“Why?”
“The Council closed it.”
“They closed your school?”
Nien nodded.
“What did you do?”
“I…” Nien thought it about it a moment. “I ran away to Quieness, actually.”
SiQQiy laughed. “Really?”
“I did. I was...” — it felt so wrong, somehow, to say it now, but — “at the time I was suffocating in Rieeve. I was very hungry for learning.”
Now, he thought, there’s nothing I’ve learned that’s worth anything.
Nien glanced back across the river.
“Strange,” he said quietly. “I remember now, the kids asked about death. We’d received word by then of the fall of Lou; it was on everyone’s minds. Rieevan children already had a lot of answers to that question, but for some reason they wanted to talk about it. Maybe they thought I would be more honest with them than their parents. Maybe they felt I might have a different view on it since I had read books they’d never seen.” Nien swallowed the lump in his throat. “It was almost as if they knew.”
“What was it,” SiQQiy asked softly, “that Rieevan knew about death?”
As SiQQiy asked it, Nien remembered Necassa telling him that the Ancient Writings were not taken literally nor studied for spiritual import in Quieness.
“Well,” he said, “that death of the physical body is only transitional. That as physical beings we are more importantly beings of spirit.”
“Spirit, as in ethereal?”
“As in very real.”
There was a twinkle in SiQQiy’s tone as she replied, “Really?” Her eyes narrowed then, as if trying to bring a memory into focus. “As a child, I remember my mother telling me a story of a little girl who traveled the galaxies and had such adventures as one could only have in the great spaces between stars. But one day she came to Leer and brought six spicy fiilas and a jug of sweet viatta to an old man who lived alone outside the Quienan palace walls. The thing was, the little girl came before there ever was a palace, or emperors, or a country to rule.
“I didn’t understand the story then, I’m not sure I do much more now, but it has always brought me peace.”
Nien felt a warmth and tenderness stir inside him. “Do you remember?” he asked.
“Remember?”
“The space between stars.”
SiQQiy stared. It took her a moment to reply, “Not anymore. You?”
“At times — with Wing. But no, not like I would like to.”
SiQQiy wrapped her arms about herself and glanced up into the sky. “Do you think we were...ourselves? Up there, I mean.”
“I think so, or some version thereof.”
“That’s a good thing, I guess,” she said, “since most days I’m all right with being me.”
“I imagine,” Nien said.
A fish jumped in the river, its opalescent scales flashing against the rippled surface of the water.
Nien was watching the place where the fish had re-immersed when he felt SiQQiy’s gaze upon him. Slowly, he turned to look at her. Her eyes were the colour of the shiny black marble he’d seen in the domes of her palaces.
“We Quienans think we’re so bright,” she said softly, “so progressive in our thinking, and yet with you I feel a sense of wonder that I realize we have lost.”
“Commander Lant once told me that we know everything. That all knowledge is recorded in the planet itself, in the stars, and in us. That discovery is really only rediscovery.”
SiQQiy gazed steadily at him. “Who are you? Why is all this so...familiar? And why do I feel as if we’ve had this conversation before?”
“Maybe we have.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You mean before this life?”
Nien could only look at her.
Reaching up, she pressed her palm to her forehead as if to clear the questions in her mind. “Is this your belief or a Rieevan belief?”
Nien shrugged faintly. “A little of both.”
SiQQiy’s thin eyebrows furrowed together — in worry or in thought, Nien could not tell. “Though there is nothing taught so specific in Quieness,” she said, “I have always wanted to believe that in the chaos there is ultimately a purpose. I don’t know if I’m drawn to that belief because it is or because I need it to be so.”
Her words caused a volley of thoughts to rise and fall in Nien’s own mind — some bringing ecstasy, others torment. “And I…I once thought I knew. Without a doubt.” He paused to steady his voice. “And somehow that hurts even more. I don’t find peace in it anymore.”
SiQQiy reached out and placed her hand upon his. “Nevertheless, I envy you.”
Momentarily stopped by her touch, Nien said, “Envy me? Why? That I can leave my room without bodyguards?”
“There is that, but no,” she said, a corner of her mouth tipping up at him. “That you once trusted in something gives you a serenity, a calmness of soul that I’ve always wanted but never been able to hold onto for long.”
“If only it was with me as you see it. In truth, my lady, I am entirely lost. You mistake surrender for serenity.”
Though he did not feel brave enough, SiQQiy’s gaze drew his eyes to hers. It ruined him to find her taking him in with the sincerest empathy.
“Under such circumstances, who could wonder?” she said. “What you suffered, what your brother and your friend experienced…” The pain in her face was so real it made Nien ache. “Though the other valleys have yet to know it, the loss of Rieeve was a great blow to our continent. We are all diminished by her loss. Life is a circle, all are essential to the whole. When one is lost, so are pieces of the rest.”
“I once believed that,” Nien said, his voice faint. “But as you say, if life is a circle, then I can only hope that those who are left will figure it out before it’s too late for them. That the Plan may still be of use to the other valleys is the only thought that gives me any validation for...being alive.”
The colours on the horizon had slowly dissipated. Overhead, the gentle blue hosts of the night began to appear in the sky, their faces reflecting in the glassy waters of the river.
“Nien,” SiQQiy said, drawing in her legs and turning around to face him. “I want you to understand what I tell you. I know it’s too late for your people, but it’s not too late for you, for your brother, for Carly, nor for your homeland. The Ka’ull can be driven from Rieeve or they can be killed.”
Nien’s eyes dropped. “I...” He hesitated. “Empress, I…”
“SiQQiy, please,” she said.
“SiQQiy,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t know if I can. It’s not something I’m sure I can do.”
And you would not ask me, he thought, not if you knew me. Not if you knew that I lost Bredo, a member of my team, that I handed my own valley over to the entire Ka’ull army, and that my back was turned when they murdered my family.
“I am not what I once was,” he said at last. “I am not the man Pree K told you about. You have met me and not him. For that, I am sorry.”
Chapter 69
Poet Laureate
“S tep aside!”
Anger flickered in the deep-set eyes of the soldier as he stepped aside for the sub-Commander and his assistant. The soldier’s long hair was pulled back tight from his face and secured at the base of his neck by a thin piece of worn leather. His hood was drawn up, covering most of his face.
Though much shorter in stature, the sub-Commander growled to his assistant that hurried along behind him. The assistant pushed by the longhaired man, scowling at him. He was still scowling when the sub-Commander stopped abruptly and turned back. The assistant bumped into him.
“Where is your superior?” the sub-Commander said to the soldier.
“In quarters above the main hall,” the soldier replied, his voice chalky and low.
The sub-Commander’s eyes narrowed. “Throw back your hood.”
The soldier slowly pushed back his hood.
�
��You look unhappy.”
The soldier said nothing.
“Well, take comfort. Your superior will be no happier to see me than you are.”
The hooded man watched the sub-Commander and his assistant go before pulling his hood back up over his head. He trudged on across the compound and to the front doors of the castle to look out across the alien valley. All was quiet. The only sounds in this valley now came from within the castle walls. To his right lay the grey-black carcasses of homes that used to be a civilization.
He grunted in disdain.
Another soldier sat inside the gates to the castle courtyard, stressing a long piece of leather.
“Gren’tel, how’s the outside?” Tem’a asked.
The man stopped, his hood still pulled low. “Burnt,” he replied.
Tem’a looked up at him. “Yeah, well, I guess they didn’t want us moving in.”
Gren’tel grunted again. “Not that I would have, anyway.”
Tem’a looked him over. “Did you see the Northing Sub-Commander come through?”
“Yeah.”
Tem’a returned to his strip of leather. “Guess we’ll be expecting company.”
There had been rumours that the Mat’ta Kell’a, their first and fiercest contingent, was looking to move southing to rest in preparation for the incursion of, well, no one really knew. Would it be Jayak? Preak? Were they actually prepared for the invasion of the most formidable valley on the continent — Quieness?
“The Mat’ta, figures they’d show up here,” Gren’tel said, and he moved on, his shoulders slumped as he shuffled off across the courtyard toward the bunks in a large lower hall beneath the northing castle wall.
Tem’a watched him go, hunched beneath his resentment.
It was a look Tem’a recognized for he saw it every day: Frustration barely held in check, fantasies of death (sometimes of the enemy, sometimes of themselves), memories and hopes burned as black as the alien village, dark thoughts passing through their minds in neat, orderly rows like hungry soldiers waiting in line for a meal.
Tem’a had his own dark moments. But he had a reputation for being the carefree one who could, at times, come to someone’s philosophical aid. Had he not been a soldier he might have been one of their people’s finest poet laureates.
He figured he could be a poet anyway — the war had to end eventually.
He hoped.
After initial training, Tem’a had been assigned to a regiment moving supplies up the Tu’Lon to the Ti-Uki confluence and then overland into the newly captured valley of Rieeve.
He hadn’t actually killed anyone yet, and even though he’d seen plenty of carnage in the cleanup of their war ship sunk by a Quieness galley in the Tou Bay inlet, he was still considered a bit of a dandy in the eyes of the “working” soldiers who had seen action in Lou and Tou. But no matter how much they harassed him, he was forever unperturbed and this, it seemed, had impressed the other men on some level.
The unofficial camp psychologist, Tem’a was secretly loved and openly chided, and he took it all in stride.
Dragging the back of his short blade across the leather strap, he pulled it taught and striated it again.
Turning his mind to home, he thought of the few people there he actually missed.
There weren’t many. There had been one woman. He had been her first crush. She had never asked him if she had been his, probably because she’d known how insatiably curious women were about him, a feeling readily reciprocated since he was intensely curious about people in general. His willingness to let people in was irresistible, a trait especially appealing to women who, in response, had often responded in kind. But he was equally as fascinated by men. He found people in general fascinating — all people — and that had not sat well with the woman. She had felt betrayed because there had been other women and men he adored, some sexually, some not. His family had felt betrayed because he could not curse his father for leaving. His friends because he questioned the Homeland Cause and the veracity of the invasion —
Though “invasion” was a word no Ka’ull ever used. The “invasion” was a matter of defense. It was an act of revenge, retribution and, ultimately, justice.
Tem’a regretted the wounds he’d caused, but how could he explain his inability to place his wonder, his awe, indeed his love for one being above that of every other?
And that included the people of the valleys they had taken, enslaved, or outright destroyed.
Condemned often for his thoughts and actions, it had become an idea he frequently pondered: how people could become selfish creatures, putting restrictions on everything, including how, where, and whom it was appropriate to love. Though this could have jaded him, Tem’a still saw people as he saw himself — in layers. He never took anything at face value. He looked deep, seeing the motivations and reasons from which a word, an interaction, even an “invasion” might have sprung. Time and again, he’d seen a moment of understanding unravel a history of hate. Part of him hoped that by affording it to others he might, someday, be afforded it himself. To his surprise, he’d been offered more of it by the rough, brutal killers he’d been surrounded by since leaving Tech Kon, than he ever was by his family, friends, or even his own mother.
Still working at his strap of leather, Tem’a thought about the soldier with whom he’d just exchanged words. He knew Gren’tel had seen action with another battalion in Lou and Tou. He also knew he’d been turned down for a position in one of the shock-troop units because of unconscionable acts —
And this, Tem’a thought, coming from the Tenkt’tla troops.
Glancing up at the sky, he saw clouds beginning to gather at the sunsetting side of the valley and felt their heaviness just as he felt the agitation of the men over the arrival of the sub-Commander.
Tem’a stood and headed toward the castle gateway. Stretching, he glanced up at the mountains surrounding the strange, exceedingly beautiful valley. None of them had ever seen such foliage, such trees. As awe-inspiring as it was to Tem’a, to most of the men it managed only to fuel their anger; for now, they had seen first hand how much abundance of life they’d been denied, every tree, every blade of grass a reminder that, in their homeland, a stand of thin deciduous trees could equal a blood feud. And then there were the immediate concerns, like the impending arrival of the Mat’ta Kell’a.
He couldn’t blame Gren’tel’s grim attitude over the thought. But they had all suspected that this valley was where the Mat’ta Kell’a would come to headquarter, and perhaps that was the reason behind the slaughter of the people that had once inhabited this valley rather than their enslavement. Emptying the valley of its natives meant the Mat’ta could rest and prepare for what lay ahead — a fight far more daunting than that which they’d already won. Tou and Lou and fallen easily; they’d been unsuspecting and unprepared.
That had changed after the Tou Inlet Battle.
With the galley that had destroyed their largest galleon had been two other Quienan ships. These ships had nursed the wounded Quieness galley back down the river — to Jada Post, no doubt.
From that point on everyone knew it would be a whole different war. There would be no more surprise attacks, no easy victories. Soon every valley on the continent would be aware of their presence.
Raising his luminous, unsuspecting eyes, Tem’a looked out over the drying fields. To his right, dark and defeated, lay row upon row of blackened rubble that stretched off toward the mountains on the sunrising side. Not for the first time, Tem’a imagined the lives that had once been lived there. He was pretty sure boys had wrestled in the streets and that blood from their noses had stained the warm brown cobblestone. That a girl had walked casually past a young man’s house, hoping he might finally take notice and think her beautiful. That an elderly woman had walked across the garden behind her house to take food to a neighbor. And he was pretty sure children had been taught by parents that here, in their small secluded valley, they would always be safe and protected.
Life, Tem’a thought. We bring it, and we take it away. And somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered whose life he might take, and possibly whose life he might save…
Chapter 70
Training
F rom where he was, lying belly down on the roof of Monteray’s house, the press of the smooth wood surface beneath his chest, Wing watched Carly, Kate, Tei, and SiQQiy talking and laughing down by the river.
The sound of their voices carried up to him as he took in the view of river and mountain, eased into a feeling of home.
A turn or two that could have been a lifetime passed like this, and every day came a gentle breeze beneath a bright lavender-blue sky.
That night’s evening meal, which had become more of an event than a meal, had been all but cleaned up after as Wing headed out with Monteray, Kate, Carly, Nien, SiQQiy, and Tei to watch the sun set — a family custom. Everyone, including SiQQiy’s guards, spent the last sunstep or so of the day on the bank of the river in the fading twilight.
Nien and Carly sat down in the grass by the river, but as Wing went to join them, Monteray said, “Wing, if you will…”
With a curious glance at Nien and Carly, Wing turned to follow him.
Monteray walked a little way off before sitting down again. Wing sat beside him, suddenly feeling ill at ease.
“Wing, I hope you’ll forgive the boldness of what I’m about to say.”
Wing tilted his head a little, waiting.
“We have come to a point,” Monteray said. “When I first saw you, when Rhusta told me that you would be coming to find me, I was concerned that once you had delivered netaia Lant’s Plan you would have no other reason to stay in Legran. Upon discovering that Nien was indeed your brother, I was sure that would be enough to hold you — and it has.” Monteray clasped his hands together; Wing could not tell if the gesture was in thought or concern. “I have seen new life come into you. But that is not all I see. It still seems your faith extends to everyone but yourself. You believe in your brother and in Carly. You have faith in my strength and in SiQQiy’s resolve to implement Lant’s Plan. In yourself, however, it does not seem you have any faith whatsoever.”
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