by J. V. Jones
Choosing a path along the sunlit port side of the ship, Tessa began replaying Avaccus’ words in her head, trying to recall everything he had said to her during the one day they’d spent together in the cave.
The smell of lemon oil and wax rose up from the sun-warmed deck, and all around her timbers creaked and strained as the ship rode wave after wave. On a bright, cloudless day like this, it was easy to believe other worlds and other places existed. The idea of ephemeras seemed somehow less shocking. Surely they were all ephemeras, each and every one of them. They lived and died and were gone. Perhaps they were reborn in another time and another place. Perhaps not. Tessa didn’t know. One thing was certain though: just like ephemeras, people could make things change.
Tessa stopped in her tracks. She could make things change. Avaccus had hinted as much to her in the cave. Trust yourself, he had said. The words were close to his last. Turning about, Tessa headed back toward the main hatch. She needed to find Ravis.
Sailors moved high above her, shinnying up knotted ropes, leaping in and out of rigging nets, turning sails, and securing lines. As Tessa stepped from the shadow of a newly dropped sail, she spied Ravis emerging from belowdecks. Just as she was about to call his name, someone stopped to speak to him. It was a woman in black, and for one awful moment Tessa thought it was Violante of Arazzo. Then the woman turned and Tessa got a clear view of her; she had neither Violante’s height nor her fine chiseled features. Tessa let out a relieved breath. It was one of the passengers who had sailed over with them on Tarrier. The woman with the veil that only barely covered her eyebrows.
As Tessa looked on, the woman ran a hand over her veil and laughed. When Ravis laughed in response, she reached out and touched his arm. She was flirting with him! Heat rushing to her cheeks, Tessa dashed forward. She had stood by and let one woman lead Ravis away from her, and she wasn’t about to let it happen again.
Ravis saw Tessa coming, but the veiled woman did not. She continued laughing in a way that caused her chest to rise and fall conspicuously, all the while sending her hands darting into the space that separated her from Ravis. Tessa didn’t stop to think, she simply came to a halt alongside Ravis and very firmly put her arm through his.
“There you are,” she said to him, not even sparing a glance for the veiled woman. “I’ve been looking for you since midday.” Then, pretending to notice the veiled woman for the first time: “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting anything?”
The veiled woman regarded Tessa coolly. She was attractive in a well-groomed, expensive way. Her veil was made from fine lace embroidery, and it fluttered about her face as she spoke. “No, not at all. I was just inquiring as to when we might dock in Bay’Zell.”
“Aah. You’ll need to speak with the captain, then.” Tessa edged a fraction nearer to Ravis. “I just passed him on the quarterdeck. If you hurry, there’s a chance you can catch up with him before he retires for the night.”
The woman pinched her lips together. Her face was heavily powdered, and specks of fine oyster-colored dust caught in her veil. “Well,” she said, ignoring Tessa completely and speaking only to Ravis, “I’ll be on my way, then. Good night, sir. I trust I’ll see you again before the journey ends.” Bowing with irritating slowness, she managed to reveal a great deal of cleavage before turning and walking away.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Ravis pulled himself free of Tessa, folded his arms over his chest, threw back his head, and laughed.
It was the most irritating sound Tessa had ever heard in her life. “Come on,” she said sharply. “Don’t just stand there laughing. Help me back to the cabin. I’ve spent the best part of the afternoon on deck.” For some reason Tessa found herself blushing while she spoke.
Ravis stopped laughing, but his eyes didn’t. Inclining his head in the direction the veiled woman had taken, he said, “That was, without a doubt, the most efficient dismissal I have ever had the pleasure of being witness to. Obviously where you come from women are taught to deal swiftly with their rivals. I dread to think what might have become of the poor woman if you’d actually caught her kissing me.” He pretended to shudder. “Doubtless the deckhands would be mopping up the blood as we speak.”
Tessa tried very hard to frown, but Ravis’ eyes twinkled brightly, encouraging her to smile. “Just help me down the steps,” she said as sternly as she could manage.
Bowing, Ravis came forward and took her arm. His kid leather gloves were as warm and smooth as skin. With no effort at all he shouldered half of her weight. “I was about to come looking for you,” he said. “We need to talk about what we’re going to do when we get to Bay’Zell.”
Tessa nodded, glad of the change of subject. “I need time. I have to find out what Ilfaylen’s original pattern looked like: what the main elements were, what designs he chose, what pigments he used. Otherwise I might as well sit down and paint a landscape in the dark. I need to have something to work from.”
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Ravis guided Tessa toward his cabin. “How much time do you need?”
Tessa shrugged. “Too much, probably. Emith might be able to help me, or perhaps there’s something in Deveric’s papers that might offer a clue. I don’t know. If I hadn’t let—” She shook her head, corrected herself. “If Avaccus were still alive, I could ask him how to draw patterns to gain knowledge, and actually search for Ilfaylen’s illumination myself.” Frustrated, she ran a hand over her face. “Given enough time, I can work things out on my own—I’m sure of it. That’s what I was brought here for.”
Tessa let herself be led into the warm, timber-scented darkness of Ravis’ cabin. Unlike on Tarrier, here they had separate cabins. Ravis had insisted she get as much undisturbed rest as possible.
Striking a flint, Ravis lit an amber-colored candle and placed it on one of the crossbeams bracing the walls. Its golden light lit up a room that had been laid out with a soldier’s sparseness and sense of order. Tessa recognized all the medicines Ravis gave her each day, arranged by size and type on a banded shelf above the bunk. Seeing them there like that, the only items on a shelf designed to hold much more, made Tessa feel sad, but she didn’t know why.
Sitting on the bunk, she brought her hands together on her lap. Now that she had finally stopped moving, strength drained from her body, leaving her feeling shaky and overly conscious of the breath in her lungs. After looking at Ravis a moment, she said, “I think we are all ephemeras. You, me, Camron. All three of us were drawn to Bay’Zell. You and Camron were forced to stay in the city, I was pulled there from another place, and somehow we came together.” Tessa felt for the hardness of her ring beneath her bodice. “I think it’s because we can make things change.”
Ravis regarded her carefully. “For twenty-one years I have been unable to change anyone or anything, even myself.”
Tessa’s hand hovered away from the ring and toward Ravis. She went to speak but caught herself. Twenty-one years. The skin of her scalp pulled tight. Deep inside her chest, close to her heart, a muscle ticked away like a clock. There was a pattern here.
“Twenty-one years ago?” she said. “That was when your father died?”
Ravis nodded.
“And seven years later your brother sent you off his land?”
“Land we fought side by side for.” A trace of bitterness crept into his voice. “He told me I was a fighter and should go away and fight.”
“Did anything happen to you”—Tessa made a quick calculation—“two years later? In summer?”
Ravis’ whole body stilled. There was no other word for it: the muscles on his face hardened and set, his chest stopped rising and falling, letting the hollow dip in his throat collect shadows. Slowly his eyes darkened from brown to black. After what seemed like many minutes, he spoke. “My wife died two summers after Malray turned on me.”
Tessa was disturbed by his bluntness. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, cutting her short. “Ask your questions, make yo
ur point; we haven’t got time for the past.”
Feeling the words like a physical blow, Tessa took a breath to steady herself. There was so much she didn’t know or understand about Ravis. They were strangers, really. It was easy to forget that.
With Ravis’ gaze pressuring her to move on, Tessa asked her final question. Only it wasn’t really a question at all, as she had already guessed the answer. “Something happened five years after your wife’s death, didn’t it? In autumn? Something important?”
Ravis’ tooth came down upon his scar. “I returned from the east in late autumn. The day I set foot on Drokho soil, Malray sent out his henchmen to kill me.”
Tessa dropped her gaze to her hands. She couldn’t look at him. The anger in his voice covered only so much. “Twenty-one years,” she said softly, knowing it was better to speak than let the silence be. “Twenty-one years. Five patterns. Mine wasn’t the only life Deveric manipulated. Yours was too.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that both of us have been held back. You said it yourself—for twenty-one years you haven’t been able to change anyone or anything. Nor have I.” Tessa risked looking up. She was surprised to see interest on Ravis’ face. “Up until now, until that day I met you in the alleyway, I was never able to be myself. Not properly. It was as if someone had a hand on my back and was directing every move I made.”
Ravis stripped off his gloves and ran a hand through his hair. He looked tired, and for the first time Tessa wondered when and for how long he slept. He was always awake when she needed him.
“The dates on Deveric’s patterns correspond to events in both our lives?” he asked.
“Yes. We’re both caught up in something—a pattern, a plot. Fate.”
“And you say we can make things change?”
Tessa nodded. “I believe that’s why we’re here now, together. And why Camron of Thorn waits for us in Bay’Zell.”
“And what of you and me, Tessa McCamfrey? Can we change ourselves too?”
“We can try.”
Ravis smiled then, slowly, allowing it time to reach his eyes. “You’re very beautiful, you know.”
“So was the woman with the veil.”
“What woman? What veil?” Ravis was no longer smiling. He caught Tessa’s gaze and held it. “I saw no one on the deck today, only you.”
Tessa opened her arms and let Ravis come to her. He moved swiftly and silently, as if he had been waiting for such an invitation all along. Kneeling at the foot of the bed, he drew Tessa to his chest and held her tight. He didn’t kiss her, just pressed her body to his as if she were something he needed to keep him warm, or safe, or both. Tessa held him. She ran a hand through his hair and down his cheek. Touching him seemed like an incredible luxury. She couldn’t believe she had been granted the right to do it.
He smelled good, clean and fragrant and slightly foreign. The skin on his neck was rough, prickly, and Tessa rubbed her open palm against it, feeling as much as she could. Lying in his arms, pushed against his chest, touching his face and neck, she felt as if she were giving him something, yet she couldn’t understand what.
Time passed, timbers creaked, the candle formed a stalactite of wax beneath the beam. Hands pressed into her shoulder and back, Ravis held Tessa fast against his chest. When finally their breaths drew shallow and their limbs cooled and the motion of the ship lulled them into a dreamy half sleep, they pulled apart.
Ravis caught Tessa by the shoulders and looked into her face. “You need to rest,” he said. “I’ll watch over you while you sleep.”
Tessa shook her head. “No. Don’t watch over me, come and lie alongside me instead.” As she spoke, she moved back onto the bunk, bringing up her legs and making room for Ravis. “We both need to rest.”
Ravis went to say something, then stopped himself. In silence he pulled off his boots and then moved across the cabin to the candle. As his fingers closed around the flame, Tessa looked at him one last time. His hair was damp with sweat, and his scar seemed almost white. The imprint of her body on his kid leather tunic was the last thing she saw before he snuffed out the light.
Tessa fell asleep the moment Ravis’ body settled next to hers. She dreamed of patterns and other things: Moldercay and his charnel house, the woman with the embroidered veil, and the impression of her body on Ravis’ kid leather tunic.
In the morning when she woke, she found Ravis still asleep beside her. Moving quietly so as not to wake him, Tessa rose from the bunk, smoothed down her skirts, brushed back her hair, and let herself out of the cabin. After stopping to relieve herself in the latrines, she made her way above deck.
Dawn had washed The Mull with silvery light. No one was about except an old seaman braiding a rope and a cabin boy waxing the deck. Tessa passed both without saying a word. When she reached the foredeck, she leaned over the railings, looked out across the prow, and searched for signs of land in the distance. After a moment or two, she spied a jagged line on the horizon. Bay’Zell. Seeing it, she felt the wall of muscle around her chest tighten. Her whole life had been leading to this.
As she watched the city grow larger, Tessa replayed her dreams in her head. After a while she turned from the railings and headed back belowdecks. Avaccus and Moldercay were wrong: Ilfaylen had made a copy of his illumination, and she knew how.
T H I R T Y - O N E
I t took them three hours to disembark the ship. Armed guards searched The Mull from prow to stern. Local Bay’Zell militia lined the wharf, opening trunks, firing questions at passengers, frisking anyone they didn’t like the look of.
Ravis was detained for an hour. The militia didn’t like the look of him one bit. He was a foreigner, they said. He had one too many knives in his pack. He claimed to have been out of the city for only eighteen days, yet he had no outward-bound shipping documents to prove his claim. In the end Ravis had to send for a local sea captain to vouch for him. The man, a red-faced, eyebrowless fisherman named Pegruff, had not been quick in coming. Yet when he finally sauntered onto the wharf, arlo flask in hand, rope looped around his neck as if he’d come prepared for a hanging, it took him less than five minutes to secure Ravis’ release. A few words, a knowing laugh, and the arlo flask passed from hand to hand was all it had taken for the militia to let Ravis go.
Ravis didn’t thank Pegruff for the favor. He said the man had owed him and this now discharged the debt.
Pegruff didn’t wait around long. After rubbing the rim of his flask against his sleeve to clean it, he handed the arlo to Tessa and said, “You two best watch yourselves from now on. Militia’s as jumpy as mackerel in a net. They know Izgard’s coming, and they think that by closing down the harbor, patrolling the streets, imposing curfews, and terrorizing every foreigner they come across, that somehow they can keep him at bay. Scared, they are. Though you’ll never get a one to admit it.”
Ravis nodded. He took the arlo flask from Tessa, drank, then handed it back to Pegruff. “How long before Izgard arrives?”
“A day. Mebbe two.”
“And the Sire?”
Pegruff spat on his flask. “Word on the street is he’ll arrive half a day before Izgard.”
“And word on the sea?”
“That he’ll come a day too late.” With that Pegruff took his leave. He asked no questions and offered no farewell, simply spit-polished his flask and walked away.
Ravis turned to Tessa. “Let’s go and pick up Emith and his mother.”
Tessa shook her head. “You won’t be able to get Mother Emith out of her chair. She won’t budge—even for Izgard.”
“Then I’ll hire a cart and pick her up, chair and all. For I tell you now, Emith won’t agree to come with us without his mother.”
Tessa nodded. Ravis was right. Bay’Zell was too dangerous a place at the moment. Izgard’s army could be here any day now, and Emith would never leave his mother alone and afraid. She was all he had. Tessa picked up her pace. She couldn’t wait to get back.
Wal
king quickly, but not so quickly as to attract the attention of the militia, Ravis and Tessa made their way across town. Bay’Zell was a different city from the one they had left eighteen days earlier. No longer brash, busy, and self-absorbed, it cowered like a child awaiting punishment. Shops were open, but only those that sold household items and dried goods had any wares. Fresh food was already in short supply, and when one unfortunate fruit seller wheeled his barrow into the street to set up shop, he was mobbed before he had chance to pin back the awnings on his stall. By the time the militia came in to break up the riot, the fruit seller had been robbed of all his wares. Peaches, plums, and other soft fruits had been stamped into mud at his feet.
Ravis guided Tessa away from the scene. “It’s the militia’s fault,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen a dozen times before. Armed men on the streets can cause more panic than an entire invading army. Bay’Zell should have access to enough fresh food to live out a six-month siege, but now with people hoarding, most of it will go to waste. A man can grab as many freshly killed chickens as he can carry, but if he doesn’t cook and eat them within two days, he’ll end up throwing them away.” Ravis squinted into the midday sun. “Especially at this time of year.”
For the most part the streets of Bay’Zell were quiet. People looked out from half-shuttered windows, stood trading whispers in doorways, or walked alone in the middle of the road, wheeling carts or dragging bedding behind them.
Tessa didn’t like any of it. She felt as if the entire city of Bay’Zell were condemned.
Her spirits picked up when they turned into a narrow, paved street. Looking ahead, spying the neat, blue-and-white facade of Mother Emith’s house, Tessa swallowed hard. She felt as if she were coming home.
Despite Ravis’ protests, she ran the last hundred paces. All her life she had been moving forward toward the ring; this was the first time she had come back.
In her mind, she could already see Mother Emith’s face, see her chair and her table, hear her instructing Emith to tap another keg, We have guests. Tessa smiled a mad, happy smile. She had missed them both so much.
