An Accident of Stars

by Foz Meadows

  With that, it was like a spell had been lifted. Everyone began moving and talking at once, dismounting as they discussed whether to keep a watch, sleep on this side of the road rather than the other, to hobble or merely hitch the horses. Zech glanced at Safi, wondering how she’d cope with a night spent outside. From their conversations together, it likely wasn’t something she’d ever done before. For a moment, Zech thought she ought to take her aside and help, but then she realised Yena, having left the torch with Gwen, was already doing just that, and so decided to speak with Jeiden instead.

  He was one of the few still mounted, apparently frozen in place. Careful of those on foot, Zech nudged her horse over to his side. His face was dejected, and when she placed a hand on his arm, he startled.

  “What?”

  “That was… that was really impressive,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Yasha should have said so. It’s wrong that she didn’t. She’s wrong,” she added, and was instantly shocked at her own defiance. “Anyway. I just thought you should know.”

  Slowly, like the onset of dawn, a smile spread across Jeiden’s face. It was shy and sweet and, like the rest of him, beautiful, and Zech felt something in her rejoice at having caused it.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I–”

  But whatever he’d been about to say was lost in a sudden, outraged shriek. Zech jumped in her saddle, fearing they were under attack – then burst out laughing when she realised what had happened.

  The Cuivexa was awake.

  “Where am I?” she screamed. “Untie me at once! You peasants, you lousy, filthy spittle-skinned snakes! You freaks, you worms, you, you–” And then, with her face screwed up in genuine horror, she wailed, “–and why am I still on a roa?”

  Twelve

  The Envas Road

  Saffron fidgeted in the saddle, wincing in her futile search for a posture that didn’t hurt her back. They’d been riding since dawn, and even though she’d stretched at lunch, the pain was only getting worse. It was last night’s rest that had done it. She’d been camping before, of course, but never without a tent, and certainly not without a blow-up mattress or camp bed to sleep on. Though the roadside grass was comfy enough at first, the ground beneath had soon turned hard and uneven. She’d slept shallowly, tossing and turning against the press of cold earth into her shoulders, and had woken that morning with stabbing pains in her neck and lower back. It was small comfort that everyone else had suffered just as much; she’d never had to keep doing something that truly hurt before.

  She tried thinking of Trishka, whose awful burns and magic-wracked body inarguably meant she was in more pain than anyone. Dawn had revealed the extent of her injuries more fully than Yena’s torch: the skin of her face was taut and shiny red, a smatter of blisters weeping clear fluid down her cheek. Her poor horse, too, was suffering. Gwen had given it something called moonsleep the night before, allowing it to rest peacefully, but with a long road still to travel, the only possible concession to the mare’s injuries was to have Zech, who was smallest and lightest, ride her instead. Trishka was now on Zech’s old horse, tied in place with the ropes that had previously been used to restrain Viya, after the Cuivexa had agreed, however peevishly, to refrain from running off. Trishka’s consciousness was intermittent, but whenever she did wake, they halted immediately so that Gwen, who’d taken charge of her friend, could check on her.

  Saffron had never seen burns like Trishka’s. Looking at them made her stomach twist. She was frightened of what might happen if they became infected, if they couldn’t find a healer in Envas. It ought to have put her own problems in perspective, but no matter how she berated herself for being spoiled and selfish, she couldn’t push through her own discomfort. You lost your fingers and lived! she told herself fiercely. This doesn’t hurt more than that! But the reminder that she was maimed forever only made her feel worse, as though she was compounding her moral failings with the sin of vanity. Was she really so shallow that she was worried about how the loss of her fingers made her look? Her thoughts began to spiral inwards, down to a place they hadn’t been since before she’d come to Karavos; the place where she felt stunted, inadequate, wrong. Tears welled up and she dashed them furiously, hating that she couldn’t control herself. Stop it, she told herself. Just cut it out. Stop crying. Stop crying right now!

  “Are you all right?”

  It was Yena, looking at Saffron with a mixture of concern and uncertainty. Her curls were covered by a faded red headscarf, accentuating her forehead and cheeks. There were circles under her eyes – attributable both to her mother’s condition and a poor night’s rest – and a long smudge of dirt on her neck.

  “I just…” Saffron gulped, faltering. “I mean, it’s nothing. I’m just not used to any of this, and I know that shouldn’t matter right now – there’s so much more going on – but I still keep getting stuck on it. I’m sorry.”

  Yena blinked at her. “Why are you sorry for that? Feelings are feelings, no matter when they happen. Our bodies don’t stop being ours just because worse things happen to other people. And why should you be used to anything here? This isn’t your world.” She hesitated. “Gwen’s told me a little about Earth–” she dropped the English word haltingly into her speech, “–and how different it is. How all your magic is scrunched and hidden, so no one believes in it anymore. How you only have one moon, and a yellow sun, and your kings and queens have no power, but that men who look like Vekshi men do.” She grinned suddenly, foxish and fey. “To me, it sounds like a challenge. But if you stranded me there by accident, made me ride through strange streets on an animal I’d never even seen before, if I fell into rituals I didn’t understand, and a stranger cut off my fingers – if all of that happened, and then I had to run away with people I’d only just met as part of a fight that started before I arrived and was bound to continue after I left – well, then, I would certainly feel at least a little lost.”She said it simply, a kindness so matter-of-fact that Saffron almost stopped breathing. Yena smiled, her cheeks dimpling with empathy, mischief – and then she reached out and grazed her knuckles gently along Saffron’s cheek. It was an incredibly intimate gesture, and despite the context, it was also the single sexiest thing that Saffron had ever experienced. Her breathlessness intensified for a very different reason.

  “It’s all right to be lost,” Yena said, softly. “How else can we find ourselves?’”

  And before Saffron could answer, she pulled her hand away, grinning, and cantered back to see how her mother was faring.

  Saffron sat still for a moment. “Whew,” she breathed, exhaling the word like a promise. “Wow.”

  She didn’t stop feeling terrible, of course. But something inside her eased that only moments earlier had been close to breaking.

  It was a start.

  * * *

  Viya was livid, full to bursting with fury and humiliation she couldn’t afford to show. Waking up tied to a roa four days distant from where she’d gone to sleep was the least of the indignities she’d been forced to suffer – far more distressing was the fact that the awful Yasha was genuinely in charge. The reason for this completely escaped Viya. Pix, after all, was a noblewoman: a skilled politician, mother and warrior in the prime of her life, to say nothing of the fact that she was actually Kenan. The idea that such a woman would voluntarily submit to the authority of a dried up, heretical, spittle-skinned crone like Yasha was inconceivable. It angered her as an affront to the gods and the natural order of things; an affront made all the more personal by the fact that only now, too late, did she understand how badly she’d embarrassed herself.

  Over and over, bloodfather Iavan had drilled into her the importance of always paying attention to eddies and shifts in power, no matter what else was happening – and despite what she might think of the people involved. Not long before his departure with Rixevet and Kadu, he’d sat her down for what was to be their last such conversation. His handsome, scarred face – half frown, half smile, the legacy of som
e distant squabble never fully explained to Viya – had turned oddly grave as he dropped a kiss on her forehead, his marriage-braids swinging down to brush her throat.

  “Listen carefully, Ivi,” he’d murmured. “One day soon you’ll be at court. Enemies might charm you. Allies might disgust you. Supplicants might bore you. Elders might condescend to you. And sometimes, you’ll be in a position to let them know it. Sometimes – but not always. Not even often. Instead, you show them all a calm, smiling face and hide your truth with innocence, like a pretty knife tucked in a sleeve. You listen to everything they say and everything they don’t, and you remember, because knowledge is greater than magic. You understand?”

  And Viya had nodded and said she had, though Iavan must have known it wasn’t true. Three days later, he was gone, and Viya had been left in Hawy’s care – Hawy, who had all but sold her to Leoden.

  She frowned at her use of the word. Sold. As if she was a horse or roa, with no say at all in where or with whom she went. The thought irritated her, hinting at implications she was in no way inclined to entertain; and so she set it aside, more concerned with how she was going to get to Rixevet. She didn’t doubt Pix’s version of last night’s events, though she might have done, had one of the other women, Trishka, not been so clearly injured. At least, she thought sourly, we’re heading in the right direction. But even though her arms and legs were no longer bound – she quivered with anger that it had happened at all – she was still stuck in Yasha’s company, and stuck riding Mara, the same wretched, stinking roa Luy had foisted on her back at the palace.

  Had she been nicer to the Vekshi woman – had she intuited, as Iavan doubtless would have done, that Yasha was the one in charge – she might have been given supplies and permitted to ride off alone, as they’d originally planned. At the very least, she could have made a case for departing once they’d travelled closer to Rixevet’s holdings. Instead, she was under suspicion of having been somehow involved in the compound raid, and therefore bound to the group by Yasha’s ominous intimation as to what might happen if she strayed. It was ludicrous – why would Leoden involve the Cuivexa in such a petty escapade?

  A memory twitched against Viya’s consciousness, trying to make itself recognised. She frowned, unable to place it for several minutes – and then it hit her. The conversation she’d overheard between Luy and Leoden. She’s meddled enough, her and the Vekshi crone both, her husband had said, and all at once she realised he must have been talking about Yasha; it was too big a coincidence otherwise. That same conversation had also mentioned a worldwalker, which Viya had thought was pure nonsense, dismissing it out of hand. But she’d already been mistaken in one such assumption, and refused to lose any more allies by leaping to another.

  So who, then, was the worldwalker?

  Viya decided on a process of elimination; Iavan would approve. The thought steadied her, and for the first time that day she felt her frustration settle. Now, what do I know?

  It wasn’t Pixeva, her feather-haired cousin Jeiden or her disreputably unmarried brother, Matuhasa idi Naha; they were all Kenan, their family known to hers. Nor was it Yasha or Trishka: the former was too obviously Vekshi-born, while the latter had the jahudemet, which suggested she was the portal-maker Leoden and Luy had also mentioned. Zech was a real possibility: she certainly looked strange enough to be from another world, and nor did she appear to belong to anyone. True, she was young, but having already mistaken Yasha’s role in things on the basis of first appearances, Viya wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. Yena was disqualified on the grounds of being Trishka’s daughter – she’d picked up this last by inference after watching how the younger girl kept hovering by the wounded woman’s side, as well as noting the similar shape of their faces.

  Which left only two other possibilities: the Vekshi girl, Safi; and the Uyun woman, Gwen. Both were equally likely prospects, but as Gwen was completely preoccupied with caring for Trishka, that left Safi as the most logical person for Viya to talk to. Not, of course, that she had any inherent desire to learn about other worlds: however else they disagreed, she shared her husband’s conviction that only Kena mattered. But as he’d held both Yasha and the worldwalker in equal disdain, as though they were two separate, albeit related, nuisances, it opened the possibility that the group might, in fact, have another power-broker. There was no chance of redeeming herself in Yasha’s eyes, and in any case, the self-abasement required by such a gambit would have crippled Viya’s pride. Which meant that her best bet now of being set free was to get the worldwalker onside.

  Thus determined, she hauled Mara around – more harshly than was needed, as she was still annoyed at being lumbered with the wretched beast – and rode over to Safi. The Vekshi girl had just finished talking to Yena; her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her hands clutched tightly at the reins.

  Her hands.

  Viya stared, heart beating faster, as she stared at Safi’s left hand. The two smallest fingers were missing, just like Kadeja’s were. A mark of disgrace among the Vekshi; yet how many young white girls with such a mark lived in Karavos? Even before she’d opened her mouth to confirm it, Viya knew, bone-deep, what the answer would be: that Safi was the Vex’Mara’s heretical omen.

  “Hello?” asked Safi, a note of surprise and uncertainty in her voice. Viya had been silent for too long, and winced – not in sympathy, but at the thought of ruining this opportunity too.

  “Hello,” she replied. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just, your hand… are you the one Kadeja cut?”

  Safi’s cheeks turned even redder. “Yes,” she said softly. “I didn’t understand what was happening.”

  Viya exhaled, exalting in her deductive success, though she was careful to keep her delight from showing on her face. Safi was a worldwalker! Nothing else could explain her ignorance of Vekshi customs. She might look like one of Yasha and Kadeja’s people, but underneath she was alien to them.

  She turned back to Safi, and found, with some small shock, that she was sympathetic.

  “I’m sorry for that,” Viya said honestly. “My marriage-mate is… well, I’m not sure what she is.”

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” The ghost of a smile flickered on Safi’s face. “And I’m sorry, too, that the others tied you up. I asked Gwen why they’d done it, but she didn’t have time to tell me.”

  The apology took Viya by surprise – so much so that, before she could think to check her response, she exploded with, “How dare they suspect me! I ran from Leoden – I came to them by accident – and they drugged me, tied me, brought me here and accused me of making it happen!” And then she clapped a hand to her mouth, mortified that, once again, she’d let her tongue get away from her.

  But rather than being outraged, Safi just nodded gravely. “Yasha’s pretty frightening,” she agreed. “I don’t think she really likes or trusts anybody – but then, I’m not sure if anyone really likes or trusts her either. Well, except for Trishka, but she’s her daughter, so…”

  Viya goggled. “Trishka’s her daughter?” She swivelled in the saddle, craning for a look. “But she’s Kenan!”

  Safi looked at her oddly. “What makes you say that?”

  Viya snorted. “What else do I mean? She has proper skin.”

  “And is that all it takes to be Kenan?”

  Almost, Viya shot back a quick retort, but checked herself in time, noting Safi’s peturbation. Viya licked her lips, trying to think how best to get things back on an even footing. “I only meant,” she said, after a moment, “that she doesn’t look like Yasha, and so I assumed she was Kenan. Besides, I’ve never met a Vekshi who wasn’t white, or heard of their children being fathered by Kenan men. Though I suppose it must happen often enough at the border,” she added, thoughtfully.

  “Less often than you might think, apparently,” Safi said, distractedly. This annoyed Viya until, with a second glance at Trishka, she saw what she’d overlooked before: the woman had no marriage-
braids, her hair cut short as Safi’s. Irritation stabbed at her. Why hadn’t she noticed? Only last night, she’d eaten at the same table as Trishka: the incongruity of a Kenan woman with Vekshi hair ought to have stood out like a beacon, and yet she’d been just as blind there as in her meeting with Yasha. Despite all of Iavan’s training, she’d simply unseen everything and everyone who wasn’t Pix, assuming that the woman who most resembled Viya herself – Kenan, noble, familiar with court – must naturally be the one who mattered most.

  She faltered, unsure how to proceed. Safi raised an eyebrow. For an instant, Viya was tempted just to ride away and damn her chances of making an ally, but for the sake of Iavan and Rixevet, she forced herself to bite back her pride and speak.

  “I hate Kadeja,” she said, her voice vibrating with a rage that, up until now, she’d been forced to suppress. “I hate her! Leoden caught me eavesdropping once – that’s what he called it anyway, as though I had no right to walk freely in my own palace! – and as punishment, he gave me to the Vex’Mara. She went to the gardens and cut a rod of star-nettle – it’s flexible and sharp, and the thorns have a sting in them. She said the Vekshi called it Ashasa’s whip, that priestesses used it to deal out discipline to heretics. She said that all the world belonged to Ashasa, not just the north, and that now she was Vex’Mara, that meant Kenans should be subject to the goddess, too. She said that, under Vekshi law, my discipline was her responsibility. So she had her servants hold me down, and then she whipped me raw. Like a criminal.”

  When she saw the horrified look on Safi’s face, she rejected it fiercely. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me! I’m the Cuivexa of Kena, Iviyat ore Leoden ki Hawy, and I will not have my strength diminished by pity! I didn’t tell you this for the sympathy; I told you this so you understand why, when I look at Yasha, all I see is Kadeja’s wrath; why the idea of not being able to tell Vekshi from Kenan unsettles me; why I don’t want to travel with you.” Almost shouting she fought to regain control of her voice. “If I must walk in Veksh, I will walk there in my own right, as Cuivexa, and make my own envoy with the Council of Queens. But I will not go there captive as a show of Yasha’s strength.”