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45
There are other people here, I think to myself, as the world shrinks down to the vicious gleam in Li’s eyes.There are other people here who will fight on your behalf.
But that’s not what I want, either. For whatever reason, Li has made this personal — and I hate, Ihate, to think this is all because of Rory, but really it’s the only thing that connects us in the first place.
I’m all defense: I shield my face with my arms, I bat Li’s grasping fingers from my hair. Blows rain down on my exposed side, as I’m shoved between Li and the railings. My body jerks in response, twitching with aftershocks as it remembers, as it’s forced to recall, how expertly she eviscerated me last year. I’d lain on the floor, crying, bleeding, alone. And I don’t want that. I don’t want that ever again.
And more than that, I also don’t want to wait to besaved.
So I find myself reacting. It’s pure instinct. I don’t know what I’m doing, but it’s less thick-shelled shrouded turtle and something manufactured, too quick to require thought, in a necessary split-second rush. It’s more impressive, more showy, and entirely inauthentic, because all Idowant to do is curl into my safe shell again. I mimic Li. My hands collide with her hands. My elbow knocks hers from mine. I fake it till I make it. Feet stomp on hers, and I notice that this is somewhere I have an advantage, that her spotless patent leather flats are small enough to be utterly dwarfed by my boring, sensible school shoes. Her shoes gleam with spots of light reflected from the lanterns, and I stand on them like it’s a game, scuffing and destroying their prettiness, until, like a cat chasing a laser pen, this is all I can focus on. Like maybe I’ll be rewarded for this. Like maybe she’ll finally leave me alone.
A clawed fist collides with my face, so I retaliate by doing the same to Li, and attempt to add a few scratches for good measure. It feels like I’ve turned feral, that I’m no longer myself anymore. But if Finlay can do this and everyone can be quietly awed, then why the hell can’t I?
All I want is to avoid what happened to me last year. She beat me up. Sheruinedme. I never want to be in that position again, crumpled and weak and disposed of while she crows in victory and I’m nothing more than an example to be made from. No. I’m more than that now. I’m part of the chiefs, and while there’s power in this alone, I know this fight is still up to me. And so I want to show that maybe it’s still true, that defense can be a kind of offense.
I twist my body, dragging Li into the railings and pinning her into place by standing on her shoes. She jerks beneath me, gnashing like a wild, captured thing, as I shove her hard against the wooden handrail and force her to look down.
From above, the statue glitters, golden in lamplight like an extravagant trophy. A roaring lion and a rearing unicorn, fighting over a crown.
And then I see it:I see everything.
It’s a peculiar angle, but seeing it anew makes the meaning of it hit me at once. Its message crystallizes in those heady seconds as I attempt to hold Li against the railings.
Offense and defense in one ying-yang depiction, ornamented with jagged edges and angles and points within both creatures. It’s a statement, a testament. You can’t have one without the other. The lion will never be free of the unicorn, nor the unicorn free of the lion, not when they’re both preoccupied with the same fight. A crown out of reach, a kingliness never to be coronated.
It’s life, carved large. Aims and ambitions and the driving force of politics. To fight and fight and fight for something greater than you. That’s what politics is. That’s what the two of us are, me and Li, on separate sides of the same argument. But crowns filled with jewels, sometimes, can be a distraction. And crowns cast in gold and made into art are sometimes symbols for a higher, more noble purpose.
“That’s whatyouwant,” I mutter into her ear as I slant her head down with the flat of my palm, making her observe the statue. It’s a moment out of madness — my breath is half-gone and I’m panting after such a riot. “To end this. But it will never happen, because you want to be the lion. You want to make things better, and let everyone know it, and boast to the world how much better you are because of it. But it’s the wrong way to do things. Because Antiro isdangerous.”
“The hell would you know about it?” she snarls, and shoves herself into my chest. “Get the fuck off of me, you freak!”
“No. Not until yousee. The lion doesn’t get what it wants and it never will,that’s the point.” I get the feeling that what I’m saying isn’t translating correctly, like she thinks I might have fully cracked, talking about lions like they exist here in the wilds and taking a sculpture as prophecy to heart. But my voice doesn’t even sound like mine — it’s as though I’m channeling some higher power, something elemental that resides within the castle. “The harder you fight this battle,” I say, trying to sound more rational, trying to calm my sped-up breath, “the harder you’ll fall, and the more you’ll have to lose when everything is overturned. And it’s entirely avoidable.” My voice is foreign to my ears. “It’s a balance, don’t you get it? Politics? There’s a personal cost, starting with time and energy and ending with life. Peoplelose. But systems don’t. There is no winning in politics and there is no losing in a closed system because it always rerights itself in the end. The pendulum always swings back, with or without your contribution. Sacrifice isn’t obligatory.” It sounds like some deep and ancient truth, something I’m only now grasping to understand the longer I concentrate on the golden statue, my mouth a mere vessel for its message. “I’m telling you, you can opt out. You don’t need to throw your hat in the ring to prove yourself. You don’t have to fight. We don’t need to bring violence to Lochkelvin. Stay out of it.Save yourself.”
“My God, you’re utterly nuts,” Li mutters, seemingly unappreciative of my words, and she slams into me so hard, breaking my grip on her, that I end up flying backward and crashing to the stone floor.
The spell is broken. The power that had shimmered through me for that brief moment as I’d been talking suddenly dims.
I’d spoken the truth between pain, but all at once it surges through me, electric and sparking. Every part of me aches, and as I wipe a tired hand down my face, I’m unsurprised to find a flash of bright red on my palm. I stare at Li. I stare at Arabella rushing over to her in concern. And in that moment, I realize that there is no saving some people. Some people, as Rory had noted, need to go down the wrong path first to see what they already had.
Arms wrap around my bent-over body, and I’m soothed by paper, ink and the memory of rain-lashed mountains. Belatedly, I realize I’m shivering, or that perhaps I’d merely been suppressing the desire to be open and vulnerable and weak, until Rory came along to comfort me. He holds me, making soft shushing noises. Another hand rubs up my back — Danny. I lean into them both, watching Li watching me, watching the sharp righteousness in her eyes, wondering when she became one of the converted.
“You talk a good game about not needing Rory for politics,” I say, an irresistible stab of words ground out between the bruises and the bleeding, “that you’re above him, and the next minute you’re fighting me on behalf of Antiro. Which is it? Because all I can deduce is that you’re a raging hypocrite.”
The venom as she scowls at me doesn’t shift, but Arabella does. She carefully takes Li’s hands in hers, checking her over, but it’s her angry frown as she glances down at Li’s extremely scuffed shoes that’s her greatest upset.
“There’s no point,” Danny murmurs, rubbing my arms gently. “Some people want to be right so badly that they’d rather look at feelings than facts. And Antiro brings out so many happy, rebellious feelings.”
“Does it not make you think?” I appeal to Li and Arabella, one last desperate stab with the only weapon I have on me. “Why does Oscar Munro support this? Could it be — maybe — that it’sall him?”
This does receive a flicker of emotion other than complete hatred from Li. She angles her glare over to Rory.
“If your dad is apparentlysopowerful all of a sudden,” Li says to Rory, her eyes narrowing to something as sharp as her voice, “then why aren’t you by his side like the perfect, doting son? I know you. You’d be soaking up all that attention. ‘My dad took down the house of liars.’ Yet you aren’t. Why?”
At first, I don’t think Rory is going to dignify her with a response. And then — “Because friendship is more important than treachery,” he answers quietly.
Li tilts her head to the side, and I see behind her glossy curtain of hair that I managed to scratch her cheek quite thoroughly. “AmIstill your friend, then?”
“Since I haven’t forgiven you for thrusting Lochkelvin into the spotlight, no.” His voice hardens. “And since you thought it appropriate to ask that question after attacking my girlfriend for the second time under my roof, the answer willalwaysbe no.” My heart gives a small, joyous leap. Rory meets Duncan’s eyes with a nod and adds in a tone of steel, “In fact, after what you just did, let me show how emphatic thatnois.”
