by NS Dolkart
But it was a small price to pay. Goodweather was alive, and Bandu would lose no more years to her pact with Ravennis. Things had turned out the way Vella had always wanted them to.
Because, through inaction, she had murdered her rival.
Vella had seen those vines waiting behind Criton. She had seen them and known that just as soon as Goodweather was safely in her arms, the Yarek would kill him. The thought had come to her then that if she refused to take the girl, if she said she was too weak to carry her and fly, and insisted that Criton bring her all the way back to Bandu, she could have spared him too.
She could have, and she hadn’t. She’d have to live with that for the rest of her life.
When they reached Salemica and Vella told her people her news, the wailing didn’t end for days. Their leader was gone, and with him, the high priest’s son and fifty good men: sons, fathers, the prides of their families. The lamentations before the great temple were loud enough to be audible even from outside the city.
An Ardiswoman who had set up her church just inside the walls came wandering over to find out what all the noise was about, her dark-skinned son by her side. Bandu gave the boy a hard look and said, “He’s Narky’s,” but she did not approach them, and when the two had satisfied their curiosity they left without any introduction.
Vella wept with her parents, but it was Delika who wailed the loudest, rending her clothes and screaming all alone among the mourners. Vella felt sorry for the poor girl. It was exactly as she had said – Criton hadn’t hesitated to make more people depend on him. Delika had had so little life outside of him, and now she was well and truly lost.
She was in a dangerous state, that girl. She had no one to reassure her, no one to help her recover from the blow. Criton’s other wives shunned her, and when one of them did approach, presumably to try to comfort her, Delika pushed her away and screamed until she retreated. A minute or two later, she ran from the crowd toward Criton’s house.
“Myma,” Goodweather asked. “Can I go after her?”
Vella nodded. Delika should not be left alone in this state, lost to grief and despair. The house would be empty; the other wives gone to their parents’ houses, their children with them.
“I’ll go with you.”
She took her daughter’s hand, and together they followed the girl to her empty home.
Delika had left the door open. Vella entered, hoping to catch the girl before she did anything rash. She found Delika by the sound of her sobs and was relieved to see that the girl had run to her bed first and not to the kitchens. There was less opportunity for her to harm herself here.
As she approached, the girl screamed, “Go away!” still face-down on her pillow.
“No,” Goodweather said. “I’m not leaving until you come too.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes, you are,” Vella answered. “Goodweather is absolutely right. You shouldn’t grieve alone.”
“I can grieve however I like!”
“Not right now. Right now you can come with us, and grieve with us at the temple.”
“I don’t want to go there.”
Goodweather sat down next to her on the bed. “We know. But you have no other family to grieve with, so I’m sharing mine with you.”
“Just go away!” Delika yelled at her. “Leave me alone!”
Goodweather looked back up at her mother, but Vella shook her head. “She can’t be left alone right now.”
Delika raised her head at that. “What do you know?”
The girl’s self-centered impertinence made Vella furious, and it took all of her strength to answer productively. “I watched my brother die,” she said, her voice low and intense, barely containing her fury. “As we speak, my father is wondering if his life’s work has all been a waste, if there will be no one trustworthy to take over when he dies. And I have had to carry this news for weeks, to tell my father that his son is dead. But this grief will not tear me apart, Delika, and do you know why?”
Delika shook her head, the tears still streaming down her face.
“Because I still have people who love me and care about me, who will not let this grief swallow me whole.”
“I don’t have anyone like that.”
“You do now,” Goodweather said.
Delika stared at Vella’s daughter for a long, hard moment. Then she threw herself back down on the bed. Goodweather put a soft hand on her back. “Please come,” she said. “I want you to be with us. You’re my best friend.”
Delika simply lay there, weeping, but neither Vella nor Goodweather moved from their places. “Please,” Goodweather said again.
At last, Delika lifted her head again. “Fine.”
Goodweather held Delika’s hand as they left the house and entered the temple, and soon they were hugging and crying and whispering together. Vella had never been prouder of her daughter. Goodweather might well have saved a life today.
The days that followed ran together like tears, and when at last it was time to go, Goodweather asked to stay with Delika at the great temple.
“For how long?” Vella asked.
“You can visit sometimes,” Goodweather answered. “I want to stay with Grandpa and learn everything from him. You were right. He needs an heir.”
Vella stared. “You want to be high priestess?”
Goodweather shook her head. “I want to be high priest.”
“But…”
Goodweather rolled her eyes. “I can change my body, Myma. We can all change them. Anyway, please? I want to be Grandpa’s heir.”
“Bandu?”
Bandu looked from one of them to the other, her expression unreadable. Finally, she nodded. “Your father is good, Vella. He teaches you to be good, he can teach Goodweather too. But Goodweather, you visit us too sometimes, so I can teach you to hear the Yarek. I am wrong that I never teach you before.”
They left just the two of them, Vella with Bandu, her wife, her love. There was a strange lightness to this moment, a lightness she had never felt before: Goodweather had been an infant the day Bandu had dragged Vella from her husband’s tent. This was the first time in their whole life together that they were really and truly alone.
Vella debated with herself the whole way back whether to tell Bandu of the opportunity she’d had to save Criton, and the choice she had made to reclaim Bandu’s years instead. She had to tell her, she had to. But she couldn’t. Maybe tomorrow.
They slept in their own bed, alone together, thankful to have each other with so many years ahead. The house had not burned down in their absence, thank God Most High, though the remains of their soup had long ago congealed into an earthy glop. They could clean that tomorrow. Vella was almost asleep, Bandu’s arms around her, when she thought of Criton again and her eyes flew back open. No, she must not keep this secret. She had to speak.
“Bandu,” she whispered, “are you awake?”
“Hm?”
“I have to tell you something. I… I killed Criton.”
Bandu made a confused, sleepy, dismissive sound. “You don’t kill Criton. Belkos kills Criton and the Yarek kills Criton, not you.”
“I could have saved him, Bandu. I saw the Yarek planning to kill him as soon as he let Goodweather go, and I didn’t warn him. I let the Yarek kill him without stopping it.”
Bandu patted her on the side. “You are too good. Go to sleep.”
“Bandu, I could have saved him, and I chose not to because I wanted those years for you. It’s still murder.”
Vella’s wife yawned and sat up. “Criton kills himself, Vella. And he takes Goodweather to die with him! Let the Yarek eat him!”
“But I undid your work, Bandu. You risked everything to bring him back.”
Bandu snorted. “I bring him back to save you and Goodweather from war. I give those years to Goodweather, not to him. There is peace now, and Goodweather is big and safe and strong. He can go back to Ravennis. I don’t care.”
“I still feel guilty.”
“I know, because you are not wicked. But you are sleepy, and I am sleepy. So sleep.”
This time, she obeyed. When Vella awoke, a breeze was blowing across her face from the open window. Bandu was already up and dressed.
“Where are you going?”
“The Yarek says to come out to talk.”
“I’m going with you.”
Bandu waited impatiently while Vella threw on her dress and pulled her hair out of her eyes, and then they were away into the woods. Vella kept trying to ask what was going on, but Bandu shushed her. “The Yarek is talking.”
“Well, what’s it saying?”
“It says sorry it almost kills Goodweather, and sorry for your brother. It says it listens to Phaedra, and now it says sorry.”
“It listened to Phaedra and repented to God Most High? Their war is over?”
“Yes. But it breaks door to lower world, and bad things come out.”
“What?”
“Yes.”
Then Bandu’s face brightened. “No!” she cried in sudden excitement and disbelief. “Come, Vella!”
She broke into a run, a sprint like Vella hadn’t seen in years, if ever. Vella chased her through the woods but could not catch up. “Where are you going?” she cried as she ran. “If you can hear the Yarek already, where are we going?”
Bandu did not answer, only sped away like a woman half her body’s age. Vella ran and ran after her, her breaths aching in her chest, until suddenly Bandu stopped short, bending over and then kneeling on the ground.
“What’s going on?” Vella panted, but then she saw it: the wolf pup in her wife’s arms. It was missing an ear, the area ragged almost as if it had been in a fight, but the pup couldn’t have been more than a few days old, not nearly old enough for such a scar to have healed.
“Are…” Vella asked. “Are we going to raise a wolf, Bandu?”
Bandu nodded and held the pup more tenderly than she had even held Goodweather as a baby. “This is Four-foot, Vella. He comes back to me.”
Phaedra’s journey back to Tarphae was harder without a horse, but at least she had Dessa’s company. Dessa was entirely too much in awe to even ask Phaedra coherent questions at first, so Phaedra asked her about her own life, and learned what she could of the woman who had saved her. It was a sad and disturbing story – Dessa seemed far too impulsive to be taught academic methods. Was it too late to refuse to teach her? Phaedra owed Dessa her life, but she didn’t owe her power.
She would have to think on that. In the meantime, she could get to know the woman better. Maybe she had matured since her first disastrous decision to leave home. Maybe she was maturing still.
Dessa seemed to sense that she was being tested and strived to make a good impression, a look of intense anxiety on her face. She kept qualifying her story with phrases like, “because I was young and stupid, I guess,” and “not that I’m a drunk – the beds are just cheaper there.” She was going to be a project, Phaedra sensed. A long, long project.
But if the Yarek could repent, Dessa could change. Phaedra owed it to her to try and help, and perhaps to teach her some magic along the way if she decided it was safe. Dessa had saved Phaedra’s life, and now she was relying on Phaedra to help salvage hers. Phaedra might not succeed, but she would try. Dessa was too young to be written off.
They had already traveled three days by the time it came out that Dessa’s mother might still be alive and that she hadn’t done anything concrete to drive Dessa away from home; that, in fact, Dessa had been on her way back when she’d come upon Narky and Phaedra in that barn. That revelation stopped Phaedra in her tracks.
“You have to go and see her.”
“But I found you first!”
“Then you’ll have good news for her.”
Dessa looked absolutely crushed. She thought Phaedra was sending her away for good.
“I thought you were going to teach me magic.”
“I’d like to,” Phaedra said. “Consider this a test. Academic wizardry was founded on tests, and experimentation. A person who can’t reconcile with failure and is too afraid to visit someone she hurt has no business being a wizard. I assumed you were staying away because your mother had done something to make you leave, but you just don’t want to face what you did to her. Prove to me that you’ll put justice above success and kindness above avoiding shame, and I’ll teach you magic.”
“You promise? You won’t disappear on me again?”
“I’ll be waiting for you on Tarphae. I will make it easy to find me.”
When they had parted ways, Phaedra cast her spell with Hunter’s belt, drawing on the connection between it and its owner. The spell confirmed her initial hypothesis: he was somewhere east of here. Psander must really have managed to pull her fortress through the gate to Tarphae.
But she did not go straight to the docks when she reached Atuna. She went instead to the High Council building and demanded once more to be seen. When the guards at the door told her to come back tomorrow, she cloaked herself in illusion as Psander had once done and asked again, less politely. The men cowered beneath the ten-foot Phaedra they saw before them, her teeth as sharp as those of Ravennis’ angels, her staff no longer made of wood but glowing hot iron. It was the most absurdly blunt use of magic she’d ever attempted, but it certainly had an effect. Citizens on the street fled screaming, and when the guards, paralyzed with fear, did not move, she walked right past them, pulling the illusion back into herself. They did not enter after her.
When they saw her, the councilors immediately ceased their deliberations over whatever matter they had been discussing and fell into a sullen, fearful silence.
“I understand,” Phaedra said, “that you have been selling parcels of my homeland, some of them with Mura’s prisoners included. This ends today.”
The oldest, seated councilman coughed. “We appreciate your concern, Wizard Phaedra, but the battle you led our navy into, though it made our waters safe from piracy, also lost us eight good ships, and ships are expensive. You do not own the island, for all that it is your homeland. Atuna bought Tarphae with ships and lives, and we will not give it away without compensation. Even to a wizard.”
“I just saved your world from destruction!” Phaedra answered. “The great tree that you can see from this building with your own eyes, that shook the sky while you lay here cowering, heard my voice and ended its war on the heavens. And you want compensation?”
“We will not be intimidated with these claims of your greatness,” the man answered. “Nor can we be swayed by threats to our safety, which I hope you have better sense than to attempt. We are representatives of our city. We serve Atuna, not ourselves. Give us our ships back, and you may lay claim to your island.”
Phaedra looked deep into the man’s eyes and found them steady and defiant. She should never have attempted this. There was a reason she hadn’t ever used magic so bluntly before, or tried to intimidate someone rather than convincing them peacefully. She should have remembered Psander’s words: never use force unless you can use overwhelming force.
“I will give you a fortnight to change your minds,” she said. “I have not laid claim to all of Tarphae as you said – my request is much simpler: grant every prisoner left by Mura either safe passage back to their homelands, or else the land on which they have labored since their capture. Please weigh that request against the danger of making yourselves my enemies, and decide what is best for your city.”
With that, she left the chamber and made her way to the docks, praying that she would not have to stay the night in this city of gold.
Whether God Most High had answered her prayer or she had just gotten lucky, she didn’t know – either way, the nervous dockworkers told her that the Atun’s Bounty would be leaving within the hour, bringing another boatload of potential investors to survey her homeland. When Phaedra boarded it, flinging the last of her coins at the captain, easily half of those investors hasti
ly disembarked. The captain was too frightened to even try to turn Phaedra away.
She set foot on her home soil well before dusk and followed the thread from Hunter’s belt until she came to the ruins of what was once Silent Hall.
There was only the wall now, and even that had lost a foot or so off the top of it. The gate that had once led through its passage under the tower now lacked both gate and tower, though the passage, at least, remained. For a moment, Phaedra feared that Hunter’s belt would lead her to a corpse.
But then Hunter himself appeared, running toward her. She leapt into his arms joyfully and laughed as he twirled her around, feeling that once-familiar rush of dizziness. It was a sensation she hadn’t felt since her teenage years, when people had still spoken of her as the best dancer in Karsanye, a girl who would surely dance through life. For the first time in over a decade, she thought they might be right after all.
Hunter put her down eventually, but he kept his arms around her. “It’s done,” he said. “I… I got it done.”
“You’re wonderful,” she said, in between kisses. “Oh, Hunter, I’m so glad.”
“Do you… do you want to come in?”
For the first time since she spotted him coming toward her, Phaedra looked around. Nobody else was approaching through the gate. There were no heads peeking over the wall. The landing that Psander’s tower window had stood at the end of wasn’t even there anymore.
Phaedra took a step back. “Are we… are we alone, Hunter? Where is everyone?”
“They all left once the tremors stopped. They wanted to build lives someplace peaceful, without all the memories.”
“And Psander?”
Hunter looked grave. “She left too. Her whole library’s in the cellar where the food used to be – she said she wanted you to have it, and the place wouldn’t survive a week if she stayed.”