Eulogy Page 10

  He stepped closer to her, still well beyond arm's reach, but halted as she flinched. "You are so much more. You just won't let anyone show you. Your—"

  "Shut it, Ark." She slid away from him, toward the door to her house. "You think you understand what I feel. More than that, you think you love me. You're mistaken." She paused for the briefest of instants. "I... I went to see my—"

  "It's more than that. I've never wanted to use you. I want to—"

  "Void take you, Ark."

  "Ah yes, an honest emotion." He bit off a sarcastic laugh. "You'll never change. You'll remain that same girl from your childhood, the one filled with fury and fear and rage—that is who you'll grow from."

  The voice's thread twitched. It slithered across the back of Irreor's neck, squeezing as if to somehow soothe. He reached back to scratch it away, but his nails only scraped skin.

  -I wish I didn't have to do this.-

  "Shut up," he demanded.

  She stiffened, unable to know he hadn't spoken to her. Her lip quivered. Her eyes welled with tears, but none dripped to her cheeks. In a stubborn, yet strangely broken tone, she said, "You're wrong. I am what I want to be, nothing else. No one holds my strings. No one will use me and no one will care for me. You're mistaken."

  "I'm never mistaken." He offered a sad smile. "Sometimes I wish I were."

  Chapter Thirteen

  "How long you been here, boy?" Gar Tsi asked.

  "Less than two hours, I think." Irreor smirked at the bedraggled man. "I figured you'd be a late, so I spent the time practicing."

  Farren awakened with its usual exuberance. Townsfolk packed the streets, merchants shouted into the crowds, and carts of wares rumbled across the cobblestones. The faint odor of apple pie drifted over them.

  Irreor had never known anything beyond this city, so it would be nice to escape, experience something new, see something glorious. The thought of it felt right. Added to that, they were burning his father today.

  He couldn't face that. Not when he'd caused it.

  "We gotta be waiting for the missus." Gar Tsi hawked and spat, then leaned against his cart and dug into his armpits. "She'll skin me if I don't, the bloody harpy. I'm not understanding how women can take so long. I just wiggle myself in and bam, I'm done. There's being nothing to it—"

  "Misses? You're married?"

  "Aye, the missus." Gar Tsi snorted. "They've got to be having all that pawing and kissing and snuggling. I've never understood it. But, I told the harpy I'd be leaving before the sun peaked, whether she's here or not. If she's insisting on snuggling longer, she'll have to catch up."

  Irreor's reply hung in his throat, as if the other man had tossed a net and snatched it up. How could the merchant be married? It didn't seem possible, much less ethical.

  Gar Tsi gripped the cart's iron wheel to hold himself upright. "Ugh, drank too much last night—kept a bottle or two of that Lekte swill. The harpy loves the stuff." He chuckled. "I guess the other woman liked it well enough, too."

  "Other woman! How many women—"

  "Aye, keep up, boy. Two. Or was it three? No matter. I suppose, once upon a time, I sucked it down with as much enthusiasm as a babe on a tit."

  "Not anymore?" Irreor said.

  "He's old," a sultry voice said from behind the merchant. "He doesn't appreciate it as much."

  A woman skipped around the merchant. She wore a tight, low-cut tunic that pushed her breasts upward. A short, oiled dagger jutted from the delicate belt at her waist. Her skirt clung to her hips, but the thin, red fabric flowed once it reached her thighs, barely concealing supple, shin-high boots.

  Gar Tsi flung his hand to the side. "My wife, Teel. Don't let her looks fool you, she'll stab you fast enough if you let her. Or maybe she'll be letting you stab her? A man can only be getting so lucky."

  "Next time he calls me a harpy I'll castrate him," she said. "We'll see how many women he ruts with when his balls dangle from his ears." She thrust out her chest. "'Tis normally acceptable to stare. I'll not stab you for that."

  Bloody void, what type of people are these?

  "Gar Tsi told me about your shoulders," she continued. "You're pretty enough, I suppose, so maybe I'll not stab you at all. Time will tell."

  Gar Tsi clapped him on the back. "You'll work, boy."

  Irreor flicked his attention between the raunchy merchant and the man's confusing wife, then looked at the cobblestones. Her curving cleavage pulled his gaze back. She thrust out her chest again, daring him to look.

  "You like?"

  "Yes," Irreor admitted.

  Gar Tsi smirked. "King's cock, who doesn't!"

  Teel wasn't Kipra. Nothing could replace her. However, the merchant's wife would serve as a nice thing to watch as they traveled. Irreor could concede that much, at least.

  Maybe I'll see Kipra again. Once I've found… something.

  Teel smiled, wicked and inviting and dangerous. "We'll have a tumble one of these nights? We've many evenings on our journeys. Lonely nights are boring nights."

  "I think not. My nights will be long, indeed boring, and filled with me perched on a branch searching for signs of attack." Irreor gave an exaggerated bow. "Alas, my lady, I'm sorry."

  "Hah! He called me a lady." She stepped close to caress his chin. "The roads are long. We’ll see."

  Gar Tsi grunted and staggered into the cart, motioning for the others to follow. "Aye, the roads are long, and we've been dawdling too long. Svart Harbor isn't going to keep waiting for us, that's for damn sure. Bastards will just sell my wares to some other worm."

  The merchant tugged the reins of his donkey, and the empty cart lurched forward. They shoved through the choked streets, ignoring the muttered curses and hostile stares of those they forced aside. The southern entrance stretched wide, a thick wooden gate mounted on hinges forged in the Stonehands smithy.

  Svart Harbor, the largest port on the island, stood directly south of Farren. Goods from the Inner Empire flooded it—hard grains, vials of sugar, intricate rugs for the nobles, countless other items. Farren was closer to it than any other city, and thus it received the freshest materials.

  The guards on duty nodded curiously as Irreor passed through the gate. Did they wonder why he, the son of Eenan Ark, left the city? Maybe, but they were Crest's men. They'd be happy with his departure.

  Unabashed, they stared at Teel.

  Gar Tsi grinned at his wife. "They're so curious, these guards are. It's their job, I suppose, but they still be looking funny gawking and ogling. You'd be thinking the King himself waltzed through these roads."

  Teel muttered, "Castrated."

  "What's at Svart Harbor?" Irreor asked.

  "Wagon's being empty," Gar Tsi said, as if it explained everything. "That Lekte swill never makes it past this hole of a city. So, we'll snatch us up some fresh spices from the mainland before we head to Grimestad. They be loving all that hot and tingle. I never understood it, myself, but they pay good coins for it, so I'll be hauling it up there." He shrugged. "Don't make no nevermind to me what happens to their tongues."

  -The path will be dangerous. Nothing teaches better than experience, and so I must give that to him. But, it must be a delicate balance—I've no desire to see my general killed by a passing bandit.-

  Irreor eyed the packed-clay road. The merchant had hired him to protect the wagon, and as the voice reminded him, he had a job to do.

  One that required more than staring at Teel's breasts.

  "This road is safe?" he asked.

  "Define safe? Nobility isn't wanting to admit it, but they don't have enough soldiers to keep the bandits away. It's being safe enough, for now, but I'm having my doubts it’ll be staying that way much longer. The island isn't being what it was. Void's tit, I've never been needing to hire anyone before now."

  The wagon rumbled onward.

  Behind it, the smoke from Eenan Ark's pyre drifted up to hug the clouds.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rippon's Royal G
ardens filled three entire acres with massive oaks, trickling streams, and chiseled stone benches. A bell chimed in the city. Sparrows and robins chirped and hopped from branch to branch. Flowers—red and pink, yellow and green, scents spreading through the garden—they jutted from the soil, their stems thin and wilting, their petals littering the ground. Villeen grabbed a fallen petal and slid it between her fingers.

  This place helped her think.

  In the days since they'd burned the queen, Abennak had spoken only a handful of times. He'd refused to speak of her father, and instead commanded her and her brother to find rooms in the castle. Nothing more. Neither kindliness nor sharpness roused him from his stupor, and he ambled through the opulent halls with a blank face and deadened eyes.

  Fier locked himself in their room, still angry that they'd come here. He understood so much of the book, far more than she, but he simply couldn't accept what they needed to do.

  They'd come here because they didn’t have a choice. Their father forced them to do it, just as he would force their future actions. If it meant a war, if it meant people must die, then so be it.

  'It's all for a reason,' the notes said. 'I'll teach them to laugh and love and hate, and I'll forge them into an empire. All for a reason.'

  Over and over her father had written those words, but his rationale escaped her.

  Insanity and arrogance weren't reasons to abuse gentahl. Sure, the power restricted its user, but it seemed he'd ignored or shattered those boundaries. How had he found the strength to alter an entire island? It must've encompassed hundreds or thousands of minds.

  Impossible. She could barely find the strength to manipulate four minds in the same room. And his book... it explained so little. She understood fragments—the passage about Rippon, how he'd planned to build the walls high and strong, the buildings squat and cozy. It was simple to decipher, but none of it hinted at his intent. Why had he designed the city like this? How had he done it?

  She sighed.

  That same passage contained another piece, one far harder to understand. 'Its people will be strong. Capable of so much love and hate. So, so strong.'

  But they weren't. They were dying of a plague, a plague he'd started. He betrayed his own words, contradicting himself at every corner. She couldn't understand it.

  And the days chimed away.

  Barely a year remained until her fortieth birthday. Mere months to learn and understand his mind when she'd already devoted over a decade to it. Months to manipulate and coerce, forge and build, then tear it all down. Not enough time. Abennak must gather his armies and thrust them into the southern kingdom, but how?

  The petal she'd plucked from the ground had disintegrated into silken pieces, staining her fingers blue. Leaves fluttered in a fall breeze—orange and yellow, some with the first hints of brown. A lone sparrow tilted its head and chirped. Did it understand why she walked this path, or was it expecting her to hurl a rock?

  She snorted.

  She walked this path because she must, and her father had already thrown the rock. He planned for them to die before another year passed. Just as her brother had died. Just as the king's wife had died.

  "I've always loved this garden."

  Villeen spun to Abennak, who knelt amongst a bed of purple flowers. He touched them with a trembling hand, caressing each petal as if it were his wife's skin. Black patches hung beneath his eyes and wrinkles covered his clothes.

  "Kara wouldn't trust the groundskeepers to tend it," he said, "so she did the work herself. I can't stop thinking of her. Life is a merry little circle, is it not? We know happiness and sadness, but where do the two meet?"

  She pursed her lips, uncertain whether he wanted an answer.

  "They meet in this flower." He twitched his lips into a smile. "The stem sucks water from the ground and uses it to produce beauty. Purple and vibrant, this flower has brought a smile to Kara's face." His smile wilted. "Ah, but we also have sadness. We've understood that part well, haven't we?"

  "That flower can't save our families," she said gently. "It can't purge a sickness. It simply is, and nothing can change that." She hesitated. Gentahl could've changed the flower to something different—a root for a salve, a knife to cut away a tumor—though the king wouldn't know that. "We choose what we take from it."

  "Then I'll take a smile." He touched the flower one final time, then rose and peered at her. "It's hard to forget how much you look like your father. Will you also choose a smile? Will he?"

  "How do you know him?"

  Abennak opened his mouth to speak, held it agape. Emotions swirled across his face—anger and sorrow, uncertainty and confidence. They clashed in the slant of his eyebrows, in the tightness of his forehead.

  "Why are you here?" he asked.

  She shook her head. She hadn't come here to let him manipulate her.

  Abennak had met her father, either before he'd taken residence in the Kurin Mountains, the mountains she and Fier and Torden had grown up in, or in the years after he'd fled. They knew one another, and that was more important than why she'd come to Rippon, more important than high walls or strong people.

  "Void take you! How do you—"

  "You came here to stop him, didn't you?" He'd said it with a note if finality, as if it wasn't really a question. "I suppose that's valiant, in a way, but I'd rather be a flower. Or a smile."

  She clamped her mouth shut. Neither she nor Fier had told the king anything these past two days. Yet he'd guessed, or known, why they'd come.

  He chuckled an angry chuckle. "And you want me to become the Mad King of Rippon, just as your father planned. You want me to dance naked in the corridors, laugh for days at an unmoving brick, talk to a goat, become friends with a chair."

  "I—"

  "Will you use your gentahl to force it on me?"

  She withheld a gulp, searching for a reply. Three people knew about gentahl, and Abennak shouldn't have heard a whisper, much less known its name. But he did, and nothing had been written in her father's notes as a hint.

  Abennak tweaked an eyebrow. "Well?"

  "I'll do what I must."

  "Then do it now." He turned his back and bowed his head. "I don't want to remember their faces. My daughters smile in my memories. My wife... she laughed with so much joy. Her voice was golden, but it's tearing me apart. Maybe I'll forget them."

  "I can't." She hesitated, imagining all the answers this man could provide—how the island was designed, why her father demanded a war, countless others. She stepped behind the king and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Please, tell me what you know of my father and how you recognize gentahl. Then I'll crush your mind. You'll remember nothing."

  "You can't stop manipulating, and I can't tell you why you shouldn't." He unleashed a short, stricken sob. Hints of laughter dwelled within. "Where does that leave us?"

  "I don't understand—"

  "You wouldn't understand my secrets. Couldn't. But you shouldn't understand, either. Those pieces weren't meant for you. They were meant for me, but I don't want them."

  "Make sense! We can stop him, void take you. Why can't you understand that? You'll help me, and I'll help—"

  "Nothing can help this. It can't make their faces go away. Their smiles so wide, their laughter so loud." He rounded on her and jabbed a finger against her chest. "Never forget that you forced this. You chose it. Yet, I'll trust you as he trusted me."

  Something indistinct pulsed within the king. Villeen froze; she knew the feel of it. Gentahl trembled within him like ripples on a calm lake. His eyes rolled back, and a frown of concentration crossed his face.

  "No!" she screamed.

  Like an approaching storm, ripples of gentahl grew until they became waves, and those waves crashed against him. Power lashed him, but it was sloppy and untrained, like a ladle of stew sloshed carelessly into a bowl.

  His features snapped taut as if struck.

  "No, no, no!" she screamed.

  The power altered him within a
heartbeat.

  Then he giggled, but not the giggle of a child or a man deep in his cups. It was the giggle of madness, and it seared hotter than the highest blaze, gripping first his face, then his arms and legs, until his entire body shook with it. He squatted amongst the flowers, tore them from the soil with reckless abandon. His laughter slowly bled away, as if he were reluctant to release it.

  Damn you!

  Answers vanished with his giggle—she'd never discover how the king knew her father, how he knew of gentahl, or why the book was a twisting ball of confusion.

  It was her first success. Her first failure.

  Part Two

  Void take me.

  He's only been gone two days, but I feel as if it's been a lifetime. I still remember the angle of his smile, the slant of his brow. Isn't that absurd? He's gone, and I remember an angle.

  It... it doesn't matter. We have what he's given us, and we'll do the best we can with it. I remember training with him on the hill to the west of Farren, how he'd never let me take the easy path.

  Indeed, he took the hardest possible approach. I'm sure he wouldn't agree with me, if given the chance, but he was also a fool, and I'll not blame him for it. For you must understand that, when he chose to travel with the merchant, he thought he was running away.

  He wasn't running. He was digging himself deeper.

  Oh, and the weight of that must've been crushing.

  Gar Tsi, do you remember the quickness of his step? So fluid, like a dancer at the pinnacle of balance. Demon-damn but I miss that. He protected you and your wagon, and he protected us all.

  Villeen.

  Do you remember his fierceness, the way he refused himself? No, I suppose you wouldn't. You were too intent on your vengeance, and you're thrilled to watch a good man fed to the flames. Know that he rejected it to the end. And this was a bitter end indeed—bitter for me, bitter for so many of us.