Notes: Content warning! A suicide that is referenced in The Isle of the Dead plays an important role in this story.
Weak sunlight cast the palace in a watery, washed-out glow. Barda squinted through the light to peer at the massive structure before him. It had been two months since he had called it home again, and yet it felt so terribly strange to walk up the wide steps.
He looked back at his companion, trailing just behind him. Without an official title or position, and with Lief and Doom almost always preoccupied, Jasmine would occasionally shadow Barda on his rounds. He did not discourage this habit, for otherwise she spent her time alone, and besides, she was the best kind of company.
"There is a place for you in the palace guards, should you wish it," Barda had told her the week before, doing his best to keep his voice unaffected. "You would not need to apply."
Jasmine had stared blankly ahead. Months earlier, he would have thought that the girl's face was unreadable like this. But he could see the thought behind her sharp eyes, and the way her lips pulled downwards when she concentrated.
"Thank you," she had said awkwardly. "But I would not want it."
He had meant his words, but so had she, and so Barda had never offered again.
"Are you finished, already?" Jasmine asked, pulling him from the memory.
"My shift has ended, but I wish to look in on how the meetings are going. Mobley has only been my deputy for a few weeks, and I have left him in charge of guarding them."
Jasmine grimaced. "I do not understand why all those people crowd into that room just for a chance to speak to Lief or Sharn. They all want food and money. As if Lief would not give it to them if he had any to give at all!"
"It is better that he listens to them say the same things, than ignore them and fall back into the old ways," he said darkly, as if Jasmine's thoughts had not crossed his own mind.
They reached the top of the stairs and Kree took flight from Jasmine's shoulder, choosing the open air rather than the confines of the palace. Barda did not miss the wistful look that Jasmine followed him with.
The huge doors were splayed open in what was meant to be a sign of welcome. Barda had always thought they made the great hall appear cavernous, but he did not feel the need to say so. The line to speak to the king and his mother nearly spilled out of the entrance.
A young woman stood just outside of the doors. She was awfully thin, and the rough brown dress she wore did little to shield her from the cool morning air. She trembled and swayed as she gazed up at the massive palace, and Barda softened, despite himself. He had learned in his years as a beggar that looking upon the palace with hate and fear had been a ritual etched into the bones of the citizens of Del for generations. As he and Jasmine drew closer, he realized the woman was trembling. He recalled how he had shaken, when he fled the palace the night of the Shadowlord's invasion. How he had stumbled away from the monstrous structure, gasping to catch hold of his panicked breath, clutching his sword with a sweat-slicked hand. But that had been so long ago, and there was no evil left to drive from inside the palace walls.
"You need not fear it any longer," he said gently. The woman flinched, and turned to him, staring up with wide blue eyes framed by brown curls. A flash of recognition passed over her face; he and Jasmine had become as recognizable as Lief. Her eyes looked far away, but she gave him a brief smile, and darted away into the hall.
They went in after her, but the woman had already been swallowed by the crowd. Barda could see Lief and Sharn from where he stood. Lief was listening intently to a man surrounded by three children who clutched their father's patched coat and stared at the king with undisguised awe. Lief had grown taller and broader during their journey, but he had only just turned seventeen. His face was still very much that of a boy.
Suddenly, Jasmine stiffened beside Barda, and placed a hand on his arm. Something was wrong, he realized. Jasmine's instincts had never failed them before.
Screams suddenly rose like a symphony, starting near where they stood, and spreading through the crowd. Swifter than lightning, Barda and Jasmine swung around, pulling their weapons from their sheaths. Filli wailed from under Jasmine's scarf, his thin voice joining the others.
"Get out of the way!" Barda boomed, but the people before him did not need to be told. The crowd parted as a figure barrelled through. It was the woman he had only just seen, but she had shed all of her fear. She was shockingly fast, and clenched a wicked knife in her hands. Mobley and Dale were at Lief and Sharn's sides, but they could not see the source that was causing such panic. Lief had drawn his own sword and was searching for the culprit in vain, for she was shielded by the crowd.
"Son of Adin! Son of Endon!" The woman shrieked; a terrible cry of hate and rage. "Little Lief, come to me! We must away together, you and I! Do you not tire of playing a king? Does the game not grow old? I know a game that is much more fun!"
Jasmine dodged through the people, sweeping nimbly through the crowd as she had once darted between the trees in the Forests of Silence. Barda followed a little behind, keeping his eyes carefully placed on Jasmine's back. After what seemed like an eternity, she reached the woman and hooked her foot underneath her legs, causing her to stagger and fall to the floor. Jasmine had the flat of her dagger pressed against the woman's heaving throat when Barda arrived. He pressed his mighty hands against the woman's slim shoulders, pinning her to the cold stone floor. She wailed and spat in his face.
"Do that again, and die," Jasmine hissed. The woman turned her savage eyes to the girl and bared her teeth.
Barda used the woman's distraction and tried to pull the knife from her hand. Her grip was of iron, and her fingers were white-knuckled. She flailed her free hand, catching Jasmine hard on her cheek, and grasped at the knife with both hands. Barda's own hand slid down the hilt, and the blade bit into his palm. He gritted his teeth and tried to pry her fingers from the weapon, but the woman was relentless. Jasmine pulled her own knife away to give him room.
"No, no, no, no," the woman sobbed hysterically. Blood ringed her arms in delicate trails; she had cut her own hands on the blade. It streamed onto Barda's hand, and his fingers skidded down her arm for just a moment. It was all she needed. As her sobs turned to wordless screams, she raised the blade high and plunged it into her own heart. Her eyes rolled and her lips opened and closed like a fish out water, as she laboured toward the death she had chosen. Barda did not look away as her blood pooled under his legs. Finally she was still, and her empty eyes stared dully at the high ceiling.
Jasmine did not hesitate before pulling the knife from the dead woman's ruined hands, as if she feared someone might pick it up and finish what had been started. She knelt beside him, and stared at the body with eyes of unflinching stone.
Barda finally raised his head. The silence in the room was deafening. Many of the people had fled the palace in the scuffle, but still more were staring at the body on the floor. His face was wet with the woman's saliva and blood. He reached a hand out to Jasmine and together they staggered to their feet.
"We will reconvene tomorrow," Lief's voiced echoed through the massive room. One by one, the remaining people turned from the body to face their king. "I ask you to return to your homes for your own safety. Please."
Slowly, as if recovering from an enchantment, they found their voices. Whispers and murmurs rose high, but they did as they were told, trickling from the palace achingly slow. Many eyes lingered on the body, and the two blood-splattered people that stood beside it, but Barda and Jasmine stared them all down.
"Get the king away," Barda bellowed at Mobley and Dale when the crowd had finally left. "And find Doom."
The guards nodded and followed Sharn as she steered Lief out of the hall, ignoring his protests and the desperate looks he shot back at his friends. A wave of exhaustion hit Barda like a blow.
"They failed him," Jasmine said fiercely, watching the guards go. "They are supposed to protect Lief, are they not?"
"They did not leave his side, and he is alive," Barda said firmly. "For now, that is enough."
"And so protecting Lief falls to us?" Jasmine snapped. She let the dead woman's knife clatter to the floor, and sheathed her own.
"Just as it has before. You knew that," Barda said, just as angrily. "That, at least, has not changed."
Still, he could not help but admit to himself that she was half-right. Had we not been here…
Jasmine's brow was smeared with the woman's blood, but her own trickled from the cut on her cheek left by desperate fingernails.
"You should bandage that," he said gruffly.
She shrugged. "Yours is worse."
Barda looked down. The battle-heat was wearing away and the nasty gash on his palm was beginning to throb. It would need to be sewn.
He looked at the dead woman, a thousand questions swirling in his mind.
"No one will claim her now," was all he said aloud. "If she had any family, they will not come forward. Not when the Lief's rule is so new. No one will want that kind of mark."
Jasmine crouched by the body. She slipped her hands into the bloodstained pockets of the woman's dress, and ran her hands along the seams. Barda looked away.
"She has nothing," Jasmine said finally. "Nothing at all."
Barda looked at the woman's spindly wrists and hollow cheeks. Jasmine was not wrong. He cursed harshly.
Jasmine rose to her feet, pressing a ginger finger to her cut. Despite her anger with the guards, she appeared satisfied at least with the conclusion. But Barda's dread only increased the longer he stared at the body.
It has only been two months, he thought grimly. This is not a good omen.
As the woman's blood began to tighten against his skin where it dried, Barda could not help but think that something much worse was still to come.
I wanted to write something pre-series 2 before things started to go poorly with Lief and Jasmine, and Lief and the people. I imagine there was tension even before it became apparent that there were lies and secrets. I think it's interesting how the attempted assassination attempts via the Conversion Project were really the catalyst for Lief very nearly losing the people's faith. The Enemy is sly, indeed…