by Kim Wedlock
He knew better than to question or argue, though he flinched at her thoughtful grunt as he bared his back, and at the pressure of her fingers as she pressed them into the most painful of his lingering wounds. "The Ayavei girl did a fine job."
"Ayavei?" He flinched again at her enduring sigh.
"The girl from the wind tribe..."
"Ah." He nodded as he looked towards her. Petra still stood protectively nearby, her gaze never wandering far, and Anthis too, he noticed warily, spared her a moment of his otherwise absorbed attention from time to time. Eyila noticed none of it. "Is there anything you can do for her?"
"No," she replied regretfully, following his gaze. "She's grieving. I'm afraid that job falls to the rest of you."
"I thought so..." He hissed suddenly as she jabbed a finger into a particularly tender spot between his ribs.
"Oh stop it. She did well." He felt the hum of her magic and immediately found himself sitting straighter, only now aware of his previous protective, sideways lean. But as she moved around to examine his collarbones, he noticed the mild disapproval in her expectant expression. "So," she began mildly, "what happened?"
"I don't know."
"You lost control of yourself," she informed him. "But why? What happened?"
"There was a fire--"
"Oh! It must have been catastrophic! Did the flames take on the shape of a demon? Did it burn open the gates to the afterlife? Did it--"
"That's enough," he growled, but she only smiled in amusement as she directed her magic into another sore patch.
"Yes, you're quite right. So? What actually happened?"
His eyes slipped watchfully onto the historian. "Anthis Karth is a Sulyaxist."
She moved her left hand to his chest and began gently probing the joins between rib and sternum while her right continued to work over his shoulder, her brow softly knitted in concentration. It wasn't until she moved down to his hips that she finally looked up, but her eyes were wide and patient. "And?"
Rathen's eyes flashed. "You knew?!" He blinked at her incredulously. "...Of course you knew..."
"Of course I knew," she confirmed flatly. "And if he was a danger to you, I would have removed him myself right at the beginning. But," she began examining his legs with careful squeezing and prodding, "I don't expect you'll listen to me. You never do. So carry on giving the poor boy trouble. As if he hasn't already been struggling with it all his life. It's not like he has anything he needs to concentrate on right now, anyway - in fact he's probably grateful for having it on his mind."
Kienza rose to her feet and looked down at his evenly balanced body with satisfaction, all trace of sarcasm vanishing. "Better?" She smiled.
"Yes..."
"Good. Now," she raised her voice and turned back towards the others, finally acknowledging their belated greetings, and left Rathen to tentatively finger the areas her mysterious, unsigned magic had permeated. "You're setting out with the intention of walking into hostile land. You are aware of this, I presume?"
"It can't be helped," Garon replied rigidly, sparing no thought to wonder at how she'd found them nor how she'd deduced their heading. "Anthis says we need to get to Enhala."
"Um, about that," Petra interrupted hesitantly, "I thought Kasire and Ivaea were in talks..."
"In the very loosest sense of the phrase." Kienza sighed regretfully and folded her arms across her ample chest, shaking her dark curls wearily as a long-suffering mother would over two squabbling children. "The talks grew stale. Neither side were truly prepared to compromise so they made unreasonable demands of the other to avoid it. The Crowns eventually clashed, the talks descended into a back-and-forth of thinly veiled insults, then they finally gave up." She shrugged. "And then, war.
"You're right to go by sea. Crossing the border by foot isn't safe. Fortunately, Enhala is far west enough to be outside of the combat zone and is only a few days from the coast, so you won't have to venture too deep. And as for the Roquna itself," her arm cut a straight line through the air directly ahead of her. "As best you can. Pay attention to what's around you and you'll get where you need to go in the end."
"Do the stories have any truth?" Rathen asked, pulling his shirt back over his head as he joined them, but his brow flattened humourlessly when he found her looking back at him with precisely the impish grin he had expected after so foolishly vague a question. "'Every story has truth'," he said drily over the top of her. "But do the stories about fogs and looping straight lines out on the Roquna right there have any relevance to us?"
"Certainly," she smiled just as unhelpfully. "So do as I told you: pay attention."
"Is this our boat?"
Everyone followed Anthis's gaze towards the vessel she had been waiting upon, and noticed together that not only did the boat bear the precise shade of tree-bark-brown that almost every Turundan forest wore, but its texture too. And lichen. They were not barnacles at all. Not one of them wondered aloud about the possible peril of wood worms.
"It is indeed!" She replied proudly.
Anthis regarded her carefully. "Will it protect us from...the fog...?"
She blinked at him. "If you're inside, I suppose it will 'protect' you from the fog..."
"So it's enchanted?"
"...It's a boat." She gave him a suddenly disapproving look, and he shrank shamefully beneath it. "Don't be ungrateful, Mister Karth. I could have left you to these dingies. Now hurry aboard. The sea won't stay so calm for long, and when you get out in the open, you'll be glad you have little current to contend with."
The group moved immediately on her order, walking without argument onto the simple wooden jetty and towards their most unusual vessel, keeping their doubts silent. Aria took Rathen's hand and began to pull him along eagerly when he didn't step on his own, but he resisted the encouragement. "Wait." He immediately regretted the slip of anger that compromised his intentionally soft tone, and his heart wrenched at the confusion in her eyes as she turned them up towards him. And for a moment he hated Kienza for answering his unspoken call, resented her impossible ability to know exactly when and where she was needed.
And she, he found, hadn't left with the others. Instead she stood a few feet away with far too much reluctance in her eyes. She knew exactly what he was about to do. But she must have agreed with it, for she didn't say a word.
Rathen sighed and knelt, turning Aria his full attention as he brought himself eye-level with her. She wasn't blind; she saw the weight behind the motion. Her confusion became tinged with the beginnings of panic and her eyes flicked with growing desperation towards Kienza for a clue. But she wouldn't meet her gaze.
"Listen to me, Arenaria." He tried to force a smile, but his face refused to cooperate. He didn't have the strength of will to try for very long, and it took him a painfully long while to continue while he wrestled with his suddenly inadequate vocabulary. "You can't come with us."
She frowned, and half of her visible emotion was overwritten by simple confusion. "What do you mean?"
"I mean you can't come with us," he replied carefully, suddenly feeling the eggshells beneath his feet. "Not out to sea, not into Kasire. It's not safe for you."
"I don't understand...I've been everywhere else with you--"
"It isn't the same, Aria."
Her freckled frown deepened, and though she folded her arms in a manner more mature than her age would dictate, there was a certain wildness in her eyes. "I don't see how it's different."
"Sweetheart--"
"You don't want me around anymore, do you?"
His eyes flashed. "That is not true." He stared at her, watching the wildness grow, and wished, stronger than he ever had for anything in his life, that that old wisdom would spark within them and chase away her fragile innocence.
But it didn't. "It is!" She declared, her voice finally breaking. "You wouldn't send me away otherwise! Have I been getting in the way? Have I not been good?"
"Aria, it's nothing like that--"
"It
is! I'm not helping enough, I'm getting in the way, I'm distracting you all - someone always has to look after me! But you don't need to! I can look after myself! You don't need to waste your time on me, just let me stay with you!"
Rathen could only watch her heart break in her eyes as his ability to speak abandoned him, and as diamond tears gushed into them, he felt them threaten to fill his, too. It was only through magic that he managed to ward them off. Because he understood how she felt all too clearly. She'd never been forced away from him before; this was quite possibly the worst thing she'd ever consciously experienced, and the weight of that thought only grew in intensity the harder he tried to fight it away.
"Please, Daddy!" She begged him, her voice rising higher in her grief and certainly catching the attention of the others, then turned desperately to Kienza, her fair curls flicking wildly, pleading with her to tell him she could stay.
He finally tore his eyes away, wondering as he did so just how much he was failing her as a parent by giving up like this, but he was simply unable to bear it. He turned to Kienza, his resigned gaze deadened by his own grief, and yet she read it all too easily. He knew, because surprise seemed to physically strike her.
"Him?" She asked in a disbelief that belied the extent in her eyes. "Are you absolutely sure?"
"It's the safest option."
She studied him very carefully, but despite Aria's desperate pleas, he didn't waver. She soon straightened and nodded, and once he'd risen and taken Aria by the hand, which gripped his as tightly as if she were having a nightmare, they vanished.
The others stared openly at the spot they'd just been standing, but only Garon looked upon the empty space with regret.
The light had dimmed, the surrounding area darkened by the reach of walls and trees, and the air offered a welcome bite. Rathen wasn't sure if his nausea was a result of the teleportation, the sickening familiarity of his new location, the weight of the present situation or a mixture of all three, but he didn't care to think on it for long.
The house that stood before them at the head of the worn garden path hadn't changed much. The garden was overgrown, but only to the extent that it was tended to upon necessity rather than completely ignored, and the flowers that grew were certainly wild despite growing in coincidentally neat rows beneath the windows. But the windows themselves were clean, the curtains undrawn, and just beyond one, a small but fresh bowl of fruit could be seen sat upon a table. Someone occupied this house. Someone who had given up long ago and had learned to just 'make do'. Someone who existed, rather than lived. Someone Rathen could muster no compassion for.
Despite his screaming reluctance, he started towards the door. Aria cried openly beside him, making no attempt at restraint nor to keep him from moving, allowing herself through denial to be lead the few steps to the top of the path, and Rathen equally allowed her to vent her distress. The village wouldn't be disturbed by it; Kienza had prudently masked their arrival.
He knocked against the door as soon as it was within reach, pushing through his hesitation before it could truly ensnare him. He regretted it the moment his knuckles struck the wood. He resented it more than anything in memory, more, even, than when he'd abandoned his life a decade ago. This was far worse than that. Back then, he'd known the world would continue to turn without him, but Aria...she was his world now, just as big and yet infinitely more fragile, and he, in turn, was hers. And he was leaving her here.
She had grown suddenly quiet. Though she still sobbed and sniffed, she seemed more concerned about the door and what might lie beyond it. She was no doubt willing it not to open. As, for many more reasons, was he.
But it did - the hinge still creaked - and all too soon an old man with thin, white hair and deep-set, unfriendly eyes was standing before them, scrutinising his intruders in a manner that suggested he was unaccustomed to guests. There was no hint of recognition in his wrinkled face, not even the slightest suggestion, and though Rathen had expected to experience the same, he was surprised to find that, despite the wear of age, there was no mistaking him at all. "Ira."
"Yes?" The old man's voice creaked, just as haggard as his face, and he frowned cautiously, looking a little more slowly from face to unfamiliar face. "Can I help...you..." His white, wiry eyebrows rose high, revealing the true depth of his scowl, and he looked more closely at the man before him with a sudden vigour in his eyes. "Vastal's light...Rathen?"
But Rathen didn't respond. Satisfied that he had his attention, he turned away and knelt again in front of Aria who had fallen silent and paralysed in her dreadful apprehension, taking her small hands in his as comfortingly as he could. Her hands and eyes latched onto him with a fearsome, steel grip. "Listen to me, little one," he said softly as she sniffled, leaving the old man to stare in foggy dismay. "I'm not doing this because I want to - this is the very last thing I want, and you must know that. But you have to trust me when I say that this is for the best."
"Where are we?" She demanded, though its effect was compromised by the shake in her voice.
"Redgrove. This is Ira's house. You're going to stay with him for a little while."
The alarm in her eyes intensified as they thundered back onto the old man, then once more in desperation onto Kienza. "No! No, I don't know him! I want to go with Kienza! Why can't I go with Kienza?!"
"It's not safe with her, either, sweetheart. I'm sorry. But she'll check in on you from time to time." He glanced up to her. "Won't you?"
"Of course, absolutely. As often as I can."
"Why isn't it safe with her?! I don't know him, I don't want to stay with him!"
"Rathen--"
He silenced the old man with a single black glance. "Because Kienza is investigating the magic herself."
"But that's what we've been doing!"
"It's not the same, she's going deep into dangerous places and neither of us want to put you in that kind of danger."
"Danger is danger!"
"No, Aria, it isn't!" He squeezed her hands as her frenzied eyes dragged him deeper into her despair, drowning him in the cascading sorrow he tried furiously to wade out of. "Please don't make this harder than it has to be, please."
"It's because I'm not helping enough, isn't it? I know it is! It's because I'm not useful!"
"That's not true."
"Name one time I've helped!"
"You subdued the ditchlings," he replied with confident ease. "They trusted us because of you, and since then have given us information we probably wouldn't have found on our own. But we're travelling into a war zone, Aria, and your safety is far more important to all of us than what good you could do, big or small." He managed the most fleeting of smiles. "You know Petra would flay me alive if anything happened to you."
Her eyes flashed in realisation, and he kicked himself for fanning the flames. "I've not even said goodbye to anyone!"
"You won't need to, you'll not be here any longer than you need to be. You'll be back with us all in no time. I promise."
"Rathen, What's going on?"
Fire sparked as a growl rumbled in his throat. He rose sharply to his feet, finally turning to face the old man who flinched beneath his sudden fury. "If there was anywhere else she could go, you had better believe that I would never even consider bringing her here." His voice was as low as the grave, and tinted by a menace that promised fulfilment. "But I have no choice - not that I'd expect you to understand." Ira appeared about to protest, but Rathen wasn't going to let him. "You failed me as a father when she died, carting me off to the Order as soon as you could so you could wallow in your own self-pity. But my mother can't die again, so you'll have no excuse to shirk your duties as a grandfather. And you won't. I'm not giving you the chance - not when this is the first thing I have ever asked of you, not when she needs you."
Ira's eyes, old, slow and moist, dropped briefly to the young girl, and though he managed to find his tongue, it provided him only the opportunity for a stammer. But Rathen had already dismissed him.
Tears once again blurred her eyes as she threw her arms around him, and he embraced her tightly, so very tightly, kissing her tanned forehead as she cried against him, her tears soaking into his shirt. "I'm so sorry, little one," he promised her quietly, but she didn't manage to respond. She may have tried, but her sobbing overruled any attempt and strengthened her grasp around his shoulders as well as his heart.
"Daddy, please don't leave me here," he managed to make out, "please, please..."
"Aria, please trust me, I will come back for you."
"No, Daddy, no, please..."
She squeezed him desperately, and he knew that if he stayed there for much longer, he would give in. But he couldn't. For her own good, he couldn't.
He struggled out of her monstrous grip and turned her over to Ira, looking at him all the while with that same menace even as he spoke with a deceptive softness. "Look after her."
"Y-yes, of course."
Kienza finally stepped forwards from her respectful distance and silently extended a pouch of coins. The old man took it immediately, worsening the foul taste in Rathen's mouth by not even trying to refuse it. He gave no thought to the likelihood that it was an automatic reaction in his confusion and that he hadn't even noticed what it was. It took Rathen a long while to even realise that his eyes had barely left him at all, and that they had remained wide and disturbed throughout. But not the kind reserved for duress, nor for irritation. He looked as though he'd seen a ghost.