Page 45 of While the Dark Remains
I grit my teeth and finally examine her wound, cutting off the messy makeshift bandage. Bone shows white through her skin, and the oozing blood and yellow pus scream of infection.
Black lines crawl behind my eyes, and I fight the urge to be sick. But I force myself to dig medical supplies from the packs, wash the wound as best as I can, and smother it with a bottle of foul-smelling ointment I filched from the infirmary. Then I splint her foot with a piece of branch and bandage it with strips of clean cloth. I can’t do anything about the infection, about the fever that’s beginning to rage behind Saga’s eyes.
“What are we going to do?” Saga says, tears dripping down her cheeks.
I shake my head. “Wait out the storm.” I don’t say what I really mean:Wait and see if your wound heals, or if the infection kills you.
My eyes rove about the little cave, and I’m startled to glimpse markings on the back wall: snatches of Iljaria writing, the colors still vibrant, though half the words have rubbed away with time. I jerk up, heart pounding, and go to examine the writing.
“Brynja?” says Saga from her place by the fire.
I brush my fingers over the words, feeling the echo of their power. That’s when I see the outline of a door cut into the stone. For a moment I just stare, reassessing my doubts about divine intervention. There’s acarving in the center of the doorway, a medallion of twisted flowers and vines, painted a vivid green.
“Brynja?” Saga repeats.
But I only have eyes for the medallion. I put my palm against it. I press.
The door slides into the wall.
Chapter Nine
Year4200, Month of the Black God
Daeros—Tenebris
I suffer through dinner, forcing myself to choke down as much of the rich food as I can. Kallias has rearranged the seating so that Aelia is on his right and Vil on his left, with me beside Vil. Zopyros, Alcaeus, and Theron are seated farther down, along with Pelagia, Kallias’s other Daerosian wife. She’s heavily pregnant and looks miserable, barely picking at her food.
Lysandra isn’t here; she must have done something to offend her father, or is trying to punish him by not attending, unaware or refusing to believe that he simply does not care about her at all.
The rest of the Daerosian nobles have arrived, and all are in attendance: the governors of the four largest cities, the overseers of the mines and the greenhouses, and the head arborist, who reportedly regulates the logging of the ancient forest inside Skógur City. They are all men except for Lady Eudocia, governor of the Bone City, and the arborist, Lady Thais.
As we dine, Kallias looks at me far too much, and I have the uncomfortable realization that he can’t be any older than forty, if even that, far younger than I perceived as a child. Kallias would have been scarcely older than I am now when Ballast was born.
Ballast isn’t here,I tell myself, and once more shove the thought of him away.
Dinner doesn’t take as long as last night, thank gods. The sun is just rising as we finish, and we all leave the table and follow the beckoning attendants down the corridor toward the great hall. My skirts whisper across the cold floor in a riot of blue and silver silk; a red velvet half cape lined with thick fur weighs warm on my shoulders. I’m wearing the headdress again, comforted by the presence of the hidden blade even though I can’t use it tonight.
I step through the double doors of the great hall with Vil beside me. The room seems smaller than it used to, and tears prick unbidden at my eyes. I have to fight to keep from looking up at my iron cage suspended from the ceiling.
Vil looks. “Black God’sbastard,” he curses.
I gnaw on my cheek, hard enough to taste blood. Vil’s shocked anger on my behalf eases something inside me, like his witnessing the shadow of my trauma legitimizes it in my own estimation.
I try not to look for the other cages, scattered around the edges of the room, but I can’t help it. I see Saga’s orange trees, and the spot on the floor where Hilf once lay in a widening pool of blood. I blink furiously.Don’tcry,Brynja!I shout at myself.
Vil grips my arm, lending me strength, pulling me out of my nightmares and into the present.
Chairs have been set up in a semicircle facing the glass wall. Light refracts blindingly through the glass, the sun having already reached its zenith. It gilds the whole room in liquid gold. I’m thrown back to last year, and so many years before, watching this same scene play out from above, stretching to prepare for my performance.
If Vil were not beside me, I would bolt from the room. We don’t go and sit down, not yet, just stand off to the side watching everyone else come in.
Pelagia enters, hands clutching her belly, and takes a seat. Two of Kallias’s other wives, Elpis and Unnur, sit beside her. There is still nosign of Gulla, and I try to push my worry for her away, but it remains, gnawing at me.
Kallias’s children parade in: Zopyros, Theron, Alcaeus, and Lysandra, then thirteen-year-old Rhode and eight-year-old Xenia, Pelagia’s daughters. Rhode holds tight to Xenia’s hand. The elder four sit in the front row, with the younger two by their mother.
Kallias’s general, steward, and engineer enter and take their seats, along with the Daerosian nobles.
Princess Aelia sweeps in with Talan, and Vil turns to greet her. They exchange pleasantries, but I can’t concentrate on their words, thinking of Aelia as a child, angry and fierce, swearing to free us all when she was grown. Why is she here, now, of all times? Did she really mean what she said back then?
