Chapter 41 #2
I swallowed, remembering the dance. The tableau. The feel of his fingers gripping my waist. A lifetime ago—or at least it felt like it. All that was gone up in smoke, like the keep.
“I’m sorry,” I offered. It was all I could think of to say.
He stared at me. Emotions warred in his expression, but the only one I could reliably pick out was anger. When he eventually spoke, his voice was hoarse with fatigue.
“Sorry for what? For betraying my family, sabotaging our defenses, or sorry that someone else got in first?”
I felt my face flatten. “Only the first one. And sorry in the sense that I wish I hadn’t had to do it.”
He studied me. “You didn’t follow me that morning because you were curious. You followed me because you needed dirt on my family. And you got it, didn’t you? My secret was the one. The one thing my father would do anything to keep hidden.”
“I didn’t want to use it,” I said. It was true. “I didn’t really want to use anything I found out.”
His top lip curled; he looked away from me briefly.
“I was going to tell you, before you threw in your lot with them”—he inclined his chin to where the Cage were packing up—“that I’m sure I can persuade Emment and Vercha to keep you on.
” His eyes sought his brother, who was having his wound cleaned.
“Like Emment said, there’s still the vote.
We can back the most progressive candidate.
Rebuild. Move to my father’s house in Breawr in the meantime. ”
He finally looked at me, saw me shaking my head. His next words were said all in a rush, gaze intense. “We could use your talents. And you’ll have everything you want.”
Anger spread crimson wings in my chest, but beneath it was a horrible, hot bubble of shame…shame that a sliver of me wanted to accept him. To go back to my cushy, familiar placement, to be adjacent to that luxury I’d half grown accustomed to…
“Still so wedded to Hundred tradition. Still speaking of us as though we’re pieces of furniture.” I shook my head narrowly, felt my breath coming faster. “You still can’t imagine any other kind of life, can you, than the wool-wrapped one you’ve been living out here?”
His expression closed up, a shutter coming down, but before he could reply, a cry rang out.
It was Zennia, sprinting toward us from the gatehouse.
“He’s gone. Iovawn Crake. He’s gone.”
A ripple of shock went through those of us who heard her. Emment and Catua ran over from nearby.
“What do you mean, gone?” Emment grated. “The laconite—”
“Discarded. He’s spoken to the earth, burrowed a tunnel. I’m sure if we search, we’ll find the exit, but there’s no sign of him anywhere. He’s just disappeared.”
“Impossible,” Llir breathed. “He was chained, he had laconite…”
“He was gagged, too,” said Catua, “and the cell was locked tight.”
I spun in a circle, a dark weight settling on me. “Where’s Vercha?” I asked, my voice breaking slightly.
I was remembering a writing desk stuffed full of paper. An unopened letter. Charred flecks in a grate.
“She stormed off,” said Catua, frowning. “Why? I haven’t seen her since…” She trailed off, staring at my face.
“What are you implying?” Emment snapped, turning in a circle. “Verch! I’ll find her. She’ll be here. She will.”
He jogged off, calling his sister’s name, but Catua gripped my arm with cold fingers. “You know something,” she said, gazing hard into my face.
“I think—” I said slowly, “I think they were writing to each other.”
—
The tide was nearly out by the time Emment called off the search.
Vercha was gone. And Iovawn Crake with her.
We’d found the exit to the tunnel he’d bored—it would have spilled them out beyond the pinewood, near the causeway. There we saw the remnants of a raised mud track, which could have been used to cross the last of the Morning Tide.
“If she got him out, why didn’t they just attack us?” Catua was sitting with her chin in her hands.
“Probably knew how outnumbered they were,” put in Kielty, who’d returned with the rest of the Cage.
“I don’t understand,” Catua replied. “Vercha wanted us dead? Her own sister, her own brothers? The father she loved?”
“No,” I said, crouching down next to her. As much as I disliked Vercha, I didn’t believe that. “I think maybe she…aligned with Uirbrig Crake more than with your father. But I think, perhaps, what Uirbrig did…the—the execution. That surprised her and Iovawn both.”
Emment and Llir were standing over us, arms folded, disbelief etched onto their faces.
“Maybe Iovawn thought the plan was imprisonment,” I said.
“Maybe that’s what he told Vercha when he wrote.
That they’d say you’d all been kidnapped by the Cage but ultimately keep you alive—keep you safe—until Crake’s and Shrike’s plans were already in motion.
But then, when Uirbrig killed your father and told his son to kill the rest of you, too…
maybe Vercha tried to persuade Iovawn to lock you up.
And pretend to Uirbrig that he’d actually done the deed. ”
“He took me off the block,” murmured Emment, “in the end.”
—
The sight of the mudflats glittering in front of us was a stark reminder that it was time to leave.
The boats were loaded, ready to be wheeled down the causeway, where, near the mainland, we’d hike north over the flats. According to Kielty, we’d be meeting a special contact somewhere in the wilderness near the estuary of the River Tiva.
Of course, Emment and Llir didn’t come to see us off. They held a private goodbye with Catua, and when she jogged down to join the rest of us waiting on the shingle, I saw the Shearwater brothers on a rise near the castle, staring down at us all from on high.
I climbed stiffly and wearily into a boat, one of three on wheels being pulled by a gray horse. Ferda, who’d been among those the Cage had safely shepherded, had lent us the mount—with Emment’s reluctant permission.
As I sat there, our makeshift caravan trundling off, the weight of the last few hours descended on me.
I leaned sideways, resting my head on Zennia’s shoulder, and at the touch of her hand, her firm arm around my shoulders, a wonderful, searing relief suffused me.
“Everything’s going to change now,” came Kielty’s voice. He was opposite me, looking down the boat at Catua. “With her on our side.” His eyes held a strange glint.
I didn’t want to think about the future just yet. I couldn’t wrap my mind around this bright, bitter freedom.
Instead, I looked back at the dark hump of Bower Island, at the crumbling castle guttering smoke, at the spray as the tide chased our heels to the mainland.
And saw a watching figure still outlined against the sky.