Waking beauty, p.4
Waking Beauty, page 4
He waved the bowl in front of her again. “It will at least warm you. You’re rattling.”
So she ate more plaster.
Over the course of the evening she watched Arpien’s spine melt. The more she shivered, the softer it got, like a candle on a sweltering summer day. She asked Neef to come lay down beside her to warm her up, but Neef was holding his grudge longer than Arpien. As for Fearless, he said he was trying to stay out of it. Arpien gathered a small forest of wood for the fire. That and her almost-dry gown smothered her trembling. She never thought she’d be eager to put the accursed pink gown on again.
When Arpien spoke, it was more quietly than she’d yet heard him. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. This rescue isn’t going at all how I planned. Then I saw you struggle in the water. That would have been the cruelest irony, if you died like that.”
If not for her fairy Gift of a Fine Ear, she would not have been able to hear him.
“My older sister drowned in a river,” he said. “I watched the current sweep her away.”
Herren never told her he had a sister before. No, this was Arpien.
“I’m sorry.” She’d watched her own loved ones die. It was one of Voracity’s favorite themes.
“They said it wasn’t my fault. How could a six-year-old drag an eleven-year-old to safety? But it was my fault.”
His bare toes squeezed the sandy dirt. They were a man’s toes, long and calloused and slightly fuzzy, but oddly vulnerable-looking without the protection of the stockings, which hung on a branch by the fire.
“My older brother Bo told us not to go down to the river without him. When he said he couldn’t go, I cried until Kirren gave in. She doted on me. And I killed her. I stood over Kirren’s grave and apologized, over and over again, that I was too weak to save her.”
How well Brierly knew the special kind of torment that lay in powerlessness. She wished the figment would quit looking at her as though he could possibly understand it, too.
“For months afterward I had nightmares,” the figment said. “Kirren and I would be at the river again. Only the banks weren’t shallow and sandy anymore. They were high walls of rock carved by the river.”
He was looking at her as though he expected her to remember the place, too.
“Don’t get too close to the edge, Kirren would warn me. I’d run right up to it, brat that I was. She’d rush after me and slip. I’d grab her hand. The river tore her away and crushed her like some bully crushing a doll in his fist. The water would swell up, this giant foaming mouth, and swallow me down. I’d kick and scream for Kirren, for my brothers, for anyone, but no one came.”
His voice was toneless, but the images he painted were so vivid that Brierly could see them before her. The dark waters roared, thousands of ravenous slobbering tongues. A six-year-old boy screamed the high pitch of terror that only the very young can achieve.
“Until you.”
The scene snapped. “What do you mean?”
“The nightmares continued for half a year after my sister died. Then one night as the river swept me away, I saw a figure in white standing on the ledge above me. I yelled for help, but she didn’t answer. The rapids carried me a good hundred yards downriver when—I can’t explain how, it was a dream—she reached down and plucked me out of the water. I was so relieved I started crying anew. I hugged the knees of the lady in white. I thought she was my sister. She dried my tears and clothes with a touch of her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not Kirren. My name’s Brierly.’”
The dream tilted, shuddered further out of her control.
“You don’t even remember, do you?” A corner of his mouth tugged up in self-deprecation. “I know it was you, Brierly. I recognized you the moment I saw you asleep in that tower. Well, after I dusted you. That song you sang this morning? I’ve chased it in my dreams for the past twelve years.” He peered into her face.
She leaned back a fraction of an inch, further from the flickering firelight.
Don’t ask me for hope.
“I never imagined that once I found you, in the waking world, I’d have to convince you of what happened,” Arpien said. “You can enter other people’s dreams, did you realize that? My great-grandfather said he saw you in his sometimes. That night you saved me from drowning, he was the only one who believed it was anything more than a dream. Kirren would have believed me, too, but she was dead. Bo told me I was a wishful idiot. He changed after Kirren died. It changed me, too, that dream. You changed me. The nightmares eased. I went back to my sister’s grave and promised her that I’d never be powerless again. I’d save anyone who needed my help. I caught snatches of you in my dreams as I grew up, your voice singing. I’d run after you to thank you, but you’d vanish. Then, when I was eleven, I saw you crossing my dream again. You were running, faster than a deer flees from hounds. I promised, with all the vehemence of an eleven-year-old, that I would save you. You patted my head and ran on.”
He drew his lanky legs up and hooked one arm under his knees. “Now I suppose you’ll pat my head and run on again. I envisioned a far different result when I awakened you. That you’d—”
He jabbed a stick into the fire. One fire-eaten log collapsed. Orange sparks rose into the night sky. “You never asked for my help. I’m a wishful idiot, like my brother said.”
Maybe it was the sheer vulnerability of his pose. “I do remember you,” Brierly whispered.
His head snapped up.
This wasn’t the first time she’d dreamt of rescue. It was the first time one of her creations dredged up memories she had forgotten. He disturbed her. She needed time to put him back in his place in the dream world. Which was funny, because her life was nothing but a deep cave of time, with endless blind caverns waiting for her to fill them.
“I’m tired.” She turned her back to the fire and flopped down on the ferny ground.
He was a prince—he knew a royal dismissal. For several attenuated minutes her Fine Ears picked up nothing but the crackling of the fire, the creatures gossiping in the woods. A couple squirrels bragged about the comparative sizes of their winter nut hoards. The boasting gave way to the sound of tiny claws scampering around a tree trunk and a chittering chorus of prove it, prove it, prove it. The night air stole away Brierly’s body heat. She wished she’d thought to grab her cloak, but she was afraid that if she moved to retrieve it Arpien would resume the conversation.
She’d forgotten the little boy in the river. Once Herren/Arpien reminded her of the incident, her congested memory colored in the details he’d left out. Yes, she’d worn white that night. White to mock the innocence she’d lost. She’d just run from a dream where a childhood friend had turned on her, and Brierly had killed her to save herself. She wandered unseeing from dream to dream and came to pause above a torrential river. Which flavor of betrayal tasted the most bitter—when she murdered her friend or when her friend murdered her? It was a pointless exercise in emotional self-mutilation. Because that—abomination of a cherished one—hadn’t been her friend, but another figment.
But if all the figments went away, she’d have nothing to clothe her solitude.
Then she’d heard a child’s scream of utter fear.
The rush of the rapids or the incoherency of his panic made him hard to understand. But she understood the root of his plea. She resisted until he was a tiny dot sinking beneath the foam. Then her hand reached out and grabbed his.
He shivered on the bank like a brown puppy and threw small arms around her knees. Such a small thing, yet he almost knocked her down in his need to cling to something solid. She’d never met such a wet child—soaked on the outside and the inside, judging by the gallons of tears he rubbed into her skirts. Tears and whatever other fluids come out of a sobbing child. But strange to say, she felt purer in this white gown now than she did before. She dried and warmed him with a touch.
It calmed the boy enough that she was able to distinguish words. “I’m so sorry, Kirren. It’s my fault you died. Don’t ever go into the river again. Promise.”
She stooped down and gazed into eyes that were brown and pink—no white left in them at all from his crying. “I’m sorry, I’m not Kirren. My name’s Brierly.” She brushed a thumb across his cheekbone and erased the puffiness left by his tears. “But I’ve learned this—just because people die, it doesn’t mean they have to stay dead.”
She’d never suspected the little boy would grow up and try to rescue her. All her other imaginary companions stayed as ageless as herself. So she hadn’t recognized him a few years later when he offered to stow her up a tree until Voracity’s servants passed by. The puppyish boy—how could he protect her when he wasn’t even big enough to fit into his own feet? Brierly had gotten used to being her own rescuer. Although this rescuer—alarmed, skinny, and with the incongruously deep voice of a man grown—was unexpected enough to crack her resentment at rescuers for a moment. He never mentioned he was Herren.
He didn’t say he was Herren now.
He looked like Herren, so he would be. While she liked the unusual, she didn’t like her creations dictating the story.
I know you. I want to help you. You’re safe now. Lies, all of them. Or at least perishable truths. Let Voracity see any fondness for her pet prince, and soon she’d be sending the nightmares. Herren/Arpien poisoned. Cut into pieces. He’d turn against her with that flashy oversized sword he was so proud of. She’d run across his grave as she’d run across her parents’, time upon relentless time.
One of her fairy Gifts was Fleetsome Feet, good for dancing. Also good for sneaking past sleeping/brooding princes. She didn’t take food or tools with her when she left. She didn’t even risk taking Neef. His hooves would alert the prince. Anything she needed she could replace when the dream shifted under her control again. By necessity, she now excelled at seizing control of her dreams.
The fact that she still didn’t have control of this one was either disturbing or at least, new.
4
Arpien
Arpien couldn’t decide what he wanted to do most: wake Brierly up and apologize again, or wake her up and yell at her again. The consistent part of his wishes was waking her up—mostly from her accursed complacency. So after a solid hour of brooding, that was what he decided to do.
She’d wandered off. Predictable. But he’d been wide awake this time and still heard nothing. Quite the insult to his training as a warrior.
He was tempted to let her go get eaten by a bear or meander off a cliff or whatever it was her half-witted wont to do. He’d never met anyone so mule-headedly determined not to stay saved. Time to get on his horse and ride back to Conquisan.
He stuffed his toes into damp ankle boots, heaved himself up, and resaddled Fearless. “Well, you had plenty to say to her. Any words for me?”
Neef huffed. Fearless bumped Neef with his massive white shoulder.
“You don’t have to say anything. I’ve set a crazy princess loose in the forest. It’s my job to corral her again.”
His princess didn’t leave tracks. This time there was no singing to follow, either. Still, when he heard the commotion, he was reasonably reassured he was going the right way.
The outburst died away, but the vademecum sword kept him going in the right direction until he saw the light flickering through the trees ahead. He left the horses some three hundred feet away and crept toward a small encampment of cutpurses.
He almost burst into the camp when he saw the rough way they searched Brierly, but it was foolish to jump into their midst with nothing but a disobedient sword until he thought of a way to get back out. Arpien lifted himself silently into a tree. There were seven—no, eight men in the band. Beards that were exorbitant even by peasant standards masked the shape of their lower faces. Cloaks disguised body shape. Two men held Brierly by the arms. A third massive man questioned her. Two men guarded something by the fire—a cloth sack. Two circled the perimeter.
The eighth brigand didn’t seem to have a job. He stood to the side, but was he the group’s leader? Arpien had seen his brother Bo, the general of Conquisan’s armies, control his men with the same imperceptible reins.
Grand. If they weren’t common brigands, they were uncommon brigands.
It took Arpien a while to piece together what had the men so on edge. Brierly had wandered into the camp (past the two men keeping watch, which boosted Arpien’s confidence a little) and rooted through their supplies. The cutpurses were concerned that she’d poked into that particular cloth sack. Doubtless the sack contained some jewels or treasure stolen from a passing lord or merchant. But this theory wavered as Arpien scooted closer to their debate.
“I don’t like this. It was one thing to kill that peasant. But if we start killing ladies of quality, someone with means is going to take it personally.”
“She’s not a lady of quality. She’s dressed in rags.”
“Silk rags? No, she’s obviously a rich merchant’s daughter fallen on hard times. Maybe ran off with her sweetheart and he tired of her and dumped her in the forest.”
Reword that sentence, and it might be true.
The massive man shook her by the arm. “Is that what happened, girl?”
Brierly smiled. Her eyes were as vacant as an addled kitten’s. “Try again.”
“She’s a spy,” said another. “I say we kill her.”
“That’s a spy?”
“Or she could be the distraction.”
The massive man crowded her space. “Where do you come from?”
Another woman would have cowered at this menacing, bearded anvil of a man. Brierly studied the cutpurse as though he were a jester of mediocre talent. “A conundrum,” Brierly said, and began singing.
I’ve walked a thousand miles and never budged a toe.
The longer the road is, the shorter length I go.
I left home long ago, forever and a day,
N’er to see it again, though n’er I ran away.
Today I nearly drowned, but never did get wet.
The further out I go, the deeper in I get.
I am so very weary, though I always rest.
Where am I from, you ask me? Tell me, have you guessed?
“We don’t guess. You tell.” The burly brigand flashed a blade under her chin.
“She’s a scatter-wit. No threat to us.”
“You know we can’t let her go and report what she’s seen.”
Arpien took a second look at their horses. Quality stock. If they’d robbed a lord they’d probably stolen his horses as well. But they spoke and acted more like politicians than thieves. (What’s the difference? went the joke in Conquisan.) Whatever was in that cloth sack must be of vital political importance. A bribe? Letters of political intrigue? Wills? Marriage records? Shouldn’t highwaymen be closer to, well, the highway? Arpien would rather deal with ordinary outlaws. They could be bought with simple things—money, food. These sounded like criminals with a cause. Likely he would not have the sort of tender they’d accept.
Under him the debate continued. “She couldn’t have gotten here alone.”
Brierly’s big toes—visible through her beheaded poulaines—tapped in beat as she sang.
A thousand folks I see, and yet I’m all alone.
All I see is mine, and still nothing I own.
“She’s a fool. Driven mad by wandering alone in the forest.”
“You’re not threatening the right thing.” The big man grabbed a fistful of white-gold hair and jerked her head up. “How about I improve your beauty? I’ll start here”—he licked his blade and drew the flat of it in a ragged line from her temple to her lips—“and draw a line to here.” He dragged it down her chin and up again to her upper lip. “Talk fast enough, I’ll leave your nose attached.”
Brierly sang.
A thousand truths I tell, and every one a lie.
Kill me once again, and still I’ll never die.
The tip of the dagger nipped into her skin. Arpien tensed to spring, plan or no plan, but the leader pulled the other’s wrist back. “If she was in her right mind, she’d have talked by now.”
“What do we do with her, then?”
A few of the men had suggestions, but the leader ignored them. “Tie her up for now.”
Brierly didn’t struggle as they lashed her to a tree. Did she recognize it’d be useless? Or were the brigands right—she wasn’t in her right mind?
Arpien whistled the cry of the night swallow. From several hundred feet away, Fearless heard him and neighed. Arpien had taught Fearless long ago to distinguish several different bird whistles. This one meant for him to provide distraction by making noise and then changing position. With luck, Neef would follow Fearless.
The distraction directed the brigands’ attention to the far side of the camp. Three of the brigands slipped into the woods. Arpien slid out of the tree and crept over to Brierly. He looked down into long-lashed eyes that should be filled with relief and admiration.
“Oh. You’re back,” she said.
The cutpurses snapped their heads in their direction.
A smart person would have run and left her to face the consequences of her own stupidity. Not Arpien. He’d always fancied himself a rescuer.
Which was how, after a respectable battle against five men, Arpien found himself tied to the other side of Brierly’s tree.
It didn’t take the brigands long to figure out they would get more information from Brierly than Arpien, even if Brierly’s answers didn’t always make sense. “Well, look, girlie. You didn’t come alone after all. Who’s this?”
“Herren.”
For once Arpien was delighted she’d gotten his name wrong. Who knew what they’d do if they figured out they’d captured a princess with a dowry on her head, and the brother of the Conquisani king? Of course, if Cryndien heard he was captured, he’d just as likely send assassins as help. He wouldn’t risk Arpien spilling Conquisani secrets.
