Flight

by Jae Waller

  “I’m sorry, sir.” My voice sounded too quiet.

  Parr gave me a tired smile. “Forgive me, Miss Kateiko. The Colonnium is a lonely place. I do not receive much company that is not demanding one thing or another of me.”

  I looked up at Parr, though I was nearly as tall as him. “Councillor, all I ask is you don’t give up. We need you on our side.”

  He bowed. “I will be dead before I give up.”

  •

  The guard changed at noon. Iannah waved before heading through the gates. Segowa disappeared and returned with furs and blankets for the children. I sat on the edge of the avenue with a bowl of broth, the slush seeping through my clothes. I got up to pass out more hot water and restore feeling to my legs.

  I was surprised how many other antayul offered water to the guards. My simple gesture had spread. The captains walked among the crowd, watching but not interfering. One shared a mug with another guard. The hill was bitterly cold even in the afternoon sun. Wind and damp took no sides.

  Itherans joined the protest. Men and women smelling of fish, Sverbian clerics wearing white robes and iron pendants of the nine-branched tree, grizzled men with elk pins by their collars and missing limbs, Ferish youth that huddled together and offered uncertain smiles as I passed. A few carried sheets of wood or cloth painted with familiar letters. Ikken naeja. Not enough.

  We gave food and water to anyone who sat on the stone avenue. Some came to the bottom of the hill and watched until the cold drove them off. The sun dipped through the sky like a sinking ship, casting shards of red and gold light into the ocean. Shadows stretched up the hill. Still we waited. Just after the sun vanished below the horizon, the gates creaked open.

  Parr and Montès stood under the rearing elk statues. I glimpsed Iannah among the guards behind them. Parr was motionless, his head held high. A scabbard hung at his side. I’d never seen him with a sword, just the knife he wore under his coat.

  They didn’t say much. Only one sentence mattered. Baliad Iyo was to be hanged.

  Silence hung over the hill like the moment between breaths.

  A bow cracked. An arrow pierced Montès’s chest through his Council robe. He toppled back, thudding to the ground.

  Half the guards on the avenue thrust their spears forward in unison. The other half swept across the hill. A guard’s spear hurtled through the air and sank into the snow just behind a fleeing figure.

  I expected chaos like at Skaarnaht. Panic. Noise. Trapped bodies. But no one else moved. The rows of spearheads were the jaws of a beast around us. My hand shook as I willed myself not to draw a weapon.

  “What are you waiting for?” someone shouted behind the stone walls.

  I looked into the eyes of the guard nearest me. A dark-haired man, square-jawed, maybe Tiernan’s age. I’d given him water not an hour before. “Please,” I mouthed. “Please don’t.”

  The spear trembled in his gloved hands. He stared into my eyes, unblinking — then raised the steel tip. He returned his spear to his side, pointing at the sky.

  I heard rustling. Other guards raised their spears. Across the avenue, all the way down the hill, steel lifted away from the crowd. I turned back to the gates. Iannah tapped two fingers to her forehead in salute.

  Parr lifted Montès’s body and carried him into the courtyard. The gates wrenched shut.

  •

  Flame wove through the darkness. Wotelem carried a burning torch up the hill. Cracking sounds filled the night as people snapped off branches and lit them from the torch, passing fire from person to person until the entire avenue blazed. From the city it must’ve looked like a column of flame rising into the sky.

  “Ai, Iyo-girl.” Airedain held a burning branch in one hand. He pushed a bundle at me with the other.

  I shook out the white linen square. In the flickering light I saw a dolphin outlined in soot. Instead of being curled like the Iyo crest, it was straight, flippers extended, forming a cross like the Rin kinaru. “Did you make this?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Special flag for a special Iyo.”

  I smiled. I draped it over my mantle and stuck my cloak pin through the corners. Then I snapped off a branch and lit it from Airedain’s.

  We sat on frosty cobblestones under drifting snowflakes. Someone began to sing, joined by hundreds of voices until the night was thick with grief. Darkness curled through the crowd as the torches went out. When the cold sank into my bones, Airedain wrapped his arm around my shaking shoulders, his sleeve pressing against my braid.

  I didn’t notice the guards were gone until the sky turned red in the east and Iannah came back alone. I disentangled myself from Airedain, my legs stiff as planks. He glanced at her, but didn’t say anything.

  “Caladheå is going to war,” Iannah said. “Parr had half the Council convinced. Montès’s death tipped the vote. We’re sending soldiers to Dúnravn and ships to Rutnaast.”

  My breath caught. It was a bitter triumph, but at least the military knew what they were facing this time. A seed of hope burst open in my chest, unfurling to meet the dawn.

  “Did you catch the person who shot Montès?” I asked.

  “No. They had a horse waiting in the streets. We have no idea who it was.”

  “What’ll happen to you?”

  “Guarding the councillors.” Iannah leaned on her spear. “Longer hours, better pay, same damned Colonnium.”

  “I promised Tiernan I’d leave Caladheå when the inquiry was over.” I wrapped numb hands around my elbows. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  She shrugged. “Come by when you do. I’ll be here until the end of time.”

  “I will. Promise.”

  “I have to get back. See you, Koehl.” She saluted and walked off.

  Airedain rose and stretched, his long arms dark against the brightening sky. “You don’t have to go.”

  “There’s nothing more I can do here. It’s not our fight anymore.”

  “It never was.”

  As I gazed at him in the faint light, I was reminded of the autumn sunrise at Kotula Huin. Today we fly. I never would’ve guessed one vision would lead me to a foreign city at the dawn of a changing world. “Are you going back to Toel Ginu?”

  “Nei.” Airedain kicked at the dusting of fresh snow. “This was our land long before the pigeons arrived. I have work, a home, friends here. I ain’t gonna let them drive me out.”

  “That could’ve been us instead of Baliad.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “I know.” He grinned, but the light no longer reached his eyes.

  Later that day as I rode into North Iyun Bel, I heard a horn in the distance, low and rumbling like an earthquake. I looked back and saw a column of soldiers riding onto the Roannveldt plain, the red elk banner snapping in the wind.

  Eventually, I’d learn the Sverbians called that day Skaarmeht. Red Morning, the start of the War of the Wind. The Rin would never name it.

  18.

  SHOIRDRYGE

  I pushed open the workshop door. “Tiernan?”

  He looked past the brazier. Flames crackled higher than his head. No wonder he hadn’t heard me in the stable. “Kateiko.” The fire dimmed, licking at the brazier lip.

  I leaned against the doorframe. “The Council declared war on Suriel.”

  “Gods willing, they will have more luck than before.” Tiernan rubbed his temples. “Come inside. You are letting the cold air in.”

  I drew forward, holding my hands to the flames. “I thought the cold didn’t bother you.”

  “Not in the way you think.” His pale skin was streaked with soot and sweat, blurring into his beard. There were holes burned in his tunic and his hair fell tangled to his shoulders. His eyes traced over my forehead. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

&nbs
p; I almost said no. Everything I’d done might invite a lecture, and after leaving behind the bloodstains of one war only to find myself at the start of another, I was tired. But as I looked into Tiernan’s eyes, I knew he’d understand. The gash on my face would fade into a scar and it’d be one more thing we’d have in common.

  So we sat on the dirt, watching flames tremble like leaves, and I told him everything. He didn’t question my friendship with Iannah, fighting itherans with Airedain, or my conversations with Parr. When I told him about calling water in front of Colonnium guards, he smiled and said, “I wondered which you would choose.”

  That night I unbraided my hair and put on my old winter clothes. I scrubbed ash from my dress and stored it in the rioden chest Tiernan had built me. As I hung my dolphin flag next to my kinaru shawl, a flash of white light caught my eye. I peered out the frost-etched window and saw Tiernan walking around the clearing, writing symbols in the air that glowed before fading away.

  “What were those?” I asked when he came back inside.

  “A warning,” was all he said.

  •

  Two days later, a blizzard struck overnight. Amid the howls of a war horn, voices called the Rin battle cry. Kujinna kobairen. Today we fly. I pulled my embroidered fir blanket over my head and told myself it was my imagination.

  A crash snapped me awake. I jerked up and slammed my head into a rafter. “Kaid!”

  “Kateiko?” Tiernan called. “Are you all right?”

  “More or less.” I put my fingers to my forehead. They came away wet. “Fuck. Ow.”

  “Go back to sleep. I will check on the horses.”

  In the morning I had to climb a snowdrift to get out the door, nearly hitting my head on the porch roof. Grey clouds smothered the sky. Light came from everywhere and nowhere at once. A hemlock had blown over, caving in the workshop roof, its trunk splintered like a bone. Shards of wood littered the snow.

  “A tel-saidu must’ve been angry,” I said as we wiped wet, heavy snow off the ladder mounted on the workshop wall.

  Tiernan gave me a reproachful look. “You should not joke about such things.”

  “I’m not joking. The Okoreni-Iyo said the Storm Year happened because Suriel started a war among the saidu.”

  “No one knows if Suriel caused it.” He stood the ladder next to the hemlock and picked up a saw. “All that’s certain is he did not take a side.”

  I craned my neck as he climbed into a cluster of green needles. “How do you know?”

  “I have met viirelei scholars who study the saidu. They say Suriel went far north during the war, all the way to the tundra. He was not here for any of it.”

  “What scholars? Where?”

  “Ingdanrad. A mage settlement on Burren Inlet, in the mountains near Nyhemur.” He looked down. “You should not stand there.”

  I stepped back. “Maika’s mentioned it. That’s where she studied healing, right?”

  “Yes. And where we met.” The saw scraped. A branch fell with a whump, scattering needles everywhere. “People from any culture can study magic there. They live freely, unlike in Eremur where every mage is bound by law to register with the government.”

  “Why didn’t anyone from Ingdanrad testify at the inquiry?”

  Another branch hit the snow. “Several Sverbian mages were accused of helping the Rúonbattai massacre Ferish immigrants during the Third Elken War. The mages were murdered while in Council custody. Ingdanrad refuses to get involved in Eremur’s politics anymore.”

  “You could’ve told someone else about the saidu war. Parr, Mayor Vorhagind — someone who’d tell the Council for you.”

  “My ties to Parr and Vorhagind are well-known. The info would have been traced back to me.” A third branch fell. Tiernan clambered down and rubbed his beard. “I have no lumber set aside, but it will take too long to season any.”

  “Tiernan.” I waited until he looked at me. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew all this?”

  He sighed. “Can this wait until my research will not get snowed on?”

  I narrowed my eyes, but relented. “If you cut boards for a frame, I’ll dry them, and we can patch it with bark. It won’t be great, but it might last the winter.”

  •

  “Bøkkai,” Tiernan swore from the roof. “Kateiko, could you bring me a cwngeht?”

  “A what?”

  He paused. “A chisel. There should be one on the table nearest the map.”

  I set down the hemlock bark I was cutting. As I rummaged through Tiernan’s tools, an ink sketch caught my eye among pages of his fine handwriting. I dropped it like it scalded me. “Why is there a drawing of Suriel’s crest in your notes?”

  “For reference. Did you find the chisel?”

  I moved under the yawning hole in the roof. “Tiernan, people tried to kill Airedain and me because of this symbol. If someone found this here, I swear to the aeldu—”

  “I am not going to discuss this while I am on a roof.”

  “Then come down here.”

  “Gods’ sake, Kateiko—”

  “I’m serious,” I said, raising my voice. “I’ve been patient, but it ends now. There’s a war going on. If you’re looking into Suriel, at least tell me.”

  I heard thumping, followed by the creak of the ladder. The door swung open.

  Tiernan stood with a hammer in hand. “I am not looking into Suriel. My research takes me to the same places as him. That is all.”

  “What are you trying to do? You’re not just burning stuff for no reason.”

  “Most people are happier not knowing.”

  I folded my arms. “Do I look happy?”

  He glanced upward as if asking the sky for strength. “You are too stubborn for your own good. Come. Sit.” He settled on the floor and rolled up his sleeves. I sat cross-legged across from him, ignoring how cold the dirt was.

  “I told you about shoirdrygen, parallel worlds, but not how they are formed.” He scraped up a handful of soil and shaped it into a mound. “Make a stream there, on top.”

  I put my fingertip on the peak. Water flowed down the slope and pooled at the base.

  “Imagine that stream is the flow of history. Then a catastrophe alters it forever.” Tiernan placed a pebble in the stream, diverting it into two paths. “Time itself is ripped apart. The world splits and two distinct timelines emerge. Hence the term ‘splintered worlds.’”

  I pulled my hand back. The stream stopped. “What kind of catastrophe?”

  He brushed dirt from his palms. “An extremely limited number of mages can tap into the flow of time and see into the past or future. Maika and I cannot. The process is unimaginably difficult and requires linking oneself so closely to time that it becomes as fragile as human life. Theological scholars’ theory is that when a temporal mage is on the brink of death, two timelines form — one where the mage lives and one where they die.”

  “What happens to those timelines?”

  “They form parallel versions of the original world. As they flow apart, history develops differently. Temporal mages tend to be extremely influential in war, politics, and religion, given their knowledge of the past and future, so their lives or deaths have monumental impact. If the inhabitants of one shoirdryge saw another, it would not look familiar.”

  Cold air blew through the hole in the roof, stirring my hair. I drew my knees to my chest. “That’s what I saw in my visions.”

  Tiernan nodded. “The storms the saidu caused seven years ago did not happen there. You saw your sacred rioden tree alive because it was never struck by lightning. You saw the wasteland as forest because the saidu never destroyed it.”

  “That’s what you’re researching? Other worlds?”

  “Specifically, how to reach them. I began looking for rifts into shoirdrygen when I was younger than you. I had no luck in
Sverba, so I came here. A couple years after the storms, I began finding runes of a kinaru sigil at potential rift sites. It meant nothing to me until I saw Suriel’s soldiers bearing it at Dúnravn. I stopped searching after that.”

  “Then what’s all this for?” I waved at the brazier.

  “I resolved to make a rift instead. Look.” He held out his singed tunic sleeve. “You need water, soil, air, heat to grow flax before you can spin the fibres into linen. Too little will starve the flax. Too much will destroy it. The fabric of worlds is the same.”

  “Wait. All your experiments with my water-calling — I thought you were just curious. You were . . . using my people’s skill for this? Using me?”

  He was silent. At least he had the decency to look ashamed.

  I flicked the pebble from the dirt mound. “Why not tell me sooner?”

  Tiernan rubbed a hand down his face. “The shoirdryge is not a world like ours with different people. It was our world. As far as I can tell, it split off around ten years ago, when violence between the Rúonbattai and the Ferish was at its worst. My guess is one side had a temporal mage who died in battle.”

  “Wait — ten years ago means—”

  “The worlds split after you were born. You exist there, but everything you know from the last decade may be different.”

  My heart fluttered like a frightened bird. “I . . . I need to think. Alone.”

  •

  I lay in the snow, staring at the darkening sky framed with barren branches. I ignored slush seeping into my cloak, my knives pressing into my back, rain sliding down my face. For all I knew, I was ignoring it in another world.

  Ten years. Before the Dona war, before the Storm Year. So many people might still be alive. We wouldn’t be cut off from the Iyo. I allowed myself to daydream, imagining all the ways my life might’ve gone.

  Some things were set out from birth. I was an antayul because I was the eldest child of one, and I’d marry a non-antayul to keep our family’s skill set diverse. But maybe in that world I had siblings. Maybe I learned woodcarving or embroidery, or went west for summer trading and sailed the ocean. Maybe I got Behadul’s approval to marry Fendul and our eldest child would be Okorebai-Rin one day.