Selah
Gullhaven’s people are practical, as coastal people always are. They do not wait for someone to tell them what to do.
By the morning after the attack, fishing nets are already being used to haul debris from the water.
Corvin has organized rotating crews to shore up the damaged dock supports before the tide turns against them.
Two of the market stalls that burned are already framed in new timber, the wood still pale and raw against the blackened stone around them.
I watch all of it from the repaired window of my room above the inn and understand, in a distant and untethered way, that the town is going to be fine.
I’m less certain about everything else.
The rumors started the morning after the relic came apart.
I don’t know whether it was the wave of magic that rolled through the harbor when we destroyed it, or whether Vaedrin’s own people talked before they scattered, or whether the truth simply has a way of moving through the world faster than the lies that were built to contain it.
By the second day, I overheard two merchants at the docks speaking in low voices about noble houses on Oshta scrambling to burn their bloodline records.
By the third, Rennic brought me a dispatch from a gargoyle caravan passing through.
It contains a single line, written in a hand I didn’t recognize.
The houses are counting their dead. They do not all agree on who is responsible.
I fold it twice, put it in my coat pocket, and don’t mention it to anyone.
The problem with destroying something that was used as a weapon is that the knowledge it carried does not disappear with it.
People know, now, that the lines they were told were clean are not.
Some of those people will want answers. Some of them will want someone to blame.
The relic is gone, but I am still here, and there are still noble houses on multiple continents that would find my existence considerably more inconvenient than Vaedrin ever did.
I think about this when Droza sits down on the windowsill beside me, or as close to it as he can get, given that the frame is not remotely built for someone his size. He sets one arm against the wall above my head and looks out at the harbor in silence.
“You’ve been up here since dawn,” he says.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Stop.” His jaw tightens slightly in the way it does when the tether is telling him something he doesn’t want to hear.
“That’s not how thinking works.”
“It is when the thinking is making you afraid,” he says. There is nothing gentle about the way he says it, which somehow makes it easier to take than gentleness would have been.
I don’t argue. He doesn’t move.
That is the shape of the last three days between us.
He refuses to leave, I never tell him to go, and both of us occupy the same rooms and the same silences without quite knowing how to name what we are.
There was no longer survival being the only thing requiring our attention.
The tether settles when we are close to each other.
It has felt different since the relic came apart.
More calm and less like a hook under my ribs.
I am still deciding how I feel about that.
Corvin finds me that afternoon in the cellar, where I have been doing the least useful thing possible and reorganizing crates that don’t need reorganizing. He watches me move a box two feet to the left for a few seconds before he speaks.
“You’re staying,” he says. Not a question.
I put the crate down. “You don’t know that.”
“Brinna told me you’ve been sleeping in the same room for three nights, and the gargoyle hasn’t left the building once.” He crosses his arms.
“That doesn’t mean I’m staying. That means we haven’t figured out what comes next.”
Corvin is quiet in the way he does when he has already decided something and is waiting for you to catch up.
“There’s a room on the east side of the inn. Good light in the morning, solid lock on the door, and the window looks out toward the cliffs rather than the harbor so you won’t have to watch the repairs if they bother you. It’s yours, if you want it.”
From somewhere directly above us, Brinna’s voice carries through the floorboards with perfect clarity: “She’s taking the room. The gargoyle already moved her bag into it.”
“Brinna has been listening from the top of the stairs the entire time,” he says.
“I can hear that,” I answer.
Ilyra finds me near the cliffs at dusk. She has her traveling pack on and the particular stillness about her that means she has already made a decision and is simply informing me of it rather than asking for a response.
“The houses won’t consolidate quickly,” she says, without greeting. “Vaedrin served three of them directly. They’ll spend the next season deciding who is responsible for the failure before they agree on a direction. That gives you time. But it’s not unlimited time.”
“I know.”
Her gaze intensifies, and I have the sense she is measuring me up.
“You have more allies than you realize. The relic’s destruction is exposed enough that certain factions will find it more useful to protect what you represent than to eliminate it. Don’t be careless.”
“I’m never careless.”
The simple but not quite architecture of a smile teases at the corners of her lips. After all this time, I had thought I’d never see the expression on her face change. With Vaedrin gone, even she was loosening up.
“No,” she agrees. “You aren’t.” She adjusts the strap of her pack and turns toward the coastal road without looking back. “Don’t die, human.”
I watch her until the road curves, and she disappears from sight.
The sun finishes setting behind the western water while I’m standing there.
Below the cliffs, Gullhaven’s lanterns are coming up one by one, gold light strung across the harbor like something deliberate.
From up here I can see the inn clearly, the warm square of the windows, the low sound of voices carrying up from Brinna’s gambling night starting early.
Droza settles behind me without sound, the way he always does. He’s close enough that I feel the warmth he puts off despite the temperature of the stone he’s made of. He doesn’t say anything.
I have spent the last several months moving toward something or away from something, and in longer than I can clearly remember, I am standing still.
It occurs to me, quietly and without ceremony, that this is what it feels like to be somewhere I intend to stay.