The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  “That you had no reason to write me because you knew I’d be away on my quest, and that if your assignment was proprietary, perhaps your silence was an act of discretion.”

  “A shrewd reply.”

  “I have my moments. Clearly, he suspects something.”

  I stopped at the stream’s edge, listening to the burble and flow. “He sensed a connection between us that night. He surely knew we were schoolmates but not that we were close friends. Aside from that, he might well be wondering if you saw what I sought for him and if I saw what you sought on your quest.”

  “On that topic,” he said, “I’ve read the quest tales in the kingdom’s chronicles. Every one, starting with Wyl and ending with my father. What Aoife wrote about Wyl’s quest—that’s not what appears in the official record.24 There, it says Wyl fought the dragon and got a scale, but Aoife said he didn’t. In all the tales, there’s always a fight, and the scale is often taken by force. Sometimes there’s a mention of the landscape, and the dragon is always red, but nothing is congruent with what I—we—saw.”

  “You don’t think what’s recorded is true.”

  “No. I’m convinced none of them saw her. Do you think my father would have told his own story the way he did if he had? That was a performance, make-believe, but exactly what people expected to hear. After seeing her, I am more than the man I was. Do you understand?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “It’s our tradition that the king publicly tells his tale before he sends his son on the quest. Why is that? Part of the ruse? The mystery? But I want to tell what I saw now.”

  “There are people who won’t want to hear it, especially those who rely on the prevailing perception of the truth.”

  “These are likely the same people who believe we have to build this wall to protect us from an invading army—or the ever-elusive dragon menace. Absent a real threat, the assumption of one is enough.”

  “If you told now, you’d break a tradition, but more than that, you’d expose”—I paused—“a lie that’s been told for centuries.”

  “And am I prepared for the consequences?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “If I say nothing, that’s almost like lying. If I tell the truth—that she exists, there was no fight or force, we have no reason to fear a dragon menace—what would happen? Possibly, no one would believe me, or nothing at all would change. What should I do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever you decide will have its own effects.”

  He sighed. “I came to talk but also for some quiet. If you’ll indulge me,” he said, turning one elbow outward.

  I accepted the offer and the solace of a peaceful walk.

  OLD WOMAN AND I WERE in the vegetable garden, tending what endured the winter, when Harmyn ran out in her nightshirt.

  “Give me your hands,” Harmyn said. We held out our palms and she grabbed them. “I had a dream I opened my right hand to the morning sun and my left to the evening moon and the light of both never faded. Feel this.”

  My blood and bones filled with currents, like water.

  “Is that all you dreamed?” Old Woman asked, lightly brushing the hair from Harmyn’s forehead.

  “I walked through Rothwyke at night. The poison was there, but it wasn’t invisible like it used to be. I could see it, very dark. It poured out of doors and windows and into the streets and the ground. It came after me, and I let it. I put my hands into it and there was light, then fire. I touched my chest, until the poison drained out of my feet, and then the fire melted me from the inside out, and I turned to gold.”

  Old Woman glanced at me with tears in her eyes. “How do you feel after this dream?”

  “Very old, as gold is old, and very new, as every breath.”

  When Old Woman touched Harmyn’s shoulder, the child started to cry.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help how terrible I’ve been. I didn’t want to be. Something happened after I drank what you gave me. I remembered many awful things, things that happened to me, and things that didn’t. I’ve hurt so much these last weeks, my body, my heart, my head.” Harmyn wiped her face on her sleeve. “No one has ever been so kind and good to me, Old Woman, and we fight, Secret, but I know you want to be good to me, too. I will try very hard to be better.”

  Harmyn wrapped her arms around Old Woman’s waist. The look in Old Woman’s eyes was a challenge. Cautiously I laid my hand on Harmyn’s back.

  That night, under a waning moon, Cyril whiffled opposite Old Woman’s soft snore as I tried to fall asleep. From her pallet near the fire, Harmyn whispered in the Guardians’ language:

  “There once was a couple who prayed for a child, year after year, until one day, their wish was left on the doorstep. The baby they thought they wanted, they didn’t want at all and less so when it began to babble and sing in many tongues.

  “They kept this baby hidden because they were ashamed of it. It talked and sang and chirped, but the couple didn’t like that, so they covered Baby’s tongue with bitter liquids and tied it into chairs and whipped it until it couldn’t cry.

  “When Baby learned to behave, they dared not send it to school for fear it wasn’t fully tamed and left it alone while they went to work. Baby discovered the door was always closed but rarely locked, so Baby left to see what was outside. That is how Baby found out being quiet for so long had made it invisible, and being invisible meant being empty, so the poison had a place to fill.”

  I clasped my arms as the sudden urge to hold her came over me. “I’m sorry, Harmyn. No one should be treated that way. Terrible things like that happened to my mother, too.”

  “And worse, because she never got to know what I know.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “We are all born made of gold.”

  DIARY ENTRY 31 JANUARY /38

  The last task is done. Released in the stream. The vial had an amber liquid which smelled of honey and almonds. Now we wait.

  4 FEBRUARY /38

  CYRIL’S NERVOUS PAWS TAPPED ME awake.

  “The King and Queen are dead,” Harmyn said.

  “You must go to Nikolas,” Old Woman said as she handed me a dress.

  “But, if someone were to recognize me—”

  “This isn’t the time to worry about such a thing! Cover your hair. Here, put on Harmyn’s spectacles,” Old Woman said, moving with the speed of someone half her age.

  Outside the cottage, a horse shivered under his sweat. I climbed up, and he galloped a direct route to the castle. I heard the first of the morning’s newsbox reports. Again and again—The King and Queen are dead.

  At the wooden gate of the castle’s outer wall, a guard peered from a barred window.

  “I’m here to see the prince. Tell him Miss Evensong is waiting.”

  He studied me, hidden under my worn purple cloak. “Haven’t you heard what happened?”

  “That’s why I’ve come. I’m an old friend. I beg you, please, ask if he’ll take my visit.”

  I heard him speak to someone behind the gate and watched another guard walk toward the castle. The remaining guard ignored me. Sometime later, the man returned, shouting to his fellow guard to allow me inside. I rode the horse up the drive and through the gatehouse, hitching him on a nearby post. A well-dressed servant, whose steady manner reminded me of Naughton, led me across the courtyard, past the keep, through a corridor, past another courtyard, and to a building newer by a century than most of the castle. We walked through a series of lavish rooms to a staircase. On the residence’s second floor, he showed me to a door flanked by two guards. One with a cleft chin looked familiar.

  I knocked, heard a shout of “Who is it?” and gave my name, Miss Evensong. A bobbin released the latch. The hinges groaned.

  “How did you know to come?” he asked. He shut the door.

  “Cyril woke me, and Harmyn said your parents were dead.”

  He slumped into a chair near the fireplace. “Why are you wearing those
spectacles?”

  “I didn’t want to be recognized.” I draped my cloak on a chair next to him.

  His eyes were blank. I touched his shoulder. When he wrapped his arms around me, I swayed back, startled by the urgency.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “He never became conscious again. Father stopped breathing, then Mother collapsed over his chest, and she died, too. The physician could find no cause,” he said.

  A shake started in my hands. I pulled away and moved a footstool to sit across from him. “Before that.”

  “Earlier in the day, I sat in a meeting about the wall with my father and Council members, as well as Fewmany and his men. I wasn’t attentive. I kept staring at the crest in the chamber, at the red scales. That night, I went to my parents’ parlor. I asked my father to tell his quest tale again, which he thought was unusual, but he indulged me. I noticed his recitation was practiced, as if he’d memorized it. Then he started to laugh.”

  “Laugh?” I said.

  “ ‘Is there something you want to tell me, son?’ he said. ‘I have a question,’ I said. ‘What color are its scales?’ ‘Red, of course,’ he said. Then I handed him the one Egnis gave me. ‘Where did you buy that one?’ he asked me, amused. I told him, ‘I didn’t. I stood in front of that red dragon as she pulled it from her body. Go to the meeting room,’ I said. ‘See for yourself. There is only one like mine in the crest. The one Wyl brought back. Like those of a snake, the dragon’s scales are transparent, like this one. Their color comes through the skin.’ ”

  Nikolas leaned forward. “ ‘You’re teasing us,’ my mother said. ‘Oh, no,’ I assured her, ‘I am not.’ He could tell I was serious and muttered something about how with more time and experience, I’d understand why this is done. I knew what he meant. For months, I’ve turned the meaning of the quest around in my head. Power in the illusion of threat, the control it allows, the sway of tradition. When I went to their room, I was thinking of the people in our kingdom, even those beyond, and of myself, and that’s when I felt it fully—the betrayal. I wasn’t told the truth as a boy and was expected to lie as a man. The dragon menace was a figment all along.

  “That’s when I told him, ‘As fathers before, Father, you lied to me.’ Mother tried to hush me, so I said to her—wondering if she remembered how many times she soothed me after I had nightmares about the dragon—‘Did you watch me go, knowing the truth of the quest?’ The moment she said she did, he slumped in his chair. Then all was in an uproar, guards dragging him to his bed, one running off to find the physician.

  “They were both dead within hours.”

  “I’m sorry, Nikolas.”

  He stared at me. “The third task.”

  “Done, four nights ago. Tonight is the new moon, the start of the month.”

  “We were told some would die. Coincidence or consequence?” he asked.

  “Coincidence,” I said, trying to reassure him, although I had no idea what to think. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “I can’t? I’ve never been as angry as I was when I spoke to them. Furious because I realized what the lie had cost the kingdom and what it cost me, all my life.”

  “What if the truth is as bad as the lie but must be told anyway?”

  “Well, it appears the truth killed them,” he said with a bitter chuckle.

  A knock and the call of three names interrupted us. I stepped away to a window as Nikolas allowed them entry.

  “Your Majesty—” one said.

  For a moment, I could hear nothing else.

  Nikolas was king now. The address declared him so.

  The men told him of burial plans, asked how he wished to notify his sisters, and promised to draft an announcement to give to the people and send to kingdoms near and far. As they discussed details, I looked around the bed chamber, paneled in a warm-toned wood and trimmed in dark green. There were two wardrobes, a table with three chairs under one window, a large bed with one long chest at the foot, pegs near the door that held a coat, a satchel, and a hat, and shelves near that, which held books and various objects. A sword in its sheath hung above the lintel.

  When Nikolas closed the door behind them, I could see from across the room he was trembling. I knew that feeling—how the tremors come and go after the initial shock of death and the numbness can’t return soon enough. I took his arm and guided him toward his bed. He splayed out on his stomach. I sat on the edge. My hand hovered above his back. I didn’t want to touch him, to feel that raw grief, but I forced my palm to fall between his shoulders. His sob struck me in the heart and spread its dark weight into my arms. I rubbed his back until he was quiet again.

  He rolled to his side. “Don’t leave. Please.”

  He piled pillows at his headboard, told me to sit against them, and before I realized what was happening, laid his head on my lap. I stared at the door, aware of how this would appear if anyone came in, but I didn’t move. His parents were dead. Who would deny him solace now?

  Then, without warning, Nikolas brought my hand to his lips and kissed my fingers. A bright pulse streaked through my body, its hum still there after he loosened his grip.

  “Sleep, Nikolas,” I whispered, and he did, even after I slipped away to read near the fire, until there were more knocks at the door and men in fine suits requiring his audience.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, KING AELDRICH and Queen Ianthe were buried side by side in a vault under the castle. I wasn’t there. I didn’t hear Nikolas’s address to the people, although I read his words in the next day’s longsheet.

  He was close to my thoughts; he and my mother, or rather, her burial as I stood hollow near Father, so many eyes on us, Nikolas’s filled with sympathy, Fewmany’s with pity.

  I sent him notes twice a day, and I knew my excuse for not seeing him was selfish. I didn’t want anyone to know I returned from my journey, lest Father or Fewmany find out. There was a reason I couldn’t confess, though. Nikolas’s grief exposed how little I’d felt when my mother died.

  Old Woman warned that my actions hurt him more than I thought they did. Harmyn, who admitted she “glimpsed” what troubled me, wanted to help. I knew she needed to practice her gift. I didn’t mind as she hummed near me, soothing as a cat’s purr. The instant her hand gripped my arm, a black feeling rushed up from my belly. I refused to let her touch me again.

  A week after the deaths, Nikolas arrived in the middle of the afternoon. Old Woman and Harmyn expressed their condolences, then left when Old Woman said they had some foraging to do.

  The door closed.

  “I know why you’ve kept away, but if anyone could understand what these few days have been like, wouldn’t it be you?” he asked.

  I looked at the floor.

  “Don’t you remember? I’ve lost both, not one. I don’t have the luxury to hole away in my room or the woods. I’ve had not a daylight’s moment of peace. Briefings on state matters the Council thinks I must have now. Already the curries for favor. A pact to review. Piles of reports and letters. One discussion about when to hold the coronation even though that’s nothing but a matter of ceremony. Even questions about what I want for dinner,” he said.

  He threw his overcoat on the table and tore the cravat from his neck. “If that weren’t enough, I know who had allegiance to my father, but not whose fealty is genuinely mine. Whom can I trust? Whom can I not? Who trusts me? Because—this is as unforeseen as much as it is obvious—there’s a rumor they were assassinated, and another that I arranged for them to be poisoned. The court of Ailliath in chaos. But wait—the worst may soon come. What else will the vials unleash?”

  When he swiped up the iron poker leaning against the hearth, I stepped back. He stabbed at the logs. “And I can’t stop thinking of their stagnant blood and worms coming through the rot. I wonder if I’m going mad. Did you think such things when your mother died?”

  I’d had those thoughts, but without any horror, only a sense that something was over. How could I admit t
o him I had never missed her? “Yes, I did.”

  Nikolas sat down and touched the stone carved with the symbol. “How did you make them stop?” he asked.

  “I never figured that out. Eventually they ebbed away until they were gone.”

  “I miss them as if they were parts of my flesh ripped out. Tell me it will feel no worse than it does now.”

  “This will ease,” I said.

  He curled his head to his knees and began to cry. I was shaking then, remembering my own twisted grief, shocked but not sad, abandoned and released. I forced myself to put my arms around him. He hugged me back. In all the time he spent with me in the months after her death, never once did he hold me, but that was my limit, not his.

  We were still sitting there when Harmyn and Old Woman returned with Cyril at their heels.

  The child knelt at Nikolas’s side and curled her hands around his arm. His body stiffened.

  “Harmyn, you’re to ask permission first. We discussed this. Let him go, or ask his consent,” I said.

  “I can help, but that means I have to see inside. May I?” she asked.

  “The way Wei did?” he asked. I’d read the manuscript to him. He knew what Voices could do.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He nodded.

  Her lashes fluttered. As her breathing slowed, his became shallow and rapid. Old Woman stood near me to watch as Harmyn’s face shifted through emotions light and dark, then froze in pain. Tears dripped over her cheeks as Nikolas pitched forward with a keen so raw, Old Woman let out a hitching cry and I fought the one rising in me.

  “Listen. There was no other way. Don’t blame yourself. I feel what you do, I can see it, it’s chewed a hole in your side—yes, where that is,” Harmyn said as he shook his head. “Egnis showed you the great man you are and the great king you could be. The sacrifice is unbearable”—Harmyn choked back a plaintive sob—“but it must be borne.”

  She began to hum an unfamiliar melody, but when Old Woman began to sing the words in the Guardians’ language, my mind and body fused together a memory not my own. This was a song people sang in Aoife’s settlement, an ancient hymn all the Guardians must have known.