“Good,” was all I could think to say. I was sorry I’d asked.
Chairman Hooak, keen to the discomfort of the situation, stepped into the mix. I expected sage words, but the old arilas proved his political nature instead. He said, “Lord Barok, I see here a quorum of the Council. I move that the Council be joined to witness today’s events and to ratify the Treaty of the Pinnion in support of Exaltier Rahan Yentif.”
I nearly laughed, thinking him certainly drunk. But the rest all raised their hands and said, eyy, without a note of descent to be found.
I asked them, “You have committed yourselves to war with Yarik? All of you?”
They nodded as though they all understood what this meant—and it seemed that they must. Rahan would have no allies in the Kaaryon except the slaves he’d freed and whatever loyalists Evand could press into service. The Hemari and Hurdu would be unleashed, and the provinces would become battlefields.
I imagined the moment in Bessradi—all of them gathered around Rahan when Soma mended their souls and made all of them free. Rahan had told it all to them. The arilas had become Chaukai.
“We are committed,” Aldus said. “How do you vote, King of Edonia?”
They know—everything.
All the many dramas I’d suffered in Enhedu proved good teachers for that moment. My waking mind stabbed down upon the element central to this success.
Rahan’s laws—the collection we had passed in Bessradi. By themselves they were radical enough, but in their totality were something extraordinary. We were no longer arilas—mere governors of Zoviyan provinces. We’d dismantled the Zoviyan Empire and made ourselves sovereigns of our own kingdoms.
I wondered how long the ten of us could hold together, but that too was a problem for another day. I said to them, “The Sovereign Kingdom of Edonia votes, eyy.”
Chairman Nace caught my attention, and I noticed the patient men of my craftsmen’s consortium clustered together upon the boulevard. Chaukai officers and their wives flowed around them.
I turned to the arilas. “Gentlemen. You will be in Enhedu for only a short time longer. Perhaps you would care to spend the time you have left discussing with my master craftsmen your needs? I do believe they have access to more than enough labor to satisfy your every demand.”
Arilas Kiel and the Havishon madman made a beeline for Chairman Nace. A few others went with more muted urgency. The rest followed—out of curiosity, if nothing else.
Gern was at my elbow again and gestured to the three men he brought with him. Their dress was no better than the rest of the refugees, but this did not disguise what they were. I’d grown up with such men keeping me safe night and day.
“Which Hemari division did you serve?” I asked before Gern could introduce them. Gern was startled by this and turned on the militia officers.
The first of them was a pox-scarred old sergeant. He saluted me and said with a voice made of sandstone, “Prince Evand was right about you.”
One of the others began to object. The third interrupted him. “Okel is right, Colonel Feseq. Lord Barok has figured us out, and he is a Hessier killer, same as you and I.”
“But he has a Hessier, right there,” Colonel Feseq said.
“When was the last time you saw a Hessier heal a half-million slaves?”
The introduction had gotten away from us. The man named Okel waved his fellows down and tried to start over. “Lord Arilas, please let me introduce to you Colonels Ellyon Grano and Wayland Feseq, formerly of the Hemari 5th under command of your late brother Evand. My name is Okel Nortran, your brother’s former chief of staff. We escaped Yarik by hiding in the Kaaryon militia and were swept up with this lot when Bessradi sent us to stop the escaped slaves. I believe you know how that turned out. We owe our lives to many things, but chief among them is the letter and hammer you sent to Evand. We would serve you if you would have us.”
I shook their hands in turn. “Well met, sirs. Commissions in my army are yours for the taking. I must beg one indulgence, however, and tell you that Evand is not dead.”
“What?” the one named Ellyon said, rushed across, and took hold of my arm. “Alive? How?”
I would have answered him except for the shriek of pure happiness that sounded from behind me. The scarred girl—Evand’s maid. She lit the sky with her smile as she ran across to Colonel Grano. They took hold of each other and wept with joy like none I’d ever seen. Every person within earshot came to a halt, and it was thousands who witnessed their reunion.
She took hold of his trembling hand and put it upon her belly. Tears poured from them both and dripped from their noses.
All the drippiness was unseemly, but the crowd overruled me with a cheer that outstripped every state-sponsored merriment I’d ever heard.
The happiness bit me, too. The girl’s belly was round and she was as flushed as Dia had been on any of the countless mornings of her long and tortured pregnancy.
“Colonels,” I said and immediately regretted the harshness of my voice. They all turned to me, and I asked with as reasonable a tone as I was capable, “Can you take command of the militia?”
“Pardon, lord, but they do not need us,” Okel said. “Those boys survived a march through flames, routed the Ludoq cavalry, and held together through a retreat as hard and bloody as Leger Mertone’s retreat from Opti Pass.”
I nearly called him a liar, but the hoarse bite of his voice stopped me cold.
“You served upon the Deyalu,” I said, to which the old veteran nodded. I turned to Gern, who was already smiling. “Could you use three Hemari colonels?”
He did not even bother with a reply. He and they started away.
“You’ve killed Hessier?” Gern asked, and the old sergeant started telling him the tale. They would get along fine.
“Now,” I said. “Where is that architect and his map?”
95
Sikhek Vesteal
The 13th of Autumn, 1196
The sun had set by the time we arrived at a dusty old quarry. Madam Furstundish did not seem to mind the age of the day, and led me around a broken block of granite. The mineshaft hidden behind it startled me. I could feel the wealth of silver at once. This was the place where the druids of Edonia had sung their Song of the Earth.
All those centuries of searching, and it had eluded me. How was it possible that the works of men could still surprise me?
“Come,” Madam Furstundish said and started down. The trip was not long, but the effect of the place upon me was profound.
I found myself before an immense vein of quartz and native silver. I could not put a word to the feeling that gripped my heart and guts. It was like I was falling—my reborn flesh tingled and my new lungs seizing as though I could not breathe. My heart pounded. My mouth went dry.
Was this love?
“Sit,” Madam Furstundish said. She’d already taken one of the two chairs at the small table there. She had a book open to a clean sheet of the whitest vellum and a brush in hand. Warm lanterns hung all around her.
She said to me, “I already have all the words from the Song of the Hessier you sang today, and I caught the ones Geart sang to remake you. How about we start with the trees. Do you know the names of all the trees?”
The feeling would not leave me. “What are you?” I asked.
“Hush. Sit down now. You will be okay. I am nothing so special. The Spirit of the Earth and I have a temporary arrangement.” She patted the top of her rounded belly. “I am her scribe, and in this place I can write the words.”
“You can sing them as well?” I asked and sat down to get a closer look at this book of hers.
“No. Not at all. I can’t sing anything. I’m just the scribe. Now let’s get started,” she said and turned the book around. Nich was the only word written upon the page, and as I read it, its meaning was as plain as could be. I sang it aloud.
yew
It was not a word I had known, and I laughed so happily I felt inclined to cover my
mouth.
She frowned, turned the book back around, and looked up at me.
“I am sorry, Madam Furstundish. I have not been able to learn the names of the trees.”
“Metals, then?” she asked, and turned to another page.
I sang the first part of the list of them, one after the other, and she translated the sounds into words upon the page.
iron copper silver gold mercury
The river of native silver glowed as I sang—as though the Spirit of the Earth was dancing with the sound of my words.
Madam Furstundish turned the book so that I could see. Tetdo, dobin, jin, kinsut, mark.
It was calming—as though a burden had been lifted. She wet her brush, and I sang the rest until she’d filled both pages with their names.
“How are you doing that?”
She ignored the question and leafed back toward the front of the book. “Can you tell me how the words are organized? I have a sense of it—the categories of things.”
“There are words for all the basic things: metals, liquids, types of stone, species of plants and animals.”
“Foods?”
“Some, but nothing made from something else, food or otherwise. Bread, cider, yarn, glass—none of those. They are things made by man and the Spirits do not know them.”
“But some parts of things are words, yes?”
“Only of living creatures: blood, bone, liver, feather, petal, root.”
Her brush did not stop moving. “And the verbs?” she asked.
“You mean to record the words of the Shadow as well?”
“We must guard against your failure. If the Ashod and their Ashmari defeat you, we cannot leave it to men with swords to defend us.”
“You will only succeed in making new priests for the Shadow. Men bend too easily to his whispering. He will not sleep for long.”
“Men cannot be trusted with the words. You and Geart both failed her, and we will not suffer the same mistake again. It will be women that we arm with magic.”
“Women will succumb to him as well,” I said.
“Not with Soma watching over them, they won’t. Now, let’s get back to it. How are the verbs organized?”
The delicate smell of her entered my nose, some light perfume of flowers and oils. I woke to the qualities of my restored humanity. I felt suddenly like a boy sitting alone in a dark room with a beautiful woman—and this was quite literally true. I crossed my legs and folded my hands nervously. I had a reason to say no to her, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
I said to her, “The verbs are simpler. Any action you can pair with a noun has a word: bone break, melt iron, heal flesh, float granite.”
“Aden used that one.”
“Which?”
“Float granite,” she said. “He moved that great stone by the entrance with it.”
“He must have been desperate—such a song would shorten his life.”
“We did everything we could to frustrate him—we even put a spike through his skull and covered him in silver dust. He wouldn’t go down.”
“Aden was made differently. He is very strong—was strong,” I said.
“Was?”
“You made him flee. You must have come very close to killing him. He would not have fled otherwise.”
She hid her frustration by wetting her brush and turning back to a later page. “Should we resume with the metals?”
I sang for her, list after list. The glowing silver warmed the dark mine, and the lanterns burned low. I gave her every word I knew. Thousands of them.
I was fighting away sleep when we’d finished but was stirred by the arrival of a young girl. I could tell it at once. She was a singer.
“Soma says to hurry,” the girl said to us. “They are ready to go.”
“Thank you, Lilly. We are just finished,” Madam Furstundish said, and she suffered to sit back in her chair.
The girl said to me, “You don’t look anything as scary as Aden.”
“I’m not a Hessier anymore,” I said to her. “Geart remade me.”
“Hmm. Sounds like wishful thinking to me,” she replied, but her dour expression gave way to a bright smile. “Oh well. Come. It just rained. You’ll want to see this.”
We followed the bright-eyed girl up, and from the lip of the quarry, I was treated to a view of the wild green world of Enhedu. What a place it was—more alive than the rest of Zoviya altogether.
Madam Furstundish said to Lilly, “One day soon, you will be able to sing all the names of everything you see.”
She shrugged and smiled. “Will you sing the song with me, Sikhek?” she asked.
“Perhaps. Perhaps one day you and I will sing to Her together.”
“Good,” she said. “Now go get Clea. Her daddy misses her.”
“I will,” was the only reply I could manage.
96
Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
The 14th of Autumn, 1196
“Pix,” I shouted when she and Boatswain Rindsfar stepped into the crowded common room of the harbor’s inn. I gathered her up and swung her around and around at the risk of colliding with Barok and those around us. “When did you get here?”
She squeezed me back hard enough to threaten the buttons on my uniform. “I just sailed in on the Grace, mother. I made a run down to Moorsmoth to pick up rope and resin.”
“How is your father?” I asked.
“Wonderful, mother. He loves building ships. Loves building them for you.” She let go of me, and we both blushed from the happy smiles of the arilas and sailors in attendance. “Are you leaving already? Rindsfar told me the news.”
“Yes. Just as soon as we are done here.”
She nodded approvingly. “Good. You go get Dia and Clea back, mother.”
The cooing of a baby drew her attention, and before I could stop her, Pix danced across to the boy’s mother. “What a beautiful baby boy,” she said. “May I hold him?”
She handed over the bundle, and Pix smooched the boy on the forehead. It was only then that she noticed the mother was Evela, that she was wearing a proper Yentif gown, and that the room was full of people.
“Pix,” I asked her. “Have you met Evela Yentif?”
“Not properly,” she said. “So, then the baby …”
“Is the crown prince of Zoviya. Yes, dear.”
“Well, the crown prince sure is sleepy,” Pix said and handed him back to his mother.
“Would you like to help me put him down?” Evela asked, which I understood clearly to mean, please get me out of this room full of men.
Pix understood Evela too, took her arm, and winked at me on the way out. “See you soon, mother.”
Arilas Hooak tried to continue the conversation he’d been having with Evela, which earned him a bit of laughter from the rest.
Oenry scratched beneath his blue cap and said, “She wasn’t going to go back to Thanin with you, Aldus Hooak.”
“Rahan’s mother is from the same village as my uncles. It seemed a proper enough place for her to stay until the Exaltier’s position is secured.”
“You have some fence mending to do first between Rahan and them, I think,” Oenry said. “No one from his mother’s side of the family attended his funeral, as I recall.”
“Ohh,” Aldus said, and tried to turn the conversation to some other self-serving topic. Barok and Regent Oklas both looked ready to be moving. The meeting’s usefulness had expired.
I waved Aldus off. “Gentlemen, my apologies, but it is time for us to board. You can reconvene upon deck.”
Lukan met me at the door with Harod hanging on. “This would be farewell,” he said and offered me his hand.
I gave him a hug, instead. “Keep some divonte warm for me.”
There were no crowds to see us off, and it was a fantastic relief to walk in peace across to the Kingfisher.
“You have everyone hard at work already?” I asked Barok.
He nodded absently. His mind was
already grinding on whatever problems waited for him back at the camp.
“You listen to Thell and the Dame,” I said. “You’ll need food and rest, or you’ll run yourself to death.”
He didn’t mind the mothering, and managed a small smile. “I will. Thank you, Soma.”
We reached the pier. Sikhek and Geart were already aboard.
I made my way up, and we pushed off from the pier. Bohn was the only man left there, and we saluted each other. He walked a short distance down the beach to a gigantic pyre—Pemini’s pyre. She laid upon a bed of wildflowers. Bohn lit it, said a prayer, and trotted back to catch up with the prince.
The flames roared up through the tall triangle of Enhedu wood, and the fragrant smoke drifted toward us. Enhedu’s bright sun kissed the rising canvas, and the breeze filled the sails with life.
The Kingfisher started out to sea, and she took with her the last black thorns of the Shadow. Our leaving was the drawing of a rusty nail from a wound. Left behind were men and women, flawed and weak but free to act and free to choose.
Edonia would keep them well.
The End
Glossary
Abodeen - A poor northern coastal province
Adanas - A monster in a children’s story and the name of the lost religion of the Edonians
Aderan - A rich western plains province
Akal-Tak - The fierce warhorses of the Hemari
Almidi - Provincial seat of Trace
Alsman - A bodyman appointed by the Exaltier to each of his sons
Alsonbrey - Eastern gateway city of the Kaaryon
Alsonelm - Northern gateway city of the Kaaryon
Alsonvale - Western gateway city of the Kaaryon
Aneth - An eastern coastal province
Anton - A greencoat trainee, Erom’s son
Apped - A prison in Aderan
Arilas - A provincial governor and hereditary title
Ataouk - A royal family defeated by the Yentif
Tanayon Born Page 17
