by Megan Bannen
He seems as eager to avoid me as I am to avoid him, spending most of his time staring at the Fev with a distant, glassy look in his eyes. I suspect it makes him uneasy to travel by river. He doesn’t know how to swim, after all, and he’s certainly had his fair share of bad experiences with water, which is why I’m surprised when he sits beside me on the deck one evening and lets his legs dangle off the side as mine do, hovering above the frigid river below.
We both gaze straight ahead, neither of us saying anything. His proximity is like sitting beside a fire, viscerally present, but something I don’t dare touch. And if I’m being honest with myself, I do want to touch him. I remember how his arms felt around me in the smugglers’ cellar, and how I ran my fingers along his skin in my dream. But now that he is very real and sitting next to me, he may as well be on the other side of the boat.
“Fifty-four,” he says out of nowhere. I glance at him, but he gives me only his profile.
“Fifty-four?”
He nods.
“Fifty-four . . . what?”
“You asked me once how many men I’ve killed. The answer is fifty-four. There may be more, men I left wounded who died later, but as far as I know for certain, fifty-four, including the assassins in the parlertorium and DeTana and DeLuthina.” His tone is disinterested, but there’s a stiff squareness to his shoulders that tells me the burden is heavy, bordering on unbearable. Heartsick, I watch him as he stares at nothing.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like you should know that about me.”
“Is knowing this supposed to lessen my good opinion of you?”
“Does it?” He goes very still as he waits for my answer.
Fifty-four men. I feel bad when I step on a cockroach, and Tavik has killed fifty-four men. It’s hard to wrap my brain around such a sum, such a toll. But what options did he have? The seedpod opened in his hand, too. He didn’t choose this life. It was thrust upon him, just as mine was thrust upon me. At least he feels the consequences of his actions. Could he say the same for Captain DeRopa? Could I say the same for Goodson Anskar?
Sing, faithful, of Tavik, prison and prisoner, I sing in my mind before I answer, “No, it doesn’t lessen my good opinion of you.”
“Well, it should.” He turns his face slightly. He still won’t look at me, but I can see the stark sadness in his eyes.
“I’ve spent most of my life adoring the man who attacked my village and kidnapped me,” I point out. “I’d say admiring you is a step in the right direction.”
His lips twist into a weak smile. “You are a terrible judge of character.”
“I can’t argue with that.” After a moment’s pause, I add, “When DeRopa caught up to us, why did you tell me to run to the monastery?”
“It was a less immediate threat than the one we were facing. I knew DeRopa must have been working with Brother Miklos, but I guess I hoped you were right about the Goodson after all. I’m sorry you weren’t.” Here, he finally looks at me, and I feel like I’m being jabbed in the heart with the shiv I refused to accept.
I decide to match Tavik’s honesty, giving voice to a painful fact that continues to bore its way through my heart. “Goodson Anskar was going to lock me up and throw away the key, just as you said he would.”
“He’ll pay for that,” Tavik promises me, his voice gravelly with barely contained fury. “I’ll make him pay for everything he’s done.”
My hands grasp the air between us as if I could pluck my logic out of the wind and hand it to him. “I don’t want the Goodson to pay. I don’t hate him. I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t.”
“Then I’ll hate him enough for both of us.”
“That’s not what I would wish for you either. You’re not so different from each other, you and the Goodson.”
Tavik’s mouth hangs open in outrage. “I am nothing like the Goodson.”
“You are exactly like the Goodson, both of you so faithful, so certain of your truth. You see the world as if it were split into halves: good and evil, life giving and life taking, man and woman, and on and on. But the world isn’t black and white. There are shades of gray, ideas you can’t cram into your well-ordered universe, people who stand outside your definitions but who are just as valuable as you or I or the Goodson. Just because he is wrong doesn’t make you right.”
“Oh, for the love of the Mother, how can you not believe what I believe at this point? After everything you’ve seen? After everything that’s happened to you? Are you seriously going to cling to the religion of the man who kidnapped you? Took you from your home? Killed your people? And after all that, after everything you know now, with the full knowledge that a goddess—a goddess, Gelya—is living inside you, you want to pretend I’m the zealous nutjob?”
“That’s not what I said. I’m only saying that he’s a good man who happens to believe the wrong thing. What if you are also a good man who’s a little bit wrong?”
“I’m not wrong.”
“You were wrong about DeRopa.”
Tavik recoils as if I had hit him, and I instantly regret saying the words. But since the specter of Captain DeRopa now looms over the conversation, I plow ahead. With the two of us barely speaking to each other, who knows when I’ll have another opportunity?
“Back at Saint Helios, DeRopa said you didn’t follow his orders. What did he mean by that?”
Tavik stares at his hands pressed between his knees. “He ordered me to remain in place and report our location. Twice.”
“But you didn’t?”
He shakes his head.
“Why not?”
“Because I made you a promise, and . . . It’s complicated.”
Everything about Tavik and me is complicated. We sit side by side, miles apart, and listen to the sounds of the river that carries us to a terrifyingly uncertain future in the Dead Forest and beyond. After a few minutes, Tavik nudges my shoulder, sending an unexpected shock wave through my body.
“So you think I’m a good man, huh?”
It’s a peace offering, one I know I’m expected to accept with a joke. “A good arrogant man,” I amend.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I lean back on my hands. “For weeks, we’ve been focusing on one thing at a time: Escape Varos da Vinnica, then figure out what to do. Get the Sword, then find the Mother’s body. But now we have the Vessel and the Sword, and we know where the body is. Is it strange that this is the first time I’ve wondered what exactly is going to happen if we get to the tree?”
“When,” Tavik corrects me. “Not if.”
“Fine. What happens when we get there?”
“The Mother’s spirit flies out of you the same way She entered in. She inhabits Her own body and saves the world.”
“That’s the best-case scenario. What’s the worst-case scenario?”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “There isn’t one.”
“I think there are many,” I insist. “We need the Vessel and the Sword, but for what exactly?”
“The Sword is to get the Vessel through the Dead Forest. It’s for killing telleg. That’s why the Goodson was able to protect you ten years ago. He had the Sword.”
It’s a good theory, and there’s a ring of truth to it, yet I feel like there’s more hope than reality behind it. I stare at Tavik’s hands tucked between his knees, wishing I could slip my own between them but too uncertain of his reaction to try.
“The Goodson told me you were dead. He said his men found your body,” I admit, my roundabout way of telling Tavik I’m glad he’s alive.
He nods thoughtfully. “Good move, cutting ties like that. He probably saw how very attached you are to me.”
“He probably did,” I agree, tired of masking my truth with humor but not sure how to talk to Tavik about the hardest things without it. My eyes meet his as an unanswered question plops itself between us. Neither of us seems to know how to get it out of the way.
His expression turns somber and makes my breath go shallow. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he says, but he doesn’t get any further than that. He goes on staring at me with a gravity that thins my breathing so much, my lungs begin to cry out for air.
The first white flakes of winter begin to fall, quickly turning into a torrent of fat snowflakes. Tavik looks up, his troubled expression slowly softening into the reverence I saw on his face in the library of Saint Vinnica.
“Snow?” he asks.
“Snow,” I agree, seeing it from his perspective, the newness of it, the beauty falling all around us.
He holds out his arms as if he could embrace the sky and smiles, his teeth bright in the darkness.
Forty-One
The Great Wall of Saint Balzos comprises over half the northern border of Auria before the line between civilization and the Dead Forest plunges into the Rannig Mountains, a natural barrier the telleg can’t cross.
There are no gates in the wall. The point is to keep things out, not let them through, so the only opening that connects Auria on the south to the Dead Forest on the north is the Five Gate Bridge, which allows the Fev River to flow from the land of the dead to the land of the living. That’s where we’re going, the same place where the Goodson and I crossed into the safety of Auria ten years ago, although I have no recollection of it.
This is our last time to go over the plan before Tavik and I separate from the crew, so I pay close attention. Hroth has re-created the Five Gate Bridge out of odds and ends from around the barge: a collapsible telescope, a teacup, a tankard, some blocks of wood. It would be comical if our lives didn’t depend on it.
He points to the tankard. “The easternmost garrison of the Great Wall is built into the side of Mount Saint Osgart. The knights stationed here man the watchtowers on both sides of the river”—here, Hroth points to the teacup and the telescope—“as well as three sentry points along the bridge, which is about a hundred yards across. An assignment at the wall is considered light duty. The knights can see the telleg from time to time, but only at night, and the things never get too close to the wall.”
“Has a telleg . . . ?” At a loss for the Rosvanian words he wants, Tavik picks up a saltshaker and animates it from the north side of the model wall to the south, making a growling sound. The fact that no one laughs is a strong indication of just how dangerous the telleg are.
“No,” answers Hroth. “And the knights sure as death won’t expect anyone would want to cross from south to north.”
“Can we go here?” Tavik asks, sticking his finger through one of the gates made by a gap in the blocks.
Hroth shakes his head. “The Fev is running too high, but this part of the wall is the lowest point, so it’s the place where it will be easiest to climb down to the other side without breaking your stupid necks. Not that it’s going to be easy.” He sets a crumpled piece of paper on the table next to the tankard. “We’ll set off the first explosion in front of the garrison. That should empty the building and bring the men from the western watchtower over the bridge to see what’s happening on the eastern shore. At that point, you two fools will go up the west tower and set off the second bomb on the bridge. You’ll have thirty seconds or so to get clear once you’ve lit the fuse, so don’t mess around.”
Hroth directs this last part at Tavik. I can tell Tavik gets the gist, but I translate anyway, because I want to make sure he thoroughly understands the danger.
“Once the bridge is damaged, we hook the rope ladder onto the wall and climb down on the north side,” I complete the plan.
“Where no telleg licker in their right mind would follow you,” Hroth adds unhelpfully.
Tavik and I wait with our backs pressed against the wall of the western watchtower for at least an hour before the explosion erupts on the opposite bank. The ground beneath my feet rocks with a violence I was not anticipating, and the three sentries posted on the bridge race toward the east side of the Fev to investigate. Seconds later, five knights rush out of the western tower and pelt across the bridge after them.
“Let’s go,” Tavik says, leading the way through the ground-level door and up a winding staircase before the ringing in my ears subsides. Thank heaven my body has had a chance to rest and regain at least a little strength, because I’m already winded halfway up. I’m not sure how I would have made it a couple of weeks ago, especially since I’m carrying a knapsack full of supplies to help get us through the Dead Forest. We make it to the top in three minutes and find it empty, just as we hoped.
“So far, so good,” I say between wheezing breaths.
“Let’s not pat ourselves on the back yet.” Tavik dumps his pack on the ground and hands me the rope ladder coiled around his shoulder.
I hold out my ring to him before he leaves me to set the second bomb. When he links his ring with mine, I tell him, “Don’t you dare lose any body parts, beloved husband.”
“I won’t, darling wife. That’s a promise.” He grins, then sneaks across the bridge, keeping his head down so he won’t be noticed from the ground.
It’s time to get to my own task. I look over the edge to find that the slope on this side is much steeper than on the south. We’ve got about twenty-five feet to scale down, twice the height of the wall around Dalment, and I thought that was dizzyingly high at the time. I pull two lengths of rope from my pack and tie one to each knapsack, lowering first one and then the other onto the ground on the north side of the wall. The ropes aren’t long enough in either case, so each pack falls a fair distance before hitting the earth.
In the meantime, Tavik stops a third of the way across the Five Gate Bridge, right over one of the arches, where he wastes no time lighting the fuse. The second he has it lit, he turns and sprints back the way he came.
I’m frozen to the spot. My heart stops beating as I watch him run back to me with a lit bomb at his back.
“What are you doing? Take cover!” he shouts, but I’ve gone wooden, and I can’t move until I know he’s safe.
Tavik tackles me, his body flattening mine against the floor, one fitting into the other like opposing magnets snapping together. He’s panting so hard I can feel his chest expand and contract as his breath steams my face, and my mind goes blank.
“Hi,” he says, looking equally blank.
“Hello.”
The bomb goes off, making the tower lurch and my stomach right along with it. Tavik rolls off me so I can grab the ladder, and we both secure the grappling hooks to the north-facing wall. It doesn’t reach all the way to the bottom, so we both can look forward to an eight-foot drop from the end of the last rung to the ground, although I’m sure that distance is nothing to Tavik. He curses on my behalf rather than his, I assume, but he says, “Nothing for it. You first.”
He helps me over the wall and holds on to me as I get a solid footing on the first few rungs, which is why neither of us notices the man creeping up behind him until he’s right over Tavik’s shoulder: Brother Miklos.
I don’t have time to scream, but Tavik must see something in my face or sense Brother Miklos’s presence behind him because he releases me and draws the Sword of Mercy—the Hand of the Father—in time to block the knight’s blow.
“Go!” he shouts to me as he draws the Sword of Wrath, too, but there’s no way I’m leaving him. I pull myself back onto the wall.
“Father of death! Go!”
Tavik lunges at Brother Miklos with one blade, and even as the knight blocks the first blow, Tavik is already following it with the second. But Brother Miklos has fought Two-Swords before, and he spins free, making Tavik correct course with a full turn into the momentum. His feet leave the ground, and his body goes impossibly horizontal in midair. Miklos is too slow to respond, and Tavik drives both blades into his stomach. The Butcher of Grama slams back against the tower’s wall and sinks to the ground, his blood pooling beneath him.
I catch sight of two more men in the distance on the other side of the bridge, and ev
en from a hundred yards off, I recognize them: the Goodson and DeRopa.
“Go, go, go!” Tavik shouts at me, waving his arm at the ladder, and this time I swing onto the ropes without his help, scurrying like a spider down the side of the tower as fast as my long arms and legs will carry me so that Tavik can get on the ladder that much sooner.
“Come on!” I shout up to him when I’m halfway there.
“Not till you’re all the way down.”
I go as fast as I can, but I know it’s taking too long. When I hit the last rung, I let go and roll across the ground the way Tavik did all those weeks ago when we jumped off the wall surrounding Dalment. The impact jars me, but I’m unhurt, and I’m far more worried about Tavik than myself at this point.
I look up to watch Tavik’s descent when movement from the left catches my eye. DeRopa has nearly reached the chasm on the east side of the bridge, with Goodson Anskar lagging several feet behind. The Goodson slows as he approaches the edge, but DeRopa sprints in a burst of speed and, to my horror, launches himself across the impossible distance, stumbling as he lands on the western half—our side—of the bridge, but landing it all the same.
“Tavik!”
He looks up, and there’s his captain, his father, the man who betrayed him looking down at him over the wall. But it’s not the sharp end of a sword DeRopa offers him. It’s his hand, reaching out, offering to pull Tavik back up. Tavik freezes on the ladder and stares at that hand for one long, heart-wrenching moment before he shakes his head and climbs down another rung.
“Father of death, DeSemla, can’t you see I’m trying to help you?” DeRopa says, his voice rough with emotion as he stretches his hand out even farther.
Tavik answers by climbing down another rung.
DeRopa pulls a knife from a scabbard on his arm and holds it to one of the ropes.
“No!” I leap for the end of the ladder, but it’s too high. It makes me want to claw off my own skin to be powerless when Tavik needs my help the most.
“It doesn’t have to end like this, kid.”