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k_a_webbPart 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
The long silence that followed what Kestrel said didn’t bother her. Instead she took the chance to study her brother, someone she’d once been close to and now realised she didn’t know, thanks to the choices they had both made, as well as the decisions made by their father. She had other family she hadn’t even known existed, because of their grandfather. A grandfather she had heard about three or four times in her life. When she looked at Ash their eyes locked and somehow she knew he was thinking about the same thing she was. Gently she squeezed his hand, knowing that, no matter what happened in the future, he was the one she was going to trust. Maybe he hadn’t been ready to tell her that they were related, but he was ready to treat her like a person, rather than just a part of the plan… unlike Falcon.
Kestrel wasn’t angry with Falcon. Not in the way she was angry with their father, and grandfather, anyway. She was disappointed with him, disappointed that after all they’d been through he hadn’t given her a chance to shoulder the burden with him. Even if he had done it to protect her she was happy that he had made that decision alone, because, in the end, it was up to her whether or not she learnt magic, whether or not she followed the plan that had been created long before she was born, and, for some reason, they hadn’t agreed. Sighing, she lent her head on Ash’s shoulder, felt him rest his head on top of hers, and tried not to wonder how different her life would have been if she wasn’t part of the family she had been born into.
“It’s not that simple, Kess,” Falcon said, running a hand through his hair. “I know you think it is, but it’s not. Ever since grandfather set foot in Ildieu he’s been entirely focused on protecting the city from what’s coming and this happening… it changes everything.”
“Yes, it does,” Ash agreed, his voice almost emotionless. “Instead of being pawns in a plan that was created long before we were born we can now make our own choices. Maybe our family was right, but they might not be, and we’re the ones who are here, we’re the ones who will be dealing with whatever happens on the equinox, and we’re the ones they have treated like we have no right to our own lives.” He sighed. “Look, Falcon, they obviously didn’t know us, as the decisions were made so long ago, and that changes things. Our grandfather doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know that I never wanted to be the leader of the Grey Gardens, but my father told me I was needed here… and now I don’t believe him, because you were here the whole time.”
“He wasn’t lying to you. You are needed here, Ash, because you are a black mage. It gives you abilities that no one else in this city has and means you can teach Kess what she needs to know. Kestrel, Ash was always going to be your teacher. Eventually, even without this happening, you would have given in, you would have accepted his offer to teach you magic.”
“Falcon, that just goes to show you don’t know me at all. The only person I ever wanted to learn from was you, because you’re my brother as well as my leader and you promised me that you would teach me, so I was going to hold you to that promise, no matter how long it took. Ash’s offer meant nothing to me. Him being family doesn’t really change anything now.” Kestrel shrugged. “What changes things is learning who you are.”
“Kess…”
She shook her head. “No, Falcon, this may all have been worked out in advance, and I get that you were just following orders, but that doesn’t change how I feel about the choices you made. When our father left you could easily have told me what was going on instead of following in his footsteps. He doesn’t know what’s happening here. I’m not even all that sure he cares. You keep saying that everything they did was part of a plan to protect Ildieu and yet they kept the two most important parts of their plan in the dark. Had they thought about all of this logically they would have told us, so we could be better prepared for what was coming, because then we wouldn’t be in the position now.”
“The choices you made when your father left have affected your relationship with your sister.” Ash bit his lip. “The choices you made before he left did… because it seems to me like you always put his orders first when, to me, it would have made more sense for you to have thought about what he was telling you before making your own decisions. Now all I can see is yet another person who can’t think for himself.”
“You did what your father told you to do.”
“I listened to what my father told me and then I made my own decision, Falcon. Don’t assume that the way you think is the way I think, because we’re very different people, and I went through experiences that you can never imagine. When I came here it was so I could protect the people of this city – from your inability to lead them through what was coming. You have no idea what people outside the city think of you, what they’ve said about you, and you are why they’re coming now.”
“I know.” Falcon sighed. “They all see me as something I’m not, because I followed my father’s orders, and I do often wish I hadn’t, but I made the choice long ago. He was much more experience than me, he knew much more than I did, he’d been preparing for this for centuries, and I was, at the time, a child. I truly believed that he was doing the right thing. Now… I don’t know, Ash, I really don’t. My choice might have been the wrong one, I should never have done what he thought was right, but it’s done now.”
“We still have time to put together a plan of our own, Falcon. If we work together, and work with the other houses, we can prepare for the invasion in our own way, rather than relying on them.” Their eyes met and Kestrel could see the confusion in Falcon’s, as he tried to work out what the best option was. “No matter what you decide Ash and I are doing this our way. I’m quite sure I speak for both of us when I say that we aren’t happy with the way we were treated and for our family to have made the decisions they did about us… they didn’t have the right to make them. This is my life and I will do with it what I believe is right, even if that does bring about the end of Ildieu. To be honest the city doesn’t mean all that much to me. All it’s been is a prison.”
Ash nodded. “Kestrel’s right. She does speak for both of us. My father never had the right to make the decisions he did for me, but at least he took me away from Ildieu and gave me a chance to learn magic. Your father has stifled Kestrel, out of fear, because they thought she’d do the same thing my sister did, and it’s quite obvious to me that she never would have done. My sister, when told that she wasn’t permitted to learn magic, would never have taught herself how to make poisons.”
“You promised me you’d stop.”
“I lied.”
“Why, Kestrel?”
“Did you really think that I was going to leave myself unprotected because you were scared of what I was doing? I was never scared, Falcon, because I knew that what I was doing was dangerous, and that meant I was careful.” Kestrel shook her head. “Being my brother meant that you had the right to worry about me, but you never had the right to leave me in danger – as my brother or the leader of my house. As I’m here that’s obviously exactly what you did.”
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I know.” For the first time Kestrel was actually glad she could only see her brother in the crystal because otherwise she might have done something that she’d regret later. “Even if you’d taught me what I needed to know I might still have ended up here, but at least then I would have stood a chance.”
“She would have been able to protect herself from the sleep spell that was thrown at her, Falcon, and we both know that. By failing to teach her you put her in danger. What if it hadn’t been us?”
“Father said it would be.”
“Even if your father had looked at this he knows as well as you do that all he would have been able to see was a possibility. It was just as likely it would have been someone else, someone who thinks of you as an enemy, and then Kestrel would have been in grave danger because you always believed what he told you.”
Falcon bit his lip. “Kestrel, I owe you an apology. Ash is right. I believed Father and I shouldn’t have done in this case, but I do understand why he didn’t want you to learn to use magic – he was terrified you would end up in the same state that Mira is now in and if that had happened we would have lost our only chance of having a female black mage in Ildieu at the time we needed her.”
“Father always was an idiot.” Kestrel shrugged. “What do we do know then, Falcon? Do we follow the plans that our father and grandfather created, that you believed before were the right thing to do? Or do we create our own, prepare for what happens if those plans don’t work, because there are no guarantees that they will? It doesn’t matter to me what they thought, because we are the ones who are living here now, we’re the ones who might well be standing alone when the city is under attack, and it’s time you started to act like an adult in your own right.”
“I forgot how blunt you could be,” Falcon said, and Kestrel could see the pain in his eyes. She was sorry that she’d hurt him with her words, but that didn’t change how she felt, because she truly believed that relying on a plan created by people who didn’t know them was a stupid idea. “Give me a couple of hours to think about things and look back the journal that Father left me. Right now my thoughts are all over the place and I don’t know what to do, Kestrel, but that doesn’t mean the two of you shouldn’t start making your own plans without me.”
The face in the crystal disappeared. Kestrel looked at Ash. “Was I too harsh?”
Ash shook his head. “I don’t think you were, but Falcon doesn’t see things the same way we do. He honestly believed he was doing the right thing, while we… we have trouble understanding why he accepted plans that were made by people who seem to think they can run our lives without even knowing us. We’re both angry with people we trusted, because they acted as though we’re nothing but mindless puppets, while Falcon was told what they believed he needed to know, giving him a position of power over the two of us.”
“Where do the two of you go from here?” Jasper asked, making Kestrel jump because she’d truly forgotten that he was there. “Do you start making your own plans without Falcon or are you going to wait and see if ends up agreeing with the two of you?”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
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Date: 2014-05-06 12:55 am (UTC)