by Beth Brower
“Yes,” Basaal said, lifting his hand to the hilt of his sword and resting it there. “Why don’t her own doctors see to the wounded man?”
“She has been told that it is a hopeless attempt, but Eleanor will not settle for that. She wishes me to see what I can do.” Ammar walked from the tent, followed by Basaal and the Aemogen soldier. “There are still wounded here to attend to.”
“Yes,” Basaal replied again, unsure of why he was speaking at all, wondering whose life Eleanor would be so desperate to save.
“Very well.” Ammar began to walk towards the pavilion. “I will gather more supplies if someone can ready my horse.”
Basaal ordered a soldier to do so, then he followed his brother to their pavilion. The Aemogen soldier also followed, nervously. Basaal looked to his left, across the small valley and up in the mountain, and saw the glint of sunlight off of something metal. Stopping and scanning the trees, Basaal tried to see the actual fortress. He could not see the tower itself, only where he guessed it would be—only where he guessed she would be.
***
It was strange to Eleanor that seeing Ammar, of all people, could free the anguish she could not otherwise feel. For as soon as he was led into Aedon’s sickroom, Eleanor began to cry. She was so relieved he had come.
Ammar set about his work. If he recognized Aedon, he made no indication. Through the tears she continually brushed away, Eleanor could see the physician’s determination to save this man. She blessed him for it, again and again. Edythe arrived soon after, assuming Eleanor’s duties as Ammar’s assistant. Then Thayne took Eleanor into another room of the fortress that was prepared with a blanket and some weak soup. He tried to help her eat, but Eleanor fell asleep before she could even taste the broth.
Eleanor slept for several hours, waking in the middle of the night. The sliver of a moon had reappeared again in the sky, giving only the slightest layer of blue relief in the dark room. As she came out of sleep, she realized someone’s arms were around her. Eleanor began to turn, surprised at the stiff resistance of her muscles. She groaned from their soreness. Then the arms shifted slightly but did not let her go. Eleanor lifted the palm of her hand to the forearm around her, feeling several bands of Safeeraah, filthy and steeped in old blood.
Reaching her fingers around his wrist only a moment, Eleanor turned herself into Basaal’s chest, clutching his black war jacket, pressing her face against the fabric. She heard him catch a sob, and Eleanor opened her heavy eyes, shifting her head back to see his face. Basaal’s eyes were open. They were rimmed and swollen, with streaks across his face catching the faint moonlight from the tower window. Eleanor’s own eyes burned, and she pulled herself tight against him. Despite the stifled emotion, Eleanor could feel his chest shake as he buried his face in her hair. She wept with him.
Basaal was gone when she woke again come morning.
Chapter Seventeen
Aedon had developed a fever.
“Ammar fears that it will rage quite fiercely,” Edythe warned, yawning and pressed her hand to her eyes. “I did not understand everything he said, but he did not know when he left what Aedon’s chances might be.”
“A fever means he is alive, at the very least,” Eleanor said as she sat down beside her sister.
“The last of the dead will be buried today.” Edyth sounded worn thin. “I should go down with you.”
“Go and sleep,” Eleanor pressed. “I will wake you later.”
Leaving Aedon in the company of an Ainsley woman she trusted, Eleanor rode back down to the tents of the wounded near the burial grounds. The work there would be finished before the day was out, and then they would be left with the task of bringing their wounded home.
At day’s end, Eleanor had not yet returned to the tower, and it was there, amongst the graves of the dead, that Basaal found her. He had come across the plain, first to the tower and then down the old road to the burial grounds. By the time he came to her, he had already visited the wounded.
Sean must have told him where she was.
Walking among the hastily refilled graves, Eleanor was checking the careful notes of Thayne’s men to be certain no grave had been left nameless. Redundant as the task was, Eleanor had needed to ground herself, needed something to count and order and wrap her mind around.
Eleanor had been crouched beside a grave marker, set for a young man she had known, when Basaal’s presence caught her attention. She turned her head in his direction, blocking the last surge of brightness before the sun would disappear below the horizon.
He looked awful, tired, and grave-weary. Basaal had yet to change his clothing. She stood, leaving her report in the dirt beside the makeshift headstone.
“Have you successfully buried all your dead?”
Those were his first words. Eleanor could not process them, and Basaal would not look at her face.
“Nearly,” Eleanor said when she finally understood the question through her exhaustion. He did not move, so she did not step towards him. “There is more work to do yet,” she said, claiming a deep breath, “as I assume Sean told you. And what of your camp?”
“We lost over seven thousand men.” Basaal’s voice was graveled, broken. “Almost half of which were casualties during the initial attack. The rest perished on the field. In the end, my own soldiers turned against my father’s, inflating the casualties significantly.” After looking at the lines of Aemogen graves on the hillside, Basaal continued. “There was not time, you see, to honor each one. We’ve buried them in mass graves.” His mouth twisted in such agony, and it seemed like he hated himself.
“You look—” Eleanor began to say but halted. “Have you even—?”
As if in answer, Basaal kicked the toe of his blood spattered boot into the dirt and shook his head, looking anywhere but at Eleanor. “The Imirillian army will be leaving the encampment to take the emperor’s body back to Zarbadast. The conquest is over.”
“Can you say that for sure?” Eleanor frowned. “Surely, if the Imirillians—”
Basaal’s head snapped up in response. “I am Imirillian,” he said, and his eyes connected with hers for the briefest time possible, before he looked away again. “I am a prince of Imirillia,” he reiterated. “And nothing will change that.”
“Why are you saying this?” Eleanor said defensively.
“I—” Basaal ran his fingers through his hair and breathed out slowly. “When the Imirillian army leaves, I will be with them.”
“You will be with them,” Eleanor said, repeating his words in a way that made it sound as if she were only confirming something she had already known. But, in truth, she was stunned. “I admit I had assumed a formal meeting would occur between myself and, well, you, I suppose, or whoever is leading the camp, to discuss the terms of peace.”
“There is nothing to be done at this juncture,” Basaal said. “Peace must be negotiated officially. How all this is to be reconciled when we reach Zarbadast is a question I do not yet have the answer to.” He put his hands on his hips and began again to kick at the dirt. “Things must be sorted out with Emir now, after the funeral has been arranged. I can all but promise on my own blood he will not pursue any further action against you, especially if trade lines were legalized between our two countries. He is more businessman than soldier. Ammar and I will need silver tongues to save our own necks. But, let the truth come out, and so be the results,” he added, before glancing at her face once more. “I will speak for Aemogen. I will stand as your voice and see what I can ensure of peace,” Basaal said as if he were relating a travel itinerary, with a tone of casual indifference, his hand moving through the evening air.
Eleanor wished to say several things, but her courage faltered. Instead, she said, “Your voice on behalf of Aemogen would be appreciated. I trust you to represent our interests well.” Eleanor wiped her hands on her skirt, needing something to do. “That saves me the trouble of sending a diplomat to argue for an end to all this.”
Basaal was
biting his bottom lip, and he swept his eyes over her, before nodding.
“Trust that you will hear word, then, from Zarbadast,” he answered as he took a few steps away from Eleanor. “I must get back.” Basaal looked as if he were about to move west across the plain, but his back foot kept him anchored to the ground. “I just need to ask you for the space to decide. Can you not understand that, Eleanor?”
She looked up again.
Basaal took a few steps down the hill and then turned again to face her. It was a severe movement, edged with the look of feeling trapped. “Can I have one year?”
“A year of what?”
“I must—” Basaal shrugged off his discomfort, looking at Eleanor earnestly. “I must decide, you see, what I will do with my life. I cannot stay with you in Aemogen to know this. You see that, Eleanor. Don’t you? For me to ever be happy in this life, I must choose it?”
She did understand. She understood why he needed to go.
“Yes,” Eleanor said simply.
“Give me a year’s time,” Basaal said, “before you move on, before you choose another.”
The sun disappeared the moment of his asking, leaving only the purple light of sunset between them, and the pale moon over Eleanor’s shoulder. His words sounded strange to her, for there was no other.
He stood looking at her, his eyes traveling her face in question, waiting for her response.
“I will wait until the snow falls next year. That would seem fair, for both of us.” Ashamed as she was for sounding so distant—even to her own ears—Eleanor could not bring herself to say it differently. There was nothing intact around her heart as it was. She moved her hand against his mark on her skin. “I really should—” Eleanor hesitated, pressing her lips together, bent down and retrieved her report. Everything inside her was beginning to tremble. “I should get back.”
The question in his face clouded over, and he took another step away from her. “Yes,” he agreed. “So must I if we are to be ready. There is still much to do.”
He almost came back to her. But, when Eleanor did not—could not—move towards him, Basaal stalled, holding her gaze for only a moment before turning away, head bent, shoulders slumped, as he walked away, limping back toward the Imirillian camp.
Eleanor watched him disappear into the gloaming before taking her eyes away from his solitary figure, adding—with a shaking heart—the memory of Basaal to the open pit of graves already filling her soul. What was one more loss, she asked herself.
Everything.
She feared it was everything.
Chapter Eighteen
In loss, the Illuminating God declares a journey. His mortals release their loves, just as the desert is stripped of its beauty, and they, His children, are hollowed and hallowed. For loss is His sanctifier.
And when emptiness upon emptiness has been consecrated and the work that spins mortality is declared complete, the Illuminating God will open the hands of the sanctified, and all He has ordained to His children will be poured into their palms, to fill the smoothed places—having been prepared by loss, now to be crowned with joy and purity.
And it pleases the Illuminating God to prepare His children to receive all, though they be numbered more than every grain of the desert sands. And all are in His hand, and all are known.
—The First Scroll
* * *
“You do realize before everything,” Aedon made a slight gesture with his hand and coughed, “you had never actually visited me in my personal chambers.”
“I was thinking about that,” Eleanor admitted as she looked curiously around the room of deep blue tapestries and dark woods. “I can’t imagine why,” she admitted. “We’ve been one another’s confidants since, well, my father’s death.”
“I’ve never spent much time in my rooms. And you always sent for me, besides.”
“Hmm.” Eleanor continued to look around the room. It was neat, clear, clean.
“Now, are you going to let me look at those harvest reports?”
Eleanor looked down at the papers in her hand, reports of the harvests from each fen. “The physician will commit regicide if he knows I have given you any work,” she said. They were scant and thin, the harvests. It would be hard for all of them come winter. Yet, the hardness of winter sounded like a welcome relief to Eleanor after the stagnant grief of summer and fall.
Aedon was only just now coming out of a second round of infections. He’d miraculously survived at the tower, not even regaining consciousness before an infection had set in, a ravenous thief that had stolen whatever strength it could. Aedon had weathered it. Now, his lungs were rough and filled with fluid, his cough a testament to the second infection not having yet been dispelled. There was no guarantee he would pass the coming winter. But Aedon planned for it, and so, Eleanor gave herself the liberty of believing him.
“I’m still not certain it is a wise idea for you to see the reports myself—but, as I know we’ve stores to shore up the weak harvest and can ensure basic survival, I will trust you to keep your emotions in check about the numbers.”
Aedon laughed. The sound itched and rattled around his lungs. The scar on his face was healing, at the very least, into a long strip of white. Ammar had stitched it together at Colun Tir. And when Eleanor’s own physician had removed whatever string Ammar had used, several weeks later, he had marveled at the Imirillian practice, asking Eleanor if she might request a scroll from the physician prince upon her next convoy of Aemogen goods and signed diplomatic treatises to Zarbadast. Eleanor did not even know if Ammar was still alive, let alone in a position to send a scroll.
“Eleanor?” Aedon asked, pulling her from her thoughts.
Eleanor handed Aedon the reports.
Looking about her, towards the window near Aedon’s small desk—the quills, ink, reports, and scrolls meticulously in place—Eleanor remembered she had been surprised by the arrival of autumn, not because it had come but rather because when it did come, the decayed emotions—numb and stiff inside her chest—gave way to the weight of raw feeling.
The dead had long been buried now, and the people of Aemogen had returned to the usual tasks of their lives—but with no pretense towards normalcy. The country would be forever changed, generations must come and go to claim any recovery.
Eleanor had spent little effort in her studies, attending rather to the losses of her people, although her interactions with them were now more quiet, observational, and subdued. In part because Eleanor could find nothing in her soul to grab hold of, in part because the loss of her country had been so tremendously deep, so filled with sorrow.
A message had come from Zarbadast. Emir, emperor of Imirillia, sent his greetings, along with a formal extension of an alliance with Imirillia. He offered terms and asked questions in regards to future trading. The sea-lane from Aemogen to eastern Imirillia would thrive. The port out of Krayklan would be expanded. Emir expressed his grand plans for intercontinental exchange and vowed that Aemogen interests would be accommodated. He also sent a token gift—of Imirillian gold, spices, fabrics, and perfumes—with the treaties, along with an invitation for Eleanor to visit Zarbadast in honor of their new alliance.
She declined, sending her reply to Zarbadast by ship through the Krayklan port with a token of Aemogen goods to show her own good faith: silver, wood, and herbs, with other small gifts that might amuse the princes and their families. Although Eleanor dreamed of the seven palaces and their astounding beauty, she did not wish to go there again. Of how Basaal fared, she heard nothing.
Aedon’s voice coaxed her again from her thoughts, and she saw that he was watching her.
“You’re different, Eleanor, from who you were just a few years ago.”
“A common occurrence, I believe,” she replied, smoothing her skirt. “The war caught me on the last edge of my girlhood, as it was.” Eleanor studied Aedon in return. “You’ve not changed, though. Here you are, same as ever before—save the injuries.”
Aedon set down the reports and considered what she had said. “No, I suppose I haven’t,” he said. “Be it virtue or folly, I am who I am.”
“Uncommonly good,” Eleanor added.
“Uncommonly stubborn, perhaps,” Aedon countered.
As ambitious as Aedon had been earlier, to read the reports and to give Eleanor his thoughts regarding Aemogen’s position, it was clear he was tired.
“If you don’t mind too much,” she said, “we will have to continue later.” She took the papers from his hands. “I have some other commitments.”
“I don’t mind,” Aedon replied with grace, knowing full well she was sparing him the strain rather than keeping to some demanding schedule.
“Thank you,” Eleanor said. “I didn’t think you would mind.”
***
The Illuminating God has called forth fidelity;
The Illuminating God has called forth patience;
The Illuminating God has called forth brotherhood;
And man, in his foolish vanity, calls forth blindness.
—The Second Scroll
* * *
As Aemogen tipped over the edge of fall, Aedon was able to join Eleanor and the council in their meetings, discussing their new position as an ally of Imirillia, how to maintain their strength in that position, and what points should be negotiated in the final treaty. Aedon also drew up plans to enlarge the harbor at Calafort, but Eleanor asked him to put them away until spring. She had not yet decided if any foreign ships would be allowed to enter the port.
Edythe had not lost her newfound assertiveness or her desire to understand better the tasks of Eleanor’s position. This caused more than one heated discussion between them regarding Aemogen politics, but Eleanor was relieved, for Edythe was steady, capable, and determined. She was a welcome voice when Eleanor could not speak.
