Chapter Thirty-Five
Despite Eliaz’s calls for discussion ahead of our arrival in Attanae, we spend most of our journey in the carriage in comfortable silence, our heads bobbing with the rough terrain of the countryside roads.
Calli, currently melting into the bench next to her brother, was asleep within five minutes of our departure, her beautiful hairstyle already tangled and smushed against the wall of the carriage.
Every few minutes she lets loose a few snores that make my throat hurt just from the dry sound of them.
I pay no notice to the drool leaving a glistening trail from her chin, pooling just below the neckline of her dress.
Giving her the dignity of sleeping messily unwatched, I turn my attention to her brother.
Eliaz sits upright, head tilted backward so that his open eyes land naturally on the wooden panelling of the carriage above my head.
From the way the apple of his throat rises and falls, I can tell he is swallowing down hundreds of disagreeable and bitter tasting thoughts, as the quiet has compelled me to do for the last few hours.
His face, however, remains relaxed, the sharpness of his features dulled by the slackening of the muscles in his cheeks, making him appear unburdened and at ease.
But combined with his gulping and intermittent sighs, and the cloud of apprehension in his otherwise clear eyes – he is worried.
And rightfully so. My attention drifts back to his bare, stretched-out throat, the blankness of the skin, where his scar should carve out his flesh, a hidden remnant of the pain of his past.
Perhaps, he keeps it blanketed from those around him, because it also serves as a reminder of the unpredictability of men, of life.
Absent mindedly, I look at his lips, his eyes, even that tiny bump in the bridge of his nose.
He has a light peppering of sun kisses under the high arches of his brow, with a few darker freckles dotted on his cheeks.
Every time I look at him, I notice more in him, I find more familiarity in him, in the life of him.
It is bizarre to think that I was ever afraid of him – he could not be further from the monstrous villain he presented himself with the day I met him first.
My understanding of him, as a boy who bore the weight of his kingdom when his parents no longer could, a boy who turned to darkness out of desperation. The boy who made good from evil and lit a candle in the darkened room of his kingdom.
My stomach flurries once more, that feverish storm kicking up and knocking the breath from my lungs. Something in me wants to lean closer to him. A magnetism I can only liken to the energy of the Relic itself, that powerful push and pull in the atmosphere, attracting and propelling.
‘Like what you see, Princess?’
How long have I been staring at him? And more importantly, how long has he noticed my eyes fixed on him? Eliaz awaits my answer, brows perked with amusement. I try to play it cool with a foolish shrug of the shoulders.
‘I could ask you the same question. You seem rather taken with that spot on the wall,’ I tease. ‘Is it the flecking of mauve in the varnish you’re particularly drawn to?’
He holds back a smirk, tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek. ‘Maybe, I am making a rather desperate attempt to distract myself from the girl beneath it.’
I shake my head, unsure whether to laugh or roll my eyes or admit it has floored me. Because it has.
‘You don’t mean to tell me you had me swap carriages with Cole and subject the entirety of the other party to a specialised kind of torture, just so you could look at me?
’ I hear in the thumping blood in my ears, his words from the oratory.
I came to have a look at you. And I smile. ‘You sure like looking, don’t you?’
His face flickers with a potion of satisfaction, thrill and – sadness? He smirks with the right amount of enjoyment for the situation, displaying no signs that that hint of sorrow was ever intermingled with his thoughts.
‘I, of course, thought it would be best that we talk a little about strategy before we descend upon an unsuspecting territory. But, in being in such a quiet and unurgent environment, I found myself with the thought that we do not know one another.’
‘You have to admit, your whole ‘boo, I’m the bad guy’ act did hinder any talks of our favourite colours.’
He holds his hands up. ‘Touche.’ Then falls into a quiet, looking out the window at the passing hills.
Umbra is much greener, and far more enchanting than I had originally thought it to be. A far cry from the miserable, dehydrated land I had conjured up in my mind as a child. A sister image to the one I had of the mainland.
‘I am sorry, I hope you know.’ He doesn’t turn from the window, perhaps so that I don’t catch the wetness of his eyes. ‘For how I treated you. For how I spoke to you. I thought…’
He trails off, his sentence suspended in the air waiting to be concluded, but it remains lingering, unfinished.
‘I know,’ I say, even though I don’t. Not because I want him to think of me as clever, or assertive, or smart. But because I suspect it is what he wants – needs – to hear.
An understanding, of him and what he cannot yet articulate.
He will find the words one day. Perhaps then my comfort will hold some real weight, and I will know, and he will feel its substance blanketing him and will find ease in it.
But for now, all I can offer is a vague, white lie that we both know I am saying just to say it. Just for him to hear it. When he doesn’t say any more, or look my way, I assume the conversation finished and rest my head on the wood behind me, closing my eyes.
I am by no means tired, it just seems like the thing to do, in a carriage, when you don’t know what to say to the person occupying it with you, and when the third person still has a chest full of sleeping breaths.
The faint clipping of stray stones against the wheels is the only thing keeping us from silence now that Calli snores no longer.
‘It is blue, by the way.’
I open my eyes to Eliaz, finally looking my way, expectant.
‘Pardon?’
‘My favourite colour, it has always been blue.’
Staring at him, slightly dumbfounded, mostly pleased by his admission, I nod. He waits.
‘Oh,’ I realise. ‘Green. Emerald green.’
And we look and look and look at each other.
‘And I like sunshine yellow. Now we all know everything useful to know about each other.’ Calli breaks through the intensity of the moment, wiping the drool from her face and righting herself in her seat. ‘How much longer until we’re there? I have to pee.’
‘We’re halfway there,’ Eliaz says, flattening a dishevelled strand of her hair to her head. ‘We just passed the Hilver Valley and we’ll be approaching Auchternauld in the next hour.’
Calli groans, propping her elbow up on the windowsill, resting her head in her cupped hand. ‘I will wet myself if we don’t stop before that wretched dump of a town.’
We do, in fact, stop before the town they call Auchternauld.
And again, not ten minutes shot of the place, because Cole has had his fair share of Lillienne’s displeasure and claims she simply liked him so much that he had to swap carriages with Calli out of pure concern for Lillienne’s safety, lest her heart explode with the intensity of her love of him.
He was also insistent that it had nothing to do with the fact that Diarmid could not retain his vomit due to the motion of the carriage, despite conflicting claims.
By the time we reach the coast, we are deep into nightfall, and Arlinman is asleep, save for the crew of the ship, who welcome us at the docks.
All I see of the town is the flickering of lamplight against cobbled stone.
The wooden, decaying remnants of the harbour’s port.
It is too dark to make it out in the dimness of the sea, the sky melting seamlessly into the water, but there is a ship docked, the only indication of its presence the determined billowing of the sails in the battering, salted wind.
‘It is good to see you, Truman. I cannot thank you enough for your services. I hope I did not steal you from any existing plans to terrorise the seas.’ Eliaz greets the man I guess to be the captain with a shake of the hand and a respective pat on the back.
‘Anything for you, old friend, you’re looking young as ever. I never feel as old as I do, standing next to you.’ The silver-haired man spots Calli, propping herself upright on the railings, picking at her nails and yawning. ‘Calliope, you’re looking bored as ever.’
‘It’s the prospect of being stuck at sea, Mr Truman,’ she groans. ‘Is there anything less exciting in the whole entire world than a ship?’
‘I have an extensive supply of ale if that helps. We will entertain ourselves – I am certain of it.’
‘That has me convinced,’ Cole stands from his perch on the step of one of the carriages. Truman regards him with an air of scepticism, forehead creased with the lines of displeasure, but he smiles at him regardless, keeping up his outwardly friendly demeanour.
He scans the remainder of the group, Lillienne whose arm is linked with mine, and Diarmid, who lingers diffidently behind us.
‘Ah, I see we have quite the crew with us, pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Truman, master of all nautical trades. Eliaz and I used to potter away on the ships when we were but young boys if you can believe it or not.’
Eliaz smile widens, and he places an affectionate arm around his old friend.
‘He is being too kind, I was ancient before he was a decade old, but it is true we used to dream of ruling the seas before the seas were taken from us. Truman and his crew here, sail only within the parameters of Umbra and not a meter further, but tonight we will finally commit the sin of trespassing.’
He looks truly delighted at the prospect, and I think of the wall in his room, how long he has dreamed of a voyage into the Silver Sea.
How fateful it is that he finally gets to do it, even under these circumstances. He gestures towards us, leaning into Truman. ‘Here we have the endearing Lillienne and her stable-manager, Mr Erskine.’
‘He’s not my anything,’ Lillienne asserts, and Diarmid sniffles and shuffles on his feet, with nothing to add.
‘Dually noted,’ Truman laughs.
Eliaz locks his eyes on mine, not quite smiling, but something squished in the middle of happy and hesitant, he runs his tongue along his bottom lip, eyebrows arched. ‘And may I present to you, old friend, Miss Eira Delengranz, Princess and heir to the throne of Reyhen.’
Truman’s friendly countenance does waver, his eyes wide and disbelieving as he examines me from head-to-toe, lips taut in a wrinkled line.
A thought, or rather, a contemplation, makes itself apparent in the way he inhales slowly and holds it there, chest peaked and frozen, then dissolves in the exhale. He bows his head to me, a stiff and reluctant movement, before simply saying, ‘Princess.’
Eliaz picks up on the unusual reaction of his friend and clears his throat, his arm slinking free from the captain’s shoulders.
‘I say we get going, don’t you? Cole will collect our luggage.
Won’t you, Cole?’ He smirks smugly at his despairing friend, already walking towards where I assume the ship to be.
I can only vaguely make out the ramp of wood intended for us to board the ship.
‘Prick.’ Cole kicks a rock, heading to the carriages where the coachmen struggle with the trunks.
‘I like Eliaz much more by the second,’ Lillienne jokes in my ear, and something in me twists. ‘I mean, obviously he has the advantage of having saved my life, that sure gives him a leg up.’ I squeeze out a laugh, and we make a start towards the creaking wooden ship.
‘Wait for me!’ Calli calls, running over and linking with Lillienne’s free arm. Diarmid shuffles behind us, his feet occasionally colliding with the back of mine, most likely because he is too occupied gawping at the monstrous silhouette of the groaning, swaying, ship.
I swallow down any apprehension, even when Truman peers over his shoulder at me, unreadable.
Even when the rest of the crew descend on us, with a scrutiny that makes me feel guilty of a crime I did not commit.
A transgression passed down to me from my father, I would assume, because after all, I am the Princess of Reyhen.
And we are about to embark into enemy territory.