Hereditary (24 page)

I killed that man, when I said I didn’t. How could he not be angry?

Hazen, who had settled on my other side, turned to me incredulously, drawing Cale’s curious gaze. I turned away from them both, and caught Harbringer’s eye again. To my surprise, he motioned to me.

“Harrow.” He spoke normally, but his voice carried. “Perhaps you would like to be our first volunteer.”

I had been expecting him to kick me out of the class, declare that I was too unsafe to have around, but now my predictions had shifted. Now I was sure that he would humiliate me in front of everyone. I hesitated, wondering if it were too late to back out of the class, but everyone was waiting for me—two rows down, the boy Cudos was staring at me. He looked amused, expectant. He clearly thought that Harbringer wanted to humiliate me as well. Feeling a rush of stubbornness, I returned the boy’s glare and pushed to my feet, marching down to the stage. Arrol smiled at me, and I managed a smile back, because I liked Arrol, his class had been my favourite, even though I had only gone to it once, before my timetable had changed.

As I reached the centre of the stage, I found myself abruptly surrounded by the four professors, each evenly spaced out and circling around me. A chill settled over me, and I heard Harbringer speaking to the others.

“Now I’m sure you’re all wondering why I have chosen Miss Harrow for this first demonstration, and I’d like you all to watch carefully, take note of how she reacts when she is attacked.”

This is a bad idea
.
This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea
.

I repeated the litany over and over again, until Arrol sprang at me. He was very fast, but I had trained with many rangers before, most of the kingdom soldiers were rangers or elves, because their powers were combative. I stepped easily to the side, and Arrol sailed past me, swung around with lightening speed, and was running for me again instantly.

I laughed then, the sound clearly delighted, because this was something I could relate to. Harbringer had chosen me because I had spent my entire life training with my father—not because I was marked. Arrol caught me on the shoulder the second time, and his strength sent me whirling, but I ignored it, and stumbled back to give myself more time to react for his third attack. Unfortunately, he had predicted this, and was coming at me from behind. I felt the prickle of awareness on the back of my neck, and dropped down, rolling to the side. When I pushed to my feet, he was facing me again, and we circled each other. I had always been much better at weaponless combat, and I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were against any enemy. Arrol was fast and strong, perhaps even more so than many of the soldiers I had fought in training, but he was large, his body cumbersome compared to mine. I feinted to his right, ducked beneath the left swing he aimed, seeing right through my fake, and pounced on his back, winding my arm around his neck.

His hands wound about my wrists, and I knew that he’d throw me off in a matter of seconds, but Mont blew a whistle then, and he stopped struggling immediately. I jumped down, and saw the faintest smile on Harbringer’s face. Arrol clapped me on the back, looking impressed, though we both knew that I wasn’t anything compared to a true ranger. Harbringer sent me back to my seat then, and divided us up into pairs. I could tell that we were sectioned off depending on our strength and size, as Rose ended up with a slim girl behind her, and Hazen ended up with Cudos. Luckily, I ended up with Cale, and we all spread out on the stage. Harbringer and Arrol demonstrated a number of attack and defence poses, and set one person in each team to the attack or defence role. I was defence, and soon had Cale swearing with frustration, because he couldn’t seem to catch me to land a blow. When we switched positions, things changed, and I found that Cale was easily able to deflect my lesser strength. In a real fight, I knew, he would have been the superior.

As the lesson ended, Harbringer caught my arm and drew me aside. Cale stopped to wait for me, but Harbringer ignored him. He handed me a rolled up piece of paper, one I recognised as the ‘questionnaire’ we had been given a week ago.

“Have it back on my desk tomorrow,” he said, walking away.

When he left, I unrolled the paper and saw that he had written something beneath my story.

You call that an ending?

Speechless, I tucked it into my dress pocket and just shook my head when Cale asked about it. Harbringer’s sudden interest in my creative writing faults apparently wasn’t the only surprise I was going to face that afternoon, however, as when I reached the academy gate, my father was there waiting for me. People threw him looks and whispered just as they always did, and I examined his expression, wondering if I might be in trouble for leaving the house that morning.

He looked excited.

“Evening, Sir.” Cale gave the Commander of the Black Guard a mock salute, and I rolled my eyes.

My father looked at my scruffy-haired friend, and then shook his head, bemused.

“Call me John.”

Hazen appeared then, looking moodier than usual.

“I take it your practice didn’t go as well as ours?” I asked him, smiling a little.

His scowl deepened.

“Well,” my father scratched his head, looking at a loss, “I had a surprise for you, Bea, but maybe I can show you later?”

“Don’t be silly, Dad, where are we going?”

He flicked a look at the other two, and then sighed as Rose approached as well.

“This is going to take some getting used to,” he muttered, which made Hazen’s lips twitch, probably because of whatever thought had accompanied the words. “Would your friends like to come along?”

Twenty minutes later, we were outside my father’s other house. It wasn’t far from the barracks, which also meant that it wasn’t far from the castle, and Rose seemed delighted at this prospect. It was not a new sight to me, the large, three-story brick house with bay windows and a plain garden, but it was the first time I had ever looked at it as my new home. We followed my father through the front door, and Gretal would have scampered away at the first sight of me, except that she caught sight of Hazen and Rose, and almost stumbled over her skirts. When she fell to her knees, I wasn’t even sure if it had been deliberate, or an accident.

“Prince! Princess!”

Cale looked to be holding back a chuckle, but my father was decidedly uncomfortable.

“There’s no need for that,” Hazen said smoothly, “we generally discourage the formalities outside of court.”

Of course, he didn’t say that the housekeeper could use his first name, and even I knew that the servants of the castle always called him Prince Hazen, even outside of court hours. I guessed he was trying to make my father more comfortable. We went up the winding staircase and when we reached the top level, where I knew my father usually slept, we didn’t go to the right wing, but instead to the left. He threw open the door and I gasped as I walked through. My furniture was all moved in. My narrow little bed, the scuffed wooden desk and chair and the tall ornamental wardrobe that had once been my mother’s, it was all there. I noticed a few new things too, peach-coloured curtains pushed to the side of the window seat, a matching peach chaise and armchair set, positioned around the large fireplace. There was a new bookshelf too, exquisitely carved and decorated with dancing creatures that looked to be half elven, half made-up.

“Oh.” I touched my face, staring at it all wide-eyed.

“I got a little carried away,” my father sounded embarrassed, “I was just so excited that you had agreed.”

I quickly thumbed my tears away and turned to hug him.

“It’s great, Dad. Thank you.”

He awkwardly patted my back, his voice gruff. “Well, you have all these fancy friends now, can’t very well entertain them in the old cottage.”

Rose laughed delightedly at that, and Cale settled himself down on the chaise, throwing his arm across the back and giving my father a look that I knew only too well.

“So,” he said, almost conversationally, and I felt the laughter bubble in my chest already. “When can we move in?”

My father went still, and I couldn’t help it: I started laughing. Cale threw me a look for ruining his joke, but my father almost immediately relaxed, and then backed out of the room, mumbling something about dinner and giving me privacy.

Hazen left soon after that, and I eventually had to kick the other two out, as they looked far too comfortable. I went down for dinner, trying to ease Gretal’s fear of me while refusing to let her serve me. She was uneasy, having me in the kitchen with her, but she would have to put up with it. After dinner, I changed into my usual tights and over-sized hand-me-down shirt combination, and sat at the desk, flattening out the page that Harbringer had given back to me.

There once was a little Siren. She lived all by herself out in the middle of the sea, singing to those who passed in their grand ships, desperate for the contact of another person. When one finally stopped, the crew captured the Siren, and threw her into a cage, deciding that her golden hair and golden skin would make them rich. Not wanting to be killed by the sailors, she sang her way free, enchanting them with a lusty, melodious song full of beauty and innocence. Her voice called to them, captured them as they had captured her, but as she stood on the deck again, the men kneeling at her feet, she found that she couldn’t stop. She sang and sang, until there was no more beauty or innocence, only hunger and violence. But still they crawled closer, held in thrall by her Siren magic. One by one, she devoured the sailors, until their bones scattered the deck of the ship, and she was alone again, out in the middle of the sea, singing to those who passed in their grand ships…

You call that an ending?

I picked up a pencil, tore out a fresh sheath of paper and began scrawling again.

The Siren grew remorseful for what she had done, and the violent companionship that she had chanced and lost. She covered her golden hair, painted over her golden skin, and made a vow to never sing again. When next a ship stopped for her, she passed herself off as a sailor, and joined their ranks. But people are sneaky, and cruel, and mean. They saw through her disguise, and soothed her into sleep that night with music. They cut away her hair, tore away her clothes, and took what they wanted while she slept. When she awoke, she was empty. She couldn’t even sing her way free, because they had taken her tongue to protect themselves.

I paused then, because I had nothing more to write. Instead, I skipped down a couple of spaces, and wrote a note below as he had.

What does she do now?

The next day, I left early for classes, deciding that I would visit the abandoned garden behind the barracks before I had to drop off my bizarre homework to Harbringer. My moods had been growing increasingly dark after the last week, and it took a long time to relax into the connection, but eventually I did. I sat with my back against one of the crumbling walls, my head tilted up to the morning sunshine and my eyes closed against the world. I could sense the life force of a person nearby, as I had learnt to do with Nareon, but this particular skill wasn’t good enough yet for me to decide if they were behind me or before me. It didn’t matter all that much—they were most likely in the barracks or the training yard, and while it was possible for them to be on the game trail behind me, I doubted it. When they didn’t move away, I wrote them off as one of the soldiers, and slipped back into a nearby plant being choked by weeds. I eased the plant-predator away, extracted it’s roots from the other, and urged it to keep to itself. I’d check up on it again in a few days to make sure it was behaving. 

Thwack
.

I twitched, feeling the stinging on my cheek, the rush of air through my hair, the searing pain in my thigh. Suddenly I was screaming, vaulted out of my connection to the forest by the pain ripping through my leg. A hand wound around my mouth, effectively cutting off any sound, and a voice growled low in my ear.

“The next time you go to the King, I won’t miss, do you understand?”

I tried to speak, but the hand was still covering my mouth.

“Nod or shake your head, girl.”

I nodded, tears leaking from my eyes as the pain began to make me woozy.

“Good. One more thing…” and then he reached forward, grabbed the bloody arrow shaft and snapped the end off.

I tried to scream again, the movement made agonising, but my captor didn’t seem to care. He lifted my leg up, grabbed the unbroken end of the shaft and yanked it through my leg. I saw spots flashing before my eyes, and barely registered the voice in my ear again.

“I’ll not have you taking any evidence with you. You’ll tell nobody of this warning.”

I woke up a short time later, and found a good portion of the bottom right side of my dress soaked through with blood, but there was a rolled bandage sitting in my lap. I picked it up with shaky fingers, and wound it about my thigh tightly, gritting my teeth against the pain. I attempted to stand, but it proved too difficult, and so I tried to blow a large enough stick toward me with my wind elemental. It flew too fast, almost striking me, but with it, I was able to push myself to my feet. The injured leg shook and buckled when I tried to put any weight on it, so I used the stick to get back to the barracks. The house wasn’t far away, and the academy was further, but if I went home, my father would demand answers, and if I went to class, I could pretend that it had been an accident. Or I could just ignore the warning and cry for help.

One of my father’s soldiers walked past me then, and threw me a smile, walking over.

“You’re leaning on that stick awfully hard, Harrow, sprain an ankle or something?”

I blinked, looked down at my blood-soaked dress, and bloodied, bandaged leg.

Couldn’t he see
?

His smile died a little, and he appeared confused—his eyes slid to my feet, flying right over all the mess in-between. He really didn’t see it.

“Yes,” I managed, my voice shaking, “I twisted my ankle.”