Page 81 of A Chill in the Flame
“We knew she’d pursue those responsible.” Harland losthimself in the map. “She must have learned of his whereabouts before we did.”
“I understand,” Eero said slowly. He turned to Harland. “But how did she cross the desert? And more importantly: why? We barely trade with Tarkhany. We’ve only received them on one ambassador mission in the last hundred years. Aubade and Midnah do not speak.”
Harland frowned. “By design?”
“By geography!” He gestured to the map, making a broad gesture toward where the fae woman’s hands still rested. “There’s no known water between Farehold’s border and Tarkhany’s capital. There’s rumored to be an oasis near Zatra, but those who’ve made it back alive swear it’s seasonable and cannot be depended upon. Besides, I don’t believe my father left things on particularly good terms with their ruler.”
“Your father was on the throne four hundred years ago,” Harland offered. “The desert king at the time was human, was he not? Those in power might not even know the tales. Things went smoothly on the ambassador visit, or am I mistaken?”
Eero resumed his pacing. “I have no way of knowing if those in power are human or fae right now. We hear nothing from Tarkhany, nor do we send word. But the appropriate time to offer my condolences has long since come and gone. After my father…”
“What happened, Your Highness? The books don’t—”
“I was a child.” He shook his head, halting his stride to grip the back of the chair with both hands. He looked down at the map, eyes flitting between the words that may have shared Farehold’s letters, though their vowels had new, strange marks and dashes, and the artistic, unreadable dots and lines of a slithering language that twisted and turned over the dunes. “It was a different time. My parents and their parents before them ruled with iron fists. Our lineage has not been known for fostering peace relations.”
Harland pursed his lips, eyes grazing the fae woman whocontinued to sit at the war room table. The bright, circular room in the tower always allowed for natural light, which somehow felt improper given the solemnity of scrying. He studied her features—she was not quite the rich bronze of Raascot, but also not the pale pink of Farehold. She was probably from the borderlands between kingdoms. Perhaps Farehold had been her home once, long before the division of the world. His mother and brother had been forced north due to the hostility toward certain magics in Farehold, just as hers undoubtedly had. Farehold hadn’t been known as a kingdom of tolerance. While Eero was good, he was also benign in the face of generations of injustice. Caris had been the continent’s first hope in shifting the tide.
The woman looked up at the man from where she remained at the table, growing more disinterested with every second that passed. “Will there be anything else?” She didn’t bother using his honorific this time.
Eero frowned at her. “Midnah? You’re sure of it?”
She looked at him in a way that conveyed deep disapproval over his question. Of course, she was sure of it. This was her power. She’d been doing this for millennia. This ancient fae had been scrying since before the king of Farehold had been in his mother’s belly.
Her look was answer enough.
“Okay. Thank you. That will be all.”
She stood from the table and reached into a bag, extending an object to the king.
He frowned. Pinched between her fingers was the plume of a long, blue-green peacock quill. “What’s this?”
“Convenience,” she said. “Don’t make me travel across the continent to answer simple inquiries. Write your questions to Ceneth, and I will have them answered from the comfort of my kingdom.”
Eero turned the feathered quill over in his hand. “What do I do with it?”
Once again, the deadened, bone-tired look of aheadmistress frowning at a misbehaving student overcame her emotions. “You write with it, Your Majesty. It’s a quill.”
Harland sucked in a breath of air at her disrespect. He knew enough of his king to know that he was relatively toothless, and he expected there’d be no recourse for her back talk. Still, it was incredibly bold to speak to a monarch as though he were an uneducated child. Perhaps she’d lived long enough and was simply poking bears, hoping one would bring her days to an end.
“My sister is a manufacturer,” she said with infinite boredom. “Her quills are particularly popular among young lovers, as they never seem to run out of things to say when separated. This one, however, will be for you and King Ceneth exclusively, as he owns its twin. Anything you write with this quill will appear in his castle. If you have a question for me, he can fetch me in Gwydir. And if that’s all”—she stood eyeing them for a long, judgmental moment—“I will begin the three-week trek back to Gwydir.”
The king looked surprised at this. “They’re not flying you back?”
She’d reached the end of patience that had never existed in the first place as she said, “I was brought under the urgency of a king summoning me. No one cares how long it will take me to return. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
The scryer didn’t wait to be dismissed. Her loose, black dress floated out of the room—the material existing as the only buoyant thing about her. The room seemed smaller with her gone, as if her presence had been holding the cream-colored stones at bay. They pressed in on the men as they stood around the map.
“She lacked decorum,” Harland said politely as the tower door closed.
Eero laughed, though the sound was not happy. “I admired her apathy. I can’t tell you how comforting it would be to feel indifferent when facing such things.”
“Your Highness?”
Eero closed his eyes, perhaps shutting out the too-small room like Harland wished he could. It wasn’t just his missing daughter, nor was it the one who’d been taken from him. It wasn’t just his people, or the kingdom, or the direction of the continent. It was his crippling inability to do anything about it. It was supposed to be Caris. She had been meant to succeed where he’d failed.
Instead, that’s all he’d leave.
A legacy of failure.
