34. Decisions
Decisions
T he following morning, the air was cool. Autumn had finally arrived.
Mila went out to the garden beside her room and stood in wonder for a long, long time with her bare feet in the cold dew. Back in the Highlands, it was hot year-round with the seasons alternating between wet and dry and the amount of humidity in the air being the main variable. Down here in Jeralusah, there was an actual winter season, albeit it was rather mild compared to the freezing temperatures experienced further south on the continent.
Still, the sensation of this cold air on her skin for the first time in fifteen years drew complicated memories up from the recesses of Mila’s mind.
Her mother braiding her long hair and knitting her a warm woollen cap to keep her ears warm. Her father’s bull beef stew warming them after a long, cold day in the field …
She pushed away the nostalgia and tried to focus instead on just the novelty of dry, chilled air against her tanned skin. She breathed it in deeply, letting it hit the back of her throat like soothing honey.
When she grew uncomfortable, she returned to her room and was delighted to find that the hot kitchen hearth on the other side of the stone wall, which usually made her room too hot to be in during summer days, was now the perfect accompaniment to the cool morning and warmed her room gently and invitingly.
There was a new menu in the kitchens now too. One that reflected the ongoing march of the seasons. In the peak summer heat, the food had focused on cool, light and flavoursome foods. Mila had grown used to eating cultured yoghurts with fruits and toasted nuts for most breakfasts, but now she found a thick and creamy porridge bubbling away in an enormous cast-iron cauldron, and the cook had insisted she add to her large bowl lashings of cinnamon and stewed rhubarb. It was delicious. As she ate, she pondered everything that had happened over the previous weeks, and realised she had a huge decision ahead of her.
With a full stomach and busy head, she went to the library. There, she found Culis with Flue, Tarett and Marie. The three ikarei had grown closer to one another in her absence, and they all greeted her cheerfully. Culis nodded at her when she entered but did not break from his deep conversation with Tarett, and her stomach jumped at the sight of him. He was wearing an emerald green overcoat that made his blond hair look gold. His face was alive and animated in conversation. He did not look like he’d just spent the past few weeks on the road. He looked joyful, energised and well-rested. Damn him.
“It went very well,” he was saying. “There was a lot of interest, which is obviously a very good sign. The more offers we get, the more selective I can be with the master we accept for each of you.” He caught Mila’s gaze, grinning. “Ideally, I’d not have you stuck in Mila’s position, contracted to a real bastard.”
Mila smiled back.
“Oh, the misery of Culis Manor,” Tarett lamented playfully, catching the softness in the exchange between them.
When Culis eventually left, Tarett immediately turned to her with a raised eyebrow. “Well?” he opened, with a knowing smile. “Looks like you two managed to hash out your differences.” He gave her a cheeky wink. “I don’t have your power, Mila, but even I can sense a lot less tension between you two than usual, or perhaps it’s a lot more…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mila replied, but with horror, she felt heat rising on her neck.
“Travelling alone with the handsome Christopher Culis for two weeks? Come on, Mila.” Marie joined the tease. “Don’t tell me you didn’t ease the loneliness on at least one of the nights?”
“Is that what you think we were doing?” Mila challenged.
Tarett held up his hands in mock submission. “All I know is that ever since I met you, you haven’t looked at the man without scowling, but now something in your gaze has changed.”
“You’re making all of this up.” Mila laughed, but urgently tried to change the subject. “I do suspect he may be looking at all of us a little differently now. While we were on the road, I taught him about the ikarei history.”
“What’s that mean?” Flue asked, and Mila sensed some embarrassment and shame rolling from them as Tarett and Marie exchanged looks of surprise.
“It’s okay,” she told Flue. “I didn’t know about it either for the longest time. It’s nothing to feel ashamed about. How is anyone supposed to know when we spend our whole lives surrounded by humans who are forbidden to talk about it? ”
“Ahh. Don’t you love it when you get a chance to share some important history? To really sink your teeth into the Eighth?” Tarett asked happily, rubbing his hands together.
The four of them spent the rest of the morning and the whole afternoon, with Marie leading the charge, educating Flue and researching everything about ikarei history that they could find in Culis’s extensive libraries. Admittedly, there wasn’t much, just the occasional reference or phrase here and there. Mila assumed most of the literature and true histories had been destroyed by the Church, but it was still a lovely day, one spent reminding one another of their worth and bonding the small group even closer.
Mila also wanted to use the opportunity to see if she could find any further information about Keras. She wanted to learn as much about that nation as she could, but unfortunately, with the others continually tossing Artor history books at her to thumb through, she quickly put that idea aside for another time.
Culis didn’t disturb them, and Tarett mentioned in passing that he’d been summoned to the palace on business for the day.
To her own surprise, Mila felt her stomach clench angrily at that news, knowing that it probably meant that Jezebel had summoned him and the two were together right now. The hot feeling of rage she felt at that knowledge was startling.
Dangerous.
That evening after dinner, while the sun was setting and turning the sky into art, Mila went out into the garden alone.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she listened to the soundtrack of dusk. Hounds bayed as they greeted the rising moon, the murmur behind her of sharp, but not unkind, directions being given in the kitchen, small birds whistling overhead as they prepared for sleep. A flock of bats flew from the forest and in the direction of a vineyard that Mila knew lay beyond the far hill.
The day had been wonderful. Finally home, with friends, spent reading and laughing, and a bubble of heat in her stomach that clenched painfully whenever she thought of Christopher Culis.
But days like today were not reality. Not really. And when she forced herself to consider what reality actually looked like, it really came down to three possible paths.
The first was to stick to the original plan. Flee to Keras at the first available opportunity, maybe take the other demons, including Natalee, with her. It had seemed like the best option for her when she’d first thought of it, but now, the more she dwelled on it, the more she realised that, not only was the plan fraught with danger, but its likelihood for success was very low. She’d have to steal the sister stone from Culis, escape the bustling and guarded manor somehow, trudge by foot to Traders Bay, find and free Natalee – who was somewhere on the sea with Baird – and then find a captain who either didn’t know Culis (near impossible) or who didn’t want to work with the Artor Trading Company.
Unless she somehow disguised herself, most traders would recognise her by description, if not sight, and she knew Culis wouldn’t take kindly to anyone who helped his investment escape.
Culis.
If she escaped, she knew he'd come after her… wouldn't he? He was certainly no fool. He would easily deduce her destination, and he'd use his vast network of connections and spies to help him hunt her down. She wouldn’t just be running from him. She’d be running from the entire Artor Trading Company. For a moment, she had a vision of arriving, bedraggled and sea-worn, to a port in Keras, only to see Christopher Culis’s grim expression as he stood, cross-armed, waiting for her at the end of the dock to bring her back.
It was not a pleasant vision, made even less pleasant by the resentful acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t actually even want to escape from Culis anymore.
The second option was to stay here in Artor and try to blow open the great deception that had held the nation in a vice-like grip for half a century.
Midas was a fraud, she was almost certain of it now. He was an ikarei who was powerful beyond belief, not a god, and if she could prove it, then she could end the slaughter and suffering of…thousands. She could reshape the future of the entire nation. She cast a half-hearted glance around her to scan for more rubane and saw a couple new tiny, red flowers in the patch closest to the kitchen furnace. But there weren’t many, and certainly not enough to distil them into anything useful. If this plan was to work, then she’d need to procure as much of the weed as possible in order to distil it into an effective, wearable ointment. Getting that amount of rubane and dousing the intended sacrifices in it to expose the God-King was no easier task than getting herself to Keras. Death and failure waited for her at every corner of that plan too.
The last option was to do nothing. To accept her fate as it currently stood. To help Culis achieve his goals and possibly change the status quo for demons as a result. Maybe life would get incrementally better for them. If Midas was truly just a demon, then inevitably, he would die one day…wouldn’t he? Would that be enough to expose the Church for the farce that it was, or would they devise some kind of explanation for his mortality? Either way, there was a simplicity to this option that was comforting. And it did not require her to do anything brave or stupid; she simply needed to wait .
The third path was the obvious one. It was the way she had always done things – to wait and let the world around her play out as it might.
But tonight, the cool air made her restless, and that choice would not sit easy in her heart.
She’d been a coward too many times in these past months. Been a bystander when she should have taken action to stop a great wrong, and now here was another crossroads, a chance to choose differently. Would she be able to stand being in her own skin if she did nothing but watch, season after season, as another load of sacrifices – demon or human – were disintegrated before Midas? Knowing that he was a fraud and that she could have saved them if she’d just had the gumption to try?
How though?
It was too late to do anything about the autumn Sacrament, which she knew must have occurred while she was on the road with Culis, but perhaps she’d be able to get enough rubane to protect the ikarei condemned for the winter one.
She could try and convince Culis to return with her to the Highlands again. The constant heat in that part of the world saw rubane grow prolifically. In her mind’s eye, she could picture her tiny house under the bayan trees and all the rubane that threatened to inundate it every year. There’d be more than enough rubane there to achieve this task. But she’d only be able to bring back what she could carry, and that would not be enough. Not for ten people.
Perhaps if Tarett was somehow allowed to come with her? Or perhaps she could infuse it in her home and then bring just the oil back here? Far more economical, but the infusion process could take weeks. How would she be able to do that without explaining everything to Culis?
Culis .
Everything always came back to him.
She hated that her stomach fluttered again as she considered him.
Could she trust him to help? Trust him with the secret of the rubane?
She weighed it up in her mind.
The risk wasn’t that he’d be appalled by the idea, or that he’d be against the idea of challenging the Church. He’d proven he was clearly not a devout man, and all things considered, he’d probably find something like this rather fun. No, the risk was that he’d share the secret of the rubane with the humans he was selling demons to, giving them even more power over their slaves. It would prevent folk like Flue from being able to protect themselves, from using their power on their master to keep themselves safe if they needed to.
I’m just scum, he’d said to her in Brewich . Next time, save yourself the disappointment and don’t expect me to ever be anything more than that.
It frightened her that he could make it so easy to forget that side of him. It was far easier to recall dancing with him in Reminisciary – and the hot thread of desire that had run between them – than to remember the look on his face when he’d ordered Natalee’s capture, and the way he’d coldly ignored Mila’s pleas for mercy.
Don’t expect me ever to be anything more than that.
Despite what she’d felt of his energy, despite the connection that had sparked between them in Traders Bay, she needed to remember that this man was still a seasoned and professional liar, that up until now he’d been propelled through life by the driving energy of his own greed and ambition. Was it reasonable to expect that to have changed over the past few weeks?
No, she decided. He could not be trusted with this information, but she’d have to devise a good lie, because she needed his help. He was a professional merchant, wasn’t he? He had the Artor Trading Company at his disposal. Surely, if he thought there was a need for it, he could sequester his entire fleet to obtain tons of rubane.
Yes. If she had Culis’s support for this endeavour, then that would be the far more efficient option for obtaining enough of the stuff. All she needed to do was somehow convince the most commercially savvy businessman in the country that it was in his best interest to obtain tremendous amounts of a noxious weed that only grew in the most remote regions of the country. Without him needing to understand why.
Simple, she thought, and then realised she had made her choice.