The Bird and the Sword (28 page)

“Y-yes,” she stammered. “You are the queen. You told the king to release me.”

You did nothing wrong.

“You are the queen,” she repeated, and the same surge of dismay that colored her words welled in my chest. I
was
the queen, and I had no idea what I was doing.

We mean you no harm. We need your help. Will you talk to me . . . inside?

We’d managed to draw the attention of a few onlookers, and we needed to take the conversation elsewhere. Kjell had not loosened his arms whatsoever, and she dangled from his embrace.

She nodded slowly, and I bid Kjell to let her go. He set her on her feet and moved between us, keeping her close. She led the way into the cottage, brushing Kjell as she passed, and with a brief hum and a soft touch, healed the bleeding wound she’d inflicted on his face. Kjell cursed like she’d run him through, his eyes spitting and his hand on his blade, but the Healer didn’t give him a second glance. She’d demonstrated her power even as she extended mercy.

The stone cottage was small and neat, a room for sleeping, a room for eating, and not much else. None of us sat and Kjell remained near the door, as if to guard against a trap. The Healer’s pale eyes clung to mine, as blue as Kjell’s and startling against her black hair and olive skin. I felt colorless beside her, and a stab of insecurity found its mark before I shored up my icy walls and focused on the task at hand.

“Are you . . . like me?” she asked.

Gifted?

She gasped when I said the word, as if she’d spent her whole life avoiding it. But after a brief pause she nodded.

“Yes. Gifted.”

I am.

“Majesty,” Kjell growled, shaking his head, and Boojohni stiffened at my side.

It isn’t something I can hide from her, Kjell.

Kjell’s distrust rose and spilled over, mingling with his fear of what he’d been taught to hate. The Healer looked at him briefly and extended her hand toward him once more, as if to ease his discomfort. He glowered, and she withdrew her hand.

“I am a Healer. But . . . what are you?” she asked, her gaze returning to me.

A Teller, though I seem to be able to command healing, to some extent.

“A Teller who can’t speak?”

I had no desire to share my story, and when I simply inclined my head, offering no explanation, her brow furrowed.

“Why are you here, Majesty? Am I to be arrested again?”

I wasn’t sure of how to proceed, of what to share, and she pressed me again, “Why did you come to my home?”

The king is not well.

“And you cannot heal him?”

No. I can’t.
The truth weighed heavily on me, and she cocked her head, as if she heard my helplessness.

“You want me to heal him.” It was not a question.

I nodded again. She pursed her lips, and her eyes moved from me to Kjell to Boojohni and back again.

“If I heal him, what will you give me?”

Kjell snorted as if she were a greedy money-changer. But I understood self-preservation.

What do you need?

“Sanctuary. Leniency. Not just for me. But for those like me. Like us.”

She wanted me to save an entire community when I couldn’t even save Tiras. But I didn’t hesitate to promise,
I will do all in my power to make it so.

It was the best I could do, and maybe she knew that, for she nodded and I began to breathe again.

“What ails the king?”

I hesitated again, afraid of revealing something I couldn’t take back, of endangering Tiras, of endangering the young Healer with knowledge she shouldn’t have.

The king is . . . like us.

She shook her head, confused. “I don’t understand.”

He is Gifted.

The girl raised incredulous eyes and shook her head in disbelief. “The son of King Zoltev is Gifted?” she marveled. Then she laughed, a great, shaking sound that held more grief than mirth.

“The Gods are just,” she muttered, fire lighting her eyes. “May the late king burn in hell.”

“The late king was my father. You would do well to remember that,” Kjell said, baring his teeth.

The Healer turned steely eyes on him. “Somehow that does not surprise me.”

King Tiras is not like his father,
I contended desperately.

“No? I am not so sure.” The Healer had not looked away from Kjell, as if his behavior made her doubt the nobility of his half-brother.

I had no response but the truth, and I gave it to her.

We are losing him to the change.

“Being Gifted is not an illness,” she argued, her head swiveling towards me. I’d told Tiras the very same thing.
I can’t fix what isn’t broken
.

I only ask that you try,
I pled, and she regarded me doubtfully.

“I will do what I can, Your Majesty.”

T
he Healer’s name was Shenna, and true to her word, she returned to Jeru City with Kjell four days later. Tiras had returned as well, but his eyes were different. His eyes had always been so brown they were black. Now a warm amber circle ringed his pupils. Eagle eyes.

“It was the same with my hair. I changed, but my hair did not. One day it was black. The next day as white as snow. As white as eagle feathers. Soon I will have talons instead of toes and wings instead of arms.” His tone was wry but his golden eyes were bracketed with worry.

When the healer asked permission to touch him, he agreed, his eyes on mine. I didn’t want her to touch him, and he knew it.

“Stubborn woman,” he breathed, and the cage that surrounded my heart constricted until I couldn’t breathe. The healer smoothed her hands down his arms and across his eyes, her face calm and her eyes closed. She hummed, a low mellow sound, never varying from a single note, a lute with only one string, plucking away.

“Why is she doing that?” Kjell murmured. Shenna’s eyes snapped open, but continued humming for several more seconds as she moved her hands.

“It is the sound his body makes, the note he sings,” she responded eventually, and though she’d ceased humming, I could hear the tone continuing, fixed in her head like a dominant word.

“It is the frequency with which his body heals itself, I am simply singing with him, strengthening his ability.”

I reached out my hand. Tiras took it, and I closed my eyes as well, breathing my words into the note the healer sang, telling him to be whole.

“I cannot heal him,” Shenna said, finally. Tiras sat motionless, Kjell paced, and I mourned.

Why?
My voice was a cry, and Tiras winced.

“
Because he isn’t ill,” she insisted. “His body sings with health and vigor . . . and strength.”

“But he is becoming something else. It’s happening more and more often,” Kjell contended, anger masking his fear.

Shenna shook her head again. “I know many Changers. It is never like this. It is always a choice.”

“You know many?” Tiras asked, raising his strange gold eyes to the healer.

“I know many,” she breathed, trusting him. Trusting us.

“Bring them to me,” Tiras commanded, and Shenna looked to me, pleading for reassurance.

I could only meet her gaze helplessly. I had no idea what he intended.

“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “They would never come.”

“Then take me to them,” he said. “And I will show them that I am one of them.”

“Why?” Kjell interrupted. “Why would you do that, Tiras? Why would you expose yourself in that way?”

“You will need allies when I’m gone,” Tiras answered, and this time his eyes did not meet mine.

Resistance bubbled in me, denying, denying, denying.

W
e left the city at dawn the next day, disguised much like we’d been before, dressed like villagers and artisans, veiled and quiet, carrying baskets and avoiding eye contact. We walked to Nivea, to the cottage of Shenna the healer, who welcomed the men with wariness, but extended her hands and some warmth to me, as if my gift and my disability comforted her. Vulnerability invited trust, apparently.

“I have told the elders. They have circulated the news among the Gifted. Each will decide whether to show themselves or stay hidden. If they don’t come here today, we must accept their choice. I will not reveal them to you,” Shenna said firmly. Her parents were present, along with her great-grandfather, a man named Sorkin, who was so old he could stand next to the cliffs in Corvyn and blend into the lined, grey rock. But in Nivea, the rock was black and shimmering, like Tiras’s eyes had been before the change made them gold.

Sorkin was a healer too, a man who’d lived through the reign of Tiras’s great-grandfather, a king even more feared and hated than Zoltev. He watched us with careful eyes, exuding both caution and hope. When Tiras bowed to him, the old man’s face softened the slightest bit. He reached out his hands and cupped Tiras’s face, not asking for permission, and he began to hum, just like Shenna had done the day before. After a time, he stopped, his hands falling away, the note ringing through the cottage.

“There is no sickness in you, Majesty,” he murmured, his brow furrowing with distrust.

“There is also very little . . . time,” Tiras said, and Sorkin studied him intently, not confirming or denying what Tiras claimed.

Sorkin stepped away from the king, lifting his hands to my cheeks as well. “There is life in you, my queen.” His eyes cut to Tiras. “I can hear the hum of two heartbeats.”

My breath caught. I had suspected as much, but shared my suspicion with no one, wanting to wait a little longer, to be sure. Now I had no doubt.

“It is very soon, and the life is young. But there will be a child,” he predicted with certainty.

I turned to Tiras, who took my hand and pressed a kiss on my palm where the prior had merged our blood months before. Joy trembled on his lips and took root in my breast. His pleasure was well noted by Shenna and the old healer, and their eyes warmed and their wariness ebbed.

“Thank the Gods,” Tiras breathed, as if another bridge had been crossed, another battle won, and the roots of joy in my chest grew tiny thorns.

“Thank the Gods,” the Healer repeated. “Now let us begin.”

From the room beyond, a woman named Gwyn was summoned, a woman so ancient and so familiar, I could only stare. It was the old woman from the cathedral, the woman who had anointed my feet and had bade me wait on my wedding day. She bowed gingerly before me, and my spirits lifted with her smile.

“When we last met, you were not yet a queen.”

I curtsied deeply, grateful to see her again.

“We meet again, and you are not yet a mother, though you will accomplish this too.” Her eyes moved to Tiras, and she acknowledged him with a deferential nod of her silver head.

“Majesty, how can we serve you?” she asked him, though I suspected she already knew.

“What is your gift, Mother Gwyn?” Tiras asked, bestowing the title with obvious respect.

“I see things others cannot. I know things others do not. And I recognize the Gifted, Highness,” she said without artifice.

You are a seer?
I interrupted, surprised.

She smiled at me, as though my voice in her head was pleasing.

“My ears are not as sharp as they once were, but I hear you perfectly.”

I bowed again.
It is good to be heard.

“I am a Teller, as are you, my queen,” Gwyn continued, answering my original question. “Though the things I see I cannot change. I can’t command the wind or water. But I know when a storm is coming.”

“What is the king’s gift, Mother Gwyn?” Sorkin pressed her gently, steering the conversation to the matter of most importance. He wanted to know if Tiras was sincere.

She tipped her head and studied Tiras, taking note of his golden eyes and his pale hair. “His gift is strange,” she reflected.

“Aren’t they all?” Kjell cut in acerbically.

The old woman simply smiled and nodded at the bristling captain of the king’s guard. “Indeed, good man. But your gift is not simply your ability to change, Majesty,” she said, directing her words to Tiras once again. He raised his brows and glanced at me.

“Your gift is your will,” she said. I could attest to that. “People obey you,” she continued. “They yield to your demands. Even your brother, who bows to no one, would prostrate himself before you if you asked him.”