Chapter 25
The fortunate thing about Griff being with Jevryn was that he, unlike her other father, understood the importance of maintaining written communication when the option was available.
So when she woke the next morning, she found her companion journal had a message in it.
It was written by Jevryn, since this set of companion journals had been designed for him and her, which meant only the two of them could read or write in them, but it was written at Griff’s behest.
Arradin would like me to inform you that we are “working things out” and he would prefer to remain here a few more days, if possible, to spare you the more indelicate side of my moods. I should like to state, for the sake of fairness, that his own moods are quite capable of indelicacy.
Nyx shook her head and wrote back: Take your time. We’re all okay here.
After showering and eating breakfast, she and Tristen headed to the Warlock’s shop.
Nyx had been surprised at how readily Ankira agreed to let Nyx bring Tristen to talk with Tobi, though the reason why became apparent as soon as they walked into the shop.
After Ankira paused in surprise when she saw Tristen, the same way everyone who’d known Seth did, she told him, “Whatever she wants you to do, you don’t have to do it. ”
Tristen shot Nyx a sideways glance. “I take it you two aren’t on the best terms?”
“We are not,” Ankira answered.
Tristen was still looking at Nyx. She sighed. “When Jevryn A-Morridahn threatens someone’s entire family on my behalf, it doesn’t tend to endear me to them.”
That wasn’t the whole of it, but it was the easiest explanation she could give.
Harder to explain that she’d thought of Ankira as a friend, and yet when her memory had been fracturing, Ankira’s first response had been to ask Nyx to give up the Guardian post so as not to disrupt Earth Between, and she’d threatened to go over Nyx’s head if she didn’t.
Harder to explain that Nyx had then had to explain that going over her head would be a very bad idea.
Nyx thought they might have been able to come back from that eventually, but then she’d portaled into Ankira’s shop, grief-stricken and not thinking about what she was doing.
Ankira knew too much about her, now, and Jevryn had seen to it that she wouldn’t open her mouth about it.
But he’d done that in a way that had made Ankira feel helpless to protect her own family and it was, ultimately, because of Nyx.
“Come with me,” Ankira told Tristen. When Nyx went to follow them, she added, “You stay.”
Nyx looked at Tristen. “Are you comfortable with that?”
He looked a little unsure as he nodded, but Nyx thought that was more about speaking with the Congregation after all this time than it was about her not being there.
“I’ll be at Cain’s Confections when you’re finished.
” They’d passed the place on their way to the Warlock’s, so he knew where it was.
Once Tristen and Ankira disappeared into the back workshop, Nyx left.
She didn’t think she would ever be able to stand in the Warlock’s shop again and not think about the worst day of her life.
And she didn’t want to think about it anymore.
She walked into Cain’s and was acutely aware of the place going silent.
One second people were talking and laughing, utensils clattering against plates, and the next second it all stopped as people took a moment to collectively stare at her.
After a moment they went back to what they were doing, even if the conversations were a little more muted than before.
She forced a smile to her lips and walked to the counter.
Before Seth’s death she’d made a habit of coming to Earth Between regularly, a habit that had abruptly ended when she’d disappeared for six months.
Word had gotten around in that time. Everyone here knew why she’d turned into a recluse.
Everyone here knew who was missing from her side.
She’d avoided coming into Earth Between since she’d returned to the Station so she could avoid exactly this response.
But she had to jump over the hurdle at some point.
Big, burly Cain stood behind the counter, and she could have hugged him when the only thing he said was: “Usual?”
Her “usual” was a dozen of whatever he thought had turned out best that day. She nodded, waiting as he boxed up a powder-dusted pastry oozing a bright blue fruit filling. When she went to pay, he stopped her.
“On the house.” He slid the box across the counter, but kept his hand on it. His voice lowered. “I was sorry to hear about Seth. We all were. He was a good man.”
“Yeah. He was.” And for the first time, her throat didn’t tighten when she talked about him.
“You need anything, you let us know.”
“I will. Thanks.” She took the box when he lifted his hand and went to sit at one of the tables outside. She put the box on the table, pulled her feet into the chair and hook her arms around her legs, chin resting on her knees, and watched the world go by.
The wind blew. The birds sang. People walked and shopped and went about their jobs. Life rolled on, here and on a hundred other planets. She watched it all and felt a sliver of her natural curiosity return.
Why was the Dresidian man she could see through the window of the clothing shop across the street having such a difficult time deciding between blue or green for a shirt color?
What made-up game were the four kids laughing and chasing each other around down the street playing?
What was the girl at the table next to her sketching?
What would people wonder about Nyx, if they noticed her sitting here? She watched it all, and she imagined, and she wondered who she would be in a month, a year, a decade. Wondered what the universe would be.
“I don’t know if a table can support two people thinking this hard,” Tristen said dryly, slipping into the seat across from her. He looked lighter, as if speaking with the Congregation had lifted something heavy from him.
Nyx knocked on the top of the sturdy wooden table. “They’re from Cressida’s down the street. She has a hundred-year guarantee on all of her carpentry.”
Tristen’s eyebrows went up. “Is she going to be around if a table gives up the ghost in year ninety-nine?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure.” She hadn’t figured out what branch of base Human Cressida was, and it wasn’t polite to ask. “But at any rate, I don’t think the table’s going to collapse.”
He made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, but didn’t say anything. After a minute went by, she asked, “Should I brace myself for disappointment?”
He started to answer her, then looked around them. “I guess we should probably take a walk.”
She took that as a hopeful sign, since a simple no wouldn’t require the privacy afforded by the Station’s grounds. But it clearly wasn’t a simple yes for the same reason.
“You’re thinking about it?” she guessed when they finally crossed back onto Kaliaris’s grounds.
“If you explain how you plan to handle the fallout of the Stations disappearing, and if I buy it, then I’ll do this.”
She blew out a breath. She had a lot of work to do. But she had a chance now. “I thought you didn’t want to rejoin the Congregation.”
“I didn’t.” A pause. “I still don’t. They serve an important function. They keep us from getting lost in the lives we save. They take the memories and feelings of others from us, so we can just be who we are.
“But I’ve had to learn to separate that for myself, and though it’s hard and I don’t like it, I can. I don’t need them. So even if they could reintegrate me—and I’ve seen what they want to try and I’m not convinced it will work—I won’t do it. I won’t put my life in their hands again.
“I’m free. I’m the only Shaman in the universe who is.
” He exhaled heavily. “And if anyone outside the Congregation and the Shamans ever discovers that, I’ll be hunted down and killed.
So I figure it’s probably a good idea if I stick close to all of the people who also have vested interests in not being discovered for who or what they are. ”
“That makes sense,” Nyx said slowly. “But you don’t have to help us to hang out with us. You may not be aware of this, but I’m somewhat known as a collector of lost causes. Just tell me you have nowhere else to go, and I’ll let you keep your room.”
He snorted as they reached the Station’s front porch and stopped. Nyx leaned against a support beam and Tristen shoved his hands in his pockets.
“I’ll take the room, but as for the other…
when Shamans heal someone, we don’t just get glimpses of who they are.
For the time we’re connected, we understand who they are.
Completely. It’s why some people would rather die than be healed by one of us, and why before the Council developed their internal Shamanic corp, it wasn’t uncommon for some people to attempt to kill us after we saved their lives.
Others are so prejudiced against races they view as lesser that if a Shaman heals someone from that race, some people view them as tainted. ”
Nyx remembered when Kalvar had broken his ankle on Arkadia, and how he’d tried to stop Tobi from healing him. Not because he had a problem with Shamans, but because he’d been certain that healing him would ruin Tobi’s life.
“For most Shamans, that knowledge isn’t as long-lived as people suspect. It flows through them and the Congregation takes it, and so long as they don’t keep healing the same person over and over, that sense of connection fades.
“I don’t have the Congregation. What I feel and what I learn, it lingers with me and I have to bury it or force it out. I remember you and Kaliaris and Griff.”
Nyx couldn’t lie to herself and say that the thought of someone knowing her when she hadn’t chosen for them to do so didn’t disconcert her. She understood now why Jevryn had refused Tristen’s help. But she also understood that Tristen hadn’t chosen this burden for himself.
“I understand what Kaliaris and Griff have been through.
Which means I understand what all of the Stations and Avatars have been through.
And I understand that Guardians, when they become so, are chosen from the desperate, so that they will never think to look past their good fortune to ask what makes their life possible.
“I understand what it’s like to be beholden to something you didn’t choose. So I’ll do this.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say.
He smiled and opened the Station’s front door. “Don’t thank me yet. You still have to wow me with logistics.”
“Right,” she muttered. Bryn Morrigan was just going to love it when Nyx showed up on her doorstep. But that was a problem for another day.