Forbidden Power

by Willa Hart

  This has always been Uncle’s version of events, but his story has never felt right to me.

  Or me, brother, Leo thinks.

  Nope, Sarkany thinks. My belief in Uncle’s story wears thin.

  “You must find your Queen, are we clear?”

  All three of us nod.

  Uncle turns to Wagu and whispers in his ear. Wagu nods and walks out the door to the horses and transports in front of the house.

  “Father, I’m ready.” Katya descends the stairs in her traveling clothes. She wears Mother’s travel tiara. Which, while not unusual for Katya to wear Mother’s jewels as she is the only current female of House Roya today, Katya wearing Mother’s tiara does not sit well with me. Katya’s three handmaidens descend behind her, then her dressing maid, and behind her are lesser maids, and bringing up the rear is…the seamstress, Huali.

  Her gaze meets mine. There is no recognition or surprise on the seamstress’s face.

  That’s Meela’s little sister, Leo thinks.

  They look nothing alike, Sarkany thinks.

  Much like us, Leo thinks.

  Huali knows nothing, I think. Her mind has been wiped clean. She has no memory of anything last night.

  “Father, you’ve told them about the Dreg that escaped? The one that Leo thought was a handmaiden to Marianna?”

  My blood quickens with Katya’s words.

  “Do you remember, Leo? She was in my chambers with the dress, which my seamstress did not forget.” She nods up the stairs toward Huali.

  Huali’s eyes widen. Ahhh…here comes the memory. So while Meela can wipe a memory from a mind, she has yet to learn how to block the return of the memory when a person becomes flooded with adrenalin. Huali presses her hand to her mouth.

  “They should know about this. I don’t believe any of us are safe until they find that horrible Dreg in Ninaku.”

  “I’ve sent a squad of guards to roust her.” Uncle says. “They’ll take her to Prison Krodoros and she’ll be drained of all memory and Slayed.”

  My body shivers. It is Meela. Uncle is sending a squad to get Meela. I can’t stand here.

  Oh fuck, Sarkany thinks.

  We must—I glance to where Huali stands, but she’s disappeared. We must hurry, I think. There is danger to Meela and her sister and to anyone else that they might know.

  “Cousins, I will see you soon.” Katya pecks each of us on the cheek. “Try not to bed too many birds while we’re away,” she whispers to Leo. “And you”—she smiles at me—“use that heart of yours to convince these two to find your Queen.”

  I nod and force a smile to my face. The entire entourage leaves the house, then I turn to my brothers and the three of us rush through the hall and bolt out of the Palace.

  Chapter Ten

  Meela

  I pull the Royal bed linens from the washer machine. My back aches with the effort. Whose bed do these linens come from? Could it be Taraz? Leo? Or perhaps the one they call The Bear—Sarkany?

  My heart thrills with the thought of the the Roya Tripsett. The muscles in my back ripple across the ache in my spine. I lift the wet load and carry the fine sheets to the drying machine that is specially made for the Palace bed linens. A dryer gentle enough to handle threads that are delicate enough for the Royal family to rest upon.

  I shall never know such luxury. No Dreg shall ever sleep upon the finest silks within the Palace, and until last evening I would not have thought twice about my fate as an indentured Dreg.

  But I’d touched Leo’s and Sarkany’s flesh, and with that touch my entire world changed. The visions that entered my mind of a world filled with warmth and light, and the feelings that invaded my heart of a kindness and gentleness that I knew as a little girl before my parents sold us as slaves. There was a vision of safety and caring and completion and dare I say it…love. No, I’d not ever felt the intensity of feelings like I did last night. There was a completeness shared between me and them, and with that touch, a need and a want blossomed both in my mind and in my heart.

  Were it but that one touch, I could convince myself that I’d imagined the visions and the feelings. That my fear of being caught by Katya and Mindslayed played tricks on my mind. But no, my skin touched two of the Roya brothers and in both touches there were visions and a feeling of being completed. Sarkany—The Bear—in his touch was the vision of a shared love, as warm as the summer sun upon my arms, the scent of damp earth after a spring rain, the sight of red leaves in the fall on all the trees that climb the side of the hills, and the soft and silent fall of a deep winter snow. In his touch was the gift of hearing the animals around us. There was love of all this in Sarkany’s touch, and understanding that we both shared this love. There was a gentleness in The Bear, re-doubled because of his size and physicality, a gentleness that he wanted to share with me.

  I shove the clean, wet linens into a dryer. Touching both Leo and Sarkany and experiencing the similar fullness of heart makes it impossible for me to call these visions and these feelings a fluke.

  My heart aches. I press the back of my hand to my brow and wipe away the sweat. Longing rises within me. A desire to experience that closeness again. I close my eyes and fight the memory and the feeling and the sadness of realizing I shall never know The Bear’s or Leo’s touch again. Nor shall I discover what could be with Taraz. This is madness. It must be. Some sort of Eliterrati trick played upon me, the poor indentured Dreg caught in a Palace trap while trying to save her sister.

  I press down my feelings. I clear my throat. I wipe my eyes. No, I am an indentured Dreg and they are Eliterrati, the Crown Princes of the Kingdom; the Roya Tripsett.

  Cursed. My life is forever cursed. I am a Dreg with the Fatal Curse who is a laundress-slave who now wants The Roya Brothers? What a fool I am.

  “Oh Goddess,” I say, and shove the sopping wet sheets into the dryer. “What a funny prank you’ve pulled on me.”

  Across the laundry, Dribble stands beside the back dock with the giant doors open and speaks to a Palace guard. Dribble’s gaze drifts to me and then back to the guard.

  An oily sick feeling threads through my belly. Palace guards at the laundry? That can’t be good. My mind reaches out to them both like two tendrils seeking information and needing to know what a Palace guard could possibly want with Dribble. The two guards eye me and then slip away from the dock. Dribble’s eyes drill into me, and I push the start button on the dryer. His gaze is heavy as he skirts the edge of the laundry and heads out the door toward the front of the building.

  My mind links into the dullness of the guard’s mind. His mind is much like the guards from last night. His thoughts are both dull and vicious. His thoughts on vulveri and beating Dregs and…wait…there is a direction, a focus in his mind: he seeks…a girl. A Dreg. A Dreg as described to him by Princess Katya, a vision of this Dreg, a girl that is similar to…

  Me!

  Oh Goddess!

  “You horrible girl, what kind of trouble have you managed to uncap?” Dribble is behind me now. The sick odor of old whiskey and onion on his breath. He presses close to me, too close. I’m thrown off by what I’ve seen in the guard’s mind. I can’t think fast enough to press pain into Dribble, and he hooks his hand to my waist.

  “You’ll give me what I want now, or I’ll turn you over to those two guards that’re looking for you.” His hot breath is on my neck and the press of his cock is against my backside. “What’ya think they’ll do to you before they drop you off at Krodoros?”

  Krodoros? Goddess. Krodoros is a worse fate than death.

  “Then they’ll come for your pretty little sister.”

  “Get off me,” I say. A bit of mind-pressure to his rib cage. Just enough so he might lose his breath.

  Dribble steps back from me and his right hand grasps his chest.

  “Oh for fuck,” he says. “That feels…” He bends forward and tries to take in a deep breath. “That feels”—he gasps, his face purples—“like a heart—” He falls forwa
rd, his head sounding like a large melon and lands on cement. His hulking body splays onto the laundry floor.

  “Oh Goddess,” I say, rushing forward. “Dribble? Dribble?” I put all my weight into pulling his arm and flip him onto his back. His tongue lolls out of his mouth, and his lifeless eyes stare toward the ceiling.

  “What have you done?” Huali’s voice breaks through my fear.

  “What? I’ve done nothing! He…he grabbed me, like he always tries to do and then…” I press my hands to my head. Did I do this? I mean, I’ve thought it a million times and maybe…did I reach out to his mind…did I apply too much to his chest…did I—

  “There’s no time,” Huali says. “They know—”

  “They who?” I interrupt. “What’re you talking about?”

  “The Palace…they know of last night.” Huali shakes her head and squints. “I don’t know how I forgot or what I was thinking, but Katya has discovered that it was you who brought back the dress and escaped from the Palace guards and now…now they believe you to be a Dreg assassin out to kill the Roya Tripsett.”

  “What?” I’d laugh if I wasn’t so terrified. Fear creases Huali’s face too.

  “They’ve sent a squad of guards to find you and take you to Krodoros.”

  I can’t tell her that I already know all this, because then I will have to explain how it is that I’ve found out these details.

  “You must go,” Huali says. “You must”—she glances around the laundry and lowers her voice— “you must do what Mother said.”

  “You”—my eyes widen—“you remember too?” Neither Huali nor I have spoken of Mother or Father since that horrible day when we awoke in this laundry with Dribble as our Master.

  Huali nods. “Your bag, you’ve kept it? You have it at the edge of the forest? In the Tree of Gold?”

  I nod. This is the one thing that I’ve forever done—one of the few memories that I retain of Mother and Father—to always keep a bag ready for my escape within the Tree of Gold near the fence that separates us from the Dark Forest. That I would know when it was time for me to leave, and that one day…one day I would need to flee, to go to the bag and run. To not be afraid—no matter what—and to go to…I shiver at the thought of the memory of what Mother told me to do: I must go deep into the forest to the Wolveskin.

  “You know where you must go?” Huali asks. She swallows, fear etching her face.

  “I do.”

  She grabs me with both arms and pulls me tight. “I love you, sister. I will always love you.”

  “What will you do?” My gaze lands on Dribble.

  “I will take care of all,” Huali says.

  Often I have thought my sister dim and too dense to care for herself, but I feel in her mind a resolve to take care of the laundry and Dribble, and to do so in a way that will give me time to escape. “Go,” she says. “Go now.”

  I am up on my feet and across the laundry, not to the dock where the guards were before, because though my mind feels them now far from here, I know that I must keep to the edges and the alleys of Ninaku until I exit the city. I turn back, once, to Huali who now stands beside Dribble. She lifts her hand to me, and I lift my hand to her.

  “Be well,” I say silently, not knowing if I shall ever lay eyes on my sister again.

  Huali, my beloved little sister, nods to me, and I turn and flee out the alley door.

  The light is bright in the alley and though it be early in the year when the breeze is still cool, there is a wretched stink that comes from the water that drains down the gutter beside the cobbles. I press close to the building and slip left and right and left again. I slide between buildings and between ramshackle pitch tents kept by the lowest of Dregs when they can’t afford even the most horrible tenement flat.

  The sun pulls high in the sky as I reach the edge of Ninaku. The slum is vast and stretches for miles. I slide through the still busy gate avoiding the prying eyes of the Ninaku guards.

  I walk past the Ever-Flowering Tree that marks the end of Ninaku district and turn into the edge of the forest. I still have miles to cover, but I’m free of prying eyes and I let my feet fly. The brush is thick, and the trees are so dense that if you do not know the hidden path through the forest as I do, you will not find your way. If a person were to witness me moving through the dense forest at a run, I would only appear as a flash of brown and could easily be mistaken for a deer.

  Sweat breaks out beneath my breasts and under my arms. I draw deep breaths. I’m not tired, running has always been a reprieve for me, not a torture. The soft earth pads beneath my feet. I’m free in the forest; free as I’ve never felt in Ninaku. My deep breaths pull in fresh air made clean by the trees around me. The sun crests higher when I see the Tree of Gold, sister to the Ever-Flowering Tree according to the stories of the Goddess that Mother told to me and Huali.

  I slow to a walk. I press my hand to the smooth white bark of the golden tree and close my eyes. Oh yes, the Goddess resides in this spot. Thank you. Thank you for this life, this tree, thank you for allowing my escape, thank you.

  I walk around the tree trunk that is bigger than a building, trailing my fingers along the soft bark. I stop in front of the knot in the trunk that is bigger than my head. I close my eyes and press my palm flat beneath the knot.

  Thank you for holding my secrets and keeping them safe.

  The Tree of Gold trembles beneath my touch. I open my eyes, and the knot turns and gently unwinds, a chamber open to me. There, as it has been since I was a kinder, is my bag. Just inside the Tree of Gold. I reach inside and pull the bag out and place it over my head, diagonally across my body. I press my hand to the bark once more. “Thank you,” I whisper. The leaves above me rustle as though both the Goddess and the Tree of Gold tell me “you’re welcome.”

  I take a deep breath and turn to the fence that separates the Kingdom from the Dark Forest. The forest is unknown to me aside from the horrible stories Dreg children tell each other to scare one another deep in the night.

  Goddess help me, I think.

  She is always with you. I hear Mother’s voice as though she is with me, thinking to me, as though she is alive and in my mind, as though she, too, has The Curse; and for the first time since I awakened abandoned in Ninaku, I am not angry with Mother and Father. For the first time ever, I…I know there is more to this story. There is something I don’t yet know; something that I must find out. Mother and Father being alive and Mother being able to communicate with her mind to me was, I thought, merely a fantasy of mine. One I’ve kept since they sold us to Dribble so that they might be free.

  I walk to the fence and press my hand to the wood and lift my foot, ready to start the journey that I fear but that I know I have no choice but to go on.

  “Going somewhere?” A voice cuts through the wood.

  A chill races up my spine.

  I turn. A lone guard stands near the Tree of Gold. He can’t be much older than I. His longsword points at me; with one lunge he can take off my head. Yet, there is uncertainty in his stance, as though a bit unsure as to what to do with a Dreg girl on a fence. His moment of uncertainty gives me time.

  “I…I was…” I reach my mind to his and press hard.

  “Wha—” He drops his weapon and presses both hands to his head. I pause as I’ve already ended one man’s life today without meaning to, and I don’t wish to end another’s.

  End them all, for they shall only seek to end you. Leo’s mind is in mine, and I spin round half expecting to find him standing beside me in the wood. Oh, I’m not there, Leo thinks, and laughs.

  “But I am.” The bellowing laugh of The Bear comes from beside me. I spin and I’m greeted by Sarkany’s great smile. “You’re coming with me,” Sarkany says.

  “I think that’s unwise,” I say, and back up toward the fence. “I’m meant to go to the Dark Forest.”

  “The Dark Forest? A little bird such as you?” Sarkany walks toward me, both of us thinking very little of the Ninaku
guard who is on the ground. “I think not. No, you are coming with me. It isn’t safe for you anywhere in the Kingdom until we decide what to do with you.”

  “Decide what to do with me? Who? You and your two brothers? Ha! I’d rather trust a garrison than you three. It’s you three that got me into this mess,” I say, placing one hand on the top of the fence and my foot on the bottom.

  “No, if memory serves, it’s your little sister that got you into this mess. It’s us who got you out of it just last night.”

  “Well, our memories are quite different. Why would a squad of guards be seeking me if not because you and your two brothers didn’t plant some horrible nonsense about me in that mausoleum you call a Palace?”

  Sarkany throws his head back and laughs. “Not what happened, but you do have a very clever imagination. Perhaps if a girl knew how to control The Gift better.”

  “You mean The Curse. I’m a Dreg.”

  Sarkany cringes with my use of the word.

  “That’s right, I am a filthy Dreg. Got that? The girl that you seem to want to save is no more than a cockroach beneath your gilded Eliterrati boot. What think you now of saving me?” I climb higher up the fence. I do not trust the Roya Tripsett and I’m not going anywhere with any one of them. Not when Dribble is dead, Huali is at risk, and Mother’s and Father’s memories are coming back and telling me I must go to the Wolveskin in the wood.

  “Bird, you only delay the inevitable. It’s our responsibility to see that you are safe and—”

  “What? Why would I be your responsibility? I’ve no one in this world that I’m beholden to or that is beholden to me or that—”

  “What about Huali?”

  I pause. “You would not.”

  “No,” Sarkany says, “we three brothers would not, but others will.”

  There is a shuffling in the grass behind us, and we both turn to see the guard half crawling across the dirt trying to escape as though a wounded animal escaping a bear.

  Here is the thing, bird, if you want to erase a mind, you must erase it in a way that the memory does not return when another person speaks of the memory or is under stress.