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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Fenlia

W hen the two-week mourning period is over, Zinnitzia brings Fen to the palace library and supplies her with a stack of books filled with anatomy, physiology and medicine. ‘Elena provided a reading list,’ Zinnitzia says. Then she lectures with unending energy, pointing to diagrams and explaining each part of the human body in such horrifyingly precise detail that Fen is often grateful that Zinnitzia doesn’t let her eat breakfast before lessons start. She stalks behind Fen as she reads, making sure that Fen stays focused on her task. She even looks over Fen’s shoulder as she practises trying to make her seeds bloom the way Elena had wanted.

On the other side of the palace, Marina has fully committed herself to Cat’s training as well. For four hours every day, Marina drills him in both Alelunen and Soleben sword routines. During the long hours of mindless repetition, she quizzes him on the books he has been slowly working through. As far as Fen knows, his reading has been dramatically improving as of late. He is still rather slow at it, but his repertoire and interests have expanded from medicinal arts to politics, law and even taxation. Apparently, Marina insists these are all things he should know. Fen just wonders how he can bear to remember all that information at once. It seems like so much.

After dinner, she meets him in an enclosed garden not far from the residential wing of the palace. He practises there, somehow still filled with boundless energy, repeating his lessons even without his taskmaster’s oversight. She recognizes his footwork from lessons she used to take before she went to Kreuzfurt. The overhead block, the step back, the twist of the hips that leads into a deep lunge. He commits to each movement, bending and turning and stepping confidently into each position. She had never moved as fluidly as Cat. Her stances were never quite as steady, but he moves as if he has been born for the blade and merely needed the opportunity to shine beneath its star.

‘You’re getting good at that,’ Fen tells him after a month of watching him work. She rolls her seeds in her hands, lights them on fire, drops them, then smothers the tiny flames with her shoe. She brings them back to life, fixing all their flaws, but they never evolve past the size and shape of their origins. Her nose twitches unhappily. She does it again.

Cat sheathes his sword as she plays with fire, running a sweaty hand across his face. His hair has started to grow longer. He is taller, too. Not by much – she can still look over his head with ease – but a little taller all the same. His body is filling out, tipping over the edge from emaciated into healthy. Now that he’s finally eating a proper diet and isn’t curled up in a cage, his body seems to be putting itself back to rights. She wonders if he’ll stay short for ever. I hope he does. She likes being taller than someone.

‘Thank you,’ Cat says, wiping his face with his sleeve.

One of the last fireflies of the season flutters and glows just to the left of Cat’s face. It illuminates his features with a pale yellow that clashes with the moon’s silver-blue. Just for a moment, Fen imagines him shining, representing the liminal space between both her country and his, the Sun of Soleb and the Moon of Alelune both bisecting him down the middle. A duality that started when Elician held out his hand and promised to take care of the frightened man he had met on the edge of a battlefield. ‘Do you think your swordsmanship can help me find the traitor?’ she asks suddenly.

‘The King does not want us looking.’

‘That’s what he told you . No one told me that.’

‘There is a reason he said not to look.’

‘Sure, there probably is, but I don’t care. Elician is my brother. And you owe him anyway. Can you help me or not?’ He shrugs, fingers tightening around the handle of his blunted sword, shifting it back and forth. ‘Ambassador Laure—’

‘She won’t know anything.’

‘She has to know something .’

Cat shrugs again before shuffling over to sit at her side. He leaves space between them, but it’s not necessary. Since the weather began to cool, he has stopped using the charranseed ointment. He no longer reeks enough to make her nose twitch. But, strangely, now that it is gone, Fen almost misses it. She had grown used to the smell.

‘Listen,’ Fen murmurs. ‘Even if she doesn’t know where Elician is, she must know who the traitor is. Someone must have written something down. There’s got to be a letter, or a notice, or something . I just need to find a way into the embassy and I . . .’ She frowns, then glances at Cat carefully. There is no denying he hails from Alelune. He could not be more stereotypically Alelunen if he tried. ‘Maybe you —’

‘No,’ Cat says.

Fen shuffles to face him. Their knees knock together. ‘You wouldn’t need to do much . . .’ she tries to barter. ‘It’s only a little bit of treason. Besides, you said you were only sworn to your Reapers and the embassy doesn’t defend your Reapers – it keeps them in cages. Helping me is like helping them.’

He looks entirely unimpressed by that assessment. He shakes his head definitively and changes the subject. ‘How are your seeds growing?’

She sniffs. ‘They’re not.’

Cat’s expression does not falter, even as her shoulders tense and she waits for his disappointment. All she ever does is disappoint the people around her. But he doesn’t voice any. He gently places a hand on her knee and says, ‘When you figure out how to make them grow – if you still want to go to the embassy – I’ll help you then.’

‘Why only then?’ She feels daunted by the impossible condition he’s placed on his help.

‘Because by then . . . I think I will have run out of other places to look.’

‘You’re looking too?’ She had not known that.

‘I’m thinking, Fen. I’m only thinking.’

In the morning, Fen takes out her seeds. She sorts them back into their groups. She holds them in her hands one by one. She thinks about Elician. She thinks about the embassy. And she wills them to grow.