A Letter to Write
NYARA
Alarna
Lord Eskarin found her on the palace steps the following morning.
She had not slept. She did not think anyone in Alarna's court had slept. The palace had that quality, the quality of a place that had been awake all night holding something it could not put down.
He sat beside her without being asked. She appreciated that about him. He never asked.
"The letter," he said.
She looked at the city below. Alarna in the morning, the light coming in off the water, the market beginning to open despite everything. She had always found that remarkable about cities. They continued regardless.
"It did not reach him," Eskarin said.
She closed her eyes briefly. "How far did it get?"
"The southern coast. The undead in the water have multiplied significantly in the past week. His couriers could not get through." A pause. "They tried twice."
She said nothing.
"Korvis," he said carefully. "Does he know his couriers were carrying it?"
"No." She looked at her hands. "He gave me the route.
He did not ask what was in the letter or where it was going.
He is not the asking sort." She paused. "He is also not the sort who would take it badly if he knew.
But I did not want to put that on him. Not with everything else he is carrying right now. "
Eskarin nodded. "He has not heard from Jularin."
"No." She said it flatly. "He has not heard from her and he is not saying so and every time her name comes up his face does something he does not know it is doing.
" She looked at the water in the distance.
"He has his mother's smile but none of her suspicion.
He will not put it together until someone puts it together for him. "
"And you?"
"I have put it together," she said. "I simply do not have proof."
They sat with that.
"Two more came through last night," Eskarin said. "The eastern line."
"What kind?"
"Old." He looked at the city. "The Avanki handled it but they did not know what they were handling." He paused.
She looked at him. "Sarenal."
"Yes."
She had known it was coming. The wards encircled everything, that was what nobody in Alarna's court fully understood. They were not a wall facing one direction. They were a perimeter. And when a perimeter weakened it weakened on every side simultaneously.
"She was supposed to seal them," Nyara said.
He said nothing.
"That was the plan." She looked at her hands.
"Not my plan exactly. I did not know the details.
I only knew that Eravic was getting the Arrolyn to her and that once she had it and was strong enough to wield it she could seal the wards properly.
Permanently." She paused. "And before she did I was going to go through. "
"Home," Eskarin said.
"Home," she said. "Yes."
He was quiet. He understood what she meant without her explaining it further because he had come to Alarna for the same reason and had been waiting for the same window and was now sitting beside her on the same steps watching the same window close.
"She did not know about Teorin," Nyara continued. "I did not know about Teorin. None of us knew that the protectorate would ever actually find her or that it was Teorin at all."
"Was it Teorin that killed her?" Eskarin's voice was quiet.
"I do not know," Nyara said. She exhaled. "And now the wards are failing on every side and creatures are coming through that nobody here can identify and the one person who could have fixed all of it is dead."
"Or not," Eskarin said carefully.
She looked at him.
He looked at the city. "I am not saying she is alive. I am saying that a woman who survived everything she survived does not simply die at a dinner table and I have learned not to accept the first version of a story I am given."
She looked at the water.
"Junis will take it hard," she said. "He liked her. More than he let on." A pause. "He likes most people more than he lets on. It is his weakness."
"Is Junis aligned?" Eskarin said.
She looked at him. "No."
"But he must remain unharmed."
"Yes." She said it without hesitation. "He must remain unharmed."
"He is loyal to Vaelor regardless of what comes."
She sighed. "No matter what. Yes."
He looked at her. "You sound as though you are not loyal to Vaelor."
"I am loyal to Sarenal," she said. "But that is not the same thing."
He nodded once.
She looked at the city one more time. The market was fully open now, vendors calling out, the ordinary machinery of Alarna turning over without her.
She had come here to go home. She had waited and performed and watched and waited and now the thing she had been waiting for had died at a dinner table in Veynar and the wards were failing on every side and she was still here.
"I need to get word to Junis another way," she said. "Land routes.”
"I have them," Eskarin said. "Slower. He may already be in Veynar by the time it arrives."
"Send it anyway," she said. "Whatever he finds when he gets there, I want him to know someone is looking from this side."
She sighed. “And I will write another letter to send by sea again, just in case.”
He nodded.
She stood.
"Eskarin."
"Yes."
"If she is alive." She did not look at him. "If somehow she is alive and the Arrolyn reaches her and she becomes strong enough to wield it." She paused. "I need you to tell me the moment you know. Before anyone else."
He looked at her for a long time.
"Yes," he said.
She went back inside.
The palace was still awake, still processing, still unable to put itself back together. She walked through it and did not stop for anyone.
She had a letter to write.