by D M Wozniak
I return the look, firmly, but with no anger. There is no anger in me for her. Only empathy and regret.
“I just need to know if the king wants me dead.”
She swallows, and says, “You said that you trust me—and you can. Please—just continue to trust me. Just trust me.”
Her plea is both maddening and moving. I believe her. I have no doubt that I can trust her. But her unwillingness to share the truth is the same wedge that was driven between Marine and me.
I pull away. “You'll tell me when you're ready,” I concede. “But there will be no more secrets between us. I cannot bear falling in love with a woman and then losing her to lies. Once is enough.”
Perhaps my words were too strong for her, since she stares back at me, wide-eyed.
“Promise me,” I insist.
She nods her head once and raises a hand to her mouth. “I promise,” she whispers.
With that, I nod back at her solemnly. She still holds her hand to her mouth. After a moment, I turn toward the tent opening and skirt in between the two loose panels of fabric.
The morning air hits me, smelling of burned wood and sweet plantains, and I can see the pink hint of sunrise upon the horizon.
A new dawn is rising.
le-Sante
Blythe sets a steaming pot on the flaming logs, throws the rag he is holding onto the sandy ground, and rushes over to me. But he stops just before we meet, almost as if his excitement is doused with fear.
I’ve seen this look before—when he pushed away from me in the road last night.
“You are recovered?” he asks hesitantly, behind the faintest glimpse of a smile.
I groan and arc my body with a hand to my back, noticing that the stars are still visible despite the approaching morning. The sky is familiar. O’Eridani, the End of the River, is directly above me. It must be just before sixbell. This was the time I usually awoke at the Royal House, leaving Marine in bed while I left for the university.
“We need to talk,” he says quietly.
I bring my gaze back down. “About?”
“Last night.”
I let out a deep sigh. Despite my thoughts being numbed by the closeness of voideath and the still-fresh memory of Chimeline’s warmth, beauty, and lies, I understand Blythe’s reference. There can be no other.
The look he gave me in the road.
He said that he heard voices in my stone, which is impossible. There are no voices. Although it is true that if one heard the wind, it would be natural for them to confuse it with whispers.
Except that voiders are the only ones who can even hear the wind. To hear the wind is to be in the void. If a non-voider picks up a voidstone, it is nothing to them. A lifeless pebble.
That is the touch test we administer. The simplest of signals.
The man is clearly confused.
Besides, he wasn’t even holding the stone. He was clutching my hand while I grasped the stone.
None of it makes any sense. But to explain all of this to Blythe is more than I can handle right now. The only outcome will be his eventual realization that he simply heard one of the buried men whimpering as they breathed in mud and water and confused it with something else.
“The plantains are burning,” Colu shouts out from his seat by the fire, many yards away.
“We need to talk about your voidstone,” Blythe adds urgently.
“About the voices you believed you heard?”
“Yes.”
“It was a long night for us all,” I say dismissively.
“You think I’m making this up?”
“No. I think you’re confused.”
“I am not a fool, master voider. If that’s what you’re implying,” he says, his face taut.
I shake my head. “No, I don’t believe you are a fool. I just think that the events of last night were traumatic for you and in the frenzy you became a little confused.”
“The plantains are burning,” Colu yells again.
Blythe reaches out and clutches my forearm tightly. “I know what I heard.”
“Alright,” I add, taken aback with his fervor. “We’ll talk later, when we have some privacy,” I say.
“Do I have your word on this?”
“Of course.”
He hesitantly returns to the fire. I follow and pass Colu, who sits cross-legged with his elbows on his knees. The large Xian man is dressed the same as he was last night—dark brown leather armor and a chainmail vest. His sword, scabbard, and baldric sit on the sandy ground.
He glances up and gives me a curt nod. The red skull is still painted upon his face, but it’s smeared beyond recognition.
“Roasted plantains and maize,” Blythe explains, picking up the cast iron pan using a rag. “Colu packed the maize for us, and I found some plantain trees by the stream.”
I nod in gratitude, taking a seat between them. Blythe sets the pan on the sandy ground, flipping the plantains with a stick. They’re blacked.
“As soon as we’re finished eating, we must start our way towards Winter’s Baiou,” I say.
Colu looks at me, but says nothing. With his one eye and his smeared face, he’s impossible to read. Meanwhile, Blythe focuses on his cooking, but I detect some disagreement in the slow shaking of his head.
“What’s wrong now?” I ask him.
“Why don’t you ask the redskull?” he answers.
I glance between the two of them. “What’s going on?” After neither of them answer, I add, “Are you concerned about the men buried in the road?”
Blythe just continues to shake his head.
“They’ll be alright,” I answer. “There were a handful that got away, including the children you rescued. Prainise is not far from here. The survivors will surely return with shovels and dig them out. The fate of Prainise is in their hands, not mine.”
Blythe looks to Colu with a piercing expression—something shockingly resembling hate. “Are you going to admit to him what you have done, or should I?” he says.
“The fate of Prainise is already sealed,” Colu utters.
“What he means to say,” adds Blythe loudly, “is that he murdered all of them.”
“Fucking Temberlain. I will not have this argument all over again.”
A rustle in the pastel darkness causes the three of us to turn toward the tent. Chimeline stands in front of it, wrapped in her patchwork blanket. She’s looking at Colu with a concerned expression.
“Fine,” he booms, arms out at his sides. “I repeat myself, but only for the master voider’s benefit.” He looks at me and nods as his posture softens. “Only because I am deeply in your debt. I would be dead if it were not for you.”
I stay silent as Chimeline shuffles over and sits down next to me, rubbing her shins to get warm. She’s barefoot.
Colu turns to the fire and leans in, red reflected in his eyes. “After you passed out I carried you here, and the three of us figured out what to do with your convulsing body. By that time, probably a fullbell had already passed.”
I wait for him to continue.
“Then I went back.”
“To the road?”
He nods. “To finish what you started.”
Blythe exhales as Colu continues. “The way this graycloaked fool makes it seem, I am some blood-crazed madman seeking revenge—”
“Slitting the throats of the defenseless can be no other thing!” Blythe interjects harshly.
I extend my hand. “Let him explain.”
Colu blows air into his two cupped hands, and then folds them together tightly into a fist.
“They needed to die,” he says. “Despite what you may think, I am not seeking revenge. I’m seeking the quickest path to peace. The least amount of death and suffering to innocents. And by my calculation, what I did last night was exactly that.”
Blythe puts his hands on his bald head, and I shoot him a warning glance.
“Prainise only respects strength,” Colu adds. “Brutal strength
. Anything less, you may think it is a lesson, but it will be the opposite. Like pouring oil upon this fire.”
I don’t say anything.
“If I had let those men live,” Colu continues, pointing north across the murky fields, “they would have regrouped and attacked our plantation. There still would have been a war, except this time there would be no prisoners. No mercy. Every man, woman, and child would be massacred in retribution for what you had done. Tortured, even.”
Blythe can’t help from interjecting. “But that is what you have done!”
“I stopped the bleeding. Those people cannot be reasoned with.”
“You talk as if the people of Prainise are animals—”
“They are animals!” Colu yells. “And Cleanthes was no different. That is the way it works out here. And if you think anything different, you are a fool!”
Blythe turns away from Colu and looks at me. “Surely you cannot agree with this madness.”
Suddenly, I feel the eyes of all three of them on me.
Turning to Colu, I nod slowly. “I understand that you had to do what you did,” I say, my voice level. “I only wish that you told me your intentions earlier. I risked voideath, specifically to spare their lives. Killing them would have been far safer and easier for me. You have no idea how close I came to dying. If it were not for Chimeline...” I shake my head slowly.
“Would you have killed them, had I asked you to?”
“No,” I say without hesitation.
He opens his fist and extends his palms, as if my answer has just proven a point, and my brow furrows in suspicion.
“So your plan all along was to kill them? And that’s why you wanted me here?” I ask, my voice darkening.
“No,” he says, shaking his head forcefully. “Remember, I only asked you to stay a fortnight. To delay the inevitable. But when you showed up last night, things changed.” He hunches his shoulders. “I did what needed to be done, which is what any soldier would do.”
“You are no soldier,” Blythe says, as he spits onto the ground.
“Finally, you say something we can agree on.”
Blythe grunts and begins serving breakfast. There are large, waxy leaves which he dips into a hot pot of water, cleaning them. Then he places the plantains and maize on it, and carries each leaf over to us, starting with Chimeline.
“The Unnamed provides,” he says to each of us.
Chimeline and I offer our thanks, while I watch Blythe serve Colu in the same manner. I’m surprised by this—given the man’s obvious anger toward the other, I would think that he would make Colu get his own breakfast. But the effulgent seems content to serve anyone.
“I heard them in the night,” Chimeline whispers. “The skullman plans on coming with us.”
I look to Colu. “Is that true?”
He finishes swallowing. “Is what true?”
“You’re joining us?”
“I can no longer stay here.”
“What about being the new redskull?” I ask in surprise.
“I can’t do it,” he mumbles.
“Do what?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Growing the hilma. My heart is not in it.”
“But the threat from Prainise has been removed.”
He nods while chewing. “True. But another threat will eventually take its place. Comes with the territory.”
“What about your promise to Cleanthes?” I hound him. “Your promise to all of his people?”
“They’ll find another redskull,” he grumbles.
“As good as you?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “But good enough.”
Chimeline adjusts her leaf-plate in her lap. “I see a piece of myself in what he’s going through,” she answers delicately. But when Colu leans in, obviously trying to listen to her words, she repeats them louder for him to hear. “I see a bit of myself in you.”
“Is that so?” he asks. “Humor me, woman.”
She presses her lips together in thought before speaking.
“You left your homeland to forget your past and to find redemption. But you didn’t find any redemption. The only thing you found was the wisdom to know that you can never go home again. It exists in place only. Like a body without a soul.”
Her words seem to penetrate Colu like the approaching sunrise, gradual and soft. Colu leans back, his shoulders relaxing as he blows air through his lips.
“You’re right, girl from Scorpiontail,” he says wistfully.
For a long time, we all sit in silence, watching the embers rise into the morning air. The sky is light enough now for me to see the silhouettes of migrating birds flying overhead.
“I had a great love once, before I enlisted,” Colu eventually says, breaking the silence. “A beautiful woman—much like yourself, except Xian. She would have been home to me, but she’s gone now. I lost her to the effulgency.”
Blythe picks up his head and narrows his eyes underneath smooth brows.
“What do you mean, you lost her to the effulgency?” I ask him.
“No one is ever lost when they decide to follow the way of unwanting,” says Blythe.
Colu flashes him a dark glance, but then Chimeline speaks up, drawing his ire away. “Tell us about her,” she says.
He shrugs his large shoulders. “We knew each other from childhood, but it wasn’t until my apprenticeship that our relationship grew. She was the daughter of the mason.”
“You’re a mason?”
“Were.”
I take my last bite of the plantain.
“Just as our love was flourishing, she discovered the way of unwanting.”
He points across the fire to Blythe.
“One of these fools came to Winter’s Baiou and built a temple, sapping the entire mason’s staff, including myself. I never met the man, but soon my woman was reading from the white book and reciting its ludicrous phrases from memory.”
Colu clears his throat before continuing. “Shortly after the temple was built, I proposed to her, but she gave me an ultimatum in return. I had to join the way of unwanting.”
I raise my eyebrows. “She must have been very taken by it,” I say.
He nods. “She had stopped calling me il-Colu by then. No names. She would not accept any of my gifts. But I still loved her.” He grunts, “I thought it was merely a passing thing.”
Colu leans forward, closer to the fire. “I didn’t believe in the Unnamed, and she knew it. When I prayed to him, I felt...” he hunches his shoulders. “Nothing.”
“You are not listening to his voice,” Blythe says.
Colu ignores him. “The night before we were to go public with our engagement, she begged me to pray. Afterward, she admitted to me that she prayed as well that night, harder than she had ever prayed before. She begged for the Unnamed to reveal himself to me, to provide me with a sliver of grace.” He smiles sadly to himself. “I remember those words, a sliver of grace.”
He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, smearing more red paint away. “She loved us both—me and her cursed Unnamed. The problem was, her heart only had room for one of us.”
“Did you hear his voice?” Chimeline asks.
I see the white of Colu’s one eye as he briefly looks up at her, before resting his gaze back on the fire.
“I’ll tell you what I told her. I did try to pray. I did try to hear his voice, for her sake more than anything else. In that silence, I kept waiting for the spark of something, so show me that there was more to all of this.” He raises his hands to the shadows surrounding us. “But then, I realized that if I actually did hear something, it wouldn’t be the Unnamed talking. It would just be my own stupid mind trying to force something that I had so desperately wanted.”
With these words, Blythe suddenly stands and walks away into the darkness, one of his hands on his bald head.
“What happened then?” I ask.
“Things got much worse between us,” Colu says. “She couldn't acc
ept my lack of faith, so our time was mostly spent fighting. It was unacceptable to her that I could not see what she saw.”
“Surely she wouldn't leave you over such a thing,” Chimeline insists.
Colu spits onto the ground in disgust. “It was much worse than that. She didn’t just leave me. She left me for him.”
I exchange a confused glance with Chimeline, both of us too shocked to respond.
“You mean—” stammers Chimeline.
“The effulgent chose her,” Colu answers.
I turn to Blythe, but he’s a few feet away from the fire and his back is to us.
“Is that even possible?” I ask Blythe, raising my voice so he can hear me. “It was my understanding that the effulgency does not engage in marital relations.”
But Blythe doesn't answer my question. He seems lost in thought.
“Oh, they don't,” Colu booms, rising to his feet in order to stoke the fire. “Marriage is against the way of the unwanting. No man should own a woman, or the other way around, and marriage is apparently the equivalent of owning.” He violently prods the fire with a branch, sparks escaping into the softening sky. Then he points it at me, the tip of it glowing red-hot. “But they have to maintain their hairless bloodline,” he says. “There’s no way around that. So this man chose le-Sante from Winter’s Baiou.”
“That was her name?” Chimeline asks. “le-Sante?”
He nods. “She believed that it was a privilege. An honor bestowed upon her from the Unnamed himself. Even her father the mason—my master—even he was smitten. I was pushed aside.”
Blythe suddenly turns around. He slowly walks forward from outside of the ring of firelight, passing Chimeline and me, and heads straight to Colu.
“I must not own the dark,” Blythe says, his arms loose at his sides.
Colu snaps his stick in two and throws them into the fire. “What are you talking about?”
“It was me. I was the effulgent in the town you call Winter’s Baiou. I was the effulgent who chose the woman you call le-Sante.”
Colu tilts his head sideways, but says nothing. He then smirks and flashes a line of white teeth before looking back into the fire.
