by Sonia Lyris
Amarta met her sister’s eyes, trying to be brave enough for both of them. “To the Lord Commander. To answer his questions. To stop running away.”
“No!” Dirina took the pack off the bed, hurled it to the floor, as if that might somehow stop Amarta from leaving. “We have spent years running from that monster. Enana and Kusan and Munasee—so much struggle to get this far away. You would throw all that overboard, all those who helped us? All who sacrificed?”
Her sister did not know about Nidem’s death, perhaps did not know how clearly Amarta had seen their own parents’ death. But what Dirina did not know about how many had paid so dearly to see them escape, Amarta did not intend to tell her.
Dirina’s voice rose in pitch. “You said that if we went there we’d never be able to leave again.”
We. Dirina was not listening. Did not want to hear. Despite the warm air, Amarta felt a chill. “You and Pas will stay here.”
Pas’s arms were around Amarta’s legs, his forehead head resting on her hip.
“But we always go together.”
“Not this time.”
“You can’t go.”
“I can.”
At this Maris walked in, took in the scene. Dirina went to her. “She’s saying she’ll leave. Go back to Yarpin. Maris, tell her no.”
“I just left that stinking sewer of misery. Why would you even consider such a thing?”
Farther north than she had ever been; it seemed a very long way indeed. It was, she suddenly realized, still winter there. Real winter.
She sat down on the bed. Could this wait until spring? Even summer? Another year?
No. The longer she waited, the more likely someone would find them and hurt those she would sacrifice everything to protect. She had to get away from them.
“Maris,” she said, “when we stood on the glass plains, you told us about the many who had died there.”
“And?”
“That blood—that debt you paid against—it is in the past. I see that suffering and more in the future. If I can make the Lord Commander understand, I have a chance of changing it.”
“I know him, Amarta. He won’t change course at your words.”
“He did once.”
“He did?”
“Yes,” Amarta said, remembering the dark night in Botaros, when her words helped changed Arunkel’s history. “He might again.”
“That seems—optimistic, Ama. Even foolish.”
“If you had foreseen what made the glass plains, Maris, would you have stood by and done nothing? Even knowing that any action you took to try to prevent it might have been both optimistic and foolish?”
Maris did not reply.
Dirina’s voice cracked. “Maris, he’ll hurt her. He might kill her. Tell her no.”
Who were they talking about now? The hunter? The Lord Commander?
Was there a difference?
“Shall I guard her day and night?” Maris asked softly. “Shall I take her mind away so that she no longer has will or remembers her intent?” As Dirina seemed to consider her words seriously, Maris shook her head. “No, I will not.”
“But what will happen?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
Dirina was silent a moment. Then: “Ama? What do you see?”
So familiar, the question, along with her sister’s faith in her answer. She swallowed a painful lump.
“And this time,” Dirina said, “you must tell me the truth.”
The truth? Could her sister bear such a thing?
She looked at Dirina, for the first time trying to imagine what it must have been like for her to leave home after their parents had died, to take a girl so young she might have been her own daughter from the only home she had ever known, in the deep dark of night, out to an unknown world, with only sense and reason to guide her. Then to flee Botaros, a baby in her arms, on the say-so of a child.
Amarta had been young enough then that Dirina’s actions had seemed—not easy, no, but surely what anyone would do.
But now she understood it was not so. She could not imagine herself having done the same.
Her sister, she realized, had courage beyond her understanding. Yes, she could bear the truth. She was stronger than Amarta had thought.
She sat on the bed, clearing her mind as the three watched. The question seemed to take a long time to arrange in her head. Perhaps because it was about herself, or perhaps because the very act of seeing made her part of much that might happen, making the threads blurry and sticky, slippery and shifting.
It was like a merchant’s scale. Herself, whole and sound on one side; on the other, the lives of uncountable peoples across the lands. One side might come out right, or the other, but both? She did not think so. Or, if it were possible, it was remote, too distant and intertwined to see. Pieces in motion that had yet to begin. Decisions by those who had no clue they would ever need to make them.
She could see this much: if she did not go, if she did not try, there would be bodies in piles, blood in the gutters.
But here in Perripur and inland to these mountains? Surely this far . . .
She looked again.
The violence would be only rumor for years: the crumbling, northern Anandynar empire, safely distant. Perripin would hear of the broken alliances, betrayals ending in burnings and slaughter. But it would be very far away. For a time.
Then it would come. She saw Kelerre’s tall silver towers torn down, their ruins a mocking tribute to the long friendship and trade ties between the two countries. Arunkin, hungry and destitute, would flee to Perripur, where the air was sweet and warm and food grew wild, fanning out along the Mundaran seashore, bringing desperation and destruction with them.
Pas would be a young man by then. Grown tall and strong, fighting for his Perripin home. A fast flash, barely there and it was gone: a Perripin force overrun by Arunkin, Pas facing death in some useless battle.
She opened her eyes, unable to keep the horror from her face. She looked at Pas, who watched her intently, his child’s eyes and mouth open wide.
“Amarta?” Dirina asked.
“There is no simple answer,” she said, looking at the three of them, Pas last of all, where her gaze seemed to stick. “This is bigger than me. I will make him listen. I must.”
Dirina’s face crumpled in agony. “I’ll never see you again.”
“You don’t know that. Even I don’t know that. Maris, will you look after them until I . . .” Until she what? Did she really expect to come back? “Will you look after them?”
“You can’t go,” Dirina said, choking back tears. “I forbid it.”
Amarta swallowed a laugh, took her sister in her arms and held her while Dirina sobbed into her neck.
For so long Dirina had been strong, keeping them fed and free. To leave her here, where she could have a sweet, warm life, was the best gift Amarta could think of. This painful day would pass.
Dirina wiped her eyes with her hands. “Maris, will you take her where she wants to go? There are so many on her trail.”
“I will be okay.”
“Maris, please?” Dirina was crying openly now. It tore at Amarta, and tears gathered in her own eyes.
Then Pas was in front of her. “Up,” he said firmly.
“Oh, sweet one—”
“Up,” he insisted.
“You’re getting so big,” she said, hefting him into her arms, where he hugged her tightly.
“I’ll take you to Kelerre,” Maris said to Amarta. “Get you some kind of passage north to the capital. If you’re decided.”
“I am.” Amarta looked around the house. “Will they be safe in the weeks you’re not here?”
“Upon my house and my land is every protection in my power to make. A fair bit. They are as safe here as anywhere.”
“But what if someone comes and—” Amarta said. “If you are not here and—”
“What, now—you, too? Nothing is certain. You of all people should know th
is.”
“Yes, but—”
“You’re the seer. Look. Decide for yourself.”
It was hazy, like mountains through a distant rain storm, but she could feel it: a chance for her family. A chance they would not have if Amarta stayed. That they would not have while Innel sev Cern al Arunkel sought her.
“Then,” she said, looking at Dirina and Pas, wanting to drink them in with her eyes and never forget them, “let us go. Now.”
Pas ran to his mother, who picked him up, sobbing. His expression was stark as he watched Amarta over her shoulder, then he, too, began to wail.
A winter storm, mild in temperature but very wet, delayed the boat’s departure from Dasae to Free Port. En route another storm soaked the decks, keeping the two women in the cabin.
“Maris, is what I do magic?”
A thoughtful sound. “I don’t know. I have yet to see you predict something that might not have been a lucky guess.”
“I understand. Have you a coin?”
Maris dug into a pouch, brought out a full nals.
Amarta nodded. Maris flipped the nals in the air. Before it landed on the cot, Amarta spoke. “The Grandmother.”
The Grandmother Queen, dogs at her feet, moon-in-window above, the cross that went through the coin where it might yet be broken, dirty with age.
“Again,” Amarta said and as Maris tossed it into the air: “The river.”
The coin landed, river side up. A switchbacked river, trees on each side.
Maris flipped the coin in the air again.
“River. Grandmother. River. River. River. Grandmother.”
They kept going for a time. Finally Maris took the coin and put it back into the pouch. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, a thoughtful look on her face. “You ask if it is magic. Yes. Also no. Among my kind, your ability is rare enough to be mere rumor; it is said that an elder mage with restored fertility might, in the last moments of her labor, when the child moves from womb to air, open a portal to prophecy.” A small shake of her head. “Otherwise, no; it does not happen.”
“So, not magic, then?”
“But when you call the coin, I feel it in you: a small, pinpoint spark of magic. The rest of the time, not even as much motion as an adept might have.”
“So, then, what am I?”
“Unique beyond reckoning. Little surprise you are sought with such passion and fervency.”
As this sank in, Amarta found herself taking deep breaths, her pulse speeding. “I think I am afraid.”
“You would be a fool not to be.”
The boat came to Free Port in early evening. The two of them stood at the rail to watch the city spires and buildings against a deepening sky. Gulls circled above, diving into the water for food, taking easy flight whenever they chose. Again Amarta watched them with envy.
She had had second thoughts and third ones as well. But they were simple, sensible fear. The decision stood.
Maris said, “A carriage to Kelerre. Then a room for the night. Tomorrow I will ask around, see how things lie, and then we will decide how best to get you north.”
“Not a ship?”
Maris shook her head. “It is storm season on the coast, and not the small, warm swirls we faced on the Mundaran. We would have trouble finding a ship northward from Kelerre and more trouble yet if we took it.”
“So I must walk?” Yarpin seemed a very, very long way away.
A laugh from Maris. “Such a walk in winter would take you a very long time indeed, if you made it at all. The crew has heard there are bandits along the Great Road when it passes into Arun. Even the high mountain route—no easy trail the rest of the year—is said to be blockaded at many points north.” She shook her head. “Your people are finally fighting back, but instead of turning on their rulers they turn on each other. Your country is wounding itself. What fools.”
“Then how am I to go north?”
“I will ask around. I do not desire to go into Arun, Amarta, but someone will. We will find them.”
“The Teva,” Amarta said. “If they were here, I could travel with them.”
A curious look from Maris. “That tribe’s home is a very long way from here. How do you know of the Teva?”
She thought of Jolon and the inked scars around his forearms. Life doors, he had said. Limisatae. Had she, she wondered, yet earned such a mark?
No, she decided. She had not.
“They rescued us, some years ago.” So long ago now, it seemed.
“Well, if there are Teva in Kelerre, I will find them. If not, perhaps some fortified trader caravan determined to make Yarpin by spring and well enough armed to make it so.” She shrugged. “In any case, we will start by buying a good horse for you.”
Buying a horse? “Aren’t horses expensive?” she asked.
The other woman chuckled. “Compared to what?”
Horses, Amarta decided, were expensive.
“Have you ridden before?” Maris asked.
Amarta considered the short time she had sat on the shaota with Mara at Nesmar Port. “No. Maris, I can never repay you for all this.”
A wave of her hand. “Not of consequence.”
“But if the Lord Commander pays me, maybe I can, at least—”
“If you take his money, you will become obligated beyond reason.”
“But—”
“Ama, I have coin aplenty. Mages always have work when we want it. It may be unpleasant work, like searching for a girl on the run, but it pays obscenely well.”
“I could foresee for you,” she said.
“Refrain. I have no interest in knowing what is to come. The past is hard enough. I’ll face the future as it arrives. Does that seem odd to you?”
“No.”
“Are you ever surprised?”
“All the time. The future is not one thing. It spreads and tangles and fades. Like game trails in fog. There one moment and gone the next.”
The ship gently bumped the dock. On shore in the fading light Perripin strode past the port carrying bundles, pulling carts, pressing horses and wagons forward. On dock people yelled, waving at the sailors, pulling ropes tight and tying them to the pier. Above were the first stars of evening, pinpoints through a darkening curtain.
Maris picked up her bag.
Then, all at once, the deep blue sky seemed to go hard like a rock wall. The boat beneath Amarta’s feet felt slippery. Her grip on the rail tightened. “Maris, he’s here.”
“Who is here?”
“The hunter.”
“The one Innel sent to find you? Here in Free Port? Kelerre? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she breathed shallowly. “Any way I go. The Great Road, the mountains. Even by ship. He’s always there.”
Maris laughed. “That’s quite a trick. I wonder how he manages to be everywhere at once. Even mages can’t do that.” The other woman’s voice seemed far away. “It’s all right. We’ll get you to Yarpin safely. After that, I cannot say.”
All the other passengers had left the boat.
“Ama?”
He had always been there. He would always be there. She could not get past him. How had she thought otherwise?
“Amarta. You are afraid. There is no need.”
It took a long moment for her to realize that Maris had spoken, and more time yet to make sense of the words.
She blinked a few times and realized Maris was right. Things were not as they had been. The cause for such fear was in the past. It had changed.
Slowly she unclenched her hands from the railing.
“Are you sure you want this, Ama?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
She was done running. If he was here, so be it.
Amarta watched the city go by from the open carriage, tensing each moment they passed an alleyway or a wagon’s shadow. She expected the hunter to jump out, to climb the carriage from the back, to drag her into the street. But he did not.
They left the carriage at a publi
c house and went inside. Maris ordered them food. Amarta looked around the crowded room, wondering which of the many people he might be.
“Eat, Ama,” Maris urged, but Amarta was not hungry. “We will take a room,” the other woman said after a while. “Busy time here, but they have one open, and tomorrow—”
“No. I must find him tonight.” She needed this to be over.
“Find him? Tonight? You must?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want him to surprise me again.”
“Unless he is one of my kind, Ama, he cannot surprise you with me by your side. Tonight, at least, I can protect you from that.”
“Please.”
“What does he look like?” Maris asked.
Amarta considered all he ways he had seemed to her across the years. “He is clever with disguise. He can seem any number of ways. Light brown eyes.”
A laugh. “I’ll look for the eyes, then.”
By the light of moon and stars they walked the streets of Kelerre, the cool winds of the ocean in their faces despite the high wall that kept the worst of the sands and storms seaside. In the dim light Amarta trailed her fingers along the seawall with its embedded shells and starfish, looking ahead to every gap and opening.
Where was he?
The wall was in ruins, the rocks and seashells broken along the crumbled stones.
She pulled her hand back from stone wall.
“Not here, then,” Maris said. “Let’s go uptown.”
They walked an hour and more. In a small, empty square surrounded by buildings Maris stopped.
“He must be here somewhere,” Amarta said.
Doorway after doorway, her heart would speed and she would hold her breath, thinking that now, surely, he would jump out at them.
“Let’s bed down for the night and try again tomorrow,” Maris said, breaking into a yawn.
The din of another pub came from a nearby building. She had lost count of the public houses they had entered, the many who had turned to look, marking the curiosity of a Perripin woman and a young Arunkel woman together.