Chapter 5: The Past Rarely Helps |
“Riona O’Shea was my friend,” said the marquise, “and Riona O’Shea was an idiot.” There was a ghost of fondness in her voice: a thing that had been felt strongly, and still haunted. “I will remember both, even if your histories do not.”
“You knew the First Crown?” Rose interrupted from where she sat, because Aaron had made sure she’d sat. “How? Rat kings don’t live anywhere near so long as--”
“If I gave the impression that I care to hear your voice longer than necessary,” the gray rat said, as behind her, the rest of her mass tangled restlessly with herself, “please accept my condolences.”
She continued.
“We were tired. We’d run so far. We didn’t know that the island we were on was the second-to-last; didn’t know that across the narrow strait ahead, that lighthouse we could see was already guiding us home. We came across a young dragon on the beach. It was a scared thing--had run nearly as far as us, I imagine; we hadn’t seen a lesser dragon for ten isles.”
“A lesser...?” Rose started. And stopped herself, with the air of a terrier at the edge of its leash.
“A dragon wasn’t a chance to miss,” said the marquise. “A strong fighter, a versatile form, and if it wouldn’t stay useful for so long as some others, at least it would help us today.
“We’d have both doppeled it, and maybe more of us besides, but our friend had lost the taste for taking things that couldn’t consent and wouldn’t hold it for us to copy until its heart gave out. That happens, you know; we did it. Trapped up some useful beastie, and let our people doppel and doppel until we broke the thing’s mind with all the lives we shoved inside. The body doesn’t last long, after. But without Rivers holding it, we’d only get the one shot. So we played for it: stone-scroll-salt, and it turns out Riona had spent five isles pretending to favor stone just so she could salt me when it counted. And Rivers knew, the bastard. I hated them.
“I loved them.
“She copied the dragon. It flew off, head all stuffed full of her. Sometimes they’d come back, the beasties we hadn’t broken--come back, and then we’d have another fighter with us, loyal as our own. That was why Rivers changed the doppeling spell for us, back at the start of it all, changed it so the beasties got our minds: to make humans out of things that weren’t. To make our problems into theirs, right at the heart of them, where they’d no chance to fight it. So we let the dragon go.
“We crossed the strait. Riona swam back for us again and again, because we’d lost our ships islands ago, and the seal women said it was safe enough. I rode on the shoulder of her wing, laying on my belly, half-under with each stroke she swam, because it was fun.
“We let ourselves be guided in by that lighthouse, on the other side. If it was a trap, it was a novel one, and humanity thrills in letting itself be caught the once. No trap: only those who’d left ahead of us. They’d just done with building it. They were so excited for us, the first to see it, the first they guided in safe.
“ ‘We’re going to count you a ship,’ they said.
“ ‘Please don’t,’ Riona said, but she wasn’t their crown. Not yet.
And then she was. And then we were setting out inland, because we could, and because we’d too long been hunted across water. We found a valley crowned by mountains and a plateau all full of caves, and we got to work.
“And all the while that dragon was alive on her own island, with her head full of memories. Memories on how to run, to hide, to fight; how to avoid the hunters while she could, and get her children out safe when she couldn’t. She wasn’t a scared little thing anymore. Wasn’t much a lesser dragon anymore, either, not with her thinking thoughts she knew to be thoughts. She was a wily thing, a breeding thing.
“It took years for us to feel safe, in our new city, in our new land.
“It takes years for dragon eggs to start their hatching.
“You know how this goes.
“They had their mother’s memories up in their heads telling them how much easier it was to think and live and hide once they’d gotten themselves doppeled.
“And so we’d a bunch of babes swarming our isle. Babes with wings and claws and fire for their tantrums. They were great tantrum throwers, her children.
“Rivers could keep them out of our castle. Our caves. So we sat in them while dragons crawled over our heads, and set about starving in safety.
“I’d not doppeled yet. I’d been waiting for something grand, something that could save us all.
“I was younger than you think I was, then. Younger than I thought I was. Riona and Rivers, they were my friends. But they’d been my mother’s before.
“The dragons set on any human that came out. Set on anything grand and impressive coming out, too, because they knew what humans liked in their doppels, and they’d learned what a hostage was.
“A rat’s too small for a dragon’s claws. Nearly too small for their eyes, as well. I mean that literally: have you tried crushing the littlest sort of ant with your hand? Just keeps crawling most of the time, doesn’t it? Takes more tries than you’d think to do it right, and meanwhile the rest are scattering.
“ ‘If they can’t kill us all, then they can’t kill us.’ We ran the whole length of the archipelago on that.
“So I copied a rat. Didn’t have to play anyone for that privilege, though I wasn’t alone in it. Not with the food we were bringing in. Even if they caught us out hunting on two legs, we’d be on four and lost in the grass by the time they’d landed. Then they’d get bored, and the food would still be there when they’d gone. As would we.
“It only takes two rats to drag back a dead rabbit. Takes a lot less than a dead rabbit to feed two rats. As long as we didn’t change back often, we’d more than halved what our people needed to live.
“We kept the Downs fed. We kept messages moving, from One Crown to Salt’s Mane. We were on the first expedition that found their mother; we were the ones that convinced her how we could all prosper together, if she’d include some patience in those egg memories of hers, and helped wrangle the current lot away from our skies. We would send our children out to meet hers on the beaches, and we’d all come away stronger for it.
“We escorted her to One Crown, and she stood before her doppel, and they signed between them the Pact. And we rats were there to witness.
“And witness we stood,
“As Riona died,
“And her children claimed her throne. And she was an idiot, such an idiot, to trust them with it. As if having her blood made them at all unique, in any way except being hers; like her blood spilled across the archipelago was anything like theirs, born to a city already safe. They asked us to build a castle up there in the sun. Then they left us down in the dark; said ‘Don’t come up if you like it better there.’
“Said ‘It’s safe now, your children don’t need to doppel.’
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
“But what they meant was our children shouldn’t doppel. And they definitely shouldn’t be raised by parents that would set them in the same playpens as rat pups, even if half those parents were rats. Our allies. Our other halves. Our family.
“ ‘We don’t need them anymore,’ they said, like all we’d done together had been an inconvenience of the moment. Like we should be happy, now, to forget all we’d done.
“Happy to give our children up for them to raise, because we’d been too long rats. Humans needed to be strict-kept to turn out human enough, they said, and soon it was only those human enough welcome up in their light.
“When they reached for our children, we bit.
“When we bit, they came with swords drawn.
“They sealed the true castle.
“They began the hunts.
“They let forget all they did not want remembered. But just because the militia doesn’t want us anymore does not mean we died out for your convenience. They cannot kill us all, so they cannot kill us. And we rats remember what to do, when dragons lay siege to humanity.”
“Now tell me, O’Shea: if our service has earned us death, what more do you deserve?”
“...I need to think,” replied Rose, as the lamplight played with the shadows on her brow.
“And why should I give you the time?” asked the marquise.
“Riona O’Shea was doppel? A dragon?”
The rat scratched at an ear, then started rubbing both paws over it, grooming. “Ah, yes. Because the point of that story was your history.”
“That’s not what--” the princess took in a breath, then let it out again. When she spoke again, she was contrite enough, but it was laid over anger. The kind that had burned already, like last night’s coals fed new kindling. “And. And it is, it’s part of it, because--if Riona was a dragon, if the first of our line was a dragon before she’d even made it to Last Reign, then what cause was there to poison my brother? Why did he let himself be poisoned?”
“Self-centered little thing, isn’t she?” asked the gray rat, turning to Aaron.
He shrugged. It wasn’t the worst trait, in his experience. So long as what a person had centered themselves on was big enough to wrap around others.
“How do you even know this?” the princess pressed. “You speak as if you were there, but I’ve read of rat kings, they don’t even live as long as a regular rat, much less centuries--”
“They shouldn’t,” the marquise agreed. “But there are always more rats, aren’t there?”
The marquise’s own anger was centuries in its chilling. The head that spoke to them was the same old gray that had met them in the dead-end tunnel, where Lochlann still waited in the dark. There was another head off to the side, leaning out to speak with a scribe, tracing its paws over the numbers on her paper. It was a younger thing, still with the sleekness of health. A head towards the back, half again as small as the others, was comfort-grooming a rat that might have been its own mother.
Perhaps the regular sort of rat king was a short-lived thing. If it hadn’t a colony to bring its entangled mass all the food it needed; if it only took into itself what souls tangled there naturally. But the marquise had been as she was for a long, long time. Aaron’s head hurt to think how long, so mostly he didn’t.
“Believe me or not,” she said. “I did not do this to make myself accountable to an O’Shea. This is not what I am, not what I should be. It is what I needed to be, because even when we had our first hands and our first paws, we knew your betrayal would come. If you would betray your best friends, why would you not betray the entirety of humanity? If the O’Sheas would not keep faith, we would. We did. We have, and we live, and we are ready.”
The scribe nodded. Pointed to another line, her own fingers finding the raised numbers as easily in the lantern light as they would have in the dark. Another head called out to an older rat scrabbling past, and directed it around to the numbers discussion. A second opinion, clearly. Another separate rat came up; asked a question, and scurried off, all before Rose could think what to say.
“You’re doppels. Doppels who don’t kill their human. Why did you agree to a pact that let the dragons kill theirs?”
Fully a third of the marquise’s heads turned towards them, at that question. Her tails gripped themselves so tightly Aaron thought he heard new cracks of bone, here and there.
“That wasn’t the pact we negotiated. That was the change the dragon’s mother demanded, when the O’Sheas betrayed the rest of us.”
“This is all--it’s all so ludicrous. You can use the Letforget. After all this time--and I was up there trying to piece it together, and you were right here and--”
“And I’ve better things to do than listen to you,” said the marquise. Though she didn’t, really, when it took so little of her. The heads that had focused on them were already drifting away, their attention returning to other problems.
“Oh, do stop bluffing.”
...Their attention was back again, now.
“This isn’t my fault,” Rose said. “Nor was any of that. You know it, and I know it, and please stop pretending like killing me will even make you feel better about things. If leadership isn’t in the blood, then guilt isn’t, either.”
“You’d be surprised how good pettiness can feel,” said the marquise, her tail jerking in its confines.
“But that’s not what you are. And it’s not what we need. You haven’t lived so long to be petty, you--” the princess reached up to tug at a scarf she hadn’t worn in months, and let out a frustrated growl, instead. “You’re--what, gathering food? Like you did before?”
The marquise did not reply. Nor did her heads look away. She didn’t blink entirely in sync, but in a sort of wave--one rolled over her now.
“But the militia won’t just share it with you even if you share it with them,” Rose continued, “because--because people are stupid, and terrible, and if they can’t lock away and forget things than they’ll drag them out and poison them, instead. And they’ve nowhere to go right now but farther into the caves, and they think they’ve nothing to lose, so why wouldn’t they be entirely stupid and try breaking down cave walls until they find where you’ve hidden all this food. As soon as you show them you have it, they’ll want to take it. They need someone to hold them together--”
“And that person is you?” mocked the marquise.
“No!” Rose said. “No it’s not! They won’t even recognize me as their princess. Won’t listen to me, unless I’ve enough people they actually respect telling them to. So you better not have hurt Lieutenant Lochlann, because the Iron Captain’s grandson is probably the most recognizable leader we have on the plateau right now. Not me.”
“No, not you,” the rat said, her gray head tilted.
“Oh, do stop it. Let’s figure out how to get our peoples working together, before the dragons finish whatever they’re doing.”
A little head leaned against Aaron’s knee. “I hate that I like her,” it confided, for his ears only.
“Right?” whispered back Aaron, who’d spent the better part of a year not wanting to like O’Sheas.
“Guilt may not be in the blood,” conceded the old gray head speaking with Rose. “But neither is trustworthiness innate. We’ll require more from you than a willingness to be less duplicitous than your ancestors.”
Rose squared her shoulders. “What do you need me to do?”
“There is a door,” the marquise started, and Aaron wasn’t entirely certain she realized how many of her mouths she was using to do so. The effect rather silenced everything else around them.
“There is a door,” she said, “under dark and under deep. But a door that is remembered may open yet.”
“...Like the kingdom tale?” Rose asked, in the most polite sort of bafflement.
“You let forget even that,” the gray head said. She closed her eyes; the action rippled out to the rest of her mass, like a pebble in a pond. When she opened them, her voice was harder. Hard nearly as it had been when she’d first started speaking to them. “Yes, O’Shea. Like the kingdom tale. We want you to open a door. Do you think you can do that?”
“Well there’s clearly a catch to it,” Rose said.
“I really hate it,” whispered the little side rat again, just to Aaron.
“Unseal the old castle, and we will work with you,” said the marquise.
“Oh,” Rose breathed out. “Oh, that would be marvelous. Will the old defenses activate, if we do? Will--”
“Things will be able to take care of themselves far better, if we can open that door,” said the old gray head, as the side rat gave up and shoved its head into Aaron’s hand for scratches. He obliged.
“How do I do it?” Rose demanded. And, “will you teach me?”
“We never learned enough while we could, and we couldn’t try, once all was done,” the marquise said. “Not on our own. It requires O’Shea blood.”
Rose’s shoulders slumped. “Must everything?”
The marquise was not impressed.
The princess held up her bandaged hand. A slight stain showed, in the lantern light; blood already seeping through.
“She may have bleed on a few walls, earlier,” Aaron said. “Rather a lot.”
“...Did it work?” asked the marquise, her whiskers forward, her noses twitching for a scent.
“It certainly seemed to,” Aaron said. “The dragons couldn’t follow us down, after that. Not that way. But it’s not a thing she can be repeating soon.”
Tails tightening and contracted all over the marquise’s mass.
“We will wait,” she said. “We will not wait long. We will not trust you, O’Shea, until your pyre is stacked, and all your deeds laid on your shroud.”
“You’re not trusting an O’Shea,” Rose said. “You’re trusting me. And you can trust that I will do all I can to save my people. As you are a part of Aaron’s people, and Aaron’s people are mine, it is only transitive that you are mine, as well. …If you want to be.”
“Where did you find her?” the side head asked, nibbling Aaron’s fingertips even as he scritched at its squirming belly.
“In jail,” Aaron replied.
The head gave a sort of snort, which was not dissimilar to a full-body sneeze.
“We’ll wait,” the marquis repeated. “And if you betray us, well. Unlike your kind, we don’t let forget.”
“Well then,” Aaron said, “If we’re all agreed, shall we go making sure everyone else agrees?”
---
They picked Lochlann up from his dark little room. He was not pleased.
The Raffertys were even less so, when they reached Seventh Down.