Page 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fenlia

F en wakes up still tired. The sun has just started to filter in through the windows, catching the reflected light off the towers. She squeezes her eyes shut, drawing her summer blanket up over her head. Leitja’s wide, childish brown eyes stare back at her from the confines of her imagination. Her hand, tiny and frail, replaces the bunched curl of blankets in Fen’s fist. Why? Leitja had asked, voice trembling on the cusp of death.

Fen throws herself upright. Her stomach clenches, but her anxiety from the night before had already left it empty. She stumbles from her bed and reaches for the eastward window of her room. Opening it, she sinks against the frame. The sun, hot even at dawn, keeps the air thick and humid. It is already hard to breathe.

Down below, white-clad Givers shuffle out of the residential quarters to the House of the Wanting. The gates will open soon and let the pilgrims and desperate masses in to seek relief. Many will receive that relief. So long as they do not come to her for help.

But no one will get the chance, she thinks. I failed so badly at being a Giver that Zinnitzia is making me train with a Reaper. Fat tears pool beneath her eyes. She swats at them desperately and tries to get control of her emotions.

Her adopted father, King Aliamon, has always insisted on the strictest control of emotions. Great displays of anxiety, despair, happiness or glee are strictly forbidden. It is unbecoming for a princess to behave so indecorously.

Fen sniffs loudly. She wipes her face. The sun is reaching even higher and soon she will miss breakfast. Which House am I supposed to eat at? The thought sends her tripping into another crying fit.

She doubles over, sobbing into her folded arms, breath hitching in the humid air. It takes a long while for her to bring herself to order. When she does, her face is blotchy and red, and she is determined to never eat another thing so long as she lives. She will just starve; that will make everyone happy.

Pushing herself upright, she spares one last glance at the sprawling view beyond her window. The glass towers loom ugly and disconcerting, with their sleek lines and curved windowpanes, but so too do the interconnecting gardens of Kreuzfurt. Boughs of trees arching downwards, trails leading off towards responsibilities she yearns to ignore. Down amidst the faux cheeriness of pansies and columbine, poppies and rue, a statue of Kreuzfurt’s founder, Shawshank, stands imperiously in the centre of a large pond. She catches sight of movement and squints at the man crouching down at the water’s edge. She would recognize that dark mane anywhere.

Elician.

Fen tugs on her boots and dress. She brushes her hair with a reckless speed that wrenches knots painfully from her scalp, braiding it as she hurries outside. Triple braids – three on each side – looped together in a tight band is the current fashion, according to Adalei. Adalei had detailed the design in a letter nearly six months ago and Fen had dutifully practised it until she could ensure the loops fell exactly where they should, just at her shoulders. She finishes setting the braids into place just as she enters the garden.

Her brother is still there, collecting stones from the shallows. Once he gets a palmful, he stands up and starts skipping them across the water’s surface. He seems to be aiming them at the statue. Of the six he sends out, only one goes far enough to reach it, cracking against the statue’s base before sinking with an unsatisfying plonk .

‘What would Father say of you defacing another statue?’ she asks, straightening her back and folding her hands in front of her as politely as she can manage. He glances towards her briefly, then skips another stone. It doesn’t go as far.

‘I didn’t deface the first,’ he murmurs. He is still wearing the same clothes as the night before and his curls look more than a little unkempt. Fen can almost hear Adalei sighing at the state of him.

‘You need a wash,’ she says. He shrugs one shoulder up, then releases another shot. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Avoiding responsibility.’ Another stone flies free. This one is the worst throw yet; it splishes into the pond, startling a few fish from their early-morning fly-catching.

‘Is that why Lio’s not with you?’

‘Lio’s resting.’

‘Good.’ It is almost impossible to talk to Elician without someone else being present. Lio has been Elician’s sworn shield since before he could even carry a shield, trained since birth to always step between Elician and anyone who might do him harm. Lio takes the job obnoxiously seriously, going so far as to interrupt arguments if he deems them too explosive. He even tries to calm tempers on Elician’s behalf too, playing mediator where he does not belong. He had tried it the night before.

It hadn’t made her feel any better.

All around them, Kreuzfurt is still and quiet. There is no one here to pay any attention to them. Not for a while yet, at least. The sun rises higher above them, seeming to slip between the pillars of the towers that make up the Houses of the Wanting and Unwanting. Every morning it rises in the same place, reaching its zenith once it is perfectly centred between the towers themselves. Every evening the moon chases after it from the same location. On and on, a constant cycle of life and death that is as endless as the war on the border. And every day, when the first light touches the mirrored walls of the two towers, each shimmering surface reflects the other, amplifying the glare into a blazing, incomparable white. Its incandescent glow bathes the world in possibility – and utter certainty.

There is no better time to hope for certainties than now. Squaring her shoulders, Fen tilts her chin up. Her brother does not do her the courtesy of looking her way. ‘You’re going back to the front, right?’

‘Yes,’ he affirms. He has one stone left. He rolls it between the fingers of one hand, then the other. Back and forth, back and forth.

‘When?’

‘A week at most. Enough time for the horses to rest and to resupply. I . . . I have to read the names of the dead into remembrance, but it depends on when Marina has the time to clear the hall.’ He lets the rock fall into his left hand, then flicks his wrist in a quick snap. It soars beautifully through the air. A perfectly subtle arch that allows the stone to skip across the water all the way to the statue and snap upwards to crack once more against the base. A perfect hit.

‘I want to go with you when you leave.’

‘All right,’ he says evenly.

She blinks. That was too easy. ‘All right?’

‘You want to go,’ he acknowledges, then finally looks at her. ‘I know you want to go. But I don’t have the power to let you.’ The worst part is he does not even sound the slightest bit sorry. He delivers each line as if he is delivering a speech before all of parliament, the lords and ladies sitting to one side, the local representatives on the other. He may as well have read her a verdict from a scroll of carefully assembled parchment, decorated with the fine painted inks imported from Glaika and the Gold Coast.

‘You do have the power. You said—’

‘I said that when I am king, I would give you a place at court. That you would be my representative for Kreuzfurt and serve as my adviser. But until then, only our father has the authority to grant any Giver or Reaper a travel pass.’

‘You could ask him to let me go.’

‘Have you asked him?’ She has. Every week when she pens her letters home, she has written, in excruciating detail, a litany of reasons why she should be permitted to return. Once, she even went so far as to tell him that he was dishonouring her real father’s memory by forcing her to stay here. He had not deigned to respond to that particular comment in his answering letter, preferring to prattle on about idle matters of no importance.

‘He says my education here is paramount.’

‘It will be,’ Elician dares to agree. The traitor. ‘If you truly are going to be my adviser and representative, I need you to pay attention to your lessons.’

‘And how are my lessons here going to help you?’ she hisses. She steps closer. He is still taller than her, and she is furious that she needs to tilt her chin up to meet his eyes.

Elician takes his time in replying. He presses his chapped lips tight, as if holding back an instinctive response – and she yearns to snatch it from his mouth.

‘I’ve already argued with Zinnitzia,’ he says finally, stepping back. ‘I don’t want to argue with you too.’

‘Too late,’ she retorts. Then her brows furrow. ‘You argued with Zinnitzia? About what?’ Elician never raises his voice unless he absolutely has to, and when he does, it can drop the temperature of a room. He is not mean when he is angry. He never resorts to insults or harsh words. Instead, he simply autopsies the problem with a cool and clinical hand, peeling back flesh and dissecting the hearts of men and women without so much as the slightest care over who he’s eviscerating. Zinnitzia could do with being autopsied for all her faults. Fen hopes it hurt.

Elician shakes his head, denying her the story with a simple, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Did you argue about resurrection?’ It is Zinnitzia’s favourite topic to lecture on.

‘Yes.’

‘Did she tell you what happened with the girl I was supposed to heal? The one who died? The one I could have brought back but—’

‘You know it’s forbidden.’

The nerve! ‘You’ve brought Lio back like twenty times!’

‘Nowhere near that high, but that’s exactly why I got in trouble. We’re not supposed to do it.’ Because of chaos. Because apparently the populations of whole cities would roam the earth refusing to die. Zinnitzia needs to stop reading bad literature.

‘So, it’s fine so long as it’s Lio, but I can’t bring back one girl who died because I couldn’t heal her first?’

‘It isn’t fine so long as it’s Lio, none of it is fine. I made a mistake.’

‘You just tripped over his dead body and brought it back to life?’ she snaps, grabbing his wrist when it looks like he intends to step back once more. ‘Don’t say it’s a mistake if you don’t think it’s a mistake. You did it on purpose, so why shouldn’t I?’

‘Because it’s a selfish thing to do. Life gave us the power to stop people from dying and changing before their time. But if you are struggling to heal someone, then it’s because Death wants their soul. Bringing them back is defying Death – and risking Death’s wrath never ends well. I will face those repercussions when they arrive, but you really don’t want them for yourself. Promise me you’ll stop trying to resurrect people.’

‘No one cares if I bring back flowers or birds or anything else – it’s just people!’

‘Yes,’ he murmurs. ‘It’s just people. People and their souls, which you actively pull from Death’s grasp each time you bring them back. Flowers and birds have different souls, souls that are more temporary and transient, but humans – the gods do not play games with our souls, and neither should you. Please promise me you’ll stop trying—’

‘But I can’t do what all the other Givers do,’ she whispers. ‘I can’t heal things and they keep making me try and someone died . I can fix that , so why can’t I just—’

Elician tugs his wrist free from her grasp. He places his hands on her shoulders and leans down ever so slightly to make sure their eyes are finally at the same level. ‘It is not your responsibility to stop Death from taking the people put in your care. You are meant to heal them, if you can. If you can’t, that isn’t your fault.’

‘You’re only saying that because you just ignore everyone you could have saved on the battlefield. How many names are on that list of the dead that are still dead right now because you didn’t do anything about it, my prince?’ He flinches. Badly. Fen lowers her voice, tempering her tone as she presses on. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. You know it is. You can’t let anyone know you’re a Giver so letting people die is all you can do. But it was my job to help that little girl and I couldn’t do it.’

Leitja had been six years old. She didn’t deserve to die from a disease that another Giver could have healed. ‘Even so,’ he murmurs, staring past her once more. ‘It was not your fault.’

‘Let me join you at the front,’ Fen requests again.

He snorts, a loud, ugly sound that does not match his fine features and good manners. He presses a hand to his face, pinching his nose, rubbing at his eyes. ‘No one knows I’m a Giver. That’s why I’m allowed to even be close enough to ignore them while they die. But you know full well Givers aren’t allowed on battlefields. What could you possibly hope to achieve there?’

‘I can tie bandages,’ she suggests. ‘Or make soup!’

‘You don’t even know how to make soup.’

‘I COULD LEARN !’

Her brother winces, shushing her as he looks about. There are a few other Givers strolling through the gardens. Even a couple of Reapers in the distance. Not close enough to hear their bells jingle, but certainly close enough for them to hear her shout. She lowers her voice, if not her intensity. ‘It could be a lesson !’ she insists. ‘One that might help you one day!’

‘When I have a sudden lack of soup during a council meeting? Yes, very helpful, that.’

‘I’ll fight, then . . . I know how to use a sword; I practised before I came here. I could learn how to do it again.’

‘You’ll fight .’ The sound that leaves his mouth now is even more derisive. Cold and condescending, a chilling hint at the temper that she rarely ever sees. ‘You’ll fight,’ he repeats darkly. ‘Will killing people on purpose make you feel better, then?’

‘No!’ she snaps back. ‘But neither will me staying here and . . . and what, exactly? Training to heal your pet Reaper?’

She had raised his hackles by daring to suggest she could join him at the front – now his anger transitions to shock. Elician’s cheeks flush red and he sputters out the words, ‘Cat is not my pet.’

‘You named him Cat ,’ she reminds him. ‘Lio told me that the whole way here you were trying to get him to be your friend. And how could you even want to? He’s a Reaper!’

Her brother’s shoulders slump. His arms hang limply at his sides, and he shakes his head. ‘ That’s your concern? That he’s a Reaper? Not that he is Alelunen, or that he was sent here to kill me, but that he’s a Reaper ?’

To be fair, none of those were exactly points in Cat’s favour, but Fen could stomach them a bit more. Well, perhaps not the latter. ‘You shouldn’t make friends with people trying to kill you either.’

‘No,’ he murmurs. ‘Perhaps not.’ He still is not looking at her. She wants to take him by the wrist once more, shake him until he listens to her properly. ‘Marina was a part of my household before you even came to the palace,’ Elician says. ‘She was my guard from the moment I was born to the moment I went to war. She taught you how to wield that sword you apparently want to use to kill people. And you . . . you’ve lived here for three years, and you truly cannot contemplate the idea of being friends with a Reaper? Of wanting to show them basic human decency?’

‘They shouldn’t exist.’

‘Ah.’

She cannot describe the expression on his face. She cannot read what lies behind that distant look in his eyes, nor what that simple sound seems to imply. But something in that expression makes her hands fidget restlessly. She tugs and pulls at her fingers. She licks her lips and takes another step closer. This time, he does not retreat.

‘Death shouldn’t exist,’ she explains, soft as can be. ‘If she never showed up . . . if she had just let Life do what he had wanted from the start, then none of this would have happened. Nothing would die, and Reapers wouldn’t exist. And if they didn’t exist then Life wouldn’t have needed any Givers either. Everybody could just be normal . . . the same.’

‘Normal and deathless. What are they teaching in temple these days?’ Elician mutters. ‘So, let me try to understand. You blame the Reapers for the powers a god has chosen to gift them,’ he summarizes. ‘And you hate Death and all she stands for because it makes your life very hard? Tell me, little sister, what kind of life would you live? Without Death and all her influence?’

‘A better one than this. Leitja would still be here. My parents would still be here. My pets.’

‘And what would you eat?’

‘What?’

‘What would you eat if nothing could die? Or perhaps you wouldn’t eat. Or need to eat. Or want to eat. Perhaps that would go away. So, what would you wear, if nothing could die? Perhaps you’d wear nothing. Perhaps nakedness would become acceptable, and we could spend our days full in the sun, burning our skin ever darker to bask in its glory. I suppose it would be cold in the winter, but we cannot die and so what do we care for the chill? Where would we live? Only in stone structures, certainly, but what of our decorations? No wooden frames or canvases, no paint. What instruments would we play? Nothing made of wood, but neither could we burn the furnaces to bend metal for a horn. Tell me, sister, what life would you live in a world where nothing dies?’

‘Don’t be so . . . pedantic. You already said it. No one cares if grass or trees or animals die. It’s just us.’

‘Just us. And then there’s Zinnitzia’s warning again. Where everything falls into chaos because the whole balance of the world is thrown off its axis.’ Elician jerks his thumb towards the statue of Shawshank. ‘That’s what he believed. That’s what Givers used to do. Make sure that no one ever died.’

It is blasphemy to say what she thinks next. Blasphemy to push the boundaries of principles that generations of scripture have written into hard stone. She says it anyway. ‘Maybe he was right, and we shouldn’t have stopped raising the dead.’ Elician’s jaw clenches. ‘Maybe,’ she presses one final time. ‘Maybe if we had continued, we wouldn’t have that Death-worshipping cult on the other side of the Bask – and Kreuzfurt would just be a place for these freaks , not us. A place to detain those who only know how to kill people and nothing else.’

He meets her eyes. The warmth and love that had sustained their meeting the night before has vanished. Utterly. And no trace of it remains. He looks like a stranger – so cold is his countenance, so distant his affection. Her breath catches in her throat.

‘I don’t often say this, dear sister, but I’ll say it now. I agree with Father. You still have much to learn. And you are exactly where you’re meant to be.’ Elician turns away. Fen reaches for his wrist, fingers curling around it with her last vestiges of strength. But he jerks from her grasp without even turning to look at her. He walks back towards the Houses of the Wanting and Unwanting and doesn’t respond to her calling his name, nor show any sign of having heard her at all.

Fen refuses to follow him back to the Houses. But there are guards patrolling the gates and the walls. They won’t let her leave. As the sun rises high in all its bright morning glory, it shines on a world where it seems that – truly – she has nowhere else to go.