Chapter Twelve Fenlia
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fenlia
The Alelunen soldiers are bound in chains and sent to an old school building with a lecture hall large enough for them to be stored in.
The windows are quickly barred, the doors secured, and they are kept out of sight from the furious Altasian civilians who call for their blood.
The Reapers, none of whom Cat apparently recognizes, are secured in another room down the hall.
Marina stands guard before the door, allowing no one in or out as decisions get made.
Elician does not wake.
Lio carries him to a grand inn near the eastern gates of the city, laying him out on a large bed with the most tender show of care.
Fen holds her brother’s limp hand. She closes her eyes and searches for some sign of pain, some broken, faulty thing – perhaps an organ failing, a synapse misfiring or a clot somewhere dangerous.
But there is nothing. Nothing at all. Every part of Elician’s body functions in exactly the way it is meant to, except he does not respond when they call his name or shake his head this way and that.
He lies there, looking for all the world as if now, finally, he is sleeping.
Cat perches at the foot of the bed, rotating one of the Alelunen pendants between his fingers.
He has examined every single one of the pendants that the soldiers wore.
Most were destroyed utterly, leaving behind only viscous remains.
But this one is almost intact, its leather exterior scorched but its shape retained.
He turns it over and over, again and again, as if the mere act is enough to enlighten him as to what exactly it even is.
‘Can you sense anything wrong with him?’ Fen asks. Sometimes he is better at it than her. He sees deeper, feels so much stronger. She doesn’t know how he does it, but she knows he studies more than her. His understanding of anatomy is far greater than her own.
But he says, ‘No,’ and keeps his attention on the pendant.
‘Do you know what that is?’
‘No,’ he repeats.
‘But it was something that had to do with Elician, right? Did it do this to him?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘You can’t stay here,’ Lio says. ‘There are things that we need to do in the city. Figure out exactly what’s going on in Altas, who has been brought back and who hasn’t.’
‘Like your parents,’ Cat suggests.
‘They’re here?’ Fen asks, turning to Lio.
‘That’s not my priority—’
‘Make it one.’ Cat says it like a command. ‘We’ve all lost too many family members of late. Find your parents, Lio.’
‘And what will you do?’
Cat shoves the pendant into his pocket. ‘Whatever anyone needs me to do.’ Finally, he meets Fen’s eyes. ‘Will you care for him?’
‘What— Of course. But…I could do more. Out there, if anyone needs help—’
‘No one needs that kind of help,’ Cat refutes. ‘Stay here. If he wakes up…he shouldn’t be alone.’
They leave.
They leave and she is alone. Elician is with her, but there is nothing else.
Outside, there are so many voices. Parents calling for their children.
Soldiers trying to organize people into lines so they can all be checked and understood.
The mayor is trying to take a headcount. Who is missing, who hasn’t come back?
But when music starts to play and singing echoes from one end of the city to the other, Fen lets the truth settle into her heart. No one is missing. They did what they had set out to do.
Or, Elician did. They saved the city of Altas, the Alelunen soldiers are apprehended. All is well.
Except Elician. Who still, for whatever reason, does not wake.
Cat relieves her at night. He sends her to her own room to find some peace and crawls into the bed at his husband’s side.
He barely says any words to her in the transition.
He waves her off as if she had not sat here, dutifully, at his command for hours.
She leaves, not wanting to cause a fuss but feeling the hurt of it anyway.
Rodans is in the main floor of the inn when she goes in search of food. He beckons for her to sit with him and some of the others. He orders a plate from the innkeeper. ‘This is Fredian and Johanna,’ he introduces. She issues a polite introduction of her own. ‘We were talking about the King.’
‘How is he?’ Fredian asks, nervous and hopeful at once.
‘Resting,’ she replies. Rodans takes her hand in his.
‘After everything he did, he must be exhausted.’
‘Yes.’ It’s the best she can come up with.
‘We can’t believe it,’ Johanna murmurs. ‘The King…a Giver…’
‘He changed the law to allow it,’ Fredian says.
‘But should he have been able to if he knew he was a Giver in advance? That’s…’ Johanna glances at Fen, and she pushes back from the bench.
‘He just saved everyone’s lives – is that not what a good king does?’ she spits out.
‘I’m not saying what he did was wrong, but—’
Fen has heard enough.
She doesn’t care about the food. She’ll eat in the kitchen if she has to. She walks away. But Rodans chases after her. He catches her by her wrist. ‘She meant no harm,’ he says. ‘It’s just a shock.’
‘It is,’ Fen says. ‘But instead of focusing on that, they should be focusing on the fact that they are even alive.’ From the uniforms both Fredian and Johanna were wearing, they were part of the standing army that had been defending Altas in the first place.
Most were told to stand down during the temporary truce around the Kingsclave, but the bulk of the army did not abandon the city. It was there when the Reapers came.
It fell when the Reapers came.
Both Fredian and Johanna died here in Altas with all the rest, and now they live – because of Elician.
‘Sometimes it’s easier to lash out against what you know than what you don’t know,’ Rodans tells her. ‘They don’t mean any harm.’
But they’re still back there, whispering, and it sets Fen’s teeth on edge. ‘I will support Elician in whatever he decides to do. Will you?’
‘Yes,’ Rodans says without a moment’s hesitation. ‘As long as it’s for the good of the nation.’
‘This was for the good of the nation,’ Fen replies. She pulls away. ‘I’m going to eat in my room.’
‘Sleep well, Princess,’ Rodans wishes. She gets her plate from the innkeeper and goes to bed. But his words lurk like a physical presence at her side.
As long as it’s for the good of the nation.
That’s the point, isn’t it?
But also.
Who gets to decide that?
For she is certain: it isn’t Rodans. And it isn’t her. But it doesn’t stop the whispers.
And the whispers are always dangerous.
At Elician’s bedside the following morning, Fen tells Cat and Lio about her conversation with the others. Neither looks surprised. ‘It was bound to happen sooner or later, someone commenting on him changing the law,’ Lio says, checking Elician over.
‘They’ll call for his removal,’ she replies.
‘They’ll try. But he just saved a city. Give his people a little credit; even they can admit this was a good job.
’ King Aliamon himself couldn’t have orchestrated a better way of garnering public support.
‘At worst, he could be blamed for corruption. But he has always planned to abdicate eventually. He even has an heir publicly in place.’
‘Yes, and then you’ll be prince consort, won’t you?’ Fen asks. Lio sends her a sharp look, but he doesn’t get the chance to issue a retort.
A horn blows from the west, loud enough to tremble the walls of the city, repeating in an odd pattern that Fen doesn’t recognize. Cat stands, reaching for his sword.
‘Is it the rest of the Alelunen army? Are they here?’
‘No…’ Lio says, lips twisting from sharp irritation to something almost close to a smile.
‘That’s not one of our alarms. That’s…’ He stands up.
‘You should see this…both of you.’ He places a hand on Cat’s lower back and flicks his wrist towards the door.
There are three King’s Guard in the hall already in position.
Lio hurries them past the guards and out onto the street.
‘Don’t let anyone in,’ he calls to his guardsmen as they go.
Then, he guides Fen and Cat through the rushing crowd of people towards the bridge separating the two halves of Altas over the stretch of the Bask River.
He shoos some people away from the edge of the wall, pulling rank and authority the whole time until they all can peer over the edge at his excited gesturing. For there, down in the river, are whales.
Twelve of them, one right after the other, some already disappearing out of view beneath the bridge but the rest still swimming on behind.
And the river is so clear, so perfect, that Fen can see everything.
The grey of the whales’ skin, the white accents beneath their chins when they lift their heads, the tapering slope of their bodies, perhaps even the slight twinkle of their eyes.
Cheers go up on the left, on the right. Chants.
Prayers. Great guffaws of congratulations.
‘It’s a sign,’ Lio murmurs. ‘It’s sacred. ’
‘It should be,’ Cat replies.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Fen agrees. She wonders what it would be like to dive into that river, to press her hands against a creature that magnificent to learn what they feel like, to know how they live. They’re miraculous. Sublime. She has never seen anything so beautiful in all her life.
‘Thank you for showing us,’ Cat says.
‘Whales in the river means a pause in fighting,’ Lio replies, even though there already is a pause in the fighting. And the main force of the Alelunen army is still nowhere to be seen.
‘Where even is the army?’ Fen asks. ‘Has anyone seen them?’
‘Not since before the Kingsclave,’ Lio replies. ‘I found my parents last night—’
‘They’re all right?’ This is Cat – Cat, who should be more concerned with his own country’s fighting force than Lio’s parents but who asks the question that Elician would have.
That Fen should have, especially since Cat had said it was a priority earlier.
She winces at the realization that it hadn’t even occurred to her to confirm that they were well.
‘They’re fine. They’ve got a cold of all things, but otherwise they’re fine,’ Lio says, setting the point aside with remarkable ease.
‘I asked them what they saw before everything happened, and they said the army was there. Just as it usually is, at the border of the Grünewald forest. Our army was in its standard position, prepared to defend if anyone broke the truce. But then, that lot we have locked up in the school arrived. There was some kind of confrontation. No one knows what happened. But the main army left before that group attacked. No one has seen them since.’
‘Why would Gillage pull back the main army…why not have them attack with the others?’
‘No one knows.’
‘Do you think there will be a second attack?’ Fen asks.
‘No,’ Lio replies. ‘No…I don’t.’
‘I don’t think so either,’ Cat agrees.
The whales swim on. Oblivious to their tensions and concerns.
They’re a sign of peace. A superstitious sign of peace but a sign nonetheless. ‘Then…let’s trust the whales,’ Fen offers, and Cat grins at that. The first sign of amusement she’s seen on his face since before they left for Altas.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Let’s trust the whales for a little longer.’
And if the whales are right: their temporary peace will hold.