An Elegy of Heroes

by K. S. Villoso

  He stopped and tried to clear his mind. The events at Enji, which ended with the collapse of the towers and the death of so many, including Moon...Oji’s death...Naijwa’s beast, being brought back to life, piece-by-piece...he could not deny that all these events revolved around this man, Yn Garr—a man who didn’t need to think twice to take him and Rosha away to coerce them into working with him. He had never liked the man, but this was the first time he had spoken to him. Kefier found that he liked him even less.

  He needed to be careful, needed time to get his head wrapped around everything. It was probably a good thing, then, that Yn Garr regarded him as little more than an idiot.

  This time, he cleared his throat. “Tell me what you’ve got in mind. I’ll listen. That’s all I can promise you.”

  Yn Garr got up, pushing his chair back. “We’ll walk outside,” he said. “Come.”

  There was a garden right outside the doors. It seemed to Kefier like a small orchard, comprising well-spaced trees with white flowers. There were rose bushes and lavender, plants common to the Kag region. White stone marked the path between the gate and the portico. Beyond the gate and the walls (made of the same stone, tipped with iron spikes), Kefier could see Cael City’s silhouette.

  “So this is where Enosh was, all those years I thought he was dead,” he murmured.

  He had not intended for Yn Garr to hear, but the man nodded, approaching him. “Here or my smaller residences in Hafod and Baidh. My business takes me all over.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “Trade, mostly. Caelian stone. Other local goods. One time Enosh tried his luck with coal, but coal is difficult to extract in Cael and the small mine collapsed before its first yield. Did you know that Cael is a new nation? In the beginning, it was just a few families exiled from Hafod. They took the northern river, expecting to die from the rocks or the beasts in the wilderness like so many others before them. They landed here and found a harsh, untillable land with a scattering of resources. Stone. Cotton trees. Lumber—if you took the proper precautions, and expected to lose a body every few nights. They lived in terror for so many nights, but what choice did they have?

  “The second wave of exiles arrived a year later and found a small village that had, against all odds, managed to survive. They had tapped the streams for fish and water and mapped a route the beasts rarely took. I remember…” Yn Garr fell silent, brooding.

  After another awkward silence, Kefier coughed. “So you trade. What need do you have for mages?”

  “What profitable business wouldn’t employ them? Properly trained mages can do more than just make charms and enchant mirrors. They make things easier for me—turn the tide, so to speak, when it came to the chink of coin.”

  “You speak like a Dageian.”

  “Is that so wrong? They are prosperous, are they not? They have power and they have fortune. With Jin-Sayeng and Hafod at the state they are in now, I expect that in a few centuries everything in the damn continent will be a vassal to the Dageian Empire. And why? Because no one else took the study of agan as seriously as the Dageians did.”

  They reached the side of the garden with a pond and a small bridge crossing over it. A child’s ball sat in the middle of the grass. A wooden top lay not far from it. Both were worn out and crusted with moss. For some reason, this stood out to Kefier, because he couldn’t remember ever hearing that Yn Garr had children. Maybe he hadn’t been paying attention.

  “That fall broke your brother’s body,” Yn Garr said, reaching down to pet a cat that had followed them from the house. The creature purred, weaving through his legs. “He couldn’t move or talk for months. Jarche had to manage his healing, because we couldn’t find anyone else who would look at him. When he recovered, he had to learn how to walk all over again. He sent you a letter, but he said you never replied.”

  “At the time, I was probably in the bowels of a Dageian slave ship.”

  “Our life, an unfortunate by-product of circumstance.”

  Kefier smirked. “Is that how you get by? Quoting Ranochi?”

  “You’ve read him?”

  “Rosha’s mother lent me a book a few years ago.”

  “Ah,” Yn Garr said. He looked surprised. Was that unfair? He knew Enosh. Why did it come as such a surprise that his brother was at least capable of certain things he was?

  If you mean breathe air, achieve basic literacy, and be Sume’s lover...I think you’ve got it covered.

  He flushed. “Tell me what you want,” he said, trying to get his mind back on track.

  “I’ve told you. I intend to school her. Both Jarche and I are capable in guiding her towards achieving control of the agan, and more than that, we have the resources to seek other mentors for her, should it be necessary. In addition, she can learn the trade, and forge a life of her own—a life better than you could have dreamt of for her. You know, of course, that your brother had money? He was particularly good at the little side investments he did for himself.”

  “We didn’t need money back home.”

  “Is that right? I was under the impression your brother found your destitute existence in Gorent more than lacking. This child—your niece—does she share your same sentiments?”

  “She’s just four years old.”

  “Exactly. You have no idea what she would or wouldn’t want for herself when she comes of age. Could you really live with yourself if you deny her this opportunity?”

  Kefier glanced at the mansion. The thought that came first to him was that he could easily knock Yn Garr to his feet, tall as he was, grab Rosha, and run. If he knew where she was. The second thought was the one that had worked itself in and around his mind over the last years, and that was that Rosha wasn’t his.

  He took a deep breath. If he said no now, would this man kill him? Did he want him to try? His nerves failed him. The old brashness, the one that had caused him to kill an undefended old man (he tried not to think about Thiar, holding his hands up and asking him to calm down, calm down with Kefier’s sword in his bubbling throat)...was gone. It had died the moment he held Rosha in his arms.

  “I need to see Rosha.”

  Yn Garr looked at him, as if deciding about something. After a moment, he nodded. He looked lost in his own thoughts.

  Chapter Nine

  Rosha was sitting on the floor when Kefier opened the door to her room. Her room, the ka-eng with the expressive ears explicitly said. She was bent over a book on Lisa’s knee.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  She tucked a stray hair over her ear, a distinct motion that made him wonder where time had gone and when it took his little toddler with it. This child couldn’t possibly be the same one that couldn’t move a step without tugging his pant leg, or stop crying for him when he left for the smithy before the crack of dawn. Sume had told him of how Rosha had stood by the gate, uttering, “Papa-come-home,” over and over again, her round face wet with tears. That wasn’t that long ago.

  “Look, Papa,” she said when he bent over to glance at what she was reading. “Sir Gorrhen has all these books. Lisa said I could have them. Is that true, Papa? Can I really take them home?”

  He glanced at Lisa. The anger came and went. “I don’t think they mean exactly that,” he said.

  “But Mama would love to see me read them. She’s been teaching me, you know,” she added, explaining to Lisa. “She’s not always patient.”

  Kefier clicked his tongue. “It’s late. Time for you to sleep.”

  Lisa took the hint and gathered the books. “We can read tomorrow again, if you’d like.”

  Rosha glanced at Kefier. “Are we going home soon? I think Dai and Narani will miss us.”

  “Soon,” he murmured.

  “I miss everyone.” She said it matter-of-factly.

  “I know,” he said. “Me too.” He cleared his throat and cast a glance at Lisa. “Are you allowed to leave us alone? Or must you chaperone bed-time too?”

  “I can leave.
” She stepped away, closing the door behind her before he could reply.

  “Why did you send her away?”

  “You need to sleep.”

  “You’re always so grumpy. I’m not sleepy.”

  Kefier glared at her. She pretended to wilt, but one hand reached out from under the covers to grab the edge of a book from the floor. She cracked it open with a smile. He continued to glare. At some point, he realized that she was blatantly ignoring him, sighed, and turned his attention to the room itself. It was larger than their house in Shirrokaru. He noted several dolls and a child’s viol on the shelves by the window.

  “Those books,” he said, turning back to Rosha. “What are they about?”

  “Fairy tales.” She flipped one upside-down to show him. “I love the pictures.”

  “And that dress you’re wearing—it’s not the same one we left home with?”

  She gave him a look that was more condescending than Yn Garr was capable of. “No,” she said, after some deliberation.

  “Did Lisa find it for you here? Or did she buy it in the city?”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t seem sure how to answer him.

  He had to think on that a bit. He wandered around the room, venturing through the two doors adjacent to it (a washing area and a study), before he realized that Rosha had fallen asleep. He drew the covers back over her and stepped out into the hallway.

  He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he caught a glimpse of the ka-eng’s slim figure passing by and called out to her. She looked at him, her ears folding back. He rubbed the back of his head. “You’re Jarche. You knew Enosh, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “He said he lived here. He—” Kefier stopped, not knowing what he was asking.

  Yn Garr’s version of the events over the last few years had turned his world upside-down yet again. First there was the brother, thought to be long dead. He had already accepted that. And then he was alive and had chosen not to let him know. So Kefier had hardened his heart and lived these last five years with the knowledge that his brother just didn’t care.

  The facts hadn’t changed. But hearing the details of his brother’s injuries from someone else affected him more than he wanted to admit. While he stood there like an idiot, the ka-eng approached him and touched his shoulder.

  “Do you want to see his room?” she asked.

  He nodded and followed her. It wasn’t far down the hall. The door wouldn’t open at first, because a pile of books had fallen from the other side and blocked it, but eventually they managed to step in. The first thing Kefier noted was that it definitely smelled like his brother. After living without him for more than half his life, the knowledge that he could still recall his scent was unsettling.

  There were more books on the narrow bed and on the shelf. There was also a closet, half-open, and filled with the kind of clothes Ylir the Merchant liked to wear. He remembered. “Yn Garr told me that he doesn’t know where he is.”

  Jarche blinked. “He hasn’t been home in years,” she said, which could have meant anything.

  “You people are annoyingly subtle. Is he even alive?”

  “As far as I know.” She sat on the edge of the bed and flicked the dust off one book. “He’s in Gaspar. What’s happening to your face?”

  “I’m trying to find a way to feel sorry for the bastard.”

  A faint glimmer of a smile touched her lips. “Is it working?”

  “I’ll let you know when it does.”

  “From what I understand, he’s being held in the king’s dungeons. He was one of the guests present during the assassination of King Zilfikar. They don’t have proof he did it, but…”

  “Nope,” Kefier said, shaking his head. “Still not working.”

  “Whatever did he do to you to make you hate him so?”

  “I don’t hate him.” The words were difficult to get out, but he had to admit the truth to them. He didn’t hate his brother, the way you didn’t hate a mountain path for being too steep. Enosh’s eccentricities had existed when they were children and he supposed he had just gotten used to them over the years. It was one of the reasons he had accepted that Enosh had abandoned Sume. If he had cared, he would’ve found a way to reach her.

  Jarche tilted her head. “Is that why you took his child and raised her as your own?”

  “He doesn’t want them. I did what I had to.”

  “What makes you so sure he doesn’t want them?”

  He took a deep breath. “From what you know of him, do you find it hard to believe me?”

  “Fair enough.” She smoothed the rumpled sheets and glanced at the pillow. There was something tender about that motion. He glanced at the view of Cael City through the window and remembered his first visit many years ago. Enosh was there with him on his first night here. Had bought him a meat skewer. It was difficult to place that memory with his brother, though, because he had been wearing a glamour spell then. Kefier only remembered a middle-aged, nondescript man who was kinder to him than his brother had ever been.

  “Was he in a lot of pain?” he asked, breaking the silence.

  “After the fall? Yes.” Jarche gestured with her hands. “You have to know, that in so many ways he was already dead before he hit the ground. The master had to hold his body together and pull his soul back in before it slipped through the stream. And then he had to use his own essence to seal the hole, to hold Enosh inside his body. It didn’t want to stay there. The body was so wretched, so broken…”

  “Stop,” Kefier murmured.

  She gritted her teeth. “I’m just telling you the truth. Another man, another boy, and it wouldn’t have worked. It was touch and go, even then. No healer would work with him. I had to reach in myself, and fix every broken part before his soul would consider remaining behind. Not an easy task, I tell you. It took me several months, at great risk to myself.”

  “I—thank you, for that.”

  She regarded him curiously. “I wasn’t doing it for you. The master asked. It is what I do.”

  “But still,” Kefier mumbled. “It was all my fault.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn’t tell you? We had an argument. I pushed him.”

  Jarche shrugged. “He never mentioned it.”

  “There was a girl, you see, and he…” She smiled, and he stopped, flushing.

  “Is that how you live, Ke-if? Do you let every moment of your past define your future?”

  Before he could muster a reply, he heard a cry, and rushed out and back into Rosha’s room. She was half-up, awake from a night terror.

  “Mama,” she wailed, turning to him, a child once more. He allowed her to bury her face in his shirt.

  “I’ll leave you two to rest,” Jarche whispered, closing the door behind them.

  It was difficult for Sume to remember that the damp, bedraggled man, with his week-old beard and pallid skin, was the same formidable figure she had seen from afar when they were last in Oren-yaro. If Rysaran could see Yeshin now, he would laugh. The warlord was stirring grains of rice in a pot and glancing up every time Sume moved.

  “Your people are starving outside,” she said in a low voice. She had found, over the last hour, that this was the only tone that wouldn’t send him into panic.

  “You’d have me risk opening those gates, would you?” Yeshin hissed, hands shaking. “They’re supposed to stay out. That’s what I told the guards, and everyone else who was alive…”

  “The man outside mentioned an uprising.”

  “Uprising?” Yeshin made a hissing sound. “There was no uprising. Only a massacre, is what. You want to see? The bodies are still there. Down below. Dragged them all myself.”

  That explained the stench on his hands. The smell of that, mixed with the rising scent of the boiling rice, made her want to vomit.

  Yeshin stopped stirring long enough to look at her. “I barred the gates, told them to keep everyone out. How did you get in?”

  “A c
rack in the wall…” she started.

  He laughed, a hollow, ringing sound that went for far longer than it should. Sume felt bile rise to her throat.

  “A crack in the wall!” he repeated, wiping tears from his eyes. He giggled. “I should’ve thought of that. And my people are starving, eh? And none of them thought to check for that?”

  “They were probably frightened of your soldiers.”

  “Frightened of me, you mean,” Yeshin said with a snort. “I should have never gone through with those beheadings. Worked far too well, if you asked me.”

  “I…”

  “Well, what else would you have done with a group of farmers taking things into their own hands? Slapped their hands and sent them on their merry way? We’re not in your grandmother’s home, here.” He pulled the pot out of the fire. It couldn’t have been cooked throughout yet, but he started spooning it into his mouth, a glazed look on his face.

  Sume waited until it looked like he was sated before she said, “Tell me what happened here.”

  The man cast her a terrified look. There was a brief moment where it looked like he was about to attack her, but even as she braced herself, it subsided.

  He nodded slowly. “Just promise me,” he said, “that you won’t scream.” He didn’t wait for her reply and took off in a slow, lolloping gait.

  Yeshin led her to the main palace, taking the back streets instead of the main road. The emptiness made the hair on Sume’s arms stand on end, but she swallowed her fear. She did find a knife while passing through one of the kitchens and took great effort to wrap it with a piece of cloth and hide it under her belt. She wasn’t sure how she would fare in a fight, but she figured she could stab hard enough if she had to. She wished she didn’t have to.

  They stopped between the courtyard and the temples. Sume could see a giant hole where the stadium had been. The temple closest to them was still standing, as much as it could on two columns. It looked like something had taken a chunk out of its side, chewed, and spat all over the grounds.