Chapter 14
This time, it’s he who finds Ren—in hopes for a goodbye, maybe. Pitiful of him, to want something so simple from her, when their common ground is found in spite. But he can’t deny himself. Not when this will be his last night.
The moon is shadowed by passing clouds threaded with silver light.
She stands beneath it, still awake, leaning against the knot-rope railings and staring up at the sky.
He climbs the steps to meet her, weight held by the rope-spun banister, and looks upward to gaze at the moon as she does.
The moon god has a name, but he can’t remember it.
If his mother still lived, she would scold him, warmly, but all the same.
“Hwai-ga,” Ren names her, just as he considers asking. “Do you think them enemies?”
“Who?”
“Elka and Hwai-ga,” she says. “The sun and the moon.”
Bass looks over, but Ren keeps her stare steady. The silver light pouring from the sky illuminates her face in a way that looks magical. Godly.
“No,” he says, taken aback. “They’re lovers. My mother told me their stories. How Elka would warm the sky because she knew that Hwai-ga gets cold without her. So Elka blanketed the world, hoping it would be enough to keep her love warm.”
Ren’s lips slowly, so slowly, curve into a smile. The smallest of smiles.
“How sad,” she says. “To watch your lover from such a distance, not ever being able to touch them. All you can do is try and leave your warmth behind for them to remember you by.”
Her words are a blade driven between his ribs, aimed for a heart he no longer has.
It knocks the air out of him completely and Bass covers his mouth to keep from wheezing.
How sad, indeed. He remembers so much of his time spent watching Isaniel from afar, curbing his glances so as to not arouse suspicion.
The little things Isaniel would leave behind, proof that he existed and slept in the same cot as Bass, because by morning, he’d already slunk out of Bass’ bunk and snuck back into his own.
Not only sad, but somehow unkind in its own way. Maybe he should see it as a kindness, as he always saw Elka’s heat as a kindness to Hwai-ga.
“And you believed them to be enemies?” he asks Ren, eyes falling to the ground below them.
From the corner of his right eye, Ren shrugs. “In a way. Day and night are so different. They are the protectors of their own realm. I guess they don’t have to be enemies, but…” She hums in thought, low and only for a moment. “But I never saw them close enough to be lovers.”
“What about dawn?” Basuin’s eyes are drawn to her yet again. “And dusk? What of twilight, if day and night are separate worlds?”
Ren turns her head now to look at him, still wearing that smile. She looks a little rueful, a little chagrined. But it makes him draw in a long breath.
“Well,” she says quietly, “I guess you got me there.”
It makes him crack his own smile, but he quickly wipes a hand over his jaw to hide it. Has Ren ever admitted to being wrong before? Never to him, at the very least.
He should correct her—say it’s his mother, not him. But it feels too hard, like too much to say all at once. Wiping the smile off his lips, Bass wraps his hand around his godstone instead. But Ren moves, and her elbow brushes against his arm.
“I need your help with something,” she says. Her gaze is stuck back to the sky. “With magic.”
Basuin hesitates, only for a second. “All right,” he agrees, but he doesn’t know why. It’s not like he’s sticking around much longer. And Ren doesn’t even like him—and he isn’t very fond of her, either.
But she asked, earnestly, and Basuin is hemorrhaging her magic.
Once more, Ren leads him out of Gyeosi and into the trees, until they reach a familiar gnarled tree. “Chiro,” Bass remembers, and Ren looks surprised.
The oak creaks awake, unbothered by them. “Am-sa, you leave again tonight?”
“We do,” she says. “Would you be so kind as to help us?” She always seems to ask.
Something he’s come to learn about her, the very few days he’s known her now.
Ren cares most about these spirits. He knows how it feels—to care most about your comrades.
To throw yourself on the cliff of a mountain trying to save them.
How Ren throws herself at the bastion over and over trying to save her people.
“Always,” Chiro groans in response, and Ren lays her palm against its bark and the portal glows to life beneath her touch. She looks back at Basuin, face awash in blue magic. This time, Ren doesn’t offer her hand. This time, she jumps into the portal without waiting, and Basuin leaps in after her.
The journey is the same, but where they land is different.
It’s dark here, and hard to see the ground at all.
There’s no light but the moon and even the moon can’t illuminate their path.
This isn’t the bastion, he knows already.
It smells of wet earth here, not of smoke.
The smell of white lilies invades him next, and when Bass turns, Ren is waiting on him.
Without saying a word, Ren takes his hand and leads him through the darkened forest. Something stirs in him, half luminous and half pathetic at the way she always holds his hand with no hesitance. Guiding him the way she guides the other spirits in this forest. Ren isn’t afraid to touch him.
There’s no time to dwell on it. He follows behind her, sticking to her trail, trusting her.
Ren moves with grace, but he moves with a reluctance.
Her hand is the only thing that feels steady in the darkness of the forest. It isn’t long before he hears it—the sound of soldiers on watch, their lightweight mail clinking against itself with every shift and move and march.
It’s a legion camp, far out from the bastion.
He jerks to a stop, clinging to her hand. Ren halts, looking back at him. Bass nods his head in the direction he hears the camp. From this distance, in the fog of night, they can’t even see the glow of a lamp. Ren gives him a nod, a reassuring squeeze to his hand, and then she continues forward.
If he were a better man, he would pull ahead. Have her traveling behind his hulking form instead. Bass has always been on the front lines. But with her, in the here and now, Basuin doesn’t feel much like a captain—not even a soldier. He’s just Bass, and she’s just Ren.
But as they close in on the encampment, the forest lightens with the familiar yellowing glow of oil lamps. “What is this camp?” he whispers.
“A hunt,” she answers him. “They catch and kill the animals that keep your men fed.”
He winces. Catch and kill spirits like Yaelic, like Qia. A horrible guilt settles in the very bottom of his gut.
Ren pulls him behind a large, thick oak.
“This is what I need your help with. Can you do this?” She takes his arm and draws a finger down the line of his veins to his god mark like she did the first time she taught him magic.
He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth to suppress a shiver at her touch.
“Paint a picture in your mind. Imagine their supplies.”
Sabotage, again. Like she ruined the farms. It won’t be enough to send these soldiers back to Shaelstorm, and it won’t be enough to scare the legion off the island either. They’ll just work on half rations until the next supply comes in. He’s done it before—and he’s asked his men to do it, too.
Basuin hesitates, torn between two worlds. Where do his loyalties lie? He is an enemy to both. That won’t change.
But the wolf-man snaps its teeth at him, a warning. Enemy or ally, you have a duty.
He knows.
And what is a soldier without duty?
Nothing.
So Basuin closes his eyes and does as Ren says, imagining the bins and barrels of supplies he know the camp will have. Sabotage won’t stop them, but for once, he isn’t being asked to kill. Ren’s told him before that she doesn’t kill the legion soldiers, though Basuin doesn’t understand it.
“Imagine it all turning to black. Dried up and spoiled.” Ren’s finger traces the lines of his god mark. This time, he can’t stop the shiver as it crawls up the back of his neck.
All the food in their ration boxes they carry on wheeled carts, decaying.
Oozing rot. Shriveled up and dried out. His mind burns their bandages into ash, turns their powders to soot and tinctures to dust. Everything he’s ever carried in his packs on his marches through Grimmalia, he imagines destroying.
“Open your eyes, Basuin,” Ren says, and he does.
His god mark is glowing, red light jumping from his hand. It snakes through the trees and toward the camp. Power and magic surges through his forearm, muscles jumping like he’s been shot with electricity.
Ren shoots him this knowing grin he’s never seen before. Something in his belly twists, seeing her eyes hold that glimmer. He can do it again. Make more magic. He doesn’t care about it—but seeing her smile makes him feel much lighter than when she frowns. Less guilty. Less ashamed.
Less like a soldier, and more like Basuin.
“More,” he says, leaning in closer to her. She smells of upturned earth and fresh-cut flowers. “Teach me more.”
She nods. “Their weapons, now. Imagine taking them apart.” Ren slips her hand under his, cradling him. “This should be easy for you. It was disastrous for me.” There’s that quirk in her lips again. Even as she looks down, he sees it.
“Really?” Bass has taken apart many guns and put them back together. Unstrung crossbows and bent metal. The only thing he can’t shatter is steel—Kensy used to laugh at him for using swords long after the legion had rifles, but Bass knows how strong they truly are.
“I’d never seen weapons before,” Ren admits, and everything that’s risen in Basuin at seeing her smile drops, a weight sinking through him to the bottom of his gut. He doesn’t know what to say. Nothing feels like enough to make up for what the legion has done.