious porridge, dear Theo. Thank you for reading to me when my blasted eyes won’t focus, and amusing me while I’m ill.” His gaze slid sideways to meet mine, and he gave me a sincere, if tired, smile. “Thank you.”
