Chapter 21: Digging

[Trigger warning: this chapter contains brief elements of emotional abuse such as gaslighting.]

Chapter 21: Digging

Orwa, Day 15 of Melia

Comet

Year 602

Sometimes I feel the world has entirely changed around me and I am lost.  

Then I realize I’m the one who is different.

—From the private journals of Farax Lucean,

Master Alchemist at Craestor University from 600 to 604

Alisia was tired, so tired of this. How long was she expected to put up with this man?

Then she laughed ruefully to herself. The rest of my life. The rest… of my life.

The two of them were seated in the parlor area of her chamber, waiting on the soup course and staring at a basket of bread that seemed to hang between them like a battle standard.

Beynon had just asked her how she’d spent her day, and when she’d told him she’d gone shopping down in Craestor proper, he’d been annoyed with her.

“Why?” she asked. “I was accompanied by your excellent guard. I was perfectly safe.”

“It’s not seemly,” he said, clearly frustrated. “You are to send ladies and attendants into the city to procure any items you might need.”

“Ridiculous,” she replied. “No one tells you not to hunt in the grounds outside the capital if that is what you’d like to do. Really, Bryn, it’s as if you don’t want me leaving the keep at all!”

He slammed his spoon down hard on the dining table. “That is not fair, Alisia,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. She knew the motion must pull at the increasingly stiff scar on his back. It was mostly healed now, but he winced anyway. “I desire your protection above all,” he went on, seeming a little calmer. “It is my only consideration.”

“Then come with me next time,” she shot back.

He didn’t reply. A little shock of silence flashed between them, and Alisia took a sip of water. Her blood raced through her veins. She hated this—hated it so much. The two of them, seated together, eating dinner and discussing their day… there ought to be some measure of peace involved here. But the current beneath them swirled with a dark silent chaos she didn’t understand. Alisia had the impression that neither of them were showing their cards—and that perhaps they never would.

“What did you need so badly anyway?” he asked quietly.

She drew her lips together in a tight line and declined to answer.

“Alisia,” he said warningly.

“What business is it of yours?” she cried. “A lady needs certain… things!”

He didn’t seem to like this answer much at all. “What things, wife?” he spat. The word was a cruel little insult somehow.

She allowed a stunted little pause to crawl across the table from her to him. “Yes!” she said suddenly, angrily. “Yes, Bryn. I bought a few bottles from a brewer in town.”

* * *

Bryn smiled grimly at her. He’d known it the moment they’d sat down together.

“It is not in-lawed yet!” she protested, the conviction nearly pulling her to her feet.

“Outlawed,” he corrected, trying not to laugh.

And she tossed the word scornfully back at him. “It is not outlawed yet! And I still do not understand why you have taken the stance you have. I’ve asked you about it again and again, but you communicate nothing.”

He decided to change the subject. “Who saw you?” he asked. “Who did you speak to?”

She gave a panicked little laugh. “I don’t remember, Bryn. It was a busy day!”

“Then I shall query your attendants until I get a straight answer,” he promised. Bryn came to his feet, too upset to continue with the evening meal. “If I were you,” he said, leaning nastily over his soup bowl toward her, “I would think very carefully about my movements within and without the keep.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she hissed at him.

But Beynon began to walk away from her toward the door.

“Bryn!” she cried, and he turned back.

“Your name was mentioned by a criminal interred in Daitak’s dungeon,” he said quietly, dangerously. He watched her face to see if it changed at all, but she only regarded him impassively. Was that a tiny flicker of a reaction in her eyes?

She didn’t respond, and he found that damning.

“You know something, don’t you?” Beynon asked her.

But she only laughed hollowly. “Absolutely not,” she cried. “What makes you think so? Talebot is a madman. He’s trying to get into your head.”

Listening speculatively, he marked the familiar way the criminal’s name rolled off her tongue. Was he imagining it?

“Think about it,” she continued almost reasonably. “Striking at us, at our—partnership—weakens your rule and position. It’s a common tactic; this breeding of distrust. I’m surprised at you.”

Beynon watched her through suspiciously lowered lids. He paused, then slowly returned to the table. Silence hung thick in the air while he pulled out his chair slowly, noisily, and then sat back down.

“What do you know of the Celare?” he asked.

She blinked. “The—what?”

It was clearly artless. She didn’t know. He chose to ignore her question and continue. “What about Daepkarra?” he pressed.

Alisia huffed. “Are you speaking a new, made-up language? I don’t understand these terms.”

He nodded curtly at her. “That’s fine. If you hear anything of either, be sure you bring me word. It sounds as though there may be a plot to overthrow the capital.” How I sound like my mother at this very moment! he thought grimly.

Brows knit in worry, she took in a breath and considered this. “What exactly did the man say to you?” she asked.

Beynon brushed off her curiosity, saying simply, “Those two words, and a lot of threats. I ordered my men to kill him.”

“Is that wise?” she asked suddenly.

Now he was convinced. The concern in her voice, the quick way she attempted to intervene... She knew something she wasn’t telling him.

“You—care for the prisoner? You care what happens to my would-be murderer?”

“Of course not,” she spluttered. “Only that if a threat to the capital exists, it may be a mistake to do away with one of their own. It might precipitate more violence.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“I know my injured state has slowed me a little of late, wife, but you have seen me wield a sword as fiercely as any man.” He looked up at her through his lashes and gently pushed a strand of hair to expose his missing ear. “I do not fear violence.”

A few moments later, Beynon strode the halls alone. He’d bathe, he decided. Warm water on his back would soothe the aching flesh there and settle his mind.

Alisia was keeping something from him, he knew. Not as much as he’d originally thought—but something. Why?

He wondered idly if they’d executed Talebot yet. And he considered again the strange, unseen psychic attack the man had leveled at him. Beynon had never felt anything that foreign or threatening before. Since that visit to the dungeon, it had nagged at him. He couldn’t seem to make sense of it.

“Concentrating, considering, contemplating,” said a cheerful voice behind him, and Beynon jumped, thinking the words had been the jarring product of his own mind.

“It’s only me,” said the fool named Mira, and laughed at his expression. “But you are pale! I apologize for startling you, Emperor Beynon. You were obviously deep in important thought.” She gave him a courtly bow, then looked up at him from under her pointed black hood.

Though he was initially annoyed, something in Beynon was glad to see her. She really was a comely little thing.

“What do you do here, fool?”

She grinned. “I entertain you, of course. Tell me: would you have a trick, a joke, or a  riddle?”

He started down the corridor once more, deciding good-naturedly to humor her. “A joke,” he chose, wanting to avoid exertion.

She fell into step next to him. She was so petite that she had to take three steps to his every one. The thought pleased him and he did nothing to shorten his stride.

“Very well,” Mira said darkly. “Beware of uprisings.”

He turned to glance at her. What was funny about that?

But she only continued sagely. “Sovereigns never expect them—and they can be a peasant surprise.”

After a moment, he smirked.

Uncanny. Does she know who I have in my dungeon?

Out loud, he said matter-of-factly, “That’s terrible,” and she laughed, a musical little sound. “Now,” he directed, “A riddle.”

The fool thought for a moment, then said blithely, “What loses its head in the morning but gains it back at night?”

All he could think about was Talebot.

Finish him off, he had told Corbin.

“What?” he asked Mira, unwilling to guess.

“Why, a pillow, of course!”

“Of course.”

While Beynon thought of the pillow he’d torn to shreds a few nights back, they kept walking and were rapidly approaching his chambers. “Give me a trick,” he said, grinning mischievously down at her.

Was that a blush rising in her cheeks?

“As you wish,” she said.

They stopped, and she spread her hands before her pretty face. The brightness of them stood out against her black garb. Out of nowhere, a gold coin—one gem—appeared in her fingers.

“This,” she said, wiggling the appendages on her right hand, the one with the gem, “Is your kingdom. This,” and here she wiggled the fingers on her other hand, “Is all of history. And the coin? You, of course. Beautiful, wise, powerful.”

He raised his eyebrows, flattered.

“Watch carefully,” she said darkly to him. She held up the coin in her right hand, tossed it up into the air, and then caught it deftly on the back of her knuckles, where she let it dance back and forth for a few heartbeats. Then she passed the gem very quickly from one hand to the other.

“You care for Daitak,” she said as she moved. “And history will care for you. Unless you are careless.”

She paused, holding her palm splayed before him, balancing the gold coin suspended between two fingers. Then she closed her hand into a fist and as quick as a brownbird, opened it back up to reveal a copper coin, an eccat, displayed between the same two fingers.

He frowned.

“And if you’re especially careless,” she continued, tossing the eccat high up into the air—

He waited. Watched her cup her hands to receive the coin. But it never fell.

Mira looked up into the air in consternation, then made a show of looking into each open hand, turning them this way and that. She even looked about them on the floor. Then she looked back up at him. “And the answer to this predicament?”

“Don’t be careless,” he said softly.

Trust was currency.

“Don’t be careless,” she agreed. Then she bowed to him slowly, saying softly. “Goodnight, Imperial Highness,” before departing.

* * *  

The day was warm, and the eborel shirt on her back brushed pleasantly against her skin in the mottled sunshine.

Craix had rolled up her sleeves and was whistling as she walked, her soft leather shoes making indistinct imprints in the loamy dirt.

As she cleared the thick weald of trees, she shaded her eyes with one thin hand and peered down at the village.

She clucked to herself. She’d been in Liminey to pick up the girl only a few weeks before, but the place looked entirely different to her now. No merchants bustled from place to place in the town, and she heard no music, conversation, or children playing. The faint smell of greasy smoke still lingered in the air—almost a memory now. If she wasn’t sure it was from the accident a few weeks prior, Craix might have assumed she simply needed to sneeze.

Pulling up on her loose eborel breeches, she continued on. They were a little big for her now, it was true. The days of travel and light food were beginning to show. But that was the fashion among young men in northern Urda these days. A secret smile curled her lip and the bits of racoon hair she’d glued there prickled slightly against her skin.

The disguise was perfect. The androgyny of Craix’s features recommended her well to a look of this kind. She was thin, so her moustache and beard were patchy and youthful. She traveled this way at times, especially when she wished to hide in plain sight or when the area she was patrolling was particularly populated.

No one had ever questioned her authenticity.

Authenticity—what a strange word. Yet I deserve it, she thought. Craix has all parts, her father had always said. Why shouldn’t she benefit—even a little—from her innate qualities?

Birds chirruped and sang sweetly behind her as she left the forest. She loved the way their cries echoed through the canopy, and was a little sad to leave the shade.

Feeling her breath quicken slightly, Craix made a conscious effort to remain calm. It was as easy now as thinking; she had become so practiced at this.

The road turned dusty and gravelly as she continued on, and she allowed herself to kick at the baked dirt, stirring up little microclouds that floated about her. She drew nearer to the residential side of town and began immediately to look for the visual signal so she wouldn’t miss the correct home.

She didn’t have to look for long.

On the otherwise deserted row of modest little hovels, one man, bent almost double, working to add a few extra cobbles to an already established stone fence. His hands were filthy with thick mud and clinging sticks of feather-light straw.

He placed the huge stone, then began to fill the gaps with a mixture of straw and mud. The pile of mud had drawn a few flies, and it stank in the heat—Craix could smell it from her vantage point several gerds away.

She stopped under the pretense of checking the position of the sun.

The man didn't turn to regard or greet her. Instead he whistled absently, as though bored with the work. It was a bird’s call—a claren. Two short, high notes, followed by four or five low ones in quick succession. It was a lilting little tune, almost musical.

Craix waited for him to do it twice.

When he stopped then and stretched skyward, ostensibly to soothe his aching back, Craix cleared her throat and stepped forward.

“Greetings, friend,” she said in her deepest tones. “Any food or water to be had?”

Wiping sweat from his forehead with a dusty but otherwise unsullied forearm, the man finally turned to face her. “I’ll do you one better—” he offered. “Need a place to stay?”

She grinned.

Inside, the small hut was cool and shady after the brilliance of the Melian sun. The man and his son were the only residents.

She was invited to sit at a scarred old wooden table. The boy stared wide-eyed at her as she shared some of their water, sipping it slowly and swishing it about in her mouth before swallowing. The child was perhaps six summers or so, and though his clothing was worn and tattered, it was clean.

“Why do you drink it like that?” the boy asked her.

She swallowed. “Makes it last longer,” she replied. “Better for you, too. Don’t gulp cold water on a warm day. Take it slow.”

Continuing to stare at her, the boy’s eyes seemed to glaze over. They were a deep brown.

Craix looked up at the man, who had come inside after rinsing off his hands in the nearby stream. He was still caked with mud and was careful not to touch anything. “How long will you need to stay?” he asked her.

“Two days at most,” she answered. “I thank you,” she added.

The man nodded. “Of course. Any way we can be of service. We take an interest in the cause, you know.”

“Oh?” she asked quietly, casting a surreptitious glance at the door.

Taking a seat on the hard-packed floor nearby, he nodded again. Craix could tell he was about to continue, but the boy suddenly gave a yelp, animal-like. It startled them all.

The little one raised a flailing arm and smacked himself hard on the chest three or four times.

She tried not to stare.

When the child had stilled again, his father spoke. “This is Amat,” he said, gesturing to his son. “And I am Centat. These—” he explained helplessly, “The tremors, the vocalisations—there is a potion that can ease them.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Really?” she asked.

Centat nodded. “We started him on it as a baby—when his mother was still alive. It contains turkey marrow, I know, and a few other things. We always bought cases of it at the Wheel and Well. But now…”

Craix nodded. “I see.”

There was a silence. The boy gave a hiccupy little cough, then cleared his throat. Then he did it again. And again. He was entirely unphased by it, and smiled jauntily up at her. She smiled back.

“He’s whole,” his father continued. “And I love him. It’s the hitting. Sometimes it’s not his shoulder, it’s his head or his eyes. I don’t want him to hurt himself.”

“Of course.”

Amat took his own little sip of water then, and tried swishing it around in his mouth in an attempt to emulate her. He’d taken too much though, and couldn’t hold back the little splash that spilled out onto the dirt floor. He giggled a little and swallowed convulsively, wiping his mouth with a tattered sleeve.

“Cannot you leave the village?” she asked Centat.

He nodded. “I’d like to,” he replied. “But we haven’t the coin. I’m working for it now, saving for it. We need to settle near a brewer, I think.”

She left not long after that.

Craix had almost no need to rely on the directions she’d been given because the remnants of smoke pulled her toward her destination like a deathly sort of beacon.

She hadn’t spent much time in Liminey before the accident, so could barely recall what the building was supposed to look like. Her hazy memories conjured a square-ish building, cobbled on two sides and built up with whitewashed timber on the others. Exposed wood joists had framed it. There had been plenty of windows, and a stolid stone chimney had risen from a respectably shingled roof.

Not so now. The Wheel and Well was in ruins.

She shouldn’t have been surprised by it, but still was somehow.

The roof was entirely gone. Most of the timbers were as well, though some blackened pieces still stuck out into the air at crazy angles like the legs of some deranged spider.

The sign above the door was burned up or otherwise missing.

Large patches of the stone walls had been toppled—well, that was the wrong word. Hurled, perhaps. They lay splayed out all around the building demarcation, as if some great force had thrown them outward and away—which Craix knew from the reports was exactly what had happened. And even the remaining stones in the foundation were charred and smoky.

Cautiously approaching the decimated building, she took mental notes of everything she noticed. It was frightfully quiet and still.

People had been killed here, murdered. Craix didn’t expect to come across any bodies or pieces of bodies, but if she happened to, she was prepared. She was ready.

Pulling her focus as she moved forward was the remains of the service counter. The long wooden structure was almost intact, but badly burned. Its supports gleamed a sooty, textured black, suggesting rows of precious ink-black stones crammed in amongst each other.

She highly doubted any resources or supplies would have survived the explosion, but she would check every storage space, every cupboard, every box, just to be sure. Even if some of the potions or ingredients hadn’t combusted, they’d likely been looted soon after. Craix’s understanding was that plenty of Emperor Beynon’s sympathizers hadn’t been sorry to see the place go. They might even have helped to undo the little shop.

And that was the question, wasn’t it? Who had destroyed the Wheel and Well? And why?

Just inside where the doorframe had once stood, her foot happened to find a mass of crushed glass fragments. Whatever the vial had held—and who knew! A Glamour? Haste? had long since dried and evaporated away. It could even have been the incendiary material in question, she reasoned, although martial materials were generally kept in a different size bottle.

But she knelt reverently next to the pile anyway. She donned a pair of leather gloves and meticulously swept the fragments up and into a small eborel pouch, taking care to scrape up and collect every bit she could.

Then she tightened the drawstring pouch and moved toward the rear of the ruined building to see what else she could find.