NOT MY TURN
There was a meeting.
They sat there, blood gluing their clothing to their skin.
Bal and Janos hadn’t been invited. The former had had to be physically separated from Ralph’s head; the latter hadn’t found his family’s parts until after it was all over.
Lukas Rivellion’s head hadn’t been as intact as Ralph’s, but Janos knew his father’s face, even without the eyes.
No one could speak. And so there they were, Wraiths, queen, advisors, sitting around a big wooden table in their blood-soaked city, eyes peeled and mouths sealed shut with the blood of their countrymen.
“What… do we do?” Isobel asked, searching for her answer in the haunted stares of those around her. Surely one of them would be thinking, planning. Surely one of them wasn’t frozen stiff in shock.
A whole minute passed. No one thought or planned or even moved.
“Maybe… Maybe we should…” Esme couldn’t find the words.
She didn’t know what to do. “We should identify them, I think.” She dropped her head into her hands so she didn’t have to look at anything.
It was all so overwhelming. The sound of blood-stiffened clothing chafing over skin, the tangy reek of the parts still stuck to people, the choking down of bile every few seconds because they would re-realize what all the stains on their hands were.
Isobel nodded. “We already have,” she said.
Bal’s soldiers. And people from the Lake.
“We should think of war,” Urias said finally.
Isobel and Esme both turned to him because someone needed to be able to think, and for the first time neither of them could.
“Obviously someone did this,” he said. “There is intent and direction in their choice of victims. I believe this constitutes war. And I believe… I believe I know who’s to blame. ”
Mak’kon’s head rose and he flattened his arms on the table.
“When Ramniel was king, those first years I served him, we were still fighting the last of the Bahn-Nuk,” Urias said, leaning forward and holding Mak’kon’s eyes. “We’d hadn’t buried Brawna yet. And one night during a campaign, we heard… birds. So many of them.
“We all came out of our tents, confused. And in the early hours of the morning, a hail of bodies rained down on us. They’d been villagers who’d helped the army during a retreat. And Brawna had cut them into pieces and saved the most recognizable parts and sent her birds to drop them over camp.”
“But we killed the last of the Bahn-Nuk,” Esme choked out. “The three of us saw it.” Mak’kon and Esme had watched as Omniel had commanded that Urias cast Brawna into the flaming gorge of the God Jaw.
“Maybe we didn’t,” Mak’kon said, scratching at his palms. His voice was ruined, half by Esme’s jaws and half by shock.
His neck was still a mess of reconnecting parts that throbbed with each word he spoke.
“It’s possible she had children, or a village somewhere. She wouldn’t have told us if she did.”
“But we swept the country,” Esme said.
“Who else would attack like that? We’re following the birds, right?
” Mak’kon raised a brow at Urias, who nodded, setting his jaw, his eyes going pure black and inky feathers poking through his hair.
His face sharpened, just for a second, into the halfway creature between man and bird.
“They’re flying north,” he crowed. Then he blinked and was a man again.
“Could be towards Waldovia,” Esme said, leaning back in her chair to hold herself.
“We’re quadruple their size. How would they raise a force to rival ours?” Tagas asked.
“By sneaking into a peacetime army encampment and killing off our men,” Esme replied.
“We need official numbers, reports from all three armies.” She looked to a servant holding wax and a feather.
“Send letters to General Gustoe and General Dahl. For the Scourge… we should send someone. Prelyn is four days for a Wraith, six for a human.”
“Let me fly,” Samander said. “I’m faster than a horse. I’ll have your numbers in less than a week.”
“Good.” Esme nodded, checking Isobel for any hint of resistance. The woman gaped at her before jerking to life and waving Samander away. “We’ll be able to plan more when we know where the attack came from. I assume that’ll take time?”
Urias nodded. “Few days, I reckon,” he said. “I should know about the same time Samander returns from Prelyn.”
“All right. We pick this conversation back up then,” Esme said, swallowing. Under the table, Urias squeezed her knee. She gave him a squeeze back. They were doing well not bursting into tears.
“Now, what to do about the competition?” Urias said, changing the topic. “I suggest we pause it. Neither heir can fight, and if it is war, each of them will have their roles to play. We must keep them both alive.”
“The will doesn’t seem too happy about that,” Tagas said, then coughed, wincing at the tightness curling on their throats. The will was not pleased to be paused, but it wasn’t throttling them either. Perhaps it understood, too.
Esme sighed. “What other choice do we have? If Janos dies, a large swath of the country will be without a leader, and we will have no way to draft their men. If Balthazar dies, we lose a general and his sizable army in Prelyn. Both would be disastrous.”
“Pause the damn thing,” Isobel rasped against her strangling. “Clean up the arena. Identify the bodies. We will be done with this dreadful competition afterwards.” Her voice was shaking and hot tears washed trails in the blood smeared on her cheeks. “I am done with this. Everyone leave.”
And everyone did.
Esme and Urias wandered aimlessly down the nearest hallway. Tagas sped off to catch Samander before he left, and Padrian and Daphna left to go help with cleaning the arena. Mak’kon practically carried Isobel out of the room. And Esme and Urias haunted the halls—freezing, chattering, noisy ghosts.
“We should go to them,” Esme said suddenly, looking sideways at Urias.
“I am not ready to be supportive,” he said quietly.
“Then come.” Esme opened her arms wide, and Urias fell into them in a heap. His shoulders shook from the weight of having to seem put together in that meeting. He cried for ten minutes, collapsed in her arms in the middle of the hallway. No one passed; no one heard.
No one but Esme. She wanted to cry, too. She’d seen the head Bal had held, and she’d recognized the faces of many young people from Bal’s army. They may have worn fighting leathers, but they were kids. Esme wanted to weep until she drowned.
But it wasn’t her turn.
Urias cried until he could finally take a full breath, and then he pulled away from her shoulder. His face crumpled and his eyes were almost swollen shut. His lips wobbled too hard to say anything.
Esme pulled him back in. He wasn’t done.
It took an hour, maybe. They sat on the floor after a while, and Esme just let him cry on her because there was nothing else for her to do for him.
“Janos has no one to do this for him,” Urias muttered. His voice was muffled by her shirt, but Esme understood anyway. “How tragic is that?”
“Very.” She swiped a thumb under his eyes. “Are you ready to go to him, though?”
Urias shook his head. “I need to bathe. I need to cry. Pray, or something.” He sniffled again and got up all on his own. “I need to think. And then I will go do for him what you do for me.”
Esme nodded up at him. He offered her a hand, and when she shook her head no, he bent down to her again.
“You cannot stay here, Esme.”
“The ground is quiet and dark and I’m too sad to want to move.”
“I know.” Urias pulled her up and onto her unwilling feet. “Rest in your room. The ground is no place to mourn.”
He kissed her forehead and dragged her back to their neighboring rooms, then used her secret set of keys to unlock her door and took her into her bathroom. She stayed there while he flagged down a servant and told her to bring them enough water for two baths.
Urias returned soon, holding a folded set of clean clothes and a bottle of sweet-smelling oil for her skin. He set it all down on a bench beside her tub.
“Are you telling me I stink?” Esme asked, holding herself together with her bare hands. If just one drop of emotion snuck out of her, she might shatter.
“Maybe,” Urias said, arranging the clothing and oil on her table in a way he approved of. He dipped away again for something else.
Maybe it was naive of her, but Esme hadn’t seen children killed in a very long time.
Childbirth, hunger, neglect—that was how children died, and Esme was always able to understand those things as immovable pillars of nature.
There would always be rough births and famines and abandoned babies.
But this… How could she even comprehend it?
She thought of Gia, and for a second the fear was so potent that it made her dizzy. Gia, in that Prelyn encampment with Wend and Ralph. Gia fighting for her little life, only for her death to be played as spectacle for her family.
Nausea grabbed her stomach. If it had been Gia’s head in her lap this morning—
She couldn’t imagine it. She refused to.
Urias returned and wrapped his arms around her. “I won’t see you tonight,” he whispered, kissing her forehead.
“Then we’ll see each other when we do,” Esme said, swallowing down what she really wanted to say.
She wanted him to stay with her and let her cry with someone.
She wanted him to hold her tighter, for longer.
She wanted to feel that unsaid promise that he’d be there for her, like she’d been there for him.
But it wasn’t her turn. It was Janos’s.
Urias left, and soon a servant slipped in to fill her tub.
It was a lonely bath. She finished quickly, and then she changed into the dress Urias had brought her and started on the long walk to Balthazar’s room.
She stalled in front of his door. Did she even want to be a comfort right now?
No. She wanted to cry, and she wanted someone to hold her while she did.
But Balthazar needed the same thing she did, and Maranna had been roped in to identify the bodies.