“You believe she’ll reject you because of that, don’t you?”
“I. . . uh. . .” Renn rubbed his face. “I should give her more credit?”
“Yes, you should.” Kaiteen flicked her glovelet again.
“But my face, you know, wasn’t much to begin with.” His cheeks burned hot. He’d never admitted as much to anyone. Then again, nobody had ever been inside his head either.
“Oh, Renn. The things we make ourselves believe. Here, look.” Kaiteen tilted his chin up with her tingling fingertips, until he met her loving gaze. She pulled her tunic out of her breeches, revealing an abdomen with a gaping, messy crossbow-dart wound.
“That’s awful.” Renn recoiled. “But, you’re dead. It doesn’t heal?”
“Heal? Heavens no! My badge of honor? I’ve three more—all matching. I’d show you, but it’s a bit unseemly for me to show certain things to a guy, especially you in particular, yah?”
“Um, badge of honor?” Renn looked away from the open wound. “What happened to you, Kaiteen?”
“They look ugly here, and they should. My death was excruciating. Right here, on this god-awful chalky plateau. What looks ugly and futile in the natural, however, is a sight to behold when a thing can be seen for its true worth.”
Renn bit his lip, not following.
“I sold my life at a high price. Each of these ‘awful’ holes proclaim that mine was a life worth living.” Her jaw locked. “I fought until my last breath for my daughter. That I had no hope of saving her, and of course did not, does not diminish the value of my sacrifice. Though I am long gone, my girl lives, sealed, with a life offered in exchange for her own.”
She tucked her tunic back in. Straightened her deerskin jacket, patting each dart hole.
“I. . . I had no idea.”
“You can’t see it, from where you stand, but self-giving, sacrificial love—that is the fabric of creation. Our world’s broken. Yet the heartbeat is there, the lifeblood coursing through everything.”
“I’d like to believe that, Kaiteen.” Renn avoided her gleaming eyes.
“But?”
“Well, the way you died for starters. Alixa, Emmie—they lost everything. Where’s creation’s love there?”
“Ahhh. . . you’ve seen but a shadow, Rennwinn. A shadow that cannot last forever.” Her leather glovelet crinkled as Kaiteen made a fist. “The curse on this land cannot restrain a people willing to live beyond themselves. That’s what I gave my life for; for Kie—” Kaiteen’s smile stuck. “My daughter, of course. Ben’s life—the same. You saw my stomach. You saw Ben’s battered body. There will be a reckoning!”
Kaiteen’s eyes had built themselves into a raging fire. I’d never want to be on her bad side, Renn thought as he studied Emmie’s fierce little mom.
“Don’t you forget it. But no worries, son.” She shot up three thin fingers, ran them gently down the cuts on Renn’s cheek. “What do those scars do for your face? They tell me your love for my daughter is pure and strong; that she will be cared for. She sees it too, don’t doubt that.” Kaiteen’s amused smile returned. “Somebody just needs to say something, yah?”
Renn nodded slowly. Kaiteen’s fingers brushed his face as he did.
“But know this.” Slight as she was, Kaiteen straightened to cut an imposing figure. “Know this for a fact. All the blood that’s been spilled—willingly and without regret—for her sake. . .”
As much as Kaiteen had assured Renn of her approval, still the intensity of her words were frightening.
“Only a damned fool dare try harm my daughter now. I will not sit idly by. My sacrifice will be felt. With a vengeance. My life for hers. I’ve earned that.” She closed her eyes. When they reopened, their gentle humor had returned. She patted his cheek. “Enough of that. Not worthy of our worries, you and I. Oh, Renn, you’ve made me so proud. You’ve shown yourself worthy—noble, royal even—to be a part of our family.”
Kaiteen winked, smiling coyly at him.
“Royal?” Renn cocked his head. “I thought Alixa—”
“Oh. . .” Kaiteen’s eyes glittered mischievously. Hand to her mouth, she glanced skyward pseudo-apologetically. “Alixa is indeed Chastien’s heir. She’ll make a much beloved queen. I should know. I was quite close to Alixa’s mother when I was small.”
“Are you saying—” Renn began, but a bemused look danced across Kaiteen’s face. She put a finger to her lips.
“As much as I crave to linger for no other purpose than to simply be with you, Renn. . . our time is coming to a close.”
“It is? I mean, does it have to?” Renn fumbled. “I’d love for longer with you.”
“I’ve had my time. You’re alive and you’ve proven yours is a life worth living. To me, to my daughter, to anyone who would matter.” Kaiteen brushed three fingers down the scarred side of Renn’s face. “Take care of my girl. You have the great treasure of having found someone worth dying for. You’ll find it infinitely more rewarding to discover that that someone is also worth living for.”
LIX - Lake Winnepaca
The sun was edging high into the sky, glittering on the lake and reflecting light off the imposing northeast mountains. No one had yet spoken. Emmie remained hunched at the waterfront, her boots and leggings cast aside, legs submerged up to her knees. Alixa, hood still over her face, hadn’t budged from where she lay. Renn was propped against a log not far off, staring unfocused towards Emmie’s small figure on the shore.
“Alixa, that you?”
Their fragile silence shattered like a glass vase.
“I was fixed to go searching.” Corbiern emerged from a tight stand of birch trees up the northern shoreline, not far from where Emmie had seen the phantom woman. “Where’ve you been?”
Alixa sat up mechanically and rubbed her face, as if to recalibrate her sense of reality. Then she cast off the remains of her blanket and rose to meet him.
“We made the best time we could.” While she appreciated his concern (kind of), she did not welcome the perceived reproach or the jarring interruption of her brooding. “I remember no promises of some pre-arranged timetable.”
“I was worried.” Corbiern spread his hands “Can I be concerned for my friends? I’d like to consider you my friend.”
Alixa crossed her arms.
“Us as well, Corbiern.” Emmie glided towards him, brushing wet sand from her legs. She smiled warmly, attempting to balance Alixa’s ‘greeting.’ “We needed some time, to go slow and talk. We didn’t intend to alarm you.”
Emmie, eyebrows raised, turned to Alixa.
“Sure, sorry.” Alixa cleared her throat. “If I sounded hostile.”
“Are you really?” Emmie asked, a goading slyness evident on her face.
“Fine, Sheep,” Alixa growled. “Corbiern, I apologize for greeting you with such hostility. I’m grateful for your assistance. I do, however, resent you questioning my methods.”
“You needn’t apologize. I wouldn’t have you change your methods on my account.”
“By all appearances we’ve experienced a visitation last night, no?” A voice, deep and bass, rang from behind Corbiern. “A disconcerting experience, that. Any hostility—perceived or otherwise—requires no apology.”
The speaker was a lanky man with long white hair, dark leathery skin, and a thick face slightly disproportional to his spare frame. Two taller, younger but otherwise similar men stood behind him, alongside Omlos and Polidan.
“Setticus.” Corbiern bowed. “Our mentor.”
“Visitation?” Alixa cut short the perfunctory introductions, which she found irritating. “Explain.”
“You all exude the aura of a Winnepacan dream-vision, which in itself is something I must ponder.” Setticus gazed on them with a grave smile. “In my 86 years, young lady, I have witnessed the lake gift many a dream-vision. But three, in one night? Extraordinary!”
“Was it real?” Renn asked, stiffly limping to join them.
“As real as me,
speaking with you now.”
They pondered, each folding themselves back into their own experiences.
“What do we do with what we saw. . . heard. . . whatever?” Emmie asked.
“Precisely as revealed, if anything was. Often a vision’s meaning defies interpretation. But come, friends, let us welcome the day and celebrate your much-anticipated arrival.”
As they shared a common meal of apples, turnips, and dried venison, they worked their way backwards through their trek— Renn and Emmie following Alixa’s per-usual mandate to remain tactfully vague —until the skeleton of their journey was complete.
“Fascinating. So, why here?”
Renn and Emmie looked to Alixa who, after a heartbeat, responded with an almost indecipherable nod. As Emmie relayed her dad’s story, Renn retrieved her relics from her pouch and gave them to the old man. Telling it in the very place of her attempted murder proved taxing, though. Emmie faltered, mid-sentence, as she spoke of her casket being pushed into the water. Renn, without skipping a beat, dramatically continued the narrative as though it were his own.
“May I see those statues as well?” Setticus asked as he shuffled through the tarot cards.
“Threw ‘em in the lake,” Emmie said. “Because . . . the dream.”
“Then you did wisely. I can hazard a fair guess at your tale, regardless.” Setticus straightened up a he spoke.” You were, I would surmise, the target of an infamous Aegorite assault in the Tablelands, their first wide-scale aggression in centuries. Why, after so long, such a merciless attack, why the southern Bandu province. . .” He folded his hands out with a shrug. “Some of us who study these things believe their motive was to take and kill the last presumptive sovereign of the royal Bandu line. Crush the Bandu’s resolve. Then turn on of rest of the West. From all I glean from your story and from these pieces left with you, I wager they believed you to be that sovereign.”
Emmie and Alixa exchanged brief glances.
“However, I do not believe you are that Bandu princess.”
“Why?” Alixa asked in her familiar emotionless mask and tone.
He turned his dark inscrutable eyes on her. Though she doubted it was evident to anyone else, she sensed he’d intuited the truth. She barely stifled a shiver.
“My interpretation of the cards,” he replied offhandedly. “And a clandestine rumor that shortly before the last sitting queen and crown princess of Chastien’s line died from poisoning, the queen had a second child. Well before Emmidawn here was born. The Bandu are a shrewd folk. Verification of this alleged second child proved elusive. Nonetheless, fair conjecture.”
“Makes sense.” Alixa sniffed as though it was of no concern of hers.
Emmie and Renn, though, knew he was relating the death of Alixa’s mother and sister, who she never knew. Emmie teared up, able to read the oh-so-subtle anguish behind her friend’s impassive front.
“However, your captors believed you, Emmidawn, to be that one.” The old man counted out points on his fingers. “They dressed you up for execution. Beat you and bound you to show their dominance over you. Entombed you in a casket. An Aegorite murder ritual for someone of supreme importance. Then to the lake—the seat of power, so the ancients believed. The amulet, of course, and my reading of these cards indicate they thought they were putting to death the sovereign heiress.”
Emmie’s gaze drifted to the south bay, as though she could see her dad there.
“Walk her down there,” Alixa whispered to Renn. “She needs air.”
“Don’t you think she’d rather be alone?” Renn whispered back.
“No. You—c’mon.”
“Renn, please?” Emmie spoke up. Having everyone’s attention on her had become stifling. She didn’t want pity. She wasn’t sure she even wanted compassion or understanding. She just wanted it to be over. “I don’t want to be alone. And you two are terrible whisperers.”
The others respectfully allowed them time to shuffle down the beach. To have the intended victim of this ritual sacrifice sitting among them—to see the human face—made for a heavy mood.
“Alixa,” Setticus asked as he shuffled the cards. “Do you know what these are?”
“I can hazard a fair guess.”
“The others?”
“They’re kids, rural Midlanders. They’ve no clue.”
“Probably for the best. . .”
“I can’t imagine what this is like for her.” Corbiern watched their figures grow smaller.
“Or still being alive, after being marked for death.” Polidan balanced a knife in his hand.
“Now maybe you can understand why Alixa here has been ‘so blasted closed and over-protective,’ to quote somebody I know,” Setticus said without glancing up from the cards. “Best not to judge without all the facts.”
“Sorry, yes,” Corbiern muttered to Alixa. “I did say that.”
Alixa replied with a semi-playful sneer.
“That someone could do that to a little girl.” Corbiern shook his head.
“Seen rightly,” Setticus said. “The incident is hardly about the evil perpetuated on the poor girl, but the goodness of her father. In its proper context, a story of hope. Now if you don’t mind, Alixa, go check on your friends. Maybe then Corbiern will keep his thoughts to himself so I can focus.”
Corbiern looked properly chastened. Alixa shot him one of her favorite smug grins and swaggered down the beach.
LX - Lake Winnepaca
Emmie kicked her bare feet along the sandy shoreline, undeterred by the sporadic crunch of twigs and acorns underfoot. Despite her heavy heart, a weak smile slowly played across her face. She hadn’t heard her rescue told since Dad’s deathbed rendition—Dad deflecting any suggestion he’d done something special, as though it all happened to him. She could listen to Renn’s version, with Dad in his rightful place as her hero, every day for the rest of her life. She gazed forward, considering a sprawling uprooted tree near the southern bay. Could it be the very one Dad hid behind, all those years ago? The idea seemed to cleanse her battered emotions.
You stole my life!
She’d shouted that with such wounded grief, only hours earlier. Lazy waves rolled across her toes as Emmie imagined how afraid her tiny self must’ve been, stolen from her family, nailed inside a coffin. She drew a ragged breath.
Renn was right there, wrapping an arm around her. It was an artless hug, but the best he could offer with an injured arm. And the sincerity behind the gesture outshone its clumsiness. She rubbed her nose into his sleeve.
You stole my life!
It was true. She would always grieve what had been taken from her, though she would never know what that was. But as she considered that old downed tree, Emmie closed her eyes, picturing Dad diving in and swimming like there was no tomorrow (literally true, for her) and then bounding off through the woods, her little self wrapped safely in his arms. Sacrificing food, medicine, and sleep for her before he even knew her. And then spending 13 years living that love over and over. A tear trickled down her cheek. She licked it off, its saltiness tasting sweet. She thought of Dreggar, and Brie, and Khuulie fishermen long forgotten. People who showered her with kindness even though she was an orphan and so other to them. Sunlight filtered through the cracks of trees all across the shoreline. Those who mistreated her weren’t worthy of her energy.
“Thanks, Da,” she whispered hoarsely.
“I wish I could give your life back to you, Emmie.”
Emmie’s grin turned sideways with amusement. Earnest, awkward, social-misfit Renn. Dad’s final gift. She threw her arms around him. Though Renn’s shoulder shot through with pain, he enjoyed every bit of the unexpected gesture.
“You, well, you sort of are.” Emmie, face flushed pink, released him. She touched the decaying tree, its root system stretching far over their heads. “I never really thanked Dad or said goodbye. I can do that here, I think. Where we started.”
Renn stood next to her, scratching his head. She was cry
ing. Then all smiles and hugs. Girls... Guess I shouldn’t complain. Probably shouldn’t say anything either.
But, no.
“I’m glad, Em. It’s good to see you, well, more like you. I’ve missed this you. I mean, not that I don’t like the you you’ve been, but. . .” Renn paused, fingering his scars. “Digging a hole, aren’t I?”
Emmie’s eyes danced with a question; one Renn knew would throw him off.
“You keep looking at me weird today,” Emmie said. “What’s up?”
“No different than normal.”
“It’s like you’re studying me.”
True. He was seeing all the uncanny similarities to her mom. Renn looked down, pawing the sand with his boot.
“Oh, it must be good,” she teased. “Your scars are going all purple!”
Renn turned away. No matter what Kaiteen said, he hated those scars.
“Renn?” Emmie’s voice filled with confusion. “What’s wrong?”
Kaiteen also said he needed to be bolder, give Emmie more credit.
“You tease me about my scars, but I hate them.” There, he said it. His scars burned with shame, all the way from his eye to within a hair of his lip. “I’ll always be deformed, hideous.”
“Oh, Renn.” Emmie covered her mouth, crushed. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’ll be scarred like this forever. They’ll always be the first thing you see.”
They stood silently, hearts pounding out three deafening beats.
“You know, I hope that’s true,” Emmie peeped bashfully. “Those scars mean I’m alive. They mean you . . . you know, you. . . They mean the world to me.”
“Yeah?” Renn scraped his foot along the ground. “So, me looking at you weird? I, uh, met your mom last night.”
Emmie, her stomach in her throat and legs noodly, seized Renn’s arm.
“She said same as you, the meaning’s what matters. She scolded me for not believing you’d see that.”
“What was she like?” Emmie clasped her hands over her mouth.
“She died trying to protect you. She loved you more than her own life.”
The Silver Claw Page 37