I wrench away from him and move across the entrance to the other wall. “Words! I do not have the luxury of being a Lingot, Highness. Words mean nothing to me. Actions mean everything.”
“Sepora, don’t do this.”
“And what of the king of Hemut? You’re sending him a supply of cratorium? Rashidi has secured you a bride and a powerful ally for war. How delighted you must be.”
“We are necessary allies, Sepora. My enemies are now Hemut’s enemies.” The louder I get, the softer his tone. I’ll not let him soothe me. Not when so much is at stake.
“Why? Why must you collaborate with him when you have all this at your disposal? You have nefarite to protect yourselves. You have cratorium to fight back. What is the point of aligning with Hemut? This is not their fight.”
“It is not their fight, but it will be,” Rashidi cuts in. “He is to wed Tulle. The Falcon King must make heirs. He must keep his lineage intact.”
And that is when the breath is truly knocked out of me. I would love nothing more than to fling myself at Rashidi for his callousness. Heirs. Tarik must take the Princess Tulle to his bed. And where does that leave me? Where has it ever left me? It leaves me as a lovesick fool. A servant who has been stupid enough to fall in love with a king. “You’ll marry the Princess Tulle after all, then?”
He nods slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. The boy king appears mortified. I wonder if I reflect his expression. “I need Hemut’s army as much as I need spectorium.”
“How could you give your affection and attention to me, knowing you would marry another?” All of the kisses, the caresses, the secret smiles shared between us. All the time I spent thinking of him, wishing to be in his presence, longing for his touch.
He takes a step forward and I hold up my hand, halting him. “I thought you knew, Sepora. Marriage is merely a means to unite kingdoms. It doesn’t mean anything. She doesn’t mean anything.”
“And what of this heir you’re expected to produce?” He doesn’t have to respond; we both know the answer. I shake my head. “And you would expect me to stand by and wait for you to return to me after spending the evening with her?”
Rashidi has the good sense to keep his meddling mouth shut. If he suspected something was amiss between the king and me, there is no room for doubt now. But I no longer care what this looks like to him. I no longer care because I have been betrayed in the worst way and I will have my answers.
“I had not thought of it that way. It is a matter of duty—”
“Duty? And if I had the same duty? Could you wait for me while I passed the time in another man’s bed?”
Tarik’s face grows hard, and I know I’ve hit my mark. “You’ve no reason to share another man’s bed.”
“I’m not your concubine, Tarik. I’ll not share you with anyone, king or not.”
His face softens. “These are the way of things. It is the only way we can be together. I thought we had an understanding.”
My laugh is sharp and full of bitterness, bereft of humor. “I thought so, too. But alas, we are not to be together, Highness. I leave as soon as dawn breaks.”
Tarik runs a hand through his hair. His face tells me he is not surprised. “Where will you go?”
“That is not your concern.” And, I’m not sure where I’ll go. Not Hemut, not in a century of centuries. I cannot return to Serubel. I would never survive in Wachuk with their crude and coarse ways of living. Perhaps I’ll travel to Pelusia. They can survive without spectorium; I’ll not be of any political use in Pelusia—and I’ll be well away from the prying fingers of this impending war.
Tarik wipes a hand down his face. “Sepora, please. You must understand—”
“What I understand is that you intend to make war on my people and that you will soon marry Princess Tulle and bring her here, into your bedchamber. If that is not the case, please do correct me.” When he says nothing, I glide past him and make my way toward the great double doors of the chamber.
“I cannot let you go, Sepora,” he calls after me. I can tell he is close on my heels. His hand grasps my wrist and he whirls me around. His eyes brim with sleeplessness and agony. I cannot help but look away. I’ll not be ensnared by him again. Not ever. “Please, Sepora. Don’t do this.”
I glance past him, at Rashidi. The old man stands now, watching us intently. He fidgets his hands. No doubt he knew the king and I had grown close while he was away. But his expression suggests that this is too close for the adviser’s comfort. I look back at Tarik. “You have your obligations. I have mine.” I open the door then and leave him behind.
* * *
Dawn breaks into my room, unwelcome and unneeded, as I’ve already packed a satchel and dressed for my journey by the light of my own fresh spectorium. Let the prince think on that for a bit. Let him think his precious, mysterious last Forger has visited me during the night.
I half expect my door to be barred shut from the outside, to in fact become a prisoner in this palace yet again, but it opens easily and without noise. There are no guards keeping watch, no one to stop me from leaving. Perhaps this will be easy. Perhaps Tarik finally sees reason in my words, that there is nothing left for me here. He is not mine; I cannot be his. And he will eventually attack my people, instead of merely defending Theoria against them.
My sandals fall softly on the stairs as I make my way down to the kitchens of the palace. I’ll eat breakfast here and take some provisions with me. After my stomach is full and my satchel fuller, I leave that wing of the palace and step out into full morning sunshine. The corral where Dody the Serpen is kept is just beyond the training courtyard; it should only take me a few moments to reach it but I find that my feet drag in the sand.
I must leave, I tell myself. I must stand my ground. If not in this, then what else is there? Why did I leave home in the first place? I’d wanted to save lives. To prevent war. Now I’ve helped to ensure it will be worse by tenfold. It will be more than war. And it will not come without a cost. What if Tarik is injured? What if the palace falls?
These are things I cannot dwell on. I’ve done all I can.
I swing open the door to the corral—and nearly touch noses with Tarik.
“You could have asked,” he says, nodding toward Dody behind him. “I would have given him to you.”
“I thought you would try to stop me.” Never could I have guessed he would provide me with the means to leave; I’d decided to steal Dody the moment I decided to abandon my life here. I couldn’t very well negotiate The Dismals by myself again. Or the people I might come across, who could be far worse than the likes of Chut or Rolan. Better to fly over The Dismals this time, than to trek through them.
Still, I should have known Tarik would not keep me here as a prisoner. He is not unjust in that way. He is not my father.
His shoulders slump. “It is impossible to make you stay, yet impossible to let you go. Why is that, Sepora?”
But I don’t have an answer for him. I hoist the satchel higher on my shoulder, waiting for him to step aside. When he does, I’m careful not to brush against him. A few days ago, I would have taken every opportunity to touch him, to revel in the feel of his skin against mine. Even now, I want him to tell me something that will set everything aright, something that will overturn my overwhelming urge to flee, something that will draw me into his arms and keep me there forever.
He says nothing.
“Hello, young sir,” I coo to Dody. He nuzzles his nose into my hand, reminding me of Patra. Dody has grown on me, yes. But he will never be Nuna. “Ready for our journey?”
I hoist myself onto him and settle into the groove behind his head. Pulling on his ear to instruct him, he moves forward, slithering past Tarik and out of the corral.
“Where will you go?” Tarik says, walking beside us as we circle the courtyard for a brief warm-up.
“I don’t know.”
“A lie.”
“Why should I tell you? Do you mean to keep watch on me, then?
”
His guilty expression suggests he had every intention of it. “Let me send someone with you. For protection.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“You were captured in the desert and sold into my harem last time you were looking after yourself.”
I bite my lip. “Well then, I’ve valuable experience in such matters now.”
He moves fast, impossibly fast, to grab my ankle, halting Dody from making another circle around the yard. The only men I’ve seen who can move like that are Majai. “Tell me what I can say to make you stay,” he pleads, his jaw clenched. “Tell me what I can say to convince you of my love for you.”
My love. He’s not spoken the word aloud before. Hoping he returned the love I have for him was not something I’d dared to do.
I want to scream at him for making this so difficult. Why did he have to come here today? Why did I have to see his face again, his eyes, his lips? Why must we both endure this torture? “For all your privilege, Highness, it seems you are not at liberty to tell me what I need to hear.” That he’ll not counterattack Serubel. That he’ll not marry Tulle. And not just Tulle. That he’ll not marry another, ever. That I am worth more than a dozen heirs to him.
But as he said, his hands are tied. They are tied, and so mine must be.
“Do you have family in Serubel?” he says, running beside us now as we move to take off. Again, his speed surpasses my expectation. “I can guarantee their safety,” he’s saying. “I’ll have them brought here at once, before the war even starts. I’ll protect them as my own.”
“My family cannot be protected,” I say, looking away from him and into the sky. I know this truth will puzzle him. What family cannot be protected by the Falcon King? My father is your nemesis is what I want to tell him. But instead I fix my gaze on a cloud in the distance. Dody’s wings flap intensely and in a matter of moments we are gliding through the air. We must pick up more speed to breech the wall ahead of us.
“Wait! Sepora, please!”
The wind catches all the words after that and carries them away from me on a breeze.
44
TARIK
Tarik bids Patra to stay at the top of the stairs at the entrance of the Lyceum. She sprawls out along one of the wider steps and flattens on her side to take in the warmth of the sun. She aims to look at ease, he can tell, but a pair of crows nearby has caught her attention and her tail flicks with the irritation of not going after them.
He smiles, leaving her behind with her conundrum. Having visited Cy the Healer enough to know his way around the Lyceum, he doesn’t wait for assistance before climbing the stairwell that leads to the Healer’s grand hallway. He arrives in the large auditorium, which is normally used for teaching, on the third floor; now the room is lined with cots from wall to wall, a patient in each one, and Healers on the move in every direction. The scene has a certain sense of controlled chaos, and it turns Tarik’s mouth down in a scowl.
The Quiet Plague is spreading too rapidly for them to keep up.
From among the Healers, Tarik is able to see Cy—the shortest and youngest tends to stand out—and he weaves his way between the beds to reach him. Cy gives him a brief nod of greeting before stirring a small pot of putrid-smelling liquid on a table next to his current patient. “I’ve something to show you, Tarik,” he says, retrieving a needle from a cloth-lined tray on the bed.
“What is that horrible smell?” Tarik says, wafting his hand in front of his face in an attempt to escape it.
Cy laughs. “That, my friend, is the solution to all of our problems.” He nods to the bowl of watery liquid, steam swirling up from the contents—an obvious mixture of glowing spectorium and something else. Carefully, he takes a spoonful of the substance and pours it into a metal tube with a needle poking from the end. He takes a seat on the bedside of the patient, a small, bony-shouldered girl whose blank stare hints of impending death. Why did her parents not seek help sooner? The day Sepora left, he’d made a decree about the plague. He’d made the Lyceum available to all citizens of Theoria. She could be in good health right now, if she’d arrived as soon as she’d shown symptoms.
Cy glances back at him. “She’s a repeat case,” he says. “They tend to digress much faster once they’ve been treated with spectorium.” He straightens her arm and, after rubbing a small leaf over the inside crook of it, he injects the needle. The girl does not react to the penetration or to the withdrawal of the needle. She does not blink, does not even appear to be breathing as far as Tarik can tell.
“What did you give her?” Tarik says, sitting on the edge of the bed at her feet.
“Spectorium, the usual liquefying herbs, water. And … nefarite.”
“Nefarite? This is what you needed the swords for?”
Cy nods. “It works, you’ll see. And for the record, her parents consented to the treatment. They wanted me to try anything, and so I did.”
“Has it worked before?”
“It has worked on six out of six treated patients.”
“Six out of six.” Tarik scratches at the light beard he’d allowed himself to grow these past few days. Or rather, the beard he’d been too busy to shave off. Preparing for war is a tedious job. At least, he’s made it tedious. With Sepora gone, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep his mind occupied with other things, even if it means keeping his commanders and advisers up all hours of the night and day and sitting in on the Lingot council to make sure all is as it should be. He’ll even bother Cy at the Lyceum, so as not to think about her. “Why? Why does it work?”
Cy shrugs. “It acts as an amplifier. We both know that when used for good, it amplifies the ability to do good. When used for bad, it weakens the ability to do bad. I thought to myself, what greater good could there be than saving a life? So then, I found a way to mix spectorium and melted nefarite, altered their cooling temperatures, and began to test it on patients who consented. The results have been quite miraculous.”
As if in response to his words, the girl in the bed begins to gasp for air, coughing and gulping for it as if she’d been drowning before. Blinking several times, she leans on her elbows at first, then hoists herself up to sit fully. “Where’s my mother?” she croaks.
Cy gives her a brilliant smile. “I’ll have her fetched immediately. We had to send her away; very little room in here, you see.”
“I want my mother,” the girl insists, this time her voice gaining some strength. With each second, her eyes become more alert, and she takes in the view around her. “I don’t want to be here.”
Tarik feels paralyzed in place. How could the injection have worked that quickly? Could it be possible? Could Cy have really found the cure this time?
“You may go home within the hour,” Cy is telling her. “But you must promise me to drink plenty of water and get plenty of rest for the next few days.”
She nods obediently, almost in reverence of the young boy. Tarik wonders how far apart they really are in age. “Yes, Healer Cy. I promise.”
The boy Healer looks to Tarik then, pride gleaming in his eyes. “What think you of that, Tarik?”
“Incredible,” Tarik says, barely able to manage a whisper. “How long will the effects last?”
Cy’s brows knit together. “My hope is that it will be an indefinite cure. Only time will tell, though. We should know within months, I suppose. That’s when the spectorium will have completely worn off on its own. That’s when the nefarite will have its opportunity to shine, so to speak.”
Within months. Could the Quiet Plague really be defeated in merely a handful of cycles of the moon? Cy believes it to be true.
So why don’t I?
45
SEPORA
I see the Serubelan caravan ahead of us just before the first catapult lets loose. I’d recognize the glow of cratorium anywhere. I have only enough time to flatten myself against Dody and wait for impact. It doesn’t come; an explosion lights the sky beside us, sending Dody swirling precariously
to the left. I gasp, maneuvering quickly to recover, attempting to lift us higher and out of their range, but a second explosion catches Dody in his back wing, and we begin a dangerous descent. They must think I am Theorian—a Theorian who has stolen one of their Serpens.
I let my hair loose from the linen I’d wrapped about my head for protection from the sun, to show that I am not Theorian, that I am Serubelan, one of their own. Or perhaps they already know who I am, and what I have done. Perhaps that is why they are shooting me from the sky.
And what is a Serubelan caravan doing in The Dismals yet again? Or, perhaps, still? Though “caravan” is not the word for the hundreds of tents and soldiers on the ground. No, this is an army. My stomach drops, even as Dody attempts to soar higher. This is a war party.
Dody’s injured wing prevents us from avoiding the third blast, which strikes his chin and erupts into flames. Blood splatters on my face, my arms, my clothes. He falls limp beneath me, and I know at once that he is dead. We begin our inevitable plummet to The Dismals and I clutch onto him, wrapping my arms and legs about him as I was trained to do in case of a crash, hoping his body will cushion mine when we hit the desert sand and hating myself for thinking of such a thing when he has just died in my service.
I let out a pathetic wail as we close in on the desert floor, and I do not stop screaming until we hit—and everything disappears from my vision.
* * *
I’m not sure if General Halyon erected this makeshift tent to shield me from the sun or to shield me from the ogling stares of his men. Even now, as we wait for my father, he will not look me in the eye, just shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other and pretends to adjust the strap holding his sword in place. He is a large man with a warrior’s body, though aged with wear and tear, but a fierce sight to behold nonetheless. As a child, I was fearful of the man and avoided him whenever possible, but now he seems to be more nervous about my presence than I am of his. Perhaps he heard the rumors about what I did to Father, that I forged a sword and wielded it against him. Surely a man such as Halyon is not afraid of a waif like me brandishing a sword at his nose when he could easily slay me where I sit. What a silly notion.