by Megan Bannen
“He’s still on the Kings Road, but I’d guess he’s got a good fifty miles on the two of you. Why exactly are you following him?”
“It’s complicated,” I tell him. This has apparently become our stock response for any question we can’t answer.
“I gather that. Forester’s message was less than enlightening. So the young man there was sent to Rosvania to free the Mother, who is, apparently, no longer in the Vault of Mount Djall, but it sounds as if he was unsuccessful?”
Rek leans in. “What he’s trying to ask is, where is the Mother?”
My eyes shift between the two men as I try to figure out how much to say. “We’re not sure. The Goodson may have information that could help us. That’s why we need to find him.”
Danov shudders. “Better you than me. I wouldn’t want to run into any Knight of the Order, much less the man himself.”
This complete mischaracterization of Goodson Anskar makes me bristle, but I decide to use this opening to put my theory to the test. “Do you happen to know if there’s been a coup in the Order? Is the Goodson still in charge?”
Both men raise their eyebrows, and Rek glances at Danov before he answers. “We’ve heard nothing of it, but information on the inner workings of the Order is extremely hard to come by. I assume you have reason to believe such a thing?”
“I do, yes.”
He nods thoughtfully. “We can put feelers out on the Milk Road, if that helps.”
“What did you ask him?” Tavik butts in.
“I asked if there had been a leadership change in the Order.”
“Why? Because you think your precious Goodson had nothing to do with what happened at the summit?”
“I trust the Goodson as much as you trust your precious captain,” I snipe at him.
Tavik purses his lips at me before asking the Brewers in Rosvanian, “And where is Brother Miklos?”
“He must have caught your scent. Ambrus sent word that he and his men are now heading west,” Danov answers.
“Father of death,” Tavik moans when I translate.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.”
“Oh! I nearly forgot,” Rek exclaims. “A message arrived about an hour ago. I can’t begin to make out what it says, so I assume it’s for you?” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the tiny missive, and holds it out to Tavik. When Tavik’s done reading it, he steps to the fireplace and tosses it into the flames.
“Is it from your captain?” I ask his back.
He nods, but he remains at the grate. “You can tell them it was from our Kantari contact, that we’ve been reporting our progress—or lack thereof—to him, and that he commands us to stay the course and keep him posted.”
“And?” I press, because I get the sense that he’s leaving something out.
He rubs his face. “You know what? I’ll take that ale after all.”
After dinner and Tavik’s third pint of ale, the Brewers offer to give us a tour of their operations. All my knowledge of the world has come from books, so I’m excited to learn about something that I can see with my own eyes and touch with my own hands. But when I translate the offer for Tavik, he raises his drink and says, “Super,” his green eyes glassy, and I have the sinking suspicion that this is not going to go well.
The brewery on the main floor comprises the largest portion of the building. There are two enormous casks, one for weak ale and one for strong. Tavik sways in the corner and scowls at them.
“Which did you give him? Weak or strong?” I ask Danov quietly.
He grimaces apologetically. “Weak, I swear.”
I decide to leave Tavik to his own devices as I listen to Rek explain how he and Danov crush the malt and combine it with barley and oats before pouring boiling water into the tun, adding the grain mixture, then pouring on more water at carefully timed intervals.
“This really is fascinating, you know,” I call to Tavik, who has stuck his face in a strainer.
“I’m sure it is.”
“Do you not have ale in Kantar?”
He pulls his face out of the strainer to glare at me. “No. When we manage to get our hands on food, we eat it. We don’t make it into some fancy drink.”
“Perhaps you have had enough of that fancy drink, then,” I suggest, my patience gone.
“Perhaps you can shove it.”
“Should we hide his swords?” Rek whispers to Danov.
I march over to Tavik and pull him to the side. “Why are you so angry?” I demand in a low, warning tone.
“Just look at this,” he cries, not bothering to lower his voice. “Mother and Father, this room could have fed my family for a year. Do you know what it’s like, seeing all this rain and all this food here in the north when the summer rains have all but stopped in Kantar? Our land has dried up. The goats are skin and bones. There’s no food. None. The Two-Swords spend more time attacking trade caravans than anything else, just to feed our people. But here you have so much that you drink this stuff.”
“Everything all right?” Danov asks nervously from the other side of the brewery.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him before turning on Tavik. “I understand you’re angry, but you’re being unpardonably rude right now.” I grab him by the arm with the dim hope of ushering him upstairs and convincing him to go to bed early, but he yanks himself free, barely staying on his feet as he glowers at me.
“Good Mother, you’re probably the one who’s been translating The Songs of the Saints for all those Kantari converts, right? What you Ovinists don’t get is that the Kantari don’t care about your faith. They just want you to fill their bellies. But no one starves in Rosvania, do they? No one goes without. And do you know why?”
I answer him with thin-lipped silence. I know he’s going to answer his own question anyway.
“Because hundreds of years ago, Ovin imprisoned the Mother and shut Her up in that convent, trapping Her life force here in this perfect, miserable country. Meanwhile, my people, the ones who stayed faithful to Elath, have slowly starved. We’ve watched our lands dry up over the centuries. Even the Ovinist countries south of the Koz Mountains suffer, their fisheries dwindling to nothing, their orchards and olive groves shriveling up, while the Mother’s life has remained trapped here. All so the northern Ovinists can pray to the Father alone.”
I have Ambrus’s basket analogy on my mind when I counter, “If Elath’s presence has brought life to Rosvania, what has caused the drought in Kantar? Doesn’t it follow that the deserts began to stretch over your country once Ludo was buried near Nogarra? It seems to me your great hero is the one who brought your people death, not the Ovinists.”
Now it’s Tavik’s turn to answer with sour reticence, so I keep going.
“And as for the rain, there is such a thing as too much, you know. If it doesn’t stop soon, it will drown the fields, and the people of the north will starve just as surely as the people of the south, and these nice Elathians who are helping us right now will be out of business.”
Tavik blows air between his ale-loosened lips, making them flap wetly. He pushes past me to head back upstairs, but not before throwing one last jab over his shoulder. “What would you know, when you’ve been imprisoned yourself all these years?”
I never knew how much anger a girl could contain until I met this boy. The presence inside me simmers in my veins, and I wish I could let myself tap into it. It would serve Tavik right if I unleashed such power on him. Instead, I stomp up the stairs after him. “I am not a prisoner,” I snipe at him, but he’s already helping himself to another pint. He gulps down half the glass, belches, and says, “You know, food tastes pretty good when you drink it.”
I take the pint from his limp fingers, and he looks at his empty hand in confusion. After I set the glass down out of his reach, I hold his slack face between my palms and make him look me in the eye. “Would you please stop?”
He droops and grows heavy in my hands, as if I’m supposed to hold him upright. �
��Sorry,” he tells me. Father above, he sounds like he’s about to start crying.
“It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right.” The next thing I know, Tavik is hugging me. But he’s also not terribly steady on his feet, and he nearly knocks us both over.
“Really. It’s fine,” I assure him. He has his body plastered to mine, and I can feel myself go pink with mortification.
“You’re so nice, Gelya. And you’re so smart.”
“You can let go now,” I tell him as I give him a half-hearted pat on the back, but he’s still got me in a bear hug when the Brewers make their way into their own parlor.
“How is he?” Rek asks.
“A little drunk,” I answer over Tavik’s shoulder, my arms pinned awkwardly to my sides.
Tavik finally sets me free so he can face the Brewers, point a thumb at me, and ask them, “Isn’t she adorable?”
“What did he say?” Danov asks.
“Nothing,” I answer, because there’s no earthly way I’m translating that.
They help me get Tavik to a small sofa. “I love all of you. I want you to know that,” he slurs as his bottom hits the couch cushions.
“Apparently, he loves you,” I translate for the Brewers. If we have to put up with Tavik in this condition, it seems only fair that we should get to laugh at him, too.
“How nice!” says Danov, smiling wide.
“Have I ever told you about Captain DeRopa?”
“A few times. Here, drink this.” I try to get Tavik to take the cup of tea Danov has just handed me, but his hands don’t appear to be working properly.
“He’s so nice,” Tavik tells me. “And he’s really smart.”
“I bet you love him, too.”
Tavik nods solemnly. “He’s like a father to me. I wish he were here. He’d know what to do. Although, Father of death, he’s going to be so mad at me if I ever see him again.”
Rek produces a blanket from a trunk and drapes it over the inebriated Kantari on his sofa. I take Tavik by the shoulders and urge him to lie down. “Go to sleep,” I tell him, and he does, but not before giving me a sloppy grin and saying, “Why are you so adorable?”
He doesn’t see the irrationally pleased and equally stupid smile that answers his.
Twenty-Six
“Do I even want to know what I did last night?” Tavik asks shortly after we leave the Brewers and Lithgate behind.
“No,” I tell him, staring straight ahead as my cheeks burn with embarrassment for both of us.
He grimaces and rubs his temples, but he doesn’t press me for details. I’d rather forget myself, but my mind keeps latching onto that one word: adorable. I’m fairly certain I know what it means, and I’m also fairly certain it’s a word used to describe puppies and kittens, not a tall, gawky Hedenski girl with freckles and red stubble on her head.
Our uniforms never fully dried out in the Brewers’ rafters, and now the interminable rain has us soaked through again, which may be why I fail to notice the telltale wetness in my drawers until the uncomfortable bloating of my abdomen alerts me to my problem.
“Oh no,” I moan.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll be right back,” I answer, inwardly wailing at the fact that not only am I going to spend yet another day walking in the rain, I’m going to have to do it while going through the demon’s curse.
“Oh. Got your monthly bleeding?” Tavik says the word bleeding so loudly that every village and town and farm within a fifty-mile radius probably hears him.
“Tavik!”
“Well, I mean . . .” His forehead crinkles. “Go take care of it?”
“How can you be so . . . ?”
“I’m trying to figure out what word you want here. Cavalier? Nonchalant?”
“Ugh!”
“What is the big deal?”
“First of all, I would rather not discuss something so private with you, and secondly, I don’t know what you mean by ‘take care of it.’ At the convent, we went to the House of the Unclean.”
“Unclean? Seriously?” Tavik shakes his head and rubs at the ale-induced headache behind his bloodshot eyes. “Your bleeding is natural and normal, all right? Just tear off a piece of fabric from your old clothes and stick it in your drawers. It’ll be fine.”
My instinct is to argue with him, but a trickle down my thigh reminds me of the reason why this mortifying conversation started in the first place. I grumble in defeat and head into a patch of trees to our right.
“Don’t stray too far,” he calls after me.
“Where would I go?” I mutter. I make sure that Tavik and I are separated by so many trees and shrubs that he can’t possibly see me as I tear a swath of cloth free of my old Daughter’s sash and use it to fashion a humiliating diaper for myself.
I’ve grown grudgingly fond of Tavik, but he’s a poor substitute for Zofia. She haunts my dreams when I really need her here in the living world. There are things only another woman can understand, and it’s at times like these when I miss her steady presence most of all, especially when the only other person I can rely on is so very male and so very not her. He may be at my side, but the truth is that I feel more alone in the world than ever.
“Sing, faithful, of beloved Vinnica, prison and prisoner, and pity her,” I sing under my breath, letting the Father fill me with the cool invasiveness of His Word while the other presence churns beneath the lid I keep over Her. I fist my hands, refusing to accept myself as either prison or prisoner. I may hold Elath within me, but that doesn’t mean I have to be Her pawn. I still have free will. I still have control over my choices and actions.
I walk farther away from Tavik, farther than is necessary. Farther than is wise.
“Gelya?” His voice grows faint behind me, but I don’t turn back. I walk until I come to a place where the trees thin and I stand on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Kings Road far below. Even if the Goodson were on that road now, he’d never find me here. He’d never think to look up. But I tear another strip from my Daughter’s sash and tie it to the branch of a gelya tree anyway, a cry for help to the man who named a little girl after the gelya berry, which is bright and alive and lovely when all else seems to have died.
As the weeks go by, our stops on Ambrus’s map grow few and far between. We stay with a miller in a small town a few miles north of the Sargo’s headwaters, with the steward of a great estate, with a farmer whose flood-soaked wheat fields bring us within spitting distance of the Kings Road. Each time it’s the same news: the Goodson is moving west. He is always too far away, while Brother Miklos is too near. The constant worry that the Butcher of Grama could very well catch up to us pulls at my nerves until I feel threadbare.
Whenever and wherever I can, I tie a strip of my Daughter’s sash to a gelya tree. I know the Goodson will never see these flags, but it’s comforting all the same, giving me a sense of control in a world in which I have none.
The messages between Tavik and DeRopa fly back and forth. Literally. Since I don’t know the coded shorthand they use, I have to rely on Tavik to tell me what they say. There’s very little variation. DeRopa always asks for our location, and Tavik always sends “an update.” Considering his clear adoration for his captain, Tavik is remarkably out of spirits every time he receives a message, and it takes him ages to compose his brief responses. I can’t shake the sense that when it comes to this correspondence, there are things he’s not telling me.
As our safe houses become sparse, we have to find other places to shelter overnight: an abandoned farmhouse, a dilapidated mill, a termite-ridden shed. In between, we walk and walk as it rains and rains, the air smelling of rot and the earth beneath us squishing sickeningly with decay. We have to circumnavigate fields so flooded they look like ponds, and each day of unrelenting rain makes our journey feel increasingly prophetic.
“Tell me again how the entire world is supposed to become a desert when Elath’s Last Breath runs out,” I joke half-heartedly
one morning, but it falls flat.
“All this rain is making Kantar look like your heaven right now.” Tavik jokes back before tilting his head thoughtfully toward the sky. “Did you mean what you said back in Lithgate? That Elath’s presence has made Rosvania rich, while Ludo’s body in Kantar caused the drought?”
“I thought you didn’t remember anything from that night.”
“I remember the less embarrassing bits, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s only a theory,” I tell him, but it feels more like truth than guesswork.
“So when we opened the Mother’s prison . . .” He holds his hands out, letting the rain plink on his palms. “This?”
“This,” I agree reluctantly, the heaviness of the idea leaning on my stooped shoulders. No matter how often we stop or how much rest I get, I can’t seem to recover my strength. Each day saps energy from my body, a cumulative exhaustion that weighs down each step I take. One afternoon, I catch Tavik looking at me, worried. His expression reminds me of the statue of the unknown saint in the convent’s parlertorium, mournful, as if I were someone to mourn.
“What’s wrong?”
He wipes his face clean of emotion. “Nothing. I’m going to pray.”
I’ve seen Tavik pray so many times over the past few weeks, I could go through the motions myself, so I only half watch him now as he worships not just the Father but the soul inside me whom I was taught to think of as a demon. But with each passing day, She feels less and less like something I could call demonic, and Tavik’s prayer does not look evil. There’s a sanctity to his movements, a clear indication that his own spirit transcends his physical body while I, a chosen Vessel of the One True God, feel nothing but the Father’s coldness when I pray.
It isn’t fair.
I find my own place to pray beneath the relative shelter of an oak tree. I kneel and press my forehead to the damp ground and sing the familiar verse from The Song of Saint Lanya.