by Evie Manieri
The Mongrel’s scars shone silver in the firelight as she slowly held out her arms. It might have been a trick of the light, but Daryan thought he saw her trembling. Nisha nestled the baby boy’s head in the crook of her arm, and then paused, her hands resting on her shoulders, beaming at her with such overwhelming tenderness that his own sore heart swelled with longing. He would have given anything to see his own mother again, just for a moment.
The Mongrel whispered, “I knew you were going to say that.”
Daryan looked around the room. Suddenly he realized that he was in the presence of a conspiracy, witnessing the culmination of a story in which he had played a part, but that he still barely understood.
Ignoring the eyes that turned to follow him, he trudged across the room, lifted the sleeping Dramash off the floor, and said wearily, “Can we go now?”
Epilogue
Eofar stood on the deck in the stern of the Nomas ship Argent with the strong, cool wind blowing into his face. He was watching the Shadari’s fires twinkling in front of the mountains, which were just visible as purple humps in the evening starlight. All around him the ship creaked and groaned uneasily, but he had already grown accustomed to the ceaseless torrent of sound. It blended into the background of his thoughts, as did the bright voices of the Nomas sailors attending to the needs of their vessel.
The cabin door behind him squeaked open and he heard the uncertain steps of his cabin-mate coming to join him.
They stood together for a few more moments, lost in their own thoughts, before Eofar looked at Rho and recoiled.
Rho’s wounds were finally beginning to heal, but he still couldn’t straighten to his full height. The resulting slouch echoed his former disinterested posing, but there was no mistaking the fact that he had turned his back on his birthright: his head was a mess of choppy white spikes. It looked as if he had used his knife to hack off his hair by the handful.
He was unfazed by Eofar’s reaction.
Eofar remembered something.
Rho said nothing in reply, but his thoughtfulness deepened and Eofar shifted the subject of the conversation.
He turned and scanned the immaculate deck, illuminated by lamps swinging from the rigging. Underneath the billowing sails, a dozen steady-legged, strong-armed Nomas women were going about their business with their usual air of unflappable efficiency. In their midst, Nisha stood with one arm resting easily on the ship’s great wheel, the other supporting Dramash as he tried to turn it under her laughing tutelage.
Rho tried to be dismissive, but without much success.
They turned back to the receding view of the Shadar.
Eofar looked down at his hands on the railing. He stamped one foot, sending fresh spasms through his bandaged ankle, as if the pain would bring enlightenment.
Eofar leaned forward. Something was flickering on the beach.
He saw a new light spring up, larger than the rest, and closer; it flared up higher, hotter. His keen Norlander eyes made out the wisps of black smoke snaking up from the pyre before they thinned out into the purple sky.
Rho leaned out over the railing and stared down into the dark water.
* * *
Isa looked down at the crowds of people heading toward the beach. The light was gone and she had finally been able to peel off her cloak and single white glove. The evening breeze cooled her skin beautifully and she closed her eyes, listening to the insects buzzing and chirping in the mountain’s scrubby underbrush. Somewhere behind her, Aeda was also enjoying the cool solitude of the mountain ridge; she could hear her tail thumping contentedly in the dirt.
Maybe he wouldn’t come.
She sat back down on the ground to wait and looked around again, checking the landmarks, making absolutely certain that she was in the right spot, then, satisfied, she stretched out on the ground with her balled-up cloak as a pillow and watched night descend over the city.
She awoke to Daryan’s warm hand brushing her hip and his dark eyes smiling into hers.
“Sorry,” he whispered as she sat up beside him. “I hated to wake you. You were sleeping so peacefully.”
She rubbed her eyes and stared at him in confusion. He wore a splendid purple robe, gaudily embroidered with shiny constellations of stars. A thin gold band circled his newly trimmed curls and his wrists were encased in a pair of wide gold cuffs. A heavy gold medallion swung from a chain around his neck. He should have looked ridiculous, but he did not. He looked noble.
“I couldn’t change,” he explained. “It would have made them suspicious. Don’t worry, I brought a plain robe.” He waved at a large sack lying nearby and began stripping off the jewelry. “Is everything ready? Do you have everything you need?”
She picked her glove up off the ground and smoothed it out in her lap. “How was the funeral?” she asked.
He sat down heavily on the grass beside her. “They didn’t know her—they have no idea how brave she really was, or what sacrifices she made for them
. They anointed her and prayed for her and laid her body on a bonfire because they thought she was the wife of a daimon. If they had known the truth, they would have torn her apart, and me, too.” He turned to her. “I looked for you. I thought you might change your mind.”
She looked out over the city. The Shadari had offered her a place of honor at Harotha’s funeral: the latest in a string of awkward gestures intended to repay her for saving Dramash and killing Frea.
“The Argent sailed before sunset. I needed to say goodbye to my brother and Rho,” she reminded him. She would never admit how close they had come to persuading her to join them. “And Dramash. I’m still surprised his family let him go.”
“Let him?” Daryan asked bitterly. “They’re so terrified of him they couldn’t wait to get rid of him. They were singing songs about his heroics all the while they were pushing him into the landing-boat. It’s all such a mess.” He sat there in silence, staring down at the city.
The drumming began, and Isa listened expectantly for the rhythm to take hold. From every corner of the city, one drummer after another took up the complicated rhythm and kept it going, made a subtle change, passed it back again, like a vibrant but amiable conversation. She found it all strangely uplifting, and now it helped her summon the last ounce of courage she needed.
“I have to tell you something.” She swallowed painfully. “I’m not going.”
Daryan looked over at her sharply. “What?”
“We should stay in the Shadar.” She faltered. She knew him too well to mistake the crushed look in his eyes. “We should stay.”
“What’s the matter?” he cried. “Don’t you want to be with me? You know it’s the only way we can be together, don’t you?”
She intertwined her fingers briefly with his, feeling the heat wrap around them before she pulled her hand away. “Now, it’s the only way, but things will change.”
He stared down at her knees. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “We’ve been planning this ever since Harotha died.” He looked up at her, his eyes bright with welling tears. “Did I do something wrong?”
She pushed down the impulse to stop, to give in. “I knew when you walked away from me, after Frea died—I knew it had to be this way, but I just didn’t want to believe it. I let myself pretend for a little while, but I can’t pretend any longer.”
He began to speak, but she went on without allowing him to interrupt her. “You are their king—you think you can’t be, not without Harotha, but you’re wrong. You’re their king and we can’t change that.”
“Yes, we can,” he responded forcefully, kneeling down in front of her. “We have to change it. Nothing’s going to get any better for us here—do you want to end up like Eofar and Harotha? We have to get away—”
“We’ll make it better,” Isa said with equal force.
“Let them do it themselves then, if that’s what they want!” he shouted. “I never wanted to be their leader, Isa. I did the best I could, but this is the end of it. I’m finished.”
“You’re not,” she insisted, “and you’re wrong. You’d find it out soon enough if we left: you would know you’d abandoned them and it would poison everything. We would never be free of it. We’d never be happy—and it would be too late to come back. No. We have to stay.”
“Have to? Who are you to tell me what I have to do? Am I still your slave? What about me—what about what I want?” He seized her and pulled her close, squeezing her in his shivering arms until she cried out. He released her at last, saying, “Can I not have something I want, for once in my life?”
“We’ll work for it,” she whispered, desperate for him to understand, to believe her, “until they don’t need you any more. Then we’ll be together.”
He knelt there for a long time, and gradually she saw his shoulders relax and she knew that she had reached him. Now that he understood, there would be no more talk of running away. She scooted close enough to him to feel his warmth and waited while the moon rose, the sky grew brighter and one by one the drums left off beating. The chirping of the insects slowed and grew drowsy.
“I have something for you,” she told him, and reached for the packet she’d concealed under her folded robe.
He took the flat bundle with a look of surprise and unwrapped the cloth. “What is—? Isa! Where did you get this?”
“From the Nomas,” she said happily as he lifted the top sheet from the stack of paper and held it up for them both to admire. “You can start your book again. You can write down everything Harotha told you about the past, and when that’s done, you can write down everything that’s happened here now.”
He ran his fingers over the sheet. “It’s so smooth.”
“It’s from Daringal. The Nomas told me it was better than our paper—the best paper you can get. It’s made from the pulp of some soft tree.”
“But how did you pay for it?”
“Lahlil. She gave me some money before she left.”
“And you bought me a present. I don’t know what to say. It’s beautiful.” He carefully placed the sheet back in the stack with the others, then looked up at her and said huskily, “Come here.”
They lay back in the scrubby grass then, and made love on his purple robe, not with the desperate, grasping awkwardness of the first time, or the frantic haste of their few secret trysts since then. This time they were exploring each other, testing their limits, seeking out the bliss that they knew waited on the other side of the pain; they were two people for whom the world would wait.
“You’ll be a good king,” Isa reassured him, tangling her fingers in the curls on the back of his neck, just as he did when he thought no one was watching. “And we will be together, when the time comes.”
He laughed a little, and flashed her a thin smile. “Thanks—but that’s not what’s worrying me.” His expression darkened. “What’s worrying me is who we’ll have become by then. People change. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us. How are we supposed to keep it all from pulling us apart?”
She stretched out on the grass beside him and gazed up at the stars, searching for the answer.
* * *
Lahlil was concentrating on being still. As the Mongrel, she knew how to be still. In combat, it was often essential, and in scouting, always—but that kind of stillness was preparatory to action; it was finite, and she controlled when it began and when it ended. This was different. This wasn’t about action. It wasn’t even about waiting. It was just about being still.
Slowly she drew in a deep breath, and just as slowly let it out again. The baby in her arms puckered up his rosy mouth and made a few tiny smacking sounds. Then he fell back into a deep sleep.
She went back to being still.
A gray haze drifted over the mountains and dissipated over the desert long before it reached her. The rich color of the sand around her shifted as the pre-dawn light grew stronger.
A swish of sandalled footsteps approached from behind, and her heart, feeling as new to the world and as defenseless as the baby in her arms, swelled in anticipation.
“Is he asleep?” Jachad whispered. She felt his warm, wine-scented breath on her neck as he knelt down behind her and peeked over her shoulder. She turned her head and caught a glimpse of his face: his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. “Shof help me, he’s too beautiful to be real. Osharad. I like it—a little odd, perhaps, but it suits him.” He knelt there for a few moments more, staring down at the tiny baby, his hands unconsciously resting on her shoulders. “Do you want me to take him for a while, give you a break?” he asked hopefully. More gently he reminded her, “You’re going to have to give him to me in a little while, anyway.”
He lifted his hands from her shoulders and for a sinking moment she thought he was going to go away again, but instead he sat down behind her in the sand and wriggled his back up against hers.
“Here,” he suggested, “lean on me.”
She did as he advised, and the slow, burning pain that
had been spreading through her lower back began to fade.
“They hauled out every tedious ritual they had for Harotha’s funeral. I left early,” he said. His voice was light and quick, but she had seen his eyes, and she could feel the grief moving just below the surface. He’s hiding it from himself, she thought, not from me. “But it was quite the spectacle. The wine was terrible. Nobody asked after you.” He gathered his thoughts and then went on, “The Argent set sail in the afternoon. Nisha said to say goodbye to you. Again.” She felt him shaking his head, and he laughed. “I still can’t believe she volunteered to take them to Norland in her own ship. What a show-off.”
She felt the rhythm of his breathing slow as he watched the sand blow around them in the dawn breeze.
“What if I had never come back?”
He sighed, long and deep. “I knew that’s what you were thinking.”
She waited for him to give her an answer.
“If you had never come back, things would have been different. That’s all you can know. Better for some, maybe worse for others. Who can say?” His voice roughened; the grief was threatening to break through. “You came back because you needed to, and I came with you because I needed to. We both have to live with that now.”
They sat together in silence while the eastern sky slowly brightened to a silvery gray. As he stirred at her back, she told him, “Not yet,” and he grunted and settled back down again.
“Nisha said she spoke to you about your illness,” he said quietly, after another pause. “She said you’ve never actually asked Shof and Amai to be free. You might try that, you know—what have you got to lose? They might finally leave you alone.”
Lahlil felt the first sign, a shiver running up and down her legs. “Exactly.”
His fingertips crept over her shoulder and squeezed it gently. “You’re not alone. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” she said. “That’s not what’s worrying me.”
“No?” asked Jachad. He leaned further back and twisted around so that he could see her face. “What, then?”
Lahlil looked over her shoulder and into his sea-blue eyes. “I think I’m happy.”