Chapter 13 #2
“And throw the clans’ alliance into chaos?
Most of the clans would back me. They’re already suspicious of Eona?.
She’s too imperial for their tastes. But how could I deny your mother her daughter?
How could I do that to her?” Irad?o cleared her throat, hiding her broken voice.
“How could I do that to the two of you?”
All through our childhood, we had been ghosts. Kept safe and pristine, untouchable. What did you do when a ghost came back to life?
“So even though Mother didn’t send you, you’re here for her?” I asked.
“I’m here for all three of us. We are children of the war, even though we never fought in it.” She looked away from me, her eyes following the dark ocean. A sailor passed behind us, holding a lantern.
Our shadows grew long, disappearing into the endless waves of ocean. There was a distant splash of some nocturnal sea creature.
I suddenly remembered her question, and the way the Kennelmaster had laughed.
“Do you regret it?” I asked.
“How can I regret my own life?” she asked. “How can I regret everything I did when it was for our people? When I thought that I was doing what was necessary to save them?”
“To save them?” I pointed out. I felt something twist in my stomach: the knowledge that, despite being a member of the Silvereyes Clan, despite being my mother’s son, despite being Yor?mu’s student, I was still something separate from the rest of them.
I was still something other, a man whose existence had been for a single purpose, only to find that now that purpose had changed.
What did you call a bow when there was no animal to hunt? Or a boat when the sea had dried up?
“Do you regret it?” Irad?o asked, her eyes on me. I tightened my lips, knowing that she likely saw through me. Still, I considered her question.
Under my hands, the wood of the railing was smooth from years of touch, from the crew’s maintenance. This was no ill-maintained ship. This had once been the prize of the Jolushi fleet.
“I don’t regret it. But I do wonder who I could have been if I had known the future.
I thought my life would be different. I thought my life would be over as soon as I accomplished my task and it made me live with one foot already in a sea serpent’s mouth.
If I had known the future, could I have been happy being someone else? ”
“And?” Irad?o asked.
I didn’t need to look over to know Irad?o was staring at me sharply, her fierce expression likely echoing my own; we shared a desperate desire to understand if someday, we could both find happiness in the fates that we chose for ourselves, rather than the ones that had been chosen for us.
“I must believe I can.” I thought of Tallu, asleep in his rooms below, how he had rejected the destiny given to him and found his happiness in destroying it.
I thought of the future I was building for him: one free of all of the burdens his father had put upon him, a destiny where both he and I were able to simply live and discover who we were without the empire that had defined both of us.
“What will you do now?” Next to me, Irad?o looked down, fisting her hands on the railing.
Above, the owl hooted again, and I wondered what the sailors thought of that, a forest animal following us out to sea.
Did they wonder if it was a bad omen? Or did they accept that it was the way of their new consort and his cousin?
“I don’t know,” Irad?o admitted. “I thought of running away.”
Somewhere in Dragon’s Rest Mountains, there was a small cabin for Tallu and me to live, for us to find happiness, for us to find somewhere to simply be.
We would chop wood in the autumn and store food in the summer, so that in the winter, when the snows piled high and we couldn’t escape, we would have months to be with each other and learn who we were together.
“But you didn’t.” My heart beat heavy, the image of the cabin fading. Irad?o’s lips twitched and she shook her head.
“I didn’t,” she agreed. “I may not be useful in the way I trained to be for so many years, but you are right. We can start again. You and I were trained to be one thing, and now we choose what we will be next. I choose to serve the north, even if it is not as their queen, even if there are no plans to wrangle or alliances to cement. I will serve the north the best I am able. And you?”
“I would serve Tallu,” I said. “I will save our nation and the man I love.”
“And if those two things are separate?” Irad?o asked.
“I cannot see a world where serving Tallu is at odds with my desire to save my home,” I said. In the dark, there was a rough squawking sound, a seal’s bark that was answered in kind.
“I often wondered if your mother and Yor?mu were doing you a disservice by cloistering you and your sister,” Irad?o said. “Had they damaged you somehow? I think they have.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It is late,” Irad?o said. “Soon it will be morning. Sleep well, cousin.”
She turned without answering my question, waving a hand when I called after her. I stared out at the dark water when she was gone, listening to the small noises of life around me until I heard the sound of another bell marking the hour. Then I went below deck, finding Tallu asleep still.
As I lay next to him, my body still cold from the night air, I could feel my stomach clenching as I acknowledged that Irad?o was right: there might come a time when my loyalty split between Tallu and the north, and I needed to choose one over the other.
And when that happened, I wasn’t sure which one I would choose.
The change in the coastline happened gradually.
The Imperium’s rolling hills and grassy beaches grew speckled with trees whose long branches trailed down to the ground.
The land itself became pockmarked by inlets and estuaries, the trees losing their uprightness, their branches dripping with green leaves that reached for the water.
The first islands of Tavornai were nothing more than hard, dark, charred things.
The land had been poisoned and the trees burned.
Nothing could grow on the islands for at least one generation.
Tallu and I, side by side, observed the landscape while Irad?o stayed on the top deck near the wheel and the sailors and soldiers bustled around us.
Once, the elven kingdom had been a rich swampland with an archipelago curling around the land, as though the sea and land had simply become one, interchangeable. It was said that the elven trees had held magic and could be shaped to grow anything an elf desired.
If Forsaith had been known for its orchards and vineyards, its harvests that easily fed four nations, and Krustau had been known for its gems and jewels, sung free from stone and ready to sit on the brow of any king, Tavornai had been known for its clever machines, the endless knowledge of elves who lived too long lives and had little else to do with their time but create.
And then the Imperium had burned the elder trees that held all the knowledge of centuries and could just as easily bloom cogs and machine-workings as they could flowers.
Irad?o leaned forward, whispering to a sea bird on her shoulder, and the creature ruffled its feathers, making a cranky sound as Terror spat curses at it from the rigging.
“Foul thing! It thinks it deserves the same meals as us for nothing! Seagulls are filthy creatures and are as pathetic as rats.”
“I like a good rat,” Ratcatcher said. “Tasty when they’re plump or thin. Tasty all around.”
Dawn said nothing but eyed the sea bird disdainfully. She swooped down, landing on my shoulder. “The sailors say they can’t sail into the swamp. They’ve heard the plants will come alive and eat their ships like leviathans of the deep sea.”
She had spoken loudly, and I reached into my pocket, fishing out a strip of dried meat. Throwing back her head, she swallowed it whole.
“Do some scouting.” I scanned the islands, the blackened earth and charred trees not giving way to new growth.
I knew it was the Imperium’s habit to poison the soil—there was a reason that Forsaith would never grow their orchards again—but Tavornai’s annual rains should have washed away some of it.
There should be some hint of green on the ground.
“Am I looking for anything in particular?” Dawn pecked gently just above my ear.
From the rigging, Terror made an annoyed sound, his voice loud, screaming about betrayal.
“We are looking for imperials living here. House Chaliko.” I turned toward Tallu as I spoke, making it look as though I was addressing him.
The Chaliko family had once given sanctuary to surviving blood mages and paid steeply for the mercy by being sent into exile in Tavornai. They should be able to help us.
Dawn pecked at my hairline again then pushed off my shoulder, flapping toward land. Terror and Ratcatcher followed her, leaving me and Tallu on the deck.
Around us, sailors slowly stopped their work as we drifted further into Tavornai.
Fog began as a whisper of fingers just above the ocean, and by the time we reached the larger islands, it had become thick. Even squinting, I could barely see more than two arm-lengths beyond the side of the ship.
Ours was not the vanguard ship; we were tucked safely in the middle, which was the only reason we survived.
Up ahead, there was a crunching sound followed by a crash. The man acting as captain shouted for the ship to stop, the call going out to our small fleet.
Sailors rushed to drop the anchor, and the massive chain rang loudly, echoing against obstructions made invisible by the fog.