by Kari Cordis
Whiteblades.
The northerners were so caught up in their awed examination that not a single word had broken the silence yet. There’d been no welcome, no greetings…the camp was frozen with measuring silence.
Dorian must have been alerted somehow, though, and her calm, dignified person striding into camp broke the rapt tension. They didn’t say anything to each other, the four women, just gravely extended hands and fingers in greeting. You could see an instant likeness between these four faces; that subtle difference that had set Dorian apart, made her indisputably in charge, was echoed in the three opposite her.
Then, as one, the three strangers turned and glanced at the group of stupefied northerners, then in unison back to Dorian. One, the middle one with the brass-colored curls and full lips, said, “Art thou mad?”
Dorian’s shoulders flexed in a graceful shrug. “Who am I to refuse a man the right to seek glory and honor? They wished to come.”
Ari could almost feel Loren’s chest expanding with pride next to him. Even Rodge, who’d probably never had an honorable thought in his life, straightened up a little.
Then, Dorian did something she’d never done before. She turned to the northerner party and said, “These are the Swords of Mercy: Tamaren, Ariella, and Ashaura,” pointing to each of them in turn.
None of the northerner party said a word, except Traive, who dipped his head and murmured, “Ladies Ivory…” The silence lasted even after they’d walked a short distance away with Dorian, heads together.
Ari got up from the fire, no longer hungry for either food or company. Restless, he wandered into the trees, staring moodily up at the sky through their branches. Swords of Mercy…how much did they know? How much knowledge of the world and the gods and one orphan Sheelman did they carry in those awe-inspiring heads? And if they were really as old as they claimed…Bark flaked off under his fingers, and he looked down at it, crumbling it in his hand. He knew what would happen—or rather what wouldn’t. Here were three more potential sources of information and guaranteed he would never have a chance to speak to them. He was never going to find anything out, and it didn’t help that Dorian’s assessment—
“‘Tis better boiled.”
Ari jumped. So close he could reach out and touch her was one of the new women, the one that had spoken and that Dorian had named Ariella. She was almost invisible in the shadows, barely discernible from the night. Her eyes, gleaming faintly in reflected moonlight, dropped to the handful of bark he still held.
“Tho’ ‘tis a fair stew Yve canst make of it, if ye prefer.”
The bark? Her deep, quiet voice was so thick with accent he could hardly make out the words. “That seems unlikely,” he said, barely aware of what he was saying. You could hardly call it a smile, but her full lips twitched and her face lightened a little. She had a rounded face that would be jowly as she got older—if she got older—but for now was just strong, and handsome. Her eyes seemed enormous in the darkness under the trees and they just stood for several minutes, looking at each other.
Finally, she took a step toward him and said, even more low-voiced than before, “Thou art troubled by thy birth.”
He swallowed. This was what he’d been wanting, a wide-open door to his past, and a nice, quiet secluded place with no interruptions to hash it out. The only problem was that this was not the sort of person you poured out your life’s troubles to. She was worse than Dorian, so reserved it surrounded her like a wall, her eyes remote and uncompromising. Alone in the dark with her, he felt more danger flowing out of her than compassion.
“I don’t know much about it,” he countered warily.
“I found thee, but a babe, in the forests of southern Cyrrh.”
His heart thunked spasmodically in his chest. She had found him? “Did you know my parents?” he asked instantly and illogically, hope and excitement all tumbling around together and getting in the way of his words.
“Nay, though they wert surely Tarq.”
“But you don’t know for certain,” he shot back. She’d found him…abandoned?
She came closer, looking up into his face. “Thy physic,” she said softly, “canst only be from two of the Sheelpeople. Never hath it been seen so with mixed parentage.”
He slumped. That’s what Traive had said, but he’d felt it was worth a try. “So, I was abandoned…” he said glumly, trying to ignore the disruption her substantial presence was causing in the immediate atmosphere.
“Nay, for I found thee close on the Forest, as if one had sought those inconstant paths for sanctuary.”
Ari blinked. The Forbidden Forest? Was she saying his mother had been trying to find it? “That could have been chance,” he murmured, not sure why it mattered.
“Again I sayeth nay,” she said, settling into the ready squat of the Whiteblades. He sank down beside her. “Had it been her thought to abandon thee, she wouldst have done in Skoline, for there she surely must have been to ken the paths to the Forest of Il. Nary a whisper of Light nor joy penetrateth the foul dark of Tskag; only through Skoline couldst she have heard of Il, and sanctuary.” He could feel her eyes on him. He was several words behind, trying to translate. “Such means a terrible necessity drove her, to risk running from a Skoline master, to risk the wilds of strange and frightful lands. ‘Tis not unknown that Tarqinas come to love a child, but neither ‘tis common. In thy case, ‘twas extreme.”
That made his eyes grow hot and scratchy, once he worked out what she meant. He cleared his throat, saying more huskily than he’d intended, “So…you took me to the clearing…the Forbidden Forest?”
“Thou neededst tending, so to the Tendress thou wast brought. She hast told thee what passed hence.”
“Was there ever anything else…I mean, did you ever find out anything more…?” How was he supposed to ask this without sounding like he thought his little problem outweighed all the other issues currently lighting up the world? These were Whiteblades, busy with matters of kings and Realms and the occasional misbehaving god.
She sat there for a moment, long enough he figured either she was done talking or whatever she was going to tell him was momentous. Maybe there was something about his father…
“We couldst find nothing out at the time, eventually assuming thou wert but an orphan…but of late…”
She trailed off, and Ari picked up insistently, “Something’s changed. Why else would Dorian want me, not just any random Enemy orphan, but ME, to accompany you all to the Sheelshard?” She sat silently, gazing into the darkness. “What do you know about me?” he whispered, leaning toward her.
“Some lives art lived in peace and quietude,” she finally said, “knowing not change nor tempest but embraced by kin and constancy.” Her depthless eyes sought his in the mottled moonlight of the glade. “That, it is my thought…is not thy path.”
“That doesn’t answer—!” he began, with some heat, before the look in her eyes halted him and he trailed off, feeling foolish. She was definitely worse than Dorian.
“‘Tis the Chieftess that hast discovered thy past. ‘Twill be she that tells it.”
“And in the meantime…” he said, a little dazed. To have come this close, to almost know… “I will just have to be content with what I do know.” He didn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice very successfully, despite that intimidating aura of her presence. She cocked her head at him.
“Thou thinkest…that thou art born of evil blood,” she said, with an almost gentle inflection.
“Aren’t I?” he demanded.
“I have a secret for thee…all art born of evil blood. Thine is no worse than any’s. None art pure enough to stand before the Lord Il…thou art just aware of thy lacking.”
She moved a hand, hanging it casually over her propped knee so that it fell into a patch of moonlight. It was a strong hand, fingers thick and competent with muscle, dark with weather. A commoner’s hand. A commoner’s face.
“How did you come to join the…Followers?�
� He didn’t want to think about Il just right then, what with his ‘evil blood’ and his current resentment over the opaque cauldron of a future the God was throwing him into.
“My people wert attacked and torched by Tarq. A short space wast I captive amongst them, used and abused as it pleasedst them until I couldst escape.” He looked at her in horror, mind completely swept off his own problems. Her face was calm, her words completely incongruous with her tone of voice. She’d said it without hardly any feeling at all—not like she’d come to terms with it, but like it didn’t even matter. “I thieved a bow and learnt to hunt and survive on mine own, making a rough living on the Empire side of the Dragonspine until foundst by Tamaren. She wast mine introduction to the Followers.”
Ari was still staring at her, aghast. “That’s…terrible,” he said with sympathy. What do you say to someone who had been through such a thing? She didn’t seem near as upset as he was.
“‘Twas very rare,” she said, reassuring him. “Tarq never partook of such things. They cared little whether ‘twas man or woman or child they torched. But, very occasionally, one of the upper class, the ghuzkun, wouldst accompany the war parties, to gather intelligence or survey for themselves a particular matter, or, when they didst build Tsagaroth, to collect slaves.”
Ari looked at her in surprise. He’d never heard any of this. “Slaves? From the Realms? That must have hit the Rach hard.” He thought of the dark, fiery Rach he’d seen at the Kingsmeet, and felt sorry for them, that they had been bearing the brunt of his people for all these centuries.
“Thou canst not enslave Rach. When these aristocrats attended the raiding parties, they tookest from amongst the captured and tortured for their dark purposes. But the reports of such things, for all the eons of war that were, art scarce.”
“But…that didn’t change it for you.”
She looked at him with those unwavering eyes, and for a second he was afraid he’d said something stupid or way too personal. But she said quietly, “There exists nothing, not even the most brutal, cruel violations of the body, that canst match an offense against the soul. The great evil inflicted on me in that week with the ghuzkun wast to mine heart, for it planted seeds of such a torment of hatred and revenge that I couldst not rest, couldst do naught but plan and inflict pain and suffering and death upon mine enemies. Such art the ways of the Destroyer, and great wast his success in me for many years.”
“You…you don’t hate them anymore?” That she ever had seemed more unlikely; he wasn’t sure he could believe that calm, strong face had ever been moved so passionately, especially by vindictiveness. For all the alarming sense of power flowing off of her, it was the same clean, pure sort of strength of all the Whiteblades, like the clear, rushing force of the Kendrick as it poured out of the High Wilds.
“Hate them? Ari, ‘twould be like hating a rat that drowneth in sewer water. They have nothing. They art lost. They art prisoners whilst I am free. So long as Raemon lives, they art trapped, bound in his malcontent and his evil. I have only pity for them.”
He stared at her. “How...?” He hated them, and all they’d done to him was give birth to him.
“‘Tis the grace of Il. There ist naught of rational thought about it…,” she said, fortunately knowing what he was thinking, since his brain-mouth connection seemed to be shorting out. “He openeth the shuttered windows and blocked doors inside of thee… so that thou art no longer trapped with thyself.”
“That’s like what Verrena was saying…” he murmured, not even aware he said it aloud.
“V’ren dost know.”
CHAPTER 33
Dorian led them high into the Tamarisks and over a dry, red, dusty pass onto the western flank of the mountains. Everyone seemed happier they weren’t leaving such a flaming hot trail anymore through the middle of Enemy territory…but they hadn’t shaken all their pursuers.
They were sitting around the campfire one night, a treasure trove of nearby pools having allowed baths all around, when one of the sentries came in unexpectedly.
“Look what I found trailing along behind us,” Jordan said from the tree line, sounding amused. A small, raggedy figure followed her into the firelight, and they all peered at it through the dark.
“What is it?” Rodge asked.
“SELAH!” Ari jumped to his feet, striding across the space separating them at almost a run and pulling her into a big bear hug. He thought his heart would burst. His Selah, back again!
“I guess she does know you,” Jordan concluded wryly.
Ari had ears only for the woman in his arms. She was laughing into his chest, that rich, quiet laugh he’d longed to hear for so many months, and trying unsuccessfully and not very diligently to push him away. Finally, he relaxed his hold a little, separating enough so that he could look down at her little face.
It was unchanged, though filthier now even than when he’d first seen it on the raft all those months ago. She cleared her throat, and with a laughing look of warning at him, turned away, pushing herself out of the circle of his arms. Composing her face, she walked with that familiar deft grace over to the fire and the rest of the company.
“Master Melkin,” she said in her plain, no-nonsense voice. “May I join your party once again?”
Melkin just looked at her with those keen eyes. “We aren’t needing a cook, anymore…”
Ari felt cold anger stir in his guts. How long had she tracked them? How willingly had she served them before, never asking for anything, and then had followed them all these leagues—
“…But you are welcome here anytime.”
Ari relaxed, enough to wonder at his momentary fury, and the air was suddenly filled with sound. Banion was welcoming her warmly, Merranic-style, which meant a lot of noise. Rodge was saying something ludicrous like, “NOW you join us, after everything we’ve been through. Where were you when it was dangerous?”
“It’s dangerous enough where we’re heading,” Loren said eagerly, advising her conspiratorially, “you might want to turn back. There won’t be much use for you anymore and you might get killed.” He was very earnest and she blinked at him, a little taken aback.
“Where have you been?” Cerise wanted to know, doubtless thinking of clothes she would like washed out and an extra pair of hands to help with her hair.
“I lost your trail at Crossing,” Selah admitted frankly.
“Yeah,” Rodge interrupted immediately, suspicious. “Why’d you run off? Why are you so afraid of the authorities?”
She shook her head at him, big eyes serious and sincere. “I was just the right age for a Follower; I would have been held there for hours until the Imperials decided I wasn’t…which meant you’d either be detained for hours, which you couldn’t afford, or we’d be separated anyway.”
“No one would ever mistake you for a Whiteblade,” Loren said kindly.
Her lips twitched. “Thank you, Loren,” she said gravely, “but I was referring more to the wait in line—you remember how many girls were there already.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ari said quietly. “You’re here now. Traive, this is Selah,” he said, suddenly remembering the Lord Regent didn’t know her.
They did their courtesies, and then she continued, “I heard that Jarl Banion had passed through Jagstag on his way to meet a party in Cyrrh, and, hoping it was you, started trailing him…but I was quite a ways behind. The floods didn’t help much,” she added ruefully, glancing down at the wreckage of rags hanging about her.
“You smell terrible,” Cerise announced matter-of-factly. “Rodge, get her a change of clothes. I’ll take you to the baths,” she told Selah, who looked at her in surprise.
Rodge said, “Wait—why do I have to—”
“RODGE,” Loren said, both helpful and emphatic, “Do you really want to smell that for the next few weeks?”
Grousing, the afflicted rooted around in his bags, eventually handing her a wrinkled ball of fabric, that, frankly, Ari wasn’t sure smelled much
better.
But she accepted it very graciously, and was just turning to follow Cerise when suddenly she froze, eyes snagging on something in the woods across camp. Everyone turned unthinkingly to look, she was so intense, but it was just Kai coming in from his restless wanderings.
Ari, close as he’d felt to the Dra the past few weeks, was suddenly as displeased to see him as if he were a Sheelman. Why did he do that, Ari groused to himself, as Selah and Cerise disappeared toward the pools. Why did he stare at her like that? He barely met anyone’s eyes, and then only for a few moments, but his eyes would rest on her face and form indefinitely.
Ari fidgeted while the girls were gone, sitting with the group for a while then rising and pacing, then coming back to the fire. What was taking her so long?
“What smells so good?” Roxarta’s voice said from behind him and he jumped up with pleasure at this fortune of chance. Now Selah could meet her.
“Beetleberry cobbler,” Yve said cheerfully, smashing berries into liquefied submission on a nearby rock.
“Ugh,” Rox said, face falling. “For Ash. How she can eat that stuff I don’t know.” She grabbed some rock-baked flat bread and settled down with the group, throwing Ari a smile.
“They’re not the same as the rest of you,” Loren said wisely to her. Ari hadn’t been paying much attention to the conversation, and it took him a moment to realize he was talking about the Hand. Ashaura was one of the new ones that had come in with Ariella.
Rox looked at him sanguinely. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”
Melkin snorted.
“Why?” Loren wanted to know. “Why would they be so different?”
“Mm,” she said thoughtfully. “They’ve been around quite a bit longer, for one thing. And for another…well, their purpose is different.”
“Their purpose,” Loren said carefully, as if he was taking notes. He was getting quite interested in the subject of late, much to everyone’s regret.
“They were formed when the Ages of War were at their darkest, their most brutal and wide-spread, and so were present for all the long centuries of their conflict. It was the intent of the Empress, by the grace of Il, to create a force that could blunt some of the viciousness of the Sheelman attacks, turn some of the wrath, take some of the ferocity upon themselves that was falling on so many hapless innocents. Their purpose from the beginning has been ever, always, only…to make war. To defend those unable to defend themselves.”