Dragonoak (21 page)

It'd
been good for me, good for the town. A necromancer in Port Mahon
meant that merchants were willing to bring their wares to the docks
once more.

I'd draw
the pain out of what remained of Reis' leg, when the wood rubbed
against flesh, or it ached for what it had lost, and at the end of
the day, I'd do what I could to settle my mind, light coiling back
within me. I thought of Claire, but the results were never
consistent. Some days, the light would fade from me as though I'd
pinched a candle wick, and others, I'd find myself burning bright,
shaking, no matter how I clutched at my wrist.

I learnt
to draw it in for minutes at a time, and found that the hand was
still there, beneath the light, fingers curling without its
influence.

I'd not
long been awake one morning when Varn came over, light rising with
the sun. A month into her stay in Mahon and she was still avoiding
Reis; I heard footsteps on the pier outside, and turned to see her
clambering through my window, landing heavily on the bed and making
herself comfortable.

“Good
morning,” I said, watching her punch the shape back into a
pillow.

“Alright. Thought you'd be caught up at the temple again,”
she said, treating my bedroom like a corridor. “Actually, wanted to
have a word with you about some stuff.”

I wanted
to have a word with her too – namely to inform her that I wasn't
hurting for business; she didn't have to keep sending people my way
– but the stack of parchment in her lap distracted me.

“Writing
a letter?” I asked.

“Yeah,”
she said, setting her jaw, but I found her considerably less
hostile, when it was only the two of us. “... to Lanta. I can read
fine, that ain't a problem, but I'm not so good at the writing.
Figured I'd get help.”

“From
Reis?”

I
flashed Varn a grin but that didn't soften the blow.

“From
Kouris
,” she said, and had I been sat next to her, she might just
have given me a black eye.

Varn didn't move. She thumbed through the pages, half of them
looking to be letters from Atalanta, while the rest contained no
more than a few scattered words. Deciding that it was
my
bed, after all, I
flopped down next to her, propped up on my elbows.

“Wanna
help?” she asked, thwacking my forehead with the
letters.

“I can't
write, either,” I told her. “Or read.”

“Yeah?
Canthian harder than Felheimish or something?”

“Nope.
Just can't read or write,” I said, knocking the pages to the side.
“And it's Mesomium, not Felheimish.”

Varn
didn't care, neither about the fact that I couldn't write nor the
name of my mother tongue, and with a sigh, she sunk down until her
legs were dangling off the bed. I knew better than to ask if she
was alright, sure she'd take it as an insult, and so I watched her
from the corner of my eye until she'd had enough of me looking at
her.

“Okay:
here's a question,” she said. “Say someone comes and puts a sword
straight between my ribs—you could bright me back, right? What if
someone stuck knives in my head? Three of 'em.”

“Why
would somebody stick three knives in your head?” I asked, and Varn
groaned, throwing her hands in the air and slamming them back
against the mattress.

“Just curious, North Woods. But anyway, get this,” she said,
pausing to press her palms flat to the bed and push herself back
into a sitting position. “We're getting somewhere.
Finally.
I did a favour
for Yia a bunch of years back – you know, works at that one brothel
but thinks she's too good for it? – and she's got a cousin who's
even more of a disappointment to her family than she is. He only
went and got himself mixed up in Gavern's business. Anyway, turns
out he defected a month ago, showing some bloody sense, and he told
Yia where Gavern goes to restock on gunpowder the first of every
month.

“Now,
it's a good week's sail from here, but lucky for us, it ain't the
first for another eight days. So I suggest you pack yourself a bag
while I'm talking with Kouris, and then we can get the hell out of
here.”

I'd
grown accustomed to Varn being in Port Mahon, and while thoughts of
Gavern were always pressing to the back of my mind, I'd
half-convinced myself that I was the only one who knew anything
about it. Varn had simply returned to Mahon as people expected her
to, and the two of us had managed to strike up something that could
be mistaken for a friendship, after a few ales.

“What?
Now? Today?”

“Thought
you were as eager to go through with this as me,” Varn said,
getting to her feet. I opened my mouth to say something more, but
she beat me to it, snapping, “Oi. Don't go backing out, Rowan. Not
after I've spent all this goddamn time down here, having to deal
with everyone trying to start shit with me. You told me you were up
for this, so let's get to it. Don't stand a chance without
you.”

I'd been
certain that we wouldn't find Gavern; or if we did, it would be so
far in the future that I would've miraculously become prepared to
deal with all of this. Saying I'd kill him when he was a distant
concept was one thing, but Varn knew someone who knew someone who
knew him. In a port of pirates, that meant it was as good as
done.

There
was no backing out now, no matter how I tried to scrape together
some excuse. What if we waited another month, what if we ensured
there was some truth to what Yia's cousin had said first? But Varn
didn't want to hear any of it, and I couldn't bring myself to form
the words.

“Pack.
C'mon,” she said, pulling the door open an inch to check that Reis
wasn't anywhere to be seen. “I've got a boat for us. In a few
weeks, I'll be back in Chandaran and you'll be on your way back to
the woods.”

The door
swung shut behind Varn and I belatedly got to my feet, wondering
what I was supposed to pack in order to go kill someone.

I paced across the room, planning out how I'd knock on
Kouris' door, find her helping Varn write a letter, and say,
I'm sorry, Varn. I can't go through with it, but
you can go home
. Varn wouldn't care, so
long as she got out of there. Or perhaps she would; perhaps she was
more invested in Canth's future than she liked to let on. After
all, she'd left this all behind to serve the Queen, and no matter
how big a part of that Atalanta had been, Varn was too head-strong
to be dragged anywhere she didn't want to be.

So: Varn
would
care, Kouris would be disappointed in me for letting things
go this far, and I'd have let myself down.

“Okay,”
I said, clenching and unclenching my fists. “I'm going... I'm going
to stop Gavern.”

I snatched a bag from the corner of my room, stepped towards
my dresser and tried to picture what Gavern actually
looked
like. There
might've been some similarity between him and Queen Nasrin, I
supposed, but I could only think of him as a brute, daring the sea
to swallow him whole for the ownership he claimed over
it.

I pulled
drawers open, blindly grabbing shorts and vests, thinking we'd need
food. A few days' worth, at the very least. Who was to say how many
stops we were making along the way? Most people, I thought dully,
would've packed a weapon or two when it came to assassinations, but
I had all I needed poorly concealed within me.

The
faded sounds of Kouris and Varn talking in the next room drifted
through the wall, and I dropped my bag at my feet.

I
couldn't do it.

Not now
that I realised this past month had been leading up to this moment.
That Varn hadn't just been getting in bar fights and reacquainting
herself with the sea; she'd been planning this out the whole time,
and I was complicit.

I sat on
the edge of my bed, light burning, boiling, fading. I gripped the
key hanging on a chain around my throat and leant forward, staring
into the fog that enveloped my mind for whole minutes. Longer,
perhaps.

Varn
came strolling back into my room, letter written, and placed her
hands on her hips as she scowled down at me.

“Oi. No backing out, Rowan,” she said. “And what's all
this
about? You said you
were getting good at this whole glowing business. We ain't got much
time! Let's get going.”

“Can't,”
I said, shaking my head. “I can't do it.”

Varn,
for as much as she indulged in seeming as annoyed as a person
possibly could be throughout every waking moment, didn't react with
anything close to surprise.

She shrugged, saying, “What's the big deal? We've all done
it. Only difference is, you ain't gotta rely on any weapon. You
don't have to get too close, and you don't have to worry about the
mess. It's
easy
.
It's no big deal, Rowan. The guy's a bastard, and the Queen wants
this done. That kind of makes it okay, right?”

“I'm—maybe I'm not like all of you,” I blurted out. The words
slipped free before I had the chance to force them to fade in my
throat.

Varn
stepped forward, huffing a dry, humourless laugh.

“You ain't like one of us? I hate to break it to you, Rowan,
but you live in a town of pirates. You eat with pirates, drink with
pirates,
work
with pirates. What, you reckon you're somehow above us all
'cause no one's ever seen you stick a knife in someone? Reckon you
can carry on not being
like us
when you live with someone like Reis? You've seen
the sort of stuff they can do, right?”

I looked
away, teeth clenching together hard enough to spur on a headache.
Varn was right. I might not have used a blade to take a life, but
I'd stolen, I'd helped the pirates plunder small villages across
the coast and I hadn't blinked when they'd bragged about the ships
they'd sunk and the lives they'd taken in the taverns; I hadn't
thought twice about the way Reis had those men's hands cut off,
until...

“I
didn't mean it like that. I know I'm not better than any of you, I
just, I don't think I can do it, Varn.”

“Well,
you ain't gonna find out for certain sat here. Come on,” Varn said
firmly, moving to grab me by the shoulder.

I
knocked her arm back and she tensed, staring down at me as though
she couldn't tell whether she ought to hit me or dodge a punch I
was about to throw. I stared up at her, jaw set, determined to be
immovable, knowing there was nothing for me in Kastelir. They had a
resistance, and it'd been built up without our help; it was
patronising to assume they needed us now.

“Rowan
,” Varn warned, and I shot to
my feet, unwilling to let her tower over me. I grabbed the front of
her vest in a fist, dared to pull her close, and a long, low note
rolled through the air like thunder.

“The
hell?” Varn murmured, knocking my arm back.

Whatever
scuffle I'd been about to lose was forgotten, and Varn scrambled
onto the bed, clinging to the windowsill and leaning out. I hurried
to do the same, recognising the sound of the horn too keenly, and
when my eyes adjusted to the pounding of the sun outside, I saw
that it was happening all over again.

Buildings were burning. Boats and cargo alike had been set
ablaze along the docks, and in the distance, the silhouettes of
colossal ships broke apart the ocean. There were three of them,
each the size of the biggest ship Mahon boasted, and as fire swept
through the town,
not again, not
again
, pounded between my
temples.

It
wasn't until Varn looked my way that I realised I'd been murmuring
the words out loud.

Not having time to deal with me, she yelled out
“
Reis
!” and
stormed into the hut. I followed, and Reis and Kouris were out of
their rooms by the time the first ship's cannons fired against us.
Holstering their gun, Reis left the hut with a look that could've
stopped a raging storm in a heartbeat.

Kouris
rushed out first, taking wide, swift strides through the sand, and
as Varn and I ran past Reis, they called out, “Better get to work,
kid,” at me.

The
crackling of flames was interspersed by swords clashing together,
and people – our people, Gavern's people, voices blending together
– screaming out in victory and pain alike. I'd witnessed plenty of
fights in my time there, many of them grave, but I'd never seen an
assault on this scale, and I doubted anyone else had. The ships had
stopped once they were in firing range and Mahon's cannons were
firing in return, and half of the ships that had sailed out to meet
Gavern's were already halfway to sinking.

A man
charged towards us as we drew towards the town and Varn let him
come close, let him – and me – believe that he was going to be able
to slash his blade across her throat; falling into stance, Varn
grabbed his face, and with an ankle hooked around the back of his
leg, threw him to the ground. In his trip down, he'd forgotten
about his sword, but Varn hadn't. She grabbed it by the hilt, using
the pommel to embed his nose deep into his skull.