The Broken Realm

4. Crimson and Gold-2

That still sounds like subterfuge. Especially now.

That’s why we must wait. Days, weeks. Until my father can come safely. Until the suspicion has passed.

Twelve days they’d camped beneath The Ghost Queen, with no news, no return message. They took turns on watch, but after so long without direction, Brandyn’s sleep was no longer restful. Storm had to force him to eat, which he did, but only because he couldn't organize a rebellion if he was dead.

“Did you hear that?” Brandyn asked. His hand moved to his bow.

Storm rose to her feet, slowly. Making a fist, she knocked it against the bark in a strange pattern.

“What are you doing?” Brandyn hissed.

“Quiet.”

The next sound came from the forest. A whistle, following the same pattern Storm had beaten upon the tree.

Storm smiled. “My father.”

“These you can eat,” Eavan said, opening her palm for Gabi and Meadow to see. “You see here? The dark lines that pass through the center of the nut? You look for that, and you will live.” She opened her other palm. “These have no dark line. You eat these, at best you’ll be stricken with flux for days. At worst, you’ll be read the dead-given rites, though I daresay you won’t be around to hear them.”

Meadow’s eyes widened in fear. Gabi reached forward and took one of each nut. “How many would make me sick?”

“I would not chance a single one,” Eavan replied. “You aren’t considering it?”

Gabi tossed aside the safe one and examined the other. “Well, it looks so harmless, does it not?”

Eavan emptied the piles into the grass and reached for Gabi’s hand. Gabi quickly moved it away.

“And how do you even know such things?” Gabi challenged. “You’re no Medvedev.”

“Gabi,” Meadow warned.

“What? My question is fair. And aren’t you supposed to be an expert in flora? What say you about these nuts?”

“These lands are foreign to me. We should listen to our elders.”

Eavan flushed bright pink. “I’m eighteen. Hardly an elder.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Gabi said. “Why should it be you we trust to determine the safety of our food?”

“Gabrianna,” Eavan replied with a heavy sigh. “Your mother would want me to look after you here.”

“You say this as if we're on holiday!”

Eavan frowned. “Of course we're not on holiday. But we must make the best of what the Guardians have given us. I have no power here, but I did spend several childhood summers in these woods, upon the exclusive invitation of Yseult herself, and what I know, I learned from Kian.”

“Kian. Who wishes us dead.”

“If he wished you dead, you'd be dead.”

“Oh, right. It is only you he wishes dead.”

Eavan snaked a hand out and slapped her. The moment of connection shocked her as much as it did Gabi, and she immediately wished she could take it back. “Gabi... forgive me. I don’t know what came over me.”

Gabi dropped the nut and clutched her face. “It is your father who has marked us as enemies! How could you not know? How could you not have seen thousands of Medvedev, thousands?” Gabi jumped to her feet. “Your father killed mine.”

Eavan fell back upon the grass in defeat. She’d pondered this to the point of exhaustion. The question wasn’t how she hadn’t seen it, but why she hadn’t cared. Of course she’d seen the Medvedev milling about in the woods beyond Whitechurch. And part of her had even wondered about how positively odd it was for them to be there at all. But such was the business of men, not girls, and so she’d left it for other amusements, which were more suited to her.

Kian had said nothing to her since revealing the truth of her father’s terrible machinations. Even the news of her uncle, Byrne, had been kept from her until she was reunited with the others. She’d been so shocked to see Gabrianna here, but the terrible news that Eavan’s father had killed Gabi’s quickly stilled that shock.

Somehow, that was even more difficult for her to accept than what he’d done with the Medvedev.

Her father had taken a life. With his own hands. His brother, in the eyes of the kingdom’s laws. And then he'd taken the Westerlands, which was not his, any more than the Medvedev were. He was now an enemy to all his peers, his actions an aggressive declaration of war.

Backed by the same king she’d nearly wed.

“Let us see if Lisbet has returned,” Eavan said, gathering her skirts with a strained smile. “Perhaps this visit has been more illuminating than all the last.”

Mason Wakesell nodded to his wife, Jasmine. She lifted her hands above her head and then let them fall down to her sides in an arc formation. She turned to another angle and did the same, repeating this until, at last, she dropped her arms and smiled.

“We will be safe here. For now,” Jasmine said, adding the last with a light frown. “I could do with some practice.”

“Your mother knows magic?” Brandyn whispered.

“The Blackwoods aren’t the only in the realm who find reason to hide it,” Storm said.

“But what if she’s discovered? She could be put to death!”

“Your mother knows,” Jasmine said to Brandyn. “In fact, I would say there's very little Asherley Blackwood does not know. Wouldn’t you?”

He nodded. “And I... I would never tell.”

Jasmine laid a hand against his cheek. “I know, little one.” She looked at her daughter. “What a gift it is to see your face, to know you’re all right. You had us so worried.”

“Of course I was all right. Father trained me well.”

Mason grinned from one corner of his mouth. “I told your mother as much.”

“I wish you’d not waited to return for such volatile times, but that would be to misunderstand your intentions, I believe. You’ve returned because of these things, haven’t you?”

“We’ve been careful, Mother,” Storm said. “We took our time in getting here, though we saw no Quinlanden men in the Easterlands at all on our path. Only when we entered our own Reach did the crimson and gold make itself known.”

“Hmph,” Mason said. He placed a hand on each sword. “A bold traitor, he is, leaving his own lands sparsely tended. He must think so little of us that he does not fear us taking it.”

Jasmine smiled sadly at Brandyn. “We are so very sorry about your father, dear. Lord Byrne was a good man, even measuring him by the standards of a Westerlander. We all loved him, as I know you did.”

Brandyn pressed his tongue to the top of his mouth to quell the quick storm of emotion. He nodded. “I will avenge him, Lady Jasmine. And all others who have and will fall to protect the Westerlands. I will avenge us all.”

“Of course you will.” A dark pall fell over her face. “But you will not do it from Whitewood, I’m afraid.”

“They’re really here now, too?” Storm asked, defeated. Brandyn, too, felt the sinking sensation at the confirmation. “Here, on the eastern side of the pass?”

“At first, they stayed to the towns close to Longwood Rush. But when they lost communication with The Deceiver, they spread their tendrils farther,” Mason explained. “If you ask me, they do it from fear, not power.”

“What do you mean, lost communication?” Brandyn asked.

“Lord Quinlanden has been on Duncarrow nigh a month,” Jasmine said. “His men didn’t expect him gone so long, but what concerns them is that the ravens bring no response. He’s gone silent, and no one knows why.”

Storm grinned. “And how do you know this, Mother?”

Mason shook his head. “You know quite well how your mother knows this. We can’t know what it means, but the king has been allied with The Deceiver since the springtide. Longer, perhaps, we don’t know. But his men are restless. He has one... a Mads Waters. Frightening man, lacking a conscience, so others more acquainted are saying. It was that one who ordered more knights from the Easterlands and spread them south, to cover more land.”

“So they’re everywhere,” Brandyn said, sighing.

“Not everywhere...” Jasmine said. “There is much a foreigner would not know about our Reach. Such as places beloved to us and forgotten by others.”

Storm watched her mother. “I don’t understand.”

“Greystone Abbey,” Brandyn said. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

Jasmine smiled as she nodded.

“Everyone has sent men to Easlan James,” Mason replied. “Rebellion stirs in the neglected town, and Quinlanden’s men are none the wiser. It will all begin or end there.”

“It will end with Lord Aiden’s head on a pike, and my family back where they belong.”

“We would all help you see it done. But we are powerless here. They’ve already executed a dozen of my men, good men, for failing to reveal your whereabouts. This is why, we believe, Waters has infiltrated all the key cities. He knows you're a child, who will have no destination as enticing as ones familiar to you.”

Brandyn’s eyes closed. “And yet, that’s exactly what I did. Returned home.”

Jasmine tucked his hair behind his ear. “No. You returned to reclaim what is yours, Brandyn Blackwood. You did what any heir would and should do. And you will reclaim it, with the help of all those loyal to your mother and her kin. But it won’t be from here.”

“You believe we should go to Greystone?” Storm asked.

“I believe it is the only place in the kingdom you can be both safe and also positioned to stir the rebellion.”

Storm bowed her head. “I had thought... we had planned... Brandyn could pretend to be Shadow, and we could be safe here.”

Jasmine pulled her daughter in for a tight embrace. “My dear. It was a wise plan. You couldn't have known how determined the men of crimson and gold would be to see Brandyn’s head next to his father’s. But there are too many in Whitewood, in all the towns and cities, who would recognize him on sight. Many would not be clever enough to hide that recognition. Others would trade their lives for Brandyn’s. We all live in this fear, now. Not all are as brave or as loyal as we are.”

Mason patted his daughter on the back. “You will need to practice the same caution when you travel to Greystone Abbey. Shadow was a fair choice for a cover, and we can spread a rumor that Shadow has been seen alive, in case you are apprehended. It may or may not save you, Lord Blackwood, but every moment of peril comes down to fortune and chance. Does it not?”

Brandyn nodded. He looked off into the woods, into the sea of white bark and lush undergrowth. He was weary of travel. He’d trade all the food left in his satchel for even one night in a bed.

But he trusted the Wakesells. There had been few Great Families as loyal, and he’d seen that reflected in Storm as she made difficult, brave choices to protect him and Hollyn.

There was also the vision that had come to him while they awaited Storm’s parents. He’d seen the ruins of a town once great. The face of a man who his mother would raise up and protect until her dying breath. Joran had been there too, though this made little sense, as Joran hadn't been seen since Byrne’s death. Brandyn’s visions were still difficult to read. He’d left in the middle of vital instruction from Magi Christian, and he was unsure now of what he could and couldn’t trust.

There was another he saw. One whose face was covered, but her magic was strong. A sorceress, though unlike any he’d studied with or under at the Sepulchre. Hers was a magic unfamiliar; perhaps f*******n. Why she was there was as unclear as her identity.