THE NORTHERN KING’S ILLNESS CAME about all at once in the morning, and had turned dire by nightfall.
The state of him—sallow, perspiring, and groaning—only agitated Baren’s fraying state. More than ever, he muttered about his ghosts, and began to adopt his mother’s superstitions about warding away death and spirits.
Gerdie stood in his father’s antechamber, silent and watching. He knew this was not Gray Fever. The pallor alone could tell him that much. It was possible his father had caught a virus that originated overseas. The only one to recently venture overseas had been Owen, and he hadn’t mentioned any pandemics, but then, Owen was not always forthright about the things that troubled him.
His mother had not left his father’s side. She had sent for the doctor, which Gerdie found unsettling given his mother’s distrust of modern medicine.
“I’m here, my love,” the queen whispered. She held the king’s hand in both of hers and pressed her face against his slack knuckles.
“Mother?” Gerdie ventured.
She turned her head, startled. “You shouldn’t be in here, heart. It may be contagious.”
With his traitorous immune system, Gerdie cared a great deal about avoiding contagions. He had read up on every illness; kept abreast of every epidemic; compulsively downed vitamins, never forgetting a dosage even when he might forget to sleep or eat. But he wasn’t frightened of catching whatever his father had contracted. He knew somehow that his father was alone in whatever this was.
His mother didn’t protest when he stepped closer, though.
“Have you eaten?” he asked. “Had some water, at least?”
As he stood over her, she raised her head and gave a wan smile. “I used to go days on nothing but sunlight and stars. Seems like a lifetime ago.”
“I’ll bring you something,” he said.
“You aren’t supposed to eat in a room where illness is present.” Her voice was soft.
So many wanderers shared fears that revolved around rooms and windows and doors and mirrors. It was no wonder they often slept out under the open sky, Gerdie thought. It must have been exhausting being so afraid.
“Come outside, then.” He touched her shoulder, and she laid her hand over his. “Please.”
Only a month ago his family had been complete and unbreakable, and now there was nothing but empty beds draped with black gossamer, and his mother.
He didn’t know how to say any of this. Owen had been the eloquent one. But the queen seemed to sense it. She rose from her vigil and called for a trio of servants to stay by the king’s side. “We’ll be in the oval garden,” she told them. “Send for me if he wakes.”
The oval garden was the queen’s favorite place in the world. There were over a dozen gardens within the stone wall, but the oval garden was where the queen’s thoughts had run wild. She plucked and planted whatever compelled her from one day to the next, and it was ever changing, and filled with all sorts of creatures.
Being here was like being in his mother’s mind, Gerdie had often thought.
It was past midnight now. An odd hour for a picnic, but Gerdie suspected his mother needed to be out of the castle for a while.
They sat on the iron bench that overlooked the reflection pond, a basket of breads and cloth-covered dishes between them.
At last, the queen spoke. “The summer that we were first married, your father and I used to sleep out here every night. Right there, where that cherry tree is now. It made me feel like I was still traveling the world, and it made him feel like he didn’t have to be king.”
“Papa didn’t want to be king?” Gerdie asked. His father was always so immersed in his affairs, it was hard to imagine him as anything but the king. Gerdie had no concept of what having an actual father might have been like. A mother, brothers, a sister—these things he knew.
“He did.” The queen canted her head as she spoke, trying to find the right words. “But it was a dark time for him. The throne is inherited, you know. His family was gone.”
Gerdie knew this, of course. His grandparents had been murdered by a duplicitous guard who wanted the throne for himself. He knew only that his father had escaped. It wasn’t something that was further discussed.
The dead had never mattered to him before now. What would be the use in thinking of them? But now, every day he thought about how long his own life might be. Owen and Wil would drown so many more times, in that vast expanse of years. In the children he might one day have whom they would not meet. In the changes they would not see, the songs they would not hear. In the portraits that were never taken.
“They did tend to take after me, didn’t they?” the queen said. “I was so afraid that they would grow up and sail away, fall in love with the world and never come back.”
“I worried too,” Gerdie said. Somehow it was comforting to talk about his brother and sister aloud, as though they still existed. He almost blurted out the rest, about the vendor turning to ruby. But he couldn’t bring himself to betray his sister’s trust. He didn’t want to ruin the memory his mother had of her. There would be no point. Wil was dead, and the thing they’d both tried so hard to solve had died with her.
Instead, he said, “I don’t understand. What’s so appealing about sleeping on the ground and sailing on ships?”
“The world speaks, and some of us can hear it,” the queen said. “The shifting sand, the turning sea, the way the wind makes everything shake and flutter as though it’s dancing full of secrets.”
When Gerdie and Wil were small, Owen would sometimes sneak them off to the Port Capital with him. One and then the other, he would carry them on his shoulders. The three of them would tuck their hair into gray wool caps, and they would pretend to be nomads so that nobody would know who they really were. It was a game they played.
While Gerdie studied the mechanics of the ships and the structure of the buildings, and while he wondered at the cogs in the machines and the motion of the water mills, his brother and sister spoke easily with sailors and vendors, mimicking their accents flawlessly and pretending to be from anywhere but Arrod.
“I wish I felt it too.”
The queen was about to say something, but the crunch and clatter of footsteps running over dried leaves silenced her. A servant emerged through the thickets, gasping. “Your Majesty,” she blurted, dipping into a hasty curtsy. “It’s the king. He’s taken a turn for the worse.”
The queen moved fast, her nightgown swimming around her. By the time Gerdie made it to his father’s chamber, his mother was already by his side.
Gerdie froze at what he saw. The king was sprawled on the mattress soaked with sweat, thrashing, crying out like a child in pain. He wasn’t conscious, Gerdie noted, but his lips were burbling with blood. In his vigil, he focused on the details, which led to no logical conclusions. After a while, those details panned out, giving way to larger details, which turned into questions. What would become of this kingdom if his father were to die? What would become of the war that already loomed like thunder across the water?
How was it possible that so much had befallen their family so quickly? He had never expected that the universe held a divine purpose for anyone within it, but this felt deliberate. First Owen and Wil, and now his father, all being pulled into a churning current of death. Without logic. Without explanation. There must have been a pattern he was missing.
He thought of Wil, which had become a compulsion since he’d lost her. He had argued when she called what happened to her a curse. But now he wondered.
The king was drowning in blood as he coughed it up.
Maybe they would all drown.
Servants ran to and from the room, carrying cloths and sloshing bowls, awaiting the queen’s directive. The queen knelt by the bed, stroking the king’s face, whispering something into his ear and then kissing the side of his head.
Baren moved to stand beside Gerdie. His eyes were glazed. “Papa will be dead by morning,” Baren whispered. “The ghosts are killing him. They’ll come for you next. Now do you believe me?”