by Vela Roth
She scuffed her slipper in the hoof print of a deer. “Speaking of magic…something occurs to me.”
Lio caught himself looking at the dainty, threadbare toe of her shoe and removed his gaze before she caught him at it, too. “What’s that?”
“Unlike badgers, deer don’t come out at night.”
“They will for me.” Lio gave her his most innocent smile.
“Hm. Can you tell where they are and what they’re doing, like the badger? Even when they’re asleep?”
“Yes. I hear their hearts beating.”
She was quiet for an instant. “I suppose you knew I was on my way here.”
“And I was very glad for the warning. I would have hated for you to catch me before I’d had a chance to wash after dinner.”
Amusement hummed in her veins. “So is it Hesperine magery that allows you to hear so well?”
“Not anymore than your eyes and ears and thoughts are magery. It is the Blood Union.”
“The same Union that causes you to share the experiences of those from whom you drink?”
“Yes, and it also binds us to every living creature around us. It is through the Union that the Goddess teaches us. We live attuned to the lifeblood of others, so we may understand the world as they understand it. It is a way of knowing, which comes with the Gift.”
She shot him a curious glance. “The Gift?”
She knew the Mercy, but not the Gift? “Hespera’s Gift is what makes us what we are. That is our name for her blessing of immortality and the ability to survive on living blood, rather than dead flesh.”
A small smile appeared on Cassia’s face, and he did not miss the irony in her eyes. “Ah. So your Gift is what humans call your curse. Insatiable bloodlust, banishment from the sun, and eternal exile from the afterlife.”
“Yes, that’s right. It’s quite terrible. I lament my pale complexion more and more with each passing night.”
Her snort was definitely a chuckle in disguise. “But worst of all, you shan’t be allowed to die gloriously in battle, so you may throw spears with Anthros for all eternity and be waited upon by willing maidens.”
“That sounds rather unfair. Aren’t there any willing knights serving in the afterlife?”
“Oh no, no knights to wait on me once I get there. I am expected to be a maiden, and willing. But perhaps I shall escape such an exalted destiny, compliments of my mother, for she was not a wife.”
Lio refrained from making another jest. If he asked about her mother, would he push their Oath too far? Would Cassia begin to watch her words with him again?
Perhaps a careful, undemanding comment was worth the risk. “I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your mother.”
“Me neither. She died.”
Regret stung him. “I am so sorry.”
Cassia shrugged.
That shrug was so foreign to Lio he knew not what to say. They walked several steps in silence. He could not imagine speaking so dismissively if he had lost his mother, even if he were not as close to her as he was. But then, he had never had to protect himself every waking moment, as Cassia did. Where he came from, an open display of grief was not a sign of vulnerability that could be exploited by an enemy.
Perhaps offering up more details about himself was the most tactful way to invite her to say more—and the only way to make her feel safe in doing so. Lio waited for her to pose another question.
“Did you have kin?” she asked. “Before you…received the Gift?”
“‘Received the Gift?’” he said with appreciation. “Not, ‘turned from the gods,’ or ‘transformed into the monstrous spawn of Hespera?’”
She peered up at him, leaning one way, then the other so she could see all sides of him. “No horns, wings or other bestial features. You don’t appear monstrous to me.”
“My parents will be reassured to know that, thank you.”
He was gratified—immensely so—to see curiosity on her face. Her mask was slipping.
“Your…human parents, or do you have…?” She trailed off.
“For those of us who become Hesperines as children, the ones who rescue us and give us the Gift are our parents. Take my cousin Telemakhos, for example. His is a classic story. Mak was born with a club foot and abandoned on a cliff as an infant. My aunt and uncle found him and brought him home to Orthros.”
“Ah yes, the time-honored Tenebran practice of exposure, in which loving parents leave their children to freeze to death or be eaten by bears. If a child is born sickly, lame, out of wedlock or to parents too poor to feed it, it is a sure sign from the gods they want the babe right back as a sacrifice.”
Spoken like someone born out of wedlock herself. “I see I needn’t mince words with you. At the Summit we struggle to address the issue without implying Tenebran traditions are barbaric or making our own appear so.”
“So you really do transform abandoned children into Hesperines?”
“We cannot create life on our own, you understand…we do not conceive children, as mortals do. But we have the power to restore and preserve life as no mortal healers can. To do this for children is one of the greatest callings and greatest privileges of our kind. We call this the Solace, for we offer refuge and comfort to suffering children. But my mother once said to me the real reason for the name is that children are the solace of all Hesperines.”
“What is it like, when you change them?”
“Hesperine parents nurture the child on blood, as humans nourish their own with milk and food.”
Cassia did not follow with another question this time. Lio clasped his hands behind his back. Was he about to discover her limits? It was not an easy thing for most mortals to consider. But he would not present his people as anything other than what they were. Especially not to her.
“Admittedly, these children do not have a choice,” he said. “But many are so far gone by the time we rescue them, only Hesperine blood has enough healing power to save them. Although we make such a vital decision for them, and they have no opportunity to consent, I must believe the succor we give them is preferable to starvation, illness from the elements, or violence by wild animals.”
“Choice?” Cassia shrugged again. “I never had a choice to be born a king’s daughter, nor Knight here to be born a hound. What does it signify, choice?”
It seemed her observation saddened him a great deal more than it did her. “Every person’s Will is sacred. It is forbidden for any Hesperine to take the blood of another living creature without their consent.”
Another moment of silence. Then, “Yet you transform children. Doesn’t that require that you drink from them?”
“What? No!” Before he knew it, he had halted in his tracks. Did she actually believe that? Perhaps he should have been more prepared for the question, but it made his stomach turn. “Parents only give blood. To…drink…from a child. That’s repulsive.”
“I see.”
He saw the shading in her cheeks and realized it was she who felt uncertain now. “It’s understandable you wouldn’t know. But none of us would ever take the Drink from someone so young and helpless. The very idea goes against everything that is Hesperine. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone would think that of us.”
“Tenebrans don’t know what is Hesperine. They only know what they fear.”
He remembered he was still standing there and started moving again. There remained such gaps in her knowledge of his people, more than he had assumed there to be after she had called the Mercy by name. And yet here she was, willing to listen. To take a risk. That only made him more determined to find out why. “You often seem to know what is and is not Hesperine.”
“That’s because I know better than to trust what I hear.”
If that were the reason, every mistrustful courtier in the palace would be a potential ally. No, there was certainly more to it than that. Lio resisted his desire to ask her directly. If he appeared too curious, she would feel threatened.
“Sin
ce humans from the Empire are not frightened of you,” Cassia said, “they must drop their unwanted babes on Orthros’s doorstep all the time. But I suppose you have no trouble feeding them all.”
“Actually, exposure is not practiced in the Empire, and extended families or Imperial institutions provide for orphans. Most children in Orthros are of Tenebran origin, and most humans who choose the Gift as adults are from the Empire. Of course, we are always happy to offer Sanctuary to adults from Tenebra, too. You might be surprised there are people from this part of the world who are willing to brave Orthros for the hope of a different life.”
“Rather than endure the fate their fellow humans have in store for them here? No, I should not wonder.”
“Every life the mortal world casts aside is a treasure to us. All can come to Orthros for a second chance. We are Hespera’s Sanctuary in the world, and it is a matter of sacred principle that we never deny anyone, just as she never denies us.”
“So how did you come to be a Hesperine?” Cassia asked. “How old were you when you received the Gift?”
He had promised her honesty. Now was not the time to dither. But he found himself doing precisely that. “If we are talking about life in Orthros in general, my case would hardly be a good example.”
“Oh? In what way are you such an exception?”
She was asking him to push her still farther from what was comfortable for her. He did not want his own family history to be what finally drove her too far…perhaps even away from him. If he was finally to witness her disgust, he would hate for it to be directed at him.
She cleared her throat. “Ah. Perhaps it is painful for you to speak of. I beg your pardon.”
“No, far from it. It is the best thing that could have happened to me. My father rescued my mother and me from her husband and gave us both the Gift.” He paused, listening again to Cassia’s silence, and realized how confusing that must sound to her.
“You do not think of your mother’s husband as your father?”
“No. I have only one father, Apollon.”
“Her husband…sired you…but your father gave you the Gift.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember him? Your mother’s husband.”
Lio looked ahead into the forest’s welcoming dark, but that was cowardly. He met Cassia’s gaze. “No. My mother, Komnena, was with child when my father transformed her.”
“Ohh.” Cassia turned toward him, walking a bit sideways as if the better to observe him. “So the tales are true, and Hesperine males do kidnap pregnant women to increase their numbers. You are one of their…” She looked him up and down again, her gaze teasing. “…unnatural brood.”
Lio laughed with relief. She hadn’t screamed at him in horror or even insulted his mother with accusations of adultery. She mocked her people’s ghastly legends. “We hardly make a habit of it. I’m the first in a long time to be born Hesperine.”
“Do your people view that favorably?”
A question that would occur to her to ask, after a lifetime of dealing with the consequences of her birth. “Hesperines love all their children with all their hearts. It makes no difference if we are foundlings like my cousin or bloodborn like me.”
“Yet you admit you are not a typical case.”
“Well, the seven bloodborn who came before me have the gratitude of all our people, but I think it only right that I hold myself particularly bound to them in gratitude. They are legendary for their deeds, especially Prometheus. I am thankful to have such an inspiring example to guide me.”
“You are the eighth bloodborn in Orthros’s history? Eight is the number of Hespera, which is considered ill-fated here. I am sure among your people, it is a sacred number.”
“Yes, a symbol of eternity.” He pulled a face at Cassia. “What’s more, I was born on the Winter Solstice, both the moons were full, and some very meaningful constellations were in portentous positions.”
“No expectations, then.”
“None at all.”
Cassia glanced up between the trees at a patch of overcast sky. “It makes sense astrology would be important to your people, as you spend all your lives gazing at the night sky.”
“We love Hespera’s sky like nothing else.” Lio followed Cassia’s gaze to the hazy cloud cover. At the moment, he could read none of the weighty messages the Goddess had written him in the stars since the moment he had arrived in her world.
Cassia gazed at him again, as if trying to read portents on his face. “So you were born a Hesperine in Orthros. You really aren’t Tenebran at all and never were.”
“No, but both my parents spent their human years here before they became Hesperines. For the record, Father didn’t kidnap Mother. She was delighted to run away with him.”
“Her husband was a cruel man?”
“He committed the cruelty of neglect, an abuse second only to the misery he put her through when he bothered to come home. My mother has often said he broke their vows first. The eternal vows that bind her and my father now are far more powerful than mere marriage. I intend no offense against a cherished human institution,” he added.
“It is neither mine nor particularly cherished by me. There is no such thing in Orthros?”
“No, Hesperines do not marry. We avow one another, and a Hesperine’s partner is not a spouse, but a Grace.” There. That did not qualify as revealing too much. He guided the conversation in a different direction. “I gather you are not fond of the idea of marriage.”
“Its lack was a great inconvenience to my mother, yet the threat of it is a great inconvenience to me. With or without it, it seems but a bane to women.”
“Not fond of your suitors either, I take it.” Suitors. The word felt foul in his mouth. As foul as the covetous lords who thought to take on the role and the way they had noticed her at the banquet.
“I’m about as fond of them as I suspect your mother was of her potential husbands. Did she say why she married him? What made him easier to handle than the other possibilities?”
“That’s…quite like what she described to me.” Lio winced. “Her other option was a man who became violent when he drank, so she chose the one who merely became lustful in his cups.”
Cassia nodded. “Wise woman.”
“I asked her why she married any of them.”
“How else would she survive?”
“That is what she told me.”
Cassia looked straight ahead, a line between her brows. Lio tried to guess her thoughts. What did she make of all this? She was above all practical. She would regard his mother’s decision to leave with his father as a strategic exit from a bad situation to an improved one. A clever move for her own survival and that of her child. But did Cassia, anywhere in her thoughts, ponder the magnitude of his mother’s escape? The magnitude of love and freedom?
Was there no such escape for Cassia?
He thought he already knew the answer to that question, and it made everything they said and did here suddenly feel confining and aimless. The tide could turn at the negotiation table. The Oath could be sworn. Peace could be won.
And Cassia would still be here, hemmed in on all sides by these same men, fighting this same war. There would be no peace for her.
“Must you marry?” he asked.
“It remains to be seen.”
Perhaps he was wrong, and there was still hope. “It would naturally be a pressing question for you, in your position.”
“It is useful to the king to have an unmarried daughter, such as she is. The promise of her hand is a powerful incentive in some eyes. Offering or refusing to give her in marriage is a means of influencing interested lords. But once she is married, she is no longer useful in this way. He will not grant her hand unless the benefits of the marriage outweigh the usefulness of the promise of marriage. Just as he will not banish or execute me until the benefits of ridding himself of me outweigh the usefulness of my continued existence. But I am already one-and-twenty, seven year
s overdue for marriage and well on my way to becoming an old maid. Perhaps I shall ride out my eligible years yet. There.” She gestured with one hand in invitation. “I have explained human marriage negotiations. Now tell me of the Hesperine alternative.”
Was it his unsatisfied belly that made her calm words so hard to stomach? No. He could not blame his failure to control his outrage on thirst unabated by deer. Only on reality.
“Come now,” she urged him. “I withstood your tales of infants suckled on blood. I’m sure I can handle Hesperine mating rituals.”
“I will tell you how different our ways are, but I regret that is a tale for another time.” Lio came to a halt and turned to face her. The smell of the forest was changing, and the night sky had turned from one shade of darkness to another. He lifted a finger toward the eastern horizon.
“It still looks quite dark to me,” she said.
A sign she wanted him to stay? He tried to recapture their banter. “My monstrous senses say otherwise.”
That won back her small, amused smile. “Is the sun really harmful to you?”
He snorted. “No. Sorry to disappoint the mages. Anthros’s holy light doesn’t burn at all.”
“Then why the hurry to return before dawn?”
“First, because my uncle insists on punctuality. Second, because…well, as soon as the sun comes up, I can’t stay awake.” As if on cue, a jaw-cracking yawn overtook him. He smothered it behind a hand.
“One of the members of the embassy is your uncle?”
“Yes, my father’s brother. Uncle Argyros didn’t kidnap Aunt Lyta, either, by the way. She told him she wanted the Gift.”
“Bloodborn and the nephew of the Queens’ Master Ambassador and his lady.” Cassia’s gaze sharpened. “And you say you’re just an initiate?”
She was all too perceptive. And clearly less ignorant of political developments than she might like others to believe.
“I am indeed a mere initiate, and I count myself extraordinarily fortunate Argyros himself is my mentor. I endeavor to be worthy of him. Which is why I really must return to the fortress. I shall tell you more about the members of our embassy,” he promised. “Next time.”
