We were talking in great joy and did not hear when the palace grounds went up in flames. The woven effigy of Belaverous, the frolicking bear, had burned into cinders by the time the shouting pierced our happy ears. Only then did we notice the light and sound from without our cozy home. You asked me, “Do you know what the Freemen say about the spring?”
Before you could tell me, there came a pounding on the door. We rose from our seats to feel that the university building, a moldering ruin to this day within the walls of the palace, had filled with smoke. The same vile clouds of burnt air came wafting from upstairs, and I rushed to your mother only to find that she had breathed it in and expired.
I would have died right there, my son, but the roof was falling in and you were still downstairs! O horrors to think that a father must choose between his wife’s still body and his live son! Weapons were thrown together and discharged in the most terrible cacophony, and I knew only that I must get you to safety.
Grabbing my sword, I gave way to the pounding at the door, and when the man entered, knowing not whether he was friend or foe, I ended his life. And now I must wonder to the end of my days what the man had come for, and whether or not I did right in slaying him. But I did not think that night. I grabbed you and we ran.
The cellars below the university were on the other side of the broad stone building, and so we rushed, low to the ground, through the battle that filled the school. I led the way, and looked back often, always frightened that I would turn to find you had fallen. Every time I turned, however, to claim from you a smile of assurance, we would be slowed to a stop.
Was it fate? Was it on purpose? Was it an accident? I think, maybe, it was my fault. I stopped to look back at you, causing you to pause in your tracks, and just as I did, the blade of a sword whipped through the air and…
I cannot write of it, my Ashner. I would rather die than write of it.
I don’t know how I survived the battle, since I am almost sure I clung to your dying body until I lost consciousness. The kind souls who saved me never spoke of how I had come to be alive, or what had become of your body. I refused to ask, and I would not let them say.
The world I knew was destroyed on the morning I woke, but this knowledge had nothing to do with the blackened stone or the piles of rubble. You were gone. The world had ended. Only politics went on.
The King was dead and his three heirs dead or disappeared. Their loss was merely added to my own. When an evil man took their place, it seemed only too fitting. Of course, I reasoned, a tyrant would rule over this new, terrible existence. I did not exercise my influence among the educated. I let the Usurper sit upon his cindered throne.
I let him sit there still, all these years later. The university we loved so well grows free with vines and weeds, now silent of the sound of laughter and debate. I hear sometimes the ghost of days past, and in those times I see you. And yet, I do nothing.
You will judge me in the afterlife, I know. I was influential in my time and molded so many young minds. Even if I had done very little and inspired but few to stand, it would have been something. My defense is this: every time I set about to wondering what I should do, I could not pass a single thought without wondering, “what do Freemen say about the spring?” And with that query, I am undone. I was cheated of my answer just as I was cheated of you, and my inaction has been the symptom of a dying heart.
We will talk, my Ashner, as we walk side by side to the bull. He will judge me harshly, but it is your forgiveness I seek. Will you forgive me that day and every day thereafter? Will you speak to me at all? Will you wait for me on the path? Or will you walk on ahead, your back turned to me for all eternity?
I cannot bear to think…
Your Ever Loving Father,
A.N.
* * * * *
Rose approached Tappan’s hammock, finding him sitting in it silently, staring at the wall. As she approached, she saw that in addition to an assortment of bruises, his eye was swollen and his lip split. “What happened to you?” she asked.
“Besides the whirlwind that is Cricket, you mean?” he asked wryly.
“He said you told him,” Rose said, putting the pieces together.
Touching his swollen eye gingerly, he replied, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Well, he was demoted…” Rose said. “I guess he’s one of us now.”
Tappan smirked. “So, now we shall be a Mule, a Monkey, a Mute, and a Maniac,” he said, laughing at his own cleverness before wincing in pain. He felt at his loosened teeth. “I don’t suppose that’s Cricket’s?”
Rose followed Tappan’s gaze to her own bloody knuckles. “Aye,” she said.
He made a triumphant gesture. “No one will be calling you a woman anymore, I bet.”
“Not to fear,” said Rose, “I’m still the Monkey.”
“We’ll work on that one next, how about?” Tappan said. He touched his head carefully. “You know what, I think I might pass out for a little while. Will you tell me about the party while I work on that?
“The party? It wasn’t that interesting,” Rose lied. “I danced once, even though I’ve never danced before in my life.”
“Was she pretty?” Tappan asked.
Rose thought about the girl. She shook her head, unsure, “It was just a girl.”
“Did you ask her or did she ask you?” Tappan wondered, his gaze losing focus.
“Are they allowed to ask you?” Rose teased, thinking about how it was really Fenric who’d done the asking. She considered what it meant that she’d been given the task at all while she talked Tappan through the basic details.
Was this, she wondered, what working with Fenric would be like? He as good as said in the carriage that his task for her had been on a whim—just as he’d said…
Rose could hardly stand to think about it. Was the natural conclusion of working with Fenric that she’d be assigned random tasks that rarely made sense? Would they begin innocently with little things like putting letters in people’s studies and dancing with girls, but then grow more complex, like stealing artifacts or…or eliminating threats? Would he ask her to murder somebody? If he did, would it be for the greater good? Did the reason even matter?
Rose’s explanation of the ball had halted for several moments before she realized she’d grown silent. She looked at Tappan to see if he’d noticed, but he was deep in sleep. Her anger grew.
Who did Fenric think he was, to assume he might someday order a person’s murder? Who did he think she was that she’d be willing to carry it out? Rose felt trapped all of a sudden, beholden to the Scribe yet disgusted by him. Filled with frustration, she pushed off Tappan’s cot and rushed out of his sleeping quarters.
She was greeted above decks by the vibrant moon and starry sky, but she saw none of it. It was time for the Scribe to stop his lies.
* * * * *
“I’ll abide it no longer,” the Captain said, sitting at the chair he’d pulled to standing. Jas moved around, picking debris off the floor and putting it back to rights. “These half-truths that you tell must stop. You were there during the Burning.”
“I’ve said, there was no—” Fenric began from his usual seat.
“You said there was no ‘Fenric’ on record,” said Kaille, “but you’re mistaken if you think I’m not onto you. Considering what I’ve seen tonight, I understand why you’d make yourself an alias, but I’m asking these questions now to the man you were, whatever his name. I must know what I’ve gotten my ship and crew into.”
“I suppose we have reached a certain jumping-off point,” said Fenric, sinking into himself. “Either I begin to trust you or you stop trusting me.”
“You said Nic Pharus came to the King with intelligence that Prince Goddard was plotting against the throne,” Kaille said in reminder. “Did you hear these accusations with your own ears?”
“These ears on my head?” Fenric asked, soaking in the levels of irony folded into his existence. He contemplated
the Captain’s assessment regarding the changed nature of their relationship, and then he sighed. “I did, yes.”
“And did you believe him?” Kaille demanded.
“I regret that I did, yes,” said Fenric, ashamed. “The attacks within the military were well disguised. The idea that they could be wrapped up easily as Goddard’s plotting—the schemes of a younger brother to gain the throne—was just the kind of simple answer we were looking for. We didn’t want to believe it to be much larger problem.”
“What did he tell you, exactly?” the Captain asked.
“He said,” Fenric sighed once more, “that the Prince Brother intended, at the festival feast of Belaverous that night, to dispose of the royal and noble families.”
Kaille blinked, tempted in hindsight to call the Scribe a mighty fool. “And what did you do with that hogwash?”
“We listened to it,” Fenric said simply. “We planned. There’d been signs that something pernicious was afoot, so we took the threat seriously. It was agreed that, if an attack seemed immanent, we would remove the children from the palace.”
The Captain sat up suddenly, his heart full of fear. “And you were involved in this?”
“Yes,” said Fenric. “I, a trusted maid…and Nic Pharus.”
There was a crash from behind them. Jas had dropped a drawer and the contents fell with a clatter. “You gave the Usurper control of one of the heirs?” he demanded.
Fenric nodded. He seemed older than he had moments earlier. “I regret that we did,” he confirmed.
“So the rumored deaths of one or more of the heirs are true,” said Kaille, thinking through what he’d learned out loud. “And you have the girl,” he added, seeing the sobbing child in his mind’s eye. Before Fenric could say so, Kaille blurted, “Did you see what happened to the King?”
“I was carrying the child to safety—” Fenric began.
“Surely you saw something,” Jas insisted.
Fenric gave him a withering look. “I’m trying to tell you what I saw, Master Hawkesbury,” he said. He began again, “I was carrying the child to safety when it became clear to me that we’d been betrayed. I hid the heir and went back to the palace. Just outside the throne room I found the King. He was bent double and stabbed through the chest with his own sword. He was moments from death.” Fenric’s eyes had clouded, and he looked down at the Captain’s floor as if the dying sovereign now rested upon it. “I took his head in my arms and he smiled at me through his pain. He spoke his final words.” Fenric gulped. He paused, as though listening to those final words in his head. His blinking was rapid as he raised his face to the Captain. “And then he was gone.”
There was silence in the cabin. Kaille’s heart thumped against his chest as he recalled the story Fenric had told him months earlier. “He—the King of Illiamna—was the childhood friend you spoke of? The one who died in your arms?” the Captain asked, hardly believing his own words.
“I closed his eyes,” Fenric said in answer. “And I spoke over him a blessing my mother taught me. Then I pulled the sword from his chest and took the crown from his head.”
“What did you do then?” asked Jas, his attention rapt.
Fenric answered coldly, “Then I went to find Nic Pharus.”
The Captain rubbed his hands over his face, fear rising in his chest with each new detail of the Scribe’s story.
“He sat upon the throne,” recalled Fenric, “surrounded by his allies. I didn’t let him speak, but I cursed his name and let that curse echo upon the Unity Stones. I dropped from my hand the dead King’s crown and lifted my friend’s sword, bringing it down upon the gold twice, rending it in four—”
“You quartered the crown?” Jas demanded, collapsing onto Kaille’s bed, his knees too weak to stand. “But why would you do that?”
“I wanted the Usurper to know,” spat Fenric, turning his furious eyes upon Jas, “that though he might have stolen the throne, he would never be King.”
Silence followed these words. Even the sea and ship made minimal noise, as though they respected the power of the man’s story too much to interject. The attention of all was trained upon the mangled piece of gold sitting upon the Captain’s table.
“I didn’t take the piece at that time,” Fenric said, answering the question they hadn’t dared to ask. “It was returned to me later. But that, at least, is a story for another night.”
Kaille nodded, exhausted from what he’d heard. “You must have run then,” he said, out of ideas. “I would have run.”
“And so I did,” agreed the Scribe. “I barely escaped with my life.”
The three men sat quietly once more, none of them wishing to be the first to speak. Again, however, Fenric broke the silence. “I’ve never told anyone this before.”
“Having heard it,” Kaille said solemnly, feeling slightly ill, “I’m not sure you should have.”
“I don’t know why,” said the Scribe, “but I trust you Captain. And I’m asking for your help. There are many who wish the restoration of the royal family, but not many working towards that end. Those who wish the opposite, however, are making extraordinary efforts. Please, join me. I need your help.”
Kaille needed space. He needed time. He thought he might lose what little he’d eaten at the ball. His stomach wrenched painfully into knots as his mind readjusted everything it had known.
Looking into Fenric’s eyes, Kaille saw them lit with an honest plea. He didn’t know what was worse, being lied to by the Scribe or being trusted by him. Nevertheless, he replied, “If your task is to restore the monarchy—and Arion be damned, I believe it is—then you shall always have my aid.”
Fenric nodded gratefully and rose from his seat. He turned and began limping away, but was called back by an afterthought.
“One other thing,” said the Captain, his finger raised. “Whyl…or whoever he is…he called you Iggy. Can I assume that’s short for…”
“Ignatius,” Fenric supplied. “I won’t deny it.”
“And what might I find,” Kaille inquired, “if I were to search the royal records for a man named Ignatius? It’s not a common name.”
“I think you should find a good deal of trouble,” answered the Scribe, his expression tired. “Luckily for me the records are controlled by the Usurper and are beyond your reach.” Turning on his heel, he added a dismissive, “Good night, Captain.”
* * * * *
Cricket curled himself within the crow’s nest, hugging his legs to his chest and burrowing his broken nose between his knees. He would occasionally shout a curse into the fabric of his trousers or slam the soft side of his fist against the unyielding wooden boards, but all it did was make him feel worse.
A silent figure climbed the wooden rail and lowered himself to sit by Cricket’s side. The demoted shiphand thought he felt a gentle hand touch the side of his head. The contact was so full of concern that Cricket was recalled to a time when, as a sick child, he’d been attentively kept by his mother. He opened his eyes, hoping to glimpse her face, but he saw the Tikaani slave boy instead.
“Don’t touch me, savage!” he shouted, jumping back from the pale boy.
“Nose broke,” Ikpek said, struggling with his words. He reached out again to Cricket’s face. “Need fix.”
“I knew you could speak, you filthy heathen,” Cricket scoffed, pushing the hand away. “I said don’t touch me.”
Ikpek arched his brow, “Cricket want bone poke in brain?” He stood. Swinging a leg over the crow’s nest rail, the slave boy shrugged. “Soon be dead.”
“What? It can’t do that.” Cricket jeered. Placing a probing finger to the wound, he felt that indeed the bone had shifted back. He looked at the savage with sudden attention. Then, panicked, he grew uncertain. “Wait! It can’t do that?”
Ikpek said nothing. Instead, he gazed upon the freckled boy with a look of pity, as though he knew that the redhead didn’t have long for the world.
Cricket touched his nose again, cu
rsed at the pain, and gaped back at Ikpek, jaw unhinged. “It could kill me? Serious?”
Ikpek shrugged, swinging his other foot over the rail.
“Wait!” Cricket cried, grabbing Ikpek’s sleeve. “What do I have to do?”
“If Ikpek fix?” The slave boy gave him a measured look. “Cricket be nice.”
“No, really,” Cricket tugged Ikpek into motion, pulling him back within the crow’s nest.
“No,” Ikpek held up a finger and pushed it to Cricket’s forehead with a steady pressure. “Cricket. Be. Nice.”
“Okay!” Cricket cried. “Fix it! Gods, Savage, I don’t want to die.”
“Not Savage,” insisted the pale boy. “Ikpek. Be nice.”
Cricket nodded rapidly, “Okay. Ikpek, then. Please help me.”
“Bite down,” said the Tikaani, shoving a thick leather strap in Cricket’s mouth. “Hold still,” he said. He touched the broken nose with probing fingers. Without warning, he placed his thumb and forefinger artfully on the injury, yanked, jerked, and then let go.
“Arion be damned!” Cricket cried after a good few minutes of screaming through the leather strap. He touched his nose tentatively and found it to be straight once more, if slightly swollen. “Gods that hurt.”
“Ah,” Ikpek held a finger to his forehead as before with a mercurial grin. “But better now. Here, must clean.”
As Cricket watched, Ikpek took a flask from his belt, ripped a patch of soft fabric from his tunic, wetted it, and dabbed at Cricket’s face. The freckled boy closed his eyes and prepared to cringe under Ikpek’s care, but the slave boy’s touch was so delicate that even his own mother’s caress had never felt so kind. The gentleness was almost too much to stomach—so much worse than the pain of the broken bone.
Cricket knew he didn’t deserve Ikpek’s help. He’d hurt and nearly strangled the pale, purple-eyed boy more times that he could remember. He’d even gotten another of the shipboys to punch him, leaving a livid purple mark upon the boy’s face. So why was the savage helping? Was he simply too stupid to remember the abuse? Or was the slave boy so inherently good that he would help even his enemy? As soon as he’d had the thought, Cricket knew it was the truth. The red-haired boy felt tears come to his eyes.