I heard a moaning noise down the hall to my right and remembered the ward of injured channelers. I owed them a visit, too. Some of them might have been classmates, a year or two ahead of me. And if I had shared their talent level, I would have been dead or crippled as they were. Guthre probably would have called me silly for the feeling, but it gave me a sense of obligation somehow.
Or perhaps just curiosity? Either way, I turned to the right, instead of left toward the way I had come in.
A broad set of double doors separated the arched entrance of the east ward from the rest of the floor. From this close, the noise sounded less like moaning than the burbling of a brook. One of the doors stood slightly ajar, and I slipped through it.
High windows kept the room ventilated, and bright in the late afternoon sun, but did little to conceal its grayness. Perhaps a hundred cots were spaced evenly on the gray stone floor. Some of the women lay strapped to their cots to keep them from thrashing onto the floor. Many of them moaned or babbled in their struggles: They weren’t struggling against the restraints but with inner demons, like waking nightmares. Others seemed still and unresponsive, breathing but otherwise showing no signs of life. A few looked as if they slept fitfully, at the edge of waking. Here and there a few slept more normally, looking like they might be lucid if only they would awaken. A few of the cots had decorative touches brought by family members—a colorful blanket, a vase of wildflowers—but mostly I looked at a sea of gray.
A few tan-clad orderlies sat at a table against the wall off to my left; one of them approached me now.
“Do you have family here?” the orderly asked. She looked about my age, with a long braid that hung halfway down her back.
“No family, no,” I answered. “Maybe some friends. I’m not sure.”
“Look around if you like,” said the orderly. “It won’t bother them. But please don’t touch. It agitates some of them.”
“I understand,” I said.
Wandering through the rows, I saw no familiar faces. Most of the women in the cots looked much older than any channelers I’d known. I wondered if the loss of magic had aged them, draining vitality along with the Empress’s magic.
“Do any of them recover?” I asked the orderly after I finished walking the gray rows.
“A few of them have. We move them out of the hospital as soon as we can when they wake. I’m told most of the ones in here will recover at least somewhat, but it will take time.”
“Is there anything else that can be done for them?”
The girl shrugged, a helpless look. “We do all we can. We can keep them comfortable and mostly out of pain. But the people who could actually heal them—” she gestured at the cots “—the ones who lived are mostly in those rows.”
“How many died?”
“About half. More in places like this hospital, which had the best of the channelers. The weakest ones survived, mostly.”
The orderly didn’t seem self-conscious about saying it. She must not realize my training. Or perhaps after so many deaths of friends, she doesn’t care anymore.
I thanked the orderly and left. Utterly drained, I no longer felt angry, just completely purged of emotions. I had many stairs to walk down to return to my chambers, and to find the strength to face my father again.
Chapter 21
Ketya
Whitmount: Five weeks after the Loss
When I was at the Academy I struggled a lot with the theoretical side of how to be a channeler. None of it came naturally to me, and I’m sure that if my mother hadn’t been such a great channeler (and one whom many in the Academy still had fond memories of) I would have been encouraged to pursue some other field, no matter who my father was. Maybe I would have understood it better if my mother had lived until I was old enough for her to explain it to me. I understood in theory how channelers could copy memories from one person and give them to another, as they did when making engagement tokens. I more-or-less understood the theory behind how memories could be suppressed, as Sperrin’s had been, though I had no idea how to do it in practice. But I didn’t understand why you couldn’t actually change someone’s memories, or implant messages in engagement tokens. Or for that matter why magic couldn’t be used to send messages from one person to another, even though it could be used to push cable-carriages across a mountain range or to force trees to bloom in cold climates, or to light palaces. There were good reasons for all those things, stemming, as far as I could follow the explanation, from the nature of the magic that flowed from Senne, the patron goddess of Ananya. Which led me to ask if other gods had different magical abilities and magic in other countries differed from ours. I gather that wasn’t a very well-informed question, but I never did find out the answer to it while I was at the Academy.
Some of my questions would be answered later. As it turned out, a little too late to be particularly helpful. And in a more painful way than I really wanted to learn them.
* * * *
I startled when I entered my chamber. Sperrin sat dozing in an armchair in the far corner, blade across his lap. His eyes opened before I’d taken two steps into the room; he seemed fully awake.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Sperrin said. “I hope Guthre is healing well?”
I nodded. “She is. They are taking better care of her than I could. I was worried the trip would be too much for her.” I tried to look him in the eye. “I hope your meeting went well.”
“It...I suppose it did. I found out a surprising thing at the end of it that I was hoping you could help me with.”
“Me? My father’s under arrest, remember? Why would anyone here trust me?”
“You’re not your father,” said Sperrin, stretching his legs as he spoke. “Besides, I trust you, and the rest of them trust me.”
“So they’re leaving me free as a favor to you.”
“Basically, yes.” He stood, returning his sword to his baldric. I didn’t know if Sperrin missed the sarcasm in my tone, or just chose to act as if he had. “I’m certain they would let you join your father if you chose. But no one seems to think that’s a good idea.”
“Do you know why he’s been arrested?”
“I do, yes. Nemias and Burren laid out the evidence for me.”
I almost cried out in frustration. He had to be doing it deliberately.
“Can you tell me why he’s been arrested?”
Sperrin thought for a minute, as if replaying a conversation in his mind. “I suppose I can. No one asked me to keep anything from you. He’s been arrested for treason. There is proof he was involved in allowing those Central Alliance soldiers to breach the Drowned City’s defenses. There is suspicion that he was involved in the god’s attack as well.”
“And you believe it?”
“I have a hard time believing it, but I admired your father. Even if I disliked him personally. I’m not unbiased. The evidence is very compelling. He will be given every chance to refute it, I’m certain.”
“Well I don’t believe it. My father would never betray his country or his Empress.”
Sperrin said nothing.
“Well, he wouldn’t,” I said. “No one knows him better than I do. I would know.”
“Of course,” Sperrin said, but somehow the words didn’t actually agree with me.
I shook my head in exasperation. Unbelievable! They were blaming everything on my father, a man who had dedicated his whole life to Ananya. Who had thought of nothing but Ananya since my mother’s death.
Sperrin waited patiently. I had forgotten he had something else he wanted to ask me.
“What was it you wanted?” I finally asked. “You said there was something else you found out.”
“I...it turns out...” It wasn’t like Sperrin to struggle with his words. Directness usually came easily to him. He kept at it, though. “It turns out my wife, Sefa, is still alive. The woman the Empress had me forget when she accepted my request to join the palace guard. No one else here seems to be able to tell me wh
ere my daughter is, but I’m hoping Sefa will know.”
That puzzled me. The pieces didn’t seem to fit together. “Wasn’t she a channeler? I thought she was powerful, and a friend of the Empress.”
“She was very powerful.”
“Then how is she still alive?”
“Apparently, the Empress withdrew her friendship with Sefa at the same time she withdrew my memories of her. She may have withdrawn her magic as well. I’m told Sefa isn’t well, but she is alive.”
“Well, I’m...I’m pleased at that, anyway.” It didn’t feel like the right thing to say, but I had to say something. “So what do you want me to help with?”
“I would consider it a favor if you would come with me when I visit her.”
That surprised me. “Why?”
“We were together a long time. I still have...feelings for her. And the memories I have are very raw. I’m afraid that I don’t trust my judgment around her. I might believe her if she lied, or not believe her if she told the truth. Things were unhappy at the end, and I’ve been gone a long time.”
“You just told me you think my father betrayed the empire without my realizing it, but you want me to come with you because you trust my judgement.”
He winced, but nodded. “I don’t think either of us is a fair judge of your father. I don’t know what he has or hasn’t done, just the charges which you asked me to repeat to you. But I trust your judgment of my wife more than my own.”
The tone of the words came as close to pleading as I’d ever heard from this proud soldier. And I knew I owed him too much to turn him down the only time he had asked for my help, after all of the ways I owed my life to him. But I would still use him to help solve my own problem at the same time.
“I’ll go with you, if you agree to come with me when I visit my father.”
“Of course.” He didn’t even hesitate. “You know your father doesn’t like me, right?”
“I know,” I answered. “But the visit will be easier if he has you to be angry at instead of me.”
“Sure. All I did was save his life. Who wouldn’t be angry?”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
“I know,” Sperrin said. “If he did see it that way, it would be a lot harder to believe in his guilt.”
Really, I didn’t have an answer to that. “When do we go?” I asked, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer.
“If you’re not too tired, I’d like to go now. When we get back I’ll get Nemias’s permission to take you to visit your father, and to bring him anything you think he needs. I asked and was told he was being well cared for. In a fortress as old as this, nothing ever happens for the first time: They have a place put aside to securely hold princes accused of treason—impossible to escape unaided, but luxurious enough that there’s less insult given if the charges prove false.”
Sperrin
Visiting Sefa meant retracing Ketya’s steps toward the hospital. The summer air had grown cool with nightfall in the higher parts of Whitmount, but the walk warmed us.
I wanted to go quickly while I could still force myself to go at all. Much as I didn’t want to face my lost wife and the unhappy memories that were most of what I had left of her, I needed to know what had happened to Lynniene. Also, not facing her felt a little cowardly in my mind, for all that I’d faced the giants with less trepidation.
Even Ketya seemed to sense my nervousness, touching my arm in support as we approached my wife’s cottage.
I knocked at the door of the one-room cottage, first hesitantly, then louder. No one answered. Trying the door I found it unlatched.
A pair of candles lit the room dimly. A large bed dominated the center of the room. Sefa sat in it, propped up by pillows. She looked older than I expected, aged by more than our decade of separation.
She looked straight at me, her eyes radiating anger and disgust.
“So typical of you to enter where you’re not wanted,” she said.
“Nemias said you were here and still alive. I thought I should check on you.”
“How solicitous of you. Ten years after you ruined my life.”
“I am sorry. Leaving was not my choice.”
“Liar. It certainly was your choice.” She almost spat the words at me. I could feel Ketya just behind me, barely inside the doorway. I wondered why it had seemed so important to bring her along.
Because you never would have made it here otherwise, I reminded myself.
There was no point in defending myself, I supposed, but I had to at least try to make things civil if I hoped to find out what had happened to our daughter. “I didn’t choose to leave you behind. I wanted to leave all the killing I was doing behind.” I knew that wasn’t quite true, now that I had my memories back, but why say now what had seemed too incendiary to say then?
“You made your choice. I don’t see how it was any different.”
“I had no idea that the Empress would end our marriage. She took my memories, too—I didn’t even know I had been married until the palace fell. Did they take yours as well? Did you know what had happened?”
“I knew where you went. Don’t you think my sister told me?” Somehow that made me feel a little better, that she hadn’t thought I had just disappeared. Even if it seemed to have made her angrier.
“What happened to you then? You were one of the most important channelers in Ananya.” I suppose it meant that the Empress had found out about Sefa’s failure to use the marriage token and acted on it, even if her sister went unpunished. Angry as I had been the night I held my blade to Nolene’s throat and forced her to use her engagement token, I may have been saving her life. At least for a time.
A spasm of coughing wracked Sefa. But she looked at me no less angrily when she resumed talking.
“The Empress’s friendship left when you did. According to my sister, she blamed me for your leaving. Said if I’d been a better wife you might not have been so unhappy and forced her to lose your services. My power started fading the day you left. And all of my friends left with it. I was sent out to the provinces, asked to do petty projects that no one cared about, and married off to a widower who beat me for hating him.”
That seemed an odd way to characterize our separation. Had she forgotten her own role in what had happened? Or that the widower she lived with—never her husband—was the same lover she’d been visiting for years during our marriage? The same lover she’d risked the Empress’s fury to stay in love with, by not opening her marriage token.
I felt Ketya’s hand on my back, lightly, for support.
“What happened to our daughter?” I asked. “Where is Lynniene?” For some reason, Ketya’s hand tensed at the mention of my daughter’s name.
“She’s not here. I haven’t spoken with her in some time.”
“Does she know...?” I couldn’t finish the question.
“We told her that you had died a hero’s death, the same way you lived. It was kinder than telling her you had abandoned her. And she looked up to you so much. But gradually she forgot you.”
“But I—” There was no point in finishing. Sefa would hear what she wanted to. “Where is she? Can you tell me?”
“I can, but I haven’t decided yet if I will. She was young when you left, but now she is old enough to know what you cost her. She would have been on her way to being a powerful channeler like her mother if you had stayed. Instead, she lost her chances at a good life when you took them away from me.” Sefa coughed again. “She has her own life, without you. She wants nothing to do with soldiers or the army, I can assure you. And she would want nothing to do with you if she remembered you.”
I winced at that.
“She would be dead,” said Ketya in a whisper. “Both of you would be dead.” I don’t think she meant to say the words out loud, but Sefa heard them.
“Do you think I would have died like those others? As strong as I was? As strong as my daughter would have been? What do you know about channeling?”
>
I touched Ketya’s arm to keep her from responding again. There was nothing to be gained by picking at unhealed wounds. “I’m sorry for what happened,” I said. “I never meant to hurt either of you. I never meant to leave either of you. Please don’t hide our daughter from me.”
“Right now, it’s the only thing I can do to hurt you.” Sefa waved the back of her hand at me. “Go away. If I decide I have something to say to you, I’ll send for you.”
* * * *
On the walk back to our quarters, Ketya asked me, “Do you think there’s any chance she’s lying to you?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I knew she might be angry with me, but I hadn’t expected that.”
“How could you have known? Your memories were gone.”
“I did what I thought was right. I didn’t like the person the wars were turning me into. I didn’t want to be constantly worried I might lose control and hurt my own wife. I didn’t want my daughter growing up with a father who loved killing so much.” I sighed. “As it turned out, she didn’t.”
“Your daughter’s name is Lynniene?”
“Yes. It’s a family name. Why do you ask?”
“I think I may have heard it before. Is it a common name?”
“No,” I answered, “it’s restricted. My great-grandmother had it, and three other women in my family before that. But no one else in Ananya has it as a legal name. Maybe you heard it as a nickname?”
“Maybe. That’s probably it.”
We barely spoke on the rest of the walk back, till we neared our chambers.
“I turn off here,” I said. “Nemias asked me to come by and work on some plans with him. I’ll get permission to see your father as well. Late afternoon tomorrow? I’ll probably be busy with army duties until then.”
Ketya nodded.
“Hopefully the visit to my father goes better than tonight did,” she said.
“I hope so,” I responded, but I don’t think I sounded very hopeful.
The Lost Daughters Page 30