Chapter 31.5 The Leader
"I've missed seeing that look on your face.
"
I blink up at Marton, touching my cheek self-consciously.
"What look?"
"The fascinated-by-globes look.
" He starts to smile. "The dragons-aren't-so-bad look.
The please-Marton-let-me-keep-this-map look.
"
I narrow my eyes at his stupid grin, feeling a wild and involuntary kick at my heart at the vibrancy of him.
He's so happy. Just like that. I've been making him so miserable when all it took to make him smile was this.
"I'm keeping the map.
"
He only laughs again.
I roll my eyes at him, though my chest feels weird and.
..glowy. I turn away to stow my treasure in my pack.
That night we camp at the edge of the foothills, the sprawling openness of the lowlands laid out before us.
And I know it is time to speak.
I stay standing as the others collapse tiredly around the fire.
Marton and Cherry arguing over a deep pot or a shallow one to use for cooking dinner.
Vakhrin cleaning his nails with a small blade, already finished laying out our dinner ingredients of hunted game and root vegetables donated by the people of the Trove.
"Our plan to face the king is a bad one.
"
They all freeze, their tasks and arguments forgotten, when I speak.
I force myself to go on, although I want to shrivel under Cherry's startled gaze.
I feel as if I'm betraying her somehow.
"Tarah—" Vakh tries to interrupt.
"No, listen to me. You were right, Vakh.
I know you're right that we need to do this.
That it needs to happen. I agree. But the way we've been planning to go about it—it's all wrong.
Head-on and foolish." I look to Marton, and he slowly nods his agreement, seeming surprised.
"We can't just...rush straight into the basilisk king's territory.
Not if he is a basilisk. Not if what everyone says about basilisks is true.
They make you see things. They can...control and affect the mind.
We can't fight that with teeth and claws.
Can't fight it with determination, or-or aplomb.
" That earns me a few chuckles. "We need.
..foreknowledge. None of the people we've met have known anything about how to beat a basilisk.
Just about how our people all lost so terribly to them the first time.
So we need...better sources. We need..."
"We need to do some research," Marton finishes.
A new light has turned on in his eyes at the prospect.
"Yeah," I agree, suppressing a wince.
"We need to do some research."
"But.
..how?" Vakh asks. "The Academy—"
"The Academy didn't have any research on basilisks except to prove how they don't exist." Marton rolls his eyes, fiddling with the edge of a copper pot.
"And I'm not sure we'd be welcome back there at this point, anyway.
" He gives me a look.
Now I do wince.
Vakh snorts. "So where.
..?"
"I don't know." I raise and drop my hands at my sides.
"But we've got two of the best people in the world for answering that question.
" My statement is directed at Vakhrin, and it takes both Cherry and Marton a moment to realize I mean them.
"What?" Cherry leans forward.
"Us? Me?" She touches her chest. Tries and fails to look confident, flattered, before her forehead crumples in confusion.
"I'm not exactly a scholar—"
"But you are.
On this subject, you may know more than anyone else in the realm.
You were born in that palace, Cherry. Raised by the king.
If anyone might accidentally have stumbled upon his secrets at some point, it's you.
And Marton is a scholar. He knows all about.
..libraries and legends and where we could look to find answers.
The two of you together—your knowledge of Ithyma, of basilisks, and of the king—you make us strong.
" I look from Cherry to Marton, each of them appearing surprised to be consulted.
Vakhrin half-smiles at me.
"So that's what we're doing now.
" I clasp my hands together, trying to channel Araine's competence.
"The new plan is to think. And to figure out where we can go to find answers.
We need to figure out how to defeat a basilisk before we actually confront one. "
"We had a summer home," Cherry says, braiding a dozenth intricate plait into her hair.
She always fiddles with her hair when she's thinking hard about something, and the hours we've spent going around in circles have led to her head looking a bit like a braided rug.
"By Tombland Lake in the east. We used to go there when the city grew too hot and stifling.
It had a library...I think. There were also stables.
I had a pony named..."
"Not with the ponies again," Vakhrin groans.
"How many ponies did you have, princess?
"
Cherry frowns in thought.
"Only two at the palace. At the consulate in the north there were a few more.
Ponies fare better than horses in cold weather—"
"They have less surface area," puts in Marton.
He has a stack of parchments in front of him—documents he managed to collected or was gifted by members of the Trove.
He's been pouring over them for details about basilisks, but most of the knowledge is old and highly stylized.
"Not as exposed to the elements. Some pony breeds have naturally thicker coats, too, and they can modulate their metabolic—"
"Basilisks," Vakhrin reminds them, flopping backwards on his bedroll with a groan.
"We're supposed to be talking about basilisks.
Not Cherry's butterscotch pony."
"That pony's name was Caramel, and you know it.
"
"I think we should turn in for the night.
" I have to fight a sigh. We've been at this for hours.
Quizzing Cherry on her half-forgotten childhood memories.
Quizzing Marton on his endless, but not always well-directed, scholarly wisdom.
All Cherry remembers are the parts that she cherished and missed all these years—the lavish homes and the ponies and the holidays by the water.
I could never forget that she's a princess, but it is strange to hear new details of the life she once lived without me.
"We aren't getting anywhere." I rub my bleary eyes.
"The library at the summer home," Marton objects.
"That could be something."
"Cherry, what kind of books did they have at this library?
"
Cherry bites her lip.
"Not big on libraries, were you, princess?
" Vakhrin ribs with a grin.
She narrows her eyes at him.
"Did you study often in your itinerant childhood, manticore?
"
His smile drops.
Cherry goes on, "I had an entourage of tutors and nannies, alright?
They carried my books, kept me apprised with my studies, read me stories when I asked for them.
I was spoiled rotten, yes. I was catered too and fussed over.
I didn't lift a finger if I didn't want to.
So no, I never explored any libraries. I didn't have to.
Anything I wanted was brought to me. And then I was locked in a tower for eight years without any food that hadn't been roasted by dragon fire, with only one friend to talk to, with no way to escape and no place else to go.
My life was a dim room filled with ashes.
I resewed my old dresses a hundred times and I cried and I waited and I wished.
I wished only to be spoiled again." Her eyes fill with tears, and she clenches her fists.
"So I deserve to be mocked, I know, because I've been selfish and petty and silly.
" A tear falls and she wipes it away fiercely with the back of one hand.
Her eyes meet mine. "I know I have been.
But I didn't know any better, back then.
No one told me that I should be any different.
" She looks away. "No one told me."
"Cherry," Vakh says gently, "I didn't mean—"
"I know you didn't." She sniffles, tries to smile.
"I'm just exhausted. All the travelling.
All the," she waves a hand, "everything.
After everything I've learned, I guess I would still really like to be spoiled again.
"
"There's nothing wrong with that," Vakh says quickly, surprising me and, by the looks of it, Cherry too.
"There isn't," he maintains. "There's nothing wrong with wanting.
..comfort. Stability. A place with...people and things that belong to you.
I've never had that, and if I had, I would never stop wishing for it back.
" He sits up, meeting Cherry's eyes as he makes his point.
"There's no reason for you to feel guilty, for wanting what you want, or for being who you are.
You are a princess. The Princess of Ithyma.
Those castles and the ponies and the summer homes—they belong to you.
They were yours by right and someone took them from you.
Took you away from everything and everyone you had ever known and forced you to live like—"
He breaks off there, but I know what he means.
"Like one of us," I finish hoarsely. "One of the banished kin.
" Isn't that what I would have been, eventually?
Where I would have ended up, even if the king hadn't asked me to take Cherry to the tower.
The people in my village had always been afraid of me, distrustful, and I was just a girl.
How much worse would it have gotten, when I became an adult?
When my dragon form grew with me to something so much larger and stronger than they were.
How long could I have lived there among those frightened humans before the torches and the pitchforks came out?
Cherry dries her face on her dress.
Looks with apathy at the traveling filth clinging to the fabric.
"Something has been taken from all of us.
The four of us, and everyone else, too. From the whole realm.
" Her gaze rises, tracks from face to face.
"We've all been...forced into shapes that don't fit.
We were born to be princesses and protectors and scholars of magic, and they lied to us.
They tricked us, and they sent us away. To find on our own what we were always meant to know.
Who we were meant to be. And it isn't what they made, and it isn't what they want.
But we're here. We're real, and they can't pretend us away.
We're going to find what other secrets they're hiding, and we're going to bring them all into the light.
"
I close my eyes, feeling the weight of those words settle.
A new duty. This is how the dark age ends.