“Yer still laughing at me, aren’t yer?”
With a horrible snort, Rafen lost control again. Shaking his head, Sherwin said, “Yer a complete loony. Yer know that, don’t yer?”
*
Rafen’s eyes flicked open. The fire in his and Sherwin’s clearing was burning low, and Sherwin had rolled dangerously close to it for warmth. Sherwin’s shirt was still in tatters from the nasty incident two weeks ago, with the consequence that he wore both a Tarhian shirt and jacket on top of it. Despite the persistent, dreamy falling of snow, Rafen would sooner throw himself off a cliff than wear a Tarhian uniform. Though he still had Erasmus’ overlarge coat, he was so cold he was often tempted to lie in the fire – and would have if Sherwin wouldn’t lie too close to him, or shriek in fright when he saw what Rafen was doing.
Next to Rafen, Ahain raised his head, growling. Two wild mice scampered away. Rafen sat up, brushing powdery snow from his shoulders and hair. The Woods were filled with wind. Above the sweeping of the beech branches, Tarhian voices exploded on the air.
“Sherwin!” Rafen hissed.
Sherwin grunted and rolled closer to the fire. His fingers, splayed on the ground, nearly brushed the flames.
“Search here!” a Tarhian called.
Footsteps followed. They were a minute away at best. Picking a fight with a search party was a fool’s errand. They were often large and contained a philosopher too. Rafen leapt up and rushed around the fire to Sherwin, kicking his shoulder.
“Umph,” Sherwin groaned, his eyes opening painfully slowly. Rafen kicked him again. Sherwin sleepily clambered up while Rafen stamped out the fire. Snatching up their swords and wooden bowl, Rafen thrust Sherwin’s blade into his arms.
“Hurry!” he said, grabbing his shoulder, and shoving him into the trees on the other side of the clearing.
The beech trees behind churned as the Tarhians came on. With growing frenzy, Rafen broke into a run, Sherwin pounding heavily along beside him. Ahain loped ahead, vanishing into the hollies and hawthorn. Still in a daze, Sherwin collided with a bluff oak with a horrible smack. He landed on his back and looked like he might stay there. Heart thundering, Rafen shoved Sherwin’s sword back into his arms, seized his shoulder, and forced him to his feet.
Leaves seethed behind them. A Tarhian emerged. He had lost his torch and squinted at the darkness ahead.
Gripping the front of Sherwin’s jacket, Rafen threw himself into a run. At the sudden movement, the Tarhian shouted in his own tongue, “Someone over here!”
He lurched after them. Sherwin was staggering, still blinded from his meeting with the oak, and Rafen was half-dragging him. The Tarhian’s friends had now joined him. Hands swiped the darkness behind Rafen and Sherwin.
“In the name of the King Lashki, stop!” a voice said in Vernacular.
Rafen jerked Sherwin down a slope to their right. It was covered with loose stones, wet snow, and twigs, and Rafen felt his feet slip out from beneath him. He was rolling downward, unable to stop himself. A grim and drunken-looking missile, Sherwin was shooting toward him from behind, threatening to collide with Rafen. Above, a vague circle of light appeared amid the trees. One of the Tarhians had a torch.
At the foot of the slope, a large snow-peppered rock loomed toward him out of the dark. Rafen seemed to have a wealth of time to feel mounting panic and think the thoughts that came with it: that he seemed to be magnetically attracted to this rock, and that was a problem; that this would mean more sleep, but not in the manner he desired; and that there was a concussed cannonball at his back. He tried to throw himself sideways, yet now he was out of time, and he had lost control of his course long ago.
His body had rolled over again so that he and the rock were face to face…
An explosion in his head, followed by blissful black.
Chapter Fourteen
Rafen’s Lineage
“Nice of yer. Really,” Sherwin said somewhat stupidly.
Rafen’s head was pounding. He opened his eyes a crack. An orange inferno filled his vision; his head felt like it had been split open by lightning. He screwed his eyes shut. The eyelids felt heavy.
“It is a miracle they did not find you,” a woman with an accent said.
At her voice, inexplicable warmth washed over Rafen. He remembered soft songs in a tongue he couldn’t understand. He lay there on the hard ground, wishing she would speak again.
“Well,” Sherwin said. “Yeah. It was.” Silence. Then: “That really hurt,” Sherwin said, like it was a revelation. “First my uncle… and then his. I think ’e got the worst end of the deal though.”
“He took a sore blow,” a man said, sounding puzzled at Sherwin’s speech.
Rafen’s breath caught in his chest. He remembered that voice speaking bad Tarhian. His eyes flew open, and he pulled himself into a sitting position. His head reeled; the fire before him whirled in circles.
“Rafen,” the woman said. A cool hand touched his shoulder and brushed away the snow. Rafen threw out an arm in protest. Bright colors popped before his eyes. “Rafen, please lie down. Please.”
Rafen’s eyes watered. Breathing deeply with deliberation, he leaned against the woman’s arm, which was now wrapped around his back. His sight was clearing. Two fuzzy figures sat on the other side of the fire. One had a pinhead with a brown blur of hair swept over it.
“Lie down,” the woman said as the second figure rose and rushed around the fire toward him. A shadow momentarily blocked out the light, and Rafen found the cool black refreshing. He lay back down before remembering Roger. He grabbed Sherwin’s arm as his friend stooped over him.
“Raf, yer came round!” Sherwin said. “I was really worried.”
“It’s him!” Rafen said frantically, his voice slurred. “Don’t – don’t trust him.”
“Who?”
“Roger.”
His face darkening, Sherwin helped Rafen lie down fully before rounding on Roger.
“’ere,” Sherwin said, his tone lower than Rafen expected he could make it, “yer didn’t tell me yer were Roger. Don’ yer come near ’im, all right? I want an explanation.”
Roger coolly answered him, “I mean Rafen no harm.”
“Yer a Tarhian,” Sherwin countered.
His heart throbbing, Rafen ran his hands over himself to find his sword from Erasmus. His fumbling fingers were moist with snow and earth. It was gone. Either he had lost it in the tumble, or Roger had disarmed him. He tried sitting up again. The woman beside him replaced her gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Please, Rafen,” she said. “I won’t allow you to be harmed. You are not captured. You are a friend we wish to share our fire with.”
At her voice, Rafen once again relaxed. Despite the pain in his head, he opened his eyes fully.
The woman’s long black curly hair fell over her olive face when she kneeled over him. While the skin beneath her eyes was crinkled, her cheeks still had the flush of youth. She looked at him, her lips twitching into a sad smile. Her deep, dark blue eyes, framed by thick black eyelashes, were tender.
Sherwin was now absorbed in excited conversation with Roger. Rafen could no longer make out what they were saying. He stared at this woman who reminded him of someone…
“Who are you?”
“Can you guess?” she asked.
“No. Yes. But it’s stupid.”
“Who do you think I am?”
“You remind me of… her,” he said. He almost couldn’t say it. “My… blood mother.”
“I am your mother,” she said softly. Rafen felt very light. “My name is Elizabeth. I am the woman who named you.”
“I remember you,” he said.
“Yer can’t say yeh’ve changed if yer ’aven’t changed masters,” Sherwin was saying, very matter-of-fact – even though he’d only been in the Mio Pilamùr for two weeks. “Yer either serve Nazt or the Phoenix. Tha’s ’ow it works around here.”
“That isn’t necessarily true,” Roger said assur
edly in his precise voice. “I don’t believe in the existence of the Phoenix. Yet that does not mean that my loyalties have not changed.”
“Right,” Sherwin said. “So yer were loyal to Alakil before. And now who are yer loyal to?”
Roger seemed confounded at this relatively simple question. Silence fell.
“What happened?” Rafen murmured to his mother. “I can’t remember… except your voice. I remember your voice.”
Elizabeth looked at something in the distance. “Ah,” she said, “I used to sing to you. In Spanish.”
“In what?”
“It was the language of a country a world away.”
Rafen’s aching head wouldn’t accept this. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“No,” Elizabeth said, stroking his face. “You must sleep. You are weary.”
Rafen grabbed her wrist. “Roger—”
“Roger will not touch you. I promise.”
There was truth in her eyes, but Rafen did not want to sleep, because he would lose her again.
“Please… don’t go,” he said.
“No, Rafen. I will always be with you. I will always be here.”
She gripped his hand convulsively, as if she too felt the world was trying to tear them apart.
Sleep was heavy on Rafen’s eyelids. He fought it for a time. Yet Elizabeth’s stroking on his hair and face was insistent. He drifted away…
*
He woke in the morning with a thundering headache. He groaned, rubbed his eyes, and opened them to an explosion of pain.
The fire had gone out during the night, and it was freezing. The snow had stopped. Rafen lay beneath a thin blanket on which a layer of it had settled. The beeches and bluff oaks were laden with white, and the world was very quiet.
Long, cold fingers settled on his throat. Gasping, Rafen threw up his hands to protect himself before realizing his imagination was playing tricks with him. It was a memory.
Roger had betrayed Rafen and Phil to Talmon when they had planned to free Etana. And then, at Rafen’s near-execution, he had persuaded Talmon not to shoot Rafen right away, but to let them torture him first… because Roger wanted to prove his loyalty to Talmon. Then Roger had appeared at Rafen’s window in the Sianian palace, with a message from Talmon: “You can never be free.” He had thrown Rafen out the window five stories up, and Rafen had plummeted, knowing he was going to die. However, the Phoenix had preserved him, and he had survived to duel with Roger later, which was when Roger had tried to strangle him.
Rafen was breathing fast now. He had been out of his mind last night – drunk, severely concussed – to stay here. He sat up, despite the angry throbbing of his head. Elizabeth was curled up on the ground to his right, breathing deeply with sleep, her snow-sprinkled black hair over her face. She too had a tattered blanket, partially covered with snow. As gently as possible, Rafen swept the snow off it with his numb hands and wrapped his own blanket around her also.
This woman had somehow known him and his destiny before birth, and named him accordingly. He wanted to ask her a hundred questions. Had she seen the Phoenix? How had they been separated? Where was she from? Who had her husband been?
A horrible thought struck Rafen. He glanced from Elizabeth to the other side of the clearing. Roger stood against a silver tree, one leg pulled up with a naked sword lying across it. He stared into the air, his icy blue eyes unreadable, so still that a white-tailed deer rustled in a bush across from him. Rafen rose, and the deer bounded away. Roger turned, his gaze meeting Rafen’s.
Rafen’s hands balled into fists. Roger breathed shallowly, like a hunted man who was wondering who would attack first.
“You are not leaving,” Roger said at last, looking down at Sherwin, who lay two steps from him, sleeping in his Tarhian coat.
“Don’t touch him,” Rafen said sharply.
“I don’t intend to. I have changed,” Roger said, noticing Rafen’s look.
“I don’t think so.”
“I have.”
“Who do you serve now?”
“No one.”
“Why didn’t you kill me while I slept?” Rafen asked the question as if he were angry he was still alive.
“I didn’t wish to,” Roger said. “I don’t serve Talmon anymore.”
Rafen’s stiffened muscles relaxed a little when he heard Roger name Talmon without a title.
“What are you doing in Siana then?” he said.
“I never left.”
“Not since you tried to kill me,” Rafen said. Roger flinched. Rafen laughed bitterly. “You don’t like to talk about it then?”
“I wish I had never done it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Rafen was only just holding a transformation at bay. While he desperately wanted to attack this man who would have murdered him, something prevented him doing it in Elizabeth’s presence. She would wake, and she shouldn’t have to see such atrocities.
Roger’s forehead furrowed as if Rafen’s words were painful. Sherwin stirred. He sat up and blearily looked around, blinking at the snow.
“Elizabeth told you last night,” Roger said. “Didn’t she?”
“She told me she was my mother.”
“And you believed her.”
“I remember her,” Rafen said.
“She didn’t tell you everything though,” Roger said.
“I’m leaving,” Rafen announced to the clearing in general.
Sherwin sprang to his feet, as if electrified by kesmal.
“Yeah,” he said, reeling a little out of weariness. “We’re off.”
“Rafen,” Roger said, stepping before the only gap in the trees, which was to Rafen’s left, “I must speak with you.”
Roger still clutched his sword. Behind Rafen, Elizabeth rose with a rustle.
“I don’t want to talk with you,” Rafen said.
“Yeah,” Sherwin echoed.
“Rafen, do you remember what happened after the Sianian princess escaped?” Roger blurted out.
“What? Of course I remember.”
Only Roger would have thought he could forget. Rafen remembered everything about that week, every second of pain.
“You told Talmon I had helped you free the princess, and I had told you your name.”
Rafen clenched his teeth, raging at himself for having lost his sword somehow. He could have fought his way out of this long ago if he’d had it. He glanced back at Sherwin only to discover his friend was weaponless too.
“Talmon believed you,” Roger said. “Did you never wonder why?”
His face was perfectly white and shone with sweat, even in the freezing air. Rafen hated him even more.
“You’re a foreigner,” he said. “Tarhians don’t trust foreigners.”
“Why would Talmon have thought I, of all people, would have known your name?”
“Phil did,” Rafen said, before he could stop himself.
“Philippe did,” Roger conceded. “I told him your name when he asked. Otherwise you would never have known it.”
Rafen felt the blood rushing to his face.
“Perhaps you remember the last thing Talmon said before he sent me to a cell,” Roger said. “I asked him why he would trust a child over me. And he said—”
Perhaps it has something to do with his lineage.
“Stop it!” Rafen shouted, the veins in his neck standing out.
“You remember,” Roger said.
Behind Rafen, Elizabeth was silent. Rafen felt her presence. He knew what Roger was going to say. He wanted to smash him into silence; and yet, he wanted the truth. He struggled with himself.
“It was to do with your lineage, Rafen,” Roger said, his head bowed. “I am your father.”
Chapter Fifteen
Roger’s Story
Rafen’s chest constricted. Beside him, Sherwin sucked in his breath sharply. Rafen stared at the ground, his insides a painful knot.
“We can tell you everything,” Elizabe
th said from behind him. “If you will but sit down… we can explain everything. You have a right to know.”
Rafen hadn’t thought of his right to know so much as his desire not to.
“Will you not sit?” Elizabeth prodded.
“I don’t think we want to sit right now,” Sherwin said on Rafen’s behalf.
“Very well,” Roger said.
Elizabeth slipped past Rafen and over to Roger’s side. Anger smoldered in Rafen when Roger wrapped his arm around Elizabeth’s willowy figure. Around them, the air became colder.
“Rafen, you are a full-blooded human,” Elizabeth said. “You were born in Spain, where Roger and I married. Four months later, I gave birth to you and your brother.”
“My brother?” Rafen gasped, meeting her eyes.
“You were one of twin boys. I was told Francisco died.”
Rafen looked back at the snowy ground. The name sounded familiar.
“Elizabeth named you,” Roger said. “I would have named you after myself, yet Elizabeth was stubborn. She named you what I thought was nonsense. I named your brother Francisco Peter.”
“Your middle names are the same,” Elizabeth said. “Pedro is the Spanish form of Peter.”
“Wait,” Rafen said sharply. “You said that I’m human. How did I get here?”
“That is a mystery,” Elizabeth said.
“When you were two,” Roger said, “Elizabeth and I went on a voyage with you and your brother in the year 1891. While on the voyage, a terrible storm came up, wrecking the ship. The end result was that many of the crew perished in the ocean. Elizabeth had snatched Francisco out of his bed, but the waves ripped him from her arms. You were with me, Rafen. Eventually, all of us went under. When we woke, we were in another ship entirely – Talmon’s. He accused us of being Sartians in his waters and demanded over and over that we tell him where our ship was. Eventually, we realized we were in a completely different world. I thought I was hallucinating for a long time. He told us no one had found Francisco… he had drowned. I surrendered to him, and he made me a slave in the barracks, tending horses and serving guards. He robbed you of your mother and forced her to marry him.”
“Why?” The word tore from Rafen’s throat. “Why would you marry him?” he said to Elizabeth.
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