Fire

by Rosie Scott

  “What mercenaries?” I retorted, glancing around the room. “There are only friends here.” I ducked to the ground, grabbing one of my coin purses. “I will pay you the remainder of your fee now, and then we will never speak of this mercenary business again.”

  Theron held out a hand. “Keep it, friend. Don't burden me further.”

  The coin purse stilled in my hands. “You would burden me?”

  He laughed. “Out of all the burdens you have right now, that is a good one to have. Make it up to me at the next tavern, then. We will go drinking. Pick up the tab.”

  I smiled. “Very well.”

  Within minutes of Theron leaving my room, Nyx knocked at my door to ask if I was ready to go outside. All of us headed through the hallway and to the main level, where we walked back out onto the open half of the peak. The sun was halfway through setting, the red orb the majority of the way below the line of clouds before us. The sky ahead was a mix of corals, oranges, and bright pinks. Above, the dark, navy blue of the night was chasing soft lavenders toward the horizon.

  Over near the stone railing to our right, an all female band was playing a happy ditty, utilizing a lute, flute, and two drums. Before them, some women danced together, while more others were enjoying the music while eating at cafe tables surrounded by hedge bushes and flower pots. Male servants served both food and drink to the women, while others scurried around the stone railing and the wall of the other half of the peak, lighting sconces.

  We headed to where there were two empty cafe tables that we could scoot together. It was close enough to enjoy both the music and the sunset, while far enough to still be able to talk. Within seconds of sitting together, a male servant hurried over, asking us if we needed food or drink. Though we'd had our feast not long before, the journey had been long and short of cooked food, so we ordered some. Nyx, Theron, and I ordered exotic ales, while Silas and Cerin ordered natural drinks.

  The food and drinks were brought out to us before we had even started our conversation. When the male servant turned to leave us, I reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “I apologize, Miss Sera. I did not know you had need of me.” He turned to face me, though, of course, he did not meet my eyes. His voice had trembled, like he thought I would be angry with him.

  “What is your name?” I asked him, ducking lower to try to look him in the eyes. He cowered back.

  “My name is of no importance. Please, do not concern yourself with such frivolities.”

  “I asked for your name,” I repeated. “And please, look me in the eyes when you say it.”

  “I am Fri'er, but I am not allowed to look you in the eye. Forgive me.” The man shook like he was terrified.

  “Why are you here, Fri'er?” I asked, my voice continuing to be calm.

  “I serve people here. It is my job. I bring food and drink out from the cooks to the people who order them. I have done this for twenty years.” It was a confused ramble. I saw a single tear fall down the man's painted cheek, and wondered if it was there from his fear of speaking with me or from his circumstances.

  “No, I meant in Whispermere. What brought you here?”

  “I must confess it was the offering of a place to stay in exchange for my work, Miss Sera. I was homeless, on the outskirts of Comercio. There was a man asking for volunteers. Offered me a place to stay. Said it was beautiful. And it is. Whispermere is beautiful.”

  How could he have known? The man did not lift his eyes from the rock below us. “You like it here, Fri'er?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, I do, Miss Sera. Your mother is a wonderful woman. She keeps us moving and well fed. She is so kind to us. So kind.”

  My brow furrowed. “You love her,” I said, because it was obvious, and he wasn't directly saying it.

  “Oh, I do. Very much. So much it feels like my chest will burst. But I am not special—we all love her here. She is wonderful.”

  “You could leave, Fri'er,” I commented, still attempting unsuccessfully to look him in the eye. “Work for gold. Buy a little plot of land and find a wife and family who will love you back and treat you right.”

  “No...no, Miss Sera. I cannot leave Nanya. The heartbreak alone would kill me before I could pass the gate.”

  I exhaled slowly, before I finally looked away. “Thank you for your time, Fri'er. That is all.”

  The servant hurried away, and I slowly faced my friends. They had been eating and drinking slowly while listening to my conversation with the man.

  “Whatever my mother is, her power is true,” I said, watching as Nyx scooted her glass of ale toward me, and motioned for me to try it. We had ordered two different types. I took a sip of hers, and squinted my eyes as the liquid felt as if it was tearing open my tongue and throat as it slipped down. “That is rank,” I told her, pushing it back.

  She chuckled. “I thought you'd say that,” she teased, before taking another swig.

  “You do not believe she is a god?” Theron questioned, cutting some meat before him with a knife.

  “She can call herself that all she wants. I will call her a god, sure, but it is only a race like any other. Gods can die. We've all heard the stories of gods fighting for power and killing each other. She called us mortals, but she is not immortal.” I hesitated. “The gods are not all powerful beings that should be worshiped. They are an ancient race whose pride in themselves has never been challenged.”

  “It is a wonder that you believe that, given you would otherwise have been able to wield your identity as a weapon,” Theron mused.

  “I see what that does to people,” I replied. “Like my mother. Her arrogance has swelled her head to the point that it is a tumor. She is the most sexist person I have ever met. She is so caught up with identity politics that she uses her race and her gender as a means to control and hurt people. I pity her. She loathes men so much, but she does not see the irony in resorting to her magic to get them to love her. Perhaps she is afraid that without her spell, they would find nothing they could love.”

  “The only thing I liked about her was her dress,” Nyx commented, which caused me to laugh at the unexpected jab.

  “Well...” I trailed off, and shrugged when my friend glanced over. “Those heels were pretty hot, too.”

  Nyx lifted her mug in a toast. “Impractical, though.”

  “And the dress wasn't?” I commented. No one I had ever known wore a dress. They were reserved for women who did not work and had the money with which to spend on a piece of clothing they could only ever wear to social gatherings of the wealthy.

  “It sounds as if she has something important to tell you tomorrow,” Cerin said, from just across the table from me. His pitch black hair appeared almost like a deep red in the light of the sunset.

  “Yes, well...we'll see about that. I want to learn more of my father. Perhaps I can find him.”

  “Kai...do not expect a happy reunion,” Nyx warned me. “If your father is a god like your mother, he might be just as awful as she is.”

  “He can't be a god,” I retorted, though I understood her concern. “Nanya said she knows all the gods. She would have known him. Instead, she thought he was mortal.”

  “That's assuming we believe her,” Silas pointed out.

  I sighed, frustrated with the excess of information swirling around my head and the lack of answers for my questions. “I don't know. Perhaps I'll just have to try to make sense of it when I talk to her again tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. After half of a year of traveling to get here, waiting another day for answers I might not even end up having was tortuous. Still, it gave me something to focus on so I could ignore my immense disappointment from meeting my mother. I had wondered who she was my whole life. Now that I knew, it felt like the worse of the two options. I felt I would have been better off not knowing.

  Sixteen

  “Your mother is waiting.” The male servant nodded toward Nyx, who had been waiting for his arrival with me in my room. �
��Is this the companion you're bringing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow me.” He turned to lead us to her, and we hurried to catch up, closing the door to my room behind us.

  This time, we were led to the top floor of Whispermere, to where there were no more staircases leading upward. We had to have been at the peak of the mountain. At the top of the last few steps, there was a thick wooden door. The servant knocked. This time, instead of footsteps, we heard my mother's voice.

  “Come in.”

  The servant opened the door for us while waiting in the stairwell. Nyx and I walked into what must have been my mother's personal quarters. It had a cathedral ceiling, as if to mimic the peak of the mountain itself. The first thing that demanded my attention was the gigantic bed just before us. It was large enough to sleep probably five people with room left over, and was clad in thick red blankets. A variety of pillows adorned the top of it, in the colors of red and dark gray. The canopy above the bed was fitted with white lace drapes that flowed beside the bed on all sides.

  There was a large, porcelain tub in the corner of the room. On the walls above it were two mirrors that stretched from just above the tub to five or so feet above it on the wall. Vines of fresh red flowers adorned the borders of the mirrors. A globe of Arrayis sat near me, to the right, next to a plush red velvet couch. Bookshelves aligned the wall before the couch, filled with a variety of texts. On a table before the couch sat a tray, little bowls of sugar and tea leaves upon it.

  Over to the left, across from her library, was Nanya's closet. She had floor to ceiling cabinets made out of a thick wood that appeared to be tinted red. I wasn't sure if it was a dye or if the wood came from a particular tree. In either case, both cabinets were stocked full of clothing, their doors open. Most of her clothing were gowns, some completely sheer.

  On either side of her room, the stone walls had been removed, leading to two balconies carved right into the stone of the mountain. The railings of her balconies were pure, clear glass, allowing it to seem like there were no walls at all keeping her from the sky. I couldn't imagine how hard it must have been to import glass up this mountain without breaking it. Standing on the balcony to our left, barely visible from through a sheer red curtain separating the outside from her room, stood my mother, a steaming mug in her hand, looking over the morning sky.

  Only when Nyx and I made no move to walk farther into her room did she turn to us. She looked pleased to see that my companion was Nyx. It was the major reason I'd picked her to come with me. I didn't want any of the men to have to withstand Nanya's sexism.

  “Come,” she said, motioning toward the balcony before her, where a small table and chairs sat overlooking the clouds. “We may sit and talk.”

  We made our way over to her, where we sat at the small table overlooking the clouds. Glancing up, I saw that we were, indeed, just meters below the very peak of the mountain. With the glass as our only barrier to the sky, my breath was nearly taken away. It was beautiful here.

  Nanya pointed out over the layer of clouds. “That is west,” she informed us. “That is the way you came from. I haven't watched the sunrise in many weeks, because I come to this balcony every morning. I would come here because I knew you were on your way.”

  There was a certain longing in her voice, which started to break my heart. She, too, had anticipated this meeting. I was sure by now that we had both disappointed each other.

  Nanya took one last look out over the clouds, before pulling out the one empty chair, and sitting down. She was dressed in a flowing white gown. It appeared she had slept in it. Throughout my entire visit to Whispermere, I had never seen her outside of the mountain, with everyone else. I wondered if she got lonely.

  “You do not approve of my ways,” she said, avoiding my gaze by continuing to look at the view through the glass. “But it is the way I have lived for nearly six hundred years. I will live like this for six hundred more.”

  “I am not asking you to change,” I replied.

  “Yes, I know. As I cannot ask you to understand, or change, or do anything you do not wish to do.” Nanya turned to face me, finally. Much of the arrogance that had been in her eyes the day before was gone, at least temporarily. “You are like me, Kai. Stubborn. A natural leader. Staunch in your beliefs. I respect that. It is the first time I have seen it in a long while. You angered me yesterday, with your words. After some thought, I realize I welcome that. No one has challenged me for a long time, and I have become bored.”

  “I was harsh with you,” I agreed. “But I believe you deserved it.”

  She laughed softly, before looking away again. “There it is again. That spark.” After a lengthy exhale, she said, “Go on, then. Tell me where you want me to begin.”

  “From the beginning,” I said. “Tell me of my father. Tell me why I ended up on the steps of Seran University. Tell me how you know of my life and why there have been assassins sent after me. Tell me why I have the power I do and what I need to know about having the blood of a god.”

  Nanya raised her eyebrows, as if this was a hefty request. “Hmm. Your...father.” It was clear she still had her biases, but she continued after a moment all the same. “He appeared at the gate one day, seeking shelter on his way to Brognel. I happened to see him there and was attracted to him, so I told the servants to let him in. He wasn't the most muscular of men, but I noticed he had rings on all his fingers, much like you. And a head full of the reddest hair I'd ever seen.” She paused. “I think that is why I slept with him. My favorite color is red.”

  That would have been humorous to me if it hadn't have been so sad. “He is a mage,” I deduced.

  “Was a mage, yes.”

  My heart felt like it was splitting in two. “How did he die?”

  “I'll get to that, child,” Nanya replied, slightly annoyed. “So, he was a mage. Fire and life magic, if I remember correctly. He told me about how he was more of a scientist of magic than a battlemage. He studied it. Made some discoveries. Claimed he had an entire town named after him for it, out west.”

  My mind raced through possibilities. “Arturian Kilgor?” I asked.

  Nanya snapped her fingers. “Ah. Yes. That's the name. That's your father.”

  I felt a little light-headed. One of the most applauded mages of all time was my father. The discoverer of the Kilgorian Law, something all mages knew by heart. We'd had painted portraits of him up in the Seran University. As a young girl, I had liked his portraits best, because he had bright red hair, like mine. If only I had known...

  “Wait...Arturian Kilgor died forty or so years ago,” I pointed out, remembering reading about it. “He was assassinated for his work.”

  “Is that what they taught you at the university?” Nanya asked, curiously.

  “...yes,” I admitted, confused.

  “Well, the date is probably correct. I was pregnant for a good many years. I didn't really know when I would finally give birth, because it was untested.”

  “Gods do not give birth to other gods?” I questioned.

  “Rarely. Most gods were created by the Ancients, not birthed. In any case, I was pregnant by a man who was not a god. In total, I carried you in my womb for nearly sixty years. As soon as I could get a seer to come here and tell me who the father was, I did so. I sent a messenger out to your father to give him the news and tell him I was going to adopt you out. The messenger came back to me and told me your father insisted on taking you. He felt you would get magical abilities from him and wanted to raise you as his own.”

  “Why didn't he, then?” I asked, saddened. To know my biological father had wanted me and was now dead was extremely upsetting. All I'd ever wanted was a parent who wanted me.

  “Well, first of all, the messenger said that the man was human. In the thirty something years it had been since I'd seen him, he had aged tremendously and was partially into his old age. I did not know when I would give birth to you. I could not promise him anything, and I knew that wouldn't
sit well with him. He was a man who sought answers. I knew he would become a thorn in my side.” She paused. “Also, the other gods were angry with me for being pregnant. If I had the baby, and they knew about it, they would come to kill you. I couldn't have Arturian going around bragging about how you were a half-breed with the blood of a god.”

  I didn't like what I was hearing. “But they knew you were pregnant. They knew you were going to have me.”

  “Yes, but they thought I would kill you as an infant. I have never had any qualms about killing others who became nuisances, and the others knew I wanted no children. It was a given I would kill you. Speaking of which, I had your father killed.” She glanced at Nyx. “By an Alderi not dissimilar to yourself.”

  I swallowed hard. “You had him assassinated? And for wanting me?”

  “I did him a service, Kai,” Nanya retorted. “The man was old and decrepit. He was going to die before long, anyway, and I didn't give birth to you for another twenty years. He would have spent the rest of his miserable life wanting answers I could not give him.”

  I knew she had a point, but I was too upset to really acknowledge it. I could not cry for my father, because I did not know him; instead, I felt distraught and conflicted, and found yet another thing to resent my mother for.

  “Why didn't you just kill me, then?” I asked. “Why did you have me and send me to Sera?”

  Nanya shrugged and smiled. “Because I wanted to see what would happen,” she replied, simply.

  “...that's it?”

  “Yes. I was admittedly proud over the fact that I was the only god to ever breed with a mortal, and I didn't know what to expect of you. I figured Arturian was right, that you would have magical abilities like he did. So I sent one of my servants to Sera with you, where he hired a mercenary to take you from the city to the university steps. Then, I waited.” She paused. “To answer your question on how I know so much about you, I have had servants and messengers relaying messages to me of your upbringing your entire life. I knew we were in for some trouble when you found out you could wield all elements when you were fourteen. You had Arturian's abilities, but it seemed as though they were amplified by my superior blood. Word slowly went out to the gods, who put two and two together and realized you were my child.”