24. The Pursuit of Truth
The Pursuit of Truth
Ilie back on the bed over the sheets. Meg kneels beside me, taking my hand. Hers feels smooth and unusually icy, like she’s cold-blooded.
“You’re going to need to keep very still,” she says, evenly. “And just a warning that I don’t know how successful this will be. I’ve only done this a few times.”
“Did you do it on other prisoners who lived in the Palace?” I guess. “Like, Rike?”
“Yes. I detected he’d been magicked and offered to remove it for him. I managed to get it all off. But yours seems particularly strong.”
My head feels clearer now. I’m finally grasping every thought that comes into my mind. Feeling grounded.
And all I’m thinking is, is this wise?
Can I trust her to do this strange procedure on me?
“Is this going to hurt? Like the way you hurt me, in The Bridge?”
“I didn’t hurt you,” Meg corrects me, looking amused again. “I just blocked you, and your magic rebounded.”
I’m gaping. “That was my magic?”
She looks at me sideways. “Weren’t you aware that’s what would have happened to me if I didn’t have blood magic immunity?”
“No. I just wanted to get you off me. Not hurt you—”
“You must have done, on some level. And I’ll admit, it was impressive. You could bring someone to their knees with power like that.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I keep quiet.
“Did you ever go into the maze in the palace gardens?” she asks, pushing back her straight locks off her shoulders.
“Yes. All the time.”
She lifts my hand to her face. “Good. I’ll use that as your path. This might feel a little like you’re dreaming. But keep going through the maze. And don’t stay in one place for too long.”
I nod.
She closes her eyes. Drags in a mouthful of air.
I feel it. A pressure that starts in the tips of my fingers, where she’s holding them. It travels like a crawling insect along my arms and then seems to invade my head, consuming it.
I’m drowsy. My fingers feel sweaty and weak, start losing their grip on hers, but she keeps my hand clasped tight. She’s spinning away from me. My eyes close of their own accord.
My heart races.
It's like falling into sleep when I don’t want to. Shouldn’t.
But I can’t fight it.
The darkness comes.
I’m in the maze in the palace grounds. It’s night. The hedges are shadowed. They seem thicker, taller, than I remember them, the paths between them narrower. I hear only silence.
I start walking. Turning a corner, I see a hole in the hedge. Through it is my old room in the palace.
I remember it. The thick, long drapes over sweeping windows. The woven rugs. The wallpaper of dainty, hand-painted pink roses. My bed with its embroidered covers. My mother, younger than I remember her, is sitting by it. Her light hair is braided elaborately, and her blue eyes are shining.
“You know that won’t be possible,” she says to the little girl in the bed, who can’t be more than five or six. There are tears in her eyes, which are identical to her mother’s. “Your treatment must go ahead today.”
Her words were spoken comfortingly, but they give the girl none. “But it hurts. So much.”
“It is the greatest of honours, Darling,” she insists. “For yourself, and for our family. And you will go through with it. Or you will go to bed hungry.”
The girl. I can feel her hunger. My hunger. This is the best way they can keep me in check. Keep me taking these treatments.
Footsteps. The doctor is coming.
The door at the far end of the room opens.
He’s a short Lartosi man, with greyish skin and spectacles. The needle he will put into one of my arms is centred on a plush red cushion.
I cry, harder.
“Please, Mother. Please.”
“The greatest of honours,” she repeats, lifting the plumed sleeve of my dress.
The puncture scars on my forearms are so red, so raw. I’m all bruises.
The doctor bends over. The needle is ready. It’s sharp. The liquid inside is a dark red.
The blood that will make me a queen goes into my skin.
The girl in the bed screams, and so do I, the woman she became.
That’s where the image ends. It remains stuck in time. Can’t move on from the girl just as the injection goes in.
And I know why. I don’t want to feel the pain she feels. The shooting up my arms. The way my head growls in reaction. Like the injection was awakening a monster within me.
A monster who would end me.
I hear Meg’s voice from somewhere beyond me.
“You’re in control, Ara. Move us along.”
Somewhere else. Where can we go?
I continue through the maze. Each turning seems to tell me a new story.
I see the grand funeral of the late king, held in the palace gardens.
I remember it all now. The black horses dressed in feathers, the dramatic mourning clothes with high collars we had to wear, the harpists and the never-ending violin music.
It was a loveless marriage between second or third cousins, to strengthen the magical bloodline, but you would never have known that from the nature of the affair.
And the way the Queen howled into my mother’s shoulder.
There I am, dining on a meal of six courses, the most prominent members of court around me.
The Queen and my mother are beside me. They are the two most powerful women in the country, and they look it.
Immaculately dressed and coiffed. Formidable.
Opposites in their looks – one so fair, the other so dark.
But they share other things. Their ambition. An intensity.
Maybe, a little darkness.
Next, I find a hole where I’m older, twelve or thirteen.
My tutor is teaching me and the Queen’s daughter, the young Crown Princess Faye, who must only be six or seven.
I’d never realised I’d even spoken to her, let alone been taught privately with her.
My tutor flicks through an enormous book of hand drawn portraits.
We must remember who these people are, for when we meet them.
We must know their likes and dislikes. How they would want to be addressed.
The topics they would prefer to discuss, in the way of speaking they would best respond to.
He closes the book. Princess Faye is dismissed. And my tutor and I begin the most important lesson. A lesson I have had many, many times.
It is devoted to one person, and one person only. The person I am to marry.
My tutor quizzes me. How would he like to be addressed by me, when we meet?
By his first name only, I answer.
What does he believe will make a good ruler?
Power, I reply. And the ability to wield it.
What are his fears?
The dark, currently. And this, failing.
The image ends.
I move on through the maze.
There I am, around the same age, staring at a prisoner through the bars of his cell. My mother and the Queen are behind me. They want me to make him feel pain. I am trying to summon something, anything, from my mind. But I can’t. The man laughs at me through missing teeth.
My mother and the Queen look disappointed. I will be going to bed without dinner.
“I want to get out,” I say. And I realise it’s not the girl in the dungeon saying it, but me, back in the room with Meg.
“It’s too soon,” Meg says. “We have years left to recover. Keep walking.”
“I want to get out,” I repeat, with force.
I stand in front of a hedge. Push it, like it’s Meg I’m pushing against.
But the hedge shoves me back and I hit the cold, damp ground.
I want to lie here. Refuse to move any further. See any more.
Then, slowly, I smell incense.
I’ve always loved the scent. It makes me feel at peace. It reminds me of –
“Old Mother?” I yell, following it.
And there she is, on the other side of another hedge. She’s in her room, in her huge armchair by the fire. She has her arm around a younger version of me – but I’m the oldest I’ve seen myself. This can’t have been long before the war.
“Old Mother,” I shout, through the gap.
It was a stupid thing to do. She can’t hear me, because that’s not what I’m saying to her, in that moment.
What I’m actually saying in that room, is, “I never asked for this. I hate it.”
She strokes my back with her bony fingers. With her other she lifts a single card from the tiny table at her feet. She’d laid out a deck of cards for us, something she’d been doing a lot more recently, because of the concern that war might finally break out.
Back when Hevalla was a monarchy, it actually had a good trading relationship with Rhavna, and the Sea of the Sisters regularly saw travel between the two countries.
That all changed about two hundred years ago, when Hevalla’s last king was executed and the country became a republic, which in many ways weakened it, and it began to resent Rhavna’s magic and wealth.
It threatened us regularly with war, which it claimed would be an act of mercy to free the oppressed.
Those threats had never materialised on account of Hevalla’s general impoverishment.
But my country’s relationship with our old ally Lartos had recently soured for reasons unknown to me and the Palace believes a new alliance between Lartos and Hevalla has been forming, with Lartos supplying its tech to the country.
If Hevalla now has Lartos’ support, it’s not good news for us.
The card Old Mother is showing the younger me is the Card of The Soulmates. I’d seen it many times in my life. The image of the man and woman in their finery, their hands entwined, haunted my dreams.
“I know,” the younger me in her arms says, weakly. “A fairy-tale ruined my life.”
I read the gestures Old Mother’s hands make. Superstition is rooted in truth. The old stories are—
“Prophecies,” the younger me replies, looking at the fire crackling in the fireplace. “You know I don’t believe that. There is no such thing as soulmates.”
She corrects me. There has been no such thing, yet. The fortune was very clear.
“If war breaks out tomorrow, at least we’ll be free. With Eric.”
Old Mother is signing again.
Free doesn’t mean any safer.
“I don’t care. At least I’ll be as far away from the Queen of Hubris as possible.”
Do not call her that. She gave you a gift many only dream about.
“Yes. A gift I have yet to receive. From a husband I have yet to meet. A husband no one thinks exists. It’s almost like she’s given me exactly nothing.” I add, “Except these.” I show her my scarred arms. The scabs have fallen and the bruises have healed.
But these marks will never fade.
Tears fall down my face. In the dream, and in real life.
Old Mother hugs the me in the image, who sinks into her. Feels so safe.
And it’s almost like I’m there – I suppose, because once, I was. I can feel her willowy arms around me. The knit from her shawl. The fire warming our bones, as the smell of incense wafts over us.
I’m going to join them.
I grip the edges of the hole. The warmth of the room envelops my fingers. I lift my leg.
Try to jump up.
But the hole hurls me out, like I hit a solid wall, and the maze is peeling away. Soon, it’s gone completely.
The floor beneath me smells of polished wood. It’s hard. Warm.
I’m panting, staring up at the ceiling.
I’m in Meg’s cabin again. I must have, at some point, fallen off the bed.
She’s still holding my hand. I snatch it away from her.
“Why did you stop me?” I hiss. “I wanted to stay.”
“That’s why I had to get you out. You don’t want to get yourself locked in your own mind.”
She looms over me.
“What was that memory about, anyway? What husband? The Queen has no sons. Who were you promised to?”
I offer her my hand. “Let’s go again.”
But Meg’s lip curls, and she sits back on her thighs.
“While I’d love to dig deeper, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You seem distressed. We’ll have to try again tomorrow.”
“Please.”
She looks at me, softer than usual. “Memories can come back on their own. Just think it all through tonight. Maybe just doing that will unlock some more.”
The Soulmates.
The eerie notes from a tune on a flute float into my mind.
It’s the song that had played at the morale booster.
“Rike,” I say. “We need to speak to Rike.”
I’m getting up. But Meg stands, too, and blocks my path.
“Slow down. You’re still coming off osimidite. The last thing you should be doing – for yourself and your Integration – is walking around the ship raving about Rhavnan folklore.”
She rises to her feet. Turns up her bedsheets.
“Get some sleep. And maybe then, when you’ve calmed down and you’re fully sober, we can try again.”
Fluidly, she moves away. Turns off the light.
The bed, its crisp sheets now peeled back, is definitely tempting.
Giving in, I get under the sheet and pull it right up to my chin, like I could drown under it. Never resurface.
The events of the day catch up to me. My last thought is of Cosmer – if he’s okay – before I let sleep engulf me.
Old Mother is here, in my mind. I can smell incense and herbs and her own scent, something ancient and somehow magical.
I call to her. She finds me.
She’s asking me where I was. She couldn’t get to me last night.
“Is it really you? I thought I was just dreaming of you.”
She smiles. Kisses me on each cheek.
“I’m so happy,” I say. “I have so much I need to tell you, and ask you—”
She gestures madly. Milky eyes wide.
–Don’t close your mind off to me like that. It’s not safe.
“I was fine,” I promise. “I was just with someone.”
Who? her eyes ask.
“Cosmer,” I whisper. “He’s alive, Old Mother. He’s alive, and we’re in love.”
Her eyes widen.
–This is dangerous. Very dangerous.
I’m scoffing. “How can love be dangerous?”
–What do you even know of love, child?
Now I’m angry. I thought Old Mother, at least, who knew Cosmer so well, had been so fond of him, would have been happy for me.
I pull away from her. Look at her differently. Accusingly. “Did you know the Queen took away many of my memories?”
Her face instantly tells me she does.
It makes me recoil from her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
–To protect you. And the wishes of the Queen – and your mother.
She has a single card in her hand. She lifts it. Flips it over.
The Card of The Choice.
–Make the right one.
A plume of smoke swallows her. It had come from her incense.
Except –
It couldn’t have done. Because it had the distinct smell of fire, and melting metal.
“Ara, get up!”
Smoke. I can smell smoke.
“What’s happening?”
It’s dark. Meg is over me. Her hair is mussed. Her eyes are wild.
“We’ve been ambushed, and the ship is burning.”