The Everlasting — Chapter 23

23

I WALKED THROUGH the gates first, this time. You hadn’t liked it much, but I simply wasn’t going to watch you take another arrow. In the end I’d threatened to run in naked with a target painted on my back, and you’d thrown up your hands and said, “As you will, then!”

I strolled through the arch fully clothed, cigarette pinched in my left hand, revolver in my right. I didn’t bother to hide the gun; the Hinterlanders wouldn’t know what it was, even as the bullets entered their brains.

I called up to them: “The Red Knight approaches!” I spoke the words in Shvalic and sent silent, guilty thanks to the Hinterlander boys who had taught me the words. “Archers, take aim!”

I pressed my back to the curtain wall, as if I were hiding from you.

There was a moment’s confusion above me—they didn’t recognize me and hadn’t expected a warning—but my hair was dark and curling, like theirs, and I’d spoken to them in their own language. Three arrows were notched to three bows, and three men emerged from their hiding places.

They had survived the First Crusade, which meant they were cautious: Very little of their bodies were visible around the parapets. Half a face, the helmet pulled low. A right shoulder, capped in boiled leather. Small targets, even for a fine marksman. More than enough, for me.

I put my cigarette back between my teeth, cupped my left hand around my right, and let my mind fall away. My body—which had survived the same war a hundred times, which knew how to shoot in the same way it knew how to eat and drink and sleep, without thought—lifted the revolver, took aim, and pulled the trigger. My arm swung smoothly to the right, thumb on hammer, finger already tightening on the trigger again, riding that

whisper-thin line just before it fired—a second target, a second shot, and a third, before the first body could hit the stones.

A weird quiet fell. I pictured the rest of the Hinterlanders crouched inside the Keep, baffled by the sound of gunfire. I pictured Vivian rising calmly from her sickbed, making her way to the throne like an actor scurrying behind the curtain.

The quiet lasted less than a second. You arrived in a clatter of hooves and steel, sword already drawn, eyes casting wildly until they found me.

I lifted one hand in greeting. “Hello, love.”

You scowled. Tapped your right cheekbone. “Slow.”

I touched my face and found a streak of raw, tender skin just below the wire of my spectacles. The last archer must have loosed his shot as he died.

I dropped my cigarette and stamped it just as the Keep doors crashed open. A voice shouted orders and men came swarming out, not knowing their archers were already dead, not knowing their whole brave, desperate venture was nothing but a plot device.

I nodded toward them. “One chance,” I reminded you. “That’s all they get.”

You dipped your head to me, a ghostly imitation of the oath you’d taken, and turned to address the men marching closer. “Soldiers of the Hinterlands! Halt now, I beg you!” Their steps faltered, paused. You laid Valiance across your thighs and lifted one hand, palm out. “Only lay down your arms and let me pass, and we will shed no more blood between us. I will kill you if I must, as I have done before, but my quarrel is not with you.”

At this juncture in the story, I was usually so terror ridden—so torn between duty and desire—that I had attention only for you. But now, for the first time, I studied the faces of the Hinterlanders. Young and not-young, bearded and clean-shaven, mostly men, a few women. Their armor was mismatched, ill-fitting, perhaps stolen from Yvanne’s court. I recalled that this had been a diplomatic visit before it became a coup.

One of them—a somber woman with thick gray braids—answered, in perfect Mothertongue, “But ours is with you, Everlasting.”

“Why?” you asked, and it occurred to me what a good question it was.

Why would a group of twelve diplomats attempt to dethrone a queen?

The somber woman said, “We were shown a—vision. I cannot explain it. A scene made of light and shadows, which showed the future. The Hinterlands beneath the boot of Dominion. Our people forced to kneel to a foreign queen. Our soldiers dead or surrendered. And everywhere—your face. Everlasting, they will call you.”

“Do you mean—did she show you a newsreel?” Why lie when the truth would serve her better? “God, she’s efficient.” Everyone in the courtyard looked at me, frowned, and looked away.

The Hinterlander leader shook her head. “We cannot let it come to pass.”

You bowed your head. Here was another circle we could not break: I had killed their countrymen, and now they would kill you, to prevent it.

You hefted Valiance into the air again and said, gravely, “Then I will

make it fast.”

It was.

The last time you’d fought this battle, you’d relied on your strength and skill, on the sheer physical mastery that had been beaten into every atom of your body.

But this time, you also had your memories. You had seen every strike and step of this fight, every variation and surprise, and so you anticipated every blow.

A blade thrust toward your stirrup, but you’d already wheeled Hen aside. A shield lifted to stop your blow, but you’d already chosen another target. A hand caught your wrist, but you’d already tossed your hilt to your left hand. I pitied the Hinterlanders: It was frustrating, to fight an enemy that knew the future.

When it was done, and the yard was quiet once more, you had not even been unhorsed. But your head was hanging low, and your sword arm hung slackly, as if it were not your arm but only a piece of meat sewn to your shoulder. I touched your leg, just above the stirrup.

You stirred. “If—when we succeed in this—when we get the book again —we will go back to the very beginning. We will change all of this, not just

the ending.”

I tightened my grip on your ankle. “We will. I swear it.” I had already sworn it several times on the journey here.

You fished the cup from your bags and nodded to the reins hanging loosely from Hen’s withers. “Then lead on, madman.”

“You don’t—you’re not going to dismount?”

“She had him killed, the last time I left him out here.” You added, softly but with conviction, “Bitch.”

So I took the reins and led you, still astride, through the great doors and into the rush-lit dark of Cavallon Keep.

The scene was set as it always was—the rustling, scurrying crowd, the stink of sweat and fine perfumes, the veiled woman on the throne and the heroes assembled at her back—save for one alteration: the book, now lying open across the queen’s lap.

It was a threat as simple and effective as a knife to the throat. Should we falter or go astray—should we deviate from the script or displease her in any way—she would vanish back through time and change whatever she chose. I had anticipated it, of course, but the sight of the book still sent a sick bolt of fear through my belly.

As we entered the hall, I drew Hen to a halt (he struck, snakily, at my fingers, but somehow missed), and met your eyes. We play it as written, then.

As written, you agreed, silently, but you ran your tongue over your teeth.

More or less.

“Sir Una.” Vivian’s voice fell weak and lovely over the hall, as it always did, but with a new, very slight tartness; she did so hate your horse.

I loosed his reins and fell back. The crowd was already parted for you, pressing uneasily against the walls. They had looked up as soon as they heard the ring of shod hooves, and they had seen you: a huge woman with a white halo of hair and the devil’s own red hands, cup held in one and naked blade in the other, sitting upon a horse like death itself. You did not look like a hero, now, so much as a harbinger.

You rode slowly toward the throne, steering with your knees. Hen’s shoes rang like great hammers on the stones.

At the dais, you made one of your wordless commands, and Hen halted.

You did not dismount.

As I wormed and shoved my way through the crowd, I heard the queen’s faint, irritated sigh. Her line, when it came, emerged through gritted teeth: “And so, you have returned to me at last.”

“Yes, my queen.” Delivered mechanically, by rote, while you stared down at her. Good: Let Vivian imagine this was an act of defiance. Let her imagine it would be your only one.

“And you have slain the last dragon of Dominion.”

“Yes, my queen.”

“And you have brought me the lost grail, which they say restores all that time takes—”

“Yes, my queen,” you interrupted, and tossed the cup carelessly down to her.

She caught it—perhaps a little too quickly, for a dying woman—and I was so close now I could hear the annoyed click of her teeth.

Still, she rallied. She called, in her spring-snow voice, for wine, and lifted the cup in two tremulous hands as it was poured. She slipped the grail beneath her veil and drank.

She did not stand, this time, for the grand reveal, but made her speech while still seated, the book balanced safely on her knees. “So long have I prayed for one thing and one thing only, and now, by the grace of God and Sir Una, I am given it: time.”

With this, Vivian drew up her veil to reveal her handsome, healthful face. While the crowd gasped and swayed, she said, through a fixed smile, “Will you not kneel, Sir Una, and accept my blessing?”

For a strained moment, I thought you would refuse. I thought you would kill her—kill yourself, kill our chance at a future—rather than kneel at her feet ever again.

But I had not yet given the signal, and you had given me your oath.

Stiffly, as if you had grown suddenly old, you slid from Hen’s back and down onto one knee.

“Will someone please get that animal out of here,” Vivian said, tiredly, and a pair of attendants scurried, bent-backed, to take Hen’s reins. I wished them luck.

An awkward beat passed, while the queen waited for your head to bow properly—but you refused to bend your neck so much as an inch, keeping your gaze insolently on hers. Pure pride, I thought, but no—you were watching the reflection in her pupils for movement at your back.

Even still, he almost had you. Ancel slipped out from the wall of the crowd, quick and graceful as a cat. Hen screamed his wild battle-scream, tossing his head while the queen’s attendants clung desperately to the reins —I opened my mouth to yell a warning I knew you wouldn’t hear, through the ruin of my throat—Ancel brought his sword arcing downward— And you spun and caught it neatly on your cross guard. In the crowd, a woman screamed.

Ancel swore, disengaging, his feet falling into a perfect defensive position. He spoke, and this time I was close enough to hear the words: “Damn, but you’re fast.”

You rose smoothly, uninjured, without arrows lodged in your ribs.

“Don’t do this, Ancel, please.” Your face was pale and frantic, a prophecy of grief. “Can’t you remember? We’ve done this before, over and over.

Don’t make me do it again.”

There was, perhaps, a flicker of doubt in Ancel’s face. Then it passed, and he said, with a shrug, “Sorry, love.”

He meant it, I thought. But he was a man who had ceded all his choices to someone else, who believed he had none left remaining to him. His motions were the motions of a wind-up doll: inevitable, preordained.

You nodded once, to show you understood, and did not blame him. Then you struck.

It was a hard blow, and fast—but not fatal. Ancel smacked it aside with the flat of his blade and turned the motion into a nasty sweep at your legs.

You were forced to step back toward the dais, and the crowd inhaled like a single, many-throated animal.

You recovered before their breath was fully drawn, lunging up and under Ancel’s guard—and finding nothing but air, as he slipped, eel-like,

around the blow. You circled one another, guards up, and I felt my brows lowering in confusion.

I wasn’t sure how many times I’d seen this duel fought, but I was sure it had never lasted longer than twenty seconds. It wasn’t even a duel, really, so much as an execution with extra steps.

But this—this was the kind of fight beloved by bards and bloodthirsty young boys. The two of you came together and apart, losing advantage and then gaining it back, striking and defending with flicks and flourishes that caught the light. A slim cut appeared along Ancel’s lovely cheekbone. The tip of his sword made a tiny red gouge in your jaw.

Your blade hit his and screeched upward, until your hilts were tangled and your faces were brought close. You struggled, as if you were evenly matched, as if you weren’t strong enough to snap both his pretty wrists.

Ancel hissed, beneath his breath: “Finish it, damn you.”

“Yield, you ass,” you answered, calmly, and I understood: You didn’t want to kill him, and he didn’t want to survive.

Maybe he never had. Maybe he’d betrayed you because he hadn’t been able to disobey his queen, and then he’d let you kill him because he hadn’t wanted to live with it. Because there were always some choices remaining to us, no matter how small and bitter.

Vivian was leaning slightly forward in her seat, watching the fight with an expression of false shock. She hadn’t noticed me yet. A weakness of hers —assuming that the only players on the stage were the ones she put there. I slipped my hand inside my trouser pocket.

But then Ancel swore, viciously, and I looked away to find him disarmed, sprawled at your feet. Valiance was buried in his shoulder, pinning him like a moth to the board. You drew out the blade. “Yield.”

His eyes cut once to the throne, then closed, as if in pain. Then he rolled desperately away, scrabbling for his fallen sword, unable to yield while his queen watched him.

You permitted yourself a brief, black grimace, and then you hamstrung him. It was a neat blow, almost clinical, drawn like a scalpel across the backs of both legs. Ancel went down, and this time he did not rise again, and never would.

It was an abrupt ending to the fight, brutal and unromantic. The court murmured uncertainly to itself. Even they felt the strangeness of the moment, like a wrong note in the middle of an old tune.

You ignored them, turning to face Vivian with something furtive and stupid in your eyes. Hope, I thought—that she had been telling the truth, after all. That she would let us both go as she’d promised.

But then, from behind the throne came a great metal slithering, as the Queen’s Guard drew their weapons in perfect synchrony. Bodrow the Giant, who was even taller than you, and Carnock the Elder, who had slain the White Boar with a single spear-throw. Sir Gladwyn, with his dark skin and his winged lynx shield. You looked at them—your comrades, your friends, your fellow heroes—and the hope withered in your eyes.

Vivian had never intended to let you survive this fight. She wanted a tragedy, and she would have one. I’d known it, and so had you, and the only reason we’d played our parts at all had been to reach this very moment: when the Queen’s Guard would rush out to meet you and leave the throne unguarded.

I heard the sharp clap of metal on metal, a roar of battle fury, the rising panic of the court—Hen screaming again, and the hollow pop of hooves on flesh—but I didn’t look toward you. Couldn’t, if I wanted to keep going.

Instead, I took the last three steps to the throne, pulled Vivian’s slim silver knife from my pocket, and pressed it across her windpipe.

“The book. Now.”

Vivian’s nostrils flared. “Goodness, Mallory! I’d almost mistake you for a protagonist. But let’s not—”

“Shut up.” My hand was shaking. Not with fear, but with the effort it took to keep myself from burying the knife in her neck, hilt deep. But the book was still in her lap, and all it would take was a drop of blood.

One-handed, keeping the knife to her throat, I knocked the book from her hands. The cover clacked and slid across the stones.

Vivian’s eyes met mine, and I knew a moment’s pure joy. We had outplayed her, at last, and now she was going to die. My hand tightened around the knife—

And a pair of arms grabbed me around the knees and bore me to the ground. My head smacked against the flagstones. My spectacles crunched into the bridge of my nose.

I twisted to look behind me, blinking through shattered lenses, and caught the glint of flowing hair, as false and yellow as fool’s gold. I wanted to laugh or cry, or maybe hamstring him again. “Oh, for God’s sake, man.”

It was Ancel, dragging his useless legs behind him, squirming pathetically on his elbows to defend his queen. He’d left a smeary red trail behind him, and his hand was clamped, with fanatical strength, around my ankle.

“Still?” I kicked out and caught his injured shoulder. He screamed a little, helplessly, but didn’t let go. “You still think if you’re good enough and loyal enough and fucking blond enough, you’ll be her favorite? Look at Una”—I kicked him again, harder—“look at her and see how the queen treats her favorite.”

His eyes moved over my head, to where you fought the whole of the Queen’s Guard. The best of her warriors, storied and glory ridden, against a woman who had already fought two battles today. I still hadn’t looked at you, but I could hear the bellows of your lungs working hard, roughening with exhaustion, and I could see Ancel’s face whitening with horror. You were not unscathed, then.

I wrenched my ankle free and dove for the book. My hands slipped sweatily on the wood, but then I had it—I had it—and all I needed was you.

I whistled shrilly, desperately, hoping you could hear the signal over the clamor of battle.

But there was no clamor. No clash of blades, no cries of pain or anger.

The hall had fallen suddenly and eerily quiet, save the heavy, ragged breathing of one person.

I turned slowly, heart seizing, fighting the urge to shut my eyes like a child afraid of the dark—but you were still standing. Your hair had been half torn from its braid, viciously enough that the roots were bloody, and your left arm hung limply at your side, but you were still alive.

There were bodies humped around you like red hills, and Hen—who had broken free of his attendants—had posted himself at your back, gore

painted up to his fetlocks. You were easing Sir Gladwyn gently from the end of your blade, and there were watery pink tracks down your cheeks where your tears had slicked through the blood.

You looked up at me—at the book, clutched tight to my chest—and your face filled with longing. To go home, to go back to a time when none of this had happened. To the very beginning, you’d said.

You had taken one step toward me when Vivian said, sharply, “Alright, that’s enough.” Then she clapped her hands twice, and there was an odd ripple in the crowd. I looked, and saw cloaks thrown back, arms lifting, burred arrowheads pointing directly at you. I knew by your sudden and total stillness that you’d seen them, too: Archers hidden among the courtiers, holding the kind of crank-wound crossbows that could punch straight through steel. That wouldn’t be invented for another two hundred years.

We had not anticipated her, after all. My limbs felt suddenly stiff and wooden.

Vivian stood from her throne, brushing irritably at her skirts. She said, in modern Mothertongue: “Well, you’ve fucked this one up beyond all hope of repair, haven’t you?” She looked out at the frightened remnants of the crowd.

Half of them had crammed themselves through the door, and the other half were huddled against the walls, staring glassily at the dais. There was no legible story here, no playwright’s careful staging to tell them who were the villains and who were the heroes. Their champion had become a devil, covered in the blood of her comrades, and their queen’s white gown was turning red at the hem.

Vivian rubbed her temple, as if she had a very bad headache. “We’ll have to start over. This time maybe I’ll take one of the children along with me, as an incentive for good behavior. Toss me that book, please.”

I didn’t understand who she was speaking to until I felt the butt of a crossbow strike hard between my shoulder blades. I hadn’t seen the men at my back.

One of them wrested the book from my grasp—my nails left pale, desperate scores in the wood—and the other wrenched my arms behind me.

I thrashed, contriving to knock into one of them just as he made the toss.

The book fell short of the dais, landing instead where Ancel lay wanly in a widening pool of his own blood.

The queen looked at the book. You looked at the queen. I looked at you.

Your face was waxen and pale, but familiar. It was the way you’d looked on your bier, I realized: Beyond fear or anger or hope. Beyond everything, save death.

Abruptly your eyes left the queen to study the archers now lined up like pallbearers at the edge of the crowd. Your expression grew a little distracted, as if you were doing sums. Could you kill the queen before the arrows killed you? Could you reach her before she reached the book, and

escaped?

You nodded to yourself. Yes.

You wouldn’t survive it, but neither would Vivian. And if you couldn’t have your future or your freedom—if you would never see your children again—at least you would have your revenge. You would be a tragedy, still, but you would not be hers.

“No!” My scream was hoarse, shattered in my throat. “Don’t do it, please, Una—I can’t—” I threw myself forward against my captors, twisting my arms backward in their sockets. One of the archers cursed and drove his fist into my kidney. I doubled over, still screaming, unsure whether it was pain or grief or sheer fury that I would have to watch you die again.

Then: the clop of unhurried hooves. A mild, sinister whinny, which I associated with imminent injury. A rush of air above me, followed by the split-melon sound of a bone breaking.

The archers’ hold loosed instantly. I staggered upright to find Hen standing nearly atop me, all four legs once again on the ground. There was something slimy and grayish on his hoof, like brain matter.

The queen was cursing at her men. “Don’t waste arrows on the fucking horse, keep her in your sights—don’t you dare, Mallory.” She’d seen me staggering toward the book and swept up her long white skirts, ready to race for it.

Both of us stopped, abruptly, because the book was no longer on the flagstones. It was in Ancel’s long, graceful hand.

Sir Ancel of Ulwin was no longer especially beautiful. His hair was sweat soaked, pressed unflatteringly to his skull, and his skin was the color of unbaked pastry. He turned the book curiously in one hand, studying the device on the cover. “This is how she does it, then.” His voice wouldn’t have been out of place at a dinner party, idly polite. “This is how she makes

it happen again and again.”

I wet my lips. “Yes.”

His eyes raked over me, unimpressed. “And you must be Owen.”

“How did you—”

He gestured toward you with his chin. “She talks in her sleep.” This he delivered with an expression that might have been a leer, on a man who wasn’t mostly exsanguinated. “Surely you’ve noticed.” I wished, fervently and jealously, that you’d put your sword through his heart instead of his shoulder.

His attention returned to the book. He ran his thumb over the circle of the dragon, rubbing at the place where its teeth swallowed its own tail. Then he craned his neck at an awkward angle, so that he could meet Vivian’s eyes. He smiled up at her, and I saw suddenly why he had been named the Knight of Hearts. It was not a rakish smile or a charming one, but a smile of pure and perfect sincerity. In Ancel’s shifting, twisted character, warped by centuries spent as nothing but a sharp tool in a cold hand, this much was true: He loved Queen Yvanne the First.

“Fret not, my queen,” he said, lightly. “I remain yours.”

Vivian smiled sweetly back. “I know, dear boy.” She held out her hand for the book.

Ancel’s expression turned wry. It was the expression, I thought, of a man who has discovered he has one choice yet remaining to him, and almost wishes he didn’t.

“Save me a kiss in hell, then,” he said, and tossed the book—not to Vivian—but to me.

I fumbled, not expecting it, and Ancel said into that last hushed second: “Get her out of here, Owen.”

Then the queen was screaming orders and I was diving sideways toward you and your arms were opening to catch me—

The book was crushed between us, the pages crumpling, sliding against your blood-soaked armor— Ten arrows were flying from ten bows, whistling toward us— I was grasping back through time, further back than I’d ever reached before, and the world was peeling away like old paint— Sharp steel arrowheads were burrowing into me, lancing into my back, my right shoulder, my left ear— And then they were passing painlessly through the air where we used to be, but no longer were— Because we had gone away, back to the very beginning.

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