The Sah'niir

by Kim Wedlock

  But those eyes then turned onto him, and they softened with a more personal concern. "Can we have a moment?"

  "Don't you always?"

  While the others turned to their own business, the pair stepped back into the trees, leaving Aria in Petra's vigilant care. Rathen felt himself relax as leaves closed around him once again, until Elle considered him with a despairing confusion.

  "Why ever would you want to go to the Order, Rathen?" Her voice was soft as she wrapped her slender, sun-kissed arms comfortingly about herself. "After...after everything that's happened?"

  "Because if Salus is going to keep stressing these chasms and he's that over-confident, someone is going to get hurt. The Order needs to be informed of his strength and plans so they can raise defences and save lives from his foolishness."

  "It will be dangerous. You know this."

  "It's necessary."

  "The Arana has spies in there."

  "The Arana has spies everywhere."

  "And you will bring Aria into their reach?"

  His eyes hardened into steel. This time, she shrank back. "She will be safe with me. I am not leaving her behind again. Anyway: why are you out here? You only slip out when you have orders. What are you doing?"

  "I am hunting."

  "Let me guess: for harpies and ditchlings?" He sighed as she nodded. "Here?"

  "No - Korovor."

  "You can't let Salus kill them, Elle. He surely doesn't see them as a real threat, just a nuisance - but I can't shake the feeling that they and their alliance will be crucial for us before too much longer, if just because he underestimates them. We need to use that - both of us do. We helped them settle their dispute, even if it's just for the moment, and for that, they've already given us their aid."

  "Scrambling into the keliceran's office? A daring group, I have to admit..."

  He blinked. "You were in there?"

  "I was. And I told no one. They left a muddy mess, though, so I had to send someone in to clean up. Daring, but none too mindful. If I'd not been in there at that moment, Salus would have identified the prints and...well, I shudder to think of the 'preventative' measures he'd have taken." She cocked an eyebrow at his confusion. "Why did I leave them alone? Who are you talking to, my love? I knew you had dealings with them - though I have to admit, I didn't realise you'd entered into such levels of diplomacy."

  "That's using the term a little wildly, there." His gaze hardened imploringly again. "We need them, Elle."

  "Yes, I know you do. But there are many holes and eyries studding our forests - not all of which are occupied. Perhaps they saw me and fled."

  "Reporting abandoned warrens? That won't cast a good colour on your record."

  "I'm sure it will be fine."

  "Elle, you can't afford to slip up. You could...if he finds out that you're sabotaging him--"

  "Then I'll think of something else. Let me worry about it, my love. I know the danger he poses far better than you. And he won't suspect me of sabotage."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  She smiled at him softly, with the most earnest promise. "Because I know what I'm doing."

  He searched her eyes for a long moment, seeking any clue to the source of her confidence or for some hint she was laying down to soothe him without saying too much. If anything was there, he couldn't find it.

  A cool breeze rustled through the branches above them, carrying the scent of meadows. Finally, defeat weighted his shoulders. He sighed heavily, shaking his head, and his eyes paced over the tree roots and thin, shaded grass. They bore a whisper of heartache when they lifted back to her. "You can't keep coming to us. You're going to get caught. We're being tracked, you know this - why risk it?"

  Her smile didn't change. "You seem to forget who I am. What I've been doing for twenty five years." She took his hand as his pale face twisted in exasperation, but rather than challenge her skill, he squeezed her fingers and pulled her close. She returned the embrace fervently. But as she rested her cheek against his collarbone and allowed herself to get lost in his familiar hold, decade-old memories shattered the unobtainable moment. She held him tighter as fear crept up her spine. "Are you all right?"

  He didn't need to ask what she'd meant. His own memories merely days old and whose confusion was still much too fresh strangled his own peace away. But he didn't answer. She squeezed him softly, as though she'd heard his silent thoughts.

  When she stepped back, dragging with her the last of their contact's bliss, she offered him a smile both sympathetic and heart-wrenching. "You have things to think about."

  "No, Elle--"

  "I'll find you tonight. You'll know when I'm there." She leaned up and kissed the dejected bow of his lips, closing her eyes against his disappointment. He was late to return it, and pulled her back when she began to leave. They remained with each other, troubled, daunted and shaken, neither speaking a word of it. When he finally let her go, she stepped away backwards, and they watched one another until she disappeared.

  He found leaving the pacifying trees twice as hard the second time.

  They'd discussed the matter at length by the time the old and unremarkable town of Eselon appeared over the hills, but they had agreed upon nothing. Rathen was the most qualified to comment on what was and was not magically possible, and what was and was not within the skills of the mages on hand during wartime, but he had also not set foot in the city for eleven years and had no idea of the advances the Order had made, never mind changes to the city itself. Garon, on the other hand, advised on the best routes into the city, none of which worked with Rathen's information, and stood rigidly against alternative suggestions.

  Among all of this was talk of who best to avoid - Rathen wanted to speak to the grand magister, while Garon wanted to avoid the head of the Order at all costs. Then just how much to tell them - Rathen was prepared to answer their every question and defuse their hostility, while Garon felt it was only necessary to get in, tell a single reliable individual what Salus was doing, and leave.

  And so, by the time they'd found a suitable hiding place beside a small if much too recent rockslide, they'd reached no decisions at all. But Garon left anyway, presumably to write more than 'help' and hopefully not naively confident of his own colleagues' trust. Rathen wished someone could go with him and make sure he didn't do anything stupid.

  They waited under tension, but the inquisitor was quick to return, message sent and curt words questioning the inherent intelligence of the officer on duty still ringing in the poor man's ears.

  "'Under orders of the First Commander'?" Anthis had asked with some scepticism.

  "It's not unheard of to incriminate one's self if it means successfully completing orders," Garon had explained, setting them off away from the ominously loose rocks without a moment to lose. "There's no better way to earn a criminal's trust, and it makes for tidier arrests."

  "And what if he does check up on it?"

  Garon grunted in amusement at a thought he failed to share. "He won't."

  They didn't stop until the thick of night, recent experiences still riding on their heels, and were rewarded for their patience with an abandoned shack along a hunting track, long-overgrown in the hills. It was cooler within the wooden walls, and they ate their usual rations without a fire beneath the sounds of chirping insects and the occasional creak of wall panels.

  Rathen was quick to finish and vanish outside to stare intently through the trees, leaving Aria in Anthis's company, who was only too pleased to watch her - if even a little relieved. The pair sat together with Eyila in a shaft of blinding moonlight to continue reading their book.

  Noting and ignoring Rathen's silent departure minutes later, and satisfied by the implications of Taliel's frivolous arrival, Garon watched the three through the broken doorway with a mind of absent thought. As odd as it was to watch a child teach an adult how to read, the young woman appeared to be making progress, and she beamed with no small amount of amazement at her every success. Ant
his smiled even broader, and his gaze when it lifted from the page she wrote upon lingered with the most blatant affection.

  Garon couldn't understand it, himself - Eyila was much too quiet. She had a firm hand occasionally, but she spent too much time watching, weighing and observing, never giving input. He'd seen little of her personality. She was impossible to read, and her expressions set him on edge sometimes - another culture, perhaps, but being unable to predict her reactions nor read them when they occurred made plans and encounters potentially hazardous. He couldn't bear to think of what would happen when she stepped into Kulokhar. She couldn't be left outside, and they could be subject to the Order's hospitality for a very long while. Imprisoned by it, some might say. The thought made him anxious.

  Ten minutes later, Eyila exclaimed victoriously while Aria clapped and Anthis gave her another of his foolish grins. She'd made it ten pages. Of course the script was large and each bore around eleven lines, never mind the illustrations that often occupied half to a full page, but progress was progress and it rounded her education of their own tongue - a tongue she already spoke so smoothly. He wondered absently how many others she could speak - the tribes learned from trade, even the isolated ones, and more countries than Turunda traded in their wares. And it wasn't as surprising as it should have been that the village healer was among those most fluent. Out in the desert, she was traders' only hope of aid if they fell foul of some beast, plant, dust storm or sun beam, and no matter how hostile they might be to 'cityfolk', if they wanted trade to stay open, they needed traders alive.

  But Garon couldn't help wondering, as Anthis stared at her again for a fraction too long before tearing his eyes a touch desperately back to the parchment, what had caused the awkward young man to finally shed his discomfort around her. Or, shed enough of it in Aria's company to be able to function rather than turn crimson and babble.

  He grunted bitterly to himself. Rathen must have yelled at him, too.

  Suddenly, the idea that Anthis could be braver than him rankled like name-calling among toddlers, and his mind stopped free of all other thoughts. Even recognising that juvenility, he continued to let it chafe.

  Then he turned away from the house and headed purposefully further up the hill.

  Petra wasn't hard to find. Some ways up, overlooking house and slope, she sat quietly against a rock. Her sword, daggers and bolas were piled on the ground beside her, her locket in her hands, but this time she stared off into space, lost in her thoughts while her thumb slowly polished the moon-bathed silver. It wasn't difficult to guess what was on her mind.

  Garon slowed his approach and skirted around a short ways so as not to put her off. He came to a quiet stop beside her, and after a silent debate, hushed the domineering voice in his head and sat down on the rock. She didn't look up, and he didn't say anything. When she finally spoke, her tone was so soft that he wondered if she'd confused him with another.

  "I'd never killed anyone before I joined you."

  That surprised him a little as he thought back to bandits and their near-miss with the phidipan at Nestor. "You've never had any trouble with it..."

  She scoffed in distinct disagreement, but didn't elaborate. "The world's better off without them. But the...the bounty hunter was the first who didn't deserve it."

  "But you didn't kill him."

  "I was going to."

  "He had bleak intentions."

  "He was doing his job."

  He decided not to comment on the fact that his 'job' was entirely voluntary and that no employer was going to hound him over it. As a 'professional' duelist, he supposed she had some unique understanding of the man that escaped him completely.

  "I should have killed him," she continued sullenly. "It would have been kinder. I knew what was going to happen...but I thought I could keep Rath...Rathen's attention. I should have known better..."

  "And if you had kept his attention, Rathen would have turned on you."

  She said nothing. Even through the darkness he could see doubt flickering in her eyes as she stared away down the hill, her fingers fiddling unceasingly with the locket. She seemed to become aware of it and clasped them around it instead. "What will my sister think when she sees me?"

  "Why should she think anything?"

  She didn't seem able to find an answer.

  He shook his head at her foolishness, but his tone didn't harden. "You think you've changed. You haven't. You're as stubborn, determined and impossible as ever. She won't see any difference."

  "My, you do know how to flatter a girl."

  "All right. You're as graceful, beautiful and surprising as ever. Either way, she still won't see any difference." He missed the frown that flickered across her brow, but she didn't raise her head. "You killed in defence. Every single time. Your sister - Celise? She's a soldier. She will be able to appreciate that."

  Her lips twisted, not unattractively, and she breathed a heavy sigh. "I guess... She never fully supported my choices, but I suppose she'd be glad to know I can defend people, too. Not just knock seven bells out of them..."

  "Yes, well, we can't all choose what we're good at." His lips bowed ever so slightly, but her own remained downturned. His smile quickly fled. "Don't carry shame, Petra. Whether because you killed someone, or because you didn't. You needed his help. How did you expect to throw that bolas if Rathen was running after you?"

  "I'd have managed." Her tone turned suddenly flat. She was finished with the subject, and seemed to have detected some hint of a phantom insult in his words.

  He eased his sigh into a long, silent breath and looked back down towards the old shack. The two sat in silence for a long minute until a red scent, spicy and floral, drifted towards him on an uplifted breeze. He looked back towards her and finally noticed the depth of her hair through the night. "Your hair is red again." He regretted the stupid statement the moment he said it. "I thought you said it stood out too much."

  "The copper beneath stands out no less. And the posters aren't in colour. A face is a face. Besides, the Arana is too advanced to go by hair colour alone." She raised her head then, and looked at him askance, hazel eyes suddenly swirling with all too familiar mistrust. "Why are you here? I'm too tired for an argument."

  "Good," he replied lightly. "So am I. I'd rather talk."

  She cocked a cynical eyebrow. "Talk? What about? Why I'm sitting up here by myself? Why I'm not patrolling? Or, perhaps it's about my father again." She fastened the chain back around her neck and tucked the oval away. "Like, 'why am I not at the Crucible where he would want me to be?' Or, 'why am I not out there looking for his killer even though it's clear there's nothing I can do here?' Because I'd love the answer to that, too. Or is it something stupid, like my favourite jump-rope game, or my favourite kind of cake? Why my hair is red? Why I put my life on the line to protect people who are ultimately strangers? Why I worry about you when you're so set on doing everything yourself? Why I don't just leave you alone, return to my world, to what I'm good at, and rid myself of your sheer, relentless...contemptible pigheadedness?!"

  He watched the tempest gather in her eyes, and he wanted to answer, to calm her sudden ire, reassure her that he wasn't out to hurt or belittle her, but out of nowhere a hammer-strike of shock rattled his thoughts to an utterly useless end. In the helpless grip of those screaming green-brown eyes - their volatility suddenly so clear, presenting a keening truth so often shut away, so often manifesting as hatred whenever he was around - he found in them a terrible familiarity.

  Instantly, he was thrown back to that misty, elven island, to the moment when those very same eyes had gripped him the first time, as equally unable to suppress the turmoil raging behind them then as now, but through whose chaos he had discerned but one single fact...

  He'd thought that hatred was aimed at him. Only now did he realise that it wasn't. Not entirely. He had shut that moment on the island away, dismissed it as nonsense on both their parts. But Rathen had been correct - and he had known it himse
lf all along. He'd just chosen to...

  'To protect myself.'

  He could answer her every question. Now he understood. She'd found something else. And it speared him with shame.

  "...Yes." The word slipped out before he realised his lips had moved, and his eyes, he knew, were stupidly wide, and yet he couldn't seem to reduce them.

  She didn't seem to notice. "Yes?!" She stared back at him, exasperated. And hateful. "What does 'yes' mean?!"

  But still he could only stare, searching her blazing eyes, vexed and wounded and confused. She was distressed. He was distressed. He knew it would be best for both their sakes to turn around and leave even before the voice in his head rose to a commanding bellow against the childish and unruly voice that egged him on. Somehow, among the chaos, he managed to find his hands and push himself up. But his feet didn't follow. He leaned over instead, his heart thumping in his skull, and kissed her without a thought.

  A cold heat flared swiftly across his cheek, and he heard her voice hiss. "What do you think you're doing?!"

  He blinked and stared back at her, stunned and stammering, but before he could catch up with the escaping seconds, his heart, dropping in his chest in repugnant humiliation, leapt back into his throat.

  Her cheeks had darkened. Her body stilled. Her eyes emptied of every rage and sorrow, glittering instead with a nervous, aching hope that shortened her breath despite the guarded turn of her head. She searched his eyes. He searched hers. They both found confusion; they both found comprehension.

  His chest tremored as her eyes dropped to his lips, his own breath quickened, and slowly, assertively, she began to lean in. He didn't let himself shy back.

  He caught her warmth, her scent, rosehip and spices, and he breathed it as insatiably as he had that first time. A heartbeat later he felt her breath brush his skin. He braced himself, but still her lips met his long before he was ready. Again her walls crumbled. But this time, his came with them.

  In that moment she was, to him, perfectly simple: fragile but convicted, troubled but driven, honourable and moral to a fault. And there was again that thriving flame of passion that drove her every word and reason, concealed beneath that thin, fragile glass guard, carefully contained, easily released, and burning brighter and hotter than anyone could know.