Dragonoak (61 page)

I lugged
The Sky Beneath The
Sun
back with me, falling down on the nest
of pillows Claire had made. Taking hold of a thin blanket, she
draped it over her shoulders and held her arm out wide, wrapping it
around me when I shuffled against her side. I placed the book in
her lap and she opened it with her free hand, flicking through the
pages, not content to start from the beginning.

“I
recall a passage that might be of interest to you,” she explained,
finger running along the lines of text as her eyes scanned for
familiar words. I placed a hand on the corner of the book, keeping
it open.

“Here:
It has long been speculated
that the phoenix population was not merely on par with humans and
pane within Myros, but socially speaking, they were revered in the
same way that necromancers were. There are countless records that
have survived the creation of the Bloodless Lands, brought south
through the mountains during the great exodus, pertaining to the
partnership and unity between phoenixes and necromantic Priests of
Isjin.

“Indeed, in one account, a phoenix by the name of Sino-Toku
is stated to have '... achieved Priesthood on the dawn of the
thirty-ninth anniversary of [his] most recent rising.' Sino-Toku is
one of the most widely documented phoenixes, believed by many to
have worked alongside Kondo-Kana, who many scholars have argued
fled Myros at the end of the War...
”

“Those
scholars will be glad to know they're right,” I said, grinning. “I
wonder if that's true. The part about Sino-Toku. I'll have to ask
Kondo-Kana.”

Claire rested her head atop mine and said, “When I met you,
you'd never seen so much as a
town
. Listen to you now.”

Claire
kept reading, finding passages on famous phoenixes and paragraphs
dedicated to their physiology, and I listened with my eyes closed,
mind rolling back from her words to the golden phoenixes of Canth,
thoughts settling on the first time I'd seen the phoenix pendant
hanging from her neck.

CHAPTER XXII

“
Anyone in?”
I asked, door creaking on its hinges as I stepped into the
corridor. “Zentha sent me. They said you might have a spare
room.”

The buzz
of conversation died down in the living room and a pane, no older
than twenty, poked his head out of the doorway. One of his horns
was growing faster than the other, but I didn't get to see much
more of him; he disappeared back into the room, as if by moving
quickly enough, I wouldn't have time to have seen him in the first
place.

The pane
blurted out something about little friends, and a gruffer voice
said, “You're kidding.” The floorboards creaked as the pane rose to
their feet.

A much
older pane turned the corner and stood with his hands on his hips,
grinning down at me.

“Thought
that was a small voice I was hearing,” he said, shaking his head so
that his long braids fell over the backs of his shoulders. “Been
hearing all kinds of rumours about an influx of little friends,
lately. What can I do for you?”

“Zentha
said you might have room for me... ?” I said, smiling as best I
could manage, fiddling with the cuffs of the shirt Claire had leant
me, collar far too stiff for my liking. “I'm going to be staying in
Kyrindval for a while, and they said I'd be a good fit
here.”

“Oh,
yeah?” the pane said, resting his shoulder against the wall. “What
are you planning on doing here?”

He asked
because he was curious; he wasn't demanding I pay my own
way.

“I
thought I could help teach Mesomium and Canthian, for anyone
interested,” I said.

“That
so?” He tapped a claw against one of his fangs, and bellowed out,
“Hafor! Get back out here. Our new housemate's gonna teach you that
Mesomium you're always prattling on about.”

Hafor
sheepishly dragged his feet behind him, took refuge behind the
older pane, and managed a wave.

“I'm
Rowan,” I said, holding out a hand to Hafor. “It's nice to meet you
both.”

When
Hafor only blinked at my hand, the older pane took it, saying,
“Draeis! Good to meet ya. Hafor here will show you to the empty
rooms. Had a few move on lately. One went off to Jorjang, actually.
It'll be nice to have some life in the place again. All you need to
know is that everyone has their own day to do the cleaning, we take
breakfast and dinner together, and if you want cooked meat, you're
gonna have to see to that yourself. No offence meant, of course. I
just don't think you'd appreciate charcoal for dinner.”

Moving
in to a cabin wasn't as big an event as I'd built it up to be, and
I preferred it that way. Hafor shuffled down the corridor, showed
me the unoccupied rooms at Draeis' behest, and I chose the smaller
of the two, lest another pane show up. The room had all I needed in
it – somewhere to sleep and somewhere to put the clothes I didn't
yet have – but when Hafor left me with a mumbled goodbye, I was
hesitant to take another step in.

I hadn't
had much luck making myself at home of late.

I spent most of the morning getting to know the household.
Draeis was a brewer and had spent years building an extensive
cellar beneath the cabin, and while Hafor wanted to work around
the
sca-isjin
,
one day, he was currently apprenticing for a tanner several streets
over. The third occupant was an energetic woman by the name of
Maedir, who tended to sickly dragons when they sought out
aid.

Claiming
that he didn't like to presume, Draeis asked if I happened to know
the other humans who'd been in Kyrindval lately, and I explained
how I knew them as best as I could. Mentioning a brother earnt me
puzzled looks, though they'd had the concept explained to them
before, and Maedir chimed in that she'd spoken with Michael a few
times in the past, and that he'd always had plenty to say for
himself.

None of
them were adverse to the notion of a second breakfast, and I even
tried a chunk of raw meat, when Draeis goaded me into it. It wasn't
the worst experience I'd ever had, but it felt far too slimy in my
throat to consider repeating. I did my part, washed the plates with
the aid of a step, and headed out into Kyrindval, hoping to find
something in the shops that might fit me.

I
stepped outside of the cabin and saw my brother heading in the
opposite direction.

“Michael!” I called out.

“Ah!
There
you are,” he said, hurrying over to me. “Zentha said you'd be
somewhere around here. Getting all settled in, are you? I hear you
had quite the day, yesterday.”

“Does
word really get around that quickly?”

“I spoke
with Kouris this morning. Excellent to see her again,” he said,
aimlessly taking the lead. “The pane don't care much for all this
nonsense, honestly. They likely think we're being petty. Well,
they're not far wrong, are they?”

I didn't
think there was anything petty in trying to defend a city against
invading forces, but it was too early to get into an argument with
Michael. I had no chance of holding my own in a debate with him now
that we'd spent years apart.

“Claire's in Kyrindval now. I don't know whether that's a
good thing or not,” I said, “Have you seen her yet? She's back at
her old place.”

Michael
frowned, humming flatly.

“Well,
you see...”

“Did
something happen?” I asked when he trailed off.

He
shrugged and I jumped in front of him, blocking the path. A shrug
from Michael never indicated that he didn't have the words, or that
he didn't care; it meant he was avoiding giving an
answer.

“You didn't see her after Isin, Rowan. She was angry.
Hell,
of course
she was angry. She was hurt, and far worse than you can
image. She couldn't get up for
months
. She handled it all as well
as anyone could be expected to. That is to say...” He paused,
sighing. “We did not part on the best of terms. A lot of her anger
was misguided, and a lot of it was not. Surely you know about the
drinking; she would go from blaming herself for Felheim's actions
to blaming me for not being a good enough brother to you a dozen
times a day.

“Which,
in her defence, may have had some grain of truth to it.”

That
said, he stepped around me and carried on walking.

I set
off after him a few seconds later, and dropped my gaze once I was
by his side. How easy it had been to imagine that Claire had been
like this since Isin fell; that she hadn't yet started to get
better, and this was the very worst of it.

“You
could've been worse,” I grumbled. “Remember when you found me
putting that dead lamb back together? You could've panicked,
could've told the entire village that I was a necromancer, but you
only cared because you thought it was impressive. Like something
out of a story, you said.”

Laughing
under his breath, he said, “That was, what—seven, eight years ago?
I'm surprised you remember.”

“Of
course I do! You were the first person who knew I was a
necromancer. I'd only been working as a healer for a few years, but
if I'd had to keep it to myself for much longer, I don't think I
would've been able to take it. And it kind of made me feel like
it'd be okay if other people figured it out, too.”

My hands
were slick with blood when he'd found me and the lamb's coat was
stained the same colour. He'd taken refuge behind a crumbled wall
when he'd encountered a wolf on the way back from the village late
one evening, and after I'd chased it away and fixed the lamb, he'd
knelt next to me and used a handkerchief to wipe the blood from my
fingers.

“And look how
that
turned out,” Michael said blithely, tugging on
the collar of my shirt. “This doesn't suit you
at all
, for what it's
worth.”

He took
me to one the busier streets in Kyrindval, home to a dozen shops,
as well as a library. I spent a tedious half an hour staring at
book spines covered in squiggles that meant nothing to me, and once
Michael was finished attending to his business, he didn't have so
much as a single book to show for it. We headed to the tailors,
after that. Pane clothes were vastly different to anything humans
wore: bulkier, thicker, and far better made than anything I'd owned
throughout the first twenty-three years of my life.

Had a
Canthian set sights on anything a pane wore they would've fainted
on the spot.

Two
walls of the tailors were dedicated to showcasing spools of fabric
in every colour, arranged by hue, stretching from the floor to the
ceilings. Pane tended to use leather and fur for most of their
clothing, but after a few minutes spent chatting with my brother,
the seamster agreed to put together some more human-looking shirts
for me. I held my arms out and he used a stick with hundreds of
tiny black lines scored along one side to measure me, but insisted
on only using the colour Zentha had assigned me.

The pane
worked quickly and precisely and we left within an hour, two new
shirts folded over one of my arms.

“Can you
help me with something?” I asked.

“Something else, you mean?” He grinned, not missing a beat.
“What is it?”

I kept
my eyes on the ground as I went, hopping between giant flagstones,
made dizzy by the enormity of the world around me. The longer I was
in Kyrindval, the deeper I went into the tribe, the smaller I
seemed to become.

“I'm
going to start teaching Mesomium and Canthian, for any of the pane
who want to learn,” I explained. “Zentha said I should leave a note
on one of the noticeboards.”

“What—
you
want to teach, Rowan?” he asked, incredulous. “No offence
intended, of course. You speak it well enough, but what about
grammar! What about different kinds of adjectives and irregular
verbs and prepositions and
writing
?”

I
stopped on the spot, raising my brow.

“I'm not going to use any of
those
words, which I think already
makes me a better teacher than you,” I said, frowning. He could've
been speaking Agadian, for all I'd understood. “Are you going to
help me or not?”

He
mulled it over, rubbing at his chin as though holding me back would
be a service to Kyrindval, but ultimately couldn't pass up the
chance to be helpful, if it involved a quill and
parchment.

We
gathered supplies from his cabin, and I sat opposite him at the
dining table, swinging my legs back and forth as he wrote out four
copies of what I assumed were the same notice. Screwing the lid
back on his inkwell, he lifted each piece of parchment, ensuring
the words no longer shone in the sunlight.

“There
we are. I trust you'll be able to post them yourself. There ought
to be nails by all of the noticeboards,” he said, clicking his
tongue when I gathered the pieces of parchment up and bent one of
the corners.

“Thank
you,” I said, glancing down at the meticulously neat script. “What
did you put?”