The Rising Tide

by Sarah Stirling

  “You’re both – oh.”

  Janus blinked up at Hika from the floor, her face etched with deep lines of worry. His whole body was numb and shivering. It truly would be an irony if he had survived all of that only to die of a fever but it sounded about right.

  “Going to sleep now,” he mumbled, too tired to fight any longer.

  The last thing he saw was the ceiling of the church; a dimly lit mural of strange figures in battle.

  Part Four: Recollection

  “What in the Siklo name were you hoping to achieve?”

  Vallnor bristled and crossed his arms, raising his chin under the incensed glare of his sister. “I was getting something done for once! Instead of sitting around here planning parties all day!”

  “So you thought you would just murder half of the city instead?”

  “They had to be put in their place. I had to show people that we were back. You really think a few nights of music and mingling are enough to make a mark on these cockroaches?”

  Fyera paused, scanning him over as if she didn’t recognise him. As if, after all these years, he was a stranger to her. The fire seared through him and he clenched his palms tight to try and hold it at bay. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen now? Do you honestly think the Sonlin are going to lie down and accept having one of their best generals murdered in cold blood?”

  Her despair was more disconcerting than her anger. “They deserved to die.”

  “I’m not denying that. But Locker damn us we need to be smarter than running around butchering everyone who might have wronged us. Have you forgotten how long you and I have been alive?”

  “No,” he said, souring his lips with a lie. Fyera did not remember like he did. She remembered memories that belonged to Fyera Siklo and Fyera Siklo only. She had not been contaminated with others, pushing and grabbing at Vallnor’s sense of self until their grubby hands left stains on his consciousness. The only thread of familiarity he could cling to was the bond with the phoenix, born of nothing but raw flame and ire.

  Fyera pinched the bridge of her nose in a gesture that reminded him so much of Kilai he took a moment to remember where he was, head spiralling down into places he had seen through his eyes but not actually experienced. It was dizzying; the kind of vertigo one felt standing atop a precipice, gulping at the staggering drop below. Only Vallnor was becoming less and less certain of what awaited him at the bottom.

  “Vallnor? Are you all right?”

  The tentativeness in her voice snapped his composure in half. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine.”

  “You’re sweating.”

  He swiped a hand across his brow and grimaced at the moisture collecting on his skin. Wisps of smoke trailed from his fingers and he shoved his hands behind his back, shaking his head as if to knock his thoughts back into place. “I’m fine. Stop looking at me like I’m broken.”

  “I don’t think you’re broken, Vallnor. I think the two of us have reawoken into a world neither of us recognises, and that’s something neither of us were prepared for.” She gave him a watery smile and collapsed onto the sofa, head lolling back, long dark hair tumbling from her braid down past her shoulders. There were heavy shadows beneath her eyes.

  No sooner had she sat than a knock came at the door. “Come in,” she called wearily.

  A servant appeared at the door. “Siklo-don, guests are beginning to arrive. Shall I arrange for them to room at the palace?”

  They certainly had plenty spares. Whole wings of the palace had lain empty for so long they had rediscovered them coated in dust and cobwebs, furniture sagging and beyond repair, walls stained with mould and damp. Fyera had busied herself fixing up the guest quarters for the upcoming fest, the place a constant flurry of activity from cleaners, artists, and various others in an effort to have the place resembling what it once had so long ago. Vallnor had found it a little creepy, how much the new furnishing and wallpapers and curtains all mirrored what had it looked like before, like she was trying to preserve a museum rather than a home.

  “Who has come so early? I will go and greet them.”

  “It is a party of the Demjors, Siklo-don.”

  Fyera stiffened, shoulders bunching around her ears. Swivelling, she met Vallnor’s gaze with wide eyes, pursing her lips. Vallnor felt his body echo hers, a visceral reaction at the mention of such powerful royals. Surely if they were still as they had been in the past he would have felt their presence? He clenched his fist, smothering the tiny fire crackling in his palm. It was clear he couldn’t trust his senses right now, not until he got his head sorted out.

  “Let’s greet our guests, shall we, sister?”

  “Vallnor,” she said in warning, glancing at the servant. “Thank you, Jyna, tell them we will be through shortly to greet them.”

  As the door clicked shut, she reeled on Vallnor. “Let me speak with them. You should –”

  “Remain in a cage until you decide I can be unleashed?”

  “Vallnor.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “Must you be so difficult? We really cannot afford to be fighting right now. There are enemies quite literally surrounding us and you wish to make me the villain?”

  Vallnor rolled his eyes. “You always have to be so dramatic. Come, we should not leave them to wait on us. It would not look so good.”

  “Oh, yes, because you have always cared about manners.”

  He dropped a hand over her shoulder and squeezed her neck, rubbing out knots of tension. “If things go badly I can set them on fire.”

  “That shouldn’t be your solution for everything.”

  Her tone had tried for humour and skimmed straight past it into a strangled kind of tension. Vallnor could feel it in the way her muscles locked beneath his fingers. She was wary. It was a feeling he could understand; the Demjors were not to be messed with. A family with history stretching back even further than theirs, with so much blood to their name that their biographies could be written in it. They were one of the four original guardian families, holed up far away in a small northern nation of the Sonlin Empire known as Kal Rakkar, but as far as Vallnor had been aware, no one had seen or heard from them in an age. He hadn’t stopped to contemplate that they were still around, no matter how their legacy lingered.

  For the Demjors were supposed to be larger than life. Unkillable warriors, surviving the bloodiest and most brutal of battles only to rise once more, as immortal as he and his sister. Or so the legends said. Vallnor had never seen any evidence. Sure, they all looked the same, all pale and gaunt and weird, but he had never seen their guardian’s true form to know just how powerful it truly was. The phoenix didn’t like it, whatever it was, but it didn’t have the same cloying fear as it did in response to the tiger. There was power in mystery and Vallnor thought the Demjors were clever enough to know that. But they were no phoenix, that was for sure.

  “Stop fidgeting. You only give them power that way.”

  Fyera shot him a glare, straightening her shoulders. “I know. But you should take this more seriously.”

  “Why? Because they drink the blood of their enemies for eternal youth?”

  She whacked him on the arm, huffing a breath.

  “They said that about us too, you know.”

  “I bathe in the blood of maidens every morning. How do you think I got such perfect skin?” She batted her lashes dramatically.

  “The phoenix knows how to choose a good vessel,” he said, sweeping a hand over his figure.

  Fyera snorted. “Keep telling yourself that.”

  But she looked more relaxed, her gait more natural than her stilted steps from before. The gentle heel on her shoes clacked against the marble floors, announcing their presence long before they arrived in the hallway, making sure that the Demjors not only had to wait for them, but that they knew it too. Royalty they may have been but their hold on the Myrlik Isles could never hold a candle to the wildfire of the Sikl
os. They could all rot in their hole for all Vallnor cared, but as much as Fyera did not trust them, she sensed a potential ally in them against the Sonlin.

  “We don’t need them,” he grumbled, just before they crossed the entrance chamber of the palace, one of the grandest rooms in the entire building, if only because Fyera had seen to its repair first.

  An elbow to the gut silenced him, stealing his breath. He could sense a strong spiritual presence, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

  “Demjor-don, a pleasure,” Fyera called out, hands sweeping out to welcome him. “I’m so glad you could – make it.”

  She composed herself well but she couldn’t hide the tripping over her own words when the man before them turned and flashed a smile – a smile that had somehow managed to slip through time and appear before them, a few hundred years later. For this man did not only look familiar, he was the mirror image of a man Vallnor had met so many years ago, within these very same walls. A prince who had come to visit them on the day of their rebirth, whose face decorated paintings through the eras. Vallnor had put it down to family resemblance back then, but the memory popped to the surface as fresh as the day he had lived it, and the similarity was uncanny. This was the same man.

  “It has been too long,” he said, clasping her arm. “Please, call me Yurak.” His grip lingered a beat too long and Vallnor reached out, forcing him to unleash her for propriety’s sake. Long, bony fingers wrapped around his hand, crushing it tight. Vallnor thought he heard his bones crunch.

  “You are looking well for a man in your years. How old are you now?” he said, sparking a flicker of flame into their joined hands. It hit Yurak’s flesh and snuffed out, the connection between them vibrating. Vallnor felt his signature crash against the iron wall that was Yurak’s and nearly gagged at the strength of it. It was devoid of feeling, a dark abyss sucking in the vibrant life of the otherworld.

  “Ah, forgive me if I hold onto my dignity. I am older than I fear I remember.”

  Vallnor whistled, ignoring Fyera’s nails digging into the flesh of his arm through the silk of his kobi. Yurak sparked the fight in him, determined not to be threatened by some distant prince in his own home. It was partly the phoenix’s posturing, he knew, but that didn’t quash the feeling surging through him; the need to prove himself the stronger man.

  “Introduce us to your companions. I do not believe we have been acquainted,” said Fyera, drawing blood.

  Vallnor hissed and wrenched his arm away, knocking into her as she pushed past him to greet the man and the woman standing with Yurak. All this simpering was disgusting. They did not need to prostrate themselves before others for allies – allies should come begging on their doorstep for their allegiance. Once upon a time they had been revered as gods. They would never usher in that era again if they let themselves be trod upon by men like this. It had always been the two of them and the two of them only; they did not need anyone else to win back their throne.

  “I’m afraid I must pass on the apologies of my mother and father,” said Yurak. “This is my younger cousin, Kelldrak.” He gestured to a shorter man, as pale as his elder cousin, with the same white hair and clear blue eyes. “And this is Kelldrak’s wife, Sekaya.”

  Fyera clasped both of their arms, pleasantries spilling from her lips at which he barely managed to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. Vallnor trailed after them as she guided them through the palace, telling them pieces of family history he only remembered as she told them, struck by the memories triggered at the sight of a broken tile here, and a statue there. Walking through the palace was much like walking through an echo, nothing but a murmur of time fading out of his hearing. He felt as if it might shatter at any moment and tumble down upon him like a collapsing dream. Like he might wake up as someone else, in a completely different place, and he would find that Vallnor Siklo had been nothing but the fragment of another’s strange, shifting dream.

  “… Vallnor? Are you all right?”

  He snapped to consciousness, blinking into Fyera’s gaze. She had taken him aside in the corridor that led to the guest’s chambers, the Demjor party lingering further ahead. Beyond her he could see Yurak’s gaze upon them, sharp as a hawk, and he willed himself back to some sense of clarity. Viktor was a damned parasite. He had no idea who was wrestling him now, the phoenix flapping its wings in frustration, unable to settle.

  “I’m fine. Stop making a scene.”

  Fyera arched a brow, painted lips tilting. “I think the one making a scene, dearest brother, is you.”

  He gave her a light shove between the shoulder blades. “Go on, then. Entertain our guests.” When he pulled his hand away it shook. Her eyes fell to it and he snatched it away, chest tight. He couldn’t breathe properly.

  “You really don’t look so well. Maybe you should lie down.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Vallnor did not lie down. He brushed past a pair of servants, ignoring their looks as he marched away, out of the grand arches of the palace and down a narrow path that wound past gardens towards stairs hewn from black rock. Down, down he raced, until he was breathless with the relentless pace. Down, until his boots crunched over stony gravel and sand, until the water surged in to meet him. Closing his eyes, he raised his flushed face to the sky, remembering the breeze upon his face as he had sat upon a rooftop with the sun beaming down upon terracotta tiles and an emerald green bay. When he opened them the sky was grey and the sea was black, stretching empty and desolate for miles into the horizon.

  Vallnor breathed and tried to forget.

  *

  “How would we even go about finding that man again? This is hardly a tiny little village.”

  “I don’t know,” said Makku, shrugging as he kicked a stone. “It’s pretty dinky. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Hang you and your man. I want a drink,” said Ivor, eyes peeled on the signs hanging from doors. A breeze picked up from the coast, rattling the rusty iron hinges of the butcher’s sign. The longer they walked without spying a tavern, the more his irritation grew, hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers. He had to walk with only one boot, the other foot bare, limping along awkwardly at the difference in height. Stubbornness had kept him from removing the other boot, complaining of the cuts and bruises. Kilai had left him to his grumbling.

  “Have you even got any coin?”

  Ivor’s scowl deepened as he rummaged through the scraps of his clothing. After a few muttered phrases beneath his breath he procured a coin, shining in the light of a nearby shop. “One yurel, as you please.”

  “And what about the rest of us?” said Makku, hands on his hips.

  “Hang the rest of you, too.”

  “You’re really going to spend the last of your money on drink?” she sighed.

  “I feel like you don’t understand me as a person, Shaikuro.”

  “I really don’t.”

  But as they finally came upon a tavern wedged in the corner of the intersection between two roads, she found herself lured into the lights shining in the window like a bug to the lanterns standing proud against the darkness. The warmth greeted her like an old friend and she huddled inside after the rest of them, scrubbing her hands together. She hadn’t noticed until entering just how chilly it had become outside, nipping at her hands and face with the oncoming bite of the low season.

  Inside was raucous and cheerful, the small hall filled to the brim with noisy bodies. It reeked of sweat from so many drunken patrons squashed inside but it was worth it to feel the heat work its way into her bones, easing some of the stiffness from her limbs caused by the fall on the ship. She quashed the niggling worries sprouting up about what would become of them now that they were without ship or ally, reminding herself that worrying about things beyond her control would do no good. First of all they had to focus on finding out where they were and how they could get to… wherever Kilai would go once her adventure was over.

  But she did not want to go crawl
ing back so soon, a failure. It would be too hard to bear, after her excitement at finally getting the chance to chase the horizon. To turn back now would be like admitting that she had never been meant for it, after all. The turtle pin was still tucked on its rope around her neck and she squeezed it tight, welcoming the cut of the metal edges on her palm. What her father would say of her now, she could only guess. She could only hope he wouldn’t have been disappointed in what had become of her.

  “Have a lick at this.” Kilai started as a tankard of ale slammed down before her, table rattling on its wobbly legs. “We’ll be having no more of that thinking stuff now.”

  Kilai glanced up at Ivor as he collapsed into a seat, foam decorating the fiery red of his beard. “I feel like at least one of us has to do some thinking for the rest us collectively.” She took a sip and grimaced at the sourness of the ale on her tongue.

  Makku laughed and clinked his tankard together with Jorkell. “Be my guest. I’m not thinking until I wake up in a gutter tomorrow.” He took a long drag of his drink and swiped at his mouth, expression sobering so suddenly it startled her.

  For all his bravado the silence still seeped into the spaces between them, allowing the noise from around them to creep in and emphasise just how quiet they were. Now that she had sat down, warmth easing the ache of her bones, she found the events of the past few days catching up with her, exhaustion pulling at weary limbs and tugging at her lids. As much as they might have needed it after the past few day’s events, it was hard to summon a genuine smile when they had lost so many friends all at once. Kilai was growing tired of loss.

  “Cards. We should play Rattlebones.”

  “No one has any cards here, Makku.”