Nine
Zidra
A benefit to staying at West Quarter Haven was that the rengiri who stayed here didn’t tend to be late-night revelers. I paused outside the front door and listened. Only quiet met my ears. I eased the door open and crept into the common room. Dying coals in the fireplace provided a dim illumination to empty couches and chairs.
Good. The last thing I wanted to do was tell anyone, least of all Sajen, where I’d been and what had happened.
I didn’t even want to think about what had happened.
Weariness dragged down my steps. I passed through the common room and turned down the hallway that ran perpendicular to the front entrance. A half dozen doors lined the back wall, leading to the sleeping quarters. Each small room had a washbasin and changing area hidden behind a dressing screen, and two cots stacked on top of each other on the other side of the room. Even during the Dawning Festival, West Quarter Haven wasn’t full. Only four of the rooms had two occupants. All of them were rengiri who traveled together as partners and were used to sharing a room, which thankfully left one of the remaining two rooms for me to have to myself.
None of the candles in the hallway were lit, so I ran my hand along the wall to count doors. When I reached the door on the far end, I went still. The scent of shifter and ale drifted from within, but it wasn’t my scent—nor had I drunk any ale. I pressed my ear to the door and heard quiet breathing.
Had an exhausted rengir forgotten which room he was staying in? Or perhaps a rengir had been visiting friends and decided it was too late or she was a little too tipsy to return to whichever Haven she had been staying at?
Or was another assassin lurking in my room?
The slow, even cadence of the intruder’s breathing sounded like someone sleeping. Perhaps a good assassin could fake that, though, to fool shifter hearing.
I leaned back and drew my sword, then eased open the door. The hinges creaked.
A grunt and shuffling accompanied someone moving on the bottom cot. My upper lip curled. That was my bed.
But then, past the scent of ale, I caught a familiar scent. “Sajen?”
“Zidra?” my friend asked in a groggy rasp. “Why don’t you have a light?”
“Didn’t think I needed one.” I slammed my sword back into its sheath. “Didn’t think there would be someone in my bed.”
His hearty laugh reminded me of some of my best days at Harcos. Most of the other students had loved Sajen for his sense of humor and vibrant personality. I’d loved him because he hadn’t treated me with suspicion and had taught me more ways to fight from the air, even though wyvern and gryphon anatomy and flight differed. He’d believed in me in a way no one else had—except for maybe Kyrundar, but I didn’t want to think about him right now.
“Istraiah came by and brought his cousin. His cousin drank too much and passed out, and Istraiah didn’t want to carry him to his home on the other side of the city, so I put them both in my room.”
I leaned against the doorframe. “And you’re in my bed because?”
“Because I weigh twice what you do. I have a fear of collapsing the top cot and crushing the poor rengir beneath me in the most ignoble death imaginable.”
I snorted. It was always difficult to stay upset with Sajen. “How considerate.” I pushed off the doorframe and felt my way to the small end table, where I fumbled to find the lamp and light it. “Sorry for waking you.”
The lamp flared to life, casting Sajen’s deep-brown skin in an orange glow and reflecting in his dark eyes. He sat hunched on the edge of the cot with his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced. His gaze studied my face for a moment before dropping to my bandaged arm.
“I’m glad you did. I’ve been worried since Kyrundar came here looking for you and Aigider told him you were meeting someone at the Grivolen ruins.”
A rumble of a growl caught in my chest. “So that’s how he found me.”
Sajen lifted a bushy eyebrow. “Kyr looked troubled when he left.” He pointed at my wound. “Seems we were right to be worried. What happened, Zee?”
I winced. Only Kyrundar and Sajen called me that, and Sajen had picked it up from Kyrundar. “Ilifir happened,” I muttered. “Look, I’m exhausted, so I’m going to get changed and go to sleep.”
“Hm.” Sajen closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose before looking at me again. “You reek, wyveri. Like you traipsed through a sewer, used antiseptic, and then cuddled with an ice elf.”
“Excuse me?” I exclaimed.
“You smell of ice elf magic. What happened at Grivolen?”
For several long moments, we stared at each other. Me willing him to give up, Sajen returning my glare without budging. Finally, I groaned.
“You’re not going to let me sleep until I tell you, are you?”
In response, he just grinned.
“Fine. But I wasn’t joking about being exhausted.” I snatched up the lamp and went to my pack. While I pulled out my nightclothes and changed behind the dressing screen, I explained the evening as succinctly as possible. Still, I had tucked myself into the top bunk before I finished the awful tale.
“Now I don’t know what to do. I should inform the governor about Castle Grivolen being a den of iniquity, and I have to find Gautindar Rouven, but as for the rest… The three attackers, the corpses being retrieved so quickly, it has to mean I was right. Magistrate Nevros’s death was no accident. Worse, whoever is behind this must have a long reach. Yet I have nothing solid to go on, and I can’t shift until this ice curse is removed. By the time that’s done, the trail will be too obscured to follow.”
I threw my arm over my eyes. “Will you douse the lamp?”
The cots shook as Sajen got up to put out the lamp and then settled back into bed. “I’ll speak to Governor Cline regarding your concerns about Grivolen. If you give me descriptions of your attackers, I can look into it while you and Kyr deal with the ice curse.”
I removed my arm from my face. “I can’t ask you to—”
“You don’t need to ask. I’m offering.”
Pressure rose in my chest. “Thank you, but I can’t accept. I started this. I can see it through without help.”
Sajen was silent for several moments. “Do you need to, though?”
I was so offended I almost sat up, but thankfully I remembered I would hit my head. “What kind of rengir would I be if I didn’t?”
“A normal one?” Sajen chuckled. “I’ve been telling you since Harcos, Zidra. Accepting help doesn’t invalidate your hard work.”
Of course it did, but I’d never won this argument at the Academy. I had proof now, though. “If that were true, I wouldn’t have been humiliated today.”
“Humiliated?” I could hear Sajen’s frown. “All of us get hit now and then—”
“At the ceremony.”
“The…ceremony.” Sajen’s bed creaked. “You felt humiliated while receiving the highest honor in the empire because you had to share the moment with Kyr?”
“Not because I had to share!” Well, a little bit, but that wasn’t the point. “Kyrundar even told me he doesn’t believe I could have earned the Emperor’s Merit on my own, well, merit. If I had never allowed Kyrundar to keep attaching himself to me, maybe I would have been awarded the Merit by myself. Or maybe I would have been watching him receive it on his own. Either way, it would have been because that was what I, on my own, deserved. I should fly or fall on my own. Now I’ll never know if I’m worthy.”
That was the real reason this heartbond couldn’t remain. I couldn’t live forever in Kyrundar Ilifir’s shadow.
“Oh, Zidra,” Sajen said with a sigh. “You are worthy of your accomplishment. And working with others is a strength, not a weakness. We all need others. Rengiri were never meant to perform our duty in isolation. Iskyr made all people for friendships and connection, for mutual help and community.”
“Rengiri also swear not to burden the Order or the empire,” I reminded him. “And Iskyr does not approve of slothfulness.”
“Zidra Eilmaris.” Sajen’s tone took on a warning edge. “ There is a difference between refusing to do a task that you have the ability, opportunity, and calling to do because you simply don’t want to do the work, and accepting help with a task you do not have the ability or opportunity to do or have not been called to.”
That was logical, I supposed, but I didn’t like it.
“Furthermore, there is an independence that comes from resourcefulness and maturity, and there is a stubborn independence born of pride. The first kind accepts help when needed. The second places your own need for validation over Iskyr’s will and others’ betterment.”
He moved again, and the stacked cots vibrated. His decision to take the bottom cot had been wise. “What is the calling of the rengiri?”
“‘Forsaking all selfish ambition, we will sacrifice our comfort and, if so called, our lives, to protect those who cannot protect themselves,’” I recited. The words had become rote, but now they tasted bitter on my tongue.
“Which matters more, then: your ability to fly or fall on your own, or protecting the empire? You cannot properly fulfill your rengir warrior duties while injured. ‘We see to our needs so that we may have the strength to serve.’ Therefore, you must first remove the ice curse. Yet you’re right it’s also your duty to be concerned about illicit activities and possible assassins. Now, what do our vows say? Do they say ‘I’ or ‘we’?”
“We,” I mumbled.
“What is to be our relationship with others in the Order? ”
“‘We strive together in unity, treating each other as brother and sister, seeking peace amongst ourselves.’”
Perhaps I had gone too long without meditating on my oaths. I believed myself at peace with the rengiri—other than Kyrundar, perhaps—but was traveling and doing my duty alone truly striving together ? I’d assumed it was enough to be together in spirit. I doubted Sajen would agree with that interpretation, so I didn’t voice it.
Sajen hummed approval. “ We are to protect the people in cooperation. You and I fulfill our vows in aiding each other. I will deal with Grivolen and investigate these attackers until you return. Agreed?”
Everything in me wanted to argue. Yet my mind was too slowed by weariness to find a coherent counterpoint. Nor did a compelling reason to reject Sajen’s offer appear to me.
I sighed. “All right. Thank you. But keep the investigation quiet—I don’t want to cause a panic when I have no evidence. And the new magistrate might have told me to give up the investigation. I don’t want him to accuse the Order of harassment or undermining his authority.”
“Why do you love to complicate things, Zee? All right. You have my word, but in return, you must make me a promise.”
“What?” I scarcely breathed as I awaited his demands.
“Seek unity, peace, and togetherness with Kyrundar as you travel together. Ask Iskyr to help you. I believe you will find you have misjudged him.”
As if. Still, to deny his request would be rude at best, a denial of my vows at worst. “I promise to do my best to follow your advice.”