5. Now War
NOW: WAR
We lay low. As was law, Fox and I attended the following tenth-day service. As Jade and Ilsit were listed among the dead, they did not, and they no longer showed their faces in town.
We sat in the back pews as we always did, heads slightly down.
Tessa had a habit of standing in the back of the church so she could leave quickly.
I spotted her out of the corner of my eye and nodded.
She did not approach us, as we had discussed.
The whole of Sheridan knew my farmhouse had been raided and that books had been burned.
I felt the eyes of several congregants on me, knowing they likely wondered if there was a chance the books I had hidden for them survived.
I forced myself to look back and grimace, as if to say, “No, and I am sorry.”
But I saw no accusations in these women’s gazes—for it was all women.
They knew if my home had not been raided, it would have been their own homes.
I wanted to shout at them that we had saved the moss, that the medicinal paste they relied on—to clean a man’s seed from their womb, to keep their courses regular and to keep some of the pain of them at bay—was still safe.
There had been so little time, and we had chosen the moss.
After church, avoiding having to speak with anyone, Fox and I made our way to my sister’s house, where she had once run an apothecary out of the front, where she had raised a daughter both with Thane, her husband, and then with Tessa, whom she had called her “true wife.” Only Tessa lived there now, with an occasional visit from Thane when he was home from travel.
But he mostly had returned to living at the castle keep.
“Thane is here,” she whispered as she opened her door, her broad presence filling the doorway, russet hair riotous and braid haphazard, dark eyes looking past us to the street outside.
Then she took a moment to point at Fox and then hold that hand in a loose cup-like pose.
This was what we did to say to Fox, How are you?
Fox patted her chest and smiled, saying, I am well.
I noticed that the straw hat Tessa often wore, which I sometimes borrowed for foraging, was askew and her hands were filthy.
“Come from the garden before church?” I joked, trying to catch her gaze.
My manner was still subdued, and there was still a tension in the air.
We had only just been raided by the lord, the priest, and their men.
We had both withstood loss, exile, and the general wear of life, that stream of time that softens the stone’s edge.
Had we been younger, perhaps we would have both still been flustered.
At this age, we considered ourselves and the outcome before panicking any further.
She gave me a doleful stare and removed her hat, then waved it next to her sweaty face and commented that she was always a little grubby—that I knew that. She indicated we should go inside, past the apothecary front room to the housing in the back.
I found myself nervous. I had rarely spoken to Thane over the winters and only over things of importance or family.
We had avoided each other for so long. We were both now past forty, and this was nonsensical to think about.
Fox had always enjoyed Tessa’s house and proceeded to the living quarters ahead of me, holding up her hand in a little wave to where Thane sat at Tessa’s table. He waved back.
We joined him at the table, and he and I nodded at each other.
“It’s good that you came by,” Tessa said, returning. She shut the door behind her and seated herself next to Fox. “Thane has news.”
He was looking at me, and there was a naked pity on his face. “Robbie. I am so sorry. Had I been here—”
“Do not take any blame,” I said, cutting him off. “I was careless in town and it cost us all. You cannot always be our protection.”
“And the times in which he has been our protection are so many, I worry it wears thin,” Tessa added, topping off Thane’s tea with the kettle she set back on a pot holder made of lacquered, painted wood she had brought with her from Eccleston.
Thane leaned forward and spoke directly to me. “Get me a list of the books and I’ll buy you every one. I swear it. I am sure I can find a few to start with in the next city I travel through.”
I looked at him and it was as if we were teenaged again, happily lost in the woods, sun-kissed and invincible.
“That would be so costly,” I said, glancing away.
“Tell them the news,” Tessa urged him.
He sat back in his chair, arms crossed, tea untouched. “About two moons ago, Tintar invaded Eccleston. There is no other way to say it.”
I felt my jaw go slack, remembering Starling’s words.
We are at war with Tintar.
Fox frantically signed something at Thane.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I can only understand if you do it slowly.”
“She’s asking why,” I interpreted.
He sighed. “The Council of Ten, Eccleston’s governing body, has broken all trade agreements with Tintar.
So, the largest and most armed country in the known world, Tintar, has been denied metals from the city that sits in the center of most of the continent’s mines.
There’s never been unrest like this in our lifetimes.
Or our parents’. It’s madness. And every country and settlement sides with Perpatane. ”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Why would they side with Perpatane?”
Tessa was shaking her head, and it occurred to me that Eccleston was her country of birth.
“Tessa, you must be beside yourself.”
“I am,” she assured me. “But Tintar conducted a restrained invasion. They only attacked buildings owned by the governing bodies of Eccleston, things taxes pay for and the like.” She snorted.
“Eh. May as well have burned it from the city walls. Everything is taxed in Eccleston. It’s the only country run by its citizens. No king. No lord.”
“Why would they break trade agreements? Why is Perpatane involved?”
“Why is Perpatane involved?” Tessa seconded my question.
Neither of you let him speak, Fox signed and nodded at Thane.
He gave her a smile, and I was reminded that he was handsome.
“I think I understood that one, Fox. Perpatane has the only gold in the world. It’s the only metal Eccleston does not have.
They convinced Eccleston, with their gold, that they should no longer sell to Tintar.
The Council of Ten convinced all the mining territories to go along with this.
I do not think the council thought Tintar would actually retaliate, but I think Perpatane did. Perpatane wants a war.”
“I think,” added Tessa, “they want to colonize this whole continent.”
“I suppose their saint and his church’s insidious spread is not enough,” I muttered. “They own half the souls in the known world, and now they want half the land too. Demons. They claim to save us from demons, but it is they all folk need saving from.”
Thane shrugged. He had been raised as a lord’s son under the care of a priest, and he was a man.
He may have offered us his protection, may have questioned the harshness of Rodwin, but it was hard for him to see the church and its country as purely villainous.
“What I think,” he said when I was finished, “is that King Pollux has always disliked Tintar. Their gods are very much against the teachings of Rodwin, and he is a holy man. He also enjoys being the sole friend to a place. He is our little settlement’s single ally.
But Eccleston enjoys the trade of every country, great or small.
You can’t isolate a prosperous, popular city-state governed by its citizens.
But you might be able to buy it. With gold. ”
“I have only ever seen one gold coin in all my life,” I said uselessly.
“Imagine crates of it, whole transport wagons,” Thane said. “That’s what they say the council was given. And those ten men are nowhere to be found.”
“Cowards,” Tessa interjected.
Thane nodded. “The thing of it is—this continent is now at war. And the refrain sung across it is that all countries will side against Tintar. And I don’t blame them.
The Tintarian cavalry and army marched weeks around Nyossa and then traveled by night, I would guess, to creep up on the center of trade, commerce, and learning. ”
“They burned all those universities, didn’t they?
” I asked. I was ignorant, never having traveled any farther than the next settlement over or as deep into the woods as I dared.
But Tessa and my husband Avery had waxed on about the public universities and the craftsmen guilds, full of masters of trade and skill.
We knew more about the surrounding mining territories that were considered a part of the city-state, but even they were unknown to me.
I was torn. What gave me pause was that I had always seen Tintar as a magical, superior place, the home country of my chosen gods.
They were pagan and even revered womanhood to an extent.
Sheridan was long bought by Perpatane, with a Saint Rodwin church installed in its town square before I had ever been born.
As a girl, learning that the forest I played in was part of another country, a country that did not want to condemn me, I had always held Tintar in high regard.
I could not get it right in my mind that they were also warmongers.
“I thought—I thought Tintar was a coastal country of fishing and nature worship,” I protested, knowing I sounded foolish.
Thane shook his head. “They have the biggest cavalry and infantry aside from Perpatane, and they are the only country with a navy. The king of Tintar is mad, but a military wonder. They have driven the Helmsmen back up into the mountains, farther than they have ever been. He is ruthless.”
“The Shark King,” added Tessa. “They say he is as tall as a rearing horse. They say he swims with sharks and that it is he who attacks them.”
Is it true? asked Fox.
“What I am trying to say,” Thane continued before I could open my mouth, “is that Sheridan and settlements like it are of importance to Perpatane now. They are offering gold to all landowners in exchange for their property. My father and Starling will make an announcement soon.”
“Where do they expect people to go?” I exclaimed.
“To Perpatane,” he said after a pause.