by Megan Bannen
She nods the nod of a deeply efficient woman, a gesture so Zofia-like it robs me of air. “I have an idea how we can get you out of town without raising suspicions.”
I translate, focusing on the words rather than the events of the evening. The words are the only thing keeping me from losing my mind right now.
“Great. Thank you.”
That’s as far as he gets before Mistress Dyer raises one cautionary finger. “But we are not risking our lives or anyone else’s until we know why we’re helping you. What does this have to do with the Mother? Why are the Kantari in Tovnia when the Mother is in the Vault of Mount Djall?”
I translate, although he seems to catch her drift on his own. Without taking his eyes off me, he answers grimly, “Tell them that the Mother is not in the vault. And if they want Her set free, they need to help us. Now.”
Twelve
As Tavik and I stand in awkward silence, watching the Dyers argue over what to do with us, my mind whirs with questions. Why didn’t the Goodson want me to go to the summit? Did he know what was going to happen? Why did Brother Miklos kill Zofia? What in the name of heaven is written on the folded parchment in my pocket? And if Tavik was a prisoner of war, how could the Dyers have known he was coming?
I can’t question the Goodson or Zofia now, and I think it’s probably a bad idea to let anyone know that I have Zofia’s notes, but Tavik is a different matter. I incline my head toward him and ask, “Who are you, and why are you here? And what happened at the statue?”
“It’s complicated.”
“You said that already. It does not answer my question.”
He glances at me, his grubby face troubled. “Do you think you could try using a few contractions when you speak? I feel like I’m talking to an epic poem.”
“I do not know Kantari contractions. Your language in its written form has none.”
“Well, my language in its spoken form does. Contractions. Learn some. I’m begging you.”
I shake my head in irritation. Now that I’m growing accustomed to the way he speaks, I suspect it was better when I understood him less rather than more.
He nods toward the Dyers. “They’re wasting too much time. We really need to get out of Varos da Vinnica.”
“‘We’? I am not going anywhere with you.”
Tavik pulls down on his stubbly face with dirty hands. “Holy good Mother, you really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” That strange sensation in my stomach starts vibrating again, unnerving me.
He looks over my shoulder toward the Dyers. “Excuse me,” he says a little too loudly, bringing their argument to a halt. He gestures first to himself and then to me, and says a Rosvanian word: “Alone?”
“I do not want to be alone with you,” I protest.
“This is the price of my honesty.” He looks to the Dyers once more and insists in Rosvanian, “Alone.”
Mistress Dyer gives me a worried look, but she says, “Five minutes. We have work to do.”
I’m tempted to bolt for the back door as the Dyers vacate the room, but there is that gaping hole in my memory that, unfortunately, only Tavik can fill. I turn on him, arms crossed tight over my chest, waiting for my answer.
He fidgets nervously with the hem of his shirt. “What do you remember after we got to the statue?” he asks.
I close my eyes and envision the last moment I can recall with any clarity. “You hit the statue with one of your swords, but the blade broke. The Goodson arrived—” Here, Tavik makes a snarling sound under his breath. I open my eyes to give him a pointed look. “The Goodson arrived, and then you drove your other sword . . . Holy Father, you drove it into the Grace Tree of Saint Vinnica.”
Saying it aloud—giving words to it—makes everything solid and real when I want it to be a bad dream. He killed the Grace Tree, and that means I am the last Vessel of the One True God. Once I die, the Father will never again speak to His people. And I am completely alone in the world.
A light-headedness stretches from my brain all the way down to my knees. Everything feels loose and wobbly. I squint, seeking the lost memories trapped in my brain. “There was a bright light. I couldn’t see.”
“And then what?”
“The next thing I remember is that I was with you outside the convent. I don’t know how I got there.”
“I carried you. We escaped through a broken storm grate in the convent’s outer wall. You may have a few bruises. Sorry about that. And thank you for using a contraction, by the way.”
“But why did you take me? You should have left me there!” I feel like a tuft of dandelion seeds clinging to the stem. One strong breeze, and I’ll blow apart.
He opens his mouth and promptly closes it again. “Sorry,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “I’m just trying to figure out where to begin.”
“May I suggest you begin when you destroyed the Grace Tree of Saint Vinnica?” I say through gritted teeth.
“No. You need a quick history lesson first. Here it goes.” He starts to pace like a caged tiger, as if he requires the movement of his legs to power the difficult words coming out of his mouth. “Twelve years ago, a small band of Elathians successfully broke into the Monastery of Saint Ovin on a mission to bust open the Vault of Mount Djall and free the Mother. Only the vault was empty. The Mother wasn’t there. The Prima of Kantar and a few of her closest advisers knew about it, including my captain, DeRopa, but they kept it secret, worried the Kantari would lose hope if the truth got out. They’ve been trying all this time to figure out where the Mother is, and so has the Order of Saint Ovin. It’s been top secret on both sides.” He comes to a halt in front of me. “But then a spy at the Convent of Saint Vinnica figured out that the Mother was imprisoned on the grounds.”
“What? That is ridiculous!” But didn’t it always feel like someone was listening to me when I prayed beside Saint Vinnica’s statue? Didn’t someone hear me when the One True God was silent? Without realizing it, I’ve been seeking comfort from the Great Demon for years. Holy Father, how great a sinner am I?
“Do you want the truth or not? Because we don’t have a lot of time.”
I nod my head, feeling as though I have looked down at my own two feet for the first time to discover that the rock I was standing on is cracked and crumbling.
“Good. The Prima of Kantar sent the entire Kantari army to take the Convent of Saint Vinnica and free the Mother.”
“Oh, my Father,” I gasp, but Tavik plows ahead.
“She was worried that we wouldn’t move quickly enough, or that the Order would find out what we knew and beat us to Elath’s prison. That’s where my mission comes in.”
He starts pacing again, maybe because it’s easier than telling the truth to my face.
“I was sent to Rosvania under Captain DeRopa’s orders to free the Mother. I was to get myself captured at the Tovnian battlefront in the hope that the Tovnians would bring me to the inevitable summit at Saint Vinnica. The Ovinists always call a summit when we Kantari do something they don’t like. And it worked. I got free—well, you cut me loose. Thank you for that—and then the sword lit up in my hand, and somehow I knew I was supposed to open up that tree, but . . .” He stops and toys with the shredded hem of his shirt again. “But the Mother didn’t just reenter the world like we thought She would.”
My ears start to ring in panic. “Where is She now?”
Tavik inclines his head in my direction and murmurs, “There.”
I look behind me in alarm. “Where?” When I turn back, he looks like he might be sick.
“You. She’s inside you.”
I can comprehend each individual word, but strung together they make no sense. “I do not understand.”
“All that light streamed out of the tree and . . . and . . .” He makes a vague gesture at me.
My head is spinning. I imitate the gesture and exclaim, “What does this mean?”
When he speaks again, his words come hurtling out of
his mouth in a rush, one toppling over the other. “The light kind of hit you, like, poured into you. And you may have floated. In the air. Several feet. Please don’t lose your shit.”
My whole body goes numb, right down to my fingertips and toes. “No,” I say in one long-drawn-out syllable as I back away from him.
“I said don’t lose your shit.”
“That cannot be right.”
“I know what I saw.”
“There is nothing inside me.”
“Elath the Mother is inside you,” he assures me.
My hard-won emotional control is fleeing farther and farther from my mental grasp. “I would know if a demon had taken possession of my body!”
The bees in my belly swarm and swell, and the reality of what it means slams into me. I’m no longer the Vessel of the Father’s Word. I am now the Vessel of Elath the Great Demon. The buzzing. The humming. The sensation inside me.
Is Her.
I back into a shelf, knocking a ceramic pot of dye powder to the floor and sending up a cloud that wafts of walnuts. I feel like my body is about to fly apart, and I press my hands hard against my face to hold myself together.
Tavik approaches me but pulls up short. “I know this must be difficult for you.”
“Difficult?” My feelings spill words out of my mouth in Rosvanian. “I watched people die tonight! One man died on me! And then I find out that the woman I’ve loved as a mentor—a sister even—was probably an Elathian spy who colluded with the enemy! I’ve been abducted by a heathen Kantari soldier who hates the Goodson—the Goodson who is the very best of men, I might add! And now this . . . this . . . thing is inside me!”
“I didn’t catch all that,” Tavik admits in Kantari. “And I don’t deny any of it. But you’re coming with me.”
I shake my head, furious with myself for freeing Tavik, and furious with Tavik for getting me into this mess, and furious with Zofia for lying to me, and furious with the Goodson for failing to protect me when I needed him most, and furious—livid—with the thing that decided to take up residence inside me. Holy Father, what am I going to do?
Tavik takes a step closer. “The Goodson was there. He saw what happened to you. Do you really think he’s going to just let you live out your life in peace at the convent when he knows what’s inside you?”
“Shut up,” I spit in Rosvanian.
“And that man who killed your friend tonight—Brother Miklos—do you know what we call him in Kantar? The Butcher of Grama. He led a massacre on an entire Kantari town, Gelya. It took everything I had not to tear his face off at that summit. And now he’s out there, searching for us—searching for you.”
He’s got me there, and he knows it. He closes the distance between us, then kneels on the ground at my feet, gazing up at me with an expression I can only describe as reverent. Because of what I am now. Because of what I carry inside me.
“Listen to me, Gelya. I know what you hold inside you. I watched Her soul enter you with my own eyes, and I have never seen anything more beautiful. The Mother is life, and life is more precious than anything else in this world. That makes you valuable beyond pearls. There are people who will want to hurt you now, people who will want to use you, but they’ll have to get through me first. I promise to keep you safe. I will protect you with the last breath of my body if I have to.”
His complete sincerity robs me of air. I believed the Kantari were my enemy, but now that my life has collapsed into ruin, the one person unequivocally on my side is a Kantari Two-Swords who has just made a vow so heartfelt, it almost feels like he married me. I look down on his dirty, beatific face, but in my mind all I can see is the knife in Zofia’s chest, a knife that is aimed just as surely at my own heart now.
Elath’s undeniable presence simmers inside me like water in a kettle right before it whistles. What will happen if I let it boil over, if I can’t contain it? I wipe my tearstained face, smearing a nightmare’s worth of tears and blood and dye and grime all over me. “If what you say is true, you cannot and should not protect me. You speak as if I am in danger, but I am the one who is dangerous. I should turn myself in to the Order and let them seal me in a vault just as Saint Ovin entombed Saint Vinnica to save the world from sin.”
Tavik winces. “Is that really what you want?”
The word yes refuses to exit my mouth. Did Vinnica get to choose her fate? Did she have a voice? Did she willingly sacrifice her life for the world, or did her father make that decision for her? Maybe it would be easier if someone else chose for me, so that the fate of the world didn’t rest on my shoulders alone. But how can I give up my life, all that I am, for a faith that feels like it’s breaking apart beneath my feet?
“No,” I admit, the word bitter in my mouth. “That is not what I want.”
“Then you’ll come with me? Willingly?”
I look down at Tavik, who, against all reason, has just become the person I trust most in this world. “Yes, I will come with you.”
He sits back on his heels, gazes up at me in stark relief. “Thank you.”
“But where are we going? How do we get this thing out of me?”
“So here’s the thing. When the Mother entered you, there was this . . . shock wave, I guess? It knocked the wind out of me, and the Goodson was out cold, which is why I didn’t have to fight him. I went to see if you were all right, and . . . um . . .” He rubs the back of his neck.
“Just say it,” I tell him. It’s not like things could get any worse, and I’m tired of being left in the dark.
“You put your hand on me. Here.” He pulls back his ragged black shirt to reveal a ruddy mark over his heart in the shape of a hand, as if someone has branded him like a cow. “I guess it’s more accurate to say Elath put your hand on me, and She sang to me. Inside me.”
“What did She sing?” I ask as I stare at the place where my hand—my hand—burned the skin over his heart and seared the coarse hair surrounding it. I stand corrected. Things could, in point of fact, get worse.
“They weren’t words exactly, just an understanding. The gist is this: We need both the Vessel and the Sword to return Her to the world. And we have the Vessel already. That’s a good thing, right?”
I can’t work up the motivation to speak Kantari right now, so it’s still Rosvanian coming out of my mouth when I say, “There is not one single good thing happening right now, you absolute git.” This is the sort of sentiment I would normally keep to the confines of my mind, but there’s nothing normal about my current situation, and Tavik seems to bring out the brutal honesty lurking in my brain.
“I’m not sure what a ‘git’ is, but I suspect I should just ignore that.”
“And where is this Sword?” I ask, my voice as dead as I feel.
“Um.” He cringes and rubs the back of his neck again.
My heart goes leaden in my chest. “You have no idea what the Sword is or where we can find it, do you?”
“Yet,” he says with unparalleled optimism.
I try and fail to massage away the headache taking root at my temples. “And what happens in the unlikely event that we find this sword? What happens when and if we figure out how to remove the demon from my body?”
“Then the Mother can return, and Kantar’s drought will end, and the balance of life and death will be restored to the world.”
But that is not what I was taught to believe about what would happen if Elath were ever set free, so I force myself to say a different truth, the Ovinist truth: “Or the world will end, and the Father will close the gates of heaven forever.”
“Well, personally, I think that’s crap,” he informs me matter-of-factly, without a hint of offense. “But I doubt I’m going to convince you otherwise at the moment, so how about this? Let’s worry about one thing at a time. Right now, we need to get out of Varos da Vinnica and go into hiding. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Good. Let’s focus on escaping with our lives. If we manage to get that far, we’ll f
igure out next steps. Deal?” He extends his hand and makes a circle with his index finger and his thumb.
I frown at the gesture. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a circle swear. You have to lock your ring with mine. Your finger and thumb should touch inside my circle.”
“Your hand is dirty.”
“Humor me.” He wiggles his hand at me. I cast my eyes toward heaven, but against my better judgment, I link the circle of my finger and thumb with his.
“Deal?” he asks.
I shake my head, more at myself than at him. “Deal.”
Our five minutes are up, and the Dyers return.
Thirteen
I have no idea how the Dyers plan to sneak us out of town, and for the moment, I don’t care. Glad to let someone else do all the thinking for me, I follow Mistress Dyer upstairs to a one-room apartment where a kitchen, a table and chairs, and a bed jockey for space. Ever bustling, she goes directly to the sink, where she pumps water into a basin as I stand awkwardly by the door.
“I won’t eat you. Come in,” she directs me as she pumps.
I take my first tentative steps into the room and nearly jump out of my skin when I see another person moving alongside me. And then I realize it’s a mirror, perched above a well-dusted chest of drawers. There are no mirrors in the convent, so I have never seen my own reflection. The girl standing before me now is horribly pale, her freckles livid against sickly skin. Her bald head gives her a rapine appearance, and the blood and dirt streaked over the long lines from her sharp nose to the grotesque length of her arms only add to the disaster in the mirror. No wonder the other Daughters—even the Vessels—kept their distance from me all these years.
Mistress Dyer stands beside me and tilts her head thoughtfully as she studies my reflection. “It’s not as bad as you think.”
I wonder if I stood out like this in Hedenskia when I was a little girl. Or did I fit in with the strange, wild people there? I watch a tear streak down one dirty cheek of the repulsive young woman staring back at me. “I’m hideous.”