Crown of Gold and Ruin, page 34
He turned suddenly, looking at Jaden with a frown etched between his brows, his eyes sunken with exhaustion. “Where are the others?”
Jaden shrugged. “Scythe said she heard water running somewhere, said she felt filthy and went to have a bath. Jaime and Diana are off … well, according to them … collecting firewood.” He had noticed them drifting closer together as the forest paths carried them further from Elenon, noticed the little glances passed between them, and how once when Di had tripped and Jaime steadied her, Di had lingered in his arms for a moment.
Trystan chuckled and turned back to poking the rabbit, now turning an inviting golden brown.
“Trystan?” Jaden asked hesitantly.
“What?”
“In the Sapphire Temple, before the Lionsbane slew Father,” he said slowly, hesitating at the stiffness that ran through Trystan. “Before that, well, he spoke of Flavian’s sins, did he not, that he adopted you to atone for some folly, that they both knew who your real father is?”
“What about it?” Trystan’s voice was gruff.
“Is it not affecting you, the knowledge that your real father is alive?”
Trystan turned and gave Jaden a long, slow, calculating look. “No one said he was alive.”
“Well, no one said he was dead either. The Lionsbane said ‘who his father really is,’ meaning he still—”
“Why do you care, Jaden?” Trystan growled. “What importance is it to you, Your Highness?”
Jaden was silent as Trystan glowered at him. Then he said, “Look, I don’t know. I just suppose I pity you.” He knew instantly it was the wrong thing to say as Trystan’s pride reared up like a striking serpent.
“I don’t need your pity,” he snarled. “If my father wanted to abandon me as an infant to Flavian’s household, then so be it. It just proves what a monster he must have been, just like Flavian.”
Jaden forced his temper down with a bitter taste in his mouth, and without saying anything, jammed Goldfire back into its sheath.
Trystan watched the golden flickers of the metal disappear greedily, his lips parting as he exhaled sharply. He said quietly, “If ever you dare to pity me again, Your Highness, I will make you eat that sword.” His eyes glowed blackly.
“If I was you,” Jaden said at last, gazing into the crackling, ruby-red flames, “and I did not know what kind of man my father was, I would want to know.”
“Did knowing the kind of man your father was help you in any way over the years, or did it just add insult to injury?”
Jaden ignored this. “Why were you visiting the slums at night before Elenon was sacked, Trystan?”
Before he could answer, Scythe emerged suddenly from the trees, breaking the tense atmosphere, her hair a long, wet curtain down her back, almost to her waist.
She did not appear to notice anything. “I brought berries,” she said, brandishing a bunch of fat, purple berries that gleamed darkly in the orange firelight. “To add a bit of flavor to the meat.”
“Splendid,” Trystan said as he turned to her with a gallant smile, all threats and pride wiped from his angular face. “I have told Jaime to collect any edible herbs he might encounter as well, so we shall have a real feast.”
“I did not imagine any prince would be able to make a feast out of boiled rabbit flesh and forest berries,” Scythe said, helping Trystan slice the berries into neat slivers with her dagger and putting them into a leather pouch.
“Ah,” Trystan smiled again, this time with a familiar touch of coldness. “But I am no real prince, am I?”
Scythe hesitated and finally glanced at Jaden, who hastily stared deeper into the flames. The meat now exuded a thick, sweet, slightly burnt smell.
Trystan’s voice was amicable as he suddenly said, “Scythe, my brother has just asked me why I ventured to the Elenon slums so frequently in the past few weeks. What do you think I should tell him?”
She raised her brows, a mix of amusement and wariness playing in her slight smile. “That’s up to you, I suppose. I, for one, tried following you and almost got killed by river-wraiths.”
“I suppose that was my fault,” Jaden winced. “But I think that my asking you, Scythe, to shadow him proved fruitful if you are in on his secret. So where did you go, brother?”
“Just so you know, Scythe doesn’t have to spy on me to be part of my secrets,” Trystan said as Scythe gave him a crooked grin, and Jaden narrowed his eyes in suspicion, “but this particular one I kept from her because I didn’t want to endanger her.” He paused. “The Velazaan tried to recruit me.”
Jaden exhaled sharply. “Tried to, or you were recruited? You wouldn’t keep visiting the slums if you had refused their call.”
Liars everywhere.
Trystan seemed to ponder his next words carefully. “They had some interesting arguments to make about their purpose in saving Elenon from a tyrannical monarchy. You know that type of drivel. Righteous and pompous. I got several invites to their meetings in these little sweatshops in the slums, measly little places, and well, I was bored with my nights, so I went. It was fascinating to see and hear the amount of conspiracy they racked up in those hot, crammed little rooms. Of course, most of the speakers didn’t know I was the prince, so their speeches went quite unfiltered.”
“What kind of speeches?” Jaden asked, glancing around to see if Jaime was returning, and Scythe seeming to do the same thing.
Trystan shrugged. “Blaspheming the Blacknetts, the royal court. Apparently, Drast was practicing blood magic, the evil kind. And they kept praising the Green Wolf, whoever he is. A lord of wonderful, calm character, a skilled commander, true Erian blood in his veins, and all that claptrap. Does that answer your question?”
Jaden noticed Scythe’s lips were twitching for some reason. “But why did you keep returning to hear all this claptrap, as you call it?” he asked quietly.
“I was trying to see if it was worth my time and investment to join them,” Trystan said gravely, and Jaden for the life of him couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “I am mysterious like that.”
“Yes, indeed,” Jaden said dryly, wondering whether, if the Lionsbane hadn’t invaded, Trystan might very well be Velazaan now. “Endlessly fascinating,” he said to Scythe, who ignored him, looking at Trystan, whose mouth now curved into a wistful, wondering smile that was quite unlike him.
It occurred to Jaden that perhaps Jaime was not the only one infatuated in their motley group. Trystan and Scythe were an infuriatingly striking couple as they kneeled close together beside the blazing flames and had been so when they danced the Opal Route under blue lanterns, gazing into each other’s eyes. Jaden found a bitter disappointment trickling through him again, immediately followed by thoughts of Cassia. She came to the forefront of his mind quite often now, Cassia running from him, her cheeks and lips that he had kissed many, many times running with tears. She had chosen to sacrifice her freedom from Elenon for her brother—and true, Jaden would have done the same for Di. Yet that did not stop the ugly images of Cassia’s body broken and bloodied at Erzul hands haunting him—along with a gnawing guilt—as they trekked through the endless green labyrinth of the Whisperwood. Jaden’s heart swelled with hate, a familiar emotion now, each heartbeat punctuated by blunt, black loathing, of the Blackcloaks and their murders, of himself, of his father, for not anticipating the attack and for dying so easily when he had seemed the immortal figurine. Leaving his family alone and wandering.
And there was also longing for the familiarity of Drast’s quiet admonitions, Vralen’s wide grin, Cassia smiling into Jaden’s mouth under moonlight, the grumble and roar of the ocean, the smell of salt and olives, and the delicate strings of the lyre. One day, I will rebuild my capital to its former glory—I will save my people, he vowed, watching Trystan and Scythe bicker lazily.
The flames crackled heartily, as though laughing, mocking his silent oath.
* * *
The forest was thick with purple shadows. Diana’s arms were aching with the weight of the white branches piled upon them from trees that had withered away decades past under blistering heat. They were cool now though, and smooth, but abominably heavy, sending needles of dull pain through Di’s hands as she struggled to hold them all in a firm clasp.
“Here,” said Jaime’s amused voice from behind her. “Let me help you, princess.” He came to her side to heft some of the branches off her arms onto his already laden hands.
Di balanced her now lighter pile of wood in arms that had never felt skinnier. “The title seems very apt now, in the wilderness, does it not?”
“It does,” Jaime conceded, smiling mildly. She could not imagine him being a notorious rebel criminal when he smiled like that. “But no court lady is trained to survive a life in the wilds, Diana. It is not your fault that it is difficult for you to cope both with the physical difficulties of trekking through the wild and with the inner battles we all face,” he said, shrewdly studying her.
Di sighed. “It is just … Jaden suffers, and I know not how to aid him. He hurts and I know not what words will comfort him. And he hides so much, Jaime, from me, from the world—” She stopped herself forcibly before she could continue; she could not reveal her brother’s secrets to a man who had only two weeks past been arrested for treason, no matter how the circumstances had changed. It was simply that she felt so at ease in Jaime’s company that the words just tumbled out.
“Of course, Di, he is grieving and shaken by the enormity of what has driven us beyond Elenon’s walls. But time heals all wounds, and I think Jaden is strong enough to accept his city’s fate, his father’s fate, and take hold of Eria’s crown with confident fingers. He just needs time, as do we all.”
“They say words of comfort often hide a sufferer’s heart,” she said after a moment’s pause.
“We are all sufferers here, are we not? You yourself, are now missing something that would have made you a very powerful woman.” He gave her another penetrating look.
Di flushed, examining the mage-blight etched onto her wrist. “I suppose that with all your Velazaan training, you know what this is?”
Jaime smiled, setting down some of his firewood on the moss and stretching his arms languidly. “Yes, I do. And I saw how you shattered the lock to the Healing Hall the night of the fall. So I know your secret, Princess. And I also know,” he hesitated slightly before continuing, “that such gifts are rare, and precious. That power could help your brother’s retaking of Eria a great deal. My advice would be to reclaim it as fast as possible by removing that blight.”
“Do you know how?” she blurted.
“I am afraid only the most powerful of mages are aware of that, Di, and I am not one.”
She sighed, watching starlight angle through the pine trees. Somewhere far away, a wolf howled ominously. It was the tamest sound she had heard emitted from the ancient woods around them, that at night more often than not echoed with distant growls and shrieks of things that did not sound entirely of this world. Just last night, Di had jolted awake to witness a huge golden-skinned spider, twice Jaden’s height, scuttling across the canopy above them as lightly as a feather, its pincers picking ravens out of the branches where they slept.
Scythe, who had been on night watch, had murmured, “A Raumb spider. It doesn’t know the scent of humans, so it won’t trouble us.” Di had watched as blood from the devoured birds spattered down to sizzle on their dying fire and shivered at the hint of the true denizens of this wood.
“But,” Jaime said now, taking her silence for disappointment, “I am more than happy to help you search for such a mage. We are after all, going to Carthage, and I’ve heard it said the Tyrols are absolutely in love with magic-doers who do their bidding. Rumors even say,” and he leaned in to whisper in her ear, the huff of his breath warming something deep in her core.
Then she started, laughter bursting out of her as what he had said registered. “You cannot be serious!” she exclaimed, and he just laughed, nodding.
“All true. The Tyrols are a wicked, strange family.” Di shook her head, chuckling, and Jaime said softly, “I’ve missed that smile.”
She studied him, the forest gloom accentuating the sharpness of his cheekbones, drowning the brown of his eyes until they were black and glinting. “Jaime, I have been meaning to ask you something.” When he cocked his brows at her, she continued, “I have to hope that with all your kindness and alliance with us, with me, that our friendship in Elenon wasn’t a feign or a lie. You and I, we did have a bond, did we not?”
Jaime looked startled that she would even ask such a thing. “Of course we did. That has to be one of the few things I didn’t lie about, I suppose.”
“And placing honor on that I have to ask, how did someone like you—heir to one of Eria’s greatest lords, an important member of the royal court—how did you become Velazaan? And why?”
Jaime, his brow furrowed, set down the rest of his firewood, and stretching his arm out, gestured her to follow him a bit deeper into the wood. Raising her eyebrows perplexed, she nevertheless followed him. They skirted a tiny scummy pool, and slid around a few birches and a strange, convoluted tree of a like Di had never seen before dripped its branches almost to the floor before them. She vaguely recalled passing it before in the Whisperwood, but she had been too caught up in her own mind’s grieved puddle to notice its queer beauty. Now she did, noting the pure white buds that glowed like lanterns and the blood-red leaves. In its branches, black-gold bits of pollen wavered and floated around like confetti. Jaime stepped up to it, and placed a hand on the flaking bark, the color of sand.
“This tree is called Menhuthracreya, Diana. My mother’s people used to worship it as a tree of birth and regrowth, as too she did, for she was of the northern hill tribes. My father planted such a tree for her in our home, and she and I would sit beside it each seventh dawn, and pray for a good, blessed week ahead. I was about six when she took a fever and died. After that, I was stuck with my father, who was busy fighting wars, so I was ferried, from one battlefield to the next.”
“I had not known Tyndareus was a soldier-lord, I rather thought he was a politician.”
Jaime studied her for a moment. “Tyndareus was whatever he was asked to be by those higher powers which we all serve, just like us all, I suppose. All of us are puppets on strings, twisting and turning this way and that.”
She stared at him, and again found herself the recipient of that disarming, brilliant smile.
“Forgive me, I ramble. But yes, though many do not know it, I grew up on the battlefields of the Empire War, and I saw how our good, strong, young Erian men suffered. How their families suffered when their corpses were sent back to them in wagons with a pouch of gold, as if this would ease the wound. I grew up wanting to put an end to this ceaseless violence that left such red ruin on the land we all loved. You have no idea, Diana, for in the south, Flavian’s presence has protected these rich forests from the invaders and strife, yet in the north …” he sighed. “Much of the land around Ravenhall is desolation. I thought, at least in Eria, that if I could help stop this conflict, then at least this realm’s smallfolk would be gifted some kind of peace to grow their crops and love their children without fear of swords raining down on them unwarranted. These kind of thoughts were always in my mind, and then for the first time, I visited the capital. And I was approached by a Velazaan spy right in the palace who had heard that I often went around the war-camps, writing journals of what each soldier said or did.”
Her eyes widened as his story unraveled, revealing to her the depths that had been carefully concealed behind those placid brown eyes. “Journals … I would like to read those.”
“My father burned them when he found them.” His tone was flat. “He said they were unnecessary, a waste of time. It was folly to make human the pawns we sent out to fight and die for us. They were just fodder anyway. He said this action would attract attention for all the wrong reasons.” He shrugged deprecatingly. “I suppose he was right. You and Jaden were not in the palace when I started visiting the Velazaan meetings in the city. This was the year we were all about fifteen, and the royal family was off visiting Bactria.”
Di remembered a stinking sea-port teeming with the military, rich feasts of seafood and heated wine, and dancing with the pudgy heir of the Bactrian lord.
“So I listened to the Velazaan, and I understood their motives, and I suppose they were the only outlet I found where I could truly commit to what I believed in. And that, Princess, is how I came to join them.”
Diana exhaled, digesting his story as a sudden quiet permeated over them. The leaves of the Menhuthracreya sang quietly. “But the Velazaan hate the royal family,” she said softly, a long while later.
“Well, I suppose that’s why I am the dilemma and why they sent me as a spy right into the lion’s den. I …” and he paused, a slight red coloring his cheeks, “I lost my heart to a member of the royalty, like a presumptuous fool, and thus endangered the Velazaan because they did not know where my loyalties now stood.”
She stared at him, shocked at what he had admitted. A lock of her hair floated between them on the breeze, and he hesitantly clasped it, stroking the red-gold strands between his fingers as if examining the texture. “Diana,” he said. She let his fingers, cool and smooth, trail across her face, his touch sweet and lingering.
Di felt strange and detached, as his other hand cupped her face. He moved closer, and the firewood Di still clasped pressed between them so that a branch dug into her stomach, though she felt the pain as at a distance. Just as his mouth grazed her own though, and she tried to decide whether to pull away, there came a deep rustling from the undergrowth.
They sprang apart, just as a feline shape emerged from the darkness, lean and dark with pale spots, and glowing amber eyes.
“Minerva!” Diana exclaimed as the wildcat padded around them, swishing her tail proudly.
She turned her beautiful head and gave Di and Jaime a look of haughty distaste, until Di kneeled and put her arms around her, burying her face in the soft black fur.
