Chapter 74
SEVENTY-FOUR
You are taking too long to write to me, my Queen.
And you are too impatient, my Empress. There is so still much to clean and heal and fix inside my city.
Mine too, but it is much easier when I know I will see you. Please visit again.
The Truce Summit is next week. I will see you there.
Do not make me wait an entire week, Vivia.
I thought you were busy negotiating between the Baedyeds and the Sand Sea dwellers. You told me just yesterday that you had no time to eat or sleep. I certainly don’t.
Yes, but you are much more important to me than eating or sleeping.
And I imagine you are blushing now, in that very sweet way that you do.
Don’t pretend I am the only one who blushes, my Queen. You’re much more forthcoming in these letters than in person.
I am trying, you know.
I do know, and I do appreciate. And I would like to show that appreciation in person. Please. Is it not better for both our peoples if we are at our strongest? And I am always strongest when I see you. I can send Windwitches for you, if you have none to spare.
Cam will take me on Aurora. Although he keeps sneaking off, thinking I don’t realize he’s got himself a lover somewhere.
Is that a yes, then? You will come?
Did you really think I would refuse? You, who are the Chosen of the Fire Well?
Tease all you want, Vivia, but I can never tell with you. I was trained my whole life to win arguments, yet I think my tutors would despair if they knew how much trouble I have convincing you to do anything.
Well, your tutors need not despair quite yet. Because you’ll see me tomorrow. It’ll be late, though. After sunset.
And I will, as always, wait up for you.
Stacia Sotar had been watching Vivia for only several moments from the doorway, but it had been more than enough time to know Vivia was not writing a simple missive to her vizers or commands to her admirals.
She was writing to the Empress of Marstok, and seeing that much pleasure on Vivia’s face …
Well, Stix might as well pour some salt on the wound that had brought her here in the first place.
She cleared her throat, prompting Vivia to whirl about. Her desk chair creaked. Then her eyes popped wide as she spotted Stix at her bedroom door.
Her face drained of color, and she stood so fast, her chair fell with a scraping thump.
“Noden hang me, is this real?” Vivia’s voice was pitchy and strained. It was night outside, so her bedroom’s lanterns guttered shadows across her sun-browned skin. “Is that really you, Stix?”
“Hye, Your Majesty. It’s me.” Stix shut the door behind her.
She wasn’t at all surprised to find Vivia’s bedroom unchanged since she’d last been here, despite so much transformation—for better and worse—throughout Nubrevna.
And in four steps, Stix had crossed to the center of the same threadbare rug beside the same iris-blue bed she remembered.
There was a new trinket here, though, added to Vivia’s desk: a single iron shackle with a dangling chain.
And as much as Stix might tell herself that the reason she’d avoided Vivia in the three weeks since the Great Collapse was because she’d needed to reconnect with the other Six—or at least those that remained …
That hadn’t been the full truth.
And now, Stix couldn’t pretend otherwise.
She dropped to one knee, her fist coming to her heart and head bowing. It forced Vivia to draw up short three paces away. And more importantly, it set the tone—or so Stix hoped—for the conversation to come.
Stix didn’t need to look up to know her queen’s shoulders would be rising. That Vivia’s face would be hardening as she tried to paste on a royal visage.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner, my Queen.” Stix didn’t lift her head. “Duties called me away.”
An incredulous exhale. Stix could imagine Vivia’s shoulders climbing even higher.
“You’re a hero,” Vivia said. “This city wouldn’t be standing if not for you, Stix. And everyone has been searching for you for weeks. Your father, the navy, Cam, and I … I have been searching for you for weeks. No, for months.” Vivia claimed a step closer.
But Stix couldn’t make herself look up. Not yet. She couldn’t meet Vivia’s dark eyes, for it would kill her resolve.
So instead, Stix ground her molars and stared at the rug’s crisscross pattern. “I’m sorry I left you without any warning or explanation. I wasn’t…” Stix swallowed. “I wasn’t myself, and there were things—surprises, really—that I had to take care of.”
“You mean joining forces with the Raider King.”
Now Stix was the one to exhale sharply. “It’s not easy to explain, but yes, Your Majesty. It was the right thing to do, joining with him.”
“He tried to destroy our city.” The venom in Vivia’s voice startled Stix. So much so that she finally looked up.
Only to discover Vivia bearing down. One step. Two. Before Vivia dropped to her knees in front of Stix.
Stix felt herself squint, although she didn’t need to. She wore new spectacles from the Sightwitch Sister Convent, and she didn’t need to strain to see mere inches away. But it was as if the unblurred truth of Vivia was too much for her.
There was a new scar over Vivia’s left eyebrow. A cut, too, that hadn’t finished healing across her chin. But it was the expression itself that was most different. Old Vivia would never have done this—come so near. Worn such feeling upon her face.
Which is even more proof of why you cannot stay here. Because you weren’t the one to peel away her mask.
Stix felt her entire abdomen solidify, like magma suddenly doused by the sea. Because she knew it was true—which also meant she was absolutely doing the right thing. She had made the right call; she simply needed to follow through.
“The Raider King tried to destroy Nubrevna,” Vivia said. “Yet somehow going to his banner was the right thing?”
“It is not easy to explain—”
“And you’re not even trying.” Vivia rocked back until her feet were beneath her.
Until she was shooting once more upright and stalking away.
It was such real, visceral anger that radiated off her, and Stix couldn’t help but notice that—unlike when Vivia had performed her rage countless times for admirals and vizers and even her father—she was not performing now.
This was real. Vivia was seething.
And Noden hang Stix, but this conversation had too quickly spiraled from her control.
“Why did you leave?” Vivia demanded. “Why did you go to the Raider King? Why did you save this city when magic just … just disappeared from the Witchlands? And then why did you leave again before I could see you?”
Stix dug a knuckle into her temple. “These are all fair questions, and I will do my best to answer them, but—”
“No.” Water splashed from a pitcher on her desk. “No, Stix. Explain now.”
With no preamble, Stix tried—as best she could—to execute her queen’s command.
She described all that she had learned, all she had done, all she had become in the past months.
But just as Stix’s own mind had rebelled and rebelled against the truth inside her, against the Paladin soul and all its memories …
She could see Vivia doing the same.
And Stix could hardly blame her.
Eventually, it became too much. Vivia sat on the edge of her bed, while Stix remained kneeled upon the floor.
The water in the pitcher stopped its wild heaving, although it didn’t calm entirely.
And for many dragging minutes, there was only Stix’s voice—as detached and clear as she could make it—filling the bedroom.
Until Stix finally reached the end of her tale. And she finally reached the part she had come here to say: “So you see why I can’t remain in Lovats.”
Vivia swayed. Her eyes, huge and pale in the fire-lit room, looked at Stix with something that might have been horror. Might have been shock. “You will leave? Again?”
“Hye.” With careful movements, Stix pushed to her own feet. The room spun. “I told you: there are Exalted Ones still out there. And one of them … he will come back here. This city is not safe. None of the Witchlands are until I find him.”
“Why you, though?” Vivia pushed off her bed. “Just because you’re … you’re Lady Baile? A … a Paladin? Surely the Cahr Awen can do this. Or the other Paladins you spoke of. That Red Sails Admiral and the child. Leave this task to them. And stay here, Stix. Protect us here.”
Stix ground her teeth. Again, she was squinting. Again, there was no reason. But it was the only way to blunt the agony of this choice she didn’t want to make. Except you do, now that Vivia has found love with another. You don’t want to be here to watch that.
“Do you see this?” From her shirt, Stix dug out a silver chain with a vial attached. She unlooped it from her neck and held it outstretched.
And as she expected—as she’d hoped—Vivia recoiled. “Is that a finger?”
“It’s his finger. The monster who built this city. It belongs to him, as does the ring upon it. I will use these to find him.”
“How?”
“I … don’t know,” Stix answered truthfully.
“I only know that this piece of Lovats is important.” A sixth finger, she thought, as she watched it dangle next to her fist. To ward off mice.
“And until I find him, I cannot stay here, my Queen. But once I do—once Kahina and I have ended him, I’ll return. ”
“Or you will never find him and never return?” Vivia shook her head, and the water in its pitcher juddered with the same furious rhythm. But where there had been outrage on the queen’s face before, now there was only cruel indifference.
It wasn’t real. That expression. It was just a little fox putting on her mask, even as the water betrayed her true pain.
“I’m sorry.” Stix returned the chain to her neck. Then tucked the encapsulated finger back inside her shirt. “I’m more sorry than you can ever know, Vivia Nihar. But I swear to you that I will return.”
Vivia’s lips seamed shut. She turned away. The water sloshed anew. “Go,” she said toward the desk. “Go, Stix, before I say something I know I can never take back.”
Stix obeyed. It was the best path for them both, even if all she really wanted to do was fling herself at her Threadsister and beg for her to listen, to understand.
She spun on her heel. Calm, she told the water in the pitcher. Be calm and give her the peace she needs.
Stix was almost to Pin’s Keep when Kahina slunk out of an alley’s shadow. The spark of her pipe gave her away. Then the woman herself was there, her white hair tucked under a hooded cloak.
“It’s done?” she asked.
Stix nodded, finding the word hye too hard to utter. Everything hurt. Not on the outside, of course, but on the inside where pain had a way of festering long after an injury should have healed.
“I’m sorry,” Kahina said as she pulled Stix against her for a gruff—but ferocious—embrace. This was the softer side of her that she rarely showed anyone. The hearth fire instead of the inferno.
A cat purred against them as they stood there in this half-collapsed street of the Skulks, and Stix found that suddenly she was crying.
All the tears she had kept locked away during her many steps from Queen’s Hill to here now pulsed outward.
Neither physical resistance nor magical resistance would keep them dammed in.
“I’m sorry,” Kahina said again. “I did warn you.”
Stix nodded against Kahina’s shoulder. “You did.” The woman smelled of tobacco and woodsmoke. “And I know you’re right that this is for the best. For Vivia and Nubrevna—and for the Empress and Marstok too. But…”
“But,” Kahina agreed, and she finally withdrew.
Her hands moved to Stix’s biceps and she squeezed so hard it almost hurt.
“You will be tougher for this, Stacia Sotar of Nubrevna. Just as I was tougher for my own broken heart. Some wounds might be slow to heal, but all do heal eventually. And as Paladins, we have more time than most. She will age and she will die, yet you will linger on.”
Stix screwed her eyes shut. Paladin bodies didn’t live forever—although their souls did—but they still outlived most humans. There was so much magic inside them; time simply did not have the same hold.
“Now come, Stix.” Kahina released her, smoke puffing from her pipe. “Our little sister is waiting for us at the Convent, and we have so much work to do.”