Chapter 9 #2
Had it been a fluke? Not really the Giver’s anointing at all? Was the way Your Highness now chafed and rubbed at her not a sign of his will but of her own misplaced pride?
She needed to go back to the Grand Kyrka. Alone, of course. But hope that the dominie would be there again and willing to teach her. She needed to know more about this being her mother had worshiped, what he expected of her, what it meant to have faith in him and make herself his.
“Kyr?”
She shook herself. “I don’t know. It’s…” She hadn’t told her friend much, hadn’t had a chance to.
Her trips to the clinic had been forcibly ended, and they’d only had a few minutes together at the funeral yesterday.
Just enough to whisper that she needed to do this.
Now, Kyrja turned to face her. “Do you believe in the Giver?”
Dania’s face shuttered. “What kind of question is that?”
“The kind I’ve been asking myself.” She reached for her friend’s cool fingers.
“I visited the Grand Kyrka the day before the funeral. Something happened.” She told her about it in quiet tones, watching Dania’s face carefully.
They’d never spoken of religion before, despite their decades of friendship.
Despite all the hypothetical conversations her brother would raise about forms of government and social experiments.
Somehow, religion had remained off-limits.
Why? Why had a prisoner in one of her brother’s cells, a man she’d only known a few hours, been the one she thought to ask about such things, instead of her own best friend?
Dania’s eyes went wide as Kyrja described the Song, her throat bobbing as she swallowed.
“I have heard of such things. My grandmother—she told me Fjordlandi had fallen away from our ordained path, that in the old days, if a king or queen didn’t receive the Song, they were ousted. That’s what started the Challenges.”
That wasn’t the history Kyrja had been taught—but the history she’d been taught hadn’t breathed a word about the display she’d witnessed.
What else had it left out? She pressed a hand to her damp brow.
“I don’t know what to do. The dominie, he said I am the queen now.
By right. But that’s ridiculous, I’m so weak compared to my father—”
“Are you?” Dania gripped Kyrja’s fingers.
“You never saw the point in the training they gave you, in fighting each other for sport or to prove dominance. But you have mastered your magic, Kyrja. Your art is proof of that. And these last few days, you have taken over both your sibling’s jobs without a minute’s trouble. ”
“But that doesn’t prove I’m stronger than they were—”
“Don’t you remember how they both complained of the difficulty?
Even after years of doing it?” Dania leaned forward to catch Kyrja’s gaze when she tried to stare off into space.
“Even last year at Yule, your sister mocked your icograph decorations and said you had no idea what real magic cost, how difficult it was, how exhausting. She said that maintaining the snows was harder work than you could ever dream.”
“She was clearly exaggerating to make me feel bad.” Wasn’t she? And yet Fodur had chided Krystiana more than once for letting the storms slip. And he’d tried, several times now, to wrest control of the prison from her, and she’d held him off easily.
Even if this attempt to contact Raf didn’t work, she intended to return tomorrow.
There had only been seventeen prisoners alive in the cells the other day—seventeen, when there should have been more than two hundred serving out life sentences—but she’d seen they each had a hot meal and blankets.
She would check and make sure her orders to provide continued hot food and drink had been carried out.
And speak more with Nik. Convince him to trust her enough to share what he knew of the Giver. Surely, given the presence of the Words in his bag, which she’d claimed from the Vektors in the aftermath of the rescue efforts before they’d had a chance to inspect it, he knew more than he’d let on.
Before she could say more, a light rap sounded—not on her door, but on one nearby. The one that should have been Dania’s room, from the sound of it. Kyrja leapt up, cracked the door open, and upon spotting the semi-familiar hulking thane, eased it open farther. “Raf! In here.”
He spun, eyes going wide as he bustled in. “I thought, when I got your message, that I was imagining its meaning. What are you doing here, Your Highness?”
“Shh.” She shut the door behind him, throwing the metal bolt and wishing it were an ice lock. “Best not to call me that here. I signed in below as Andresa.”
Raf looked from Kyrja to Dania, running agitated fingers through his blond hair. “I—am I in trouble? Under arrest?”
“Do we look like Vektors?” Dania had taken her hooded coat off, too, so the silver in her hair was visible, and of course her petiteness couldn’t be missed. Size was a definite requirement for guards, unless they were Blessed—which her aging hair and skin said she wasn’t.
Raf frowned. “Then…what? I heard that Nik was thrown into the Ice Prison. But Your H—Andresa. He is no terror-maker. I don’t know what his father did, but I’ve known Nik my whole life, and I swear to you, you’ll never find a more peaceful man.”
“I know. But his father implicated him in his last moments.” A crystal recording of the meeting had survived the chaos, and Kyrja had watched it for herself.
Her father hadn’t been lying, not about that.
Tristan, who looked like an older version of Nik, had indeed claimed the event and said his son would continue his work.
“Frost and snow.” Raf sagged against a wall that looked as battered as the rest of the building. “I came into the city with Nik—why haven’t I been questioned? I can attest to his innocence, whatever Tristan said.”
Kyrja moistened her lips, choosing her words carefully.
“My father is not interested in evidence that would speak in your friend’s defense.
I publicly demanded a trial, exercising my rights as Heir, otherwise I’m not certain there’d even be an imitation of justice.
But it’s my father who dispatched investigators, and I have no doubt they’ll only report what he would approve. ”
She stepped closer to him and reached out, gripping his elbow.
He startled, and she wasn’t sure if it was the fact of her touch, or if the chill from her hands had cut through his shirt.
“Raf, listen closely. If you have in your possession any evidence that could be construed against him, I need you to make certain it does not fall into my father’s hands.
Do you understand? Thus far he has forgotten my single mention of Nik arriving with a friend, but he could remember at any moment. You should make yourself scarce.”
Defiance flashed over his face. “I won’t abandon Nik just because—”
“If my father finds you, you will not just be questioned. Your words will not help your friend. You will be branded a co-conspirator and thrown into the next cell, to be executed with him. Please.” She let her fingers, and her ice, bite.
“You were the one person Nik asked after. I would like to assure him that you are safe and out of my father’s grasp.
I would further like to tell him you are actively doing all you can to protect any information about him—or any other associates of his—that would be harmful. ”
There would be some. She’d lain awake the night before the funeral, thinking of him because it was easier than thinking about either her visit to the kyrka or the ceremonies to come. And she’d come up with more questions than answers.
Why had he said he hadn’t seen his father in so long?
As thanes from the domes, sons worked the land with their fathers or worked beside them in the mines.
Very few exceptions were made. And the Words in his bag?
Those were not only expensive—far more expensive than an average laborer could afford—but illegal to carry in public.
Only dominies were permitted to transport the scriptures, and he’d said himself he wasn’t a dominie, that there’d been no positions available for him to study for.
Yet he’d studied. The Words, and the law, according to what he’d told her in his cell. How? Who had taught him? He’d mentioned a brother, a dominie, but she couldn’t recall his name.
Whoever it was, Raf must have the answers. He straightened, going pale. “You think…?”
“I think my father is determined to crush the Red Hands once and for all, and in that quest, he will crush anyone with ties to either Tristan or Nik. But I also think Nik speaks the truth when he says he was not involved.” She dropped her hand, stepped back.
“If you want to help, to protect him, then protect yourself and whoever else he calls friend. Protect any information my father would use against him but that isn’t, in fact, proof of his guilt. ”
“There is no proof of his guilt. He is not guilty.” Raf pinched the bridge of his nose. “But your point is received. He is not guilty of this, but we have both done our fair share of bending the rules when it comes to what we’re permitted to do with our time.”
“Tell me no more.” She moved to the bag she’d tossed on the bed, knowing she’d find inside it exactly what she’d instructed Dania to bring.
The small drawstring bag clinked when she pulled it out.
“There are riks enough in here to see you home quickly and help you make your way in hiding for a while. Vanish, Rafnar. For your own sake and Nik’s. Disappear.”
When she tossed the bag, he caught it easily, but his blue eyes still flashed. “This isn’t right. It isn’t fair. We’ve broken rules, yes, but they weren’t fair, and the breaking of them did no one any harm. He would never, never hurt another living soul. He doesn’t have it in him.”
The very impression she’d gotten after their few hours working side by side. The very reason she knew she’d be back in Nik’s cell every opportunity she could find. Trying to help him, yes. But not just that.
Trying to learn how to be more like him. Because right now, every new injustice she discovered stoked her anger.
And she had no idea what to do about it.