thirty-nine
She was expected to believe this. This fantastical story of another world, another life, and another Sulim who had lived and died shortly after meeting her soulmate, the woman sitting before her now.
“When did this happen, exactly?” Sulim drolly asked when Mira finally finished explaining the concept of Crossing. “Before or after I met you… a few years… ago?” She couldn’t believe she was asking that.
“A few days ago,” Mira explained a little too readily.
“I woke up and I just… I can’t explain it. I simultaneously remembered where I was, and everything that led up to me being here on Cerilyn, with you, even, and I remembered… God, I remembered the most awful shit about that other world. From what got me arrested, to seeing you die,
to my mother Ascending before my very eyes and bringing an end to that reality.”
“I don’t understand. Your mother Ascended here, and didn’t end the world.”
“Because my mother did it before it was too late. She still defied the fate she set out for herself by waiting for me to be born, but I’m told that this reality is not tainted. It can be saved. I… really hope, anyway. Why else would that Dreamwalker be haunting me still?”
“Back up. You’re adding more new terms. I don’t know what the hell a Dreamwalker is.”
Another hurried explanation full of Julah terms that Sulim could hardly parse, despite studying some Julah those past few years and even practicing it on Mira when she had the chance.
Someone who can explore other people’s dreams.
Sulim nodded along. A practice that died out over a million years ago.
Sounded like half of the shit Mira talked about with regards to julah sorcery.
She’s been visited by someone claiming to be one.
Well, sounded like most sorceresses could do whatever they wanted, anyway.
Sulim long had a theory that the reason women weren’t given leadership roles in the Temple was because there were too many famously talented ones throughout history, and men feared them.
Since meeting Mira, though, she learned that it was partly to avoid bringing about the apocalypse. One of those things that didn’t necessarily start misogynistic, but when society got more patriarchal… well, then. Sulim knew a few things about that, being a human and all.
“You must think I’m insane.” Mira slipped off her couch and paced in the space between it and the fireplace.
Wherever her gaze went, it did not land on Sulim.
“The only reason I know I’m not is because Kema and Hannu showed up here, declaring that my mother came to them and told them to help me. They remember, Sulim. They remember going with me on that pilgrimage. They remember my mother existing as a mortal,
whereas the Ascension happened half a millennium ago. I don’t have to tell you, Kema is a hybrid. She’s only forty, I think. There’s no way she could remember my mother! Unless she was there. In that other life with me.”
“Yeah, back up to me being murdered. And living on Arrah.” Sulim tilted her head, yet her visage continued to demand answers. “I only know one person from Arrah.”
“Yes. Your partner in Cerilynian crime. Sonall was your husband in that other life.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. That was the last straw for Sulim, who had enough of this julah nonsense.
Even if Mira swore she was telling the truth, Sulim had no desire to entertain any notion that she had ever married Sonall.
Just because they had a brief relationship here…
which mostly ended due to Sulim meeting Mira…
who really had nothing to do with Sulim solidifying her stronger desire for women…
because why would that be relevant? To this tall tale, anyway.
“The reason you can’t remember any of this is because your soul did not Cross with mine,” Mira explained, one hand on the mantle and the other gesticulating in a feeble attempt to get Sulim to believe her.
“Because you were dead and had returned to the Void.”
She stopped for a moment, staring into the distance as her lips pursed in thought.
“I remember. I was watching over your body in the Temple, before your funeral, and I saw your soul. It visited me. Shit.”
She turned away, as if Sulim were not right there before her.
“I told you to go Home. To the Void. You must have been processed through the Void before my mother ended that reality. You no longer existed as the woman I knew.”
“Well, that’s heavy.”
“A lot about that time leading up to my mother’s Ascension was heavy. I had finally figured out how to exact vengeance on your behalf. I was going to do to that man what I did to Chief Aina Aiya here on Cerilyn.”
That was the first thing Mira said that truly upset Sulim, if only because she was one of the only people who knew Mira was responsible for the former chief’s demise.
Black magic. Technically, it was called “the Old Ways,” as Mira always corrected, but in human parlance, they considered such julah rituals as black magic.
It was forbidden, and extremely dangerous.
Love spells. Death spells. Taking control of someone else’s soul to make them your thrall.
Those were just some of the rituals Sulim had looked up during her bouts of research whenever Mira said something to pique her interest.
Then, of course, there was the really crazy shit, like what her father Nerilis Dunsman was doing to planets.
Destroying the very soul of a planet, which makes it cease to exist.
The craziest thing that Sulim understood?
It changed the structure of the entire universe around it to accommodate the space as if that planet never existed.
“Admirable that you want to avenge my death,” Sulim said, making herself more comfortable on the couch. The air conditioner kicked in the moment she began to sweat. “But you’re already lucky you got away with it here.”
“I know. That’s why I ended up in prison. I didn’t get away with it there. I wonder… what was the difference here? Was my mother’s mortality somehow what led to me being caught in the other reality? Or was the Void machinating us meeting somehow?”
Sulim shrugged. She still wasn’t quite sure if she believed this.
“There are so many differences between you two,” Mira said to her girlfriend, who remained sweating on the couch. “You were certainly softer in the other world…”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I don’t mean it like that. Here you’re… ah, you’re quite fetching in a very different way. Very athletic. I enjoy your extra sass, too.”
“Oh, good, because I have plenty, surviving this place!”
“But you were married to Sonall. The way you told it, you met on Qahrain—”
“Okay, that’s the nuttiest thing you’ve said yet.”
“—and he fell in love with you after multiple visits. He proposed to you in a time of your life when you were starting over, and you decided to take your chances being the future Lady Gardiah because it meant you were set for life.”
“Why would I ever marry him, though? Was I that destitute?”
“From what I understood, you had an arrangement to go your separate ways romantically once you had established yourselves as the next generation in charge. And I don’t mean divorce.”
“Right. Sure. Was I having his babies, too?”
Mira chuckled. “You sure as hell were not, and it was causing lots of problems.”
Sulim found herself matching Mira’s relieving smile.
“Look,” she finally said with a sigh. “I’ve been through a lot of crazy missions where something was seriously at stake. Even a moon a couple of times!”
Sulim didn’t mention it, but she and Sonall had been sent to entire moons and dwarf planets that were decimated of life.
Bodies everywhere. Some of them even preserved.
Sulim and Sonall weren’t always doing the killing, but there was death everywhere she went.
That’s why Cerilyn is all about enjoying what you can out of life.
Vices galore. Sex, gambling, drugs, and drinking. The four pillars of fun.
“Yeah?”
“What I’m saying is that this is… if what you’re saying is true, Mira, then that Dreamwalker is still stalking you because you were sent here for some reason. And for some fucking reason, I’m not privy to any of these memories. Who else do you think remembers?”
“I’m almost certain that Uncle Ram knows. That’s who I was visiting before coming back here. But he’s being cagey. I don’t think he wants to accept it.”
“Gee, wonder why.”
“Besides Hannu and Kema, though…”
“Yeah, so, what’s Hannu’s problem? She was obsessed with me.”
Mira choked on her words in surprise. “You met her?”
It was time for Sulim to do some explaining now.
By the time she returned to the fortress later that night, claiming she needed some time to process all of the incredible information hurtling her way, Sulim was too tired to check in on how Chief Olma was doing in the infirmary.
She had also skipped dinner, meaning she hadn’t seen Sonall.
I don’t think I can look him in the eye right now.
It was one thing for them to have been in a relationship here when they were twenty.
It was quite another to imagine being married to the version of him that had never been abducted by Second Tribe mercenaries.
I wonder what he was like… The boy Sulim first met here in the fortress, the one quiet and traumatized from losing his whole family and seeing “unspeakable” things done to his sister that ultimately killed her, had later transformed into a gambling, drinking, killing machine.
It was how he survived this place. He embraces it.
Unpacking all of that could happen when he retired, rich due to how good of a mercenary he had become.
And while he had always sworn to not be a piece of shit rapist when looting towns and estates on behalf of the tribe, he had found creative ways to put down other mercenaries who were.
Including the one who had killed his sister.
From what I understand, that guy was his first kill.
Sulim always heard that the first kill was the hardest.
It was easier from there—and from what she saw of Sonall when he accompanied her on missions, sometimes as a glorified bodyguard, yeah.
That was true. The man didn’t think twice about dispatching guards and crooks if it was easier than sneaking past.