Chapter 13 #2
Cairn leaned forward, planting his hand on her desk with a wince. “Your secret’s safe with me, blind girl.” He paused. “For now. I don’t know how it works, but you’d better make it work enough to read these.”
Eiko swallowed, her fingers brushing the edge of the nearest book. The texture was uneven, with thick parchment on the earlier pages and thinner parchment later on, where the writer had probably run out of supplies.
Why is he offering to keep my secret? she whispered inwardly.
Hymn’s voice was hushed and curious. He needs you to trust him. He thinks I’m dangerous. He thinks I might burst you open and go on a murderous rampage through Goldmoor. It’s in his best interests if you believe you can tell him your secrets.
Eiko glanced at Cairn again. He was already opening one of the Whispering notebooks, flipping to the first page and stabbing his finger at it, the gesture sharp and impatient.
“Read,” he said. “Learn. The commander won’t wait for you to catch up.”
He pushed away from the table and snatched up his cane. “I have shit to do, so I can’t watch you all day. I’ll post a barracks attendant at the door—they can fetch your meals, because you won’t be leaving this room until you finish all of these.”
“I thought you were all worried about my monster?” she called after him—damn, the man was surprisingly fast. “Now suddenly you’re fine leaving me alone?”
His croaky laugh floated back to her. “Don’t flatter yourself, blind girl. We know what’s inside you. We know the signs. And if you do fail, that monster of yours won’t get very far. There’s no hiding now. No surprising us. We’re fucking ready for it.”
Sunlight crawled across the table, thinning and paling into the cool blue-grey of approaching dusk. She missed the nightjars outside her window back home. They would begin to sing soon.
What had been done with their little cottage?
Her thoughts kept straying to Rion and Ren’s families, and how heartbroken they must have been when they discovered what had happened.
She recalled the train attendant asking for their full names that first night.
She had been too busy thinking about other things at the time, but she now realised that word would have been left in Stonesigh, detailing the passengers who joined the Kingsweep before the train departed.
Rion’s mother only pretended to be as hard-hearted as she was hard-headed.
She would have taken the news with a straight face and calm questions, but she would have spent all her nights crying over a broken heart.
Rion wouldn’t have sent word to let her know she was alive; she was too smart for that.
She had seen Ron ripped apart on that clifftop.
She had spent every day since Silencing wrestling for control over her monster. Fighting to stay alive.
She would wait until she was certain she would live before she wrote home to tell them all she had survived.
Ren was more impulsive. He followed his feelings more than his head. He wouldn’t have been able to stand the thought of his parents grieving him. He would have written immediately.
Movement behind her jolted her from her thoughts, a handwritten book falling from her fingers and thumping painfully into her lap.
She gathered it up again and glanced behind her, squinting at the blurry outline of an attendant towards the front of the hall, who was lighting the lanterns.
Eiko had gathered her books and retreated to the rear of the hall, to a mostly covered alcove tucked into a corner, angled to the side of a window to still catch the light.
She didn’t want any of the attendants—or any soldier who decided to visit the library—to catch her reading.
The attendant Cairn had sent to wait on her was actually waiting on the other side of the library door, so at least she didn’t have to worry about him, but a couple of other attendants had slipped in and out of the library throughout the day.
Thankfully, none of them had ventured far into the hall.
She stopped trying to focus on the attendant and leaned back in her chair, pushing the books away.
Her eyes burned. Her head throbbed. Her second sight was beginning to blink in and out.
Attempting to read again after ten years was hard enough, especially with the written vocabulary of a ten-year-old, but then there was a whole new language that she didn’t even know verbally.
The language of monsters and Silencings.
Bits and pieces from the collection of notes on the Whisperings floated back to her in disconnected pieces.
Catastrophic danger.
Classless.
Silencing not possible long term.
Unstable manifestation.
Patterns of behaviour: large-scale destruction, risk-taking, skilled deception.
Cannot be controlled.
Cannot be contained.
She pressed her palms into her eyes.
“Welcome to the Godsguard,” she grumbled, “You might die at any time, but also please fill out this fifty-volume reading list, or you’ll be yelled at by a man with a cane.”
Hymn was too quiet, huddled within her throbbing mind. He didn’t even laugh at her joke.
You okay? she asked.
I didn’t lie to you, he insisted. Again.
I know, Hymn. It’s just … She swallowed. It’s a lot.
And for the love of the sun, it truly was. Every note had been written in tense script, some of the pages torn with haste as the writer scribbled in panic. Others carried watermarks that might have been sweat or rain, or blood, but the worst were the sketches.
The frantic, charcoal smears were hardly recognisable. Long, sweeping arcs of black. Shadows of beasts as big as castles. Notations of speed and size that shouldn’t have been possible. Sometimes a human silhouette was drawn beside those smudges. Torn apart. Fallen. Used and discarded.
Deceived.
She swallowed the nausea rising in her throat, and her fingers drifted to the other stack of books.
She had skimmed them earlier. They were all handwritten, some in a very sharp, uncompromising hand, others in an ordered and blocky, almost regimented script.
There were diagrams, notes on movements, arrows to animate the drawings, and margins all filled with clipped corrections and amendments.
She tried to absorb as much as she could, copying the gestures as it got harder and harder to focus past her dizziness.
She gathered lanterns on her desk to try and illuminate the pages better as night settled in, and when the attendant called from the front of the hall that he had brought dinner, she was barely seeing more than dull, shapeless blurs of greyscale colour.
Since her lunch tray had given her a surprisingly large burst of clarity with the second sight, she hurriedly tucked into the tray, attempting to restore it again.
There was a shallow clay bowl with a rich tomato-based stew, thickened with lentils and herbs.
Shreds of slow-braised meat melted into the sauce, and she could taste garlic, rosemary, and a hint of wine on her tongue as she shovelled it into her mouth faster than was really necessary.
Almost immediately, her tray sharpened into focus.
She could make out the olive oil shimmering across the top in a golden swirl, catching the lantern light.
There was a heel of crusty bread—dark, seeded, blistered in places from a stone oven.
When she pressed a finger to it, the crust crackled, giving way to a soft, steaming interior that smelled faintly of yeast and salt.
Her stomach grumbled, even though she was already eating.
She dipped the bread into a mound of whipped, soft cheese that seemed to be blended with honey and cracked pepper, almost moaning at the combination.
I think my power might affect your human body differently, Hymn noted thoughtfully. It seems to burn a lot of calories.
Eiko wasn’t even listening. She picked at a small dish of roasted vegetables, tasting the charred zucchini, blistered tomatoes, and slivers of red onion caramelised at the edges. They had been tossed with lemon zest and thyme, still carrying the warmth of the pan.
“Nothing but the best for the King of All’s finest soldiers,” she remarked around a mouthful of food, before adding, “Wait, what?” because she had been so focused on her tray that she hadn’t been paying attention to Hymn. The second sight doesn’t burn you out? she added internally.
Only since we Silenced, he admitted. It burns you out, so it burns me out. I could feel it burning through you as soon as you activated it the first time.
Damn, she grumbled, already getting distracted by the little plate of olives on her tray.
They were glistening with oil and tiny shards of herbs and tasted like the brightest heaven.
Whoever prepared the tray had tucked sprigs of fresh oregano between them.
After sampling everything savoury, she went back to the stew and cycled through each of the dishes again until they were all empty.
But she wasn’t done, because there was also dessert.
A single pastry sat on a small wooden board: flaky layers folded around a warm filling of spiced pear.
A drizzle of citrus syrup coated the top, studded with crushed pistachios.
The syrup still clung to the ridges, catching the light like amber as she raised it to her mouth and bit into it, now openly groaning.
Do you think I can ask for another tray?
I think the King of All’s finest soldiers could probably ask for anything. Hymn sounded very amused at her show of hunger.
Do monsters eat? Almost immediately, she regretted the question.
He took a moment to answer. Yes. You might want to finish that before we try to have this conversation.