When I wake, the day after Fabithe’s arrival in Kingstower, I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling without the slightest desire to get up. I feel mentally drained, even though the me that lives in my own body didn’t do that much yesterday. Not surprising, I suppose. By spending such long intervals in someone else’s head, only to return to my own timeline a couple of minutes after I left it, I must almost have doubled the length of my day. It isn’t something that’s occurred to me before, but it’s worth thinking about – because it must be possible to spend so long out of my body that I’d be exhausted upon my return, to the point of being unable to use my gift for a while afterwards. And if I don’t know what those limits are, I might exceed them at exactly the wrong time.
I need to get better at this. I’ve known that for a while now. I just don’t know how to go about it. When my gift changed, once all five of us had been marked – once I started being able to choose who I connected to – I convinced myself that I was gaining more control. Yet that change wasn’t my doing; it simply happened. I’m still pulled in when someone’s emotions become too strong. I have no way to reject the connection, or to escape again except when I experience something so extreme that it gives me the jolt I need to snap out of it. Even if I could block out the people in my head, I’m not sure how I’d achieve that without potentially missing something important. Ifor knows more about how to control my gift than me, and it isn’t even his.
I hold my breath, listening for any sign that Oriana is stirring on the other side of the carved wooden screen that separates us. Every evening since Fabithe left, she’s washed the strip of fabric that he wrapped around the lianthis on her wrist and hung it by the fire to dry; every morning, she’s tied it back into place. Isidor offered to find some other pieces of fabric, but she very politely rejected the offer. I haven’t said a word about it, just as I haven’t said a word about the shirt that Fabithe left behind, which has now become her nightgown. In turn, she has steadfastly not asked me anything about his return to the Westlands. I know she’s trying to respect his privacy, and I know I ought to do the same – inasmuch as that’s possible for me. But I also know that she’s desperate for news. Surely it would be all right for me to tell her something, if only to reassure her that he’s alive and well …
As if yesterday has laid down certain pathways in my mind, I feel a familiar tug on the silver thread that connects me to him. He isn’t afraid or in pain, just tense and angsty. All right. That’s a subdued enough emotion that I might have a shot at resisting it. If I want to get better at controlling my farsight, there’s no time like the present. Maybe if I use the grounding exercises that Theo gave me?
Five things I can see: ceiling, wooden screen, daylight. All this formal carved furniture that hasn’t changed since I was a child and – wait. No. An old storage chest, yesterday’s clothes flung across it.
Four things I can touch: the blanket covering me. The tickle of my hair against my cheek … the polished wooden table, silver cutlery … No. Focus.
Three things I can hear: Oriana’s soft breathing. The rain beating on the shutters. Yes, definitely the rain. And Rys not talking …
Fabithe hasn’t slept, though with rather more reason than usual. The king’s chambers consist of a series of three rooms: the bedroom itself, a dressing room with a separate smaller bedroom for the valet, and a receiving room for intimate dining or conversation on those occasions when a more formal setting is not required. Upon questioning Rys, Fabithe discovered that not only was there no guard on the secret panel, there was no guard on the main door to these chambers either. Nor were any of the doors locked.
My valet would wake up if anyone entered, Rys said, apparently believing it sufficient explanation for the complete lack of security.
And yet he appears to have slept through my arrival. Do his talents run to the art of battle as well as the art of dressing the wealthy?
No … but there are plenty of guards patrolling Kingstower. How would an assassin get past them?
If I were an assassin, you’d already be dead, Fabithe reminded him.
Yes, but not everyone is you, Morani.
Giving up on the conversation at that point, Fabithe sent him to dismiss his valet for the night with whatever explanation seemed best to him. They locked the outer door and barred the entrance to the secret tunnels by the simple expedient of pulling a dresser across it. Then Rys went to bed, while Fabithe paced the receiving room and brooded darkly on the sheer extravagance of a suite of rooms larger than a normal person’s house – one containing solely wardrobes and another no fewer than three tables with different purposes – being dedicated to a single man. If it was an attempt to avoid replaying their reunion a thousand times in his head, it was only partially successful.
Now the two of them are eating breakfast at the dining table in the receiving room. The food is better than anything Fabithe has eaten since he was last in Kingstower. But that only goes some way towards making up for the atmosphere: a thick, uneasy tension in which he and Rys keep darting glances at each other like duellists waiting for the other to attack first.
“So,” he says finally, not sure if he’s won or lost by being the one to break the silence. He concentrates very hard on getting his accent right; he might have let it slip under stress, last night, but it’ll not happen again. “Aren’t we going to talk about why I’m here?” Then, when Rys looks blank, he prompts, “The people trying to kill you?”
“Oh. Right.” Rys gives him a sheepish smile. “You said there would be more attempts on my life. That you could make them stop.”
Make them stop may have been rather an extravagant promise, Fabithe reflects now. When he said it, he was trying – unsuccessfully – to distract Rys from the shock of his own continued existence. But knowing that Ifor was behind the assassination attempt, and therefore that there will inevitably be a second and a third and a thousandth till one of them is successful, is not the same as knowing how to put an end to that relentless cycle.
“I can keep you alive, at least,” he says.
“What do you suggest?”
“More guards, for a start. Protecting you within Kingstower as well as without. The last assassin was your priestess; you can’t assume it’s impossible for them to infiltrate the walls. That means increasing security not only on your own chambers but anywhere else you habitually go. I’d also suggest a food taster, more regular patrols, a search on anyone entering the tower – oh, and you might want to send someone down to the cellar to fix the hatch to the ice house.”
Rys nods, looking somewhat bewildered.
“I’ll stay with you at all times,” Fabithe goes on. “Personal bodyguard. Perhaps in shifts, if you’ve one or two members of the King’s Guard you’re certain you can trust – ”
“There are plenty. It is you I am worried about.”
“I assure you, I’m not going to stab you in your sleep.”
“You know that is not what I meant. If you leave these rooms, you will be recognised. By Rion, by Nelle, by one of the many household members who remain from your day. I have already sent orders for any guards who attend my chambers to be drawn from those who joined after you left, but venture beyond them and someone will know you. And when that happens, your life will be forfeit.”
“Ah, yes,” Fabithe drawls. “Nelle. When were you going to tell me that you married my childhood sweetheart? Seems like the kind of thing that’s worth mentioning when you reunite with your long-lost brother.”
Rys looks shamefaced. “I would have done. I just – ”
“Didn’t want to admit to stealing my girl as well as trying to murder me?”
“If it is any consolation, Morani, she does not like me very much.” Pushing his half-eaten breakfast around his plate, Rys stares at it and sighs. “She only married me because you were gone, and she had grown used to the idea of becoming royalty. All the same, I am sorry if you feel I betrayed your memory.”
It’s a level of honesty that Fabithe didn’t expect, and it confirms what he heard from Donalle. Annoyingly, he finds himself sympathising. He squashes the impulse, but is nevertheless compelled to respond with equal frankness.
“Truth is, I really don’t care. I only brought it up to make you feel bad.”
Rys lifts his head, a reluctant smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I suppose that is fair, given everything.”
“Glad you approve.”
“But I suspect you also sought to distract me from what I was saying: you cannot guard me day and night. You cannot leave these rooms without putting your own life at risk.”
Fabithe shrugs. “I accepted that risk when I came here.”
“Well, I am not willing to do the same. I will not have you die for me again.”
“How am I supposed to make sure the assassins fail if I don’t guard you?”
Rys frowns. “You have not told me how you knew about the first attempt. How can you be sure there will be another? I found nothing to suggest that Antobi was not acting alone.”
“Because Northfell is meddling in Westlands affairs again. The assassins won’t stop till you’re dead; Antobi was only the opening gambit. And it’s happening because of me. Because I drew Ifor Darklight’s attention and made him angry, and this is the result. He is punishing me by threatening you, and – ”
Belatedly Fabithe realises that he’s shown far more of his hand than he intended. He’s just admitted, tacitly, that he cares enough about Rys that a threat to his life is an effective punishment. And judging by his soft smile, Rys has joined the dots. Scowling, Fabithe concludes, “The point is, he’s using the Westlands as a distraction. A way of pulling me away from what I was doing. And I can’t have that on my conscience.”
“Nor can I have your death on mine,” Rys says. “Not again. Guard me at night, if you want to, but I will set other guards during the day.”
“You want me to sit here in your chambers doing nothing? I might as well not be here at all.”
“If you are guarding me at night, you will need to sleep during the day.”
Fabithe pulls a face. “That’s not necessarily true …”
A knock at the door interrupts the argument. When Rys calls out his permission, the guard who was sent to fetch Fabithe’s possessions – as promised, not someone Fabithe recognises – enters the room. Solemnly, he places the battered old knapsack on the floor. Rys watches with an air of mild bemusement, as though he was expecting something altogether different.
“Surely that is not everything?” he asks, once the guard has departed again.
“Oh, but it is,” Fabithe says. “I left my other twenty suitcases and my extensive retinue of servants in my summer castle.”
Rys looks reproachful. “Stop twisting my words, Morani. Where is your sword?”
Fabithe doesn’t feel like getting into that question again. “It broke.”
“Broke? What on earth did you do to it?”
“You know, I don’t remember you being nearly this nosy.”
“Fine. You do not have to tell me. But if you need another sword, I will have one brought for you.”
The idea hadn’t even occurred to him. For years, he’s been in the habit of thinking of his sword as irreplaceable – which of course it was, when there was no prospect of ever returning to the Westlands. But here in Kingstower, every member of the King’s Guard has a sword just like it. There’ll be half a dozen spares in the armoury.
His first impulse is to reject the offer. Yet there’s no denying that a new sword would be useful – both now, to protect Rys, and in the future. And since he couldn’t afford to buy one if he won every card game he played for an entire year and lived on nothing but sunlight, it would be foolish to let the opportunity pass. Bowing his head to stare at his plate, he mutters, “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”
When he looks up again, Rys is watching him in silence. The expression on his face is dangerously heartfelt. If he apologises again, Fabithe thinks savagely, I’ll save the assassins the bother, and stab him with my steak knife. But when Rys does speak, it goes in a completely different direction.
“Would you … the ondan board is here somewhere. I thought perhaps a game …”
Fabithe hesitates. He’s not played ondan since he fled the Westlands – one of those things too full of the sting of memory to be admissible to his new life. But it’s better than Rys’s relentless questions about the minutiae of his existence, and so he shrugs agreement, stacking the used plates and cutlery neatly on the dining table while Rys hunts through the endless cabinets that line the walls.
As soon as the wooden box is placed on another of the tables, this time between the two armchairs by the fire, he regrets the decision. It’s all so familiar: the hinged board with its brass clasp; the concentric circles inscribed on the surface, with multiple interlocking loops along which the pieces move; the chip in one edge where nine-year-old Morani accidentally knocked it to the floor; the rich, dusty scent of the wood. Treasurewood, he remembers now. Takian. The same as the altar where Donalle left him as a baby, from which he took a new surname when Kingswood was denied to him. If he’d remembered it sooner, perhaps he’d not have agreed to play. Still, he grits his teeth and says nothing, because everything in Kingstower will be like this. Every bloody thing will remind him of the past. And the sooner he gets over it, the better.
“Black or silver?” Rys asks.
“Silver.” But only because he always used to say black.
As Rys tips out the pieces and begins setting them up, the words of their long-ago tutor run through Fabithe’s mind. He can’t stop them. It’s like being tortured by his own thoughts. First, the larger carved pieces, five for each player: Those are the tanai. You have to get at least one of them to the centre. Lose them all and you lose the game. Then the numerous smaller, smoother pieces: Those are the hinai. They keep your tanai safe. They block. They guard. If necessary, they are sacrificed.
Fabithe’s fists clench. How many times did the two of them sit opposite each other across this board? Rys with his careful caution, marshalling his hinai in solid defensive ranks to protect as many of his tanai as possible, keeping his options open. When it was his turn, he’d study the board gravely and from every angle, till Morani grew impatient with him. Morani’s own turns were over almost as soon as they began; he played a freewheeling, reckless game with the sole purpose of seeing the frustration on his brother’s face when half a dozen carefully planned moves were undone by a single daring strike. As far as he was concerned, only one piece needed to reach the centre, which meant that four out of five tanai were there to distract, to devastate and – if needs be – to die. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Morani got one of his tanai to the centre about as often as he lost them all and thereby handed victory to Rys. But that in itself was enough – because if occasional flashes of genius and a willingness to take risks were as good as meticulous planning, what price the latter?
“As I recall, we were very evenly matched,” Rys says, his thoughts clearly running along similar lines. “I wonder if that still holds.”
Fabithe doesn’t answer. He’s thinking about the pattern, and wondering if he’s no more than the target of some vast, hideous joke. Why else would he have blithely played this game for so many years in the way he did, willingly sacrificing four of his key pieces to protect the fifth, without ever understanding what it meant?
“Morani?” Rys prompts him. “I have made my opening move.”
Right. Fabithe looks at the board. It’s a move that Rys has made a hundred times before. The temptation is to fall into those familiar grooves in response, to challenge and irritate Rys just as he used to, and let the game unfold as it always did. And yet …
Over the next half-span, he systematically takes the black army apart. He reaches the centre. Yet he loses three tanai along the way. Then he plays black against Rys’s silver, and wins even quicker – but still, he has to sacrifice two tanai. At the end of the second game, he sits back in his chair and scowls at the scattered pieces. “Again?”
“You have already beaten me twice.”
“It’s not enough. I want to know – ”
He stops himself. Yet Rys only waits, his eyebrows raised in gentle enquiry. He’s always been good at that. Patience. Silence. It’s very annoying.
“I want to know if it’s possible to keep them all alive,” Fabithe blurts out finally. “To keep them all alive, and still reach the centre.”
Rys frowns. “You mean the tanai? I am not sure you can. You win by capturing all five of your opponent’s, each time one breaks for the centre, or by sacrificing enough of your own that one makes it through. You and I have proven that, often enough. Though you are better at ondan than you ever were, I do not think a pure victory is possible.”
“It has to be.”
“Why is it so important to you?”
“Because – ” No. The pattern is none of Rys’s business. In fact, Fabithe reminds himself, he’s not even sure he believes it. “Doesn’t matter.”
He looks at the board again. The tanai start in the outermost of the concentric circles, alternating black and silver, each one surrounded by a protective group of hinai: five separate little armies for each player. The further towards the middle they get, the more vulnerable they become to attack along the curving paths that converge on the inner circles from all around the board.
Five separate little armies.
But unity beats strength – he knows that from fola’po.
And, I want us all to survive this, Alyssia said. We can’t do that if we abandon each other.
So …
“One more game,” he says, already returning the pieces to their initial positions. “Please.”
“If you insist.”
They start. Fabithe concentrates on moving his tanai in a series of feints towards the centre and away again, gradually gathering them together on one side of the board. And once they’re grouped, it all unfolds like magic. Because it’s in the rules, isn’t it? Get at least one of them to the centre. There’s nothing to say it can’t be all of them. And protecting five tanai on their collective journey is much easier than protecting one, because it takes fewer hinai to guard them. Because they can also guard each other.
“Gods, I hate it when Alyssia is right,” he mutters, as the final move falls into place. One of his tanai in the centre. The other four on the innermost spaces surrounding it. The hinai beyond them. Like a flower or a snowflake. Like a pattern.
“I take it back,” Rys says in a dazed voice. “It is possible.”
Reluctantly, Fabithe lifts his gaze from the near-perfect arrangement of pieces to Rys’s face. He’d almost forgotten that he was playing against someone else. The black army became no more than a distraction, an obstacle to flow around in pursuit of his vision. But Rys’s brow is dotted with sweat, as if he has just fought a hard battle.
“Clearly you learned something in your time away,” he says. He’s smiling. His eyes hold admiration and pride. And Fabithe, who only agreed to the game in the first place to see if he could crack open his ex-brother’s careful control, finds himself remembering the genuine joy that Rys always took in his achievements. He’d been a better swordsman than Rys. A more effortless scholar. Rys could have resented that, but he never did.
Till he tried to kill me, Fabithe reminds himself, but the thought has lost its edge.
“I doubt I could ever repeat it,” he says diffidently.
“Nonsense. You will beat me every time, now. You have learned … the value of taking care, perhaps? Whereas I could never learn your brilliance.”
Brilliance. Fabithe returns his gaze to the board. This is how ondan is meant to be played; he’s almost certain of that. All those years, he and Rys were fumbling around the edges of an ancient truth that they have only now learned to recognise. Instead of pride or satisfaction, the knowledge fills him with a deep and hollow terror, as if he’s standing at the lip of a bottomless pit, about to fall.
“Ondan is one thing,” he says softly. “Real life is quite another.”
After breakfast, when Luthan goes out to work in the vegetable patch behind the house, I follow her. To start with we kneel side by side in silence, pulling up weeds, harvesting a few knobbly tubers that were left in the ground through the winter and picking leaves from something that Luthan calls airy collard. But Fabithe’s discovery of the meaning behind his game – ondan – has given new urgency to some of the things I most want to know, so after a while I speak.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about the research you did in Stonesands. Did you find out anything useful about the other fives?”
“Yes and no. The best information I could glean concerns the five in the previous age, the Fourth. They fought in the Ruby Wars, nearly five hundred years ago; there were plenty of written records in Oceantree’s library, and I’ve found more among Isidor’s books as well. But before that …” She looks rueful. “Certain key events of the Third Age are now treated as heresy across much of the continent, to the point where the priests omit almost a century from their historical account – ”
“They omit it?”
“Yes. They claim it never happened. By their reckoning, the year is 1411; by ours, it’s 1499. As a result, when it comes to those lost years, we know only what mages have succeeded in preserving through centuries of persecution. And the Second Age – when the original Five lived – is even harder to unpick. It survives purely as the religious history recorded in the Makkisto: the book of the Kyantil that deals with the deeds of the Five on earth.”
From what Ifor said, I got the impression that there had been more cycles than that. Supposedly, we follow in the footsteps of the original Five once every Age, meaning those lost years of the Third Age were the first time it happened. By my reckoning, that makes this life only our third repetition – not the endless, relentless battle implied by my brother. But perhaps if I remembered my two previous lives it would feel like a long time to me too.
“What about the First Age?” I ask. “Presumably there was one.”
“Almost no sources from that time survive. What we have is a collection of second-hand stories and garbled myth. But it isn’t relevant, anyway. The First Age was before the Five, and before magic. Although,” Luthan adds reflectively, “people back then had other kinds of power. Hari Cleareye is said to have called the greatest souls of her age back from the dead using music alone.”
That sounds pretty unlikely to me … but then, so did blood magic when I first learned of it. Still, as she said, it’s an irrelevant diversion.
Our basket is full of vegetables now. Together, we lug it over to the spring and start to rinse the soil off them, though there seems to be more dirt under my fingernails than on the entire harvest put together.
“So tell me about the five in the Fourth Age,” I encourage her. “You said they fought in the Ruby Wars. That was when the Iron Fortress was destroyed?”
She nods. “Back then, the Roden of Northfell was a man called Thekyan. He sought to claim the great powers of the world for Northfell. First he invaded Iridene in search of the Scintilla – ”
“The what?”
“The Scintilla. Created by one of the great mages of the Third Age. It’s some kind of stone that can answer questions. It’s meant to be where the Iridian oracles derive their power.” She shrugs. “I don’t know if it exists, but Thekyan couldn’t find it. So then he invaded Castellany, but again he failed. Even though he killed every single person in the Fortress, he never found the Ruby.”
“Thekyan,” I repeat, remembering the memory Ifor showed me. “His sister was called Meli, right?”
“Yes. As far as I can make out, she was one of the five. During the war she fell in love with Tormali Lovestone, the Highest Lord of the Ruby, and ran away to be with him. Thekyan killed her along with everyone else.”
“He killed her?” I whisper. “But – ” I do not want to harm you. Perhaps that is my downfall. And the Rodena laid a geis upon her sons, and upon every generation to follow: should any one of them kill a sibling, or have a sibling killed, or shed so much as a single unwilling drop of a sibling’s blood, they themselves would be brought to ruin and death. So surely he wouldn’t have –
“Maybe not in person,” Luthan says. “But no one was left alive.”
“She was marked twice? And Tormali?”
“Yes. At least, we have to assume so – because, of course, there were no survivors to tell the tale. The records confirm that Meli was marked once as a child, and Tormali during his incarceration in the Castle of the Black Sun, but nothing of the second marking. My speculation is that Meli and Tormali marked themselves again to protect the Ruby from the armies of the North, and that is why it was never found. Meli is the woman from the story I told you before,” she adds. “The one who lost her baby in a mirror.”
“Right.” My head is beginning to spin. I sit back on my heels, scrubbing my wet hands on my trouser legs. “So who were the other three?”
“Arûqor, Ititha and Tarmora. Arûqor was a captain in the Western army. When war broke out, the king of the Westlands refused aid to the royal families of Castellany, on the grounds that he had signed a peace treaty with Northfell. He might disapprove of Thekyan’s actions, but they didn’t go against the agreement between North and West. Arûqor disobeyed him, and led as many men as would follow him into battle.”
“But why?”
“For honour, or for love. Arûqor had met Thekyan before. He had also met Ititha. Spent months stationed in the Stone Citadel as an envoy from the Westlands. Back then Ititha was a Guardian, but by the time the war reached Castellany, she was Keeper of the Sapphire. She called the West for aid, and Arûqor answered.”
“So, then – ”
“After the fall of the Iron Fortress, Ititha convinced the Highest Lords and Ladies of the three remaining castles to take the elemental jewels to war. When the northerners moved south, leaving nothing but ruin and death behind them, they were confronted by a far stronger army than Thekyan had expected. The combined forces of Castellany and the Westlands to match his soldiers. The power of the elements to match his Otherpower mages. Ititha and Arûqor were both killed, but their work was done. The balance could have tipped either way.”
By now, neither of us is even pretending to work. We’re sitting on the muddy ground by the spring, facing each other, the basket of vegetables dripping beside us.
“But he was defeated,” I say. “Thekyan, I mean.”
Luthan nods. “A mage called Tarmora met him in the heart of battle, and destroyed him.”
“She was the fifth?”
“She was the fifth.”
“And they were all marked twice?”
“Yes.”
The pattern seems clear – assuming Luthan is right about the markings, and I have no reason to believe she isn’t. Each of the other four played their part before they died, weakening Thekyan enough that Tarmora was able to finish him off. That’s what we’re expected to do this time round with Ifor. Which means, if I try to find a way to keep us alive, I may end up tipping the balance the wrong way, and letting him win.
“I think Ifor was telling the truth,” Luthan adds. “Don’t you? The parallels are obvious.”
A Roden of Northfell, determined to make war. His rebellious sister. A woman of the Sapphire and the Westlands warrior who loved her enough to go to battle for her sake. And the mage who came out of nowhere to triumph, in the end. No, I can’t deny the parallels. The only one I’m not sure of is Toralé …
Except that I am sure. Because it makes sense of everything I’ve felt since I met him. In a previous life, I loved him.
“Is that normal?” I ask. “To be reborn as a variation of the same person, over and over?”
“It’s hard to be sure. Generally people don’t remember their past lives, so there’s no way to track them through the ages. We only know about our former selves because they did things that were important enough to be recorded in the history books. But I suppose there’s no reason why not.”
“Fabithe said that isn’t how it’s supposed to work. He said we’re reborn to learn a new lesson each time, not repeat ourselves. In which case, wouldn’t it make more sense if our souls or – or whatever it is that moves from life to life – ” I still can’t fully accept this as the way the world works – “aren’t fixed to any particular characteristics? I mean, we’re not just talking about general traits persisting, like stubbornness or curiosity. We’re talking about things that I really don’t think are part of my essential nature.”
“Like what?”
“The special skills thing, I can kind of get behind. Maybe farsight is an intrinsic part of me, or at least, an intrinsic part of being a person who’s born to fight evil and therefore needs some sort of weapon against it.” I’m fighting very hard to keep the scepticism from my voice. “But having the same relationships? Same bloodline, same gender, even the same damn eye colour – ”
“I didn’t say anything about eye colour.”
No … that was Ifor. I remember now. The first time I was pulled into his head after coming to Endarion, he looked at Oriana and thought about seeing her eyes in a different face. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now … well. I know they say the eyes are the window to the soul, but I never took that literally.
“Relationships, then,” I say. “Are you telling me that the same people are destined to fall in love with each other every time they’re reborn?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
I don’t even know where to begin. I suppose part of it is no more than my own personal philosophy. If we’re meant to learn and grow through these cycles of rebirth then I don’t see how that’s possible unless we experience everything. Female, male, neither. Attracted to the same sex and the opposite sex, both and none. Black and white and every shade in between. Different abilities, different circumstances, different everything. What possible benefit could there be in forever restricting a soul to one single set of characteristics?
Of course, the fact that I don’t like a particular explanation of how this world works isn’t enough to make it untrue. When I talked to Fabithe, he implied that he feels the same kind of recognition towards Oriana that I feel towards Toralé. Ifor, too, seemed convinced that Fabithe and Oriana would be drawn together, even before I saw it in them myself. There appears to be plenty of evidence, both now and in the past, to suggest that these relationships are inevitable. But what’s the point of love, if you can’t choose it for yourself?
“I don’t like it,” I say stubbornly. “It makes me feel trapped. Like a hamster in a wheel.”
“A what?”
“You know. Running and running, but never getting anywhere.”
Luthan’s gaze flicks to me, then away again. I can feel her wondering whether it would be wise to say what’s on her mind. In the end, she admits, “I’ve been dreaming again, since you came back. Always the five of us. Leading the people through the wilderness, through the waiting shadows. And the narrowing path ahead. Only now …” She swallows. “I can see that the path is a circle. No matter where we start, we end up back there again.”
“Then surely the only way out is to break the cycle.” Break the pattern.
“I can’t,” she says. “Because if I do, the shadows will consume everything.”
Dakion cannot tell how long he has been here, in this small, stifling room. There is no natural cycle of day and night; not the faintest glimmer of light thins the relentless dark that threatens to choke him. Sometimes a single instant stretches to eternity, and sometimes spans are swallowed by the nothing that surrounds him. Unreality lurks only a heartbeat away, waiting to possess his mind; to fend it off he walks the perimeter of his cell, three paces by four, fingertips brushing the walls. If he is going to defeat his brother, he must fight with everything he has left, even if his only weapon is the retention of his own wits.
They bring him food and water – that is something, at least. Not that he ever sees anyone bring it, but every so often his blindly reaching hands find new supplies left for him in a corner of the room, like feeding a dog. Dakion supposes they have little choice. Starving him to death would still count as killing him, albeit indirectly. Ifor will not risk bringing the power of the geis down on his own head. No: much better to keep Dakion alive but out of sight, like Ariamé. Like their mother.
He does his best to think of his father’s last words as a beacon in the darkness: He cannot have you killed. Hold on to that. Yet they offer scant consolation – because if Dakion is to be imprisoned in this lightless cell for the rest of his life, he would rather be dead. At least then he would have the satisfaction of knowing that his brother’s downfall would follow.
He remembers a day when he was ten years old, making Ifor only six or seven. Ariamé had not been born yet – it was just the two of them – and he had always done his best to make his brother his friend. But Ifor would have none of it. Finally, Dakion snapped.
Why do you dismiss me? Why do you turn away when I speak to you? We are brothers! We are on the same side!
Ifor looked up at him calmly – that bright hair, those green eyes, so much like their mother’s – and said, There is no one on my side. And you and I can never be allies.
Why not?
Because I was Roden before, and I nearly won. Being the second son is a much harder position to start from.
Even at that age, Ifor frequently said things that Dakion did not understand. Still, he seized on the part of it that made sense to him.
You hate me because you want to be Roden? But, Ifor … He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, smiling awkwardly, desperate to make some sort of connection. It is hardly my fault that I was born first.
Ifor’s expression did not change. I do not hate you. You are simply in my way.
Rejected and embarrassed, Dakion let his hand fall. Ifor met his gaze.
I am sorry, he said, not sounding at all apologetic. But I have to be Roden again.
Then what? Certain avenues of retribution were closed, of course, because of the geis. Shedding his brother’s blood would have meant his own destruction. But the Darklight boys found plenty of ways to hurt each other, all the same. No doubt Dakion twisted Ifor’s arm behind his back or kicked him until he cried – because in those days the three-year gap between them gave him the advantage. Ifor might have been unnaturally intelligent for his age, but he was still smaller and weaker.
It was an advantage that lasted right up until Ariamé was born. At that point, even the small amount of time that the brothers spent together was lost, Ifor instead becoming obsessed with his new sister in a way that Dakion found vaguely disturbing. A seven year old might find some mild interest in the novelty of a baby, but what could ten and three have in common? Or fourteen and seven?
I thought you said there is no one on your side, he flung at Ifor once. He had been coming along the corridor in one direction, only to meet Ifor and Ariamé walking hand in hand in the other. The trusting expression on his small sister’s face as she looked up at Ifor made Dakion’s heart hurt in a way he did not want to examine too closely.
Perhaps not, Ifor said. But if anyone could be, she could.
So maybe it was as simple as that: the older sibling basking in the uncritical adoration of the younger. Yet that did not explain their complete inseparability. Surely Ariamé must sometimes grow tired of obeying Ifor’s every command? And surely Ifor must sometimes want his own space? Dakion knew from personal experience that a boy who was rapidly growing into a man often engaged in pursuits that were unsuitable for children. Did Ifor take his sister with him when he hunted or wrestled or duelled? When he indulged in alcohol or opiates? When he visited the local brothel? Or did he restrict expression of his baser instincts to those times when he was away from home, on a state visit to Castellany or the Westlands, and the two of them were temporarily apart?
Dakion wondered all these things, but only in idle moments. Truth be told, his own pursuit of pleasure meant he did not pay more than fleeting attention at the time. Yet now, looking back, he wonders if perhaps he should have. Because then came the day that Ifor returned from his latest ambassadorial trip to find Ariamé struck down by a mysterious illness; and the aftermath of that was a sister whose mind was forever altered, and a brother who barely showed his face in Northfell for the next five years.
Dakion knows he should have kept a closer eye on Ifor, during that long absence. But he was busy with his own concerns, and an absent brother felt like less of a problem than a present one. It is only now that he recognises the full truth of an adage oft quoted by his tactics tutor: growing accustomed to a threat does not lessen its danger, merely your perception of it. He understood all along that he was an obstacle in Ifor’s path, yet still he failed to prevent Ifor from removing him.
Stay alive, he tells himself. Stay alive, and stay sane. As long as you achieve those two things, he has not truly defeated you. They seem like trivial goals, pathetic in their lack of anything higher than basic survival. Yet at the same time, as the darkness stretches on and on, they are beginning to feel increasingly impossible.
It isn’t raining, for once. Sitting on the flat rock in the swimming cove, arms wrapped around my knees, I gaze up at the sky. The moonlight is bright tonight; Ikotha the water-moon is close to full, while Alosami the air-moon is nearing half. Luthan told me that five times a year, the two moons are new together – they call it dark of the moons, an inauspicious time – but there’s never a point when they’re both full. Water and Air are opposites, she said. They can never be at their strongest at the same time. I resisted the urge to tell her I don’t think that’s how moons work, mainly because when it comes to Endarion I don’t trust anything I learned in the other world. If the Sapphire can exist, then I guess so can moons that literally represent elements. All the same, I can’t help but feel that Luthan is awfully superstitious for someone so interested in learning.
“Are you all right?” Oriana asks. I turn to see her standing at the treeline, a rectangular package in one hand.
“Fine. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
I’m worrying about my family. My other brother, the one who didn’t do unspeakable things to you. Ifor has framed him for murder, and there’s nothing I can do about it. But I can’t tell you that, because it will only remind you who I used to be.
“Oh, you know,” I say aloud, flippantly. “Fate. Reincarnation. Dying to save the world. That sort of thing.”
“Then it is lucky I brought snacks.”
I scoot over to make room beside me on the rock. She sits, unwrapping the package as she does so and holding it out to me. It appears to contain a collection of small brown stones.
“Luthan and I made candied twignuts,” she says. “Want some?”
Tentatively, I put one in my mouth. Then, more rapidly, a second and a third. “Holy crap. These are really good.”
“It was the closest we could get to … what is it again? Chocolate.” Fishing a nut of her own from the wrapper, she adds, “You seem unhappy.”
“Aren’t you? When so much rests on us. When even the best-case scenario relies on our deaths – ”
“If not for you, I would already be dead,” Oriana says. “Or suffering whatever new tortures my husband could invent. There might be a lot of hard work ahead of us, but I cannot be anything other than grateful for the life I have.”
I eat a few more nuts in silence. Then I say, with a sideways glance, “In other words, I’m being a whiny little brat.”
“That is not what I said.”
“But it’s true.” Looking down at my own knees, I admit, “And you’re right. I’d rather be here, facing my doom, than in an exile where I’d never have met you.”
She reaches for my hand, our fingers intertwining. I lift my head, to find her watching me affectionately. In response, something twists in my stomach. I love her, this brave and beautiful girl – that’s undeniable. Perhaps, if we were to break the pattern together …
“Oriana,” I whisper.
“Alyssia.”
Heart pounding, I lean towards her. My free hand touches her face. I can’t speak any more, but I ask her the question with my eyes. Is this what you want?
She closes the distance between us. I’m sure it was her. I’m sure it wasn’t me. Her lips are on mine, soft and warm. She tastes of sugar. And for a moment I think –
But just like with Pete, this kiss is a mistake. As much as I’m longing to make my own choices when it comes to romantic relationships, I have to admit that. We draw away from each other at the same time, laughing, and in her case blushing.
“I don’t – ”
“I am not – ”
We break into renewed laughter as our words collide.
“I do not think I … like girls,” she says finally, cheeks glowing. “That way.”
“As it turns out, I do,” I say. “But I don’t feel that way about you either. Don’t get me wrong, I love you, but you’re my friend. And that’s perfect and enough, just the way it is.”
“As it turns out?” she echoes. “You mean that was the first …”
“First time I’ve ever kissed a girl? Yes. But it isn’t like I didn’t know, really. When I was thirteen, I had a crush on the head boy at our school and his girlfriend.” I can’t help giggling, giddy with the whole thing: the kiss and the night and my intense relief that she doesn’t seem to think badly of me for any of it. “That was awkward. But neither of them ever noticed I existed, so it didn’t matter all that much.”
She rests her head against my shoulder. “Then I am glad. To be the first. And I love you too.”
We sit quietly, watching the lake under moonlight. Somehow I don’t feel so scared any more. I’m also pretty sure that I’m not the only one who went into that embrace motivated by an impulse more complex than straightforward affection – which is why, after a while, I tell her, “Fabithe made it safely to Kingstower.”
She tensed against me as soon as I said his name. Her reply is fast, and a little breathless. “Is he all right?”
“Fine.”
“Good. I am glad.”
“So now will you admit that you like him? And that maybe, possibly, you kissed me just now to prove to me, or to yourself, that kissing your friends is a normal part of your everyday life, and not something you only want to do with one person in particular?”
She says nothing, but that doesn’t stop me hearing her thoughts. Sitting right up close to each other as we are, the jumble of emotion and memory is as vivid as if I’m inside her head: Fabithe tying fabric around her wrist to hide the lianthis. There’s more worth in your littlest fingernail than in Ifor Darklight’s entire body. Fabithe bringing her seaberries. You’re safe, tekirra. This will pass. Fabithe giving her his ring. It was all I had, when I fled Kingstower. And now it’s yours. His rare smile. His arms around her. His lips touching her brow. And suddenly I feel as if I’m intruding somewhere I have no right to be.
I’m about to change the subject when she says very quietly, “I cannot like him. Not the way you mean. It is too dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?”
She shakes her head. Once again, I experience a rush of memory, but this one is very different: a welter of fear and degradation intense enough to make me flinch. In Oriana’s mind, physical intimacy between a man and a woman is a painful, twisted act. Something that can be forced on her. Desire that she can be made to feel whether she wants to or not. It’s all tangled up with cruelty, like flowers and thorns on a poisonous briar.
“Never mind,” I say quickly. “I get it. Sorry. But … that wasn’t anything close to normal, Oriana. It wouldn’t be that way with someone else.”
“Logically, I know you must be telling the truth,” she says, staring without seeing at the dark water in front of us. “The world cannot be built on so much horror as that. But my body does not understand things in the same way that my mind does.”
“You think you’d panic?”
“I know I would panic,” she says bitterly. “I panic at the mere idea of kissing him.”
“But you weren’t scared when we kissed just now, right?”
“No. I mean no offence, but you are not physically intimidating.” She manages a wan smile. “It is a shame we are not attracted to each other, Alyssia, because you do not make me anxious at all.”
“But Fabithe does? I thought the two of you were friends.”
She nods. “I trust him absolutely.”
“Then why – ”
“Who says it has to make sense?” She is angry now. “I want him. I am terrified of wanting him. The problem lies with me, because I am broken beyond repair. And that is why it is a good thing that he will never want me back!”
Her voice wavers with incipient tears. I put my arms around her.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “You’re not broken. But you’ve been hurt, very deeply, and that kind of wound takes a long time to heal.”
She sobs into my neck. It takes me a second to work out that there are words in it. “What if it does not ever heal? What then?”
I don’t know what to say. Faced with her distress, it’s clear that all my more metaphysical doubts over the way the pattern seems to want to pair us off in heterosexual couples are irrelevant: her feelings are real, and that’s what matters. I want to tell her that everything will be all right, but that would be facile. I have no experience of anything like what she’s been through. Much as I want to believe that she and Fabithe will find a way to rid themselves of their past shadows and be happy together, I can’t be sure. So I just hug her until, finally, her shoulders stop shaking and she draws back from me, wiping her eyes.
“You’ve come so far already,” I tell her. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I have faith that if you decide you want that kind of intimate relationship with someone, you’ll make it happen.”
She’s silent a while. Then she says, “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“You said being with a man, that way … that it is not meant to be cruel. I understand that. But what I cannot work out is how it could ever be enjoyable.”
“Oh. Well. I’ve never done anything more than kissing, but …” Ugh. This is going to be ridiculously embarrassing. Not looking at her, I admit, “I’ve tried things out. By myself. Maybe you need to … explore a bit.”
“Explore?”
“You know. Find out what feels good to you. That way, you’ll have a sort of … baseline to go by? And you’ll know not to put up with anything less.”
“I suppose so.” Her face heats. “It is not as if I have never – I mean, before Ifor, there were times when – but the two things seem entirely separate from each other.”
“I don’t think they’re meant to be. I think, with the right person, it’s meant to be the same as it is for you alone, but … better.” Tentatively, I add, “And if you want him, and you trust him, then you really ought to talk to him about all of this.”
Somehow, the conversation has moved back from the general to the specific. Oriana is clearly conscious of the fact; she shoots me a glance, a little colour still in her cheeks.
“I already told you,” she says. “He is not interested in me like that. And besides, he is no longer here.”
The second shouldn’t make any difference, if the first were really true – but I keep that thought to myself. “He’ll come back, someday. And when he does, I think you should be honest with him. If he really isn’t interested then you’ll lose nothing, but if he is …” I give her hand a squeeze. “He’ll get the chance to prove himself worthy of you.”
Returning to the royal quarters after a long day of sitting in session, Rys slows as he approaches the door to Nelle’s chambers. His wife sleeps in the set of rooms adjacent to his, separated by no more than a single wall, yet at times like this she might as well be in another country.
“Your majesty,” one of his daytime guards says. “Are you entering the queen’s rooms? Should we secure them for you?”
Morani’s doing, all of that. He considers himself alone to be protection enough for Rys during the night – a fact with which Rys has neither the basis nor the inclination to argue – but by day, now, there are to be four guards at a time. Today they went wherever Rys went, checking every room for hidden dangers before he walked into it. Rion scoffed at him, asking why he had become so conscious of his own safety now, when the first so-called assassination attempt happened close to a week ago. Intelligence from the spy network, Rys informed him, which was mildly satisfying in its own right. The Westlands has not had a functioning spy network for years – one of many crumbling institutions that Rys needs to find time to rebuild – but if Rion believes the king to have access to information that a mere king’s brother does not, so much the better.
Rys presses the palm of one hand flat against Nelle’s door. Morani is alive, he wants to tell her. Bursting into the room, alight with the joy of it: that wonderful, impossible life where he believed there to be only death, like a phoenix arising from a funeral pyre. He is here, in this very building. I did not kill him.
Yet he is constrained by the thought of the last real conversation they had, up in Charnu’s nursery. Since then he has barely seen her, let alone talked to her. Because what could he say? She spoke the truth: he was under no illusions, when they married. He knew she still pined for his brother. He knew he would never live up to Morani’s memory. He knew he was her consolation prize, a promise of being queen that fulfilled her ambitions if not her heart. And he was willing to accept all that, because he himself had only offered for her from a sense of obligation. As the future king, he needed a wife, and since he owed it to his dead brother to make sure Nelle was provided for, the solution seemed clear. It is not her fault that over time his feelings have evolved into something far deeper, while hers remained the same.
Perhaps he could have found a way to tell her, in time. Perhaps he could have won her love. But now Morani is back from the dead, and if he tells her that he risks losing what he does not have.
The guards are still waiting for an answer. With an apologetic shake of his head, Rys turns away from the door.
“No,” he says. “No. Best not disturb her so late. I will speak to her another time.”
Morani is alive, he thinks again, as they move on to his own chambers – but it is a more complicated happiness than before. Because as long as his brother is here, there will be an even greater distance between himself and his wife.