by Megan Bannen
The urge to start bawling is cut short when I realize that Tavik isn’t here. A spark of panic snaps me, but then I see him standing a little farther on between the trees. He’s naked from the waist up, with the scabbard straps crossing his torso just under the mark my hand made over his heart.
“Blessed be the Mother,” he says under his breath. Then he draws the swords from their scabbards, pushing the blades skyward in two parallel lines, arcing them slowly downward to his sides before following their path back in the opposite direction.
Each movement is slow, precise, one moving smoothly into the next. It’s absolutely mesmerizing, and I tiptoe closer for a better look as the sun sets behind him, peeking between the narrow trees, outlining him in amber light. He bows low, his swords extended outward before he transitions into an asymmetrical position, the blades shifting in opposite directions as he raises his knee toward his ribs.
He is lean and rangy, his bones outpacing his flesh so that his frame seems a little too large, hinting at the man he’ll grow into. His muscles shift and tighten beneath a layer of scarred, taut skin. One series of scars in particular stands out, forming a shiny silver crescent on his arm.
As he continues through the movements, the strain begins to show. His blades are not as steady, and his muscles tremble. He sweeps the blades in a long, low swipe parallel to the earth before arching his back and crossing the swords behind his head. How is he not falling over? This is incredible, beautiful in a way that goes beyond the surface, transcendent.
He straightens, shifting his torso upright as he casts his arms behind him, up and over until his hands reach the same level as his shoulders. He bends in his elbows and spins the pommels of the swords over the back of each hand. But then he loses control of both weapons, and they drop like a pair of bricks onto the soft earth.
“Father of death!” He leans down to pick the swords off the ground and mutters, “Hello, Gelya,” without looking in my direction.
I watched him that entire time, and he knew it, and now I’m burning with embarrassment. “I apologize. I did not mean to—”
“Snoop?”
I taste the new word in my mouth. “Snoop? That is an odd word.”
“That’s,” he corrects me. “Contractions, remember?” He takes off the scabbards and sets each one gently on the ground as if they are as delicate and precious as babies before he picks up his tunic, which, to my surprise, is neatly folded. Thank the Father, he’s putting on his shirt, I think, but he pauses, squinting at me with amused suspicion, and it’s clear he knows I’m staring at his chest. Well, what am I supposed to do? I haven’t been in close contact with many men before, especially half-naked ones, and it’s extremely distracting.
“Does that hurt?” I ask, nodding at my handprint over his heart, feeling remorse when I wasn’t really the one who did that to him.
He looks at the brand and frowns. “No. You’d think it would, but it doesn’t.”
That’s a relief at least.
“What were you doing?” I ask him. “Were you dancing?”
He raises his thick eyebrows. “You thought I was dancing?” The tunic hangs from his hands. I wish he’d put it on. How hard is that?
“If you were not dancing, what were you doing?”
“Praying.”
“Really?” I take a step closer. “It looked like dancing to me. You pray with swords in hand?”
“Yes, all men do, although most pray with only one.”
“But you are not yet a—” I stop myself just a little too late. In his mind, Tavik fills in the blank, as evidenced by the sour look on his face. He puts his tunic on at last and picks up his swords. I follow him to our packs and attempt to undo the offense. “How do women pray in Kantar?”
“Without swords,” he answers curtly.
“Do you pray to Elath? Or to the Father? How does it work?”
“Both. We pray to both. All things in balance.” He folds the blanket he lent me with sharp efficiency, irritated with me for implying that he’s not a man. But in my defense, he isn’t. I’d bet he’s only seventeen or eighteen. How bizarre that Kantar sent someone so young on such an important mission.
“Would you like to know how Ovinists pray?” I offer.
“Not really.” He stuffs the blanket into his pack and straps on his scabbards, leaving me to fold and pack my own blanket. He holds up his knapsack and asks, “Can you help me get this on?”
“Why do men pray with swords and women without?” I ask as I pick up his knapsack. It’s decidedly heavier than my own, plus he has to carry it over the swords at his back. I’m half tempted to offer to take it, but he shrugs into it before I can say anything.
He turns back around to face me. “You and the questions. You’re like an expectant pigeon waiting for a crumb.”
“Is that a colloquialism?”
“No, it’s Tavik’s Brilliant Simile.”
He’s teasing me, but it’s a strangely nice kind of teasing. I think I’m forgiven.
“Men are made in the image of the Father,” he explains. “Women are made in the image of the Mother. So men are deliverers of death, while women are givers of life. In this way, all things are in balance. The world has been out of balance since the Mother was taken from us. The world is full of death and destruction now, and so men, who are associated with the Father’s death, pray with swords. And because the world is empty of the Mother’s life, a woman’s hands are empty. Until now.”
He nods his head in my direction, at the being I contain within me. He’s all reverence again, the way he was in the Dyers’ workroom when he told me what I was. I squirm under the weight of his stare and the impossible expectations behind it.
“I don’t want this,” I tell him.
He throws up his hands. “You carry the Mother inside you. A goddess. And yet you stand there, sulking and whinging and crying like it’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to you when it’s an honor.”
“Says the boy whose body is entirely his own.” I grab my blanket off the ground and fold it with a rigorous efficiency to rival Tavik’s, taking my anger out on the wool. The next thing I know, I’m crying again, and I couldn’t even tell you why. I am sick to death of weeping at the drop of a hat. It’s so frustrating, and yet completely out of my control.
“I’m sorry.” Tavik takes a tentative step toward me. He holds out a hand, but he doesn’t touch me. “Hey, now. It’s all right. It’ll be all right.”
And now I’m laughing and crying at the same time. “I’m fairly certain it will not be all right.”
This time, he does touch me. He takes me by the shoulder and gives me an encouraging squeeze, and his hand feels warm and kind when I feel so cold and empty. It helps. “Then I’ll be positive for both of us. One thing at a time, right? We’re already halfway to that safe house in Dalment. Plus, you just used a contraction, so I think there’s reasonable cause for optimism.”
I wipe my blotchy, tearstained cheeks. “How can you find humor in any of this?”
“I’m always funny. It’s one of my most charming qualities.”
“Yes, that’s just what I was thinking.”
“See there? Another contraction. If that’s not cause for hope, I don’t know what is.”
Before I can respond, I’m on the ground, the wind knocked out of me. The contents of my knapsack press into my back as Tavik’s body lies atop mine, pushing me into the damp earth.
“What—”
“Knights on the river,” he hisses, slapping a hand over my mouth just as he did on the streets of Varos da Vinnica even though I don’t for one second need help staying quiet. We lie there and wait. It feels like eternity before the boat approaches, and when it does, I freeze, sandwiched between my knapsack and Tavik’s weight, and listen with my entire body as the splashing of oars in the water passes just beyond the shrubs that barely hide us. I’m too scared to draw breath, as if these men on the river could hear my lungs contract and expand from twent
y feet away. Tavik’s heart thuds so hard it’s audible.
We wait until the liquid sounds of the boat pass us.
And wait.
Finally, Tavik takes his hand from my face and rolls off me. He lies on his back between me and the Sargo, his right arm pressed against my left.
“Did they see us?” I whisper.
“I don’t think so.”
“I still cannot believe that I am hiding from the Order of Saint Ovin.”
We lie there, neither of us moving.
“What?” I ask. “No vulgar insults about the Order or my religion?”
“When am I ever vulgar?” He rises and gives me a hand up. “Come on. The sooner we get to Dalment, the better. I want to reach that safe house before dawn.”
“Tavik?”
“Yeah?”
“If I never again have your hand over my mouth, it will be too soon.”
He raises his eyebrows then breaks into a sheepish grin. “Fair enough.”
Sixteen
It’s well before dawn when we hit the bend in the Sargo, the point at which we’re supposed to head east toward Dalment.
“Do you see the road?” Tavik asks me softly.
“Hello?” comes a voice out of the darkness. Tavik steps before me and draws his swords as my heart leaps into my throat. For a second, I assume the Order has caught up to us, but on further thought, it seems unlikely that a knight on a manhunt would say hello.
“Blessed be the Mother,” says the voice, which belongs to the black outline of a man against the dark landscape. The silhouette of his hands goes up in surrender. “My name is Ambrus. I’m your contact.”
Tavik nods and puts the blades back in their sheaths as Ambrus approaches. He’s a short, bald man, neither fat nor thin, wearing round metal-rimmed glasses that reflect the moonlight. He looks like someone’s grandfather, the kind of man who gives a piece of candy to every child who enters his shop.
“Oh my,” he titters. “That’s the closest I’ve been to a sword in my life. Come along, now. I’ve bribed the guards at the west gate to let us in. One of them is Elathian. Good lad, that one. Here, I’ve brought a pilgrim’s cloak for each of you. I thought they would be a good disguise since Ovinists depart from the Cathedral of Saint Markos for trips to Saint Vinnica and points beyond, although you’ll have to forgive me, my dear, this one is going to be a bit small on you.”
For the first two miles of our trek to Dalment, Ambrus keeps up a steady stream of chatter, as sweet and normal and comforting as birdsong, if slightly exhausting, but he quiets down once he gets winded. As promised, the guards at the gate let us through without incident, and one of them even hugs Ambrus—the Elathian, I assume. There’s a hackney waiting for us as well, so we don’t have to walk all the way to Ambrus’s apothecary after traveling over twenty miles on foot.
“Come in, come in.” The little apothecary left a lamp burning in his absence, and he takes it in hand to light our way up a flight of stairs, talking the whole time. I struggle to keep up the translation, but the gist is that no one seems to be looking for us here in Dalment, so there’s definitely cause for relief.
As we reach the top of a second set of stairs, he opens a door and gestures us through. We find ourselves in an attic bedroom, where a serving girl probably slept at some point in time. Now it’s me and Tavik and a small table with two wooden chairs and one narrow, rickety bed.
We set our packs on the floor, and Tavik puts the two swords on the table, after which he rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck. I’m trying to decide if I should collapse onto the bed before Tavik gets it or read Zofia’s notes at once, when Tavik asks, “Can you tell him I need to send a message if possible?”
“Of course,” answers the apothecary once I’ve translated. I keep hearing all this talk of messages and messengers, so I follow Ambrus and Tavik down one flight of steps, where our host opens a door off the landing. When I peek in, I can see this is clearly his bedroom, and I hover at the door, hesitant to enter a man’s private space. I take a few reluctant steps into the room and watch Ambrus pull out a quill, a pot of ink, and a long, narrow scrap of paper, setting them neatly on his desk.
“Thank you,” Tavik says in Rosvanian as he dips the nib into the ink and scratches out an extremely tiny message with his left hand. Once he’s done, he blots the paper, rolls it up, and stuffs it into the equally tiny canister that the apothecary hands him.
“What did you write? And where is this messenger?”
Ambrus goes to the window and throws up the sash. “Here.”
I cross to the window to get a better look. There’s a small wicker coop built onto the exterior wall. The sun has begun to rise in the east, but it’s still very dark. I can barely make out the flutter of wings within the open cage.
“A bird?” I ask. In answer, Tavik reaches beyond the window frame and takes the creature from its perch. Blue wings. Gold breast. A black band on each side of her face delineated by a white stripe above and below. Long wings and scissored tail. He might as well be clutching Zofia in his muscled grip. Or me.
“It’s . . . it’s a soulswift,” I stammer.
“These birds carry messages between Elathians. Hence, ‘messenger,’” Tavik explains as Ambrus helps him tie the canister to one of the bird’s delicate legs.
“How can you . . . ? These are . . . They carry . . .” For the second time in as many days, I want to pry his fingers off a soulswift, this innocent creature who was once a Vessel just like me. And then I want to wrap my own fingers around Tavik’s ropy neck and squeeze the breath out of him.
Tavik gives me an utterly unmerited long-suffering look. “I know Ovinists believe these birds carry the souls of the dead, and I can see you’re really pissed off right now, but I’m tired, and it’s hard to be sympathetic to a religion that has tried to stomp out my own for literal centuries. They’re just birds, all right? Really handy birds.”
“Let her go,” I insist, my breath hitching in outrage.
Tavik obliges, holding the soulswift up to the window to release her. The bird flaps her wings and takes off on the wind, heading south and west in the direction of Tovnia. As the three of us watch her disappear into the distance, Tavik murmurs the same desperate word Zofia’s voice spoke to me in my dream a few hours ago: “Hurry.” The bird darts through clouds dyed deep purple by the coming sunrise. I watch her until she disappears from sight, carrying Tavik’s message and a piece of my heart with her.
“How does she know where to go?” I ask.
“They just know. That one is heading for my captain now.” Tavik shrugs as if none of this were shocking. With each second he’s in my life, I find myself with more questions and fewer answers, and I had so few answers to begin with, as it turns out.
“Wait!” I call as he stalks past me, heading for the door. Ambrus and I glance at each other and follow him as he clomps up the stairs. In seconds, I’m at his shoulder, hounding him. “What message did you send your captain? And how could you use a soulswift to send it?”
I can hardly believe I’m uttering these words, and yet I just watched a soulswift willingly take Tavik’s message. Why would a soulswift help Elathians? It makes no sense. Unless what I was taught to believe is the thing that makes no sense. The alien humming within me throbs, reminding me of Her unwelcome presence.
“Is everything all right?” Ambrus asks from behind me, breathless on the stairs.
“No.” I hustle to catch up to Tavik, who pushes open the attic door. “Do not ignore me!” I fire at his back.
He stops beside the bed and faces me, his eyes bloodshot. “You can yell at me later. I promise.”
He drops onto the tick without bothering to take off his road-dirty boots and nestles into the blankets as if lying in a bed were the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him. Maybe it is. He probably sleeps in a pig’s trough back home.
“Tavik!”
But he’s already out cold. Ambrus and I stand over him, staring
at his slack face before the apothecary turns to me and asks, “I don’t suppose you play Shakki, do you?”
I itch to read the parchment in my pocket, but what can I do when Ambrus comes back a few minutes later with two tankards of ale, a Shakki board, and a tray of bread, cheese, and salami?
“Thank you for helping us,” I tell him as we set up the game pieces.
“Certainly, although I must admit it would be nice to know exactly why I am helping you.” He says this in a conversational tone, but the content leaves me at a loss for words. I decide to take a page from Tavik’s book and answer, “It’s complicated.”
“I gather that.” He smiles at me and makes his first move. “So the Mother is no longer in the Vault of Mount Djall?”
Tavik admitted as much to the Dyers. There’s no point hiding it from Ambrus. “Correct.”
“But She is still imprisoned?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
I flounder before I repeat, “It’s complicated. We’re working on it.”
“May the Mother help us all,” Ambrus says with a sad nod as he provisions his army in the mountains when he should be shoring up his defenses along his coastline. I get a strong roll of the dice, confident that I might win for a change.
“She can’t help anyone if She’s imprisoned, can She?” I point out with a hint of bitterness in my voice as my army charges through the paltry defenses he set up along his northern border.
“Is She truly absent from the world?” Ambrus challenges me, raising his thin eyebrows over the tops of his glasses. “There is still life. You and I are here. Our hearts are beating in our chests.”
I reply with a noncommittal sound as Elath’s presence makes my stomach churn.
Ambrus frowns at the board. “Frankly, I think the Ovinists have it right to a certain extent.”
Now it’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Really? How so?”