The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  “Zerill,” Tarv said, “It is not—”

  “What? It is not my turn? Not the way things are done? I will not let us kill ourselves because it is tradition!” The loudspeech she’d practiced all her life spilled out of her in a torrent. “I have tried to obey the rules of Kinmeet, and you will not listen! You want things to be done the way they always have? Then we will die like we always have! It is not the highlanders who are afraid, it is us! So afraid of anything we don’t know that we would rather fade away year by year than try something new to stop it!”

  Not one voice rose to challenge her. Her people had always spoken little, and hesitantly; it was as if the clear, quick fury of her words had them mesmerized. She didn’t dare pause for more than the slightest breath, didn’t dare slow enough to break the spell.

  “There is a place for tradition. There is wisdom in the ways passed down to us by the first ancestors. But do you think the All-Kin would be proud that we cling to his name as an excuse to do things as they have always been done? We were saved once before because he saw that something had to change, and he changed it. He did something new. That is what we should remember. Continuing as we always have even after that way has failed isn’t wisdom—it is madness!

  “For too long, we have followed a path chosen by others! We call ourselves the Abandoned, but we did not choose to be abandoned. It was done to us. We talk about our war with the highlanders, but it is a war they wage, not us. We only sit in the dark and wait for them to come. It has been a long time since we chose a destiny of our own, and this is the only choice that is left to us now: we can act, or we can die.

  “A fight is coming above the mist that will decide whether we survive or disappear. That is not a lie, not a trick. You want to believe that it is, because that would be easier. Because nothing would have to change. But it is real, and it is happening. If we do nothing, the future of our people will be decided by highlanders. And I am tired of living and dying by their whims!”

  She turned a circle, cast her gaze over every face in the Kinmeet as she spoke. “You can cover your ears and pretend that everything will stay the same. I will not. There is a boy waiting in the Plateaus who knows nothing of the people he came from, and still he has found the courage to be what we need him to be. I will not abandon him. There are highlanders there who would stand beside us, even against their own kind. I will not do less. If you send me away, I will go alone, though it will make little difference. But if the Lighteyes will have me as grandmother, then I say it is time for the Abandoned to decide our own fate. I say we stand with those who would stop Lenoden Castar. I say we fight!

  “So make your choice. We have wasted enough time.”

  Utter silence. The whole of her people stared at her almost timidly, and none moved, as if the fervor of her speech had frightened them. Even Jeva said nothing, raised no protest. I was so nervous to stand before them, once, Zerill remembered. It felt like that had been a very long time ago.

  At last, a single voice answered her. Not from the circle, but from beside her on the knoll. “If—if—we do this… how do the highlanders know we are with them?” asked Grandfather Tarv. “An army of Abandoned should be their enemy.” He spoke slowly, uncertainly, but there was something genuine behind it. Fighting for the future of the Abandoned was something the Heartspears understood. And Zerill knew in that moment that if she could just give him an answer, it could sway the entire Kinmeet.

  But she didn’t have one.

  Azlin would. She would never have come before the Kinmeet unprepared. But Zerill wasn’t her sister—the whole of her plan had been to get Josen to the Plateaus. She’d only dealt with highlanders a few at a time, always alone or with Verik. She hadn’t had any reason to consider how it would work with larger numbers.

  Until now.

  When the Storm Knights saw an army of the Abandoned emerge from the mist, she couldn’t think of a single thing that would stop them from panicking. They wouldn’t wait for an explanation from an enemy they didn’t even think could speak. Josen would try his best—she believed that—but he was as likely to be thrown in a cell as he was to convince the highlanders to believe in an alliance. Their first instinct would be to fight back. And everything Zerill had said was just wasted breath stirring the mist unless she could give her people a reason to believe they wouldn’t.

  A reason she didn’t have.

  It can’t end here. I’m so close.

  And then, for the first time, a highlander’s voice rang across the Kinmeet.

  “There is a way,” said Eian Gryston, though he hadn’t been granted permission to speak. “I can show you.”

  42. Standing the Cliff

  Shona

  “You know that Rudol is only letting you do this because he doesn’t think you can,” Shona said.

  The coach rattled along rough Cliffside roads on its way to the standing ground; in a very short time, Josen would stand the cliff in front of all the Plateaus. Shona didn’t much like the plan, but they had limited options left—at least this would delay Rudol from making a rash decision, and make Josen’s presence known to his supporters. It would have to do. And it would, as long as there was a way to get him out before he fell. She’d spent the last day ensuring that there would be.

  But she was starting to fear that he wouldn’t take it when it was offered.

  “He won’t let me fall,” Josen insisted. “He’ll end it first. I’m sure he will.” He didn’t sound sure. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he was.

  “Josen, if you need more time, you have to tell me now. I know this is harder for you than you’re saying. You’re still weak, and after everything with your father…” Shona glanced at the swamplings with growing unease, and didn’t finish.

  Verik sat beside Shona at the rear of the carriage; Azra and Eroh were with Josen at the front. Shona didn’t mind Eroh being there—the boy was less interested in conversation than in watching the city pass by through a gap in the curtains. Sometimes he would ask about what he saw, but mostly he just murmured softly to Goldeyes, perched calmly on his shoulder. No, it was Verik and Azra who bothered her. Neither of them had spoken since they’d left the Stormhall—and not very much even before that—but it always felt like they were listening. The silent audience made Shona uncomfortable. There were things she wanted to say to Josen that would be better kept private.

  If Josen felt the same way, he didn’t show it. He just smirked, and said, “You mean that he claimed my brother wasn’t his son? My half-brother, if we believe the fevered claims of a dying man. As if Rudol didn’t hate me enough already.”

  “Do we believe him?” Shona asked. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. My mother lived and died by the teachings of the Convocation, but… she used to tell me stories about Whitelake from before she was married. Sledding in the snow, sliding on the icy lake in winter. Being free. She hated being shut away in the Keep, and she hated my father for doing it to her. If she found some kind of escape in someone else…” Josen spread his hands. “It’s no worse a sin than ending her own life. Why not?”

  “And are you… I just want to know how you’re taking all this.”

  He pushed his fingers through his hair. “Not well! Is that a surprise? She was… Spirit of All, I loved her more than anybody, but now I have to wonder if I knew her at all. And my father isn’t exactly the man I thought he was, either. I was so sure he didn’t care about anything except the future of his precious bloodline, but the way he talked to you… He had a heart in there somewhere, before he became the man he had to be to wear the crown. The same crown I’m about to stand the cliff for. People just see a little circle of blue glass, but… it has teeth, Shona. Put it on and it eats you alive, sucks everything good out of you like marrow from a bone. I’ve seen it. And yet here I am trying to pry open its mouth and stick my head in.”

  Shona leaned forward to lay a hand over his. “You aren’t your father. It won’t be the same. And I’
ll be there to help you.”

  “I wonder if anyone ever told him the same thing. ‘You’ll be different than all the others. You can be king without losing yourself.’ I wonder if he was fool enough to believe them.” Josen let out a clipped, bitter laugh. “You don’t have to spin fables for me. We both know what’s coming.” His eyes were far away, focused on something she couldn’t see—some glimpse of a future he’d been running from all his life. It only lasted an instant before he shook his head. “That isn’t what matters right now. I can do this. I owe it to you and Zerill and Eian and… too many others. I’ll stand as long as I have to.”

  “Don’t say that just because you think I want to hear it,” Shona said, frowning. “Stronger men have died standing the cliff. It’s only going to be worse if you’re distracted, and if you fall, Castar wins the throne by default.”

  “Is it really just distractions that have you worried? Is that all?” Josen quirked an eyebrow, and trailed the fingers of his left hand down his side. Beneath his tunic, things flexed and twisted in all the wrong places.

  Shona caught herself before she winced; the sight of his body was still etched very clearly in her memory. “It’s not that,” she said, less convincingly than she liked. It was only half true—his injuries did worry her, but for what they’d done to his mind more than his body. So much had been heaped on him in so short a time, and although he tried to pretend he could bear the weight alone, she knew better. He’d always been brittle. It had taken her a long time to see that—how close he’d always been to breaking. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said, his eyes downcast. “I don’t look like I’ll last for very long, do I?”

  “I’m just trying to tell you that we can find another way.”

  “There is no other way. You know there isn’t. If I don’t do this, Rudol throws everything away. And I just… I need him to believe me. If he sees I’m really willing to go this far, that I’m not running… that has to mean something to him.” Josen lifted his head, and there was that look: quiet, and deep, and desperate. “I’m doing this, Shona. My father has already stolen enough from me. He doesn’t get to take my brother. I won’t let him. Rudol will end it before you have to.”

  And what will you do if he doesn’t? He was trying so hard to be the man everyone needed him to be, she could see that he was, but she’d also seen that look on his face before. She couldn’t ignore it. “Josen…” She hesitated, glanced again at Verik and Azra. But audience or no, this was a conversation she and Josen had to have. “Do you… do you remember the night your mother died?”

  He flinched, like she’d put a blade to him instead of a question. “Do you think I could forget?” he asked quietly. “You never said anything, after. I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “So did I,” she said. She’d kept the memory locked away for more than six years. But she couldn’t anymore.

  It had been early spring, near the beginning of Orin. The arrangements of their betrothal had only recently been agreed upon, and Shona and her family had come to the Aryllian Keep to announce the union to the lowborn. Josen’s mother had been distant, hardly helping with the preparations; a few days after the announcement, she’d shut herself in her chambers, refusing food and water. Shona had stayed for the rest of the cycle to offer what help she could, but on the last day of Orin’s Rest, the queen had passed away. The lowborn had been told she’d fallen ill, but Shona knew better.

  “That night, you took me through one of your hidden passages out of the Keep,” she said. “You’d shown me some of them before, but this was the longest. We came out in Cliffside, at the back of a little cave that opened into the alleys. I was terrified to be walking in the slums at night with no guardsmen, and you had the lantern—I must have nearly broken your hand trying to keep you close.”

  “I remember,” said Josen. “You nearly did.”

  “I thought we’d go to one of the taverns, but… You took me right up to the cliff’s edge, down an alley that looked like no one had been that way for a hundred years. The rail at the edge was almost entirely rusted away. There was nothing between us and the mist. You never said why you’d brought me, or why there.”

  “It’s just… a place I go, sometimes,” Josen said, a little bit defensively. “To think.”

  “Whatever the reason, you didn’t tell me then. For a while we… we just stood there. I was looking at you, and you were looking over the edge.”

  Josen sighed, and pushed his fingers through his hair. “And then I kissed you.”

  “And then you kissed me.” And more than that, after, in a room at a dingy inn nearby. The one night they’d ever spent together. She remembered the feeling, still: sorrow, of course, for him and what he’d lost, and guilt that she didn’t feel more of it, but also a sense of contentment, even pride, that he’d come to her and no one else. That she could be there for the man she loved when he needed her, could finally fall asleep in his arms. At the time, she’d wanted very much to believe that it was the beginning of something.

  And then she’d awoken in the middle of the night to an empty bed and the sound of the door closing.

  The next day, he’d acted as if nothing had happened. She’d told herself that he was grieving, that it would take time, that it hadn’t been fair to expect so much from him so soon after such a loss. But when their wedding day finally came, she hadn’t been terribly surprised to find he’d fled. A part of her had been preparing for it, ever since that night.

  “I know I hurt you,” said Josen. “If I could take it back… But I can’t. What was it you told me? Apologies don’t change anything. Why bring it up now?”

  “Because I saw something in your eyes when you looked over the edge,” Shona said. “Pain, or desperation, but… more. Deeper. Like you were caught in a trap, and you could only see one way to escape. It scared me.” Looking back, that was the moment she’d known, even before he’d left her at the inn. She’d tried to ignore it, but she’d known that something was broken in him. That he wasn’t kissing her because he wanted her, but because he’d just needed someone to cling to that night. “I told myself it was nothing, but I never forgot. For a moment, just before you kissed me, I thought you were going to… to make me watch you do what your mother did”

  “And what is that, Shona?” Josen’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you say it plainly? If that’s what you want to ask, then ask.”

  Shona swallowed once, and then looked him straight in the eye. “Were you thinking about stepping over that ledge?”

  And then Azra and Verik weren’t pretending not to listen anymore. Only Eroh, still peeking through a slit in the curtains, didn’t turn to hear Josen’s answer.

  “How can you ask me that?” Josen demanded. “You were there. Nothing happened that night except… except what happened!”

  “No. Not that night. But these last few days, I’ve seen the same look in your eyes too many times. I need you to tell me that you weren’t close to jumping. That you aren’t thinking about it now.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Josen’s gaze darted toward the carriage door—always looking for that way out—but he stayed where he was. “Right in front of you? I’d never—”

  “There are so many people,” Eroh said suddenly. “Are they all here to see Josen?”

  The noise had increased so gradually that Shona hadn’t paid it much mind, but suddenly she was aware of the low rumble of many voices speaking at once, growing louder and closer. She hooked her finger in the curtains nearest her and opened a narrow slit to peek through. Ahead of the carriage, hundreds of people crowded the narrow street, maybe thousands, all shoving and pulling at each other in an effort to get closer to the standing ground.

  “I think they are,” Shona said. It was what she’d wanted—Josen’s message had to reach as many ears as possible—but seeing them now, she couldn’t help but imagine what that many people could do if they didn’t like what he had to say. “Get bac
k from the window, Eroh. And put on your hood. If they see your eyes, there won’t be any getting through.” The boy did as she asked, but Shona kept watching through the slit in the curtains. “It won’t be long now. We’re nearly there.”

  There was little point in trying to get more of an answer out of Josen now—she could hardly hear her own voice anymore. The sound was near-deafening as they pushed through the heart of the crowd, beating against Shona’s eardrums from all sides. Verik and Azra exchanged a flurry of signs. Shona had only spent a short time in the Swamp, but it had been enough for her to understand that this could well have been the loudest thing either swampling had ever heard.

  They slowed as they neared the standing ground, where the people were clustered so densely that the Royal Swords couldn’t maintain a path. Cer Falyn had sent an escort of Storm Knights with the carriage, and they formed a vanguard, shoving men and women aside to clear the way. It felt like they were hardly moving at all, now, and at times even the Swords and the Storm Knights together couldn’t keep everyone back. Every time something or someone thumped against the side of the carriage, Shona flinched.

  It felt like an hour, but it couldn’t have been more than a quarter of that before they reached the enclosure around the standing ground. The noise lessened as they pulled free of the throng, and when they were safely inside, the Swords on guard closed and barred the gates. The carriage rolled to a full stop, and the driver slapped a palm against the roof to signal that it was safe to disembark.

  Josen reached for the door.

  “Wait.” Shona leaned across the carriage to grab his wrist. It was loud enough still that she had to raise her voice, but she could hear herself when she did. “Tell me you won’t do anything foolish. I can’t do this without you, Josen.” She wanted to say more, to remind him of Greenwall, and her parents, and all the people who believed in him and depended on her. She wanted to, but if she put that weight on Josen now, she feared it would only drag him over the cliff. Instead, all she said was, “If you feel yourself so much as sway an inch, you need to give me a sign.”