Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (50 page)

“I liked those stories. Not where they led, but... What
is
it like in Canth? Is there even a Phoenix Festival?”

The man on stage finished his act as the question came out, and Kouris and I both looked back at him, clapping as he bowed. No one took his place. The seats around us emptied, but Kouris and I remained sat there, leaving the rest of the entertainment for the hours ahead of us.

“There's something of the sort. Not celebrating the end of any war, not exactly. It's there to remember the Phoenixes. I'd say it was a solemn event, but there's not much solemn about Port Mahon,” Kouris said, grinning. “Still, can't be claiming that anyone does
more
drinking than usual on that day. Last year, Reis sculpted a wooden phoenix, half my height. Painted it and all. Took 'em months to work on, and even though I lived in the same hut as them, I never saw it until it was unveiled. Reckon they'd put the whole of Isin to shame.”

“Was... you know, was everything you said about Reis true?” I asked, getting to my feet and standing on the bench. Kouris stood, feet firmly on the ground, and I tapped my palms against her horns before hopping down next to her.

“Aye. Well, we didn't head to Canth together. They'd already been there a good four years when I arrived. Their parents owned the ship Iseul and I travelled on, along with the port we pulled into. Worked for them for a few years, in order to pay my debt off,” Kouris explained as we meandered around Asos. “Now, Reis was only seven back then, and they'd had to learn Canthian for theirself. I didn't speak a word of it, but they helped out—stuck with 'em after that.”

It was too easy to simply think of Kouris as absent for those twenty-seven year. In spite of how far she'd gone, she'd managed to build up a life for herself. I hoped that it would be the same for me. I hadn't gone so far as to leave Asar, but if I had to return to my village, I wanted to be different. Wanted to be someone new.

Children ran through the square, wearing feathered cloaks with oversized hoods, and one of them ran smack into Kouris' knee. The child recoiled, pulled their hood back to see what they'd hit, and mouthed, “
Whoooa
,” as their mother swooped in, snatching them out of what she assumed to be harm's way. Kouris rolled her eyes with a chuckle, and we moved on to the performance drawing the largest crowd.

Without having to be asked, Kouris let me climb on her back, and with my arms around her shoulders, I had a clear view of the stage. Five people stood in the centre, draped in red cloaks, and behind them, spiralling towers and glassy-green buildings had been painted across a great screen. I didn't recognise any of the landmarks, but knew at once that it was supposed to be Myros.

“And in the year of seventeen eighty-six, the Necromancy War came to a halt after seven long decades,” a man said, arms spread out wide while the two actors either side of him stood with their heads bowed, “The King of the Everlasting Kingdom deigned to meet with the necromancers who had brought its golden age to an end—”

From behind the screen, a drum roll sounded, and another of the actors looked up, throwing her hood back. The crowd jeered. She was Kondo-Kana, I assumed. I knew how this story went: the King met with half a dozen necromancers, offering peace, and one by one, they cut the throats of his generals. The story lacked originality, Michael said, and was handled far too brutishly; it screamed that the necromancers were to be loathed, when a whisper would've done the trick.

“Alright up there, yrval?” Kouris asked, and I wrapped my fingers around her horns, humming.

The play contained few words, and none of the energy of the performances the pane gave around the fire pit. A man pulled back his cloak, wooden crown atop his head revealing him to be the King of Myros, and one of the necromancers drew close, whispering in his ear. The King was not slaughtered, nor were his generals. I supposed he was manipulated, for he moved in jerky motions when the necromancer tugged on an invisible rope around his neck.

I'd prepared myself to recoil from what they thought of necromancers, to feel my stomach churn to know what was said about me, but in truth, I was merely bored.

“The juggling was better than this,” I said, propping my chin on Kouris' head.

We steered away from the stage, leaving Asos to wander through the other squares. There were no shortage of songs to listen to or acts to watch, and for an hour or more at a time, I was able to forget that any of this had anything to do with necromancers. I didn't delude myself, however; I knew that they were saving the most vicious of their songs for last, to make a real spectacle of the execution.

As we moved from one part of Isin to the next, I began to see cracks in the cheer. The people sat outside taverns scowled into their steins, and I hurried past, lest Kouris draw too much attention to herself. There were fewer pane than I'd seen in Isin before, and I knew that people were waiting for an excuse to pick a fight. Not every tavern was awash in orange and gold, and from within those that had forgone decorations, I heard them sing songs of King Jonas,
died in his castle, died all alone, the resistance drove a blade to the bone.

Kouris scowled, but I didn't let her linger. We pulled away from narrow side-roads, back towards the festivities. The scale of the festival changed, depending on what part of Isin we wandered through, and in the outer districts, they were using empty crates as stages and drinking home-made ale from dingy glasses. I was determined to see as much of the city as I could, and between a man telling jokes that went over my head and two women singing almost perfectly in time, Kouris caught the eye of a teenage boy helping an older woman carry a barrel of wine across the street.

“Oi, get this,” he said to the woman, finally taking his eyes off Kouris, “You know Ostin, right? Works as a gardener at the castle, yeah? He heard that Queen Kouris has only gone and come back.”

I held my breath on Kouris' behalf, but there was no need to. Any pane would've jogged his memory.

“Don't give me that nonsense. Everyone's always yapping about her coming back—I have to put up with a new rumour every other month. Let the dead rest,” the woman huffed, intent on getting back to work. “What's next? Suppose you're going to tell me the necromancer they're burning is Kondo-Kana herself.”

The boy frowned at the barrel, mumbling to himself, and once we were out of earshot, I let out a laugh. If only he knew how right he was. I glanced up at Kouris, glad to be with her; it was harder to believe there was any truth in the stories about necromancers when I was wandering through the streets of Isin with the long-dead Queen Kouris.

“I've been wondering...” I said as we found ourselves back at Asos. “How
did
you know to come back here?”

Kouris held her tongue, but only in order to find somewhere to sit. We settled down under the shade of a young oak tree, and the nearby families enjoying picnics called their children back over at the sight of a pane, giving us all the privacy we needed.

“This'll probably disappoint you, yrval, but there's not much to it. Someone came and got me,” Kouris said. “Now, there aren't many pane in Canth. Reckon I saw two, in all the time I was there. So when a pane shows up on a ship one day, of course word's going to be getting back to me. Knew there was something wrong right away—the pane, they looked like they'd been used up. The last of their strength went into surviving the trip down, and all they could talk about was the dragons, and what Felheim was doing to 'em. Didn't even get their name.”

I folded my arms across her bent knee, chin propped on the back of my hand.

“So you came back to help the pane, just like that?”

“Just like that. I marched down from the mountains to do the same once before, and I wasn't about to let a sea stop me. To tell the truth, I'd been down in Canth for so long that it was almost as though Asar and Kastelir didn't exist. Almost as if I'd dreamt them up. It was a wake-up call, there's no doubting that.”

I don't know what I'd been expecting her to say, for nothing else made sense, but there was still one thing I couldn't quite account for.

“When Claire and I met you, you already knew who she was, didn't you? How?”

Kouris grinned, fangs showing.

“Reckon I gave her quite the fright, showing up like that, already knowing her secrets,” she said, sounding a little too pleased with herself. “Truth is, I'd been watching her. Her and some of the other knights. I needed to see for myself how the dragons were being used, and so I went from one village to another, trying to figure out what settlement would be hit next. That's how I found your dragon-slayer. I watched her put a sword through a dragon's head, but she didn't stay and celebrate, like the other dragon-slayers I'd tracked down had.

“She ran. She ran away from Thule, and I lost track of her, for a time. But I knew that she knew, and took my chances, thinking she might be heading into Kastelir for help, if she hadn't left Asar already.”

And to think, I'd spent so much time convincing myself that I was only paranoid. There weren't
really
pane after us.

“I'm glad you came back,” I said, sitting bolt up-right when I realised what I'd said. “I mean—I'm not glad you had to leave Canth, or about the whole dragon thing. But I'm glad I got to meet you.”

Kouris chuckled, placed a hand on the small of my back and tugged me closer.

“I get what you mean, yrval. I'm glad I met you, too. Not glad you
had
to run away from your village, but glad you got out of there,” she said, and for the rest of the afternoon, we did much of nothing.

I laid with my head on her lap, enjoying the feel of sunlight filtering through the leaves, and listened to music that all at once seemed close-up and a world away. People came and went, dragging instruments and children and partners along with them, and Kouris and I drifted in and out of sleep, until evening fell.

Asos Square cleared out, a little. Once the sun set, the lanterns would be lit, and the marquee in the centre of the park promised a night of drinking and dancing. People went home to change into their finest clothes, and I took the chance to stand up and stretch out, mind made pleasantly numb by the remnants of dreams. Kouris yawned widely, pushing the full length of her tongue out as she did so, and had any parents still been picnicking, they would've been certain their children were going to be inhaled.

I was about to suggest finding something more to eat when someone called out, “Rowan!” from behind me.

Akela and Katja had found their way into Asos. Katja hurried off the path and onto the grass, greeting me with a kiss on the cheek. They were both dressed better than anyone else in the city, better than anyone would be tonight; Katja wore yet another dress, this one light gold in colour, and Akela had exchanged her armour for an embroidered silk shirt and neat black trousers.

“Oh, I'm glad to have stumbled upon you, dear,” she said, clasping both of my hands in her own. How different she looked today, now that the funeral was done with; how much more comfortable I felt around her, now that nothing flared up within me at the sight of her. “Have you been here long? I was only able to sneak out of the castle this last half hour. It isn't the celebration it ought to be, not with recent events.”

“We've been here all day,” I told her, unable to miss the way her gaze kept drifting over my shoulder. “Oh. Right. This is—well, this is Kouris.”

I stepped to the side, allowing Katja to approach her namesake. I didn't know how Kouris would react. I recalled the way she'd marched away from the camp fire, but when faced with Kidira's daughter, she stepped forward, letting herself grin.

“You must be Kouris,” she said, holding out a hand.

Katja took it, and said, “It's wonderful to finally meet you. I've heard so very much about you.”

“Only good things, I hope.”

“Indeed,” Katja said, letting go of Kouris' hand and clasping her hands behind her back. “Well, until a few weeks ago, that is.”

Something went unspoken between them. They were both nervous and excited all at once, immediately aware of the role they played in each other's lives, but strangers nonetheless. They were eager to change that, in spite of how Queen Kidira felt about the matter, and I wandered over to Akela, giving them room to talk.

“I am afraid I am abandoning Ightham. Right now, she is enduring the endless ball,” Akela said, not sounding sorry at all. “Still, it is not so bad. She is certainly looking the part.”

I felt sorry for Claire, trapped inside as she was, but when I looked at the castle in the distance, I was confident that I couldn't do anything to rescue her. Akela was in full support of my suggestion that we find something to eat, and Katja and Kouris walked behind us, tentatively getting to know one another. We found a vendor roasting a whole pig on a spit, and Katja politely declined a serving at the sight of it. Akela decided to eat enough for the both of them, and we strolled aimlessly, until Katja cleared her throat.

“On the way here, I saw a performance that I thought would interest you, Rowan,” she said, taking my arm once I'd finished eating. “Would you like to see it?”

I nodded, and I supposed it was for the best I did. Katja took wide-strides down the street, pulling me along with her.

We didn't get far. We turned into a square Kouris and I hadn't yet explored, reminding me that there was more to Isin than could ever be seen in a single day, and a man in white robes instantly did all he could to garner our attention.

“Ladies—!” he called out. “Don't tell me two intelligent looking women such as yourselves have been taken in by this disgrace of a festival!”

Katja turned to me, raised her eyebrows, and walked briskly over to the man. He was stunned into silence for a split second; those in the square were giving him as wide a berth as possible, and I felt as though we were the first people who'd willingly approached him all day. There were others dressed like him around the square, holding out rolls of parchment that people flinched from, as though they were brandishing weapons.

“Religious sorts. Not at all what I had in mind,” Katja whispered to me, smiling brightly at the cloaked man. “Pardon me. Could you elaborate?”