Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (22 page)

It was nothing but bad timing. The first necromancer I'd ever met and they were being dragged to their death. I mirrored Claire's pose, rested my head in my arms and stared down at the end of the alley, away from her. There was nothing I could say. The sickly feeling retreated when the necromancer was taken away, but my vision was warping, sparks of colour blinking in and out along blurred edges.

“How did it happen?” Claire asked quietly. I tensed at the words before I'd parsed their meaning, and she quickly added, “Should you wish to talk about it, that is.”

“Peter, he, ah...” I found myself saying. I did want to talk about it; I wanted people to know that whatever they'd thought of me was wrong; but I'd never been asked. Michael and my father found out from the villagers, and by then the truth was twisted. “He was seven at the time. His parents were friends with my family. I mean, most people were friends with each other in the village, but they came over for dinner once every few weeks, and Michael used to give him private lessons...”

The words came slowly. I kept pausing, swallowing lumps in my throat and finding my mouth all too dry, but Claire was patient.

“One day, he was playing outside of the village, climbing the rocks like all the kids did. Like Michael and I used to. No one knows what happened, really. He slipped, or one of the other children pushed him—either way, he cracked his head open. He was still alive when his parents brought him to me, just about. They put him on my table and he was gone.

“They started crying, begging me to help, saying there must be
something
I could do. Whenever anyone died in that room, it was always the same. And I always shook my head and said I was so, so sorry, pretending I couldn't do anything, because once they
knew
the person they'd brought in was dead, that was the end of it.

“But I looked down at Peter and couldn't stop thinking about how
unfair
it was. He was
seven
. He didn't even have all his teeth, and he was just
dead
, lying there, and he wasn't going to spill his gravy when he came over for dinner again. But more than that, it wasn't right that I could help him and was choosing not to.

“So I brought him back, and his parents kept on crying, only it was out of relief. They were so happy to have Peter back that I thought they'd keep my secret,” I said, exhaling shakily, feeling that I'd emptied myself in speaking those words.

“But they didn't,” Claire murmured, and I turned towards her, wondering if she'd be disappointed that after so many years, I'd given up pretending so easily.

No one had their suspicions. No one dug to uncover what I was really doing.

I could've left Peter dead on the table and carried on as a healer.

I could've helped more people, but I'd thrown that all away.

Claire looked at me, quiet and understanding in her own way. She reached out, brushed the hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear.

“They didn't. I went back the next morning and the whole village was crowded outside of the apothecary’s. At first I thought something had happened, there'd been an outbreak nearby and everyone wanted to be safe. I remember laughing and saying I guessed that I'd be open late into the night, but...” I buried my mouth and nose back in my arms, staring ahead. “Everything was boarded up. No one said anything to me—and that was it.”

I closed my eyes and I was back in the apothecary’s. Everything was so close: the warmth of the log fire in the back, the sharp, sweet smell of bitterwillow being boiled; the grain of the table I worked at beneath my fingers; the door creaking as it was constantly swinging to and fro, people poking their heads in and saying
if you just have a minute, Rowan
, or
hear there's a few heading over from Ironash
.

“I doubt it's of any consolation, but I believe you did the right thing,” Claire said, “There are few who can claim to have helped somebody so wholly, and at no small cost to themselves.”

I leant back, head hitting the wall, but gravitated towards Claire.

I was running from my village, from what I was, but she was running, too.

I pressed my forehead to her shoulder.

“Why did you bring me along?”

She hesitated. I felt her shoulders rise, but she choose to be honest with me, as I had been with her.

“I thought that it was only a matter of time until word spread. There are those who would not be so kind as to turn you over to the authorities, those who would use you for their own ends...” Claire said, and it was enough to drag me out of the depths of my past. I wanted to know
who
these people were and what she knew.

Michael and Rán tracked us down before I had the chance to ask.

“There you are!” Michael exclaimed, and from the redness of his face I imagined he'd been running all over Orinhal in search of me. “Nasty business, this. The sooner we're out of here the better.”

Rán held out a hand and I took it, feeling raw for what I'd said to Claire; but no longer numb or dizzy, which I took to be an improvement. She knelt down, hands on my shoulders, asking over and over if I was sure I really was alright. It'd been like this ever since the incident with the axewoman. There was no end to her apologies, no matter how I told her that I knew she'd never purposely do anything to hurt me. The tips of her ears continued to point towards the ground in spite of all that.

The fact that she was sorry was written all over her. I couldn't hold it against her, even if Claire did.

Claire got to her feet and Michael held out the paper bag he was carrying. I peeked inside and he dug out a scone and gave it to me. I was far from hungry but appreciated the gesture, and felt better for having something in my stomach as we made our way over the ravine.

Michael managed to procure the alcohol he'd wanted for so long from Orinhal, but we didn't drink that night. Nobody brought up what had happened in Orinhal, because there was nothing that anyone could think to say to me that wouldn't have soured my mood all over again, and we turned in shortly after dinner, staring up at the stars when sleep didn't come to us.

Nor did we open the drink the night after, or the night after that. Since encountering the axewoman we'd been covering more and more distance with every passing day, cutting our sleep short and pushing the horses on, and it was taking its toll on all of us.

Three days of drizzle followed. The sky turned from one shade of grey to another, and the closer we drew towards Isin, the more Rán withdrew from us. She tended to take the lead, but it started to feel as though she was actively trying to pull away. She had little to say, even to me; she'd nod and grunt when I spoke to her, but rarely offered anything in response.

At night, she sat by the fire, toying with a coin between her fingers. It was so dented and scratched that I could barely make out the tiger's head on the back. When she slept, she slept curled up, back to me, and I told myself that it didn't mean she wouldn't let me stay with her, wouldn't take me to Canth.

When Claire said, “We ought to reach Isin tomorrow evening,” as she cleared the dinner things away, Michael decided he'd had enough.

He took out the bottles that had only served to weigh him down for days, held one in each hand and said, “It's our last night together! Our last night like
this,
anyway
.
Now, I know that I've done my share of complaining about the sleeping situation, but that isn't to say I won't miss it. It's worth celebrating, isn't it?”

Drink was the last thing I wanted, but Rán snapped back to the present and snatched a bottle from him, growling, “Alright, alright. But no making a toast, you hear?”

Rán drank down half the bottle in one go, which made me think it was safe to sip on. I screwed my eyes shut the moment it touched my tongue and did my best not to choke on the taste. It was strong. Stronger than any wine I'd ever tasted, and Michael laughed, saying, “If you could read the label you'd have no problem. Look:
whiskey
.”

He tapped his finger against the label and took a mouthful from the second bottle. He kept a brave face, but I knew it'd taken him by surprise, too.

Claire took the bottle from Michael. She didn't drink in as much of a hurry as Rán had, but she drank as though it was nothing stronger than ale. Michael did his best to keep up with her, but to his dismay, the alcohol didn't bring the conversation to life as he'd been hoping it would. In fact, he discovered that he didn't have as many words to share as he usually did, and after no more than half an hour, he fell into a heavy slumber.

I had enough to make my legs feel light, but Rán had finished almost an entire bottle herself and Claire was sat on the other side of the fire, making a dent on the other one. I envied Michael his sleep, but the silence was too thick to settle down in.

After a while, and without a word to either of us, Claire stood and walked away from the camp, taking the bottle with her. I watched her go and hoped that Rán might speak to me, now that we were practically alone. I shuffled to the side, brave enough to hook an arm around hers, and she didn't rebuff me. Not straight away.

“That dragon-slayer can't handle her drink half as well as she thinks she can,” Rán said idly. “Best be going to make sure she's alright.”

I wanted to say
I'm sure Claire can take care of herself
, but didn't want to endure her coming up with some other reason to be rid of me. I reclaimed my arm and pushed myself to my feet, steadier than I expected to be. Or else the alcohol hadn't been given the chance to catch up with me; when I found Claire, a few minutes away from the camp, sat halfway down a gentle hill, the cool night air hit me and made my head spin.

“Claire... ?” I tried, squinting through the darkness. The grass was heavy with rain that hadn't quite stopped falling, and the dirt was slick between my toes. “Is everything alright? Rán was worried.”

“Mm.”

She was still drinking. I heard the whiskey gulp as it plunged towards the neck of the bottle.

“It's getting muddy out here. Come back to camp,” I said.

Claire took another drink and spoke as though I wasn't there.

“Tomorrow, we arrive at Isin. And we see if this has all been for naught.”

Pausing, I sat next to her. I didn't mind the feel of damp grass through my clothing; it was like being home, back in the fields. Besides, for all I'd put them through, my clothes didn't look particularly new. It was getting to the point where I couldn't tell blood stains from dirt stains.

Claire handed the bottle to me, actions not as steady as her words, and I took it, though I didn't want any more to drink.

“I'm sure it'll be—it'll all work out. Whatever you and Rán have been trying to do, I doubt there's any way you can't pull it off between you,” I said, trying to be encouraging, trying not to allude to the fact that I was entirely clueless. I didn't want her to tell me what she was doing purely because alcohol had lowered her guard. “I know I'm not exactly built for any of this, but if I can do anything to help... you probably know that I will, by now.”

Claire hummed and took the bottle back from me. It took her a moment to realise she could drink from it.

“I used to have a good life, you know,” she said.

I didn't doubt it. There we were, sat on the cold, damp ground, running from Knights, running from
something
, all the comforts she'd once known left far behind in a memory. I couldn't even say
it won't always be like this
because I didn't know that it wouldn't.

“I made myself a Knight. In spite of my connections, my family,
I
did that. I made a home for myself; I lived in a set of chambers overlooking lake Lir, and I spent years collecting art, making it mine. I had friends. I had Alex and Rylan, I had my brothers...” she said, dropping the bottle to the ground. I grabbed it before it fell, and in a murmur, she added , “I even had a fiancée, once.”

I wrapped my fingers around the bottleneck. All the warmth brought on by the whiskey was gone.

“Oh,” I eventually said, when it occurred to me that I should say something. “... what happened?”

“Nothing involving
this
,” she said, voice losing its crispness. She put a hand to her forehead and brushed her hair out of her face, fingers tangling in it. “Just—dragons. It was years ago, and there were dragons. A task I was assigned to did not go as planned; it cannot be said that I took it well.”

Without looking, she gestured to the bottle in my hands.

“I indulged in too much drink, perhaps. Focused on my work too hard after that. If you are asking what happened, what single factor is responsible for it all, then I am afraid that
I
happened.”

I pressed my lips tightly together and let the bottle roll down the hillside, whiskey soaking into the ground as it went. Suddenly, I felt that it wasn't my place to try comforting her, but I couldn't leave her there. I got to my feet and wrapped both arms around one of hers, hoisting her up as I said, “Come on. Let's get back to camp,” firmly enough to let her know that I wasn't going to return alone.

Claire walked surprisingly steadily, for all that she'd had to drink, and once we reached the camp, she laid down and slept without making any fuss. It was the first time I'd seen her fall asleep so quickly, so easily, and supposed that something good had to come out of Michael's plans. I sat down on my own side of the fire, glanced at Rán without saying anything, and trusted her to watch over us until morning.

Isin had been our goal for so long that I'd forgotten it was a city, made up of moving parts. In my mind, it had become a fixed spot where
something
would happen; it could've been a tree stump or a dusty rock, for all I knew.

But as we drew closer, the roads became busier, and there was no doubting the size of the settlement we were approaching. Claire changed back into her dragon-bone armour a few miles from Isin and swathed a long black cloak around herself, helm kept safely in one of the bags. Rán marched on, as sullen as she'd been for days.

There was nothing to be said. There was a sense of finality in the air, of inevitable dread, and we waded through it, until we reached a crest of a hill and Isin spilled out across the landscape all at once.