The Bird and the Sword (12 page)

“Kjell!” All the laughter fled Tiras’s voice, and I heard him draw his sword as well, though I dared not move my eyes from the furious warrior before me. The word coming off his skin was
destroy
.

Destroy
.

“Are you like your whore mother?” Kjell whispered, his eyes never leaving mine.

My mother was a Teller. Not a whore.

“A Teller,” he whispered, confirming that he could, indeed, hear me loud and clear. The tip of his sword tapped the underside of my chin. I tried not to gasp when I felt the sharp nick, and in my mind I heard my mother whispering into my tiny ears before she closed her eyes for the last time.

Swallow, Daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power. Curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell. You won’t call on heav’n or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive.

I hadn’t hidden the words well enough. I hadn’t stayed silent. Now I would die.

A
drop of blood slid down my neck and between my breasts. Then another.

“Will you kill me too, Kjell?” Tiras asked, his voice a strained whisper. I didn’t understand the question. Obviously, the king’s life was not in danger at the moment.

Kjell looked to his king, his throat working, and I saw the horror and indecision in his face. He was afraid of me and afraid for Tiras.

“I would give my life for yours,” Kjell told Tiras, and
truth
rose around him. I did not doubt him. He would save the king at all costs, and he wouldn’t hesitate to run me through.

“You can’t kill her, Kjell. Put down your sword,” Tiras warned.

“But the law . . .” Kjell protested.

“You were willing to break the law when you thought she could heal me,” Tiras interrupted.

“You said she couldn’t,” Kjell argued, his voice rising.

“She can’t. Not the way we hoped.”

I was bleeding, they were talking around me, and I didn’t understand all the things they weren’t saying.

“Put down your sword, Kjell,” Tiras commanded again, and his voice harbored no argument.

Kjell lowered his weapon reluctantly, but he didn’t sheath it. The blood continued to slide down my neck and pool between my breasts, but I didn’t wipe it away or lower my gaze.

Why would he kill you?
I asked the king. Kjell sneered at my bravado.

“The question is, what good are you to us? We are losing the king, just as your mother foretold. And you are unable to heal him.”

“Kjell!” Tiras warned softly.

I’d forgotten my mother’s curse. Suddenly, I could hear her voice the way it echoed across the courtyard of my father’s keep, warning the king as he told her to kneel before him.

You will lose your soul and your son to the sky
, she’d said.

Tiras was that son.

And there was something terribly wrong.

We were interrupted by a clattering of boots and shouts, and several of the king’s guard burst into the garden, genuflecting even as one began to speak. The king stepped neatly in front of me, shielding me from their view.

“Your Highness. The members of the delegation are starting to arrive. The Lord of Corvyn and the Ambassador from Firi along with representatives from several other provinces and their entourages. Should we escort them individually?”

My father was in Jeru.

“How many men?” Kjell asked.

“Two score and ten, sir,” someone answered.

“Allow them to enter,” Tiras said calmly. “Escort them here and provide them room and refreshment. Make sure there is a guard detail on each member of the delegation, just as we discussed.”

“Yes, Majesty,” the men replied and left the garden as hastily as they’d arrived.

“Go to your room. I will send Boojohni to attend you,” Tiras commanded me, throwing the words over his shoulder as he strode away, Kjell on his heels. I sank down to the bench, disregarding his command. My legs wouldn’t hold me. I was trembling from the confrontation, from the sword at my throat, and from the strain of revelation, my own and the king’s. I wasn’t safe, the king was cursed, and the world was upside down. I wanted to use my words to right it, to fix it, but I couldn’t. That much was abundantly clear.

And now my father was in Jeru. I had no doubt he’d come to demand my return. My stomach knotted and my hands shook, and I wiped at the trickle of blood that refused to congeal. The bodice of my dress was stained, and my hands were streaked with it.

I had three choices: I could go home, I could stay here, or I could run away. Far, far away. I could run to the forest of Drue. Boojohni said it was filled with creatures. The odd, the strange, the Gifted. Maybe I could build a life for myself among other outcasts now that I could speak. The thought brought me up short. I couldn’t speak! I could put words in people’s heads. I wasn’t a creature. I was something else entirely.

They would kill me.

My father was the only one who had any incentive to keep me alive. I should return to Corvyn. I should go back home and hide in my father’s keep and pretend the words hadn’t come alive inside of me. I could pretend that all was as it had been before, and maybe in pretending, I would save myself. But pretending wouldn’t save Tiras.

I heard a sniffling and a shuffling, and Boojohni appeared around the hedge, a smile of greeting peeking out from his shaggy beard.

“The king told me ye were in your chamber, but I could smell ye out here.” His eyes narrowed on my neck, and his smile disappeared. “What happened, Bird?”

I pressed my hand to my throat and shook my head.

“Come with me. I’ll take care of ye.” He reached for my arm, but I shook him off. I didn’t want to be taken care of. I wanted to run away from all the men who sought dominion over me, who thought they could own me, imprison me, use me, cut me. I wiped a furious hand at the blood on my neck and the tears on my cheeks that I hadn’t realized I’d shed.

Can you hear me, Boojohni?

He hissed and stepped back, his eyes filled with horror.

I bowed my head in defeat, sorrow making my chest constrict and my eyes overflow. Boojohni could hear me, and he was afraid. I felt the air around him swell with revulsion and dismay. His breathing was harsh, and I tried again, my inner voice broken and sad even to my own ears.

Are you afraid of me, my friend?

I felt his hand touch my hair, just a tentative brush of his fingertips, but I didn’t look up at him.

“Bird?” he whispered, as if he still wasn’t sure about the voice in his head. “Bird, is that ye?”

Yes. It’s me.
I nodded as I spoke, and he gasped again, like he couldn’t believe it. He reached toward my lips, and his hand fell away like he’d changed his mind at the last second. He took several steps back, and I rose on quaking legs and followed him, wanting to plead with him, needing to convince him of things I wasn’t sure of myself.

I found my voice
, I tried to explain.
At least . . . a piece of it.

He nodded slowly, his eyes still impossibly wide, but the horror he had exuded was abating.

You can hear me now. I can talk to you.

“I have always been able to hear ye, Lark. But before it was a feeling. An instinct. Now I hear a voice . . .
your
voice. And it’s going to take some getting used to.”

I understand. I’m afraid too. I’m so afraid, Boojohni.

His mouth trembled, and his compassion sang sweetly in the air. It was like a salve to my soul. He wiped at his eyes and pointed to the wound on my neck.

“Did the king do that?”

I shook my head.
No
.

“Good. I don’t want to hate him. He’s different from what I expected. Different from his father.”

I don’t want to hate him either,
I confessed, and Boojohni looked at me sharply. I don’t know what he saw, but I allowed him to take my hand and lead me out of the garden and up the wide, winding staircase to my tower room. “You need to prepare yourself, Lark. Yer father is here, and there are rumors afoot,” he whispered, his eyes darting right and left like there were ears and eyes everywhere.

Tell me.

“The king is young. The members of the Council of Lords think he is too lax on the Gifted.”

My eyes shot to his, and he grabbed my hand, comforting me. He said no more until we were alone in my chamber.

He doctored the wound at my throat as he talked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“They blame him for the rise of the Volgar. They say he has encouraged revolution. He has led the Volgar to believe he is weak and lenient.”

I thought of the way Tiras and Kjell had fought the terrifying bird people, hacking them out of the sky, and wondered at the delegation’s definition of lenient.

The Volgar are not . . . Gifted. They are monsters.

“The council believes there is no difference,” he said.

I winced, and Boojohni patted my hand again. It was what King Zoltev, Tiras’s father, had believed. But my mother was not a monster. I was not a monster.

We continued with our conversation, my words slow and small as I did my best to assemble them in my head. Boojohni listened in wonder as I answered his tentative questions, and at one point, wiped his eyes and smiled at me tearfully.

“Ye sound like a nightingale, Bird. Yer voice is beautiful. Sweet. I could listen all day.”

Before long, Greta and the maid I’d just learned was Pia brought steaming buckets of water to my room and pulled a gown from my wardrobe. Boojohni informed us all that he would be waiting outside my door to escort me to the Great Hall when I was ready.

He shot me a sheepish gaze as he excused himself, and I pressed a frantic question on his mind that he studiously ignored. He wasn’t telling me all that the king had communicated.

Pia’s eyes grew round at the blood on my dress, and Greta was less abrasive than usual as I was bathed and primped, then dressed in a silvery silk that made me feel like a raindrop—grey, small, and all but invisible. Pia wrapped a diamond choker around my neck to hide the thin slice Kjell had carved into my throat. They didn’t ask about the wound, and I wondered if it was because I couldn’t speak or because they regularly saw things in the king’s employ that they were forced to ignore. Pia informed me the choker had belonged to the king’s mother, Aurelia, and that it suited me. It didn’t. But it was beautiful, and its weight gave me courage.

Pia brushed a drop of lavender oil into my heavy hair so it would shine and held the length back from my face with a thin band of braided silver studded with diamonds that matched the jewels at my neck. The lavender eased my nerves, and I tried to focus on the scent so I wouldn’t think about the evening ahead as Greta lined my grey eyes with kohl, blackened my lashes, and stained my lips and cheeks with rose-colored face paint.

I had the distinct impression I was being prepared for something I was not at all ready for, and when Boojohni rapped on the door and urged us to hurry, the maids stepped back and admired their handiwork like I had been the ultimate challenge, and they had succeeded with their task.

When Boojohni saw me, he seemed proud and pleased, and I shot him a question I’d been saving throughout the long beauty session
.

What is happening in the hall?

Boojohni winced and covered his ears, as if that could keep me out.

“Hellfire, Bird!” he whined. “Adjust your tone. Ye don’t have to yell.”

My mouth dropped open, and I halted in surprise. I hadn’t realized I could control my volume. But it made sense. Just like a person could moderate their voice, I too could ‘speak’ quietly, even whisper, so only the person next to me could hear. That meant I could also raise my voice in a crowd and deliver a message to a group.

I repeated myself more carefully, and Boojohni nodded, indicating I had been successful.

“There is a feast for the dignitaries. Ye are attending to show your father that you are in good health. Ye are to nod and smile and sit near the king. Ye are to keep yer words to yourself.”

I had no intention of revealing my gift, but Boojohni’s instructions bothered me.
You are suddenly the king’s messenger?

“I have no loyalty to your father, Lark. I never have. My loyalty was to your mother and now to ye. I believe ye are better off here in Jeru.”