“Eian?” Shona looked hopefully toward the old knight. He’d spent more time in the Swamp than any of them save Zerill.
Eian hesitated, and then closed the distance with reluctant steps. “We… we can carry her,” he said. “For now. Once we’re away from here we might be able to find branches and make some sort of travois. But I haven’t navigated the Swamp without lanterns and a compass in a very long time. I don’t know—”
“You know better than we do,” said Shona. “Just pick whatever way feels best, and pray. We need to move. Help me get her up.”
Eian lifted Zerill under the arms, and Shona took her feet. Josen moved to help, but thought the better of it. In his condition, he’d only slow them down—though he doubted the two of them would carry her particularly quickly without him, either. Not fast enough to outrun Castar. He could tell by Shona’s face that she’d had the same thought.
“She’d better wake up soon,” he said.
She nodded grimly. “Let’s go. Eian, lead on.”
They were interrupted before they’d gone five steps.
“Highlanders,” Zerill mumbled in a thick, groggy voice, “put me down. You’re going the wrong way.”
Shona
Shona watched hungrily as Zerill skinned and gutted the huge fish.
The swampling woman had recovered quickly—out of sheer necessity more than anything, Shona thought—and led them through the Swamp until she’d found a well-hidden spot in the shadow of a stone ridge with thick-hanging vines on all sides. Neither Shona nor Josen knew the first thing about setting up a camp, and Eian was accustomed to better tools and supplies, but they’d made do under Zerill’s terse instructions. Stumbling in the darkness with only her voice and the faint witchlight to guide them, they’d made do.
As soon as they were hidden, Zerill had set her own fingers—it had made Shona wince just to watch—and splinted them with a pair of straight sticks and a length of fabric cut from Eian’s surcoat. When that was done, she’d shown them how to build a fire that wouldn’t give away their position from a distance—the fire itself was recessed into a large hole, dug deep enough to hide the light from searching eyes, and a second smaller tunnel brought air to the flames. She’d known exactly where to gather fallen branches for fuel, and she’d sparked a flame by rapidly twisting a pointed stick against a small log with a nest of bark scraps and wood shavings for kindling. Shona hadn’t even known that was possible—she’d always relied on a tinderbox, and the manor’s servants were usually the ones using it.
Once the fire was lit, casting just enough light to see by over the lip of the hole, Zerill had gone into the darkness alone. She’d returned not an hour later with a fish impaled on her spear unlike any creature Shona had ever seen—a strange smooth-skinned thing as long as her leg, with whiskers like a cat and round black eyes the size of a clenched fist.
Now, Zerill squatted by the fire with her knife in hand, readying the fish to cook. It had looked less than appetizing to begin with, and the cleaning and skinning was disgusting to watch, but Shona’s stomach wouldn’t stop rumbling. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so hungry. She’d been too nervous to eat all day leading up to the escape, and they’d trudged through the Swamp for hours before Zerill had chosen this place to camp. It was hard to tell, beneath the mist, but it had to be long past midnight now.
Eroh was already asleep, curled between the roots of a boggrove tree; Goldeyes perched on a lone branch halfway up the trunk, watching over his master. Eian leaned against the ridge at the very edge of what scant, flickering light escaped the fire-hole, standing sentinel against the dark. Around the fire, Josen and Shona sat quietly as Zerill cleaned the fish. There had been little conversation as they walked, and no one seemed eager to start one now.
When she was done, Zerill wrapped the fish’s innards in its skin and silently handed both to Josen. He took them without complaint, which surprised Shona—he’d always been somewhat squeamish. I suppose he’s been travelling with her for a long while now. He must be used to this. Josen took a clump of witchmoss in hand and carried the offal out into the Swamp, beyond the short reach of the fire-light, presumably to dispose of it so that it wouldn’t bring predators to the camp.
Which left Shona alone by the fire with Zerill.
She didn’t know what to say to this woman she’d risked so much for—this swampling who could hunt and make fire and fight Deeplings single-handedly. Just looking at those black eyes and that pale skin made Shona nervous; she was afraid her voice might tremble if she spoke. Silence was easier. But if we have to rely on each other, I should know what she’s about. She watched quietly for a while longer, gathering her courage.
Zerill spitted the fish on a long stick and laid it over the fire-hole to cook, then took up another, shorter stick from a pile she’d made to her left side. Holding it with her splinted left hand, she drew her knife with her right and started to sharpen the stick to a point. She didn’t pay Shona any mind.
Come on, Shona. The swampling certainly isn’t going to speak first.
“You… you killed a Deepling,” Shona said at last. “Alone. Unarmored. With a broken hand.” The impossible seemed as good a place as any to start.
“It was luck,” Zerill said, without looking up from her work. “The bird startled it.”
It had been a great deal more than luck, Shona was certain, but she didn’t argue. “Is it… common among your people for women to fight like that?” She had seen Zerill fight before, but still it was hard to accept just how different the swamplings’ culture had to be. Or that they had a culture at all. Storybook monsters weren’t supposed to have their own customs.
“Why should it matter that I am a woman?” Zerill looked up from the stick she was sharpening then, her brow furrowed; for a moment Shona thought that she would give anything to come from a world where she could ask that question so sincerely. And then Zerill reminded her why that was a foolish wish. “If only half of the Abandoned could fight, it would not be enough. We are too few already, and fewer with every purge.”
“It’s just… it’s different in the Peaks,” said Shona. “You must have noticed we don’t send women into the Swamp very often.”
Zerill gave a small nod. “Most who come to kill us are men.” She seemed interested now, or at least she didn’t look away again. “I have always thought it strange. But I have seen highlander women in the grey of your knights. Rarely, but not never. What about the woman who helped us escape? Morne. She is a knight. It is allowed.”
“It is, but… not the way it once was,” said Shona. “Before the King’s War it wasn’t uncommon for women to earn their knighthood, or even to serve as lord general. One of our oldest fables is of a woman called Cer Lena the Nightfalcon, and she wore the grey. Now, there isn’t really a rule against it, but a woman has to be ten times as stubborn as any man to make it as far as Cer Falyn has. And even that wouldn’t have been enough without Eian’s help.”
Zerill frowned. “You say these things as if the ways of the Abandoned are the confusing ones. I should ask you why your people choose to cut their numbers in half.”
“You don’t have to convince Shona that we’re doing it wrong,” Josen said, stepping out of the dark with a shallow grin on his face. “I can’t count how many times she’s told me that she wishes she was born in the Age of Queens.” He sat down next to the fire once more, and crossed his legs beneath him.
“I have said that, but…” Shona shook her head. “It isn’t so simple. Whatever else he did, Kaleb made forward steps that I wouldn’t give up. The baskets, for one, and half the trade pacts we still honor. Maybe he was the ruler we needed at the time. And there have been good kings since. But poor ones, too. Some who might have been better replaced by their sisters. It’s just… frustrating how easily people forget everything the Aryllian queens did for the Peaks.”
“Why do they forget?” As she spoke, Zerill laid the now-sharp stick down to her right, and picked
up another from the unsharpened pile on her left, starting the process over again. “We know of your King Kaleb, and we know there was a war. Your soldiers move through our Swamp when you fight amongst yourselves. But even the oldest of the Abandoned do not remember why, if we ever knew. We see too little of what happens in your mountains. There must have been some reason.”
“Not a good one,” Josen muttered. “He just wanted a crown. Everyone seems to.” He didn’t elaborate—apparently he was content to let Shona handle the details.
Zerill was still waiting silently, so Shona did her best. “The reigns of our last queens were… troubled. Trade was difficult before the baskets, and many duchies lacked the means to feed their people without reliable aid. There was widespread famine, and a terrible plague in the Plateaus. Kaleb was Queen Karan’s elder brother, and he thought that he could better handle the crisis. The people were eager for change, and liked the sound of his promises. It wasn’t hard for him to gather supporters. They named it the King’s War, after he won. He had to justify his treason, so he said that the women after Aryllia had led the Peaks astray—that it was the Sky God’s will that a man sit the throne from then on. Kaleb’s Law, it’s called.”
“But your people still revere Aryllia,” said Zerill. She’d sharpened three of the small sticks now and was working on a fourth, stopping once in a while to flip the fish spitted over the fire. “Even below the mist, we hear her name.”
Shona hesitated a moment—she’d often wondered about that herself. “I don’t think anyone in the Peaks knows how to make sense of it. That’s the problem. We’ve been ruled by kings and by queens, and our history has a wound in the middle of it right between the two that we can’t come to terms with. Some of our greatest rulers have been women, Aryllia chief among them, and many of our heroes too: Terene and Berial and Elica Braveheart, figures like the Nightfalcon in our stories. People still respect those names. But that doesn’t fit with the way things are now, so people tie themselves in knots trying to rectify one thing with the other.
“No one overtly says that a woman can’t fight, or lead a house, or govern a duchy—but the royal family is bound by Kaleb’s Law, and it would be unseemly not to follow their lead. It would be heresy to disrespect the Windwalkers, so we say that they were something more than human, above such classifications as ‘man’ or ‘woman’. There are a hundred different excuses, and they all mean the same thing: the men in power, for the most part, like things this way.” Shona sighed, and spread her hands. “But then, it isn’t as if Aryllia’s daughters ever allowed a man to sit the throne while they were in power either. It’s complicated, and people don’t like that. It’s easier for them to assume that the way things are is right than to ask complicated questions.”
“But there must be others like you, who would ask those questions. Can you not make your voices heard?” Zerill seemed genuinely perplexed by that.
“Some try,” Shona said. “It never amounts to much. The Convocation opposed Kaleb during the war, but after he won, he exiled their seat of power to Skysreach. Ines Terene—Josen’s grandmother—governs her duchy, and her daughter will after her, but they are far from the center of the Peaks, and even Terene’s name doesn’t stop people gossiping about the Mad Woman of Whitelake. The closest anyone ever came to real change was Deoma Luthas, with most of the outer duchies behind her. But she needed the Convocation’s support, and in the end they chose Gerod’s side.”
“Politics,” Eian spat—the first thing he’d said since Zerill had awoken. He didn’t move from his place at the edge of the camp, or look back, just kept watching the dark for whatever might come. “I am starting to see that the Word of the Wind changes very easily to suit the needs of those who interpret it. Benedern thought he might take back power by putting a queen on the throne again, so he encouraged the delusions of a madwoman.” His hands clenched into fists at his side. “The Convocation sent thousands to their deaths, and then they shrugged their shoulders and sided with Gerod the moment the lowborn started to turn against Luthas.”
“After she murdered my aunt,” Shona said quietly. “Benedern’s mistake was supporting her to begin with, if that’s truly what happened. He wasn’t wrong to betray her.” She’d always wished she could have known the woman she was named for, the sister her father had loved so dearly, the queen whose death had driven Gerod to end the lines of Eagles. She would never forgive Deoma Luthas for taking that chance from her. “But I don’t know that it would have mattered if he’d chosen a better woman. We’ve been told for too long that the rule of queens nearly destroyed the Peaks. Kaleb’s legacy. It isn’t a simple thing to fight centuries of conventional wisdom.”
“But you still do,” Zerill said. “You brought us out of Greenwall. If you were the weak highlander woman they would have you be, we would not be here. Having to fight has made you stronger. It is the same way with the Abandoned.”
That meant something, coming from Zerill—Shona found herself admiring the swampling woman’s strength more and more. Considering the torture she’d suffered at the Stormhall, it was amazing that she could even walk, and yet when they’d needed her eyes to guide them, she’d led the way. She’d stood her ground against a Deepling alone, with a broken hand, and she’d won. And her physical endurance wasn’t even the most impressive thing. To hear Josen tell it, she’d defied every law her people had in an attempt to save them, risking her own exile to do it. She could have been the hero of any number of stories Shona had read as a child.
If not for those black eyes, and that pale skin.
No swampling was ever a hero in the legends of the Nine Peaks. In stories, they were evil savages for the Nightfalcon to trick with her wit and guile, monsters for the Thunderblade to slay with his blessed sword. And for all that Shona admired Zerill, she was more than a little bit scared of her too. She was trying not to be, but she’d learned that fear all her life, even before she’d seen the woman kill four Storm Knights in the dark while outnumbered ten to one. That was the kind of fight the swamplings knew—the kind that taught them how to kill. Whatever battles I’ve fought, they don’t really compare.
“Maybe it has made me stronger,” Shona said after a long moment. “But I can’t say I feel very grateful. If it meant the fight was over, I’d gladly give up whatever strength comes with it. Wouldn’t you?”
“What do you think?” Zerill asked. With the stick she was whittling—her fifth, now, and the last from the unsharpened pile—she made a sweeping gesture at her companions around the fire-hole, and a quiet murmur rose from her throat. It took a moment for Shona to recognize that it was laughter, because no smile came with it. “I am leading three highlanders through the Swamp for no more than a distant chance at peace. This fight has made me strong, but it has also made me desperate. To do what I have done… my people would call me mad.”
“Ours would call us the same,” said Shona. “For putting our trust in a swampling.”
Zerill sawed a thick chunk of flesh from the spitted fish with her knife, and jabbed it through with the stick she’d just finished sharpening. Then, meeting Shona’s gaze once more with those eerie black eyes, she held the piece of charred fish out like a peace offering.
“Then let us hope that they are both wrong,” she said. “Because there is no turning back now.”
36. A Revolution Planned
Shona
Shona nearly collided with Zerill when the other woman came to an abrupt halt ahead. Her heart thumped hard against her chest, and she barely held back a scream when Josen bumped into her from behind.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
Shona waved a hand to silence him, and squinted pointlessly at the blackness ahead, trying to see whatever Zerill had. The swampling woman had far better dark-vision than the rest of them; if there was something out there beyond the glow of Josen’s witchmoss, she would be the first to know.
But Zerill only said, “We are close. We should stop here.” And now that she’d said it, Sho
na noticed that she could hear the distant croaking of toads, faint but clear.
“Why?” asked Shona, and her voice trembled just a bit. “Cer Falyn and the others don’t know our basket fell. They won’t know to wait. Don’t we want to get to this Toadthroat before they leave without us? And Castar won’t sit on his hands while we accuse him of treason—he’ll have sent men after us. He could be marching a force on the Plateaus already. Why waste time we don’t need to waste?”
It was a real concern, but she was against delaying for more than just practical reasons. She’d never been in the Swamp at all until Castar had marched her through it, and now she’d spent much longer in the cold and the wet and the eerie witchlight than she’d ever wanted to. She’d never been so tired in her life. At least with Castar there were tents and bedrolls. She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand, and couldn’t suppress a shudder when the movement made a stiff red stain scrape against her shoulder. And clothes. She’d washed her hands and face as best she could with murky marshwater, but no amount of washing seemed enough to remove the high chastor’s blood from her clothing.
“Because it could be a trap,” said Eian. He didn’t look back, just stared ahead through the dark, holding a clump of witchmoss high. “If Castar caught any of the others, he might still have sent men to the meeting place to lure us out. She means to scout ahead first.” The sound of his voice actually made Shona start. He’d spoken little in the last two days, even to Josen, and he could hardly meet Zerill’s eyes without flinching. For her part, Zerill seemed happy enough to let it stay that way.
“Yes,” Zerill said. “I will get closer, look for signs. Verik may be with them, or nearby. If he is, he will know whether it is safe. If not, I will see what I can see and hear what I can hear.”
Eroh tugged at Zerill’s hides. “If you’re going, I want to come.” Shona hardly recognized the boy, now that they’d cleaned the dye from his skin. His hair was still dark—that color was harder to rinse out—and faded spots of persistent brown clung to his face here and there, but otherwise he was paler than Zerill. Above his dark robe, the white circle of his face caught the witchlight so that from a step or two away he was nothing but a disembodied head floating through the Swamp. He might have been a ghost—the restless spirit of one of the Windwalkers of old.
The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1) Page 61