Chapter Nineteen: Come Wander With Me
Oh but you, you always said, "You're just too good a ship to wreck."
You said, "Never mind nothin', there's a summertime humming."
- Brian Fallon
Lissa Dove was missing.
That was the main topic of conversation at the orphanage. The girl from Likely had not been seen in four days now, had dissipated into the ether like so much gossamer-fine fog, and with her vanishing, a thousand rumours had swelled forth to fill the void that her absence had left behind. It would have been simplest to assume a quiet elimination, a planned departure, a realisation that she had little chance of victory at this late stage of the Selection and a gregarious, graceful bowing-out before she was forced out in a more public manner… and yet, none of that really rang true to anyone who knew Lissa the way that the people of Layeni orphanage had grown to know her over the past few weeks. Had she eloped with a pretty young rebel with hair as dark as Lissa's was blonde? Or maybe she had been uncovered as a mole within the Kingdom in Exile and fled north back to the safety of Mordred's protection. Or, as Saran had heard only the night before, maybe she had been murdered by a Crown assassin, one of the many supposed to have infiltrated the rebel provinces and the Wastelands with the intention to make an example out of the girls who had joined the Selection.
A dozen stories, a hundred theories, a thousand wild ideas, and yet one singular truth that Saran could perceive – and that was that Lissa Dove was, quite simply, gone. She had not vanished in the night; Saran had gone out with the children for the day, and Lissa had gone to the market, and Saran had returned, the children had returned, and Lissa had not.
They had begun to dredge the rivers for a body.
Saran dealt with her emotions neatly. She always had – she wasn't sure whether it was a legacy of her Mongolian heritage, or just an element of her naturally efficient personality. If she was upset, she allowed herself to be upset, processed her feelings as quickly as possible so that she could get back to the things that were important. And the thing that seemed the most important to her now was this: Lissa was missing.
She had always known that a rebel Selection would be just that: in itself, an act of rebellion. The dangers had been acknowledged, emphasised, accepted. And yet this – not an explosion, not an air-raid, not a battle, just a quiet disappearing in the daylight – this unnerved Saran greater than any bloody massacre in the open might have done. It seemed so wrong that a person might be there and then gone, and that the rebels seem as frustrated and clueless as she, and that there be no signs, no traces left in the wake of Lissa Dove… or her body.
Saran wasn't sure why she thought Lissa was dead. It was simple intuition, a feeling like a knotted thorn behind her heart. She could not dislodge it. It was a sinking, certain feeling. She trusted it.
Wick had left her a box of tea that morning. She had found it sitting on one of the low wooden benches that lined the long tables at which the children were fed their breakfasts and lunches every day. There had been a note pinned to it, but where Saran knew that Yue received short missives from the prince wishing her well and discussing whatever little book he had sent her, Wick's note was almost desultory –
S.A.
for sleep
W.H.
Nonetheless, Saran was grateful. She was not in a position to be otherwise. It was a Kazakh brand of tea, she saw, meant to relieve stress, and she wondered if Wick had guessed that the disappearance of her companion had caused her long and sleepless nights, or if that fact was growing readily apparent on her face after so many days of exhaustion. She was glad that Demetri – and Wick, if she was honest – was not here to see her these days. She looked positively ghoulish, on the few occasions she caught sight of her own face in the mirror, all deep shadows and new hollows and even a few worry lines creasing the otherwise smooth skin beside her eyes.
She was brewing some of that tea when there was a knock on the door and the mistress of the orphanage put her head around the door to say that Saran had a visitor and would she be willing to see her? Saran nodded, and thanked her, and brewed a second cup of tea for her guest, expecting Yue or even maybe Cor to appear around the door.
To her surprise, it was not another member of the Selected, or even a member of the Inner Circle. It was the Warden of the North, Devery Atiqtalaaq, who had paid Saran a visit here all those long days ago when she had first arrived at the orphanage. Saran was struck yet again by the plain handsomeness of Devery's face, the energy in her bright brown eyes, the precision with which she bound her hair in twin braids. There was still that superficial, immediate resemblance to Saran's övöö, but Bataar would never smile at Saran so gently or reach for her arms with such a tender touch. She was still wearing clothes with a slightly northern flair - her coat lined with fur, her sleeves reaching past her fingertips, a woollen scarf wrapped around her head like a shawl, as though she had come straight from travelling to see Saran, without even pausing to change.
"Amar mend üü, Lady? Are you safe and happy?" Saran was grateful again for Devery's willingness to perform the zolgolt, the traditional greeting of the steppes, as familiar and comfortable as the embrace of a loved one. The two northern women grasped each other by the elbow, and leaned in to touch their cheeks to one another - Devery still smelled like the north, Saran thought distantly, of the Yukon river and cotton grass and green tea. It was another jolt of familiarity in a week that had been decidedly void of such comforts.
"Tiim shüü, Warden, I have been safe and happy." It was a lie. They both knew it.
They stepped back from one another and Devery gestured to ask for a seat on the bed that had belonged to Lissa. Saran nodded, and Devery sank down into her seat and accepted her cup of tea with a smile and a murmured bayarlalaa.
"Is there any occasion for your visit, Warden?"
Devery smiled sadly. "I wanted to check in on you, Miss Altai. See that you're coping with this unexpected complication with all the strength I know you are known for. Miss Dove's disappearance has been quite the shock to the whole High Command, myself included. Adminster Givre has asked me to give you his personal assurances that we will not rest until we have discovered what happened here… and to ask that you maintain a certain degree of discretion for the time being."
Saran frowned. "You want me to keep this a secret?"
"They want to avoid panic." Devery was disassociating herself from High Command – did she disapprove of this request? Saran found herself trying to analyse the Warden's expressions closely.
Saran shrugged. "It's discomfiting for sure," she allowed herself to say, quite slowly as though turning each word over. "But… you know, I am sure Lissa will be found shortly." Devery nodded. "So there isn't use worrying anyone, I suppose."
"Indeed." Devery flashed a brief look of appreciation, and took a deep sip of her tea before she continued. "Now, Miss Altai, I must confess I had ulterior motives in volunteering to convey this message, and again I must rely on your discretion."
Saran found herself leaning forward in her seat, curiosity swallowing her thoughts whole.
"The truth of the matter is that the Elite has been formed." Devery almost laughed at the expression of shock on Saran's face. "It's true. Miss Delrío was removed from the Selection a week ago. Miss MacIntyre has asked to leave the Selection for personal reasons. Miss Rouen has been eliminated..."
"Cor?" Saran shook her head. She had always presumed Cor would last til the end, if only for the reason that she seemed too intimidating to ever be the sort of girl who could be told to leave. "Really? When?"
"Last night. Again, this is highly confidential."
Saran furrowed her brow. "Does the king know you're telling me this?"
Devery set her teacup on the dresser. It made a decisive click as she set it down. "Saran."
"He doesn't, does he?"
"You are of the north, as I am. I speak to you as I would confide to family."
"I'm not of the north," Saran said, almost automatically. And she wasn't, not really. She had put down no roots in Yukon, had left no bones in its soil. She still belonged over the sea, under the same sky, yes, but on different earth, on the Altai mountains, with her family.
"But you know it. As intimately as one who has tethered themselves there with blood and heritage and buried bones."
"So I am one of… ten remaining?" The Elite. It had seemed so impossible at the beginning, such a lofty ambition, so far from her grip. She tried to tally the other girls in her head, the ones that might remain – Atiena, Yue, Liara, Vardi Tayna, Eden, Marjorie, Liz, Nina, Lissa…
And Saran.
Ten?
No. Lissa was gone. Nine.
The Elite.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Do you remember my words the last time that we met?"
This is not a competition for a heart but for a crown. And with a crown comes a people. A people who must be protected. At night, I pray that our queen shall be of the north. I have faith that I will not have to beseech you to think of Yukon, and Whites, and Baffins, and Hansport, as I know I will have to plead with any queen from the south.
She had spoken like she thought Saran had a chance, and Saran remembered thinking that conversations like this should wait until the Elite had been chosen, the field narrowed, the shortlist formed. She could remember wondering if Devery knew something that Saran didn't, or if she was merely hedging her bets.
Saran said, "Warden, I appreciate your apprehensions. But..." She sighed. "I have not had the… honour of any direct contact with the king. I fear the chances of my victory are inordinately slim. In truth, I have no idea why I remain in the competition – Demetri spends so little time with any of us."
Dangerously close to speaking ill of the king, but Devery's eyes were sympathetic. "Indeed. But, Saran, the role of a Selected is passive. The role of a queen is not. And as a member of the Elite, you are much closer to one than the other, are you not?"
"What are you saying?"
"If you want to become queen, act like it."
Saran could not help but think of long-ago days of youth, playing in the garden with Qadan and Naran, pretending to be khans and climbing bodily onto whatever little pony strayed close enough to them to play folk hero and charge back and forth across the hilly plateau on which their house was set, practising their archery with the clumsiness of children. To be a khan had merely been to tell her older brother what to do, and wrap yourself in fur, and stand on the highest branch of the tree. This… this was decidedly more complicated.
"Seems a tactic for getting myself into trouble," she murmured.
"There are people in the north languishing in our new Kingdom while these southerners busy themselves with expansion. What is the point of gaining more land if we can't keep it and protect our people?" Devery reached a hand across to touch Saran's. "You have cared and contributed wonderfully to the children of this orphanage while staying here, as a queen cares and contributes to her citizens. Do not think that has gone unnoticed. If Demetri has not met you, then he has certainly observed you. And, more importantly, so has High Command."
Saran said, "is that a good thing?"
And Devery replied, "that depends. Are you sure that you want to win?"
Marjorie was not quite sure of the correct response when dinner that evening proved to be Chinese takeout in white cartons, like they were back in Clermont with all of the beautiful conveniences of modern life in the Crown territories. Nor was she sure of exactly how one should behave when said white carton was proffered by Thiago Wesick himself, still dressed in the coat he claimed to have stolen from the corpse of Trajan himself, the shadow of hard work cast over his whole appearance, visible in the bags under his eyes and scruff of stubble on his jaw.
"I hope you like laziji," Thiago said, his voice sounding rusty like he had not put it to use in many long hours. "It was all I could grab after Anzu got through with the meal."
Marjorie hoped it wasn't obvious that she was angling her notebook away from the spymaster, though she was grateful that for once she had not included in her diaries anything which was liable to get her into too much trouble, should Thiago or Demetri ever get a look at it. She had come out here, to the iron fence surrounding their hotel headquarters, not for privacy but to soak in the last few rays of a slowly sinking sun.
"I'll eat pretty much anything," she said with some honesty, and accepted the food with a smile and a nod of thanks. To her surprise, Thiago did not move away, but gestured as though to ask if he could take a seat next to her, and, when Marjorie put up no protest, the spymaster sank down into a seat on the ground next to her. It was such a decidedly… ordinary look for a man with whom Marjorie had learned to associate a considerable deal of respect and a healthy degree of fear. For his part, Thiago didn't seem to find anything too unusual about the situation, for he set about immediately digging into his food with his chopsticks, and gazing at the hotel with the faraway expression of one who has left the office but hasn't quite left the work behind.
Marjorie watched him silently for a few moments, unsure about what was going on, and then just as quickly she realised that staring at him was highly unlikely to win her any favours, and she focused on her food instead. Laziji proved to be some kind of chilli chicken laced with ginger, fragrant and tasty, made with enough skill that she wondered which of the rebels could take credit for it. Even if it hadn't, Marjorie had learned since those first lonely, strange days in the Wasteland safehouse that a picky palette simply wasn't something the rebels were willing to contend with.
"How was your day?" Thiago said quietly.
"Not bad." Marjorie wasn't sure how she could explain how monotonous her days had become, how every hour repeated the last, how she was not permitted to leave the grounds and so spent her afternoons pacing and trying hard not to think about the tunnels extending deep and far underneath the land. She wondered if this was what Thiago was here to confront her about – how she and Cor had snuck into the tunnels yesterday to explore, and fled before they were caught. Was he about to tell her she had been eliminated? Or worse? After all, Cor had not come out of her room today. What was to say Cor was even still in her room? Marjorie said, quite wryly, "how was yours?"
"Busy." Thiago shrugged. "The Kingdom has over a thousand informers across all of Illéa. When each of those provide you with even a single piece of information, even every week… well, that's a lot to try and get through. And our people do a lot better than one report once a week. A lot better."
"Surely you have people to help?"
"Not enough."
They dug into their food again, Marjorie's mind still spinning slightly, as though she found herself now engaged in a chess game with the spymaster and needed to make sure she did not inadvertently move any of her pieces into danger while she was focused on protecting her king piece. Thiago seemed hungry, but he ate at a remarkedly restrained speed nonetheless, almost as though he were keeping pace with Marjorie for the sake of putting her more at ease. It was almost as though he radiated cold, Marjorie thought. It was impossible to relax when he was sitting next to her.
Then he spoke again. "You're a smart girl." Thiago reached into the dead king's coat and pulled out a notebook. One of Marjorie's. The Selected girl barely managed to hold back the sudden intake of breathe at the sight of her precious treasure trove of information in the hands of someone who – while not an enemy – was not entirely a friend either. This was the black one, the one that she had brought with her from Clermont in the first place, the one she had filled up with all of her initial observations around the safehouse, her first meetings with Demetri, with the rebels. "You know, my day would have been less busy if I didn't have to spend an hour or two decoding this."
"Decoding?" Marjorie stared into her takeout box. She blanched. "An hour or two?"
Thiago slid open the book, and began to flick through the pages – endless lines of broad swipes of ink, not appearing to form any legible letters or words. "Munson shorthand, right?"
Marjorie nodded, still unable to shake her surprise at just how easily he had done it. "Uh… yeah, Munson. Well, mostly."
"Thought I saw some parts in Eclectic-Cross as well. Took me longer than I'm willing to admit to realise that you'd pushed a lot of the words through Spanish first, made the whole phonetic system much harder to decipher. Mix it up with a bit more irregularity in future – establishing any kind of pattern is basically asking to be cracked."
"You did all that in an hour?" Marjorie wasn't sure if that said more about how poorly she had encoded her notes, or about how efficiently and effectively Thiago Wesick worked.
"It was my pleasure. I appreciate talent."
Marjorie glanced at him in surprise. Certainly not the tone she had expected this conversation to take. "Talent?"
"For observation. For… calculated deduction. For secrecy." He met her eyes. "Oh, secrecy is a talent just like any other."
Marjorie said, "I suppose you're going to confiscate those?"
Thiago shrugged. "By rights, I should burn them all. Probably inform Demetri so he can kick you out of the Selection. Possibly throw you in the tunnels to make sure you don't carry any of our secrets back to Mordred."
"Should?"
"Like I said. You're a smart girl. And we're short on people. Especially smart people." Thiago tucked her notebook back into his coat. "You know, Corvina Rouen was eliminated from the Selection last night. Demetri sent her home to Sonage without even letting her say goodbye. I imagine, sequestered up here like this, without any company, without anything to do, a smart girl like you… well, not long before you start getting bored. A member of the Elite without a king to impress."
Marjorie spun her pen across her fingers. She resisted the urge to say that she was already bored. She resisted the urge to ask why Cor had been eliminated. She resisted the urge to ask why she hadn't been.
"As I said," Thiago said. "We're short on people."
"You want me to be your…. assistant?"
"Assistant. Apprentice. Accomplice."
Marjorie stared down at the pages in front of her. "And what do I get?"
Thiago shrugged. "Let's see how good of a job you do first. Eso parece sensato, no?"
"No puedo estar en desacuerdo," Marjorie admitted begrudgingly. She couldn't disagree that it seemed sensible. She couldn't deny it was entirely not the way she expected this conversation to have gone.
And they returned to their food, spymaster and Selected, as the sun sank slowly, spreading scarlet across scrubland.
"What are you smoking?"
Vardi Tayna looked at him with her eyebrow raised. "Are you asking literally, demusha?"
She handed him her carefully rolled joint – not pure hash, Täj could see, but spliced with the herb that rebels in the Wasteland called metzliaxitia, its bitter taste immediately apparent in the acrid smoke which surrounded Tayna like a mourning shroud. She had long ago weaned off those other drugs upon which she had been in the habit of imbibing, back when they were young, back when she had first earned her brand, back when she was still Yenifer, but occasionally she slipped. Very occasionally, she slipped. Täj thought she had slipped now. Her pupils were dilated wider than they should have been, given the light on the balcony. She was on the window seat and swaying slightly to the soft strains of the record she had put on, quiet enough that they wouldn't bother the sleeping Yue in the room above.
They set me on fire and I did a lot of burning, told me I didn't know things I thought I knew for certain….
He put it to his lips and took a drag.
Vardi Tayna was wearing a tank-top, for once. It bared her clavicle. It bared her arms. It bared the brand which was still visible there: Ꮬ. Big and black and bold, edges still turned inwards on themselves like they were still burning. In the dim glow of the street lights below, it seemed even larger than it usually did, even more noticeable. For all that Tayna claimed to owe loyalty to no-one and nothing but herself and her own interests, Täj thought, it was cruelly ironic that she bore such a clear sign of… well, allegiance wasn't a good word for what it had been.
He passed it back to her. The glow as she inhaled lit up only the curve of her lips, the blunt edges of her nails. She passed it back to him, tipped her head back and exhaled like she was breathing out with it all of her sins and regrets and burdens. As though a single breath could hope to alleviate all the wrong that she had wrought. You could, of course, say the very same thing about Täj. About Demetri. Their hands weren't just dirty. They were drenched in blood. Red soaking along every tiny pore, sinking deep into the lines of their knuckles, painting their nails like polish.
They still hadn't spoken about the other night. They didn't have to. Theirs was the silent communication of those who did not need words or even eye contact to comprehend one another, the perfect understanding of… well, Uzohola had called them soulmates once. Täj didn't think he agreed with that designation. That made it sound like it had been fate that he had met the little feral girl in those wastes all those years ago. Fate and destiny and serendipity, rather than a long series of terrible choices and fateful mistakes and selfish decisions and desperate attempts at survival in a bad situation.
And now the wind's getting colder and the night's getting cruel, but I don't mind, I don't mind if I'm with you...
There was a knock on the door. Täj went to the door to answer it, expecting it to be Raphael or Agares, some notice of tomorrow's schedule or a message from Demetri, but instead found it was –
It was Liara Lee.
In the gloom of the dim light, her features were softened greatly from their usual harsh edge. It made her skin seem to glow slightly, accentuated the shadows in the hollows of her cheekbones, the inky gloss of her hair. She was still dressed, like she had waited for Atiena to fall asleep before slipping upstairs. She looked young again, like the little girl who had played with Demetri in the palace gardens, held Mordred's hands for all of the precocious photos at formal events, sat on Ysabel's lap at the end of state dinners when she couldn't keep her head aloft under her own power.
Liara held up a tray holding two cups of oolong tea and said, her voice soft and yet maintaining a certain aloofness that made it sound like she was doing him a favour, "I heard music. Just wondering if…?"
She seemed to realise, rather abruptly, that Täj wasn't wearing a shirt, and blinked. He could feel her eyes on the jagged black scar that marked his collarbone and throat, as physical and real as a caress. He could remember her looking at it the same way, that night on the rooftop. He didn't mind – not just because it was Liara, but because it was not something, like Tayna's brand, which carried any kind of stigma. There were no soldiers without scars, and Täj had earned his.
"Wondering?"
"If we could talk."
Täj cast a glance over his shoulder at Tayna, who seemed to be contemplating climbing out of the window to escape the whole situation. The record was still playing softly in the background: I could swear that I knew you before, like we were lovers in another life, or maybe we were only strangers in the rain...
Liara would want to talk about the king, he thought. She would want to ask why he would not speak to her, would not revel in memories past, would not meet her gaze or bear her presence for longer than he must. Just as their conversation on the roof had been equal parts frustrating and cathartic for the Selected girl, Täj could tell that her curiosity had only grown and grown in her chest like a tumour.
And though Täj had answers, he did not think that Liara would like to hear any of them.
"Let's go for a walk instead," he said.
Liara's eyes were very dark indeed. She had inherited them from her mother. "Sure."
"Give me a moment."
He shut the door and pulled on a shirt; Tayna slipped from the window seat to the bed and under the covers as she had a thousand times when they were young. She said nothing, although he could feel that she was watching him as well. Eyes like daggers, that one. He didn't think he would ever fully get used to it, especially when she looked at him like this. Täj rather thought the sky could have shattered around her, shedding stars like so many dropped coins, threads of dying light unspooling in piles around her, and she still would not have looked away.
The last time she had looked at him like that, he had kissed her.
The first time she had looked at him like that, she had tried to kill him.
He stooped to kiss her on the top of her head. "Sleep well, T."
He could tell she was biting back some acrid comment, some cruel words, some sharp insult, but instead she just said, "enjoy your romantic walk, demusha."
"I'll do my best."
"Don't tell her anything that you shouldn't."
And again, Täj could only say, "I'll do my best."
The body was found at dawn on a Saturday morning, just as the sky was curdling into a new paleness at the edges of the sky. Her long, lean limbs were all askew, as though she had been dropped into her makeshift grave with absolutely no care or thought given to her peace in death. Her browned skin had grown pallid and shrunken in death, a gaunt face made more gaunt for lack of motion. Her sunken eyes lay open, open and staring, staring and empty and piercingly icy blue.
They had been called out to investigate what Farid had reported as a potential land-mine – a fresh heaping of newly turned soil, something explosive interred beneath the ground. The other rebels had hung back in small thickets of two or three, wary as the marshal and his lieutenants probed the earth with bayonets, swept metal detectors through the air, and called for shovels to be brought when no bomb was detected. The soldiers put to the new task with gusto, but it was a young man, Rhys, only sixteen, who first hacked into skin and flesh and bone and scrambled back with a shout for the marshal to come quickly. They had indeed found something explosive. Explosive, though, didn't necessarily mean explosions.
Someone had wanted this girl to be found, Farid had pointed out. This was a warning, and designed as such. The rebels knew every inch of the land around the bunkers. Any change was immediately detected and noted and investigated – it was as close to a headquarters as they had ever come, their one point of resistance against their nomadic traditions. So someone had planted this body here, and someone had expected it to be found, and now they had found her and Uzokuwa wasn't sure who or why or what lay ahead.
He would have to step carefully.
He wondered what the theories would be. Would they consider this a message from one of the other Selected? Not unheard of, in the old stories, to eliminate a rival in as bloody a manner as possible. Or maybe
"Ngiyaxolisa," Uzokuwa murmured under his breath in a barely-uttered curse. "Awukufanele lokhu. I wish it was me in that bloody grave." He turned to his men. "Bring her up carefully. She will never be our queen, but she was our comrade."
They would burn her, he had decided. Burn her, as they would burn any rebel. For she had been a rebel, one of the truest devotees to the cause amongst the whole of the Selection. And though she would never see a free Illéa, Uzokuwa would see to it that her name was added to the roster of the martyrs, and her name placed on the walls of the palace in Angeles when they retook the capital. It was the very least they could offer this poor, broken carcass of what had once been a strong, stoic, capable young woman. It was the very least that he could do.
"I will inform Demetri," he added. "Keep this a secret until I have told you otherwise."
The men probably didn't need his words. They had known her also, known her and liked her and shared with her their troubles and their thoughts. When they knelt by the grave to pull her from the tangled grasp of the roots which entangled her, it was with a certain reverence that they hoisted the corpse and carried her back out into the sunlight.
Even in death, Nina Alexandra Novak had a certain powerful presence about her.