Riding through the streets of Kingsleigh is like passing through a waking dream. Fabithe keeps his hat pulled low over his eyes, his head bowed as though he seeks to protect himself from the drizzle. Around him, everything is familiar yet different: he knows that cottage, yet there are climbing plants on the walls and the door is brown not green. He recognises the fork where two paths meet, but the angle of their meeting isn’t quite the same as he remembers. He knows these people, yet they are strangers; they wear the clothing of his childhood, they have the same voices and stature and skin, but the detail of hair and eyes and faces is not the same at all. He feels as though he’s stepped into a painting, a representation of reality; everything is here, but subtly changed, both like and unlike his memory of it.
He’s made good time from Freshwell. The horse dealer was as reliable as promised. The horse – a fine animal whom Fabithe named Tola, meaning black, because he’s nothing if not consistent with his horse naming – is young and swift. He also succeeded in replenishing his supplies with enough basic food to last the journey. It took him all of two days to get here. And now, having made as much haste as possible, he suddenly wishes it had taken longer.
Ahead of him, Kingstower awaits, the single tower for which it is named a jutting spire above the roofs of the settlement. The castle lies beyond the town, with its own boundary wall and lands; once the gates would have been open to the people of Kingsleigh during the day, but now they are kept guarded at all times. As Fabithe rides through the streets, gaze fixed on the tower, sorrow and fear and sharp, terrible remembrance run through him. The last five years of his life melt away from him till he’s just a boy again, betrayed and lonely, heartsick. This is where he came from, fleeing a life in ruins and a handful of broken dreams. This is the place that gave birth to him, and even though he is a ghost on its streets, coming here is like coming home.
He realises that he’s allowed Tola to slow to a stop, that people are giving him curious glances as they hurry past in the rain. Immediately he urges her forward again, trying to keep his emotions in check. He has a task to do here; that’s why he came. Nothing else matters.
He keeps going, through the town and out again, but not in the direction of the castle. Instead, he veers off into the outskirts, to the neighbourhood where Donalle used to live. He’d visit as a boy, sometimes, during his various illicit forays out of Kingstower. At the time, he found her clear interest in him perfectly unsurprising. It was only during his last days in the Westlands, when for a brief period he lived with her and was pulled back from the brink of death, that she revealed the truth: he would never have been born, were it not for her.
As soon as the small cottage with its patch of garden comes into view, nausea twists his stomach. A sharp twinge shoots through his chest, where once the brand was red and raw, followed by another twinge from a long-healed wound. He might not want to remember, but his body has its own set of memories. Still, if he hesitates at all, he’ll never find the courage to do it.
Dismounting, he ties Tola’s reins to the gate before marching straight up the path to rap on the door. Then he waits, trying not to breathe in the horribly familiar scent of the marshfoil that grows in the little garden. No sound from within the cottage. Perhaps she’s out tending to the people of the town. Perhaps she’s dead …
“Yes?” The door swings open, and there she is. “Make it quick, I’ve – ”
Her voice dies as her gaze narrows on his face. Her lips move in speech that’s too soft to make out. Then, with disconcerting suddenness, she smacks him across the upper arm.
“Ow,” he says mildly.
“It’d be your ear,” she mutters. “Only you’ve grown since last you darkened my door.”
All right. Start as you mean to go on. With an effort, Fabithe pushes away the formal speech patterns of his childhood, falling into something approaching hers: the Westlands equivalent of the Castellian accent he habitually uses. “It’s good to see you too, Donalle.”
“Don’t give me that!” She stabs an accusing finger at him. “Years I’ve spent, not knowing if you were alive or dead. Years, imagining your throat cut in an alley somewhere. And now here you are, strolling up to my front door as if this is a social call!”
Tears glimmer in her eyes. He’d not realised she cared about him that much. Guiltily, he says, “I’m sorry. Really. I – I should have found a way to send word. But I had to separate myself from who I’d been. Let Morani die so I could survive. It was the only way I could do what you told me.”
“And what was that?”
He meets her gaze. “Pick myself up, and keep going.”
“Apparently you’ve kept going all the way back to where you started from!”
“Yes, well …” He gestures over his shoulder. “I owed you a horse.”
Face working, she glares at Tola. She seems to be lost for words.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I can go, if – ”
“Too late for that,” Donalle snaps, turning her glare on him. Yet when she speaks again, her voice is softer. “What are you doing here, lad? They’ll put you to death if you’re caught, you know that.”
“Long story,” Fabithe says. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“I don’t know. Are you expecting me to feed you?”
“I’d not dream of it.”
“Good. I remember how much you eat.” With a scowl, she turns on her heel, indicating with a jerk of the head that he should follow. “Come on, then. Hurry up if you’re coming.”
Her cottage is just as he remembers it, inside. The door opens straight into the living space, with its fireplace and larder and the same battered table and mismatched chairs. A screen portions off part of the room into a sleeping space. Beyond that are two further doors, one leading to the outhouse and the other to the separate small room where Donalle blends her medicines and treats her patients.
At her gesture, Fabithe sits down on one of the chairs, which creaks alarmingly under his weight. Donalle bustles around the room in a way that precludes conversation, taking cups from a shelf and adding herbs, fetching the kettle from the fire. Finally, she comes to the table with two steaming cups of kalefar and draws up the second chair, regarding him intently.
“Well? I don’t suppose seeing me was important enough for you to risk your life, so why are you here?”
“I need your help,” he admits.
“And the world remains the same as it ever was … what is it this time?”
“I need to get into Kingstower without being seen.”
Her expression doesn’t change, but he detects a shade more wariness in her voice as she says, “If it’s Rys you’re after – ”
“Not in the sense you mean. I’m here to warn him.”
“Warn him?”
“It seems our old friend the northern ambassador wasn’t content with ruining my life,” Fabithe says, as lightly as possible. “Now he’s sending assassins after Rys.”
“I heard there was some kerfuffle at the coronation,” Donalle agrees. “But why not send a letter? Why come back here yourself?”
“Because it’s my responsibility. My fault. I did something that led to Ifor finding out I am still alive. I do not regret it – I cannot regret it – but …” Once again, he hears echoes of Morani in his voice, awoken by the surge of emotion; sternly, he suppresses both accent and sentiment. “The assassins are his retaliation. And that means it’s my problem to fix.”
She looks at him for a long while, but all she says is, “You’re older.”
“I could hardly help that.”
“Maybe not. It comes of learning what matters.”
What matters. It’s a strange echo of Oriana, here in the little room where he first became Fabithe. Dropping his gaze, he mutters, “What d’you mean?”
“When you left the Westlands, you were brittle. Like badly tempered steel. I thought even if you survived, you’d most likely snap. But now … seems you care about something more than revenge.”
I still want to kill Ifor more than anything else. The response is automatic, yet he recognises it as a lie even as he goes to say it. Sure, it’s not as if he’d give up the chance to slit the bastard’s throat, if it were offered to him. Yet somewhere along the line, almost without him noticing, other things became more important.
“And that makes me older?” he says aloud.
“It means you’ve learned something more fundamental about the world than anything you were taught in Kingstower.” She shakes her head. “A royal upbringing doesn’t fit you for real life, lad. Many nights I’ve lain awake wondering if I only saved you for a worse death in a foreign land. Yet here you are.”
She’s right about his upbringing. He owes a great deal to the Captain of the King’s Guard, who taught him a resilience beyond what would be typically expected of a Westlands prince. Fabithe trained with the Guard for several years, learning not just how to fight but how to survive. They ran barefoot around the grounds of Kingstower, toughening their soles – because if you’re captured, the captain said, they’ll take your boots. And you need to be ready to escape despite that. They spent a week thrown into the wilderness without any supplies, not even a coat. You’re welcome to return to the tower before the week is up, but you’ll be out if you do. They fought with one hand or foot tied back to mimic the loss of a limb, set snares and wove nets, learned to make a fire in a rainstorm. Fabithe never found out what enemy it was that the captain clearly expected to assault Kingstower at any moment, but if he’d not undergone that intensive training, he doubts he would have lived through his first year of exile. He wishes he could tell the man that without risking execution. The truth is, he owes a lot of people his life. Still, at least he has the chance to put things right with Donalle.
“Here I am,” he agrees with her. “I’d not be, if not for you. And as I recall, I never thanked you for it. So thank you, Donalle. For everything you did for me.”
“Your manners have improved, I’ll give you that,” she says brusquely, though her eyes are wet again. “But you’ve still not told me what you want. I’ve no way to smuggle you into Kingstower.”
“No. It’s advice I’m after. Was the old ice house ever closed up?”
She frowns. “Not the external entrance, far as I know. But the door to the cellar will be locked. You’ll not get through that way.”
“And the hatch?”
“Same as ever, I daresay. You’re not telling me you plan to squeeze through that?”
“I’ve done it before.”
Amusement brightens her face. “No doubt, lad. But you’re a touch broader across the shoulders than you used to be.”
“Let me worry about that. They don’t set a guard in the cellar?”
“Not that I’m aware. Guards at the gate, and patrolling the walls, but I don’t suppose they ever thought of the cellar. And if you go after dark, they’ll not see you coming from the walls either.” She studies him. “There’s a way to go once you’re in, though, without being caught.”
He nods. “Shame I no longer have my sword. It would have provided good camouflage. Man with a sword like that in Kingstower, anyone who sees him will assume King’s Guard and not look any closer.”
“What, you sold it? After all the effort I went to, getting it back for you?”
He remembers. It had been the second or third day after he failed to die; she’d brought it to him, telling him they’d planned to bury it with him. She’d thought he’d want it – that it would comfort him. She wasn’t to know it would only become a reminder of his shame, a symbol he’d lug around from place to place without ever letting himself make use of it, till he tried and failed to gain his revenge. He might as well have left it behind in the Westlands, for all the good it did him. And yet, it was priceless in the end, so who’s to say that Donalle was wrong?
“It was my sword or my life,” he says. “Someone thought my life was worth more.”
“And was she right?”
“Yes …” Belatedly he registers the pronoun. He lifts his head, eyeing her suspiciously. “I never said she.”
“It was a fair assumption,” Donalle says. “Given all that fuss with Nelle before you left.” Before he can reply – which is lucky, because he doesn’t know quite how to do it – she adds, “Did you know she married Rys, in the end?”
“No, I – no.” How could he? He might have made it his business to know as much as possible about Ifor, after he was sent into exile, but he also made it his business to know as little as possible about the home he was leaving behind.
Nelle, though … when he was fourteen, he’d believed himself in love with Nelle. Enough in love to defy their parents and propose marriage to her. Enough in love to plan an elopement. When he’d first been accused of plotting against the throne, he’d thought that was what Petros was talking about. That was how naive he’d been.
His love for her died along with Morani himself. Throughout the long night before the duel, he’d hoped that somehow she might save him. That she was working to prove his innocence, that she’d arrive with his father and a pardon and free him. But she didn’t even visit; no, only Ifor did that. And in the morning, as they dragged him bruised and broken to face Rys on the combat ground, she passed by on the other side of the corridor and didn’t so much as look him in the eyes.
He barely thought of her, once he became Fabithe. His entire life was focused on revenge. But now, he examines his feelings about the fact that his first love ended up marrying the brother who tried to kill him, and is relieved to find that he feels very little at all.
“I wish them joy of each other,” he says.
Donalle snorts. “Then you may be disappointed. But they do have a son. Charnu.”
Your nephew, is the implication, but she doesn’t say it. She understands, as perhaps no one else does, how fiercely he rejects any ties to the family who adopted him, accused him and cast him out. The fact that he apparently still loves them, despite all efforts to the contrary, doesn’t mean he wants to be classed as one of them.
Taking his lack of answer as answer enough, Donalle turns the conversation to less painful subjects. She tells him what’s happened in both Kingstower and Kingsleigh since he left: a gently malicious recitation of the triumphs and woes of people he once knew, from the Captain of the King’s Guard to the farmer from whom eight-year-old Morani once stole three apples and was soundly thrashed as a result. Hearing about them is no more painful than hearing about the characters from a storybook. And while she talks, she feeds him after all, bringing out vast quantities of meat and bread and cheese and fruit – though each accompanied by a glare that forbids him from mentioning it.
Once she’s run out of both food and anecdotes, she rolls her eyes at him. “Your appetite’s not changed.”
“Then please, let me give you some coin – ”
“I don’t want your money!”
“Donalle, you nursed me back to health when I should have died. I ate your food and drank your medicine. I took your only horse. And I don’t suppose I ever thought to give you anything in return, despite the fact that I’d grown up believing myself a king’s son.”
She says nothing, but her silence attests to the truth of it. Fabithe spreads his hands. “See? I was an arrogant little shit back then. But I’ve some coin now, though it’s Castellian, and I’d like to make things right with you, if I can.”
Wordlessly, she takes the string of silvers he’s holding out to her. Her face quivers. But all she says is, “Dusk’s falling. You’ll want to be getting on.”
A glance out of the window shows him that she’s right. He gets to his feet, pushing his chair under the table, suddenly nervous. It’s felt like healing, of a kind, being here with Donalle: a way to make peace with the past. But the real challenge is still ahead.
“Right, then,” he says.
“You can leave anything you don’t need with me. Have Rys send for it once you’re in the tower.”
Nodding his thanks, he stows his belongings neatly to one side of the room, out of the way – all except the lantern and the coil of rope. He checks to make sure all his knives are in place, then tugs his hat firmly back into place on his head and pulls his gloves on. The rope goes over one shoulder. “Well. Best be off.”
“Mm.” Once again, there are tears in Donalle’s eyes. “Just don’t get yourself killed, all right? It was enough work, putting you back together the first time.”
“I’ll try.” He surprises both of them by giving her a quick hug. Then, as the Kingstower bell tolls seven times for Eventide, he leaves the cottage and heads in the direction of the castle.
His route doesn’t take him directly up the hill, towards the gate and the guards, but rather on an oblique path that spirals round to the far side of the boundary wall, where the old ice house is located. It’s hard to see unless you know where to look; from the outside, it’s visible only as a low mound of earth. Yet beneath that lies an underground chamber that was once used to store blocks of ice shipped all the way from the north – at least, that’s what they used to say when Fabithe was growing up, though by then it was being used to hang salted meat, ready for winter.
He pushes through the bramble bushes at the top of the mound and crouches, searching. The whole area is more overgrown than it used to be, but finally he locates what he’s looking for: a round metal grille set into the ground. As he’d hoped, it’s not been replaced since he last came this way. Although the lock holding the grille in place is intact, the hinges on the opposite side have rusted away completely. He’s able to swing the whole thing out of place, to reveal the dark hole beneath.
This was once the external entrance to the ice house, a vertical shaft down which the blocks of ice could be lowered without carrying them through the relative warmth of the castle. And Donalle was right: it’s not been blocked up. No reason for it to be, really. It’s still needed to ventilate the room below, and it’s not the easiest of entrances. An opportunistic thief who noticed the rusty hinges and succeeded in opening the grille would be confronted by what is essentially a tall, smooth-walled chimney – an impossible climb, for anyone unprepared for it.
I dare you.
Morani, you do not have to do what Rion says.
Shut up, Rys. This is why we brought a rope. Go on, Morani.
Shrugging off the voices of the past, Fabithe knots his rope around the thick stem of the nearest bush – no way he’s going to trust the rusty grille – and lowers himself into the shaft. Slowly and carefully, he braces his back against one side and his feet against the other, and walks himself down. When he reaches the bottom, he imagines he hears the voices again, echoing faintly from above.
Rion, stop! What are you doing?
Calm down, Rys. It is only a joke. We will let him out later.
And then the thud of the rope, tumbling down the shaft after him, and the sound of laughter.
He was furious, when it happened: with Rion, and his fondness for pranks that bordered on malice; with Rys, and his ineffectual sense of fairness that never quite overcame his reluctance to act. Driven by that fury, he’d circled the ice house, searching for another way out. And that’s how he found the hatch.
Leaving the rope dangling – he doesn’t want to be trapped for real, if his planned route into the castle is closed to him – Fabithe moves away from the fitful circle of light cast down the shaft by the moons. By memory and touch more than sight, he locates the door that separates the ice house from the Kingstower cellar, and tries the handle. Locked, as expected, but worth a try.
He keeps feeling along the wall till he comes to the hatch in the corner. Once it would have been opened to allow blocks of ice to be pushed from one room into the other, but now it’s left unused. The hatch is old and rickety, secured from the other side by a simple catch. It’s straightforward enough to slip a knife blade between hatch and frame and wiggle it till he feels the catch lift. Then, cautiously, he pushes the hatch open. The cellar on the other side is just as dark, and there is no sound.
This is how he escaped Rion’s trap, when he was younger: wriggling through the hatch to emerge grime-smudged and scratched in Kingstower itself. Back then, he’d run light-footed up through the kitchens, across the courtyard and back out through the gate, to creep up on Rys and Rion still crouched by the hole in the ground that they’d dropped him into.
Morani? Are you hurt? Please, say something!
He is trying to pay us back for tricking him. Leave him down there awhile and he will start to talk.
And what if he is bleeding to death down there, Rion? We need to fetch another rope and go after him.
They’d not seen him coming. He walked right up behind them and said, quite casually, What are you looking at? The shock on their faces was worth any amount of scrapes and dirt.
Now, Fabithe assesses the dimensions of the opening with both hands and reflects ruefully that Donalle was right: the years have wrought their changes on him. Getting through the hatch took some manoeuvring when he was thirteen. Try it now, and he’s in danger of getting stuck completely. But since he’s unlikely to find another way into the castle without being seen, he’ll have to make the best of it. And perhaps, given that the frame is as old as the hatch itself …
He slides the blade of the knife between wood and stone, then works the handle back and forth, using it as a lever. As he’d hoped, the wood is quite soft. It doesn’t take long before, with a damp splintering sound, it starts to come away from the wall. Soon he has the entire frame out, leaving a wider aperture. Though the stone still scrapes his shoulders and back, leaving long stinging grazes that he’s sure to feel in the morning, the additional space is just enough to allow him to squeeze through – and now he’s in Kingstower itself.
As Donalle said, even now there’s a way to go before he gets to the king’s chambers. Fabithe reviews the route as he creeps through the darkness of the cellar: through the kitchens, out into the small yard where the well is, up a flight of steps onto the east wall. Along that, avoiding the lookout, then through the small door into the guardroom and down through the guards’ mess hall to the practice grounds, then the stables. That in turn would lead him to the formal gardens, then the royal living quarters and finally the room he’s after. All of that might have been more or less doable, if he still had his sword and could pass himself off as a member of the King’s Guard. As it is, he’ll have to use a less populated route.
By now, he’s reached the staircase up to the kitchens. He hesitates at the top, listening at the door, but again there’s no sound. So he turns the handle, wincing at the slight squeak, and opens the door a fraction. A glimmer of light comes from the low-banked fire in the hearth, enough to illuminate the man sleeping on a bench along one wall. It’s likely the kitchen-master; he never left the kitchens in Fabithe’s day, and it seems that’s not changed. As Fabithe steps softly through the room, the kitchen dog lifts its head and gives a low whine, tail thumping. The man’s breathing changes, and Fabithe freezes.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispers, unsure whether he’s addressing the dog or the man. With a sigh, the dog lowers its head back down; the man sleeps on; and Fabithe hurries out of the room.
Instead of turning towards the pantry and the cold-room and the well beyond, he heads the other way, taking the same path he took when he was thirteen – the one that leads straight to the main courtyard. This would be far too dangerous in the daytime, with people coming and going, and the guards at the open gate; at night, though, it’s filled only with shadows. There will still be guards patrolling above the gate, but they’ll be looking out, not in. And on the other side of the courtyard lies the entrance to the Holy Chamber, a dark archway without a door. The One is always open to our prayers.
Fabithe hesitates at the edge of the open space. There might not seem to be anyone around, but a lot of windows overlook this place. He looks up. The thin crescent of Alosami is hidden behind a thick veil, but Ikotha is free and nearly full. He watches a particular cloud as it drifts across the sky. A few more heartbeats … a few more …
The dappled blue of the night darkens. He launches himself at a run across the courtyard, straight to the waiting mouth of the Holy Chamber.
Inside, his pace slows. He walks along the short passageway that leads to the chamber itself, his fingertips brushing the walls. He doesn’t want to linger here. The air is thick with memories. But somehow, he can’t help himself.
The walls fall away from his hands, opening out into echoing space. He takes a deep breath, and the scent of the place hits him like a physical blow. If he thought the marshfoil was bad, this is a thousand times worse. As he steals down the central aisle, the past floods his mind as if he’s drowning in it.
Did you never wonder why you look nothing like your brothers?
Your mother was a whore, and who your father was is anyone’s guess.
They found you lying in the chapel. Abandoned like so much rubbish.
No wonder you were forbidden to marry Nelle. If her father found out the truth …
Petros watches you, always. Surely you have noticed. He fears what he brought into his family in a single moment of weakness. You are his shame, Morani. His greatest mistake.
And then – Fabithe stops. Yes, it was here, in this exact spot. The scrape of weapons being drawn. The sting of the blade across his palm. He’s almost sure that Ifor marked him first, but it didn’t matter. His was the knife that cut deeply enough to spill blood on the stone. His was the sacrilege. And Ifor made him pay for it, many times over: with the accusation of treason, complete with evidence. With the trial. With the night before. Worst of all, with the discovery that every bitter thing he’d been told that day was true.
Rubbing the tears roughly from his face with the back of one hand, he keeps moving. The door he’s looking for is behind the altar, covered by a large embroidered panel showing a scene from the Kyantil. It’s too dark to make out the details, but he remembers it well. In the centre, five impossibly beautiful, ethereal figures, arms upraised, radiant with light, dressed only in white robes. Around the edges, soldiers with helmets shaped like snarling wolves, brandishing an assortment of fearsome weaponry, and black-clad mages with twisted faces and fire crackling from their fingers, all falling back in horror and awe. The Five defeat the powers of evil. When he was a child, Fabithe always used to wonder how they did it, armed with nothing but their own self-righteousness. It seemed such an unsatisfying way of defeating an enemy, just showing up and quelling them with the force of your goodness. He would have preferred a bit of gore, a few severed limbs here and there.
These days, of course, he’d love victory to be that simple.
He lifts the embroidered panel aside and feels for the hidden catch. The door is built to look like part of the wall; it will open only if he presses the right bit of moulding. In a way it’s easier in the dark, since he can’t see to get confused. He works his way to the right part by touch alone, and presses down hard. Nothing happens straight away. He tells himself very sternly not to panic. Then, with a grating noise, part of the wall swings away from his hand.
Fabithe lights his lantern, then steps through the door and shuts it behind him. He’s standing in a narrow, musty passage with a layer of undisturbed dust on the floor, which suggests that no one has been down here for some time. This network of secret ways, once used by the royal family and their spies, was long abandoned even when he and his brothers used to explore it as children. Admittedly, if he does hear anyone coming, he’ll be stuck: the passages are straight and empty, without anywhere to hide unless he happens to be in the right place to conceal himself in one of the spy holes or turn down a branch that leads to a different part of the building. Still, judging by the state of the place, it’s unlikely.
At a brisk walk, it doesn’t take him long to reach his destination. The sliding panel might look like part of the wall, but he spent enough time sneaking in and out of all the rooms linked to these tunnels that he recognises it with ease. It’s unguarded, which makes his current task easier but also provides additional fuel for the rant about insufficient security that he’s been preparing throughout this incursion. Surely Rys has more sense than to think a single failed assassination attempt is an end in itself, rather than a mere pause? There should be guards here. There should be guards everywhere. Still, his negligence is Fabithe’s gain …
I’m here. I’ve done it.
He extinguishes his lantern, then slides the panel open and slips through, crouching down to close it behind him. As he does so, a light flares in the darkness of the room beyond.
“Stand up.” The voice is weary, with a deep undercurrent of anger. “Turn around slowly. Do not reach for your weapons or I swear my blade will find your heart.”
Fabithe obeys, keeping his hands loose and away from the knives at his belt, showing that he means no harm. His heart is beating so hard that he’s sure it must be audible, but he manages a mocking smile as he confronts the man who used to be his brother.
“What are you going to do, Rys? Kill me again?”
Everything swirling around me, I blink until I can focus on the face of the person opposite. Light brown skin and silver-blonde hair. A wooden table littered with papers between us, steps rising around a tree trunk behind her. No. That’s not right. She wasn’t – I’m not –
“Luthan,” I say carefully. “Who am I?”
“Alyssia.”
Right … we were talking about the triangle of glass, the key to my movement between the worlds. She’d just given it back to me, asked me a question, though for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.
“How long was I gone?”
“A little longer than usual. Perhaps a hundred heartbeats.”
And yet for me it was a whole afternoon and evening. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed inside a vision for that long before. Luthan herself once described my gift as one of seeing the now, but surely this stretches the definition of now far beyond its natural breaking point.
She also told me that I see the inevitable: the things that can’t be changed … or that I can’t change. For the first time it occurs to me to question whether there’s a difference between those two definitions. Because I find it hard to believe that so much time could pass without any possibility of the events unfolding in a different way – but if there’s an element of subjectivity to this gift, then maybe that explains it. Either way, it does imply that the point at which the vision ended is the point at which far greater variation becomes possible again. In which case, Rys has the potential to answer Fabithe’s question in a number of different ways, not all of them favourable.
“Remind me again what you asked me?” I say to Luthan.
“I was hoping you could tell me more about the other world. You said distances are shorter there than they are here. I thought maybe you could draw me a map.”
“What for?”
“I’m trying to make a key of my own, using yours as a model.”
Whatever I expected her to say, it wasn’t that. Faintly, I ask, “Why on earth would you want to do that?”
“I don’t have a stave any more, Alyssia. I need all the tools I can get. Remember how Ifor and his army left us in the Duskmire, how he and Tarrith opened up a portal so they could leave? Your key is like an individual version of that. It gives you a way to escape.”
“Until someone else gets hold of it and decides to lock me away.”
“I know,” she says. “But I think it’s worth the risk.”
“Even if you succeed in making one, how do you know it’ll take you to the same place that mine takes me?”
“I don’t know for sure. I just want to be prepared.”
I look at Luthan: her long silver hair and her freckled fawn skin and her mismatched eyes. She’s striking, but not so much so that she’d be out of place in my world. Her coat, shirt and trousers look more old-fashioned than obviously alien; with her embroidered cuffs, the leather thong tying back her hair and the knife at her belt, she’d probably be taken for a cosplayer. She doesn’t even have a birthstone to give her away – though if she did, I assume it would vanish in the other world like mine does. All in all, I don’t know why the idea of her making the crossing seems so unutterably impossible. I did it, after all, and no one came close to discerning my true origin.
“All right,” I say. “I’ll draw as much as I can remember.”
As it turns out, it isn’t easy to make a detailed map from memory, even of a place you’ve lived in for years. Certain areas are straightforward: Woodleigh, school, the town centre, Dr Whyte’s office. Bus routes to locations further out, like the road where I was originally found. But I’m pretty sure even those bits aren’t completely accurate, and of the rest, who knows? Whole chunks of the town are no more than question marks. Still, Luthan seems happy enough, particularly when I add the handful of correspondences that I’m aware of between Clifton Ree and Endarion.
Once I’ve finished, I leave her in the house and go in search of Oriana. When we arrived back at the lake, yesterday, I expected Isidor to tell the Emerald Blades to remain on the mainland while we crossed to the island. Instead, once they’d seen their horses safely established in Isidor’s stable – which, now I come to think about it, is plenty big enough for ten more horses, as if he knew they were coming when he built it – he told them they were all welcome to stay on Othitali, then made multiple trips back and forth in the rowing boat to ferry them across. They made camp in a large clearing on the other side of the island from the house; today, straight after the noon meal, Oriana set off to visit them. As far as I knew, it was only meant to be a brief introduction, a chance for them to verify for themselves that she really is here and willing to prevent the war. Yet she hasn’t come back.
The reason for that becomes obvious as soon as I enter the camp. Oriana is kneeling on the ground beside one soldier, wrapping a bandage around his wrist. Another man is finishing off a cup of some herbal concoction, while a second brew simmers over the fire. The other Blades are watching her, some out of the corners of their eyes and the rest openly staring – much as they might react if a rare wild animal wandered in among them.
“The liniment I am making for your company now is based on a remedy from the Westlands that a friend gave me,” she’s telling the man whose wrist she’s bandaging. “I changed one or two of the ingredients to better suit the readily available plants of Castellany. The preparation is quite simple, once you – ” At that point, her gaze falls on me, and she looks faintly guilty. “Alyssia! Have I been gone too long?”
“No, no, you’re fine. I was just …” I can’t say that I wasn’t sure she was safe without offending the Blades, so I conclude vaguely, “Checking.”
“I am nearly finished. But these men were sent here without a medic among their number, and Kam sprained his wrist when his horse startled on the way over here. And if Sol’s sore throat spreads to the rest of the company, they will all be miserable.”
I rode with these Blades all the way back from the Oaken Keep to the lake, and I never thought to find out what their names were. Quietly, I sit down on a nearby tree stump and watch – not only Oriana, but the men around her. I want to figure out why they don’t make her nervous. They’re here under orders and on their best behaviour, but they’re still warriors. They outnumber her ten to one. She’d have every right to be as scared as she was by Fabithe, when they first met. Yet she’s tending to them, and talking to them, without any sign of fear. Perhaps it’s the healer in her coming to the fore … but now I think of it, she was equally unafraid of Oceantree and his men. I know she’s still deeply affected by what Ifor did to her, so why …?
“This has reached the right consistency,” she says, giving the copper pot over the fire a stir. “If one of you could – ”
Obediently, the nearest soldier lifts the pot off the fire for her. She leans forward to give it a sniff, then nods.
“Leave it to cool and then it will be ready. I will come back tomorrow to check on Kam and Sol, so if there is anything else you need, please tell me then.”
She smiles round at them all. One or two of them bow, but the rest seem more stunned than anything. Then she joins me, and the two of us leave the camp.
“I thought you only went to introduce yourself,” I say on the way back to Isidor’s house. “So why the healing?”
“You said those men have been sworn to the task of helping me get away, if we end the war but I cannot go home. That means there is a chance they will have to risk their lives for me.”
“There’s also a chance they’ll force you back to the Citadel, if we fail.”
Her chin lifts. “If we fail then it is my duty to go back. But they have no such duty to protect me from Ifor. That makes them my responsibility, Alyssia.”
In a sense, it isn’t so different from my reasoning, when I told them her story in an attempt to sway them to her side; yet in another and far more accurate sense, it’s a world apart. Where I think of the advantage we might gain from those who follow her, she thinks of what she owes them. I don’t know if I’m a worse person than her or she’s simply a better leader than me. Maybe both. But I’m reminded of when we first escaped from the Citadel: how even as utterly devastated as she was that night, she still found concern for the guards in the gatehouse who stood between us and our freedom. That makes them my responsibility. I suspect it’s all the answer I need to my earlier question.
“Have I told you that I love you?” I ask, smiling.
Oriana gives me a curious look, as if she isn’t sure what moved me to say it, but she returns the smile. “Maybe once or twice.”
By now it’s getting dark. In the Westlands, Fabithe is breaking into Kingstower, but I try not to think about that. I concentrate on helping to prepare food, on eating, on talking to Toralé about his practice with Isidor this afternoon at navigating the house and its environs. But later, once Oriana and I have retired to our separate sides of the top floor for the night, I feel a tug on my connection to Fabithe. I’ve finally caught up in real time with the end of the vision I saw earlier. That loose end whispers through my mind, promising more: a new unfolding of the inevitable from however Rys chooses to react to his brother’s resurrection. And although I’m already tired, having lived at least half this day twice over, I can’t resist the emotional current that drags me down and under.
“Morani …” It’s a near-soundless whisper. Rys backs away a step before catching himself. Though shock has turned his face into a frozen grey mask, it’s still unbearably familiar.
You are going to stay calm and in control, Fabithe tells himself. Don’t let him see that this means anything to you. Reveal no emotion at all. And do not slip into the wrong accent.
“Morani is dead,” he says. “You of all people should know that.”
“But I – you – how is this possible?” Rys reaches out a trembling hand to support himself against the nearest post of the canopied royal bed. “I killed you.”
“Obviously you didn’t try hard enough.”
“I killed you,” Rys insists. “I saw you die. They buried you.”
“I don’t know who they buried, but it wasn’t me.” Despite his prior resolve, Fabithe can’t help but let bitterness seep into his voice as he adds, “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Disappoint me?” Rys sags against the post as if he can no longer hold himself upright. One hand presses hard against his mouth, suppressing a laugh or a sob. “Holy One, Morani …”
“Fabithe.”
“… if I had known you were alive, I would have – ” He stops. The mask slips, for an instant; tears shine in his eyes. A deep silence falls between them, bursting with unspoken words.
Finally, Rys swallows – hard – and pushes himself back up to vertical. His voice is hoarse but steady. “Why are you here?”
He’s not changed. Still fearing the worst, still determined to face it. Fabithe feels a twinge of affection, but quashes it relentlessly. “Why do you think?”
Rys lifts his chin, meeting Fabithe’s gaze without flinching – and there is a change, after all, because he has to look up to do it. “Have you come to kill me?”
“Do you deserve it?”
“Yes, Morani.” It’s barely a breath. “Yes, I do.”
Stop needling your brother. In the renewed silence, Fabithe hears the words quite clearly; laughter curling through their mother’s voice, a gentle hand on his shoulder. It must have been ten years ago, at least; she’s been dead and gone that long. You know he takes everything far too seriously.
Not his mother. Not his brother. Yet all the same, he finds himself spreading his hands and stepping back, making himself unthreatening. “If I wanted you dead, Rys, you’d have been dead these five years.”
“Then why – ”
“Unlikely as it may sound, I came here to help you.”
“What?”
“The assassination attempt. There will be more of them. I’m here to make them stop.”
Rys frowns at him. “More? But how – ” He shakes his head, as if discarding the half-formed question, and replaces it with another. “Why would you do that for me?”
“Not for you,” Fabithe says. “For the Westlands.”
He expects more questions, then. Practical questions, like So who’s trying to kill me? or What’s your plan to stop them? or How did you find out? Yet instead, Rys keeps frowning as though he can’t make sense of what he’s seeing. And when he does speak, it’s to say under his breath, “All this time, you were alive out there.”
“Apparently so.”
“Then where have you been? What have you been doing?”
Let’s see. I use what I learned from our geography tutor to travel the world without ever having to visit the same place twice. I use what I learned from our strategy tutor to win money from rich people. And I use what I learned from our weaponry tutor to win every back-alley brawl I get into as a result. Fabithe shrugs. “I can’t see why that matters.”
“Because you are my brother.” Rys’s stare has turned hungry, as if he wants nothing more than to consume every detail of Fabithe’s life. Fighting down the burn of anger, Fabithe walks over to the window, wrapping detachment around himself like a shield. Stay calm.
“I learned to take care of myself,” he says, without looking back. “The rest is unimportant.”
“Then will you tell me how you survived in the first place?” This time it’s a request, rather than an interrogation. With some reluctance, Fabithe responds to it.
“After you tried to kill me, Petros summoned an old healer from the town. Donalle.” A small, suppressed sound from Rys’s direction makes him turn, eyebrows raised. “You know her?”
“I – she came to me, not so long ago. She told me the truth about … you. Your birth.”
“I hope it helped.” Stay calm. “To know you did not kill your own brother after all, only some nameless commoner.”
“You are still my brother.”
“No. I am not.” Yet the cursed accent is bleeding through. Roughly, Fabithe repeats, “I’m not.”
Rys’s face crumples as it didn’t for any of the other cuts that Fabithe has inflicted on him tonight. Yet then he nods once – as if acknowledging a hit on the duelling floor – and says courteously, “Please, go on, if you are willing.”
“I was to be buried in a traitor’s grave. Rather than the royal physician sully himself with the deed, Donalle was to prepare my body for burial.” Fabithe grimaces. “But when she came to it, she found I was still alive.”
He doesn’t need to explain what happened next; Rys knows the law as well as he does. Trial by combat is meant to be to the death, but losers have survived before. As with everything else about the trial, that is held to be the One’s judgement – and thus such survivors aren’t summarily executed. Instead they are exiled, knowing that if they ever return to their homeland then their lives will be forfeit. And with the exile comes …
“She branded you?” Rys whispers. The shade of horror in his eyes – as if he’s never heard of anything so barbaric – allows Fabithe to take a degree of malicious satisfaction in contradicting him.
“No. That was Petros himself, before he cast me out.”
“Father did it?”
“Yes. Donalle only helped me heal, as best she could in the time allowed.” Five days, from branding to imposition of the death sentence. Long enough to make farewells and reach the border. Not long enough for much else. It had helped that he’d had no one he could safely say goodbye to. “She retrieved my sword for me. She gave me medicine and supplies. And somehow, I survived.”
“For all that time,” Rys breathes. “And Father knew. He knew all along that you were alive, and he let me think – ”
“Of course.” Stay calm. “My continued existence was an embarrassment to him. He thought I deserved to die, remember?”
“I am not sure he did,” Rys says softly. “Not by the end.” He looks down, then back up again, as if he’s not sure the next question will be welcome – yet in the end, because he’s Rys, he asks it anyway. “You never thought to contact me before now?”
“I was under the impression that you didn’t like me very much,” Fabithe says. “Given that you tried to kill me the last time we met.”
Rys shakes his head. “If I had known you lived, I would have come looking for you. I would have found a way to give you back your life.”
“Would you? Though you believed me a traitor?”
“It has been years since I believed that.”
“So you admit you made a mistake.”
“Of course!” Rys attempts a smile. “I would never have done this to you if I had known … It was a mistake. Only a mistake.”
“That mistake cost me everything,” Fabithe says. Stay calm. Stay – “The moment you inflicted the fatal blow, it was already too late to realise you had got it wrong.” He laughs, though it almost hurts to do it. “You thought I was your brother. You had no reason to believe ill of me. And yet you were willing to throw my life away for a mistake.”
Rys bows his head. “I know. I know. Do you think I have not lived every day with the guilt of it?”
“Guilt?” Now Fabithe can no longer control his anger, and nor does he want to. It burns through the door behind which he’s always struggled to keep it contained, a fire hot enough to consume everything in its path – and though it hurts, there’s also freedom in it. “What do I care for your guilt? You let him destroy me, Rys! You believed a lie over your own brother!”
He takes a couple of steps forward, and Rys flinches back as if he fears a blow. Somehow that only makes Fabithe angrier.
“Petros, I have learned to understand. He knew what I was; he must always have doubted me. But you …” He doesn’t want to say the next words, but they come out anyway, a boy’s wounded cry. “I thought you loved me.”
“I did,” Rys whispers. “I do. I am sorry, Morani. I know it means nothing to you, but I really am. I hardly knew what I was doing, that day on the combat ground. I have played it in my mind a thousand times over since, wishing I could change things.” He gives a bitter little laugh. “The words are meaningless. How do you ask a man’s forgiveness for murdering him? I would take it back if I could. But you were a better person than me, that day, and I must live with it forever.”
Fabithe’s fists clench. He could punch Rys. Pummel him till he stops talking. For years he dreamed of revenge on Ifor, yet that revenge was denied him; Rys is the next best thing. And it would be easy, Fabithe knows that. If he could beat Rys when he was fourteen, how much more easily could he beat him now? A few broken bones would be a mere fraction of what he himself suffered, the days after the duel. The night before it. A wronged man has the right to exact his payment in blood …
But that’s not what he came for.
“Forget it,” he forces out through gritted teeth. “Just forget it. It is not – ” For fuck’s sake. “It’s not important. Any of it. It’s ancient history.”
“Please, Morani. If there is anything I can do to help make things right …”
“You can start by using my name,” Fabithe says. “Nothing’s changed. Morani still died on the end of your blade. And the sooner you realise that, the better.”