The Bird and the Sword Read online

  I showed Boojohni the book and the letters the king had drawn, and carefully wrote my own name on a clean sheet so I could show him my name. I pointed to the word and pointed to myself in excitement.

  “Lark? Is that how you write Lark?” Boojohni asked, smiling.

  I nodded emphatically. He took the quill from my hands and wrote a B, one of the few letters I knew from before, and patted his chest. I knew there must be more to his name than just a B and beckoned to the king impatiently, tapping the letter.

  “She wants ye to write my name, Yer Majesty,” Boojohni offered, though the king seemed to understand perfectly well what I desired.

  “Are you named for the lake in the Drue Forest, beyond Firi?”

  Boojohni puffed his chest in pride. “I am. There are many creatures in the Drue Forest.” He looked suddenly uncertain, as if the king might send soldiers to set the forest on fire, rooting out said creatures, but King Tiras simply nodded and began to form the word. I watched in fascination as the letters became two, then four, then eight. Boojohni had a magnificent name.

  I focused on each letter, assigning a sound to each one, though I wasn’t sure I did it correctly. I closed my eyes and the word trembled behind my lids, Boojohni’s name set free.

  “What?” Boojohni asked, and my eyes snapped open, making the word pop like a soap bubble.

  Boojohni was looking at me oddly. Then he looked beyond me, to the door of my room. He waited, as if listening, and bowed to the king.

  “I think I am being summoned, Majesty.” He looked at me then, “I’ll be back, Bird. I promise. I’ll ask every day.” He looked at the king almost fiercely, as if daring him to refute.

  “You may come back,” the king said, his tone mild. “But you will have to be accompanied by a guard, Troll. I don’t want the little lark to fly.”

  Anger licked my skin and Boojohni bowed slightly, agreeing to the demand. Then he hurried away, and I watched him leave, fighting off despair. He’d only just arrived and now he was gone again.

  “What do you want to learn today?” the king inquired softly, and I swallowed the emotion in my chest, willing the tears to slide back down my throat and extinguish the angry fire in my belly.

  I turned determined eyes on him and touched my lips. His brow furrowed, creating black slashes over his narrowed gaze. I felt a surge of confusion and something else, something I couldn’t name, lit the air between us.

  I touched my lips again, adamantly, and pointed to the letters. His brow smoothed subtly.

  “You want to know what they are called?”

  I nodded and cupped my ear as if listening.

  “Their sound? You want to know what sound each letter makes?”

  I released my breath, my frustration easing. I nodded again.

  Tiras spent an hour saying the name of the letters and repeating their sounds, his lips pursed and humming, my eyes trained on the shape of them and on the texture and the tones he created. I could only repeat the noises in my head, but I nodded and moved my mouth as he moved his, writing the letter as he said the name. He was patient, remarkably so, considering his gruff nature, and I wondered if he would be as patient if I could ask all the questions in my head. I couldn’t, so he raced through the names and sounds, only pausing when I scowled or tapped at a letter insistently, making him repeat it more slowly. When he started to pace like a restless lion, I abandoned the table and the careful crafting of shapes and urged him with tugs and repeated pointing, to write the names of every item in the room. He abandoned the paper and began writing words in charcoal or paint over every surface.

  “It is easy enough to wash off or paint over,” he said with the unconcerned shrug of a man who has never cleaned up after himself, and I laughed silently, watching him as he filled my room with words, painting on the furniture and walls like a naughty child, drawing simple pictures so he could name things beyond my room—animals and trees and bushes and plants. I began to draw with him, as I was a good deal better at it than he was, and he labeled my drawings, saying the word and breaking up the sounds so I started to recognize them.

  The maid gasped when she brought my supper, but the king looked at her with haughty dismissal, and she bowed and stuttered and left the room with great haste. She obviously told the rest of the servants, because no one scolded me or tried to wash our words away.

  He spent the day with me, and when he left, I wandered from one word to the next, touching them, saying them in my mind. As I did, I was unable to stop the moisture that rose in my eyes and slipped down my cheeks. It was the happiest day of my life.

  That night, just like before, the words filled my dream and spun in the air above my head. In my dream I could speak, my tongue was not tied, and my voice was not trapped in my throat. The words were mine to command and control, and I walked through King Tiras’s castle unlocking doors and moving furniture, until I found myself back on my balcony with a longing to fly.

  I plucked the word fly from my lips and pressed it to my breast, commanding myself to soar like the poppet from my most terrible memory, and as I rose in the sky, the Prince of Poppets, the poppet that caused my mother’s death, appeared, beckoning to me. As we flew, the poppet became an enormous eagle with a white head and huge black wings, and I could not keep up with him, so I laid across his back, his feathers soft beneath me, my arms locked around his neck, and we flew until the light began to seep over the Jeruvian hills. Then he was gone, and I was falling and flailing, unable to remember the words to save myself.

  The next day, Greta delivered a stack of books—all of them a good deal smaller and simpler than The Art of War—sneering that they were from the king, and I began to devour words, decoding them, uncovering them, losing all sense of time for the pursuit of language. I wanted to speak, if only by the written word, and I was insatiable. I was not a typical student. I was voracious. Determined.

  When darkness fell, I burned a dozen candles to continue my studies, falling asleep among piles of books and waking to do it all again. The words I couldn’t decipher, I copied in never-ending lists that the king, upon his return, read and explained.

  There were combinations of letters that made little sense and words that contradicted the things I thought I understood, but I committed each word to memory, and over the space of several weeks, my thoughts started to appear in written sentences behind my eyes, fully formed and complete. They were simple sentences with holes and probable misspellings, but sentences, and one night, half delirious, my eyes aching, I begged a candle to move closer. Come here, candle. The sentence trembled in the air like the text from a page.

  And the candle obeyed.

  Horrified, I gasped and leapt from my chair, making the candle I’d commanded topple over on my open book. The flame of the candle licked the page like a cat over spilled milk, and the book was almost instantly engulfed in fire.

  One dusty book triggered the destruction of the next. The fire spread with an audible whoosh, enveloping the table completely. I ran for my wash basin and upended it over the blaze. It wasn’t enough. The flames jumped to the chairs, and I tried to smother them with the heavy, braided rug from my floor. The rug proved ineffectual, or maybe it was my fear, but I retreated as the flames rose to the giant beams above my head. Smoke billowed around me, and I ran for the door, pounding desperately for someone to hear. The breeze from the open balcony doors pulled the flames toward the drapes, and they too were instantly engulfed, barring my only exit from the room. I tried to find the words to extinguish the flames, but I was terrified. Terror was not conducive to conjuring perfectly formed sentences.

  I sunk to the cold, stone floor, trying to breathe, desperate to think.

  Out, fire. Out.

  I saw the words rise, and the fire in my chamber whooshed through the balcony doors, gone but not doused. That wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind. I ran to the balcony doors, following the fiery banshee I’d created. It had fled my room and was climbing the tower wall like a living thi
ng. The fire had simply spread outward. I heard shouting and realized someone had spotted the flame.

  How did you spell disappear? I searched my memory, choking on the smoke still filling the room.

  Die, fire. Disappear. This fire is no longer here, I commanded fiercely, the words bold and blue, cold and clear. I watched them fall on the flames, and the fire sputtered immediately.

  I repeated the rhyme, more confident now. The words shot from my mind, and the flames disappeared completely. A pale ribbon of smoke rose from the blackened wall, the clinging soot the only remnant of the blaze.

  I tried to instruct the soot to disappear too, but it stubbornly remained, proving that I could put out the fire, but I couldn’t yet save myself from the natural consequences of my mistakes.

  The door to my room slammed open, and I found myself face to face with a livid Tiras, who waved at the smoke and scooped me into his arms.

  “Are you trying to kill yourself? Or are you trying to create a diversion for escape? It’s a long way down, even for a lark.”

  The room suddenly filled with scurrying servants, and I was rushed from the smoky room, disheveled and terrified, clinging to the king who promptly dumped me in another chamber—right next to his own—and barked at me that burning alive was a terrible way to die.

  I curled my hands around the silk-covered arms of the chair I’d been tossed into and seethed at his manhandling.

  You are an ass! I thought to myself, the words ass and Tiras becoming almost one in my head.

  “You think I’m an ass?” he asked, outrage making him hoarse.

  My head shot up and our eyes clung.

  You look like a god but you act like an ogre.

  “An ogre?” His voice was beyond incredulous. “A god?”

  I bolted to my feet, my chair barking against the floor with my sudden ejection. First the candle. Now the king.

  Stop that.

  His eyes were as wide as mine, and he approached me slowly.

  “Stop that?” he whispered, his eyes on my mouth as if expecting them to move.

  Impossible.

  He nodded, agreeing. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “Do it again,” he ordered brusquely.

  It was my turn to shake my head.

  “Do it,” he repeated. I sat back down in the chair—collapsed—my legs suddenly so weak I couldn’t stand.

  “Lark,” he demanded, waiting, his eyes still trained on my mouth.

  I wasn’t sure what I was doing. But I pushed a word at him, the way I often did with Boojohni. It was a random word, the first thing that popped into my head. I seemed to have a penchant for words with a double S.

  Kiss.

  “Kiss?” he hissed.

  My face was suddenly hot, and my hands rose to my cheeks.

  Stop looking at my mouth.

  “I’m looking at your mouth because I can hear you. But you aren’t speaking.” His voice was hushed with wonder, and he leaned over me, caging me in the ornate chair, and lifted my chin with the tips of his fingers so I was forced to meet his gaze.

  “Again,” he commanded.

  Tiras.

  “Tiras,” he repeated.

  Lark.

  “Lark.” His voice was awed.

  Cage.

  “Cage.”

  Afraid.

  “Afraid?” His black eyes were suddenly fierce. His face was only inches from mine, and I couldn’t bear it.

  I closed my eyes, seeking the privacy I’d suddenly lost. I needed him to leave. I needed him to leave me alone.

  Leave.

  “Why?” he asked softly.

  It hurts.

  “It does?” His breath tickled my face. I couldn’t sit back any farther in my chair, and he was everywhere. In my head and in my space, hovering over me like an avenging angel. I fought the panic that rose like a wave.

  I pressed my hands to my chest. It suddenly hurt so much I could barely breathe. My heart was pounding, and my breaths felt like shards of glass.

  “Tell me,” he commanded.

  I shook my head. No. No. No. I couldn’t explain how it felt to converse with another human being. To actually converse. I had been reduced to sharing nothing of my innermost thoughts for most of my life. Reduced to throwing things when I was angry. Reduced to tears when I was sad. Reduced to the simplicity of nods and bows, of having people look away from me or become frustrated when they didn’t know what I was trying to communicate.

  I had been alone for so long with thousands of words I couldn’t express. Now this man, this infuriating, beautiful, man—son of a murderous king—could suddenly hear me as if I spoke. A woman instead of a caged bird. A human being instead of a silent presence in the shadows.

  And I didn’t know how I felt about it.

  Go, Tiras. Please go.

  I didn’t open my eyes, and I kept my mind muddled so no more words would escape. I felt him straighten, and the heat of his presence waned. Then his footsteps sounded, retreating. The door opened and closed again, and I heard his key scraping in the lock.

  From the balcony of my new room I could see the king’s guard, practicing their maneuvers and sparring in the jousting yard. Sometimes Tiras was with them—Kjell was there more often than not—and they seemed to take inordinate pleasure from knocking each other down and bloodying each other up.

  But the king’s duties extended beyond fighting and practicing with his men. Once a week the people made a long line around the castle, coming to the king with their problems, with their complaints, with their accusations. Greta explained that from dawn until dusk, one after another, the people were given a hearing. I wished I could watch and listen, but I could only observe the long lines of waiting citizens from my balcony and speculate about what they would say to the king. It would be exhausting to make one decision after another, to have people looking to you to be just and judicious.

  The balcony also gave me a view of a well in the city square, where people gathered to visit and fill their buckets. Oddly, most people didn’t fill pails with water. Instead, they leaned over the edge, one at a time, and seemed to peer down into the depths, almost like they were calling to someone or something below. It was strange. People lined up for their turn to look down in the well, and the line was almost as long as the one for the king on hearing day.

  Public punishments were also carried out in the city square, following King Tiras’s rulings. I saw a man dragged behind a horse, a woman put in the stocks, another lose her hand, another lose his tongue. I didn’t know their crimes, but I could guess. Was it a Teller who lost his tongue? Was it a Spinner whose hand was hacked off? After I realized what was occurring, I huddled in my room and closed the balcony doors so I wouldn’t hear the crowds and the horrific public displays.

  I wondered about the punishment for starting a fire within the castle walls, the penalty for putting words in the king’s head, for speaking without a voice, for moving things with one’s mind, and I no longer felt certain of my innocence. I realized the harm I could do, and I was afraid. But my fear didn’t stop the words from forming, the letters from assembling, my mind from spelling, and my thoughts from spinning.

  New clothes were hung in the enormous wardrobe, clothes fit for a princess and rather ill-suited for a prisoner who never left her room. The king’s servants washed the walls and replaced the heavy drapes over the balcony door in my old chamber. The pictures and words on my walls were gone, wiped away and painted over. But under the scent of paint and soap, I could still smell the smoke, a reminder of what I could do with a careless word. The books were gone too, and I wondered if Tiras would replace those or if I had become frightening to him, the way I frightened myself.

  The fear didn’t stop me from experimenting when I was alone. I tried commanding my voice to work, but it stayed frozen in my throat, unaffected by my demand. My words were not effective when I applied them to myself. I couldn’t fly, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t suddenly paint or sew or dance beyond my nat
ural abilities. In fact I couldn’t change myself at all, but beyond that, I discovered that when I spelled out a command, seeing the words in my mind before releasing them, they were highly effective. I was only limited by my ignorance, by my fear, and by my own sense of right and wrong.

  I made my dresses dance around my chamber like headless ghosts at a royal ball. I made the furniture rise and reassemble on the ceiling. I commanded the lock to release on my door and stood in the hallway beyond my room, unsure of what to do or where to go now that I could easily escape.

  I was free. I was powerful. I was terrified.

  I returned to my room, re-engaged the lock with a simple spell, and huddled in my wardrobe in the dark. I felt no joy at my emerging power. I felt only dismay and disgust. And doubt. What was my purpose? What would be the price of this newfound power?

  Tiras didn’t leave me alone for long. A week after the fire, he was back, escorting me through the hallways and out into the sunshine, past the sentries and the servants, and into the busy town square, as if he was just one of the townspeople. I was a little surprised by his freedom of movement and his lack of concern, but when I looked closer, I noticed flashes of green and archers on the ramparts as well as guards trailing a ways behind us and a guard in every other alcove. The people bowed and bobbed, but most just went about their duties with a quick nod, obviously used to seeing him out and about.

  We walked in silence, our postures identical, hands clasped behind our backs looking at the path in front of us. I kept my thoughts loose and formless, not allowing myself to create words that he might hear. As we neared the well I’d seen from my balcony, I stopped, one hand on the king’s sleeve, one pointing toward the long line of those waiting to look down into the depths.

  I didn’t want to form the words, but he seemed to understand my question anyway.