by May, K. C.
Boden smiled. He had been the best fighter in Kaild, but he couldn’t properly judge his skills against those of his new friends—or the other warriors in his unit—until after they’d been tried in battle. Confidence was one thing; arrogance something else.
“I for one don’t want to die yet,” Korlan said. “I have a sweet wife and baby to go home to. Are you going to eat it?” The question was directed at Boden.
“I haven’t decided. Probably. I don’t know. You’ve got to give Commander Turounce credit for being persuasive, though.”
“Your own papa said not to eat it,” Rasmus said. “He loves you, right? He wouldn’t’ve said that if he didn’t have a good reason.”
That was exactly the point and the root of his dilemma. He couldn’t ignore what Gunnar had said. The man had his faults, but failing to love his children wasn’t one of them. Boden saw that now. “He said the godfruit infects the soul with a foul sickness.”
“What does that mean?” Korlan asked. He shoveled another spoonful of food into his mouth. “I’ve eaten it every day for almost fourteen months. Don’t feel any different.”
“I don’t know.” Maybe he’d ask around. If others in his unit were Relived, maybe they could explain what Gunnar had meant. “I take it you’re not Relived?”
“Not yet,” Korlan said, “but better Relived than dead forever. That’s what I say.” He pushed his empty bowl a couple of inches away and picked up his godfruit.
“No fault in that logic, either,” Boden said. He picked up the godfruit beside his own bowl, weighing it in his hand against his father’s warning. It looked like a large plum with dark-purple flesh. Though he trusted Gunnar as a drill master and trusted his own ability as a fighter, a little insurance wasn’t a bad thing. Two of his companions bit into theirs at the same time.
“Tastes like ass,” Joh said, scrunching his face.
Korlan laughed. “How do you know what ass tastes like?”
“My wife’s apparently not as sweet as yours,” Joh said with a wink. “Go ahead, Boden.”
Boden took a bite and squeezed his eyes shut against the bitter taste, chewing quickly and swallowing it down. The taste reminded him of wet leather and horse farts. It was possibly the most foul-tasting fruit in the world. “Damn, that’s bad.”
“You’ve got to choke the whole thing down,” Korlan said. “A bite or two won’t do it.”
Together, the three of them took several more large bites, chewing and swallowing as fast as they could, and soon the fruit was gone. “No seeds or pit,” he noted.
“Further proof of its divine origin,” Joh said.
“Huh,” Rasmus said. “Guess that’s why Mangend wants to control the Isle so badly. They can’t simply steal a crate of fruit and grow their own Tree of the Fallen God.”
“Mangend doesn’t want the godfruit any more than Arynd-ban does,” Korlan said. “They just don’t want us to have it.”
“Even if they found a seed,” Joh said, “who’s to say its fruit would have the same effect. It’s Hibsar’s blood that makes the godfruit magical.”
“Or cursed,” Rasmus said. He wiggled his fingers and made his eyes round. “Ooooh!”
“Go ahead and laugh while you can, Bokk,” Joh said. “If we both die today, I’ll get up and laugh over your corpse.”
Chapter 8
Before the sun had peeked over the waters of the Inner Sea, Jora awoke and dressed, then braided her hair quickly. She’d been meeting Sundancer every morning for nearly three weeks, deepening both her understanding of Azarian and her friendship with the dolphin. Having to stop to go work in the leather shop dashed her spirits, and she spent all day looking forward to the next morning.
She ran out to the shoal with her flute and notebook. Sundancer was already there when she settled onto the last rock.
“Ahoy, Sun Dancer.”
“Ahoy, Autumn Rain,” Sundancer replied. “You rested well?”
“Yes, and you?”
The question note had been a bit of a challenge for Jora to figure out, but when she realized the simplicity of adding a single note to the end of a statement to make it a question, it made more sense than adding on useless words, such as do or have. The past tense was formed similarly, although it took two notes to signify, and Azarian didn’t have articles. She had to infer words like the by the context to make sense of it.
“I rested well. Your speaking is much improved.”
“You taught me well.” Jora lowered the flute to smile, and Sundancer replied with a twitter.
“I not teach...” The pattern of notes she whistled next was unfamiliar to Jora. “You can learn more. I teach you.”
“I’m sorry,” Jora said aloud. “I don’t know what you said. I still have a lot to learn.”
“I go now hunt. Goodbye, Autumn Rain.”
“Goodbye, Sun Dancer. Good hunt.”
Before Sundancer swam away, she whistled the new series of notes again, something for Jora to look up and add to her growing vocabulary. She played the notes on her flute to be sure she had them right, and then waved so long to her friend. Back in her room, she deciphered the notes, but she wasn’t sure she understood what Sundancer meant.
Spirit flow power.
She spent the day mulling over those three words while she worked, wondering if perhaps she’d misinterpreted the notes. After a long day in the leather shop, she worked the radicals again, looking up possible combinations in the book and coming up only with knife capable, hungry snow beach, or spirit flow power.
Knife capable. It could have been a reference to her leatherworking skill, but it wasn’t likely that Sundancer knew Jora was a leatherworker.
Hungry snow beach. That one was even odder. Snow beach could have meant white sands. She tried to think of a beach nearby that had white sands, but all the beaches she’d seen were more or less the same beige color. Hungry snow made less sense.
That left only spirit flow power. She wondered whether spirit flow was Sundancer’s way of saying Mindstream. Flow, stream. Spirit instead of mind. It wasn’t too far-fetched. Certainly made better sense than knife capable or hungry snow beach. Power could be... magic.
The book Nuri had mentioned came to mind. The people in the story had powerful magic, and they spoke with dolphins. Could the magic be somehow related to the dolphin’s language? How did it relate to the Mindstream? Unless the Mindstream was the magic.
The Mindstream was the magic.
That had to be it. Sundancer was simply picking up on Jora’s Mindstreaming ability and considered it a power or magic of some kind. She pulled out the journal she’d obtained from the stationer and jotted a note, then thoughtfully stroked her cheek with the end of the lead pen. What would she say to Sundancer the following morning to let her know she’d figured it out? I know, she thought with a smile.
A knock at her door drew her eyes up. “Come in.”
The door opened, and Anika poked her head in. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” Jora said as she closed the book and set it aside.
Boden’s mother came in and sat on the stool near the foot of Jora’s bed. The room wasn’t big enough to have any proper furniture for entertaining guests. “Gunnar spoke to me and my cowives about you earlier today. He said he’d like to propose to you, bring you into our family.”
Jora swallowed. She’d wondered how that conversation would go. “If you don’t want me, I’ll understand.”
“Oh, sweetheart, no,” Anika said, taking one of Jora’s hands. It was warm. Comforting. “We do want you. Well, most of us. Marja’s going to need some time to warm to the idea. I wanted you to know that we’ll welcome you gladly, and to warn you not to take anything Marja says personally. For whatever reason, she decided that she would be Gunnar’s last wife, and now she’s having to adjust to a different way of thinking about herself. I don’t know why that’s important to her, but there you have it. The rest of us will counsel her to be more accepti
ng.”
Jora supposed that going from being a First Wife to a widow to a latterly maid had been a blow to Marja’s pride. Being the last woman Gunnar married might have helped her feel better about herself. “I can understand that. I’m sure a new wife in the family can be an uncomfortable thing to some women, especially if that new wife is...” She was going to say a freak, as she’d been called since her childhood, but she knew Anika didn’t share that view of her. Saying it would’ve made Boden’s mother uncomfortable. “...different,” she said.
Anika smiled and patted her hand. “Your uniqueness is part of what makes you so special to us, dove. And speaking of which...”
“You’d like to ask about Boden again?” The first time she’d checked on him, he hadn’t written any messages for her at sunset, though the second time he wrote to let them know he was thinking of them and hoped they were faring well. His third message had been more cryptic: Papa, you should’ve told me why you left.
“If you don’t mind,” Anika said, wringing her hands. “Today is Suns Day, and I hoped he might have another message for us.”
Suns Day already? Jora snapped her fingers. “Of course. The week has gone by so fast. Give me a moment, and I’ll have a look.” She crossed her legs and closed her eyes, then took a deep breath and opened the Mindstream. She found Boden’s thread quickly and followed it. He lay abed in the darkened tent. The only sounds were the chirping of crickets. “He’s asleep,” she said, unsure why she was whispering. Boden wouldn’t have heard her anyway. “Let me see where he is.”
By moving backward along his thread, she saw that he’d arrived at a large encampment earlier in the day. “He’s with his new unit,” she told Anika. “He’s met his commander and made some friends. All is well.” They were inland, she discovered when she extended her mystical vision upward, a few miles from where the beige sands of the seashore were stained with the brown of old blood.
She moved along his thread to sunset, watched him enter the tent, sit down on his bunk, and pull the journal from the hidden bottom of his knapsack.
Oh good. A message for them.
He opened to the back page and wrote, Jora, be cautious. They’re coming.
“No,” she whispered.
“No message?” Anika asked.
Jora opened her eyes and closed the Mindstream. She swallowed hard. They’re coming. “I guess that means he’s in no danger,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. But was she?
She barely heard Anika thank her and wish her a pleasant night. The part of her that responded reflexively returned the pleasantries. The rest of her, the part that knew what Boden’s warning had meant, was frightened.
Chapter 9
Jora barely slept a wink. Between dreams of hooded figures coming out of the darkness to grab her and her very real fears of the same, what little sleep she did get wasn’t restful. She awoke earlier than usual, when the dawn sky was still only the blush of a waking sun over the still waters of the sea. Even the cooks weren’t up yet, though one of the more obstinate roosters did try to convince everyone that daylight was wasting.
The main road in town was lit by cressets, though by this time of the night, their sputtering flames only illuminated the ground a few feet around their poles.
One of the town’s working dogs huffed a warning when she exited the dormitory. It approached, head flat and tail stiff, to investigate. “It’s me, Bear,” she said quietly. She waited for the dog to recognize her scent, and when he licked her outstretched hand with a friendly tail wag, she patted her leg to encourage him to come with her. “I haven’t any food, but I wouldn’t mind the company.”
What was she to do? The bigger question, she supposed, was what did they want? Perhaps it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps they wanted only to try to recruit her into their ranks. A career in the Justice Bureau would take her away from everyone and everything she knew. A marriage to Gunner wouldn’t be feasible if she lived in Jolver or Halder. Would a marriage to anyone? Did Truth Sayers marry or have families? She chuckled, imagining babies swaddled in Truth Sayer garments and bald children running, silent and serious, through the halls of a stately building and tripping over the long skirts of their robes.
“Who’s there?” someone asked in a commanding voice.
She stopped and peered through the darkness, trying to identify the guard who’d spoken. “It’s Jora Lanseri.”
Before he’d sheathed his sword and stepped into the moonlight, she recognized the form of her father, Dyre Kyear. Relief flooded her heart. She ran to him and threw her arms around his waist. She sorely needed someone to talk to, and his strong presence brought her comfort.
“What’s wrong, dove? Why are you up so early?”
“A bad dream woke me. I decided to do a little work before I went out to the shoal.”
“More dreams about Tosh?” He pressed his lips together. “We all mourn and miss him dearly. He’d have given us at least a half-dozen grandchildren by now.”
Jora smiled. “A half-dozen little Palos? Oh, the horror. And I thought my nightmares were bad.”
“Now, be nice.”
She giggled. “I’m jesting, of course. Palo’s a dear, and we all love him.”
“He is now, under Gunnar’s firm guidance.” Dyre grinned. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
“I wouldn’t. But no, my dream was about... something else.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Jora swallowed, unsure she should worry him. If what Boden had written was true, he would find out sooner or later anyway. “Papa, something happened when I was Mindstreaming to Oram a while back.”
She saw his brow dip in the dim light of the sputtering cresset. “What was it?” he asked hoarsely, no doubt expecting bad news.
“I saw some Truth Sayers with the Legion soldiers and commander. Is that common?”
Dyre nodded. “Every company uses one or two Sayers to relay communications and commands between Legion headquarters and the various companies across Serocia. They’re much quicker than messages sent by riders or bird. It’s easier to coordinate movement and defense that way.”
She didn’t remember that from her lessons as a child. Either the fact wasn’t taught, or she hadn’t bothered to commit the information to memory. “Somehow—I don’t understand how—they saw me. They looked right at me, as if I’d been standing there in the room with them.”
“Did they say anything to you?”
She briefly recounted the events she’d witnessed, expressing concern for the man named Gilon. “As Boden was leaving last week, I told him to write something in his journal at sunset on Suns Day if he had a message for us here at home.” She swallowed hard, finding it hard to voice her fear or the reason for it.
“Tell me. What did he write?”
“Jora, be cautious. They’re coming.”
His dark brown eyes hardened under a furrowed brow. “I see.”
“I don’t know how they found out it was me, but apparently they did.”
“It’s good you told me. I’ll have a talk with the councilwomen as soon as they’ve risen.”
“What are they going to do? Are they going to take me away?”
“I don’t know, dove, but we’ll figure something out. My guess is they’ll want you to join their ranks, but we’ll do what we can to keep you here. Try not to worry. It’s unlikely they’ll be here today or tomorrow. We have some time to make a plan.” He drew her into his strong arms, and she breathed in his faint musky scent, a scent that had comforted her as a frightened child when the Mindstream had first begun to reveal its grotesque apparitions to her.
“Thank you, Papa,” she whispered.
When she met Sundancer at dawn, the dolphin could already tell something was wrong. She slipped silently through the water toward her human friend, her body tilted to one side and one dark eye watching with sympathy.
“You are not good, Autumn Rain?”
“No, Sun Dancer. I must go soon. I not wa
nt go.”
Sundancer watched her for a moment. “Where?”
“Not know. I am afraid.”
Sundancer, plainly as melancholy as Jora, whistled something Jora didn’t understand, and she hastily scribbled down the notes of the sequence. Then she righted herself and rose up in the water and twittered, now excited about something. “Come with me.”
Was she inviting Jora to run away with her? She laughed and asked, “Where?”
“Not know.” She whistled another phrase Jora had to write down.
“I wish I could, my friend. I don’t want to leave my family and friends any more than I want to leave you.” She put the flute to her mouth and tried as best she could with her limited vocabulary to communicate that to Sundancer.
The dolphin once again lay still in the water, one eye directed at Jora. “I am not good.”
Jora nodded her understanding. “I am not good.”
Sundancer invited her for a swim, but Jora didn’t feel up to playing. She wanted to run back to her room, grab her book, and spend as much time learning to talk to Sundancer as she could. What the dolphin had said the day before still confounded her.
“Spirit flow power,” she played, repeating the notes Sundancer had whistled.
The dolphin replied with a sudden burst of twitters, followed by a tail dance on the water’s surface. Jora couldn’t help but smile at Sundancer’s antics. “I would miss you if I leave,” she said aloud.
“Spirit flow power. I teach you.”
Jora could already Mindstream. What would Sundancer have to teach her that she didn’t already know? “Teach spirit flow power? I know now.”
“I teach...” Another sequence of notes Jora didn’t know. It was frustrating not understanding her, especially since she had such interesting things to say.
“I need more time to learn your language, Sundancer. I don’t want to go yet.” Jora’s eyes welled with tears, but she wiped them away. She didn’t know for sure she would be taken away. It was silly to get worked up over what might be nothing.