Chapter Seventeen Cat
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cat
Cat and Elician purge the plague from Altas.
They go door to door, family after family, making sure there is not a single sniffle or sore to be found.
Cat says goodbye to Cieli. He pulls her into a room just for themselves.
He closes the door behind them so no one can see and he holds her the way he always wished he could.
Her arms wrap tight around him. Her lips press against the hair above the shell of his ear. ‘You will be crowned, Stello.’
‘Do you truly believe I can do this?’ Cat asks her.
‘Yes,’ she swears. ‘And so do all who know you, truly.’ He wishes he had her confidence. Instead, he steps away and bids her well. He finds Marina next, already preparing her bag for the road. She glances at him as he approaches. Presses a hand to his cheek before letting it fall.
‘You’ll be all right,’ she decides, and he says the same to her for want of other words. She finishes packing, tosses her bag over her shoulder. Then asks, ‘That book, the one I gave you for your wedding. Did you ever read it?’
‘No,’ he confesses. ‘I brought it with me though. Hoped perhaps it could be a distraction. But…’
‘Read it. Promise me you’ll read it before you meet your brother.’
‘I promise,’ he swears with all the solemnity it requires. She squeezes his fingers. Muscle and bone sing beneath her touch. ‘Ride well…and…come after us if we fail to return.’
‘Yes, my king. I will.’ She leaves, and Cat only has his own things to take care of.
His own journey to the barn. He arrives to find his horse ready, its saddle and bridle in place.
Elician nods in his direction, mounts his horse and leads it to the barn door.
Lio loiters only a moment longer, offering Cat a boost. He settles one hand on his saddle, the other on Lio’s shoulder, and prepares to step into the cradle of Lio’s hand when he stops.
‘Lio…I don’t know what I’m doing,’ he admits.
‘With…the horse?’
‘No.’
He lowers his hand from Lio’s shoulder. A quarantine.
A plague. Sending Reapers into Soleb and hoping they’ll listen and won’t kill anyone.
Trusting strangers. Returning to Alelune.
With no army, no assurances, just Death and her wide arm swinging across the swell of a continent, casting her fury at any who dares to cheat her.
And, in the midst of it all: a throne.
He still means to gain his throne.
Which means confronting Death, and asking her to accept him even after he will have fought his way across all of Alelune, desperate to end her plague.
‘None of us know what we’re doing,’ Lio tells him.
‘If I’m supposed to be a king, shouldn’t I know?’
‘No,’ Lio replies. ‘The only thing you can do is your best.’
‘I’m afraid I’ll hurt him,’ Cat whispers, lowering his voice to ensure Elician cannot hear. Lio leans in close, a hair’s breadth away from Cat’s lethal touch. Unafraid, unconcerned.
‘He’s already hurt,’ he says. ‘But of everyone I have ever seen vying for a place at his side – you are the only one who has ever been worried about that outcome. And that, Your Highness, means more than anything else. I trust you. Doesn’t that tell you something?
’ He steps back and threads his fingers together to form a cradle.
Cat steps in and accepts the boost onto his horse.
He scrambles into position. ‘Take care of each other,’ Lio calls up.
‘Take care of Soleb,’ Cat replies. Lio offers him a salute, and Cat turns his horse to follow Elician.
It is time to go home.
Elician is in no mood to talk. Cat knew that would be the case early on, but still, he tries to pull his husband into conversation.
He receives short, stilted answers in return.
It is not his fault, Cat knows deep in his heart.
He knows, too, that those words will be meaningless to Elician.
It was Elician’s power. Stolen from him, certainly, but only stolen because he had been so utterly unwilling to allow Lio to die in the first place.
And so, the pendants were made. And so, the plague began.
Love had been Elician’s undoing. And it is the one thing he has so terribly feared all his life.
Cat rummages through his bag after the first hour of endless quiet, his horse mostly just plodding along in the same general direction as Elician’s.
Lio found him an agreeable creature, more prone to following than prancing about or eager for distractions.
A beginner horse that Cat is very, very happy is not more active.
He finds Marina’s book and opens it at long last. He turns to the first page – and gasps. Elician’s attention snaps to him in a moment. Cat clears his voice, reads out loud: ‘I was born to be a Queen of Alelune; I reigned twenty-five years. My name was Alenette, and I chose Marina after I died.’
‘What did you say?’ Elician slows his horse, brings it level with Cat’s. ‘What is that?’
‘Marina gave it to me – us, on our wedding day. I never read it. She kept telling me to, but—’ There had always been one more thing to do.
‘She’s your ancestor?’ It seems pure befuddlement is enough to distract Elician from the chaos of his guilt. Cat skims the next few paragraphs, turning pages this way and that to make sure he’s understood correctly.
‘No. Not directly. Her sister…I’m from her sister’s line.’
He understands, now, why Marina gave it to him at the wedding. What she hoped to offer to him. Family. Connection. Stretched and distorted though it is. He flips through more pages, skimming and absorbing as much as he can.
The truth is, Cat remembers precious little about what life in Alelune is like beyond the Reaper cells and the horrors of court.
The Alelune he’s come to know has always been a painting crafted by dozens of artists, a collage organized and maintained by those who each wanted to show him their version of reality.
His own hazy memories of his time before the cells are precious and protected by a pane of glass.
When he tries to peer through, his breath fogs his sight and the image becomes blurred.
He knows the shape of a man, the sound of a laugh, the feeling of water in his lungs.
He thinks, maybe, that he held Gillage right when he was born.
He thinks, sometimes, that his parents’ divorce was the best thing that ever happened.
He thinks he loved the Blue Palace and that he had known and cared for Captain Partho, whom he never saw again.
He thinks he liked being away from court, but perhaps that too is merely a supplanted thought, an idea driven home after being forced back to Alerae just to lose himself in the dark.
His clearest memory of his father, though, is from the day he died.
The day Cat went to him, terrified and hopeful, and felt his father’s body crush him to the stone floor beneath his mother’s throne.
And his clearest memories of his people since then are…
parties and dances and costume balls where he stood off to one side, listening to a masked fool tell stories and juggling, and wondering if maybe he should use that time to escape instead.
Marina’s book describes the years of her youth as if they were unremarkable.
And even though their worlds were separated by a thousand years, it is tangible enough that Cat can hear echoes of her life rattling about his mind, reminding him of a life he once knew.
Festivals. Parades. He reads the words out loud, Elician riding at his side, listening intently.
The horrible, lurking silence replaced by a shared awe of disbelief.
She writes of the war, candid in her phrasing, slipping from the forced objectivity her place in Soleb seemingly instilled in her over her many years of service.
‘The Solebens were a spoilt race,’ Cat reads.
Elician huffs, something between charmed and acquiescent.
‘Their wealth made them blind to the necessities of labour, and their hierarchies were ingrained into the very fabric of their people.
Soleb is still like that today. Spoilt and proud of their traditions, they believe themselves superior in all things.
But their foundations are built on nothing but sand.
They do not understand what it is to work, and their crowns are rested on heads that the people choose to love.
If that love is shaken, the kingdom will fall.
‘Alelune is different.’
Cat glances at Elician. He has no reaction to the last bit.
He is at the precipice of that fall now, his people questioning him, doubting him.
As soon as word gets out – and it will – that this plague is connected to him, they both know: Elician’s reign will end.
Swift as a bird’s wings. It is only a matter of time.
Cat swallows, and reads on. ‘In Alelune, the Queen is chosen by the gods. Siblicide is normal, if not expected. I had no heir. My sister was both my dearest friend and dearest enemy. She longed to rule, and I forfeited my right when she killed me. If the gods had wanted me to live, they would have stayed her blade. They didn’t…
but chose to resurrect me instead. I stood before her as a Reaper, and in that moment neither of us knew the will of the gods.
We only knew that there could only be one queen, and I would not kill my sister.
‘I made a choice then to leave Alelune rather than fight for my crown. I never returned, but they began imprisoning Reapers after I left. Sometimes I wonder if it was my fault, but I cannot claim ownership of a decision made out of spite and fear. Someone would have made the choice regardless of who or what I was. If the gods didn’t want it to happen, the gods would have stopped it.
And so, it must have been so.’ He trails off, frowning at the next line.
Elician is waiting, curious and expectant. Cat closes the book. ‘She says I must decide whether to kill my brother or not.’
‘Have you not already made that choice?’