Chapter Eleven
Bem gets called over to a desk near the entrance by a tall, gruff man whose ridiculous bushy eyebrows tickle his eyelids, causing him to blink profusely as he scans me up and down as I enter.
I remain near the door, keeping tucked away from the nursemaids flying past in all directions, shouting at each other from opposite sides of the open-plan building for poultices and such, tossing them to each other as their paths cross.
We’re in what appears to be a warehouse turned hospice, two seemingly endless rows of rickety beds line the crumbling red-brick walls, some with patients of varying degrees of stress and serenity, others lay empty in anticipation of their next visitor.
The ceiling is high and the foundational beams that keep the building upright exposed, tangled with ivy and housing what looks to be multiple birds-nests. Each nest like the beds below, either nursing life, or awaiting its next occupant.
My eyes dart from nurse, to guard, to patient, unable to follow one person for longer than a second before getting distracted by the movement of another.
Everyone seems engaged in a task or grievance, but as I see the patterns in which every action is carried out, I realise that this chaos, although somewhat overwhelming to observe, is perfectly organised, and each person moves with a meticulous precision that tells me this operation has been running for a considerable amount of time.
A nurse swats away a tiny brown bird that swoops down at the quill in her hand, cursing something awful, the patient in the bed she stands beside sitting upright and alert. Blond hair glues itself to his ashen skin with sweat.
‘Those blasted birds! Someone ought to chuck a few stones up there and knock them dead. Dreadful things keep shitting on my notes and stealing my quills.’
The blond boy’s head quivers as he turns it up at the nurse, visibly appalled.
‘I- I do believe they are silver-crested jarfs, m-miss nurse,’ he stutters. ‘They only build their nests indoors and require assistance in finding the right materials. Wonderfully harmless things, miss nurse.’
If I couldn’t tell the identity of the man by his face, his voice was certainly the give-away.
I rush over, crashing into a few guards as I keep my eye fixed on the boy, empty vials smashing into the floor and papers sent flying. I abandon all apologies as I careen into the foot of his bed, almost winding myself.
He looks up at me with a tilted head – a green tinge creeps up his neck and onto his face.
‘Diarmid,’ I puff out.
‘M-miss, I mean prin – I mean, Y-your Grace.’ He makes to get out of the bed.
‘No, no please don’t bother yourself with all that nonsense.’ I motion for him to get back into his original position. ‘I’m here as nothing more than a new acquaintance, a friend, if you will.’
His smile looks suspiciously like he is holding back sick.
The nursemaid’s icy blue eyes trail me up and down, lips pursed with disgust. She looks ironically bird-like herself, peering down at me over her hooked nose, tufts of hair spiking up from where her white lace nurse cap has slid back on her head, like brown feathers sprouting from her scalp.
‘We do not allow visitors,’ she sneers. ‘Especially not of your kind.’
‘Is this affliction contagious?’ I ask, which earns me a scoff.
‘Worried it’s catching? You Reyheni are all the same.’
‘Well, why else would you turn away visitors from those who need them most? It’s not like you’re hiding anything here.’ I raise a bow and she tuts, looking ready to peck me to death.
‘What makes you think I’m not from Umbra anyway? I’m quite obviously wearing a traditional Umbrian style.’
The nursemaid takes a step forward, and I stop breathing through my nose at the hot odour of alcohol and perspiration that radiates from her.
‘Your skin has that immortal glow you’re all so smug about, and you have that charred smell of power clinging to you.’ She grins, some of her brown teeth broken into spikes. ‘That’ll soon fade, you wait and see.’
Thrashing waves of anger rile within my stomach, and I ball my hands tight into fists by my side to stop myself from scratching the smugness from her face.
How dare she say such insensitive things in a building of those going through the same pain of the very thing she mocks? The sea in my stomach comes to boiling point and I swear I can feel steam escape my mouth as I open it.
‘You b—’
A large crash rips through the entire warehouse, causing the birds to take to the air in panic and sending every person into a stunned silence, heads snapping to the source of the commotion.
The black door has been blown off its hinges, lying splintered approximately five feet from the entryway, crescent moon face to face with the floor.
But it is not the sight of the felled door that causes ripples of muttering and darting eyes through the on lookers, but the broad shadowy figure heaving with a temper threatening to erupt.
There, face contorted with a thousand emotions, dripping from the rain that now lashes through the door-less gap, is the monster of the King of Umbra.
And his raging eyes are fixed on mine.
‘YOU!’ He explodes and darts in my direction, his pointed finger flexed with the intention to wound.
He pays no heed to the nursemaids and guards that throw themselves from his path, falling onto patient’s beds or directly to the floor.
Nothing in this moment could break his gaze from mine.
He thrusts himself upon me with an animalistic lunge, his finger stabbing into my chest like a blunt dagger.
‘It’s you, you’re doing this. You’re sacrificing your people to make me weak,’ he screams into my face, balling my skirts in his fist and yanking me closer. In my peripheral vision, I detect the movement of Diarmid pulling the bedsheets over his head.
‘You fucking bitch!’
I wince as his spit catches in my eye. I am stupefied with fright, my throat closing up and hindering my ability to squeeze out any words. I just stare at him, jaw hanging and eyes wet – a dumbfounded fool.
‘Answer me,’ his growl vibrates in the air.
‘Eliaz.’ Calli appears behind him, a hand slapped to her chest, face twisted with disbelief. ‘How dare you, Brother? She is not to blame for this.’
The king turns his head to his sister, my dress falling back into place with the slow release of his fingers.
Calli steps closer, hand extended. He doesn’t accept it.
‘It was only yesterday that she blamed you for it all. She is not the one doing any of this.’
He stumbles back a step and his eyes flit between his sister and me; expression caught somewhere between anger and remorse.
Something in it catches me off guard, and I scan his face for any signs of the nightmare that has haunted me relentlessly, but all I find is a man – grieved and evidently distraught.
‘You trust her?’ he asks his sister, his chest panting with the exertion of his already depleting wrath.
‘I trust that she wants to trust us. But you’re letting that damn temper ruin any chances we have of that happening anytime soon, Eliaz.’
I shuffle on my feet, tilting my head in anticipation of interrupting, rubbing my arm, unsure of what I might say, nervous of how he’d receive it. Umbra is crumbling, that is plain to see, but this apparent influx of afflicted means that so too, is Reyhen in need of help. His specialised help.
‘I am willing to look past your behaviour in order to come to some sort of agreement of mutual benefit here,’ I chime in. They both shift their attention to me, waiting for me to continue, and I stutter to a start again, unsure of what else they expect me to say.
‘L-look.’ I move to Diarmid’s bedside, eyes fixed on the king’s fiery eyes of honey as I pull the sheets from the stable manager’s hands, revealing the trembling boy hiding beneath. His hands retreat to his chest when he notices all our eyes on him.
‘This is Diarmid Elmstine,’ I say to the king.
‘E-Erskine,’ the stable-manager corrects.
‘Diarmid Erskine,’ I revise with an embarrassed wince.
‘He is the stable manager at the castle in Reyhen. He is only one of countless people that are crucial to ensuring that the entire kingdom runs as it should. Every person that you take into your care is a person Reyhen loses, indefinitely. I will not put my kingdom at risk of collapse. So, unless we can come to some sort of agreement on how to proceed. Both Umbra and Reyhen will crumble into nothing.’
The corner of Calli’s lips rise with the ghost of a smirk. Eliaz simply crosses his arms on his chest and expels one elongated breath from his nostrils. Studying me.
My cheeks flush with the vulnerability of it, and I pick at the sleeve of my dress as I wait in desperation for the silence to shatter.
All eyes are on us. Even the silver-crested Jarfs cock their heads our way, settled back into their home on the beams.
‘You will have to get over whatever grudge you hold against me, as I do with you,’ I start up again. ‘We have to push it all aside for the good of our kingdoms…’ I hesitate on the last word and squeeze my eyes tight before locking them on his once more. ‘Eliaz.’
The stiffness of his expression falters for a beat at the sound of his name on my tongue, before he throws back on that mask of exasperation once more.
‘Get her back to the manor, Calli.’ His gaze does not leave mine, his molten honey eyes glazing over with something I cannot quite place. A melancholy of some sorts. My chest tightens.
‘But, Eliaz—’ Calli touches his shoulder, and he flinches at it. The nightmare startled from his thoughts. He clears his throat and pivots, his back now a wall between us.
‘You want us to talk, so we will talk. There,’ he says, his shoulders bumping his sister’s as he walks past. Heads creak on their necks, tracking him all the way to the gaping entrance.
He stops, examining the door on the floor with a slight dip of his head before straightening his posture looking out into the rain. He sighs.
‘And somebody fix that fucking door.’