by Lindsey Byrd
“Of course dear,” Najah said, entirely oblivious to her discontent. The physician cleared his throat. “Oh yes, yes, speaking of the children. Go on Mr. Burns, please.”
“Aside from the . . . Traverses . . . there’s been no mention of the plague moving any further south. And from what I can see . . .” Burns reached for his bag and withdrew a few vials. “There’s nothing causing this illness. Nor, as you suspected, is it likely contagious. The symptoms—coughing, vomiting, etcetera, don’t appear to have any understandable root. To be frank, though, it will be necessary to study them to devise any kind of cure.”
“We’re not looking for them to be studied,” Kera told him. He frowned at her. “We’re traveling to the Long Lakes to find the griffons.”
He laughed. It bounced off the walls, and he seemed to believe that she’d made some kind of joke. When he carried on a touch too long, however, Najah cleared her throat. “That’s quite enough,” she snapped, and he sobered in an instant.
Apologizing, he straightened his cravat. “You’ve come all this way to find the griffons? Why risk your hand at fantasy and myth when a doct—”
“Every doctor in Ship’s Landing has done nothing but study this plague,” Kera said. “As talented as you are, we do not have the time nor inclination to wait. Our children are dying, sir. And if there truly is no cure, then playing on fantasy at least can soothe a mother’s heart.”
His expression turned condescending. He was preparing to tell her what she already knew, Now listen, ma’am, I know you mean well, but—
“Mr. Burns, I do believe we’ve tired of your company,” Najah intervened. Burns recoiled as though he’d been shot. Najah couldn’t have surprised him more than if she’d torn her dress off and pranced about the room. “Horaceon will see you out, thank you for your assistance.” She tilted her head a toward the door. “Do please leave the poultices I requested before you go, we’ll send your fee along shortly.”
“I— Well . . . Yes. Of course, Lady Zakaria.” He left as if he expected to be called back. He wasn’t.
Instead, Najah shut the door behind him and returned her attention to Aurora and Kera. “I’d very much appreciate it if you spent the night. Get your rest. By the morning I’ll have two fresh horses secured for you, and new supplies for your journey. We’ve some maps available and I’ve some missives I can give you about the last sightings of the griffons.”
“You believe us?” Aurora asked. It was not, perhaps, the question she’d meant to ask. She was missing a polite word or two. But Najah nodded and folded her hands before her body.
“Ms. Lawrence, I’ve lived in these parts all my life. Griffons and beasts are a part of this land. I know their legends like I know my own family tree. Maybe scientists will find the answer to the plague in a bottle one day, but that doesn’t help your children now.” Aurora didn’t seem to know what to make of that statement. She glanced to Kera for clarification, but Kera had no time to speak. “Faith, Ms. Lawrence. Sometimes all we have is faith. That is, after all, why you named your daughter that, isn’t it? I believe in this land. You should too.”
Mount Maladh was unlike anywhere else in the world. Even now, with her children sick in the main house, Kera found an indomitable sense of peace and stability within its protected walls. The grass was kept remarkably level, the trees were planted for no other purpose than aesthetics and shade, and even the shrubbery was clipped daily into topiary perfection.
Najah had encouraged Kera and Aurora to rest and relax as much as they could. She told them to eat and bathe, listen to music, and allow Najah’s staff time to collect the supplies that they would need. And, for the first few hours, Kera had contented herself with doing just that, but then she saw the tomb in the distance . . . and she needed to go.
Aurora asked if she wanted company, and Kera contemplated it for a long while before quietly saying yes. Najah said she’d make sure the kids were minded while they were gone, then all but shooed them out the door. It wasn’t a long walk.
Stonework and masonry held General Zakaria’s tomb together with careful mortar and delicate craftsmanship. An iron gate kept visitors from crossing too close. She wondered if fervent patriots made pilgrimages here. Najah would hate it, but she would be too polite to turn them away. At least behind the gate his body could rest in peace.
“The last time we were here, Mori was pretending he wasn’t mourning.”
“You have that in common with your husband,” Aurora told her, blunt as usual. Kera’s lips quirked up in a smile that seemed to form whenever Aurora spoke these days. A smile just for her.
“I’m not pretending I’m not in mourning.”
“What are you doing, then?”
“I don’t know.” They stopped right at the edges of the gate. Kera’s fingers reached out to touch the twisted iron. There was a split blister on her palm, and it stung, but the contact was worth the pain. “I don’t think I’ve known what I was doing for a while.”
“Faith . . .” Aurora cleared her throat, then started again. “When Faith was a kid, well, a smaller kid. When she was younger, she had this toy. I couldn’t afford to get her a proper one, but she’d been watching the other girls and their dollies, and I wanted to get her something. So I took up some cloth and got some straw from the stable and made this awful-looking thing that she loved for reasons I never quite understood.”
There seemed little point in saying it was because Faith adored her mother. They’d only known each other for a few weeks, but Kera could see the love in Faith’s heart every time she looked at her mother. She’d do anything for her, and vice versa. Even if their positions were reversed, Kera imagined Faith would still be right here with her, bringing her mother to the griffons no matter the cost.
“The girls still used to tease her,” Aurora said, stepping up so she could hold the iron bars too. “I’d get worried that she’d never have any friends. Then one night I went by her room to see if she was okay, and I heard her talking to the thing. She had it propped up on her pillow and she was sat all cross-legged, blankets up over her shoulders, and I listened for a while as she talked to it.”
“What’d she talk about?”
“All her problems with the girls in town. She’d explain each issue, say things like ‘Alta wants Jeremiah to walk with her to the river on Thursdays, but Jeremiah can’t go because he walks Micah to the river on Thursdays and he can’t betray Micah.’” They shared a moment of pleasant commiseration at that. Nothing was more dramatic than the complicated social lives of children, and no amount of explaining how small or petty those social lives were would make any difference to the child in question. If left to their own devices, the youths of the world would have given up on life already, convinced that it ended the moment someone made a social faux pas too grandiose to be ignored. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say, is that the next day, after she’d done her talking to Widget—”
“Her doll?”
“Yes, she’d go to that group of kids and she’d give them the answer and things would get better. Even if the doll never talked back, it was like the mere act of saying it out loud just helped. She said holding it in didn’t do anything but give her a headache.”
Kera swayed just enough to tap Aurora with her shoulder. “She takes after her mother.”
Aurora’s left hand was only a few inches from Kera’s right. “Bullheaded?” Aurora asked.
But as Kera reached out and placed her palm around Aurora’s knuckles, she replied with a firmly sincere “Wise” instead. She squeezed Aurora’s hand, and Aurora released the bars. Their fingers tangled around each other until they found a comfortable grip. The grave lay quietly before them, watching without comment.
“There are so many conversations I wished I had with Zakaria before he died. He was Mori’s father in every way that mattered save blood, and sometimes I felt like he was the only one who could truly make him do something he didn’t want to do. I wish I had that talent.”
“W
ell, if there’s one thing I learned from my husband, it’s that a relationship shouldn’t be about trying to get someone to do something they don’t want to do. It should be about how to find middle ground between you . . . so that neither one of you is hurt in the process. I never had that relationship, but . . . it’s what I always wanted.”
“Do we meet in the middle?” Kera asked, trying to sound casual as she thought back to their relationship as of late. She couldn’t recall the last time they’d argued. It might have been over a week ago.
Aurora’s fingers tightened around hers. “More and more.” Then, motioning with her joined hands toward the grave, she asked, “What would you say to him? If you could?”
“I’d ask him to forgive my husband for dying in a duel,” she admitted, not daring to look up. “He’d have been furious, you know. He was always telling Mori he needed to slow down, plan ahead. Not throw himself into battles he couldn’t win.”
“And what else?” Aurora pushed.
“What else did Mori do?”
“What else would you say?”
Her free hand fell from the iron bar, and she wrapped her arm around her waist. Her ribs bothered her some, and she straightened her back to alleviate the pressure. The sound of hedges being clipped into submission click-clacked from elsewhere on the property. No one should be close enough to hear, but it didn’t stop Kera from lowering her voice anyway. “I’d ask him what he would have done in our situation. If . . . if he’d have left in the first place. If staying here makes more sense now that we actually are here. If he would still press on . . . when Faith and Aiden seem to be doing better here . . .”
The clipping went on. Somewhere a bird cawed. Kera waited for Aurora to tell her that she didn’t need to rely on anyone but herself. She waited for a chastisement or rebuke, or even some rallying words that helped bolster her inner strength. But when she chanced a glance up at Aurora, she found her companion looking pensive. She was staring at the general’s grave, biting her lower lip as if she wanted to say something but didn’t know how.
Finally, the younger woman shook her head and twisted so she was half in front of Kera. Their eyes met, and Aurora didn’t look away. “After Burns left, when you were helping Aiden eat, Her Grace told me that their daughter had the shaking sickness.”
It was surprising; Najah never talked about Amani. “She did,” Kera agreed.
“She said the general tried to get help from the griffons.” Kera hadn’t known that. Despair filled her at once. If Zakaria had gone, but it hadn’t been successful, then what hope did they have? “He looked for them for days, and when he finally found them, he did get some talons from them. He brought them back, but when he stepped back into the house—she was already in the throes of a fit. She died before he could give them to her.”
Pain lanced through Kera’s heart. She cupped her free hand to her mouth, tears pressing at her eyes. “Maybe they are doing well now,” Aurora said. “And maybe they’re just doing well for right now. But everyone we know who’s gotten this thing has died. And I don’t want to stop here, so close to those lakes, and not have time to get what we need if they take a turn for the worse. They’re underweight, Kera . . . They’re . . . Sometimes in the mornings when they just wake up and can’t move, I don’t know what to do. Aiden’s so small, and Faith . . . Faith’s always had fits more than him, and all I can think of is being like the general. Holding that cure in my hand, but my daughter’s dead on the ground ’cause I didn’t go get it fast enough. And I can’t . . . I can’t take that risk, not for either of them, can you?”
“No.” She didn’t need to think about that. Not even for a moment. “No, I can’t.” She swallowed, shaking the sudden image from her mind as her brain conjured it for inspection. She didn’t want to see it. She didn’t want to imagine it. She wanted it gone from her life, along with all possibility it could occur.
“I just . . . I feel we have to keep going. Especially since we’re so close. If nothing else, now they’ll be stronger for the journey. Maybe we can even get them to eat a little more while we’re here.”
“No, no, you’re right. I . . . Thank you. Gods, thank you.” She huffed, shaking her head again. The image was gone, but when she looked up, she was forced to see the utter belief and sincerity in Aurora’s face. It felt too pure to see. “Thank you for not giving up.”
“I wouldn’t. Not for this.”
Forcing a smile, Kera took a deep breath. “In any case, I do wonder what happened to the talons he collected . . . If he’d had them, why didn’t he use them when he fell ill years later?”
“She said they used them during the war,” Aurora replied softly. “When soldiers were dying and loved ones needed aid, they used the talons . . . and when the general fell ill . . . they didn’t have any left. He died because he gave his cure away far too soon.”
“That’s awful.”
“Would you have done differently?”
She didn’t need to think about that either. The answer came as quick as it had before. Resignation and understanding sighed out around the word no, even as she wished she could claim otherwise. “But being selfless all the time apparently is a good way to get your loved ones killed too.”
“Our children aren’t dead yet, Kera. And he did a lot of good before he died. Our country is free because of him.”
“Just because it’s the right thing doesn’t mean it’s the most painless thing. I just wish he’d kept some for himself. Then that ass wouldn’t be the Overseer of Absalon and maybe I could get some peace in my life.”
Aurora laughed. It came out harsh and biting at first, then dwindled off into endless chitters that shook down her arm, through their clasped hands, and into Kera’s body. Soon Kera found herself laughing as well. “My dear lady! I’ve never heard you use such foul language.”
“Brennan Wild is an ass,” Kera repeated, laughing around the words. “And so is my husband!”
“They really are, both, asses. This is true.”
Taking a deep breath, she leaned in close to Aurora, sharing her breath. “I’m going to tell you something, Widget,” she said sternly, even as Aurora’s lips twitched like she wanted to laugh again, but knew it wasn’t the right time. “We’re going to do this. We’re going to go to those griffons, and we’re going to find those talons, and you, me, and our kids are going to live for a very long time if only to spite my husband for the rest of all time.”
Kera looked up at the sky. “So I hope you’re well and truly satisfied you self-centered bastard. Because none of us are going to be dying anytime soon and you’re just going to have to deal with that.”
Kera waited for several long moments. The tomb, predictably, stayed quiet. Aurora, somewhat unpredictably, did as well. She seemed to be waiting for Kera to say something else, allowing her the chance to speak if she needed to. But when she saw that Kera had finished, she placed a palm on Kera’s cheek. Her thumb stroked the skin beneath her eye, and just for a moment, Kera was certain Aurora meant to kiss her.
Instead, Aurora just held her cheek and held her eyes in a gaze that seemed to set fire to Kera’s body, thawing out parts of her that she’d never thought she’d feel again. “You’re going to live forever,” Aurora said. “Death’s too scared to take you now.” Then she leaned in, and instead of kissing Kera’s lips, she kissed her brow. “We should get back.”
“Thank you,” Kera whispered.
“For what?”
“For listening. For letting me talk. For . . . not thinking I was mad. For being here . . . with me . . . even now.”
“You’re welcome, and thank you for all the same.” Warmth flooded Kera’s body. She threaded their fingers more securely together and leaned against Aurora’s arm as they walked. Her head rested on Aurora’s shoulder, and they returned to the house slowly. At their own pace.
She felt strangely lighter, now. Her feet did not ache as much. Her back no longer seared through her mind in agony. She imagined the adrenaline
would fade soon enough, and the pain would reignite in all its glory. But for now, she was stronger than she had been in quite some time.
They stepped back inside, and found Najah sitting with Aiden and Faith in their bedroom. Faith was awake, and was eating a bowl of broth with slow jerky movements, and Najah was helping her when she fumbled. She took the spoon in hand and brought it up seamlessly to Faith’s lips. “Did you get what you were hoping to receive?” Najah asked.
“Yes.” Kera had said what she had wanted to say in any case. “How are things here?”
“They’re well enough.” Najah sighed. Shaking her head, she tapped her fingers onto the table. “I’ve already prepared fresh horses for your journey, and I’ll see to it your gelding is well taken care of while you’re gone.”
“You’ve already done so much for us . . .” Kera hedged.
“And I’ll continue to do so. I’ve terms, you understand.” Aurora glanced up at them, lips pressing together, but Kera was not afraid of such terms. She already suspected she knew what they would look like. Kera nodded instead and asked what Najah expected from them. “When this is over, I’d very much like for you to spend some time here proper. The both of you are more than welcome, and your families as well. I have missed the children, and though I am delighted to finally meet your little Aiden, this was not the circumstance I envisioned.”
Kera promised easily. “Yes, of course, they would love that.”
“I’ve heard from Ira recently. He and Amit are considering returning to Absalon for a time. I know that Amit will be most gratified to see you well.”