Darkwind, p.39
Darkwind, page 39
I know you asked me to wait until we saw one another face to face. But I feel I must address your other concerns now. I know if I wait, these matters will devour you like a Viperwolf, and that would certainly complicate our reunion.
Cistine remembered the cold tide of reality smashing over her that day, like the Agerios would bash itself apart on the rocks whenever she and her family picnicked on the shore.
As a child, she’d asked why it kept doing that…heaving itself up and throwing itself forward, only to be broken in foamy pieces again. She remembered her mother telling her that was what the sea did, because it didn’t know any better. It didn’t know how not to be broken.
She’d thought of the sea when she’d realized Julian was about to leave. That the dashing boy she’d glimpsed shyly around corners for years and years—the playmate she’d started to hope might take notice of her fletched dresses and bejeweled gloves instead of the toys they shared—would soon be gone.
She’d felt like a wave then, knowing she should let go of him, but not knowing how to do it. How not to be broken.
She felt like a wave now.
My answer is yes. As much as it pains you. Whatever it destroys. You must tell Cistine why you truly helped her when she first came to Hellidom. Even the ugly bits. Even the parts that were lies and deception.
She was honest with you about the Svarkyst steel. Now you must be honest about the rest. Even that you knew the Chancellor would come for the Talheimic princess.
Cistine was in the study, and in the reading nook—her lungs squeezing, her breaths wobbling, her eyes sparkling with hot tears of shock, and disbelief, and rage…
Tell her you intended to use her to lure the Chancellor from Stornhaz. It’s better she learns it from your own mouth than anywhere else.
Cistine was a wave smashing into the rocks—the letter falling from her hand as her fragile heart cracked in pieces.
And then she was moving.
She staggered up from the nook, waving Faer off as he plucked at her shiny sleeve in passing. Her dress—a gift from Tatiana—suddenly felt like a hunter’s net, like boning that squeezed her organs to bursting. She wanted to be free from it, but she didn’t have any other clothes. She didn’t have anything here that Thorne and his cabal hadn’t given to her—these gifts, these placations…
These lies.
She stormed up the stairs, hating her skirts and sleeves, hating the slippers on her feet. She hated every step down the hall to the room she shared with Ashe and Pippet, and Tatiana and Ariadne.
Lure. She didn’t wonder if they knew—she was certain they did. The cabal kept no secrets from each other. Only from the people they used and had purposes for. The ones they pretended to befriend when they were really grooming them for slaughter.
Lies.
She burst into the room, and Ashe sat up sharply on the mattress. She’d been dozing, judging by her cloudy eyes and the state of her hair, and she shuffled her appearance into something respectable at Cistine’s arrival. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re leaving,” Cistine said. “We’re leaving Starhollow, right now.”
Ashe scrambled to her feet. “Thorne’s orders?”
“Mine!” Cistine snapped, incensed at the sound of his name. “Leave anything you don’t need. I’m going to find Julian.”
Cistine picked up her training armor and hurled it into the corner—those threads Tatiana and Quill had helped her choose. She wondered if they’d truly cared about making her proficient, or if they’d all been simply helping Thorne entertain her by her own wishes, to keep her complacent and close by until Kanslar Court rose to power and he could use her to tempt his sickly mentor from safety. To lure him into the open.
Lies on top of lies.
Cistine slammed her fist into Julian’s door twice, and he answered it bedheaded as well, and shirtless. For once, that sight did nothing to stir Cistine’s nerves. They were already raw, fizzing with fury. There was no room left for anything else.
“Something happen?” Julian mumbled.
“Put on your shirt. We’re going.”
Julian’s eyes widened. “Finally.” He ducked back into the room and reemerged before Cistine had mustered enough clarity to turn away from the door. He walked with her to the top of the steps, meeting Ashe with Echelon in her hand. “Do either of you want to tell me why you finally decided to go?”
“Not now,” Cistine growled. “Once we’re out of the mountains.”
They walked out into the rainstorm’s tendrils, the faint whisper on the grass like the world’s dullest lullaby. Cistine tucked her head and walked shoulder-first into the mist, and her friends—her true friends, her Talheimic companions—walked beside her without question.
Their loyalty, she could trust. Their hearts were beyond question.
They walked north, across the river from the archer camp, past the pond where Cistine had wasted away the days even after Kanslar’s constellation had risen. She’d let herself become complacent, distracted—allowed her focus to shift from her home and its needs. She’d welcomed this interference with open arms when she should’ve marched straight to Stornhaz.
The moment the cabal had left Hellidom, she should’ve gone.
But she’d taken Thorne at his word. She’d let him trick her into believing the danger was in Stornhaz, even in the Chancellor’s household, rather than in his own hands.
No longer. Never again.
Julian’s warning shout sliced the cool air, and Cistine picked up her head just in time to catch a faceful of feathers. Faer banked and swooped back toward them, tangling his talons in Cistine’s hair this time, grabbing and tugging and making a mess of things, just like the man who commanded him. Cistine swatted upward as hard as she could, cracking the side of her wrist against Faer’s sternum. The raven faltered and flopped into the grass, squawking indignantly at the blow. But he’d done his job.
“Cistine!” Quill’s voice was unmistakable even before she caught sight of him jogging after them. He had the audacity to be wide-eyed, as if he hadn’t sent his watchdog of a bird ahead to stop them—to prevent her from leaving.
Just like he did to his sister.
Julian started forward with a low curse, and Cistine slung an arm across his front. “Don’t stop. Just keep walking.”
They trudged up the riverbank, pretending Quill wasn’t following them. Pretending they’d never heard of such a man before and couldn’t hear him shouting their names now.
Until his hand descended on her shoulder.
“Get away from me!” Cistine hurled his arm aside as she whirled to face him. “How dare you touch me, how dare you even look at me after what you’ve done? What all of you did!”
Ashe and Julian halted several paces up the bank, listening with blatant curiosity as Cistine faced Quill, heaving with rage. Quill stared at her in shock for a moment, then with a face full of calmness that was somehow more infuriating. “Would you mind telling me what it is I’ve done? I lost a bet with Tatiana, so I have to keep a ledger of all the times I fail.”
“Don’t play coy with me,” Cistine seethed. “Like you played into Thorne’s games. Deceiving me…giving me gifts. Pretending we were all friends! As if Talheim and Valgard could ever be anything but enemies after what we did to one another!”
Quill’s brow wrinkled with concern that almost seemed sincere. “Cistine, you aren’t making any sense.”
“Don’t condescend to me! Don’t pretend you didn’t know what he wanted…how he intended to use me.”
And Quill’s eyes finally betrayed him. They skipped away from her, searching the rain as it intensified. “It isn’t what you think.”
“Despite what your cabal believes, I’m not a silly, vapid little princess. I’m sure you all enjoyed playing me for one, like you did with the archers. But the deception is over, Quill. I know who you truly are.”
He looked up at her with the nerve to seem wounded, eyes flashing painfully. “Let me find Thorne. He can explain what’s really happening here.”
“You mean he can lie!” Cistine shouted. “I’m not going to give him the chance. As far as I’m concerned, in this struggle between Thorne and the Chancellor, the Chancellor is a far better man.”
Quill blanched. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying!” Cistine stepped closer to him, filling the slim space between them with the heat of her furious breath. “The Chancellor is the only one who hasn’t lied to me or used me. And the only one who can actually help me and my kingdom!”
“Cistine, no—you know what he’s capable of! Thorne and Baba Kallah—”
“Enough!” Heat raged in Cistine’s head and heart, her temples throbbing as she fought the angry tears. “I’m done believing the cabal’s stories. Go tell them to your sister, Quill. I’m leaving. And if you try to force me to stay here against my will, you’ll be no better than a slaver.”
Quill’s mouth hung open, and this time Cistine believed the hurt in his eyes. Believed that if nothing else, he finally understood how she saw him…what he had done to her. What he had helped Thorne do.
“Cistine,” he said as she turned away, “you should know, if you’re going to go, the Chancellor is—”
Cistine turned and struck past Quill’s guard—straight into his face. His nose crunched under her knuckles, and he staggered backward, falling dazed on the ground and smashing his head on the shore. He doubled over on his side, clutching his temple in one hand, over his scar. Cistine fought down a stab of guilt at the concussed look in his glassy eyes. She would not apologize for silencing him when he’d violated her command to stop feeding her stories.
So Cistine left him there and joined her friends again. When Julian took her hand, she almost wept. But she forced herself to keep walking, one sodden, miserable, freezing step after the other—away from Quill. Away from the cottage. Away from the cabal.
Back into the Valgardan wilds.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
BY THE TIME they reached the Vingete Vey, some of Cistine’s wrath had cooled. She’d spent enough nights awake and enough days in choked, furious silence to parse out where the blame was due: what she owed to herself, what she would have to pay Thorne back for if their paths ever had the misfortune to cross again, and what belonged to the cabal.
They’d walked along the Vey for less than a full day before a wagon slowed beside them, and the driver offered them a ride. He was an older man, a trapper named Jaius, with long braids nestled in the tufts of his silver beard. Rosy cheeks embraced his blue eyes, which watered constantly despite the heat. The back of his cart was crammed with furs and barrels of treated meat for trade in Stornhaz. Julian and Ashe took turns sleeping in the back of the wagon and riding in the seat—keeping Jaius company.
According to the trapper, Kanslar’s season was the greatest for Valgard; the Chancellor, it seemed, had a soft spot for fine pelts and game meat. Cistine listened to him discuss this with Ashe and Julian from the back of the wagon, since she couldn’t bring herself quite yet to carry on a civilized conversation with a Valgardan.
The man’s blue eyes were too much like Thorne’s, his accent too much like Tatiana’s, his face too much like Maleck’s. These were marks against him.
As the days passed, Cistine’s fury cooled into caution. Lulled by the swaying wheels and the tug of the tired horses against the cart’s hitching rails, she reflected on the truths that lay ahead of her, not behind. Whatever else the cabal had lied about, it was still true the Chancellor was fascinated with Talheim. She had the Guide’s word and the Vassoran guard’s crude hints to confirm that. She would still have to go cautiously and choose her words carefully before him.
Ashe’s voice broke into her thoughts: “Do you think Maleck knew?”
Cistine lifted her head from the pillow of animal hides, looking at her Warden where she perched on a trunk of furs nearby. “What?”
“The things Thorne was doing.” Ashe’s voice was brittle with anger on Cistine’s behalf, but also soft with curiosity. “Do you think he knew?”
Cistine flopped back down. “Does it really matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why.”
“I don’t…I don’t know, Cistine.” Ashe’s sigh was filled with something less than disappointment, but more than annoyance. Something softer. “Because Maleck and I have more in common than I…than either of us wants to admit. And I need to know I’m not capable of something like this. Of hurting someone I claim to care about this deeply.”
Cistine swallowed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Maleck really thought he was helping a useless princess.”
Ashe’s grateful smile made the concession worthwhile—even if Cistine didn’t believe a word of it.
The cart flap peeled back suddenly, and Julian crawled in among the furs. “Your turn to keep the trapper awake.”
Ashe slipped out to join Jaius on the seat as Cistine settled back into the furs, burying her face in her arms, and Julian rubbed her back with his knuckles.
“Just a few more days,” he said. “Then we’ll be on our way home.”
The notion jumped tears to Cistine’s eyes. Right now, she wanted to run to her mother, like she had after she’d found Lord Rion’s note. She wanted that warm embrace to piece her back together again.
Julian stretched out beside her, propping his head on his hand and draping an arm around her waist. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Cistine rolled over, facing away from him. “Not really.”
He was quiet for several minutes before he touched her hip. “We knew this might happen, Princess. Staying with them was always a risk.”
“I said I don’t want to discuss them, Julian.” Cistine’s voice shook. She was so tired of people ignoring her wishes and testing her boundaries.
“All right. But when you do, you know I’ll listen.”
She knew he would—and he would feed her anger. He would agree with her offenses and console her with his complaints. And she would feel justified, and she would simmer, and it would lead to nothing. A pot uselessly boiling over. It wouldn’t change anything if she kept looking back…back to Hellidom. Back to Starhollow.
So she told him nothing. She kept to herself, and slowly pulled the pieces of her composure back together as the days wore on. She didn’t even bother to look outside the cart as they crossed a tributary and moved along the banks of the Ismalete River, tumbling north to south.
They followed it deeper into Blaykrone territory. Through Eben.
Sometimes, Ashe or Julian tried to coax her to look at the landscape, to behold the mountains in the west or the southern edge of the lake where Cassaida’s family lived, or the Sotefold Forest that marked the beginning of Erdotre territory. She declined each time. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to love Valgard’s hills and valleys, its lakes and rivers—or its people.
She wanted to appeal to the Chancellor, and then she wanted to go home.
A day finally dawned when Cistine was shaken awake by Ashe’s hand on her shoulder to find Jaius had driven them through the night.
Cistine sat up, her hair storming around her face. On the other side of the wagon, Julian stirred as well.
“We’re here.” Ashe announced. “Come and see Stornhaz.”
The City of a Thousand Stars wasn’t accessible by any roads. They had to dock the cart on the river’s shore and load the pelts and meat barrels onto a barge, which sailed upriver through a slotted gate into the confines of the city’s encircling outer wall.
At the sight of its interior, some of Cistine’s anger faded and a hint of wonder returned. Stornhaz was splendid: enormous, yet insular. Several tall towers and gaudy domes, draped with flower-studded lichen, were almost tall enough to peer over the flat, white stone wall around the city. There were dozens of docks sprouting into the water from the ends of the streets and the backs of the alabaster homes, decorated with banners and pennant-chains and garlands of flowers, which loomed over the channel. Draped in balconies, the homes seemed expensive by common standards—and that, at least, verified Tatiana’s tale of the rich and powerful who dominated Stornhaz.
And that was good. Those were precisely the sort of people Cistine needed to meet with.
They traveled below several roads built almost to the top of the wall, balanced on stone struts. These were framed with strange posts, all with a single arm that hung out over the roadway.
“Streetlamps,” Jaius explained when Cistine gestured to the poles. “Lit with augmented bulbs that could burn all night, every night. But they’ve been dark some twenty years now.”
Cistine’s belly dropped as they sailed below one of those towering bridges. She was glad to pass out from under the shadows of its struts and poles into smaller, more familiar streets. Avenues that reminded her of Astoria—of home.
The sweet music of bells filled the air as the barge passed by a particularly wide dock at the edge of a broad, column-wrapped terrace. Children kicked a ball across the open flagstones in front of what seemed to be a school. When they spotted the barge, the children whistled and waved. Cistine fluttered her fingers in reply and tried not to think of Pippet, who must have been their age, trapped in Starhollow with her lying brother.
She tried not to feel guilty that even to Pippet, who was innocent in all this, she had not said goodbye.
The streets widened as the pole barge moved upstream. Jaius guided them effortlessly among the docks, until he pushed into port seemingly at random. Workers in dark blue livery swaggered from the nearby buildings to unload the barge.
“Where are you off to now?” Jaius asked as Julian helped Cistine onto the dock.
“The courthouse,” Cistine mumbled. “Could you point us in the right direction?”
