Authors: Anna Steffl
“Is that smoke?” Degarius suddenly asked.
Smoke? Draeden? How could it have found them here? Arvana clutched the Blue Eye and scanned the sky. There was no smoke except for the light gray billowing from Ferne Clyffe’s chimneys.
“The damn steward is a usurper,” Degarius snarled and took off in a gallop.
By the time Arvana understood his concern was over the occupation of his home, he was too far ahead to catch. Without waiting for her, he dismounted, drew his sword, hurtled the steps, and burst through the front door. While Arvana tied the horses, she heard him shout, “Mrs. Karlkin, why is my house open?”
Arvana tiptoed across the porch and peered around the open door. A handsome, stout woman with a halo of blond-going-gray hair was standing in the foyer. She was likely the housekeeper Degarius had been yelling at. With her arms crossed over her apron in satisfaction, she was watching a weeping Chancellor Degarius embrace his son. Through sobs, the chancellor said, “Fassal has made a public condemnation...but issued no call for your arrest...still it’s dangerous...the price on your head.”
The housekeeper saw Arvana and gave her a head-to-toe look. Feeling like a spy, Arvana was about to retreat to the steps, when the woman motioned her inside with unexpected friendliness.
“I’m at liberty?” Degarius asked his father.
The chancellor released his son and looked at him from arm’s length. “Myronan, don’t hope for it. They’ve stripped you of your appointment. As it is, we’re lucky King Lerouge didn’t pull his troops. Plus, you have no time. The war likely starts in three days. We think the Gherians will declare at the end of their Winter Solemnity. Alenius has called a meeting of the Cabinet of Counties to mark the event—at sunset in the Fortress. The nine days of atonement began a week ago.”
“So soon,” Degarius muttered. “We’ll just make it.”
“We? Going where?” The chancellor turned around and narrowed his rheumy, astonished eyes. “Hera Solace?” He glanced to Degarius. “Myronan?”
“Miss Nazar is with me.”
His father pinched his brow and looked between them. Undoubtedly, he’d heard from Lady Martise the circumstances of his son’s disgrace. Undoubtedly, he would blame her, too. Though he’d been the kindest of men in Acadia, he was Degarius’s father. He was probably wondering why she was here when his son so obviously disdained her. Arvana steeled herself for a chilly reception.
Instead, the chancellor said matter-of-factly, “I’d heard you’d perished in Solace with the rest.”
With the rest. Why couldn’t he have just said something unwelcoming? The rest.
“Mrs. Karlkin,” Degarius said, “I need the keys to the attic and my grandfather’s chest.”
A great ring of keys came from the housekeeper’s apron pocket. She singled out two. “These would be them, Lord Degarius.”
“The attic?” his father asked. “What must you have from the attic this moment?”
“Something I should have looked for a long time ago,” Degarius mumbled as if to himself and started up the stairs. “It would have spared me a world of trouble.”
Arvana began to follow when the housekeeper curtsied to her. “Excuse me, but how should I address you? I heard hera and miss.”
“Miss, now.”
“Ah yes. For now.” The housekeeper curtsied again. “Most excellent.”
As Arvana grasped the baluster, she turned to give the woman the only thing she could for her kindness—a grateful look. The housekeeper accepted it with a smile so warm it consumed her genial, black, quail-like eyes. Intuitively, Arvana knew all the goodness of the world had been bound up in this woman.
At the end of the second floor hall, Degarius unlocked a door to narrow, steep attic stairs. His father led the way up to a cavernous attic flooded by channels of light coming in through the dormers. It had the fusty smell of a dead person’s house that had been kept locked and unswept for many moons. Degarius weaved through crates, past an old table with a baby cradle stacked on top of it, to a big cedar chest.
In Sylvania, her family home didn’t have an attic, or the extraneous bits and pieces leftover from life to keep in it. An attic was a strange, cold place, like Hell—full of things not good enough, not necessary, left to themselves. Except one thing here was necessary, just as one soul in Hell had been. Poor Lina. What had she done to deserve damnation? While in Hell, Arvana couldn’t ask, and Degarius never seemed surprised, or shaken, to hear of her fate. Lina
had
molded her grandson into a consummate martial man. Perhaps, if not bribed with Assaea, he’d have been content to manage Ferne Clyffe. Dirt, instead of blood, would have stained his hands. Was that enough to damn her?
Degarius grabbed the trunk by one handle and dragged it into the light. Kneeling before it, he inserted the key in the lock and tried to turn it. He jiggled the lock, slid the key in and out again, his face growing redder with each attempt. He hammered the chest with his fist and then turned the key with all his force. The key bent and the lock remained stalwartly closed. With a growl of irritation, he threw down the key and rose to rummage through the mounds of household goods. After considering and rejecting a table leg, he found a sooty fireplace poker. “Move back.” He brought the tool down in a perfectly aimed glancing blow against the lock. Nothing. The muscles in his neck stood out and he grimaced as he raised the iron for another strike, then another. Each blow was louder, like the thunder in an approaching storm.
Arvana involuntarily cowered. He was unbelievably strong and persevering. Lina had enticed him to train by offering the sword, but the strength and will were all his. There was no one better to have Assaea. Could she say the same of herself and the Blue Eye?
Crack.
With a heavy exhale, he picked the lock from the mangled wood. It was intact, but the metal rings through which it passed were no longer attached to the chest. He dropped the lock, threw the lid open, and took from the chest a black coat decorated with medals, gold buttons, and lace. “My grandfather’s uniform,” he said. By the way he caressed the garment, touched the medals, Arvana guessed he was thinking about his own brief generalship.
He passed the coat to her and rummaged deeper in the trunk. He pulled out half-a-dozen books, passed three to his father, and kept the others. She was left holding the mothball-scented uniform.
“These are personal,” the chancellor said upon opening one. “I don’t see it is our business reading them. Myronan, what is this about?”
With a half-guilty glance to the book in his hand, Degarius said, “Before she died, she told me I should read these. I never had occasion until now.”
“It doesn’t mean you should read them. You know she wasn’t right those last years. She thought you were my father.”
“I’m guessing grandfather told her something of the Forbidden Fortress.”
“Why do you need to know?’
“The thing I killed in the lake was a draeden, an immature draeden. They have another that I guess they’ll unleash on Sarapost at the end of Solemnity. Don’t you have any intelligence on it?”
“We know that Sovereign Alenius is planning to unveil something at the end of the Solemnity, but we thought it merely the announcement of their first push into Sarapost. We’ve heard rumors of something strange to the far north, but a draeden? That’s impossible.”
“I’ve seen it,” Degarius said. “It was what burned Solace. Our troops don’t stand a chance. They’ll be dead in minutes. Alenius is going to unveil it and maybe The Scyon. Only The Scyon can raise the draeden.”
The chancellor gaped. “You intend to go to the Forbidden Fortress?”
“Where else?”
Clutching the diaries to his chest, the chancellor teetered backward and melted into a threadbare armchair. “If what you say is true, you’d be undertaking a fool’s errand. The ancients used blessed swords and a Blue Eye against The Scyon. Our best course is to alert King Fassal and disband all our troops at the front until King Lerouge can bring Artell. But a Blue Eye?”
Arvana caught her breath. Was he going to tell his father everything? As much as she admired the chancellor, he’d been an official. His allegiance was with Sarapost. He shouldn’t know.
Sure enough, Degarius said, “The Solacians have been keeping—”
“Degarius,” Arvana said firmly and cupped her hand over where the relic lay beneath her coat.
“They’ve been keeping a Blue Eye ever since Paulus died. Their superior gave it to Miss Nazar.”
Arvana knotted her fist beneath his grandfather’s uniform. How dare he?
The chancellor nearly dropped the diaries he held. “You?”
If his father was going to know the truth, he might was well know all of it. “I was sent to judge if Prince Lerouge could use the relic. He wasn’t the best man, but he seemed to have changed and your son...he can’t use it. So, I gave it to the prince.”
The chancellor nodded. “Lerouge had Artell, Lukis’s sword and an army.”
“Grandmother gave me Assaea when I won my first tournament,” Degarius said haughtily, obviously spiteful at being cast as second best. “So, it’s a fool’s errand, but not completely foolish.”
“My mother had Assaea?” his father asked. “But how?”
Degarius shrugged. “She never told me. I never really believed it was Assaea until”— he glanced to Arvana, but said— “until I killed the draeden.” There wasn’t even a flicker of appreciation left in his glance for how she’d saved his sword, and life, at the Citadel.
Eyes glazed with introspection, the chancellor said, “No wonder my mother was so disappointed I refused to take up the sword.” The chancellor sighed, focused on the books in his lap, and then opened the top one.
Degarius, too, started to read.
Here she was, purposefully left holding the uniform. She draped it over the chest’s edge and to pass time, stepped to the window overlooking the back of the house. The river, edged by a bluff on the far side, flowed parallel to the horizon. He’d spoken of learning to swim there.
“Myronan.” The way the chancellor said his son’s name meant something was wrong.
Arvana turned from the window.
Degarius took the book from his father. As he read, his mouth first pressed into a thin line, then puckered on the ends, as it he’d tasted something bitter.
The chancellor, doubled over, looked as if he’d had the air knocked out of him. What had Lina written to affect them so?
Degarius was shaking his head in disbelief. “Did you know?” he asked his father.
“No.”
“What’s the matter?” Arvana asked. “Doesn’t it show the way? Is it impossible?”
“It shows the way. It is possible.” Degarius snapped the diary closed. “But there must be another way, a better way.”
“What do you mean? Another way?”
“A way without you.”
Arvana’s throat pulsed with rising fury. “This is the other way.” She pulled the relic from her shirt. “You promised the superior to do this.”
Degarius, with chin thrust out and crossed arms, stepped imposingly close. With the resolute confidence of a man sure of his authority, he set his piercing blue eyes on her. “I only promised your superior to come here. I’ve done that. Now, I must do what’s best for my country and people. Make this easy. Give me the relic. I know you won’t kill me to stop me.”
The lying bastard! She hardened her gaze and met his. She recalled the vision of him from bonfire night, the man made feeble by being drawn through the Blue Eye. By her actions, she’d made her beloved father suffer; she’d do it to him. “You’re right. I won’t kill you. But I’ll make you wish I had.”
“Ari.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Let my father or me find someone to use the relic.”
Him or his father? That was lunacy. Her head buzzed with anger. “Is this about you being the hero? You’re no better than Chane with his delusion of being Paulus. He wasn’t Paulus, and neither are you. I am. Your grandmother begged
me
to help you.”
The chancellor was suddenly beside them, holding his hands between them like a bystander trying to stop a fight. “Please.”
Degarius motioned him away. “Lina was crazy.”
“Crazy to give you Assaea? You think she judged well in that case. Besides, we have but days! If you were to find someone able to use it, you have no idea how crossing the border between life and death can disturb a mind. Just opening the cover to test your champion will ruin the advantage of surprise, an advantage
my
people died for. We have a chance, however small, if we do this together. Here.” Arvana thrust the Blue Eye before his eyes. “If you wish to fail, I can’t stop you except by a way that is my equal harm. Whom would I find to take Assaea if I must stop you? As much as I wish I could do this alone, I can’t.” She jabbed the relic at him. “Take it,” she screamed. “Take it!”
Degarius raised a hand but placed it to his forehead. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want you to have to do this.”
“It isn’t
your
choice. It never has been
your
choice. You’re not the general of this battle.”
“Damn it,” he cursed under his breath, tossed the diary on the table, and strode toward the stairs. His heavy stomp down them echoed up through the cavernous roof.
Arvana slipped the chain back over her head. The locket was cold against her heaving chest.
The chancellor picked up the diary and held it to her. “It is
my
mother’s, such as she was. If you wish to see it, I consent.” He motioned to the armchair.
Arvana accepted the book and the invitation to sit. So much anger had sapped the marrow from her bones.
Lina wrote:
I dread passing this confession to you, Nani. It is a shame I’ve hidden from everyone except your grandfather. Even he, however, did not know the whole truth of it. Otherwise, how could he have loved me?
The young shouldn’t shoulder the errors of the past, but that is often the case in this world. As my excuse, let me tell you I, along with every other country girl, believed being a Lily Girl was our chance to become accomplished and serve the Sovereign Alenius. We heard that he was the most handsome of men and that he would take the most beautiful, talented girl in Gheria to be his wife. My father wished me to marry Stellan, but then he was but the second son of a neighboring lord. I thought I deserved better. So, when the eunuchs came for Lily Girls, I slipped away to the village.