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AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER OF BEES.

Kij Johnson.

It starts with a bee sting. Linna exclaims at the sudden sharp pain. At her voice, her dog Sam lifts his head where he has settled his aging body on the sidewalk in front of the flower stand.

Sucking at the burning place, Linna looks down at the bouquet in her hand, a messy arrangement of anemone and something loose-jointed with tiny white flowers, dill maybe. The flowers are days or weeks from anywhere that might have bees. But she sees the bee, dead or dying on the pale yellow petal of one of the flowers.

She tips the bouquet to the side. The bee slides from the petal to the ground. Sam leans his dark head over and eats it.

Back in her apartment, she plucks the stinger from her hand with a tweezer. It's clear that she's not going to die of the sting or even swell up much, though there's a white spot that weeps clear fluid and still hurts, still burns. She looks out the windows of her apartment: a gray sky, gray pavement and sidewalks and buildings, trees so dark they might as well be black. The only colors are those on signs and cars.

"Let's go, Sam," she says to the German shepherd. "Let's take a road trip. We need a change, don't we?"

Linna really only intended to cross the Cascades, go to Leavenworth, maybe as far as Ellensburg and then home—but now it's Montana. She drives as fast as the little Subaru will go, the purple highway drawing her east. Late sun floods the car. The honey-colored light flattens the brush and rock of the badlands into abrupt gold and violet, shapes as unreal as a hallucination. It's late May and the air is hot and dry during the day, the nights cold with the memory of winter. She hates the air-conditioner so she doesn't use it, and the air thrumming in the open window smells like hot dust and metal and, distant as a dream, ozone and rain. Her hand still burns. She absently sucks on the sting as she drives.

There are thunderheads ahead, perhaps as far away as North Dakota. Lightning flashes through the honey-and-indigo clouds, a sudden silent flicker of white so bright that it is lilac. Linna eyes the clouds. She wants to drive through the night, wonders whether she will drive through rain, or scurry untouched beneath their pregnant gravitas.

The distance between Seattle and her present location is measured in time, not miles. It has been two days since she left Seattle, hours since she left Billings. Glendive is still half an hour ahead. Linna thinks she might stop there, get something to eat, let Sam stretch his legs. She's not sure where she's going or why (her mind whispers east, toward sunrise, and then my folks live in Wisconsin; that's where I'm going, but she knows neither are the true answer). Still, the road feels good; Sam sleeping in the back seat is good.

A report would say traffic is light, an overstatement. In the past twenty minutes, she has seen exactly two vehicles going her way on the interstate. Ten minutes ago she passed a semi with the word Covenant on the side. And just a moment ago, a rangy Montana State Patrol SUV swept past at a hundred miles an hour to her eighty-five, its lights flashing. Sam heaved upright and barked once as the siren Dopplered past. Linna glances into her mirror: he's asleep again, loose-boned across the back seat.

Linna comes over a small hill to see emergency lights far ahead: red, blue, a purple-white bright as lightning. The patrol SUV blocks the freeway. There are six cars stopped in the lanes behind it, obedient as cows waiting to file into the barn. The sun is too low behind her to light the dip in the highway ahead of the cars, and the air there seems dark.

Sam wakes up and whines when the car slows. Linna stops next to a night-blue Ford, an Explorer. The other drivers and the state trooper are out of their cars, so she turns off the Subaru's engine. It has run, with occasional stops for gas and food and dog walks and a half-night of sleep snatched at a Day's Inn in Missoula, for two days, so the silence is deafening. The wind that parched Linna's skin and hair is gone. The air is still and warm as dust, and spicy with asphalt and sage.

Linna lifts Sam from the back seat, places him on the scrub grass of the median. He would have been too heavy to carry last year, but his muscles atrophy as his spine fuses, and he's lost a lot of weight. Sam stretches painfully, a little urine dribbling. He can't help this; the nerves are being pinched. Linna has covered the back seat of the Subaru with a waterproof tarp and a washable blanket; she's careful when she takes corners, not wanting him to slide.

Whatever else he is (in pain; old; dying), Sam is still a dog. He hobbles to a shrub with tiny flowers pale as ghosts in the gloom, and sniffs it carefully before marking. He can no longer lift his leg, so he squats beside it.

The only sunlight Linna can still see fades, honey to rust, on the storm clouds to the east. The rest of the world is dim with twilight: ragged outlines of naked rock, grass and brush stained imperfect grays. A pickup pulls up behind her car and, a moment later, the Covenant truck beside it. Another patrol vehicle blocks the westbound lanes, but its light bar seems much too dim, perhaps a reflection of the sky's dying light. If time is the measure for distance, then dusk can be a strange place.

Linna clips Sam onto his leash and loops it over her wrist. Rubbing at her sore hand, she walks to the patrol SUV. The people standing there stare at the road to the east, but there's nothing to see, only darkness.

Linna knows suddenly that this is not twilight or shadows. The air over the road truly is flowing darkness, like ink dropped in moving water. "What is that?" she asks the patrolman, who is tall with very white skin and black hair. Sam pulls to the end of his leash, ears and nose aimed at the darkness.

"The Bee River is currently flooding east- and westbound lanes of 94, ma'am," the patrolman says. Linna nods: all the rivers here seem to have strange names: Tongue River, Automatic Creek. "We'll keep the road closed until it's safe to pass again, which—"

"The freeway's closed?" A man holds a cell phone. "You can't do that! They never close."

"They do for floods and blizzards and ice-storms," the patrolman says. "And the Bee River."

"But I have to get to Bismarck tonight!" The man's voice shakes; he's younger than he looks.

"That's not going to be possible," the trooper says. "Your options would be Twelve and Twenty, and they're blocked. Ninety's okay, but you'll have to backtrack. It's going to be a day or two before anyone can head east here. Town of Terry's just a couple of miles back, and you might be able to find lodging there. Otherwise, Miles City is about half an hour back."

Linna watches the seething darkness, finally hears what her engine-numbed ears had not noticed before: the hum, reminding her of summers growing up in Wisconsin, hives hot in the sun. "Wait," she says: "It's all bees. That is a river of bees."

A woman in a green farm coat laughs. "Of course it is. Where you from?"

"Seattle," Linna says. "How can there be a river of bees?" Someone new arrives and the patrolman turns to him, so the woman in the green coat answers.

"Same way there's a river of anything else, I suppose. It happens sometimes in June, July, late May sometimes, like now. The river wells up, floods a road or runs through a ranch yard."

"But it's not water," Linna says. Sam pushes against her knees. His aching spine stiffens up quickly; he wants to move around.

"Nope. Nice dog." The woman waggles her fingers at Sam, who pushes his head beneath them. "What's wrong with him?"

"Spinal fusion," Linna says. "Arthritis, other stuff."

"That's not good. Not much they can do, is there? We used to raise shepherds. Lot of medical problems."

"He's old." Linna suddenly stoops to wrap an arm around his ribcage, to feel his warmth and the steady thumping of his heart.

The woman pats him again. "Well, he's a sweetie. Me and Jeff are going to turn back to Miles City, try to get a room and call Shelly—that's our daughter—from there. You?"

"I'm not sure."

"Don't wait too long to decide, hon. The rooms fill fast."

Linna thanks her and watches her return to their pickup. Headlights plunging, it feels its cautious way across the median to the other lanes. Other cars are doing the same, and a straggling row of tail lights heads west.

Some vehicles stay. "Might as well," says the man with the Covenant truck. He is homely, heavyset; but his eyes are nice as he smiles at Linna and Sam. "Can't turn the rig around anyhow, and I want to see what a river of bees looks like with the light on it. Something to tell the wife." Linna smiles back. "Nice pup," he adds, and scratches Sam's head. Leaning heavily against Linna's leg, Sam stands patiently through it, like a tired but polite child through the cooings of adults.

She walks Sam back to the Subaru and feeds him on the grass, pouring fresh water into a plastic bowl and offering food and a Rimadyl for the pain. He drinks the water thirstily while she plays with his ears. When he's done, she lifts him carefully onto the back seat, lays her face against his head. He's already dozing when she rolls his window down and returns to the river of bees.

A patrol car has rolled up the outside shoulder. Now it's parked beside the SUV, and a second officer has joined the first. Lit by their headlights, the young man with the cell phone still pleads. "I don't have a choice, officers."

"I'm sorry, sir," the patrolman says.

The man turns to the other officer, a small woman with dark hair in an unruly braid stretching halfway down her back. "I have a Ford Explorer. This—river—is only twenty, thirty feet wide, right? Please."

The patrolwoman shrugs, says, "Your call, Luke."

The patrolman sighs. "Fine. Sir, if you insist on trying this—"

"Thank you," the man says, and his voice shakes again.

"—I have a winch on the patrol vehicle. We'll attach it to your rear axle, so I can pull you out of trouble if you stall partway. Otherwise unhook it on the other side, and I'll drag it back. Keep all vents and windows closed, parking lights only. Tap your brakes if you need a pull. As slow as the truck will go. And I am serious, sir: the river is dangerous."

"Yes, of course," the man says. "I'm really grateful, Officer Tabor."

"All right then," the patrolman, Tabor, says, and sighs again. He talks into the radio on his shoulder, "Tim, I've got someone who's going to try and crawl through. I've warned him of the dangers, but his wife's in the hospital in North Dakota, he really wants to try. If he gets through, can you make sure he's okay?" Indecipherable squawks. "Right, then."

Linna and the Covenant driver (his name is John, he tells her as they wait, John Backus, from Iowa City originally, now near Nashville, trucking for twelve years, his wife Jo usually comes along, but she's neck-deep in preparations for the oldest's wedding—and on and on) watch the huge Ford roll forward, trailing cable like a dog on an inertia-reel leash. Barely lit by its parking lights, the truck inches onto, into the dark patch of highway. Blackness curls like smoke, drifts over the truck. The SUV revs its engine for a moment and then dies. Brake lights tap on, and Tabor sighs a third time, sets the winch in motion, and pulls the truck back.

The air is cold, the sky moonless but bright with stars. To warm herself, Linna walks along the line of cars and trucks. People doze across their front seats, or read or talk or play cards under dome lights. Engines purr, running heaters, and the air is sweet with exhaust, an oddly comforting smell. An older couple sit in lawn chairs by their parked RV; the woman offers Linna a styrofoam cup of coffee and the chance to use their bathroom. Linna accepts gratefully, but refuses their offer to sleep on the couch.

She does not think she'll be able to sleep. Stars pace across the sky, their dim light somehow deeper than blackness, and yet too bright to sleep through. A coyote, or perhaps a dog, barks once, a long way away. Back at the car, Linna watches Sam chase something in his sleep, paws twitching in the rhythm of running. Live forever, she thinks, and wills his twisted spine and legs straight and well. It doesn't happen.

It is very cold, and the sky through the windshield is the color of freshwater pearls. Linna wakes, blinks, and remembers. There is half a cup of coffee on the floor of the passenger seat. It's cold and acidic, but the familiar bitterness anchors her. Sam is still sleeping: he never liked morning, and they moved to mountain time as they drove yesterday, so whatever time it is (4:53, the dashboard clock tells her when she looks), it is really an hour earlier. Once out of the car, she stretches. Her eyes are sticky and her back aches, but the time before dawn is a strange land to her, and she finds herself surprisingly happy.

She walks to the patrol SUV. Tabor sits with the door open, drinking directly from a thermos. "Coffee," he says. "Still hot. Want some? I lost the cup, though."

She takes the steel cylinder. The smaller patrol car and its driver are gone, as are the big Ford and the distraught young man. "What happened to the guy who had to get to his wife?"

"We scraped all the bees off the air intakes, and got the car running again. He drove back to Ninety. It's adding three, four hundred miles, but he's going to try and go around."

Linna nods and drinks. The coffee is hot, and it warms her to her toes. "Oh," she says with delight: "That's good." She returns the thermos.

"You get stung last night?" Tabor has seen the white spot on her hand.

She rubs it and laughs a little, oddly embarrassed. "No, right before I left Seattle. And now here's a river of them. Small world," she says and looks toward the fog collected in the dip.

"Hmm," Tabor says, and drinks off some of the coffee. Then: "Listen for it," Tabor says.

Linna listens. The SUV's idling engine throbs. A car door clicks open, far back in the line. There's no wind, no whispering grass or rubbing leaves. There is a humming, barely audible. "That's them." She whispers, as if her voice might disrupt the noise.

"Yeah," he says. "The fog is clearing. Look."

She walks a little toward where the river should be, will be. "No closer," Tabor behind her warns, and she stops. A tiny breeze brushes her cheek. Mist recoils, and patches of darkness show through: asphalt black with sleeping bees. And then something else.

The sky lightens, turns from pearl to lavender to blue. The clouds are gone and the eastern horizon glows. The fog retreats. There is the river.

The river is a dark mist like the shifting of a flock of flying starlings, like a pillar of gnats over a highway in hot August dusk, like a million tiny fish changing direction. South to north, the river runs like cooling lava, like warm molasses. It might be eight feet deep, though in places it is much less, in others much more. It changes as she watches.

The river of bees streams as far as she can see. Off to the south, it flows off a butte beside the freeway and across the road, down into the river bed of the Yellowstone, then pours up over the side of a gully to the north and west. As she watches, then sleeping bees wake and lift to join the deepening river. The buzz grows louder.

"Oh," she says in wonder. Tabor stands beside her now, but she cannot look away. "Where does it begin?" she says at last. "Where does it end?"

He is slow answering. She knows he is as trapped in its weird beauty as she. "No one knows," he says: "Or no one says. My dad used to tell me tales, but I don't suppose he understood it, either. Maybe there's a spring of bees somewhere, and it sinks underground somewhere else. Maybe the bees gather, do this thing and then go home. There's no ocean of bees, anyway, not that anyone's ever found."

Others join them, talking in loud and then hushed voices; there are flashbulbs and video cameras—"not that the pictures ever come out," a voice grumbles. This is peripheral. Linna watches the bees. The sun rises, a cherry blur that shrinks and resolves as it pulls away from the horizon. Pink-gold light pours into the hollow. The river quickens and grows. People watch for a time and then walk back to their cars, sated with wonder. She hears their voices grow louder as they move away, conversations full of longing for coffee and breakfast and hot showers and flush toilets; they comfort themselves with the ordinary.

Linna does not move until she hears Sam bark once, the want-to-go-out-now bark. Even then, she walks backward, watching the river of bees.

"This is going to sound strange," Linna says to Tabor.

She walked Sam until his joints loosened and he no longer dragged his hind legs. She exchanged pleasantries with the man from the Covenant truck, though now she remembers nothing but his expression, oddly distant and sad as he watched her rub her hand. She drank orange spice tea and ate a fried-egg sandwich when the woman at the RV offered them, and used the little stainless steel bathroom again. The woman's husband was cooking. He flipped an egg to the ground between Sam's feet. Sam ate it tidily and then smiled up at the cook. Linna spoke at random, listening for the bees' hum. "Excuse me," she remembers saying to the couple, interrupting something. "I have to go now." She has led Sam back to the patrol SUV, and says:

"This is going to sound strange."

"Not as strange as you probably think," Tabor says. He's typing something into the computer keyboard in his vehicle. "Let me guess: you're going to follow the river."

"Can I?" she says, her heart leaping. She knows he shouldn't know this, shouldn't have guessed; knows she won't be allowed, but she asks anyway.

"Can't stop you. There's the River, and then I saw the sting and I knew. My dad—he was a trooper, back twenty and more years ago. He told me it happens like this sometimes. There's always a bee sting, he said. Let me see your car."

She leads Tabor back to the Subaru, lifts Sam into the back seat. The trooper makes her open the back hatch, sees the four gallon jugs of water there. "Good. What about food?" She shows him what she has, forty pounds of dog food (she bought it two weeks ago, as if it were a charm to make Sam live long enough to eat it all, but she knows it won't work out that way) and two boxes of granola bars. "Gas?" She has most of a tank: just under two hundred miles' worth, maybe. "Get some, next time you're near a road," Tabor says. "Subaru, that's good," he adds, "but you don't have much clearance in an Outback. Be careful when you're off-road."

"I won't go off-road," Linna says. "There's just too much that can go wrong."

"Yes, you will," Tabor says. "I've heard about this. You'll follow the river to its mouth, whatever and wherever that is. I can't stop you, but at least I can make sure you don't get into trouble on the way."

Tabor brings her a heavy canvas bag from his SUV. "This is sort of an emergency kit," he says. "My dad put it together before he retired. We've been keeping it at the base ever since. Got the report and hauled it down with me, figuring someone might show up needing it. Heavy gloves, snake-bite kit, wire, some other stuff."

"Do people get back?" Linna says.

Tabor unzips the bag a few inches, drops a business card in. "Don't know. But when you get wherever it is, you're going to send all this gear back to me. Or leave it. Or—" he pauses, looks again at the river.

She laughs, suddenly ashamed. "How can you be so calm about this? I know this is all insane, and I'm still doing it, but you—"

"This is Montana, ma'am," Tabor says. "Good luck."

The aqua clock says 6:08, and sun is only two hands above the horizon when Linna puts the Subaru into gear and eases across the median.

Linna is lucky at first. The exit to Terry and its bridge across the Yellowstone is only a couple of miles back, and she learns her first lesson about following the river. She doesn't have to see the river of bees because she can taste its current in the air as it pulls her north and west. Terry is a couple of gas stations and fast-food places, a handful of trailers and farmhouses, everything shaded by cottonwoods, their leaves a harsh silver-green when the wind moves through them.

Her second lesson: the river tells her where to go. There is only one road out of Terry, but there is no chance she might make a mistake and take another. She stops long enough to buy gas and road-food and breakfast, and eats in the car on her way out of town. Sam is interested, of course, so she feeds him a hash-brown cake by holding it over her shoulder. Soft lips lift the cake from her hand. The vet would not be pleased, but she's not here, and Linna and Sam are.

The road is two empty lanes of worn pavement threading through soft-edged badlands, following a dry streambed. She knows the bees are a mile or two to the east. Gravel roads branch off to the north from time to time. She longs to take them, to see the bees again, but she knows the roads will taper off, end in a farmyard or turn abruptly in the wrong direction. It will be many miles before she reaches the river's mouth. These roads will not take her there.

The road changes from worn to worse, and then decays to gravel. Linna slows and slows again. The sun that pours in the passenger windows loses its rosy glow as it climbs. The only traffic she sees is a single ancient tractor that might once have been orange, heading into town. The old man driving it wears a red hat. He salutes her with a thermos cup. She salutes with her own cup of fast-food coffee. The dust he's raised pours into the car until she rolls the windows closed.

When she crosses the mouth of a little valley, Linna can just see the bees. She stops there to walk and water Sam and to drink stale water from one of the jugs. The cooling engine ticks a few times then leaves her in the tiny hissing of the wind in the grasses. The river of bees cannot be heard from here, but she feels the humming in her bones, like true love or cancer.

She opens the bag that Tabor gave her, and finds the things he mentioned, and others besides: wire-cutters and instructions for mending barbed wire; a Boy Scout manual from the '50s; flares; a spade; a roll of toilet paper that smells of powdered paper; tweezers and a magnifying glass and rubbing alcohol; stained, folded geological survey maps of eastern Montana; a spare pair of socks; bars of chocolate and water purification tablets; a plastic star map of the northern hemisphere in summertime—and a note. Do not damage anything permanently. Close any gates you open—mend any fences you cut—Cattle, tractors and local vehicles receive right of way—Residents mostly know about the river. They'll allow you to pass through their property so long as you don't break the fences. It was signed: Richard Tabor. Officer Tabor's father, then.

In another small town—the sign says Brockway—the road tees into another dusty two-lane, this one going east-west. She finds a gravel road heading north and west, but it turns unexpectedly and eventually leaves her in a ranch yard in an eddy of barking dogs, Sam yelling back. The next road she tries turns east, then north, then east again. The gravel that once covered it is long gone. The Subaru humps its way through gullies and potholes. She drives over a rise, and the river streams in front of her, blocking off the road.

She's close enough to see individual bees but only for an instant before they drop back into the texture of the river. Brownian motion: she can see the bee but she cannot see the motion; or she sees the current but not the bees.

What am I doing? she asks herself. She is fifty miles off the freeway, following hypothetical roads through an empty land in pursuit of something beautiful but impossible and so very dangerous. This is when she learns the third lesson: she cannot help doing this. She backtracks to find a better road, but she keeps slewing around to look behind her as if she has left something behind; and she cries as she drives. The tears are bitter when she tastes them.

So she threads her way across eastern Montana, gravel to dirt to cracked tar to dirt, always north, always west. Sometimes she's in sight of the river; more often it's only a nagging in her mind, saying follow me. She drives past ranches and ruined lonely barns, past a church of silver wood with daylight shining through its walls. She drives across an earthen dam, a narrow paved ridge between afternoon sunlight on water and a small town straggling under cottonwoods, far below what would be water level if it weren't for the dam. She crosses streams and dry runs with strange names: Powder Creek, Milk River; when she slows on the narrow bridges to look down, she does not see powder or milk, just water or nothing. Only the river of bees is what it claims to be.

When she crosses U.S. Highway 2, Linna stops for a while in Nashua. Sam is asleep, adrift in Rimadyl. She parks in the shade and leaves her windows open, and sits under the comforting glare of fluorescent lights in a McDonald's, stirring crushed ice in a waxed cup. Conversations wash over her. Their words are strange as a foreign language after the hours alone: the river of bees (which blocks Highway 2 less than a mile east of town); feline asthma; rubber flip-flops for the twins; Jake's summer job canning salmon in Alaska.

The bees pour north. The roads Linna follows grow even sketchier. The Subaru is four-wheel drive and set fairly high, but it lurches through potholes and washouts, scraping its undercarriage. No longer asleep, Sam pants in her ear until Linna slows to a crawl. Once the car seems to walk over the stones in its way Sam relaxes a little, sits back down. The sun crawls west and north, scalding Linna's arm and neck and cheek. She thinks sometimes of using the air conditioner but she finds she cannot. The dust, the heat, the sun, are all part of driving to the river's mouth. Sam seems not to mind the heat, though he slurps thirstily through almost a gallon of water.

Linna is able to stay close enough to the river that individual bees sometimes stray into an open window. Black against sun-gold and dust-white, they inscribe intricate calligraphy in the air. Linna cannot read their messages.

Linna stops when the violet twilight starts to hide things from her. She parks on a ridge, under a single ragged tree that makes the air sharp with juniper. Thinking of snakes, she walks Sam carefully, but it is growing dark and cold and only the hot-blooded creatures remain awake. A bat, or perhaps a swift or a small owl veers overhead with the almost inaudible whirring of wings. A coyote barks; Sam pricks his ears but does not respond, except to urinate on a shrub he has been smelling.

She does not sleep well that night. At one point, great snorting animals surround the Subaru for what seems hours, occasionally bumping into it as they pass. Sam is as awake as she. At first she thinks they're bears, that she has stumbled somehow upon a river of bears (and why not? the world that contains a river of bees may contain a thousand wonders), but starlight shows they are steers. For some reason they are not asleep but travel under the spinning sky, toward water or away from something or out of simple restlessness. Still, she cannot sleep until they are long gone, no more than a memory of shuffling and grunts.

It is past dawn when Linna brings herself to admit she won't be sleeping any more. After the steers passed she couldn't stop shivering, so she crawled awkwardly over the front seats to curl up with Sam, pulling his soft blanket over them both. Now his spine presses against her thigh, each bone sharp as a juniper knurl. He smells of stale urine and sickness, but also of himself. She eases away for a moment, presses her face to his shoulder and inhales deeply, feeling his muskiness work its way into her lungs, her blood and bones.

People have smells like this, smells that she has collected to herself and stored in the memory of her body; but Sam is special, has been part of her life for longer than anyone but parents and siblings. She has friends and has had lovers, though lately she has grown to love her solitude. For the first time, she thinks that perhaps she should have stayed on the road, closer to where veterinarians and their bright clean buildings live; but she has enough Rimadyl to kill Sam if he needs it, and death is the only gift she or anyone can give him now.

At last she climbs out of the car, stretches in the surprising simultaneous sensations of cold air and sun's warmth. "Come on, pup, " she says aloud. Her voice startles her; it's the first she's heard since Nashua—yesterday, was it? It seems longer. Sam staggers upright and she lifts him to the ground. He creeps a few steps and then urinates, creeps a few more and pauses to smell a tuft of something yellow-green. She doesn't bother with the leash; he's not going to run away—as if he could run anywhere, anymore.

The river hums along perhaps a hundred yards away, broader and slower now. Bees stray from its course; Linna can see individuals as she squats to urinate, grateful again for the toilet paper in the kit the officer, Tabor, gave her. Something wild and sweet-smelling grows all around her; it might be lavender, though she thinks of lavender as something polite and domesticated, all about freshly ironed sheets and bath salts and tussie-mussies. Bath salts: she sniffs her armpits as she squats and then recoils. Well, dogs like stink; perhaps Sam will enjoy this new, pungent her.

The straying bees explore the flowers around her, spiraling and arrowing like electrons in a cloud chamber. One lands on her stung hand where it rests on her knee as she crouches. The slight touch of its legs might be no more than an imagined tickle if she did not see its stocky, velvety bulk. It's the Classic bee: yellow-and-black striped, small-bodied, dark transparent wings folded tidily. It strokes the air with tiny feelers, then leans its head over and touches its mouth to the white spot on her hand, as if tasting her. For a dizzying moment she wonders if it's going to snap her up the way Sam snapped up the bee that gave her the sting back in Seattle.

Behind her, Sam gives a yelp, all surprise and pain. Linna whirls around and feels a drop of her urine splash against her knee as she stands, and a hot sharp shock to her hand—a bee sting.

"Sam?" she shouts and stumbles forward, dragging her pants up, suddenly feverish with panic or the sting. She knows he's going to die, but not yet, her mind tells her. Too soon.

Sam limps to her, a comical look of distress on his face. She's reassured. She's seen this expression before, and it doesn't mesh with grandiose fears. She folds to her knees beside him (lightheaded or concerned) and looks at the paw he's lifting. She sees the tiny barb against a pale patch of skin on his pad. She finds herself laughing hysterically as she removes the stingers, first from his paw and then from her hand. Officer Tabor's father knew what he was doing.

Linna has not driven more than five miles an hour since awakening, though these terms—mile, hour—seem irrelevant. It might be better or more accurate to say she has driven down forty little canyons and back up thirty of them, and crossed twelve ridges and two surprising meadows, softly sloped as any Iowa corn field and spangled with flowers that are small and very blue—time measured as distance. She thinks perhaps she's crossed into Canada, but there's been nothing to indicate this. She's running low on water, and is tired of granola bars, but she hasn't seen anything that looked like a town since Nashua.

The trail she follows is a winding cow or deer path. She keeps one set of tires on the track and hopes for the best, which works well as long as she goes slowly enough. She keeps inspecting where the bee stung her earlier: there is an angry swelling across her hand, centered on a weeping white spot, half an inch from the first. What is half an inch, if measured in time? Linna doesn't know, but she worries over the question, as if there might be an answer.

Since the sting the light has seemed very bright to her, and her hand is by turns hot and cold. She wonders whether she should turn around and try to find a hospital (where? how can she know when she measures distance by event?). But the calligraphy of the bees hovers; she is just on the edge of making sense of it; she is reluctant to give this up.

The Subaru grinds to a stop in a gully, too deep to cross. Linna feels the river: close, it says, so close; so she lifts Sam out and they walk on. He is very slow. There are bees everywhere, like spray thrown from a mountain stream. They rest on her hands and tickle her face with their feather-tip feet, but she is not stung again. Sam watches them, puffs air at one that clings to the silver-furred leaves of a plant. They cross a little ridge and then a second one, and there is the mouth of the river of bees.

The bees pool in a grassy basin. As she watches, the river empties a thousand—a million—more into the basin, but the level never changes, and she never sees bees leave. It is as if they sink into the ground, into some secret ocean.

She knows she is hallucinating, because at the bank of the pool of bees is an unwalled tent hung with tassels and fringe. Six posts hold a white silk roof; the sunlight through it is intimate, friendly. And because this is a hallucination, Linna approaches without fear, Sam beside her, his ears pricked forward.

Linna cannot later say whether the creature under the tent was a woman or a bee, though she is sure this is the queen of the bees, as sure as she is of death and sunlight. She knows that—if the creature was a woman—she had honey-colored eyes and hair, with silver streaks glinting in both. And if the creature was a bee, her faceted eyes were deep as Victorian jet, and her voice held a thousand tones at once.

But it's easier to think of the queen of the bees as a woman. The woman's skin glows honey-colored against her white gown. Her hands are very long and slender, with almond-shaped nails; they pour tea and arrange cakes on plates ornamented with pink roses. For a disconcerting moment, Linna sees long, slim black legs arrange the cakes and blinks the image back to hands. Yes, definitely easier to think of her as a woman. "Please," the queen of the bees says. "Join me."

In the shade of the awning are folding chairs draped with white fringed shawls. Linna sinks into one, takes a cup, thin as eggshell, and sips. Its contents are warm and clearly tea, but they are also cooling and sweet, and fill her with a sudden happiness. She watches the queen of the bees place a saucer filled with the tea on the ground beside Sam (a thousand dark facets reflect his face: no. Simple gold eyes, caught in a mesh of laugh lines fine as thread that smile down at him). He drinks it thirstily, grins up at the woman.

"What is his name?" the woman says. "And yours?"

"Sam," says Linna. "I'm Linna."

The woman gives no name for herself, but gestures to her skirts as they swirl around her ankles. A small cat with long gray and white fur and startling blue eyes sits against one foot. "This is Belle."

"You have a cat," Linna says. Of all the things she has seen today, this somehow seems the strangest.

The woman reaches down a hand, and Belle walks over to sniff them. Belle's fur is thick, but it doesn't conceal how thin she is. Linna can see the bumps of her spine in sharp outline. "She's very old now. Dying."

"I understand," Linna says softly. She meets the woman's eyes, sees herself reflected in their gold, their black depths.

Silence between them stretches, defined by the eternal unchanging humming of the river of bees, filled with the scent of sage and grass in the sun. Linna drinks her tea and eats a cake, which is gold and sweet. Across from her the bee's body glows brilliantly in the silk-muted sun.

Linna holds out the injured hand. "Did you do this?"

"Let me mend that for you." The woman touches Linna's hand where the two stings burn, the old one awakened by its new neighbor. The pain is there, under fingers that flicker soft as antennae, and then it is not.

Linna inspects her hand. The white spots are gone. Linna's mind is as clear as the dry air, but she knows this is an illusion. She must still be having some sort of reaction, or everything—the tent, the woman, the lake of bees—would be gone. "Could you heal your cat like this?"

"No." The woman bends to pick up Belle, who curls up in her thin black insect's legs. Belle's blue eyes blink up at the face of the queen of the bees. "I cannot stop death, only postpone it for a time."

Linna's mouth is suddenly dry. "Can you heal Sam? Make him run again?" She leans over to touch Sam's ruff. The blood rushing to her head turns everything red for a moment.

"Perhaps." The woman's voice is melodious, with a humming in its tones that Linna decides to ignore. "I hope that you and I will talk a while. It's been many years since I had someone to talk to, since the man who brought me Belle. She couldn't eat. Her jaw—" the cat purrs and presses her head against the bee's black thorax "—it was ruined, a cancer. He walked the last day, after his old car gave up, carrying her. We talked for a time, and then he gave her to me and left. So long ago, now."

"What was his name?" Linna thinks of a canvas bag back in the Subaru, filled with all the right things.

"Tabor," she says. "Richard Tabor."

And so they talk, eating cakes and drinking tea under the silk awning of the queen of the bees. Linna recalls certain things, but cannot later say whether they are hallucinations, or stories she was told or told herself, or things she did not speak of but experienced. She remembers the taste of sage pollen, bright and smoky on what might be her tongue, or might be her imagination. They talk of (or visit, or dream of) countless infants, creamy smooth and packed safe in their close cribs; small towns in the middle of nowhere; great cities, towers and highways seething with urgent activity. They talk of (or visit, or dream of) great tragedies—disaster, whole races destroyed by disease or cruelty or misfortune—and small ones, drizzly days and mislaid directions and dirt and vermin. Later, Linna cannot recall which stories or visions or dreams were about people and which were about bees.

The sun eases into the west; its light crawls onto the table. It touches the black forefoot of the queen of the bees, and she stands and stretches, then gathers Belle into her arms. "I must go."

Linna stands as well, and notices for the first time that the river is gone, leaving only the lake of bees, and even this is smaller than it was. "Can you heal Sam?" she says suddenly.

"He cannot stay with you and stay alive." The woman pauses, as if choosing her words. "If you and Sam chose, he could stay with me."

"Sam?" Linna puts down her cup carefully, trying to conceal her suddenly shaking hands. "I can't give him to anyone. He's old, he's too sick. He needs pills." She slips from her seat to the dry grass beside Sam. He struggles to his feet, and presses his face against her chest, as he has since he was a puppy.

The queen of the bees looks down at them both, stroking Belle absently. The cat purrs and presses against the bee's black-velvet thorax. Faceted eyes reflect a thousand images back to Linna, her arms around a thousand Sams.

"He's mine. I love him, and he's mine." Linna's chest hurts.

"He's Death's now," the woman says. "Unless he stays with me."

Linna bends her face to his ruff, smells the warm living scent of him. "Let me stay with him, then. With you." She looks up at the queen of the bees. "You want company, you said so."

The black heart-shaped head tips back. "No. To be with me is to have no one."

"There'd be Sam. And the bees."

"Would they be enough for you? A million million subjects, ten thousand million lovers, all as interchangeable and mindless as gloves? No friends, no family, no one to pull the sting from your hand?"

Linna's eyes drop, unable to bear the woman's fierce face, proud and searingly alone.

"I will love Sam with all my heart," the queen of the bees continues, in a voice soft as a hum. "Because I will have no one else."

Sam has rolled to his side, waiting patiently for Linna to remember to scratch him. He loves, her, she knows, but he wants his stomach scratched. Live forever, she thinks suddenly, and wills his twisted spine and legs straight and well.

"All right then," Linna whispers.

The queen of the bees exhales, and sweet breath blows across Linna's face. Belle makes a tired cranky noise, a sort of question. "Yes, Belle," the woman says. "You can go now." She touches her with what might be a long white hand. Belle sighs once and is still.

"Will you—?" the queen of the bees asks.

"Yes." Linna stands, takes the cat from her black arms. The body is light as wind. "I will bury her."

"Thank you." The queen of the bees kneels, and places long hands on either side of the dog's muzzle. "Sam? Would you like to be with me for a while?"

He says nothing, of course, but he licks the soft black face. The woman touches him, and he stretches lavishly, like a puppy awakening after a long afternoon's sleep. When he is done, his legs are straight and his eyes are very bright. Sam dances to Linna, bounces onto his hind legs to lick the tears from her face. She buries her face in his fur a last time. The smell of sickness is gone, leaving only Sam. Live, she thinks. When she releases him, he races once around the little fields before he returns to sit beside the queen of the bees, smiling up at her.

Linna's heart twists inside her to see his expression, but it's the price of knowing he will live. She pays it, but cannot stop herself from asking, "Will he forget me?"

"If he does, I will remind him every day." The queen lays her hand on his head. "And there will be many days. He will live a long time, and he will run and chase—what might as well be rabbits, in my world. "

The queen of the bees salutes Linna, kissing her wet cheeks, and then she turns and walks toward the rising darkness that is the lake of bees and also the dusk. Linna watches hungrily. Sam looks back once, a little confused, and she nearly calls out to him, but what would she be calling him back to? She smiles as best she can, and he returns the smile, as dogs do. And then he and the queen of the bees are gone.

Linna buries Belle using the spade in the canvas bag. It is twilight before she is done, and she sleeps in her car again, too tired to hear or see or feel anything. In the morning she finds a road and turns west. When she gets to Seattle (no longer gray, but gold and green and blue and white with summer), she sends the canvas bag back to Officer Tabor—Luke, she remembers—along with a letter explaining everything she has learned of the river of bees.

She is never stung again. Her dreams are visited by bees, but they bring her no messages; the calligraphy of their flights remain mysterious. Once she dreams of Sam, who smiles at her and dances on young straight legs, just out of reach.

#📚

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cature · 1 year ago

Text

GHOSTWEIGHT.

Yoon Ha Lee.

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth.

What the paper-folding diagrams fail to mention is that each fold enacts itself upon the secret marrow of your ethics, the axioms of your thoughts.

Whether this is the most important thing the diagrams fail to mention is a matter of opinion.

“There’s time for one more hand,” Lisse’s ghost said. It was composed of cinders of color, a cipher of blurred features, and it had a voice like entropy and smoke and sudden death. Quite possibly it was the last ghost on all of ruined Rhaion, conquered Rhaion, Rhaion with its devastated, shadowless cities and dead moons and dimming sun. Sometimes Lisse wondered if the ghost had a scar to match her own, a long, livid line down her arm. But she felt it was impolite to ask.

Around them, in a command spindle sized for fifty, the walls of the war-kite were hung with tatters of black and faded green, even now in the process of reknitting themselves into tapestry displays. Tangled reeds changed into ravens. One perched on a lightning-cloven tree. Another, taking shape amid twisted threads, peered out from a skull’s eye socket.

Lisse didn’t need any deep familiarity with mercenary symbology to understand the warning. Lisse’s people had adopted a saying from the Imperium’s mercenaries: In raven arithmetic, no death is enough.

Lisse had expected pursuit. She had deserted from Base 87 soon after hearing that scouts had found a mercenary war-kite in the ruins of a sacred maze, six years after all the mercenaries vanished: suspicious timing on her part, but she would have no better opportunity for revenge. The ghost had not tried too hard to dissuade her. It had always understood her ambitions.

For a hundred years, despite being frequently outnumbered, the mercenaries in their starfaring kites had cindered cities, destroyed flights of rebel starflyers, shattered stations in the void’s hungry depths. What better weapon than one of their own kites?

What troubled her was how lightly the war-kite had been defended. It had made a strange, thorny silhouette against the lavender sky even from a long way off, like briars gone wild, and with the ghost as scout she had slipped past the few mechanized sentries. The kite’s shadow had been human. She was not sure what to make of that.

The kite had opened to her like a flower. The card game had been the ghost’s idea, a way to reassure the kite that she was its ally: Scorch had been invented by the mercenaries.

Lisse leaned forward and started to scoop the nearest column, the Candle Column, from the black-and-green gameplay rug. The ghost forestalled her with a hand that felt like the dregs of autumn, decay from the inside out. In spite of herself, she flinched from the ghostweight, which had troubled her all her life. Her hand jerked sideways; her fingers spasmed.

“Look,” the ghost said.

Few cadets had played Scorch with Lisse even in the barracks. The ghost left its combinatorial fingerprints in the cards. People drew the unlucky Fallen General’s Hand over and over again, or doubled on nothing but negative values, or inverted the Crown Flower at odds of thousands to one. So Lisse had learned to play the solitaire variant, with jerengjen as counters. You must learn your enemy’s weapons, the ghost had told her, and so, even as a child in the reeducation facility, she had saved her chits for paper to practice folding into cranes, lilies, leaf-shaped boats.

Next to the Candle Column she had folded stormbird, greatfrog, lantern, drake. Where the ghost had interrupted her attempt to clear the pieces, they had landed amid the Sojourner and Mirror Columns, forming a skewed late-game configuration: a minor variant of the Needle Stratagem, missing only its pivot.

“Consider it an omen,” the ghost said. “Even the smallest sliver can kill, as they say.”

There were six ravens on the tapestries now. The latest one had outspread wings, as though it planned to blot out the shrouded sun. She wondered what it said about the mercenaries, that they couched their warnings in pictures rather than drums or gongs.

Lisse rose from her couch. “So they’re coming for us. Where are they?”

She had spoken in the Imperium’s administrative tongue, not one of the mercenaries’ own languages. Nevertheless, a raven flew from one tapestry to join its fellows in the next. The vacant tapestry grayed, then displayed a new scene: a squad of six tanks caparisoned in Imperial blue and bronze, paced by two personnel carriers sheathed in metal mined from withered stars. They advanced upslope, pebbles skittering in their wake.

In the old days, the ghost had told her, no one would have advanced through a sacred maze by straight lines. But the ancient walls, curved and interlocking, were gone now. The ghost had drawn the old designs on her palm with its insubstantial fingers, and she had learned not to shudder at the untouch, had learned to thread the maze in her mind’s eye: one more map to the things she must not forget.

“I’d rather avoid fighting them,” Lisse said. She was looking at the command spindle’s controls. Standard Imperial layout, all of them—it did not occur to her to wonder why the kite had configured itself thus—but she found nothing for the weapons.

“People don’t bring tanks when they want to negotiate,” the ghost said dryly. “And they’ll have alerted their flyers for intercept. You have something they want badly.”

“Then why didn’t they guard it better?” she demanded.

Despite the tanks’ approach, the ghost fell silent. After a while, it said, “Perhaps they didn’t think anyone but a mercenary could fly a kite.”

“They might be right,” Lisse said darkly. She strapped herself into the commander’s seat, then pressed three fingers against the controls and traced the commands she had been taught as a cadet. The kite shuddered, as though caught in a hell-wind from the sky’s fissures. But it did not unfurl itself to fly.

She tried the command gestures again, forcing herself to slow down. A cold keening vibrated through the walls. The kite remained stubbornly landfast.

The squad rounded the bend in the road. All the ravens had gathered in a single tapestry, decorating a half-leafed tree like dire jewels. The rest of the tapestries displayed the squad from different angles: two aerial views and four from the ground.

Lisse studied one of the aerial views and caught sight of two scuttling figures, lean angles and glittering eyes and a balancing tail in black metal. She stiffened. They had the shadows of hounds, all graceful hunting curves. Two jerengjen, true ones, unlike the lifeless shapes that she folded out of paper. The kite must have deployed them when it sensed the tanks’ approach.

Sweating now, despite the autumn temperature inside, she methodically tried every command she had ever learned. The kite remained obdurate. The tapestries’ green threads faded until the ravens and their tree were bleak black splashes against a background of wintry gray.

It was a message. Perhaps a demand. But she did not understand.

The first two tanks slowed into view. Roses, blue with bronze hearts, were engraved to either side of the main guns. The lead tank’s roses flared briefly.

The kite whispered to itself in a language that Lisse did not recognize. Then the largest tapestry cleared of trees and swirling leaves and rubble, and presented her with a commander’s emblem, a pale blue rose pierced by three claws. A man’s voice issued from the tapestry: “Cadet Fai Guen.” This was her registry name. They had not reckoned that she would keep her true name alive in her heart like an ember. “You are in violation of Imperial interdict. Surrender the kite at once.”

He did not offer mercy. The Imperium never did.

Lisse resisted the urge to pound her fists against the interface. She had not survived this long by being impatient. “That’s it, then,” she said to the ghost in defeat.

“Cadet Fai Guen,” the voice said again, after another burst of light, “you have one minute to surrender the kite before we open fire.”

“Lisse,” the ghost said, “the kite’s awake.”

She bit back a retort and looked down. Where the control panel had once been featureless gray, it was now crisp white interrupted by five glyphs, perfectly spaced for her outspread fingers. She resisted the urge to snatch her hand away. “Very well,” she said. “If we can’t fly, at least we can fight.”

She didn’t know the kite’s specific control codes. Triggering the wrong sequence might activate the kite’s internal defenses. But taking tank fire at point-blank range would get her killed, too. She couldn’t imagine that the kite’s armor had improved in the years of its neglect.

On the other hand, it had jerengjen scouts, and the jerengjen looked perfectly functional.

She pressed her thumb to the first glyph. A shadow unfurled briefly but was gone before she could identify it. The second attempt revealed a two-headed dragon’s twisting coils. Long-range missiles, then: thunder in the sky. Working quickly, she ran through the options. It would be ironic if she got the weapons systems to work only to incinerate herself.

“You have ten seconds, Cadet Fai Guen,” said the voice with no particular emotion.

“Lisse,” the ghost said, betraying impatience.

One of the glyphs had shown a wolf running. She remembered that at one point the wolf had been the mercenaries’ emblem. Nevertheless, she felt a dangerous affinity to it. As she hesitated over it, the kite said, in a parched voice, “Soul strike.”

She tapped the glyph, then pressed her palm flat to activate the weapon. The panel felt briefly hot, then cold.

For a second she thought that nothing had happened, that the kite had malfunctioned. The kite was eerily still.

The tanks and personnel carriers were still visible as gray outlines against darker gray, as were the nearby trees and their stifled fruits. She wasn’t sure whether that was an effect of the unnamed weapons or a problem with the tapestries. Had ten seconds passed yet? She couldn’t tell, and the clock of her pulse was unreliable.

Desperate to escape before the tanks spat forth the killing rounds, Lisse raked her hand sideways to dismiss the glyphs. They dispersed in unsettling fragmented shapes resembling half-chewed leaves and corroded handprints. She repeated the gesture for fly.

Lisse choked back a cry as the kite lofted. The tapestry views changed to sky on all sides except the ravens on their tree—birds no longer, but skeletons, price paid in coin of bone.

Only once they had gained some altitude did she instruct the kite to show her what had befallen her hunters. It responded by continuing to accelerate.

The problem was not the tapestries. Rather, the kite’s wolf-strike had ripped all the shadows free of their owners, killing them. Below, across a great swathe of the continent once called Ishuel’s Bridge, was a devastation of light, a hard, glittering splash against the surrounding snow-capped mountains and forests and winding rivers.

Lisse had been an excellent student, not out of academic conscientiousness but because it gave her an opportunity to study her enemy. One of her best subjects had been geography. She and the ghost had spent hours drawing maps in the air or shaping topographies in her blankets; paper would betray them, it had said. As she memorized the streets of the City of Fountains, it had sung her the ballads of its founding. It had told her about the feuding poets and philosophers that the thoroughfares of the City of Prisms had been named after. She knew which mines supplied which bases and how the roads spidered across Ishuel’s Bridge. While the population figures of the bases and settlement camps weren’t exactly announced to cadets, especially those recruited from the reeducation facilities, it didn’t take much to make an educated guess.

The Imperium had built 114 bases on Ishuel’s Bridge. Base complements averaged 20,000 people. Even allowing for the imprecision of her eye, the wolf-strike had taken out—

She shivered as she listed the affected bases, approximately sixty of them.

The settlement camps’ populations were more difficult. The Imperium did not like to release those figures. Imperfectly, she based her estimate on the zone around Base 87, remembering the rows of identical shelters. The only reason they did not outnumber the bases’ personnel was that the mercenaries had been coldly efficient on Jerengjen Day.

Needle Stratagem, Lisse thought blankly. The smallest sliver. She hadn’t expected its manifestation to be quite so literal.

The ghost was looking at her, its dark eyes unusually distinct. “There’s nothing to be done for it now,” it said at last. “Tell the kite where to go before it decides for itself.”

“Ashway 514,” Lisse said, as they had decided before she fled base: scenario after scenario whispered to each other like bedtime stories. She was shaking. The straps did nothing to steady her.

She had one last glimpse of the dead region before they curved into the void: her handprint upon her own birthworld. She had only meant to destroy her hunters.

In her dreams, later, the blast pattern took on the outline of a running wolf.

In the mercenaries’ dominant language, jerengjen originally referred to the art of folding paper. For her part, when Lisse first saw it, she thought of it as snow. She was four years old. It was a fair spring afternoon in the City of Tapestries, slightly humid. She was watching a bird try to catch a bright butterfly when improbable paper shapes began drifting from the sky, foxes and snakes and stormbirds.

Lisse called to her parents, laughing. Her parents knew better. Over her shrieks, they dragged her into the basement and switched off the lights. She tried to bite one of her fathers when he clamped his hand over her mouth. Jerengjen tracked primarily by shadows, not by sound, but you couldn’t be too careful where the mercenaries’ weapons were concerned.

In the streets, jerengjen unfolded prettily, expanding into artillery with dragon-shaped shadows and sleek four-legged assault robots with wolf-shaped shadows. In the skies, jerengjen unfolded into bombers with kestrel-shaped shadows.

This was not the only Rhaioni city where this happened. People crumpled like paper cutouts once their shadows were cut away by the onslaught. Approximately one-third of the world’s population perished in the weeks that followed.

Of the casualty figures, the Imperium said, It is regrettable. And later, The stalled negotiations made the consolidation necessary.

Lisse carried a map of the voidways with her at all times, half in her head and half in the Scorch deck. The ghost had once been a traveler. It had shown her mnemonics for the dark passages and the deep perils that lay between stars. Growing up, she had laid out endless tableaux between her lessons, memorizing travel times and vortices and twists.

Ashway 514 lay in the interstices between two unstable stars and their cacophonous necklace of planets, comets, and asteroids. Lisse felt the kite tilting this way and that as it balanced itself against the stormy voidcurrent. The tapestries shone from one side with ruddy light from the nearer star, 514 Tsi. On the other side, a pale violet-blue planet with a serenade of rings occluded the view.

514 was a useful hiding place. It was off the major tradeways, and since the Battle of Fallen Sun—named after the rebel general’s emblem, a white sun outlined in red, rather than the nearby stars—it had been designated an ashway, where permanent habitation was forbidden.

More important to Lisse, however, was the fact that 514 was the ashway nearest the last mercenary sighting, some five years ago. As a student, she had learned the names and silhouettes of the most prominent war-kites, and set verses of praise in their honor to Imperial anthems. She had written essays on their tactics and memorized the names of their most famous commanders, although there were no statues or portraits, only the occasional unsmiling photograph. The Imperium was fond of statues and portraits.

For a hundred years (administrative calendar), the mercenaries had served their masters unflinchingly and unfailingly. Lisse had assumed that she would have as much time as she needed to plot against them. Instead, they had broken their service, for reasons the Imperium had never released—perhaps they didn’t know, either—and none had been seen since.

“I’m not sure there’s anything to find here,” Lisse said. Surely the Imperium would have scoured the region for clues. The tapestries were empty of ravens. Instead, they diagrammed shifting voidcurrent flows. The approach of enemy starflyers would perturb the current and allow Lisse and the ghost to estimate their intent. Not trusting the kite’s systems—although there was only so far that she could take her distrust, given the circumstances—she had been watching the tapestries for the past several hours. She had, after a brief argument with the ghost, switched on haptics so that the air currents would, however imperfectly, reflect the status of the void around them. Sometimes it was easier to feel a problem through your skin.

“There’s no indication of derelict kites here,” she added. “Or even kites in use, other than this one.”

“It’s a starting place, that’s all,” the ghost said.

“We’re going to have to risk a station eventually. You might not need to eat, but I do.” She had only been able to sneak a few rations out of base. It was tempting to nibble at one now.

“Perhaps there are stores on the kite.”

“I can’t help but think this place is a trap.”

“You have to eat sooner or later,” the ghost said reasonably. “It’s worth a look, and I don’t want to see you go hungry.” At her hesitation, it added, “I’ll stand watch here. I’m only a breath away.”

This didn’t reassure her as much as it should have, but she was no longer a child in a bunk precisely aligned with the walls, clutching the covers while the ghost told her her people’s stories. She reminded herself of her favorite story, in which a single sentinel kept away the world’s last morning by burning out her eyes, and set out.

Lisse felt the ghostweight’s pull the farther away she walked, but that was old pain, and easily endured. Lights flicked on to accompany her, diffuse despite her unnaturally sharp shadow, then started illuminating passages ahead of her, guiding her footsteps. She wondered what the kite didn’t want her to see.

Rations were in an unmarked storage room. She wouldn’t have been certain about the rations, except that they were, if the packaging was to be believed, field category 72: better than what she had eaten on training exercises, but not by much. No surprise, now that she thought about it: from all accounts, the mercenaries had relied on their masters’ production capacity.

Feeling ridiculous, she grabbed two rations and retraced her steps. The fact that the kite lit her exact path only made her more nervous.

“Anything new?” she asked the ghost. She tapped the ration. “It’s a pity that you can’t taste poison.”

The ghost laughed dryly. “If the kite were going to kill you, it wouldn’t be that subtle. Food is food, Lisse.”

The food was as exactingly mediocre as she had come to expect from military food. At least it was not any worse. She found a receptacle for disposal afterward, then laid out a Scorch tableau, Candle Column to Bone, right to left. Cards rather than jerengjen, because she remembered the scuttling hound-jerengjen with creeping distaste.

From the moment she left Base 87, one timer had started running down. The devastation of Ishuel’s Bridge had begun another, the important one. She wasn’t gambling her survival; she had already sold it. The question was, how many Imperial bases could she extinguish on her way out? And could she hunt down any of the mercenaries that had been the Imperium’s killing sword?

Lisse sorted rapidly through possible targets. For instance, Base 226 Mheng, the Petaled Fortress. She would certainly perish in the attempt, but the only way she could better that accomplishment would be to raze the Imperial firstworld, and she wasn’t that ambitious. There was Bridgepoint 663 Tsi-Kes, with its celebrated Pallid Sentinels, or Aerie 8 Yeneq, which built the Imperium’s greatest flyers, or—

She set the cards down, closed her eyes, and pressed her palms against her face. She was no tactician supreme. Would it make much difference if she picked a card at random?

But of course nothing was truly random in the ghost’s presence.

She laid out the Candle Column again. “Not 8 Yeneq,” she said. “Let’s start with a softer target. Aerie 586 Chiu.”

Lisse looked at the ghost: the habit of seeking its approval had not left her. It nodded. “The safest approach is via the Capillary Ashways. It will test your piloting skills.”

Privately, Lisse thought that the kite would be happy to guide itself. They didn’t dare allow it to, however.

The Capillaries were among the worst of the ashways. Even starlight moved in unnerving ways when faced with ancient networks of voidcurrent gates, unmaintained for generations, or vortices whose behavior changed day by day.

They were fortunate with the first several capillaries. Under other circumstances, Lisse would have gawked at the splendor of lensed galaxies and the jewel-fire of distant clusters. She was starting to manipulate the control interface without hesitating, or flinching as though a wolf’s shadow might cross hers.

At the ninth—

“Patrol,” the ghost said, leaning close.

She nodded jerkily, trying not to show that its proximity pained her. Its mouth crimped in apology.

“It would have been worse if we’d made it all the way to 586 Chiu without a run-in,” Lisse said. That kind of luck always had a price. If she was unready, best to find out now, while there was a chance of fleeing to prepare for a later strike.

The patrol consisted of sixteen flyers: eight Lance 82s and eight Scout 73s. She had flown similar Scouts in simulation.

The flyers did not hesitate. A spread of missiles streaked toward her. Lisse launched antimissile fire.

It was impossible to tell whether they had gone on the attack because the Imperium and the mercenaries had parted on bad terms, or because the authorities had already learned of what had befallen Rhaion. She was certain couriers had gone out within moments of the devastation of Ishuel’s Bridge.

As the missiles exploded, Lisse wrenched the kite toward the nearest vortex. The kite was a larger and sturdier craft. It would be better able to survive the voidcurrent stresses. The tapestries dimmed as they approached. She shut off haptics as wind eddied and swirled in the command spindle. It would only get worse.

One missile barely missed her. She would have to do better. And the vortex was a temporary terrain advantage; she could not lurk there forever.

The second barrage came. Lisse veered deeper into the current. The stars took on peculiar roseate shapes.

“They know the kite’s capabilities,” the ghost reminded her. “Use them. If they’re smart, they’ll already have sent a courier burst to local command.”

The kite suggested jerengjen flyers, harrier class. Lisse conceded its expertise.

The harriers unfolded as they launched, sleek and savage. They maneuvered remarkably well in the turbulence. But there were only ten of them.

“If I fire into that, I’ll hit them,” Lisse said. Her reflexes were good, but not that good, and the harriers apparently liked to soar near their targets.

“You won’t need to fire,” the ghost said.

She glanced at him, disbelieving. Her hand hovered over the controls, playing through possibilities and finding them wanting. For instance, she wasn’t certain that the firebird (explosives) didn’t entail self-immolation, and she was baffled by the stag.

The patrol’s pilots were not incapable. They scorched three of the harriers. They probably realized at the same time that Lisse did that the three had been sacrifices. The other seven flensed them silent.

Lisse edged the kite out of the vortex. She felt an uncomfortable sense of duty to the surviving harriers, but she knew they were one-use, crumpled paper, like all jerengjen. Indeed, they folded themselves flat as she passed them, reducing themselves to battledrift.

“I can’t see how this is an efficient use of resources,” Lisse told the ghost.

“It’s an artifact of the mercenaries’ methods,” it said. “It works. Perhaps that’s all that matters.”

Lisse wanted to ask for details, but her attention was diverted by a crescendo of turbulence. By the time they reached gentler currents, she was too tired to bring it up.

They altered their approach to 586 Chiu twice, favoring stealth over confrontation. If she wanted to char every patrol in the Imperium by herself, she could live a thousand sleepless years and never be done.

For six days they lurked near 586 Chiu, developing a sense for local traffic and likely defenses. Terrain would not be much difficulty. Aeries were built near calm, steady currents.

“It would be easiest if you were willing to take out the associated city,” the ghost said in a neutral voice. They had been discussing whether making a bombing pass on the aerie posed too much of a risk. Lisse had balked at the fact that 586 Chiu Second City was well within blast radius. The people who had furnished the kite’s armaments seemed to have believed in surfeit. “They’d only have a moment to know what was happening.”

“No.”

“Lisse—”

She looked at it mutely, obdurate, although she hated to disappoint it. It hesitated, but did not press its case further.

“This, then,” it said in defeat. “Next best odds: aim the voidcurrent disrupter at the manufactory’s core while jerengjen occupy the defenses.” Aeries held the surrounding current constant to facilitate the calibration of newly built flyers. Under ordinary circumstances, the counterbalancing vortex was leashed at the core. If they could disrupt the core, the vortex would tear at its surroundings.

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” Lisse said. The disrupter had a short range. She did not like the idea of flying in close. But she had objected to the safer alternative.

Aerie 586 Chiu reminded Lisse not of a nest but of a pyre. Flyers and transports were always coming and going, like sparks. The kite swooped in sharp and fast. Falcon-jerengjen raced ahead of them, holding lattice formation for two seconds before scattering toward their chosen marks.

The aerie’s commanders responded commendably. They knew the kite was by far the greater threat. But Lisse met the first flight they threw at her with missiles keen and terrible. The void lit up in a clamor of brilliant colors.

The kite screamed when a flyer salvo hit one of its secondary wings. It bucked briefly while the other wings changed their geometry to compensate. Lisse could not help but think that the scream had not sounded like pain. It had sounded like exultation.

The real test was the gauntlet of Banner 142 artillery emplacements. They were silver-bright and terrible. It seemed wrong that they did not roar like tigers. Lisse bit the inside of her mouth and concentrated on narrowing the parameters for the voidcurrent disrupter. Her hand was a fist on the control panel.

One tapestry depicted the currents: striations within striations of pale blue against black. Despite its shielding, the core was visible as a knot tangled out of all proportion to its size.

“Now,” the ghost said, with inhuman timing.

She didn’t wait to be told twice. She unfisted her hand.

Unlike the wolf-strike, the disrupter made the kite scream again. It lurched and twisted. Lisse wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but there was more incoming fire, and she was occupied with evasive maneuvers. The kite folded in on itself, minimizing its profile. It dizzied her to view it on the secondary tapestry. For a panicked moment, she thought the kite would close itself around her, press her like petals in a book. Then she remembered to breathe.

The disrupter was not visible to human sight, but the kite could read its effect on the current. Like lightning, the disrupter’s blast forked and forked again, zigzagging inexorably toward the minute variations in flux that would lead it toward the core.

She was too busy whipping the kite around to an escape vector to see the moment of convergence between disrupter and core. But she felt the first lashing surge as the vortex spun free of its shielding, expanding into available space. Then she was too busy steadying the kite through the triggered subvortices to pay attention to anything but keeping them alive.

Only later did she remember how much debris there had been, flung in newly unpredictable ways: wings torn from flyers, struts, bulkheads, even an improbable crate with small reddish fruit tumbling from the hole in its side.

Later, too, it would trouble her that she had not been able to keep count of the people in the tumult. Most were dead already: sliced slantwise, bone and viscera exposed, trailing banners of blood; others twisted and torn, faces ripped off and cast aside like unwanted masks, fingers uselessly clutching the wrack of chairs, tables, door frames. A fracture in one wall revealed three people in dark green jackets. They turned their faces toward the widening crack, then clasped hands before a subvortex hurled them apart. The last Lisse saw of them was two hands, still clasped together and severed at the wrist.

Lisse found an escape. Took it.

She didn’t know until later that she had destroyed 40% of the aerie’s structure. Some people survived. They knew how to rebuild.

What she never found out was that the disrupter’s effect was sufficiently long-lasting that some of the survivors died of thirst before supplies could safely be brought in.

In the old days, Lisse’s people took on the ghostweight to comfort the dead and be comforted in return. After a year and a day, the dead unstitched themselves and accepted their rest.

After Jerengjen Day, Lisse’s people struggled to share the sudden increase in ghostweight, to alleviate the flickering terror of the massacred.

Lisse’s parents, unlike the others, stitched a ghost onto a child.

“They saw no choice,” the ghost told her again and again. “You mustn’t blame them.”

The ghost had listened uncomplainingly to her troubles and taught her how to cry quietly so the teachers wouldn’t hear her. It had soothed her to sleep with her people’s legends and histories, described the gardens and promenades so vividly she imagined she could remember them herself. Some nights were more difficult than others, trying to sleep with that strange, stabbing, heartpulse ache. But blame was not what she felt, not usually.

The second target was Base 454 Qo, whose elite flyers were painted with elaborate knotwork, green with bronze-tipped thorns. For reasons that Lisse did not try to understand, the jerengjen dismembered the defensive flight but left the painted panels completely intact.

The third, the fourth, the fifth—she started using Scorch card values to tabulate the reported deaths, however unreliable the figures were in any unencrypted sources. For all its talents, the kite could not pierce military-grade encryption. She spent two days fidgeting over this inconvenience so she wouldn’t have to think about the numbers.

When she did think about the numbers, she refused to round up. She refused to round down.

The nightmares started after the sixth, Bridgepoint 977 Ja-Esh. The station commander had kept silence, as she had come to expect. However, a merchant coalition had broken the interdict to plead for mercy in fourteen languages. She hadn’t destroyed the coalition’s outpost. The station had, in reprimand.

She reminded herself that the merchant would have perished anyway. She had learned to use the firebird to scathing effect. And she was under no illusions that she was only destroying Imperial soldiers and bureaucrats.

In her dreams she heard their pleas in her birth tongue, which the ghost had taught her. The ghost, for its part, started singing her to sleep, as it had when she was little.

The numbers marched higher. When they broke ten million, she plunged out of the command spindle and into the room she had claimed for her own. She pounded the wall until her fists bled. Triumph tasted like salt and venom. It wasn’t supposed to be so easy. In the worst dreams, a wolf roved the tapestries, eating shadows—eating souls. And the void with its tinsel of worlds was nothing but one vast shadow.

Stores began running low after the seventeenth. Lisse and the ghost argued over whether it was worth attempting to resupply through black market traders. Lisse said they didn’t have time to spare, and won. Besides, she had little appetite.

Intercepted communications suggested that someone was hunting them. Rumors and whispers. They kept Lisse awake when she was so tired she wanted to slam the world shut and hide. The Imperium certainly planned reprisal. Maybe others did, too.

If anyone else took advantage of the disruption to move against the Imperium for their own reasons, she didn’t hear about it.

The names of the war-kites, recorded in the Imperium’s administrative language, are varied: Fire Burns the Spider Black. The Siege of the City with Seventeen Faces. Sovereign Geometry. The Glove with Three Fingers.

The names are not, strictly speaking, Imperial. Rather, they are plundered from the greatest accomplishments of the cultures that the mercenaries have defeated on the Imperium’s behalf. Fire Burns the Spider Black was a silk tapestry housed in the dark hall of Meu Danh, ancient of years. The Siege of the City with Seventeen Faces was a saga chanted by the historians of Kwaire. Sovereign Geometry discussed the varying nature of parallel lines. And more: plays, statues, games.

The Imperium’s scholars and artists take great pleasure in reinterpreting these works. Such achievements are meant to be disseminated, they say.

They were three days’ flight from the next target, Base 894 Sao, when the shadow winged across all the tapestries. The void was dark, pricked by starfire and the occasional searing burst of particles. The shadow singed everything darker as it soared to intercept them, as single-minded in its purpose as a bullet. For a second she almost thought it was a collage of wrecked flyers and rusty shrapnel.

The ghost cursed. Lisse startled, but when she looked at it, its face was composed again.

As Lisse pulled back the displays’ focus to get a better sense of the scale, she thought of snowbirds and stormbirds, winter winds and cutting beaks. “I don’t know what that is,” she said, “but it can’t be natural.” None of the imperial defenses had manifested in such a fashion.

“It’s not,” the ghost said. “That’s another war-kite.”

Lisse cleared the control panel. She veered them into a chancy voidcurrent eddy.

The ghost said, “Wait. You won’t outrun it. As we see its shadow, it sees ours.”

“How does a kite have a shadow in the void in the first place?” she asked. “And why haven’t we ever seen our own shadow?”

“Who can see their own soul?” the ghost said. But it would not meet her eyes.

Lisse would have pressed for more, but the shadow overtook them. It folded itself back like a plumage of knives. She brought the kite about. The control panel suggested possibilities: a two-headed dragon, a falcon, a coiled snake. Next a wolf reared up, but she quickly pulled her hand back.

“Visual contact,” the kite said crisply.

The stranger-kite was the color of a tarnished star. It had tucked all its projections away to present a minimal surface for targeting, but Lisse had no doubt that it could unfold itself faster than she could draw breath. The kite flew a widening helix, beautifully precise.

“A mercenary salute, equal to equal,” the ghost said.

“Are we expected to return it?”

“Are you a mercenary?” the ghost countered.

“Communications incoming,” the kite said before Lisse could make a retort.

“I’ll hear it,” Lisse said over the ghost’s objection. It was the least courtesy she could offer, even to a mercenary.

To Lisse’s surprise, the tapestry’s raven vanished to reveal a woman’s visage, not an emblem. The woman had brown skin, a scar trailing from one temple down to her cheekbone, and dark hair cropped short. She wore gray on gray, in no uniform that Lisse recognized, sharply tailored. Lisse had expected a killer’s eyes, a hunter’s eyes. Instead, the woman merely looked tired.

“Commander Kiriet Dzan of—” She had been speaking in administrative, but the last word was unfamiliar. “You would say Candle.”

“Lisse of Rhaion,” she said. There was no sense in hiding her name.

But the woman wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at the ghost. She said something sharply in that unfamiliar language.

The ghost pressed its hand against Lisse’s. She shuddered, not understanding. “Be strong,” it murmured.

“I see,” Kiriet said, once more speaking in administrative. Her mouth was unsmiling. “Lisse, do you know who you’re traveling with?”

“I don’t believe we’re acquainted,” the ghost said, coldly formal.

“Of course not,” Kiriet said. “But I was the logistical coordinator for the scouring of Rhaion.” She did not say consolidation. “I knew why we were there. Lisse, your ghost’s name is Vron Arien.”

Lisse said, after several seconds, “That’s a mercenary name.”

The ghost said, “So it is. Lisse—” Its hand fell away.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

Its mouth was taut. Then: “Lisse, I—”

“Tell me.”

“He was a deserter, Lisse,” the woman said, carefully, as if she thought the information might fracture her. “For years he eluded Wolf Command. Then we discovered he had gone to ground on Rhaion. Wolf Command determined that, for sheltering him, Rhaion must be brought to heel. The Imperium assented.”

Throughout this Lisse looked at the ghost, silently begging it to deny any of it, all of it. But the ghost said nothing.

Lisse thought of long nights with the ghost leaning by her bedside, reminding her of the dancers, the tame birds, the tangle of frostfruit trees in the city square; things she did not remember herself because she had been too young when the jerengjen came. Even her parents only came to her in snatches: curling up in a mother’s lap, helping a father peel plantains. Had any of the ghost’s stories been real?

She thought, too, of the way the ghost had helped her plan her escape from Base 87, how it had led her cunningly through the maze and to the kite. At the time, it had not occurred to her to wonder at its confidence.

Lisse said, “Then the kite is yours.”

“After a fashion, yes.” The ghost’s eyes were precisely the color of ash after the last ember’s death.

“But my parents—”

Enunciating the words as if they cut it, the ghost said, “We made a bargain, your parents and I.”

She could not help it; she made a stricken sound.

“I offered you my protection,” the ghost said. “After years serving the Imperium, I knew its workings. And I offered your parents vengeance. Don’t think that Rhaion wasn’t my home, too.”

Lisse was wrackingly aware of Kiriet’s regard. “Did my parents truly die in the consolidation?” The euphemism was easier to use.

She could have asked whether Lisse was her real name. She had to assume that it wasn’t.

“I don’t know,” it said. “After you were separated from them, I had no way of finding out. Lisse, I think you had better find out what Kiriet wants. She is not your friend.”

I was the logistical coordinator, Kiriet had said. And her surprise at seeing the ghost—It has a name, Lisse reminded herself—struck Lisse as genuine. Which meant Kiriet had not come here in pursuit of Vron Arien. “Why are you here?” Lisse asked.

“You’re not going to like it. I’m here to destroy your kite, whatever you’ve named it.”

“It doesn’t have a name.” She had been unable to face the act of naming, of claiming ownership.

Kiriet looked at her sideways. “I see.”

“Surely you could have accomplished your goal,” Lisse said, “without talking to me first. I am inexperienced in the ways of kites. You are not.” In truth, she should already have been running. But Kiriet’s revelation meant that Lisse’s purpose, once so clear, was no longer to be relied upon.

“I may not be your friend, but I am not your enemy, either,” Kiriet said. “I have no common purpose with the Imperium, not anymore. But you cannot continue to use the kite.”

Lisse’s eyes narrowed. “It is the weapon I have,” she said. “I would be a fool to relinquish it.”

“I don’t deny its efficacy,” Kiriet said, “but you are Rhaioni. Doesn’t the cost trouble you?”

Cost?

Kiriet said, “So no one told you.” Her anger focused on the ghost.

“A weapon is a weapon,” the ghost said. At Lisse’s indrawn breath, it said, “The kites take their sustenance from the deaths they deal. It was necessary to strengthen ours by letting it feast on smaller targets first. This is the particular craft of my people, as ghostweight was the craft of yours, Lisse.”

Sustenance. “So this is why you want to destroy the kite,” Lisse said to Kiriet.

“Yes.” The other woman’s smile was bitter. “As you might imagine, the Imperium did not approve. It wanted to negotiate another hundred-year contract. I dissented.”

“Were you in a position to dissent?” the ghost asked, in a way that made Lisse think that it was translating some idiom from its native language.

“I challenged my way up the chain of command and unseated the head of Wolf Command,” Kiriet said. “It was not a popular move. I have been destroying kites ever since. If the Imperium is so keen on further conquest, let it dirty its own hands.”

“Yet you wield a kite yourself,” Lisse said.

“Candle is my home. But on the day that every kite is accounted for in words of ash and cinders, I will turn my own hand against it.”

It appealed to Lisse’s sense of irony. All the same, she did not trust Kiriet.

She heard a new voice. Kiriet’s head turned. “Someone’s followed you.” She said a curt phrase in her own language, then: “You’ll want my assistance—”

Lisse shook her head.

“It’s a small flight, as these things go, but it represents a threat to you. Let me—”

“No,” Lisse said, more abruptly than she had meant to. “I’ll handle it myself.”

“If you insist,” Kiriet said, looking even more tired. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then her face was replaced, for a flicker, with her emblem: a black candle crossed slantwise by an empty sheath.

“The Candle is headed for a vortex, probably for cover,” the ghost said, very softly. “But it can return at any moment.”

Lisse thought that she was all right, and then the reaction set in. She spent several irrecoverable breaths shaking, arms wrapped around herself, before she was able to concentrate on the tapestry data.

At one time, every war-kite displayed a calligraphy scroll in its command spindle. The words are, approximately:

I have only

one candle

Even by the mercenaries’ standards, it is not much of a poem. But the woman who wrote it was a soldier, not a poet.

The mercenaries no longer have a homeland. Even so, they keep certain traditions, and one of them is the Night of Vigils. Each mercenary honors the year’s dead by lighting a candle. They used to do this on the winter solstice of an ancient calendar. Now the Night of Vigils is on the anniversary of the day the first war-kites were launched; the day the mercenaries slaughtered their own people to feed the kites.

The kites fly, the mercenaries’ commandant said. But they do not know how to hunt.

When he was done, they knew how to hunt. Few of the mercenaries forgave him, but it was too late by then.

The poem says: So many people have died, yet I have only one candle for them all.

It is worth noting that “have” is expressed by a particular construction for alienable possession: not only is the having subject to change, it is additionally under threat of being taken away.

Kiriet’s warning had been correct. An Imperial flight in perfect formation had advanced toward them, inhibiting their avenues of escape. They outnumbered her forty-eight to one. The numbers did not concern her, but the Imperium’s resources meant that if she dealt with this flight, there would be twenty more waiting for her, and the numbers would only grow worse. That they had not opened fire already meant they had some trickery in mind.

One of the flyers peeled away, describing an elegant curve and exposing its most vulnerable surface, painted with a rose.

“That one’s not armed,” Lisse said, puzzled.

The ghost’s expression was unreadable. “How very wise of them,” it said.

The forward tapestry flickered. “Accept the communication,” Lisse said.

The emblem that appeared was a trefoil flanked by two roses, one stem-up, one stem-down. Not for the first time, Lisse wondered why people from a culture that lavished attention on miniatures and sculptures were so intent on masking themselves in emblems.

“Commander Fai Guen, this is Envoy Nhai Bara.” A woman’s voice, deep and resonant, with an accent Lisse didn’t recognize.

So I’ve been promoted? Lisse thought sardonically, feeling herself tense up. The Imperium never gave you anything, even a meaningless rank, without expecting something in return.

Softly, she said to the ghost, “They were bound to catch up to us sooner or later.” Then, to the kite: “Communications to Envoy Nhai: I am Lisse of Rhaion. What words between us could possibly be worth exchanging? Your people are not known for mercy.”

“If you will not listen to me,” Nhai said, “perhaps you will listen to the envoy after me, or the one after that. We are patient and we are many. But I am not interested in discussing mercy: that’s something we have in common.”

“I’m listening,” Lisse said, despite the ghost’s chilly stiffness. All her life she had honed herself against the Imperium. It was unbearable to consider that she might have been mistaken. But she had to know what Nhai’s purpose was.

“Commander Lisse,” the envoy said, and it hurt like a stab to hear her name spoken by a voice other than the ghost’s, a voice that was not Rhaioni. Even if she knew, now, that the ghost was not Rhaioni, either. “I have a proposal for you. You have proven your military effectiveness—”

Military effectiveness. She had tallied all the deaths, she had marked each massacre on the walls of her heart, and this faceless envoy collapsed them into two words empty of number.

“—quite thoroughly. We are in need of a strong sword. What is your price for hire, Commander Lisse?”

“What is my—” She stared at the trefoil emblem, and then her face went ashen.

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth.

But the same can be said of the living.

#📚

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cature · 1 year ago

Text

AND HER EYES SEWN SHUT WITH UNICORN HAIR.

Rosamund Hodge.

“Look, Zéphine!” Marie called. “A unicorn!”

Even though Zéphine knew what would happen, her heart still thumped with hope. She set down her spoon, then jerked her head up to see the breakfast room window where her little sister stood. But when she looked where Marie pointed, Zéphine saw only a gazebo whose white latticework was clogged with crimson roses.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Marie whispered.

“Yes,” lied Zéphine. “Beautiful.”

Why should she hope to see a unicorn now, when she never had in all her life?

Marie untangled herself from the lace curtains. She was only twelve; baby fat still clung to the corners of her beaming face. “And on your nineteenth birthday, too! It’s a lucky sign—the unicorns will love your maiden dance tonight, I know they will.”

Zéphine sat back in her chair and looked at her little silver bowl. She didn’t want any more custard; the few mouthfuls she had already eaten hung heavy in her stomach.

Marie kept on chattering. “...and the suitors can start watching you dance for the unicorns next month. Philippe is first in line to try, right? He would make a good king.”

“Mother danced for nine men before Father.” Zéphine mashed the custard with her spoon.

“I wouldn’t like that.” Marie’s dark eyebrows drew together. “Nine men, all dead....”

I would only like to summon a unicorn, thought Zéphine. The men can look after themselves.

But she knew that no unicorn would ever come for her.

She stood abruptly. “I’m going out.”

“I’ll come—”

“Leave me alone.”

As she pushed open the glass doors, she saw that Marie had tears wobbling in her eyes. Tonight, Zéphine would get to watch those pretty dark eyes overflow with tears until Marie’s trembling little hands finished sewing Zéphine’s eyes shut.

She strode past the gazebos and topiaries to the northern quarter of the garden. First came the fountains. Marie loved to play among the glistening water-spray, but Zéphine hated them: their many-tiered elegance proclaimed the wealth and peace that the unicorns had given Retrouvailles for a thousand years.

Beyond the fountains, though, lay the pools. They were crafted with as much art, but made to look natural: some overgrown with water-lilies, some surrounded by cattails, some clean and open, ruffled only when a crane alighted. Here Zéphine had always been happiest, because she could pretend she was outside and free.

Today the pools looked nothing like freedom; they reflected the high outer wall of the garden, the mocking rim where stone met sky. If only walls stood between her and freedom, she would have been gone years ago. But the ancient enchantments of Retrouvailles did not permit princesses to leave the palace grounds until they had performed the maiden dance and been accepted.

Fear burned through her stomach. She halted, looking down at the still, dark water in the nearest pool. She had swum in this pool and she knew how deep it went. Deep enough for drowning.

Swallowing, she knelt by the water. Plump white stones by ringed the pool; for weeks she had planned to use them to weigh herself down, but now she couldn’t make herself pick them up.

If she failed her maiden dance, she might not have another chance to die with her soul still free. Still human. But even so, she couldn’t move.

She only needed to be brave for one moment, long enough to jump. Drowning couldn’t hurt too badly. If she could inhale enough water right away—if she could be absolutely sure that she would indeed fail tonight—if she were not too afraid to do anything but kneel here, shivering.

She was infinitely afraid.

“Contemplating the water, demoiselle?”

Zéphine flinched, then recognized the voice. The cold ache in her stomach eased. “Hello, Justin. Guarding the virtues again?”

Justin stood to attention in the narrow point where two walls met, his dark blue coat crisp and buttoned, one hand on the filigreed hilt of his sword as if he might need to defend the kingdom at any moment. He would not: the garden was a nine-pointed star to symbolize the nine virtues of a true princess, and the palace guard maintained a ceaseless watch on each of the nine points to symbolize their devotion.

He saluted. “Someday I’ll be lucky at cards.” Guarding the virtues was one of the least favorite duties among the guards, and they regularly wagered it away.

Zéphine fought a smile. She was sure he gambled poorly on purpose, likely because he knew how much seeing him meant to her. Ever since Justin arrived at the palace six months ago, she’d sought him in the gardens again and again. Out of all the guards—out of anyone, Marie excepted—he was the only one who saw her as a girl, not a maiden fated to dance with the unicorns.

It didn’t hurt that he was handsome. He was no taller than Zéphine, but his arms were round with muscle; his skin, though pale and colorless when he first arrived from the northern provinces, was now quite respectably tanned; and his eyes were an exotic pale blue, and his mouth seemed always on the verge of a smile. For several months, she had kept thinking she would like to kiss that mouth.

Princesses were not supposed to long for guardsmen.

I will never see him smile again, she thought as she stood and walked towards him.

“You look tense. Out for a last walk?”

Zéphine’s heart skipped before she realized what he meant. “I suppose I won’t see you as much when I’m queen.” She did her best to smile.

“Don’t say me you’ll miss me.” Up close, his smile didn’t look convincing either; his jaw was tight, his forehead lined. Zéphine had to crush a sudden conviction that he knew what was wrong with her. She’d been so careful. Nobody knew: not her father, not even Marie.

“What if I will?” She leaned against the wall beside him.

He stayed at attention, facing forward, but his eyes flicked sideways at her. “I think a queen will have better ways to amuse herself. Starting with her husband.”

She sat down with a huff and curled up against the wall. Her red skirts pooled around her; she thought of her blood seeping across the floor of the Great Dome, and swallowed dryly.

“That’s bad posture, demoiselle.”

“Soldier, I command you to sit.”

“I’m not technically a soldier.” But he sat beside her anyway, stretching out his legs as if his white trousers couldn’t possibly stain.

Zéphine tore at a clump of grass. She wanted to forget about tonight for just a few minutes, but how could she, when her stomach was still cramping in fear and every heartbeat took her closer to the unicorns?

“So you dance tonight?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“I thought a princess’s maiden dance was supposed to be joyous.”

“What do you know?” Zéphine turned on him, not caring that tears prickled at her eyes. “What does the Reine-Licorne mean to someone like you? Crowns and silks and formal court sessions? Or legends and glory and—”

“You.” He wiped a tear off her cheek with his thumb. “Just you, demoiselle.”

“You don’t know me. You don’t know what I know about being demoiselle.”

“Then tell me what you know.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Tell me what you want.”

“I know my first kiss will be with the man whom the unicorns permit to watch me dance and live. I know my first child and every one after will be a daughter. I know that I will dance with the unicorns every full moon until I die, when my body will be left on the Plaine d’Ossements; and when the unicorns have gnawed away my flesh they will crack open my bones for the marrow. And I wish I could change any part of it.”

“Well.” Justin leaned closer. “One of those things I can change.” And he kissed her.

It was barely more than a brush of his lips, but it sent a shock through her body, sharper than fear. For one moment she was stunned into stillness. Then she leaned forward to kiss him back.

A moment later he had gathered her into his arms and was kissing her open-mouthed. She felt it through her whole body, a fire she had never quite believed existed, least of all for her. It felt like her bones were melting, but that was all right, because he lowered her onto the grass. When he lifted his lips from hers, it was to kiss her neck and then her collarbone.

“I love you,” she whispered.

His lips stilled against her skin; then he sat up, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. I can’t— I’m sorry.”

She sat up too. “Sorry you kissed me or sorry I said—” Her throat closed.

“You’re the princess. You have to dance for the unicorns. I can’t—” He choked on a bitter laugh. “I can’t take that away from you. I can’t hurt you.”

Zéphine hugged herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she said dully. “I’ve never seen a unicorn.” She ignored his sharp intake of breath. “My dance will fail tonight, so Marie will be queen and I will be the unicorn bride. Do they tell you guards what that means? They will dress me in white like a bride and give me the draught of waking sleep so I can neither feel nor move. Then Marie will lay me on the floor of the Great Dome; she’ll sew my eyes shut with unicorn hair, slit my arms from wrist to elbow, and perform her maiden dance around me. When the unicorns come for her they will drink my blood until I die and eat my soul when it escapes between my lips. It’s the only way she can take my birthright once the unicorns have rejected me. That’s why I’ve never loved my sister. I’ve always known the last thing I’ll ever see is her sewing my eyes shut. The last thing I’ll ever hear is her song to the unicorns.”

Justin drew her back into his embrace, but she held herself rigid and went on, “Being the unicorn bride, it’s not just dying. Unicorn queens can rest with the ancestors when they die, but unicorn brides forget their names and ride for eternity with the unicorns. I’d let you take me right now if it would make me unfit, but I’d still have to try and fail and I can’t bear it. I won’t. I came down here because I was trying to decide if I should drown myself in the pond.” She gulped. Her voice had gone high and babbling, but she couldn’t care. “You have a sword. You could—”

“I’m not going to kill you, demoiselle.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Zéphine.” His arms tightened around her. “I couldn’t ever kill you.” He pressed his face into her hair.

It felt comforting to be in his arms, but he couldn’t protect her. “I’m dying anyway.”

He drew a slow, deep breath. “You said that even if I— You wouldn’t be unfit. But I was taught that a princess draws the unicorns through her purity.”

Her face heated. “The purity of her heart. That means she wills nothing, desires nothing but to dance before the unicorns and by dancing, protect her people. And I—” Her fingers tightened around his arm. “I don’t remember which came first. Not seeing the unicorns, or wanting to be free. But either way—there’s no chance they will look at me tonight and judge me pure.”

Justin let out a deep breath. “Did your tutors ever tell about the Bull of Kyrland?”

“Of course,” she said. Kyrland was the barbarian country across the northern sea; the Bull protected it as the unicorns protected Retrouvailles.

“In my home town... most of us are more than half Kyrlander. So we know about the Bull. It isn’t like the unicorns. It doesn’t judge your heart. The Bull comes for whoever spills blood and offers it a binding price—something as precious as what you want it to give you.”

Zéphine blinked at the grass. Hope felt like a cold weight in her stomach. “But... what could possibly be as precious as my birthright?”

He squeezed her. “Offer it your birthright as the price to take you away from here.”

She sat rigid for a moment, hardly daring to breathe. Escape. For years, she’d thought it impossible. She’d thought she would have to be queen or unicorn bride or die.

She could live.

Zéphine twisted to face him. “Tell me how to summon the Bull.”

Justin’s face was unreadable. “You’re sure?”

“Do you think I have any other choice? Tell me how.”

He let go of her. “As my demoiselle commands.”

She scrambled into a kneeling position as Justin pulled a knife out of his boot. It must be his own personal knife: it had none of the decorations and monogramming that were all over the palace guard’s regalia—just a plain wooden handle, with a one-sided blade that angled down to the tip.

He handed her the knife. “Carve a circle on the ground. It doesn’t need to be big.”

The knife handle felt cold and awkward. Zéphine clenched her hand around it and shoved the knife into the ground. Slowly, jerkily she ripped it through the grass roots in a little circle barely wider than her hand.

“Good,” said Justin. “Wipe off the blade. Now cut your finger enough to draw blood. I can’t do it for you, I’m sorry—”

Zéphine sliced her palm open with a long, shallow cut. The pain made her wince, but her hands were steady. She was doing something. She wasn’t trapped any more. She thought she could suffer anything if she were only doing something to escape.

“Now?” She looked at Justin.

He looked a little sad. “Spill your blood inside the circle. Say, ‘Black bull of the north, come to my blood.’ Name your price and make a wish.”

Her heart thudded in her ears. “Black bull of the north.” It wasn’t just her heartbeat; there was something deeper thudding through the ground, almost in time to her heart. “Come to my blood.” She could barely breathe; the vibrations rippled through her bones. “Take my birthright... set me free.”

Everything went dark. She couldn’t feel the grass beneath her or the sting of the cut on her palm, only the heavy beat of approaching hooves. Then she saw something moving towards her: a silhouette of even deeper darkness, growing every moment until it towered over her like a mountain. Hot breath steamed across her face—

She was lying on the grass, light dazzling her eyes. Zéphine blinked, her eyes watering. She was still in the palace. Had the Bull refused her?

Then she heard crashes. The clatter of metal on metal. And screams.

She sat up with a gasp. “Justin. What—”

He shoved her back down. “You summoned the Bull but he didn’t listen. You did break the protections on the palace.” His voice had gone harsh and clipped. “Stay down or I will tie you up.”

“But—”

At the edge of her vision, she glimpsed black-cloaked men. She caught her breath in fear, because she knew they were not any of Father’s men—and then they started speaking in a harsh, guttural language. Kyrlander.

Justin answered in the same tongue. They bowed to him and left.

Zéphine stared up at him. Her whole body had gone cold.

He looked back down with no hint of a smile at all. “I am Prince Idrask Leifsson, and you just allowed my men into your kingdom. Thank you, demoiselle.”

She surged up, grabbing the knife off the ground, and lunged for him.

He caught her easily, twisted her wrist until she dropped the knife with a grasp, and slammed her back into the ground, this time face-first.

“You really won’t win against me in battle, demoiselle.”

She sobbed with fury into grass. He had lied to her. Every single day he had lied to her, and most especially today. When he kissed her—when he said he wanted her to be free—

She had been such a fool.

“What are you doing to my family?” she gritted out.

“Let’s hope they’ve been taken prisoner.” There was a short silence; then someone shouted from a distance in Kyrlander. “Time for us to find out.” He hauled her to her feet, pulling her hands behind her. “Do I need to tie your hands?”

Zéphine pressed her lips together. After a moment Idrask sighed, gripped her arm, and pulled her forward.

Her face heated as she remembered the last time he had touched her. He had only stopped because he had realized it wouldn’t break the protections on the palace.

The gardens were still empty; at first she could almost imagine that nothing had happened. Then she saw a group of black-clad men marching along the side of the palace; the glass doors of the breakfast room were shattered. She had always thought she didn’t love her sister, but when she thought of Marie trapped by the Kyrlander soldiers, she felt sick.

Idrask dragged her down the pathway, past the breakfast room and towards the southern wing of the palace which surrounded the Great Dome. She glimpsed the weathered, gray-green curve of the dome rising above the other rooftops; she remembered the mosaics on the inside walls, portraits of queens all the way back to Ysonde Blanchemains, the first Reine-Licorne. It was probably full of Kyrlander soldiers now.

They were certainly all over the rest of the palace now. She saw more of them, and more signs of fighting: smashed vases, doors swinging open, and sometimes bodies lying horribly still—Idrask always grabbed her chin and turned her face away when she stared. They passed groups of guards taken prisoner, little frightened clumps of servants, and one noblewoman crouched sobbing in a corner, her lacy blue dress spattered with blood.

By the time they entered the southern wing, Zéphine felt like she was in a dream: as if she had closed her eyes and found herself in this nightmare palace overrun by Kyrlanders, and all she had to do was wake up.

The inside of the southern wing was only more dreamlike: fewer signs of fighting—the tapestries had not been ripped off the wall, the golden molding and rosettes still gleamed, the mosaic floors were unstained—but all the palace guards, the nobles and servants, privy councilors and petty officials were gone, replaced by ranks of pale Kyrlander soldiers who saluted Idrask.

Then he dragged her into the Great Dome. They walked through the rings of pillars and she saw the Unicorn Throne, a low, curved seat gleaming like pearl in the sunshine that fell through the eye in the center of the dome. She saw her father lying before the throne in his white-gold robes of state, his graying beard matted with blood. Saw the pool of blood lazily spreading out.

She choked. One part of her mind kept stuttering, It’s not real, not real, not real, but the rest of her knew that this was all real and true and she had made it happen.

“Welcome to my new home.” A man stood by the throne in simple gray—shorter than Idrask, and older, but with the same pale blue eyes, and something similar in the lines of his square face.

Zéphine drew a trembling breath and squared her shoulders. “Who are you?”

“Launrad Yfir-konungr, lord of all Kyrland and now Retrouvailles. I must thank you for your help, my dear—how does your formal title go? Demoiselle la Plus Pure?” His teeth gleamed as he smiled. “And thank you, Idrask, for finally getting her skirts up. I was beginning to think they made all their guards into eunuchs.”

“I did better, Uncle.” Idrask’s voice was blank and respectful. “I persuaded her to invoke the Bull. Of course he did not hearken to her in the least, but it made her unable to summon the unicorns. After such betrayal, I’m sure their house has lost the covenant entirely.”

He was lying. He knew she had gotten at least halfway in the summoning; he had said as much. Zéphine didn’t dare even look at him, but her mind raced. He was the nephew—possibly heir—of an emperor who now ruled half the world. Why could he possibly want to lie about how he had helped achieve an overwhelming victory?

Launrad clucked his tongue. “Not a bad day’s work, though I’m still in terrible doubt about your manhood.”

Idrask’s expression didn’t change. “I’ve done as I promised. Now where is my brother?

“In another moment. We have one more guest on the way—and here she is. Good morning, demoiselle.”

Zéphine turned, knowing and dreading what she would see. There was Marie, each arm gripped by a guard, her dark hair falling out of its chignon and her mouth set in a rebellious pucker. When she saw Father’s body, her mouth dropped open, lips trembling; then she snapped it shut and glared at Launrad.

“The situation is simple,” said Launrad. “I control the entire palace. By sunset I will control the capital. Within a few days, my ships will land in your ports. To ensure a peaceful transfer of power, you and your sister will publicly proclaim me lord, then journey to Kyrland and bow before the Obsidian Throne. Or you will die right here like your father.”

Marie’s glare didn’t falter. “We’re the daughters of Retrouvailles. We bow to no one but the unicorns.”

Zéphine wasn’t even aware of moving before she was kneeling in full obeisance, hands and forehead pressed to the floor. “Please. She’s only a child. She doesn’t understand. I am a woman, I am the eldest daughter of my house, and I submit. I submit.”

“Zéphine!” Marie gasped, but she was drowned out by Launrad’s bark of laughter.

“Say so in public, and I think we have an agreement.” Zéphine rose in time to see Launrad glance at Marie. “There will be time to teach your sister obedience later.”

“Zéphine,” Marie repeated, eyes glistening. “After Father— how could you?”

“I think because your older sister wants to live, my brave little demoiselle.” Launrad strode towards Marie. “It’s a desire you’ll understand better as you grow older and realize you’re able to die.” He tilted her chin up with a finger. “You’re much more foolish than her, but also prettier. I think you will be the one I make my bride.”

Zéphine’s hands clenched. “She’s thirteen—”

“I can stand to wait a year or three for sons.”

“But—”

Idrask gripped her shoulder painfully tight and whispered in her ear, “Don’t. When he’s in this mood, all you can do is obey.”

“I’ll never submit,” Marie snarled, which only prompted another laugh from Launrad as he turned away from her. “Idrask sister-son. Do you want your brother back now?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have one more task for you. Just one, and I’ll return him.” Launrad was only a pace away from them now. “We don’t need the older princess. Kill her.”

“No!” Marie shouted.

Idrask didn’t blink. “I thought you needed her to publicly submit.”

“I changed my mind. Besides, weddings are much more amusing, don’t you think? Marie is enough. Kill Zéphine right now if you want your brother back.”

Marie was struggling with the guards and yelling. Zéphine couldn’t move; she felt like she was watching everything from somewhere very cold and far away. She knew what would happen. Idrask had already betrayed and used her. He had helped his uncle invade her kingdom and kill her father. He was content to see Marie forced into a marriage that would be no more than rape. All for his brother. There was no chance he would scruple at killing Zéphine now.

“No,” said Idrask.

Her gaze snapped to his face, pale and inscrutable, and now the fear started up and down her body in cold-hot waves. Because she wasn’t going to die, she was going to dangle between them as Launrad’s plaything, the same way she had been the unicorns’—and Idrask again was nothing like she’d thought—

“You don’t want your brother back?” Launrad raised an eyebrow.

“I think this is another one of your loyalty tests, and I’m tired of them.” Idrask crossed his arms. “Where is my brother?”

—but he had still never cared about her, and she was doubly a fool to have hoped that he wanted to save her.

Launrad shrugged. “You’re right. And here comes your brother.” He gestured. Light glimmered beside the Unicorn Throne and a pale, scrawny boy with tangled dark hair appeared on the ground. His hands were folded over his chest and he lay quite still. Someone must have washed him, because it took a moment to see that his throat had been cut.

“Kari,” Idrask breathed, and lunged forward. In a second he had pulled the body into his arms; his shoulders trembled, but he didn’t make any sound.

“You really are the stupider of the two,” said Launrad. “I needed the power to transport men across the sea instantaneously. What did you think the Bull would accept as a binding price? Kari at least knew it would take royal blood.” He shrugged. “Though he was stupidly happy to die in your place. Since you’re still alive, I suppose you do come out ahead.”

Idrask didn’t look up. “I’m going to kill you.”

“No.” Launrad’s smile didn’t to break. “If you were going to kill me, you would have already done it instead of talking.” He leaned over Idrask’s shoulder. “But you know that even if you could succeed, you would die and so would this princess. You’ve just demonstrated that you’ll risk your own brother’s life to protect her. So I think I’m safe.”

For a moment there was no sound but Idrask’s slow, trembling breaths. How do you like being the one betrayed?, thought Zéphine, and felt a moment of pure, vicious pleasure.

Then Launrad clapped his hands once. “But I can give as well as take. You refused for so long to despoil Zéphine, and now you’re unwilling to kill her. It’s only fitting to let you wed your tainted demoiselle. Here and now. Guards!” He raised his voice slightly. “Bring in the ministers of state.”

She wouldn’t have to face the unicorns. She would get to marry the man she had wanted. Zéphine was getting what she’d always desired, and she wanted to crawl away in shame. Surely she deserved punishment as much as Idrask did.

Four guards marched out of the room. In a moment they would bring in Father’s ministers and Zéphine would abase herself so that she and Marie could stay alive. She looked back at Idrask. If he had not started all this killing, he had certainly helped. He had betrayed her. His brother was dead in his arms.

He was the only possible ally for her and Marie.

She walked forward to lay a hand on his shoulder. Then she looked down and felt faint when she saw the edges of the cut in Kari’s throat. He had been sliced open like a piece of meat. Swallowing, she knelt beside Idrask.

She whispered, “You can’t avenge him unless you get up right now.”

He didn’t reply. But he laid Kari, very gently, back on the ground and stood beside her. At the same time the guards brought in five of the ministers of state, rumpled and downcast. One of them was bruised and one was spattered in blood.

“Good morning,” Launrad said cheerfully. “You’re here as witnesses. Idrask Leifsson, my sister-son, is about to marry your eldest demoiselle.”

Zéphine swallowed dryly. Yesterday she had been thinking wistfully of how she would like to kiss him. Now she was marrying him.

Her father’s body lay six feet away on the ground.

The ceremony was mercifully short—after the style of Kyrland, she supposed, though surely their royal weddings were usually more elaborate. Launrad asked them if they would be wed, grasped their hands and asked if anyone knew of an impediment, then without a pause put their hands together.

“Thy hands are joined and so thy lives. Zéphine, it pleases me to accept you as a daughter of our house. Guards, take the prisoners away. Idrask, I suggest you take your bride to your room.” Idrask’s hand clenched around hers and he glanced back towards Kari’s body. “We can talk about the funerals later.”

Without a word, Idrask strode out of the room, dragging her with him. Marie called her name, but when Zéphine glanced back, she was already half-out the door. All she saw was Launrad, still smiling as he stood beside the bodies and the empty throne.

Idrask took Zéphine back to her bedroom. He slammed the door shut and slumped against it, releasing her hand.

Her room looked exactly the same as when she had woken up this morning: red-and-gold papered walls, white-and-gold curtains flowing from the canopy over her bed, great gold roses molded around the top of the walls. Her silver comb still lay in the corner where she had thrown it in a fit of anger.

She turned back to Idrask. He had slid down to sit on the floor; now he stared blankly at the walls.

“So.” She knelt before him. “Would you care to explain what’s going on?” He didn’t respond, and she sighed. “Soldier, I command you to answer.”

“Not a solider,” he muttered. Then he looked straight at her and grimaced. “I was never your soldier.”

“I guessed that part. Launrad sent you here?”

He nodded. “To bring down the defensive spells through you. He said—” He stopped to draw a slow breath. “He killed our father. Nobody can prove it but everyone knows. He’s used Kari and me as hostages against each other since I was ten. Three years ago he had Kari locked away entirely. He said when he owned Retrouvailles, he would exile us together.”

She tilted her head. “Why didn’t you seduce me when you had the chance?”

He looked away. “I thought I could do anything to protect Kari. I was wrong.”

Something in her loosened, but she still had to say: “Do you think my maidenhood will comfort me when my country is invaded, my father is dead, and Launrad is raping my little sister every night?”

“I never said I was doing the right thing.” He stood. “Launrad won’t lay a hand on your sister. And you’ll be a widow tomorrow.”

“What?” She scrambled to her feet.

“I’m summoning the Bull tonight. My life has to be worth his.”

“That won’t help. The palace is full of Kyrlander soldiers; they’ll just put another king over us.”

Idrask slammed his fist into the wall. “Then what do you suggest? He is always smarter, he is always stronger.”

Zéphine’s chest felt tight. At the dawn of Retrouvailles, the legions of the Imperatrix had occupied the country from sea to sea. When Ysonde Blanchemains first called upon the unicorns, she had destroyed them all in a day.

But if Zéphine had ever had a chance of summoning the unicorns, she certainly didn’t now. And Marie was far too young.

“...I could summon the Bull.” The words came out weakly. She hadn’t been able to kill herself to escape a fate worse than death; she wasn’t sure that she could do it to save her sister and her country.

“No. I won’t—” He stopped, took a breath. “I lied to you.”

“I know.”

“About the Bull. He... could listen to anyone’s call, but it is our house that has a special covenant with him.”

“Like Retrouvailles.”

“More or less. Ever since the first yfir-konungr hanged himself upon an oak tree to call upon the Bull.” He smiled bleakly. “Then had his wife run him through with a spear to complete the offering. Ever since, any one of our house who calls upon the Bull is heard.”

“I’m your bride.”

“In name. I don’t think the Bull cares about such things.”

Zéphine hoped she didn’t look too relieved. “Surely there are Kyrlanders who don’t like Launrad. You could make alliance with them.”

Idrask gave her an edged smile. “He left them all in Kyrland.”

And of course Idrask couldn’t go back to find them without Launrad’s help.

“Look.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I can get you and your sister out of the palace tonight, then summon the Bull. Launrad hasn’t named an heir yet; in the confusion, your people will have a chance to rebel.”

Zéphine opened her mouth, then closed it. Despite everything, she didn’t want him to die.

She didn’t have a choice.

The evening sun slanted low and ruddy through the windows. Zéphine lay on her back, staring at the top of the canopy. A trembling servant had finally brought her food several hours ago. She had devoured it and continued waiting.

If Idrask got them out, they could find the surviving nobility and start a rebellion. She knew it. Nobody would follow a despoiled princess: she knew that too. Marie was their only hope. Zéphine had never danced for the unicorns, so maybe Marie could inherit as if her older sister had died young; but maybe Zéphine would have to become unicorn bride after all.

On the run, there would be no draught of waking sleep. After all she’d done, she probably deserved it, but she was still afraid. So afraid.

The door clicked open; Zéphine sat up, brushing the hair out of her face. It was Idrask, holding Marie by the arm.

“I’ll be back after dark,” he said, and left.

Marie bolted forward to hug Zéphine. “I was so scared,” she whispered into her shoulder.

Zéphine smoothed her hair. “You’ll be fine,” she said automatically. When was the last time she had embraced her sister?

Marie lifted her face. “I was scared for you. What did he do, to make you grovel so?”

“He threatened to kill us.”

“You’re still a princess!”

“I’m still a prisoner.” The words snapped out full of bitterness; when Marie frowned, Zéphine remembered that this was the first time she’d ever voiced rebellion. Even though she had nothing left to lose, her heart still skipped and she added hastily, “Anyway, a dead princess won’t help anyone.”

“What do you mean, prisoner?” asked Marie.

And she’d had enough of silence. “What else could I mean? We are bound in the palace by spells, to stay here until we dance or die. If we survive to become queens, we can leave but we can never go far because we must return to the palace and dance every month, while our husbands rule in our names. And when we die, we are nothing but meat to fill the unicorn bellies.”

Marie shook her head. “But the unicorns.... Zéphine, you’ve seen them. How could you want... anything else?”

Zéphine looked away.

“You have seen them, right? You always said you did!”

She pushed her away. “I lied.”

Marie’s mouth formed a little circle. She barely whispered, “Oh,” as she sat down on the floor. Her fingers gripped the carpet for a moment.

“I lied every day. Morning, noon, and night.” Her voice wavered and her throat ached but she couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. “I lied and I lied and I hated you so much. Because you could see the unicorns and you were going to live and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She dropped into a crouch before her sister and stared at the carpet, her eyes stinging. “I broke the defenses on the palace trying to escape and I would take it all back if I could.”

“Oh,” said Marie again. “That... I suppose that’s why you were so unhappy.”

Zéphine looked up. “You knew?”

Marie had pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged them to herself. “I could tell you were angry with me. I didn’t know why. But you were always so unhappy, I knew that something was wrong.” Her voice dropped to a rough little whisper. “I always wished I could help you.”

Zéphine reached forward and took her hands. “Marie.” She swallowed. “Idrask told you we’re going to escape, right?”

“Mm.”

“I made everything go wrong. And I can’t dance for the unicorns anymore. But I’m going to get you to safety. I’ll find Father’s generals, and we’ll rally the army and drive the Kyrlanders out of our country, and Marie, someday—someday you’re going to be the best Reine-Licorne that’s ever been. All right?”

Marie’s mouth curved softly upwards. “Will you be happy then?”

“Yes.” Zéphine knew it was a lie—she wouldn’t ever be a good enough person to be happy just living for others—but she had to say it. “We’ll be together and I’ll be so happy.”

Idrask came for them several hours later. He gave them packs and cloaks and lead them down the narrow corridors used by servants and guards, until they were almost halfway across the palace. Then he said, “Wait here. I only have a few men, and I need to make sure they’re in position.”

Zéphine crouched next to Marie in the darkness, hugging her cloak to herself, and tried not to think of what might be going wrong. Then Marie said softly, “I know this place.”

“Hm?”

“I used to explore the passages. We’re not that far from the Great Dome.”

“That’s nice,” Zéphine muttered, adjusting her cloak. She kept remembering Idrask’s rough voice as he told her about the first Kyrlander king. There had to be some way to stop him. Maybe if she begged him for protection, he would come with them. If she were a princess in a chronicle she would want vengeance on him, but she was cold and afraid and despite his betrayal, he was the closest thing a friend she’d ever had. Marie didn’t trust him, but surely—

She shifted, then realized that Marie wasn’t next to her any more.

“Marie?” she whispered, standing, and then a little louder: “Marie!”

No one answered; she was alone in the darkened corridor. How long had Marie been gone? She could be anywhere now.

“Zéphine?” She jumped, but it was only Idrask. “It’s all ready—”

“Marie’s gone!”

“What?”

“She—we were sitting together and then she wasn’t here. She must have slipped away—I don’t know where—”

“Could she have gotten scared? Thought I would betray you?”

“No, Marie’s fearless—she’d try to save me, and challenge you to a duel—” Zéphine stopped, remembering Marie’s words: You were always so unhappy. I always wished I could help you.

“She’s gone to the Great Dome,” she whispered.

“What?”

“To summon the unicorns. Come on!” She turned and ran.

She’d been worried about running into guards, but the first time they came across one, Idrask simply snapped, “The younger princess is running away. Come with me!” The man followed without a word and they kept running.

All the way to the Great Dome, Zéphine hoped they wouldn’t find her. Maybe Marie had gotten lost or scared along the way; maybe she’d had some other plan. When they pounded up to the double doors, she paused, gasping, and dared hope that Marie had succeeded, that the unicorns were now nuzzling her palms and in another moment they would destroy the Kyrlander army. She hoped for anything other than Marie trying and failing.

Then Idrask flung open the great double golden doors.

Launrad stood near the center of the Dome—bodies and throne cleared away—clasping Marie to his chest. The gesture would have looked tender if not for the knife against her throat.

“Good evening,” he said. “I hope you were coming to warn me. It would be very disappointing if you thought this child was dangerous enough to support.”

“Yes, Uncle,” Idrask said bleakly.

Zéphine bit her lip. “Please,” she said. “She’s just a child—she doesn’t understand—”

“You’re right,” said Launrad. “She doesn’t.” He shifted his grip and laid the blade of his knife across her face. “Little girl, what shall we do with you?”

Zéphine tried to start forward, but Idrask grabbed her. Marie met her eyes across the room and smiled as a little line of red trickled down her cheek.

“Is it so disturbing? I’ve heard about your customs, the rite of the unicorn bride. She would have done worse to you, if you had failed in your duties.”

“Please,” said Zéphine.

“But I can’t have my betrothed marked in an unsightly fashion.” He abruptly released Marie and shoved her away; she fell to the ground. “Take her away, bandage her up, and make sure she isn’t so foolish again.”

One of the guards started forward, reaching out to grab Marie, but she jumped up and darted away with a movement that was strangely graceful. The guard lunged for her, but she twirled away again. Like a dance.

Zéphine’s heart thumped. It was a dance. The opening steps of the maiden dance, that she had been meant to dance this night—and Marie—

“No!” she shouted. “Marie, stop!”

“Can you not catch one little girl—” Launrad began irritably.

Marie spun, leapt, and landed straight into a cartwheel. And the unicorns came.

They walked out from the rim of the room, between the edges of the shadows. They were the same blistering white-gold as the sun at noon, but Zéphine could look at them unflinching. Their manes were tangled starlight, their horns glimmered with unnamable colors. The rest of the room faded, growing shadowy and indistinct, as if it were ashamed to have form in their presence. Her eyes blurred with tears; she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could only stare and realize why Marie had always spoken with wonder in her eyes.

Launrad drew his sword. “Kill them now!” But none of the guards took a step, caught by wonder or fear. One guard stood directly in the path of a unicorn, but even he did not move—only stared, his mouth working as the unicorn walked smoothly towards him... and through him, without pausing, as if he were made of smoke. For one instant he swayed, blood seeping from all over his chest; then he collapsed. His blood spread in a pool.

The unicorn walked on, unstained.

That sight sent everyone but Marie scrambling, trying to dodge the unicorns as they made their slow, placid progress towards the center of the Dome. Launrad pulled a group of soldiers to one side in an orderly retreat. Zéphine and Idrask took refuge at the base of a pillar; unicorns passed them on either side, and though Zéphine knew what would happen, she started to reach out before Idrask pulled her hand back.

Light clotted around Marie and the unicorns. The angles of the room were the same, but gazing towards the center, Zéphine felt she was looking up an immeasurable distance, towards a place she could never hope to go.

Marie flung her hands wide. One note of unicorn song ripped out of her throat: a clear, bell-like sound that sent Zéphine slumping forward. She looked up, vision swimming, to see the unicorns circling Marie. It was the climax of the dance; Marie’s eyes were solemn and sure, and for one heartbeat she looked certain to succeed—

Then her gaze drifted to Zéphine. Her steps faltered.

The unicorns lowered their horns.

It was at least quick. Marie cried out once as three horns ran her through at once. Then she collapsed, and there was no sound but the soft, wet noise of the unicorns lapping up her blood.

Zéphine did not look away. She stared hungrily at every curve of the unicorns, at the blood sliding down their jaws, and she crawled forward so she could try to dance for them. So that before they killed her, they would look one moment in her eyes.

Idrask wrestled her to the floor. He muttered something garbled and human; it took her a few moments to realize he was saying, “She’s already dead, you can’t help her, you’ll just die, Zéphine, don’t leave me—”

And she sobbed as she realized that he thought she was trying to help her sister. Her sister who was now a unicorn bride.

The unicorns raised their heads. Even now, remembering it was her sister who lay bloodied and broken beneath them, Zéphine’s mind keened with the desire to follow them, dance for them, die for them. If they had ever looked at her, she would have been lost completely; but they did not notice anything human as they streamed out of the Great Dome, fading as they ran, until they disappeared between the shadows.

Slowly, Zéphine realized she was weeping, her body shaking with great, soundless sobs. Idrask still held her to the floor, his face buried in her hair, whispering something like I’m sorry and I’m here and I’m sorry.

Finally she got control of herself; after a few hiccups she whispered, “I’m all right.” Idrask still clutched her, so she said more strongly, “I’m all right. You can let go.”

They sat up together. Her head pounded, her teeth ached, but she was still alive and sane. Her gaze wavered towards where Marie lay dead, and she swallowed convulsively. She had always known that one of them would be the unicorn bride. She had always wanted to escape.

She had never, ever wanted it like this.

“That,” said Launrad, “was very troublesome.”

He stood a few paces away from Marie, his arms crossed. He looked down at her body with an expression that suggested her death was a petty insult he nonetheless took personally.

She staggered to her feet. She stepped unsteadily towards Launrad, not sure what she was about to do or say. Idrask gripped her hand, to comfort or restrain, she couldn’t tell.

Launrad looked past her at Idrask. “It seems you were wrong. Their covenant is not completely broken. You will get your wife with child as fast as possible.”

Zéphine found her voice. “My daughter... will never dance for the unicorns.”

He smiled and clapped a hand against Idrask’s shoulder. “Let me know if you need help,” he whispered, and left them.

Zéphine knelt by Marie. Her face was pale and blank, as if life had never touched her; but at least there was no ghost of agony. She was now a unicorn bride, and maybe that was happiness for her.

She always loved them, thought Zéphine. Like she always loved me. Then she started to cry again.

This time, when they went back to her room, it was Zéphine who slumped against the door and slid down to the floor. Her eyes were hot and itchy. She was very tired.

She thought, I keep doing nothing and everyone is dying.

Idrask knelt before her; he laid one hand on the door by her head. “Zéphine. We’ll try again tomorrow. You should rest.”

She looked up at him. He’s the only one left, she thought. Her stomach clenched. I won’t let him die. I absolutely will not let him die.

“No,” she said.

“We can’t do anything more tonight—”

“No.” She stood. “I’m not running away while you kill yourself. I want to help you fight Launrad myself. I want us both to live.”

“After I’ve killed your whole family?”

“Marie decided. You’re sorry. I don’t care about the past, I just want to stop losing people.”

“Zéphine—” He looked away. Swallowed. “Thank you. But there is no way to stop Launrad without the Bull.”

“You go to the Bull and I swear I will dance for the unicorns.” The words snapped out of her; she was almost sure she meant them. “We can run together. Launrad’s main army hasn’t even landed yet. If we find the generals, we could win.”

“Against the Bull?”

“Against Launrad! He needed your brother’s blood to transport a troop of guards to this palace. He’d need something very precious to exchange if the whole country rose up against him. How many times do you suppose he can pay the Bull without giving up his own life?”

Idrask’s mouth twisted. “You’d be surprised.”

Her hands trembled. “I am a terrible princess. But at least I haven’t given up.” She poked him in the chest. “Dying won’t make you any more forgivable.”

Idrask snorted, turning away from her. “You’re that eager to keep yourself wed to a conqueror?”

“...you know, I’d forgotten that part.”

He barked out a laugh. “Well, I suppose if we win, we can arrange for everyone else to forget it too.”

She tilted her head and stepped towards him. “Do you love me?”

His shoulders tightened. “I won’t trouble you.”

“You,” she whispered, “are the stupidest man alive.” She couldn’t reach his lips, so instead she kissed the side of his jaw. “I’m not leaving and I’m not dying. I’m going to fight him with you. And what I said in the garden.... I still mean it.”

He turned to face her. “You can’t possibly—”

“I am princess of Retrouvailles. When Ysonde Blanchemains’s lover was captured, she became the first Reine-Licorne and slaughtered all the legions of the Imperatrix to get him back. If I want to love you then I certainly will.”

For another moment he stared; then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. It was not like the last time, when he had kissed her with a fierce precision that she now knew was born of desperation. This time his touch was gentle, hesitant, as if he could hardly believe she was real.

Zéphine pulled him down onto the bed.

Much later, they lay curled together in the darkness.

“Tell me about Ysonde,” Idrask murmured.

“There’s not much more to the story,” said Zéphine. “It was so long ago—and in those days we were just an alliance of tribes—it’s not even sure that she was saving her lover. Most tales say that, but some say it was her father or her sister. One tale says it was her daughter, and a few say she was moved only by the sufferings of her people. But they all agree—she went to the Plaine d’Ossements, somehow she summoned the unicorns, and she danced before them. And the unicorns consented to serve her. In one night, they killed every soldier of the Imperatrix within the land. For thirty years, she ruled as Reine-Licorne—there were no kings in those days. Until her last dance, when the unicorns loved her so much that they killed her and ate her soul; so alone of all queens she rides with them forever as unicorn bride.”

Idrask’s arms tightened around her. “That’s how they love? They really are evil.”

“No.” She was surprised how vehement she was. “Unicorns aren’t evil. They can’t be, for they never choose. They simply are according to their nature.” It was one of the first precepts she had ever learned. “That’s why they are drawn to the pure in heart: they can recognize their complete singlemindedness.”

“Don’t ever be that pure.”

“That’s... not a thing you can promise or decide. You either want something that desperately or you don’t.” She sighed into the darkness. “I don’t think you ever need to worry.”

Idrask’s finger traced the line of her temple, and she caught his hand. “Don’t you ever summon the Bull.”

“...I can’t promise that either,” he said. “If you were—if it really was the only way—”

“But not before.” She laced her fingers with his and clenched them.

“Not before,” he agreed, and buried his face in the crook of her neck.

“This way,” whispered Idrask, and she followed him down the servants’ corridor.

It was almost the same plan as before: Idrask would give orders to the few guards he trusted to obey him and they would slip out of the palace with stolen horses. But this time it was Idrask who was supposed to leave at her side, not Marie, and they were leaving in the slow, warm afternoon hours instead of the middle of the night.

They were past the point where they had lost Marie—Zéphine’s throat tightened—and they were almost to the stables. Idrask led her through a door, out from the corridor into a ballroom. The chandelier glinted faintly in the afternoon sunlight that spilled across the gold-and-crimson floor. Everything looked quiet and normal; Zéphine sighed in relief.

“I really thought you had more sense,” said Launrad.

They spun to see him at the opposite end of the room—and there were the guards coming in the doors. Zéphine felt dizzy. They were trapped.

“Lost it, sorry,” Idrask said through his teeth, gripping her hand. As Launrad walked lazily towards them, Idrask backed towards the windows.

“I would have been content to let you give her children,” said Launrad. “But if I must do everything myself—”

Idrask whirled away, dropping Zéphine’s hand as he drew his sword to attack the guards between them and the window.

He was brutal and quick. In a few moments he had dropped two of the guards; he grabbed a sword off one of them and slammed it against the window, shattering the glass. Then the other guards were on him and he had to turn and fight them, a sword in each hand.

“Zéphine!” he yelled. “Out the window—”

And Launrad was there, and his sword only moved twice before it was buried in Idrask’s gut.

The whole world seemed to stop for a moment. Zéphine couldn’t breathe. Then Launrad pulled his sword free and Idrask fell to his knees, his swords clattering to the ground beside him. Everything moved again. The guards drew back; Zéphine ran forward to grab his shoulders and steady him.

Idrask pressed his hand to his side with a gasp, then held it out, blood dripping onto the floor where the gold inlay formed a perfect circle. “Black bull of the north,” he snarled. “Come to my blood.”

“No!” snapped Zéphine, trying to pull his hand back—

As nothing happened.

“I lied,” Launrad said placidly. “I didn’t just kill your brother for the power to move troops. I also bargained his blood to ensure that for all my life, the Bull would never hear your calls, nor could anyone else invoke him against me.”

Idrask gasped again and slumped. His whole torso was soaked with blood now. Zéphine eased him down to the ground and pressed her cloak over the wound—he let out an awful grunt—but the blood kept seeping through.

“Stay with me,” she said. “Idrask? Listen to me. You said you would stay.”

His lips curved a little. “Sorry.”

He was dying.

In that moment, she knew what the Ysonde had felt, what had caused her to strike the terrible bargain with the unicorns. It didn’t matter which legend was true and whom she had been trying to save—lover, sister, father, or all her people. There had been someone whose life was worth anything to her.

Zéphine’s heart still wasn’t that pure and never would be.

But the Bull would grant you anything for a price.

She leaned down and kissed him. “Thank you.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.” She smiled. “So I’m not afraid any more.”

His eyes widened and he started to gasp her name, but she pulled the knife out of his boot and turned away. She stepped forward, head high. Bloody, broken, and impure, she was still a princess of Retrouvailles.

Launrad eyed her. “You can’t possibly hope to fight me.”

“No,” said Zéphine, because he was right: he was a warrior and she was a princess who had never killed anyone. But she was also the wife of Idrask Leifsson, wedded and bedded and heir to his power.

Her hands moved as smoothly as if they belonged to someone else. One quick slice, and she had opened her palm again; as the blood welled up, she held out her hand and said, “Black bull of the north, come to my blood!”

Hoofbeats drummed in her ears.

Launrad sighed. “He won’t ever turn against me—”

The ballroom was gone. She was back in the darkness, but this time in the very far distance—she knew it was the north—faint light glimmered at the horizon. The hoofbeats pounded closer, jarring her bones, but she still couldn’t see him—

Until his breath burned along the back of her neck. Suddenly Zéphine felt very small and unworthy and afraid. But this was the Bull, who granted wishes even to people who didn’t deserve or mean them.

“Lord of the north,” she whispered. “Father of my house. Grant my wish.” She turned then, and saw the great hulk of its body, the two burning red eyes whose fire concealed infinite depths. The air shivered out of her lungs, but she drew another breath and said, “Take my heart for your price.” All her impure heart. All her desires, foolish and hateful and kind alike. All her hopes and hates and fears. “Take it and give me in return a heart that is pure enough for the unicorns.”

For one heartbeat the eyes stared at her; then the darker void of his mouth yawned open and rushed down, swallowing her—in the belly of the Bull, everything was fire, burning and devouring—

She heard a noise that was something like an earthquake and something like a chuckle, and she knew that it meant, Granted.

Then la Demoiselle la Plus Pure opened her undefiled eyes and gazed at the enemy of her country. She curved her hands in the gesture used by every princess and queen since Ysonde, and she whirled into the maiden dance. Around her men shouted and drew their swords, but they didn’t matter; they were nothing, shadows, as the walls grew filmy and vague and the ever-living unicorns walked out. She remembered that she had once feared these creatures, but as they nuzzled at her palms and whinnied, the soft noises tearing at her throat with longing, she could hardly imagine why.

Among the glimmering crowd, she could faintly make out human faces—slender, ghostly girls, naked and unashamed, clinging to the backs of unicorns, their faces half-buried in their manes. She remembered one part of her purpose and she held out a hand, calling, “Marie!” There was no response, so she called again, “Marie!” and a third time, “I call on my sister Marie!” Still nobody answered—one girl blinked at her with puzzled eyes, and she recognized her.

The Demoiselle grabbed her wrists and pulled her off the unicorn. “Marie,” she said. “You are my sister. Remember.”

The girl blinked slowly again. “Yes,” she said. “I remember you. Are you happy now?”

That question didn’t have any meaning, so she ignored it and said, “You are a princess. Do you remember that too?”

Marie’s hair swirled in the still air, like a handful of confused thoughts. “...yes.”

She cupped her sister’s face in her hands. “If you could be happy here... would you protect us?”

Suddenly Marie smiled, looking immeasurably human. “You know what I always wanted. All of it. Of course I will.”

The Demoiselle let go of her and looked at the unicorns.

The unicorns gazed back, and knew themselves in her eyes. And she finally understood them. She understood that they needed a demoiselle: a creature they could recognize, yet who was other. This need had driven them to princess after princess, ever since Ysonde first gazed on them and woke them; it drove them to devour the unicorn brides. She understood why they demanded the pure in heart: because, being creatures that did not know choice, they could only recognize someone for whom need and desire had fused into absolute certainty.

And she understood the strictures of Retrouvailles. The people had been desperate for princesses pure enough to dance before the unicorns. So they had created the walls and the spells and traditions to ensure that each princess would grow up unable to imagine any choice or outcome besides her maiden dance. Only in this way could they guarantee that every princess would be pure. But they had also guaranteed that no princess could ever change anything.

Until one weak and foolish girl had ripped out her heart.

“Listen,” she said, for she was still just human enough that she needed to speak. “I am giving you a new covenant. You will heal the Kyrlander prince. You will destroy the Kyrlander king and rout his men. And then—” her fingers twined with her sister’s “—you will permit this one to remember her name, and she will be your pure-eyed demoiselle, to guide you and reflect you as you guard our country.”

The unicorns looked into her heart and they believed her.

She turned away from the light of the unicorns and walked back towards the clumsy human forms. One of them was the Kyrlander prince she had determined to save. On either side of her, the unicorns streamed away to kill. Someone screamed, but it was not anyone she meant to protect and so she ignored the sound.

One unicorn followed at her back, and when she knelt by the Idrask’s side, it leaned over her shoulder and gently tipped its horn against his wound. Light glimmered across the blood; he drew a shallow breath, then a stronger one. He opened his eyes. For one moment the light of the unicorn was reflected in them, and she smiled at the gleam, but he blinked and it was gone.

“Zéphine?” he breathed, sitting up.

“Our people are safe,” she said.

“Our people,” he repeated blankly. He pressed a hand to his middle, as if still unable to believe he was healed.

“The unicorns have seen you and accepted you,” she explained. “That makes you my king, and my people are your people. I will help you protect them.”

Around her, the gleaming forms of the unicorns began to fade, and she turned to watch them slide back into the shadows. Her eyes stung and watered with the need to follow them, but she knew she would dance with them every full moon; once Idrask had died of old age and there was another princess for her people, she could persuade them to devour her.

Idrask touched her face. “Zéphine, are you all right?” His palm was sticky with blood.

“I told you. Our people are safe. You are alive. No more princesses will be sacrificed.” She thought maybe her tears had worried him, so she smiled. “What more could I desire?”

His mouth pressed into a line. “Right.”

There was no more time to speak, because the room was full of clamor. A few of the Kyrlander guards had survived, and many of the Retrouvées had broken out of where they were kept and come searching for the cause of the disturbance.

The Reine-Licorne stood, pulling up Idrask with her, and went to tend her people.

She was crowned three days later: the first Reine-Licorne in nine hundred years to rule in her own right, with Idrask Yfir-konungr as her consort-ally.

For the first month she was very busy, and there was little time to reflect. Sometimes she dreamed of her sister begging her to wake up. Though Idrask often smiled at her, sometimes she woke in the night and found he had been weeping into her hair. She understood why. The Bull had taken none of her understanding, so the facts were very clear to her. But they were also distant, like stars on a cold night. To some degree, she could regret causing Idrask pain, because she was determined to protect him. But even that was only a wisp of a sorrow that burnt away when she looked into sunlight and saw a unicorn glimmer back.

She was the Reine-Licorne. Her duty was her delight, and she desired nothing but the safety of her people. That Idrask could not accept this was unfortunate, but it was not her concern.

One month after Launrad’s defeat, the moon was full and it was time for her to dance before the unicorns again. She did not need to, now that Marie rode with the unicorns and knew her own name, but—she explained to Idrask—she wanted to. It would have been more accurate to say that she was Reine-Licorne, and therefore she was one who danced, but the word “want” made him quiet and stare at her for a few moments. Then he kissed her fiercely and let her go without protest.

She went to the Great Dome and knelt in the moonlight. As the unicorns began their slow, inexorable stride out of the shadows, she rose and danced.

Zéphine woke on the floor of the Great Dome. She stared lazily up at the curve of the dome, painted like a night sky with gold-and-silver rays coming out of the eye in the center, and wished that Idrask was here with her.

She sat bolt upright. She wished. She was full of desires and hunger and fear.

There was only one power that could have given her old heart back again.

In a moment she was running out of the Great Dome, past the ceremonial guards, back to the Royal Chambers—and there was the royal physician at the door, pale-faced and stammering that the Consort had made them swear she was not to be disturbed—

She pushed past him without a word. Idrask lay still on the bed, and for one moment her heart felt like it had stopped. Then she saw the bloody bandage over his eyes and remembered that no one bandaged a dead man. She saw his chest rise and fall, and she felt dizzy with relief.

Then she realized what that bandage must cover.

Zéphine stalked to the edge of the bed. “How could you?”

The edge of his mouth curved up. “They weren’t nearly as enchanting as yours. Didn’t need them anyway.”

“I told you not to summon the Bull.”

“I told you not to become that pure.”

She supposed he was right, so she sat beside him on the bed and silently took his hand. His fingers tightened around hers.

“I’m not sorry,” she said.

“I know. I’m not either.”

She closed her eyes with a sigh. She was happy to be restored: to be alive and holding his hand. But part of her keened at the memory of the unicorns, and the thought that she might never dance with them again.

When she opened her eyes, though, she saw a unicorn gazing at her through the garden window. It was not so crisp and blindingly real as she remembered; it seemed to have shaped itself out of the pale morning light and the slanted shadows between the leaves of the rose-bushes. When she blinked at it in surprise, it blinked back in silent recognition, then faded.

To restore a heart was not to make it forget. Perhaps there were some desires that could be chosen, after all.

If she tried, she could forget every desire besides the unicorns again. If she tried, she could lose the sight of them once more. If she tried very hard, she thought that she could even learn to both love her husband and protect him.

Idrask’s breathing had evened out into sleep again. Zéphine sat by his side and waited for him to wake.

#📚

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cature · 1 year ago

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OUR DEAD SELVES LIE LIKE FOOTSTEPS IN OUR WAKE.

Jeff Isacksen.

I close my eyes and listen to the gentle beating of her heart, the rhythm of her life. I can almost feel the warmth of her blood. Intensely intimate—more even than the earlier tangle of limbs and lips—the fabric of her physicality is laid bare in her heartbeat. Like I’m part of her, I press so close that I am among the tiny, fleshy machines that move her parts and breathe her air and do all the other miraculous, incredible, completely mundane things that came together to be Adalia.

“I can see yours, you know,” she says.

I shift in her arms. “My what?”

“Your heartbeat.” She knows my thoughts, as always. Spending so long together, sharing every aspect of every moment, we have become one person. I know her feelings by the subtlest shift of her eyelids. She reads my mind from nothing but a far-off look.

I don’t question her, because I know it’s true. Adalia sees things no one else can. We are all in touch with the invisible strands of the world, but her innate understanding goes deeper than even our most talented instructors. A heartbeat—something that I would struggle and study to harness—she sees clearly as a splash of color on canvas.

In sheer ability, I would never match her, but I have a gift too. Where she sees, I understand. The formulas and symbology that our predecessors spent generations building and rebuilding are full of holes that only the best of us can fill. Three years ago, I drew a new symbol and argued for its place in the books. They said it was impossible, that no one of my age could show such ability.

They had said the same of Adalia. In both, they were wrong.

“How do you do it?” I ask her.

“I just do.” She takes a flask of powder from the nightstand and pours it out across the polished wood. With her fingers, she draws. “Do you love me, Mikale?”

“Yes.” I reach out to touch her dark curls. This is our last moment as we are now. Our time at the University is over. It’s frightening, because I can’t remember my life without her. “More than love. I am you.”

We have our share of privileges. We were born with the talent for magick. More importantly, we were born thusly to Lords recognized by the city. Common mages are a destabilizing element, they say, and must be normalized—a symbological process that often kills and leaves the lucky few irreparably damaged.

But our peers are more privileged still. I was born a cripple, and she a girl. Which of these is worse, we debate to no resolution. They say my foot is twisted, but what they mean is that it is hardly a foot. They say she has grace and empathy, but what they mean is that they would rather see a woman as a Lord’s servant than as a Councilor.

Her fingers dance in swoops and waves, cutting runes into the powder. It’s odd to see. Hands usually draw with inks or chalk. Powder and silver-tipped slippers are for simple gestures in duels, when there is no time to stoop and paint. With my warped foot, dueling is an impossibility, but I have seen her practice countless times.

She finishes with a stroke I recognize. My symbol—our newest tool in altering the threads of the world. I sit up.

“This is both of us.” Adalia laces her fingers with mine. Tomorrow, she is to leave the city as a mage-guard to a long expedition. The Council must be hoping that she never returns. She will, but it will be a year or longer. “My sight. My talent. Your symbol. Your wisdom. I always want you with me.”

Most spells alter threads. They can turn air into bursts of fiery energy or freeze water in a glass. Others destroy threads or create them. The formula on Adalia’s nightstand binds things—ties threads together.

I move our laced hands over the runes. The energy of them is thick in the air. Her symbols are beautifully precise. “You are me, Adalia, so I’m always with you,” I say. It has to be true, because a year without her is a year without myself.

She spreads her fingers, and the runes flash with yellow light. The air crackles. I feel something like a tug in my chest, and I gasp and breathe, and then everything is still.

I can hear her now. Faintly, in the back of my mind, her heart beats, warm and steady. And mine beats for her, I know, when I see her smile back at me.

In my sleep, the world is theoreticals. I dream of unproven equations, long-shot theories, and frightening, exciting discoveries. Between night and morning, I discover a thousand new slants on old symbols, then I fight to stay asleep. When I wake, all these things dissipate like smoke, leaving only the faintest haze behind my eyes when I finally open them.

When dreams fade, I can hear her. Her heart beats against my mind like rain against a roof. Sometimes, it is steady even drops. This morning, it’s a thunderstorm—pounding, echoing. She returned years ago, but shame kept me from writing or seeking her out—shame for what I am without her. She has never come to me, either. And because we are each other, I know that she is ashamed of who she returned as.

I grope for my cane, and my hand touches glass instead of wood. A bottle clatters. I tell everyone, myself included, that gin fights the pain in my damned, twisted foot. But it fights away doubts, too. After all, what genius discovers a new symbol as a student, then accomplishes steadily less for a decade? And it fights the cold of the Tower and the drafty halls of the Researcher’s Wing.

And it fights the thoughts of her, but it can never win. Even when she’s far away, serving as a mage-guard or advising Lords in magick dealings, she is always there. Her heartbeat hammers through the alcohol, through the pages of books in which I bury myself. What use are discoveries without her to share in them?

As her heart steadies, I find my cane. The cold of morning makes the first movements of my foot an agony. I swallow the remnant gin from the bottle on my nightstand and hobble towards the door.

The research hall is massive, with vaulted ceilings and walls lined with chalkboards, dozens of polished writing desks and bookshelves. Symmetrical corridors lead in all directions, where rooms identical to mine house my peers. A roaring fireplace struggles to keep the vast room warm, but I feel chills as soon as I step inside. Drawing my robes tighter to my body, I move to my desk and its chaos of notes and drawings and books with marked pages.

“Lord Mikale,” a familiar voice says. I feel a hand on my chair.

I don’t want to turn. I want to bow my head over the infinite writings of our library. Inside every hundredth book or so, a secret waits. Past geniuses with unpopular notions of magick inked their discoveries onto fragile pages and left them for us—for me—to raise like a torch. I want to be writing, solving, learning, and unlearning.

But I’m obligated to glance up. Lord Erich meets my eyes. He’s a beautiful man, tall and slim. His wavy hair is bound with a ribbon, and thin spectacles rest on his straight nose. His research is unremarkable, and his skill as a duelist is almost as shameful as my own. But with a Councilor’s daughter carrying his child, Erich has earned himself a powerful father-in-law and a position with Steam and City Works.

“Lord Erich.” I’m suddenly aware that I haven’t eaten. The gin burns holes in my stomach.

“I wish I had the mind to follow your patterns.” Erich nods to my desk and smiles sardonically. “I’m joking. One can’t expect a genius to operate like your average researcher.”

“Is there such a thing? I thought only geniuses worked here.” I run my tongue over my dry lips. All I want is water and silence. “Average mages can help the Jacks solve petty crimes, and run papers for advisers.”

“When everyone is above average, that becomes the average, my friend.” He touches the green-striped brooch pinned to his robes, the mark of the City Works branch. “But enough small talk. I’m here officially, Mikale.”

“Shouldn’t you be with the engineers? This place is for self-directed researchers. If we have something for City Works, we’ll send a page.”

“Listen.” He lowers his voice and sits on a stack of books. “Everyone knows you’re one of the best, but there are whispers, Mikale.”

I clench the edge of my desk. Politics seep into everything—another poison that kills knowledge for knowledge’s sake. “Aren’t there always?”

“This is serious. Some people—I’m not a liberty to say whom—feel you are unfocused. It’s no secret that you’ve been drinking more, and your research of late hasn’t impressed the Council.”

I feel myself sinking. For the Council to speak poorly of my research threatens everything that I have. I know I’m squandering my talents, but there is nothing for me beyond the Tower. “Research takes time....”

“That doesn’t change what’s being said. There are people who want to see you removed, Mikale. They say you’re wasting resources and embarrassing the University and your fellow researchers.”

I have nothing to say. I just push the papers around my desk, trying to remember the last revelation I’d shared with the Council. There was something I’d worked on, something important from the night before, but between the alcohol and my sleeplessness, I can’t remember. I glance at my chalkboard, but it bears a hand-shaped streak of white. Did I erase my writing in a fit, or did someone maliciously wipe it away?

“I know you’re better than this.” Erich stands and straightens his robes. “I want you to work for me. City Works needs more dedicated researchers, and the Council agrees that you could use direction.”

We are expecting great things from you, a Councilor had said when he welcomed me into the Researcher’s Wing. I cover my face with my hands. Adalia’s heart taps out its even rhythm, deep in my skull.

Erich puts a hand on my shoulder. “In the past, City Works has relied too heavily on engineers and not enough on mages. There are opportunities for untouched research with us. I promise you won’t be bored. And it’s a respected branch.”

The main doors fly open, banging back against the stone walls. Everyone, even the most absorbed reader, flinches and turns. A page stands in the doorway, his eyes downcast. “My apologies, Lords, but Instructor Henning is dead. Please convene this way.”

Researchers flood after the boy. I struggle to keep up as well as I can manage. Erich makes a show of friendship and keeps stride with me, though I can tell he wants desperately to bolt ahead.

In the main hall, where the countless wings of the Tower connect, gaping mages surround the Instructor’s body. Covered in burns, he lies on the floor with his arms outstretched. Powder sits in a pile at his feet. Half a rune has been slashed into the white dust.

Erich fights his way to the front. “Who did this?”

I know before they say it. Logic tells me that Henning was an incredible duelist and only the best could have beaten him so soundly. But more than that, I know because I remember her heart pounding. I know because I am her.

“Lady Adalia,” someone says, and I mouth along.

I get used to the brooch. At first, it feels like a chain. Years later, it’s an extension of my robes, weightless but always there. Lord Erich lied about the boredom of it, as most of City Works’ problems are trivial. I rarely spend an entire day in my study. But the solutions I produce are tangible, and tangibility begets recognition.

The Councilors and Lords know me now. I receive invitations and offers that I never would have as a researcher. Magick within City Works has the potential to change the city, and everyone wants to be on the cutting edge.

City Works has even convinced the Tower to lend books to my study, so today I find myself in the main hall where Henning died. The Tower looks alien to me. When I was a researcher, I rarely left the Wing, and I haven’t been back since Erich hired me. Some of the tapestries are different now, I think. I press my cane into the carpeted walkway and start towards the library.

But then I feel her—her heartbeat, close. “Mikale?”

At the base of a stairwell, she watches me. Her dark curls are shorter and lighter in patches. She’s thicker now, more womanly. The cloth at her chest is still broochless, unaffiliated. Everyone will hire her and use her power, but no one will claim her.

Researchers strive to be unaffiliated. In that, I have failed. But those who seek to become Councilors fight for affiliation. In that, she has failed.

“Adalia.” A part of me wants to fall into her arms, but she is hardly Adalia now. All of her tragic beauty has bled out, leaving her hard and angry. Without me to share in it, her soft side has atrophied. And I feel betrayed because she isn’t me or herself.

“So it’s true. You’re with Steam and City now.” She sighs. “I didn’t want to believe it. You have a researcher’s heart.”

“No one becomes a Councilor for research,” I say without thinking.

“You never wanted that.”

I frown. My dream of research alone died years ago. But within City Works, I’ve gained respect and contacts. I’ve climbed steadily upwards. Becoming a Councilor is a natural goal. “Things change.”

“I see that.” Her words are sharp.

“Like how you used to not be a killer,” I snap back.

“Legitimate and legal duels.” Her heart beats faster, incensed. “If any of those deaths were questionable, I would be in the dungeon. They’d love to be rid of me.”

Her face twists, scowling. Once, she had been determined but warm and alive. Her eyes look like clockwork now, like she’s been hollowed out.

“What happened to you?” I ask, as though I don’t know.

“Me?” Her words echo in the empty hall. “What happened to you, Mikale? I loved you, but now you’re just—”

“You killed Lord Berecht in front of his children!” I slam my cane down against the floor. “You’re beyond ambitious, Adalia. You—”

“He asked why he should bother hiring me as an adviser when he could pay an alley whore for the only thing I was worth!” Adalia’s heart bangs like gunpowder. “I challenged him. He accepted, then and there. If he would kill in front of his sons, he can die in front of his sons!”

I pull away. Her words are venom. She’s panting through her teeth, angry, near mad. But I know that it is honesty, not insanity.

“I’ve learned two things,” she continues, her arms lashing as she gestures. “One: no one is going to give me anything, even if I earn it. And two: they are too damned proud to decline a duel from me. If they stand between me and a place on the Council, I will do what I have to.”

“You’ll kill the whole Council, then?”

“If I have to! At least I remember my dream.”

Once, I’d believed she could be the first woman on the Council of Mages. Now, I see that they’ll break her long before that. They’ve broken her already. My Adalia is in pieces, like a crystal glass tossed carelessly aside.

She strides forward and pushes a finger into my green-striped brooch. The metal backing pricks my chest. “You have no right to talk about what I’ve become. You let your research rot and then sold yourself to City Works because that was the easy way out.”

My heart catches. I’m in pieces, too. Her eyes fall—a hint of regret on her hard face. “I never learned how to be me without you,” I admit to her and myself.

Adalia covers her mouth with her hand. Her eyes begin to shine with tears, but she blinks them away. “...I’m sorry, Mikale. You—we were so much, and it seems like it’s all gone.” Her shoulders fall. Without her fury, she hangs limp, barely upright. “I hate seeing you like this. I just want to scream until you’re you again.”

I look away, shamed. “It wouldn’t help.”

“At least you can still do great things at City Works.” She touches my arm, but I move it. “It’s not ideal, but you can learn and discover and—”

“I’m sabotaging my research.” The tears are mine this time. I can hear the pain in her heart. I’ve stabbed her through the chest. “One of the Councilors wants the support of the Engineers’ Guild, so he’s asked me to see that certain projects fail. And I’m doing it.”

Her frown dimples deep into her right cheek. That’s how I know when she is truly hurt. Not upset, afraid, offended or angry, but truly, deeply hurt. I can hear it in her heartbeat, too. I wonder what she hears in mine.

Before she can speak, I turn my back and walk as quickly as I can. The Tower doors open onto rain-slick streets. Cold drops fall like tiny swords. I savor the stinging pain and drag myself, empty-handed, back to Steam and City Works.

The smooth tiled stone underfoot is so clean and shining that I can almost see myself in it. I’m glad that I can’t. The sound of my cane against the University halls should be nostalgic, but my foot is worse now. The rhythm is wrong. The wood of my cane is different, and the sound isn’t light and hollow but dense, hard. I try to use it to block out the beating of her heart.

Blue-black curtains wave over massive windows that overlook the city. In the moonlight, spires rise like mountains from the City Center, encircled by the ugly grays and rotting buildings of the Outer District. The air is silent and still.

But from the cracked door of an empty lecture hall, I can almost hear myself arguing my discoveries. Using brilliant logic and hard-earned knowledge, I twist everything that the University and the Council think we know about magick. Every word on every page is a weapon against stagnation. Every thread I bend in a new way is a shield against old bearded men who believe their knowledge is the only knowledge, when in truth they know nothing.

And on a padded bench beneath a painting of a generations-old headmaster, I almost see Adalia, hair bound with golden pins, tears shining in her dark eyes. She cries to me about the unrelenting humiliation that her instructors try to break her with. They cut her down, insult her, and when it is time to duel, they set her against a fierce young man who has injured five others before her.

She burns him because his defense is poor. Because he underestimates her. Because she underestimates herself and hurts him badly. And with her chin high and ice in her eyes, she walks from the dueling hall without a faltering step. She hasn’t the luxury of weakness. She cannot worry for him or ask after him, because it is better to be feared than mocked.

Afterwards, she cries to me alone, in the abandoned hallway beneath the judging eyes of a long-dead headmaster. And when footsteps echo from the next corner, she becomes silent, eyes dry and lips steady.

Here, now, I hear footsteps and raise my head. When I see her, I nearly lose my grip and fall. If not for the shortness of her curls, I would think myself mad, seeing ghosts of our murdered youth.

The silver tips of her slippers click on the floor as she walks to me, arms wrapping around herself. “I knew that you’d be here,” she says, knowing me better than I know myself.

“I didn’t.” Out the window, gas lamps light the main streets in a golden glow. “I’m not sure how I got here. I just walked....”

“It’s a horrible place.” She raises her chin to meet the painting’s eyes. “I hate it, but I wish I could be here forever. I miss us.”

“We’re still here,” I say, but I don’t believe it.

Adalia lays her hand on the lecture hall door. It creaks open. “Tell me something incredible, Mikale. Like you used to.”

She leads me inside. The gas lamps flash. The rows of tables and empty chairs and the long chalkboard at the front of the room are all just as I remember them. Symbological equations cover the board, some half-erased, others underlined, all of them elementary.

“The one at the top,” I say, pointing. Slowly, I help myself towards the chalkboard. “You know it. One of our most basic concepts of alteration....”

Faintly, she smiles, and she sits atop a table at the front of the room. “I know it.”

“It’s garbage.” I seize a piece of chalk like a knife and slash through the runes. “It functions, but we don’t know why. Decades ago, a man named Instructor Jeralt penned a different series of runes that can do the same things but better, faster, and more importantly, we understand them.”

She leans back on her palms. “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because they never teach it—because it unhinges some of the very basic concepts of magick that the University and the Council hold dear. We’ve based everything on this other cruder drawing for generations.” Wiping a space on the board with my palm, I touch the chalk to it. My hands are shaking from how hard I grip. My fingers feel clumsy, drawing in chalk again, but I scratch out Jeralt’s equation from memory. “We’ve made so much out of nothing. Just imagine what we could do if anyone was willing start over and learn it all again.”

“Understanding isn’t everything, genius,” she replies with a grin. She stands up and takes the chalk from me. Her hands are clumsy, too. Her feet, I’m sure, still draw with dangerous precision. Her linework tightens as she writes. “No one, not even you, can explain why I can do this.”

She finishes her last rune, and the symbols glow. Fire leaps from the lanterns, crawling like snakes along the floor. The flames wind up the legs of the middlemost table, converging and burning brighter. But, impossibly, they consume nothing. The wood remains polished and clean.

Adalia waves her hands like a puppeteer. She can feel the threads, I know it. The fire burns higher in places, like fingers straining for the ceiling, while others fall closer to the table. It’s all there—the City Center, the Tower, the University, and even the Outer District and the Basin, where part of the city collapsed ages ago.

I gape. Her heart patters, delighted. The fire even feels hot, but the table refuses to burn. “...how did you do that?”

“I just did,” she says with a laugh. She parts her hands. The fires vanish, leaving the smell of smoke in the air. “I just see it and make it do whatever I want.”

I glance at her with a wry smile. “All that power, yet you never fixed my foot.”

“If I could, I would. You of all people should know the limitations of magickal medicine.” She touches my chin and smiles.

I grin faintly and put my hand on her wrist. “If we adopted Jeralt’s equation, it might be possible one day.”

“I’ll leave that to you,” she whispers, and her lips brush against mine. They’re warm and familiar, soft still and beautifully pink. My eyes close.

But I stop and turn my head. Her lips fall against my cheek. I glance down. “We’re not who we were.”

Adalia shrinks, withers away from me. She flees from my words, head down as she skulks to the door. “Hasn’t this proven that we are?”

“No.” I follow her back out into the echoing halls. “This just proves that we were something else once.... We can’t just erase everything and be children again.”

She bites her lip to stop the shaking. “Why not?” Pressing her fingers against her head, she spins to face me. She’s quiet—a pained silence—then she swings her arms wildly. “If I could, I’d tear open time and push you through it! Then you could be you again, here again. And you’d take me with you, and we—”

“No, I wouldn’t,” I say. She stares at me, betrayed, her frown dimpling deep into her cheek. But I mean my words, even though they hurt her—me. “You never learned to be you without me, and if we did it all again, we’d end up right here.”

“I’d still go back if I could. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes!” I shout, and I hate myself for it. I know it’s weak and wrong and selfish and that all roads from there lead to here, but I still would. “But it’s a ridiculous to talk about impossibilities. This is beyond theoretical.”

Adalia collapses into the cushions of the padded bench. She drops her head against the wall, dark eyes on the ceiling. Deep shadows cover the stonework, barely visible by the light from the connecting atrium. “I’m tired, Mikale. But I don’t want to sleep, because tomorrow I’ll be me again. I miss being us.”

I sit down beside her, careful of my foot, and rest my cane across my lap. Adalia’s weight leans against my shoulder. I can faintly smell her hair. Was it so long ago that we sat like this, sharing her tears over her horrible victory? The memories are so clear—of speaking, spitting resentful, hateful words about rigid old men who so willingly crushed down everything that we believed in. I struggled, then, to understand how men calling themselves mages could knowingly stunt the growth of knowledge.

And I look down at my hands and see ink stains on my fingertips from symbology I’ve written that would never work. Impossible, I’d said to Erich’s face when I presented him with a dozen broken equations—false solutions to a problem that I could have solved on the second pass.

“We can’t be who we used to be,” I say, brushing her hair from her face. Her curls are like dark velvet, soft and comfortably familiar. “But maybe we don’t have to be who we are. What would Adalia have wanted for you?”

Her eyes are ringed with exhaustion. “She wanted to prove it could be done.” Adalia wets her lips. “But I think she would have been happy to know she was making a path for other women. Like your scholars and their writings. She would have left behind something good for when this damned city was ready.”

I kiss her softly, sweetly, and then I stand. “It’s late. You need sleep.” With my hand in hers, I help her to her feet. “Wake up as someone else, if you can.”

Our fingers slip apart. I want to strain after hers, to brush fingertips again even if for one second. But I make my hand fall and turn from the ghosts of our past—our corpses that we left to rot in our footsteps.

Tonight, we have died again and left ourselves another decade of haunting memories. The years are now nothing but failed theoretical could-have-beens, like doors slammed shut and barred forever.

I don’t sleep, but the rhythms of her heart tell me that, in time, she does. In my cramped quarters, I struggle through pages of complicated equations. My failed symbology wastes a pile of parchment, covered in flawed inks. Finally, I return to my chalkboard, a better tool for uncertain work, a tool I haven’t touched in years.

The sun is rising when I’m sure the runes are right. I draw the final symbol—my symbol—and lay my hand over the dusty board. The runes flash. The thread tugs at my chest like it will rip me open, and I cry out through my teeth. It pulls and aches, but then it—no, they unwind, like two halves of a severed whole. I feel amputated, empty, bleeding, but I make myself stand. I make myself walk, leaving yet another part of me to die on that hard wooden floor.

At Steam and City Works, Erich looks surprised to see me this early.

“When I said impossible....” I limp past him, towards my bare desk. “I meant for someone who wasn’t a genius. I’ll make it work.”

With those words, I anchor myself to my small study and my drafty, leaking quarters. The favors I’ve curried from powerful men will vanish. I will live and die at Steam and City Works. So I spread my books and my pages across my desk and hang my chalkboard on the wall.

Silence fills my head where Adalia used to be. I wonder what’s she’s doing and where in the city she is now. For the first time, I don’t know. I can only hope that, after so long stumbling over what we left behind, leashed to the past by a heart thread, she will finally find herself, whoever that may be.

With chalk in my clumsy fingers, I draw Jeralt’s equation. From it, all of my research shall grow.

#📚

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cature · 1 year ago

Text

REMEMBERING LIGHT.

Marie Brennan.

In her first light, Noirin never thought it strange that her world should be only a few blocks square, and that on the other side of the Palace Way (whose Palace had vanished before her grandmother was born) there should be a place where the people had four arms and water always fell from the sky. She never gave it any thought at all, until the day the chantry disappeared.

It stood—had stood—on the other side of Surnyao from the Palace Way, and at first dawn its long shadow had stretched across the intervening blocks, all the way to the boundary with Yimg, the place of rain. The Asurnya measured their world by that tower, the tallest they had left. Then one day the first sun rose and no shadow answered; the Asurnya looked to the sky and found it empty, and Noirin realized what they meant by measuring the world, what her mother was talking about when she said there was once a sunset chantry on the other side of the Palace Way—that there had once been an other side that was not Yimg but Surnyao.

She grew up in the absence of that shadow, one absence among many. One more thing her people had lost. Noirin underwent the rites of early light in a ramshackle tower built to replace the missing chantry; by the time she reached her increasing light, that tower had collapsed. She departed her girlhood in a shabby building of only four storeys, where the remaining suns could barely find her at all.

There were only two left. But Noirin faced the horizon anyway; she covered her eyes seven times, and whispered a sacred vow to the wind.

“I will recover what we have lost.”

Surnyao, as it had been before the seventh sun burned out, and the end of the world began.

Before they came to Driftwood.

“You must not go,” the Chant Leader said despairingly, when she told him of her intent. “I’m not a traditionalist, Noirin; you know I’m not. We once had the luxury of following the chants in the matter of travel, letting the suns dictate how far we went, but that was before the—” He choked on the words. “What you propose, though, is too much.”

“In my increasing light,” she answered him, inflecting her verbs with both respect and determination, “I am permitted to go out of the city of my birth. If that city has dwindled, it makes no difference; there is no reason I should not go.”

Casuistry, and they both knew it. Before the end of the world, the chants had said that only those in their glorious light should go to the far ends of the earth. The traditionalist opinion, since Surnyao’s arrival in Driftwood, held that to go past the ends of the earth was out of the question, even for such elders. But the world was a smaller place than it had been—much smaller, and ever shrinking—and tradition was, as the Chant Leader said, a luxury they could not afford. The fields that once fed them had withered and vanished, their mines crumbled into oblivion, and to survive, they were forced to trade with those beyond their borders. Those from other worlds.

Other worlds which, like Surnyao, were dying. Because that was Driftwood: an accumulation of fragments, universes in their final throes. Just before the seventh sun burned out, whole realms of Surnyao fell into Absent Light and were never seen again. But where they had been, instead there was a dark mist, and then something else in that mist: another land, foreign beyond comprehension, which had suffered its own disaster. Was still suffering. Flakes of fire whirled through the air there, and some of its people stood out in that wind until they burned to cinders, accepting—even welcoming—their demise. The rest dug into the ground for shelter, and traded with Surnyao and their neighbors through cramped tunnels that stank of ash.

That place was gone now. Noirin had never seen it. It had crumbled faster than Surnyao, slipping toward the center of Driftwood, into the Crush itself, from which nothing emerged again.

The Chant Leader would have buried his hands in his beard, but it had thinned with time, only a few black wires left. He had pulled the rest out, in his agony over the doom of their world. “We need you here, Noirin. You’ve memorized all the chants, every one we still remember—even the ones we no longer use. Who else cares as much as you? Who else can become Chant Leader, after I’m gone?”

She put her hand on his arm, felt it tremble beneath the thin silk of his robes. Worn, and much patched, but it was the last silk they had. “I’ll come back. When I’ve found him.”

“When!” he cried. “That was ages ago, Noirin. How many races in Driftwood live that long? Even if he lives, it will be like finding one spark of light in the blaze of seven suns.”

Beneath that, the real protest: if he ever lived at all. The Chant Leader thought it a myth. But it was his job to remember everything, as much as he could, and so he told the story: the man who came to Surnyao, who lived among the Asurnya for a time, and then went away. A man who might, if the stories were true, still live.

The Chant Leader dropped his face into his hands. “Noirin, the—” His voice caught again, and when he recovered, his whisper was low and intense. “The second sun will burn out soon.”

It struck her with the chill of Absent Light. He could not know that for sure; it was a common pastime in Driftwood, trying to predict the decay of worlds, and equally common to mock those who tried. Would the first sun—the last one—come with them into the Crush, or would Surnyao go to that ultimate end in darkness? Either way, the loss of the suns was the best metric they had, and to lose one of the remaining two was a sign of how little time they had left.

How little time she had to find her quarry.

Noirin chose the strongest inflections she knew. “I will go out under the light of two suns,” she said, “and return before the last burns out. I promise you, Chant Leader: I will come back. And I will bring hope with me.”

But hunting through the Shreds was not so easy.

Here in the heart of Driftwood, nothing went very far. Not the worlds she walked through, small fragments like her own home, struggling to preserve themselves against the unstoppable decay. Not the oddments she brought with her, barter-pieces in an odd economy where strange things could acquire value.

Even her determination faded faster than it should.

She expected her search to take a while. If the man she sought were nearby, she would have heard; Noirin therefore went to the edge of her range, the point at which people ceased to understand the pidgin she spoke. There she stopped for a time, taking a job in a Drifter bar, among people so crossbred they belonged to no world at all. She washed dishes with the juice of a plant whose original name was lost along with the world it came from, but which grew now in many parts of Driftwood and went by the humble name of rinseweed. While she worked, she learned a new trade-tongue, one used in Shreds more distant from her home. And then she moved on: all part of her plan.

What she hadn’t planned for was loneliness.

Not for people—or at least, not only. She missed the two suns; too many Shreds had only one. She missed the chants, patched and ragged though they were. Those things had always kept her company before, and now their loss caught in her throat, so that she dwelt obsessively on her vow. I will recover what we have lost. It eroded her patience, as she found a new job, learned a new tongue, asked after the man she sought.

The sound of his name changed between languages, but the meaning did not. And he was a one-blood, not a crossbred Drifter; it made him distinctive. She found people who had heard of him, certainly—or at least heard the stories. But how to find him, where he lived... that, no one seemed to know.

One spark of light in the blaze of seven suns. How many people lived in Driftwood? She asked three scholars and got seven different answers; it depended on whether she meant just the Shreds, or also the Edge, the place where worlds arrived out of the Mist. But all seven numbers were high, and Noirin was seeking a single man.

She had terrible dreams of the second sun burning out. One Absent Light the dream was worse than it had ever been, and she jerked awake, wondering whether that was a sign. Whether her people now dwelt under the light of a single sun. Could she tell, this far beyond the edge of Surnyao? Worlds worked according to their own rules, and the Shred she was living in was nothing like her home. But some things a person could carry within herself.

She moved onward. Another Shred, another job, another tongue to learn. Her grasp of it was halting at best. She spoke it well enough, though, to understand a bird-winged man when he told her the most helpful thing she’d learned yet. “He doesn’t like to be hunted,” the creature said. “Hired, yes. Hunted, no.”

Noirin thought this over while she chopped vegetables she didn’t know the names of and threw them into a bin next to the bar’s cook. Hired, not hunted.

Very well.

The third public house she worked in occupied the massive trunk of a tree in a Shred whose people had vanished before memory, leaving a forest that resisted the attempts of neighboring Shreds to cut it for wood. The tree had no doors—its bark flexed open to allow passage—so Noirin had to watch in all directions, but she had no difficulty spotting the man when he walked in.

And he spotted her just as easily. He stopped halfway in, growled something that sounded like a curse, and turned around.

“Wait,” Noirin called, but he had already left.

She ran after him. He was easy to find, too tall to move quickly through the low branches, his skin silver-blue in the muted air. A branch snagged the loose fabric of his tunic, and it ripped with a sound like the rattle some Drifter musicians used. He swore again—then a third time, as Noirin caught up to him.

“Why did you run away?” she asked.

He glared at her. His eyes were as deep a black as her own, oddly reassuring. “You’re the one who’s been hunting me.”

What did she expect? She was a one-blood, as distinctive as he was among the Drifters; no one in this part of the Shreds had skin as dark as hers. She had moved to a new area before trying to hire him, but he was clever enough to make the connection on sight.

Noirin freed the torn edge of his tunic from the branch and wished any of the pidgins had the inflections of her native tongue; she couldn’t express supplication well enough. “No. The rumor I spread was true; I want to hire you. To help my people.”

He pulled away from her in disgust and fury. If the trees had let him, he likely would have walked away again, but there was no graceful exit to be had. “I can’t save your gods-damned world.”

A sound of startlement escaped her. “I didn’t think you could.”

Now she had his attention. He considered her, while he tucked the trailing flap of his tunic into his sash. “Then what did you want me for?”

Noirin wished they stood in sunlight, rather than the oppressive dark of the trees, but feared that asking him to move elsewhere would exhaust the small patience she’d won. “Are you the man known as Last?” The meaning stayed the same, no matter the tongue; she named him in the language of her home.

He went still at the sound of it; she could almost see the rapid dance of his thoughts, recognizing the language, trying to identify it. “Surnyao,” he said at last, and a small sun of joy burned beneath Noirin’s ribs. “The place of light.”

“It used to be. And that is why I’ve searched you out.”

“I can’t put it back the way it was, either,” he said, with a surprisingly bitter cast to the words.

She shook her head. Now was the time to ask; the bitterness wasn’t directed at her. “Could we go somewhere... more comfortable?”

After a heartbeat, a grin broke through the twist of his face. “Either you’re propositioning me, or you want sunlight.”

Another startled sound. “No! You—you aren’t—”

“Asurnya?”

“A woman,” Noirin said. “At least you don’t appear to be.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes. “That’s right; your people have rules about that sort of thing. So you’re how old—third sun?”

Both the heat of embarrassment and the light of joy faded a little. “Nearly fourth,” Noirin said. This time she was glad for the pidgin, so she didn’t have to decide whether to inflect for shame or not. “Maybe fourth, by now; I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone.”

“I’m not arrogant enough to think you’d hunt me out for breeding, anyway. So you want sunlight, and to ask me about something else entirely.” His next words were addressed to the trees. “All right, I’m listening to her. Will you let me go now?”

The branches, without seeming to move, opened up around them. Last grinned again at Noirin’s wide eyes and said, “Little-known secret. The people of this Shred never vanished; it was only ever inhabited by trees. You’ve been waiting tables inside their king. Come on.”

She absorbed that in wonderment, then stretched with relief as they came into the open air. The sun in this next Shred was weak, leaving her cold all the time, but it was better than nothing. Last led her between two buildings and into a courtyard she didn’t know existed, where the ground gave way to a shallow bowl of beaten copper ten paces across. It caught the sun’s weak light and gave back gentle warmth, and Noirin almost wept with sudden homesickness.

He gave her time to compose herself, then said, “So what do you want me for?”

At his nod, she seated herself gingerly on the copper, pressing her hands against the sun-heated metal. “We still have stories of you,” she told him, faintly embarrassed to admit it. “They say you were in the place of fire, and the first outsider to set foot in Surnyao.”

“Place of fire....” His eyes went distant, and then he snapped his fingers. “E Si Ge Tchi. I think. They were trying to negotiate a treaty with another world, for protection against that firestorm. Yes, I remember.”

Radiant light, within and without. He remembered. Noirin said, “You are the only one who does.”

“I thought you said your people told stories about it.”

“About you. And a little about Surnyao, what it was like then. But the truth is that we’ve forgotten most of it. We talk about Absent Light and the vanished suns, but it’s empty words, fragments without meaning. Nobody understands well enough to explain.”

He turned his head away. She took the opportunity to study his profile: the folds of his eyelids, the sharp slope of his jaw, the copper light giving his skin a violet cast. So unlike an Asurnya man. And old—how old? He must come from a very long-lived race indeed, to have been there when Surnyao was new to Driftwood, and still be here now. But he had seen it with his own eyes, not filtered through generations of broken chants, memories warped by pain and loss.

Last said, almost too quiet for her to hear, “That’s the nature of Driftwood. Fragments.”

The pain in his voice made it hard for Noirin to speak. “And it’s in the nature of those who come to Driftwood to fight against it. You remember. You can tell me how Surnyao was. And then I can go home, and tell my people, and we will take that light with us into the darkness.”

It would come regardless. She knew that much. The last suns would burn out, and Surnyao would go into the Crush, as countless worlds had gone before them. But they could go as Asurnya, with the strength of all they had forgotten. They could make their own light.

He let out a breathless laugh. “Tell you? An entire world. Or most of one, anyway. I lived there for some time—no doubt your stories tell you that—from mid-sun to Absent Light. I could talk from now until your last sun dies and not tell you everything I saw, and you’d forget half of it before I was done.”

She felt the pulse of her heart in her tongue. “You could come to Surnyao—”

He was on his feet before she saw him move, retreating to the center of the shallow copper bowl. “And see the wreckage of a place I once loved? No. I won’t be your new Chant Leader, won’t bind myself to—”

And then he stopped, before Noirin could find a response, and in the warm glow she saw speculation dawn on his face. “Though perhaps,” he said, and stopped again.

She dug her fingers into the unyielding copper. “What?”

He hesitated for a moment, then said, “You’d have to do something for me in return.”

“I always intended to,” she said. “Nothing in Driftwood is free. What do you want?”

Last said, “To forget.”

The sign above the archway was illegible to Noirin, but Last told her it read Quinendeniua. The Court of Memory.

Walls of packed and polished mud surrounded the courtyard, and fragrant trees bloomed along the walls, breathing forth their scent in the light of flickering torches. In one corner, a creature of amorphous shadow served drinks to patrons, and in another, four musicians provided a melody to the dancers who swayed across the paving-stones.

And that was all. Quinendeniua was the only remnant of its world; beyond its earthen walls, other Shreds went about their business. But the sound did not carry across the threshold, as if this were a sacred space.

Last felt it, too, for he spoke in a quiet tone that went no farther than Noirin’s ears. “There are two ways to do this. But if you chased me down to find the memory of Surnyao’s past, I doubt you want to begin with blasphemy. You haven’t been presented to the fourth sun yet.”

In the warm darkness, she could scarcely feel the heating of her own cheeks, and she managed a light response. “Even if I were—you’re not arrogant enough to expect that.”

His teeth glinted silver when he grinned. “Right. Well, for this to work, we have to match each other; we have to move as one. So, like most people who come here, we dance.”

“Are—” She stared at the figures moving in the torchlight. “Are they all here for memory?”

“One way or another. It’s the magic of this place. Some people want to remember someone else’s memories—for education, or just for escape. Others want to forget. Memories can be shared, or given away.” His eyes vanished into the darkness beneath his brows when he looked down at her. “How do you want to begin?”

The memory he wished to lose was not Surnyao; he’d refused to tell her what it was. What could be so bad that this man would want to erase it from his mind? It was at least partly morbid curiosity that made Noirin say, “My payment is that you will forget. Let that be done first.”

“So I don’t have to worry you’ll skip out on the bill,” he said, and managed a hint of amusement. “I appreciate it. But no—I’ll give you what you came for, first.”

His fingers curled around hers, and he pulled her forward before she could protest.

The music was foreign but lovely, a slow beat from skin-covered drums and some kind of rattle, stringed instruments like leudani weaving melody and harmony around it. Noirin could not understand the singer’s words, but the sense of them reached her anyway: memory and forgetfulness, the foundations and chains of the past. She didn’t know whether the connection of minds came about through the music, or if Quinendeniua did it to all who came within, but she believed what Last had told her was true.

Here, she could see what he had seen, more completely than words could ever convey.

Here, she would remember Surnyao.

The dances of her home were long forgotten. She had seen others in her travels, some frantic, some like the slow movement of statues. This was neither. We have to move as one, Last had said; he drew her close, wrapped one arm about her waist. They were closer in height than she had thought, and could lay their heads upon each other’s shoulders. She felt the tremor of his laughter. “I know it’s strange. Just relax. In a moment, you won’t notice this at all.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him. But he began to move, in slow, easy steps, and she moved with them; she couldn’t not, as close as they were. His free hand held hers lightly, like a bird. Despite the darkness, the air was warm, and a pleasant sweat beaded her skin. Noirin closed her eyes, gave Last her trust, felt him give the same to her. There was nothing but the darkness and the music, the scented breeze, the firmness of the paving-stones beneath their feet, and memory....

Seven suns, blazing their glory across the sky, a brightness and a heat that gave life to everything below.

Chants, always chants, not just at certain times but continually, their steady pace the means by which the Asurnya measured their days. I will meet you at the Hyacinth Canto. You haven’t come to see me in a hundred cycles. Fry the meat for one stanza.

Tall towers that cast no shadow, lit from every side by the suns. In the catacombs beneath them, warriors with spears of black iron, the priesthood of Absent Light. Figures of terror, to small children—behave, or I’ll apprentice you to the Harbingers of the Dark.

Markets that sold a thousand spices, each one distinct on the tongue. Aromatic flowers that danced in the gentle air, their seeds spreading in the ceaseless light. Serpents dozing in the warmth, sold as pets, as sacrifices, as food. Vast fields, kept damp by intricate irrigation, regulated by a caste called the saerapavas.

A young man. Tall and slender, black as obsidian, with a merry grin. In his third sun, he was too young for breeding, and so he dallied with his male friends until that time came. Even with a silver-pale outsider, horrifying the Chant Leader, who insisted that contact with someone from beyond the edges of the world would be an abomination, regardless of age.

Last loved Chahaya, and mourned when he reached his median light, moving into the world of women and family.

Grief threatened to suffocate Noirin—hers and Last’s. This was the world they had lost, in all of its wondrous complexity, from the heartbreaking perfection of the ancient chants to the shameful poverty of the beggars in the streets. Good and bad, grand and humble, all the different aspects of Surnyao, and the suns watching it all in their slow march across the sky.

Absent Light.

Wails throughout the city, the terrified shrieks of children. She could not feel the terror herself: to Last, it was simply night, a common enough occurrence in most worlds. And now it came too often for her to comprehend its full horror. But she witnessed the paralysis of the Asurnya, the Harbingers walking the streets with their black iron spears, and heard the silence where the chants had been.

Then dawn, the First Sun, blessing the world with its light.

And Surnyao came to life once more.

The shoulder of Last’s shirt was wet with tears when Noirin lifted her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and tried ineffectually to brush it dry.

He stopped her with one hand. “It’s all right.” Grief shadowed his eyes, too; he had remembered Surnyao with her. So much lost! She thanked light he’d left when he did; she did not want to remember the moment after his departure, when the Glorious Sun burned to cinders on the horizon. That horror lived on well enough in tales.

He let her pull free. Noirin retreated out of the way of their fellow dancers, going to stand beneath one of the trees. Tiny pink petals drifted down, reminding her of similar trees that had once bloomed in the gardens of the chantries.

When she had composed herself once more, she turned and found Last waiting at a discreet distance. Torchlight flickered behind his head, but his face was in shadow. “What do you want to forget?” she asked him. “What is so terrible, the very memory of it must be torn from your mind?”

He didn’t answer at first. This was not part of their agreement, that she should ask questions. But finally he said, “Not terrible. Just—” A ragged breath, and for the first time it occurred to her that he might have chosen his position deliberately, to hide his expression in darkness. She understood him better now, and she knew the ways in which honesty was hard for this man.

“Just painful,” he finished.

Noirin left him his distance, but not his reticence. “You bear so much grief. Why is this pain worse than all the others? Last... what are you trying to forget?”

And she knew, fleetingly, as she said it, that she had used the wrong name; he was not always called Last. But she didn’t know what his real name was.

He answered her anyway. “My world.”

The weight of it was there, in her memory. Rarely at the forefront of his mind, but always present. He was old, far older than she had realized; old when Surnyao came to Driftwood, and far older than he should ever have been.

Last of his race. Last of his world, which had long since gone into the Crush. Living on, with no idea why, ages after he should have been dead. And something had happened to him, a recent pain, which made him want to forget where he had come from, forget there was one world he would grieve for beyond all others, now and forever, with no end in sight.

She didn’t know what that recent pain was, how it had driven him to this desperate point. But she knew why he’d chosen to share Surnyao with her first: to postpone the moment when he would give up the memory of his own home. And she could guess the reason for that, too.

“You’re the only one who remembers,” Noirin said. His world, and countless others that had come and gone. “If you forget... then they’re dead, even if you live.”

“Maybe I want that,” he said harshly, cutting across the steady rise and fall of the music.

“For now. But not forever. There will come a time when you regret the loss of those memories. And who will remember them for you then?”

Last dropped his chin. Staring at the paving-stones, he said, “This is not what we agreed.”

No, it wasn’t. And Noirin could not deny the curiosity burning within her. To know the origin of this man—his name, the name of his world, the path that had led to his immortality, even if he didn’t understand it himself. She would know what he knew, what no one else in Driftwood did.

But she would be stealing his very self from him. If he forgot those things, he wouldn’t be Last anymore. It was a form of suicide.

She had agreed. Noirin struggled with her conscience, then snatched at the hope of compromise. “If we do this... that memory becomes mine, in its entirety.”

“Yes.”

“Then I could keep it for you. And when you ask, we’ll come back here, and I’ll return it to you.”

His head came up in a swift arc. Small shifts in his posture told Noirin he almost spoke several times, pulling the words back just before they reached his lips. Finally a broken half-laugh escaped him, and he said, “I should have known better than to think Quinendeniua would be so simple. Letting you in my head like that... you understand me too well now, don’t you?”

She had no idea what he meant by that, but kept her silence.

“You could walk out that archway and be mugged in the streets of Vaiciai, or a dozen other Shreds between here and your home. You could die of old age or disease before I come find you. We could return and find Quinendeniua gone, just a crumbled chunk of wall dissolving in the Crush, and no world left that can do what this place does. A hundred and one ways for that memory to be lost. And without it....”

Another long pause. This time, Noirin completed the sentence for him, because he’d said enough that she did indeed understand him now. “Without it, you might die.”

“I don’t know why I haven’t,” he said. “For all I know, forgetting might make it happen.”

“Then the question is: are you prepared to destroy the last piece of your world?”

She didn’t want to ask it; if he said yes, then she would have to do as she promised, taking his memory, destroying him in spirit, and maybe in body, too. But that was his choice, not hers.

Last buried his head in his hands, while behind him the dancers swayed and whirled, trading memories, remembering and forgetting events, people, worlds.

He lowered his hands. “No. I don’t want to forget.”

Noirin let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Giving Last space for privacy, she went past him to the bar, paid for a drink with the ingots of iron that were her wages in the sentient tree where she had waited tables, what felt like a world’s lifetime ago. Surnyao had no iron anymore, no Harbingers of the Dark. She pushed the memory aside and returned to Last with the cup.

He downed its contents, unconcerned with the possibility that the drink of this world might be poison to him. Then again, could anything harm him? She hadn’t seen enough to know.

“Thank you,” she said, and not just on behalf of Surnyao.

Last grunted. Then he seemed to reconsider that answer, staring at his empty cup, and said, “It’ll pass. I’ve wanted to forget before—but this is the first time I’ve had a way to follow through. I think... I think I’ll be glad when Quinendeniua is gone.”

And with it, the temptation of oblivion. Noirin understood.

He set the cup aside and said, “I’ll guide you back to Surnyao. There’s some bad Shreds between here and there.”

Side by side, not quite touching, they passed under the arch of Quinendeniua, leaving behind the dancers and the music, the falling petals of the trees. Seven suns burned in Noirin’s mind, lighting the way home.

#📚

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