Chapter Four
MY SISTER DOES not rage. She does not weep.
She does not do much of anything at all, but eat when told, and nurse when the girl child cries.
Kalixta supported me in sending my mother away, letting me be the one to help during this time while I can.
Truthfully, my mother could have stayed.
There’s room enough. But I wanted Kalixta and my niece all to myself.
I don’t know how long I’ll be gone and I want to help while I can.
So, I sleep while Kalixta and the baby do.
I wake when the girl cries, stroking her back as she latches on to her mother’s breast. When that does not soothe her, I change her wet napkins, and when that’s settled and still she cries, I rock her and cry with her out in the cavernous halls where her howls won’t reach my sister’s ears, giving her the rest she desperately needs.
While my sister sleeps and the baby is quiet, I whisper words of strength and resilience to them both. Hope and love.
It is not until the early morning hours on the day before Alixor is to come, while both Kalixta and the baby are deep in sleep that I seek out Ninon.
I carry a candle with me through the darkened halls, the lamplight dim along the smooth, worn walls.
Her room is quiet and dark, a sharp smell lingering in the air.
I pick up a folded parchment on her bed, and thumb it open, reading the words: Meet me there.
I don’t have to wonder what it means. I pocket the note in my trousers as I leave her room.
Nevoba is a network of interconnected caverns and caves divided into sectors.
The eastern end holds the sleeping chambers for mothers with children, while women over selecting age are given their own private sleeping chambers on the western edges.
In the center we have spaces for cooking and gathering.
The great hall is used for the rare occurrence of receiving the Sar Dyēus’s hoard, often for letting the children run and play freely, and weekly for deliveries from the farmhands.
The upper section on the western side is storage for food, weapons, the stables, and nightly rooming for the farmhands following a delivery.
The huntresses spend most of our time here, and once a week we take advantage of the presence of men from the farms.
The delivery won’t come until the afternoon, leaving this area quiet, the hunters out on watch or taking their hard earned break elsewhere.
I pass the empty rooms and make my way through the storage area and take the small opening that leads out to the path where we burn our waste.
The acrid stench always lingers on the air out here and Ninon and I learned early on in our youth that this was the perfect place to disappear.
Other children find this area, too, of course.
Like Ninon and I, they discover and claim little crevices or nooks as their own, but no one has ever found ours.
The dark is thick, my candle stub long since burned out, but my feet know the way over each rise and fall of the ground. Soon the familiar scent of burned waste leaves my nose and I smell something else that has me recoiling.
“Gods, Ninon,” I say as I lower myself down into a small gap between the rocks along the base of the mountain that frame in Nevoba’s caverns. “Are you alive down here?”
I crouch to crawl through a smooth rock tunnel that opens into a bigger chamber, glowing with the light of a fire.
The smoke and scent rises, leaving through fissures in the hard stone earth above.
The sunlight seeps in through the cracks, casting shadows and further illuminating the smooth rock walls of our secret hideout.
Ninon sits on her heels, a cloth of fabric wrapped around her nose and mouth and I bring up my shirt to cover my own.
“The text warned of a strong odor.”
“A scent this strong calls for more than mere warning,” I say, squinting.
Ninon grunts her agreement.
“How’s it coming along?” I blink the tears from my eyes.
“Everything is going as it should,” she says.
She occasionally stirs the mixture in a pot over the flames.
“It’s almost boiled down to the right consistency.
During the day it will rest and steep off the flame.
Then I’ll run the mixture through cloth, then leave it to rest until tomorrow evening when it’s ready for consumption. Do you understand?”
I look from the pot, back to her. “I do, but why should I need to?”
She shrugs. “In case you ever need to concoct it yourself.”
My brows furrow. “How long will this last?”
“You only need a single drop under the tongue daily for it to work. This amount will last a year, I should think.”
“It’s more than enough, then.” The idea of being trapped in Dyēus, away from Ninon and my sister, ties my stomach into knots.
“We’ll see how persistent Alixor is,” she muses, stirring the mixture slowly again.
“I’m sure I’ll be allowed to return for visits, and it’s not like you won’t be here to make another batch.” I watch her face, waiting.
The pot bubbles and hisses. “You never know.”
My breath hitches in my chest and I look away from her. “I hate when you say things like that.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I know.”
I snap back to her. “No. You don’t. Just because your mother—” I stop myself, pressing my lips together tight. We’ve had this argument countless times before. The words other women and the children from our youth burrow deep, despite Ninon’s strength of heart. And mine.
Her eyes look into mine for a beat, then to the pointed tip of my ear, then beyond, over my shoulder. “How’s Kal?”
Forgoing covering my nose with my shirt, I rub my face with my hands, digging my heels into my eyes. “Exhausted.”
She lowers her mask and scratches her nose. “Is she alone?”
“My mother will be with her soon.”
“You should go. Be with her while you can. There’s nothing for you to do here.”
I frown. Ninon enjoys time alone. I, on the other hand, hardly know the meaning of the word. And in moments where I do happen to be by myself, I feel lost. Empty.
Always in the days leading up to when I leave for Dyēus, Ninon does this. She pulls away, turning into herself. I hate leaving her. The pain of knowing I won’t see her for an indeterminate amount of time stings like a popping ember landing on my skin.
“Have you been eating?” I ask her.
A wry smile curls her lips. “The food stores are near. I’m eating.”
I huff a laugh. “I’ll check on you again tomorrow night.”
“Stay with your sister.”
“I won’t leave you,” I say, scoffing at how ridiculous her request is. But she doesn’t look at me. She only folds her hands in front of her. “You’re doing this for me. If anyone ever found out, you’d be—”
“I know. But you have to. She needs you.”
I know that, too. “You’ll be all right?”
She looks back to me then, resolution settling into the subtle change of her eyes and set of her mouth. I’ve seen that look before, in moments before she looses an arrow to kill. “I will. Don’t worry about me.”
“Impossible.”
There’s a tightness growing in my chest. I know I could be gone for months, maybe longer, while Alixor tries to impregnate me, but ever since that morning we rode out to collect the dragonsbane, I’ve felt like this is the end of something.
What if something does happen to Ninon while I’m gone?
“Why do I feel like you think you’re never going to see me again? ”
“We don’t know what the future holds for us, what Erenmaag has predetermined.”
“Or what they’ve left for us to will,” I say, offering a counter to her invocation of the god of fate and agency.
“In the end, we can only wait and see which will prevail.”
“I will always take matters into my own hands. Nothing will happen to you, Ninon, and I will see you again.”
Ninon looks at me, brows pinched before they soften into something akin to understanding. “I believe that.”
I smirk, rising to make my way out. “You’d better.”
I stay with my sister for the rest of the day, but that evening, I need to hunt.
A delivery from the farmhands came in the afternoon, and the northern sector is alive with noise as I enter, shouts rising in greeting.
I smile, waving and ducking around mingling bodies as I make my way towards the stables, joining the women who are gearing up for the night.
“What are you doing here?” asks Haven, another huntress, as she finishes attaching her pack to her mare.
“The dust storms are weeks away. You need me to help stock the provisions.”
Haven blows air out from between her lips. “Sounds like an excuse to me.”
“I got restless,” I relent, running a hand down Aspa before loading her up, too.
“Get your restlessness out with one of them.” She nods to the crowd of men sharing drink with the women or attempting to ply them with small pots of honey.
As if any of us need encouragement. They’re as handsome as their dragon shifter fathers, though none hold the ability to shift.
Their ears are gently pointed like ours, unlike our human counterparts in the world beyond the mountains.
Sometimes, a group of men with their softly rounded ears from beyond attempt to pass over the mountains, seeking to serve the gods.
They’re all taken in and given work in the fields, marked as all of us are who dwell below the safety of Dyēus.
They’re not permitted to leave the fields to make deliveries, so I’ve never seen one myself, but the farmhands love to tell stories.
When I say nothing, Haven raises a brow. “Or a few of them?”
I laugh and shake my head. “Not tonight.”
“I guess you are going to get plenty of that sort of entertainment in Dyēus,” she comments with a smirk and I roll my eyes skyward. “Where’s Ninon?”