The Waking Land Read online

  “Five percent,” Victoire spits at her father. “Five percent of the budget went to public works—roads, public bathhouses, bridges. How much went to putting that hideous fountain behind the palace? To renovating Princess—I mean Queen—Loyce’s chambers so she had a proper Idaean-style solarium?”

  Master Madoc rubs his fist over his forehead. He says nothing.

  “His Majesty never…” I begin.

  Victoire turns on me. “Oh, you’re so blind, El! Antoine Eyrlai gives you nice dresses and lets you study plants—and you eat out of his hands. Did you even know that he defunded a public hospital so that he could rebuild his hunting lodge at Oise? When he’s brought those precious orchids to Eren so you and Guerin can study them, that money comes from somewhere. It comes from the people, who can scarcely afford it.”

  I realize I’m leaning backward. I’ve known Victoire almost my entire life, and I’ve never seen her like this. So angry. So fierce. So righteous.

  Her fury sparks an answering anger in me. Master Madoc is willing to give me up because of his wrong?

  “Is this true?” I say to him. “Did you lie to the people?”

  He stares at me, his eyes moving back and forth. “The ‘lie’ is the king’s, not mine.”

  How can this be true? The Antoine Eyrlai I know, the one who sat at the breakfast table with me and chatted about the latest scientific discoveries in Ida and Agra, called himself the father of the people. I saw how the burden of kingship could sometimes exhaust him; how, some mornings after reading his memorandums, he rubbed his temples and said to me, “Elanna, sometimes even a king must make sacrifices.” I saw how those sacrifices ate at him.

  Or I thought I did. It’s true I never sat in on his cabinet meetings; I never looked with anything more than passing curiosity at the memorandums his ministers gave him, though they lay right there on the breakfast table.

  No, I didn’t look. Instead I saw how he drowned himself in port wine to numb his guilt; how he closed the gates of his palace, shutting out his people, and went to the country to avoid his responsibility.

  Maybe those mornings with me, talking of scientific discoveries, were just another form of evasion.

  The pieces fall together in my mind. “But Antoine is dead. You’re the one who falsified those reports. You’re the one who will lose everything if the people discover what you did.” Loyce would dismiss him, of course, and he would take the blame. “You could be the one running for your life.”

  Victoire looks at me, and sudden understanding passes between us. I say slowly, “If you force me to return to the palace, to beg Loyce’s mercy, to go to my death, I will spread the word myself. I’ll make sure everyone knows what you did.”

  The words taste bitter in my mouth. I don’t like using this against him, the man I used to pretend was my own father. Yet how abundantly he has just proven we are not family.

  He steeples his fingers. “You are aware, Lady Elanna, that to threaten me is to threaten my family.” A nod toward Victoire.

  “I did not lie,” Victoire exclaims. “And I shall be the first to tell anyone who asks!”

  Madoc’s nostrils flare. The pouches beneath his eyes speak more than ever of exhaustion. But he does not reprimand his daughter.

  “I’m glad you understand,” I say to him. His eyes narrow; he does not answer.

  I stand and walk out. Victoire leaps to her feet and rushes after me, past the spindly-legged tables and out of the refuge I thought surely would be safe. We make our way through the series of delicate, carven doors to the one that leads to the portico.

  She grabs my elbow. “Where are you going to go?”

  I can’t meet her eyes. She must think me a very great fool, and a raw, raging part of me still wants to insist that all is well, that Antoine would never allow so great a deception, that everything is as well as it has ever been in Eren. I look past her shoulder and force myself to sound confident, though I’m anything but. “I shouldn’t tell you. Then you can’t be made to tell what you don’t know.”

  The truth is, I have no earthly idea.

  “I’m going to come with you. Sod Papa and his—”

  “No!” I’m taken aback by my own vehemence, and so is she. She frowns. “If they capture me, they’d capture you, too. It would destroy your parents.” It wouldn’t be much easier for me, knowing I’d ruined my best friend’s life. I bite my lip against the sharpness of tears.

  And to be truthful, I don’t know if I can bear to be with her right now. Her revelation about the king has upset me too deeply; what if there is more she hasn’t told me? I don’t know if I can bear more discoveries of my own ignorance.

  Her mouth tightens. Then she reaches out to embrace me. “There’s a blanket in the potting shed,” she whispers in my ear. “I’ll bring food out once it’s dark. And clothes, in case they’re looking for you by a description of what you’re wearing.”

  I pull back. “Victoire, you can’t—”

  “Don’t you dare leave because it’s the noble thing to do,” she adds ferociously. “I’ve read enough adventure novels. I know what you need.”

  I doubt Madoc will fail to notice our conspiring, but I can’t say it to Victoire’s face. Without another word, I hug her tight and turn to go.

  She shuts the door behind me.

  I start crying even before I cross the threshold, stumbling down the steps to the garden. I can’t go to the potting shed, but where else is there to go? I could hire a horse and make my way, alone, into Tinan. But even on the main roads, there can be thieves and all sorts, not to mention the royal guard. And Hensey gave me a few coins, but not enough to get all the way there, though I suspect King Alfred would take me in.

  Still, Tinan seems to be my only choice. King Alfred is known for his generosity, and—like Eren—Tinan is a former subject state and current ally of the empire of Paladis. Unlike Eren, Tinan conducts relations with the emperor so well that Alfred has managed to assemble a standing army without a word of rebuke. Perhaps he will give me safe passage on a ship to Ida. I have to try, even if the royal guard hunts me down. Even if there is no way Loyce will let me escape this sentence.

  I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. I should never have come here; it was a cruel thing to do, putting the Madocs in danger, and the price was the realization of my own blindness. I’ve been a fool, and I won’t be again. From now on I’m moving forward on my own.

  A branch snaps. Another.

  I look up. Men are coming toward me through the garden’s overgrown path, past the swing—men—two—three—four—

  “It’s all right, Lady Elanna,” says one of them in his burring Caerisian accent. “We’re here to help you.”

  My breath aches in my chest. How did they find me? How did they know to come here?

  “Your father has sent us to help you.” It’s him. The man from the Paladisan embassy. The man whose name burns in the back of my mouth.

  How dare they! How dare they come after me, how dare they assume that I want their help? I don’t want to go back to my father. I refuse to have anything to do with Caeris or her people.

  “Get away from me,” I snarl. I’m so angry I can’t even run. My hands rise of their own accord and curl into claws. If any of them come near me, I’ll tear their faces off.

  A pounding starts under my feet. It surges up into my body, swells through my head. I taste earth in my mouth. A woman’s voice screams. I’m screaming. But I’m not a woman. My throat is wood and water and sap. I am green and bruised and rocky, and I am angry. So angry.

  The garden bursts alive.

  A man screams as a rhododendron flings him to the earth. Another gasps as tree roots trip him up, and another as the very ground begins to shift and quake under our feet. I’m gasping, fighting down another scream, tremors racing up and down my arms. I’ve got to run, but the green power still pulses through my body, a counterpoint to the shaking in my limbs.

  A hand on my arm. I wrench around to see gray eyes in an I
daean face, before he speaks a word and everything crumbles.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Darkness. Movement. Warmth under me, behind me. Fists of trees. An ache between my eyebrows. Hand on my elbow. Stars.

  So many stars.

  The horse slows, bracing itself through a patch of mud. The man behind me tightens his arm around my waist, then pulls me toward him to compensate for the horse’s shifting. My head tips against his shoulder. I smell cloves and cinnamon. It feels good to be held.

  To be held? I force my drooping eyes open. Where am I? We’re pounding down an open road in the dark, with no light but the stars. I make out a company of five, six others in front of us. In their dark clothes, moving without words, they seem an extension of the forest and fields we’re passing. Not even a lantern to light our way.

  My father’s men have caught me at last.

  My companion, feeling me stir, has loosened his grip. “How do you feel?” The words have an Idaean accent.

  It’s him, then. Jahan.

  He did something to me. Some magic.

  Because I used magic in the garden—I tasted the earth in my mouth. In broad daylight, for anyone to see, I used magic. The magic I’m not supposed to have, the magic that until now I’ve kept hidden, made an entire garden come to life. A shiver burns through my stomach. I didn’t know I had such power. I didn’t remember.

  Now I’ve put us all in danger. Not just myself, but the Madocs.

  But I wouldn’t have done it if my father’s men hadn’t come after me. They threatened me; I was trying to defend myself.

  And he asks me how I feel?

  A muzzy taste lingers in my mouth. I can’t seem to think of an appropriate insult—it must be the effect of whatever he did to me—so I find myself saying, “I’m at a disadvantage. I don’t even know who you are.”

  His chest contracts against my back. I think he’s trying not to laugh.

  “My name is Jahan.”

  “Jahan what?” I demand. “And I’ll thank you to state your intentions, as well!”

  A snort escapes him: He’s definitely trying not to laugh. “Jahan Korakides, at your service, demoiselle. And I swear to you, my intentions are nothing but honorable.”

  “Indeed?” I say. “A man takes a woman—by magic—and knocks her senseless, and she comes to on a horse in the middle of the night, and she’s supposed to assume his intentions are honorable?”

  “If he is a gentleman, yes,” he says. “No gentleman would harm a lady.”

  “Am I supposed to believe you’re a gentleman? Gentlemen don’t abduct women!”

  “Do you feel yourself abducted? I was under the impression we were saving your life.”

  The audacity of this claim shocks all the words out of me. It’s a good thing he’s got me wedged in front of him—one hand lingering on my waist—or I’d punch him in the face.

  “Or perhaps saving you from yourself,” he adds, as if he’s just thought of it. “From your own intransigence.”

  “My intransigence!” It’s his accent that irritates me more than anything, the way it twists the familiar words so that it seems I’m hearing them for the first time, the sound burring in my ears. “I’d like to see what you’d do if you were accused of regicide and taken by a—a—an Idaean sorcerer!”

  He’s grinning behind me, I can just tell. The rogue.

  “It seems to me I’ve saved your life twice now. So you might be reassured that I mean you no harm.”

  “Indeed! Well!” I can’t seem to stop sputtering. “Good! Otherwise I would have to shoot your leg—or something else—off and steal this horse.”

  “Ah. Alas. I’ve taken your pistol.” Damn him, he’s trying not to laugh again.

  “You took it? You searched me?”

  “You dropped it,” he says, his voice heavy with diplomacy, but I know he’s lying. The gun was tucked into a pocket of my overcoat. He shifts behind me, lifting his hand away from my waist and returning a moment later with a slosh. “Water? You must be thirsty. It was a long spell to be under; I do apologize for that.”

  I’m still vexed about my pistol; I ignore the waterskin. “Did you think I’d shoot my father’s people?”

  “Yes,” he says frankly. I stiffen in indignation, but I suppose I did attack them in the garden. They probably think me capable of anything. “You’d think we were the ones who want to put you in prison, the way you treated Hugh.”

  “I don’t even know who ‘Hugh’ is.”

  My voice shakes on the last word, because it’s Hugh whose name I’ve been pushing just out of reach. In my mind’s eye, I see him from a child’s perspective, a tall, rangy man in a gray coat that smells of autumn, picking me up from the base of the tree in the garden at the house we kept for state occasions in Laon. Who were you talking to, little El? he asks me.

  Nobody, I say.

  He swings me around, making the world spin, and then we go inside together, my cold hand tucked into his big warm one. He tells me the story, the poem I like so well. Even now, the words haunt me. I haven’t been able to forget them, no matter how hard I’ve tried. I whispered them to myself in the dark after I was taken hostage, a small, useless comfort.

  “Wildegarde came, bearing a flame in her heart and her hair crowned with the pale light of stars,” I mutter under my breath. “Where she placed her foot, the earth trembled; when she raised her hand, mountains moved.”

  I snatch the waterskin from Jahan’s hand and take a long drink.

  Once I finish and pass it back to him, Jahan reins in the horse, his arm coming around my ribs so that I don’t rock forward. Even through the thickness of my greatcoat, I feel his warmth. Ahead of us, the other riders are slowing. The starlight glints off hats and hair, the tip of a musket. A man brings his mount next to ours. I can’t make out anything of him but the battered shape of the hat on his head, the forward cant of his body.

  “Lady El.” It’s still a shock, how familiar his rugged Caerisian voice is, as if my childhood sat up and spoke. “I heard you talking. You’re all right there with Lord Jahan? We have a few more hours to go.”

  Hours. My bottom is starting to feel numb, but I say, “I’m fine.”

  “Good. Have a touch of this.” He hands over a flask.

  I unscrew the lid and sniff it. “Whiskey? Or are you planning to drug me?”

  Jahan snorts.

  “It’s the water of life, Lady Elanna, nothing more.” The other man pauses. “I’m Hugh Rathsay. I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

  “I remember you. Do you still manage my father’s spies?”

  There’s a pause. I take a swallow of the whiskey. First it tastes of the peat bogs of Caeris, and then it burns. I grimace and pass the flask over my shoulder to Jahan.

  Hugh is laughing a little. “I don’t know that I would call myself Ruadan’s spymaster. But very well, if that’s what you like.”

  I think of his face on the wanted poster, Loyce’s taunting voice. More fiercely than I meant to, I say, “Isn’t there a price on your head? Why didn’t you stay in Caeris?”

  “One cannot live one’s life in hiding.” The cadence of his voice makes the words more poetic than they should be. “There’ll be a price on your head, too, by now.”

  “I expect so,” I say stiffly.

  Jahan hands the flask back to Hugh. He’s coughing. I allow myself a smirk.

  “Is our Caerisian brew too strong for you?” one of the other riders asks, nudging his horse closer as he laughs. The faint light shines off his pale hair.

  “I’ve drunk worse,” Jahan says with dignity, between fits of coughing.

  The other rider leans close to us. “Lady Elanna, I’m Finn.”

  “Finn.” I can’t make out anything of his face but the tip of his nose, though I hear a smile in his voice. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “I assure you, the pleasure is entirely mine.”

  His tone is courtly, and the whole thing seems surreal. Next thing I know, a stri
ng quartet is going to start up and he’ll ask me to dance.

  But Finn is, in fact, asking Hugh a question, which I missed.

  Hugh gathers his reins, starting to move ahead, then glances at me. “It’s good to have you back, Lady El.” He nudges his mount away, to ride beside Finn.

  “You do know him,” Jahan murmurs in my ear.

  I ignore this. “Were you following me this morning, up to the stones?”

  “Following you? It was coincidence. I wanted to see the circle.”

  But his arm tenses around me, so I suspect he’s lying. The hairs prickle on my back despite the warmth of his body close behind mine. I say, “Do you know where we are?” It comes out sharper than I intended.

  “North of the city.”

  I could have guessed that—and I can also guess that our destination is Ganz, the place Hensey told me to run to.

  Hensey. She knew these people. I call after Hugh, “You’ve suborned my nursemaid. Do you know what’s become of her?”

  “Alis Hensey?” He’s quiet so long that I begin to shiver in fear of what he’ll tell me. One of the other men says something, too low for me to hear, and Hugh sighs audibly. “They’ll have imprisoned her, along with everyone else suspected of conspiring in the king’s death.”

  “She helped you,” I say. “And you’re going to leave her there?”

  He’s quiet again. Then: “She understood the risk.”

  I cannot speak. Will Hensey be flogged? Executed? Left to rot in prison? And what of Guerin? What of Victoire and her family?

  I have left them all at Loyce’s mercy, and now I’m headed north with these Caerisian savages, who don’t even have the heart to save their own. And the Idaean sorcerer whose arm remains around my ribs, hugging me against him. His body is warm and I feel the imprint of his hand beneath my armpit and left breast, even through the layers of my clothes.

  He leans forward so that his breath stirs my hair and pitches his voice just for me to hear. “I know it’s hard for you.”