Ketya
Was that supposed to be a pep talk? I wondered. Don’t relax. We’ll probably all be dead soon anyway. Thanks, Sperrin. Thanks lots.
I pulled myself to my feet, still stiff from the river crossing. Picking up my pack, I adjusted it carefully—he was watching to make sure I did it right, of course. Do you think we’re idiots? I almost asked. But we were still alive, and most of my friends weren’t, and he was a big part of the reason why. That and your stupid incompetence at magic, I reminded myself.
I felt angry as we started to walk through the Westbarrow—angry at myself, at Sperrin, at the gods who had destroyed our world on what was supposed to be the happiest night of my life. A part of me was even angry with my father.
Angry enough that I almost missed the flash of blue where there should have been only barrows and memorials to the Drowned City’s privileged dead.
A lot of the Holy War dead were interred here, so I had been hearing about the Westbarrow on Memorial Day since long before I’d lived in the palace. Once my father had moved us to the Drowned City I’d taken part in the annual memory walk through the Westbarrow. It really wasn’t optional for the chancellor’s daughter: I and all the other kids who were old enough not to have nightmares afterward were given baskets of flowers, and we would follow some old soldier or other through the rows of barrows while our guide would tell us which ones to leave flowers in front of. Some of the guides told stories about the inhabitants of particular barrows. Others just pointed and never said a word; it mostly depended which of the old soldiers got sent that year.
It took a while to get used to the idea that people weren’t actually buried here, but lay inside the barrows on raised platforms. That made sense given the Drowned City’s high water table and the river’s occasional habit of overflowing its banks, but it still seemed odd. I had never been in any of the barrows—I assumed the doors were kept locked—just stood in front of them on the memory walks and scattered flowers wherever the old soldiers told me to.
None of them had glowed blue at the time.
Runes covered one entire barrow, while others bore only a symbol or two on the door. Comparatively few of the tombs glowed: only the oldest, I realized as we began walking among them.
I could tell Sperrin wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not when I told him about the blue runes. His expression changed when I pointed out which barrows had marked doors.
“Those are all Holy War veterans,” he said. “Those aren’t just the oldest graves, they are all soldiers. All significant soldiers, I would say. People whose names you will have heard of.”
People whose names even you will have heard of, is what he means. I’m not an idiot. I studied history like you. Just because I’m not a master of killing like you are doesn’t make me stupid.
I knew better than to say the words out loud, but some of my feeling must have shown on my face. Sperrin moderated his tone:
“What I don’t understand is the one that you say is covered with blue, not just on the door.” He gestured, though I knew he couldn’t see the blue himself. “It’s an old barrow but it doesn’t belong to anyone particularly heroic. Why would they mark it?”
Both of us startled at my father’s quiet laugh. We had gotten used to his silence.
“The soldiers’ barrows are protected from people trying to get into them. The barrow you are looking at is protected from things coming out.”
I looked at the runes on the door. They looked jagged, unlike the ones that covered the sides and top of the barrow. “But the seals are broken. They broke some time ago, it looks like.”
Sperrin looked at me, then at the door. “Can you tell if they broke from the inside or the outside?”
“From the outside,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
My father gave both of us a hard look.
“No reason,” Sperrin said. “I thought it might be nice to know if someone was visiting the gods before they visited us.”
That’s what it is! It’s a passageway to the land of the gods. I had known there was one in the Westbarrow, but had never made the connection. I felt a little silly that Sperrin had realized before I had, even without being able to see the runes.
My father had known all along, of course. I wondered if him not saying anything was some sort of test.
“Let’s get moving,” Sperrin said. “I would rather not stand around waiting for straggling silverbacks to come kill us.”
“You don’t know that the gods came out of this barrow,” my father said.
“No, we don’t know that,” Sperrin answered. He started walking down the row of barrows, away from the portal between worlds.
We walked a long way in silence before Sperrin finally stopped us in front of a blue-runed barrow door.
“You know this tomb?” he asked me.
“Of course. This is Captain-General Keir’s tomb. I had to put flowers here.”
“He deserves them. He earned those flowers by winning a battle he had no right to.”
“You know a lot about him?” I knew the name, and that he was a war hero, but not much else. He’d had some connection with the truce negotiations too, I remembered, but I couldn’t recall what exactly.
“I studied his campaigns. We played heroes and gods a lot as a kid. I was always trying to beat him. Whenever I played the gods’ side I always trounced the rest of the kids who were playing his campaigns. They shouldn’t have been winnable. But he won them. I read that he was the reason the gods were willing to negotiate in the first place.”
“Really?” I had never heard that. I glanced at my father for confirmation, but I couldn’t read his eyes in the darkness.
“It was in another general’s biography, written not long after the Holy Wars ended,” Sperrin said. “I can’t say whether it’s true or not, or whether the diplomats would agree, but soldiers thought so at the time.”
Sperrin reached for the door.
“Wait, we’re going inside?”
“We need to take shelter for the night somewhere. This seems like the sort of place where a godservant or one of their allies is very unlikely to come looking for us. Especially if it’s glowing with magic that doesn’t come from the gods—or at least not from the Empress, so it doesn’t come from our god.”
“Aren’t the doors locked?” The rune wasn’t a lock, I could tell. Some ward against godservants, I suspected. That would have been useful to know how to do yesterday. Not that there’s anyone who could teach me how to use them...even if I wasn’t terrible at magic.
“Not anymore,” Sperrin said. “They were sealed magically. The seals died with the Empress.”
“Oh,” I said. I should have known that.
As we crossed through the threshold, I felt a flare of warmth against my skin. The Snake Slayer’s armor seemed to harden into real metal as I passed the rune, then went back to its gossamery near-nothingness.
Sperrin closed the door, leaving us in darkness.
“Welcome to a hero’s grave,” he said. “We should all hope to die so well.”
* * * *
After a moment, Sperrin struck a light and lit a stub of candle from it. Taking another candle stub from his pocket, he lit it and placed it in a small alcove. Between the two candles we had a flickering measure of light.
“Is that safe?” I asked.
“Safe enough,” Sperrin said. “I think the worst of the danger for tonight is past. There will be enough danger tomorrow.”
“Thanks. That’s very comforting.” I couldn’t help myself.
“Watch your tongue,” my father said. The first words he’d said since we had left the portal. “Do not speak that way to your elders, or in front of me.”
“Yes, father,” I answered. What else could I say? How about: Is this really the time to quibble about manners? But it wasn’t the time to pick a pointless fight with my father, either. He would win, and I would feel even worse.
Sperrin waited till my father and I had quieted
. “I thought it would be safer to risk a little light than to blunder around a tomb in the dark.”
Somehow I had almost forgotten the purpose of the chamber. For the first time, I looked around.
Part of me expected to see the glowing blue runes that had been showing up everywhere, but only the flickering candles lit the space. We stood in a small outer room, with a wooden couch on either side and a small stone-topped cask in the middle. A small doorway led to an inner chamber, where desiccated bodies in martial garb lay on a pair of stone platforms.
I walked over to look more closely, though I didn’t step into the inner room.
Black blades lay alongside the bodies, similar to the one Sperrin carried, but nothing like the silver-bladed swords I’d seen carried by the palace guards. I’d seen firsthand that those light swords weren’t really designed for war. But I hoped Sperrin wasn’t trying to protect us with a centuries-old sword.
“Why are they all men?” I found myself asking. “There are no women in this tomb, only men.”
Sperrin answered from behind me. “Keir’s wife, Juila, was a soldier and sorcerer—they called them sorcerers in those days, before there were channelers. She was taken by the gods during the war. Keir said she was a prisoner, not dead, but the gods insisted they didn’t have her. She was never returned with the rest of the prisoners on both sides who were exchanged at the war’s end. I don’t know if she really was dead, or if there was some other reason.”
“You know a lot about him. I thought you only cared about battles.”
“I heard a song about it once, at a friend’s funeral. It stuck with me. Keir never remarried, because he expected his wife to return someday. That’s why only he and their two sons are buried here.”
“Weren’t any of his sons married? They look old enough.” From the size of the bodies, anyway. I didn’t consider myself much of a judge of dried corpses.
“I wouldn’t think so. None of the ones here survived the war. Their father didn’t join them until later.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know.” For some reason I felt sadder about that than about some of the bodies we had walked past in the last day, even though these were strangers and some of the bodies had been friends. Perhaps I would be able to mourn the friends later, but now that part of me felt empty—as if it had been ripped away along with the magic. Just like Sperrin had said: I would need to survive now, in order to mourn later. And you will probably lose more friends before later arrives, I reminded myself.
Looking away from the bodies of the dead boys and their father, I saw Sperrin had spread out a little buffet of dried food from our supplies, and three cups of water. Somehow the food seemed so oddly ordinary that I had no idea what to make of it.
* * * *
“I think,” said Sperrin after we had all eaten sparingly, “that now is the time to discuss where we are going.” He sounded oddly hesitant. “I have given the matter some thought, and wanted to give the two of you my suggestions.”
Glancing over, I saw light in my father’s eyes, the excitement he always got when he sensed weakness.
Sperrin
Now came the hard part.
We needed to go to Whitmount, deep in the mountains, and I needed to tell them the reasons why. All of which were true, but none of which were really my reasons.
“I think we should take the Mountain Road for Whitmount,” I began.
“Whitmount? Really?” said the chancellor. “So you are saying we should bypass the easy coastal roads and walk for three weeks over some of the most difficult and mountainous roads in all Ananya, wihout benefit of magic. That makes sense to you?”
I felt myself flushing slightly, but pushed on. “For a number of reasons, yes. We will be exposed to attack on the coastal roads. I know the Mountain Road well. Whitmount was specifically hardened against attacks by godservants in the Holy War; it was the temporary capital for part of the war, and it is a regional seat of government now. It is a likely place to regroup and launch whatever counterattack is decided on by the...war government.”
The chancellor snorted.
“Captain, there was a saying where I grew up, ‘Don’t lie to a liar.’ It was often used with respect to games of chance, I believe. Now I am certainly no liar, but in my years of service to the Empire I have come to know more than a few of them, and I think I have a credible knowledge of lying. I think perhaps there is something you are not telling us, Captain.”
“I think it is our safest course,” I said. “It will be safer—I can get both of you to safety on the Mountain Road. If there are dangers on the way, we will be much less exposed.”
“Come now, Captain. Surely you do not expect me to believe that is your true reason for subjecting us to this arduous journey.”
The chancellor has chosen a strange time to begin talking again, I thought. How much does he know? Too much, I suspect.
I started again: “After the attack here, I think the seacoast is unsafe. We do not know how widespread the godservant attack was. Perhaps they only attacked here, but it’s just as likely they attacked more broadly. And even if they didn’t, with our armies stripped of magic, forces from the Central Alliance will be raiding along the coasts and attacking the northern border crossings, at the very least.”
“Perhaps,” said the chancellor. “And perhaps not. There is much that you do not know.”
What a bizarre answer, I thought. It’s as if he wants us to take the most dangerous way, for no real benefit. That’s not like the chancellor at all.
“Would you care to enlighten me?”
“None of it concerns you especially. You are a mere soldier. Brave, but ignorant.”
“If there is something we need to know, I would appreciate your telling me. It might save your life, and your daughter’s.”
“Not as long as I am your prisoner. Release me to return to the city, and be on your way.”
For a moment I actually thought about it. That man is far too convincing. I wondered why the chancellor was so anxious to take the coastal road. We’d seen the Central Alliance ships raiding in the city already—there would certainly be a fleet raiding along the coast. And the Ananyan Home Fleet, which had left the Drowned City’s harbor with such fanfare and fireworks, would be crippled without its channelers to provide propulsion and power their war-engines, making them easy targets if they couldn’t find shelter before the Alliance fleet found them.
“I’m sorry, Lord Chancellor. But I can’t do that.”
“You certainly can.”
“My job is to take you and your daughter to safety.”
“Your job is to obey my orders, just like it is hers”—his eyes touched Ketya—“and anyone else left alive in that city. Taking me prisoner is not part of your job.”
“If I had obeyed those orders, we would all be dead now.”
“Perhaps you would be. I certainly would not. And your job as a soldier is to die when ordered to do so.”
“I don’t think you have so many soldiers left under your command that you can afford to spend their lives freely,” I said. In spite of myself I heard a warning tone come into my voice.
“Your lives are nothing to me. Stay or go as you please. But I will return to the palace.”
“No, my lord, you will not.” I realized my hand was on the hilt of my blade. Would you kill this man? Oh, how I wanted to. Right here in Keir’s grave. But I had more control than that. Mad or sane, the chancellor was still an important man and my duty was to keep him alive, however reluctant we both might be about it.
“Then we must take the coastal road. North or south, as you choose.”
“I am sorry, my lord. We take the Mountain Road.”
The ghost of a smile touched the chancellor’s face. This man thinks he can break me, I realized. He thinks I am like a spirited horse, to be broken to his will.
“I will tell you why you wish to take the Mountain Road,” said the chancellor. “You wish to take it because you think that
a woman whom you abandoned a decade ago and forgot about until yesterday might still be there, and might care for you, now that you have lost your new life. You think that the daughter whom you were so quick to abandon might half-remember your face, and might even be able to convince herself that she loves you. You are a fool, Overcaptain Sperrin. You know nothing, and you will take us only to disaster.”
The chancellor moderated his tone, mockingly. “Am I correct?”
Hardening my voice, I deliberately took my hand from the hilt of my sword.
“I think, Lord Chancellor, that I am not the only ignorant one in this chamber.” I took a breath. “I think you should sleep. Do not attempt to escape again. I saved your life once from duty and once from respect. If you were a friend, I might save it a third time, from friendship.”
“I did not ask for your friendship,” said the chancellor. “I do not befriend sheep. Sheep are to be herded, and worn, and eaten.”
“Even so,” I said, unsheathing a knife from his boot. “I will sleep across the doorway. Try and cross it while you think I sleep, and I will cut the tendon in your leg. You will never walk straight, or swiftly, again.” I spread my blanket in the flat space across the doorway, folded it once, and lay my blade and knife next to it.
I realized that I had enjoyed the exchange.
“Ketya,” I said. Her face looked very pale, even in the dimness. “Please be kind enough to snuff out those candles before you go to sleep. We have a long way to go before we reach safety, or a fresh supply of candles.” With that I lay down on the blanket and closed my eyes.
Tomorrow, we would begin the road to where I last saw my daughter. To where we used to live. What will you do if you find her? I wondered. The Empress might well have given my wife a new husband, my daughter a new father. They probably wouldn’t have remembered me at all, until yesterday. It had been almost ten years.
Right now my memories were still maddeningly incomplete, returning in bits and pieces. I tried to piece together how our relationship had ended from the memories that had returned so far.
Far too many of my memories of Sefa were unhappy, and I wished I could remember more of the good parts, the feeling of being in love with her. I had loved Sefa the whole time we were together. I couldn’t help it with the memories I’d gotten at our engagement. When I asked to leave the front, it never occurred to me that doing so would mean leaving Sefa, even though we spent very little time together by then. What I hadn’t realized, though, was that the memories from the engagement piece were never really mine to keep. When the Empress died and my other memories returned, the memories from the golden fruit that had signaled our engagement didn’t. So all I could remember, when I found out that Sefa still lived, was the marriage as it was in the years we actually shared, not the stolen memories that made me fall in love with her before we ever met.
The Lost Daughters Page 16