“That thing …” Cattrine said from beside him, “it seems quite fixated on you.”
“Yeah,” Cyrus said. “This is what happens when you insult a guy’s mother when you’re three. Old grudges die hard.”
She frowned. “You’re joking. This hardly seems the time.”
Cyrus shook his head, wiping water from his beard. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Cattrine stood as they came further out into the sea from the palace. There was light to their left, and Cyrus turned from looking at the crew of a half dozen rowers on the small lower deck to the city, where lights blazed, and his mouth fell open.
It burned. Half the city was on fire, blazing strips of light where smoke drifted in the corners against the walls. Against the fiery backdrop, figures were visible, running around on four legs, striking people down. The docks were a frenzy of activity, ships casting off, battles being fought. The fires cast light on the walls of the city, and Cyrus realized to some surprise that they crawled, covered over with scourge scaling them as easily as he might climb a ladder.
“Look at them go,” Martaina whispered, and the crew stopped rowing. Other boats were launching out of the docks as quickly as they could steer out of the harbor with crews rowing madly. Cyrus watched as a scourge ran to the end of the docks and leapt into a boat. The screams carried over the water.
“They came because of him,” Cyrus said, looking up into the air, to the outline of Drettanden, still watching him from the balcony. “He came because of me. We brought death to Caenalys.” He bowed his head and felt Cattrine’s hand on his wet hair, stroking it gently off his brow where it crept out from beneath his helm.
“It was coming anyway,” Cattrine whispered, and he felt her kneel next to him. “My brother would have laid siege to the city trying to get the walls open, and it would have taken months. The scourge would have come around behind him and taken his army then the city, anyway. She looked in concern. “Where is my brother?”
Cyrus felt a surge of guilt. “We rode ahead of his army three weeks ago. They would have arrived here in another week.” He swallowed heavily. “I don’t … I have no idea whether they met the scourge or not. We had thought these creatures bottled up, fighting our armies at Enrant Monge while we planned to evacuate the rest of Luukessia.” Blackness climbed into his mind. They followed me. I changed the rules and ruined all our battle plans, all our assumptions. I’ve failed again, and hundreds of thousands have died for that failure.
“Where do we go now?” Aisling asked quietly as they sat there, drenched in the glow and the noise.
“West,” Cyrus answered, and he saw the men at the oars put them back in the water after a nod from Cattrine. “If the armies of Luukessia are still out there, they’ll have to flee toward the bridge. Hopefully we’ll meet up with them there.”
J’anda let the quiet remain in place for an additional moment before he spoke. “While I love the conditional ‘hopefully,’ what’s your plan if they’re not?”
Cyrus felt his jaw clench. “Then I guess we’ll have to cover the retreat of the last civilians ourselves … and hope the scourge don’t follow us over the bridge.”
He cast his eyes back toward Caenalys, even as they rowed away, past the palace and toward the west. The city burned, a little at a time. The air was cold, not like winter but the distant fires gave no warmth at all. The smell of death was heavy in the air, along with the smoke that came in drifts off the city. Cyrus sat there, dripping, breathing it all in, and watched as the Kingdom of Actaluere reached its end.
Chapter 97
They rowed on through the night, through a swell and a rain that chilled Cyrus through, spattering on his armor. They went west, and when he took his turn at the oars, Cyrus felt the pull of them over and over on his hands, the knotty pine of the wood smoothed and making callouses in places he hadn’t had them before. The rain washed away the smell of death, sapped the salt from the air and went slightly chill but nothing in comparison to what they had braved in the winter up north. There was still the taste of salt permeating in Cyrus’s mouth from the air before the rain, and he rowed on, with the others, until he tired, then he clutched Praelior in his hand and pinned it against the oar, using the strength to keep going long past when he might otherwise have quit.
The slow tapping of the rain on his helm died in the wee small hours of the next day. They had a lamp at the fore, and stars came out to guide them. Cyrus felt the press of the bench he was seated upon, and he kept an even stroke, matching his motions to the other men rowing with him, all swarthy men of the sea, with olive skin and dark hair.
There came a sound next to him as someone sat, someone covered in a heavy boat cloak, and when Cattrine’s delicate features peeked out from beneath the cowl he was unsurprised. “Hello,” she said just loud enough to be heard over the rain.
“Hello,” he repeated back to her. He let a healthy silence fall between them then thought to speak. “I’m sorry about-”
“I’m so glad you came,” she said, halting as they spoke over one another. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. You were saying?”
“I’m sorry about Caenalys,” Cyrus said. “It feels as though everywhere we go, destruction follows-”
“The city was doomed,” Cattrine said. “If they hadn’t come with you, they would have been along within weeks anyhow, and it would have been just as bad.” Her eyes found his. “You saved my life, at least. I thank you for that.”
“It was the least I could do,” Cyrus said quietly, trying to focus on the steady rhythm of rowing. “I heard that you made a bargain for my life, to return my head to my guild for resurrection.” He lowered his voice. “A terrible bargain, with a terrible price.”
“It was not all for you,” she said, “though I confess your life was the thing that tipped the scales.” She stared straight ahead, toward the bow, and he saw her delicate features in profile. Her lip was still swollen, scabbed, and he could see by the lantern light hanging on the ship that her eye had a trace of black under it.
But she was still pretty. Still Cattrine. He resisted the urge to kiss her again and again. “I wish you hadn’t. Not for me.” He bowed his head, even as he kept the steady stroke of the oar going. “Why did you do it?” he asked, shaking his head, feeling the mournful sadness in his soul as he considered what she had likely been through. “For me-”
“Because I loved you, idiot.” She spoke in an outburst of relief, as though it were all she could do to get it out, and a sob followed it. “I did all I did because I felt it, as I thought you did, but did not wish to say it because of your beloved Vara.” Her hand came up to his face, stroked his bearded cheek. “I saw the struggle in your eyes the whole time we were at Vernadam, and I wanted to let you heal and become whole again before throwing another burden upon you.” She blinked and turned her head away. “It was the same reason I did not tell you who I was. I only wanted you to be able to feel … normal again. To begin to believe you could feel for another again.”
“I did,” he said quietly. “I did because of you. As hard as I tried to forget you, to stay away, I still found myself like a boomerang in flight, curving right back to where I had come from. He shook his head and felt the droplets of rain that had collected in his beard fall. “I … missed you.” He tugged in the oar, and laid it across his lap. He reached over and kissed her, fully, totally, and felt her return the same to him.
She broke from him quickly but with hesitation, her hand still held to his face. “Are you not with Aisling now?”