Chapter 16 #7
Until at last they began to remember themselves, or at least each other. This the queen could not permit. So she told one final story—a story so perfect it gave her an empire and a crown, a thousand years from now—and hid the book away. But the historian stole it and ran back to his hero.
And now, finally, we might write our own ending.
I let myself go slack, sagging against you, so that your voice hummed and buzzed in my skull, lingering even after you fell quiet.
I was sorry, I supposed, to lose whatever stubborn pride still remained to me. To learn that all my great deeds and noble battles had been carefully staged performances, my victories assured, my death predetermined.
I was even sorrier to lose the last scraps of my selfhood, to know that I had not lived a life but merely played a part. That I was not a woman but only a painted icon, with lacquer for skin and oil paint for eyes.
But I was sorriest of all to lose Yvanne, finally and forever.
The woman who gave birth to me, whoever she was, had abandoned me beneath the yew soon after.
I had neither missed nor resented her as a child; I had a full belly and two parents who loved me, and I’d seen enough of the world beyond the woods to know myself lucky indeed.
I hoped she was well, but it was a polite, impersonal emotion, as you might hold for a stranger.
Then I lost my fathers, and learned what it was to be hungry, to be alone, to be no one at all.
When I first saw Yvanne that day in the woods, gazing down at me with such endless needing—when she whispered my new name in my ear—it was like being born anew.
In this new life, she was my god and my religion, my savior, my queen—my mother.
I knew now I had never been her daughter. I was just a tool well suited to her work, a lost girl she had stumbled across by chance in the woods one day.
But—my heart went suddenly cold—was there any such thing as chance, in Dominion? If my fathers had not died, would I ever have drawn the sword from the yew? Would I have slain the Brigand Prince? Would I have so eagerly abandoned my old name, and taken the one she gave me?
I felt all the muscles of my back drawing tight, pulling away from you. I remembered my fathers the way I’d found them so many times: side by side, hand in hand, as if, with the very last of their strength, they had reached for one another.
The cruelty of it had sunk into me like the iron point of an arrow, and never fully worked loose.
Father Foy and Father Theo were not weak or fearful men, but neither of them would have risked the other’s life for the sake of a few pigs; they would not have fought the Brigand Prince and his men.
Their deaths had been senseless, serving no purpose.
Save, perhaps, the queen’s.
I wondered how many tries it had taken her, before she found the thing that would send me to the yew, and then to war, the single moment that would turn me from a child to a blade. I wondered how many times my fathers had been killed, how many times they had clasped hands as they died.
And suddenly I didn’t want to run away at all. I wanted to ride back through the gates of Cavallon, sword drawn, and scream the queen’s name until she met me in the yard.
If it was a tragedy Yvanne wanted, I would make her weep; if it was blood she wanted, I would drown her in it.
Your voice came to me in pieces, between the pounding of my own pulse in my ears. “Please, Una,” you were saying. “Please, let her go. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”
I felt your fingertips on the back of my hand and discovered that I had clenched my fist hard around my hilt.
I had climbed halfway to my feet. You were still on your knees, a supplicant to some vengeful god. Your head was tilted back so that I could see the long, clean line of your throat, unmarked by war.
“Please,” you said again. “Come with me. Leave her, leave all of it.”
The hinge of my jaw creaked when I opened my mouth, stiff and reluctant. “The things she has done—the things I have done, in her name—”
“We can’t go back anywhere within our own true lifetimes. We could forget again, and she could find us too easily. She’ll be looking for us.” You tilted closer, urgent now. “But I have the book, which means we can go further and faster than she can follow. I know how it works, more or less—”
I looked away from you, at the bare bones of the trees. “You want to run.”
“I told you I was a coward.” I heard the flinch in your voice.
“You want to run, and leave her alive.”
“I want to run and leave you alive, you ass.” You ran your hands over your face, so that your spectacles lay crookedly over the too-sharp bridge of your nose.
“If we run now, we leave her story without its proper ending, and we take away her chance of ever fixing it. I don’t know if it will be enough to take away her throne, but it will weaken her badly. ”
I said, stubbornly, knowing I was a fool and not caring, “There is no honor in running.”
And you answered, with infinite exhaustion, “Fuck your honor, Una Everlasting.”
I was struck silent.
You reached for my sword, and I let you ease my fingers from it, joint by joint. I even let you draw it, clumsily, and cut away the fine leather cording of the hilt. Beneath the leather there was a sign stamped in the steel: the letter S, repeated twice.
Then you set your gun beside my hilt, turned so that I could see the same mark pressed into the grip. I looked up at you, bewildered.
You tapped the mark on Valiance. “Saint Sinclair. The finest weapons maker of the modern age. Vivian must have had fifty swords made, a hundred. Each time it broke or chipped, she simply replaced it with a new one. Manufactured magic.” More quietly: “It’s a prop, Una. A fake. All of it is.”
I remembered shattering that sword and finding it whole again in the morning. I remembered the strange comfort of it; if I was cruel or violent, if I cut like a knife through the world and left a bloody wake behind me—perhaps I had no choice. Perhaps it was my fate.
You went on: “You and I both swore to serve crown and country when we were too young to know better. But we served a lie. We have no honor. We have no duty. We are sworn to nothing and no one, now—save each other.”
You lifted your hands and laid your palms along the planes of my thighs. You were not a supplicant now, but something much more dangerous, and a shudder moved through me at the sight of you.
You said, low and ragged, “I have loved you since before I was born, I think. I have studied you, worshipped you, lost you, mourned you. I have wept at your bier and fought beneath your flag. I have killed you, Una, over and over.” Your voice dragged now like a dull blade, whetting itself against me.
The tips of your thumbs pressed into my flesh. “This once, please—let me save you.”
I sagged back to the earth. I nodded my head once, very slightly.
It felt awful, that letting go. Like falling on the field, like losing a limb. Like killing the girl who’d been born that day in the woods, bathed in the blood of her enemies, and not knowing who was left.
You asked for my hand. I gave it to you. You took Valiance in your other hand and drew my thumb carefully, so carefully, along the blade. You hissed as the skin parted, as if my flesh were yours.
You pressed our hands to the open book, and our blood swam together on the empty page. I did not ask where or when we were going; it did not matter where we ran, so long as you ran beside me.
Very soon we were gone, and there was nothing beneath the yew save a gun, misplaced in time, and a sword beside it.