49. The New World
The New World
I’m looking up at Drake.
I think, from my breathlessness, and the magic sparking around us, and over my mouth, that we’ve just kissed.
I remember now. We did.
I blush, brightly.
“Sisters. This is completely inappropriate,” I say, rushed.
“Inappropriate,” he states.
“We should have waited until our wedding day. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
And then I’m frowning.
Because I know we are to be married, but I distinctly remember rejecting his proposal in my dream.
And he was hurt by that.
I stroke his cheek. “Drake. I have been awful to you. And I don’t even know why. Of course I want to marry you. It’s the only logical thing to do. And we both want the same things. We would grow to love each other, I’m sure of it.” I tilt my chin up at him. “Will you forgive me?”
He seems sad. I thought he’d be happier by my words. But maybe I’ve pushed him too far.
“Drake,” I say.
He lifts his thumb and drags it across my cheek, wiping away the tears there.
“I’m… crying,” I gasp. I hadn’t realised.
The dread I feel is cold and instant.
“What did you do to me?”
He’s calm.
“You were grieving. You asked me to help you.”
I relax. Of course. He eased my pain.
I’ve lost so many people.
And nothing is more important than getting to Rhavna. Making a good impression on the Queen, so that we gain her trust and she crowns us.
It will be the start of our lives together.
“I shouldn’t be in your cabin,” I say quickly. “Goodnight, Drake.”
I brush my lips against his cheek in parting.
Releasing him, I say, “I can’t wait to be your queen.”
I go straight up to The Bridge, praying Meg will still be there.
She is. She’s at the control table with the others, almost exactly where I left her hours ago – although Dezeeves isn’t here now.
“Meg,” I call to her. “Can I speak with you?’
Her eyes narrow. It couldn’t be clearer that she hates me right now. But I need her.
“Please.”
Her scowl is unmissable as she drags herself over to me like her body weighs a tonne.
“I need to borrow a dress,” I tell her by the window.
She blinks at me. “You took me away from flying this ship to ask me about a dress.”
I blink at her right back. “I have to look my best to meet the Queen tomorrow. You know I do. Will you help me?”
I watch her tongue stab into her cheek.
But then she looks her composed self again.
“I’ll come to your cabin in the morning, before we begin descent.”
“Thank you,” I say. Quietly, I add, “And I’m sorry about Ephraine.”
She scoffs. “How can you be sorry? You’re the one who killed him.”
“I’m sorry I caused you pain – not that I killed him. He betrayed us, Meg. His actions led to the deaths of many.”
She flinches from me.
It’s how I know I have her in my palm.
“And there is someone who has killed far more people than Ephraine. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Do you agree with us?”
What I really mean, is, will you support us? Or stand in our way?
“I… agree. It won’t be easy.”
“It will, for Drake and I.”
She gasps, an expression of complete shock on her face. “You have united with him. The magic is entirely stable. I can feel it.”
“Of course,” I say, a little confused.
“What about Cosmer?”
“Cosmer?” I echo, even more confused. “He’s in the infirmary.”
And I’m not sure why she would ask me about him.
Cosmer was one of my keepers, up here on the ship. I knew him vaguely from my village in Hevalla – he lived next door to me.
It’s a shame, really, how his life has turned out. He’s troubled. He fought his way back onto the ship when we set sail for Rhavna – almost died trying to get back on – and it surprised us all at the time.
But we all know now it was just so he could get back to the osimidite.
Something passes over her eyes.
“I see,” she murmurs.
Then she glances up at the air above my head.
“And you’re aware Drake’s magic is all over you?”
“He helped me through my grief.”
“Your grief.”
“I asked him to.”
She reaches up, over my head, touching something I can’t see.
Rapidly, her hand smacks back down to her side. As if whatever she touched up there burned her.
“The magic you made together is strong. Steadfast. I doubt I’d be able to remove it. If you ever asked me to.”
“I wouldn’t.” My brow furrows. “Why? What’s wrong?”
She turns away from me. “I need to get back to work.”
It’s like she can’t get away from me fast enough.
But I steady myself. Because I know Drake would have only done something to me if I’d asked him to do it. And if he thought it would help me.
After enjoying a long bath in the communal baths, which I have completely to myself, I sleep well. Dreamlessly.
And Drake doesn’t visit me in my mind. Why would he? We have the rest of our days in the real world to spend together.
I’m already awake when Meg knocks on my door the next morning. The dress she’s picked out for me is simple yet elegant, and red. Red as the rubies that will soon adorn the fourth finger on my left hand. She has also brought red paint for my lips and black for my eyes.
“They’re perfect,” I tell her. “Thank you.”
She helps me into the dress and starts doing it up at the back, and I ask her the question I’ve been meaning to ask.
“Why did you try to get Drake onto your side, Meg? Encourage him to pursue me? I’d trusted you until then. And you knew I was rebuffing him at the time.”
The dress done up, she starts brushing through my hair. Quietly, she says, “It was in your best interest for the bond to develop. The magic needed to stabilise. And now it has. And you are powerful.”
“So you are loyal to me? You’ve always been loyal to me?”
She shrugs. Brushes some more. “I am loyal to myself.”
I pull away from her and the hairbrush a little. “I don’t think that’s something you should say out loud.”
“Why not?” she asks, quite innocently. Glancing at the air over my head again, she murmurs, “When you are apparently most loyal to yourself, too.” She pauses.
“It means we are wise. And you will soon learn, in the Palace, that I am more honest than most, Ara. You’ll need me – you already do.
And you know now I have never meant you ill will. ”
“What are you saying?”
“That you were right to seek me out yesterday. Let us be honest with each other from now on. And valuable to each other.” She nods at me knowingly. “We do not need to like each other to do that.”
Reluctantly, I nod back at her.
She tilts my head forwards again with her thumbs and goes back to preparing me to look like the queen I will soon be.
Thirty minutes later, Drake and I are watching the descent from The Bridge.
Dezeeves takes over at the control table, bringing up the ship’s various levers while Rike steers the helm and Meg bleeds the osimidite. Some of the other Rhavnans I don’t know help watch the gauges.
The whole ship shakes as we lose more and more height. The whirring amplifies. My ears burst like static and my stomach jolts.
But the view is incredible. At first, there’s open water below us. Then, we see Rhavna. It really is set into the water like a jewel in a crown, just as I’d pictured. I see forests. Open green spaces. The mountains in the distance.
But I also see stretches of barrenness that remind me far too much of Hevalla.
I clasp Drake’s hand when we see it. The dome.
A huge expanse against the barrenness – in fact, the land which is directly around it is the most barren of all.
But the dome itself is beautiful. A perfect bell shape of sparkling blue so pale it’s almost clear, catching the morning sun’s rays and throwing them back.
We hover directly over it.
And then before our eyes, it lifts, as if someone really has opened the cloche. A deity, maybe.
Effortlessly, Dezeeves steers us in.
We land with a jolt in the enormous courtyard. The main building of the Palace is a short way away, opposite, beyond the rose gardens and maze. We are as tall as it. As if we are a palace ourselves, but a different kind. Newer.
And the court are waiting for us. The ship is quickly surrounded by people in their finery.
We follow Dezeeves down to Deck 3. He unlocks the largest door in the row, which leads to an enormous docking pod, and breezes in, us traipsing after him.
He yanks the lever to open the external hatch door, and stretches out his palms, as if welcoming into them the light now shining on him from outside.
He looks ordained. Just like the travelling holyman I believe he once was.
Glowing, he turns to us, now facing us fully and lifting his palms higher.
“The ground, at last. A new world for us all. Without Provision. Without starvation. A world where we live among magic. And are blessed by the gods.”
Utter glee sprinkles his eyes as he laughs, possibly harder and harsher than ever before.
I look at Drake.
I know exactly what he is about to do. For us.
It comes as no surprise to me at all – and brings me only a thrill, as if I’d willed it myself – when in one swift movement, he lunges, throwing a familiar silver knife over his shoulder, right at Dezeeves.
The knife wedges perfectly into his narrow chest while he’s still laughing.
Everyone in the room seems to just watch as the blood soaks through our captain’s maroon shirt, spreading out red and dark around it. The sight, red on red, reminds me of petals within petals. Like those of the Hevallan hibiscus that had adorned the vases at his own dinner.
Under his breath, in my ear, Drake mutters, “I told you I wouldn’t have missed.”
I take a closer look at Dezeeves. His eyes have widened. I believe, in his final seconds of life, he saw the knife coming from Drake’s hand. I wonder if his brother’s words about complacency repeated themselves in his ears. Must have sounded as loud and long and inevitable as the bell for Temple.
His laughter has stopped. His mouth is parted, and I almost expect him to say something. A joke. A parting wisecrack. A noble-sounding comment to make us reconsider our actions, our loyalties – or simply feel threatened.
But for the first time – maybe in his life – he’s completely silent.