Fire

by Rosie Scott

  “That was the last you saw of him?” My heart broke for my former friend. I wish I had known any of this was going on at the time. Though knowing about it wouldn't have made it easier to do anything for him.

  “No...he asked me where his father was buried. So I told him about the small tombstone we'd had fashioned for Lucius up on the hill, and he left. The last time I saw him, he was standing over his father's grave. I'll never forget that, because he had such long, black hair, like both of his parents, and it was waving in the wind.” Red paused for a moment. “It stormed heavily that night. I remember having trouble falling asleep, hoping he was safe.”

  Silence settled over us in the bar. Even Nyx was quiet and thoughtful. After a few minutes, the innkeeper said, “I haven't heard from him or of him since. I hope he's okay. Can't imagine where he would have gone, given this was his only home. Was hoping maybe he'd figured out how to get through whatever trouble he'd gotten himself into in Sera, but given you came here from there, that's unlikely.”

  I turned around on my bar stool, glancing out the window. “Where did you say Lucius's grave was?”

  Red pointed to the right, where there was nothing but more bar. Outside, though, there was a crest of a small hill. “We put him up on the hill, where him and Celena would picnic in better times. Lucius made his wife a spyglass that she would look through up there. Swore up and down she could see Glacia if the skies were just right.”

  “Thank you,” I said, before standing. Turning to Nyx, I added, “I'll be back.”

  I walked alone out to the grave, finding it only after some intense searching in the long grasses. The gravestone was a simple cube of smoothed stone with Lucius's full name etched through the polish, and the years of his birth and death. It was a nice gesture from a village that had been the life and death of the man.

  The wind blew past me, coaxing my red hair to ride along its current. I looked to the ocean, where the water was waving in trepidation for another oncoming storm. I could see why Cerin's parents found this to be a beautiful and peaceful spot. I tried to find Glacia somewhere along the farthest reaches of the ocean that my eyes could see, but I could not.

  My eyes found the gravestone again. I tried to imagine what was going through my former classmate's mind as he stood here, broken and alone. Where would he have gone? Would he have survived? I glanced up. Along the horizon from which we'd walked from not long before, I could see just the slightest image of the forest we'd left behind. Far to the left were the peaks of the Cel Mountains. If I were him, I would have sought the shelter of the forest.

  I began to walk slowly back toward the inn. Perhaps I would never get any more of the answers I sought, and perhaps I would never see Cerin again. Seeking answers had only created more questions. Perhaps finding out the answers to my parentage in Whispermere would allow me to be at peace with leaving one mystery in my life behind.

  Nine

  The table before me was of normal size, but it was so stuffed with extravagant foods that my little girl mind looked upon it as a feast. Roasted pheasant, desserts made of exotic and rare desert fruits from Nahara, all manner of other meats cooked in ways I'd never tasted before.

  Father had entertained Naharan diplomats just hours ago, and what was left of the feast was given to Terran and I to pick over. As a child, times like these were almost as fun as entire event festivals held in the merchant district. Food was my only vice.

  As I chewed through a mouthful of pork, I looked over the table at Terran. I found him to be so cool. He was fourteen. Fourteen! As a seven-year-old myself, that was so old. Terran was now at the age where girls in his classes were swooning over him, but he didn't seem to notice. Yet, anyway. Despite father's grunts over the length of his hair, Terran kept it shoulder length. Now, it was kept in a ponytail as he ate. At some point over the past few years, Terran's face had sharpened. He had the high cheekbones normally reserved for the models that the expensive clothing merchants hired to show off their clothes to leering tourists.

  I was glad he kept his hair long. I had always thought men looked better with longer hair, and my brother was no exception. His hair glimmered in the nearby candlelight, the shine a golden hue over seas of dark chocolate. Then, my mind moved back to my father's disapproval of its length. I realized that had it been me who asked, father wouldn't have relented. But because it was Terran, he'd allowed him to make up his own mind.

  I frowned over my next bite of food. I didn't know why that still hurt me so bad. It was the way it always was. Father would refer to me as his daughter, but he didn't feel it. I was often reminded of the sacrifice he made to raise me, to the point where I wondered why he'd decided to if it was going to be so much trouble.

  “Brother,” I blurted, before I could stop myself. Terran glanced up at me, the bright green of his eyes much darker in this light.

  “Hmm?” He murmured, through a mouthful of pie.

  “What was mother like?”

  Terran's eyebrows betrayed his amusement at my question, and he smiled. After he finished chewing his bite, he asked, “Mother? Is that what you've taken to calling her? You two never met.”

  I felt embarrassed, then. I'd just assumed that father's wife would have been my mother. I knew she'd died before I had even been born.

  “You can call her mother, you know,” Terran went on, when I hadn't responded to him. I had been too hurt. I think he sensed that. “She would have been, had she been alive to see you.”

  “Do you think she would have liked me?”

  “Of course she would have liked you. Mother liked everyone.”

  “Just like father hates everyone.”

  Terran chuckled. “Precisely.” He took another bite. Chewed, swallowed. “Did you know that mother was pregnant with a girl?”

  “The second time?” I asked, stupidly.

  “Yes, silly. The first time, she had me. The second time she was pregnant, she wanted a girl so bad. She prayed every night to the gods for a girl. Then, she hired an illusionist to finally tell her when she was far enough along. And he told her she was having a girl. Everyone was so happy. I think even father was, in his own way. Then, of course, you know the rest of the story.”

  I did. Mother had been in labor, and had had immense complications. She was a dual caster, and before marrying father, had been one of the Seran Army's top elite soldiers. It had taken a huge toll on her, aging her past her years. The pregnancy had ended in death. Both for her, and her baby.

  “As for what she was like...” Terran trailed off, pushing the last bite of pie around his plate, distracted. “She was strong. And smart. Really, really smart. I could ask her anything and she would have the answer or would know where to go to get it. If she wasn't training the mages or working, she was reading. She was like a kid in that way. You know how kids go to school, and some of them actually like to learn?”

  I nodded. I knew exactly how that felt. I thirsted for knowledge.

  “Well, then you become an adult, and you stop caring. At least, that's what it seems like. Not mother. She was always learning about something new. Annoying father by talking his ear off about her latest obsession. She read me a bed-time story one night, when I was about your age. And when she got done, she told me, 'Terran, never stop learning. If I have one regret in life, it was that I took advantage of my years in the army and didn't learn everything I could about the places I went.' In a way, I think she even kind of regretted marrying father, because it tied her down. But don't tell him I said that.”

  “She sounds a lot like me,” I said, unable to keep the hopefulness out of my voice. There was no bringing her back, but I wished to make some sort of connection with her, anyway. The only father I'd ever known didn't care for me. I could hope for a mother that did.

  “You are a lot like her,” Terran agreed, with a smile. He was so mature for his age, able to talk about his deceased mother without a tear. Perhaps he just had too many good memories of her and could not find his sadness. “S
ometimes I think my memories serve me incorrectly, sister. Sometimes I think the baby was born that day, and that she's sitting right across from me.”

  Terran stood up in his chair, just to lean across the table and ruffle my hair. It was a loving gesture, but as a child, I wrinkled my nose and acted annoyed.

  I was unable to get the idea of parents who loved me out of my head after finishing my meal, so I headed through the castle to outside. I didn't hear the sound of fighting, so I figured melee training was done for the day.

  I found Bjorn sharpening a sword at the grindstone just outside of the armory. His cheeks were red from a day in the full sun. His hulking frame looked too large for his tiny seat. People of his size normally scared me, but his familiar form was nothing but comfort.

  Dad. The word really only made sense with Bjorn. As a little girl, I simply didn't have the guts to ask him if I could call him that.

  Bjorn looked up, saw me standing outside the gate and watching him. He must have been fatigued after a day of training. Still, he greeted me with a beaming smile.

  “There's my girl!”

  A cheesy, child-like grin spread across my face, and I squeezed between the wood planks of the heavy gate, hurrying to him. Bjorn dropped the sword he'd been working at beside the grindstone, and opened his thick arms just before I jumped into them.

  “Ohhh, boy!” He feigned falling backwards a bit, before catching himself. “Uggh, girl, you're going to kill me one of these days. What are you, two hundred pounds?”

  I gasped. “I'm fifty-seven pounds, not two hundred!”

  “Fifty-seven...two hundred...” Bjorn trailed off as I pulled back from his arms. I felt his sweat on my own skin from a long day's work. “Not too far off though, are ya?”

  “Bjorn!” I groaned, embarrassed.

  He laughed. “I'm just teasing ya, lass.” He watched me with suspicious eyes. “You've got something on your mind.”

  I nodded, too shy to admit it verbally.

  “What's going on in that little head of yours?” He asked me.

  “Do you think mother would have loved me?”

  His hazel eyes widened. “Are you kidding? She would have adored you! Who doesn't love you?”

  “Father,” I replied, a sharp pain in my gut accompanying the word.

  “Ohhh, come now. Your father loves you. He's just a grumpy old man.” Bjorn reached over, rubbing my forearm affectionately. “He's a smart man when it comes to politics and magic, love, but he is socially and emotionally stupid.”

  I frowned over at Bjorn. “What do you mean?”

  “He's not good at showing love or letting you know he cares.”

  I blinked up at Bjorn bashfully. “Do you love me?”

  “You know I love you. Very much.” He grabbed me around my waist with an arm, pulling me toward him for a quick peck on the cheek. “Do you love me?”

  “Mm...” I looked away. “Maybe.”

  Bjorn scoffed playfully. “Maybe? Now, that's not fair at all. I think I got the raw end of the deal!”

  I was overcome with giggles.

  *

  “I hope that smile means it's a man you're dreaming about.” Nyx's voice mused from beside my ear.

  I opened my eyes, and looked over at her. “It was, but it was Bjorn.”

  She made a disgusted face, and I laughed. “I mean, if that's what you're into,” she offered, with a wiggle of the eyebrows.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter. I was just reminiscing about him and Terran. I miss them both.”

  “As I'm sure they miss you,” she replied, before laying back, staring at the peak of our tent. “Just don't be getting so homesick that you want to go back to Sera.”

  “To live?”

  “Uggh...you asking me for clarification means you're thinking about it.”

  “No,” I retorted. “I don't want to live in Sera. What if we were to visit again someday? Would you go with me?”

  “If I could spend the entire time in the tavern? Maybe,” she answered. “You know...you better think long and hard about doing that, if you wanted to. Your father's treachery has few limits.”

  I frowned. There was much to be desired when it came to my relationship with my father, but Nyx flat out abhorred him. Still, I didn't find her to be exaggerating when it came to her words. It was hard to admit I didn't know what he was capable of. For all I knew, the Seran Army could have been looking for me, much like I'd been told they'd been looking for Cerin.

  “What do you think our plans will be, after making it to Whispermere?” Nyx pondered.

  “I don't know. I guess that depends on my mother's plans for me.”

  “Your mother,” Nyx murmured, before a huff.

  “What?”

  “I just think it's weird that you called her that.”

  “Why? She birthed me. That's what she is.”

  Nyx shrugged, her shoulder bumping into mine. “In that same sense, Queen Achlys is my mother, but I couldn't stand the bitch.” Disgust lined my best friend's voice.

  “She's the one who—”

  “Yes,” she retorted quickly. “She personally picked out the ten males each year for the Reaping.” Nyx spoke of an annual event held in her underground home city of Quellden, where the female Alderi celebrated their coming-of-age by sexually dominating a handful of males. While most cultures considered both genders to be equals, the Alderi were a race where only females could be in power, and males were thrown into servitude.

  “It made me sick,” Nyx continued, after a moment. “She picked Jemia'h as one of the males, thinking she was gifting me something. I grew up with the kid. I considered him a friend, as much as I was berated for it. And there he was, being raped repeatedly by my peers, and all I could do was watch.”

  I stayed quiet, waiting for her to continue. Nyx had told me about the Reaping, that she sometimes nastily referred to as the Raping, because in her words, “Well, that's what it was.” Never before had she been this detailed. Perhaps all this talk about parentage was bringing those bad memories of hers to the surface.

  “So, I did the only thing I could think of to do, and I stood there. Let all the other girls go before me. Achlys thought I was just waiting for everyone else to finish so I could be the center of attention, because she was demented like that, and thought I was, too. There I was, the only one left, and those poor ten juveniles on the floor in chains, all watching me to see who I was going to victimize. And my mother is standing outside of the arena, reminding me that she picked Jemia'h for just such an occasion, like I was fucking blind and didn't see him laying there shaking.

  “I turned to her and said I felt sick. She told me maybe a little sex would make me feel better. I thought about telling her I didn't want to have sex in front of my mother, but many of the girls there were my blood. I ended up saying I didn't want to do it. I didn't tell her that I found sex horrific if the men weren't into it, because I knew such heresy could get me killed. So I found a safer way to say it, and told her I wanted to take sex from men on my own time. That's when she insisted, and all the other girls started their ceaseless chatter.”

  I swallowed. It was an intensely uncomfortable story to hear. I couldn't imagine growing up in such a culture. Now that Nyx was talking about her own mother, I felt like any issues with mine should be non-existent.

  “In the end, I finally decided to fake my way through it. Out of the ten guys there, Jemia'h was the only one I knew. I knew he had a crush on me, and I thought he was cute. In a fucked up way, I thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad, because we did feel something for one another. But...” she trailed off, her voice breaking at a point. “It's not like he consented. I knew he had a crush on me. He didn't walk up to me on his own free will and tell me he wanted me, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, softly. After a few moments, when she said nothing else, I asked, “Did you end up sleeping with him?”

  “Well...eventually. I just straddled him for so long that the audience got b
ored, and Achlys was grumbling a bunch of different words, many of them some rendition of disappointment. I said something stupid to Jemia'h...something like, 'I really do like you,' which sounded so childish, but he seemed to appreciate it. Then he told me he liked me, too, and then awkwardly told me to go ahead and do what I needed to. So...” She hesitated. “I did. And then I apologized. And I kissed him on the cheek, because I cared for him. And the audience found that to be a show of weakness, so I lost most of my high regard and any friends that I'd managed to make, and Jemia'h was tossed into the crawler pit, for fear he was weakening the women.”

  I stiffened. I wasn't sure what the crawler pit was, but I knew it sounded awful. I also knew that whatever it had contained had killed Jemia'h.

  “So...yeah. You can share blood with someone, and not be family,” Nyx finally continued, completing the circle of conversation. “Don't forget, Kai...you're an adult. Whatever your mother has planned for you doesn't matter. I mean, if it sounds good, by all means, go for it. But it took you long enough to escape your failure of a father. I don't want to see you run to a mother who has convenient reasons for missing out on the first twenty-one years of your life just to become enslaved in her plans for you. Make your own.”

  I nodded slowly, as if Nyx could see it; we both had our eyes on the roof of our tent. The morning sun tried hard to shine through the canvas, but only succeeded in poking light through the tiny holes in the crisscrossed pattern of the fabric.