The Waking Land Read online

  —

  THE SOUND OF the front door closing behind the Butcher echoes through the house. My father turns to me. He puts a warm, solid hand on my shoulder. Our eyes meet. His are a deep brown, flecked with gold, just like mine.

  The line of his mouth deepens. I almost speak, but what is there to say? This time, he saved my life. This time, he stepped between me and the gun.

  I don’t know my father. Not at all.

  Still, he’s ready to use me for his purposes, willing to manipulate the power I have. I swallow.

  He turns back to the room, still clasping my shoulder. I see a press of unfamiliar Caerisian faces, along with my mother and Hugh. Hugh’s face is set, stern. My mother looks troubled. She’s holding her elbows, the fingers of one hand playing a rapid melody on her upper arm.

  Father speaks to Hugh, but the words are for us all.

  “Light the fires on the hills. We’re going to war against the queen.”

  A thrumming shock runs through me. Just like that, we’re at war with Eren, with Loyce.

  Did I think we?

  Scattered applause shakes through the assembly. Hugh doesn’t clap, but he does say in his dependable voice, “It will be done.”

  But my mother has put her back to us. Her shoulders hunch; she seems shrunken. Without a backward glance, she walks out of the salon.

  —

  FINN TAKES THE news less well than I would have expected. He looks from my father to me, his nostrils flared. A muscle works in his jaw. He seems to be struggling too hard against some emotion to speak.

  My father and I came up here together, by mutual, unspoken consent. It turns out Neave Thiebault hid Finn in the old nursery—a dusty, lifeless room where I must have spent my forgotten childhood. Finn shifts, and his foot knocks against a rocking horse, its bridle painted bright red. Another object I don’t recognize.

  “I thought you’d be brandishing the Dragon,” I say to Finn, referring to Caeris’s flag, long since forbidden by the Eyrlais, but not forgotten. It shows a dragon rampant, encircled by a knot-work tree. “Running up on the high hills, summoning all of Caeris under your banner, for king and country.”

  He folds his arms tight across his chest. “After you confront the Butcher of Novarre? Maybe you should take it up into the hills yourself, El.”

  I want to step back, but my father’s right behind me. Finn’s not upset. He’s angry.

  Of course he’s angry. They made him hide up here in the nursery while I tried to give myself up. We’re going to war, and he wasn’t there to see the moment it became inevitable.

  He looks at my father. “I thought we’d have more time.”

  “We all thought we would have more time.” My father glances at me, and in a breathless instant, shame sweeps over me. They would have had more time. We would have had more time, if not for me. If I had let Sophy and Neave smuggle us out of here, the Butcher would not have pointed a pistol at me, I would not have tried to give myself up, my father wouldn’t have defended me and, by doing so, declared himself a traitor to the nation. My father, who even in his first attempted revolution was so careful that they could not condemn him by direct evidence but merely confined him to his country estate and took his daughter away.

  I worry at the ring on my finger, twisting over the middle to expose the Valtai knot.

  “It may not come to battle before the winter,” my father is saying, “but we must be prepared. The queen has superior manpower and artillery.”

  “That’s why Jahan came to Eren,” Finn says, still with that edge to his voice. “To bring us the emperor’s support. We can’t go to war without the black ships from Paladis. We have to wait.”

  Father spreads his hands. “Loyce Eyrlai won’t wait. Jahan had better send for the ships today.”

  The muscle jumps again in Finn’s jaw. “We have to delay. He’s been gathering information—writing up a report to outline the reasons why the emperor should offer us his support. He meant to put it together in one docket as soon as he got back to Laon, but I…”

  He trails off. I look around to see the expression on my father’s face. It would silence me, too.

  “Your Highness.” Somehow my father’s deliberate politeness is worse than Finn’s barely suppressed anger. “I was under the impression that the emperor had already committed to our cause—that he had already agreed to send the black ships.”

  For a long moment, Finn says nothing. I bite the inside of my lip. How could he lie to my father about the emperor’s support?

  “It’s not so simple,” Finn says at last, and his tone is almost belligerent. “Prince Leontius stands by us, but the emperor…His Imperial Majesty feels that Caerisians do not always keep their promises. He wants assurances that we will lower the tariff on goods and encourage enrollment in the imperial army—not only from my father, but from you.” He swallows. “Any revolution in Caeris must take place under imperial auspices.”

  Imperial auspices? A shiver runs down my back. The last time the Paladisan empire involved itself in Caeris and Eren, it conquered us and ravaged our lands with witch hunts. That may have been two centuries ago, and the empire’s borders have shrunk, but we all know what the emperors are like. If they believe they should have something, they take it.

  My father seems to be thinking the same thing. “Do you mean that the empire means to annex us? Will we be vassals to Emperor Alakaseus?”

  “No,” Finn says hastily. “We will remain an allied state, as we are now. Well.” He has the courage to meet my father’s eyes, at least. He does not look at me. “Unless we renege on our bargain. If we use magic.”

  Me. He means me. “That’s what Jahan’s doing,” I say with a gasp. The irony shocks me. “He’s gathering evidence that we’re not using magic.”

  Finn nods. He still doesn’t look at me.

  There is a silence. “Well,” says my father, bringing his hands together. “Perhaps we shall not concern ourselves so much with the emperor just now. There is much to be done, and many in Caeris who will rise to the Dragon.” An ironic glance at me. “The fires on the hills will rally supporters to come here. It’s an old code. We’ll send word to the mountain lords, as well; they have their own ways.”

  Even to me, this doesn’t sound like much against Loyce’s army—against the Butcher of Novarre, who has slaughtered his way to the highest command.

  Finn presses his fist against the window. “We don’t stand a chance without the black ships.”

  “We do.” My father seems to be addressing me, rather than Finn. He smiles. “We have something—someone—Loyce Eyrlai does not have. Someone she’ll never have.”

  I stare back at him, willing him not to say it, even as a strange, desperate hope tightens my throat, even as I know it will make us enemies of the emperor of Paladis himself. Part of me wants him to say the words, as if they can cure all the years between us, even though this is the whole reason I didn’t want to come home in the first place. Even though he’s already proven his willingness to use me for the power I command.

  This is what I was born for. It’s the whole reason I exist, the reason my father wants me back now. Because of what I am, even though I have spent years silencing the knowledge of it.

  He says, “We have the steward of the land.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I drop onto a cushioned stool in my bedchamber and stare at the mirror over the vanity. The bruise on my eye is turning a queasy yellow, and dried blood from the fallen stableboy splatters my chemise. (The boy himself is concussed, but he’ll live.) I’ll look a sight at supper—not that the Caerisians will mind. They’ve already decided that my moment of insanity, when I tried to give myself up to the Butcher, was pure heroism.

  They’ve also already decided I’m the true steward of the land. My father has carried the title all these years, but not the magic. And I have the magic. I’ve already heard the Caerisians whispering that the storm was my doing. It won’t be long before rumor becomes reality for
them.

  A sigh unravels from within me. I wish I could talk to Jahan. I liked the way he listened to me, as if he really heard me—more than that, as if he understood what it’s like to hold secrets buried so deep you don’t even let yourself see them. As if he understands what it’s like to be born for a purpose you never chose.

  And I liked the way he looked at me—as if I were someone worth seeing.

  I rub my eyes and blink. I seem to be seeing his reflection in the mirror. That’s it; I’ve lost my mind.

  His finger taps, and I hear it. A hard sound, fingernail against glass.

  I freeze.

  “El?” He’s talking on the other side of the mirror, though I can’t hear his voice the way I hear the tap of the fingernail. Instead, I hear it in my head—oddly, without an accent. His lips move, but I hear his words in my mind. “I’ve been trying to reach you, but you haven’t been near a mirror or anything I could speak through! Your magic must be different from mine. You didn’t hear me calling your name, did you?” He grins at me, but then his gaze drops to my chest and his eyebrows lift. “Are you hurt? Where are you?”

  I remember my bloody chemise and feel a dull flush spread over my face, even though I stood in front of my father, the Butcher, and a room full of strangers without embarrassment. But I’m in the intimacy of my bedroom, wearing only a chemise. In front of him, the fabric feels very thin indeed. I’m almost naked. What if I had started to undress, thinking myself alone? I tell myself I’m being absurd. He needs to know what’s happened. My modesty is unimportant.

  I explain that we’re at my father’s house, that we’re going to war, that the blood isn’t mine. That he needs to persuade the emperor to send the black ships while covering up any use we might make of magic. “And,” I say, “my father’s given me a new title.” I clear my throat. Just preparing to say the words makes the pulse pound in my temples. “I’m the steward of the land now.”

  Jahan’s eyes widen a fraction. He knows what this means, I realize. Finn—or someone else in the Dromahair court-in-exile—must have told him about the tripartite division of rulership, must have educated him on Caeris’s history and legends.

  He gives a sudden laugh, and I seem to feel the vibration of it even through the mirror. “This is more than I ever expected!”

  I find I’m smiling back at him. “What do you mean?”

  He just shakes his head and leans forward so his nose is almost touching the glass. It magnifies his face: I see the mole tucked alongside his nose, the tracing of lines across his forehead as his brows lift. “So, steward of the land. I suppose you won’t even speak to me, now that you’ve been named to such a lofty position! Will I have to beg?”

  “Only if you say things like that.” I’m laughing. But then I think how dangerous my position is: I’m the first steward of the land in two hundred years. The first since the great witch hunts, the first since Caeris was conquered by Eren. I am a threat to everything Paladis has built.

  If the emperor finds out, he’ll destroy me. More than that: obliterate me.

  “You’ll hide this from Paladis,” I say. “Won’t you? You’ve hidden yourself all this time. You can…” He can hide me. I can’t make myself say the words, though, ashamed of myself for hoping for his protection.

  I dare to look at him, and the sympathy in his eyes makes my heart beat faster.

  “It’s so much power in one person,” he says softly. “So much for you to bear.”

  As if his acknowledgment breaks a dam in me, tears start in my eyes. I’ve been running from this for so long. “That’s why my father wants me back. Not for me. For my power.”

  The tears blur my vision. I can’t see Jahan. I don’t want to cry in front of him, or in front of a mirrored image of him. I don’t cry in front of anyone. I breathe hard.

  “El.” Jahan’s hand comes back up to the mirror, his fingertips pressing against the glass so that their tips pale.

  I blink away the tears—two fall, cold tracks on my cheeks—and look at him. Our gazes touch. A heat burns up from the pit of my stomach. Catching my breath, I bring up my hand and fit my fingertips to his, one by one. It seems as great an act of courage as revealing myself before the Butcher; my very blood is singing. It’s the way he’s looking at me, his mouth quirked so the dimple shows, the black beat of his eyelashes as he blinks.

  “But you can bear it,” he says. “This is what you were born for, you said so yourself.”

  It takes me a moment to readjust to our conversation. I pull my hand from the mirror and fuss with my hair. “I don’t think I can be what my father wants me to be.”

  “What do you want to be?” Jahan has dropped his hand, too, but his gaze is still intent.

  I don’t know that, either. For years, I’ve been telling myself I want to be a botanist.

  But then I touched my magic again.

  As if he hears my thoughts, Jahan says, “Your power is part of you. You can’t run from it forever.” He makes an odd expression, between a wince and a laugh. “I should know that better than anyone.”

  He looks away, then, as if he hears something. Behind him, I recognize the white plaster walls and elaborate moldings of the Paladisan embassy in Laon. Jahan’s dressed for a formal supper in a blue brocade coat with gleaming brass buttons, fitted smoothly to his figure. Lace smothers his neck, although, in keeping with current fashion, he hasn’t bothered to tie the cravat properly. It exposes the olive skin of his throat. Then I remember that he’s not keeping up with current fashions—he sets the fashions. I wonder why he chooses to look so careless—or if carelessness is his way of showing the social conventions for what they are.

  His short, mussed black hair looks so soft and thick. My fingers twitch. I want to touch his hair; I want to touch him.

  “I have to go.” He turns back with a smile and then, to my utter shock, blows me a kiss. I reach up reflexively, as if I’m going to snatch it out of the air like a child. But before I am crushed by embarrassment, the image in the mirror jostles and settles back on me, alone in my unfamiliar room, with the skin darkening around my eye.

  —

  WORD HAS SPREAD about what happened in the audience room—the Butcher’s accusations, my father sacrificing himself for me. The maid who comes to help me dress for supper seems torn between shy silence and wanting to question me while she does my hair. The tight stays put me in an uneasy mood, made worse by my effort to quell the strange mix of embarrassment and longing stirred up by my conversation with Jahan. I’m not some silly chit, swooning over a man’s fine looks, yet I can’t stop reviewing our conversation in my head. If the glass hadn’t separated us, our hands would have touched. He blew me a kiss. I barely hear the maid’s attempts at conversation, only making the polite, appropriate noises.

  The maid finishes. A weight seems to settle on my chest, and I forget Jahan. At supper, I will face the people of Caeris. I will face their expectations of me. More than that, I will face the truth of what I am, what I’ve spent my life trying to forget.

  The maid curtsies and goes out. I’m so preoccupied I almost forget to thank her.

  It’s time.

  I trip out of my room—literally. This underskirt and petticoats are a few inches too long; I’m told Sophy has loaned them to me. Dratted things.

  Raised voices echo behind a door to my left. My parents’ quarters.

  Finn is talking from the other side of the hall. I hear doors thump and floors squeak as others emerge for supper, but the twist in the hall hides me from them.

  My thin slippers are good for tiptoeing closer, even if the paniers make my tucked-up skirts unwieldily wide. I patter over to their door and listen.

  “…you wouldn’t,” my mother is saying.

  Father’s response is lost, a rumble. He must have his back to me.

  “The risk!” Mother cries out. “Another war—and we’ve only just gotten her back! I don’t think I can bear it—”

  Another rumble from Father.
>
  A silence.

  “If it is her choice,” Mother says at last. “But you can be sure it isn’t mine.”

  A maid swings around the twist in the corridor, carrying a stack of linen. I jump and sidle away from my parents’ door, pretending I was fixing a ribbon in my bunched-up skirts. A rumor that I’m a spy as well as the steward of the land and betrayer of the cause is the last thing I need.

  —

  THANKS TO MY eavesdropping, I arrive late in the drawing room. I see Hugh standing with a cluster of men and women—the people from the audience chamber today. All of them are drinking whiskey from little cut-crystal glasses. As I enter, Finn walks over to the fire, cradling a lone glass against his chest. The people in the crowd glance toward him, and, as I enter, toward me.

  I choose Finn. But then, beyond him, I see Sophy sitting on a window seat between some swagged curtains, almost hidden. She’s been watching Finn; her glance toward me is guilty. So I swing past Finn and go to her.

  She rises to greet me. In a cream gown embroidered with pale-blue flowers, lace softening her collarbone, she looks almost regal, like the goddess Astarea, born out of sea foam. We curtsy and make the usual pleasantries, but I see her glance cut again to Finn.

  “Have you met the prince?” I inquire.

  As I might have expected, a flush stains her milky cheeks. If you grew up on all those tales of King Euan Dromahair and a free Caer-Ys, Finn cuts a romantic figure. He’s wearing an old-fashioned knee-length scarlet justacorps with an enormous quantity of lace pooling out the sleeves. It does look rather dashing on him, since he’s so tall and lean.

  “I couldn’t possibly.” Sophy stares down at her clasped hands.

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” I point out. If she’s here, she’s worthy of meeting him.

  “Yes, but—” Her flush deepens. “Only as your parents’ ward.”

  She keeps talking, but my ears have stopped, repeating the words. My parents’ ward? My parents have a ward?

  “I don’t remember you from when we were children.” Too late, I realize I’ve interrupted her.