Chapter 34 #2
I crushed her to my chest because I was beyond words. It spoiled my expectation of dying, but she needed to live. And if her will to survive depended on mine, then I would have to rally for that. It wouldn’t have to be long, just long enough to get her somewhere she would be safe.
“I love you, Kaylay,” she murmured into my neck. “Separation from you now would seem a crueler fate than any I can imagine.”
She said it.
She loved me.
I closed my eyes. I did not lament when nothing happened.
The tsarina lied to me constantly, and it was no surprise that she had about this too.
Or maybe I had thwarted whatever magics she invoked either by speaking and revealing myself as more than just some Otherland bird or by confessing to who I had been with Drook and Klessa.
But it did not matter anymore. And Alaina loved me anyway.
“Kaylay?”
I opened my eyes again when I heard her confusion.
Alaina sat up and held her hands out in front of her, palms full of feathers.
Alaina loved me. And it was the worst possible time for her to declare it.
“We have to leave now,” I told her, projecting an air of calmness in the midst of my panic.
“Why now?”
The wing that separated her from the ice melted into a flurry of feathers.
My shoulder slid down the wall, no longer supported by the other wing.
I struggled against the bunched-up summer cloak beneath me, fumbling with the leather gloves as I tried to unclasp it so that I could straighten myself out. I couldn’t feel my toes in the boots.
Alaina screamed and shoved me back. She launched herself off me, fleeing out into the demolished ice bedroom. She waited in the corner like prey, deciding if she needed to prepare another attack or if she could safely run away.
I couldn’t blame her. I probably looked a mess.
I slid myself off the ice bed and stood on numb legs, no longer accustomed to how my old body moved and still accommodating wings and talons and tail feathers that were no longer there.
“I cannot keep you warm anymore, Alaina,” I said, holding out a gloved hand in her direction.
She stared at me for hours, days, lifetimes. Precious moments, perhaps life-saving moments, slipped by as she stared at me in my thin black clothing.
I couldn’t wait for her. I grabbed the cloak and approached her, throwing it over her when I was close enough.
“You’re Finist the Falcon?” she asked, only now beginning to put it together.
“No.” I knelt to clasp it for her. “Just Kaylay.”
The cloak dragged on the ground, but it would have to serve.
“We need to leave,” I said again, this time my voice more confident, command built into the suggestion, so that I could override any of her lingering stupefaction.
I stood and moved toward the doorway, stumbling several times on the ice debris, the frozen bells around my boots silent even in my missteps.
I held my hand out to her again, pleading with her to join me, glad it was gloved and more like what she expected than a naked human hand. “Alaina, please.”
She took a deep breath, hiked up the cloak, and then joined me as we crossed into the entry.
“What’s the plan?” she asked, clearly over her moment of disbelief.
“I need you to lie convincingly,” I told her. “Scream at the door. Cry. Plead. Beg. Whatever you need to do to get the guards to listen. Tell them I’m dead. Tell them anything. Just get them to open the door.”
She nodded, her face set, hard, and determined. She gathered herself up and released my hand. She flew at the doors. She threw herself bodily against them multiple times, wailing and screaming for help.
I took position beside the doors, shivering when the ice wall touched my back.
I did not tell her my part in the escape.
I did not think she would approve. But I had grown vicious in my captivity, and survival, her survival anyway, meant that I could retain no scruples or high-handedness.
If I had to kill to keep her safe, so be it.
“The creature is dead,” she cried out, “and I am not far behind. Please!” She clawed at the door and pounded her fists. “I’ll give you my pearls,” she shouted. “I’ll give you anything! Anything!” She gave one last burst of pounding before she sank into a pile on the floor and wept. Loudly.
If I had not told her to put on an act, I would have certainly mistaken it for sincerity. Such emotions were likely not far from the surface though. She had managed stoicism so far with grace.
Nothing happened. No sounds from the other side, no answers in return. Were the guards debating the wisdom of opening the doors? Were they loyal to the tsarina to the point of turning down the princess’ jewelry? Had they fallen asleep? Were there even any guards out there?
Alaina’s gaze met mine. Unspoken fear and doubt passed between us. After a moment, she made a move to rise, but I held up a hand.
The doors shuddered as the bolt slid out of position.
Alaina perked and then melted back into her position of abject defeat.
A single door swung outward. A guard, backlit by a fire from without, stood in the opening.
“He’s dead,” Alaina repeated, pointing towards the doorway opposite the bedroom. She lifted her chin, her face tragic and pale in the dim light. “Spare me, I beg.”
Another guard joined him at the doorway and looked her over.
“Please,” she fumbled at the teardrop pearl necklace at her throat. “It was my mother’s. A coat is all I ask.”
In their avarice, the guards entered without checking their surroundings, believing Alaina’s tale of my death.
I grabbed the nearest one from behind and smashed his head against the ice wall.
He slid down, a streak of blood left behind.
Alaina kneed the guard who allowed his attention to be caught up with his companion’s fate.
He doubled over with the violence of her placement.
In his incapacity, I relieved him of his sword and concussed him with the hilt.
Together, Alaina and I stripped the guards.
I donned the hat and coat from the first one, pulling the collar up around my face.
She had the second guard’s coat on under the cloak and a fur collar wrapped around her neck by the time I rejoined her.
I could barely see her eyes beneath her own hat.
I offered her the first guard’s wool-lined boots and bear-skin gloves.
She stuck her feet, slippers and all, into the boots and drew the gloves on, although they ill-fitted to such a degree that it might have seemed comical if we were not desperate.
We stopped just outside the ice building to ensure there were no other guards we needed to disarm.
The silence and isolation, especially when our last view had been of a crowded entry, weighed upon me.
Fortunate, of course, but so desolate and empty that I could not help but worry over our obviousness.
We pulled the doors shut and bolted them again so that the guards could not pursue us, and no one would suspect what had happened until someone came in the morning.
We took a moment in front of the fire. I gave her the sausages the guards had been cooking as I warmed my hands through the gloves.
“It’s bad when toes burn, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It’s worse when you cannot feel them at all,” I assured her, although I did not tell her that I had stopped feeling my toes and the fingers on my left hand some time ago. “Wiggle them, if you can.” Mine were completely unresponsive, but that was a problem I couldn’t think about now.
“To port?” she asked after a few moments.
“To port,” I agreed.
She set out in that direction, and within several strides, I caught up with her.
She glanced up at me briefly but then returned her attention to our path, effectively preventing any discussion between us.
Wise of her to conserve our energies as we trudged through the freshly fallen snow in silence.
The original slickness of the roads and the heavy accumulation eventually slowed us to a crawl as we fought to maintain our pace.
Even with our new barriers against the cold, the biting wind tore through them, and my will to continue waned in the painful, numbing, frozen air.
I winded before she did and slowed my pace still further, trying to catch my breath and still only managing the most shallow gasps as the breath-dewed fur clung to my lips.
I took another several steps and stopped. My lungs burned. My chest heaved. I willed myself to take just a few more steps, just a few more, but my legs did not respond to any directive.
“It’s not much farther,” she encouraged when she noticed I had stopped completely.
I gulped and pulled the coat collar away from my face, certain I could breathe again if only I could get enough air.
I took another staggering step, and my boot slid on the ice.
My leg went out from under me, and I fell to my knees.
Pain spread through my body like a bolt of lightning.
I was burning. Even the collar around my throat clung to my skin by frozen fiery sweat.
“Leave me,” I rasped.
“No!” She grabbed at my arm. “You are NOT giving up now. I forbid it!”
I struggled to rise, not eager to continue, but recognizing she would give me less of a fight if I could manage. My legs, numb to everything, fumbled beneath me, and I fell again.
“Get up!” she screamed. She pulled at my shoulders to help me rise. “You need to get up!”
I had never considered that it might end like this, that I might die out in the cold, struggling to keep another alive, disgraced, collared, and mostly nameless. But I could not keep up, and I could not let her throw away her chance at escape and a new life because of me.
“I have never been able to save anyone that I’ve loved,” I told her. “So I need you to be safe now. Please. That’s all that matters to me.”
She tried to haul me up and slipped. I fell even deeper into the snow and closed my eyes. Nearly frozen shut anyway, giving into the inclination came too easily.
In the darkness, she called my name, my Varnasian name, my Varnasian name made sweet by her abbreviation of it.
I wanted to answer her, to promise her it would all be well, to tell her I would be at peace, that my suffering was over, at long last. I couldn’t.
My lips wouldn’t work. My voice didn’t come.
I hoped she understood that I hadn’t wanted to leave her, but my purpose was fulfilled.
The Otherlander’s promise ushered me into tranquil welcome oblivion.