Chapter 10 Please
The Smuarhiel were the first to shape the cosmos.
From the sun, moon, stars, sea, wind, and seasons, their great houses rose—divine families who ruled over the vast domains of Skoyr and the realm of men, Hlódyn.
In their shadow came the Aestrein, the Lesser Gods, who claimed dominion over subtler lines: beauty, luck, whispers, vengeance, and more.
Though deemed trivial by their elders, their influence wove itself into the fabric of mortal life.
Together, they formed the divine order—an uneasy pantheon whose quarrels shape both gods and men.
–Excerpt from the forbidden 'Anatole Text', written by the Crimson Scholar
His.I stare out over the plains from the back of one of the wagons, feeling every bump and shift in the road.
The irons have become heavy and so have my eyelids.
I close them and try to imagine what the day would have looked like if I'd made it to Cinder on time.
If I'd been out in the mines or fields, earning a day's wage instead of whispering with Morgana in the Muddy Crow.
I want to curse her vagueness and myself for rushing in so quickly without thinking. The crown piece is left behind and buried. Soon I'll be a sea away, no closer to it than I was yesterday morning.
But closer to the other two—and if by some gleaming twist of fate I manage both and survive to get back….
Rowan's shoulder bumps against mine and her hiss of pain breaks through my overly ambitious thoughts. She sits up, rubbing at her eyes. "You didn't sleep?"
I shake my head. "Couldn't." I glance at the pirates astride the horses that flank our wagon.
The gray haired twins, strapped to the teeth with pistols and blades, and a ruddy skinned man who wears a brown hat that's seen better days.
They didn't sleep either, and I'd bet my last eyrir Crow told them to watch us like hawks.
"I wonder where we're going." Rowan twists slightly in her seat to stare around at the landscape.
We've been following the steep cliff edge through the night. The water below laps menacingly against a gray sky, heavy with the promise of a storm. Every other direction is brown stretching plains that give way to purplish mountains in the distance. Given the cove’s proximity to the border, I'm not sure we're even in Ethiyra anymore.
"He said something about a ship," I whisper, because one of the twins has picked up his mount's pace, coming within earshot of anything louder.
Now I'm the one turning to glance ahead of us, past Sabre, who's driving the wagon.
Rhyland Crow sits astride the massive black mare Harlow tried to run with me on.
I recognize it as Solomon's. She's beautiful, a worthy choice for a leader, wasted on her previous owner.
"My guess is he's trying to get out of Helgate, maybe out of Ethirya entirely, to a border country with a harbor city where he can buy a ship before the Magistrate catches up.
" The thought turns my blood cold. A clearer head now tells me I wouldn't willingly set foot on such a thing, despite what I might have briefly considered.
It's just a matter of biding my time to find an ideal moment to get away with Rowan in tow.
There has to be another way to retrieve the other pieces after she's safely brought back to the city.
But…if he's destroyed the Nightingale, that means he must have his crown piece with him. I could swipe it soon, while he sleeps. They'll have to stop eventually, won't they?
I take a moment to wrack my brain. The Sons of Serenity tutored us in geography.
This was an effort to demonstrate how far the new faith, Centurism, was reaching and the efforts of the crusaders fighting the holy war, dubbed the Divine Reformation, to convert the resisting nations: Staygia, Godror, and Eclen.
Ethiyra's neighboring country, Triel, had fallen to the will of the imperial magistrate, and the new faith that came with it, over a decade ago.
They proved an effective buffer between us and a hostile Eclen, but in the last year rogue Vagril, members of the old faith, slipped through, wreaking havoc on the border villages. Raiding farms. Burning churches.
"You're making your scheming face." Rowan feigns a cough when she speaks, covering her mouth so the pirates can't read her lips in the growing dawn.
"Am I?"
She nods. "Same face you'd make when you were about to give the Sisters a run for their eyrir."
I smirk at that. "Some of my fondest memories."
Her lips mold into a frown. "We need to be careful, Vale. These pirates are all Vagril, savage and ruthless. They truly think Crow is a god. They'll do whatever he says."
I almost chuckle but bite the inside of my cheek instead.
She's lived a sheltered life at Blossom House.
The Sisters and Sons would have us think anything and everything was death incarnate to keep us in line.
Children who were placed in their care at a young age like hers had no chance to believe anything else.
These men are dangerous, but not because they're Vagril— because they're pirates.
There's no point in saying this out loud. Not here, not now. Instead I nod absently and continue to watch the men around us. Thinking. Waiting. It's only a matter of time before one of them let their defenses down. Then, we run.
I've started to drift in and out of broken, dream filled sleep. But not dreams at all, really—memories. Vivid ones that feel real as the time lived.
My fever raged, a wildfire within my thin, wasting frame.
Each breath was a rasp, each heavy blink a dizzying swirl of the dim room the Sisters had quarantined me off into.
The sick room they called it—it stunk, bad, like unwashed bodies, decay, and a mix of vinegar and citrus they probably used to clean between the dead and dying.
Outside, the winter wind howled, a constant, mournful cry in tempo with the ache in my bones.
All I could do was shiver under the raggedy sweat laced blanket and wonder.
Wonder what human illness finally caught up with me.
It’d been impossible to harvest herbs for Móeir’s tonic from the meadowy edges of the city—nothing grew under layers of bitter ice and sludge.
The apothecaries were far too expensive this time of season, even in the Slags.
It was not the pox, I’d surmised with some measure of relief.
I’d seen what that disease could do, how it devoured its host from the inside out.
There were no telltale red or black spots on my skin, no rim of putrid green surrounding them.
No slobbering or festering or coughing up black puss.
Still, I lay there, a ghost of myself, ears ringing faintly beneath the matted strands of my hair.
The Sisters of Silence had found me on the streets, a frozen waif they mistook for a child half my age.
My small stature, a consequence of a year spent near starving, had been my temporary salvation. But I knew it wouldn't last.
A shadow fell across my bed. Not a Sister, but a girl. Slender, with eyes as dark and wary as a winter sky.
“I’m Rowan,” she whispered, creeping closer. "They say you're sick. Sick with something they have no name for." Her voice was barely audible above the wind.
My lips were cracked and dry, but I still managed to part them and croak. "They'll name it soon enough. When the physician gets here and looks me over."
I’d heard them, the Mothers Three, whispering to each other after they’d paid two beggars a few copper eyrir to lug me in from the cold, bundled tight but half frozen.
They wouldn’t touch me—not yet. Not before a physician came with their bird-like mask to make sure whatever I had wouldn’t kill them all.
After that they would test me with iron, to make sure I wasn’t one of the slaves, nymphs.
To ensure there was no magick flowing through my blood.
Rowan's eyes widened. "The inspection. The iron...they say it burns nymphs. Like fire. Makes the worst pain. Steals their magick."
I nodded, a faint tremor running through me. I wasn’t afraid of iron; it had never done much more than irritate my skin if I held it too long. But the moment they saw my pointed ears, the ones I tried so hard to tuck out of sight under a cap or my thick hair, they’d realize.
I didn’t know why I should trust her—why I’d give myself away before I was even truly found out.
Maybe because she was brave. Small, tiny, but determined.
Fearless seeming, coming into a sick room despite what she could catch and what I’d heard the Mother’s Three threaten to do to any of the children who set foot over the threshold.
My shaking fingers lifted on their own, tucking frozen strands of chestnut hair back to reveal my ears fine point.
Not nearly as dramatic looking as a full blooded nymph, but there was no denying I was other. Not human.
"They'll know. The iron won’t hurt me; I’m a halfling, my father was human. But my ears will give me away."
To Rowan’s credit, her voice didn’t even warble and she actually inched closer when she asked, "What will they do?"
A brutal cough wracked my body, my voice a stale, dry whisper.
"Send me to the Magistrate I expect. Maybe worse.
" Another cough. "I need my màma's potion; it’ll cure me so I can get strong and run.
But the herbs—nightshade berries, bitter yarrow stem, dowl flower, and vervain leaves… they don't grow in this cold."