At that moment, there was a tremendous sound, and my entire carriage rocked to one side. I screamed once, hoarsely, and nearly fell over.
“Stay back!” one nearby guard shouted – or tried to shout – over the mob. “Do not approach the Godspeaker!”
There was another shove, not as strong as the first. Outside my carriage, two of the guards were physically holding back the mob, bloodthirsty and shouting.
The old anxieties were thrumming now, in the deepest part of me, but I found it frighteningly easy to ignore. I gripped my knees and stared forward, sinking back into the numbness.
“Kill the Godspeaker!” they chanted. “Kill the Godspeaker! Kill the Godspeaker!”
Numbness was not good, but it felt safe. The crowds roiled and hated and chanted, and the caravan marched on, the caravan marched on.
We made camponly once. I was not let out of my carriage. I curled up on the wooden floor and didn’t sleep.
Andwelum, as it turned out, was a dingy little coastal town, nondescript, made up mostly of squat buildings with weathered tin roofs. It had neither the splendor of Ellorian nor the mightiness of Avenos. It didn’t even have a wall; the city just sort of happened at one unremarkable spot where the moor met the coast.
And yet when we arrived, it was overrun. There were people everywhere, although none of them seemed to like it much. When the head of our caravan came into the city, someone shouted, “Make way for the Lord-Regent!” There was an echoing answer of, “Make way, make way!”
Andwelum remained unimpressive the closer we got. Its buildings were weatherbeaten, its streets muddy, and I could detect the stink of blood lingering beneath the wood smoke and dirt. Though I tried not to imagine to what had happened to such a poorly-defended coastal town this close to Avenos, images appeared in my mind anyway, unbidden.
The other members of the caravan were dismounting their camels, climbing out of their carriages, beginning the process of unpacking and settling. As I was wondering whether or not I would be let out of my carriage this time, I heard voices from outside.
“… large building on the north side of the city,” said a familiar voice. “So far as we can tell, it once served as a town hall of sorts. It should be sufficient.
“Good,” said another voice that I knew to be the Lord-Regent’s.
“Ours was the first caravan to arrive,” said the other voice. I recognized it, too, though I couldn’t immediately tell from where. I moved closer to the door of my carriage. “The city was abandoned.”
“Not abandoned, I don’t think,” said a third voice, Soya’s.
“No,” agreed the Lord-Regent grimly, “not abandoned.”
“Is this him?”
They had stopped outside my carriage.
“Yes. Please, Your Holiness, for your own safety, stand back.”
I sat up a little straighter. Could it possibly be—?
“I have no fear for my safety, Lord-Regent.”
The carriage door was pulled open, and I squinted against the sudden light. In long waxed cloaks streaked with rain stood Soya, her father the Lord-Regent, and—
—and, gods, it was Rolen, Godspeaker to Aemor. It felt as though an age had passed since I last saw him. He was worse for wear, though no worse than me, I was sure.
Incredibly, there was not a trace of suspicion on his face. I was so unaccustomed to seeing an expression of trust that it took me a moment to identify the emotion that was on his face. I eventually recognized it as eclipsing sadness.
“Silas,” he said. “It’s so good to see you.”
He reached out both hands into the carriage toward me. The gesture seemed to not only surprise but offend the Lord-Regent, the guards outside my carriage, and many of the onlookers standing in the mud outside. At once I could hear frantic whispering.
I hesitated a moment, swallowed the knot in my throat, and took his outstretched hands.
“Please, fetch him a waxed cloak,” Rolen said to a nearby functionary.
“Your Holiness—!” the Lord-Regent began.
“Now, please,” he interjected, firmly but not unkindly, with the exact inflection needed to silence dissent. The Lord-Regent growled in the back of his throat, but the functionary was already scurrying off to fetch one from a trunk secured to the back of my carriage.
Rolen helped me gently from my carriage. Rain began drumming at once on my hair and face, but it was worth it to breathe fresh air. I looked slowly at my surroundings. Soya was frowning; the Lord-Regent looked about ready to scream, and all the servants and guards were staring at me with outright distrust. It was only Rolen who was putting one arm around my shoulders, and I tried not to be stunned by the gesture.
The functionary soon came back with a waxed cloak. Rolen swept it over my shoulders for me. I shivered, though whether from the cold or the staring onlookers, I couldn’t say.
Rolen once again put his arm around my shoulders and started to move toward a large building that looks like an inn. The crowd parted in the middle, creating a long but narrow path up toward its front door.
“I can’t help but notice those manacles you wear, Silas,” he said to me softly as we walked, and I kept my eyes down. “Did the Lord-Regent force this indignity on you?”
I deeply and thoroughly owed him an answer, but it had been over a week since I’d used my voice, and all that came out at first was a dreadful croaking sound. I tried again.
“It’s – it’s f-f-f-f-fine.”
“It is most certainly not fine,” Rolen said, “but you are lovely to bear these cruelties with such grace. These people stare at you as if you’re some monster in need of caging.”
“P-p-perhaps I am,” I said.
“Silas, if there is no respite for a man of your supreme patience and graciousness, then there is no respite for anyone.”
I didn’t quite know what to say, so I stayed quiet. Compliments of any sort were entirely alien to me, especially lately.
“Your mother is waiting for you, Silas.”
I took in a sharp breath. I looked up at him just as we made it to the lobby of the inn and he shrugged of his cloak. I had a lot of tangled, painful emotions tied up in her, but one rose far above the rest: I wanted to see her. “Wh-wh-wh-wh—?”
“Upstairs,” he said. “You can go now, if you like.”
“We can’t allow him to just go anywhere, Holiness,” the Lord-Regent interjected, having followed us inside. His cloak was removed by a servant.
“Then we shall have to pull rank on you, won’t we?”
The voice had come from the side. I turned to see Greatmother Amira, dark hair rain-streaked, boots up on a table by the fireplace. She looked tired, and somehow more dangerous than usual.
“Holiness,” the Lord-Regent said, quickly adjusting to the sight of Sol’s Godspeaker in his presence, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist. The boy has proven—”
“He is not a boy, Lord-Regent,” Greatmother Amira interjected harshly. “He is a Godspeaker. And he is not your prisoner.”
“He has proven time and time again that he is a threat to everyone around him!” the Lord-Regent said.
“Don’t mistake your perceptions for proof, Lord-Regent,” Rolen returned without missing a beat. “You are absolutely incapable of knowing his experience.”
“He is a threat that must be controlled,” the Lord-Regent said.
Clang. It was the sound of Greatmother Amira’s mug of something – ale, perhaps – hitting the table. It was loud enough to silence everyone all at once.
I watched as she rose to her feet, as she crossed the weathered, aging wood floor toward me. She hooked a finger under the chain linking my manacles and lifted them up to inspect them.
“Show me a man who thinks he can control a god,” Greatmother Amira said pointedly, “and I’ll show you a fool.”
“I’d be careful about preaching wisdom, Holiness,” the Lord-Regent said, slowly. “Wisdom is lovely in theory, but in practice, I have an
entire kingdom now under my protection.”
“Gods help them all, then, because they don’t seem to be helping you,” Greatmother Amira said.
I stood for a while in stupefied silence. Although it made perfect sense for them to empathize, I still found it mystifying. I’d prepared myself to live the rest of my life at the mercy of no one. I swallowed the knot of welling emotion in my throat.
“P-p-please,” I said. “My m-m-mother—”
“She’s upstairs,” Rolen said, smiling warmly. “And rest assured, you may count on privacy. We still outrank the Lord-Regent.”
I stared up at him gratefully, hoping my expression could convey everything my stubborn tongue could not. I hurried past him, up the creaking stairs, and into a narrow hallway, where standing at the far end—
“Silas!”
She was haggard, sleep-deprived. Her eyes reminded me of Perenor’s.
At once, tears went streaming down my face.
“M-M-M-M—!”
I ran for her, and she crashed into me, holding me so tightly that all those years of mistreatment felt like some evil, distant dream. I was awash in that uniquely childlike security – what son is ever afraid of anything while in his mother’s arms, after all?
“Silas,” she sobbed into my hair. “Gods, you’re alive – I’d feared—”
She didn’t have the words for it – so few of us did, despite how many had already died – but I knew well enough what she meant. She held me all the tighter in her arms, and with my own hands bound, I could only bury my face in her shoulder and press into her as tightly as I could.
“You’ve lost weight,” she told me, voice thick, and it took everything in me not to sob. “Don’t they feed you in Avenos? And you’re in chains! Gods, what happened? We’ve had no word!”
But for my stutter, I would have been espousing how deeply and profoundly wonderful it was to see her, how much I had missed her, despite the fact that I’d never had the time to notice.
“Come inside – they have a room for you—”
She ushered me inside the door outside of which she’d been standing. It was a plain, dirty, nondescript little room, but I don’t think anything could have made me notice. Together we sat down on the edge of the bed, and she carded her fingers through my hair like when I was still a little boy.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said as she kissed my temple. “Thank the gods, thank the gods. When we heard word that Umbrion’s Godspeaker was in Avenos, we could hardly believe it. What happened? Where’s Perenor?”
The wounds were still fresh, of course, and her question pulled them open again. Gods, how could I answer her when grief had all but stolen my voice for weeks? How could I tell her what she needed to know when I was a useless, stuttering mess?
“Silas?” she asked when I didn’t answer. “Where’s your brother?”
She withdrew and looked down at me. Some shadow of an answer must have been visible on my face, because all the blood drained from hers.
“Silas?” she said again, more urgently.
I swallowed a hard knot in my throat.
“He f-f-f-f-f-f-fell,” I stammered. “In b-b-b-battle, he f-f-f-f-fell…”
She clapped a hand over her mouth.
“A g-g-g-great d-d-demon,” I choked, fighting back as best I could the ever-encroaching tears. “He w-w-w-was th-thrown…”
“No,” she said, and my tears came anyway.
“He d-d-d-died to s-s-s-save the c-c-city,” I told her, though my throat was growing ever tighter. “He g-g-g-gave up his l-l-l-life, everything in he c-c-c-could g-give…”
“No,” she said again. “No, gods, please no—”
“I’m s-s-s-s-s-sorry,” I stammered at her. “I’m s-s-s-so s-s-sorry, it’s m-m-my fault—”
“Silas—”
“I sh-sh-shouldn’t have l-l-let him g-g-g-go,” I said, face not wet with tears, shoulders shaking, hands wringing in my manacles. “He w-w-w-was in n-n-no c-condition to f-f-fight, I sh-shouldn’t h-h-h-have—”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, pulling me into her arms again. “Don’t you dare, Silas. I’m not going to lose another son. Not to war, and not to his own grief. Do you understand me?”
I understood her; whether or not I could believe her was another matter entirely. We sat together a while, her hand in my hair, as I curled up against her and tried to hide from my grief for no other reason than I was not sure how much more I could live through.
“I will not lose you,” she whispered to me, over and over. I was not sure if it was meant to reassure me or herself. “I will not lose you.”
Mother and I had dinner that night in that room at the end of the hall, with two guards posted outside my door. The food was sub-par and all my old wounds were aching, but for the first time the ache felt more like healing and less like dying. A pain shared, it seemed, truly was a pain halved.
We didn’t talk much. Every time one of us tried, the subject inevitably turned dark, and my mother would grip my wrist and say, “There’s no point in discussing it here, like this.” And she was right, of course – what point was there in trying to make sense of tragedy when the tragedy had not yet ended? – and we would drop the subject and fall into silence.
And it wasn’t ideal, but it was good. Good to be with her, good to share the burden of our losses.
“Wh-wh-where’s G-Grandmother?” I asked eventually, half-wondering if I really wanted to know.
“With the Lady Queen, I’d imagine,” Mother answered, picking at her breast of roast duck. I sat up straighter in the flimsy wooden chair.
“The L-L-L-L-Lady Queen yet l-lives?”
“‘Survives’ may be the better term,” she replied grimly. “The loss of her wife nearly broke her. But yes, she lives.”
I took a sip of the weak, cooling tea. Part of me wanted to seek her out and offer condolences, but the rest of me knew better. Even if I would be let out of my room – which seemed unlikely – I doubted she would want to see the face of the man who reached out his hand and ripped her wife apart.
“Your grandmother does want to see you,” she said, and I looked up at her. “She’s just busy. She’s one of the most senior on the Queenscourt, and she’s been trying to make sense of this new political chaos.”
“Th-th-th-that is the d-d-duty of House Olen,” I sighed.
“Silas,” Mother said gently, “don’t be too hard on her. She was as wounded as any of us by the Breaking. Her sense of duty is strong. You can’t fault her that.”
I felt as though I could, but for Mother’s sake, I wouldn’t. I took another sip of tea.
There came a few muffled voices through the doorway. I couldn’t make out the words at first, but as they came closer, they got clearer:
“The Godspeaker is not allowed unscheduled visitors.” It was one of the guards. “Lord-Regent’s orders.”
“I could give a fuck about the Lord-Regent and his orders,” came the answer, and I knew at once who it was. “He’s not my Lord-Regent and he never has been. Are you going to move aside or aren’t you?”
“It’s G-G-G-Greatmother Amira,” I said to Mother, who straightened in her chair.
“Should we – do we stand? What’s the form of address—?”
“It d-d-doesn’t matter,” I assured her.
The door opened a moment later.
“Silas,” Greatmother Amira said, striding into the room. She was still in her fitted leathers and knee-high boots. “I apologize for interrupting, but—”
“No, no, no,” my mother said, rising respectfully from the table. “Please, I’m sure you have much to talk about.”
“I won’t be long,” Greatmother Amira said.
“Of course,” Mother obliged. “Silas, I’ll come find you after dinner. I’ll try to find your grandmother.”
I smiled as best I could, though I fear it came out more like a grimace, as I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her at all. I watched as Mother left, then l
ooked back at Greatmother Amira.
“You’ve had no further contact with…?”
It took me a moment, but only a moment. I shook my head.
“Good,” she said. “That’s good. On the grand scale of things, at least. The moot begins officially tomorrow, and though there have been no formal discussions, most of the Godspeakers are already in agreement on the plan of action.”
I stared up at her in confusion.
“It’s something that hasn’t been attempted in an age,” she said. “Not since my people were stranded on Onansu.”
For a few moments I couldn’t glean the meaning of her words, until I could. It was something I’d only ever heard of through history books, and I realized, somewhat belatedly, that Greatmother Amira was the living embodiment of that history.
“Y-y-y-y-you’re talking about—”
“When the gods came down in what your kingdom calls the Manifest, we – the Ansu – were too far to hear them, too far to know,” she said, sitting down across from me. “But we saw the Worldmother’s Light on the horizon and we yearned for it. Back then, Onansu was an unforgiving place, rocky and unyielding.
“For weeks, we prayed to that far-off light for some respite, for some aid and understanding. And eventually, it worked. The Worldmother came down from the sky, burning white, and she grew the jungles up around us.”
“She m-m-m-made you her Godspeaker,” I said. “The f-f-first.”
“Yes,” Greatmother Amira said, “with a kiss. She blessed me and all of my people with great knowledge and strength. It led us across the waters, to your fledgling kingdom of Imlandran. It led us to develop horticulture, husbandry, mathematics, philosophy.”
“And w-w-w-we’re g-going to r-r-repeat that p-process?”
“If it worked with a few hundred people praying and fasting for a few weeks, imagine what all five Godspeakers could do in just a few hours.”
Something cold twisted inside of me. “Y-y-y-you m-m-mean to summon the gods? Can s-s-such a thing b-b-b-be done?”
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