by Ryan Kirk
“There’s something else,” Ana said.
Brandt turned his head so he was looking at her.
“You won’t expect this,” she warned.
He reached up and brushed the hair out of her face. She’d grown it even longer these past two years.
Ana took a deep breath. “I’d like to start a family.”
Brandt’s hand tangled in her hair. He tugged at the tangle hopelessly for a moment, then simply removed his hand. “What?”
Her eyes twinkled with mirth. “I’m sure you heard me the first time.”
Brandt pushed himself gently away from her so they weren’t entangled. “Now?”
Now that she had expressed herself, she had no problem defending her decision. “Yes.”
“I’m sure there are worse times to start a family, but I can’t think of one.”
She kicked him in the shin under the covers, then turned serious. “I understand. But there is no perfect time to have a child, especially for us. There will always be another danger. In the past it was Falari incursions. Now it’s the Lolani. Who knows what we’ll discover five years from now?”
She paused, her gaze steady on his. “But that’s no reason not to try. Children are another reason for us to keep fighting for a better tomorrow.”
Brandt sat up in bed, and Ana’s hand met his. She held it tightly. He returned her grip. “What about your training?”
She smiled at that. “I’ll continue as best I can, but my skill won’t matter. We both know that.”
“You’re one of the stronger affinities in the monastery.”
“And I haven’t made any progress in months. I’m near the limits of my ability.”
It was the first time either of them had said as much out loud, even though Brandt had suspected it for a while. The admission still hit him like a punch to the stomach, though. He wanted her to grow stronger. They’d been on this journey together, and he didn’t want to leave her behind.
But there were limits, and Ana had found hers.
He considered her proposal. They had talked about having children before, but it had never felt quite right. Brandt enjoyed the idea of raising children, but he found himself with cold feet now that the actual opportunity presented itself.
He snuck a look at Ana. She was gorgeous, kind, and strong. And he suspected she would make a wonderful mother.
In the end, his decision was simpler than he expected. This was what she wanted, and he couldn’t refuse her.
“Very well,” he said.
A smile grew on her face, and a mischievous look flashed on it immediately after. “You want to start now?” She threw the covers off, revealing nearly her entire body.
He should probably tell Kyla they were leaving, and there was no shortage of work around the monastery to complete. The rebuilding had just barely begun.
But it was important to have priorities.
4
Despite their initial confusion, her family’s good manners prevailed. They welcomed the trader into their home and offered what little remained of their meal. The Etari, who introduced himself as Ligt, accepted the hospitality and dug into the remains of the meal with the enthusiasm of a man close to dying from starvation.
Alena laughed to herself as Mother and Father attempted the polite conversation that dominated imperial meals. They asked about his travels and the weather on the road. He answered them kindly enough, no doubt used to imperial customs, but his patience for such questions was clearly limited.
Her mirth died when she caught sight of Jace out of the corner of her vision. He stood near the door of the dining room, stiff as steel. He crossed his arms and fixed Ligt with a glare meant to kill.
Alena didn’t need to soulwalk to understand her brother’s reaction. He understood why Alena had run to the Etari years ago, but his heart still wrestled with her decision and the dark consequences it had spawned. Most days it felt like they had put their past behind them. But Ligt’s presence threatened to destroy in a night what they had spent two years trying to rebuild.
Still, he probably wouldn’t draw his sword within their family house. Her brother could be rash, but he matured day by day. His new promotion was evidence enough of that.
Thought of his promotion saddened her. Tonight should have been his night to celebrate.
Alena interrupted her mother’s question about Etari food. Ligt didn’t bring welcome news, so it was best to deal with it now. Alena raised a hand and her mother went silent. “You said Sooni summoned me. Why?”
Ligt scraped the last of his food from the plate, then turned to face her, hand signing a gesture of appreciation for her intervention. He switched to the Etari language. “Do you still speak and understand Etari?”
“With ease,” she replied, in the same language.
A sign of gratitude. “I do not know the words for some concepts in imperial.” He signed an apology.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
She sensed the tension growing among her family members. They all knew she’d spent years among the Etari, but Jace wasn’t alone in his discomfort in being reminded. She turned to them. “He doesn’t know enough imperial to explain Sooni’s summons. It’s not because he desires to keep anything a secret.”
“She speaks true,” Ligt added.
“If it makes you uncomfortable,” Alena said, “I can speak with him in another room. You will know everything before we’re done.”
Father shook his head. “Anything that affects you affects us. We’ll stay.”
Ligt spoke to Alena in Etari. “Your family loves you.”
She turned back to him. “They both do.”
A sign of affirmation, respect indicated in the gesture.
Ligt, in Etari fashion, spoke directly to the problem. “The great scourge threatens us again.”
Alena started. “The Lolani have returned?”
Ligt signed for her to remain calm. “Not in person, but in other ways.”
“Explain.”
“It is our gatestones. Have you noticed anything strange with yours?”
She signed a negative. She missed Etari communication, so rich in its combination of gestures and words. It felt so much more free than imperial.
“Some of our more recent family members have experienced challenges with the gatestones. The problem seems to be worse the closer one gets to the remains of the shattered gate. But at times, our gatestones fail us completely.”
“How so?”
“Some who use them vomit. Others complain of strong headaches. A few have come close to death’s gate. For others, the connection briefly vanishes. The problems are increasing in frequency, severity, and duration.”
Alena frowned, then signed her confusion. She hadn’t noticed any such problems, but she very rarely connected to her gatestone.
“Many believe the Lolani queen has infected our gate.”
Alena leaned forward. Through all her years with the Etari, she’d never learned much about their gate. Hanns, her emperor, had told her the Etari possessed the remains of a gate that had been shattered. It was the source of the small gatestones every adult Etari embedded somewhere in their skin, usually near the navel. It allowed them to connect to a power greater than their own, bypassing the cost that plagued imperial warriors gifted with affinities.
But Alena didn’t know where the Etari gate was, or anything else about it. Sooni, the leader of her family, had never spoken with her about it, despite Alena’s inquiries.
“I’m sorry,” Alena said. “Why does Sooni want me?”
“She says that you can soulwalk.”
Then Alena understood. Among the Etari, soulwalking was taboo, for reasons they had never explained to her. Alena only discovered her own ability to soulwalk after leaving the Etari, so the subject hadn’t come up.
After their last battle with the Lolani queen, Alena had written a long letter to Sooni explaining everything. She was obligated to inform them of Azaleth’s death
, the outcome of the battle, and her own role in it. That had also been the letter where she told Sooni she wouldn’t be returning to Etar anytime soon. Explaining it had been difficult, and Alena still didn’t believe she’d expressed herself well.
Sooni deserved better from her.
Sooni had done more than just save Alena’s life. She’d given Alena a second family. And Alena was responsible for Azaleth’s death. Several reasons complicated any return to Etar, but it was her fear of facing Sooni again that prevented her from venturing near the border again.
But thanks to the letter, Sooni knew she could soulwalk and somehow thought Alena’s gift might be exactly what the Etari needed. Alena swore, in Etari. She didn’t need her mother yelling at her for her language.
“Will you come?” Ligt asked. “There is concern that if something is not done soon, the infection will worsen.” He paused, giving her a meaningful look. “We might lose all the power of the gatestones.”
Alena had mixed feelings about that threat. She didn’t treasure her gatestone quite the same way the Etari did. For them, the gatestone represented their passage into adulthood. It remained with them until the moment of their passing, when it would be given to another, often within the same family.
Her stone wasn’t without sentimental value. It hadn’t marked her adulthood, but instead her formal acceptance into Sooni’s family.
Her more pressing concern was that her gatestone fueled her soulwalking abilities. It had been a large part of the reason they’d defeated the Lolani queen and her minions. Losing the gatestone wouldn’t be difficult. Losing its power would be.
“I’ll need to discuss it with my family,” Alena replied.
Ligt signed his acknowledgement. “Perhaps it would be best if I waited somewhere else?”
Alena glanced at the looks on her family’s faces. “That might be wise.”
After Alena got Ligt settled in their family room, she returned to the dining room. Jace had taken a seat. She completed the circle. Then she took a deep breath and recounted the conversation that had just taken place.
“But you don’t have to go,” Mother said.
Alena signed the negative, then remembered she was with her family. She shook her head. “No. There are no immediate consequences to refusing the summons. If I choose not to go, Ligt will leave without complaint.”
Ligt might leave, but if disaster befell the Etari, they would hold her at least partially responsible. Then she would feel the consequences. But she didn’t want to make this decision about what the Etari might do or not do to her. She wanted to do the right thing.
And as soon as she understood that, she realized she had already made her decision.
It tore her in two.
Father, always more attuned to her thoughts than she guessed, realized the same. “You want to go.”
She nodded, feeling the pain in her heart mirrored in the faces of her family. “If the attack has anything to do with soulwalking, then I’m the only one who can help. And I don’t want to see the Etari suffer.”
Jace’s fists clenched at that, but he said nothing. At best, most citizens of the empire viewed the Etari with ambivalence. But no small number saw their existence as an affront to the empire. Jace might not have felt so strongly as a child, but Alena’s time among them soured any generous views he might have had. He couldn’t view them as anything more than the people that had taken his sister away from him.
“I don’t want you to go,” Mother said. “What if it’s dangerous?”
Alena had no good answer to her mother’s concerns. She felt little threat from the Etari, but she had no way to evaluate the danger from the gate. “I’ll be as safe as I can.”
Mother looked to Father, worry in her eyes. Father, in turn, watched Alena closely.
She remembered that gaze from when she was younger. It wasn’t a soulwalk, but the sensations weren’t dissimilar. Father didn’t have an affinity, but his careful observations and slow wisdom served him nearly as well. “Why do you really want to go?”
Alena swallowed. “The Etari saved my life, and I owe them a debt for that. If I can serve them in this, I would like to.” She paused, knowing the answer wouldn’t satisfy her father’s insight into his daughter. “And perhaps there are answers. For all my training, I still don’t understand my powers well, and this might be a path in the right direction.”
“And you’ve been eager to leave for weeks now, anyway.”
“Yes.” She wanted to tell them more, to tell them that she loved them but she had to go. But this was her family. They all understood her, and she hoped they trusted her, too.
Father leaned back in his chair, a sigh escaping his lips. “Then I suppose you should go. But you will keep in touch, and you will return when you are able.”
Mother protested, but Father calmed her with a hand on her shoulder. He waited for Alena to answer.
“I will,” she said. “If you wish, I can form a connection with you the same way I did with Brandt before he left. I should be able to reach you that way.”
Alena looked to Jace. Mother would eventually follow Father’s lead, but Jace was another matter entirely. He stared at the table, fists still clenched. When he did look up, his jaw was set. “I will go with you,” he declared.
“What?” Alena asked, her question joining the chorus of inquiries coming from their parents.
Jace shrugged. Once he made a decision, he rarely retreated from it. “I lost you once to the Etari. I don’t mean for it to happen again.”
A dozen challenges presented themselves to Alena, but one above all else. “But what about your promotion?”
His only answer was to meet her gaze. She saw then that nothing she could say would change his mind. He would follow at a distance if she didn’t let him join them. She gave him a small nod and he relaxed. He’d been preparing for a fight.
There was little else to discuss. Alena hated seeing Mother distraught, but there was little she could do to ease a mother’s worries. She would form a connection with both of them. It was the only comfort she could offer. She would reach out to them when she had the time.
“I’ll let Ligt know,” she said. “I imagine we’ll leave in the next day or two.”
“And I’ll let the governor know that I’ll be gone for a while,” Jace said.
And just like that, the decision was made.
She was going back to Etar.
And this time, she was bringing her brother.
5
Estern came into view long before they reached its walls. When he first saw it clearly, Brandt stopped to take it all in. He shook his head at the changes visible even from afar. The city had grown since he’d been here last.
He shouldn’t be surprised. It had been, what, a dozen years since he’d last visited? His travels with the wolfblades occasionally brought him through, but not for a while before his fateful visit to Landow. And since then the vast majority of his days had been spent in Highkeep.
Beside him, Ana seemed less impressed. “Looks dirty.”
Brandt smiled. “Still not interested in moving to the city?”
“Give me open air and clean water any day.”
Brandt and Ana shared a dislike of cities, although for different reasons. Brandt had grown up within one, the youngest son of a family of wage-earners. He admired his family, but growing up in a city where so much of the empire’s coin had been on display left him with little but bitter memories. He despised ostentatious displays of wealth, and there were plenty to go around in the larger imperial cities.
They spent the rest of the day reaching the walls of the city. Farms gave way to homes built beyond the walls. Brandt wondered if the city had run out of space or if those who elected to live outside the walls found life to be cheaper and the space more welcoming.
The wolfblade within him frowned at the new construction. He understood why people built in such places. Whether due to cost or space, they could build their homes outsid
e the walls but still retreat inside in case danger threatened the area.
But there was little to worry about here. Estern, while not quite in the center of the empire, was hundreds of leagues away from any border that threatened it. There hadn’t been a meaningful threat in this region since Anders I established the empire two hundred years ago.
He still disliked it. Should the worst come to pass, the houses were a liability. They could shelter invaders or be burned, obscuring enemy movements. Though he didn’t feel the need to circumnavigate the city to prove his suspicion, it appeared as though the construction encircled it.
The houses ended about five hundred paces from the wall. From that point, nothing protected would-be invaders from the sight of the wall. Brandt supposed the short open field was better than nothing.
The gates to Estern stood open, and Brandt and Ana entered without problem. Brandt stopped before he made it a dozen paces into the city. How could such a city even be possible?
Every building in sight was more than a story tall. Several were more than three, and they all seemed crammed together. The noise, especially after the weeks on the road, deafened him. How did anyone get used to such a cacophony?
Ana gave him a small push. “You’re making us look like country folk who’ve never seen a city before.”
“It’s so much bigger than I remember it.”
“It’s still a city.”
“Let’s find someplace to sleep tonight. We can try for an audience with the emperor tomorrow.”
Brandt didn’t have any particular worries on that count. By now, Kyla would have sent a message ahead making the emperor aware of their impending visit. Hopefully accessing the palace wouldn’t prove too difficult.
They faced an overwhelming number of choices for food and shelter. Eventually, Brandt chose one more or less at random. The space seemed clean and the room and food affordable. They weren’t anywhere near the heart of the city, but Brandt suspected they didn’t have the coin for such places.