by NS Dolkart
His eyes remained alert. He knew these elf captains well enough to know that any attack would be blinding in its speed and viciousness. He had seen them fight each other once, watched as they exchanged perfectly matched blows until the sudden end when the Illweather captain had removed her opponent’s arm and head. The Goodweather captain had taken it well at the time, and he didn’t seem much the worse for wear now. There was just the hint of a scar on his neck where the blade had sliced through. Hunter wondered what magic had put the elf’s body back together, but then he managed to focus once more on the sound of the whetstone and pull his mind back from speculation.
The Goodweather captain smirked. Did he find Hunter’s meditations amusing? Or had Tritika somehow revealed something inadvertently, something that he would soon report to his queen? There was no way to know, not yet. He concentrated on the sound.
“I have sympathy for your friend’s point of view,” the Illweather captain said. “It is an unpleasant noise.”
“I’m enjoying it, myself,” her counterpart replied, his smile growing wider.
“You Goodweathers have always had poor taste.”
Hunter chanced a look at Tritika. The young woman was a decade his junior and very, very quick, and her fervor in training for battle had always been unmatched among his students. She was one of the few villagers who had mastered his elf-fighting technique of mental misdirection. Psander had not needed his recommendation to choose her for a second bodyguard: Tritika had already proven herself last year by fighting off a pair of elven scouts and making it home to safety. Hunter was quite proud of her.
Tritika had a look of intense concentration on her face, no doubt focusing on keeping her own thoughts blank. She was very earnest. But of course, Phaedra would have said the same about him.
He could not think about Phaedra, not now. Afterwards, yes, when the elves were gone and no lives depended on his concentration. This brief conversation was a feint, a distraction designed to keep him from staying sharp.
The Illweather captain was smiling mischievously at him now. “What are their majesties discussing, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps your wizard is negotiating an exchange,” the Goodweather captain suggested. “Selling some of you in return for our rulers’ help.”
“Help with what?” Tritika asked, taking the bait.
“The skyquakes, I believe. Your Psander created them herself, but they have gotten out of hand. Like your Gods before you, you godserfs have difficulty controlling your creations.”
Hunter went back to honing the sword in his mind. If he knew more than the elves did on this matter, he ought to let it stay that way. He could explain what Phaedra had told him later, when the danger was gone.
Hunter missed his actual sword. It was bittersweet to focus his memories on the experience of sharpening it when the sword itself had broken long ago. There was no blacksmith in Psander’s fortress and certainly no iron mines – Gods knew where the elves had procured the steel for their sickles – so the only weapons he had now were those he could make or loot. Today he held an elvish sickle, chosen both for the dominance it signaled and because his preferred spear was too long for such close quarters. Would he need to put it to use?
An hour dragged by, slowed by Hunter’s need to remain alert at every moment. His arms were getting tired of holding the sickle, his eyes of glancing back and forth between the captains, watching for early signs of hostile motion. His muscles ached with tension. The fairies could tell, of course, but still they had not attacked. Hunter suspected they had never meant to, but it was too dangerous for him to make such assumptions. If he let his guard down…
Finally, the door opened and the Illweather prince swept out, followed closely by the Goodweather queen. “Come,” the queen said to her captain. “Castle Goodweather must be informed. Its help may soon be needed.”
Hunter gave Tritika a glance and they fell in behind the elves, escorting them back to the gate. Then at last the enemy was gone, the threat over.
Tritika collapsed against a wall. “I thought that would never end!”
“It was long,” Hunter agreed, “and you did well. If they had learned much from us, I think they’d have said so.”
Tritika nodded. “They do love taunting.”
As they made their way back upstairs, Hunter finally let his mind wander. His first thought, as always, was of Phaedra, so brilliant and so beautiful and so far away. It had been eleven long years since he had seen her, years that had felt empty in her absence. The older villagers kept urging him to forget about her, to marry and have children and behave like a man with blood in his veins, but he could no more forget Phaedra than he could forget to breathe. If there was any chance that she would have him when she came back, he could wait forever.
She loved him too, or at least she had said so, but her work had been far too important for her to abandon it and make a life with Hunter. It was more than that too: she didn’t want to marry him, because marriage so often led to children. She didn’t dislike little ones, he thought, but her study of magic was more important to her, and it would always be more important. She could risk no distractions.
Hunter could accept that, but he didn’t think he would ever truly understand it. He had himself lived an undistracted life once, and come to regret it. He knew now that only people were worth dedicating one’s life to. He hoped she would give him the opportunity to devote his life to her.
What was taking her so long? He asked himself that question nearly every day. She had sealed all the gates besides Psander’s one – he was sure of that. The elves had gone wild when the gates would not open for their raids and had come storming up to Silent Hall to demand that Psander let them through. Psander had laughed and the villagers had thrown stones at them until they left. So if the work was done, why had Phaedra not returned?
Perhaps Mura was to blame. The pirate sorcerer had set up his camp on the island of Tarphae, where Psander’s gate led, so returning was probably easier said than done. But Phaedra was adept at travel magic, so Psander said. If she couldn’t find some way to clear them off the island, couldn’t she at least evade them? She had managed once before.
But there was always that worst possibility, the one that Hunter refused to believe: that Phaedra had tried to come back to him and failed. That she was dead. It was a horrible thought and he always pushed it aside when it came to mind, but for how long could he keep this up? How many years before he would have to consider her lost?
When Hunter and Tritika got upstairs, they found Psander still sitting in her workshop, apparently lost in thought. “Did the meeting go well?” Tritika asked.
Psander didn’t even look up. “As well as might have been expected,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Psander answered, “that if we’re very, very lucky, we may all survive the year.”
3
Delika
Criton was agitated. He always got like this before a visit from Goodweather, his eldest daughter. He would stalk about for days, clenching and unclenching his hands and being generally useless while his wives managed their children, washed the clothes, herded and milked and sheared the sheep, cooked the meals… in short, while they did everything. The older three rolled their eyes and labored on; only Delika found his nervousness endearing.
“Delika, what did you like to do when you were twelve?”
They were in Delika’s bedroom; she was mending clothes while he paced in front of her.
“You don’t remember?” she asked, folding her arms and pouting at him. “You were there, you know.”
But he didn’t answer, just looked miserable and desperate. Delika took pity on him.
“I liked being with you,” she said.
He smiled weakly at her. “You’re no help.”
“That’s what she’s coming here for.”
“I should show her something she’s never seen bef
ore. Did I bring her to the citron groves last visit?”
“Yes. But there weren’t any fruits yet. I bet she’d like them better now. It smells so nice there.”
He came over and sat down beside her on the bed. “Do you think she’ll be angry about us? You two are like sisters.”
She wanted to soothe him, to deny that Goodweather would care that they had gotten married, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Of course Goodweather would care. She and Delika were best friends, despite the distance and the infrequent visits. Delika didn’t know what she’d think of this new arrangement, but she was bound to have strong feelings. Would she hate Delika for what she’d done?
Criton didn’t even wait for an answer. “I’m going to find Horda,” he said, standing up again. “Goodweather loves her lamb with the carob paste.”
That was the one problem with marrying Criton: Delika still had to share him.
She wished she didn’t have to. Though she was his newest wife, Delika had known Criton longer than the other three. Not much longer, she had to admit that. Maybe a year. But what a year that had been.
Criton had rescued Delika twice when she was five years old, first from elves she could not remember and then from the grasping ocean God, Mayar. He had found her a family near Ardis, since she had not known where her own was, but a few months later she had run away from those not-parents and found him again. After that, he had given up on sending her away. When his first wife had left him for another woman, taking her baby with her, she hadn’t even considered bringing Delika: Delika was his. She had always been his.
But then, a few weeks later, his cousin Belkos had killed him. The two-and-more months that followed were still the worst in Delika’s life. Kilion Highservant, who was now high priest, had taken her in, and she supposed he and his family had been kind to her. She didn’t really remember how they had treated her, to be honest – all she remembered was the pain.
It was almost funny, in retrospect, that the Highservants had been the ones to watch over her after the assassination. Their own daughter Vella was that very same girl who had run off with Criton’s first wife, Bandu. She was now Goodweather’s second mother, so in a strange way they were almost all related. But back then, the Highservants had only been grieving parents with a missing daughter, and Delika had only been a little girl with no parents at all.
Things were better now, so much better, and Delika had Bandu to thank for that. Bandu had traveled to the underworld with her strange magic and brought Criton back from the dead, so for all Delika’s jealousy, for all that she wished Criton didn’t have that longing look in his eyes whenever he asked Goodweather how her mother was faring, Delika did her best to be grateful. When that ugly feeling rose, she reminded herself that without Bandu there would have been no Criton for her to marry.
Delika had always wanted to marry Criton, though her reasons had changed over the years. When she was little, she had thought that if you loved someone you were supposed to marry them, and it was as simple as that. Then it had been the overwhelming need to stay with him, the fear of having to part from him when she got older. Her awakening had come late, only a couple of years ago. She had never been boy-crazy, but all of a sudden she was him-crazy, so much that it frightened her.
It still frightened her, really. It wasn’t until this year that she had overcome her fears and asked, demanded, begged him to marry her, because she hadn’t been wrong when she was five and she hadn’t been wrong when she was ten and she still felt the same at fifteen, so it wasn’t going away. It had taken persistence and courage to make him see her as anything other than a child, but she had managed it in the end. Now he was hers, really hers, and it was her greatest accomplishment.
Naturally, the other wives resented her for it. Three wives should have been more than enough for any man, even Delika couldn’t deny that, but their marriages were all political, not love marriages like hers. Criton had taken two wives among the plainsfolk and one Dragon Touched widow, all in order to bring his people together. The young city of Salemica was thriving on the peace he had wrought, and these other wives and children were very much a part of that. But Delika had cemented no alliance for Criton, bought him no peace treaty. It was obvious that if he had married her, he must love her more than the rest of them.
Horda was the nicest about it. She had been the first to marry Criton after his return from the dead, and though she clearly still thought of Delika as a sort of stepchild, she had never treated her like a threat. She had borne Criton four children: Torgos, Galanea, Aegypa, and baby Salemis, who had been named after the dragon. They were all so much younger than Delika – all the children were – that taking care of them had been her primary chore for years. Horda had greeted Delika’s marriage with dismay and even horror, but she hadn’t taken it out on Criton’s newest, youngest wife. She was a good woman. Delika didn’t exactly like her, but she tried to appreciate her.
Papira was Criton’s second wife, if you didn’t count Bandu. Her jealousy was obvious, as was everything else about her – frankly, Delika found her boring. She didn’t talk much, but when she did, she may as well not have. Her one redeeming quality was that she was too much of a coward to really cause trouble for anyone. That was a relief, but also not remotely interesting. Papira’s motivations and opinions were completely standard, her insights uninsightful – even her face was dull.
Criton would never have married such a boring person if not for the politics of the thing, Delika was sure of it. But when she had said so to Criton’s third wife, Iashri – a mistake in itself, talking to her about anything – Iashri had smiled wryly and said that those three children hadn’t seeded themselves.
Iashri was Criton’s only Dragon Touched wife, and she was the one who really bothered Delika. She always acted as if she knew so much more of the world than Delika did, and this knowledge inevitably involved some critique of Delika’s happiness. If Delika liked Goodweather’s visits, it was because the two of them were so frivolous together. If she thought Criton loved her, it was because she didn’t understand men. If she enjoyed Horda’s cooking, she was eating too much.
Delika had almost, almost managed to hold her tongue and let Iashri’s comment slide, but instead she had muttered, “Lord knows how he managed with you,” and of course Iashri had heard her. Delika’s big mouth was always getting her in trouble.
It had been that way ever since she was little, and she didn’t know if it would ever get better. A part of her hoped it wouldn’t. She knew the other wives thought her impetuousness came from youth and immaturity and she didn’t want them to be right, even if it would mean trouble her whole life. Whatever they thought, Delika was happy with who she was.
It was Iashri, really, who didn’t have any confidence in herself – that was why she kept trying to make Delika feel the same way. Delika might have been younger than her, but she wasn’t stupid. Iashri’s favorite phrase had once been, “When you get married, you’ll see,” but now that she couldn’t use that anymore, it had been replaced by, “When you have children.” That was still safe for now, since Delika was the only wife with no children of her own. Horda had her four, Papira three, and Iashri was pregnant with her second.
“Wait until you have your own,” Iashri had told Delika a month ago. “You think you love Criton more than we do because we don’t worship him; well, wait until you have a screaming baby and Criton disappears.”
Delika hadn’t had a good response for that one. It was undeniable that Criton wasn’t as helpful with his children as he might have been. He played with them often and showered them with love in a most endearing way, but when they cried or whined or made demands he would leave them to their mothers or to Delika and disappear. Still, Delika didn’t think it was right to blame him for it, because it was when Criton tried to deal with the situation himself that he most often ended up in one of his rages.
He had to be careful about these things, because when he was tense Criton became prone to fits of
rage. There was no predicting their timing: they would strike suddenly in the midst of some otherwise unexceptional argument or conversation, and when they did it was terrifying. He would shout, slam his fists against the furniture, and breathe sparks, and that wasn’t even the scariest part: the really frightening thing was that it was all so undeliberate, so sudden and disproportionate and sometimes even nonsensical, that anybody watching him could see that he couldn’t stop himself. And that meant that if it ever did turn to physical violence…
Well, it hadn’t yet, and everyone was alive and well.
Criton did always apologize after an outburst, but even Delika had to admit that it wasn’t good enough. What good was a heartfelt apology if he had so little control over himself? He couldn’t promise never to do it again, because he hadn’t meant to do it to begin with.
She did wonder sometimes if it had been the outbursts that chased Bandu away. Delika could remember times when the two of them seemed to do nothing but argue. On the other hand, she couldn’t remember any rages from those days, so perhaps there hadn’t been any. Maybe it had only started after she left him, or after he had died and come back; maybe there had been instances that she didn’t know about, before she had come to live with them. After all, Delika had only spent a few months with them before Bandu left Criton, and his rages weren’t all that common. Even now, with his life a good deal more complicated than it had been back then, he didn’t lose control more than a few times a year.
In any case, avoiding frustration was clearly the only way he knew to avoid an outburst. Surely the other wives ought to forgive him for that – he was doing his best for all of them.
At least he wasn’t frustrated right now, just anxious. Goodweather visited only twice a year, when she and her stepmother came to Salemica for a few weeks to visit their respective relatives, and more than anything, Criton was afraid of disappointing her. He desperately wanted her to enjoy her visits and spoke openly about how happy he was that she and Delika were friends.