7 Nevrine (continued)

Jeddan and I looked at each other, and he shrugged, which I took to mean “let’s try to avoid trouble, but we can overcome him if we have to.” We walked over to the guard, trying to look innocent, though if the man was as suspicious as he sounded, he probably thought Jeddan was a threat because of his size. Jeddan no doubt felt the same way, because he trailed behind me a bit so I could do the talking.

“What’s your business in Debressken?” he said. He wore a fur-lined cap and a heavy coat, and his nose was red and dripped. I could see smears on his gloves where he’d swiped the back of his hand across it. Lots of smears. It made me feel like my own nose needed wiping, though it really didn’t.

“None,” I said, going for politeness. “We’re on our way to Hasskian. Just passing through.”

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll give you an escort.”

“Why do we need an escort?” I said.

“We aren’t taking any chances, not after we been attacked,” he said. “You could be foreigners in disguise.”

“Do you think foreigners could possibly speak Balaenic this well?” I said.

He shrugged, and said, “Not taking any chances.”

“Looks like you took care of the foreigners well enough,” Jeddan said. “If that was their village we saw a ways back.”

The guard looked as if he wanted to find something suspicious in this statement, but couldn’t. “Brought it on themselves, trying to attack us,” he said. “Lord Governor sent out the troops and took them all away.”

“It’s not a small town,” I said. “Where did they take them? Far enough away to keep them from attacking honest Balaenic folk like you.”

He grinned. It wasn’t a nice grin. “Put them in a camp northeast of Hasskian,” he said. “Nobody’s sure what to do with them. Can’t let them attack us, but we won’t kill women and children no matter if they’re foreigners. Lord Governor’s still thinking about it. He’s a good ruler, even if he is touched.”

“Touched?” I said, because I’d never heard anything to suggest Endolessar wasn’t mentally stable.

“Touched by the magic,” the guard said. “One of those who rose up after the calamity to work magic. Lord Governor Endolessar can move things without touching them.”

“I’m surprised he wasn’t lynched,” Jeddan said.

“We’re not small-minded people,” the guard said, and I had to pretend I was coughing to cover my laughter. “Nothing wrong with magic if you use it for good. We had a bunch of people changed like that, all of them swearing to use their magic to benefit their city. I almost wish it was me.” He looked more closely at my face. “You’ve got the eyes,” he said. “Are you…” Despite his words, he looked afraid. A reasonable fear, since he’d been harassing us.

“We are,” I said, and on a whim did the water-summoning pouvra almost in his face. I’m most comfortable with fire, but I didn’t want to scare him further—that’s not true, I did want to scare him, but it was an ignoble desire that would have done nothing but satisfy me. Jeddan, for his part, passed his immaterial hand through the man’s arm, making him look as if he were going to be sick. I know Jeddan did that because it’s the only overt pouvra he has, but I’m sure he got as much satisfaction out of doing it to the man as I would have from fire.

“I’m sorry,” the guard said, “I didn’t—I wouldn’t—but you’re not going to Venetry, then?”

“After Hasskian,” I said, puzzled. If we’d (I was going to write “if we’d asked him more questions, we might not have gone to Hasskian at all” but that’s not true, we still would have needed to warn Endolessar even if we’d known about the king’s summons.)

“Well, safe journey, then,” the guard said. “If you stop at the sentry post just inside the Hasskian city gate, and tell them you’re magickers, they’ll take care of you. Sorry about the misunderstanding.”

“That’s…all right,” I said, and we went on down the road. Off to the left, another guard was turning away a traveler who presumably didn’t have a good reason to be there, and there was a line forming at the city gate.

Debressken grew up around us, made of stone hauled from the quarries to the west, cheaper than timber in this place, and the people were surprisingly friendly. Or maybe it wasn’t surprising, if they knew their guards were turning away “undesirables” before they could get this far. The snow was falling more heavily now, still tiny specks, but they drove into my eyes and nose, and I turned up my collar and pulled my hat down over my eyes.

“They took them northeast,” Jeddan said. “What’s northeast?”

“Nothing that I know of,” I said. “Nothing special, anyway, unless the convergence changed the terrain. More plains, more towns. A forest, not a big one. Maybe that’s why it’s special—they can round up hundreds of people and there’s no one to make a fuss about it.”

“What can we do?” he said.

“Us? Nothing. What do you think? We can’t walk into Venetry trailing a village’s worth of Castavirans and their cattle.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, then thought better of doing it again.

“It just doesn’t seem right,” he said, but he fell silent and we walked the rest of the way to Hasskian without saying anything. Not much point, when we were both thinking the same thing and neither of us had a solution to it.

For the last mile or so we shared the road with a dozen other travelers, all mounted, who came up from behind and then passed us. Apparently they met the stringent Debresskian code of acceptability. We watched as, one by one, they were stopped at the gate, a big iron-barred door a good ten feet tall that had a rusty portcullis drawn up above it.

Hasskian is a good distance from the Fensadderian border, and it’s been almost seventy years since Balaen came under attack from the west, but the last time, the enemy did get this far, and Hasskian held the defense for fifteen days before the army could arrive to repulse the invaders. So its gate, and the black stone walls circling it, are there for a reason.

I’m sure they don’t realize the irregularity of the stones make the walls easy for a determined person to scale, and the spacing of the three gates means there are places where said determined person can get inside the city without anyone noticing. I’ve been to Hasskian half a dozen times over the years, even though it’s been a while, but this was the first time I’ve gone in via the gate.

When it was our turn, the guard, who was better armed and armored than the Debresskian and had the hard look of a man accustomed to hurting people, said, “Name and business?”

“Rokyar Axe,” Jeddan said—I didn’t know the name of his village until that minute, and it was nice to see my surmise about his occupation proved correct.

“Thalessi Scales,” I said, “and we have been touched by magic and would like to see the Lord Governor on a private matter.”

“All magickers are to see the Lord Governor upon entry,” he said. “Follow me.”

That was easier than I’d expected. We went through the gate and into a tiny round room at the base of one of the towers flanking the portcullis. Most of it was taken up by a table on which lay a stack of official-looking papers, a shallow dish of ink, and a wooden stamp stained dark with use. The guard scribbled our names on two of the papers, stamped them, and handed them to Jeddan and me. “You know where the Citadel is?” he said. I nodded. He didn’t need to know how well I knew the Citadel, at least certain very well guarded rooms of it. “Show these to the majordomo. He’ll make sure you see the Lord Governor.”

to be continued…

7 Nevrine

We camped early tonight because we found a place where this river—more of a stream, I guess—runs through a copse of trees near the road, and we were still so tired we decided it was better to stop here than to push on until nightfall and risk not finding anywhere good. The fire is so comfortable, and I’m full, and I wish all of that physical comfort meant emotional comfort too, but I’m still not sure we made the best choice last night, and that’s not a good feeling.

I wish I had Jeddan’s confidence. Once he’s made a decision and acted on it, he doesn’t keep revisiting it and worrying he did the wrong thing. When he frets, it’s about much more serious, life-altering things, like death. Me, I can’t stop thinking about possibilities—like, what would have happened if I’d chosen differently, or how can I analyze a situation to know whether this decision would be right in other circumstances. I have to live with the consequences of my actions, and I’m fine with that, but I’m always looking to a future in which I’ll have to choose again, and worrying I won’t learn from my mistakes. Especially when those mistakes hurt other people.

But I keep getting ahead of myself. I think it’s because, by the time I get to writing, since all the events are in the past it’s hard for me not to look over them and make conclusions and think about what it all means. And that’s interesting, but I wonder if it doesn’t color the “story” I’m telling in these pages.

So this begins early yesterday morning, when we started before the sun had fully risen so we’d have plenty of time to explore Hasskian and work out a real plan that wasn’t “let’s see what happens,” which is my least favorite kind of plan.

We passed a still-sleeping Balaenic village that lay right on the Royal Road, then made the turn that leads to Hasskian, which is about ten miles off the main road. There’s another town—small city, really—called Debressken near that junction, and we were nearing it when Jeddan said, “That’s a Castaviran town over there.” He pointed, and I saw the distinctive pointed roofs off to one side, maybe a mile away from Debressken to the south. It also looked very quiet.

“I think we should visit them,” I said. “See how they’ve fared. I don’t like how close they are to these towns.”

Jeddan nodded, and we set off across the fields—not cultivated fields but the untamed lands between towns, full of tall, dry grass and small animal burrows. It was going to snow soon, which made everything dim even though there was a small bright spot to the east where the sun was peeking over the horizon, showing Hasskian, even at that distance, as a black blob low to the ground. Our footsteps swishing through the dead grass were the only noises anywhere.

“Don’t you think we should hear people waking up now?” Jeddan said.

“Yes,” I said, and started walking more quickly. Jeddan sped up as well. We reached the first of the outbuildings, a barn, and looked inside. It was fully stocked with bales of hay, and fitted with the pails and other necessities of a dairy farm, but there were no cows, nothing living at all. It was eerie.

We turned around and went toward the farmhouse, where the back door hung ajar and swung slightly in the cold wind blowing a storm toward us. After exchanging glances, I pushed the door open and we went inside.

It had been ransacked. The kitchen we entered was strewn with pottery shards, drifts of flour and sugar lay across the floor, chairs were knocked over, and the tablecloth was puddled on the floor beneath the table. The fear choking me subsided when I realized there were no bodies, but there were so many other rooms… Jeddan and I spread out and searched the house. Everything had been torn apart. There were no bodies, and no living creatures anywhere.

“I wonder where they went,” Jeddan said, stopping just inside the front door, which had been smashed. He scanned the ground. “A lot of people came through here, not that that’s news. But I can’t see any indication of people being dragged away. And only two or three people other than us went out the back.”

“They had to go somewhere,” I said.

“I’m just saying I can’t tell where that is,” Jeddan said. He went through the door and stood for a moment, looking toward the rest of the town. “Do you want to look further?”

“I think we have to,” I said.

I wish we hadn’t. We found the first bodies, all men, about a hundred yards from the farmhouse. They’d been dead for a while—Jeddan said probably a week. I don’t want to know what he’s seen that he knows that so precisely. There weren’t many bodies, but we didn’t look very hard for them.

It didn’t take long for us to establish what had happened: the town had been raided, the villagers and their livestock rounded up and taken somewhere, those who fought back were killed. We both agreed it was likely soldiers had done this, Jeddan based on the nature of the dead people’s wounds, me because I’ve seen mobs and I’ve seen raids and I can tell what kind of damage is caused by which. I wish that weren’t true.

It sickens me that the Balaenics just left the bodies there to rot. They saw the Castavirans as enemies, true, but that was like they didn’t think they were human. I have to stop thinking about it if I want to keep my meal down.

After about an hour we’d had our fill of the destruction and decided to move on, since there was nothing we could do. We were both depressed, I think, and I felt nauseated by all the death, so we decided we’d move through Debressken as quickly as possible so we could finish our business in Hasskian and move on.

It only took a few minutes for that plan to go to hell. It was full light when we left that ransacked village, and we were no longer the only travelers on the Hasskian road. No one we passed seemed inclined to speak; most of them kept their heads down and ignored us. Or maybe they were just huddled up against the cold. Either way, it’s not that unusual for travelers to keep to themselves, because you never know if the person who wants to be friendly is actually looking for a victim. And we were just as happy not to talk to anyone.

So it was surprising when we were hailed in a very unfriendly voice and told to stop where we were. I hadn’t really been paying attention—was hunched into my coat like everyone else, blinking away the tiny cold motes of snow that were beginning to blow into my face—so when I looked up I was surprised to see an armed guard pointing in our direction. Another guard had accosted one of our fellow travelers and had a sword, not military issue, held in a way that suggested violence was definitely an option.

to be continued…

4 Nevrine (continued)

The mage shook like a dog, and fire flew off him like water. “Bitch,” he screamed, and fire wrapped me again. This time I went insubstantial and jumped away from it, which made his eyes and mouth go wide. He flung fire at me again, and again, and I let it pass through me, or dodged it when I had to breathe, and lashed out at him with my own fire, which he dodged in turn.

The other man, the one Jeddan wasn’t wrestling, turned and ran from the clearing, shouting to people I couldn’t see. I didn’t have much attention to spare either for him or for Jeddan, because I was trying to come up with a way to end the little dance I was having with the increasingly maddened mage. He didn’t seem to be tiring at all, but I was becoming light-headed, and at some point I would have to stop going insubstantial, and that would be it for me.

Maybe it was the light-headedness. Maybe it was the hours of practice finally coming together. But as I went insubstantial one final time, I could see the shape of the pouvra as if it were rods and curves spun from spider’s silk, as insubstantial as I was, and then it shifted and I saw a new shape that emerged from the old one. Without stopping to think, because I could never have done it if I analyzed it, I bent my will to the new shape.

It was as if—I’ve thought about this a lot since then, thought about it to avoid thinking about other things, and it felt as if the world blinked, and when its eye opened, I could see everything differently. It was so strange I forgot I was fighting for my life. I was about five feet from the mage at that point, keeping my eyes on his chest because its movements told me where he was going to fling fire next, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to turn the pouvra on him.

Thinking back on it, I don’t know why the pouvra’s revealing his innards didn’t disgust me. I must have been more light-headed than I thought. Mostly I was fascinated by what I saw, heart and lungs pulsing, arteries and veins quivering as blood flowed through them.

I was too distracted, I suppose, because he was able to grab me in a moment of solidity and shake me so hard I couldn’t summon fire. “I am going to enjoy raping you, over and over again,” he snarled, and that woke me up. I tried going insubstantial, but I was too tired and breathless, and I couldn’t burn him without burning myself, and his innards were pulsing queasily just inches from my face.

I could see his heart throbbing, rapidly because he’d exerted himself as much as I had. I remember thinking how strange it was that all the blood went in and out through those few slender vessels, and again in that dreamlike state I reached out with the mind-moving pouvra and crushed all of them until they twisted and broke.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then the mage released me and clutched at his chest. His expression was so surprised, so normal, that it was hard to believe he’d been trying to kill me seconds before. I stepped away and watched him collapse. He didn’t move much, just twitched as his face went ashen, and then he was dead, and I just stood over him, breathing quietly. It still didn’t seem real. Even the memory, as I look back on it now, seems unreal, like I’m remembering someone else’s life.

Jeddan must have said my name several times before I heard him, but what I remember next is him putting his arms around me and holding me close, his chin resting on the top of my head. “What did you do?” he whispered.

“I killed him,” I said. “It was easy.”

Jeddan didn’t push me away, or make sounds of fear or disgust. “He would have killed us both,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But it was easy.”

Then he let go of me to hold me at arm’s length, and I was startled at the intensity of his gaze. “You’re not a killer,” he said. “I’ve never known anyone less callous about human life than you are.”

“Okay,” I said, which was so inadequate, but was there anything I could have said that would have made things better? Then I turned away and went rummaging through the mage’s clothes. I remember thinking if I was going to kill someone, it should at least be worthwhile, and if he had money on him, we could use that. Jeddan didn’t say anything else, and I was grateful more than ever that he has a gift for silence. I know he doesn’t understand how I feel, but I know he realizes talking about it now will only make me feel worse, and he won’t push. So grateful for such a friend.

The bandit had a little purse with fifteen crowns and a handful of smaller change, and a fire opal pendant that looked too feminine to be his, and wore a gold ring on his left hand. I left the jewelry, but Jeddan collected it, along with the other bandit’s purse; Jeddan hadn’t killed his man, but he wasn’t going to wake up any time soon.

Then we struck camp and moved on down the road, though it was so dark we almost couldn’t see to find another campsite, even with the see-in-dark pouvra. There weren’t any horses when we emerged onto the road, so I think the bandit who escaped probably warned the others the mage had referred to. I almost wish we’d been able to take a couple of horses, even if we can’t ride; how hard can it be to point a horse’s nose in the right direction and hang on to the saddle? But there’s no sense worrying about it now.

It started snowing as we put up the tent, then Jeddan guided me inside and told me, “Lie back to back,” so I did. I waited for him to fall asleep before I started writing, just in case I was going to cry, but I don’t feel tearful. I don’t feel much of anything except overwhelmed.

I used a pouvra to kill a man—not by accident, the way I did when I worked the fire pouvra for the first time, but deliberately, consciously choosing that man’s death. It’s fitting, in a way; I’m already a thief, and it seems I’m now an assassin, because what else can you call that kind of pinpoint, fatally accurate attack? I know my mind-moving pouvra is never going to be as powerful as Cederic’s, but then he can’t manage the kind of delicate movements I can. The kind that can crush blood vessels and—true God help me, I can’t stop thinking of the possibilities now.

It scares me that I can so coldly consider ways I might turn this combination of pouvrin to my benefit. And the worst thing is I don’t dare swear never to do it again. What if using the pouvra that way meant saving someone I love? Meant bringing Balaen and Castavir together in peace? I wouldn’t even think twice about it.

I can’t write anymore, and I don’t think I can sleep. I’m glad Jeddan’s here. I wish he were Cederic.

4 or 5 Nevrine, don’t know

Dreamed again, dragged myself out of it before it was embarrassing. Finally cried.

30 Coloine

It’s been an awful day. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything less; 30 Coloine has been a terrible day for me every year for the last six years. Fortunately, it ended well—quite a surprise, actually. I think I might be able to sleep tonight.

We’re making good time now we’re on the Royal Road. Balaen’s King is erratic and hedonistic, and our government is sometimes guided more by vanity and greed than by good sense, and the nobles play vicious games with lives, part of why my family lost its status I guess, but we’ve got an excellent road system. I don’t know if that’s down to the current Chamber Lord who has jurisdiction over transportation (lady, actually, Debarra Jakssar, the only woman in the Chamber) or if it’s something she inherited, but the major roads are well-kept and smooth. Of course, that’s going to benefit the God-Empress too, but there’s no point worrying about that.

That wasn’t the awful part. The Balaenic village hadn’t had much food to spare, and we forgot to ask at the Castaviran village, so we’re running low on supplies. Jeddan’s good at setting snares, but now that we’re out of The Forest—there are still trees surrounding the road, but it’s not heavily overgrown—there aren’t as many places for animals to shelter, and I think the convergence’s upsetting of the landscape has caused many of the animals to flee. So when we saw signs that we were approaching another village, I cheered up.

It makes me sick when I remember that now, because as the road curved out from beneath the trees, we saw smoke, a lot of smoke, and heard screaming, and there was far too much movement in the streets. Jeddan and I looked at each other, then I took his hand and concealed us, and we ran toward the village.

It was carnage. Men and women were fighting in the streets, some with blades, others with whatever weapons they could find. Bodies lay fallen everywhere, some of them crumpled where they’d managed to crawl away a bit before they died. As we watched, a handful of men burst through a door with their arms full of—I don’t know what, boxes and piles of cloth, whatever they thought was valuable. Half of the main street was on fire, and I saw a woman climbing out of a second story window and dropping to the ground; by the way she landed, it looked like she broke her leg. The tingling numbness of the concealment pouvra seemed to spread through my body, making everything around me seem unreal.

Jeddan tugged at my hand and we turned around and left. There wasn’t anything we could do. I know, I have all this magic, I should have been able to think of something, but I was just too numb to think. No, even now that we’re well away from it, I still don’t know how I could have made a difference. I wonder what started it. Not that it—

I was going to write “not that it matters,” but it does, because if we can understand what made Balaenic clash with Castaviran, and Castaviran with Balaenic (and I can’t imagine it was anything else that caused that horror) maybe we can stop it next time. Maybe. I’m depressed enough right now that all I can picture is that now-familiar image of both worlds going up in an epic conflagration, and the survivors clawing their way out of the wreckage and still being unable to create a new, common world.

We made camp and ate a scanty meal, then sat staring at the fire. Jeddan said, “We probably…”

“I thought of that too,” I said. “But I couldn’t bear the idea of taking advantage of that calamity to stock up on food like some looter.”

“Me neither,” Jeddan said, and we both went silent again. I know I’ve said I like being alone, and silence doesn’t bother me, but right then I thought I might scream if I had to listen to the emptiness one minute longer. So I said, “How old are you?” Then I wished I’d thought of something else, it sounded so inane, but he said, “Twenty-four.”

“I’m twenty-seven.” And that was when I understood what had been niggling at me all day. “It’s my birthday today,” I said. “I’m twenty-eight.”

He smiled. “I wish I had a candle for you to light,” he said.

“I wish I had a gift for you,” I said. It’s been years since I had anyone I cared enough about to gift on my birthday. It was a surprise to discover I like Jeddan that much—he’s just comfortable to be around, and we have so much in common. I definitely think of him as a friend, almost as good a friend as Sovrin or Audryn, but in a different way.

“You could tell me a little about yourself,” he said. “That’s like a gift.”

So I did. Not much—he may be a friend, but we’re not close enough yet for me to tell him all my secrets. I told him about Dad and Mam and growing up in Thalessa, but not about Bridie or Roda, told him about traveling and learning pouvrin, but not about how the magic woke up inside me, told him about Castavir and how we’d come up with the kathana to save the worlds.

I couldn’t talk about Cederic—I’m trying not to think of him at all, it hurts too much—but I did tell him about the God-Empress, and made him laugh at the story of my failed wedding to Aselfos, which in hindsight is pretty funny. Jeddan is a good listener, and when I wound down, he said, “Thank you for the gift, Sesskia. And good fortune on your day.”

“Thanks, though that seems a wish that didn’t get fulfilled, given the day we’ve had,” I said.

“We didn’t get caught up in the disaster,” he pointed out. “We still have food and shelter. We’re only ten days from Venetry—fourteen at worst. By my standards this has been an excellent day.”

“Your standards seem a little low,” I joked.

He shrugged and bowed his head. “I’ve been outcast for a long time,” he said in a low voice. “I did a good job looking like I fit in, but I knew I was different, and so did they, and the strain of pretending—you know what I mean. I should have gone traveling like you did, but I was too afraid to leave the village. But it was getting harder, all the time, to be normal, especially when I discovered the second pouvra and started thinking about learning more. Being with someone else like me…it’s like there was a rock pressing down on me, all these years, and now it’s just gone. I hope that doesn’t sound too…I don’t know. Too sentimental.”

It did feel a little sentimental, but I was so moved at his willingness to share something so personal I didn’t feel embarrassed. “I feel the same way,” I said. “The Castaviran mages are friends, and it was good to be around other mages, but there was always a gap I didn’t know how to fill because we couldn’t really understand each other’s magic.”

“You and I can’t understand each other’s magic either,” Jeddan said, smiling.

“But we’re getting there,” I said. “Tomorrow I want to work on learning the see-inside pouvra. And then I’ll teach you how to see in the dark. It occurred to me today that that pouvra alters the body, which is what you said happens to you when you work magic. Maybe that will make it easier for you to learn.”

“Then don’t stay up all night writing in that book,” he said, and went into the tent. So I’m finishing this, and then I’m going to sleep, and tomorrow will look better.

29 Coloine (continued)

“Listen to me, you idiot,” I said in a low voice that didn’t carry any farther than the three of us, “you can either be a hero in this, or I can make you look so foolish no one will obey you ever again. This is the new world. That village is not a threat to you. They are allies. Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to…open diplomatic relations with them. You’re going to start learning their language, or teach them yours—doesn’t matter which way that goes. You’re going to trade with each other.

“And in a while, I don’t know how long, an army is going to march down that road, and you are going to help keep that village from being overrun. You’re going to do all of this because what you want, more than anything in the world, is respect. Up until now you’ve been getting it because you’re a bully, but I think you’ve just learned that that only works until a bigger bully comes along. If you want respect for a lifetime, help people get what they need. Right now, they need direction. It’s a new world and everything’s different. You get to choose what happens next.”

(I cleaned all that up and made myself sound more eloquent than I actually was. A lot more eloquent, actually. I was getting angry again, which makes me stammer, and when I tried to regain some self-control, I stammered more.)

“What are you?” he said.

“I’m a mage of the shadow world,” I said, “and I’m the wife of a Castaviran mage, and I don’t want both my worlds destroyed. Please see sense.”

I knew the moment he decided to disregard what I said by the way his lips thinned and his eyes narrowed. “Hold him,” I told Jeddan, and while the mayor thrashed around trying to get away from someone a foot taller than he was, I walked slowly toward the watching villagers. I felt so weary then, all the anger gone, leaving nothing but cold sorrow. “Hi,” I said. “Sorry about the fire. I really was just trying to get your attention. Can I ask you just one question? Who struck first, you or the, um, invaders?”

They looked at each other, mute. “Just tell me,” I said.

“We did,” said one of the men. He looked ashamed, and that lifted my spirits just a tiny bit.

“And you all thought that was okay? Because they were strangers, and didn’t speak your language, and were mysterious, and that frightened you?” I said. I looked at the man who’d spoken, and said, “What’s your name?”

“Aiden,” he said.

“Aiden, was it right, what you all did?” I said.

He raised his head to look at me directly. “No,” he said in a loud, carrying voice. “It wasn’t right. And I knew that, and went along with it anyway, because I was afraid. And I’m ashamed of that.”

“Thanks, Aiden,” I said. “What do you think you all should have done, instead?”

He shrugged. “Try to talk to them. Find out why they’re here.”

“Did you all hear that?” I said. A lot of nodding happened. “Do you agree with Aiden?” Murmuring, all of it agreement. I felt even more relieved. “Then this is what you’re going to do,” I said. I repeated what I’d told their mayor, but since I was calmer it came out more reasonable-sounding and I’m sure it was more effective. “It’s going to be hard,” I said. “But winter’s coming and I think you can both use all the help you can get.”

“We’re experienced at fading into the hills,” Aiden said, “and we’ll help the newcomers do the same.”

“You’re both newcomers,” I said, “and you shouldn’t forget that.” I glanced back over my shoulder, where the mayor hung unresisting in Jeddan’s hands. He didn’t look unconscious, just like he’d given up. “But I think this town needs new leadership,” I said. “Aiden, I’m appointing you mayor. I think you’ll do a good job for the immediate crisis. Then you can have an election, or however it is you choose your town leadership, and maybe they’ll keep you, or maybe it will be someone else, but it had better not be him.” I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder.

“You don’t have the right to do that,” someone said.

“Really? How would you like to go about it?” I said. “Because I’m interested in your suggestions.”

The voice subsided. No one else seemed inclined to speak. “Then that’s settled,” I said. “We’ll go back and tell the Balaenics what you’ve decided, so they won’t attack you when you visit them. Make peace. Make friends. You might even make marriages. I did.”

That was all there was to say. Jeddan let go of the ex-mayor and gave him a kick to the seat of his pants to propel him on his way. I pretended not to notice. We went back to the Balaenic village and explained the situation, which took far too much time because they had all these irrelevant questions they wanted to ask, but eventually we were back on the road and, coincidentally, ended up camping in the exact same spot we did last night.

Huh. I was done writing, but I want to put this in too. I was about to curl up in my bedroll when Jeddan said, “I wish I’d been able to understand what you were saying back there.”

“Maybe I should teach you Castaviran,” I said. “It’s less difficult than Balaenic.”

“Not so I could follow along,” he said, “because I could guess the content. But I’ve never seen anyone control a crowd just with words before.”

“I did nearly set all of them on fire, you know,” I said.

“That just got their attention. Whatever you were saying…they knew you meant it. If you’d told them to follow you to Hasskian, they’d have done it.”

I thought about that for a while until I had to get up and write it down because it was keeping me from sleeping. I’ve never been a leader. Haven’t had anyone to lead, for one thing, and leaders stand out, which I’ve tried not to do my whole life. I think Jeddan must have been wrong.

And yet…talking to those people, even talking to that idiot mayor, I felt…I’m not sure what. Rightness, maybe. As if I’d touched on something true and had the power to show that truth to everyone around me.

I wonder if that’s how Cederic feels. I only know a little of what leadership means, from watching him, and it seems more a burden than a blessing, all that responsibility. But it comes so naturally to him, how he listens so carefully to what people say, and sees solutions where other people see only problems. How he can command a room without saying a word. It reminds me of the day Vorantor was killed, just before the convergence, and he held everyone together even though I’m certain he was just as afraid as anyone because we still didn’t have the right kathana. I miss him so much.

I hope I dream of him tonight.