Sign of the Knife, page 30
My hands flew up, twisting the knife from his grasp. Roland fell to the ground, and I stood between him and Joren, Ordalf in my hands.
Roland’s men stepped forward, but Joren put out an arm to stop them. The entire camp held their breath, all eyes on me.
“Use the knife, Mira,” Roland said. “It’s yours. Keep your oath.”
“You were going to kill me.”
His eyes were ice, but his lips smiled. “You’re strong, Mira. I see who you really are. And Prince Joren?” He made a sound like laughing. “If he had known who you were, he would never have kissed you.”
“There you are wrong,” Joren said, his voice strong. “I know exactly who she is.”
“You know now, do you? An assassin. A spy. Did you know she met with me in Woodall after she met you? She kissed me the night of the funeral pyre, after planting the explosives. She is a wench with a knife, an assassin trained to kill.”
Shame licked my throat and chest like flames. It was true. I was a spy. A killer. And here I stood, knife in hand, fighting for a clear thought.
“But you’re wrong,” Joren said quietly.
No, I thought. No, Joren. Roland is right.
“Avylen, look at me.” Joren’s voice was commanding.
Surprised to hear the princess’s name, I looked for Illsabet, but every eye was on me, on the knife in my hand.
Joren let out a sharp breath. “Oh, what a horrid time for talking.” He looked at his guards, at the man bleeding on the ground beside him, and Roland’s men, then back at me.
“Mira, your father is Alazar, King of Aloysia, and you are my princess. My Avylen. Crown Princess of Aloysia.”
He had gone as insane as Roland. “What?”
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Roland laughed out loud. “Do you expect her to believe a lie like that?” He snorted from the ground and some of his men laughed with him. “Just because you wear a crown doesn’t mean you can change the truth.”
Joren’s eyes were only on me. “Why do you think I brought you with me? Why did I find you at the inn, set guards to protect you, and—” his voice faltered, “and—get to know you?”
My knees felt weak. I clutched the knife as if for support.
Rain ran down my hair and dripped into my eyes.
“But, you’re going to marry the princess.”
“You are the princess! Mira. Avylen. I’m going to marry you!”
Thunder crashed overhead and rain ran off the blade of his sword.
I heard a sound behind me and turned as Roland sprang at me. I spun, Ordalf before me. “Don’t move!”
To my surprise he stopped, eyes on the knife.
I took a step back and looked from Roland to Joren.
A flash of lightening jagged across the sky and the world tipped as a crash of thunder shook the ground.
I ran.
Past stunned guards. Through the camp where I killed Leif.
Away from Roland and his insanity, away from Joren and his lies, away from murderers and princesses and lovers and hate.
The storm crashed around me. It was darker than night as rain pounded down the mountain like hoof beats.
I ran uphill, climbing over rocks and logs, slipping in mud, pushing through thorns that grabbed and tore. I discovered Ordalf was still in my hand and cut my way free of the brambles.
Roland and Joren were behind me with guards and archers and men on horseback. I tried not to picture the bloodshed as I climbed on, lungs aching, mind throbbing. When the ground evened out, I ran like a deer, faster than the wind whipping about 333
me, and kept running when the ground became steep again and my legs cried out in protest.
The world was only water, mud and rocks—climbing, running, gasping for breath.
I thrust Ordalf into the ground and pulled myself up a steep incline.
Another flash of lightning ripped the sky and I looked over my shoulder. Nothing but darkness lay below me.
I pushed through tangles of bushes until I fell into openness, a sudden clearing.
I landed on my hands and knees.
The sky cracked again, lighting my view. A few paces before me, the ground dropped away into stormy sky.
I fell to my face on the ground. Dear Gen, I had nearly thrown myself off the mountain again.
I lay on the ground, cheek to wet stone, and waited for Roland and Joren to kill me.
Rain lashed my back.
Princess.
My mind thrust the word away.
I was not the princess!
Roland said if I killed Joren I would become his princess someday, to rule with him.
But he was wrong. I’d killed too many people. And killing didn’t make me a princess.
I screamed into the storm.
I gripped Ordalf and cut my arm. Cut deep.
My blood mixed with rain, the tears of Ada, and I waited for it to leak out of me. For my life to end.
Like Leif. Like the man who fell and bled on my boots.
Like all the people on the boat.
Like Catriona.
I saw Joren’s face. You are my princess.
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And I cried out again. I could never be his princess. He had Avylen.
You are Avylen, Crown Princess of Aloysia. You are my princess.
I dropped Ordalf, clutched my bleeding arm to my chest, and cried into the darkness. “I’m sorry, Joren! Catriona, I’m sorry!
I didn’t know what would happen.”
Thunder cracked so close I shied. The flash that lit the night encircled me. Showed one twisted oak that grew on the peak in a flash brighter than daylight.
Gods have mercy!
I remembered Medwin’s words about storms on the top.
Medwin.
He had kissed my hand as he had Joren’s. As if I were royalty.
I will leave you a blessing.
Joren in the torchlight of Trevelia. She is exactly who I would want to marry, even if we were not betrothed.
Joren holding my hand when I was lost in the passages.
Joren kissing me softly beside the snow drift.
Joren smiling, his eyes on mine.
Joren, who would always be true to his word.
I shook my head, trying to clear these impossible thoughts.
Could he have spoken the truth?
Could he have lied?
The princess was in hiding, someplace no one would think to look.
Like Mama’s farm in Brynn.
Domhnall was searching for her. Domhnall and his apprentice.
Roland.
Roland, who asked about my home, my education, my betrothal. You’re meant for more than this. Can’t you feel it?
Your hair. It reminds me of home.
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Had he found the princess?
I lifted my face to the sky and let the rain mix with my tears. I let go of my bleeding arm and lifted Ordalf—heavier than I remembered—and cut my torn skirt into a makeshift bandage. I wrapped the rain-soaked cloth around my bloody arm. I was dizzy.
If I was the princess—
That was impossible. I couldn’t be.
Could I?
Who is she?
Illsabet.
A girl from a farm.
Summoned back to Lydelia to marry her betrothed.
To marry the prince.
Joren.
Fetched by the prince himself.
Escorted by royal guard.
Varik.
Over Jacob’s Peak to her home in Lydelia.
Where her father had not been a sailor or a merchant.
Where he gave everything to protect her.
Her father, the King.
Her father, who did not sell his daughter for opals or rubies.
Alazar knows his daughter is alive. The hope of seeing her again is the only thing that keeps him from death.
Her father who loves her more than life itself, just like Mama said.
Everything Mama said that had never made sense fell into place.
And I knew.
This is who I am.
The world shifted into place.
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An explosion of light and sound split the darkness of the storm, cracked my ears, and shook the earth with a power beyond this life.
I was thrown backward, onto the ground as flames burst into the twisted tree before me, cracking and hissing like demons, throwing light onto the rocks, the bushes, my torn skirt, and my wrapped arm.
I shielded my eyes and crouched in the rain.
Lightning had struck the twisted oak. How could it burn in such a storm? Yet burn it did, lighting the night and washing the world below even further away.
I tried to stand. The rocks and sky wavered. I watched flames throw themselves into the night and I crawled toward the fire, dragging Ordalf with me, pausing to rest, letting rain pour over me, pushing myself on.
A branch crashed from the burning tree onto the ground before me, sparks sizzling in the rain.
I lifted Ordalf over my head and hurled it as hard as I could into the flaming tree. A branch crashed in a spray of fire and rain.
Sparks fell on my clothes and hair.
I unfastened my cloak and pulled off the tunic Roland had given me.
It was heavier than it should have been, and I had to rest for a moment before I could get it over my head. Firelight caught the gold stitching and tangled in the emerald sequins. I heaved the tunic into the flames.
It burst into a blaze of glory.
And then it was gone.
Like Catriona.
Like the fool I had been.
The world dipped,
wavered,
and tipped into darkness.
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CHAPTER 33
I closed my eyes and slept.
In my dreams I was thirsty. I walked down a familiar path searching for a stream I knew lay just ahead, but I couldn’t find it.
I woke shivering and parched. When I opened my eyes, I was confused.
What was this sky, so huge above me? Where was Trevelia? The ceiling of stone? The pond?
I remembered climbing stairs. Slipping.
Joren. Medwin.
Where were they?
Something tugged on the edges of my mind and I raised my head. The world spun.
Roland. Fighting in the camp. Running.
I groaned and laid my head back down.
Princess.
What insanity had I imagined?
But—
The fingers of my left hand clenched over my scar. My arm ached to the bone, and I shivered.
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Ordalf?
I remembered throwing it into the burning tree. I lifted my head and looked at the tree.
It was a black skeleton against a clear blue sky. Ashes of burnt limbs lay about.
I couldn’t see Ordalf anywhere.
The wind bit with teeth of ice.
I shivered and remembered my tunic burning. Perhaps I’d acted rashly.
But no. Roland lied to me. I was glad the tunic he gave me was gone.
My tongue searched the inside of my mouth for water but found none. When I sat up, the earth tipped away and I clutched the ground, trying not to fall into the sky.
The closest puddle was an arm’s length away. I drank, mouth to the ground, like a dog.
The pain in my left arm was intense. It felt right to hurt. I welcomed the pain, but it made my vision swim.
When my tongue could move easily, I lay back down and slept.
I woke briefly and shivered in the blackness of night.
Then it was morning. A vulture perched on a branch of the skeleton tree, watching me.
“No!” I croaked. “Go away! Shoo!” I sat up and waved my right arm.
He stretched out his neck and looked at me with small black eyes, then spread his giant wings and flapped into the sky, circling twice as if to say, “I can wait.”
He flew into the wind to the east and I lost him in the rising sun.
“Ugly beast.” I bent my head to a shallow dip of water and drank till it was nothing but a damp spot. Then I moved to another and drank it, too. I wanted food, but there was nothing to eat on this peak except, according to the vulture, possibly me.
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Jacob’s Peak.
Good mercy. This was the peak Medwin spoke of in the prophecy. I tried to remember his words. Blood and fire will pour from Jacob’s Peak as Ordalf cuts ties and binds anew.
Blood and fire, indeed.
I tucked my left arm into my lap and wrapped my right arm about my knees for warmth. Wind whipped my hair about my face.
I didn’t intend to become vulture food. Although yesterday—or was it two days ago—the idea would have been welcome.
Though I could hardly stand, I needed to find food. But going down the mountain I would almost certainly be found by Joren or Roland- whomever was still alive.
I closed my eyes and prayed to every god in Gen’s great sky that it was Joren. I imagined myself marrying him, and for one brief moment, it felt glorious, like springtime and the warm waters of the pond room and smiling into his beautiful eyes all at once.
But then I remembered his face when I admitted I’d planted the explosives. The way his eyes searched mine.
I curled into a ball, dug my fingernails into the cut on my arm and cried out in pain. It didn’t stop the aching.
I couldn’t return to Joren as a murderer, a liar, an assassin.
Princess.
No. I was not his princess. Good mercy, how I wished I’d known when we were in Trevelia. I would have kissed him harder—
I tried to stop myself, but my thoughts were a jumble of Joren and kissing and Ordalf and Roland. Of growing up in Brynn, thinking I was a fatherless child. Feeling so insanely out of place!
Afraid the father Mama told me of hadn’t wanted me, had left me for opals and rubies. Learning to shoot arrows and throw knives. I wondered if my father—King Alazar—had been good at these things.
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He was still alive somewhere. King Alazar was living in a prison.
My father—alive.
But did that mean Mama was Queen Addis?
My head spun and I closed my eyes.
Queen Addis had been murdered. Everyone knew that.
There were no rumors of her survival. She wasn’t in the dungeons with Alazar. She wasn’t in Brynn.
But had she been? If I was Princess Avylen, anything might be possible.
I remembered Mama’s books on court customs and politics. Such an odd thing for a seamstress in Brynn to have. How had I never thought about how strange that was?
And what about Catriona? Had the queen been expecting a child when the ruling family was murdered, and the kingdom overthrown by bandits?
Who was Mama? Who was Catriona?
Who was Princess Avylen?
Who was I?
I knew nothing about my life, about the people I called my family. The ones I’d been closest to were complete strangers.
I was a complete stranger.
Catriona was so good at caring about the customs and manners in Mama’s books, at curtsying, and making friends with everyone. She would have made the perfect princess. While I didn’t make the perfect anything. Not a good quilter, not a good assassin. And I was certainly not a good princess. But Catriona couldn’t be the real Avylen. She wasn’t even born when Aloysia had been overthrown.
I had been two years old. Just the age of the princess, who, rumors said, had somehow escaped.
She is exactly who I would choose to marry, even if she was not the princess.
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“That’s not who I am,” I whispered to the sky. “I can’t be your princess. I ruin everything.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to care that I’d ruined it all.
Joren would make the perfect king—if he lived to take the throne. He was intelligent, brave and concerned about others. He was everything his father wasn’t.
The people of Gilan would have trouble respecting him because he was his father’s son. No one knew that more than me.
A tyrant like King Derrik rules with respect sprung from fear, like claws gripping the throat. But Joren needed the respect that flows from trust. And having a wife and queen who had killed people—
his own people—would make that impossible.
I would make his life impossible.
I thought of Roland holding Ordalf to my throat. The ways he’d lied to me. Lied to me! About everything!
And I’d believed him. The things I’d been willing to do for him made me physically sick. I groaned and my arm throbbed.
“Is this who I am?” I asked Ada, goddess of change.
“Princess Avylen is dead. She died in the attacks on the palace when she was a baby. I killed her again in Woodall when I planted those explosives. When Catriona died. I was killing her all along, every day I listened to Roland. Every time I gave myself to him.
Every moment I believed his lies.”
A blackbird sailed high above me, and I watched it disappear into the sky.
“But Mira is dead too. She died in Trevelia beside the pond when Joren smiled at me. When he kissed me. She’d been dying all along the riding path. Her bones lie in a pile of skeletons beside the pond room.”
A cloud was drifting across the blue.
“Who am I?” I whispered.
I sent a prayer deep into the earth to Ada as I wet my tongue and opened my mouth. “Avylen,” I said it out loud, hearing the sound in the morning chill. The name sounded empty as wind.
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“Maid Avylen,” I said to the sky, putting a common title with a royal name—neither royal nor common. Like me.
Treason was punishable by death. Even for royalty. No one can try to dethrone the king and live. Not in Gilan. Not in Aloysia.
According to Mistress Iarla and the stories Joren told me in Trevelia, there were no exceptions.
The people would cry out for Joren to behead me. The royals in both kingdoms would insist on it.
I swallowed and put a hand to my neck.
If he were ever to rule successfully, with the trust of his people, he would need to be rid of me. He couldn’t be seen as loyal to the maid who tried to assassinate him, who killed his people in the process. It would be political suicide. His position was tenuous enough without a treasonous scandal. He would have to disassociate himself from me entirely. I could think of no better way than with the clean, sharp slice of a guillotine.
