Given to the Earth

by Mindy McGinnis

  “I will be honest with you, husband,” Khosa says, taking a breath as if she would continue, but he lays a finger upon her lips. It is a glancing touch, which he removes quickly to spare her, but the act of stopping her speech was to spare himself. There are some truths he cannot bear, and the day has been long.

  “I wish only to sleep, wife,” he says, laying his head on the pillow near hers, their faces almost touching. She smiles at him, runs a hand through his hair as he drifts off to sleep. Vincent is almost lost to the blackness of sleep when he speaks again, not entirely meaning to. “I love you, Khosa,” he says.

  And his wife silently cries.

  CHAPTER 55

  Donil

  I stand at the city gates, watching for Winlan and the other travelers from Hygoden. My horse nudges my arm, perhaps mistaking me for Dara and looking for a stray apple. Though I am undeniably the softer of the two of us, my sister made it a point to carry a little something for the horses, and I rest my forehead against the stallion’s long nose, wishing that she were here as much as he does.

  “She’ll not be gone long,” I tell him, spotting a small braid in his forelock that her fingers undoubtedly put there. He nickers in response, and is answered from up the road. I raise my head from his to see Winlan on foot, leading a wagon loaded with his family and what seems to be the entire contents of his house. Behind him streams a long line of people similarly encumbered, all of them familiar faces of Hygoden.

  I ride to meet them, reining in beside Winlan and his wagon. Pand acknowledges me with a jerk of his chin, Unda by pulling up her hood, then peering at me from the folds.

  “Depths, man,” I say to Winlan. “You did not have to bring home and hearth.”

  “I think I did,” he answers easily. “The earth moved a second time, and I fear may not have much left holding it together. I’ll not leave my people behind to save yours.”

  I nod my understanding, but look down the baggage train that follows him. “Am I to take it then that this is all of Hygoden?”

  “It is,” his wife answers, daring me with a glance to send them away.

  “I put good men on the ship,” Winlan says, nodding his head out to sea. “It’ll clear the point a bit after us. I thought it might be better if I brought word of such a thing before it arrived itself.”

  “Indeed,” I say, wondering how Stille will react at the sight of sails on the horizon.

  Not only Stille, but also Vincent. The matter of the ships has been settled, after a fashion. They will be built, Sallin and I working alongside the Hygodeans to learn what we can and aid in whatever way possible. Meanwhile, Vincent will stay with the army and rouse them to march against the Pietra.

  There are no easy tasks on either side, my hands helping fell trees that they may float on water, Vincent convincing his men to march against an enemy for the sake of an Indiri girl, instead of sitting quietly behind fortified walls. I argued that I was of more use to the army, but he insisted I work with Winlan, being a familiar face to the Hygodeans and a trusted one.

  “And what of Khosa?” I asked, working to keep my face and voice devoid of emotion. “She was well liked in Hygoden, and the ships in her interest.”

  Vincent looked away from me, his mouth tight with some feeling I could not quite interpret, be it anger or worry. “Khosa is unwell,” he said. “I would not have her near the sea.”

  And so it is that I—someone whose gut turns at the thought of boats—find myself scanning the sea for the shadow of a ship and escorting an entire village of sailors along the road to my adopted home. My palms itch in their call for Pietran blood, my eyes always turning the direction in which my sister went. Yet my feet turn toward Khosa, my body at war with itself.

  “Where is Khosa?” Unda asks, trusting me enough to poke her nose out of her hood.

  “I do not know,” I tell her as the city gates open for us. “How could I, when I am not with her?”

  * * *

  “The entire village?” Vincent goes pale beneath his tan when I find him on the training field and tell him Hygoden has arrived. All of it.

  “I settled them in the courtyard for the moment,” I tell him as he gives instructions to a commander, then follows in my steps. “I wasn’t sure what else to do with them.”

  Vincent nods, regaining his color, already searching for solutions. “There would not be enough beds in the entire castle, even if I set everyone to turning out all the empty rooms. I can’t very well ask them to sleep on the ground when they’ve come so far at my behest.”

  “No,” I agree, motioning him forward to where the Hygodeans are sprawled, children holding the leads of their goats, mothers resting with infants in their laps.

  “Depths,” Vincent says, halting his steps at the sight of Winlan. “That man is two of me.”

  “Three,” I correct him, earning an elbow in the side.

  “Winlan is his name?”

  I nod, and we walk forward together. Introductions are made all around, Vincent shaking Winlan’s hand and waving off the awkwardness of a bow coming from a man who towers over him.

  “I’ll not lie to you, Winlan,” Vincent says, surveying the line of Hygodeans who are still marching into the courtyard. “I was not expecting your entire village to answer my call.”

  “No,” he agrees, scratching his beard. “But you need us more than we need you, so I thought they’d be welcome.”

  Vincent’s eyebrow goes up, but I see his mouth twitch with humor as well. “Welcome indeed, but there is the matter of where to house you.”

  “No worries,” Winlan says, waving away the concern. “Hygoden has always seen to itself. Harta made his own shelter when he walked in this place; we will do the same, perhaps even on the same spot.”

  “That is time and timber better used in making ships,” Vincent says, to which Winlan shrugs.

  “I’ll not ask for your help in making houses or hulls, King of Stille,” he says. “But I will ask you that you stay out of my way while I’m doing both.”

  I stifle a laugh, the first I have felt since returning to Stille. Beside me, Vincent draws himself up to his full height, but still has to tilt his head back to address the sailor.

  “Very well,” Vincent says. “Anything that you need. Stille is at your service.”

  Winlan gives him a stiff nod just as the first cries come from the castle walls. Vincent and I climb to the parapets and see the outline of a distant ship on the horizon, sails billowing and whitecaps breaking around it.

  Beside me, I feel Vincent shudder, and I do the same. There are people on that floating monstrosity, hands that know how to turn a rudder and draw a line. They can save us all, or drag us to the depths, and we have no way of knowing which it will be.

  “Filthy fathoms,” Vincent says under his breath, watching as more of his people catch sight of the ship, fingers pointing and women pulling their children closer. Only a few cheers go up, and those laced with trepidation.

  “Tell me I’m doing the right thing, brother,” Vincent says, eyes on the horizon.

  “Brother,” I answer, feeling the word to my bones, “I no longer know what is right or wrong.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Ank

  Ships?” Witt repeats, wide-eyed. “You are sure of this?”

  “My mother walks a fine line, and does not speak openly—”

  “A family trait, it seems,” Witt mutters.

  I shift in my seat, allowing my bones to creak and a hint of discomfort to cross my face as I pull it closer to the fire in his chambers. Age is not respected here, but Witt has always seemed to allow me such moments—even if they are feigned—in which to prepare my next words.

  “I cannot ask her to act outright against the interests of Stille,” I tell him. “She is of their blood and country, as much a part of the royal family as any full member. To push her to speak ope
nly is to risk treason. Something I think you would not ask of your own mother.”

  It’s a blow beneath the belt, but it strikes home—a tender spot. I think Witt does not know how open he has become with me, how his emotions flicker across his face in the firelight. In the great aching middle of him, I have felt a need for his own mother and a regret for the sacrifice on her part that made him Lithos.

  “How sure are you of this?” he asks.

  “As much as I can be,” I tell him. “The male Indiri and the queen traveled to Hygoden to speak to a man there about the building of them. The Indiri is as a brother to the king, and the queen made so not only in name. Vincent cares for her and would not have sent the two remaining people closest to him away from his side if the idea did not carry merit.”

  Witt nods in agreement, and I prepare the next step in my argument, only to be set back by an unlooked-for question.

  “The king took a great risk, making the Given his wife,” he says. “Bringing a woman his countrymen would see dead to his side.”

  “Yes . . .” I draw out the word. “But the Given was always held in high esteem by Stilleans. A girl made to die, yes, but as their savior.”

  “Mmm . . .” is all Witt has in response to that, and I notice that the wine bottle the Keeper brought him before retiring for the night is quite low.

  “Lithos,” I say, changing to formal address in the hopes of bringing his mind back to duty, “what harm is there in letting the Stilleans leave their shores? Your people call not for blood, but land. It will be open for the taking with no blades crossed if only you let them board their ships and take to the sea.”

  “The people may not call for blood, Feneen, but Hadduk surely does, as well as half my commanders and their men under them. Already as Lithos I have brought your people to fight alongside mine, convinced my army to cross water on the hands of your Silt Walkers—and lost more than a few in that act, I’ll remind you.

  “I asked them to fight beside those they found repugnant, stand on unfamiliar sand, and be taken by a wave. Shall I now put forth an order to bide, while those we would have fought and conquered sail away on seas still brimming with the spears of drowned Pietra?”

  His words are dark pebbles falling into the calmness of my mind, sending ripples that disturb all the way to the edges. He is not wrong. The simplicity of allowing the Stilleans to leave, the most straightforward and easiest of all solutions, depends upon something that does not come naturally in these stone lands.

  Forgiveness.

  “Should I give that order, I would be Lithos no more,” Witt says.

  “Would that be such a bad thing?” I ask.

  I expect his anger to emerge, cold and smooth as a blade left unused, but always ready to be drawn. Instead he considers, fingers tight on the cup he holds.

  “For my own sake, I say it would not,” he decides. “But a Lithos who ceases to be that is no longer of any use to the Pietra. There would be boats built on both shores then, but mine not meant to sail far, or for very long.”

  “A sacrifice not unlike the Given,” I say. “Sent to the sea for the sake of your people.”

  “And to what end? I’ve seen the boys training to fill my boots. They will not be kind men, and will spark with the need to prove themselves. I can give the order to let the Stilleans bide and build my boat, and then you would find yourself with a new Lithos eager to march for blood.”

  There is truth to his words, and I ponder them in silence, thinking it will stretch long until I break it. Instead, Witt continues, voice low as if he does not remember that I remain with him.

  “And what would become of Dara of the Indiri then?”

  CHAPTER 57

  Witt

  This is why the Lithos is not to be distracted.

  Ank has left me, concern clearly visible on his face. He stopped for a moment after opening my door and turned, one hand on my shoulder. I’ve had too much wine tonight, and I nearly called him my Mason, a slip that Hadduk would have had my tongue out for. The Feneen’s hand rested on me, and I thought he would give me some word of advice, some indication of which path to take, but his face only reflected my confusion, and he left me with nothing.

  I rest above the bedclothes, the bloody knob that I now call my ear burning. The Keeper wrapped a fresh linen around my head, but the cooling balm she put there first is long absorbed. I could call for her, set her practiced hands to ease my pain, but discomfort is not why I lie here, mind reeling, yet always returning to the same thing.

  I know what it is I want.

  I toss to my side, facing the fresh air that comes through the small balcony of my chambers. Even the sea is at odds with me this night, calculatingly complacent as the pot of my mind boils over. By all rights, I should be with my Mason, making plans as to where to meet the Stilleans, how to descend upon them when they come to rescue Dara.

  I snort at the thought.

  More like rescue Pietra from her.

  “Or me,” I say to the wall.

  “Depths!” I punch my pillow and rise, pulling on clothes. There is no sleep in my future, and I need a clear head if I would speak with Hadduk this night. Walking off the wine that slurs my tongue is the first order I give myself.

  I descend stone steps, waving off the guards who offer to accompany me. I know these halls, let my bare feet wander where they will as my head clears. But there is wine in the blood that flows to my legs, and they have their own thoughts. I find myself before the door to the cells, hand upon the dark wood.

  “What good can come of this, Witt?” I ask myself, the words echoing back from the door to find my damaged ear, the pain there no longer of much concern.

  Because I can think of many good things that can come of it.

  Though I admit, as I open the door that few of them are likely.

  CHAPTER 58

  Dara

  I have no jailer but time.

  Gaul has not been replaced, no other Pietra willing to stay beneath stones with me and risk his brains painting them. My cell floor was dug up shortly after the jailer’s body was removed, and I then returned to it. I’ll find no more branches beneath the dirt, and what areas I’d smoothed for my sleep are now rough beneath me, fists of soil jammed into my spine.

  I sigh, tossing in the dark. With Gaul dead, I do not even know whether it is day or night outside, cannot count the passages of his torch to know if it is midmorning or twilight. The man was set in his ways, and they gave me a measure of comfort, until I drove a spike of sharpened wood through his eye.

  Whether it be night or day outside, it is surely night where I am, and sleep the only passage of time I can look for, though I do not know if moments or days have passed when I wake. The strip of bandage around my arm where I removed my own skin has been changed twice by the Keeper. The blood drying there tells me she is due again to see to it.

  I rest my hand on the wound, feeling the soft pulse of life beneath it, blood and skin mending themselves. I wish them speed, and rest my head against the ground, trying to unsee the face of the spotted man whose neck I snapped.

  He was a true Indiri, stronger than either my brother or I. That he could sit in this darkness for as long as I’ve spent my lifetime and not be a raving animal when brought out has told me fathoms about him. But I’ve had time, here in the dark, to ask my ancestors about him, riffle through their memories and learn what I can. My mother knew him, and thought highly of him.

  What would she think, had she seen him catch a red-hot poker from the air and close his hand around it, to spare me the same? And what would she think of me, to have held his head in my hands, only to twist it so that it would never speak again?

  “He asked me to,” I remind myself aloud, something I’ve taken to here in the dark. And while true, it is little consolation that the fate of the Indiri tribe lay at my feet and I snapped it between my hands. Y
et how could I not do as asked, when he leaned into me, smelling not of earth and sky but of stone and mold, long nights spent alone and his own charred flesh?

  One other thing he said to me, before I sent him to the earth, has stuck in my mind like a ninpop in the sickly sweet juice of a rankflower stem.

  “You are not the last,” he said. “Ask your ancestors, cast back even to those whose faces you’ve not seen before.”

  Here, with no other task for my mind, it should be welcome. Others have tried before me to send their minds back to the beginning of time, when we were beneath the earth itself, tree roots in our eyes and ears, waiting for the rain that would wake us. But to dig that deep is to sink into a long trance, suns and moons passing as others care for your body and your mind roams. The Indiri whose neck I snapped had only a Pietran cell to look at and Gaul to see to his needs, no matter how roughly. He promised me I was not the last, and I saw the truth of it in his eyes before I took the light from them.

  My hand finds a clod of dirt, and I make a fist, breaking it in frustration. Donil has been by my side since we left the pits of Dunkai, and Faja still walks in the forest. I need not dwell on the Indiri of the past in order to know I am not alone in the present. I toss the clod of dirt in my hand against the wall, listening to it scatter, so that I may not acknowledge the truth.

  I do not want to ask my ancestors anything, even though I have time for that and little else. I’ve seen my mother’s death, through her own eyes. Felt her pain and anguish at the thought of her children, heavy in her womb, the rage that split her head as she charged the Pietra, voicing it with a throat bloodied by its force. All this I’ve known, and gone back to my ancestors, seeing that first inherited memory before I can see any other.