Book 3, Chapter 1: Waking Up Alone
It was late and dark, hours after midnight. Nearly three weeks had passed since Morrentz tossed Bechalle out the tower window. There’s a word for that, believe it or not, so common is this occurrence. Defenestration. Not a nice word under certain governments, but given my circumstances at the time, I was rather fond of it.
I’d mostly slept. Off and on, for about two weeks after, well, the torture. I didn’t like calling it that, didn’t want to think about it, yet it was. And I was thinking about it.
Nighttime, my room was dark, and I sat up on the bed, awake.
I slid off the bed softly, walked to the window and pulled open the heavy, brown curtains. Pale moonlight fell across the stone walls and tapestries, angling down and onto the red carpet. Somewhere, off in the distance, a crow cawed. I pulled my hand up into the faint moonlight. Hairless, slender, young skin. There! A little blue flame, dancing across my hand. A stream of energy wove between my fingers, then circled on my palm.
A death sentence for me if anyone found out.
Shutting the window, I turned around. A fairly large room, walls of stone, fireplace off to the side, coals dimming to a low orange as the hours wore on. Tapestries hung off the walls with pictures depicting all kinds of magical beasts and scenes from nature. I had the ones with people in them removed after waking up too many times, terrified Bechalle was at my bedside.
By the third week, I’d largely healed from the cutting. Physically, at least. When magic can heal you, your body and mind have different memories of the past. Although in my case, my torturer imprinted upon my skin injuries not amenable to magical healing. Those cuts took time. Perhaps Bechalle did me the favor of physically marking the memory, focusing myself, my consciousness, not so much into the body as of it. In the same way the heart or any organ is part of the whole.
After waking up on that battlefield, a prisoner soon to escape, and as a young girl, I’d ever had a disconnect between self and body. It wasn’t mine. The “I” part of me wasn’t born with this body. I’d lived a life before this one, had creaky knees, sometimes an angry back, or at least an unhappy one, but then I opened my eyes on that field.
Bechalle changed all that. Pain demands attention from the self. It’s private, immediate. In those first few days after, every little movement reopened my skin, focusing my attention. Bechalle’s machinations cemented me, my person, into this young body. It was hard to believe I once wasn’t, but I suppose that is, in a larger sense, true for everyone.
The scars on my back told a story, held a meaning, if you could read them. Bechalle thought he could steal the powers of a god by cutting his strange pattern into my back. I shuddered, remembering this. Somehow, he’d given me magic, endangering my life even further. If I wasn’t careful, if I couldn’t keep it hidden.
Looking at my hand, watching the little blue flame dance, it grew as I concentrated, rose a bit off my palm. I tried making it smaller, whispering “Shrink, go away!” and it faded into whisps.
A light knocking at my door. It began to creek open. “Princess? Are you awake?”
I quickly held my hands behind my back, turned to the door. “Yup, just woke up.”
Looming large in the doorframe, Morry entered, “I heard movement, thought I’d check on you.” He was wearing a loose shirt and drawstring pants rather than his usual chainmail hauberk. Slight orange from the dying fire across the right side of his face, the rest in shadow.
“Thank you, but I’m alright. It’s probably that I’ve been sleeping so much. Had to wake up sometime.” I marveled that he heard me moving. He’d been taking care of me, keeping people out, while I healed.
“That crow woke me up, too. You want some tea?”
“Why me? Why do you think Bechalle chose me to cut?”
“Ah.” He entered through the large door. The big man’s grim features, softened now into worry. “I don’t know, Princess. He was mad. Beyond mad. You must be cold. Here, I’ll get your fire going again.” He walked over to the fireplace, knelt in front of it, began poking, then adding cut logs.
“I’ve been wondering about that. The nurse, the one he had helping him, she said all the girls he cut had my eye color. Lavender.” What I couldn’t tell Morry burned inside. How did Bechalle know to choose me? Was it because I’m from somewhere else, another world? Or part of a crazy annoying and overly long game? Perhaps designed to churn out people who would, at the very mildest, boycott the escapism industry.
“That just means they were of Laemacian descent.”
While his back was turned, I pulled up my hand to look. The energy was gone. Dissipated, I guess, after I released some of it. I tucked my hands into their sleeves anyways, like a monk, joined Morry by the growing fire. Flames touched the new logs he put in, flickering on and off the wood, until they caught, held on, and grew. “I can’t help but wonder.”
He smoothly rose, putting his hand on my arm, “Nothing that piece of filth did had anything to do with you, Princess. All his evil, that’s on him. Here,” he walked behind me, picking up a heavy wooden sofa chair as if it were made of cork instead of hardwood, “here, sit.” He then got himself one, but went to the bed and took a blanket, placing it on me, before sitting himself.
“Thank you, Morry. You’re ever taking care of me.”
“That’s what I was hired to do.”
“Ha! You’re a chef now.”
“A chef?”
“Back at the camp, when you first made breakfast for me, I declared you a chef.”
“Then I am a chef.”
“Lord Morrentz, General Chef, how is the situation?”
“Oh,” he sat back. “The earls have not called their armies to march against us. Either they’re glad you’ve replaced Bechalle or they’re worried for the hostages.”
“And my troops?”
“With your troops soon to be returning from the field, we’ll need more space. I’ve directed Tread to arrange for more barracks to be built.”
“Wait, what? Tread? And why are my troops returning – don’t they have to guard the bridge to keep the Ketzillian army from crossing?”
“The Ketzles have withdrawn. We’re heading into fall, and this far up north the weather could turn bad pretty quickly. They’re probably running low on food and are returning to the castle they captured. Yohstone Castle.”
“Ok. Huh. And Tread?”
“I took the liberty of tossing all Bechalle’s people out.”
“I know you sent his guards out.”
“And his cooks, servants, the chamberlain, quartermaster. Every last person. I made Tread the chamberlain.”
My jaw dropped, but I put it back up before speaking, “You booted everyone? And you made a fifteen-year-old boy the chamberlain of a castle?”
“Can’t have you getting poisoned. Or work not being done because you’re not their preferred ruler.”
“Wait, back up, just a sec. Tread is running the castle?”
Morry sat back, a touch of a smirk on his face, “He’s been doing a fine job. Got a good head on his shoulders. Princess, he’s not made for war.”
“Alright, ok, yes. He does have, uh, farmstead experience. Good choice.”
“And I made Brin the quartermaster.”
“Oh? A fourteen-year-old girl, why not?”
“She needed something to keep her occupied since we wouldn’t let her take care of you. But now that you’re better . . .”
Brin was a formidable girl. Knowledgeable about statecraft and etiquette, she’d been a helpful guide in this new universe I found myself in. She’d become my mistress of the bedroom and came with three ladies in waiting. I couldn’t let them take care of me like they were supposed to, me being the princess and all, because sooner or later, they’d see the magic sparkling around my hand. That would be bad. Before the grand magister, our most powerful wizard, had left, he made sure I knew that rulers with magic were not tolerated. Too much power in one person. A king with such powers had caused the collapse of society some four hundred years prior and now his conclave forbade it. Such people were disappeared. Executed.
“No. No mistress of the bedroom, no ladies in waiting.”
“The scars won’t bother them. They’ll treat you as fitting your rank.”
I shook my head. He misunderstood and that was helpful, but a part of me wanted to come clean about the magic. Surely, Morry would understand! Know what to do. But I couldn’t. As big and scary and tough as he was, a wizard would tear him apart with but a hand gesture. It was too dangerous. So, a misdirection, “They’re all related to the former duke.”
His gaze moved from me to the fire. “Perhaps it’s best for now. But in time . . . Princess, you’ll want to be among friends.”
I reached across and put my left hand on his, “I am,” then sat back.
“I mean your own age.”
“Have you been able to find Bechalle’s head nurse?”
“No trace of her, I’m afraid. Either she was killed to protect Earl and Countess Carlisele or she fled.”
That still stung. The Carliseles were Brin’s parents and probably knew about Bechalle’s late night activities. It was odd. I liked Brin, relied on her for so much, but her parents were, if not monsters themselves, complicit in a monster’s crimes.
“I set her free too quickly. She could have given us more information about Bechalle’s plans. His reasoning.”
“That’s on me. I should have had her jailed.”
“What about the grand magister? Any word?”
“Uh, no. Since that night, he’s been gone.”
“Damn.” He’d taken the magical knife that had made these cuts, these scars on my back. They seemed to have given me this power, but I didn’t know why or how. I needed the knowledge of a mage and had none of it. Him gone might be for the best, though. I was in less danger with him gone. Or so I hoped.
“You think there’s something more to your wounds.”
“Why else would the grand magister leave?”
“What has changed, Princess?”
I froze, then closed my eyes and forced myself to calm down. “They’re almost healed over. They don’t open anymore.”
“It’ll be good to see you out of this room.”
“Morry, I’m going to go back to sleep now. Thank you for checking up on me.”
He rose, “My lady.” As I headed back to the bed, he pulled the chairs away from the fireplace, turned to leave and, stopping by the door, said, “Sleep well.”
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