by R. K. Hart
Maya shook herself and nodded, giving her stomach one more pat before she moved across the square and crouched with difficulty next to the girl, quietly introducing herself. The girl was eight or so, her face wan with pain and shock. Her right leg was broken, but the break was clean, and the woman hovering over her - her mother or aunt, judging by the blonde curls they shared - held her still while Maya settled the bone back where it should have been. The girl didn’t scream, just made a single whimpering noise while Maya bound the limb.
‘How brave you are, sweetling,’ Maya said.
‘Everyone keeps saying that,’ the girl said dully. ‘But all the brave people are dead.’
Maya touched her cheek. ‘Not all,’ she told her, before she moved on to the next patient.
Lida and Jessa left her to it, going back to their work. They found nothing further in the rubble; Lida tried not to watch as a group of townspeople took what boats they could find into the port and began fishing bodies from the sea.
Night came and the moons shone bright above them. Lida’s limbs were jerky with exhaustion and she felt full up with death. Jessa was so weary that she swayed on her feet. They stumbled back to the town square, from where the injured had been moved and a pyre constructed in their place, piled with more bodies than Lida dared count. People were gathering around it, giving up on the day in some silent consensus. Lida watched as one after another desperately scanned the growing crowd, searching to find not just those who were there but those who were missing, counting how many shipmates, how many friends, how many family members they might have lost. Faces fell and lit again when they found someone they knew; embraces were freely traded, faces touched, lips kissed. There was not one person who was not covered in soot and dust and blood.
A tired-looking stranger brought Lida and Jessa food, but they could not eat. Isla brought them mulled wine and they drank it as if it were water. Torches flickered around the square, standing watch over the dead, echoed by the candles around the pyre and in the hands of the living. Someone had made a makeshift shrine and covered it with flowers and food; one large, charcoal star had been drawn on a drape of emerald fabric. Jasmine and sandalwood incense swirled through the breezeless night, masking the other scents, though not completely.
Maya found her sister intent on the task of drinking as much as possible. Maya had always scolded Lida for drinking, mindful of her sister’s recklessness even while entirely sober, but as it was she refilled Lida’s cup and draped an arm around her shoulders.
Lida gestured clumsily at Maya’s stomach. ‘Is he Malik’s?’ she said.
Maya narrowed her eyes and moved the wine jug away. ‘He’s mine.’
‘So Malik doesn’t know?’
‘No.’
‘Is that why you left?’
‘Partly.’ Maya sighed. ‘I was afraid I would be forced to marry him. I think … I think Malik would have wanted it.’
Lida swayed. ‘Da would never agree!’
‘Oh, Lida,’ Maya said, smiling slightly. ‘No, perhaps not. Other parents do; you know it’s usually what’s done, when girls are as careless as me.’ Her voice was mocking; Maya was many things, but never careless.
‘It’s certainly something to think about, isn’t it?’ she continued. ‘How long can I withstand the patriarchs on my doorstep? How do I care for a child, and work to pay for food? How long before patients refuse my care? How long before someone takes their grievance to a magistrate? How do I not become a burden and embarrassment to my father? How long before my son looks at me with shame?’ She considered the wine, wishing for a moment that she could drown her sorrows in it. ‘It was a hard decision, little owl.’
‘I would have helped you, May,’ Lida said determinedly. ‘Cathan would have helped you. You could have worked.’
Maya squeezed her shoulder. ‘I know. But you have your own life, Lida. Cathan has his own life. I want to be mistress of mine.’
‘What will you do? When … when he comes?’
Maya smiled. ‘Sailors’ children stay with their mothers until they are five, no matter where they go, no matter which ship they sail on. He will be with me.’
‘You’re staying with them? With the Myrae?’
Maya nodded. ‘I have a contract as the ship’s physician on the Restitution for the next three years.’
‘But they don’t let anyone work for them,’ Lida said, then remembered Jessa was sitting beside her, and the Belle’s Setiian deckhand, Sira, was sitting across the square staring unseeing at a full plate of food. ‘They don’t let Eilins work for them,’ she amended.
‘Because most Eilin sailors are men,’ Maya said practically. ‘And the second they step on board, they start telling the captain her job, regardless of their station on other ships. They happily take Erbidan sailors, and occasionally Setiians, though they don’t let them come to the Isle until they’ve sailed on Myrae ships for years.’ She nodded at Sira. ‘Sira’s an exception. She was adopted by a sailor and grew up on the Isle.’
Lida sipped at her mulled wine and struggled to reconcile her beautiful, vain sister with the woman who stood beside her. If someone had told her four months ago that Maya was to spend months at a time in the cramped conditions of a ship, with bad food, no admirers, and no dancing – by choice – Lida would have laughed herself hoarse. Maya was not afraid of hard work, but she also liked the comforts of life, and preferred them delivered on a platter by a handsome young man who jumped at her every command. There would be none of that on a Myrae ship.
Lida’s mind turned to Aaron; perhaps she’d been unknowingly cruel. Would Maya even think of Aaron, now that she was a mother, and had someone other than herself to care about? And if she did, how would Aaron react, finding not the carefree woman blazing beautiful in the afternoon son, but someone with a swollen belly or her arms full of her son?
Lida pushed the thought aside and took Maya’s hand. ‘I am happy for you, May. But will you get shore leave? When will I see you?’
Maya gave her a look she could not decipher. ‘You shall have to come and see me.’ She gave Lida’s shoulder another squeeze.
Someone took her cup from her hand, but before she could protest, Lorcan had drained and refilled it with a jug he seemed to have brought with him for the purpose. He repeated the process three times, colour blooming in his cheeks, before Lida got her cup back, mercifully full. She sipped at it cautiously; it was honey wine, very sweet and very strong. It spread cloyingly over her tongue. She wondered if he had eaten, remembering the mornings she had woken up with her stomach cramping with hunger after Aaron’s dreamscape training.
‘Maya fed me,’ he said with the ghost of a smile. ‘When I woke, I thought I had dreamed the last months. I thought I was back in your sandstone city, waking up in the stable block to Maya with an offer of food.’ He studied a dark stain on the cobbles near their feet. ‘I wish that I was,’ he added, so softly Lida almost didn’t catch it.
A hush fell over the crowd as a woman stepped before the pyre. She was simply dressed in a deep blue tunic and fawn pants, her chestnut hair pinned atop her head and encircled with a wreath of woven willow. Like everyone else, she was covered in ash and dirt and blood; unlike everyone else, she wore a bronze pin of office on her breast, a circle etched with an Eilin willow.
‘I am Sacha,’ she said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried around the square. ‘I am maire of Port Royal. To those who do not live here, I welcome you. To those who do … I grieve with you.’ She bowed her head.
‘I thank you all for your assistance today. Know that you have my gratitude and you have my love. Know that all of you will have a roof over your head tonight and for as long as you need it. Know that your service here will never be forgotten.’ She paused, swallowing.
‘It is too early to ask for answers, too early to seek reparations. I have nothing to give you in any case. Tomorrow I will ride for the King and provide witness for what happened here. I will be guided by his wisdom and his judgement.
‘May you take comfort - as I do - in the knowledge that Eianna’s arms are open and the ones we love have taken their place amongst the stars. In death we are equal; in death we are as one. Our loved ones in this pyre were from Eilan, from Brinnica, and from the Isle of the Gods. They lived and laughed and loved and fought and worked like all of us. Some had seen many summers, and some, far too few. In minutes, they will rest with the eternal stars, beyond the concerns that consume us, but when the sun rises, we will still carry them inside us. This night, and every night, we will remember.’
‘We will remember.’ The murmur was taken up by the crowd, and Lida shivered.
The maire raised her glass. ‘To the bravery of the dead.’
‘To the bravery of the dead.’
Lida tipped a little of the wine from her glass as everyone around her did the same. She watched as the golden liquid dripped onto the cobblestones.
The maire was handed a torch; she closed her fingers around it and, for a moment, her eyes and her face seemed broken with pain. Maya rubbed her stomach.
‘Her son is in the pyre,’ she whispered to Lida. ‘Gods, I can’t ...’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t even imagine.’
Without opening her eyes, the maire thrust the torch forward in one decisive movement, then held it still until the pyre caught alight. Lida watched the flames lick up the wood, the acrid smoke spilling in a straight spiral up into the night sky.
She and Maya stood very still as the bodies began to burn. Soon the flames became too hot and the smell became too powerful, and Maya pulled her back through the crowd, out to the sea air of the ruined port. Lorcan followed, but Jessa and Isla stayed, standing shoulder to shoulder in a determined vigil.
The wine had gone to Lida’s head and she was dizzy and exhausted. She stared out at the sea, listening as the water lapped against the sea wall, the ghastly frame of the Ice Maiden disrupting what might have otherwise been a peaceful scene. The smoke in the sky had almost cleared, and Kaia was glittering, subdued, through the light cloud.
Maya and Lorcan spoke for some time, like old friends. Lida remembered how jealous she had been of their easy rapport in Kingstown and shook back her hair with a smile. It was a mistake; her head spun and though she fought it, her knees gave way and she folded in a heap, leaning against a pile of rubble, glad for the coolness of the stone against her hot skin.
Maya exclaimed as Lida’s eyes fluttered shut. ‘It’s fine, May,’ Lida muttered, embarrassed. ‘Too much wine.’
Lida felt her sister’s hand across her forehead. ‘This isn’t wine, Lida,’ Maya said crossly. ‘You have a fever. You need rest. Is there somewhere you can take her?’ The last part was directed at Lorcan.
‘We have a house in the trade quarter,’ he said, then murmured something further that Lida could not catch.
‘What?’ She struggled to sit. An ache spread through her back and shoulders and up her neck, so fierce she flopped immediately back down.
Arms caught her shoulders and scooped beneath her knees and she felt herself lifted smoothly from the ground. ‘Maya will send someone to check on you,’ Lorcan said softly. ‘If you have what I did, it is too dangerous for her. But someone else will come.’
Lida nodded. He was uncomfortably warm, but she lay quiet in his arms as he walked. She didn’t open her eyes.
‘Lor?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Where is Sacred?’
‘Midnight has ridden from Port Royal to the Illarum many times. I hope that she will return there, and Sacred will follow her. I asked Jakob to watch for them.’
‘Lor?’
‘Yah?’
‘Maya says I should go to the Myrae.’
‘I do not think she means right now.’
‘Lor?’
‘Lida?’
‘Can we go home?’
He kissed her hair. ‘As soon as you are well, I will take you wherever you wish to go.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Kaia
It was hard for Lida to say goodbye to Maya. She’d wanted to see her for so long. She wanted to talk about Brinnica and share what the Kali had said about their mother and ply her with questions about the Myrae. She wanted to ask about Cathan and feel her nephew kick and somehow casually mention to Maya that the Kalisson might be coming to find her and not to panic if a giant blonde-haired man showed up on her doorstep, although she supposed that Maya being on the Restitution might make that somewhat more difficult for Aaron.
Instead of what she wanted, she spent four days bed-ridden with the same virus that had almost killed Lorcan on the Belle, though she did not develop the chest infection. A grey-haired, sad-looking Eilin physician named Artur declared that she was out of the infectious period on the very day that Aife and the Restitution left to return to the Isle. Lida felt cheated.
She did not know what her new world would look like with Maya on board a ship and not within her reach. She tried to tell herself that it was Cathan she worried for, knowing all the while it was not true. She had relied on Maya for so long that the notion of being truly by herself was unsettling.
She didn’t tell Maya any of it, but rather hugged her tightly, awkwardly fitting herself around the side of her swollen belly, unable to let her sister go.
‘You will write to me, May?’ she said anxiously.
Maya didn’t answer, pulling away to chew on her lip, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable. ‘Please come for the birth, Lida? I would like … I would like to have you with me, when he comes.’
Lida thought of Siva, of the memory at the very back of the golden mist, and of the bright smear of blood on their mother’s cheek. ‘Of course, May.’ She felt her eyes burn; she wasn’t sure who her tears were for.
Maya wiped Lida’s cheeks, slipping back into her usual practicality. ‘You are drinking stoneseed tea, aren’t you?’ she murmured. ‘I think one grandchild will be enough of a shock for Cathan. We should try to space them out, if we can.’
Lida coughed, her cheeks burning. ‘Not yet,’ she managed.
‘Hmm,’ Maya said. ‘Get some. Soon.’
‘I don’t know that I’ll need it,’ Lida muttered.
Maya pulled back and frowned at her. ‘What’s wrong?’
Lida looked out to sea. ‘Dylan told me … Dylan told me a lot of things. About Lorcan. About before me.’
‘So?’ Maya said.
‘So,’ Lida said fiercely, ‘I don’t need the tea. Why bed half of Brinnica, and not me?’
Maya laughed, a bell-like peal. ‘Always in such a rush, little owl. Some things are worth taking slowly.’ She studied her sister. ‘It is hard, sometimes, when two people grow up in different places. They are trying to play the same game, but with slightly different rules. If you wish to play together, you need to share the rule book. In both languages. And know that translations are often lacking.’ She smiled. ‘Did he tell you what he and I talked about, that night in Kingstown?’
Lida shook her head.
‘You. All you.’ She flicked her braid over her shoulder in an echo of the old Maya. ‘I’ve never been ignored like that, so politely. It was very insulting. I didn’t realise at first, and I thought perhaps he loved like Jakob, but then he started asking questions. The first few were subtle, and then it was as if he gave up, and it was one after the other, question after question. What you were like when you were small. What your favourite foods were. What you liked to read. What you liked best at school. How you liked your tea.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘What made you happiest. What your favourite colour was. What kind of healer you wanted to be. What your friends were like. Whether you’d been in love before.’
Lida frowned in surprise. ‘What did you tell him?’
‘The truth. Well, mostly. I made you sound a little less irritating and ill-tempered, because it’s a miracle from Eianna that someone might like you enough to take you off Cathan’s hands.’
Lida growled under her breath, but Maya only smiled.
‘I
don’t think you need to worry about anything, except perhaps whether his mother likes you.’ She mussed Lida’s already-wild hair. ‘Aife would say that every river runs at its own pace, and to heed the current when you swim.’ She grinned. ‘Cathan would say something different.’
‘Don’t be a boar in a tea-shop, Lida,’ Lida muttered.
‘Mmm. I would tell you to be patient, but I know you won’t listen.’ She gave Lida a final, hard hug. ‘So instead all I will say is: get that tea.’
***
Lida and Lorcan left not long after. The journey from Port Royal to the Illarum was around three days on foot, and would take them through the grassy fields and farmland that made up the south-western tip of Eilan.
As they crested the rise outside the port, Lida turned back to look at the town. The sea glimmered blue and beautiful, but there were few jetties still intact. Even from a distance, she could see the ruined buildings and piles of rubble. There was no sound and little movement: the town looked asleep, or worse. Someone had towed the blackened bones of the Ice Maiden out to sea, a new anchor thrown over the spine of its hull, tethered in place until the next storm came and the remains sank beneath the waves. Until then, it sat as a skeletal monument; Lida imagined it to be a warning, although she wasn’t entirely sure of what.
Lorcan set a fierce pace across the fields. It was difficult for Lida to match, laden with her pack and lacking his length of leg, and after a few hours she had to ask him to slow down. By then she was covered in sweat, hungry and cross, so he suggested they take a moment to rest.
Lida collapsed into the long grass and sipped at her water flask, looking out to sea. She wondered how she was going to get to the Isle of the Gods for her nephew’s birth. She would have to ask her father for the coin, she thought, and then try to beg a ship to take her from Little Buck Port, as Maya had. She hoped she’d be as lucky.
‘Thinking about Maya?’ Lorcan asked softly.
Lida nodded. ‘I still can’t really believe it. I don’t even know if Cathan knows.’
