Thorn (41 page)

“It was a long night,” I temporize.

“And yet there were no flying daggers or hidden knives that I heard tell of.” Garrin raises an eyebrow, his eyes lingering on my bandaged wrist.

“I am glad you are so sheltered,” I reply blandly. “I hope you never meet with such yourself.”

“We are pleased that the Princess Alyrra has recovered so quickly,” the king says from behind me. I turn towards him, encountering the same hawk-like features and hooded eyes, but I also detect a slight twinkle, the faintest movement of his cheeks in the ghostly memory of a smile.

“I thank you, Your Majesty.”

“How could we fail to be pleased?” Garrin asks, and with a courteous nod moves on to more fertile hunting grounds.

“Ah, there is Kestrin,” the king murmurs.

Kestrin scans the room as he enters. I know from the way he finds me at once, the way his eyes fasten on the bandage at my wrist, that the Lady explained the whole of his ordeal to him.

He crosses the room to us with barely a nod to the other guests. The last week’s rest has helped him, easing the tension and exhaustion from his features, but his face is eerily gaunt, as if his youth has been bled away, leaving a faint gray tinge to his skin. I wonder how much the Lady’s spell took out of him, the effect of his inner exile on his body so long turned to stone. “My lord father,” he says. “My lady.”

“My lord,” I say, aware of the eyes on us. I smile and curtsy prettily to his bow.

“Let us go in,” the king says, gesturing for the servants to open the doors to the dining room. Kestrin offers his arm, and I find myself taking it. What a strange game we play, I think. One would think we had barely met at all, and then only at court.

At dinner I sit below the king, Kestrin across from me and Melkior at my side. When I look up, I see a wide band of wood carving where the walls meet the ceiling; Kestrin catches my speculative look and smiles guiltily, making me wonder if someone else might be observing our dinner tonight. The king asks me only a few questions, but they are questions of some substance and I take my time answering them: what have I learned of his city while living outside the palace? Was I treated well? Would I be averse to keeping the wedding for when it is set in a month’s time?

The rest of the evening I maintain a friendly discussion with Melkior, asking after his daughters and revisiting the topics first mentioned at his dinner. I am careful not to mention Red Hawk or Violet. It is too soon, yet, to venture there. When we rise to leave, Kestrin offers me his arm, circling the table to escort me out after his father.

He leads me to a marble square with a fountain playing at its center. I drop my hand from his arm as we approach it, taking a seat on a stone bench. Kestrin sits next to me, watching me covertly. I do not speak, engrossed in the play of moonlight on water.

“Lady,” he says softly. “Are you well?”

It is a strange question, for it has none of the court in it, though it should. “We are both here, are we not?” I ask.

“It has been a week.”

“Yes.” A week in which my arm healed enough to no longer require a sling, and my chest wounds closed enough so that each breath brings only a whisper of pain. I wonder how long it took for Kestrin to recover; perhaps his wounds were deeper, being cut into his soul and not his body. In the moonlight his face still has the look of stone upon it, only his hair, smooth and shining, softens his aspect. “Are you truly the Wind?”

“Yes.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I used to plan how I would tell you, what I would do. Stupid.” The word is laden with contempt.

“Childish,” I amend tactlessly, but he only laughs. “Why did you wish to marry me?”

“Can you ask?”

I do not answer.

Kestrin bites his lip, then speaks. “When I first found you, I was a novice testing my abilities and you were a child hiding in the forest from your brother. I could not help returning to check on you, and with my father’s tutelage I learned to send words on the Wind to you. I waited for your stories; I wished to get you away from your brother; and more than any of that, I wished I might see you with my own eyes.” He clasps his hands together. “When it came time for me to seek a wife, I knew it would be you.”

“I did not know what you were.” It is a small betrayal; there are so many other greater things between us, yet this seems the deepest.

“I know. I am sorry.”

I trace the embroidered design along the hem of my tunic, my finger running over the perfect stitches. “You have heard Valka’s sentence?”

“I have.”

I wait, but he says no more. “Is that how all traitors die?”

“Traditionally, a traitor is hung until dead. Then his body is left for the crows to pick and the rain to rot for a month before being thrown into a ditch and forgotten.”

“Then why must she be tortured to death?”

Kestrin rubs his chin. “I believe that Red Hawk saw your friend’s attackers executed, did he not?”

“Yes,” I admit, wondering where his questions will take us.

“Was that your doing?”

I consider him carefully, weigh the risks. “It was.”

“I thought as much. They were flogged before they were hung. Why did you agree to their ‘torture’ before their deaths?”

I try to swallow but my mouth has gone dry. “I didn’t,” I begin and then stop. Kestrin watches me keenly. I hear Red Hawk’s voice discussing the flogging:
that their punishment not go too easily with them.
I had not paused to consider this addition to the punishment. They had caused physical harm, and I wished it all back upon them. There had been nothing of mercy in the justice I had sought. “I did not think,” I whisper.

“They were made an example of to deter others from their path. This is much the same; the greater the offense, the greater the punishment.”

“No,” I say. “Even what the thieves did—it was their justice. Every man in this city knows the punishment the thieves exact for such a crime; it is the same for all. What you would do to Valka goes beyond the punishment for treason. It will only haunt the rest of us.”

“Valka’s deeds will die with her.”

“Her memory will remain. Those who liked her will remember not just that she died, but that she was made to suffer. That will create hatred in their hearts where there was none before.”

Kestrin sighs. “My father—”

“Is the law,” I say, cutting him off. “But is his decision just?”

“I will speak to him on your behalf,” Kestrin says. “Perhaps I will succeed where you have not yet.” I look at him curiously. “My father said you spoke for Valka at once.”

“I don’t know what justice really is,” I tell him. “But I am trying to get what I can right. The death she chose lies beyond all law. Her thoughts were cruel and the power that carries out such a sentence would be equally cruel.”

“I will speak to him,” Kestrin assures me.

I pick at the bandage around my wrist, fraying the cloth with my fingers, but he does not speak again. “It’s late,” I finally say.

“Your wrist—what happened—it’s the same,” he stumbles, his voice anguished.

“Yes.”

His hands curl into fists and he crosses his arms quickly, as if to hide his fists, though his anger is directed towards himself now. He holds himself in tightly; I know the look, know the way he trains his breath, and I am sorry for him. This will remain between us the rest of our lives: a legacy of hidden identities and shadow truths and violence left to us by the Lady. I do not know what to say to comfort him, and I am not sure that I should speak comfortingly when I can still feel the burn of his magic, the iron-backed bite of his anger. Yet he had not known, had been forced into the most difficult of situations. I had failed to prevent a flogging when nothing threatened me and I stood safe in the company of a friend—a flogging that, by the King’s Law, should never have happened. How much more terribly might I have failed in Kestrin’s situation?

“I will not judge you.” I feel him turn towards me, his eyes resting on my face. “I
cannot
judge you.”

“Do you think that will make it easier for me?” His voice is hard; I have to keep myself from flinching away.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what will ease your way or make things harder.”

He buries his face in his hands, his hair falling forward to hide his features. Then his hands slide through his hair to curl around the back of his neck. I wonder if his eyes rest on the marble tiles underfoot, or if they are turned elsewhere, deep inside himself.

“Can you be happy here?”

I feel the strangest tingling sensation in my chest; I think that I might cry. “Does it matter?”

He straightens, dropping his hands, but still he does not look at me. “You can return home if you wish. You have been through enough to warrant breaking the betrothal without endangering our kingdoms’ friendship.”

“I told you once before, there is nothing for me there.”

“You did.”

“I have come to love your land and your people very much, my lord. I would not leave by choice.”

Finally, he turns to me, and there is a flicker of hope in his eye. “There is—would you walk with me, lady? I would like to show you something.”

I take his arm, following him back into the maze of hallways. “It is a little ways from here,” Kestrin explains, and then falls silent. We reach a part of the palace I have never seen before, moving through quiet corridors until we come to another set of wide doors leading into a square. But this square is unlike anything I have seen in Menaiya: there are no marble tiles, no mosaics, no elegant fountains. Here grows a wood.

I stand frozen on the threshold, gazing at the trees—pine and birch and a few slender aspens. They are silvered in the moonlight, their leaves rustling in a faint breeze, filling the air with the scent of the forest: leaves, and beneath that damp earth and moss. I move forward in a dream, reaching out to touch the rough bark of a pine tree. A gravel path wanders off through the grove, curving, for there are no straight lines in a forest. I want nothing more than to walk it, to lose sight of the palace even as I stand in the belly of it, surrounded once more by trees.

“Do you like it?” Kestrin asks from behind me.

I had forgotten him, dropped his arm and walked forward without a thought. Now, with an embarrassed smile, I turn back to him. “It’s lovely. Who planted it?”

“I did—or rather,” he says with uncharacteristic humility, “the gardeners did. But I planned it. For you.”

My hand rests against the tree. “This garden has been here some time. These trees aren’t newly planted.”

“I was very sure of myself,” he says with a mocking smile. “At least it served one purpose: when I brought the impostor here, she glanced at it once, thought it quaint, and wished to go on to a lunch party.”

“You knew.”

“I knew she wasn’t you. But I didn’t know who she was, or who you were.” He crosses to me. “I knew that, as happy as you might be here, you would still like a memory of home.”

How close we are, I think, gazing at him. And yet how far. He will not cross this final distance, will not or can not. So I will have to. I reach out, brushing his arm with my fingertips. “I am home, Kestrin.”

His hand reaches up to touch mine, and we clasp hands, awkwardly, uncertainly.

“It’s strange.” I smile sadly. “I trusted you completely, you know. When I followed after the sorceress. I knew you wouldn’t kill me. You might rage, you might act like a bully—”

He swallows a laugh.

“But I knew you wouldn’t kill me.”

“I wouldn’t have been so sure.”

“You protected me and helped me.”

His mouth twists.

“Remember that, Kestrin. I do.”

“Do you remember also that you have seen the wasteland that is my heart? Could you marry such a man?”

I hesitate, trying to find the right words, but I must take too long for he adds, “Could you ever come to love me?”

I respect him, I trust him, and I have come to think of him as more than just an ally, a friend. Perhaps love will flow from that. “I don’t know,” I admit. “But I know that there is more to your heart than those places the Lady allowed you to wander. Look around,” I gesture to the trees around us, the myriad sleeping creatures hidden in the grove, “this too is a part of your heart. How could it not be?”

“Do you believe that?”

I take a step forward, so that I am barely a handspan away from him, and rest my other hand on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of each breath. “I have no doubt of it,” I say, because I cannot yet tell him I love him, because we need more time without games and deceit between us to find such love.

He looks at me wonderingly, and then, hesitantly, brings his other arm around me, drawing me to him. We stand there a long time together, his cheek resting on the top of my head, my own against his chest. I close my eyes and listen to the steady beating of his heart and the gentle rustle of leaves overhead.

Laurel waits for me in the palace courtyard, her hand on a horse’s bridle. The mare is a gentle creature, Solace, who could be trusted to children and idiots. I almost laugh. Laurel’s eyes widen as she sees me, her legs bending in an awkward curtsy. I ignore it, wrapping my good arm around her.