Dragonoak (30 page)

“Things
mean something, yrval, because people mean something.”

I closed
my hand tight around the coin and passed it back to her. She
carefully placed it back within her inner pocket, pressing a hand
to her chest to ensure it was safely stowed away.

“But you were with Queen Kidira for years. You were
married
. I knew Claire
for months, and... and it's been two years. It should stop.
I
should
stop...”

The
words were hot on my tongue. It was too much to try saying after
holding my silence for the better part of a day.

“Six
years I was with Kidira. Twenty-seven years I was in Canth. Should
be long enough to forget about a person, aye?”

I couldn't answer that. I couldn't imagine how any stretch of
time could wear away the impact of someone who'd been so
real
to me.

“For a
while, it only ever got worse and worse. Some days were rougher
than others; some days I saw her face, whether I closed my eyes or
kept 'em open,” she went on to say. “It became a constant. Now, I'm
not saying I became used to it. It was as raw to me after ten years
as it was after ten days, but I'd reached a limit. Accepted she was
gone, that I'd never see her again.

“I
thought that'd be it. I'd be done with my suffering and I'd move
on. But one day, just like that, I realised that us being apart
wasn't a hard lesson I had to learn. There wasn't gonna be an end
to it. I missed her then and I miss her now, and there's no getting
away from that. No softening it. A lot's changed, and I know she
was lost to me decades ago, but I won't ever love anyone else the
way I loved her. Time's got nothing to do with it,
yrval.”

I looked
away, swallowing the lump in my throat.

“You
shouldn't have left,” I said without a hint of judgement, an ounce
of blame.

I
shouldn't have left. I shouldn't have run. Claire shouldn't have
gone deeper into Isin.

She
should've run.

“Wish to
the gods I hadn't,” she murmured. “But dying... that does something
to you, yrval. I'm grateful for what Iseul did, I really am, but
something changed in me.”

Eyes on
the ground, I nodded my head. She was right. Something changed, or
something was pulled loose, misplaced; it was hard to move on from
that moment.

What
Kouris said had been grim – I wouldn't forget Claire, and I
couldn't force myself to stop missing her – but I felt better, in a
dull sort of way. If nothing else had come of our conversation, my
feelings had been validated.

I
gathered up the bags I'd so carelessly discarded, slinging them
over my shoulders and climbing on Kouris' back, ready to travel
back in silence.

As
Kouris' feet pounded against the ground, I reminded myself that it
hadn't been a wasted journey. We might not have found out as much
as Atthis had hoped, but we now knew that Felheim had lost control
of at least one dragon; it'd crashed through the wall, and
recently, at that. From the hurry they were in to patch it back up,
I'd no doubt that there were plenty within Kastelir ready to fight,
ready to spill in through the gap.

I kept
my eyes on the wall as we rushed past. We were at the shattered
length of the wall sooner than I'd expected us to be, and work
hadn't ceased. The more sizeable chunks of debris were in the
process of being pulled away, and the workers were further from the
wall than they had been. Soldiers on horseback were watching over
them, and Kouris sped up at the sight of them without resorting to
a full-out sprint.

It
wasn't enough for us to go unnoticed. We'd garnered the attention
of two patrolling soldiers, and after a moment's deliberation, they
set off after us.

Kouris
glanced back, letting out a low rumble from the back of her throat.
The horses charged closer, and though we could've out-paced them,
the soldiers had bows strapped across their backs. Kouris had
thicker skin than anyone I knew – and literally, at that – but I'd
no doubt a rain of arrows would take their toll on her.

“Alright, yrval. They ain't gonna be causing a problem. What
could they even want with us? Probably just feeling like bothering
a pane,” Kouris said to me, skidding to a halt.

The
soldiers' horses kicked up a cloud of dirt as they caught up with
us, stopping either side of us.

Crouching down slowly, Kouris lowered me to the ground, and I
stood with my chin up, doing all I could to focus on the soldiers,
and not the bags. I'd no doubt they were looking for any excuse to
rifle through our things.

“Good
morning,” one of the soldiers said, remaining atop his horse so
that he could match Kouris in height, if nothing else. “We received
a raven this morning. Word is, an unauthorised party were seen
leaving a Canthian ship in Ironash. A party containing – notably –
a pane and a necromancer. Wouldn't happen to know anything about
that, would you?”

“I don't
think pane can be necromancers,” I blurted out in an effort to buy
myself time to think.

The
soldier was far from impressed.

Someone
at the docks – someone on the ship, someone who knew I was a
necromancer – had betrayed us. No doubt Katja had delighted in
telling her guards what I was. A disgruntled sailor had been
convinced he hadn't earnt enough coin, lugging us across the sea
for eight weeks while we shared their rations and did none of the
work.

Luckily,
Kouris thought faster than I did.

She
leant towards me, bemused, and asked in loud, clear Svargan, “What
are they saying? Translate for me.”

The
soldiers shot each other nervous glances, reassured at the sight of
three more soldiers hurrying over to join their ranks. It took a
lot to confront a pane, and they hadn't accounted for a language
barrier.

“He says
they're looking for a pane who came from Ironash, all the way
from... Canth, I think he said,” I told her.

Kouris
nodded as I translated, then held her hands defensively in front of
her, talking rapidly and covering her chest with her palms as a
sign of sincerity.

“She says she doesn't know anything about that. It's only
been a few weeks since she left the mountains, and she's yet to
ever
see
the
ocean, let alone go to and from Canth,” I explained to them,
“Ironash is where we're heading now, actually.”

The
soldiers' reinforcements gathered around us, and a woman wearing a
helm that covered all but her mouth came the closest, and looked
down at me.

“Ah
,” she said, not needing to ask
why we'd been stopped.

“What do
you think, Captain? This one says the pane's only just down from
the mountains and has never been to Ironash, but of course she
would.”

The
woman looked us both over and said, “Best to confiscate their
things. We'll look through them, then question them. I'm certain
they won't object, should they have nothing untoward to
hide.”

I took a
step back. How were we supposed to prove ourselves innocent of the
very thing we were guilty of? I tried to catch Kouris' eye,
desperate to climb onto her back and run, and all of the soldiers
save the Captain dismounted their horses.

Claire's
bags. They were going to take Claire's bags and dig through every
inch of them before I'd the chance to even know what they
contained. We could run, but they'd litter us with their arrows,
following us all the way back to my farmhouse. There was no getting
out of this, whether we stayed or fled.

The
soldiers cautiously drew closer and Kouris snatched the bags from
my back, holding them up out of reach, buying us a few more
seconds. It was all for nothing. It wasn't enough.

Until it
was.

From the
wall, a long, low note dragged itself out into the air. I'd heard
the cry of a horn more times than I cared to count in Port Mahon,
and it never meant something good was coming. The soldiers turned,
all eyes facing the mangled wall, and we stared along with them,
gripped by curiosity and a little fear, as though we were all on
the same side.

The cry
faded like the last clap of a thunderstorm, and all was
unsettlingly silent, until the eruption came.

Horses
poured in through the gap, dozens upon dozens of them, riders
gripping at reins and weapons alike. They weren't soldiers, not
like the Felheimish in their gold-stained armour; their armour was
mismatched, and though we were too far for me to make out the
banners they rode under, I could tell they were crudely
constructed.

“Rebels
from Orinhal!” one of the soldiers declared, scrambling back up on
their horse. “Captain, what should we... ?”

The
Captain grit her teeth, glanced at us and back at the wall, not
needing more than a second to make her decision.

“Don't just
stand
there
,” she called. “After
them!”

The
Felheimish were our enemy, but they weren't. They thought they were
protecting Kastelir and Felheim alike; they'd no idea that their
King had been responsible for this all.

With
what had to be the resistance pouring through, the wall looked more
remarkable than ever. The stonework was jagged where it had been
rent, like teeth rising up, a maw threatening to swallow the two
Kingdoms whole. There were more of the resistance than the
Felheimish, chasing the workers away and fighting soldiers, but
those stationed along the wall were sounding horns one by one,
gathering their forces.

Kouris
and I saw our chance and took it. I leapt onto her back, feet
already moving, and I watched the chaos unfurl as we charged away
from the battle. The resistance weren't chasing any who fled and I
knew the fight couldn't be as senseless as it seemed, from a
distance. They'd planned this out. They were trying to keep their
way to Felheim open, trying to send a message.

And
then, when the shapes of people fighting were almost nothing but an
indistinguishable blur in the distance, I saw her: a woman astride
her horse, clad in the white of dragon-bone.

“Kouris!” I cried, “Kouris,
stop
.”

It
wasn't that my heart had slowed, or that it had stopped. It'd been
torn from my chest, and no amount of beating my fists against my
ribs was going to entice what wasn't there to beat again. When
Kouris didn't slow, I let out a garbled, unintelligible noise,
tugging on her horns.

“Kouris,
please
, go back, go back!”

“Don't
look back, yrval, don't look back,” she growled, breaking out into
a sprint. “You know my eyes are better than yours. You didn't see
what you thought you did.”

Her words meant nothing to me, nor did the way she charged
forward. I let go of her horns, pushed myself off her back, and
landed on the hard ground with a bone-breaking thud. I clung to
enough momentum to roll to my feet and charged back to the battle,
to the woman in dragon-bone armour, the woman fighting
for
Kastelir, and it
took Kouris all of a few seconds to catch up with me.

She snatched me up as I ran, pinning my arms to my sides. I
kicked out, dug my heels into her chest, but she didn't flinch. She
pulled me to her chest and set off, not listening to me when I
yelled, “Let me go,
let me
go
. I have to—put me down!” not caring
where I struck her.

For half
an hour I screamed my throat raw. I cursed her, repeating the same
plea over and over, thrashing until all the energy I hadn't truly
had over the past two years was depleted. What I'd said to Kouris
stuck in my mind, and what I'd seen became clear to me: it was an
illusion and nothing more. I'd seen what I'd wanted to see. How
many dragons had been slayed in the past two years? Anyone could
have access to dragon-bone armour, and I hadn't been able to tell
how crude it was, from a distance.

I went
slack in Kouris' arms, unable to say anything. She felt the change
rush through me and loosened her grasp, but continued to hold me
against her chest. Slowing without stopping, Kouris ran back to my
village without pausing for a break, without needing to eat, and
the moon was full above us when Kouris finally came to a
halt.

I
groaned as she lowered me to the ground, and she placed a hand on
my back, keeping me steady.

“I'm
sorry,” I whispered, hand covering my mouth. “For what I said. I
really thought...”

“It's
alright, yrval,” she said softly, crouching down and stretching out
her limbs. “If I thought I'd seen Kidira down there I would've cut
through every one of those soldiers to get to her
ghost.”

“I
shouldn't have shouted at you,” I argued weakly, taking a step
forward. My legs didn't appreciate it. Knee buckling, I placed my
hands against a tree trunk, forehead resting against the knots of
the wood for balance.

“Feeling
okay there, yrval?” Kouris asked.

“Fine,”
I murmured, waving a hand.