The Lost Daughters

by Leigh Grossman

  I managed a wan smile. “I’m supposed to be nursing you,” I said. “Of course I can get up.” My legs felt a bit unsteady at first, but after a drink of water and a few ginger half-steps I felt able to walk normally.

  “How are we leaving?”

  “There are a variety of tunnels and sally ports where we can leave unnoticed,” Guthre answered. “I believe Sperrin was questioning your father on the specifics of his protection agreement with the god’s messengers and fey helpers, so that we can avoid being killed along the way. He apparently has some sort of protection from them as part of this agreement, but it’s not clear how far it extends—at least, he’s not making it clear. But as long as he needs an escort out of prison, your father is being somewhat cooperative.”

  “Are we taking any other soldiers with us?”

  “I don’t think there are any other soldiers in this castle who wouldn’t kill him.”

  I didn’t answer; I just tightened my pack and walked toward the door.

  “One last question,” Sperrin was saying to my father. “Who was that golden-eyed creature who killed Talye? The same one who attacked you in the tunnels under the palace.”

  “That was a misunderstanding,” said the chancellor. “When he saw me leaving with the two of you, he thought I had contravened our agreement. That creature is Kedessen’s half-brother Eury, born of a mortal woman. Eury acts as a sort of emmissary between Kedessen and our world. He isn’t a god, but something more like a demi-god. He can change shape and command fey, and when Kedessen chooses, he gives his brother other powers. And my understanding is that he can’t be killed.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Sperrin answered.

  * * * *

  As Sperrin moved toward the doorway a red-haired figure blocked his path: Kern, the real one this time.

  “I was always suspicious of you, Sperrin,” he said. “Always the hero, but a little too cozy with the traitor. Are you here to throw away the lives of more scouts? I see you’ve added Talye to your total.”

  “That wasn’t my doing. The one who did it will pay.”

  “The one who did it is about to be released, by your hand.”

  Sperrin frowned. “I wish there was a way to avoid that. I am only doing it out of great need.”

  “I heard your conversation with him. You’re not just letting him out. You’re escorting him all the way back to the nightmare place those things came from.”

  “That is also true, and unavoidable.”

  Kern’s red hair was matted to his head, soaked with sweat. He held a light blade, a scout’s weapon. “I knew you were going to release him. Even after everything he’s done. Even after that friend of his killed Talye. I can’t let him leave.”

  Sperrin responded in a surprisingly gentle tone. “We need to take him with us. It’s for the good of the empire.”

  Kern spat. “The good of the empire! This traitor is responsible for all the bad that’s happened to the empire. But Overcaptain Sperrin, the man who loves killing, is determined to let him live.”

  “Let us pass, Kern.”

  “No.” The sergeant spat again. “If you want to pass, you’re going to have to kill me. And I know you’ll enjoy it.”

  Sperrin’s heavy blade flashed, faster than my eye could follow. Kern’s weapon fell to the floor with a clatter. The redhead held his mauled swordhand silently, blood welling between the fingers of his good hand. Fury blazed in his eyes.

  “No, I don’t have to kill you. Don’t tell me what I have to do, sergeant.” Sperrin walked past the disabled scout, the rest of us following.

  We moved down the hallway quickly. Sperrin and Guthre both knew many ways to get in and out of Whitmount unseen from within the depths of the mountain.

  No one spoke for a while, until Sperrin finally broke the silence.

  “Unless we get the magic back somehow, he’ll never fight with that hand again. It will never heal right on its own. It probably would have been better if I had killed him like he wanted.”

  “No,” I tried to reassure him, “you did the right thing. Most people don’t think life isn’t worth living if they don’t get to kill.”

  Guthre shrugged. She had started to adopt some of Sperrin’s mannerisms, I noticed. “Maybe you’re right about Kern,” she said to me, “but I kind of see things like Sperrin on this one. I’m not sure I would want to live that way.”

  Guthre meant the comment seriously, but I had to restrain myself from laughing. She is her father’s daughter, I thought. But how am I going to tell them they’re related?

  Part V

  The Barrow

  Chapter 25

  Ketya

  The Mountain Road: Six weeks after the Loss

  We emerged from the base of the mountain a few hours before dawn. I didn’t need to point out the blue runes of old magic on the walls of the ancient tunnel; even if the others couldn’t see them, we all knew how the catacombs beneath Whitmount had been made. The door clicked shut behind us, leaving no visible seam in the mountain. All the runes were on the inside, I noticed. I wondered if the door could be opened at all from the outside. Not that any of us were likely to be welcomed back to the bloody mess we had left behind.

  I wished there had been a way to undo my father’s treachery without freeing him, without becoming a party to his treason. I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d been more clever I would have figured something out. After all, my father’s plan had depended on me remaining blind to his machinations. Although to be fair I’d been a kid for most of them, and away at the Empress’s Academy for the rest. Intellectually I couldn’t find it in myself to take much blame for my father’s actions, but emotionally that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  Guthre took the lead. I could tell Guthre’s wounds still bothered her, even though she barely showed it. Probably Guthre wanted to be alone, and scouting, doing the things that made her useful.

  At the moment, having been thoroughly played for a fool, I felt anything but useful.

  I’d brought the Talisman of Truce along, had studied its already memorized passages over and over. But I not only had totally missed my father’s betrayal—I still wasn’t sure how he’d done it, and whether it could be undone.

  Sperrin seemed to have a lot of confidence in my knowledge of the treaty. Unless he was just trying to keep me from giving up.

  I hoped I didn’t betray his faith.

  It was hard not to have betrayals heavy on my mind. I barely saw anything around us, my mind just twisting my father’s words into shapes, looking for all the times and places I had missed a chance to see him for what he was.

  What he was. He was still my father.

  He was still the man who had raised me.

  Who had, if his words could be trusted, tried to kill me. Or at least had been indifferent to my expected death.

  I still couldn’t believe it.

  Then snap out of it. I heard Tenia’s voice in my head.

  But I made a mess of things, I protested.

  Maybe you did. So figure out a way to fix it. I’m the one who told you to trust him.

  But you died because I couldn’t see what he was.

  I died because I didn’t listen to you and I overruled your instincts. I should have listened to my chancellor. Maybe we could have done something about it and maybe we couldn’t have. But blaming yourself for being fooled when my mother and everyone else in the empire was fooled too won’t help.

  I knew it wasn’t really Tenia. But I knew exactly what she would have said. And she was right. Maybe I could fix it and maybe I couldn’t, but blaming myself for my father’s actions and misdirections wasn’t going to help. I would need to understand his actions completely to have a chance to help undo them. I couldn’t hide behind his lies, and my own illusions, any longer.

  Tenia was dead. I couldn’t lean on her illusion, either. I would have to solve this myself.

  But tonight, in the dimness of the moonlit sunken road that led us by twists
and turns toward the Mountain Road, I treasured the memory of those illusions.

  I wanted to believe my best friend was still alive. I wanted the comfort of believing my father loved me.

  * * * *

  My father insisted that his agreement with Kedessen protected him from direct attack by godlings or fey, and that they wouldn’t attack others in his presence, either.

  Sperrin disbelieved him, and pointed out the recent example of Talye’s death as a counterexample.

  “Guarding the door of my cell isn’t the same as accompanying me,” my father countered. “You only had to fight on the trail when you left me alone so you could frolic with wolves and giants.” Whether he lied or not, so far, at least, nothing had slowed our passage back to the mountains.

  The truth of my father’s statement carried more than a little significance: If we didn’t have to avoid fey attacks, we could travel on the Mountain Road rather than side paths, and reach the entrance to the land of the gods much more quickly.

  And speed might mean the difference in whether the Central Alliance invasion succeeded. In how many Ananyans starved to death in the coming year.

  Sperrin was reluctant to take the risk.

  Guthre saw things differently. She looked at the chancellor wolfishly, from across the low fire in our rock-sheltered camp. “So this truce that keeps them from touching you?” she asked. “Does it apply to all of you, or would just part of you be enough?”

  He gave her a scathing look, but she seemed unaffected. I suspected that some of Guthre’s sarcasm was to mask the pain from her mostly healed wounds. But then a lot of what Guthre did was to mask pain.

  I wondered about what Talye had been to Guthre. The two of them had been very close friends once, I gathered. Probably a lot more than that, although maybe not for long. I recalled Guthre’s mention of “soldier’s marriages” and Talye’s warnings about getting too close to Guthre, and wondered what the two scouts had shared together, and what had come between them.

  I’d never been that close to anyone. My father discouraged close friendships except for with Tenia, and as close as Tenia and I were, there was always something political about our friendship. I think if she had lived, if the worst hadn’t happened, it could have been more. But in some ways I didn’t even think I knew how to be a friend. Not the kind of friend Guthre wanted me to be, anyway.

  Sperrin

  “What sort of guards should we expect when we enter the barrow?” I asked the chancellor. I wasn’t at all sure we would even take the same route to the land of the gods the chancellor had used before, but I wanted to find out all I could. We walked on the wide smoothness of the Mountain Road now, so far with no repercussions. Guthre ranged well ahead and often onto side trails, scouting for problems. Ketya walked a little ahead as well, pointedly ignoring her father. That left me to try and find out more about the challenges we would be facing.

  “From what I have been told, none of the entrances are guarded,” said the chancellor.

  “Truly?” I asked. “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “Who would dare attack? Who do they have to fear?”

  That sounded true enough, but I had gradually realized that I couldn’t detect the chancellor in a lie. Everything he said sounded true. What a gambler that man would have been! But then, in a way the chancellor already was. Who had ever gambled an empire the way he had?

  “What will the entrance look like?”

  “I can tell you there will be a stairway down, as if you were traveling underground, instead of to another world. But other than that, each entrance is different, and the same entrance may be different on another day. The world of the gods is just as fickle as the gods themselves are.”

  “Says the man who sold his daughter’s name and his Empress’s life to them?”

  “Only to one of them. I would have preferred a lesser deal, but I had to take the one available. Wouldn’t you have done the same?” The chancellor looked at me for a moment. “I suppose you wouldn’t. You left your wife willingly.”

  “That wasn’t my choice. The Empress never told me the price before I had to pay it.” I knew the chancellor was baiting me, but felt heat in my cheeks anyway.

  “Oh, I wasn’t speaking of when you left for the palace. I was speaking of last night. You did know your wife was in Whitmount, correct?”

  A ghost of a smug look crossed the chancellor’s face at his small victory.

  “She’s dead,” I said flatly. “She died in the battle. Killed by your friends as part of your bargain.”

  The chancellor shook his head. “You can’t blame me for incidental deaths. Besides, it wasn’t a very good match. Both of you were unhappy. Your wife wouldn’t follow her Empress’s orders and you were too trusting to see what was going on and fix the situation.”

  “Still no reason for what was done to both of us, and to our daughter.”

  “You would have to take that up with the Empress. I had only just arrived at the palace when your case came up, so I was not fully involved; The final decision was hers. It did not help that you waited to act until there was no good solution anymore, and all the Empress could do was try to salvage what she could before two useful assets were rendered entirely useless.”

  Ketya

  The Mountain Road: Seven weeks after the Loss

  By now Sperrin and Guthre both had to suspect they were father and daughter, I was sure of it. If not for the matter of my father’s treachery, the matter would have been resolved already.

  I couldn’t imagine how they couldn’t have figured it out. Unless they both just didn’t want to confront it. But I knew how important it was to Sperrin to find his daughter: My father might have lied about many things, but I didn’t think he had lied about that.

  And no matter how much I might not want to think about it, any of us could die in the mountains. Would they want to die never knowing they had found each other, however accidentally? Would they really want to die with that kind of secret? So I looked on it as a sort of duty to tell them, whether they wanted to see it or not.

  But I had no idea how. Just blurt it out? What if they looked at me like I was crazy? But my father had told me it was true. The same father who had lied to me until the final confrontation in his cell at Whitmount.

  Finally, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. It felt like that first river crossing in the darkness the night we escaped from the Drowned City, when I could barely keep from shouting.

  The four of us sat more-or-less around a small cooking pit. My father tended a makeshift stew bubbling above a tin of cooking fuel.

  “I think you two need to talk to each other,” I said, indicating Sperrin and Guthre. My father looked down at the stew, a hint of a smirk on his face.

  “About what?” Sperrin asked. “Is there a problem?”

  I didn’t answer. The tiny clearing descended into awkward silence.

  “She’s right,” Guthre finally said. “There is something I’ve been wondering. How did you know my mother?”

  “Who is your mother?”

  “The woman Captain-general Nemias was talking about. Sefa. My mother was named Sefa.”

  “There must be a mistake. Sefa was my wife. I hadn’t seen her in many years, though. Not since the Empress sent me to the palace and made me forget her.”

  “That was my mother’s name,” Guthre said. “I hadn’t seen her in a while, but I heard about it when she came to Whitmount.”

  “Guthre,” I broke in, “he’s your father. Your real father. My father knew about it the whole time, but he didn’t tell me until after I left the hospital. I swear I didn’t know until then.”

  Sperrin looked a little dazed. “Really? But Sefa said....”

  “She lied to you, Sperrin,” I said. Now that I had actually said it the words flowed more easily. “She was angry and wanted to hurt you. I don’t think she had any idea where Guthre was.”

  “No,” said Guthre. “She left home before I did. I never spoke to
her again. She and I didn’t talk much the last few years at home.”

  “So you were Lynniene...?” Sperrin said the words slowly, as if from a great distance.

  Now Guthre flushed. “I didn’t know the name was real. I thought I’d made it up. Memories of a good father who I’d been taken away from.”

  “Sefa said they told you I died.”

  “Maybe they did. I don’t remember them telling me anything. I was pretty young. Then when I was older things had gotten so bad that I couldn’t believe any of it had been real. I remember a lot of trips with my...I guess my real father. That was you?”

  “That was me,” said Sperrin. “I was away fighting a lot, but when I was home on leave, we would have lists of places to visit, and we would try to see all of them before I had to return to my unit.”

  “I remember, I think.” The dazed look faded from her face, replaced by a touch of anger. “So that animal wasn’t my father? I wish I’d known. I would have killed him.”

  Sperrin

  “I almost killed you,” I said. The two of us were scouting well ahead of the others, just close enough to respond to a shout.

  Guthre shrugged. “That’s all right. It’s what fathers do.”

  “It’s funny. I came to Whitmount partly to look for you, once my memories came back. And then I didn’t even recognize you in all the time we spent together.”

  “I have changed since I was eight, you know.” She spat. “The thing that bothers me is that the chancellor knew about it the whole time. I think I’ll kill him.”

  “We need him to bring the magic back. He knows it, too.” The thought pained me a little.

  “I’m not an idiot. I won’t kill him while we still need him.”

  “He’s very good at being needed. You’re not the first person who’s been this angry at him.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” she said. “I’m sure it happens all the time. But most of those people have a crazy amount of respect for the man, like you and Ketya do. I just think of him as the guy who betrayed the whole empire because he couldn’t handle it when his wife died. It won’t bother me a bit if he dies.”