Chapter Twenty-Two Vina #2
The shock of that lanced through her. She tried to jerk up off the chair—failed.
“You—how?”
“Witch hunters are a blessing, for all the trouble they cause. It wasn’t hard to follow your witch’s scent.
” He drew white gloves from his pocket and began to roll them neatly onto his hands.
“You will not live much longer, Sir Lavinia, so we may speak freely. And I do like to educate my lessers,” he said, with that same awful mildness.
“We archivists are an ancient order. We have studied and collected—sheltered and shaped—stories as long as the Isle has lived. We have had other names, in our past. But we remember him, the tale of the Eternal Prince, who always returns to rule, then die, then rule again.”
Vina bit her tongue until it bled. Listened, as scribe needles were moved, clinking like pointed teeth—as Meera lit more candles, the room growing hotter, brighter.
“He is an old tale of a warlord,” said Apollonius.
“He is a murderous, powerful king—beloved and monstrous. Glorious, but destructive. He rules, until he is grievously wounded in tragedy, when he is carried away to an abbey of healing by a lady of great power. There, he sleeps to rise again—and bring tumultuous change with him.” A sneer shaped his mouth.
“In his absence, the Isle falls always to the Queen—eternal as him, but prosperous, luminous. A beacon of goodness.
“Long ago, the Queen sought out the ancient ancestors of us archivists,” Apollonius said, examining the bare skin of her arm.
She would have flinched, if she could. “In those days, we cared for tales in many forms: as whispers, birds, dances, song. Changeable, chaotic. She put an end to that. She wanted a peaceful Isle—steady, prosperous. A nation with an identity to be proud of, instead of a shifting sea of tales, never steady enough to have worth. A blessed stone in a silver sea.”
Vina could not imagine a king upon the throne, at the first. The Queen was, after all, meant to be eternal. But even as the thought struck her, she felt the shape of a tale scratch at the edges of her mind: a bloodied throne, a sword, a man.
She heard the vial of ink being unstoppered.
“What are you going to do?” Vina asked.
He tutted. “Let me finish first,” he replied.
“It took us generations, but we chained the sleeping Prince with limni ink. Chain upon chain, binding him to his long sleep. As long as he is bound, he cannot awaken, and the Isle will have peace. It took almost all the ink upon the Isle,” Apollonius said.
“But we still have enough for our work. Including for you.”
He placed a hand on her cheek. As if she were a book to be handled, to be repaired.
“You cannot be allowed to change your tale—to run, to hide, to resist. You must help us maintain order. You must be perfect.”
She jerked her head to the side, knocking his hand away.
“I can’t be perfect,” Vina said. “I’ve never been capable of it, terribly sorry.
I’m Elsewhere-blooded, a woman. I’m not fit to be the knight.
I’m already changed. Why not cull me? End this tale?
” She rolled back her head, baring her neck in a challenge.
“I’m offering. Let another bit of the Isle die. Go on.”
Apollonius sighed, already seeking another lecture, when Vina heard a hand slam down on a table. Furious.
“It’s your kind who ruin the Isle,” said Meera angrily, voice raised. “You—you don’t love it as you should. You let false ideas about your blood and Elsewhere control you. You’re traitors.”
“Why let Elsewhere folk in at all?” Vina challenged. “If we’re all traitors, aberrant—apart from you of course—why allow them on the Isle?”
“If we had a choice do you think we—”
“Meera,” snapped Apollonius. “Be silent.”
Meera fell silent, nostrils flaring, chest heaving with rage. But Vina’s mind was aflame. She began to laugh.
“You can’t stop it, can you? No matter what you try, the Isle welcomes Elsewhere folk in. It needs people like us.” She grinned at Apollonius, at the shadow of Meera at the scribing table. “You’d never let us in if you had a choice. People like my mother. Like you, Meera. And you hate it.”
“Enough, Sir Lavinia,” said Apollonius.
“No, no, let me finish! If the Isle needs Elsewhere folk, then the Isle must need new tales,” she said, with remarkable cheer, considering she was still strapped down.
“It needs change to survive, and you’re starving it, withering it, for a vision of a nation that was never meant to last.” She strained harder, harder.
She had to break free. “You’re killing the Isle, and you know you are, don’t you? But you won’t stop, you or the Queen.”
“The gag, Meera,” said Apollonius. “She’ll need it anyway.”
He gripped Vina’s chin, holding her still.
“You say a great many foolish things, sir knight,” Apollonius said, voice hushed.
“All we care about is the Isle’s survival.
People from Elsewhere may crawl onto the Isle’s shores now, but we will heal her.
We hold to our ideals. When you, and all incarnates like you, serve gratefully and correctly, she will live and flourish—and no new Elsewhere blood will touch her blessed shores.
We know it. Do not blame us for your failures. ”
Vina, with a rage she didn’t think she was capable of, tried to bite him. Something was wedged between her teeth.
“Now the needle, Meera,” said Apollonius. “And the ink. I will need to work delicately.”
The clink of instruments. Vina struggled harder.
“Hush, hush now. It will be done soon.”
He stood over her, ink in hand. But now that Meera had moved, Vina could see what she hadn’t before—what lay on the table apart from ink, needles, gloves.
A book. A book of plum-dark leather, writing gold-bronze upon its surface, entangled with briars. The Knight and the Witch.
Her book. Her tale, bound in ink and paper. Ink, like a shadow, like a chain, was rising from its surface, twined to the scribing needle.
“You may resist your tale,” said Apollonius. “But we cannot allow it. We must bind you tighter.”
The ink rose like a snake, like a noose, and wrapped around her wrists. It touched her skin. She remembered, distantly, how it had hurt to be scribed as a child, as a test of what she was.
It hurt more now.
Vina gritted her teeth, trying to hold the scream in.
Her vision whited in and out.
Eventually her head was released. She saw the book on a table, ink rising in coils from it to wrap around her, shape to her, burrowing beneath her skin.
All her life, these chains had lived inside her. She’d never known. The archivists controlled her tale. They had her. They had her.
There was pain for a long time.
A cold cloth, infused with magic, was placed on her forehead, soothing the flaying echoes of ink in her skin.
“Apollonius did not tell you about your mother,” said Meera, as the perfume of magic, cloying and strange, filled the air.
“Don’t,” Vina managed to whisper out. She could see the malevolence in Meera’s eyes. There was nothing the archivist could say that would help Vina—only things that could hurt.
“She was an incarnate too,” said the archivist, when Vina was silent, her blood beating in her ears, heart pounding.
“Late discovered. Her story was foreign. Elsewhere. She must have carried it over like a disease.” Her hand was cool on Vina’s forehead.
“I was only an apprentice when they removed her, but I remember. It was all properly hidden, of course. It’s archivist business.
It’s lucky we don’t have to be so careful anymore, now we have the pale assassin to blame. ”
“My father,” Vina croaked out. She felt like she was going to be sick.
“What about him? I don’t think he knew,” Meera said with a calculated shrug.
“Your father requested that you be kept at home, that you be raised under his care. But Head Archivist Roland and the Spymaster and the Queen all agreed—there was too much danger in not carefully managing you, with your blood.”
Meera stepped back.
“I’ve spent my whole life, my youth, my apprenticeship, proving I am not like your witch, or your mother,” said Meera, viperous soft.
“That I am not simply an ugly, necessary thing that the Isle requires. I am a woman of the Isle—I have shaped myself for love of it, and because it’s the right thing to do. ”
“They’ll never—think you’re like them,” Vina rasped. Grinned, baring her teeth. “Never. You can destroy all of us. Any of us. You’ll still be other.”
Meera stared at her, stony-faced.
“Your witch is an abomination,” said Meera. “And so are you. But in your next life, I’m sure you’ll both be right. A golden man, a blond-haired maiden witch. I’ll be proud and happy, when you return changed for the better.”
She woke hours later to the Spymaster standing at her side, his hand on her book. His gaze was solemn. She was lying bound still, unable to move, the agony of ink and her tale settling around her.
“I’m sorry, Sir Lavinia,” said the Spymaster. “There’s nothing that can be done. You must do your duty, as you have all your lives.”
She thought she could feel his hand on that plum-colored leather, that tome full of her fate. His fingers drummed gently on the surface.
“I understand you more than you know,” he murmured. “All kings and queens need men like me. They have all needed me. The Queen has my loyalty. And my tale neatly under her thumb.”
“I think you’re too clever, truly, to think this can continue as it has,” said Vina, finding her clumsy voice, raspy with thirst and pain. “The Isle will die if you don’t let the tales—us—be free.” Vina was shaking, clammy, cold and hot all at once.
“I’ve often theorized such,” said the Spymaster. “And I will do what is needful. But you must do the same.” He lifted his lamp—was it still night? Or had a whole day passed, and a new night fallen? “Dress, Sir Lavinia,” he said. “The Queen has a task for you.”
He unbuckled the straps around her, and she sat up without any plan to do so. She did not plan to stand either, or straighten, or follow him obediently when the door opened—but the tale tugged her forward, and she had no say in where it led her. She returned to her prison.
“Here,” he said. “Allow me. I will be your squire.”
With his help, she donned her armor—fresh Palace armor that had been laid out for her use. A new sword, sharpened and ready.
As he secured the last buckle, he paused.
“Tell me, Lavinia. In your study of the Eternal Prince, did you learn of the one who carries him to his resting place? Did you come upon the Lady, in her blue cloak, her eyes of midnight?”
Vina searched for her voice.
“I saw an image,” she said thinly. “No more. I do not know her.”
“She is the Lady of the Lake,” he said. “Or simply the Lady. She is bound to my tale, in her own way. I was merely curious.”
But his voice was not merely curious. There was grief in it.
That was when she knew with bone-deep certainty that she was going to her death. The Spymaster would not have risked being vulnerable to her if there was any hope left.
On horseback, on an unfamiliar destrier, she traveled to the Palace.
She dismounted, and her legs carried her to the White Hall, where the Queen sat on her throne, with an animal-skin rug set beneath her bejeweled and slippered feet.
A rug of scales, burnished gold. Her women in black vizards surrounded her, faceless.
Vina kneeled.
“Majesty,” her mouth said. “You summoned me, and I am here.”
The Queen looked down at her and smiled. In her hand she held a rose-red cloth—a favor, and a blessing, for a knight readying for a great and glorious journey.
“My dear knight,” she said. “we have a sacred quest for you.”
The tale snapped entirely into place. A key in a lock.
“My Queen,” said the knight. “Anything you ask of me is yours.”