1.3: Familiar Wounds

When she built her seat of power in the newly named and conquered city of Gere, Grenja Furl had tried her hardest to bring something of the Southern Throne to the Keep. But both because it had been built on the ruins of Eyrie and because it had been constructed as a fortress to withstand Dellan rebellion the southern touches looked ridiculously out of place. We were escorted down a long hall, its thick white walls decorated with tapestries and banners that were too bright and too small for such a place. Their colorful hunting imagery of stags and boars being chased through autumn woods almost managed to cover the great scorch marks that scarred the walls. Almost.

               The last time I had been here, we had just put down Fethvevern’s Uprising- the bloodiest and most determined Dellan insurrection, it had swept through Kipana’s streets and broke upon us here at the Keep. The last time I had walked this hall bodies had lain in crumpled heaps on the floor and blood had decorated the stones in pools and puddles and arterial sprays. Ezra at my side, we walked past the place where I’d eaten a knife to the shoulder and a bright tapestry of geese in flight, indistinguishable from the rest, decorated the spot where Grenja had beheaded the last surviving Dellan even as he was raising his hands in surrender. Her matched hatchets had chopped his hands to bits and sent fingers flying before sinking into his neck.

               “You should see your face,” Ezra said quietly.

               I didn’t need to. I could imagine my own expression all too well. “I suggest getting used to it,” I murmured back, my eyes fixed on the great double doors at the end of the hallway ahead of us. Thirty paces.

               “What are you thinking about?”

               “How well this Keep cleans up,” I answered honestly.

               She raised an eyebrow at me bit I only shook my head. Twenty paces.

               Ezra glanced around us but our two escorting guardsmen were as far away as they could be without being rude and the single messenger we caught coming the other way hurried by with his eyes down. Satisfied that we wouldn’t be immediately overheard and with the distance to those great doors closing fast- fifteen paces- Ezra waited until the lone messenger was behind us before she pitched her voice low and asked me a question. But whatever it was she wanted to know, whatever she said, never reached me because with ten paces to go, Whisper stirred once again. He rolled over in my mind like something surfacing from the depth, my thoughts sheeting off his consciousness like fantails of water, and he sighed. A long, drawn-out breath that swept through my bones and raised the hair on my arms. It’s all dark, he murmured. It’s all so…dark. The amazement in his voice made me shudder before I could stop myself. Those were the exact words he had said before. At the beginning and the end.

               Keeper? He breathed and I could feel him press against my eyes like giant wings had been spread inside my skull and their feathers were pushing down on my tiny human thoughts. It was the strongest I had felt Whisper in months. He dotted my vision with black spots, brought a darkness to the edges of my sight, and completely blacked Ezra out of my immediate perception, and then he was gone again. Not even an echo remained. My vision cleared so suddenly that I stumbled and Ezra had to catch me by the arm. I was shaking, I realized, shaking hard with my heart pounding like I’d just run a race.

               “Is that a ‘no’ then?” Ezra asked, still supporting me as we walked.

               I tried not to look too blank as I stared back at her but it was hard. Whisper had shaken me to the core. Ezra brushed a bit of mud from the front of my shirt, covering my unsteadiness, then let me go.

               “I didn’t think you’d be that shocked,” she muttered. “From what I’ve heard they had eyes on you before.”

               My mind made the connection at last and with one stride to go before the doors, as the guards in Grenja’s blue on either side of them pulled them open, I looked blatantly all around us. Even knowing he was there it took me a moment to find him. He was positioned well, half hidden by the pillars that upheld the Keep’s roof, not quite invisible but by no means easy to find. I couldn’t see his face but I didn’t need to, this one wore the Judge’s sigil openly enough once you spotted him. The long white cloak of his office was pinned to one shoulder with a silver brooch in the shape of a long, sharp, nail. When he caught me looking at him, he inclined his head in open recognition. We’re watching you, he said in that gesture, and we don’t care if you know it.

               I conjured up a grim smile from somewhere dark and plastered it onto my face. Watch away, I told him with mine. But by then the double doors were open and some loud-mouthed announcer was actually calling our names like this was the King’s Court, and I couldn’t stall any longer. I took a deep breath, Ezra stood up a little straighter, and then we walked in together, dripping rainwater and mud in our wake.

               The Judge stood motionlessly at his post and watched us go and the weight of his regard came to rest like an old familiar wound across my back.