The Angler awoke with a mouthful of fur and lifted the cat off his face. The girl was gone. And something else. He closed his eyes, lifting his hands, his long fingers extended, feeling the temperature of the air. Yes. Whatever it was had changed. It was right, now. Everything was right. He blinked and looked down at the cat. It purred and rubbed against his leg. He scratched it behind the ears, and it rubbed its face against his hand.
The Angler smiled at it fondly, his heart light and buoyant. At last, everything was as it should be. Only one single thing left to do now. He walked to the very edge of the precipice, staring out across the vast expanse of water. He closed his eyes, lifted his arms, and hopped off the edge.
The guard’s hand was on her shoulder before she was halfway across the bridge.
“Where do you think you’re going?” He spun her around roughly. Elaine opened her mouth to try to talk her way inside, but the man stopped, squinting at her. “You’re Elaine?”
She nodded.
He released her. “My apologies, miss. Go ahead.”
What was that about? But her mind quickly turned to the task ahead as she made her way to the dungeons. She had spent so many hours studying the maps of the palace, she could have found them in her sleep.
Her father looked up, his face resigned, and his eyes widened when he saw her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I have no idea what that even means,” Elaine said. “Are you?”
He considered. “I guess I’m not sure, either.”
She moved to stand near him, just out of reach, a few feet from the bars.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this.”
She grimaced. “I would rather have been caught up in all this than kept completely out of it. How could you keep that big of a secret from me? How could you look me in the eyes and know that in just a few days you were going to be arrested and then executed right in front of me?”
Her father looked at her. “I suppose I’ve kept so many secrets over the years that it didn’t feel like that much. It was just one more.”
She looked away, up the steps, blinking back tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low.
She swallowed. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”
“Are you sure you want to—”
“Yes. That was all I ever wanted.” Elaine crossed her arms over her chest. “Clearly I’m—” she caught herself, swallowed back the bitterness. “I want to know who you are.”
“I’m sorry,” the boy said, looking down at his hands. “I never planned on being a parent. I had no idea—I mean, it’s been nine hundred years since I was really a kid.”
“Please just tell me.”
The boy nodded. “I loved Lilianna—the Mandrevecchian—more than anything.” He looked up, staring off into the middle distance. “Through every lifetime I’ve ever had, that has been the one constant.”
Elaine tried to imagine loving someone that much, for that long.
“Man, woman, whatever, it didn’t matter. I love her. She was the one who discovered the monastery and realized what its power could be used for. She united the clans, snatched victory out from the hands of the god of death himself.” His eyes glowed with pride as he told her the rest of the story of how, with Aron’s help, they had united the country and fallen in love.
“If you loved her so much, what happened?”
“Why aren’t we still together, you mean?” He shook his head. “You try keeping a relationship together for hundreds of years, with each of you switching bodies every few decades. When one of you is responsible for an entire country.” He looked down. “There are always cracks. In every relationship. They tend to spread, if you’re not careful.”
Elaine moved to the wall, leaned against it and slid down the cold stone until she was sitting on the floor. She propped her elbows on her knees and watched this little boy who was also her father lean his forehead against the bars and continue.
“At first, everything was easy. The cracks were there already, but… I was just so happy. I couldn’t believe she loved me, too. She was incredible. So beautiful.” He glanced at Elaine, possibly to see if she was uncomfortable.
“What happened?”
His eyes got that faraway look again. “Well. First, Aron was going slowly crazy. Lilianna still relied on him, still followed every whim he had.” His fingers tightened on the bars. “At the time it made me crazy. She and I disagreed on many things.” He twisted the silver ring on his thumb.
Elaine thought of Jole. How was she feeling right now?
“At the very least I knew she didn’t want my advice, and I didn’t want to lose her, so I said nothing. But then things started to fall apart. The clan leaders became too powerful. She needed their support to hold onto her power, and so more and more of the income went to appeasing the few, already wealthy people. I… I think also, though…”
When he had been quiet for several seconds Elaine broke in. “What?” Be patient. At least he’s telling you things, now. She readjusted herself on the cold floor and took a breath, waiting for her father to continue.
“Well… There was a part of Lilianna that always hated the people she ruled.”
Elaine raised her eyebrows.
“I see that look, Elaine. No one is perfect.”
She looked down. “Of course not.” Seems like a major flaw, though.
“I’m not perfect, clearly, and she wasn’t either. I wish…” he shook his head. “Anyway. When Lilianna was young, her father killed her mother. In front of her. And no one in our village did anything.” Elaine recoiled, her mind returning to that day she’d thought her father had been executed, what it had felt like wandering the streets alone, with nothing. She tried to imagine years of that, an entire childhood of that, and shuddered. “I didn’t do anything either, except try to be there with her. I think she must have forgiven me for that—I still haven’t—but she never forgot that the rest of the people who knew her didn’t bother to help. Because it was inconvenient for them. Uncomfortable.
“For most of Lilianna’s life, she did almost everything for herself, with no help. I wanted to help, but she wouldn’t take anything from me, ironically.” He took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. “So, when she took power, she didn’t have much sympathy for the struggles of her people. Her thinking was, I did it, and I did it alone. So can you.”
“But she had your help, and Aron’s and Paric and Gird,” Elaine protested.
Her father smiled wryly. “Yes. Try telling her that, though. Admitting that she needed help was not Lilianna’s strong suit.”
Sounds pleasant.
“I’m just as much to blame, though. I didn’t see any of this, didn’t think it through. I kept it to myself for very a long time, which only made it worse when I finally spoke up. I exploded. I criticized her. I argued and fought with her. I had a vision of how I wanted things to be and I never let myself back down. Even though she was the most important thing. I wish I’d remembered that. Wish I’d had less of that in the beginning and more of that in the end. In a way, it’s my fault, the way Mimros is. Because the more I pushed her, the more she went in the opposite direction. And then came Alydren’s betrayal.”
“The soldier?”
“Yes. The head of the military. After about three hundred years, he started to disagree with some of her choices. I think he realized slowly that it might not have been Numenos that day who had slain Jedren. Realized that maybe the person he had helped put on the throne was just as fallible and selfish as any other. He refused to follow her orders to punish a town that was rebelling, and then when she tried to have him executed for treason, he made an attempt to overthrow her which was very nearly successful.”
Elaine’s eyes widened.
“Aron’s luck saved her again, along with Paric’s quick instincts, but just barely. She was furious.” He was silent again for several long seconds, and when he spoke again his voice was
tense, tight, like he was speaking around something large and heavy lodged in his throat. “When she came to tell me about it… I… I said maybe she should have listened to him in the first place.”
Ouch.
“I apologized later, but… I don’t think I really meant it, and I think she could tell.”
He sank to the floor, holding the bars for support and leaning against them.
“After that, things really started to go downhill. Aron was becoming more and more unhinged; Lilianna and I couldn’t even seem to speak to each other without arguing. I… I was furious with myself that… for so many hundreds of years I had put my love for Lilianna above everything else. I looked around the world and—” he choked, then swallowed. “I saw so much pain and misery, and I had done nothing to stop it, nothing to improve it, all because I selfishly wanted Lilianna to love me. I felt so ashamed, so guilty, and I took it out on her. I argued more and more, refusing to ever back down. And the harder I pushed, the more defensive she became, the harsher she became in her dealings with the country.
“Finally, I left. I gave up. On her, on us, on Mimros. I was clearly only making it worse.” He looked down at his tiny hands gripping the bars.
“And still all I could think about was making her see things my way. I sent her letters, tried to speak to her. And she refused. Of course. Who would want that?”
Elaine had no idea what to say. To love someone that much, and to have that lead to so much pain and destruction. She shook her head, feeling drained of all emotion. “That sounds… terrible.”
“Yes. I blamed her and she blamed me. And we were both right, in a way, but it helped neither of us. Eventually, seeing all the destruction around me, I decided the only way out was to take her place. I didn’t want to overthrow her militarily. I doubt I could have done that anyway. She would have seen it coming a million miles off. But the monastery; she thought she had them under her thumb. And for a long, long time, she did.
“I managed to convince one of them of how terrible things had become. She was new, a recent addition to their order, and she agreed to my plan. She and I did it together, not involving any of the other monks.
“I had to make sure that no one would suspect. I had to make sure everyone thought I was dead, because I was the only one who knew enough about Lilianna and Mimros to take her place. Or, I thought I was. As always, I thought I knew everything. Clearly, I was wrong.
“One of my employees was deathly ill. I approached him, asked him if he would do me a favor, and in exchange I would pay his family enough money that they and their children and grandchildren would be provided for. He agreed, and I paid off a member of the watch to help us switch places. I also gave him a drug, so that he would sleep and not feel pain when he was executed in my place.”
Elaine saw in her mind that lolling, sack-covered head, barely visible through the smoke. One of her father’s employees. She stared down at her hands. Green stains on her fingers.
“Then I went into the mountains, made my way to the monastery, and waited for the Mandrevecchian to come.” He sighed.
“So, you killed the Mandrevecchian to take his place,” Elaine said. “That… that must have felt awful.”
The boy’s jaw tightened. “I should have done it much earlier. Or not at all. I wish… I wish I could go back. Do things differently.”
“Would you have told me what you were planning?” It slipped out before she could stop herself.
The boy bit his lip. “Maybe.” He looked at her seriously. “At the very least, I would do a better job protecting you. I’m so sorry. I thought Gilmurry was a better man than that.”
Elaine looked into her father’s black eyes and saw that even if he told her everything, she still would never fully understand. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live nine hundred years. She’d never been in love, let alone loved a single person for twelve lifetimes. Pain squirmed in her stomach. She tried to shove it down. It was selfish of her. She wanted him to love her the most. But he didn’t. This little boy with the soul of her father had carried the fate of the entire kingdom on his shoulders, had sacrificed the person he loved the most for the principles he believed in. And his only regret was that he hadn’t listened to the person he loved, that he hadn’t seen her vulnerabilities better.
“You can tell your friend that she doesn’t need to pardon me. I’ve lived enough lifetimes. More lifetimes than I would like with these memories. And Lilianna is out there, somewhere. I would like to rejoin her, wherever she is.”
Elaine’s stomach twisted again. What about me? Do you want more time with me? She couldn’t ask the question. She already knew the answer. Her father was looking off into that middle distance again. He shook himself suddenly and turned to her.
“Gods, Elaine, I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m so caught up in this.” He reached out through the bars and took her hand. “How are you doing?”
“Um,” Elaine looked down at the tiny hand in hers and a swirling sense of unreality washed over her.
Her father continued. “I’m going on and on about all this stuff, and I know you wanted to hear it, but I want to hear about you. I’m so sorry I’ve put you through all this.” He shook his head. “It didn’t occur to me that… that you would want to help. Destroying the evidence, working with… Jole.”
“Of course I wanted to help!” She waved her free hand in the air. “Did I ever not get involved in anything?”
Her father smiled. “True. Yet again I misunderstood. Maybe if I’d asked for your help this all would have gone better.”
“It definitely would have.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
Her father laughed. “You’re right. Gods, nine hundred years of listening to no one. You’d think I’d have learned by now.”
Elaine laughed, too, her chest loosening.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said. “Tell me everything that’s happened.”
Elaine sat and leaned against the bars. She told him everything, from stealing the Onera to getting arrested by Paric to being freed by Jole. She glossed over her time in prison. Her father listened, exclaiming in all the right places, occasionally adding commentary of his own. When she finished, he shook his head in wonderment.
“I never imagined… you are a force to be reckoned with.”
“Imagine what I could do if I actually knew what was happening.”
He squeezed her hand. “All right. I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“We could have gotten around the problem of me not being able to lie.”
“Not sure problem is the right word for that. But yes. I see that.”
“I mean, I managed it in the prison.”
“True.”
Elaine chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I think I need to go talk to Jole.”
Elaine turned the ornate gold handle and pushed into the darkened room. The heavy door swung inwards on silent hinges. In the center of the room, a dark shape slumped on the throne. Jole started when she heard Elaine’s boots clicking across the marble floor, and sat up, wiping the tears off her cheeks.
Elaine planted herself in front of her.
“I’m still mad,” she said. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
Tears spilled out of Jole’s eyes again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that without telling you. I just… I thought you were going to make the same mistake I did.”
“I know. I understand,” Elaine said. “And I’m mad, but I’m not leaving. Unless you want me to,” she added.
Jole shook her head. “No, I need you here. I’m not a good person. I can rule, but I need you to stay. I need you to be my conscience.”
Elaine’s eyebrows lifted.
“I have no idea what I’d do with power. I don’t particularly want it,” Jole said. “But I’m good at keeping it. You just tell me what we should do with it. Whatever world is inside your head, that’s the world I want to liv
e in. Not mine.”
Elaine took her hand. Jole tensed at the touch.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s figure out where to go from here.”
“One other thing,” Jole said, blushing and looking away.
“What?”
“Well… I told you my mother was the Mandrevecchian. I’m not entirely sure, but I think… I think Coralie was my father.” She pulled her hand out of Elaine’s and picked at one of her nails. “I think we’re… sisters. Kind of.” She shifted, waving a hand. “I mean, not biologically, of course, but like… in a way…” She darted a glance at Elaine.
Sisters?
“Not that it matters, or anything,” Jole said, shaking her head. She moved to stand up.
Elaine grabbed her and hugged her. “What a super weird, incredibly confusing family,” she said, grinning. Jole laughed.
“Same to you. Right. Not sure what you call it when one of us is the daughter of the reincarnated soul of the other’s father… once removed?”
“Sure. That sounds right.”
80
Elaine
Year 1 of the Reign of the Sister Queens.
It was a warm day and the four of them had taken the planning meeting out onto the parapet. Over the white stone wall was a sweeping view of the roofs of Kreiss and the bay sparkling beyond. Elaine’s teacup rested on a stack of books; scrolls of papers littered the stones around her. Jole sat on the railing, her back to the view, sharpening a dagger idly. Paric stood, arms crossed, looking out at the city, his eyes scanning the nearby rooftops. Gird rearranged the tea things on a white, painted iron table.
“Ok,” Elaine said, consulting her notes. “Where are we on the formation of the new clans?”
Jole ran the sharpening stone over the blade, the metal singing. “The other clan leaders aren’t happy about it, needless to say. Some of them more so than others. I’m handling it.”
“What does that mean?”
Jole rolled her eyes. “One of them is putting together an assassination attempt. Another is talking to that commander; they’re thinking about trying a military takeover. I’ve got the commander good and bribed, plus two spies in his inner circle he doesn’t know about. The first guy, I’m thinking we should just take him out; his number two is friendlier to us.”
Death of the Immortal King Page 41
