Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 39 of 44

Bailey left Calla's shack with his answer and rode hard for the palace. He knew the swamp would strike back. He did not know it would wear a face he trusted. Cora rode close behind, her cracked wand loose in her hand. Rufus and Crane flanked them. They reached the palace courtyard by dusk and found the gates open and the guards uneasy. Colt Brennan met them in the yard, his one good eye sharp behind his glass lens. "A boy came out of the marsh," he said. "Brown hair, wet clothes. Says his name is Finn. He's been telling your soldiers the swamp declares war. Half of them believe him." Bailey went cold. Finn was the swamp's spirit. He had dissolved into the water long ago. Now the swamp had made itself a body. Bailey found the boy standing on the throne room steps, dripping, smiling that wrong smile. Soldiers gathered around him, hands on their swords, unsure who to obey. "You took my warden," Finn said. His voice carried water in it. "You took my cage. You freed my keeper. So I will drown this whole city and take you back." He raised a wet hand. Vines shivered up through the stone floor. Bailey did not draw his sword. He remembered what he was now. He was the swamp's returned child. The water had given him back once. That made him part of it, not only its prey. "You can't drown me," he said. "I'm yours. You made me. Kill this city and you kill your own." Finn's smile faltered. Bailey stepped forward and pressed his bare hand flat against the crawling vines. He spoke the old tongue, the words his hands had learned in the root den. He did not command the swamp. He claimed it. "I am the child you returned. I hold the ground you stand on." The vines stopped. Finn shook, water running from his hair in sheets. Bram Mosswick pushed through the crowd then, horns lowered, the broken manacles still on his wrists. He set his huge hands on the boy's shoulders and held him fast. "Speak your last, spirit," Bram said. "The king's kin holds you." Bailey kept his hand on the vines and finished the binding. The false body sagged. Finn's face melted into muddy water. It ran down the steps and soaked into the cracks between the stones. The vines withered and pulled back underground. The soldiers dropped to their knees. Bailey stood breathing hard. He had turned the swamp's war aside. But he understood now what it cost. He had claimed the swamp as his own to stop it. He had become its master and its child both. Cora took his arm. "It's gone," she said. Bailey shook his head. "It went into the ground. It's still in me. And now the whole city saw me speak its tongue." His own people had watched him command the marsh. They would fear what their king truly was. “A hero.” Cora said, “That’s what we all see.”