Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  Anfluga slapped a wave, but I saw Therkon’s recoil. And the endless moment while they faced each other, two starlit silhouettes. Both rigid, down to the out-thrust jaw.

  Then Therkon half drew away. All but propped himself on the gunwale. When he spoke his voice cracked.

  “Gods, man. Do you think I haven’t seen?”

  Water rose and fell beyond them, its facets catching the starlight to glints of foam. I wondered if my heart had stopped, before Segil spoke.

  “What, then, d’ye mean to do?”

  Therkon should have pokered up in earnest. If he could not wax indignant at anyone taxing him in what should have been my fathers’ place, it ought to have been enough that Segil dared question a future emperor.

  But Therkon only turned his head and stared away past the dragontail sternpost where the foam glinted, brief as flowers, along Anfluga’s trail. When he spoke, it sounded empty as the receding sea.

  “I will do—what must be done.”

  He put both hands on the stern-rail and bowed his head and the rest reached me in the barest whisper, less heard than imagined through the sounds of wind and wave.

  “Whatever that means to me.”

  * * * *

  Segil’s “mam” was almost as massive as he was, with his dark eyes and skin, but something in her facial bones that said,

  distant white blood. She met us on the wharf, after Anfluga worked in through the plentiful traffic under Munen’s sun-white terraces, vivid above a laughing blue and white sea. Someone had recognized the sail a long way out, and word had run through the town. One of their own, coming home.

  And with Segil’s mother, Rathi’s widow came.

  Of all the voyage it was the moment, I had dreaded most.

  Segil had told us, almost in passing, “T’was fixed, long ago. When t’skipper went, I’d take her on.” Anfluga, he meant. Smoothing a palm over the hand-worn, sweat-stained tiller bar. “Split the difference, costs an’ pay, wi’ Druath. She’s a canny woman. An’ sea-born, herself.”

  Small, going grey, but upright and composed, even when Segil brought ashore the “flotskyll” and gave her the news that mattered most to her.

  “Ye’ll hear the tale,” he told her, “from my mam. But we’ll sing him this eve.” They had been working on the songs all up Hamair’s coast, across Hellir Strait, even round the sunlit, green-glinting lands of Sandouin. “Aye, me mam’ll do the tale,” he said to me, “but we’ll wake Rathi. We’re his crew.”

  That plan had been the most constant pattern of the voyage, after the weather, which produced showers and spring squalls but always cleared to sunshine, to blue skies that Segil snorted were “t’bogle’s amends,” and that spoke, clear as the scent of woken earth on the wind, of spring.

  As constant as the slight, impalpable, unmistakable resumption of Therkon’s courtesy to me.

  He let me change the bandages and keep close ward over his healing hand, he still smiled and called me “Chaeris” without hesitating over “my lady,” and spoke to me, at times, like his friend. But always, afterwards, the constraint would fall again. Transparent as a veil of glass, and as unbreakable.

  Because I could not even ask what had gone wrong between us. Because of how I already knew.

  When I tried to speak to Druath, the platitudes drew on my own past and present grief. But though she listened somberly, it was without tears.

  “He was flotna,” she said. “Like my own pa. Seafarers. Ye ne’er know when they’re comin’ home. An’ ye ne’er know when they’ll go.”

  She had a brief contest with Segil’s mother over housing

  Therkon and me, before we spent four days in Segil’s family house on its upper terrace, a wholly fascinating, deceptively narrow-fronted pile of gables and shingle roofs. The three floors climbed like terraces too, a single stair up the middle, curtains for walls, and a hearth at either end. Therkon and I were bestowed, apologetically, on the “weens’ floor”: boys’ room to the right, girls’ to the left, snug under the topmost ceiling. On the second floor

  Segil’s parents, his aunt, his two sisters and their husbands lived.

  Segil had space there, but he never slept in it. “Away to Haggar’s daughter, down t’road,” his elder sister told me amusedly. The ground floor was common-space and kitchen, where Segil’s father held sway. He had broken a thigh at sea and come home to stay, Segil said, adding, ironic as ever, “He’s more time for it than mam. An’ he’s a better cook.”

  The first was certainly true. Skalr was a true Teller. What that meant in the Isles I had not yet understood.

  After a professed healer had seen Therkon’s hand, judged it healing beyond need for extra help, and supplied a new salve “to ease in the scar,” we spent the days exploring the house, or investigating passages from Munen. Neither of us had wanted to draw Anfluga further astray. Segil argued at first that they would take us right home, but then he stopped short, and said abruptly, “Aye, lass. Ye deserve at least one trip wi’ a proper necessary.”

  It did not stop him exhaustively criticizing every possible

  vessel, captain or crew. But for the most time, we slept. I had not realized how much I had needed a true, safe, stable bed until I woke the first morning only a little before noon.

  Each day, though, people came to see Skalr with what seemed trivial news, even gossip, births and marriages and ships out or in. Between times she moved about the house, or ran minor

  errands, or occasionally joined conversations, all with an absent air of listening. After the rest went upstairs the first night, she had sat me down at the left ground-floor hearth, the common space. I had been unsure how much to tell, of our origins, our identities. But when I said, “Where shall I start?” She said, “Begin at the beginning, and go on to the end.” And Two took her at her word.

  The third afternoon she appeared as we were shaking off a shower’s wet from a harbor trip. Segil took one look and went alert. Skalr nodded to him and said, “I’ve told Thengir.” Thengir had no title, and lived in an ordinary house, but he seemed the nearest Munen had to a lord. “He’ll call Gather tonight.”

  The rain had cleared by sunset, and the moon rose exquisitely, four days from full. Its lop-sided golden globe lit the rain-limpid air, the distant horizons I could never get enough of, the panorama of harbor and streets and the steady stream of people filling the space behind the quay. In a more formal town it might have had a fountain, and been called a square. Here it was just the gather-ground. People sat on steps, on native boulders, on long kitchen stools. And the gods sat with them, Tiran and the Mother, in a little thicket of candles that helped lamps and lanterns and open windows eke out the moon.

  There was very little noise. It stopped completely when Skalr emerged on the back step of the quayside inn, crossed hands on her breast, and bowed her head to the Mother, briefly as to an old friend.

  Then she raised her low, casual voice that now carried like a honey-toned trumpet, and said, “Hear the tale of the Winter Dark. The deed of Therkon Burnt-Hand and Chaeris, the Seer of Iskarda.”

  Therkon was perched beside me on a convenient step. I felt rather than heard the quick intake of his breath. I could imagine his rapt, dazzled look. We were about to become legend. He had told me sagas. Now we would enter a saga ourselves.

  Cold lay the Isles

  in desolate winter,

  Dark as the grave,

  in Sthassamaer’s hold.

  Stark snow blighted

  Kaldr’s fishermen.

  Cruel wind struck

  at Ve Pool’s fleet,

  Wrath of the sea

  punished brave Hondeland,

  Plague broke the dream

  of Hringstenn’s stones.

  Hard rock at Cuwen

  lies bare and lone.

  She half sang, half chanted, low-pitched but resonant
. There were towns and islands I never heard of in that list, and as the roll-call extended I began to understand what “Teller” meant.

  Two can reclaim them all. I have telescoped that part to moon and lamplit shadow, the audience’s absolute quiet. Until Skalr paused, not for breath, but for emphasis.

  Then from northward

  came the heroes,

  Cast by waves

  on Sickle’s beach,

  Their sea toll paid.

  The Winter Man claimed

  White-sailed Aspis,

  her sixty rowers.

  Sailmen and captain,

  Avergil, Crespis, Suris, Deoren . . .

  A list of names that I had never known, but I knew who they were. Ten Imperial guards. The captain. Deoren’s troublecrew. She had talked to Therkon too.

  And of Iskarda,

  Verrith, Azo.

  My eyes filled as I fully understood. A Teller in the Isles told more than story, or even saga. This was history. Record, honor, epitaph. Memorial.

  And they would not honor even outland heroes alone.

  The Seer found them

  come to Evvamoor,

  Quieted sorrow and

  Saw their way.

  Then said Therkon

  the far-planner,

  ‘Farther southward

  I will to go,

  Wherever fate takes us,

  whatever the cost.’

  ‘Where you go, I go,’

  the lady said.

  Suddenly I was blinking away my own tears of awe and wonder at apotheosis. I could not, yet, hear the capital “L” for “lady,” but I knew that it would come.

  We reached Grithsperry. If a talespinner was meticulous in listing the dead, so was she with less savory events. Hvestang caused tumult, Skatir imprisoned us, we fired the tower and fled. Tolla took us south with

  Frotha the ship-wife, Colne the master,

  to Jurrick they sailed.

  Where, scrupulously not awarding blame where neither Two nor I had certainty, we lost Nouip’s brooch, and Therkon sold his ring.

  What is a treasure,

  said Therkon Burnt-hand,

  So it be not spent

  in the hour’s need?

  In the quiet around us I could almost hear Anfluga’s men adding passage costs and herring sales, and finding the real source of my bountifulness.

  We fled Jurrick, I fell on the cliff, less, I was grateful to hear, from rashness than haste. Veenn and her kin salvaged me, while my “true companion” ran for help.

  A Teller names evil-doers along with the good and the dead. “Stokka, Lord of Ve Pool” was as unsparingly described as the Ve Pool thieves, as “Aerful of Ve Pool,” and Fiskri, Halri and Sheinn.

  When we moved to Eithay I stopped listening: not for the

  embarrassment of the herring sale. Meeting Rathi, the first

  traumatic voyage with Anfluga, was bad enough. But I could not bear to think about Skall again.

  By the ceat, on the hillside,

  strong-hearted Chaeris

  Struck for her way-mate,

  waking light,

  Wiping out sea-kites.

  Nine at a blow.

  Never again,

  will the flotnar fear Skall.

  A teller’s, a historian’s, a justice’s verdict. Two retrieves it. I was only trying to escape the rain and mist, the dead men lying round me in the raw wind and seabirds’ cries.

  Nor can I bear, even now, to retrieve the rest of that journey into winter. Even those last minutes among Hringstenn’s stones.

  I opened my eyes again when Skalr’s tone announced

  conclusion. The gather-space was utterly still. All the faces were lifted, blurs in the half-light. Not a few of them, to my appalled realization, were turned to Therkon and me.

  Go now, bade the Mother,

  your grievance settled.

  Yield the day.

  The Seer has spoken,

  Seeing for Me.

  The heroes have fought.

  Hvestang has brought the

  end of dispute. Dawn will waken,

  Dayspring return.

  The comfort of grief

  Comes from remembrance

  in honor, in truth.

  Now the Isles will remember

  Aspis, Aerful, Anfluga,

  Iskarda’s Seer,

  and Therkon Burnt-Hand,

  So long as sails move

  out to sea.

  * * * *

  I would have liked to stay in Munen, not only to watch the Isles’ summer succeed their tardy spring, but because, lacking lords, Munen seemed a town both odder and far easier than any other we had seen. But Therkon, I knew, would be worrying about Dhasdein. And though Skalr’s tale had met only the deepest, most respectful silence, followed by a steady surge of candle-lighting before the images, next day people were already following me, calling me Lady, trying to touch me, to ask for Sights in the street.

  I had lit a candle too. It was less thanks than invocation, though I could not decide what I really sought. That we stay in the Isles? That we find swift passage home? That Therkon treat me as before? That I could ignore his last words to Segil? Certainly, I did not expect Segil himself to thump in the third-next noonday and burst out, “There’s a schooner in! Skthoja, out of Inganess!”

  “First souther o’ the season,” he added in satisfaction, as he and Therkon and I and half the household began tumbling down the hill. “She’ll have the pick o’ the lading, such as it is. An’ she’s a fine weatherly hull as well as fast, an’,” on a note of triumph, “there’s a necessary!”

  Skalr caught my eye behind his back. I tried to smother my own laugh. To remember Dhasdein and Iskarda. To silence my divided heart that cried one instant, I want to go home, and the next, I want things as they were.

  Skthoja’s tall, laconic captain knew Munen, and Segil. And some of the tale had already traveled, for when he heard whose passage Segil wanted, I felt him half-check to stare. Before he nodded across the tap-room table to Segil, and then inclined his head to me. “Aye, m’lady. Where is it ye’d go?”

  Segil opened his mouth to say, Inganess. Therkon’s eye amended, Phaerea. I spared one wistful thought for Ve Pool. When I had asked if Stokka might avenge her tale on Fiskri’s folk, Skalr had shaken her head with a curt smile. “Wi’ every Isle eye upon him? He’d never dare.” But prudence warned to avoid provocation, all the same.

  I opened my own mouth to suggest, Jurrick? Two’s extrapolation meshed with memory, clear back, clear forward to Sickle, and we Saw.

  “Hranhaven,” we said.

  * * * *

  We farewelled Munen on the wharf, as we had farewelled so many towns, though seldom in a crisp wind, under full sun, and with what seemed like the whole populace out to see us off. It made parting from those we knew more difficult. Especially from Anfluga’s crew.

  Looking up at Segil as Two added time, I realized that I had known him longest of anyone in the Isles. Had traveled further with him. Shared greater perils and distresses with him than with anyone except Therkon. A tale is a saga, a record of heroes. How does one list, let alone mourn, the threads of tiny everyday events that weave lives together, that we were about to sever for good?

  He was looking almost wooden. There was a lump in my throat: I wanted to put out my hand, but though courteous it seemed inadequate. No doubt he would hesitate about offering his. Then feelings overran caution and courtesy too, I put both arms round him as far as they would go and hugged.

  “Thank you,” I said, when we did let go. “For everything.”

  He nodded once. “A fair wind,” he said. The traditional Isles’ sea-farewell. “An’,” he blinked, once, twice. “Remember
us. As we’ll be rememberin’ ye.”

  “We’ll remember.” And suddenly we Saw, past my own life­span, past even a saga’s memorial. Two would remember him, as humans never could. And Two would pass her memories to the qherrique, into the record we had inherited. The record that had preserved seven hundred years of Amberlight.

  “You will never be forgotten,” we said.

  His face told me he understood. At least, that it was a Sight. He bowed his head as to the Mother. Then he lifted it, Segil again.

  “A brave, canny lass,” he said, straight-faced. “An’ fast wi’ a blade. But none’ll ever call ye ‘wee’.”

  So I could pull a face and threaten mayhem as for once in a roar of friendly laughter Therkon and I climbed a gangplank, and prepared to wave goodbye.

  * * * *

  Skthoja was as fast as promised, and the weather stayed fair. West about Terrace to Inganess, west and north for a brief call at Mirkadin, then east about the tip of Phaerea, north again, a long leg to avoid Grithsperry, a harrowing wide cast about Rack Head, then a last south-east run into the bight of the Sickle, to Hranhaven itself: for all that long but easy passage I ate, and slept, in a tiny passenger’s cabin, and worked out with Therkon daily. Hand to hand. Neither of us wanted to use a blade. And all the way I struggled not to feel that thin tether of constraint, not to wonder what his last words to Segil might come to mean.

  It was relief beyond expression when Skthoja worked in under summer-bright hills to Hranhaven, and my eyes beheld what we had Seen in Munen: the tall, grey-haired, pale-skinned woman waiting on the quay.

  “Aye,” she said, when I stopped laughing and weeping and crying into the shoulder of her homespun cloak, “I Saw you! I Saw you here! Nouip, I can See!” There was a smile for once on that reticent face, equal parts amusement, joy and pride. “And I knew you had. Two months gone, when the season changed. I knew ye’d prevailed. I Saw ye, on a dockside. An’ third yestermorn, when I let the dogs out, the wind said, Hranhaven.”

  She held me a little away from her. “There’s been rags o’ the tale, with every keel in.” The Sickle accent seemed almost Outland after the thicker voices of the southern Isles. “Come ye now to my sister-daughter’s house, up the way here, and give me it all.”

  Nouip’s niece was almost as grey-haired as she, and as