Four days after Tiras had shown me how to write my name, Kjell returned to drag me from my room in the middle of the night, just like before. I went with him willingly, eagerly, though his promise to help me had been a lie. I didn’t do it for him. I didn’t do it for the king, who’d lied to me too. I did it for the words he’d said he would teach me.
Kjell didn’t take me into the bowels of the castle this time. We went to another tower, a tower directly opposite mine, and I marveled that the king had been so close all this time. I wondered if he’d seen me standing on my balcony, waiting for him to return. But when Kjell shoved me inside the chamber and slammed the door, locking it behind me, I found myself completely alone.
The king’s bedcovers were tangled, his clothes discarded on the floor, but he was gone, and though I pounded on the door, Kjell did not return to explain what I was doing there and what was expected of me. Stepping out onto the balcony, I discovered the night was incredibly bright, the moon almost full, just like it had been the night I’d found the eagle in the forest. But there were no birds to save in Jeru City. Or kings, for that matter. I was lonelier than I’d ever been, and that was a feat in itself. I pulled my dressing gown around my body and returned to the richly appointed chamber.
There were books on the shelves and several lay open on a table not so different from the one in my room. My father kept the books at the keep locked in his study. I had never seen one up close. I turned the pages, studied the words, and tried to make sense of them, tracing the shape of each letter with my finger, the way I’d traced my name. I’d determined that the S at the end of Tiras looked and hissed like a snake. I studied the page and found all the words with an s in them. I’d also compared the R shape in our names and determined its sound. Of course the T made a tapping sound at the beginning of Tiras’s name. T-T-T-T. I liked to focus on the sound, making it stutter in my mind like a woodpecker. I was going to take one of the books. When the king came back and found me in his room, I was going to fill my arms with books and refuse to give them back.
I kept the candles lit and pored over the pages until my eyes would no longer focus and my head began to droop. I curled up in a corner of the king’s bed, trying not to notice how the covers smelled of fresh air and cedar. Then I slept, heavy and hard, dreaming of the shrieking of birdmen and the words that danced on the pages of the king’s books. The letters shifted and reformed, whispering their names in my mother’s voice. I heard a cry, piercing, louder than that of the Volgar, and a desperate fluttering, like a dozen flags whipping in the wind. It was so close, so present, that I opened my eyes blearily, reluctant to abandon sleep so soon.
Dawn was breaking and grey light had just begun to spill through the open balcony doors and sneak across the king’s chamber. The doors had been open when Kjell had pushed me into the room the night before, and it hadn’t felt necessary or even right to close them, as if the king himself would use the balcony to reemerge from the night. But morning had returned without the king, and I blinked wearily, caught in that drowsy place where sleep and wakefulness become a strange blend of both.
The eagle from the woods, no sign of the arrow buried in his chest, perched on the balcony rail. I watched him through glazed eyes, my lids at half-mast, unalarmed and completely unconvinced that I wasn’t still sleeping. He was aware of me, of that I was sure. He cocked his head and shrieked, as if warning me away.
The door of the king’s chambers burst open, and Kjell erupted into the room, making me bolt upright, sleep abandoned, the eagle forgotten.
“Where is he?” Kjell growled, as if I’d spun the king into gold while he slept. I shook my head helplessly and extended my arms, indicating the empty chamber. He turned in place, his hands on his hips, frustration oozing from every pore. The word hopeless flitted in the air around him, and this time I didn’t just hear the word, I saw it, recognizing the S—a pair of curling snakes that hissed with sound before disintegrating with his movement.
He grabbed for my arm, and I wriggled away, darting to the table where the king’s books were spread. I grasped the first one I touched, scooping it up and clutching it to my chest.
“Put it down,” he roared.
I danced away from him, flitting to the door he’d left gaping beyond him and dashing out into the wide hallway. I would return to my room, gladly. But I was taking a book.
I ran with the livid Kjell bellowing behind me, and when I finally stopped in front of my tower door, after easily navigating the corridors, he drew up abruptly, gasping for air, eyeing me like I was completely daft.
I thumped the book at my chest fiercely so he would understand why I had run. Then I pounded the door to the room where I’d been held for two long weeks. With a shake of his head and an impatient curse, he pushed me aside and unlocked my chamber door. I was shoved inside once more—an infuriating pattern emerging—with no explanation of what he’d expected from me and no enlightenment as to the king’s whereabouts. But he didn’t take the book.
Kjell was back less than an hour later. I was bathed and dressed, but my feet were bare, my hair lay in wet clumps down my back, and I hadn’t broken my fast. When Kjell burst through the door, it was all I could do not to fling my goblet at him, and when he grabbed for my arm, his grip harsh and bruising as always, I shoved him back as hard as I could. He was as brawny as the king, and he only staggered because he was surprised, but I shook my finger at him in warning and lifted my chin. Then I turned and began walking for the door, indicating I would go where he wanted me to go, but I would not be manhandled. When he tried to grab me again, I smacked his hand and kicked at his legs.
“Fine. I won’t touch you. The king requires your presence. Follow me.”
I followed him docilely, my chin high, my hands folded, but when he made to shove me into the king’s quarters, I shot him a look of such malevolence that he dropped his hands once again and bowed slightly, as if conceding.
“He asked for you. That is why you are here. The only reason you are here,” he explained begrudgingly, and stepped aside, bidding me enter. But this time he didn’t leave. He followed me inside and locked the door.
The king was not in shackles like the first time I’d been summoned, but his skin was flushed, and he trembled and thrashed on the bed. The bedclothes that weren’t twisted around his body were pooled on the floor, and when I approached, he opened his eyes and tried to rise. He wore a pair of breeches that were soft and loosely gathered, and nothing else. I wondered if the breeches had been pulled on for my sake and mentally thanked the Gods for that. And where had he been all night?
I could not make him an elixir or blend the herbs for tea like I could have done at my father’s keep, where I had my own supplies in my neatly organized bottles and vials. I had nothing here—nothing that would ease his pain or lower his fever. I couldn’t even tell Kjell what I needed or send a summons to the kitchen. I thought about the words I’d pressed upon him when he was chained to the wall, the words that had brought comfort and relief. But I didn’t dare touch him that way with Kjell looking on. I wouldn’t survive the night.
Distrust tinged the air, and I dismissed Kjell with a sigh, turning my attention to the task at hand, to the mysterious king who exuded size and strength yet struggled with an ailment he was clearly hiding from his servants and his subjects.
Instead, I filled a basin from the pitcher on his dressing table and brought it to his bedside, soaking a cloth and wringing it out before running it over his arms and chest, repeating the action until the water in the basin was warm and I was soaked through. It didn’t appear to be helping, and Tiras watched me with exhausted eyes, offering no complaint. But his agony pulsed like a drum beat. It was becoming deafening, and I wondered why I was the only one who could hear it. It had always been that way. I had always been that way, hearing the words nobody said.