Forestborn

by Elayne Audrey Becker

  It was about two weeks before we first came to Roanin, after seven or eight years of living in the Vale alone. Helos and I had finally decided that we couldn’t do it any longer. We needed support, community, and hadn’t found another home in the Vale since the massacre that destroyed Caela Ridge also disrupted the giants’ influence that had kept the land there stable.

  The one time we dared to return after the attack, we found little more than smoldering wood and overgrown vegetation—the trees had begun to reclaim what was theirs. Our house had collapsed inward like parchment crushed in one’s fist. Some of the elevated bridges we’d raced upon still stood, while others had broken or burned to the ground. That ground—a horrid mess of arrows and gore, bodies and ash, half the bones lost to marrow sheep within hours. Maybe I had friends there, or tutors, or toys. But I can’t remember their names. I can’t remember a single face clearly, aside from Father’s. Facedown in the grass with an arrow in his back, exactly as we’d left him the night before.

  No shifters we met in years to come would take us under their wing. All seemed afraid to congregate in groups, lest the humans who killed our family come after theirs, as well. So we had grappled with the river at last and entered Niav, completely overwhelmed by the buildings and the faces, the wheeled carts and the cadence of conversation—and the relief at being able to understand the words.

  Once we had gotten over our initial shock and worked up the courage to remain within the city borders for more than a few hours, we began seeking employment. Many people turned us down when they took in our grimy faces and tattered clothing, the garments salvaged from the wreckage of Caela Ridge by then riddled with little tears and holes. Others were swayed by the sight, and a few offered jobs and lodging.

  But I’d ruined it for us. We had heard the rumors of Eradain but were ignorant of the other realms, unaware of the unprecedented event the year before, the second time all three Predictions yielded the same three words. I revealed our shifter nature within a couple of weeks, after a man had scared me badly enough that mouse instincts wrenched my core. Whiskers burst from my cheeks, and officers dragged Helos and me in front of their newly elected minister.

  Minister Mereth. The leader who won that year’s election in a landslide, a visionary with publicized plans to improve access to education and reduce the damaging impact of overgrazing livestock. A pragmatist who opted for logic over sentiment and exiled a couple of starving kids with nothing more than small sacks of food, out of an abundance of caution for her people. You will find no work here, she said, before summoning an artist to copy down our natural forms, to prevent us finding work. She gave us one week to leave the realm.

  The guard bangs twice on the doors now—enormous, gilded, bronze creations standing nearly as tall as the flags. I dig my nails into my palms, suddenly eager for distraction. A sculptor has carved tiny pictures into the bronze, but I barely have time to examine them before the doors heave inward, metal hinges groaning with the effort.

  The entrance hall is far more welcoming than I expected from the looming exterior. Candelabras affixed to the walls cast the high-ceilinged foyer in a muted but surprisingly warm light. Thick rugs woven with reds and golds blanket the floor and keep the stone’s chill at bay, while a grand staircase, twice as wide as I am tall, doubles back a dozen or so steps up so that we can’t see where it leads.

  Our guard speaks to a nearby manservant, who disappears around a corner in the back.

  “If you’ll just wait here a moment,” says the guard.

  There are no chairs in the hall, so we hover in silence while Weslyn straightens the cuffs of his sleeves. I wonder if it’s an intentional move on Minister Mereth’s part, forcing visitors to stand. Helos nods to me, and I return the gesture stiffly.

  When Minister Mereth breezes around the corner, she’s just as I remember her. With one exception: the expression on her face is decidedly kinder. Her tall, curvy form is draped in a blouse and rippling skirt of deep scarlet, while smooth, deep brown skin peeks out from beneath a lacy, cream-colored shawl. Her gaze sweeps over all of us, but to my relief she glides straight to Weslyn.

  “Prince Weslyn,” she greets with a smile, though her eyes remain wary. He takes her proffered hand and shakes it once. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Her cadence is measured, softer than the lilting accent with which Weslyn speaks.

  “Minister,” Weslyn replies. “I seek an audience with you.”

  “On behalf of King Gerar, I presume?”

  “Of course.”

  Minister Mereth’s eyes narrow shrewdly, and I have the distinct impression there’s some game going on here I don’t understand. “And your companions?”

  Weslyn gestures to Helos and me. “These two would sit in, if you grant it.”

  I fight hard to keep my astonishment from showing.

  Minister Mereth shifts her focus to us, and though I make sure to keep my face devoid of recognition, I can feel my limbs freeze a little on instinct. Her gaze, though penetrating, isn’t omniscient, but it lingers on Helos longer than it had on me. “I grant it. First, though, you must be tired. Go and freshen up after your journey. Are my hands attending to your horses?”

  It seems for all the world like she’s directing the question at Helos, and I can sense his confusion as clearly as my own.

  “We came on foot,” Weslyn replies, wresting her gaze from my brother at last.

  She doesn’t bother trying to conceal her surprise. “Indeed.”

  There’s a moment’s silence, during which a look passes between them that I can’t interpret. Then she smiles. “We’ll dine together tonight. For now, Elias will show you to your quarters.”

  A slight fellow with long lashes, pronounced cheeks, and copper skin steps forward and inclines his head. “If you’ll follow me,” he says to the seven of us, gesturing to the grand staircase.

  Minister Mereth sweeps from the room before we have a chance to turn our backs to her.

  EIGHT

  Elias leads us to the second level, where the staircase opens up to a broad stone gallery lined with vertical, rounded windows. The view looks out onto a tailored courtyard below, a tame, square plot cut into the palace’s center that’s altogether too artificial for my taste. Down the hall, a handful of finely dressed people toting pens and parchment look us over, their faces bloated with a self-importance that screams “state officials.” I try and fail to read the documents as we pass.

  Since working for King Gerar, I’ve gleaned no tales of discontent with Minister Mereth’s term, of which two years remain. Only latent apprehension among Castle Roanin’s court, lest their neighbor’s continued success inspire democratic sentiment among grumbling Telyan royalists. In a rare stroke of political interest, even Finley has worked to prevent that happening.

  “This is clever,” Helos remarked one afternoon, his voice echoing in the castle grounds’ old carriage house. We had thrown open the shutters to create a musty, private studio for Finley’s latest project—a wooden ship he was constructing based on intricate diagrams.

  Finley’s face had popped over the wall of an unused tacking stall. “You mean me?”

  “I mean this,” Helos replied, smacking the top of Finley’s head with a leaflet.

  Finley snatched the creased parchment and scanned it, then grinned. “So you do mean me.”

  “‘Princess Violet fights the flames,’” Helos recited from the caption. I grabbed the leaflet’s edge, the air crisp with autumn’s chill. It was a drawing of Violet with a bucket, dousing a fire licking the edge of a nest of chicks. In the air, the water droplets formed beaded words. Foresight. Courage. Justice. “No mention of any Prince Finley.”

  “Whose idea do you think it was to put the story in the papers?”

  “Your sister’s,” I said at once.

  “Well, yes. But as an image?”

  I studied the sketch more closely. “You drew this?”

  He winked. “Pictures hold more power than words, somet
imes.”

  “And deflection,” Helos added, with a decidedly arched brow. Violet’s first public initiative, a proposal to replace old wood with stone to reduce the spread of fire, had been met with widespread approval. So much so that the press had ceased reporting the fire that spurred it in the first place.

  “There’s a reason the people have not tried to overthrow us yet.” Finley shoved the leaflet into Helos’s chest. “We do more than keep systems running. We promise to do good and then follow through.”

  “Sounds like royal arrogance to me.” But Helos had been smiling.

  At the end of the hall, we round the corner and halt almost immediately.

  “Your Royal Highness,” Elias says, opening the door to the first chamber. Weslyn nods and steps inside.

  The next two rooms are for my brother and me. Mine is bright and spacious, with an enormous four-poster bed set against the left wall, a mirrored dressing table and impressively carved wardrobe, and an array of upholstered couches and chairs arranged before the windows. Blues and yellows adorn the room, down to the thick rug lying underfoot.

  While Elias leads the group on, I shed my pack and dash to the towering windows, leaning against the sill. Our quarters are at the back of the palace, right at the edge of the hilltop. After our view from afar, I know how sheer the drop is just below.

  There’s a knock on my open door, and Helos pokes his head through a moment later. “She’s making a statement, I think,” he says, stepping inside.

  “What do you mean?”

  Familiar despite his borrowed form, Helos sits on the arm of a couch and nods at the view. “Only one way out of here, and it isn’t through the window.”

  He was quicker on the uptake than I was, but he’s right. Where they’ve placed us, our movements can be tracked.

  “She doesn’t trust us,” I observe.

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  I turn again, not having heard Weslyn arrive.

  “But it’s not surprising,” he adds, closing the door and coming to my side. “It’s highly unusual for a visitor from another court to show up unannounced. Even more unusual for them to travel with such a small party, and on foot. A dead giveaway that we traveled in secret, and all this on top of the pressure she’s already feeling from Eradain.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t trust us, either.”

  I make no move to fill the silence that follows. This is the first time he’s chosen to be alone with us, and I don’t know what to make of it, any more than I do his civil tone. As if nothing could be more normal.

  “I want to apologize for Dom’s actions today.” Weslyn leans against the windowsill, collared shirt crinkling. “He’s my responsibility. It will not happen again.”

  Helos and I exchange a look. Where was this sentiment when Carolette was hurling insults, or he himself treated us like a curse?

  “Do you believe him?” I ask, feeling the need to test his apology. “That if you go with us tomorrow, you won’t return.”

  He appears to consider the question carefully. “If I don’t return, it won’t be because of any prophecy.”

  That surprises me. “And dinner tonight? You asked if we could attend.”

  “You two have a part in this mission that the others do not. You have a right to hear what Mereth has to say.” Briefly, he studies his hands on the sill. “In any case, since we’re about to travel together, just the three of us, I thought we ought to…” He trails off, drumming his fingers along the wood.

  “Bond?” Helos supplies in a dry voice.

  Weslyn’s face flushes. “Something like that,” he mutters, twisting back to the window. If I didn’t know better, I’d call his reticence discomfort.

  Following his gaze, I locate Glenweil’s northern border not far beyond the palace hill. The plains on the other side are barren and flat, shaded with burnt umber, the coarse, yellowed stalks covering them withered and listless. Divots and cracks are flecked with fading hawkweed and silvered sagebrush, and to the east, jagged buttes of stone and clay sever the horizon. The sight conjures other images—murky bogs, stagnant pools, birds crouching mutely in their roosts. Plants that burn when you graze their sides. I imagine the land weeping through its roots.

  Everything about it speaks of silence.

  “Eradain,” I remark in a small voice.

  Weslyn nods. “That’s it.”

  And since he’s clearly trying, and he’s right we’re about to travel alone, I decide it’s only fair to return the effort. “Have you ever been?”

  “Once.” He frowns a little. “Long ago.”

  I chew the inside of my lip.

  It feels strange to stand on the doorstep of the place Helos and I never ventured in all the years of living on our own. When the time had come at last to trade the wild for city life, we spent a long time searching for a place to cross the river. It had taken two treks along the shore, top to bottom and back again, before we conceded there were no natural crossings. The river barely even narrowed at any point, aside from a steep gorge to the south. No, the only place a swim seemed feasible at all was over to Niav, where we could see the city and tiny dock lining the opposite shore.

  Helos decided to go first, of course, intending to signal back to me if he deemed the water safe enough. We’d waited for early evening, when the sun was just beginning to set. Then he’d waded into the river and—

  “What exactly has Eradain demanded of Telyan?” I ask abruptly, to stem the tide.

  Weslyn’s jaw tightens, and seeing this, my brother folds his arms.

  I recall the way I learned more of Eradain from refugees in the Vale than from my employer’s own mouth. How King Gerar never granted me more than closed doors any time that kingdom came up. Shoved aside when my presence was no longer useful, and never trusted enough to share the truth. A small fire kindles within.

  The brand of shame.

  “Never mind,” I say crossly.

  Weslyn glances at me, eyebrows arched. “It’s complicated.”

  “And I suppose I’m too dull-witted to understand?”

  Helos kicks my foot, but I ignore the warning.

  Weslyn fists his hands on the windowsill. “All I said was it’s complicated.”

  “If it’s private information, you can trust me to keep it to myself.”

  He says nothing.

  “Never mind. The solution is always to keep me in the dark, isn’t it?”

  Weslyn fixes me with a level stare. “What am I missing here?”

  “You tell me Eradain, whose laws are notoriously prejudiced against anyone with magic in their veins, like me, issued terms for your father to agree to, but you won’t tell me what they are.” My temper is rising fast and hot. “Telyan may go to war in a matter of weeks, a time frame you were quick enough to hang over my head when it meant securing the stardust faster, but I’m not permitted to know why. Instead, you keep the truth to yourself and expect me to do your bidding half-blind. Have I not done enough to earn your trust? Are you all so ashamed of your association with me that you dismiss me the moment it stops benefiting you?”

  He crosses his arms, regaining his usual condescension. The stubborn ass. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s a king’s place to keep things from his subjects.”

  But I spy for him, gather intel for him. I’m on a quest to save his people and his son. I am more than an ordinary subject. Or maybe … maybe I only hoped I was.

  Foolish hope.

  I turn back to the window.

  “He does trust you,” Weslyn insists.

  I note the use of he, not we, and keep my eyes on the horizon.

  “Listen. Relations between Telyan and Eradain are … strained. King Jol is young and ambitious, only twenty-five and two years into his reign, yet already working to distinguish himself from his father. He’s become vocal in his belief that the world would be better off without magic.”

  Yes, I’ve heard loose renditions of the climate there, snippets repeated on southern to
ngues spitting envy rather than disgust. As if Telyan, too, should persecute magic within its borders. I laugh without humor. “Haven’t Eradain’s people always felt that way?”

  “No, they rebelled against the idea of a magical monarch. This is different.” He presses a palm to his forehead, suddenly weary. “Since assuming the throne, Jol has sent several envoys to my father, all bearing the same message: reclaim the continent. Join him in a mission to conquer the Western Vale, to rid the land of magical beings once and for all.”

  “What?” Helos exclaims, voicing my outrage. “The Vale has always been neutral territory! Is it not enough to target people within his own kingdom?”

  “It may have been, once. But it seems the Prediction has changed that.” Weslyn’s gaze darts to me, inscrutable, before returning to my brother. “The first year the Predictions aligned, my father met with Mereth and Jol’s father, Daymon. My father and Mereth both advised prudence without mobilization, but Daymon disagreed. He ordered his staff to assemble a list of every shifter in Eradain, so that he might keep tabs on them.” He pauses. “Then the earthquakes began.”

  I feel a tremor of nerves despite myself. “There’s no proof it will happen again. The Rupturing.”

  “No, but we know an explosion of magic caused it, and a series of earthquakes preceded it. It is not unreasonable to fear that new earthquakes means it’s starting again, especially with them happening in all three realms.”

  “But to tie that to the Prediction,” Helos says. “As if two shifters could cause the continent to break apart. The idea is absurd.”

  “It isn’t to Jol,” Weslyn counters. “And it wasn’t to Daymon. Not with earthquakes suggesting a buildup of magic and Predictions repeatedly warning of death. Daymon originally saw two shifters as the heart of the issue, but when the Predictions began to repeat, he expanded his identification system to include all magical civilians.” His forehead creases. “I’m sure you heard what followed. Shops and homes vandalized, jobs lost, marriages broken. It wasn’t unusual for people to vanish and not reappear until several days later, in considerably worse shape than before.”