Dragonoak (62 page)

“Don't say you don't trust me, Rowan,” he said, rocking on
the back two legs of his giant chair. “...
tuition in Mesomium and Canthian available from a native
Mesomium speaker. If interested, speak to Rowan Northwood at the
fire pit any day this week, around eight o'clock
, is the gist of it. And in parentheses:
look for the smallest little friend within the
tribe.
”

Michael
was far too pleased with himself over that last remark, and I
didn't give him the satisfaction of rolling my eyes. Folding the
parchment in half and slipping it in my pocket, I got as far as the
door before saying, “Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm taller than
Kidira.”

Michael
opened his mouth as if to refute the point, but soon realised there
was none to be made.

“I
always manage to forget that she's short,” he said. “Do you want me
to change it? I'd hate to be indirectly responsible for troubling
Kidira.”

“It's
fine,” I said, “I'm meeting Claire soon.”

I
succeeded in posting three of the notices. The board was far too
high up for me to nail it to any part of it but the very bottom,
and I hoped it wouldn't become lost beneath a sea of parchment
scraps that were undoubtedly more interesting than anything I had
to offer.

I kept
the last piece of parchment folded in my pocket, and decided to
track down a fourth noticeboard after I'd seen Claire. We were
meeting with Akela and Kidira to discuss our next move. I'd
expected them to make plans without me, but Claire hadn't even
asked if I wanted to come along. My being there was a given. She'd
simply told me where to head.

I
dropped my new shirts off in my room, didn't take the time to
change, and followed the map Claire had drawn for me that morning.
We'd been lucky to have the great lodge to ourselves yesterday and
couldn't expect to claim it two days in a row; Claire had assured
me there was a study room in one of the libraries we could make use
of.

I didn't
understand why Kyrindval needed more than one library until I got
there. This library was a world away from the severe building
Michael had taken me to that morning. It was made from stone,
surrounded by beds of tulips brighter than any I'd ever seen
before, and inside, the books were as much for decoration as the
paintings of mountain and coastal landscapes lining the room. There
weren't any rows of bookshelves; rather, they ran along the walls,
creating a wide, open space.

Cushions
bigger than I was were strewn across the floor, and pane lounged
against them, reading or napping with a book folded open against
their chest, their head in someone's lap. Three doors led off the
larger one, and I would've asked the pane who weren't too immersed
in their books if they'd seen any other humans pass through, if not
for the way Akela snuck up behind me.

“Northwood!” she said far too loudly for our current
surroundings. “Northwood, my friend, a very good day to you!
An
excellent
day
to you! You are most certainly deserving it, yes?”

“Hello...?” I said, convinced I'd missed something. When she
only grinned toothily, I said, “Are Claire and Kidira already
here?”

“Yes,
yes, they are through this way,” Akela said, hands on my shoulders
as she guided me between piles of pane to the door on the left.
“They are talking about something dreary, I am not doubting this.
It is a good thing I am having you for company, yes?”

The room
was set aside for writing, more so than reading; there was a table
in the centre, surrounded by an assortment of armchairs, and the
scrolls in the room were all blank. Inkwells, quills and candles
were placed atop a cabinet in the corner, and a wide, high-up
window let in sunlight. Claire and Kidira were waiting for us, one
more patiently than the other, sat opposite one another at the
table.

I pulled
out a chair between them, inching it towards Claire.

“Did
everything go well?” she asked.

“I have
somewhere to stay, and Michael helped me with the notices,” I said,
keeping it brief as Kidira drummed her fingers on the edge of the
table.

“Now,”
Kidira said, bringing her hands together. “What is our next step?
Do we retake Orinhal, or consider it lost to us
indefinitely?”

Kidira
wasn't wasting any time. If she was susceptible to a fraction of
the cheer Akela was, she buried it deep, kept it hidden beneath her
blunt words.

“There
are plenty of good people still there. Atthis, Ash, Galal. They
will fight for Orinhal from within, but may be relying on our
intervention,” Claire said. “Over the past two years, the
resistance has done little more than defend itself and liberate a
handful of cities. I sent soldiers through the gap in the wall
hoping to send a message to Felheim, but we have never launched an
offensive. It may be time to consider other options.”

That was
what Akela had been hoping for.

“Excellent! It is about time that we are
truly
fighting back. We are finding
where they are weakest and hitting them there, yes?”

The
three of them spoke of strategy, which was more a process of
eliminating bad ideas than anything else. I'd been pleased when
Claire invited me along without a second thought, but I had nothing
to offer up. I didn't recognise the names of any of the cities
Rylan's soldiers had captured, any of the bases he had built, and
didn't know which parts of the terrain would offer us an
advantage.

Thinking
out loud, I said, “What was the plan before? Before... before we
lost Isin?”

“Irrelevant,” Kidira said, “Whatever plan we may or may not
have formed would've involved an entire Kingdom's worth of
resources, along with an army. Of which, you may have noticed, we
no longer have either.”

My chair
legs scraped on the floor as I turned towards her, not about to be
dismissed without getting an answer first.

“But you didn't want a war. You weren't going to march entire
armies into Felheim, were you? I know King Jonas' death sort of got
in the way of planning, but there must've been
something
you were going to do.” I
pleaded my case, but was met with stony silence from Kidira. I
turned back around, imploring Claire and Akela to listen.
“Claire—remember when we were going to run away from Isin? Nothing
was getting done, and you felt we were running out of time. We were
going to go to Thule, weren't we? You said there was someone who
could help us get into the castle.”

Only now
did Kidira say something.

“You
were going to run away, Claire?” she asked, sounding more amused
than I'd ever heard her. “You didn't tell me that.”

“It was
a complicated time,” Claire said, then fixed her eye on me, mind
glossing over all the reasons why it wouldn't work. Shaking her
head, she said, “That was a long time ago, Rowan. The castle will
be more guarded than ever, and I do not even know if she resides
within Thule still. And if she does, there is no reason why she
would help me; no doubt the entirety of the Kingdom knows of the
treacherous Knight who stands against Prince Rylan and all the good
he wishes to do.

“And how
would we get into Thule? Soldiers patrol every inch of the wall,
and even the borders that run between the mountains are
guarded.”

I was
halfway through a shrug when the answer came to me.

“I have
dragon. We could go through the Bloodless Lands to get around the
mountains,” I said.

Akela
cleared her throat to cover a laugh.

“Might
we have some serious suggestions,” Kidira said, sighing.

“It
was
a
serious suggestion,” I said, unwilling to let her dismiss me so
easily. “I can go to the Bloodless Lands.
You
were fine there, with your
blindfold. If we took Oak, we could get close to Thule in no time,
and we wouldn't have to worry about more stray dragons.”

“Very well,” Kidira reluctantly allowed, rubbing her right
temple with two fingers. “Say this ridiculous plan of yours works.
Say we get into Thule. What then? We take our chances and have
Claire write to her contact, declaring our intentions, and
hope
that they help us
force our way inside? And what next? Claire talks to her father and
sweeps all this trouble under the rug?”

Holding
my hands up, I slumped back into my seat.

“I don't
hear anyone else coming up with any plans,” I muttered, well aware
that she'd treat a suggestion from anyone other than me with some
degree of civility.

“There might be some merit to it,” Claire said. “I fail to
see how we can rectify the issue without going directly to the root
of the problem; there is no use in flailing at branches. There are
too few of us to spread ourselves effectively. If Rowan can get us
into Thule I cannot promise that King Garland will
want
to listen to me,
but it is better than biding our time here.”

“If he is not wanting to listen, he is always being
made
to listen,” Akela
added helpfully.

Kidira
clicked her tongue, unable to believe that she was really going
through with this.

“And who
is this person to you, Claire?” Kidira asked. “Are you certain we
can trust them?”

“If she
has not been poisoned against me, I've no doubt she will keep our
intentions to herself, at the very least,” Claire said. “We were
engaged, many years ago.”

I'd
offered up a plan more solid than I'd first realised, yet Kidira
wouldn't be happy unless someone handed Felheim over to us. Hands
on the table, she got to her feet, and left the room without a
word. Her presence lingered. Akela, Claire and I remained silent,
sharing glances for mere fractions of seconds before finding some
scratch upon the tabletop to occupy ourselves with.

Kidira
returned with an armful of books, some the size of her torso,
making a mountain of them atop the table. She left again, this time
bringing a set of three steps used by pane to reach the higher
shelves, and stood atop them to properly pore over the
books.

They were all full of maps, some of individual regions in
Felheim and others of Asar as a whole, though the maps showing
Agados were always strangely devoid of detail. Kidira turned the
books away from her, sliding them across the table so Akela and
Claire could see them, and said, “Well, Claire. Where
do
we cross into Thule,
after our little trek through the Bloodless Lands?”

For an
hour, Claire, Kidira and Akela studied maps, trying to make sense
of the mountain range, while Akela jotted down the names of the
busiest towns and roads in the surrounding area; anything Claire
could recall from the top of her head. Kidira frowned at every
suggestion, intent on assigning failure to it, until Claire came up
with something better.

“To me,
it is seeming that if we are not rushing, if we are planning this
properly, then there is a chance. I am thinking we could be
reaching Thule, and the Felheimish, they are not realising until it
is too late,” Akela said, once the seventh route to Thule Claire
had proposed hadn't been immediately dismissed by
Kidira.

“And what then? What if we are successful in overthrowing the
King and Queen in their own castle? We barely held onto
one
city, let alone an
entire country. Look at us,” Kidira said, shaking her head. “We
have but the three of us, a pane far too eager to fight, and a
necromancer unwilling to lift a finger.”

“What?”
I blurted out.

I couldn't say what drove me to anger the fastest: what she
was implying, or the fact that she'd brazenly failed to include me
in the
us
she
spoke of.

“You know the answer to that,” she said, eyes fixed on one of
the maps. “You would sooner ensure things were easy for yourself
than fight; you would sooner throw away one of your many lives than
take a moment to
think
about what you are doing.”

“Kidira
,” Claire said sharply, but I
didn't need her to defend me.

I rose
to my feet, and the scraping of chair legs wasn't enough to get
Kidira to turn my way.

“You think that was
easy
?” I asked. “I was... I
was—”

“You
were what?” she asked, feigning interest when the words wouldn't
come to me. "Unwilling to fight? Uninterested in surviving?
Selfish, ultimately?"

She
still wasn't looking at me, still wasn't using my name.

Stepping
closer, I grabbed the shoulder of her shirt.

Teeth
grit together, she said, “Do you not remember what happened the
last time you put your hands on—”

“Go on
,” I hissed. “Go on. Hit me
again.”

It
seemed Kidira had no interest in doing such a thing when I made the
initial offer. I saw Akela rise to her feet from the corner of my
eye, not knowing who to pull away from who, and Kidira was finally
looking at me. Her eyes locked onto mine as she took a single step
down, not knocking my hand away, and there it was. The last chance
I'd get to spit out the fire that twisted in my chest every time
her gaze slipped through me, as though I was no more worth
acknowledging than the wind.