Blood Song: The First Book of Lharmell Page 10

  He dug into his pocket and slapped it onto my palm without a word. Then he pulled out of my grasp and made for his turret.

  ‘No! Please. Talk to me. I need to know what’s going on.’

  He rounded on me. ‘You really have no idea? I’m amazed. You do enough snooping around.’

  ‘I think I know what I am. I think I know what you are. But I don’t know what you and they are up to, and it’s driving me crazy. And that thing today in the cloak. What was he? And what was in the sky just now?’

  I saw relief on his face. He was glad of my ignorance, which meant he wasn’t going to tell me anything. I turned to go, but it was his turn to call me back.

  ‘Zeraphina, wait.’

  I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. Instead, he held out his wrist and Griffin flew from the battlements and landed carefully on his sleeve. He hadn’t whistled or even looked at her. Then Leap jumped onto the ledge and butted his head against Rodden’s shoulder. I felt a huge pang of loss. They were deserting me. My only friends were being taken from me.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I whispered. For the second time that day I was close to tears. ‘Griffin doesn’t go to anyone but me.’

  ‘I asked her to,’ he said.

  He wasn’t making sense. He hadn’t said a word. ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘Not with my voice. I spoke in my head. They can hear me. They can hear you. Haven’t you ever realised?’

  I shook my head. Hear me?

  Zeraphina . . .

  I felt a jolt. It was the voice in my not-dream. The voice of the blue-eyed phantom, the one that had soothed the burning hunger from my body and driven away the keening wind. I knew that voice better than anything in the world. I heard it in my dreams. ‘You try it,’ he said.

  Tentatively, I held out my wrist and called to Griffin, speaking her name with my mind. Nothing happened. I tried Leap, begging for him to come to me. He didn’t move.

  ‘I can’t –’ My voice caught. I stepped forward and clutched Leap to my body, burying my face in his familiar fur. Why was Rodden so cruel? I didn’t understand any of this.

  He sighed. ‘I forgot. I made them give you laudanum for the hunger. It’s made you foggy.’

  I shivered in my nightclothes.

  ‘You should go back to bed,’ he said, and walked away.

  Angry, I whistled for Griffin and she came, a flash of gold over my head. I trudged to my room, angry that he’d given me still more questions instead of answers. I hugged Leap to my chest and kept my eyes on my eagle, her wingtips brushing the walls as she flew.

  ––

  ‘Here.’ Renata handed me a tall glass of water. I sipped cautiously, still feeling the woozy effects of the drug I had been given. I was in our rooms on the sofa, my legs curled under me and a blanket around my shoulders. It was nearly midday but I’d only just woken from a fitful sleep. The glass felt too heavy in my hand. My shoulders ached from the strain of the archery tournament and my mind was leaden. It was mostly from the laudanum, but there was something else. I was fed up. Fed up with not having any answers. Fed up with being kept in the dark. I was also exhausted from the blood-hunger. I remembered what Lilith whispered to me that morning in her room, devastated by Lester’s death. I just want everything to stop. I try to look ahead and it’s like there’s nothing there. That was how I felt. I was trapped in Pergamia. I knew that when the time came I would be unable to get in the coach to go home. The Lharmellins had me in their grip. If one of those things had come down from the sky I would have begged for it to take me to the north, even though I was terrified of what it would mean.

  So, there it was. I was trapped. In limbo.

  Renata reached for my hand but I pulled away. She sat down next to me. ‘Lothskorn wants me to take you home,’ she said softly.

  I started. Rodden. My mind was suddenly crisp with rage. ‘Why does everyone do everything he wants them to?’ I exploded. ‘What’s with him? Is he king all of a sudden?’ I struggled off the sofa and glared at her.

  ‘Darling,’ said Renata, her voice pitched as if to soothe a wild animal. ‘He’s worried about you. I’m worried about you.’

  Worried! He knew I could no sooner go home than fly to the moon. I hurled the glass to the marble floor. It smashed into smithereens, water and shards splattering all over the ground.

  Renata stood up. ‘Zeraphina!’

  I snatched up a vase and hurled it against the far wall. It hit a painting and exploded, and they both went crashing to the ground. This was good. This was just what I needed. To destroy something; feel it break under the force of my hand.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lilith came into the room, surveying the damage.

  ‘Zeraphina is throwing a temper tantrum because she doesn’t want to go home.’

  ‘But my wedding’s tomorrow.’

  ‘See, Mother?’ I said. ‘Lilith’s wedding is tomorrow. Now, how can I miss that?’ I stalked to my room. If I had been properly dressed I would have fled the apartment, but I was still in my nightgown. I slammed the door behind me. Leap’s ears were flattened against his skull and he looked at me with haunted eyes. I sat down and pulled him onto my lap.

  As my anger dissipated I felt a twinge of shame. Renata and Lilith had no idea what I was going through, but that wasn’t their fault. All these years I had worked hard to conceal the truth from them. From myself as well. Practising my archery had been the sporting equivalent of putting my head in the sand.

  But now, because of my pig-headedness, it was too late: Lilith would marry Amis tomorrow, and Pergamia would become her home for the rest of her life. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d condemned her to a life in peril. Whatever circled ominously over the keep on a nightly basis was sure to attack before long. My dreams were more prophetic than I’d thought: if Lilith died, her blood would be on my hands, for I had been the one to coerce her northwards.

  My head started to ache and I lay down. I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing I heard was Renata and Lilith coming in from dinner. I crept out, blinking in the candlelight. As my eyes cleared I saw that the mess I’d made had been cleared up.

  ‘Were they very valuable?’ I croaked.

  Renata handed me a flute of something pale and bubbly. ‘Not at all, darling. As soon as I saw them I knew they were barely fit to be hurled across a room. Are you feeling better?’

  We sat together on the couch and I curled into her warm body. The dress she wore was of the softest satin. I felt like a child who’d been woken by the grown-ups coming home and I relished the cosseted feeling it gave me. I was still the baby of the family.

  ‘A little,’ I said.

  Lilith sat before us on the ottoman, her eyes shining. She held up her glass. ‘What should we toast?’

  ‘That’s easy, Daughter. To you and Amis. To the future.’

  ‘To the future,’ we echoed, even though it pained me to say the words. I took a sip of the bubbly stuff and it was pleasant, but very dry. Then I sneezed.

  Renata took my glass. ‘And that’s more than enough for you in the state you’re in. It’s time you were off to bed.’

  ‘No, please. Just a little longer.’ I wanted to stay with them in the soft candlelight and just be quiet together. It was the last time Lilith would belong only to us.

  Lilith took another sip. ‘Tell us about your wedding, Mother.’

  Renata smiled softly and dropped her eyes. It was a tale we’d heard only in snatches over the years, and rarely with any joy. Tonight, it seemed, we were to be indulged. ‘By the time I was married,’ she began, ‘I was already queen. My parents were gone and Amentia was mine. It had declined by then, but I expected us to pull through. Of course, we never did. Things just got worse. At the time I wasn’t particularly worried. I was quite enjoying myself and had no intention of marrying; men are so dreadfully bossy. Then I met your father.’

  ‘Love at first sight?’ asked Lilith.

  ‘Hardly. He was always taunting
me about something. It never even crossed our minds that marriage was on the cards: I was a queen and he was a prince, fourth-born and totally landless. It’s just not done, you know.’

  ‘Mother,’ I reproached. ‘Marrying beneath your station.’

  ‘Quite. So, as neither of us was even thinking of marriage, we became friends. Of sorts. More like sparring partners; we were always fighting about something. And then one day he told me I’d have to marry him because I was in love with him, and I was very angry to find he was right.’ She was smiling, lost in the past, a place she hadn’t dared to go for a very long time. ‘And then we had you, Lilith,’ she said softly. ‘And then before I knew it I was expecting you.’ She grasped my hand, her smile fading. ‘And then he was gone. We’d had three years.’

  Lilith and I were silent. It had been a mistake to ask her about her wedding. The story, as we’d known, had a tragic ending.

  Renata gripped my hand hard. ‘And that’s why I was so afraid to lose you, Zeraphina, when you grew ill. You and Lilith were all I had left of him. I would have done anything to keep you with me. Anything.’

  I was too stunned to speak, but the question echoed through my mind.

  Anything? What did you do to me?

  Lilith wrapped her arms around her, which is what I should have done. Belatedly I joined them, and for a few minutes we were a sticky mess of tears, satin and rouge.

  Renata came to the surface first. ‘Look at me, my eldest daughter’s wedding tomorrow and I’m crying before the service has started. I’ve had too much wine.’

  ‘Don’t they like to drink in Pergamia!’ said Lilith.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Have you seen Amis’s aunts? They’re always tipsy.’

  ‘Outright drunk, more like it,’ Renata said. ‘You watch. We’ll come back to visit your sister next year to find her passed out cold in some bushes.’

  Come back. Leave. It was an impossibility. The journey home would kill me for sure.

  Renata steered me to my room and tucked me into bed.

  ‘Just you and me now, hey?’ she whispered, smoothing the sheets. ‘Heaven help us.’

  I managed a weak smile before the tears, wine and sheer exhaustion knocked me out.

  ––

  I slept until just before dawn, when I was awakened by shouts and running feet. I leaned over my balcony to try to see what was going on, but the commotion had already passed by. As my eyes adjusted to the morning light I saw more archers than ever posted around the battlements, arrows trained on the sky. They looked particularly alarmed and I got the impression that this time it had been a close call. I ran to the door of our apartment and stood outside, listening. There was another commotion going on somewhere, but far off in the keep. The king and queen were being called for. Then things quieted and I crept back inside.

  I stood in the darkened sitting room, ears peeled for the sounds of an attack, and I remembered that this was Lilith’s wedding day.

  As I was being dressed, possibilities were racing across my mind. I could stop the wedding. Tell Lilith she wouldn’t be safe if she stayed in Pergamia. There are monsters across the straits. I think they attacked this morning. I think I’m one of them . . .

  But it was there that my mind recoiled and I knew I couldn’t open my mouth. I told myself that it wasn’t only cowardice that kept me silent, but a lack of proof: all I had in the way of material evidence was a tawdry paperback from a market stall.

  If only I’d voiced my doubts earlier. But hadn’t I tried? Hadn’t I been trying to find out the truth ever since I’d got to Pergamia, and been laughed at and paraded in front of crowds for my trouble?

  I remembered how pleased I had been with myself the morning I had convinced Lilith to come to Pergamia. As I watched her being dressed, her face aglow with excitement, I wondered what sort of life I had condemned her to.

  I had one chance left to ensure her safety, but I would have to rely on the most dangerous man in the kingdom: Rodden. I’d stupidly asked for my ring back, voiding his promise to grant me anything I desired, but I had one more bargaining chip. He wanted me to go home. So I would tell him I could stay and kick up a fuss in Pergamia, or he could give me a big bottle of laudanum so I could knock myself out for the whole journey back to Amentia, and promise never to return – if, and this was a big if, he promised to take care of Lilith. Get her out of the way before things turned nasty. And I had a feeling they were going to.

  For the wedding, we three wore gowns in the Amentine style, but in summery Pergamian fabrics. Lilith wore white, I was in pale, rosy pink and Renata’s gown was deep magenta. I was finding it hard to breath in my corset, and I could barely keep still long enough for Eugenia to make me up.

  Renata checked the hour-candle: it was time. She nodded to Lilith and we fell in behind her. Renata was wearing her crown and I had a delicate garland of roses in my hair. Lilith wore a thin white veil sewn to her silver circlet.

  The ceremony was to take place in a rose arbour in the garden. We met Amis in the throne room, Renata presenting her eldest to him formally, as if for the first time. The pair bowed with the requis- ite stiffness, but I could see smiles hovering at the corners of their mouths.

  In the Pergamian royal family, it was the king and queen who performed the marriage ceremony. The son or daughter had to present their betrothed and then swear all the things they would and would not do from this day forth, and generally sum up why their parents should consent to the match.

  I was so busy scanning for Rodden’s dark hair and brooding features as I walked to my place in front that I barely registered the beauty of the rose arbour. By the time I’d reached the front, curtseyed to the king and queen on their ubiquitous thrones, and moved to one side, I knew he wasn’t there. Unable to help myself, I kept glancing over my shoulder at the court seated behind me until Renata gave me a stern look.

  I couldn’t believe Rodden was missing the wedding of his best friend. I had desperately wanted to talk to him before anyone promised anything to anyone. If I didn’t like his response I could still have a fainting fit and halt the proceedings until I came up with another plan. There didn’t seem much point in fainting now. I would just have to track him down after the ceremony.

  The irony of his absence hadn’t escaped me: I’d spent my whole time in Pergamia trying to avoid Rodden, and as soon as I wanted him around, he disappeared.

  Then Amis was bringing Lilith up the aisle to his parents. I looked at them, and my anxieties were soothed enough to watch the ceremony, if not actually listen to the words. The pair knelt before the king and queen, bowing their heads. King Askar began a long speech, something about the might of Pergamia and its great, illustrious history. Then Queen Ulah made an even longer speech about the sanctity of marriage. Amis’s aunts had snagged a front row seat and I could hear them hiccupping and blowing loudly into handkerchiefs as they wept. Carmelina, standing at the front with me, was tearing up too.

  Nothing really filtered through to me until right at the end. Amis had finished his lengthy promises to Lilith and was telling the king and queen why he wanted to marry her. He was looking at Lilith with an open face and a gaze of pure love.

  ‘. . . met her it was like I already knew her. It was like remembering, not learning; seeing, instead of just looking; and not only hearing, but sensing and knowing and feeling all at once. Because we are the same, deep down. And nothing can change that.’

  The words were meant to be words of joy, but they stung me. I realised then that no one was ever going to stand up in front of a room full of people and say such things to me. I couldn’t let anyone see me how I really was, because I was a monster. I would never find that one person who, deep down, was the same as me. I felt tears start, and I was angry with myself for crying, for feeling sorry for myself. But then Lilith and Amis were standing, facing us all, and everyone was crying, so I let the tears fall over the smile that I made myself wear, for them, because they were in love. And I felt that part of me
that was happy for them and I cherished it. Because that part was human, and it was the part that I fervently hoped was the real me.

  TEN

  Finally, at the wedding feast, he was there. We were celebrating outdoors in the sunshine and I spotted him making his way over the grounds to the banquet from quite far off, so I slipped away from the high table, scooted in a wide arc and intercepted him.

  ‘Psst!’

  Rodden looked around and saw me hiding behind an oak. He gave me a curious look.

  I waved him over. ‘Where have you been?’ I hissed.

  He instantly looked annoyed. ‘Well, I would tell you, but I’ve just remembered it’s none of your business.’

  ‘Don’t be so snippy. What was going on this morning? Were we being attacked?’

  Rodden looked around. We weren’t far from the others. ‘Will you keep your voice down?’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘I told you, it’s none of your –’

  ‘Yes, yes, none of my business. I didn’t want to talk to you about that, anyway. I want to make a deal with you.’

  He folded his arms. ‘You don’t have anything I want.’

  ‘Oh, really? The other day you said you wanted my hand in marriage.’

  ‘That was just to see the look on your face.’

  ‘And how was it?’

  ‘Priceless.’

  I could only imagine.

  ‘Well?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I know too much. You want me gone. I’ll go home if you keep Lilith safe.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Come on! It’s easy. I’ll go quietly back to Amentia, not tell anyone about what you are and what you’re doing –’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m doing.’

  ‘That’s beside the point. You’re up to no good, and if I had five minutes in your room I’d find out what. But I promise never to even think of you again, if you, when the time comes, whatever it involves, will make sure that Lilith is far, far away from any trouble.’ There. It was exactly what he wanted. He would have to agree.