The Shattering of the Spirit-Sword Brackish 1

by Sam Farren

  Castelle trailed off, teeth clamped together.

  Bowing her head, the woman said, “I did not wish for my involvement to be known, Princess.”

  “So you remained silent? Do not call me by my title if you have no intention of respecting me.”

  “Your title is your title, regardless of any respect, Princess.”

  Castelle lifted her chin. There was something in the woman’s words that did not quite sting. Her voice was flat, not entirely unaffected, but the words came across as scripted. The woman’s accent hid her intentions, and a cascade of questions tore through Castelle’s mind.

  “Explain yourself,” Castelle said.

  The woman bowed her head.

  “You would not believe me, Princess,” she said. “But you must come with me.”

  The woman didn’t wait to be dismissed. She left Castelle where she stood and headed back into the valley.

  That was it. Castelle’s chance to run. The woman had left her rope in a pile on the ground, and moonlight didn’t glint against a single weapon. It would be easier to run from a person, a woman, than a shambling spirit decorated in bones.

  Castelle looked to the sky, but the stars had rearranged themselves. She couldn’t tell east from west.

  “What are you doing?” Castelle asked, catching up to the woman.

  “My horse is upset,” was all she said.

  Castelle didn’t run. She watched the woman place a hand on the horse’s face, soothing it without words, and a dull spark of hope twisted in her gut.

  The woman had proven she didn’t want Castelle dead, not in the immediate future, and had clear intentions of taking her somewhere. She wouldn’t explain herself, but had called her Princess without sneering, without grimacing around the word.

  The common people supported Castelle. They always had. It was not only her fathers who wished to see her returned to the throne, but hundreds of thousands across the thirteen islands. The woman could be part of a larger movement. She’d have to be, to orchestrate something like this.

  She was taking Castelle back to the capital. Not to be hung, drawn, and quartered, but to reclaim her throne.

  It was dangerous, ridiculous, stupid to stay, but in fourteen years, this was the closest she’d come to moving forward. She wasn’t running in the wrong direction, wasn’t waiting, waiting, waiting.

  “Will you tell me your name?” Castelle asked.

  “Eos,” the woman said, without looking away from the horse.

  “Eos?” Castelle repeated. “And what is your family name?”

  “My name is Eos, Princess.”

  There was a secret wrapped up in her insubordination. She wasn’t a relic of Fenroe’s nobility, but her name could have meaning in a distant land. Her family could be traitors to a Kingdom Castelle had never heard of.

  Castelle didn’t push the matter. The less she knew about the woman, the better.

  “Well,” Castelle said. “Where are we going?”

  Eos inclined her head.

  “Across the fjord, Princess.”

  Eos said no more. She didn’t respond to the eager rise of Castelle’s brow, the question half-formed on her lips. She paid more heed to her horse, placing her hands on his muzzle and whispering something before putting his reins on. She led him to the cart and attached him to it, slow and methodical, never once glancing back.

  Castelle had a dozen chances to escape. The horse would become ensnared by his own reins, should he charge after her. Castelle had a dozen chances to dart down the valley and find a faster route with the breaking dawn, but she stood there, watching Eos get her horse ready.

  Eos climbed into the cart’s seat and pointed behind her.

  “You aren’t covering me with the canvas again,” Castelle muttered, climbing into the back.

  There were a pair of tough boots waiting for her.

  Escape was still an option, always at the forefront of her mind, but better left for towns and villages.

  The carriage rolled to a slow, steady start. It was harder to feel every bump in the road with so much else to focus on. The sky bloomed early, sun embracing midsummer, and Laister came to life around her.

  With the forest a full day behind, the island was all open grassland and abrupt inclines. Hills rose and fell as though tossed from the sea, and dark grey rocks jutted from the lush green that covered the earth, set to grow more vibrant with the autumn rains something in the distance promised.

  There were no towns to be seen, no scattered farmhouses. It was untouched, vast and quiet, air stirring with the seasons left behind. Castelle’s fingertips pressed to the splintered sides of the cart. It was more of her Kingdom than she’d seen in the last decade. Without the forest closing around her, she could breathe in the sea salt that had found its way to the capital, so long ago.

  No wonder she’d yet to run back to the temple.

  They wouldn’t pass any villages. Eos would make sure of that. Laister was a prosperous island, thanks to the port that connected the archipelago to the eastern nation of Amaros, loyal to the crown, but as with all places, nature outnumbered settlements.

  Eos’ mask was in the back of the cart. When Castelle could take in no more of a world that had not grown walls to shelter her, she ran her fingers across the bone, ravine running from top to bottom. Had Eos not been wearing it, Castelle would’ve broken more than a nose.

  “Why were you wearing this?” Castelle asked. “What does it represent?”

  “My face is memorable. Had I been spotted in the forest, I hoped this would be enough to frighten the guards,” Eos said. “I hoped they would mistake me for a spirit.”

  Glaring got Castelle nowhere. Eos didn’t look away from the road ahead, half-buried in long grass and moss, and Castelle grew tired of staring at her long, dark brown hair, pulled back into a rough, loose ponytail.

  She folded her arms across the back of the cart, taking in all they passed. Two hours in and her stomach was rumbling, but she supposed she was still a hostage of sorts and wouldn’t resort to begging. She would bear her hunger with dignity.

  Anything less was unbecoming of a Princess.

  Hiding away in the woods for twelve years and never reaching out to her people wasn’t particularly becoming of a Princess either, yet her own Kingdom was new to her. There she was at the age of twenty-eight, travelling without a swathe of guards surrounding her for the first time in her life.

  There was misplaced freedom in it. She rubbed at her wrists, reminding herself they’d been bound.

  “This is all rather bold of you,” Castelle said, for the sake of speaking up. “Brave, stupid. All those things and more. Whatever your plan may be, you’ve executed it better than any of the assassins who stumbled into the forest before you, but it won’t be long till my army is on our heels.”

  Eos took her time replying.

  “They will not send an army,” she decided.

  “Oh?”

  “You are the last of the Greyser line. Half of Fenroe believes you are dead; the other half believes you are in the forest. Lords Damir and Ira will not announce to the entire archipelago that you have been abducted by marching armies across the land,” Eos explained. “It would put too big a target on your back.”

  Castelle opened her mouth but couldn’t snap a reply. Eos was right. Her fathers were smarter than that. They would not send legions, but individuals versed in the tapestry of the land. Soldiers wouldn’t roll over the horizon; people would lurk behind rocks, would wait in villages and patrol ports.

  “Regardless, you won’t succeed,” Castelle said. “The moment we reach a village, all I need to do is announce who I am. My people will protect me.”

  Eos said nothing. She pulled on the horse’s reins, and the cart slowed to a stop.

  “… Unless, that is, you wish to tell me what, exactly, you are doing,” Castelle said. “I believe you’re sincere when you say you don’t intend to murder me.”

  The cart stopped, steady on a patch
of flat ground.

  Eos climbed into the cart, dragging one of her bags with her. Castelle cleared her throat, pressing into a corner.

  Eos opened her bag. The sun declared noon had passed, and Eos retrieved a loaf of bread wrapped in off-white cloth. She broke it into chunks, and Castelle accepted it without the paranoia expected of a Princess.

  Castelle ate faster than she would’ve liked. Eos pushed a canteen of water her way, gaze averted as she ate. Used to staring at people bluntly, Castelle scanned her face for some clue. Her scars were redder, in the daylight.

  “You look tired,” Castelle said. “When did you last sleep?”

  “Several days ago, Princess,” Eos said, picking at her bread.

  “Before you abducted me, you mean. Well. Never mind that. I doubt you’ll take the opportunity to rest, no matter how I offer it,” Castelle said. “Would you tell me something, Eos?”

  Eos nodded once, using her thumb to press bread into her mouth.

  “That puppy in the forest. How did you enlist his aid? The dogs of Laister Forest are not easily manipulated.”

  “I did not use him, Princess. The dog was not part of the plan. He helped of his own accord.”

  Castelle narrowed her gaze. The look would’ve sent most servants running, but it was useless when Eos refused to look up.

  “Then what was your plan? To sneak into my chambers and pull me out of the window?”

  “Yes, Princess.”

  Castelle scoffed. It wouldn’t have worked, on any other day. Not if Rhea was there, not if she hadn’t downed glass after glass of red wine.

  “You were lucky,” Castelle muttered. “If I hadn’t been drunk—gods!”

  Eos said nothing more. She finished the bread, folded the cloth neatly across her lap, and put it back in her bag. She dragged the bags into the front seat with her and set off in silence.

  “Do you think you’re helping me? Is that it?” Castelle asked, a mile later.

  “I am helping Fenroe, Princess.”

  “If you’re helping my Kingdom, then you’re helping me. My blood is in the land.”

  Eos’ shoulders rose, but she said nothing.

  “May I make a guess?” Castelle tried.

  Eos glanced back.

  “Are you taking me to the capital? To Torshval?” Castelle asked, voice falling. “Are you going to turn me in to—to the… That is, are your intentions such that—”

  “No,” Eos interrupted.

  Castelle nodded. She nodded and nodded, then threaded her fingers together. She had no reason to trust Eos, but if she was to be Queen, she had to trust her instincts. Her stomach did not turn, and she took Eos’ words as truth.

  Besides, Laister was the southeasternmost island in the archipelago. The fastest route to the capital was through the northern port, not the west. A tenuous grasp of cartography and sailing routes kept her safe, for now.

  “Then you are not working for them?”

  “I am not.”

  By evening, a dark shape had risen in the distance. The horse had dutifully dragged them up hills that’d been mountains, thousands of years ago, and the grey clouds tricked Castelle’s eyes into mistaking it for part of Laister.

  “Oh!” she said, after long minutes of staring without understanding.

  Eos looked back.

  “That’s—that’s Stalf, isn’t it? The island over there,” Castelle said, leaning over the side of the cart, expecting inches to make a difference. “The volcano on it, at any rate. Gods. I’ve only seen paintings of it.”

  Eos followed her line of sight, but Stalf sparked nothing like awe or disinterest within her. It was unremarkable. She’d seen it a thousand times, along with the other islands.

  Castelle only had books to see the archipelago through.

  Eos had the sight committed to memory, but all had Castelle were facts. The volcano took up two-thirds of the island and had not erupted in a hundred and sixty-six years. Each time it spewed lava into the ocean, it grew larger, creeping towards the rest of the archipelago.

  Shaking her head, Castelle pulled herself to the front of the cart.

  “Will we draw any closer to it? I can only see the peak, from here.”

  “Yes, Princess,” Eos said.

  In the last two days, Castelle had felt more extremes than she had in years. Fear. Excitement. Her Kingdom suddenly open to her, a salt-breeze on her skin, the faded illusions of books come to life. Let the people Castelle’s fathers sent after her lose their way. This was where she was supposed to be, out in the heart of Laister, travelling along an overgrown path few ever took.

  Castelle leant against the front of the cart. Eos was unperturbed by her gaze and didn’t take her eyes off the road ahead, heavy though they were. The deepest of her scars ran from the corner of her right eye, twisted along her cheek, and cut through the corner of her mouth and the line of her jaw. The cut had not been clean; a fraction of an inch to the side and she would’ve lost an eye.

  She couldn’t have been much older than Castelle. A decade, at the very most. All the records Castelle had studied had been concerned with conflict in Fenroe and hadn’t gone into detail about foreign wars. Eos must’ve risen through the ranks in some terrible struggle to have abducted her so easily.

  To think, she’d almost earnt another scar for her effort.

  “You are not Fenronian, are you?” Castelle asked. “With an accent like that, you aren’t from any part of the archipelago.”

  “I am not,” Eos agreed.

  “Where are you from? Certainly not Amaros or Nor. I would recognise those accents,” Castelle said. “But you speak Fenronian well enough. I imagine you’ve been here for some time.”

  “Eight years.”

  “And before that, you were…?”

  Eos passed the reins into one hand and pressed her fingertips to the start of the deepest scar, running along her eye.

  She chewed her teeth. She spoke as though obeying an order.

  “I am Yrician, Princess.”

  “You are from Nor. Why didn’t you say so? Had you—”

  “No,” Eos said. “I am Yrician. I am from the land.”

  Castelle frowned. Visiting dignitaries from Nor, trusted advisers to her mother’s cousin, often spoke of the Yricians. They were a wandering people without a home and had infringed upon Nor’s borders centuries ago. They were not Norian, but they lived on the land, taking what they needed.

  And so they had come to Fenroe to do the same.

  They were part of the reason her mother had closed the ports, almost two decades ago. The rebels had undone that order, and here were the consequences.

  Stalf didn’t fade from sight. Their path arced, ever keeping them the same distance from the volcano. The whole archipelago was made of much the same, land broad and fertile, but Stalf was one of the few islands that hadn’t forgotten what it was. It hadn’t forgotten the power it held, the heat it could send crawling across the land, slow and unstoppable.

  The dark clouds turned to drizzle, disappointing for its lack of bluster. Eos gestured to the canvas piled in the cart, tied to one side, but Castelle settled for the rough hood of the cloak she’d been given. Eos didn’t pull her own up, and the rain danced around her like the muted light of a spirit.

  A settlement whipped past, between the intersecting slopes of two hills. There were twenty, maybe twenty-five buildings, and a wide, paved road, visible from a good distance. Castelle’s heart leapt, but she said nothing, did nothing. She didn’t pull herself out of the cart and tumble down the hillside till Stalf was out of view, didn’t plan her escape.

  She let the opportunity pass by.

  She stared ahead, convincing herself there’d never been anywhere to run to.

  Castelle didn’t have to justify her inaction for long. Ahead, the hills became as one, forming a vast plateau. The Laister Fjord cut across, depth turning it as dark as Stalf, running across the land for the miles Castelle’s eyes could make sense of. She’d see
the still waters, once they were closer, reflecting the sky in brilliant clarity, but something other than the sheer cliff sides caught her attention.

  The bridge crossing the fjord could be seen for miles around. All roads east of the fjord gathered there, and a scattering of buildings joined together, offering rest for weary travellers and goods for those passing through.

  Castelle held her breath. If she made a sound, Eos would remember she was there and turn the cart off the road. The road that became smoother by the minute, hard-packed dirt growing wide as other paths meandered into it.

  The perimeter of the outpost was lined with ruins, crumbled walls and the outlines of rooms rising in reddish hues from the grass growing upon former floors. Other people made use of the road, some travelling on horseback, others in carriages, and Castelle’s tongue stuck behind her teeth.

  She couldn’t declare that she was the Princess of Fenroe. The faces of failed assassins filled her mind, bodies left headless, spirits rotting in the dirt of Laister Forest. Someone at the outpost could be willing to slit her throat for a bag of gold.

  She slumped in the cart, hidden beneath her cloak’s thick hood.

  The cart stopped. Eos slid off the seat.

  Two dozen people were wandering the poorly paved area, consulting their maps, considering taking rooms for the night. It was not yet six, but their next stop could be hours out. Daylight was stretched thin, and much of western Laister was wide and empty, past the fjord.

  Castelle searched the buildings for a sign of fealty, of allegiance to the misplaced crown. The banners hanging from windows were old and tattered, dyes faded, but none of them had ever boasted the Greyser crest, the brown bear reared up on its hind legs, pressed against a dark green backdrop.

  Castelle didn’t follow Eos.

  They’d stopped outside an inn, but Eos found her way to the market stalls. Castelle watched as she silently bought parcels of bread and grain, nodding her head in curt thanks. A temple rose between two almost identical taverns, indistinguishable from a house, save for the crudely carved frieze of the three gods above the doorway. Castelle frowned, pulling her cloak tighter around herself.