The Ikessar Falcon

by Villoso, K. S.

  “When do you plan to go up to the temple?” I asked as Namra ladled out scoops of rice, the fragrant steam a sharp contrast to the cold air. She slid her own plate over to me.

  “The sooner, the better,” Rayyel replied.

  “It’s too late now,” Namra said. “I’ve been told it’s a three-hour walk up the mountain and I would rather not travel in the dark.”

  I hadn’t even noticed it was close to evening. I gazed up at the grey sky and had an uneasy feeling over Agos and Nor’s plight. They should’ve reached the temple by now—would they be spending the night in the mountain? Or were they on their way back? It was unlikely the priests would’ve let them in if they were all as unfriendly as Belfang.

  “Tomorrow morning sounds good,” I said.

  “You intend to travel with us?” Rai sounded surprised.

  “Is that a problem?”

  He turned to Namra. “If her doctor thinks she can make the trip…” Namra began. She peered into my face. “You were at death’s-door. I’m surprised you’re as active as you are now, considering.”

  “I’m sure he won’t try to stop me. I’ve been walking around the village the whole day, and the exercise will be good for me.” The innkeeper arrived with a third bowl of stew and a plate. I thanked her profusely before ladling the contents over my rice. This wasn’t food I knew how to eat with chopsticks, and with no Zarojo watching, I felt confident enough to begin eating with my hands, scooping enough wet rice and thick, white fish meat onto my fingers before placing them in my mouth. There was a smoky sourness to the food, with a hint of garlic, red onion, and ginger. It was almost Jinsein, and I wondered if our host was accommodating to our particular tastes.

  After a moment of awkward silence, Rai pulled a wooden box closer to the table to sit on and turned to his own meal. To my amazement, he followed suit and picked at the rice with his fingers, too. After years of servants and giant tables with more food than we knew what to do with, it was strange to be sharing such a simple meal elbow-to-elbow. Without the trappings, without the ceremonies, we were just people. It was suddenly difficult even for me to believe how the fate of an entire nation rested on our shoulders.

  Night came, followed closely by mosquitoes. The innkeeper lit lanterns and scented candles to drive the insects away. I took a deep breath and turned to Rai, only to see him rise. “We should sleep soon if we are to be up before dawn.”

  Namra nodded. “I’ll get our things ready. Dragonlord Rayyel—will you and the queen be sharing quarters?”

  I felt the blood pound against my ears and found myself unable to answer. If he said yes…

  I had wanted this. I had wanted this for so very long.

  Six years, Rai. Six. In that length of time, a young dog becomes old, a sprout becomes a sapling, a baby becomes a child, a girl becomes a woman…

  I swallowed my misgivings and that memory from the Ruby Grove, when Khine asked what I would be if I could be anything in the world. Freedom was...a luxury I couldn’t afford.

  “I think,” Rai said, breaking my thoughts, “that the we are not yet ready for such an arrangement.” The discomfort was plain on his face. Despite myself, I felt a wave of relief, followed closely by guilt.

  “Then you may have my room, Beloved Queen,” Namra said with a bow. “I will not be sleeping until much later, anyway, and I think the common room will suit me just fine. Is this suitable?”

  “It is suitable,” I found myself automatically replying. I got up. Namra reached forward to support me. I didn’t need the help, but it was difficult not to like her now. I had been hasty in my previous assessment of her. Rai stayed in the garden, mumbling about needing to speak with our host.

  The room was extremely small, no bigger than the bed, but I had grown accustomed to such arrangements and lowered myself into the mattress without fuss. All the day’s activity had worn me out. “I apologize for my behaviour in Anzhao,” I said, looking straight into Namra’s face. “My separation from my husband wasn’t easy for me. Seeing him again after so many years was...difficult. I would’ve lashed out at anyone.”

  “Beloved Queen, there is nothing to forgive. The circumstances were not ideal. You were tired, and we tried to push you to a wall. A part of me knew it was not the best plan—I didn’t expect less from Yeshin’s daughter.”

  “I must be the worst queen Jin-Sayeng has ever seen.”

  I heard her take a deep breath, the sign of someone who knew how to hold back criticism. “If it’s any consolation,” she said at last. “It’s not like there’s anyone else to compare you to.”

  “There is that,” I mumbled. “Thank you, Namra.”

  She bowed once before she left.

  The one good thing about my exhaustion, at least—it was easy enough to push away my desire to get up and return to Khine and his mother. I fell asleep to the sound of an owl hooting outside. Sometime during the night, I woke momentarily to the sound of my husband entering his bed from the other side of the wall. Perhaps if he had come to me, proving the words he had uttered back in Anzhao when he had kissed me and told me he loved me before expressing his distaste—all nearly within the same breath—it would have changed everything. I could still, at least, convince myself it would.

  But he didn’t. The memories were real, but were they nothing more than leakage from a man who had dammed his emotions his whole life? I wouldn’t be surprised if he found his actions shameful and would never speak of them again. That same old unease that had marked our marriage returned. What were we, really? What was I to him, what part did I play in his life? There is nothing worse than grating silence where love ought to be.

  I fell asleep, and dreamt I was back in the outskirts of Anzhao, in a quiet shed with Khine’s arms wrapped around me. Outside, the rain drummed a symphony that drowned the world, strong enough to wash the bitterness and regret away. Silly dreams, ridiculous dreams, the sort that had no place in my life. I forgot them as soon as I woke up.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Holy Bluffs

  The sun rose behind a drizzle of rain as we broke our fast with toasted rice coffee, dried fish, and more conversation about the agan and the effigies. I think Namra was eager to have someone to talk to other than Rayyel. Given that she had just spent the last three years with him, I couldn’t really blame her. I wondered if it was truly devotion to their shared god or penance for some unimaginable crime that drove her to serve him. A bit of both, probably. Afterwards, she left to see if she could borrow oiled cloaks from the villagers, which gave me time alone with Rai in the covered deck. A moment with my husband, watching raindrops dripping along the shingled roof before they plopped to the ground, where they gathered into furrows in the soil…

  I couldn’t get past the awkward silence and excused myself to take a walk. Another person would’ve commented on the weather, at least, or asked me if I was feeling well; Rai merely grunted in response.

  My body, surprisingly enough, felt better than yesterday. Apart from my sore shoulder, my legs were starting to move with ease—a sharp contrast to my frayed mind. I went through the gate and turned at the first alley. There, I stopped to stare out at the sea. The waves were unusually rough that morning, crashing against the rocks into a spatter of mist and sea foam. It reflected the state of my nerves, of what the last few hours had reduced me to. Without realizing it, I began to make my way back south to the bridge. I hadn’t even gotten that far when I saw Mei walking towards me.

  I called to her. She looked up. Her clothes were soaked, as if she had been walking under the rain for some time. “Have you seen Khine?” she asked.

  “He didn’t spend the night at home?”

  Mei shook her head. “I was hoping you knew where he would be. His sisters don’t. I’m worried about him.” Shaking, she reached out from under her sleeves to grab hold of my hand. Her fingers were deathly cold. “He seems to think highly of you. Please, if you see him, tell him—tell him it’s not too late to start over. A chipped sword�
��still has an edge.”

  “I will.”

  “Because he thinks that he’s done for—that he’s used up everything he could have ever been and that I and his sisters and his brother are paying for his mistakes. But perfection is only for the gods. We have to keep going even if all we have left are pieces of what we thought we were.” She looked like she was going to start crying.

  I almost didn’t want to talk about what I had learned last evening. But I had to—there wasn’t much time left. I led her to the alley under the shelter of the overlapping rooftops and waited for her to calm down before telling her everything. Of the mages in the temple and how they had been using the priests as a front to get the villagers’ blood, how the featherstone mines now housed an army’s worth of things that would use the blood to draw power from them.

  “Warn the villagers. If they begin acting strangely, it’s because the effigy with their blood is being used and until it is destroyed, the link to them remains. Try to keep them safe until then—they haven’t gone mad, it’s all the mages’ doing. We’re heading up to the temple now where I intend to get to the bottom of this.”

  She took the news better than yesterday’s. When you’ve made it your life’s goal to make minute judgements on people and their character, you start to recognize that look of resolve and strength. Mei Lamang was someone who knew how to crawl through life and who had weathered enough pain for several lifetimes.

  I heard Namra calling for me from the other end of the street. I turned back to Mei and pressed both of her hands together. I kissed them. “You have nothing to worry about,” I said. “Your son is a good man.”

  “You told me that yesterday.” But she reached up to touch my face and gave me the ghost of a smile, one that made it easy enough for me to admit how much I envied Khine for his mother.

  I rejoined Rai and Namra by the gate. She had found cloaks and wide-brimmed hats made of dried reeds, which did a decent job of keeping the rain off us. Not that it helped much in my case; my clothes were already damp from my walk. We made our way past the streets to the lake, and the narrow, rocky trail that wound around it. The lake looked more grey than blue through the torrent of raindrops—a grey, broken mirror with a thousand cracks.

  We continued up until the lake was a dot below and the midsummer air became thick fog, an impenetrable blanket. I could barely see Rai ahead of me. The sound of rainfall was soothing, at least…the trickling of countless small streams was a welcome distraction from my roiling thoughts.

  My luck ran out with the first crack of lightning in the sky.

  “Well,” Namra said, looking up. “That was unexpected.”

  “Midsummer rain,” Rai replied. “Lightning is expected.”

  “Could’ve told us that,” I whispered, wondering how they kept each other company in the last three years with such dull conversation. The sky began to rumble. “We should stop while there’s still cover.”

  Rai made a noncommittal sound that indicated he was comfortable either way, but Namra agreed. We found a small alcove under an array of tree roots and boulders. I sat with my back to the soft soil and buried my face into my lap. I heard movement and saw Rai settle next to me.

  I gazed at him from the corner of my eye. He had grown thinner than when we shared our lives together. Life on the road was a stark contrast to the one in the palace, where our entire days revolved around shuffling in and out of meetings. For perhaps the first time in my life, I understood that I didn’t know much about him at all. I knew about his interests, but not what he thought of the world. I knew about his life, but not his hopes for the future. I had incorrectly assumed it was all the same as mine. It was an odd conclusion to come to about the man I claimed to love.

  “You understand why I have to do this,” he said in a low voice.

  I blinked. I didn’t realize he had noticed me looking at him. “I don’t, Rai,” I murmured. “You know I really don’t. Everything you do confuses me.”

  “I am not truly an Ikessar.”

  “They changed your name in the books.”

  “So you can understand why I do not want it done a second time. A lie on top of an untruth. Is this the basis for which you’d want us to rule the land?”

  I digested his words while I held back the familiar anger. “And so you refused to be crowned.”

  “My uncle Rysaran, the last true Ikessar, thought he needed a dragon in order to rule. Calling himself a Dragonlord when he had no dragon was something that went against his beliefs. He disappeared before they could crown him, too. When I found out about…about all of that…I needed to do something. I didn’t want to be an imposter setting another imposter forward as heir. Imagine how my clan would react. I left you to be crowned as Queen because I didn’t want to fracture the land.”

  “Your proposal with Zheshan would have accomplished the same thing. What would splitting Jin-Sayeng have done?”

  “My clan’s concerns would have been divided. The boy remains heir to Oren-yaro and would be safe, for a time.”

  My throat tightened. No—I understood nothing at all.

  “If…” I found myself saying. “If Thanh isn’t yours, couldn’t you just let us be? I’ll…I’ll step down.” Agos’ words came back to me. Take Thanh and just run…

  “Escape the Oren-yaro? Or his guardians? Neither of us have enough people we can trust for that. The boy will die by my hand, Talyien—peacefully. Need I remind you how brutal my mother had been to your father’s supporters? I am afraid that she will consider the boy an appropriate tool for the vengeance she couldn’t exact.” There was hardly a flicker on the expression of the stone wall that was my husband. I thought a wolf of Oren-yaro was unyielding; I had no idea how deep the Ikessars’ own tenets ran. I thought all they did was preach about the things the rest of us were doing wrong. I had always known Rai was stubborn, but not to what extent. That he had asked a priestess for assistance, among all the people he could’ve turned to, spoke volumes.

  A thought occurred to me. “What did you do for the two years before Namra joined you?”

  “A vow of silence,” he murmured.

  “Akaterru be damned. You’re a priest now?” It shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

  “As was my mother, and Rysaran before me.”

  “It was Rysaran’s selfish decision to stick to his ideals that caused the War of the Wolves in the first place. Self-made ideals—I understand how important these are for everyone who follow the texts of Kibouri, but they’re not practical. These ideals made him abandon his duties, just as…just as they made you abandon yours.” I realized how badly I wanted to ask him about Chiha. But it was not the sort of question I could think about without getting irrationally angry, and I chose to leave it at that.

  “I am not Oren-yaro, Tali. But you are. I knew you would try to hold things together, that you would be Queen to the best of your abilities. I wasn’t wrong.”

  No one else but Rayyel could irritate while offering praise, all in one breath. I turned away in time to see a figure emerge from the fog. No hat for this one, not even a cloak—his clothes were soaking wet. I lifted my head from my knees when I recognized Khine.

  “Doctor,” Namra greeted.

  “I’m not, really,” Khine mumbled, dropping into the shelter of the alcove without waiting for an invitation. He looked at me, and then at Rai. “I’d like to go up to the temple with you.”

  “Go back to your mother,” I said. “I’ll speak with Belfang on your behalf. I—”

  “I wasn’t asking for permission.” He sat on a rock, a good distance from the rest of us. “No sign of your guards?”

  “None. I’m sure they’re fine—they’re probably stuck under some tree or rock like we are.” Since when did I become a nervous chatterer?

  He nodded, swallowed, and gestured towards us. “And you’re not killing each other.”

  “For now,” I said. I smiled at Rayyel. He didn’t reciprocate.

  “That’s progress.” Kh
ine began coughing.

  “You’re drenched. Was it too hard to find proper clothes?”

  “Would’ve taken too long. I wanted to catch up to you.”

  “And where did you spend the night, anyway?”

  “If only I had known all you were going to do was pester me...”

  “You knew I was going to pester you. You came anyway.”

  “You allow them to speak with you thus?” Rai broke in, in Jinan.

  “He can understand that, you know,” I said.

  Rai looked embarrassed for a moment, but he recovered swiftly. “I believe that as Queen, you should know to remind people not to overstep their bounds.”

  “Akaterru, when did you morph into both Magister Arro and Yeshin? Fine—Lamang, this queen wishes to remind you that you are not allowed to speak with me thus. Happy, Lord Rayyel?”

  Rai frowned.

  The thunder stopped, the rain ceased, and we returned to the trail. My heart was racing again, and I was trying very hard not to look at Khine. I tried not to compare how he was nearly of Rai’s height but with thicker limbs and broader shoulders, or how he shuffled through the drizzle like a wet dog, unlike Rai who strode forward as if he was on some death march—eyes hard, face expressionless. Two men couldn’t have been more different.

  We reached the base of a cliff. The trail split, winding around both sides. Perched above was the temple—a grey, moss-covered building that shot straight into the sky. It had two narrow towers on each end, marked by stained glass windows on every floor. Rainwater from the faded yellow roof dripped into a pond, which overflowed and spilled over the rocks like a small waterfall.

  The trails both led up a flight of steps carved right into the mountain before joining once more in front of the gates. There were two priests waiting for us at the top of the shared landing.

  “Beloved Queen,” they said in unison.

  “You were expecting me?”