Drowned (10 page)

And that is why I couldn’t bow. And why, if it means saving myself, I’ll have to vacate my new position. As much as Tiam wanted it for me, because he thought it would make me safer, even he can’t save me now. He has enough to deal with on his own. I have to save myself.

While I’m thinking, a commotion brews in the open window. Men are shouting, and their voices drift up to me. For the first time, I peer outside to see a crowd of a dozen or more people fumbling in the moonlight at the water’s edge. Someone is lying there, in the center of the huddle, but I can only see the sweaty backs of the fishermen glistening in the light and a pair of ruts in the sand, heel marks of the person’s feet. Someone screams something about a “fishing accident.” I cringe. Another scribbler victim.

Far above me, I can just about make out the tower balcony. Someone up there—it sounds like the king—shouts, “Bring him to the doors. At once!”

To the doors?
I wonder.
Whatever for?
Our medics can’t perform miracles; they can bandage a cut or tie up a sprain, but we have no medicines, no means to perform complex operations. Usually when a person has been stricken by a scribbler, the wound is severe, and they are tossed into the waves so that the scribblers can finish their meal. Curiously, I watch as four of the heftiest fishermen reach down and bring the victim up to their shoulders, so that his bloodied face and stomach greet the moon. There is a huge gash just under his collarbone.

The fish chowder I’d eaten earlier gurgles in the back of my throat.

Tiam.

No.

Unaware of how I end up there, I find myself breathless and trembling at the top of the staircase, watching the doors swinging open and the fishermen carrying him inside. They stand at the entrance, their bodies glistening with sweat in the orange torchlight, gazing at the hall just the way I did the first time I was brought here. “Drop him,” one of the guards says.

And they do drop him, as if he’s a thing instead of a human. As if he’s something without a soul. Without hope. He’s not conscious, and when they carelessly throw him to the floor, his head flops to the side, his mouth falls slack and a trickle of blood escapes. I feel tears on my hand, and my hot breath burns my palm; it’s fastened over my mouth because I know otherwise I will scream. Everything left in this world that’s worth something is lying in broken pieces on that floor.

I rush down the steps. Halfway down the stairs, I become aware of the severity of his wound. The gash is so deep that the white of his collarbone is visible among the torn sinews of muscle. I’m about to run to him when the king’s voice booms behind me. “Guards, escort those commoners out at once.”

Turning, I see the king, his face ashen and swollen, eyes yellow with sickness. He is at the top of the staircase behind me, his pink robe swishing along the marble floor. The logical part of my brain urges me to fasten myself against the wall and let him pass, but another part, far stronger, is teeming over, ready to explode. It’s the part that knows time is of the essence, and the king is moving at too leisurely a pace to help him. “He needs medical attention at once!” I yell at him.

King Wallow raises his head toward me sluggishly, a peculiar expression on his face. I clench my teeth. My direction was supposed to get him to act in haste, and yet now he’s standing still, staring at me. I want to grab him, get him to move, to act, but as his gaze hardens on me, I cringe. A shiver overtakes my body and a trickle of sweat runs down my rib cage. When he nods at a guard, I know I’ve said too much already.

The guard steps forward, turns his spear to the flat end and raises it over his head, and it whistles down over me. I feel crushing pain in my skull as I’m falling head over heels down the remaining steps of the staircase, coming to rest in something sticky, wet and warm. The last thing I remember is thinking,
Please, please, please, don’t let it be Tiam’s blood.

Eight

The Valley of Dying Stars

I
t feels like a hundred tides later when I wake up with a start. I’m on the mat in my quarters, and the ropes holding it in place squeak as I throw my legs over and rush to the window. About two steps later my skull feels as if it is being crushed between two stones, and I fall forward, against the window ledge. The ocean crashes somewhere in the distance. I peer over the ledge, but everything is just a blur. Blinking furiously to get my eyes to work, I finally make out a line of blue in the distance. The tide has not yet come in. I exhale. I’m safe.

There is a sloppy bandage over my eyes, and when I bring my hand up to touch my forehead, my fingertips are coated in blood. My garment splattered with it. My face and neck feel tight from where it has dried on my skin. Dizzy, I crawl to the mirror to inspect the damage, and suddenly, one image hits me and sends me reeling back against the wall, sobbing.

Tiam.

Tiam. Gone.

I can’t put the words together in my mind. All my life he’s been beside me in formation. And I’d always thought that he’d get a prime spot in the formation while I was cast out to the dangerous edge. I always assumed he’d outlive me. I think of that horrible wound, his body covered in blood, his limbs tight and lifeless, and wonder what they did with his body once the last of his life was drained. Did they throw him out into the ocean as carelessly as they’d dropped him on the ground? Will no one else mourn him?

I think back to that morning, when he told me about being king. He was so hopeful and excited.
I think I can help us. I think I can do good.
The words keep ringing in my ears because after my father, Tiam was the last person. The last person on the island capable of making a difference. The rest of us just exist, flailing helplessly on the shore like fish struggling for air, waiting for the waves to come and wash us off the map.

Across the room, I finally focus enough to see my reflection in the mirror as I huddle pathetically on the ground. My hair is hanging in mangy black ropes over my face, which is ruddy with dried blood, except for two pale streaks under my eyes that my tears have washed clean. A horn blares above me, deafening, signaling the end of low tide, but I don’t even flinch.

I don’t even care.

I’m done.

Let the tide take my last breath. Let the scribblers get the rest of me.

“You’ve come to,” a voice says from the hall. I know it’s Burbur. “Good.”

Nothing is good about this. I don’t answer, don’t even turn to look at her. I just lie there, pressing my face against the cold wall below the window, wishing my heart were broken enough to stop beating.

Guilt tangles my thoughts. I think back to him standing at the balcony, looking so regal. I was too afraid to bow to him. He deserved my allegiance. He deserved my respect. And I was too afraid to show it.

“Now, don’t pout. Why in the world you would speak to the king without first being spoken to is beyond me,” she continues. I hear water pouring into the tub. “Come, now. Brought you some fresh water to bathe in. No lavender, of course, but good and clean. Come, now.”

I don’t move. I hope she’ll think I’m dead and just leave me alone.

A moment of silence passes, so I think it worked. I wait another moment, and then another, then lift my head up and turn toward the door. She’s still standing there, though, holding a pile of fresh towels. She reaches down and pulls off my garment. I’m too weak to fight, so she manages to shove me into the warm water easily. My bloody skin instantly turns the water brown, but it still relaxes my muscles, comforts me. She dunks me, and I wish I could stay under forever, but when I come out, she’s whispering, “That’s a good girl,” in a way that makes me start to weep all over again.

“Tiam,” I whimper. “Tiam.”

“Shh,” she says, lathering up my hair. “Let’s get you all clean, and then you can go to see him.”

I choke on some soap. “See him?”

“He only wants to see you.” She makes a “tsk” noise with her tongue. “Which seems odd to me considering he is betrothed to the princess.”

“You mean, he’s alive?”

“Yes. For now. He’s in the room across the way,” she answers. “The medics have been wanting to treat him, but he says no. He wants only you. Did nobody tell you this?”

I shake my head and dunk myself under the water again, then jump to my feet, hastily swab off and throw on the new garment that Burbur has hung at the door. My body is still wet, so it clings to me, but I barely notice. I wring it out, rake my hand through my hair and quickly cross the hallway. Before I get there, I can already hear the moaning. Why, if he’s in that much pain, does he want to see
me?

I creep into the room. His face is strangely serene, his eyes closed. In the torchlight, it appears as if he’s just catching the last few moments of his evening sleep. There is a blanket over him, and underneath, his chest rises and falls in spasms with every breath. But there is something odd there, something where that hideous wound had been earlier. Whatever it is, it’s tenting the blanket up over his body.

Suddenly he moans again, making me jump. Arching his back, he exhales, his breath coming out in spurts, face twisting with pain. I move closer, calculating every footfall on the floor so as not to make a noise that will wake him. When my thighs are pressing against the side of the bed, I slowly reach down to lift the blanket.

Lightning fast, his hand whips out from under the blanket and grabs my wrist. His eyes dart open. I stifle the yelp in my mouth as his face softens. “Coe,” he breathes, his voice weak and gravelly. “It’s only you.”

When I’d heard he only wanted to see me, some small, pathetic hope ignited in me, but
it’s only you
makes me wonder if he’s disappointed. Of course he is. Burbur is wrong. He wanted Star, not me.

“Yes, it’s me. How are you? Do you need anything?” I ask, coming closer. His eyes are unfocused, and they seem to be staring at the space below my shoulders. I look down and notice that in my haste to dress, the white tunic is sticking perfectly to the curves of my body. The dark outlines of my nipples are visible. I wrap my arms over my breasts and blush as I sit beside him.

He quickly looks away, focusing on the wall ahead of him. “Coe, I’m sorry. I should have told you about Star.” His voice is only a whisper.

I shake my head. I think about him, standing on the balcony a tide ago, perfect and healthy and ready to rule. I didn’t bow to him. And now look at him. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“I need...” he whispers, grabbing for my hand. “I need you to keep them away from me. The medics.”

“What? Tiam, the medics will help you,” I say. “That’s what they’re for.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t understand. Everyone wants me dead.”

“The king will protect you. He will make sure that—”

“The king couldn’t even protect himself. I made a mistake. I mean, who was I kidding, thinking I could just...” He labors to swallow. “I thought that people were rebelling against the king because they wanted someone else. Someone who understood them. But they don’t.”

“They want Finn. I—”

“No. They don’t want a ruler. They don’t want
anyone.
” He motions me closer. “I don’t think I’m going to live through this, so I want you to know. My plan was to get us, all of us, out of here....”

Get us out?
He’s delirious, babbling nonsensical things. I shiver. “Tiam, you’re hurt. You’ve just had a bad fishing accident, and you’re not thinking straight. Right? It was just an accident. You need someone to care for you.”

“No. I just wish I could have made a difference. For you. For Star. For everyone. That’s what I wanted.” He pulls back the blanket, and I gasp. Under his shoulder is a terrible wound, black with blood, and in the center, poking just above the surface of his skin, is a pale bluish spike. What I’d thought was his bone earlier is actually the jagged edge of a scribbler’s nose. “Look what I got for my sixteenth Hard Season.”

It’s Tiam’s first day of manhood. I can’t believe I hadn’t realized it before. These things are never celebrated here, but it’s so sad to see him like this on his first day as an adult that I immediately begin to cry.

“They want to tear down the castle and use it to make the platform higher.” He sighs. “I thought... I knew some people were... But...” His body begins to convulse as he is racked with a fit of coughs. I look for a glass of water, but there is nothing in the room besides the small bed. He catches his breath. “And if they do that, if they destroy the castle, all hope of us surviving will be gone. I tried to tell them. I need time. I need to figure out what it all means. And when I do, I can...”

I swallow. “It wasn’t an accident, was it? You fought with them? With Finn?” When he doesn’t answer, I say, “Tiam, why? Why are you so desperate to be king? If you had just let them—”

“I
can’t
let them,” he says, his eyes blazing. “Coe, that’s why you need to do it now. Don’t make the mistake I made. Don’t trust them. If I’m not here, you need to talk to Star.”

“Stop, Tiam. You’re going to be fine.”

He shushes me with a finger. “I can’t trust anyone. Even the medics.” He coughs again. “You need to go with Star. And don’t let them know. They’ll kill you for it.”

“For what?” I whisper in horror. He’s out of his mind, talking crazy. Does he really think I’d go with Star, that she’d
get us out?
Out where? There’s nowhere for us to go! Seeing Tiam reduced to a blithering lunatic, like Xilia or Mutter, it might as well be the end of the world.

Suddenly, it dawns on me, something my father had told me. This is the end. Before civilization, before people made tribes and tribes evolved into larger communities, it was every man against each other. We built and built and became more sophisticated, using the resources we had. And then when we began to lose those resources, we started to slide down the slope we’d climbed. Now we’re almost at rock bottom, exactly where we were when we began. Every man for himself. My dad taught me that. It was the reason he cared, the reason he tried to help people. Because when that’s the case, when everyone is fighting for that last bit of space in the formation... That’s it. It’s over.

“Look,” he whispers, “don’t let the medics near me.”

“No, of course I won’t,” I say. There is a shuffling in the hallway, then more footfalls. Far down the darkened hallway, Burbur is shouting for Gathering. Formation is soon. Formation! “Can you move? Can I help you to formation?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t.”

A sickly feeling falls over me. Tiam is the last person I ever thought would give up. I always imagined him fighting long after every other person on the island succumbed. He can’t be giving up this easily. “Listen to me. You are going to live through this. The Tiam I know wouldn’t let a little pain stop him.”

He swallows again. “Pain’s not that bad. It’s...just...” He lifts his other arm. For the first time I notice a thick, rusting shackle around his wrist.

“Someone chained you to the bed?” I whisper in disbelief, every part of my body tightening.

He grins a little nervously. “Yeah, so, I could use a little help. Do you think you could find something to...”

The grin warms me, but at the same time it’s a weight pressing against my chest. He’s still the old Tiam, still willing to fight. But he can’t do this without me.

Without another word, I walk out into the hallway, unsure as to what I’m looking for. More people shuffle by, making their way to the formation, but I scan the walls, then hurry into my room. The piece of jagged coral scrapes my palm as I hastily grab it, but I toss it down. It’s no match for a metal chain. Nothing on the dresser is right for the job.

I rush into the hallway and check the tubs that have been filled for Gathering. Nothing but shell trinkets and towels. Burbur is coming through, emptying them. She says, “You’d better get up to formation.”

“I can’t leave Tiam. He’s chained to the bed. Do you have a key? Or something I can use to break it?”

She quickly finishes loading items to her cart and mutters, “If he’s chained there, someone must have wanted him to stay there.”

“But he’ll die.”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she continues to wheel the cart down the corridor, and I hear it squeaking long after she is out of view. Glancing at the wall, I notice that several of the stones are crumbling. Using my finger, I pry at the edges of one, trying to loosen it from the wall. I spend what seems like forever digging at the mortar, until my fingernails are bleeding and sore, and still the stone stays put. It doesn’t even wiggle.

Aborting that plan, I look up and down the corridor, finding nothing else of use. What I need is something heavy and metal, like a hammer. There is only one hammer I know of, but the builders kept a close eye on it, and I’d heard it had been lost several seasons ago. I’d used it only once, to repair the door to the craphouse.

That’s when it occurs to me. My shovel!

I hurry back to my room, looking for my sack, and when I reach it, I remember that I surrendered the shovel when I gave up my job as Craphouse Keeper.

“I’m going out to formation for something,” I call to Tiam. “I promise I will be back.”

He mumbles something, and though I can’t hear, I know what he is saying.
I’ll handle it. Don’t worry about me.
As if that’s even possible. I propel myself down the now-deserted hallway and toward the grand staircase, then plunge down the stairs two at a time, only taking notice of the bloodstain—mine? Tiam’s?—on the marble floor by the entrance when I see what is creeping toward it.

Black water, swirling with foam. A wave crashes, somewhere very near, almost as if it’s on the other side of the wall. The tide is coming in. Soon, very soon, much of the castle will be underwater.

I push open the door, and a wave trickles up to meet me. Out of the castle’s torchlight, I can barely see anything. In the dark skies above, seagulls circle overhead, squawking in warning. Once my eyes adjust to the moonlight, I slosh through the wet sand and ankle-deep water, willing myself to go faster as I cross to the area where the water has not yet come. I race up the shore, toward the craphouse, but the second I throw the door open, I curse myself for my stupidity.