by Jae Waller
Airedain shook his head. “Suriel didn’t wake — Iyo elders say he never went dormant. We call him Ainu-seru. The mountain owl. Stayed awake while other saidu slept, just turned cranky and hid on his mountain peak. When itherans showed up he got really pissed off. S’why Crieknaast has always been so fucking windy.”
I had so many questions, but his eyes looked unfocused and he was shivering. I picked up a clay mug from the ground, filled it with hot water, and pressed it into his hands.
He held it up in thanks. “I tell ya, one thing I miss about Toel is having antayul around.”
I stayed with Airedain until it was time to meet Iannah. He assured me Segowa would be back soon, but the image of him huddled in the shadows followed me through the streets. Lucky. Was that the best we could hope for?
Iannah was leaning against the stone wall around the Colonnium grounds when I arrived. She wore her blue elk-sigil coat, but carried a sword instead of her spear. Long pieces of hair hung loose from her bun.
“When did you get off duty?” I asked.
“Eight.” She yawned. “I think.”
“We don’t have to go anywhere today—”
“No. I need to get out of here.” She pushed off the wall. “I forgot everything’s closed today though,” she said as we walked down the hill.
“I don’t want to be in a crowd anyway.” My eyes flicked to her sword. “I have to ask you something. Did you — stab anyone last night?”
“No. Why?”
“I was with someone that got hurt. Badly. I know it’s your job, but . . .”
Iannah stopped walking. “I have to do lots of things civilians don’t like. If it bothers you, leave. But my job is to keep the peace. Best way is to stab as few people as possible.”
I gave her a half-smile. “Where do you like to go that’s quiet?”
She looked at me closely. “There’s one place, but it’s not somewhere most visitors go.”
“As long as I won’t get stabbed.”
So we headed outside the city and south along the bay where the ground rose into craggy hills. My back was slick with sweat when we reached a bluff overlooking the ocean. Boulders were strewn about like grains of sand scattered across the earth. Behind us, the Roannveldt plain faded into mist.
Iannah went straight to a hunk of red stone and climbed up like it was a ladder. I followed more slowly, seeking footholds on the salt-stained rock, cursing my skirt. The dull roar of waves rose toward us. A warship drifted in the bay, white sails spread to catch the wind.
“It sounds like the earth’s pulse.” I loosed the ribbon from my braid and ran my fingers through my hair until it billowed around me.
“I grew up inland,” Iannah said. “Never saw the ocean until I left home. Sometimes I come here to remember there’s a world outside the Colonnium.”
She had a way of speaking that made the words flow together, something I’d noticed among all Ferish. I studied her face. She had a sharp jaw and a long nose that ran perfectly straight from her brows. If itherans could attune, she’d turn into a rust hawk.
I winced as soon as I thought it. Attuning was intensely personal. I didn’t even know the second form of every Rin.
Turning away, I saw an open structure further along the bluff. It was little more than a flat roof supported by stone pillars. A grey slab occupied the centre. “What’s that?”
“The Hollow Sepulchre. A war memorial.”
We slid down from the boulder and weaved past the rubble, stopping several paces away. I recognized a few words carved under the roof overhang. The slab was waist-high, unmarked, the rough width and length of a person.
Iannah unsheathed her sword and set it on the dirt before stepping onto the smooth stone floor. She turned and saw me standing motionless. “You can enter if you leave your weapons.”
“In my culture, people aren’t allowed to enter another nation’s shrine.”
“It’s fine. Really.” She held out her hand.
I set my flail and knives on the ground. Then I took Iannah’s hand and crossed over the border into the memorial. She didn’t let go as we walked to the tomb.
“Caladheå was built on a lot of spilled blood,” she said. “My grandfathers are buried near the city. You’d think we’d learn to stop killing each other.”
“Someone told me this morning people have short memories.”
“They do.” Iannah nodded at the tomb. “It’s empty as a reminder that anyone could end up in there, but nobody comes here anymore.”
I thought of the dead soldiers buried near Tiernan’s cabin. Dead. The word scratched inside my skull like a thorn. I wondered if Iannah knew them. Suddenly I felt sick. I pulled my hand from her grasp and walked to the side of the memorial facing the foggy ocean.
It felt like the whole of Aeldu-yan had been stuffed into the hollow slab behind me. We were falling, all of us falling one by one. The further I ran, the deeper I spiralled into something I couldn’t escape.
•
That evening, Iannah took me to a shop crammed between buildings as if it was built in an alley. She simply called it Natzo’s. The red-brick walls were decorated floor to ceiling with spoons. Long-handled wooden spoons, tiny silver spoons, ceramic spoons painted with delicate flowers. Iron vats lined a brick counter, puffing steam from under their lids. Iannah explained the contents and translated my request for Natzo, the short, balding Ferish shopkeeper. Spianèzi te choionne, she called it, which I didn’t try to pronounce.
Iannah took a notched steel spoon from the wall and found an empty table lit by a tallow candle. I chose a copper spoon with an etched handle. We both had flat wheat noodles, mine in clear broth, hers in opaque green. I’d never eaten wheat — it didn’t grow here. I tried to mimic how she twisted noodles around her spoon.
“I didn’t mean for today to be so depressing,” she said.
“It’s not your fault.” I tried a mouthful and winced. The spicy broth stung my lips. “Did you always know you’d become a soldier?”
“Yeah. I could knock down most boys in Laca vi Miero. Came to Caladheå to join the military academy when I was fourteen. Soonest they let people in. Knocked down most boys here and enlisted a year later.”
“What’s the academy like?”
“Brutal. Long days sparring in mud and rain until we were bruised like last year’s crop. Still better than boarding school.” She pointed at my flail with her spoon. “What about you? Not many civilians carry those.”
I pulled my cloak over it. “We get our first weapons when we turn nine. Civilians don’t exist among my people.”
“If this inquiry goes wrong, they won’t exist here either.”
“Everything seems to rest on that. I hate not knowing what’s going on.” I rested my chin on my hand. “You must hear all sorts of things at the Colonnium.”
Iannah rolled her eyes. “I swear people forget guards exist from the way they talk in front of us.”
“So you know everyone’s secrets?”
“Some.” She paused with her spoon above her broth. “A Sverbian councillor used to fund a radical militant group called the Rúonbattai. During elections he pretends it never happened. And the Southeast Liaison got thrown out of a dinner last month for implying a Nyhemur diplomat’s wife looks like a goat.”
I clamped a hand to my mouth so I didn’t spit noodles over the table. The corners of her eyes pulled back in amusement. I wondered if she ever smiled.
“What’re you doing tomorrow?” Iannah asked later when we got up to leave. The street was black outside. Rain battered the windows.
“Nothing yet.”
“I’m off duty in the afternoon. If you come by around one, I’ll show you something.” She covered a yawn. “Right now, I need to sleep.”
•
“Please declare yourself and relinquish all weapons,
” Gélus droned.
“Kateiko Sohikoehl. I’m here to see Pelennus.” I placed my identification card on the desk along with my weapons.
Gélus looked down at them and back up. “Oh, you again.” He consulted a paper covered with tiny writing. “Pelennus is off duty.”
“I know.” I stared at Gélus. He stared back. I sighed and retreated into a corner.
A low murmur seeped out from the doors across the hall, rising and falling like the tide. More guards stood in the lobby than last time. I edged behind a pillar, relieved when Iannah showed up. Her hair was tidy again, but she still looked tired.
She led me through winding corridors until we emerged outside. I stepped onto the lawn to look at the back of the Colonnium. A balcony spanned the second level, its roof supported by wide-spaced stone pillars. I realized it was the loggia I saw from Falwen’s office.
Iannah stopped at a door in the central tower. She took out an iron ring loaded with keys, turned a rusted one in the lock, and yanked the handle. The door groaned open. I ducked under a spiderweb and followed her up a creaking spiral staircase. Freezing rain gusted in from narrow slits. She held a finger to her lips before unlocking the door at the top.
I stepped onto a ledge and gasped. We stood just below the domed ceiling of a massive hall sculpted from cream marble. Ice coated the windows. The black-robed figures below looked tiny, facing each other from behind two long polished tables. A man with a yellow beard stood in the centre like a leaf snagged on the antlers of clashing elk.
“Are we allowed to be here?” I whispered.
“I have the key, don’t I?”
I peered over the iron railing. At one end of the hall was an elaborate chair carved from the same gleaming black wood as the panelling behind it. “Why is that seat empty?”
“It was the seat of the Ferish lord who built this place,” Iannah whispered back. “He stationed archers on these ledges to protect him during the First Elken War. Didn’t help much. The Sverbian-viirelei alliance killed him on the back lawn while he was executing prisoners. After the Second Elken War, Ferland and Sverba formed the Council so one person would never hold that much power again.”
“Does it work?”
“Not really.”
I squinted at the yellow-bearded man. “Ai, that’s the Crieknaast mayor.”
The discussion drifted up to us, distorted by echoes. Montès and a man with white-blond hair were asking questions. Vorhagind gave weary replies marked with half-hearted gestures. Parr sat straight-backed, hands folded in his lap. His black hair was pulled back, showing a scarlet hem around his neck. Most councillors had grey hair or none at all. Montès’s balding head gleamed in the cold light. The elderly man who spoke at Skaarnaht dozed in his seat.
I frowned. “It’s all old itheran men.”
Iannah snorted. “Welcome to the Council.”
“What’s that red hem on Parr’s robe mean?”
“Ex-military. Served for eighteen years, six as a captain. He fought in the Third Elken War and through the height of the Rúonbattai resistance. Retired when he got elected.”
“Crieknaast and Rutnaast are both on routes through the Turquoise Mountains,” the pale-haired man said. “You sent messengers to warn other border towns about Suriel, correct? What did these messages say?”
“That all our industry near Dúnravn Pass be destroyed,” Vorhagind answered. “That every incident was preceded by terrible storms, the like of which we have not seen since the Dúnravn avalanche two years ago.”
“Do you mean to imply those are related, or is your retirement plan to write the farmer’s almanac?” Montès asked. I had to pay close attention to understand his accent.
“The viirelei believe Suriel is linked to the wind,” Vorhagind said. “They warned us of him twice and were right both times. I trust them to read the signs.”
“That would be the one thing viirelei can read,” a dark-haired man said. A laugh rippled through the room.
“Ass,” I muttered.
Montès tapped the table. “Why did Rutnaast’s mayor ignore your warning? Did he distrust you, or simply distrust viirelei?”
“I can only speak to my decisions.” Vorhagind’s words carried an edge. “I would suggest you ask him yourself, but he is a touch too dead to respond.”
“A terrible loss indeed. Do you fear for your safety, Mayor, over there by the mountains?”
“I would be fool not to in these times.”
“And if someone told you to abandon your town’s primary trade route and industries to appease a spirit, you would?”
“I have, and would again.”
Montès rose to his feet. “My fellow councillors, a month ago I hesitated to doubt such a dedicated mayor, overlooking his order to barricade us in the town hall, but it is plain to see now. These storms have driven the poor man mad with fear. Even his staff seem addled, haunted by tales of ghosts. The people of Crieknaast worry about their mayor’s soundness of mind.”
“That’s not true!” I hissed as a clamour erupted. Iannah raised an eyebrow. I bit hard on my tongue.
Parr’s clear voice cut through the others. “Montès would have us believe citizens are dropping dead of their own accord — a witless, deluded, and dangerous view.”
Montès raised his hands, wide sleeves draping like cocoons, until the room fell silent. “Mayor, you consulted the mage Tiernan Heilind after the lumber camp incident, did you not?”
“Aye, as due his involvement in the Dúnravn expedition.” Vorhagind sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth.
“Heilind vehemently proclaimed the existence of a spirit after that expedition.” Montès’s voice was smooth as silk. “He now refuses to testify. I assume he is no longer willing to corroborate a story borne of paranoia and children’s bedside tales.”
“Fucking takuran.” I gripped the cold iron railing. Iannah raised her other eyebrow.
“Proof be in our funeral sites and the ruins of our towns.” Anger filled Vorhagind’s voice. “Go look, if you dare step out from behind your guards. But do not butcher my townspeople again, or we will stand against you.”
Shouting erupted below. Words blurred like driving snow, too thickly accented for me to understand. Half the Council leapt to their feet, leaning over the tables and brandishing fists.
Parr stood up, raised a massive tome, and dropped it on the table. The whump resonated throughout the marble hall. A stack of papers spun away and fluttered to the ground. The oldest councillor jerked awake. Everyone snapped silent.
“Crieknaast called for aid and we gave them death,” Parr said. “Rutnaast called for aid and we gave them nothing. Caladheåns have made it clear they will not accept inaction, and I do not intend to fail them too. We know these towns lie in a warpath. Have you forgotten how many soldiers died at Dúnravn?”
Parr placed his fist over his heart. “Eremur suffered three wars because we turned against each other. We may not survive a fourth. We must stand together on the front lines and face our common enemy. Councillors, we swore an oath to our citizens. Do not fault them for demanding we fulfill that oath.”
A murmur rippled down the tables. One by one, the councillors took their seats. Montès was the last, adjusting his robe before lowering himself into his chair.
Iannah looked up at the domed ceiling. “People think history’s forged on battlefields. Sometimes it’s decided in this room.”
The sleet had faded by the time the Council pushed back their chairs. Iannah and I slipped down the spiral stairs and through the Colonnium to the south gallery where Falwen’s office was. We sat on a bench between the statues of soldiers on horseback, stretching our stiff legs. Orange light glowed through ice crystals on the windows.
“Montès only did that to get back at Vorhagind for humiliating him in Crieknaast,” I said.
Iannah shrugged. “He’s petty enough for that, but it’s more complicated. Montès got elected twenty-three years ago, just before the Third Elken War. You must know what happened there.”
“Um . . .” I would’ve if I was Iyo like she thought. The Rin didn’t get involved, so neither did any other northern jouyen. “I know the Ferish started it.”
“Not the ones in government. Ferish rebels held a coup because they were angry about treaties the Council signed with Sverba and your nation. The Sverbian Rúonbattai tore Caladheå apart in retaliation. Ever since then, Montès has done whatever it takes to keep soldiers in the capital.”
“Even when they’re needed elsewhere?”
“Crieknaast has eight thousand Sverbians. Caladheå has a hundred thousand residents, mostly Ferish. Guess which matter more to him.”
I frowned. “Who else is testifying?”
“Rutnaast refugees. Dúnravn survivors. Nobody with political influence.” Iannah glanced at me. “What’d you say before? ‘Takuran’?”
I gave a harsh laugh. “It means someone so foul they have to be buried in shit because dirt rejects their blood. Don’t repeat it.”
Voices echoed through the gallery as a group of councillors entered from the lobby. They must’ve lingered in Council Hall and just left. Parr was among them. He put his hand on a councillor’s shoulder, said something, and strode to the nearest staircase up to the balcony.
“I have an idea.” I dashed across the room, boots slapping on the tile. A man jerked aside as my skirt swirled against his robe. Iannah ran after me, sword swinging at her hip.
“Councillor Parr,” I called, catching up to him at the top of the stairs. “May I speak with you?”
“Miss Kateiko.” He brightened. “What can I do for you?”
I twisted my hands behind my back as he pulled out a silver key. “I was just wondering . . . no one from the Iyo-jouyen is testifying at the inquiry, right?”
“No, not as far as I know.” He unlocked a door and beckoned Iannah and me through.
Inside, dusk light filtered through tall windows overlooking the pillared loggia. A map with flowing gold script covered an entire wall. The other walls were lined with paintings in gilt frames — portraits of sombre itherans, vases spilling over with colourful flowers against dark backgrounds, ships in hazy ports at sunrise.
