Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 27 of 44

Rook laid the forbidden book on the throne room floor. Its pages were dark with age. The letters were carved marks, not writing, the same old tongue Bailey once read in the swamp roots. "This names your birth, Your Majesty," Rook said. "But I can't read it. One wrong mark could tell you a false past." Bailey knelt over the book. The marks blurred together. He knew this tongue, but a slip could send him chasing a lie about what he was. Tyrek crouched beside him, knife still on his belt. He had guarded Bailey since the swamp. "You trust this book?" Tyrek asked. "Books lie easy as men." Cora came from the doorway, her cracked wand tapping her palm. His sister had read the same carvings once. "We can't guess at this," she said. "Guess wrong and we chase a false story into a trap." Crane spoke from the wall. The old officer had served the dead King for years before he turned. "There is one who reads the old tongue clean," he said. "A butcher woman from the marsh. She twists nothing. She has no throne to want." Bailey looked at Cora. Cora nodded. They brought her that night. Calla Voss was a hunched old woman with bone charms braided in her white hair. She carried a cleaver even here. She smelled of smoke and dried meat. She did not bow. She looked at Bailey and grunted. "You've got old eyes, boy. Older than your face." She knelt and set the cleaver down. Her finger moved along the carved marks, slow, one at a time. "This mark is a name," she said. "Not two. Fools split it and read a lie." She read for an hour. Bailey held his breath at every pause. Then she stopped. Her hand shook. "Here," she said. "Your mother did not carve your name for the King. The King stole it. He carved his loyalists' tokens from the same marks. He wanted the old blood for himself." She looked up. "You were not born a warden, boy. You were marked to be one. Your uncle's debt was set on you before you drew breath. Your family gave you to the swamp to hide you from the King who hunted your line." Bailey sat back on the cold stone. The book did not lie now. Calla had read it clean. He was not made in the swamp by chance. He was hidden there on purpose, by his own blood, from the man whose throne he now held. "Who chose to hide me?" Bailey asked. Calla tapped the last carved line. "Your mother's own hand made this book," she said. "And she named the place she meant to fetch you back from." She read the marks aloud. A name Bailey did not know. A living name. Bailey stood. His mother had planned his return. Someone still waited where she meant to send him. And that someone knew what he truly was.