Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War 1)

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The sun set and Snorri spent that time in the Ikea’s prow, staring north, his black eyes no doubt hunting the Norsheim coast. My strength made no return; if anything, I grew weaker as the night fell. I tried some dry bread and water, donated them to the sea, and dropped into a dreamless slumber.

Dreamless at least until I started dreaming of angels.

I stood in the predawn, on the hills just beyond Vermillion’s farmlands, looking down at the Seleen snaking westward towards the distant sea. Baraqel stood above me, on the hilltop, statued against the sky, unmoving until the rays of the rising sun lit his shoulders.

“Hear me, Jalan Kendeth, son of—”

“I know who I’m son of.”

The angel had far more gravitas about him now than he had in his early visits. As if he spoke more with his own voice than the one I’d fashioned for him back when he was nine parts imagination.

“The time will soon come when you will need to remember where you sprang from. You sail into the land of sagas—a place where heroes are needed, and made. You will need your courage.”

“I don’t think remembering my father will help there. The good cardinal would turn and run if a goat blocked his path. It wouldn’t have to be a big one either.”

“It’s in the nature of children to see past the strengths of their parents. Time to grow up, Jalan Kendeth.” He lifted his face to me, golden-eyed, glowing with the dawn.

“And what’s so great about being brave? Skilfar had the right of it. We’re all running around each according to our nature, some cunning, some honest, some sly, some brave—but what of it?”

Baraqel flexed his wings. “Your grandmother spoke to her sister of you. ‘Has he the mettle? Has he the courage required?’ An ‘idle, shallow boy, full of bluster but ringing hollow,’ she called you, Jalan. ‘A mind blunted by sloth, blinkered by a dry wit,’ she said, ‘but whet it and that mind could take an edge. Had we but world enough and time what we might make of the child . . . but we have neither world nor time. Our cause is narrowing to a point not so many miles distant, a second not so many years hence and in that spot, in that moment, will come a test on which the world will turn.’ These are the words she drew you with.”

“I’d be surprised if she knew which one I was. And I’m sharp enough when I need to be. Bravery is just a different kind of broken. The quins are missing whatever it is a man needs in order to feel fear. Snorri’s scared of being a coward. There’s a wyrm like that in their heathen stories, Oroborus, eating its own tail. Scared of being a coward, is that what bravery is? Am I brave because I don’t fear being afraid? You’re of the light; the light reveals. Shine a bright enough light on any kind of bravery and isn’t it just a more complex form of cowardice?”

I stood a moment, the heels of my palms pressed to my forehead, hunting the words.

“Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.” I ran out of words under his gaze.

“Cleverness builds ever more elaborate structures of self-justification,” he said, judgment spilling from his mouth. “But in the end you know what is and what is not right. All men do, though they may spend their years trying to bury that knowing, burying it beneath words, hatreds, lusts, sorrow, or any of the other bricks from which they build their lives. You know what is right, Jalan. When the time comes, you’ll know. But knowing is never enough.”

They told me I spent the best part of a week insensible. Sleeping twenty-two hours in twenty-four, half-waking to let Tuttugu spoon warm gruel down my throat—some of it down the inside, some down the outside. A quin had to hold each arm when nature called me on infrequent trips to the side, or I’d have pitched in and not have been seen again. We crossed the open sea, then followed the Norsheim coast day upon day, heading north.

“Wake up.” The angel’s only instruction this sunrise.

I opened my eyes. Grey dawn, flapping sailcloth, the cry of gulls. Baraqel silenced. The angel spoke true. I always know what is right. I just don’t do it. “Are we nearly there yet?” I felt better. Almost good.

“Not far.” Tuttugu sitting close by. Others moved about the longship in the dimness.

“Oh.” From behind closed eyelids I tried to imagine terra firma, hoping to stave off a prebreakfast vomit.

“Snorri says you’re good with wounds,” Tuttugu said.

“Christ. This voyage is going to kill me.” I tried to sit and fell off the bench, still weak. “I thought it would be the undead horrors and mad axe-men out on the ice. But no. I’m going to die at sea.”