by Kova, Elise
And for the very first time, Vi wondered if that was the role she should fill. If her mission was to do what was best for her Empire, then she should let nothing, not even her throne, get in the way of that… right? It was an answer she didn’t have time to come up with as the brief moment of introspection was quickly interrupted.
“What will Solaris do?” he demanded again. “All I see are our clerics, our blood on the ground, our people in danger. Is Solaris just leaving us to die?”
“Is help coming from the Empire? Or are we alone?” Another woman stepped forward, emboldened by the man’s tirade.
“The White Death is affecting everyone—the South, East, West, and North. It is a plague on us all. My father has already left for the Crescent Continent,” Vi said quickly. She cleared her throat, trying to dictate her words as her tutors had instructed, putting on her best Empress voice. “He has gone in search of a cure that—”
“They say the disease itself comes from the Crescent Continent,” another woman spoke. Vi turned, surprised to see the old Western woman she had purchased spices from. Her beady black eyes bored into Vi’s soul. “He will meet his demise on that foreign land. If he has gone into those pirate-infested waters, into the territory of Adela, she will kill him as she killed his grandfather before him. The Emperor Solaris is already dead.”
“Hold your tongue,” Vi whispered. There was a dangerous note to her voice, one she had never heard herself make before. “Careful, lest someone hear your words for the treason they are.”
“We ask questions and it’s treason?” The first man balked, talking even louder. “This is how Solaris treats us!”
“No, that’s not what I—” Vi tried to say quickly but was interrupted.
“That’s enough,” Sehra said quietly. She didn’t shout, didn’t need to. “Focus on the wounds yet bleeding before you go looking for old scars to tear open.” She narrowed her eyes at the man. Vi watched how, with a look, Sehra suddenly made herself seem twice her size and the man half of his.
“Chieftain, I meant no disrespect.” He lowered his eyes, shoulders curling forward slightly.
“Is that so? Certainly an odd way of showing it. You disrespect me, as I told everyone to leave, and you disrespect my honored guest, the Crown Princess.” Sehra’s eyes swung to them as the others scattered. Vi looked for the Western woman, but she was already gone. All of the transgressions against her family tonight would have to be forgiven, it seemed. Forgiven, maybe, but not forgotten. “I told everyone to leave, and that includes you three.”
Vi was suddenly aware Andru had materialized at her left. For all his awkwardness, he was proving himself a true friend time and again.
“We’re gathering Ellene and then going back to the fortress,” Jayme reported stiffly.
Sehra gave a small nod of approval. “No more distractions.”
This time, no one stopped them getting to Ellene. She was engaged in a heated conversation with Darrus, arms flailing, voice strained to a barely audible pitch.
“Ellene, we need go back.” Vi grabbed the girl’s elbow.
Ellene jerked away without even looking at them, focusing on the man she’d been dancing with all night. “Not without Darrus, he’s not talking sense.”
“I have to go to the infirmary, Elle,” he said gently.
“This is getting serious!” Ellene grabbed his hands, tears welling in her eyes. Vi resisted the urge to correct her that it had been serious for some time. Darrus was the only one among them who had really done something. “Come, stay in the fortress—it’s safer there, with us. Let other clerics do the work, they don’t need you. You’re not even fully trained yet.”
“Ellene, I can’t.” Darrus pulled her in tightly. “I have to help our people. New clerics just arrived with medicine from the West today. They have more insights. We’re going to beat this.”
Vi found herself admiring Darrus once more. He was composed and certain of himself when she could barely fend off the panicked ravings of one of her subjects. He continued to fearlessly step up, putting his life in danger, for the sake of his people—her people, her Empire.
What kind of a leader did that make her if she needed others to stand in for her at every turn? What could she be doing for her people?
Finding the apexes of fate was a way to stop this. If they held the knowledge of how to stop Raspian, it would stop the White Death, too.
“Don’t… Please, don’t…” Ellene gripped at him so tightly that Vi was certain she left bruises. He lightly kissed the top of her head through the young woman’s spiral curls, then looked to Jayme and Vi.
“Take her and keep her safe. Do not let her come after me.”
Vi gave a short nod, overlooked the fact that a commoner had technically just issued an order to her—sometimes etiquette was best ignored, particularly in the face of what was very obviously young love—and pulled Ellene into her arms. “We have to go now.”
“No, don’t take me!” Ellene twisted. “I’m going with him.”
“Your mother asked us to take you.” Jayme got a grip on Ellene’s other arm.
“Ellene.” Za’s voice was a sharp and searing blade to the heart of her daughter’s contention. “Back to the fortress. Now.”
Ellene slumped against Vi and let herself be shepherded away.
More and more people were beginning to panic. There was wailing, crying, shouting, and accusations thrown their way whenever someone bold enough got a good look at Vi walking in their midst.
The four of them navigated through it, hastening back to the fortress to wait out what already truly felt like the longest night of the year.
Chapter Thirty-One
They sat around a small table in the back corner of one of the kitchens. Between each of their hands was a mug of warm tea; a plate of food steamed in front of them, but none of them could muster the will to eat.
After the events of the day, Vi certainly wasn’t hungry.
“He’s going to die,” Ellene mumbled grimly.
“You don’t know that.”
“He’s going to get sick with the White Death, and die.”
“No one knows how it’s transferred,” Jayme started.
“Part of what makes it so terrifying,” Andru interjected under his breath.
Vi was silent. The old Western woman was still in her mind. She’d said the White Death came from the Crescent Continent. If Vi’s theories on the crystal caverns were true, then the plague’s origins were far more homegrown.
But the solution might lie across the sea, nonetheless… with a man she knew through strands of light. What would she ask Taavin first? She worked to sift through the chaos of the day to find an answer.
“I saw houses in the capital, families who lived together in one room—five people—poor folk who couldn’t afford any clerical help.” Jayme continued to try to cheer up Ellene. “Mostly left to fend for themselves… One fell ill, but the other four survived. I’m no cleric myself, but I don’t think it’s transferred by mere proximity, like autumn fever.”
“He’ll catch it. If anyone will catch it from proximity, it’ll be him.” Ellene wasn’t hearing them. She wasn’t seeing them either. She stared off at nothing, wallowing in her own doubt.
Vi wrested herself from her thoughts and rested a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Listen to Jayme.”
“He’s going to be taken by the illness just like my grandmother!” Ellene pushed her hand aside and crumpled into tears. Jayme and Vi shared a look.
The death of the last chieftain had been particularly hard for the North. A people who were still relatively new to the Empire, still stinging from the loss of their sovereignty, had their leader called to a foreign land to see if her rare magic could assist in finding a cure for the White Death. Sehra’s mother, Ellene’s grandmother, had never returned from that journey. She’d succumbed to the disease and her body was burned in Norin, her last rites given by foreign people in a foreign land.
“Darrus is strong,” Vi attempted. “He’s much younger than—”
“My grandmother was not that old.” Ellene’s head jerked up, tears streaming down her cheeks. “And she was one of the strongest chieftains to ever live.”
“You poor lot, stuck in here on the night of solstice.” Renna made a clicking noise with her tongue as she shook her head in disapproval. “You should’ve been dancing the dusk away, filling your stomachs with good food, filling your souls with the final rites of the evening, and then drifting to sleep as the wonders of the day filled your mind.”
“Unfortunately a plague doesn’t wait for festivities to be over.” Vi sighed, still rubbing Ellene’s back with an open palm as the girl sniffed softly.
“It does not. But at the very least, would you three like a story? Seems a shame to head to bed without even hearing one of the old tales around a fire. What good is the solstice if you don’t?”
“I wouldn’t mind.” Jayme was the first to seize the opportunity.
Vi recognized as well what Renna was trying to do for Ellene. The kitchens were large, but Renna had been in ear-shot since the moment they’d sat down. Moreover, there wasn’t much activity at this time of night, so there hadn’t been much noise to drown out their words.
“I’d like that as well. I don’t think you’ve told us stories since we were kids, sneaking in for whatever cookies or cakes you had baked for the day.”
“Well, speaking of…” Renna glanced over her shoulder. “We made a whole batch of candied nut rolls for the festival that no one has touched thanks to all this madness. If you finish your dinners, I could cut you each a hefty slice and I’ll tell you one story before bed.” She looked right to Ellene. “Would you like that?”
Ellene gave a small sniff and, for a brief second, Vi was afraid she would protest that she was far too old for sweets and fireside stories before bed. They all were. But for one night, retreating into the comforting ignorance of childhood wouldn’t harm any of them.
“I think I would,” Ellene said finally.
“Then finish your meals and I’ll have warm sticky sweets ready when you’re done.”
“Sticky sweets for finishing a meal; I feel like a child again,” Andru murmured.
“There are worse feelings,” Vi said quickly, with a small nod toward Ellene. Understanding dawned on Andru’s face, and something like gratitude. Vi was starting to understand how this shy, awkward man’s mind worked—and how often it missed what seemed like obvious social cues. Renna was just trying to help, and one slice of nut roll would not turn any of them into a toddler again. And, if Vi was honest with herself, her mouth was already watering at the thought.
Renna was good to her word. The wiry woman had a plate waiting for each of them when they arranged themselves around the giant stone hearth of the kitchen. In proper fashion, they each sat on the floor, the woman easing herself into a stool she’d pulled over.
“When was the last time we did this?” Vi asked with a small laugh and nudge to Ellene’s shoulder. “Seven? Ten?”
“It’s been so long I can’t remember.” She stared at her nut roll and inhaled through her nose. “It smells just like I remember, though.”
“Sounds like you had a nice childhood,” Jayme said softly.
Vi resisted the debate that would follow any kind of correction. Her childhood hadn’t been bad… but nice? Nice was living with your family, knowing your sibling, and not growing up as the Empire’s trading chip.
But there were layers to Jayme’s statement, ones Vi may not have considered before Andru revealed her clandestine meeting in the Crossroads. What had her childhood been like? She knew Jayme had become the official courier almost immediately after enlisting. How did a fourteen-year-old manage that? It was something Vi hadn’t really considered, but the older she got, the more she wondered at the logistics that had lined up to make such a prestigious honor of delivering Imperial letters fall on a young girl’s shoulders.
Just how well did she really know her friend?
“What story would you like to hear?” Renna asked.
“I have no preference,” Jayme said, louder, as if to speak over the echo of the words she’d uttered under her breath. “They’ll all be new to me.”
“Something romantic,” Ellene eagerly chirped. Vi didn’t know if returning her mind to romance was the best course.
“Something happy,” Vi suggested hastily.
“Something romantic and happy…” Renna leaned back in her chair. “How about the creation of the reservoir?”
The reservoir was a large freshwater lake to the south east of Soricium. It was said that its underground tunnels fed most of the springs throughout the jungles. And, if that were true, it made it not only the largest source of freshwater on the continent, but also the primary water source for the people of Shaldan.
“The one with Dia and Holin?” Ellene asked eagerly. “Yes, that one, tell that one!”
Renna chuckled. “Very well, if my little chieftain-to-be commands it…
“Long ago, as Shaldan and its people grew under the care of Dia, so too did their needs. No longer could they collect water from when the skies opened, or rely on small trickles through the jungles. Something far more substantial was needed.
“‘Cut a layer beneath the earth,’ a young man suggest—”
“Holin!” Ellene said through a particularly large bite of her sweet roll.
“Yes, Holin.” Renna smiled brightly at Ellene’s ever improving mood. “He suggested such to Dia—that if she could use her axe to cut not just the earth above the ground as trees, and plants, but the earth below, that water would gather there in a mighty basin for all to utilize…”
Vi hadn’t heard the tale in some time, and she found herself as entranced as her friends by Renna’s storytelling. Andru seemed to be getting particularly into the way the weathered woman spun the tale as he inched forward, hanging on every word, nut roll forgotten.
It was a story of love being enough of a reason to master a power none had seen before, a story of triumph, full of such fantastical embellishments that even though Renna presented it all as fact, Vi was certain very little was actually true.
“… and while it was aptly called the reservoir, even then, a new name was eventually given—Lake Io, named after Dia and Holin’s first daughter. Some even still call it that name, in honor of our first chieftain.”
“What?” Vi sat straighter. “What did you just say it was called?”
“You’ve heard it before.” Ellene tilted her head, clearly not understanding what had Vi so worked up.
“I know, I must’ve… But on all my maps… It’s just ‘the reservoir’…”
“Perhaps because your maps have been made by the South.” There was a cool edge to Renna’s tone. One Vi chose to ignore. “Lake Io is how most of the old folk will refer to it.”
“How is it spelled?”
“I-O.”
Vi had seen it before on her maps.
But she had always thought it was intended to be some kind of acronym, one she’d never understood—one she’d always assumed meant reservoir in the old language of the North. If she had tried to pronounce it as a word, it was always I-ooh in her mind, nothing like how Renna or Ellene said it.
Io.
Pronounced eye-owe.
Just as Taavin had said—Lake Io was an apex of fate.
Vi shot upright. She had to tell him she’d pieced together his clues. “I have to go.”
“What’s wrong?” Jayme asked.
“Have I done something to offend?” Renna was visibly nervous as Vi passed.
“No, no,” Vi said hastily. She gave the woman a small nod—a huge sign of Imperial deference, as far as etiquette was concerned. “You’ve done me a great service. I need to consult my maps. They’re not marked properly and I must go fix that.”
“Don’t try to think through it,” Ellene said through a mouth of food to Renna. She’d cleaned her plate, so Vi coul
d only assume she was starting in on her half-finished roll. At least someone would eat it. “She gets like this about her maps sometimes. I’m sure she needs to correctly label every one.”
Vi let them think what they wanted; all she needed was to get back to her room.
Her uncle appeared in the doorway, stopping her in her tracks. He had a serious look about him, the look that usually heralded a scolding. But he said nothing, simply stared.
“Excuse me, uncle, I need to go do something.” Vi stepped around him, and he just watched her go, shoulders sagging. There was a glint to his eyes, a shining wetness that was strange to see. He wasn’t one for emotion, but after helping Sehra with the outbreak, Vi couldn’t blame him for reaching a deeper-than-usual level of physical and mental exhaustion. Her heart had contorted as well for those suffering.
“I need to speak with you, Vi.” He cleared his throat, forcing out the words.
“Not now, uncle.” Vi was starting up the stairs, taking them with her long legs two at a time.
“Vi…”
“This is important,” she called over her shoulder. He still hadn’t moved from that partly hunched, limp-armed position. “Tell me tomorrow morning!”
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, and Vi rushed off. She wondered briefly just what he needed to say, and what had him in such a state. But whatever it was could keep.
Right now, she had to get back to her room, chart the best course to get to Lake Io, and tell Taavin of her discovery.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Vi was breathless by the time she ran into her chambers.
“Okay, Lake Io…” Vi mumbled as her fingers traced her shelves. She knew she had an atlas exclusively for maps of the North. One book that would be perfect for… “There you are.”
Lifting it from the shelf, Vi placed the over-sized tome on her drafting table and began flipping through it. She looked over to one of the unlit candles on the wall and lit it with a thought.
By candlelight, Vi selected a map detailing Soricium and the surrounding area. The edge of the map bled over onto the next page, where the topmost corner of Lake Io could be seen at the edge of the vast and mostly uninhabited jungle. Reaching into her drawer, Vi resisted the urge to grab for her pen and add “Lake Io” under “Reservoir.” Instead, she grabbed her trusty caliper—a metal tool composed of two straight edges screwed together at the top to precisely tune the width between their points.