Chapter Sixteen Cat
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cat
Marina leaves her post outside the room where the Reapers are being held.
She examines the patients that start forming outside the school looking for answers, and grimaces when she sees the pustules.
She joins their efforts, telling Cat and Fen to work together so she can walk Elician through exactly how Fen is managing to balance life at the edge of death.
She takes hold of a patient’s arm after Elician touches them first, her ability to narrowly target specific parts of that patient’s body freed by his protection.
She does it so naturally that Cat guesses: ‘You’ve seen this before, done this before. ’
And she nods. ‘Yes, my king, but now is not the time. Help Fen.’ He does, but all the while he waits for when it is time to talk.
There are not a lot of victims at first. A couple of dozen at most. But the word quickly spreads, and a call goes out to inform everyone who is ill to meet at the city hall for an easier time of managing new cases as they arrive.
All day has been a matter of reaction rather than action. Lio has been running about town trying to get information while the only two Givers in the whole of the city have been attempting to take care of everyone all over again.
And Elician has just woken up. He isn’t at full capacity. Around midday he asked for a chair and hasn’t stood from that seat since. He needs rest, but he doesn’t have time. None of them do.
Cat steps towards him, only to be stopped by the sound of a hiss. He whirls in the opposite direction. A woman is there, body almost entirely covered, dark hair draping the sides of her face. ‘Cieli,’ he breathes out, going to her without question.
He has not seen her since she tried to murder King Aliamon and Queen Calissia in their beds.
Since he told her to stand down even though she had every reason to ignore his call.
He had looked for her. But there had never been any sign as to where she had gone.
Now, he stands before her, reaching out with trembling fingers.
She takes his hand. Her cell was across from his in Alerae.
For years he tried to take her hand, for years he was always too small.
He could never make the difference. Their fingers thread together. ‘Stello,’ she greets.
‘You’re here – have you always been here?’ Then his eyes fall to her cheek. ‘Your face—’
‘It was healed before I left Himmelsheim. The princess did it. Her father made her promise not to tell.’
‘But – why?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps to see if she would.’
‘Where have you been?’ Questions pile upon themselves. Elician calls his name, but he cannot answer. He cannot bring himself to look away from her. ‘Death came for Brielle,’ he says. ‘Gillage sent me her head.’
Cieli’s lips part, then she smiles. Her other hand comes and clasps around their joined palms. ‘Beheading does not kill us,’ she says. ‘Not for good. If Brielle is truly gone, then it was her time. And she has been truly freed.’
‘I wanted to see her again.’
‘You will. In another form. On another day. Until then, know that if Death took her: it is what was best. You know that.’
He does. He always has. But it is a bittersweet ache. He leans his head towards her, clinging to her as he never could before. ‘Alest!’ Elician calls one more time. ‘Lio, can you get him—’
‘Why are you here?’ Cat asks furtively. ‘Do you need to hide—’
‘No. I came to speak to you. It’s Alelune, Stello. There’s a plague in Alelune. And it’s killing everyone.’
‘Your Grace?’ Lio asks, standing just behind him.
Cat can’t bring himself to let go of Cieli’s hand.
He steps to the side though, and reveals her before his husband’s closest friend.
Lio’s lips part. His brows furrow in confusion.
He squints, shaking his head as if not understanding what he is seeing. ‘I know you…’
‘I was in the cell across from yours,’ she replies. Then, she hisses. Fondness. Joy. Lio echoes it back, the same emotion, then amplified, muddled with confusion. She returns the volley.
‘You’re the one who taught him how we speak?’ Cat asks.
‘One of many,’ she replies.
‘They took you,’ Lio says. ‘They took you weeks before the end and then – where did you go? How did you get here?’
‘I’ll explain. But…not here.’
Lio nods. He touches her shoulder lightly, then gestures back towards Elician.
‘Come. Please. Our king will want to see you too.’ She thanks him, and Cat guides her to where Elician is waiting, still surrounded by Marina and Fen and half a dozen guards and a few straggling Altasians.
Elician doesn’t have the same flash of recognition for Cieli that Lio did, but Fen does.
She gasps, breathing out Cieli’s name and glancing at Cat with something akin to shame crossing her features.
‘You never told me what you did,’ he says.
‘I wasn’t supposed to,’ she replies.
Elician cuts in. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We should go back to the inn,’ Lio says. ‘All of us.’
And, bless him, Elician does not argue. He merely holds one hand out as a sign for them to lead the way.
Cieli is different from how Cat remembers her.
She stands with such easy confidence in a private room the innkeeper set aside for them all to use for their conferencing.
She does not hunch like he did when he first left the cells.
She does not murmur or keep her voice low.
She told him, once, that she used to play politics in court.
She had been a noblewoman, never directly in line for the throne but still someone who had power and influence.
Her Soleben was flawless. He had always wondered what she would look like in his mother’s halls.
Now, he can see it. After years in the dark, she has shed those horrors as a snake does its skin.
And she will never again return to those cells.
They are all here: Cat, Elician, Lio, Fen and Marina, and they listen as Cieli explains.
‘After the attempt I made on King Aliamon’s life,’ she says, ‘he offered me an opportunity.’ Elician’s father had sworn he would ensure no harm came to Cieli, but, ‘He said Alelune would soon experience a transition, and if you were to earn your place on the throne…you would need support. I’ve been in Alelune ever since, telling everyone I could… you are alive.’
‘That’s a very dangerous task he assigned you,’ Elician says slowly.
The wrong word to the wrong person at the wrong time could have earned her the attention of any number of people who would have wished her ill.
Then, all it would have taken is a slight touch of the skin – and her secret would have been revealed.
She would have been sent back to the Reaper cells.
‘We’re all in the process of doing dangerous tasks,’ Cieli responds coolly. ‘But it became far easier once Gillage ascended. No one has ever wanted that boy on Queen Alenée’s throne…and when given an alternative?’
‘People are receptive?’ Fen asks.
‘Some are. More by the day. I was in the Blue Lands when we heard word of a Reaper army being sent out of Sinestra. It came in just after I arrived.’
At the mention of the Blue Lands, Elician meets Cat’s eyes. Then, slowly, he tells Cieli: ‘We wrote to Captain Partho – to see if he’d join Alest’s cause.’
‘I never spoke to him directly. But his men were furious at the thought of Reapers on a battlefield. I thought following in the Reapers’ wake may be a better opportunity.
If people were already angry…more could potentially be persuaded.
It took me time to catch up to them, but when I did, it wasn’t just anger I found… but sickness.’
‘How bad is it?’ Cat asks.
‘Every town that the Reaper army went through fell ill. The symptoms were always the same: a kind of euphoric strength that quickly turned to debilitating weakness. Bruises on the skin, heart rate and breathing erratic. Eventually the infirm do die, but it’s an elongated process, usually coming down to a lack of food or water rather than anything else.
If they receive around-the-clock care, they survive.
But they require around-the-clock care. With the amount of exertion their bodies are going through, they aren’t capable of managing such things on their own. ’
Cat presses a hand to his face. Pinches his eyes. It’s been weeks. Weeks. The symptoms in Altas emerged after just a few days. No one died; they hadn’t let it get that bad. But he knew the moment he felt it that it could be fatal…and now, the confirmation – ‘How many people have died so far?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t stayed anywhere long enough to find out. But panic is setting in.’
‘And only towns that the army visited got sick?’ Elician asks.
‘At first,’ Cieli murmurs. ‘But I passed through a village I visited early on – Ines. They refused to let the Reapers or anyone else from that army into the village on principle. It wasn’t one of them who brought the illness. Yet they were sick by the time I arrived anyway.’
‘Are they blaming the Reapers for it?’ Cat asks.
‘Some,’ Cieli admits. ‘Many blame Gillage, though. For using them at all.’
‘It wasn’t the Reapers who did this,’ Marina says at long last. She has been quiet through Cieli’s explanation, standing by a large window overlooking the city.
‘Was it me?’ Elician asks. Cat’s fingers spasm at his sides.
‘No!’ Fen gasps, already on the defence. ‘Of course it wasn’t—’
‘In a way,’ Marina cuts in. ‘Yes.’ Elician takes the news well.
He doesn’t outwardly react with much, but Cat knows him better than that.
Lio does too. At Elician’s side, Lio’s horror is palpable.
His arm twitches outward as if to reach for his friend, only to remember that they are not in private company.
Doing so would only have been a breach of protocol at a time when Elician already feels weak.
‘How can you say that?’ Fen gasps.
‘It’s the pendants,’ Elician replies dully. ‘And then…Altas. It’s Shawshank’s Plague.’