Chapter 15 #2
The announcement finished, the congregation gradually broke up, talk of the change still rampant among them.
A few watched me, perhaps figuring out who I was.
Needing to escape their eyes, I pushed through the crowd, picking out a path of least resistance.
As folks broke away, I spied Princess Azra again, only this time she had her head bent close to that of a staff member, a young woman around the princess’s age, whose name I didn’t know, but who had served at Rove Castle.
I’d seen her on occasion in the baths. Despite the noise of the throng, the woman spoke quietly, with a hand covering her mouth.
I shouldn’t have lingered, but I did, concerned, and so when Princess Azra lifted her gaze, she spotted me easily. She did not look happy.
I knew they’d discussed me, and not merely Renn’s mention of me just now atop the wall. I knew Azra was digging. She didn’t like that I’d stayed in the west tower. She didn’t like the closeness between me and her would-be betrothed. She likely already knew we’d ridden in together.
Beatty headed for the kitchen. Turning away, I followed her and busied myself peeling potatoes.
Not a half hour passed before I felt the kindling of frustration through the link.
I might not have noticed it had I not been so numbly focused on stripping potato skins with my mother’s knife, its citrine stone leaving a dent in my palm.
I wondered at it, but not five minutes later Sten appeared in the kitchen.
I readied an excuse. Renn and I, we had to distance ourselves—
“Princess Eden requests you,” Sten said, surprising me.
I wiped my knife on a borrowed apron, set it aside, and followed the guard into the keep.
He took me to a narrow room, a war room, perhaps, above the Great Hall.
My eyes first and foremost shot to Renn, who glanced my way and then pointedly avoided my gaze.
A square table with a map pinned to it sat before him.
Sir Arquan and Princess Azra stood to his left, and an Antsan guard just behind them.
He was a thick man, built more like Sten, with tan skin and brown hair cut somewhat similarly to Renn’s, if Renn were to grow his out for six months.
Princess Eden lingered inside the door. I moved to her side, confused, as Sten took his place to Renn’s right.
“—inappropriate. It will not sit well with the king,” Sir Arquan was saying, referring to his sovereign, King Vitsoph.
“You fail to recognize that without craftlock, we would not be having this conversation,” Renn retorted blandly, and frustration bubbled up softly against the basalt wall.
“Do you mean that Nicosia would not have breached Rove in a single night?” the emissary shot back. “To say magic is good because it can be is like saying a feral dog is good because it takes care of table scraps.”
I bristled but held my tongue.
“And yet Nicosia’s armies are full of them, Arquan,” Renn protested.
Princess Azra said, “You don’t fight feral dogs with feral dogs, Your Majesty. You shoot them.”
“Our men are mobilized and ready,” Sir Arquan reminded him.
“And I thank you for that, again.” Renn leaned on his hands on the table, peering over the map.
“But Sesta has prepared for this war for years. Neither Cansere nor Antsan have done the same.” He turned his head and coughed.
I instinctually took a step forward, thinking of the bloodied handkerchief, thinking of his lumis’s scars, but the cough was not productive, and I held myself back.
“I mean to end the fighting as quickly as possible, not draw it out for the sake of outdated sensibilities.”
“Is there a purpose for your attendance, Miss Tallowax?” Princess Azra asked.
All attention moved to me, Renn’s slowly, as though it pained him. Sure enough, a faded ache knocked against the basalt wall.
Eden answered, “Miss Tallowax is to be my master-at-arms for the incoming recruits.”
My pulse sped. “What?”
She looked at me and offered a small smile.
“Not because you are the only crafter here, but because you have shown immense deftness with your skill, as my brother has boldly pointed out. The messengers have already departed to spread the edict; I’ll need help organizing and preparing the incoming troops.
” She touched my shoulder, a whisper of contact, her expression turning pleading. “Please, Nym. I can’t do it alone.”
“It should not be done at all,” Sir Arquan complained.
“And yet as Eden has stated, I’ve sent out the messengers.” Renn pushed off the table, finding a spot on the wall to occupy his focus.
I swallowed. Nodded. “Of course. I would be honored.”
I felt out of my depth, and yet I craved something to occupy my time, my thoughts, and my energy. I’d lost much of my “deftness” with Ursa, but I would do my best.
When I turned back to the others, Princess Azra pinned me with a calculating stare.
Then she turned to Renn, expression melting to that of pleasantness.
“You are, of course, correct, Your Majesty. It isn’t our way; our crafters are sent to the south colonies to protect the masses.
But this is not Antsan, and this is not yet our war. We will follow your lead.”
Sir Arquan frowned but nodded.
Colonies. I tried not to grimace. I wasn’t familiar with the geography of Antsan.
I imagined me, Ursa, and Dan shipped away from Fount, away from our home, after manifesting powers.
Torn from the rest of our family. To do .
. . what? Live and farm in a new place where everyone possessed the craft?
Would it be violent and anarchist, or some sort of labor camp?
Renn dismissed the meeting; I eagerly left the room, desperate for some distance between us. It felt as though any sort of scab I began to lay over the gaping wound of him tore off the moment I saw him, smelled him, heard him. My chest ached with loss, and my head ached with lack of sleep.
Eden thankfully took me to her chamber so we might discuss plans for the incoming troops, and I blissfully lost myself in the work for hours.
When we’d finished and Eden turned to other tasks, I headed to the infirmary.
I knew it was wrong to take bliss in others’ injuries, but seeing three soldiers in the small space brought me relief.
When you’re relieved, it feels like the rain. Cool spring rain, Renn had told me. I wondered how much he could feel now with this wall between us, if he felt it at all.
But I needed to stop thinking of him. Somehow.
I introduced myself to Physician Addsmuch, who was thankfully happy to meet me and not at all perturbed by my abilities.
All three soldiers in the infirmary were men.
The first had a rolled ankle, which displayed in his waterfall-esque lumis as a small stone breaking the flow of water.
I repaired a torn shoulder and bad sunburn in the second.
The third possessed a hairline fracture in his forearm that Physician Addsmuch had already splinted, but he allowed me to balm it with the craft.
As the three men left, a new patient entered the infirmary—the Antsan guard who often shadowed Princess Azra. The same as from the war room.
I approached him. “Are you lost or unwell?”
“Is both an answer?” he asked, his Antsan dialect crisp and rhythmic, heavier than that of Sir Arquan’s and the princess’s. “My, uh, stomach hasn’t been feeling well lately. Don’t know if it’s the weather or the food.”
I crooked an eyebrow. “The weather has been pleasant.”
He shrugged. “Hell of a lot hotter here than back home. Should I . . . ?” He glanced between me and Physician Addsmuch, which took me right back to the conversation in the war room and the Antsan distaste for craftlock.
“I suppose you have your pick.”
He considered for a moment. “I’d pick having it over with sooner.”
I gestured at the nearest cot, and the man sat down. I reached for his jaw, but he instinctively pulled backward.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I promised. Sighed and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Jonras.”
“Jonras, I can take your hand instead, if you’d prefer, but I need to be touching your skin, and I ask you not to break contact until I’m finished.”
He nodded and held still. Since he didn’t proffer his hand, I gently placed my fingertips on his strong jaw and dowsed.
It took a great deal of self-control not to laugh at what I saw. His lumis was . . . a cake.
It was an enormous cake, colored more like mountains and river bottoms than any actual confection, but it was indeed a cake.
A full six layers, unadorned yet masterfully created.
I’d wondered if his claim of a stomach ailment was some sort of farce, but sure enough, what I could describe as nothing other than frosting dripped off the third tier.
I smoothed and cooled it before checking for any other maladies. Finding none, I released him.
Blinking, he touched his stomach. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
He sat with it a moment, as though waiting for some ill side effects to settle in. Finding none, he looked up at me. “Thank you, Miss Tallowax.”
I don’t know what it was, the gratitude or the sliver of mirth he’d given me, but I found myself somewhat contrite, reflecting back on the silly story I’d once woven myself for Renn, imagining him a farmer’s son and not a prince, someone I might meet at the bonfire and fall in love with, start a family with, live happily ever after with.
On a different turn of time, where I was still young, before the cruelness of men left me scarred and cold.
And I thought to the gods, If I had to have opened my heart again, why couldn’t it have been to someone like Jonras? Or Sten? Or even Kilg from the Rove kitchens? Why did I have to fall in love with the impossible choice?
Thorns pressed against the basalt wall, dulled but present, and I wondered if Renn sensed my grief, or if something else entirely guilted him.