Forest Born (21 page)
R
in woke with hope clawing up from the pit of misery in her chest. If they could get to Razo’s body, maybe they could fix him as they had done for Isi. Dasha could give him water, and Enna could give him heat and breath so he lived again.
If only . . . if
only . . .
She closed her eyes and imagined Razo breathing in, sitting up, and asking, “What happened? Did I fall asleep? Where’s Tusken, and why are all you crazy girls staring at me like that?”
She clung to the hope because she sensed it was about to blow away. Isi’d had no serious injury and she’d stopped breathing only moments before. Fire and wind could not heal a burn or a sword wound, could not bring back a boy dead for a day.
My brother is dead.
The thought pressed on Rin, pushed against her eyes, filled her mouth. She thrust away that knowledge, desperate to keep it from burying her, at least not until Tusken was safe.
Isi stirred and seemed to want to wake, but Enna kept shushing her and insisting she sleep on, until at last Isi protested that she was thirsty enough to drink Enna’s blood.
Then Enna popped right up and said brightly, “Good morning, Your Majesty. I believe the rooster has crowed.”
Dasha said there was not much water left in the dungeon air. She pulled as much as she could, letting fat drops splash into their cupped hands. Rin sipped the warm liquid from her hands, licking her fingers, feeling the air around her crackle and dry up. Their bellies all groaned in chorus, and to distract them from hunger, Isi told them about the day before. She and Selia had talked for hours. Selia had tried to persuade Isi to sign the document, but Isi had insisted she would not sign anything without seeing Tusken first.
“I was a little better at resisting her people-speaking than last time, especially when she was trying to provoke me to do what I didn’t want to do. Her ability to dissuade me from action was still quite strong. After a time she got frustrated and wanted her pet fire-speakers to hurt me without really hurting me, just to cause me pain. They were poking me with heat. It stung. I didn’t attack back, but I did wash away their heat with wind. Nuala, her favorite of them, retaliated and pulled all the heat out of my body. I think it was a mistake. I think she was just clumsy and took too much. But that’s what did it . . .” Isi put a hand on her chest and stared at it for some time.
“Do you want to tell us?” Dasha asked, her voice more concerned than curious. “What was it like?”
“It hurt.” Isi took a breath. “It hurt a lot, as if she’d put her fingernails into me and was yanking out something essential, like, oh, all my internal organs.”
“Lovely,” said Enna.
Isi’s eyes were haunted. “The yanking kept going, and I couldn’t . . . while Selia was talking at me, I couldn’t concentrate enough to call a wind. Then a huge pulsing numbness exploded from my belly and radiated through my whole body, and . . . I don’t remember much of anything until I heard Rin’s voice, and then Enna shouting at me. You were none too gentle.”
“What am I supposed to do when my best friend dies on me? Pat your cheek and say good for you?”
Isi squinted at the dark wall as if she were trying to make out someone’s face from a distance.
“You remember something else,” Rin whispered.
“Do I?” Isi smiled, surprised. “I wasn’t sure. It’s like I have a memory of a memory, barely the scent of it. I think . . . there is a place that still remembers. Where all things know all the languages. I think I was there, or almost there. I felt something . . .” She frowned in concentration. “I think I was bursting with the first words of
all
the languages. A good feeling. For a moment, I was looking forward to learning them all.”
Isi’s gaze shot to the door. “Someone’s coming.”
“Quick, pretend to be dead,” said Enna.
Isi lay on her side, her back to the door. Dasha and Enna knelt beside her.
“What’s your plan?” Isi whispered.
“Surprise,” Enna said. “I guess.”
Rin did not think. She bound to her feet and pressed herself against the wall, closest to the door’s opening. She’d stopped moving just as a boy of about fourteen years, his chin and cheeks red and pocked, peeked through the bars in the door.
Enna and Rin met eyes, then Enna leaned down and whispered something in Isi’s ear.
“I am just a page,” he said, his Kelish accent less pronounced than most Rin had heard. “So do not hurt me, please. Her Majesty wants—
aah!
”
He cried out as Isi twitched. Enna and Dasha pretended shock.
“Can it be?” Enna exclaimed. “Is it possible? Does she . . .
live
?”
Isi twitched again.
“
Aah!
” said the page.
Dasha stooped over Isi’s body. “There’s something strange. I can’t feel a pulse, and yet she moves! Come look! Hurry, you’ll want to report this to your queen.”
The page opened the door, barely peeking through. Three soldiers were gawking over his shoulder. Isi trembled again, and they recoiled, but when she stilled, they opened the door a little more, peeking closer, their attention wholly on Isi.
It was not much space, but it was enough for a thin girl with a lot of sneaking practice. Her whole mind, her whole body, pulled in thoughts of that tree by the wall—no trunk, a few scrawny branches thrusting leaves up to the sun, its roots still living, still drinking and growing, still breaking stone.
Go like roots under soil
, she told herself.
Moving, though no one
sees; living, though no one notices.
She bent her knees and eased through the opening, ducking beneath the page’s arm, twisting to avoid the guard. She did not look back as she left the dungeon behind.
Rin fought to keep her legs from shaking and her steps careless. Trees were never afraid. Finding Tusken was as important as roots finding water, as leaves cupping sunshine. She flowed through the underground corridor, up the twisting stair. Some thoughts she tried to keep small and quiet in her head—the knowledge that if she was discovered again, Selia would cut her throat and toss her over the wall. It did not matter anymore, not since she saw Isi die, not since Razo died. If life and death were so sudden, so arbitrary, then nothing mattered. Except Tusken.
Climbing from the lower stairs into the central chamber was the worst part. Only a handful of soldiers, Nuala, and Selia had seen Rin. Dressed in Kelish robes, walking with purpose, she hoped others would dismiss her. But climbing up from the dungeon would certainly make her look suspicious.
She hesitated near the top, listening. There were footfalls, conversation, but perhaps not near. She took a deep breath, reminded her body what it felt like to be calm, to feel breezy, to walk with casual purpose.
She climbed the last stair. The guards at the gate were looking out, not in. Workers were coming and going from the kitchen, but did not glance her way. She circled the first floor of the central tower, picking up a discarded bucket to aid her look of errand runner. The spotty-faced page came up from the dungeons and continued upstairs. She turned her back and pretended busyness sorting plates on a table, hiding in plain sight until she could no longer hear the slap of his boots.
She passed by the four chambers of the side towers, their doors all open in the summer heat—kitchen, kitchen storage, armory, and a rest chamber for the guards. None seemed likely places to keep a kidnapped prince.
Rin started toward the central winding stairs up to the second floor.
“. . . have much to account for, Nuala. Let me see for myself if the little sausage lives.”
Selia’s voice. Rin stopped, pressing her back against the rounded wall separating her from the stairs. Cold sluiced through her limbs, and she held her breath, listening to Selia and her hearth-watchers descending into the dungeon. Rin closed her eyes, trying to remember the rhythmic whooshing of life inside a tree.
The lick of sunlight on a leaf,
she told herself.
Deep water flowing.
With trembling stilled and breathing slowed, Rin left her wall and climbed the stairs. She’d already begun to ascend when two more soldiers came down after Selia’s party. Rin’s face burned red in surprise, betraying herself in her panic. It was too late to hide the blush, to pretend innocence and normalcy.
They stopped her, demanding something in Kelish. She tried to moisten her mouth, but people-speaking was useless when she could not speak their language.
Then again . . .
She could not risk saying a word, but if guessing a person’s thoughts and desires was part of people-speaking, she was not completely powerless.
The soldier who had spoken was handsome—very handsome, with bright blue eyes and a square jaw, firm shoulders and chest. By comparison, his perfectly normal companion seemed dull.
Rin ducked her head, putting a shy hand over her mouth, pretending her blush was caused by embarrassed affection. Recalling the mannerisms of her oldest niece Minna whenever she met new boys, Rin glanced up at the handsome soldier through her lashes, back down again, and up, as if she would never tire of the sight of him. She licked her lips, smiling the sweetest, most innocent smile. And then, she giggled, covering her eyes, hiding playfully behind her hands.
The second soldier groaned impatiently. Clearly the handsome one got this reaction a lot from girls. The first spoke again, his tone exasperated, but there was no real fire behind it. He was flattered, she could tell, and now there was a danger he might corner her into a conversation. So she giggled again, peeking at him through her fingers, and fled up the stairs.
She stopped at the top just out of sight, her hand on her chest to keep her heart from thudding through, listening to hear if they would follow. One soldier called up after her, but the second said something in a teasing tone to his companion, and they continued down. Rin exhaled and took in her surroundings.
The central chamber on the second floor was fitted with large tables, carved wooden chairs, tapestries twitching in the breeze that arched in through the tall, thin windows. Compared to the bustle of downstairs, it was as quiet as a meadow morning. It took some time for Rin to make her way through all four side chambers. One of the doors was locked. She could hear voices on the other side, and she waited for someone inside to emerge. Her legs hurt, as if she’d been standing for days. Selia was down in the dungeon even now. She would notice Rin’s absence. Soon they would search, and no girlish giggles would protect her.
Some minutes passed when two disheveled-looking women emerged from the fourth door and blinked at the day as if just waking up. They hurried downstairs, letting the door swing closed behind them. Rin stood behind it, grabbing the door before it shut and slipping inside. Another sleeping chamber, this one crammed with beds and pallets, and completely empty of life.
The winding stair to the third story of the central tower seemed to stretch into the clouds, and she imagined it the trunk of a tree, leading her out to its branches. The idea made the castle seem less hostile.
At last it opened into a large receiving room, not as grandly furnished as Isi’s in Bayern, but neat with rugs and tables and lounges. It was empty. Two of the side doors stood open and Rin moved through those chambers, finding no one. She tried the door of the third—locked. The fourth was closed but unlocked. It was a bedchamber, this one with only one large bed. The narrow light from the window dropped a slit of yellow across the floor, neat as the slice of a blade. The contrast of concentrated brightness against the dim room was blinding. Rin squinted through the glare and spotted a bump on the bed, a shape like a sleeping child.
She leaped forward, her hands out to pull him in to her chest, to cuddle him and kiss him.
“Tusken!”
The shape that gave beneath her touch, soft and square, was a pillow under a blanket. The room was empty.
Rin slammed a fist against the wall and sank to her knees. She was exhausted, starving, her whole self teetering on the edge of despair. Perhaps Tusken was not in the castle itself but in an outbuilding—the garrison perhaps. Or even in the town of Daire to the northeast of the fortress. Wherever he was, there would be hearth-watchers guarding him, and soldiers too. How could Rin possibly get him free? Or even run back to tell Isi without getting charred to bits?
It did not matter, she decided. They had killed Razo. They had killed Isi and would again, and that was wrong. Being with Isi had not changed her the way she’d hoped, but she knew Isi would not quit searching. Rin would check that last locked door, then the garrison, and walk to town if she had to. Keep moving. Throw herself into the fray and hope for the best.
Rin inhaled deeply, letting breath fill her center, and eased her way out the door.
She made sure the door shut silently behind her, then turned. Selia was entering the chamber, surrounded by seven hearth-watchers and several soldiers. Behind Selia, with her head bowed, came Isi.
N
o. Rin had St allow Isi to be taken alone again. But Selia must have proved the stronger. Rin ducked behind the nearest chair, but it was too late. She’d been seen.
Nuala yelled in Kelish, and fire erupted on the rug beneath Rin’s feet, encircling her in a flaming ring. She screamed, tossing her arms across her face to shield her eyes from the blaze. The fire extinguished just as suddenly as it started and soldiers were around her, hands seizing her arms, shoulders, waist, and hair. She whimpered in pain.
“I won’t allow it,” Isi was shouting. “If you hurt her, or hurt me again, I will fight back. And you don’t want to fight me, Selia. I’m not the same girl you left in the Forest those years ago.”
“Easy,” said Selia. “No one need fight. Let us talk as friends. I did say no harm would come to anyone as long as you cooperated. When this girl sneaked out of her safe cell and violated my home, she forfeited her right to my protection.”
“Selia—,” Isi started.
Selia lifted one of her pale, thin-fingered hands. “But to show you my compassion, I will pardon her. For the moment. You see she still lives, the fire that could have been her death doused and gone. Her safety as well as Tusken’s depends on you, Crown Princess. But just to be safe, since she’s proved to be a slippery little thing . . .” Selia motioned to one of the soldiers, a thick-set man with auburn hair and white temples. He clamped iron cuffs around Rin’s wrists, one hand gripping her upper arm.
Rin winced as the cuffs bit into her skin and wondered why they did not just kill her. But she remembered Isi telling Enna,
Selia might threaten you, hurt you . . . use you to get to
me.
Rin’s stomach squelched as if full of sour milk.
“Your Majesty?” It was hard to use that title on Selia, but she managed to squeak it out. She was cuffed and held, but not gagged, and she reasoned she had nothing much to lose. “May I speak with you?”
Something in Rin’s aspect might have intrigued Selia, or alarmed her, because she strolled a little nearer, keeping the soldier who held Rin between them.
“You have something worth telling me?” Selia raised an eyebrow.
Rin cleared her throat, then spoke softly, sure Selia would not allow her to keep talking if her hearth-watchers overheard.
“When you’re muddled and lost in a crowd of people, you can’t see yourself anymore. All you can see is them. So many faces and voices, so hard to remember which one is you, because it’s easier to see all of them than to see yourself. It can feel like drowning.”
Rin was breathing so hard, she was getting light-headed. Though Selia cut her eyes at Rin, she did not interrupt. Rin continued.
“You need to be up a little higher, just to keep ahold of yourself. You
should
be a queen. That is what you were meant for, right? A queen—one woman who is lifted above, who has the right to speak and everyone must obey. Who is not lost in the crowd. No one would question the way you hold yourself up, the way you speak out, if only you were a queen. It’s not fair that a queen is decided by birth, is it? A queen should be chosen, a queen should be the one everyone loves and wants to follow. That’s you.”
Still Selia listened, though her gaze was not something Rin enjoyed enduring. Rin’s breathing was becoming more sure.
“I understand that, Selia, and I think you know I can sympathize more than anyone. But I also understand the rest.” Here her voice dipped even softer. “The hate that chokes your soul, the shame of cheating to get what you want, of tricking people into loving you, of pushing yourself up so high you can no longer touch and hold the people who loved you. Everything you’ve accomplished doesn’t feel as good as it should, does it? You hurt so much. And you think that hurting Isi in turn will make that go away at last. It won’t. When Isi is dead, when Tusken and Geric are dead, when you’re crowned queen of Bayern, the pain will still chase you. Let Isi go. Let Tusken go. Be queen of Kel. This is your best chance at being happy.”
It was alarming to witness the struggle of emotions on Selia’s face—anger, curiosity, fear, wonder, and beneath it all, horrifying pain. Her face was blotchy red, her chin quivered, her eyes blinked too fast. Unexpected tears stung in Rin’s eyes as this woman who had killed her brother became so terrifyingly human. Rin’s heart ached for the pale-haired girl from Kildenree: homeless, wandering, unhappy, and searching all her life for relief.
She could help me,
Rin thought,
and I could help her. I could.
Then Selia straightened, her nostrils flaring. She breathed in and her struggle ended. She came very close to Rin, leaning so her lips touched Rin’s ear as she whispered, “You understand nothing. You are a worm quivering on a stone. You are a crushed beetle. And if you’d had any real talent at understanding, you would have seen that I don’t care to be understood.”
Selia put a hand on the soldier’s upper arm and whispered, “Hurt her.”
His elbow slammed into Rin’s gut, and she doubled over, groaning.
Isi started. “No!”
“Whoops!” Selia said. “I said,
don’t
hurt the girl. So sorry, Crown Princess, an error. We should get on with these negotiations to avoid any more mishaps.”
Rin’s gut wrenched, her wrists smarted where metal rubbed against her skin, her head ached from her rough capture. Speaking had not helped. Selia would force Isi to sign the document and then she would kill her. Rin sensed that familiar pit of despair open beneath her, felt herself barely balanced and slipping.
Useless, hopeless, failed again, Razo’s
dead and nothing matters . . .
The windows were open, and the breeze that trickled inside carried the first cool murmurings of autumn. Autumn was Razo’s favorite season, mostly because he liked nuts, and nothing pleased him more than scavenging for his own food—except perhaps eating it. Despite her nauseating pain, Rin wanted to smile. Ma said that giving in to despair was like eating poisonous berries to keep from feeling hungry. Razo never despaired.
You’re Forest born,
he’d told her.
Rin kept her eyes on Isi, set her jaw, and breathed deeply.
Selia was sitting on a carved chair with deep red cushions, several paces from Isi. The seven hearth-watchers surrounded Isi, and two soldiers with swords drawn and bows on their shoulders stood behind Selia’s chair. Selia was smiling at Isi, speaking in her usual calm, pleasant tone.
“Spark a single flame, and Tusken loses a finger. Hurt one of my people, and Tusken loses a limb. I’d prefer to keep him alive for my purposes, but truth be told, I don’t need
all
of him. That leads to a question—how much fun can a child have without legs or fingers? I can’t imagine you would be so cruel, Crown Princess, but I really don’t know.”
“I won’t hurt you.” Isi’s face troubled, her voice heightened as if she were trying to speak from the bottom of a well. “But understand, if you kill me or hurt Tusken, an army of your hearth-watchers and soldiers won’t stop that girl in the dungeon. If you had truly killed me, Enna would have seen to you and all your followers. The moment she so much as suspects I’m hurt, she and Dasha will tear this castle—”
Selia tsked. “Really, such talk.”
“I will protect myself. If you—”
“Please, show some pride. There is no need to grovel for mercy. Yesterday was a mistake”—she glanced at Nuala, whose broad face was bright red with chagrin—“and will not happen again, so long as you behave. I regret the tactics taken to encourage your participation, and I regret your placement in those foul dungeons. An oversight on the part of my steward. You are my guest, an honored prisoner of war, and from now on you will be treated as such. Your son will go home and your friends as well, if only you will sign your name here.”
Selia gestured to the ornate table before her, the only barrier between the two yellow-haired women. A document lay beside a quill and pot of ink. Rin observed Selia, trying to tell if the woman was lying. She seemed to mean what she said—she was willing to send Tusken home if Isi signed. But there were mysteries behind those words that Rin could not guess.
“Sign, Crown Princess. Sign your name. So simple a thing! You acknowledge that I have won this move in our war game, and thus allow the boy to return to his father. I swear on my own life that I will not kill him, and he will not come to any harm, save if you break my rules.” She picked up the paper, wafting it in the air, her eyes shut as if it created a most refreshing breeze. “Just sign your name, my dear. Just sign.”
“Fine.” Isi spoke rigidly, as if she had practiced her words in advance. “I will put my signature to that document, decreeing you lady of the eastern provinces on Tusken’s eighteenth birthday, so long as he is alive and well on that day and living with his parents in Bayern.”
Selia barely flinched, but Rin’s eyes caught it. “A marvelous idea! Well thought. Sign first, and I swear upon the life of my mother that I will add that clause as an addendum.”
“I . . .” Isi shook her head, a tight, small gesture. “Write the addendum first. And I will sign it, after I see my son.”
Selia clicked her tongue in disappointment. “Crown Princess, Crown Princess, now why would I hazard my most valuable possession? As much as I trust my voice soothes your more suicidal instincts, I just don’t know what you might do if Tusken were in this room. I need to keep him away from you so I can return him safely to his father.”
Isi glanced once at Rin before speaking again, her face taxed as though she spoke with effort. “That was clever. What you did. Escaping execution in Bayern.”
“Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” Selia smiled at the window as if at a pleasant memory.
“How did you do it?”
Selia looked at Isi with sympathy, and Rin knew she guessed that Isi was trying to get her to reveal some weakness. “It is a marvelous story. I will tell you all about it after you sign.”
Isi pressed her lips together, breathing in through her nose. “I guess you made an offer to your prison guard, though I can’t think of many things you had to offer . . .”
Selia sat up straighter, her eyes twinkling. “Oh, is that what you imagine? You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“I know you’re capable of escaping death by my hands, but I’ve done the same from yours,” Isi said, her face still down. “I know you’re capable of marrying the king of Kel, just as I married the king of Bayern. So far I haven’t seen you do much that I haven’t done as well.”
Selia stood, her lips trembling. She must have known that Isi was baiting her, must have read those intentions in her old rival as easily as she talked her into submission. But she could not seem to help speaking.
“I am capable of everything, Anidori. Everything! It was all me. You should feel flattered by the lengths I go to get your attention. Even the war was my gift to you.”
Isi scoffed, but Rin knew it was just to provoke Selia more. “You started the war?”
Selia’s smile was condescending, making sure Isi knew she realized her intentions, though she was willing to speak all the same. “After your botched execution, I left Bayern and went south to Tira. I adore Ingridan and genuinely considered marrying the prince there, but he has no true power. Shame. Tira was a lovely place and so enchanted by war, much to my delight. After some prodding on my part, the Assembly was swooning in rapture at the idea of invading Bayern.”
Isi gaped, genuinely shocked, and no reaction could have pleased Selia more. She laughed, clasping her hands to her chest.
“Yes, that was me! It was a wonderful plan, until . . . Enna, was it? Yes, Enna started burning. As you can imagine, I was intrigued by the idea of a person setting fires out of nothing. I spent some time in Yasid and uncovered writings on how to learn the way with fire, bringing them back to Tira. There was a disillusioned Tiran war captain by the name of Ledel who was embarrassingly fond of me. He was thrilled to try and learn the fire way, to teach a band of soldiers too, and simply gushed over my idea of using it to restart the Tiran and Bayern war. I left him to it and journeyed on to Kel, just in case he failed, which he did, poor dear. But no matter, by then I was courting the king of Kel. I have decided war is much too unpredictable. This way is superior, because here we are.”
Isi did not try to hide her shock and anger. That was wise, Rin thought. Selia would see through it anyway.
“You didn’t explain how you freed yourself from the barrel of nails,” Isi said. “I imagine it’s too shameful to repeat.”
Again, fury flashed in Selia’s face, and Rin winced, expecting at the very least thrown chairs and tables. Selia’s eyes were hot, but she remained in control, speaking in fixed, measured phrases.
“It was so ordinary as hardly worth the trouble to mention. I made friends with my guard. I invited him to free me and put some animal in my place. I suggested he be the one to bury the dead animal so no other knew. So devoted he was to me, he did not speak of it all these years, but of course I could not trust him to remain silent forever. And if anyone suspected I was still alive, getting my hands on you and Tusken would prove so much more difficult. Even that loose end is tied up now, thanks to you. I had my hearth-watchers burn that little town in order to lure you out. Geric came instead, but as I’d hoped, my one-time collaborator rode along.”
“Brynn. You had your fire-speakers kill him.”
Selia examined her fingernails. “Was that his name? Of course I had to wound Geric as well so you would come trotting to his rescue. With both you and Geric out of the palace, your darling son would be much easier to carry away. So I thought. But not as easy as if you actually brought him along for the plucking! Many thanks for that, Crown Princess.”
Isi squeezed her eyes shut.
Selia eased into her cushioned chair with a forced calm, the remnants of anger disappearing. “Well. You see how utterly useless it is to fight against me. I have friends in five kingdoms, I have knowledge and understanding you can only guess. And I will win. Submit to me.” She spoke the words like a mother to a baby, encouraging her to rest. “I know you are exhausted; it will be such a relief. Submit to me, and then you will rest and all will be well.”