Chapter 25
EMERE
“You’re wanted. Look at this.”
Rakel put down her bags from the market and drew out a piece of paper from her robe.
On the rough fibrous paper was a drawing of Emere’s face, printed to fill almost half the page.
Wanted for murder and arson, with a reward of three thousand denarii.
An added note that he was very dangerous and should not be approached.
Emere squinted blithely at the portrait.
“They must be getting desperate.”
He flipped the paper and saw the faces of Septima, the stout man, and Devadas printed side by side. The same charges: a thousand denarii a head.
“Who are those other two?” Rakel asked, perching her head on his shoulder.
“Our patient’s friends.”
Rakel said that Septima had gotten through the worst of it, but she still had not woken up yet.
“They must be alive then?” Rakel asked.
“Perhaps.”
Such posters were used to disseminate the appearances of the wanted criminals being pursued, but Emere knew that they also functioned to make the wanted anxious.
Once they saw the posters, they would begin to think that they could be recognized at any time, and that would eventually lead them to do something foolish and get caught.
But it felt safe here. As long as the only person who knew he was here was Rakel …
He laid the poster on the table and placed a bowl of noodles Rakel had bought on it. Steam rose from it as he lifted the lid. He mixed it with his fork. The warm noodles tasted of salt, honey, exotic fruits and spices, and olive oil. It must have been delicious, but his mind was elsewhere.
Rakel sat across from him and ate from her own bowl. She chatted about her trip to the market, but the thought of his dream from the night before, the encounter with the Circuit of Destiny, dominated Emere’s attention.
“Are you there, Emere?”
At Rakel’s words, Emere shuddered back to reality. “Hm?”
“You’ve been nodding and agreeing with just about everything, no matter what I said. Where were you?”
“Sorry. So many things going on.” He glanced at the wanted poster, and rolled some noodles onto his fork. Rakel did not press the matter, letting him slip back into his thoughts.
The devastation of Arland and Kamori in his dream was the same as what he had seen of Mersia in his youthful days. The devastation wrought by the Star of Mersia. Why had the Circuit of Destiny shown him this vision?
Was he to stop this catastrophe from happening again? It could be, like the burning slums Cain showed him, a warning of things to come. The thought made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The Circuit had said to Emere that he was deserving of making the decision for countless people.
That he could become king.
Before he knew it, he was standing up and Rakel was looking up at him, halfway into her noodles.
But then he came back down to what was real.
He had been the councillor of a powerless province, but now he wasn’t even that.
While he was on the run as a wanted criminal, Ludvik and the Office of Truth, with the help of secret support from key members of the Senate, were successfully carrying out a detailed plan to take control of the government.
Emere was hiding, trapped. The one thing he believed in—Loran’s vision—had turned out to be a lie.
What had he done to get to where he was now?
Emere traced it all back to the moment in the sacred grove, where he saw a Tree Lord for the first time, the rustling of their leaves telling him of destinies.
He’d been chasing his own destiny all his life.
He could have stopped at any time in the last twenty years.
But he was too wise too late, wasn’t he?
He met Rakel’s eyes, and realized again the kind of life he could have had.
The situation made him scoff, and it came out as almost a laugh. Rakel looked more puzzled at him than ever. But then his laugh turned into a sob. Rakel swallowed her food and said something, but it was inaudible as his tears, incomprehensible even to himself, began to flow.
Before he realized it, Rakel was by his side, one arm around his shoulders. As Emere’s sobbing subsided, she asked softly, “Are you all right, Emere?”
He barely managed to nod.
“Emere, if you are still the man you were ten years ago, you will be all right. You may feel lost, but you will find the way.” Rakel held his face with both hands and looked straight into Emere’s eyes.
“I know I said we hadn’t accomplished anything in our ten years together, and that may be true.
But during those years, you always knew what to do and where to go.
I only had to follow you. And after all that’s happened, we are here, together, aren’t we?
” She paused to hug him tight. Emere hugged her back, his tears staining her shoulder.
After a moment, Rakel gently pushed him away and said, “I’m going to finish my food and pray. Do you want to pray with me?”
His throat was too constricted to reply, so he just nodded again.
He did not believe in her Nameless God, but he knew she found praying to be a comfort, and he would take what he could get.
Rakel went back to her seat to finish her meal.
The shame of having wept like a child made him avert his eyes.
When Rakel was done, she brought a large washing bowl and a towel over to him.
“Wash your face first. Careful, the water is hot.”
Rakel opened a cupboard and took out a small familiar red mat embroidered with her family pattern; it was old but very beautiful. Emere washed his face as he was instructed, but continued watching her as she unrolled the mat. Like he used to, when they were young.
“Bar the doors.”
As Emere secured the doors, Rakel took down a black head covering from the shelf and wrapped it around her head, kneeling on the mat.
Emere knelt next to her. On the cupboard was a small statue with two arms stretched upward.
The same wooden statue he had seen when they lived together as travelers.
A form with no face, and indistinct clothing, if any.
It was unclear, even, whether it was a youth or an elder, man or woman.
But that was inevitable, as the Ebrians had never met their god.
Rakel placed her hands on her knees, bowed her head, and recited an Ebrian prayer in a low voice.
Emere could only just about make simple conversation in that language, but because he had lived with her for so long, he could recite this prayer from memory.
A simple prayer, wishing for the peace and prosperity of a family.
But just as the prayer of Emere’s memory had ended and he was about to stand up, more words came from Rakel’s lips.
A prayer he had never heard before. He listened closely, but the only thing he could understand was his name, which appeared several times.
In all those years he had known Rakel, this was the first time that he had prayed with her.
He didn’t know what to say to the Ebrian god beyond the simple prayer he had memorized, so he just sat with his head bowed for the remainder of Rakel’s prayer.
But listening to her words, he found himself calming down.
Rakel stood. Emere stood up with her, then moved aside so Rakel could roll up her mat.
“What did you say in the prayer just now?” he asked.
Her face was somber as she placed her mat back in the cupboard. “A prayer is a conversation between the Nameless God and myself. You shouldn’t ask me that.”
“But I can recognize my own name.”
“… I asked them to guide you,” Rakel relented. “I told them that you seemed very confused right now and that you could use help.” Rakel took off her head covering, stashed it back in the cupboard, and fastened the lock.
He had to ask her, then, the question he had never asked her before.
“Does your god ever speak back?”
“Never.”
“Then how do you know your god is real? Arlanders worshipped their dragon like a god, and the Tythonians had a god of thunder and lightning. You’ve heard how many people say that the Ebrian god does not actually exist. So why do you risk arrest by the Office of Truth like this?
Why do you pray, with all the bother of barring your own door? ”
“Emere,” Rakel said softly, “do the Arlanders still worship the dragon? And what happened to the thunder god of Tythonia? What of the Tree Lords of your Kamori? How many people did we see in our travels who actually continued to worship their gods?”
The first thing the Empire did in their invasion of a foreign land was to destroy that land’s objects of worship—nothing thwarted the recalcitrance of a newly conquered province better than that. So, provincials following their old ways were rare, and those who admitted to it even rarer.
Rakel stood up straight. “But our god still exists. As long as we believe.”
While she put away the mat, Emere cleaned their bowls, lost in thought.
Rakel then left to make a house call, leaving Emere alone. Watching Septima’s chest rise and fall with her breath, he murmured, “You had faith in Cain and this is what he brought you. Do you not regret it? Even when nothing is promised you?”
Septima did not answer. All she did was breathe.
Emere sat by her and listened to the rhythm of her inhales and exhales.
The earlier explosion of emotion made him tired and his head hurt.
He closed his eyes. He wanted to dream. Whether of Cain or the fake Loran, he wanted to meet them and have them tell him that this was what they wanted him to do, that these were the choices before him, that his long wait would have not been in vain—he wanted them to reassure him so.
The sound of the door opening woke him. Rakel entered, taking off her coat.
“I told you to bar the door.”
“… You said no such thing.” Emere stood up, and Rakel put down her medicine bag and came up to quickly check Septima’s condition.
She turned to him. “You said you would do anything I asked of you, right?” Her eyes were shining. She looked exactly as she had when they had first met.
Emere nodded. “Anything.”
“It’s dangerous. I’ll understand if you refuse.”
She looked more expectant than worried. What Rakel wanted, of course, was not refusal.
“I’ll do it. What is it?”
Rakel grinned. “I just went to see someone in our congregation. Well, after I saw the patient.”
Congregation. The Ebrians must have organized in the Capital. Rakel had said before that her task was to send out news from the Capital to other parts of the world. Now Emere knew she hadn’t been alone in that.
“There’s a guest from the north,” she went on, “who wants to join us in an alliance against the Empire. I want you to help us with our negotiation.”
Emere blinked. “Why is that dangerous? And why would I be the one for the task?”
“Have you forgotten you’re a wanted man? You even setting foot outside is a dangerous proposition,” Rakel tutted. “But this is someone you know.”
He took a deep breath. “Who is it?” He already knew. There was only one person who would be planning such a thing.
“King Loran of Arland.”