16. Valerian
Valerian
We put distance between us and the Oracle’s pond before any of us speaks, and when we finally do, it’s me, because someone has to say the size of the thing out loud. Saying the size of things is my job.
“She’s right,” I tell them, low, while Tabby walks a little ahead, lost in her own thoughts.
“About the Sorcerers. I felt it when the realm reopened. We all did, that first day, the Gatekeeper coming through, warning us. We chose not to believe it because it was easier to fight one grief-mad Demon than a whole world. But it’s true.
They’re coming back to finish the sealing. ”
“Then we’ve been fighting the wrong war,” Azaan says grimly. “This whole time. Mordecai, the book, we thought that was the war. It’s a skirmish. It’s the thing in front of the thing.”
“Yes.”
“How bad?” Luka asks. “The Sorcerers. You keep flinching when you say it. In three centuries I’ve not seen much make you flinch.”
I choose my words, because they deserve the truth and not the comfort.
“The last time the Sorcerers moved against this realm, they didn’t fight Tabeitha’s armies.
They didn’t need to. They unmade the border and folded the whole of Sanguisca, every fortress, every demon, all of us, into a book, and shut it.
That’s what they do. They don’t conquer.
They erase. A realm of heat and desire is a wound in their tidy cold world, and they close wounds.
” I let that sit. “We are, all of us, standing here because they decided once that we shouldn’t exist. And now they’ve noticed we’re out of the drawer, and they’ll decide it again. ”
The silence that follows is the worst kind, the kind where four very dangerous creatures all understand at once that they might not be dangerous enough.
“So we can’t fight them,” Luka says slowly. “Not the way we fight everything else.”
“Not the way we fight anything else,” I agree.
“Force doesn’t work on a thing whose whole nature is unmaking force.
The only thing that ever held them off was a claimed realm and a Queen strong enough to be a wound too big to close.
” I glance at Tabby’s back, at the small determined shape of her walking through hell like she owns it, which she nearly does now.
“Which means everything comes down to her. Her throne. Her claiming it fully. It’s not just about Tabeitha anymore, or the book, or Mordecai.
It’s the only defence this realm has ever had, and she’s the only one who can raise it. ”
“That’s a lot to put on a woman who’s died twice and is being eaten alive by a ghost,” Azaan says quietly.
“I know.” It sits in me like a stone. “I know exactly how much it is. Which is why we don’t tell her all of it at once.
We get her the book. We get her the throne.
We deal with Mordecai and Tabeitha because we have to, because they’re in the road.
And we pray she’s ready to be a wound too big to close by the time the cold arrives, because if she isn’t. ” I don’t finish it.
“She will be,” Gavriel says. Flat. Certain. The most words he’s offered all day. “She always gets up. It’s the truest thing about her. She’ll get up for this too.”
I look at him, my stoic brother, and I find I believe him, because he’s rarely wrong about her, and because the alternative is unbearable.
“Then let’s get her home,” I say, “and make a Queen out of the bravest woman in any realm, before the cold comes to switch us all off.”
We walk on. Ahead of us, Tabby laughs at something, throwing a grin back over her shoulder, and the four of us smile at her without letting her see the weight we’ve just set down between us.
She carries enough. This part, the size of it, the fear of it, we carry for her.
That’s the job. Until she’s ready to carry the realm itself.
Soon. It has to be soon. The cold is already coming.