The Bird and the Sword (31 page)

My heart lurched but I didn’t flinch, and I watched him warily, waiting for him to continue. He glanced up briefly, and his eyes were kind.

“He has not returned, my queen, not for a very long time. I watch for him too. If he does, I will send word immediately. Never fear.”

I could only nod, fearful of revealing too much about myself and about the king, wondering if Hashim had known Tiras’s secret all along.

Kjell was as drawn and quiet as I, and though there was little love lost between us, we’d formed an alliance, desperate to protect the king and the kingdom, though that was getting harder and harder to do. We’d spread rumors of his travels to shore up support in the provinces, though the guards must have wondered who accompanied him on these official royal visits.

Twenty-eight days into the king’s absence, a message was received by carrier pigeon from Firi. Volgar sightings were increasing in the area, and nests near the shores of the Jyraen Sea were causing general unease. The Lord of Firi wasn’t asking for reinforcements, but the news added to the bleak atmosphere in the castle.

What would Tiras want me to do?
I asked Kjell, pacing from one end of the library to the other.
I need him to come home.

“There may come a day when he won’t return, Lark,” Kjell said quietly. “We have to face that.”

He will return. He always has.

“You have to start making decisions without him,” Kjell urged. “It is what he has been preparing you for.”

I can’t rule alone.

“He was convinced you could.” It was the kindest thing Kjell had ever said to me, and when he raised his blue eyes to mine, I saw something new there. A begrudging respect, a sliver of forgiveness . . . something. For the first time, I didn’t feel any disdain or dismissal.

“You have to start somewhere. There hasn’t been a hearing in a month. The people are afraid, crime is rising, and altercations abound. Our dungeon is full, and the guard doesn’t know what to do with those they are holding. You have to take his place. You are the queen.”

Will you help me?
Will you speak for me?

It was Kjell’s turn to balk.

How will I render judgments if I can’t speak?

Kjell groaned and fisted his hands in his hair.

Sometimes
Tiras and I pretend that I am whispering in his ear. That way it doesn’t look so odd when we communicate in front of others.

Kjell looked as if he regretted his insistence on a hearing day, but he agreed, the word was spread, and the following morning I walked into the Great Hall amid confusion and wonder, chatter and whispers. I sat on the throne, and the guard, already briefed by Kjell, began to organize the line of hesitant subjects, who looked as dubious as I felt.

And it began.

One by one, the people approached, quickly stated their case, and a judgment was made. I listened more to what they weren’t saying, just like I’d done before, terrified that I would make the wrong choice. Kjell would lean in, I would cup my hand over my mouth, pretending to speak privately, though my lips never moved, and I would tell him my judgment. He would repeat my verdict and we would move onto the next case. He never questioned me or raised a condescending eyebrow.

I grew more confident as the day progressed, relying almost entirely on my ability to hear what others couldn’t. When I was unsure, I asked Kjell for guidance, and he would make a suggestion. But that happened less and less as the day wore on.

Toward the end of the day, a man came forward and laid a large satchel at the foot of the dais.

“Tell the queen your trouble,” Kjell commanded impatiently.

“I caught a Changer,” the man exclaimed excitedly. “I hunt them . . . for the good of Jeru, of course.”

“Show me,” Kjell commanded, sounding exactly like Tiras, and I heard the same apprehension in his voice that gripped my chest.

The man opened his satchel and pulled out a huge black bird with a glossy white head. He laid it out carefully and stepped back, puffing his chest and standing akimbo like he’d presented me with a chest of jewels.

The bird was limp and lifeless.

I rose from my throne, overcome with dread, and Kjell hissed beside me, telling the hunter to back away. I knelt beside the bird and raised his red-tipped wing. I started to shake, my vision blurring as Kjell pulled me away. The feathers were still warm, and bile rose dangerously in my throat. I collapsed in my throne, unable to stand.

“How do you know it was a Changer?” Kjell asked, his voice so cold the man shivered where he stood, sensing his offering had not been well-received.

“I saw her change,” the man babbled. My heart stuttered and skipped, and guilt warred with the sliver of hope that made me ask,
Her?

“Her?” Kjell repeated.

“
She was a woman one moment . . . then she changed. She flew away. I set a snare . . . and I caught her when she returned.”

“And you killed her?” Kjell asked.

“She is a Changer,” the man repeated, as if that were explanation enough. I rose to my feet once more, outrage giving me mettle, and the man must have seen something in my face that alarmed him, for he began to back up.

“I didn’t mean to kill it. It was alive in my snare. I covered it in the shroud and put it in the sack. There must not have been sufficient air.”

The law says only the king can condemn the Gifted.

Kjell repeated what I’d said, and the man began to tremble.

“But . . . King Zoltev—” he stammered.

“Is no longer the king,” Kjell finished
.
He turned and approached my throne so that I could pretend to confer with him.

He has lost the right to hunt. If he is caught hunting, he will be executed. Killing eagles—Changers or not—in Jeru is now prohibited. Let it be written, let it be done.

Kjell repeated my judgment.

“But . . . how will I live?” the man wailed.

Tell him he may trap rodents and snakes. Each week he may present his kill to Mistress Lorena in the courtyard of the castle, and she will pay him for his services to Jeru.

The man accepted the judgement with wide eyes and made to take the eagle.

Tell him to leave the bird.

Kjell did as I asked.

I want to know where he killed her.

“There’s a cottage in the western wood, not far from the perimeter wall. She was there,” the man answered Kjell without hesitation, eager to redeem himself.

My heart ceased beating once again.

When I couldn’t continue with the hearings, Kjell told those waiting in the long line that we would resume first thing in the morning. I waited—sitting motionless on my throne—until the hall cleared and the guard moved to their exterior posts. Kjell waited with me, standing over the bird, his hands clenched and his eyes wet.

“I don’t know what to do,” he confessed. “I don’t know what is right or wrong anymore. And I’m afraid I’ll never see my brother again.”

I
went looking for Tiras. It wasn’t the first time in the last twenty-eight days. I’d disregarded the king’s wishes repeatedly, walking through the forest with Boojohni trundling behind me when I couldn’t escape him. He had stayed close, sensitive to my emotions and to the ever-increasing absences of the king. But I had magic on my side, and that night I slipped away unnoticed.

I walked to the cottage in the western wood, the one where Tiras had shared his secret, the cottage so perfectly described by the huntsman. No eagle swooped down to greet me, to give me words and point me toward home, but there were signs that someone had been in the cottage. A dish, a comb, firewood on the hearth.

None of the items had been there before. I touched the comb in confusion and turned toward the bed where I’d spent a miserable night after escaping the castle, wondering where I would go and what I would do. Someone had slept in the bed since. The bed was not made. Had Tiras changed and simply stayed away? Had his Gift taken yet another piece of him, a piece that made him believe he could no longer return to the castle?

I slumped down on the bed, so weary I could no longer stand.

Tiras?
I called.
Tiras, please don’t hide from me.

The shutters on the cottage banged against the stone, lifted by the wind, and I listened for an answering voice, a heartbeat, a flutter of wings, but heard nothing but my own trepidation. I bowed my head in dejection, my gaze falling to the hard-packed dirt floor.

A bit of white lace protruded from under the bed.

I leaned down and grasped it, only to find it caught on something heavy. Kneeling, I peered beneath the old frame and saw a valise, tipped on its side, garments spilling from the top. I tugged it out to examine it more closely, and fingered the lace in bewilderment, pulling it free from the valise. The lace was attached to the neckline of a voluminous gown, its light color indistinguishable in the darkness. A pair of dainty shoes, a size larger than my own, silk underthings, and another gown were folded beneath it, along with a fine, scarlet cloak.

Someone had made themselves at home in the king’s cottage, but it was not Tiras.

I exhaled in painful relief, still shaking my head in bewilderment. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I knew one thing. A woman had been there. A Changer. And now she was dead.

T
he bird the huntsman had presented to me the previous day had been removed from the Great Hall when I returned the next morning. The floors gleamed, and the room had been aired, and I mourned again over the bird that wasn’t really a bird. Kjell was at my side again, my mouthpiece, and I resolved to question him over its whereabouts when the hearings were over. I doubted I would tell him about my discovery at the cottage; my late night wanderings would earn me an around-the-clock guard.

I greeted the line that had already formed with a tip of my head and a crook of my wrist, beckoning the first subjects to come forward. The guards kept things moving along in an orderly fashion and kept a measure of security between me and those who left the hearing unhappily or in chains. As the day wore on and the judgments commenced, one after the other, a murmur suddenly rippled through the crowd and a cry went up.

The guards immediately moved in front of me, concerned that a squabble had broken out in the line, or someone had grown violent. I felt his name swell from the throng, as if he’d suddenly become the focus of every thought.
King Tiras. King Tiras.
I stood, desperate to see over the guard that had closed ranks in front of my throne. Kjell rose with me, parting the guard and descending the dais with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Step back. Move back!” Kjell ordered, and I stretched to peer beyond the wall of protection around me. Then I heard his name again, spoken with exuberance and welcome by the men who stood between us.

“The king is returned! King Tiras is back!”

I don’t remember standing or leaving the dais. I only knew I was moving through the crowd as Kjell and the guards I pushed past sought to create a path for me, their arms outstretched on either side to hold back the swell. But the crowd parted easily and without hesitation, a wave of deferential bows and bobs opening the way before me.

Then I saw him, standing at the rear of the hall, a full head taller than almost everyone around him, though those nearest him had fallen to one knee, baring him to my view. He was dressed for judgment day, except for the long black gauntlets that covered his hands and forearms, making him look like the warrior kings he’d descended from. A crown adorned his white head, and a cape of royal green swung around his shoulders. His mouth was unsmiling but his eyes clung to mine, warm and amber, and as familiar and welcome as my own heartbeat. Then I was running, my feet flying, and I was in his arms.

“You are not acting like a queen,” he scolded as he lifted me off my feet and buried his face in my hair. “The people will think me soft.” I couldn’t answer, couldn’t form words at all, and clung to him as he embraced me in return.

Without loosening his arms, he raised his face from my neck and dismissed the entire gathering with a simple, “Go now and do no harm.”