by J. E. Holmes
“I would think about it sometimes,” he said. “I would think, ’how great would it be if he were gone?’ And sometimes I would think it could be me. I would always hate myself when I did. I would think of my brother and sisters, or my mother, and it would go away.”
Wulfgar rose and set a hand on Javras’s shoulder, stopping his pacing. The huge man said nothing, just gave the shoulder a squeeze and released it.
“When he left, I knew something awful was going to happen,” Javras continued. “I knew he was going to his death—and he must have known it, too. He didn’t plan to die, but he knew it might happen. What I told you was the truth.”
“I doubt it was the whole truth.”
“And when I thought of him dying, and the bloodsword being claimed by King Maxen, I froze inside. I knew someone had to do something. So . . . .”
“Young Javras calls upon friend Wulfgar and friend Wien,” Wulfgar said. “He knows I would kill, knows Wien would kill, and he tells us dilemma. He says, ’How can I stop this?’ And Wien, so clever, says, ’Be there to pick it up.’ And the rest is Javras’s plan.”
“Head him off,” Javras said. “Arrive in Korv before he did, claim to be attache to the emissary—except I didn’t know that the King didn’t even know my father was coming.” He sighed. “He had been hoping to maintain the element of surprise as well.”
The frantic planning, the heightened tensions, the sudden involvement of Ediline made more sense now. Her father had been desperate not to be killed. Throwing Ediline to Ashwin’s son had just been a ploy, a distant hope that might assuage the Endbearer. And her mother had come up with the idea. It made her fists curl.
“And you two agreed?” Ediline said, trying to cool her head.
“I owe much to young Javras,” Wulfgar said. He grinned. “And I disliked his father very much, like dog that does nothing but pee, only worse. I agreed.”
“Mesér Teshtéshev contracted me years ago to protect her son,” Wien said. Her face was placid, cold. “I obey.”
“What did you feel, killing him?” Ediline asked.
Wien cocked her head to contemplate. “Success,” she said. “Relief.”
“And . . . afterward? Since?”
“I feel nothing.”
Ediline shivered.
“Is this better now?” Javras snapped, turning on Ediline again. The anger in him hadn’t gone away. She was glad—hers hadn’t gone anywhere, either. “You know what I’d been planning, you know how it happened. I had no intention of—no. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if we get along. I’m going to help you end this war.”
“You had no intention of what? Of betraying me?”
He actually growled, and her heart skipped three beats when his hand landed on the hilt of his sword. “Easy, Princess. I wasn’t allowed to spend my days planning, gathering information on how much the King knew. Things might have gone differently.”
“Because you were forced to be with me? Lords, Javras, if I was such an inconvenience, why not let me fall when I slipped over that railing?”
“You think your father would have let me live if I’d been involved in your death?”
The scream roiled out of her. “My father would not have given a single fuck, Javras! He’d have been fucking delighted, probably would’ve adopted you. Fuck you.” The tears rolled down her cheeks.
He softened. “I thought you were the eighth.”
“And you would have let me fall, otherwise?” The tears wouldn’t stop. Her nails in her palms cut deep. When she felt the blood on her fingertips, she felt the draw of the bloodsword. Like an emblem, drawn to its likeness. The sword thirsted, and she could feel its will move toward the blood.
“Of course not,” Javras said. “Ediline, you know I—”
“I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear you say those words.”
The fury sparked again. She could see it in his face, but she didn’t know at whom or at what he was so angry. He closed his eyes, let out a breath, and unclenched his jaw. “Princess Ediline, I humbly apologize for lying to you,” he said. “I apologize for fighting you. I apologize for my behavior. It was unkind, to say the least, and you did nothing to deserve it. If you and I may be civil with one another, I would be glad.”
He didn’t look at her while he said it. After he said it, and he opened his eyes, he didn’t look at her. He turned his shoulder, went to the far edge of their haven from the rain, and sat against the wall, his head tilted away.
“And if you are looking to lose your money,” Wulfgar said, “I would be happy to take. I ramshackled penpén game set out of pebbles and small board.”
Ediline couldn’t pull her eyes, still wet with tears, from Javras. He’d apologized, but she hadn’t accepted. She shook with how angry she was. She turned from the campsite. “The rain has let up. I’ll be back.”
When she stomped from the camp, unable to fully hold back her emotions, she unconsciously set a hand on the hilt of the bloodsword, and it sent a shiver through her that stabilized her, that made her shoulders still and her chest rise and fall in a regular rhythm.
The slicing-rain was letting up. Now it just felt like being slapped in the face by tiny, wet hands. But she didn’t mind it. She just turned her eyes down and walked, focused on nothing but the broken stones beneath her feet. Despite being cracked and crumbled, she saw the uniformity to them, the regular lines they made. She stepped over vines dotted with little cuts and scratches from the rain.
Her shoulders had relaxed, and her breathing was regular. Her jaw had unclenched. It felt like calmleaf. She’d used plenty on herself in her childhood, to help control her anguish. Had Javras used some on her? No, she would have felt it. It would have tugged on her.
Still, the calm was there, and it felt external. In her head, she knew she was just as confused and lost, just as deeply hurt, only she didn’t feel it anymore. She was just aware of it.
She ran her hands over her face, through her hair, wiping away water and little bits of ice from the rain. Her palms stung from where she’d dug her nails in. Gasping, she touched her face, drew her fingers back. She’d worried she’d smeared blood on her cheeks, but now she saw she hadn’t. Now she saw something else.
Her heart pounded. She gaped at her palms. The blood was gone from one hand.
Not smeared away, not dried. Gone.
Consumed.
— Chapter 23 —
“On the second darkened day, beasts fled. Flocks of birds, exotic and plain, abandoned the great Attenia. Wolves of the forests and harmless rabbits scattered into the mountains. Fish could only swim along the stream that carried them, toward Attenia or away. People witnessed this with fear, with confusion. ’There is nothing to fear,’ the Lords declared.”
—The Words of the Lords, ed. xii
“No need to panic,” Ediline chanted to herself. She stuffed her palms under her arms. She didn’t want to look at them. And she paced. Whatever the calming effect had been, it kept her aware of her surroundings enough to let her know that she didn’t want to get lost, and so she turned back toward the enclosure, and she paced a line.
“No need to panic,” she said again, even though she could feel the calm slipping, feel the burst coming. It was like a deluge leading to a flood, and she was standing at the bottom of the ravine, waiting for the water to crush her. It was coming. She could see it.
“It just . . . .”
She turned again and paced, her feet falling with steady thumping rhythm.
“Well, I set my hand on the hilt and it just . . . .”
A shiver spread through her body, starting at her hip.
“Really it’s no different from what else it does. Except I didn’t tell it . . . .”
The shiver grew fiercer. She unclasped the scabbard from her belt and hurled it against a stone wall. The clack of contact was so small. It seemed tiny, lying beside a massive building made out of massive stones. Yet it was the one that was eternal, powerful, undying.
It had survived all the time since the ruin of Attenia, and the buildings had barely held on. In another seven hundred years, would any of this still be here, and would the bloodsword be any worse off?
She was distracting herself from the thing that she couldn’t say, the thing that she knew but couldn’t get to come to her lips. Even in her mind, she had difficulty bringing the thought forward. Yet, struggling, she did.
“It drank my blood,” she whispered. She couldn’t hear herself.
“It does that.”
She whirled, grabbing for Wulfgar’s knife. It was Wulfgar himself, and he laughed. With hands raised, showing he was no threat, he started walking closer. His hair was flat and wet, his skin shiny with water.
“You heard me?”
“I have good ears,” he said. He turned when he came to her, and he headed for the sword. Part of her lurched for it, panicked that she needed to grab it before he did or it would be lost forever, and she would die. But she held her feet firm. Right now she wanted to be nowhere near the thing.
“Tell me what you know,” she said.
“You made bond with blade?”
“Yes. During the fight.”
“It is more than simple oath. Felnuar is ancient Attenia magic. It knows you made bond. It will protect you.”
“Felnuar is the name for the sword?”
“One of them.”
“I hate it,” she spat.
“I also.” He bent low and picked it up by the buckle on the scabbard, careful not to touch the hilt. “Attenia had much more magic than we have now, simple little emblems and Inherences. Such small magics.”
“Where did you learn all this?”
“Heh,” he laughed again. He walked back toward her, the sword held at his side far from him, like a piece of filth.
She shuddered. But when he held it out to her, she snatched it, and she took it in her still-bloodied palm. When she switched hands, the blood was gone. Her wounds weren’t healed, the pain wasn’t relieved, but the blood was gone.
“Does it have a mind?” she said. “A soul?”
“I do not think so. It has intent.”
Another icy shiver ran down her spine, threatening to split her in two. The Words of the Lords said that Loethe the Ninth had forged the bloodsword. Had it been part of the mythic betrayal? And how did Wulfgar of all people know so much about it? He eyed her like he knew her questions.
“When we stop this war,” she said, “tell me everything you know about this sword, about Loethe, about the Attenia.”
He hummed as he considered. “I will tell you some,” he said with a laugh. “You cannot win all I have to bet in one game. Save some for the next game.”
Lords, she didn’t want to think about a next game. The idea of simply reaching Korv alive seemed impossible enough. Then, getting to Ancil. Then, stopping the war. After that, she didn’t want to think, didn’t want to do anything but go home, go to Marv. But, if she survived, she would still have the bloodsword. Her life would still be entwined with it, and she knew she would not be able to escape the future.
“Wulfgar . . . .” She almost told him about the shadow-creature.
“I will go back now,” he said. “Be angry with Javras. He was unkind to you and deserves it a little. Of course, if you tell him I say this, I will wear your head like pretty little hat.” He did not laugh; she had no idea if he was being serious. “But he is also hurt. He needs to talk, if his mouth does not get in the way. You are lucky I do not turn you inside-out.” He patted his hip, where two knives were sheathed.
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You do not want to hear his words.”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you need to.”
“Totoath lili tetenerefete oekoekun bo tu,” she said, the nasty expression coming right back to her mind. It was the only thing in Fa she remembered how to say fully and fluently, because she had practiced so many times. Shitting on a nest of spiders.
Wulfgar laughed but shook his head. “I do not think that is best here.”
“What is best?”
He said a different sequence of words in Fa, with which Ediline couldn’t keep up.
“What does that mean?” she said.
“It is another expression, and it means being on fire and jump into frozen lake. Both will hurt, but to do is to have a chance to save your life.” He walked away, and Ediline remained standing in the rain. On fire, not wanting to run to the frozen lake.
Crouching close to the fire was good. Ediline felt the cold fall off her slowly, and the wetness dry even more so. Only Kuo appeared awake. He was seated just beside her. She doubted that both Wulfgar and Wien often slept at the same time; she also noticed that, despite their apparent deep slumber, she couldn’t see either of their weapons.
“Healing was supposed to be my good thing,” Kuo said. His voice was as soft as the embers.
“It is a good thing.”
He shook his head, irritated. With her, maybe, for not understanding; with himself, more likely, for not communicating exactly what he meant.
“Tell me again,” she said. “Use different words.”
“Stopping a war is a very good thing,” he said. “I never thought . . . .”
“This all must be confusing.”
“I follow.” He glanced up at her, and there was a smile in his eyes, though it didn’t reach his lips. “It is . . . intimidating, I think is the correct word.”
“Daunting? Seems impossible, even though you want to do it.”
“Daunting,” he agreed. ”So this means you want to do it?”
“Who would not want to stop a war?”
“Well, those who fight them, for one.”
“They are idiots.”
She knew a lot of those idiots, and she didn’t disagree with him. Regarding this one thing, she was in absolute agreement. Fighting was a last resort, when diplomacy was ineffective, when all other options had been exhausted. So easily everyone else seemed to jump to violence. She loved weapons, sure, but she sought not to use them to kill.
“After we stop this, will you go back to Taibenai?”
He nodded. “My friends and family are there.”
“I’ll . . . you should go. Make sure everything is all right with them.”
“This man Javras,” Kuo said abruptly. His voice dropped even lower, beneath the crackle of the fire. Ediline was certain she could only hear him because of how close she was. Wulfgar might still, if he were awake.
“Yes?”
“There is a thing between the two of you,” he said. “What sort of thing is it?”
“Lords, I don’t know.” She looked across the fire at Javras curled against the wall asleep, his back to them. “It’s immensely complicated.” She gave Kuo an incredulous look. “In Tailiet it was difficult to get you to speak to me beyond simple hello and do you have a fever? Now you want to know about my personal life?”
Kuo averted his eyes. “I do not want the thing to become a bad thing. Wien seems interested in the same.”
“I know. I slept with him, but it’s more than that.”
“I had guessed.”
“I wish I could trust him.”
Kuo nodded. “No, it is good. You have common sense.”
“Of course I do.” She gently shoved him. Pain pulled across her back.
“Then sleep, Princess,” he said. Then he shifted slightly, set his head down, and closed his eyes. Ediline sat before the fire, and she didn’t realize when she fell asleep.
There was a rustle nearby. Ediline jerked awake, hand going for the bloodsword. The fire was nothing but a tiny glow, their enclosure a dark red blur. Kuo and Wulfgar and Wien were exactly how they had been. But Javras was gone.
She crept away from the fire, out from their protective wall and onto the streets of Attenia. The air was chill and wet, but the rain had stopped. Still damp, Ediline’s clothes clung to her. The air above was open, and starlight poured down. The Eve
rquiet was distant, beyond the line of trees at the edge of the road.
Padding softly, she skulked away from the wall. She couldn’t see Javras anywhere. Maybe he’d gone into the trees, into the jungle. But why?
“Surprise.”
She leapt straight up and spun. The voice had come from behind her. Her heart pounded, and her slick boots hit the slick stones wrong. She slipped and whirled and fell backwards. At the last minute she managed to keep herself from falling straight on her back, maybe cracking her tailbone, by twisting and throwing an arm underneath herself. Then she rose, slowly, gracefully.
Javras sat on top of the wall, on top of the roof that had been over their heads. In the dark, she couldn’t read his expression.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
“You said surprise, you idiot.”
“Ediline—”
She began back toward the wall. Why had she gone looking for him? She didn’t want to talk to him. Seeing him, hearing his voice, brought about too many conflicting memories. At the same time, she heard him say you are beautiful and spit Ediline, give me the sword. Two different people. Too different.
“Wait,” he said.
She hesitated though she didn’t stop.
“Care to join me?”
His deep, confident voice rolled down her back like warm water. She found her feet stuck. Two different—where was the real Javras? She turned to the wall, spotted good hand- and footholds, and climbed it in three lunges. She swung herself up and took a seat just beside him, some space between them.
“I forget how graceful you are sometimes,” he said.
“Because you always have me tripping over myself and stammering.”
“You aren’t stammering now.”
“Anger sharpens the tongue,” she said.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hands curl into fists. Let him be angry. She would match it. She would double it.
“You turned on me because I was in the way,” she said after a pause. “You were lying to me; you didn’t want to give anyone the sword. You just wanted to do what I did—take it away from them all.”