Chapter 28 The Farewell
One level below the residential areas of the Trove, the narrow halls and passages all lead into one, wide, high-ceilinged room.
It lies toward the center of the mountain, so there's no natural light, but it's kept warm and bright by torches around the room and a big crackling fireplace at the head of the space.
Lining the center of the room are rows and rows of tables, and the people of the Trove use this as a communal dining hall and meeting space.
A carved doorway along one wall leads to a series of smaller rooms, and these are used as the kitchens and pantries.
During mealtimes, when all of the tables are crowded with chatter and eating, you can just barely make out the bustling and banging of pots and steaming and crackling of foods going on back in the kitchen area.
I was surprised to find a place like this among the Trove.
Araine and Jeksu and the others had mentioned the way the Trove was divided into factions, so a communal space where everyone mixes and eats and talks together was not something I expected.
When I first came here a couple nights ago, Araine explained it to me like this: About thirty years ago, when her mother was a young reformist in the Trove, she had wanted to create something that could bridge the gap between feuding factions.
Although this space was used for meetings even back then, it was only for whichever group had claimed it as theirs for the day or the night.
Different groups and families and individuals all fed themselves, mostly eating whatever they had hunted or gathered for themselves that day.
This wasn't work that really bothered anyone, but it meant some people, if they were injured or busy or couldn't hunt, had to depend on the kindness of others that wasn't always forthcoming.
Araine's mother had wanted to fix that, too.
So she had spent months and years—longer than such an achievement, on the surface, may have seemed like it would require—lobbying different groups and chatting up families and getting other people to support her idea to turn this room into a dining hall.
The biggest problem had been the question of who was going to dedicate so much of their time to hunting and cooking for the hundreds of people of the Trove, and Araine's mother had eventually solved it by proposing a rotating schedule.
Each week, one group of randomly selected Dragomira from all different factions would volunteer their time in the kitchens, preparing the food.
Most people knew how to cook enough rudimentary dishes that this was possible, and anyone without experience could learn from the others.
In addition, any faction leaders— people like Inobar and Besana, I assumed—who felt that kitchen work was beneath them, could get out of it by sending someone else to volunteer in their place.
And anyone who wanted to go out hunting or gathering—a thing which most people regularly did, because it was an opportunity to stretch their wings—could contribute to the kitchen stock.
If there wasn't enough food brought in to feed everyone, they planned to reevaluate the plan and assign specific people to the task.
But in all the years since the dining hall program had opened, Araine told me with a proud smile, there had never not been enough food.
Often there was too much, which was why certain rooms at the base of the mountain were kept cold enough to freeze things in for emergency supply.
Most everyone loved the dining hall program, because it meant they could eat a good meal every meal, rather than just gobbling up some raw meat in their protectorkin form. And it meant that even if someone hadn't had time to hunt that day, there was still a place where they could go to get food.
Of all the successes of the dining hall, Araine was the most proud of how it had done so much to bring about her mother's true goal.
To bring people together, and get the different factions to communicate and collaborate on something.
It had made the Trove into a more unified place than it had ever been before.
It wasn't every Dragomira for themself anymore.
It was all of them together, if only in this one thing.
Araine was almost misty eyed as she explained it to me, and though there was a part of me that felt this was much ado about a room to eat in, there was a bigger part of me that was endeared by how much she cared about this place.
The dining hall, and the Trove.
This was the kind of thing Cherry had been talking about.
The way that Araine made power and leadership into an act of love.
How she had earned the position she had, continuing the work of her mother before her.
This was the kind of leader, I realized, that Cherry wanted to be for Ithyma.
I just don't know if it is possible.
Ithyma is a much bigger place than the self-contained Trove.
And by all accounts, the basilisk king is a much fouler foe than any dragon or wyvern.
I don't know what it might take to make Cherry's vision a reality, but I don't think we have whatever it is.
As I make my way slowly through the tunnels toward the dining hall, clad in one of the spare tunics the people of the Trove keep stashed in corridors for emergencies, I allow Marton's words to resonate with me.
I know you think it's a bad idea.
You won't be helping anyone if you're dead.
These words scare me, because Marton is smart.
He makes plans, thinks things through. If he thinks confronting the king is a suicide mission, shouldn't I listen?
Can I afford not to?
But with the way Cherry has been touting her own independence, can I afford to abandon her in this?
Will she and Vakhrin try and face the king without me?
As I come to a bend in the hall, I hear Marton's all too familiar voice and freeze with my back pressed to the wall as I listen.
"—fine. Just strained the stitches is all.
"
The voice that responds belongs to Hamish.
"That's not fine. You're bleeding. What have you gotten up to?
I've told you and Vakh both, you can't heal if you won't rest.
"
Bleeding? My gorge rises and I taste smoke in the back of my throat.
Bleeding. I forgot about Marton's stiches, about the wound in his side from Inobar's claws.
Wounds he has because of me. Wounds that heal slowly because he's a human.
Wounds I forgot about when I seized him up so abruptly just now.
Sick to my core, I lift my nose into the air and sniff.
Human. Male. Leather and books. Rust and salt.
Marton is bleeding because of me.
Monster, monster, monster.
I turn on my heel and flee.
"Where have you been hiding?" Araine asks as I finally make it to the dining hall half an hour later.
Ariane is seated at a long table, looking happy as I've ever seen her in her spot sandwiched between Raku and Sartok.
Jeksu is on Raku's other side, Perilya beside him, with a line of vaguely familiar Dragomira filling up the rest of the table.
There are two empty seats directly across from Araine, and I catch whiffs of Cherry's human scent and Vakh's distinctive manticore smell on the air.
They were recently here.
As if she can read my thoughts, some of the cheerfulness leaves Araine's features.
"The princess and the manticore told me what you all have planned.
" Araine nods to the space my friends have vacated.
I slide into an empty seat, ignoring the uncomfortable prickles that climb up the back of my neck.
I feel cornered, like a prey animal caught in a snare or a child about to be scolded.
"What do you think?"
Araine tilts her half-empty chalice back and forth between her hands, her eyes glued to the contents.
She glances up to pin me with her gaze.
"I think it's the most dangerous thing anyone has done in five hundred years.
" I try not wince. "I think if you succeed, it could be the best thing anyone has done in a thousand years.
"
I gape at her. A wry smile climbs across her face.
"I'm not your leader, Tarah.
I can't tell you what to do. But I'd like to be your sister.
I'd like to be your sister for a long, long time.
" She reaches across the table to cover my hands with her own, and I try not to jerk them back in surprise.
"You have to do what's right for your people.
Whoever you decide those people are. You have a place here in the Trove if you want it, if you decide your people could be us.
If your people are Marton and Vakhrin and Cherry, then do what's right for them.
What's safest." A new weight enters Araine's eyes, and she swallows once before going on.
"But if you decide your people are the people of Ithyma, or all the kin of the world, then do what's right for them.
You'll be a better person than me."
The chattering of the Dragomira around us has quieted while my sister spoke, and I look to the left and right to see that the occupants of our table have all turned to gaze solemnly at me.
"I would go with you, if I could," says Raku, looking at me steadily.
"If I weren't needed here." He touches the table top, tilting his head each way to indicate Araine and his brother.
Around him, the others nod. And I understand.
I understand that these people all have each other.
They have a home that they've worked hard to build.
They won't abandon it for the good of a nation that's never been anything but cruel to them.
How much am I willing to give, for that nation?
How hard am I willing to fight for the good of everyone, when the safest thing for the people I care about would be to take them and fly fast and far in the opposite direction?