And it began.
One by one, the people approached, quickly stated their case, and a judgment was made. I listened more to what they weren’t saying, just like I’d done before, terrified that I would make the wrong choice. Kjell would lean in, I would cup my hand over my mouth, pretending to speak privately, though my lips never moved, and I would tell him my judgment. He would repeat my verdict and we would move onto the next case. He never questioned me or raised a condescending eyebrow.
I grew more confident as the day progressed, relying almost entirely on my ability to hear what others couldn’t. When I was unsure, I asked Kjell for guidance, and he would make a suggestion. But that happened less and less as the day wore on.
Toward the end of the day, a man came forward and laid a large satchel at the foot of the dais.
“Tell the queen your trouble,” Kjell commanded impatiently.
“I caught a Changer,” the man exclaimed excitedly. “I hunt them . . . for the good of Jeru, of course.”
“Show me,” Kjell commanded, sounding exactly like Tiras, and I heard the same apprehension in his voice that gripped my chest.
The man opened his satchel and pulled out a huge black bird with a glossy white head. He laid it out carefully and stepped back, puffing his chest and standing akimbo like he’d presented me with a chest of jewels.
The bird was limp and lifeless.
I rose from my throne, overcome with dread, and Kjell hissed beside me, telling the hunter to back away. I knelt beside the bird and raised his red-tipped wing. I started to shake, my vision blurring as Kjell pulled me away. The feathers were still warm, and bile rose dangerously in my throat. I collapsed in my throne, unable to stand.
“How do you know it was a Changer?” Kjell asked, his voice so cold the man shivered where he stood, sensing his offering had not been well-received.
“I saw her change,” the man babbled. My heart stuttered and skipped, and guilt warred with the sliver of hope that made me ask, Her?
“Her?” Kjell repeated.
“She was a woman one moment . . . then she changed. She flew away. I set a snare . . . and I caught her when she returned.”
“And you killed her?” Kjell asked.
“She is a Changer,” the man repeated, as if that were explanation enough. I rose to my feet once more, outrage giving me mettle, and the man must have seen something in my face that alarmed him, for he began to back up.
“I didn’t mean to kill it. It was alive in my snare. I covered it in the shroud and put it in the sack. There must not have been sufficient air.”
The law says only the king can condemn the Gifted.
Kjell repeated what I’d said, and the man began to tremble.
“But . . . King Zoltev—” he stammered.
“Is no longer the king,” Kjell finished. He turned and approached my throne so that I could pretend to confer with him.
He has lost the right to hunt. If he is caught hunting, he will be executed. Killing eagles—Changers or not—in Jeru is now prohibited. Let it be written, let it be done.
Kjell repeated my judgment.
“But . . . how will I live?” the man wailed.
Tell him he may trap rodents and snakes. Each week he may present his kill to Mistress Lorena in the courtyard of the castle, and she will pay him for his services to Jeru.
The man accepted the judgement with wide eyes and made to take the eagle.
Tell him to leave the bird.
Kjell did as I asked.
I want to know where he killed her.
“There’s a cottage in the western wood, not far from the perimeter wall. She was there,” the man answered Kjell without hesitation, eager to redeem himself.
My heart ceased beating once again.
When I couldn’t continue with the hearings, Kjell told those waiting in the long line that we would resume first thing in the morning. I waited—sitting motionless on my throne—until the hall cleared and the guard moved to their exterior posts. Kjell waited with me, standing over the bird, his hands clenched and his eyes wet.
“I don’t know what to do,” he confessed. “I don’t know what is right or wrong anymore. And I’m afraid I’ll never see my brother again.”
I went looking for Tiras. It wasn’t the first time in the last twenty-eight days. I’d disregarded the king’s wishes repeatedly, walking through the forest with Boojohni trundling behind me when I couldn’t escape him. He had stayed close, sensitive to my emotions and to the ever-increasing absences of the king. But I had magic on my side, and that night I slipped away unnoticed.
I walked to the cottage in the western wood, the one where Tiras had shared his secret, the cottage so perfectly described by the huntsman. No eagle swooped down to greet me, to give me words and point me toward home, but there were signs that someone had been in the cottage. A dish, a comb, firewood on the hearth.
None of the items had been there before. I touched the comb in confusion and turned toward the bed where I’d spent a miserable night after escaping the castle, wondering where I would go and what I would do. Someone had slept in the bed since. The bed was not made. Had Tiras changed and simply stayed away? Had his Gift taken yet another piece of him, a piece that made him believe he could no longer return to the castle?
I slumped down on the bed, so weary I could no longer stand.
Tiras? I called. Tiras, please don’t hide from me.
The shutters on the cottage banged against the stone, lifted by the wind, and I listened for an answering voice, a heartbeat, a flutter of wings, but heard nothing but my own trepidation. I bowed my head in dejection, my gaze falling to the hard-packed dirt floor.