I used to think I knew what love was. Then I thought I knew what it was not. Now I think I have no idea of either. What the body wants, the body will find a way to have. That isn’t love, that is need.
He put the journal down and clenched his fists, unable to contain, unable to name, his emotions. He wanted to weep for his mother and hurt Anza for having read the journal and put a knife in Karolje’s heart and drown himself in the lake all at once. His clothing felt like sandpaper. He was afraid that if he touched anything, he would destroy it.
I have walked in terrible places and done terrible things. Karolje would have driven me mad if I had not had my sons to protect. But he will kill me soon. I can see it in his eyes. He has had his Truth Finders trying to pry secrets from my mind. But what they want to know is not held in words or thoughts, and they cannot understand that.
When I am gone, Karolje will pay.
When she vanished, he had not been allowed to weep and had held it inside, a tight ball compressing more and more on itself each day until it took up almost no space and was immovably dense. He learned to keep himself away from that grief, to veer off course anytime he approached before it could draw him in. Now it threatened to pummel him.
Every time he had talked to Anza, she must have had the journal in her thoughts. Weighing him, wondering if he was more like Karolje or Mirantha. Knowing the pain that had been the air he breathed since he was small. Seeing him through the veil of his mother’s love. So many times Anza could have turned away, and instead she had put herself in his path. Put her body in his arms. When she touched him, the air had rung like a bell against his skin. She deserved far better.
He closed the journal. It could not stay in the Citadel. He would give it to Mirovian to return to Anza.
He took out ink and pen and paper. He intended to write a long letter, telling her what she already knew, all the reasons he could not let himself love her. But the words would not come right. He scratched things out over and over. Tevin’s voice echoed in his mind: You will pretend to love them so they don’t know how much you’re like him. He tried to write that—if I seem to love you, it is a lie, because lying is all I know—and blotted it out because it too was a lie. She compelled him to honesty. That was one of the things for which he loved her.
What he finally finished with was only a few short sentences, inadequate but true. He signed his name, sanded and sealed it, and placed it between pages of the journal, which he rewrapped.
He had an awareness, distant, like a storm on the horizon or a sleeper wave offshore, of waiting force. It was coming, the wreckage of the past, ready to crash over him. He couldn’t stop it. History was inexorable.
Despair overwhelmed him. He went into his bedroom, bolted and locked the door, and flung himself on the bed fully clothed. His knife pressed uncomfortably against his hip, and he took off the belt. Without conscious thought he drew the blade. The edge was sharp. He put his hand on the hilt and pressed the tip against his heart, not with enough force to go through his shirt.
Not now, not when he owed his brother so much. To kill himself now was to waste everything Tevin had done.
Not now, while he remembered the feel of Anza’s hair in his hands.
He sheathed the knife and tossed the belt onto a chair. He undressed and got into bed, but he left the lamp on. The low, golden light at the end of the wick burned through his dreams.
MIRANTHA
IN THE CITADEL, she never carried anything deadlier than her small scissors made for snipping threads or flower stems. The knife she wears now—at six inches the longest that is legal for a citizen of Karegg—has become a familiar weight on her hip. She has a pair of longer knives, the edges so sharp they cut your eyes to look at them, that she brings with her on the nights she is involved in resistance activities. They have plain hilts and plain sheaths, the weight perfect in her hands. She knows how to use them together and singly.
One evening in the dreary period where winter and spring bleed together, a day of sleety rain followed by a day warm enough for shirtsleeves, she puts the knives on and slips out of her lodgings. It is cold enough for a concealing cloak. The moon shines fitfully through clouds, but she smells rain on the wind. Twelve years have passed since Ashevi died, twelve years since Mirantha vanished. Esvar will be twenty-one soon. It seems hardly any time at all since she held him, a red-skinned newborn with still-blue eyes and fat wrinkled fists. She has seen him a few times since she returned to Karegg; unlike his brother, he comes from the Citadel on occasion, without pomp and clamor. She has never been close enough to clearly see his face. She wonders what atrocities her sons have committed to keep themselves alive.
Tonight the resistance is meeting in a small, filthy house jammed onto a hillside with others like it. The nearest well is three blocks away. The streets are unpaved alleys not wide enough for a cart. In places it is so steep the dirt has been carved away and planks laid down to make crude steps. Getting out will be a mess if there is rain.
She is the last one to arrive. Herself, Ivanje Stepanian, six others, sitting in too-close quarters in a room that reeks of poverty. They have a single candle in a holder on the floor. One man is the householder, a grey-haired shrunken person whose right hand was chopped off a few years ago as punishment for copying seditious writings. His livelihood lost, he retreated to the slums to brood upon revenge. Sparrow feels a strange, terrible kinship with him that she does not with other resisters; his mutilated body seems the physical form of her own loss. The shiny scar tissue of his stump catches the candlelight.
The wind rattles the door fiercely, and thunder rumbles low and deep. She goes out to check the weather, shutting the door behind her. The clouds are thick and dark, obscuring the moon. Her eyes sting from the woodsmoke, which can no longer rise in the heavy air. In the west, lightning streaks across the sky. The wind gusts, and her nostrils flare like an animal’s. She hears a distant bay that is not thunder.
She dashes back into the house. “It’s going to storm,” she says. “And there are hellhounds coming. I heard them.”
“Where? Which way?”
“I’m not sure,” she says. Ivanje grabs her arm.
Her years in the Citadel come crushingly down on her, memories so vivid she thinks she is there again. Her mouth tastes like she has swallowed something poisonous. She bends over, retching and retching, tears running from her eyes with the force of it. She cannot think. Karolje grabs her by the hair and forces her onto the bed. He opens her wardrobe and with a knife slices through the new gown her mother has sent. He knocks her wineglass to the floor and stands over her with a belt while she picks up every sliver. In the throne room he presents to her a handsome necklace she had seen another lady wearing a few hours ago, and the lady stares viciously at her while Karolje’s fingers fasten the clasp. She huddles in the corner of her bed, weeping with shock and shame, after the first time he strikes her hard. She is so afraid.
“Sparrow!” Ivanje says, hurrying her to the door. “Run!”
She is shaking and trembling, and to her shame lets him push her away. Then her body takes over, run run run, feet thumping against dirt it is too dark to see. She skids, falls, picks herself up, keeps running. She feels the breath of the hellhound on her neck, its teeth on her skin, and looks back, gasping. She imagined it. She falls again and twists her left wrist when landing. The pain is sharp and immediate. Run run run. Lightning flashes, and the thunder comes close upon it.
She finds herself on the lakeshore, where she smells fish and tar and hemp. Her senses are all too vivid tonight. There is a rip in one knee of her trousers, and the cloth is sticking to her leg. She must be bleeding. A scrape, like a child. The wooden jetty she is standing on is slick. The water slapping against it is threatening. A cat in heat yowls behind her.
It’s over, she tells herself, over, over, over. She still has both her knives. They will never take her. She will kill herself first, even if it means smashing her own head into a wall.
&n
bsp; She is shivering now from chill rather than fear, her teeth clicking together, and she turns around. She sees a shrine half a block away, a single lamp burning at its door. Unthinking, almost unaware, she hurries to it. The door is dark, blue or black or green, it is hard to tell, and it opens when she pushes. She stumbles in, kicks the door shut, and collapses on the tiled floor.
* * *
The priest, a thin, dark-skinned man a few years older than her, gives her hot tea and cleans her scrapes and binds her wrist. At first she has no words, only animal-like moans. The warmth from the hot liquid—it is more than just tea—spreads through her, and she stammers her way to a thank-you. There is nothing left of her but exhaustion.
He shows her to a long, windowless room where there are several cots, and she lies down on one, still dressed. He spreads a blanket over her, says a few things that she does not have the attention to hear, and leaves the room. The door stays ajar. Sparrow stares at the yellow rectangle on the wall where the light from the corridor falls, and for a long time there is nothing in her awareness.
Something moves in the light. A spider, crawling down the wall. It moves so confidently. She watches until it has crept back into shadow. She does not feel so raw, so exposed, anymore. Thunder cracks nearby, rousing her back to full alertness.
There is a soft thud. The main door to the shrine closing. A dog’s bark.
They have tracked her, followed her scent. The priest will not refuse them. No one would.
She is on her feet, a knife in each hand, but already she hears the priest’s voice and the sound of men approaching. She has nowhere to go. Her breath is coming short and fast, and she is sweating.
The door opens. A soldier enters, light shining on the blade of his sword.
Suddenly she is calm. If she is to die now, it is an honorable death.
He will try to disarm her first; resisters are to be taken alive. She drives the knives forward, one aimed at his gut and the other at his throat. His sword comes up expertly to block the knife at his stomach, and when the blades clash, it sends a stab of pain through her sprained wrist and forearm. With his other hand he grips her right wrist and immobilizes her arm with the knife inches from his neck. She kicks hard at his shins.
He evades her. His grip on her arm shifts, and then before she knows it both knives are on the floor and he has pushed her up against the wall, his arm pressing on her throat. He can cut off her breath just enough to keep her alive. She has no way out.
“Hands on top of your head,” he says.
Viciously, she lowers her head and bites his arm. He slams her against the stone as Karolje once did, and pain freezes her. The world is a chaos of lights. One hard punch to her stomach, and she cannot help doubling over, and he chops at her neck with the edge of his hand. Her arms turn weak as water.
“Now,” he says, “you can come quietly and have this over with, or I can drag you out of here hamstrung in both legs. Which will it be?”
The pain and the threat and the utter futility of it all come together, and the fight goes out of her body. Out of her heart. She stands limply while he shackles her hands behind her back. Her sprained wrist throbs against the metal shackle.
He puts one hand on her shoulder and steers her forward. She feels a pang of loss for her knives.
In the front of the shrine, the priest says, “Don’t hurt her. There shouldn’t be blood spilled in a shrine.” He has lit incense somewhere, and the scent propels her back to the Citadel chapel, to Ashevi. The helplessness of years long gone crashes back down on her.
The soldier laughs. “Don’t hurt her? What do you think is going to happen at the Citadel? Stay out of it, priest.”
Outside, rain falls lightly. There are three more soldiers, one holding the chain of a hellhound. Another has a captain’s insignia on his tunic. Sparrow looks around for horses, a donkey cart, anything. Are they going to be walking back to the Citadel? She wonders if she should reveal herself and ask to be taken before Karolje. They wouldn’t believe it.
A hellhound’s bite seems a better death than torture. She kicks at the dog. It is not close enough for her to make contact, but it growls, low in its throat, and its back bristles. The soldier yanks on the chain, restraining it. She kicks again. The man who chained her grips the shackles and pulls, jerking her arms toward him. Her body follows.
“Back off,” the captain snaps to the man holding the dog.
The soldier obeys. Sparrow keeps her eyes on the hellhound. She knows how well-trained they are. One lone woman can’t make it go wild. The weakness is in the soldier. And he, unfortunately, looks experienced and well-trained himself. The dog is no way out. Moisture on her eyelashes makes it difficult to see.
Lightning whitens the world, the thunder deafening and immediate. Everyone jumps, and the dog howls.
She breaks free of the soldier’s hands and runs at the dog. It turns, snarls. It lunges at her. The soldiers are yelling, and the rain is falling harder. Another flash. She sees the sharp white fangs.
The dog’s handler pulls the chain. The thunder booms, and he jerks in surprise.
That is all it takes for the hound to pull forward and turn, sink its teeth into the soldier’s hand. The man screams in pain and horror, and the hound breaks free, runs, trailing its chain.
“Go after it!” the captain shouts. “Both of you!”
They obey. The man who was bitten writhes in agony as the venom courses through him. His mouth is open, his face twisted, while the rain beads his skin. His hand has already started to swell. There is no cure for a hellhound’s poison.
The captain squats by the bitten soldier. His arm moves. Blood sprays outward. The flailing body jerks once. She could run now, but she doesn’t. Nothing matters.
Sheathing his knife, the captain rises. He and Sparrow look at each other in the rain and lamplight. The world stills, teeters on its axis.
“I know you,” he says.
His face is familiar to her too. She cannot name a time and place. But he is a captain in the Citadel; she probably saw him often. He would have been younger then.
“I know you,” she says. They step closer to each other. The hellhound barks frantically in the distance. “Tell me your name.”
“Alcu Havidian.” He swallows. “My lady?”
“No longer,” she says. Her memory of what they did for each other is clear now. I do it for Vetia, she had said.
They stare at each other, the dead man a silent witness. The barking breaks off, and a man screams.
Havidian unlocks the shackles. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Go. Hide. Keep fighting.”
“You’ll be killed for this,” she says in a flash of lightning.
“I think I am soon going to be the only witness,” he says, jerking his head over his shoulder to renewed barking. The dog sounds frantic now, trapped. “I may be killed for what happened to the dog.”
“Don’t go back. We could use you.”
Thunder drowns him out. He shakes his head. “I can’t. Go. We depend on you.”
“The others—my friends—”
“The leader was killed. The others are captive. I will try to help them die quickly.” He pauses, smiles suddenly. “My daughter is here. She graduated from the College two years ago. Thank you for that. And I can tell you in return that your sons are men worth serving. Now run, my lady, please.”
She does, back to the lake and along the deserted wharfs. Boats rock beside her on the high water, and she hears the slosh of waves against the pilings. Even when she is gasping for breath and her side aches she keeps going, stumbling over coils of rope, sliding on boards covered with fish scales. The shifts between a lightning-bleached world and utter darkness confound her eyes. The rain picks up its pace, the drops striking against the water and fountaining between her feet. The cats and the rats have all taken cover.
The cats and the rats. The phrase repeats itself continuously, forms the rhythm of her movement. The cats and the rats. The cats and the ra
ts.
She is pushing herself too hard. She turns onto the next street and finds a gap between two buildings where she is at least out of the wind. The overhang of the roofs keep most of the water off her. She sits and huddles against the wall. Her skin is numbed from cold. The cats and the rats.
She is so cold and wet and exhausted that it takes time for her to realize she is crying. Her heart is broken. Her sons, her sons.
ANZA COULD NOT see across the courtyard when she opened the door. The thick mist smelled of the lake: wet, muddy, green. Rivulets ran down the stone, and the iron railing was covered with beads of water. She watched one enlarge and drop. She had a cup of hot tea in her hands, a comfort against the greyness. The air was chilly for summer, nothing like yesterday’s heat. The fog had moved in beginning at midday, several hours ago, and seemed unlikely to lift anytime soon.
The hoofbeats that had brought her to the door clattered to a halt in the courtyard entrance, out of sight. She heard the rider dismount, the tread of boots on stone. One man, alone. It wouldn’t be Esvar, then. I’m not in love with him, she said to herself. I’m not.
A figure emerged at the top of the stairs. Jance. He wore a short black cloak over his uniform. His hair was beaded with moisture. They greeted each other and went into her flat. She had lamps on, and his belt buckle caught the gleam.
“I’ve brought this back,” he said, handing her the wrapped journal. “He wanted me to tell you that it’s not a rejection. He thinks it’s safer with you. There’s a letter in it.”
She nodded. She was not surprised. His other choice was to burn it. She would read the letter after Jance was gone, though she thought she knew what it said. He would sunder their connection. It was the only thing he knew how to do.
“Was he angry at all? Do you want tea?”
“He didn’t seem to be. Although it’s hard to be sure. He did look like he hadn’t slept much.”
The kettle was on the hearth, keeping hot, and she poured a mug of tea for Jance. “It’s nasty out there. Stay a bit.”
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