41. The Counterbalance
The Counterbalance
I’m still up on the platform. Even through the goggles of the oxygen mask, I can see the sky is brighter – and looks so close. Sharp black shapes are wheeling through it.
Vultures.
I’ve never seen birds up here. I didn’t even know they could fly this high. The Emperor is moving, sailing smoothly again, and it’s like they’re following us. Planning to prey on us.
Hands I know must be Drake’s slide along my back and ease me up. Then, slowly, he lifts the mask off me.
“Can you see those?” I ask him, still looking at the birds. My raspy voice rubs against my windpipe as I talk.
“Lartosi vultures,” he replies, sitting back on his knees. “Highest flying birds in the known world.”
Glimpsing him properly, I see he’s slightly hunched. There’s an oddly watchful look in his eyes while he studies me, like maybe he thinks I might pass out again.
He saved me.
Even though I never agreed to a truce between us.
I spot the beginnings of a new bruise under his chin. A flush creeps into my face.
“Did I punch you?”
“You did.” He smirks to himself. “Hurt me more than when you tried to use magic on me, actually. You should be proud of yourself.”
I know he’s joking, but I feel terrible. “I’m sorry. I thought you were—”
“Trying to drug you,” he says simply. “I gathered that. The lack of oxygen to your brain brought on dissociation. Osimidite works similarly.”
I sit up, and realise Dezeeves is kneeling opposite us.
“Where’s Cosmer?” I demand.
Don’t have thrown him out. Don’t have thrown him out.
Dezeeves grimaces. Or maybe the sunlight is in his eyes. “In the infirmary,” he answers, his lips looking dry and clear, like fish scales. “Scaling a ship at high altitude – especially while it is in motion – is not something we recommend. It was best he be checked over.”
I snort. “Do you even have any medics left to check him over? Since you evacuated your whole crew?”
Dezeeves bows his small head. “I have a medic and a cook. Several engineers – I believe you would have met one, when you were able to have Cosmer locked out. It was not a small feat, the planning for this undertaking. The Queen was becoming impatient. But everything had to be just right.” He’s fiddling with his ponytail in an agitated way that remains me of his son.
My eyes narrow. “What’s wrong? You don’t look nearly as happy as someone whose careful planning perfectly worked out.”
He peers at me, as if seeing me from afar. “That would be, because it hasn’t, Ara.”
I wait for him to elaborate.
“I am afraid we have, in Drake’s words, let our hearts rule our heads. Cosmer coming to Rhavna with us will displease the Queen.”
“Dezeeves,” I say, trying to keep my temper. “If you’re referring to my relationship with Cosmer, Drake and I just proved we can combine our magic when there isn’t anything romantic between us. Maybe we wouldn’t need to marry at all. Maybe we’ve been thinking about this all wrong—”
Dezeeves holds a finger up to stop me. Looks between us accusingly. “Are you quite sure there is nothing romantic between the two of you?”
“Of course,” I say at once. “We’re barely friends.” I add quieter, because Drake is watching me unnervingly, as if I’ve offended him, “currently.”
Dezeeves looks crushed.
“I did everything right,” he says, more to himself.
A sheen of light over him is making him look paler.
“Assigned you to keepers who were known to be good friends, and would generally keep you together as a group of four. Even placed you with Meg, briefly, whose curiosity and ambition would make her likely to help you recover any of the memories that you may have still been missing. I allowed you to talk amongst yourselves, privately, many times. I ensured The Soulmates would be played at the morale booster, to see if that would return to you your memories of the fortune. Even your meeting, which had seemed to go so well—”
“Our meeting,” I say, edged.
“The Dragoness was an old and dying ship,” he explains.
“Her downing was planned. There were suspicions around my loyalty to Hevalla. There have been suspicions the moment I began my Integration work. Leading The Dragoness mission solidified my loyalty in The Assembly’s eyes – and downing the ship, whilst ensuring Drake’s escape through spies we had on board, allowed you both to meet in circumstances that would encourage a faster bond to form. ”
I’m still as the sun above us.
I’m longing to feel shocked.
At this point, I am so used to everything in my life being a lie that I hardly even feel surprised.
“Many people died on that ship. Drake would have died,” I seethe. “If I couldn’t save him.”
“We were confident you would. We knew the bond would activate upon your meeting, strengthening the both of you.”
I let my voice sour. “Cosmer could have died under your watch, too, many times. Through his addiction, or his Sacrifice. You and the Queen have no regard for human life, Dezeeves,” I spew.
“And love is not something you, or her, can design. Even if you play around with two people’s magic and engineer every interaction they’ve ever had.
” I say, confidently, “I do not believe, after this morning, I need to marry Drake. I have accepted the union – but not romantically. I will still live at court, but not as a queen. I will still be the…” I remember Old Mother’s word for it. “Counterbalance, to Drake. Be an—”
I look at Drake. There’s something I can’t read on his face.
Isn’t there always?
I could almost convince myself it is pain.
“—advisor to him,” I continue, kindly. “And a friend.”
Drake doesn’t react for a moment.
Then, he nods.
I add, to Dezeeves, “But I won’t be stopped from being with the person I love.”
Dezeeves just looks small. Hunched. Like the flawed, middle-aged man he is.
As a final parting shot, knowing he will understand me, I conclude, “And, after abandoning him as a baby, drugging him in the brig, and who knows what else – it’s time you did the right thing by him. Allowed him a chance at happiness.”
He sucks his teeth. His eyes, which were already an unusually colourless colour, like weak tea, water themselves down even more.
“I will discuss all of this with the Queen upon our arrival to Rhavna. But,” he says, stepping on my hope before it has sprung, “I cannot think she will take kindly to any changes in her plans.” He looks at Drake in a way I can only describe as distrustfully.
“There were reasons, after all, that they were put in place.”
He rises to his feet.
“Come back to The Bridge when you are ready.” He shrugs.
“Or, do not. It is a beautiful day.” He holds out his thin arms. “Mourn your dead, and try to enjoy being in the air – I always do. Our estimated arrival to the dome is eight past the hour tomorrow morning. Life in the sky can be regimented. Harsh.” He stares at me, as if trying to tell me something. “But the ground has its shackles, too.”
With that, he makes his departure briskly yet soundlessly.
Drake and I get to our feet, too.
He says, quietly, “Would you like to take a walk around the deck? I have not seen the garden yet.”
He sounds hopeful, somehow. But I shake my head.
“I need to check on Cosmer.”
His mouth thins. “Right.”
And then I remember there is something I haven’t yet done.
“Thank you,” I say. “You calmed me. Saved my life.”
He definitely isn’t a tyrant. Yet.
“And you saved mine on your beach,” he counters, dismissively. “We are even.”
“No. I have been racking up a debt to you I didn’t even know about. Your defence for Cosmer. Helping me during evacuation. Even—” My breath hitches. “—not kissing me, when they wanted us to.”
His face lowers to mine. “If I ever kissed you, it wouldn’t be under duress, in a room full of our enemies.”
He must be trying to humour me.
“It’s beside the point. We never will. Kiss.”
He cocks his head. “A shame. I would have loved to know what would have happened if we did.” His fingers twitch at his sides. “The power released could be immeasurable.”
I struggle to find the right words. “We’re strong enough as we are.”
“Are we?” he asks, pointedly.
“Talk to me properly. You know I hate those answers as questions. Like you’re mocking me.”
“I have never mocked you.”
I need to end this conversation. It’s made me flustered. Like I’ve let him get in my head again.
“See you in Rhavna, Drake.”
I turn towards the stairs – but he calls out to me.
“Were you being truthful to Dezeeves, Ara? When you said you believe there is nothing romantic between us?”
My step – and my breath – falter.
“Yes. Of course.”
I look at him over my shoulder. The sun is lighting him from behind. With his dark hair and deep tan, he looks shadowed. Powerful. Like the sun is naming him the moon.
“Why?” I ask him. “Do you disagree?”
His voice is small, as though it’s reaching me from the other end of the deck. “You know I disagree.”
No.
I can’t hear this. I need to keep walking.
I need to keep walking.
“Don’t say anything else,” I warn him. “Don’t ruin this. You heard Dezeeves agree to help me be with Cosmer just now. It’s decided.”
He shifts his feet. “Just try not to get too upset when things don’t work out the way you hope they might. How does the old Rhavnan saying go? Make a plan, so do the Sisters.” Rigidly, he adds, “And remember your suffering is just as painful for me as it is for you.”
“Things will work out.” Exhaling a puff of air, I snap, “I thought you were supposed to be the optimist!”
He looks at me gently, like he’s about to bring me bad news but knows I need to hear it. “No. Remember what I told you. I am only one when the facts allow it.”
This isn’t a truce at all.
He’s still trying to play some game with me.
I start walking again. Reach the foot of the stairs on the deck itself.
He leans over the wooden railing protecting the platform. Traps me with another sentence that he throws down at me like a noose.
“You want things you can’t have, Ara – and that is understandable. But I promise you it’s all right to want things you can.”
I leave, ignoring him on the platform, and half wishing he might fall right off it.
I’ve never been in the infirmary, but I know it’s somewhere on Deck 8, the deck I’d liked least with its hardened gunners manning cannons and the unpleasant woman, Kira, in the armoury.
Now the deck is empty, I don’t feel the same unease I felt.
The only people here are a few soldiers, who by their looks must be Rhavnan, stationed at a couple of the centremost cannons.
Many of the lights are off. The armoury, on the left-hand side of the deck, is shut.
I walk to the right, following a hallway. I can see light at the end of it.
I hear Cosmer’s loud voice before I see him, and it’s like my world became animated again.
“No. No. I am not a fish. I don’t need hydrating.”
I enter the light, and it’s like it enters me.
Because there he is, in his crumpled shirt and breeches, looking dank-haired and tired and bloodshot-eyed and unkempt and not perfect in any way. But he is.
He is.
He turns away from the rubber balloon hanging up on a brass rack on wheels he was being presented with by the middle-aged, kind-looking woman I’d seen earlier on The Bridge.
Not caring that she’s right there too, I hurtle to him, fast and panting, like I’m escaping from something. My arms throw themselves around him so hard he stumbles back.
“I couldn’t hold on any longer,” I breathe into his chest. “I’m sorry.”
Slowly, I feel it. His arms – which hadn’t actually been that tight around me to begin with – are now completely slack.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, looking up at him.
“You made me take your mask,” he says, his voice croaky like mine from our exposure to thin air. But there’s something else under that.
“I had to,” I reply. What does he want me to say?
He stares at me, and it’s the strangest expression, like relief and love and heartbreak all in one. “I told you not to use your magic on me.”
“I used it to save you—”
He drags a hand down his face. “Yes. And if you’d died because of me, I’d never have been able to live with myself—”
“And if you’d died in front of me, and I didn’t do anything to help you, I’d never have been able to live with myself.” I look at him differently. “If you don’t want me to risk my life for you, don’t put yourself in situations where I need to.”
He’s shaking his head, roughly. “That’s not fair. I was just trying to get back to you.”
I can’t do this. Can’t argue with him. When all I want is to hold him.
“Cosmer. Can we just forget about this? You’re alive – we’re alive. And I have so much to tell you,” I say, letting myself be happy again. Hopeful. “Things have changed. I’m not going to marry the person I was promised to. I found another way.”
Something flashes up on his face. His mouth tweaks. “Really.”
“Yes!” I’m beaming at him. Because this might be the happiest I’ll ever be, and I want him to know that. “I’m yours.”
“You’re mine,” he repeats, like he can’t believe it. But then a smile plays on his lips.
“Yours,” I say again, pushing my face right up to his. I could breathe in his freckles like dust.
The medic – I’d completely forgotten she was even there – murmurs, “I will leave you both alone.”
“No,” Cosmer states, without looking at her. “You stay. We will leave.”
“You’re supposed to be on bed rest.”
“That’s where we’re going. Our cabin. To… rest.” He gives me one of his beautiful crooked smiles. I could see hundreds of them and still feel surprised by them. The way they make me feel.
“What shall I tell Dezeeves?” she asks. “He was concerned for your welfare.”
“Tell him, right this second, I’ve never been better.”