Chapter 20- Eloria Presses

I hate talks of war, yet council members speak to Theron about politics, and I see the way it drives him mad

“Another border town,” Cassius says, and makes a black marker on the map. “Aspre. Beasts came out of the eastern wood four nights ago, took half the garrison before the rest drove them off. And then, so the report says, a company of northern riders happened along the very next morning, out of the goodness of their hearts, to help hold what was left.”

“Let me guess,” Theron says as he rubs his temples. “They are still there.”

“They are helping, Majesty. Setting the watch. Assisting our arriving reinforcements. Ever so grateful for the chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with their southern friends against the common enemy.” Lykos speaks flatly.

“Then that is good news, yes?” I ask hesitantly. If my father’s men are helping then perhaps he could be an ally against the increased dark beast attacks.

Cassius sighs. “No, Your Highness. This is not good news. Lykos was just being sarcastic.”

I blush from embarrassment. I still struggle with Lykos’s tones and he looks over at me and gives me a cheeky smile and shrug. Theron gives him a look and Lykos turns to me.

“My apologies, Your Highness. I didn’t mean to cause confusion.”

“It’s alright.”

“Back to the matter at hand,” Cassius interrupts. “These soldiers seem to have no intention of leaving. That is the main issue.”

Cassius then motions to the board on the table. “This is too many to be a coincidence. Aspre is the fourth town in two months. Along with Velmara, Szirthely, and the two forts along the Kolzhvar River. Every one of them was attacked by dark beasts, the soldiers and townsfolk wiped out, and then the northerners arrived.”

“And we cannot say a word,” Theron says, “because on paper they have done nothing but bleed beside us.”

“Worse than nothing,” Cassius says. “The survivors are always dead by the time our own men arrive. Every time. A garrison holds off a beast attack, and the only witnesses left standing are the helpful northerners who tell us how bravely they fought.” He lets that sit. “Beasts do not finish a job that clean, Your Majesty. Men do.”

The shadows in the corners of the room have gone very deep.

"So my wife's father is murdering my soldiers," Theron says softly, "and letting the beasts take the blame."

"That is precisely what I am saying." Cassius turns his head, slow and deliberate, until he is looking directly at me. "And a man does not find the soft places in the dark, Majesty. Someone shows him where they are."

Both Lykos and Theron turn to look at me.

A beat of silence passes before Lykos breaks it.

“I’m sure Emperor Canute has many spies along the border towns. It doesn’t help that more and more dark beast attacks keep occurring and spread our forces thin.”

“I don’t doubt that he has his spies,” Theron says. “Every court has spies. It does not mean—”

“It means he knows things he should not,” Cassius says, “faster than he should know them. That is all I am saying. That is all I am ever saying. Someone close to this table is feeding the north, and until I know who, every man we lose is on my ledger.”

"Then find your leak," Theron says, his voice firm and final, "and bring me a name. A real one. Not a suspicion." Cassius looks at me then, and Theron cuts him off. "And don't say my wife."

My heart flutters, but my chest tightens.

Theron is defending me, even though he has every reason to suspect me. He is refusing to. I am sure he has done the arithmetic, that he knows I am the most likely answer, but he chooses not to face it.

He is protecting me from himself.

And I let him, because I am a coward, and because the alternative is the truth.

- -

Torsten comes at the changing of the guard, the way he always does, and I meet him in the lower garden while Iona distracts Cassius again for me.

"The information on the border towns was useful," he says, by way of greeting. "Your father noticed. He also noticed how quiet you have gone since. I shouldn't have to remind you that you were not sent south to play empress."

“What does he want?”

"His mind." He says it lightly. "The Emperor knows he is being bled. He is not a fool. So your father wants to know what he means to do about it, where he plans to reinforce, where he means to pull back, what he suspects, and how close he is to having evidence to prove it. You sit at his council now, Bree. You sit at his table. Use it. Your father wants to know his enemy's next move before the enemy makes it, and only you can give him that."

I fidget with my hands as anger boils inside me. What is worse is that he is right, only I can give my father this, and it sits in my stomach like acid.

Torsten must have relayed how Theron lets me sit in his council meetings now. I already know some of the answers my father seeks from me, what Emperor Canute seeks from me.

“And if I don’t have any new information?” I say, though I know the answer.

“Then the medicine that has kept your mother breathing becomes very difficult to arrange. Speaking of whom." He reaches into his coat. "She sent this. Proof she still draws breath, for now. Your father thought you should be reminded of who you are working to keep alive."

And he holds out the letter.

I take it before I can stop myself. It is the thing I have been starving for. Last time she wrote to me she was very weak. So I made my next task to collect information since I couldn't leave the castle after meeting that God or dark beast in the woods. I sent all that I could over. In hopes that it was enough.

But as I read this letter I can tell immediately it wasn't.

This is not her handwriting.

I have read a dozen of my mother's letters. I have watched the neat lines become more and more shaky with each correspondence.

The writing slants hard to the right, and I keep my face precisely still as I read, knowing that Torsten is still watching me and my reactions. I can’t let him know that something is off.

“Thank you, Torsten.” I say as I tuck it into my pocket. “I think I'll retire to my room for now.” He looks like he is about to say something when Cassius fumbles into the garden after Iona mutters something. I can tell she was unable to distract him further and he looks over at me. I smile at Iona, grateful that she stepped out into the garden otherwise I wouldn't have known Cassius had returned. Which would bring its own set of problems. I nod to Torsten and then to Cassius before stepping away and heading back to my room. Cassius hangs back, giving me space, even though I know he follows.

Once finally in the safety of my room I take a better look at the letter, and notice in the bottom corner that there is a hand drawn picture of a dog. It's a child's sketch, one I recognize immediately. Mikli would often draw dogs in the margins of his lessons when bored. It was the kind of thing my brother drew on every scrap of paper he ever touched, for years without thinking, until our father beat the habit out of him.

I know now that this letter was written by my half brother, Mikli. My brother, who was forbidden to reach me, reached me anyway, through the one channel my father left open, my mother's letters. I read it, yet despite it being in my brother's hand writing I can tell that the voice is still my mother’s. Her words, even in his hand, are unmistakably hers. She writes that she is not doing well but tells me not to worry, that the illness will pass, and that she only needs more rest. But I can tell there is more she is not saying.

Then the tone of the letter changes. Mikli fills in the gaps she has left. He tells me she can no longer write. That she can barely lift anything, and can barely keep her food down. She is dying. My brother then writes about how he and Mealla overheard information.

I can tell immediately that he was afraid to write it down in fear of being caught. Because he then goes onto blabber about the pond in the gardens. The stones we used to toss, and how once Mealla tossed it too far and broke a vase which I took the blame for. He writes how he and Mealla have never forgotten and things have changed since I left. How I'm missed. And that's it.

I read it four times. I am crying by the second, silently. Aodh presses close and says nothing, because he knows there is nothing to say.

One line sticks out to be. “Look at what I gave you before you left, and do you remember the stones?”

The dagger.

I take it out of the trunk where it has lived wrapped in a shift since the night I came south, and I unwrap it in the candlelight, and I look at it, really look at it.

It is a beautiful thing. A sapphire the size of a thumbnail set into the handle. Smaller sapphire jewels were encrusted into the handle as well. Even as I wielded it against those branches in the wood, it seemed to sparkle blue.

I stare at the dagger for a long time. This was the last gift Mikli gave to me. I turn it over in the light, and examine it more closely.

My gaze is always drawn back to the design of the hilt. That's when I see it, set in a plain line that I had taken for decoration. I see five small clear stones that are dull and unremarkable.

I have seen stones like these exactly once. When I was a young girl, my father wanted to be sure I was hollow. He brought out these crystals to test for the faintest trace of magic. These stones are called adamantite, and are forged with Nibheis ore. A conduit, for magic or alchemy. I remember reading in the library when researching alchemy how it can expand the range of the Nibheis ore crystals.

Five of them. Hidden in plain sight, down the hilt of a dagger, given to me before I even realized what it was.

“He knew,” I whisper. “Aodh, he knew. Before I ever left. He knew that there may be a time when I would need to contact him.”

“Clever boy,” says Aodh softly. “And he loves you. Those two things together are rarer than you would think.”

I'm unsure what to do. I pull out my own crystal shard I keep by me and place it close to the hilt of the dagger.

Nothing.

I then take the crystal in one hand and the dagger in the other, and press the cold blue stone of the crystal against the first of the little clear stones on the hilt.

Again, nothing.

Frustrated, I press the two items together and concentrate.

Finally, a faint, pale green light rises from the clear crystals on the dagger. And then, faint, from a thousand miles away, I feel him.

Mikli. The particular warmth of my younger half brother, and a sense of hope blooms in my chest.

“Bree.” The sound is soft as snow falling. “Bree, is that, are you—”

“I'm here,” I breathe. “I'm here, Mikli. I got it. I understood. I'm here.”

The connection wavers, gutters, a candle in a wind a thousand miles long. The gentle pale green glow fades in and out on the hilt stones.

"Are you all right?" His voice comes thin, scraping, like a word dragged over gravel. "Bree. Are you all right?"

"No," I whisper. The truth, for once, because I am too tired to give him anything else. "No, Mikli. I'm not. I don't want to keep doing this. Feeding our father information. Everything he makes me send about Theron, about the south, I can't—"

"Feeding who? What are you—" The connection scratches, drops, and I lose him.

"Mikli." I press the stone harder. "Mikli! Are you there?!"

"—here. Still here." He surges back, fainter. "Bree, listen, I don't have long. The stones can’t hold long conversations and will need to be charged—”

He cuts out again. I press the crystal tighter to the handle of the dagger.

Please. Please work.

“—it won't hold. I need to know something. What is happening down there? Truly? They tell us the south begs us for aid against the beasts. That we send men to help hold their borders, out of mercy. Is that—"

And I have time for one word before the stone goes cold and dead in my hand.

"No," I say. "Mikli, it's a lie. All of it. Father is—"

Gone. The glow drops and I can no longer hear his voice. I am alone again, but not in the way I was an hour ago.

Somewhere in the north, my brother knows I heard him. My mother is dying and telling me not to worry. My father wants me to draw a map of men to be murdered or he will let her die faster.

And my husband suspects the truth of what I am, and chooses to keep it in the dark.

I have a fortnight to decide which of the people I love I am going to destroy.

I hold the dagger to my chest, and Mikli's love is still humming faintly in the stones.

There has to be another way.

There has to be.

I think to myself over and over again as I gently rock myself back and forth. A soothing stim to help calm my nerves. If there is one other option left, I will find it. I must because even if I don't make a choice, someone else will. I may not have the power over these events, but I can choose to find another way. If I cannot then I will just have to make one.