Dragonoak (18 page)

“I like
it. It's better than anything else I've seen,” I reassured her.
“... why do you keep calling me that? What does it mean? You said
something like it in the temple—Aejin yaka Aejin.”

“Aejin
yu ka
Aejin,” she corrected me. “Necromancer is a heavy word,
created by people who are not as we are.
Light from my light.
I
t is what we called ourselves, in
the Everlasting Kingdom. It is what I would call the sons and
daughters and children of Isjin.”

“Oh,
that's...” I liked the sound of it. Eyes drifting closed, I
repeated the words over and over in my mind. I wasn't scared of
Kondo-Kana, though I thought that perhaps I should be angry with
her; she was the one spoken of in legend, the one responsible for
the Bloodless Lands, for driving us out of Myros and turning people
against necromancers; the one who'd caused us to abandon the gods
she so solemnly spoke of.

And
yet...

“Now,
now, Aejin,” she said, “This world is still so new to you. Do not
deprive yourself of sleep.”

Mumbling
nonsense, I let my body go slack against her, head in her lap. With
her fingers trailing through my hair and a long-forgotten song on
her lips, I fell into a sleep as deep as the ocean, dreams keeping
their distance from me.

*

I awoke
to find that Kondo-Kana's cloak had been made into a make-shift
pillow for me.

She was
knelt in the corner, placing new candles into the pools of dried
wax, and seemed to realise I'd woken before I did. Standing over
me, she said, “You are just in time, Rowan. Nasrin wishes for you
to join her at dinner.”

“It's
dinner time already?” I said, stretching my arms above my head as I
sat up.

I hadn't
expected Queen Nasrin to remember that she'd mentioned inviting me
to dinner, let alone go through with it, but I was eager to join
her. There wasn't any way my second impression could be worse than
my first.

“It has
been dinner time over and over,” Kondo-Kana said, smiling when I
stared at her blankly. “You slept for three days,
Aejin.”

“What?”

The words to tell her how wrong she was rested on the tip of
my tongue, but I bit them back. It didn't
feel
as though she was wrong; had
she told me I'd slept for three weeks, I might've believed that
too. I was refreshed in a way I hadn't been in months, and I got to
my feet, brushing it off. If I needed to sleep for three days, then
I needed to sleep for three days. There was no getting around
it.

Picking
the cloak up off the bench, Kondo-Kana swathed it around herself
and led me to the dining room. It was a far cry from the banquet
hall in Isin's castle, and reminded me more of my kitchen back in
the farmhouse. A table big enough for six took up most of the floor
space, and a single servant was in attendance. She placed the bowls
of food in the centre of the table, plates hanging precariously off
the edges, and Queen Nasrin, lost in a letter, shooed her away when
she tried dishing up the food.

“Nasrin,” Kondo-Kana said, gliding into the seat opposite
her. “You have company.”

“Rowan. Ah.” With a smile, Queen Nasrin folded the letter in
two and beckoned me over. “Do take a seat. Nice to see that you're
up and about, finally. I tried to call on you several times, but
this one—” She paused to point accusingly at Kondo-Kana with her
chopsticks. “—insisted that
no one
was to wake you. Not even a Queen.”

Propping
her chin up in her palm, Kondo-Kana said, “It is of no concern. I
have slept for centuries at a time and always awoken to find Bosma
much the same.”

“Hm
,” Queen Nasrin said, raising her
brow. “But I am glad you're done with your little nap, Rowan. I
believe I may have spoken in haste the first time we
met.”

Queen
Nasrin shot Kondo-Kana a side-long glance that wiped away much of
the smirk on her face, and I said, “Oh, really... ?”

The food
was no more exciting than the dishes I'd make back at the hut, and
Queen Nasrin busied herself with ladling out great spoonfuls of
rice, meat and vegetables onto my plate and hers, while Kondo-Kana
merely watched it all unfold. I'd no doubt whatsoever that Queen
Nasrin would've cooked the food for herself, had she been able to
scrape together an extra hour in the day.

“Really
indeed. I'd hate to make any promises before I knew what it was you
wanted, though,” Queen Nasrin said, pouring a glass of water for
all three of us. “If you'd be so kind as to enlighten
me...”

Kondo-Kana brought her drink to her lips, looking between the
two of us as though she'd heard it all before.

“I'm,
um. I'm from Felheim, as you probably figured out from that
conversation I had with Varn,” I began, picking my words slowly,
knowing this was the last chance I was going to get. “All I'm
asking is for a way home. No ship can make it to Felheim, not
without your authority, and... and I live with Queen Kouris and
King Atthis, so—”

“No,” Queen Nasrin said, cutting me off. She shook her head,
swallowing her food before continuing. “Rowan, you are a
necromancer
. In your own
right, you are worth more than any King or Queen. And that's
assuming I believe you. Do you know how many people have come to
me, claiming to be royalty or nobility from Kastelir, ever since
whatever happened there happened? Do not hide behind people who
cannot prove their worth as you can.”

I put my
chopsticks down, not wanting her to see how my hands were
trembling, but before I had the chance to correct myself, she said,
“... wasn't Queen Kouris killed decades ago? In the war, or some
such? Hardly the most believable of stories, Rowan.”

I chewed
slowly on the chunk of pork in my mouth, looking between Queen
Nasrin and Kondo-Kana, and couldn't keep my first thought to
myself.

“We're sitting at a table with Kondo-Kana –
the
Kondo-Kana – and you
still doubt what I'm saying?”

Queen Nasrin took no offence at my observation. With a laugh,
she said, “Very well. I concede your point. If Kana sits at my
dinner table, then Queen Kouris may well reside with you. In Port
Mahon, isn't it? Ah, I know all about Port Mahon. Its problems are
much my own, I'm afraid. Why is it, I wonder, that a necromancer
such as yourself would go to such lengths to hide their gifts? You
ought to have been
helping
the people, Rowan. Acting as a beacon of hope
while their brothers wage petty, destructive war against them. Why
would you shirk such responsibility?”

My face
grew warm, hands clammy, and Kondo-Kana clicked her tongue, saying,
“Do not be cruel, Nasrin. Let the girl eat in peace.” Her words
weren't enough to save me. Queen Nasrin had set down her chopsticks
and was waiting patiently for my reply.

“I used
to help people. I used to work as a healer in my village. People
would come from miles and miles around to see me, and the village
elder would take most of the payment for himself. For the village,
he always said. But I didn't mind, because I was helping people.
And then one day, one day a boy had died and his parents were
sobbing, so I did what I had to. I brought him back to life. After
that, no one would talk to me. I wasn't allowed in the village, and
I spent months terrified that they were going to march into my
house and drag me away, and...

“So I
ran away. I went to Kastelir, where it was worse. Kondo-Kana, she's
the only necromancer I've ever actually spoken to, but I did see
one other one, once. Soldiers dragged him out of his house and took
him to the capital, and burnt him at the stake as part of a
festival.

“That's
how people like me are treated, where I come from. We're blamed for
everything that's happened since the Necromancy War, and no matter
what anyone told me, I didn't believe it would be any different
here.”

A pause
followed, and Queen Nasrin proved herself to be a reasonable
woman.

“Fair
enough,” she said, muttering “Heathens,” under her
breath.

We went
back to eating while Kondo-Kana hummed distantly. I could tell that
the Queen was mulling something over, and scooped as much food into
my mouth as I could, in an effort to stop any more questions
tumbling from my lips.

“There is still a trade agreement in place with Felheim. I
suppose I could find you and your companions a place on one of our
ships,” Queen Nasrin said, and I could've sworn my skin started
glowing brighter. “
But
there is the condition that you first do something for me, of
course.”

“What is
it?” I asked. I'd do anything, anything. I was so close
now.

Queen
Nasrin shrugged, taking a sip of her drink.

“Support
Port Mahon. Do what you can for the people there. And should you
happen to encounter Gavern—”

She
picked her chopsticks up and swished them through the air, saying
it all so casually that I didn't instantly grasp her
meaning.

“Wait. Wait. You want me to
kill
Gavern?”

“In a
word, yes,” Queen Nasrin said, still talking as though she'd asked
me deliver a letter for her. “He has been a nuisance from the very
moment I claimed the throne, causing far more problems for me than
even Port Mahon. He's sent his assassins and I've sent mine, but no
one can get close enough to him without any sort of weapon-check or
restraints. Which is where someone with your skill-set comes
in.”

I didn't
want to believe what I was hearing. I'd been offered a way home,
but it was at a price I never thought I'd have to pay.

“Killing
Gavern won't fix anything,” I said, desperate to find something
else I could do for her. Anything else. “Reis always says that
another pirate's going to take his place once we get rid of him,
and... and why are you asking me? Kondo-Kana must be a lot better
with necromancy than I am.”

“Kana is a
pest
. She lives in my palace, complains that my perfectly good
statues aren't accurate enough, and insists that she isn't going to
interfere with history. As though she is some misplaced relic of
the past, and not a person who is living and breathing in this very
moment. At least she's had the decency not to eat throughout the
entirety of my reign,” Queen Nasrin said, scowling at Kondo-Kana,
who only smiled at her fondly. “And you're right. Killing Gavern
won't instantly bring an end to all of my problems. But Gavern is
not merely another pirate; I have the misfortune of being related
to him.

“He's my half-brother—we share the same mother. Of late, he
has been rallying support in order to usurp me, despite the fact
that
his
father
never sat on the throne. It's ridiculous, truly. He claims I do not
have the right to rule over Canth because I am no King, and says
that my father's death was
suspicious
. The man was
poisoned
: Gavern is not
telling us anything we don't already know.”

That
said, Queen Nasrin returned to the last of her meal, thinking
nothing of it. I was furious. Furious at myself for thinking I
could make a deal with a Queen – with anyone – and not feel as
though I was being used for my powers.

What had
I expected? To heal a few wounds and hope that would serve as
payment enough?

“I—I
have
to go back to Kastelir, but I feel as though...”

“As
though you're being exploited? Rightly so. But tell me, Rowan,
would you have come here offering to help, had I not been able to
provide you with the means to return to Asar? Both of us ought to
be upfront about what we're doing.”

Asking
me to use my powers to kill a man I'd never met was worse than
never being offered the chance to return to Asar. It'd take a
thought, nothing more than a single surge of intent, and it'd be
done; but where would it stop? Through all Katja had put me
through, it'd still taken me days to force death into her. I had
changed since leaving my village, that much was painfully clear,
but I didn't want to imagine myself changing so very much that I
could steal life with such ease.

“I won't
pressure you, Rowan. Varn will take you back to Mahon, once you're
ready. I'll have her stay with you for a week, while you make up
your mind,” Queen Nasrin went on to say, placing her plate atop the
empty bowls. “It'll be for the good of Canth, but I understand if
you don't want to go through with it. I certainly won't think
anything less of you, and there may, in time, be other tasks for
you to fulfil.”

Other
tasks. If they were on par with this one, why should they be any
better?

“I think
I'd like to leave now, Your Majesty,” I said. “Thank you for your
hospitality. I'll... I'll think about it.”

“Of
course,” Queen Nasrin said, gathering up the dishes and making all
necessary arrangements.

Kondo-Kana walked me through the unkempt gardens, arm in
mine, staring up at the stars as she went. Her eyes remained
brighter than they were, eerie light standing out against the dark,
and I knew she must've once burnt as I now did. No one who knew the
first thing about necromancers found it strange, and seeing
Kondo-Kana as she was could only mean that it was
reversible.