My anger at him dissolved into an awful, bottomless remorse.
“No, Babba, no. I did this,” I said. “You could’ve said no when everyone else asked you. But you didn’t want to say no to me. I asked too much.”
“In a thousand lifetimes, you could not ask too much.”
I sniffled and wiped my nose on the cloth he’d given me. I felt a degree of control returning as I thought about what could’ve gone differently. Was there something either Babba or I could’ve said or done that would have resulted in something other than us standing here, shocked and shaken like frail twigs?
“This is the part of my life like in all the old legends you used to tell us when we were small. There’d be this part when the hero realizes the king, his father, isn’t perfect and the hero storms off. I guess I stormed off.”
Babba didn’t move even an eyelash. “Because you’ve discovered I’m simply human, like anyone else.”
“At the end, the king always dies and they reconcile on his deathbed.”
“Do you plan to wait that long to forgive me?” The question was an earnest one. Babba stared down at me, his eyes reddening again.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. You’re my father, and I’m a woman, not a hero, and I do love you. And I know, better than anyone, that what you said was all you could say.”
Babba’s voice came out strangled.
“You’re wrong, Hadara, about being a hero. What you said back there was the most heroic thing I’ve ever heard. You may not believe your schooling ever did you any good, but those words came from somewhere.”
It was my turn to get choked up. My thoughts came out in a flood, as if I’d been crying them as tears, all in a stream. “I just wanted to help. I’m going to be a healer. I wanted to heal this whole city, all at once, but I’m just one girl. S’ami told Valeo I was powerful, but I don’t know what he meant; what power could I have?”
I had said Valeo’s name, which conjured up the bloodied dagger in his hand, something I could never un-see.
Babba took one of my hands in both of his and gazed out along the canal again. “Well, I don’t know this Valeo. But if S’ami says you’re powerful, then he would know. And I believe him.”
“But I can’t stop this. You couldn’t stop it. No one can.” My voice rose to a wail. “I can’t stop anything.”
Babba raised an eyebrow. “Then perhaps your power is to start something.”
Start something? I sniffled. “Like what?”
Babba shrugged. “I expect you’ll figure it out. You and your mother. You’re the ones who always seem to know what needs doing.”
The canal and its slow ripples caught our attention again for a few moments, our gaze wandering off into our own avenues of thoughts and distractions. A brass horn sounded from the far-away Ward, signaling a full turn since midmorn. If I lingered much longer, it’d be midday.
Yet I wasn’t sure I could face Leba Mara and her sarcasm today. I straightened myself slowly and sighed.
“Duties,” Babba said, glancing quizzically at me. “At the sick ward?”
I nodded. “Leba Mara won’t be happy with me.”
“Word will have reached her by now. She’ll know. You won’t have to say anything.”
“I suppose.” That sounded right, but I didn’t want this moment to end. It wasn’t that I was enjoying myself, it was just that I couldn’t bear the idea of trudging back to Ward Sapphire and going about my day as though it had been any other day.
“Today is not off to a good start, but we must continue it, Hadara. We have duties, and we must do them, yes?”
I nodded, and we hugged and held onto each other until I could feel my heartbeat match his. He had me take his arm and we walked back to the Ward together in silence, me watching my feet as they reluctantly took me back, the planks of boardwalk disappearing one by one. I clutched the cloth he’d given me, which I twiddled between my fingers, occasionally wiping a stray tear or dabbing at my nose until we reached the familiar pavilion by those hideous iron gates. If we passed anyone, I never saw them, and Babba didn’t acknowledge anyone with his usual solemn nod.
We parted with a final kiss on each cheek. I was alone with my thoughts. Only two things ran through my mind. The first, of course, was Widow Reezen dying.
This was the second: my father had called himself a coward.
That, too, felt like a death. I wanted a different ending for him, and for me.
10
The first demon I let live among the people so that he might learn to love and be loved. Instead, the demon took a name, Ice-dust, and swore to destroy me. He pursued me to my Temple and threatened me upon my altar, cursing my name and answering my theurgy with flame and fury.
I am immune to your perversion of nature that you call magic, Ice-dust said. I knew then he had to die.
—from Verisimilitudes 10, The Book of Unease
As Babba had predicted, Leba Mara had also heard about the executions and my presence there. But her not saying anything was worse than if she’d asked endlessly about it all. I kept anticipating and bracing for questions that never came, and instead had to contend with sad, pitying looks and sighing head-shakes that left me wondering if she wanted me to speak first or was dropping hints I should remain silent but strong.
Finally, Leba Mara motioned me aside.
“Y’need the rest of the day off?” she asked, her face pulled into a concerned look I didn’t really want to notice.
“No,” I said, looking away.
“Better to keep busy, I suppose.”
I shrugged, staring at some blurred spot on the floor. “Sure.”
“You young ones and your one-word answers! Girl, I’m trying to help here.”
“I’m alright,” I said, examining my feet with sudden interest.
“Look, I’m going to tell you something I never told anyone, not even your mother,” Leba Mara said.
That caught my attention. What would she have ever withheld from Mami that was important? Something about herbs or medicines? I couldn’t imagine, but I was intrigued.
“I had to witness your grandmami’s hanging,” she said, her shoulders giving an involuntary shudder as she recalled it. “I was a young healer then, just gotten my totem hardly a season earlier. Reyhim needed me to examine the body, make sure it was certain dead. Yes, we still do that. All three of today’s hangings were in here already, freshly killed.”
I put a fist to my mouth to keep from retching, unable to keep back memories of Widow Reezen’s bloodied, broken corpse.
Leba Mara looked away.
“You get used to death,” she said, her voice distant. “You can’t be a proper healer if you don’t. Doesn’t matter how they die, corpses all look the same after a while. Only I hadn’t seen a hanging before then, and I vomited on Reyhim’s blue robes, I did. Nearly got myself hanged for it.”
My jaw dropped open. “You puked all over the Azwan?”
“He wasn’t Azwan then, just a stuck-up, mad-pious high priest with his sights on the Temple proper.”
“You puked on him,” I repeated. I wanted to laugh, in a sick, weird, unfunny sort of way.
“I puked all over those lovely blue robes and his fancy blue slippers,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. “Proudest moment of my career.”
And then I did laugh, a hoarse, hiccupy sound that mixed with a few dry sobs. I put a hand over my mouth, but any attempt at discretion died when Leba Mara joined in, her mouth cracked into an utterly wicked grin.
“That’s a good girl,” she said. “Look, with the respect due to him, Reyhim’s become the Most Worthy of all Nihil’s servants for a reason. You’d have to be mad-pious to want to make every last, stubborn disbeliever fall in line. He’s good at what he does, may Nihil bless his hardened crust of a soul.”
Part of me understood that Leba Mara had to enforce doctrine as our healer mistress. The other part of me wanted to stomp away in disgust. Just because this was wh
at an Azwan decreed didn’t make it right, and Reyhim needed no apologist. I wanted to believe that, and I mistrusted anyone—including Leba Mara—who was going to suggest otherwise.
I folded my arms across my chest and glared at Leba Mara. “How many more people will it take until the Azwan has filled his quota of disbelievers?”
Leba Mara shook her head. “No one can answer that, Hadara. All we can do is our best.”
“Is that what Nihil expects of us?”
Leba Mara’s tone hardened. “It’s what we expect of ourselves. Never lose sight of that.”
The guilt pang hit sharply, and I winced. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry. It’s just hard.”
We walked back into the main sick ward together, her arm around my shoulders, which felt comforting. Yes, she had to enforce rules—she couldn’t be a healer without the Temple’s say-so—but she did so on her own terms. Maybe that was the example I needed. I hugged my middle and imagined she was my grandmother, and she was old and wise enough to make me feel like I could get through today. Eventually, the tension seeped out of my shoulders.
“That’s better, Hadara,” she said once we were back among the throngs of healers and patients. “Can we find a speck of sunshine in all this?”
“Sunshine? You mean something good?” How could something good come out of this day?
“Who’d be that hard-hewn rock of a soldier come looking for you? Vanyo or Vaneo or something. Didn’t seem to be on a mission, just wanted to check on you.”
That Valeo had stopped by looking for me wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine on a dark day. He was hail and storm clouds and the last thing I needed was for Leba Mara to fish for new gossip at my expense. The sick ward could be as bad as the marketplace sometimes. “That would be Valeo. It’s a private matter.”
“Oh, alright then. Private Matter it is,” Leba Mara said with a wink. It was so out of character I almost gasped. Valeo plus sunshine plus winking? What kind of crazy things did Leba Mara imagine about us?
“Time was when I had ‘private matters’ with a young gentleman.” She was practically singing. I’d never seen her so cheerful.
I was horrified. Widow Reezen was dead. For all anyone knew, more people were being hanged as we spoke. And Leba Mara was reminiscing about her courting days.
“I should go get my mop.” If I could keep from flinging it, I’d consider it an accomplishment.
“Not so fast, O young woman with the Private Matter.” Leba Mara took out her broken shield totem and waved it overhead. “Training today.”
“Training? In what?” I asked, clearly irritated. Maybe I should’ve agreed to a day off after all.
“Oho, annoyed I’m onto your little secret, are we?” Leba Mara turned pink with joy. She then waved to everyone around her. “Well, we won’t tell anyone, right all?”
About thirty people, including patients, laughed aloud. Some secret. My face flushed. My whole body flushed. I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.
“They’re hanging people,” I blurted. “The Temple built a gallows on the patio behind the sanctuary.”
That shut everyone up.
And got everyone staring at me.
Finally, a beggarman cradling his bloody hand spoke up.
“We know,” he said. “The fishermen’s all been saying it this morning. They’s seen it from halfway outta harbor.”
An orderly rolling bandages nodded. “The bodies have already been in for examining, didn’t Leba Mara explain?”
“Yes,” I mumbled at my feet. “I just don’t see how you can be in a good mood about it.”
Leba Mara turned back to me, fists on hips. “Don’t go blaming folks for thinking young love is something to be cheery about in these dark days. Yes, alright, he’s a Temple Guard. I’d have picked someone a bit, ah, more local, let’s say. More attuned to our ways. Less … imposing. But it is what it is. Soldiers fall in love with local girls all the time, if the old legends tell it right.”
I gulped and changed the subject. I didn’t want to be any more of a local legend than I was already. Besides, I had other obsessions than romance. “My Babba tried, you know. He really did.”
I wanted them to know it wasn’t because Babba agreed with this. I needed them to know he hadn’t failed them. Not really.
“He’s a good man,” Leba Mara sighed. “It wasn’t much of a hope. But stop trying to change the subject. Young love is very serious. And who knows? You might do some good reforming one of them. Don’t you go missing a lovely chance at happiness because you’re too caught up in others’ misery.”
She waved her totem again overhead and began singing about young love and spring flowers and kissing and more love. Then she darted and wove the totem around me, casting sparks in a dozen shades of soothing green. The sparks became light waves, the hues becoming more subtle and varied. The more she waved it around, laughing, as if taunting me, the greener the air around me got.
“Feel anything?” Leba Mara asked.
I shook my head.
She lowered her arm and gave me a confused look. “That’s the best I can do for a cheer-me-up spell. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.”
“Sorry, no.” I didn’t feel any different. Not at all.
“Humph. Well, there’s no helping self-pity. All you need is to return to work.” She motioned me over to the beggarman with his injured arm. “Let’s begin our training, then. Easiest there is. All we’re doing is washing it off first to see how bad it is. So all we’re going to do is conjure some moisture, just a few drops. Watch closely, and do as I do.”
Magic. I ought to be dancing around with excitement. I should be leaning in, ready at a jump. Magic fascinated everyone I knew, but the Temple only let a miniscule number of people actually try it. If Nihil didn’t deem you worthy of using his theurgy, you didn’t. That simple. So Leba Mara was offering me one of the highest honors the Temple could bestow, something that had to be cleared with an Azwan. If this had been Amaniel, she’d be exploding with joy.
Except, of course, an Azwan already allowed Amaniel to study magic, and I’d come to my own ideas about its worth.
And I hated even the idea of it. I’d much rather heal people by washing their injuries, stitching them up, splinting broken bones, and whatnot. That’s what it said in the text Leba Mara had given me to read. It made few mentions of magic, as if the authors meant for healers to be ready if the already unpredictable magic gave out on them.
And that was good enough for me.
That wasn’t what Leba Mara had in mind. At the very least, I supposed I should know the truth about how easy or hard it was to conjure or spellcast or scry or curse or heal.
“With Nihil’s blessing on you, love, this should be easy for you,” she said. “You ought to be quite powerful, I’d think.”
My back went rigid at that, and I forced a smile. Yes, I had Nihil’s blessing, but it hadn’t occurred to me that came with blanket permission to learn magic. Of course. How stupid could I be? The Azwans were likely expecting it.
Nihil’s nose, I hoped that wasn’t so.
Leba Mara had me hold my hand over hers so that we held her totem together. She waved it over the man’s injured arm while she muttered some nonsensical words about water and waves and droplets of rain.
A sharp jolt went through my hand. I found myself on my bottom, staring up at Leba Mara, who was hopping around, shaking her empty hand. My heart seized up in my chest.
The altar. The egg. The flash of light and then nothing.
I closed my eyes and inhaled, deep and long. There is no altar. There are no Azwans. I pulled myself to my feet and stopped my reeling, found my center of gravity, and opened my eyes. See? The sick ward. No altar. I also didn’t see any totem, but I did note a smoldering black scar on the wall over the beggarman’s cot. He peered out from beneath the crook in his elbow, eyes wide in shock.
“Why, by all three moons,” Leba Mara said.
The man just looked a
t us.
“Must not be working right today,” she said, crinkling her brow.
An orderly picked up the totem and bounced it from hand to hand, then dunked it in a basin of water, where it landed with a blunt hiss. When it was cool enough to touch, he handed Leba Mara the totem again. She held it up to her eyes and squinted at it, then down at me. I rubbed my singed hand on my smock. It stung, and the hair on my neck pringled.
“Hadara, did you do anything?” She gave me her warning side-eye.
I shook my head and gulped. “I swear it.”
She waved her totem over the man’s arm to try again. This time she did so without me touching her—just to see if it works, she said—and immediately a light mist gently scoured the man’s arm clean.
“Well, isn’t that peculiar,” she said. “Nihil’s never deprived me of his theurgy before. I’ll have to ask the high priest about it later.”
The orderly patted her arm. “It’s alrighty, Sister Mara. We all have days.”
“Not me. Never.” Leba Mara turned the gold totem over in her palm as if it had disappointed her. “Peculiar. Wonder what you have to do with it, Hadara.”
I rubbed my palm on my dress again. It didn’t sting any longer, but it had to be more than coincidence, didn’t it? It was something about me. I could see magic when others couldn’t. I understood languages. But what was this new thing I could or couldn’t do?
“Maybe we shouldn’t try anything,” I said, “until after you speak with the priest?”
She scowled, but didn’t argue.
After that, I made it a point simply to watch Leba Mara work. A few half-formed excuses floated in my brain, but I didn’t need them. She was so rattled, she muttered to herself as we worked. She decided we’d start with small injuries—surface wounds and ingrown toenails and bad headaches and the like. I followed her around as she examined people, and that suited both of us. It’s what I was really interested in, anyway, and I spent the day with my eyes bugged out and brain engaged. Questions poured from me. It felt good to be distracted, and I threw myself into learning everything I could without letting up for a moment. Because if I stopped, I would start thinking about this morning, and that felt like a dangerous thing to do.
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