Schisms

by James Wolanyk

  Yatrin hummed considerately. He’d made his point to the outsider. “We were raised believing it might be a metaphor, some sort of symbol for us to understand sacrifice. But it was all true, Anna. Isn’t there something beautiful about truth? Don’t we crave being vindicated?”

  “It’s growing late,” Anna said as they wandered into the start of an open field. She studied the high grass swaying, rippling with the late afternoon’s breeze. Beyond it were the mounds of terraced farms and villas, the sunlit mansion estates rising up like blossoms from the forests, the gleaming white curtains of Golyna’s walls. Far in the distance, the mountains and their catacombs were shaded with pockets of shadow and deep auburn, gathering the first wisps of fog that would tumble down the slopes at dawn. It was everything she’d expected, yet nothing like it. “We shouldn’t be out here. We still need Mesar to dispatch missives to the Nest.”

  “Relax,” Yatrin said. “We settled that already.”

  “Of course.”

  “Just breathe, Anna. Look at what’s here. Can’t you feel the world moving through you?”

  She’d felt that way for a long while. Not moving through her, perhaps, but buffeting her wildly from day to day, misfortune to misfortune. “Head back and watch over Ramyi, would you? There’s something I ought to attend to.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just point me toward the officers’ villas,” Anna said. “It won’t take long.”

  * * * *

  High atop a rise crowded with rose gardens, lit only by the city’s bleeding glow and lanterns scattered along its walkways, Konrad’s villa waited. As much as Anna tried to focus on the switchback steps, which terminated in an arrangement of columns, vine-smothered stucco, and a glorified bronze portcullis, she found herself haunted by the monolithic nature of the estate. The state’s fanatical devotion to oneness, to matter gaining sentience, made the rise seem like a glorified monument of flesh.

  Where did the villa’s masonry end and Konrad begin?

  Where did Konrad end?

  Anna pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders and approached the gateway. Small, thin hounds barked beyond the portcullis, circling the open courtyard and swishing their tails until a group of watchmen emerged.

  Hardly sparing her a glance, the watchmen entered the gatehouse and tugged on a series of ropes, all the while passing whispers among themselves. Finally, with the cranking of a wall-mounted lever and its affixed cogs, the portcullis chugged upward and locked in place.

  “I’m here to see Konrad,” Anna said, only realizing she’d spoken in flatspeak after the fact.

  Several of the watchmen attended to the hounds, who’d only grown more fervent with the absence of the metal grating, while their apparent leader approached with a lantern. He was a clean-shaven, stocky man with a limping gait. “Come,” he called out in uncommonly delicate flatspeak. “The Ga’mir has been expecting your arrival.”

  As the watchman escorted Anna through a maze of atrium fountains and hardwood parlors, his curiosity became more obvious. What started as furtive glances eventually mounted to staring. “You’re the one they call Kuzalem.”

  “In some places,” Anna said. She was distracted by the villa, not because of its opulence, but its sheer beauty. Every corridor was lined with cushion-padded alcoves or hemmed in by murals and frescoes. Through the slivers of tall, slightly ajar doorways, Anna glimpsed tanks filled with enormous, vibrantly colored fish, shimmering with emerald and turquoise and ruby scales. Where Malijad had been opulent, verging on gaudy, the villa carried a sense of elegant restraint.

  “My children have read tales about you,” the watchman said. “All of the shops in Golyna have them, you know. Have to wonder how they compare to the truth.”

  Time will tell.

  The watchman led Anna through a smaller courtyard and toward a manor house, gesturing to the windowpanes full of dim candlelight. “The Ga’mir didn’t foresee your presence at this hour, as you might understand. He thought you’d rest.” They moved through the foyer and arrived at a set of oak doors. After two knocks, Konrad’s voice rose from the other side as a flicker of Orsas. “He’ll see you now, Kuzalem.”

  “Anna,” she corrected, though it was lost on the watchman. She sighed as he shambled off across the courtyard. After a moment to gather herself, smoothing the folds of her cloak and brushing a stray hair from her face, Anna pushed the door inward gently.

  Konrad sat on one side of an enormous wooden table, joined by a young, dark-haired boy and slender woman. He and the boy wore loose khet shirts with their upper buttons undone, while the woman wore a low-cut gown worked in saffron-shaded silk. His guests were decidedly Nahoran, identified by their narrow noses and smooth olive skin. Dishes overflowing with figs and roasted meat were scattered across the table, most barely touched, and between them were small bowls filled with herb sauces and oil.

  It was strange to see Konrad without any armor. Anna had come to associate it with him, with all of the slaughter and mindlessness that had run rampant during the Seed Massacre.

  “Blessed stars, Anna,” the southerner said in river-tongue. “What a pleasant surprise.” He addressed the woman and boy in Orsas, which caused them to stand, give polite nods to Anna, and file out through a nearby door. “Come, sit. Are you hungry?”

  “No,” she lied. “Perhaps I should come back tomorrow.”

  “It’d be rude to turn you away on your first evening here,” Konrad said. Again he gestured to the table, uncorking a leather-wrapped bottle and filling an empty glass with wine. “Have you heard all the festivals the shabad are throwing in your name?” Anna recognized the term from her talks with Yatrin: The noncitizens, the outsiders residing beyond the towering walls of the state’s major cities. Suddenly the whoops and colorful sky bursts and chants among the dark fields made more sense. “Some of the higher-ups in Golyna proper are already trying to arrange a meeting with you. Merchants and scholars from the other regions too. You’ve caused quite a stir.”

  “I have more pressing business to sort out with you,” Anna said.

  “Just as well,” Konrad replied. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you privately.”

  “About?”

  “Chodge,” he said, pushing the glass toward Anna’s side of the table. “How fortunate that you came without that Alakeph cretin. Mesar, isn’t it? He’s a sanctimonious one. Wordy too.”

  Shaking her head, Anna sat down across from Konrad and folded her hands in her lap. The room was hot and clouded with perfume. “Entertaining guests?”

  “My wife and child,” Konrad said.

  It struck Anna with a cold lurch in her stomach. Of all the people and monsters she’d known, it was laughable to think he was the most deserving of a family. “Spoils of war.”

  “In some sense,” he laughed. “I knew Daguna before Malijad.”

  Anna tensed her jaw. “And the boy is adopted? The same as the rest?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’s Nahoran. You’re not truly his father.”

  “But I am,” Konrad said. “Daguna isn’t a citizen. Privileged as I may seem, I’m no citizen, and I can’t join with them. But she’s never made me lament that.” He chuckled. “And do you know what my son said the other day? He can’t wait to serve in the auxiliaries. Talk about aspiration.”

  How fortunate you are. She expected better of herself than to latch onto every indignity she felt, but at times it was impossible. There was no remorse in him, no sense of wrongdoing in luring a young girl through deception. “Have you picked apart our belongings yet?”

  “My quartermaster sought me out early this evening,” Konrad said. “He had something of rather interesting note.”

  “Do you have it with you?”

  Lips still on his glass, Konrad smirked. “I assume this isn’t about a missing necklace.”

 
“Konrad.”

  “There was the small matter of encrypted coordinates too.”

  “Not encrypted to you.” Noting the southerner’s apparent surprise, she took a sip of dry red wine. “My breakers aren’t fools, Konrad. How do you suppose I got those coordinates?”

  “Divination?” he asked. “Luck? I haven’t a clue and I’m a poor guesser, so let’s cut it short.”

  “A defector from Malijad. From the kales, in fact. You must’ve known him personally.”

  “Quite the leap, isn’t it?”

  “How else could he draft coordinates with your unit’s touch?”

  An owl’s distant hoots spoke in Konrad’s place. After a moment of reflection, rubbing his chin and draining the last of his wine, he sighed. “Bring the bottle. We’ll mull this over upstairs.”

  Konrad picked through his study to the sound of lullabies. His wife was settling their child to sleep in a room down the hall, singing—of all things—a maiden’s tune from Kowak. He came upon the frozen shore, pledged to love her evermore. . . . In spite of the room’s countless furled-up maps and treatises, or perhaps because of them, the study appeared to have seen surprisingly little use. Held her heart in both his hands, placed her o’er both salt and clans. . . .

  “Does she know the river-tongue?” Anna asked.

  Konrad, squatting over a crate by the window, stopped sifting through papers long enough to hear the melody. “She’s learning it,” he explained, “but it’s slow going. She still hasn’t figured out the true letters yet, so it’s all by ear.”

  Anna moved to the door and closed it softly. “What did your quartermaster say about it?”

  “Nothing.” Konrad resumed his shuffling. “Seeing as he’s attached to my company, he’s been passing on anything he can’t tell horns from tail. For all he knew, it could’ve been southern charting. I’d wager he’s unaware that I have a vested interest in it.”

  That soothed Anna, but not much. “And can you parse it?”

  “Naturally, but these coordinates are encoded with the bearer’s whispers. Perhaps you’d care to shed a little light on what it’s marking.”

  “Something important to me,” Anna said, resisting her memory’s torrent of burlap stitching and clouded eyes. Her thoughts drifted toward the bearer’s code word, her lone bargaining token: Sekullah nes’taran. “Sharing your insights would be a show of good faith.”

  “Do we have good faith, Anna?”

  “We could.”

  Konrad lifted the scroll tube out of the crate, turning it end over end so it glimmered in the candlelight. “Then you’ll be receptive to the idea of bargaining, won’t you?”

  Anna’s hands tingled with panic, with a burning urge to escape. Her reply came as a statement, not a question: “What do you want?”

  “Is that door shut?”

  She nodded, her hand resting on the knob.

  “The breaker companies heard theories about that Nest of yours,” Konrad said. “Is it true, then? Are your reserves hunkering down there? The foundlings too?”

  “What are you playing at?”

  “Has it ever been breached?”

  She shook her head.

  “On the kator,” Konrad said, his voice a haunting echo of the bravado from earlier, “I didn’t speak my full mind about Volna. Things are going to turn sour here, I know that much.” He cradled the scroll tube in his hands, swallowing hard until Anna moved closer and leaned against a nearby desk. “If your Nest is as tucked away as you claim, then it’s one of the only places they can’t burn out.”

  “That was the idea.” Anna found herself gaining a foothold in the conversation, or at least some thread of leverage. It eased her, in any event. “Be sharp about it, Konrad: Are you trying to tuck your tail in there?”

  He gave her a hard, spiteful look. “Not me. My family.”

  Much as Anna wanted to prod at him, sprinkling salt into the first cut she’d found upon the man’s heart, she couldn’t bring herself to lose control. In a single calming breath, she saw the raw surrender in his eyes, the sheepish way he clutched at the scroll tube, the anchor of his fears and judgments in the world. Family. “Just her and the boy?”

  “That’s all.” His face hardened, apparently on command, as he removed the scroll tube’s cap and fished out its contents. Then he spread the paper across a candlelit, varnished desk, making the lines of Anna’s dried ink shimmer. “So, do we have an arrangement?”

  “Show me what you’ve worked out, and we’ll see.”

  “That’s not how this works.”

  “The difference,” Anna said, joining Konrad’s side, “is that I can live with the guilt of losing this information.”

  He squeezed the edge of the table with white knuckles. “At the very least, you can tell me what this defector was trying to pinpoint. Did he draw this himself?”

  “What worth does it have to you?”

  “In good faith, remember?”

  Staring down at the pattern, Anna was overwhelmed by the frustration of it: So near, so promising after years of failure, yet so far beyond her reach. But losses were the catalysts of gains, she’d learned. “Somebody has been hiding from me since Malijad. These coordinates will end the chase.”

  “Now it makes sense.” He glanced at her speculatively, biting back a grin on the edge of his lips. “You think the tracker’s here.”

  “The source had no reason to lie about it,” Anna said. “He was paid well.”

  “Not all secrets are for sale.”

  “This was,” she snapped. “And he died for it, you know. They came after him with everything they had. So you’ve had your laugh, now mark it.” She met his eyes squarely. “And then get out of my way.”

  “Once you provide me with the breaker’s words, I’ll oblige you.”

  She did not want to speak, but her seed of wrath could not be uprooted, could not be swayed from its course. Anna closed her eyes, folded her arms, and whispered the breaker’s code. Chilling knots crowded her stomach.

  “Lovely,” Konrad said. “Now, as the lady commands.” He drew a blank sheet of paper from a nearby stockpile. As he smoothed it out on a drafting slab, Anna realized that it already displayed a featureless outline of the continent and its clustered islands. “Although, it is a shame that you’re shoving me aside so quickly. My Borzaq would bring fire down around them.”

  Anna frowned, slapping a palm down on the map before Konrad could dip his quill in an open ink vial. “You’d be willing to help me?”

  “Should I not be?” he asked. “I play the role you assign me, Anna, but I’m not an enemy. Not the enemy we’re about to face, to address the obvious point. I have my own matters to settle.”

  Again, Anna listened to the owls in the darkness. She drew a hard breath, then nodded. “If you’ll lend your aid, we’ll see you repaid in kind. You can trust my word.”

  “As the stars will it, panna.” Konrad flashed a toothy smile, then leaned down and went to work with a variety of compasses and angling devices and measuring rods, triangulating the coordinates’ prescribed location as an ink drop nestled in the mountains between southern Hazan and the lowlands of Nahora. The southerner examined his work speculatively, as though searching for the fault of some other drafter, then set his quill down with a satisfied hum. “It’ll take some time to approve the strike, but the sooner I requisition everything, the sooner our boots hit the ground.”

  It was nothing, really: A single black blemish on the page, painstakingly nestled into the divide between thousands of leagues of bleak sands and shrubby gulches. Soon this world would become her reality. War was not a matter of controlling land, but controlling the space between land, the empty sprawls where nothing existed beyond withering sunlight and parched roots, seeking and holding flecks of civilization amid the void of the wild. But the southerner’s mark played throug
h her mind’s eye as a brother’s pale, ragged corpse, as fires roaring through setstone, as children nailed to gates and drowned in the name of Rzolka.

  We’ll see you repaid in kind.

  Chapter 7

  News of Shem’s arrival came wrapped in red ribbon, delivered by a Nahoran runner to the cottage near a shaded pond. Days of negotiations between Mesar’s staff and Nahoran leadership had boiled down to the brief missive Anna now smoothed out upon the oak table. Her mood was surprisingly even as she mulled over its flowing script, faintly aware of Ramyi’s footsteps rustling in the garden outside. It was a bearable, though not ideal, course of action: Shem would be sedated and restrained until he reached the central city.

  Even that was one of many stipulations.

  Entire districts of the state would be shut down. A personal Chayam regiment would escort him along a string of kators. Jenis would need to oversee the transfer from within the Nest.

  Anna couldn’t help but marvel at the absurdity of it all. Shem was still a boy in her mind, a bright-eyed child dancing on the wind of the world. Yet the missive spoke the truth of his nature. More accurately, it revealed her own.

  “Anything?” Ramyi asked, poking her head into the doorway and staring expectantly.

  Anna nodded. “He’s coming.”

  Ramyi grinned, as did Anna.

  At least it was something fresh for them, a return to form after periods of anxious leisure. Anna had kept the girl occupied with exploring the countryside and wandering the villages that seemed to sprout from the outer ring of Golyna’s wall, but she couldn’t shake a sense of wasted time beneath those pleasures. The two of them had woken and slept as they pleased, spent silent hours under the sun and drifting knots of clouds, and went berry-picking with some of the local shabad children, who were curious about Ramyi rather than spiteful. At times Anna had even let the girl run off and play in the villages’ sparse juniper forests, finding special delight when Ramyi returned to teach her the names of the trees in Orsas.