Chapter 47
Thealina
Cool air hits my heated skin.
Naked skin.
At least no one can see me in all my glory. No one to question the lone, barefoot, bare bodied woman appearing out of nowhere.
I clamp my fingers around my Taka pouch, the other crossed over my breasts as I skulk about the town, slithering down the dark alley to the courtyard of a widow who I know leaves her shoes by her back door and washing out on the line come day or night, rain or sunshine.
I’m proved right as I approach.
I dress in a dark skirt with high slits in the thighs and a small loose shirt exposing my midriff. Not entirely appropriate but if I had some anklets, and beads, I could pass for a hedge-dwelling tree-witch.
My stomach rumbles, it’s been too long since I ate and I’m feeling it, though I have to lay low in case Rafe spots me.
Saying goodbye to him twice isn’t an option. Because saying goodbye to him twice would shatter the last remaining fragments of my soul.
Gods, I miss him.
I think of him as I run through the town.
As I eat the apple I snatched from a bleary-eyed fruit merchant preparing his stall.
As I wait on the steps of the cleric’s building, watching the sun climb and the morning mist dissolve.
Their doors should be opening soon, and I can’t help but bob my leg up and down in anticipation for some good news.
Be alive, Sam. Please be alive.
The sound of double oak doors grinds open, knocking against the wall before a young elven woman latches them securely.
My feet stay rooted. My stomach queasy.
It could all have been for nothing. And right now, I’m too scared to find out.
“You need something, miss?” The elven woman asks, noticing my lingering. “Been staring at these doors for a while.”
My lungs fill with air till they burn, my ribs bruised from my heart beating so hard. I nod and swallow the dry lump in my throat, press my shoulders back and steel myself for the outcome of my actions.
Or consequence.
The clerics record room is huge. Grand. Triple-storied, gleaming white pillars, a fireplace and opulent desks dotted throughout the area.
At the centre of the vast chamber is a large, circular oak counter and a balding man stationed behind it, scribbling down on parchment.
Every now and then he pushes his wire-framed glasses back up his nose.
“Yes?” He says, peering down his beak at me.
‘Battle of Sovo, 830. I need a list of the deceased.’
He sighs, lifting his gaze. His skin sallow, his mouth pinched. “These are not public record yet.”
‘Please. I’m doing some family lineage research. I just need to look up a name. Two maybe.’
“For coin, give me the name and I’ll check, that’s the best I can do.”
Everything’s for sale. Everything always comes at a price. Even grief. No one ever does anything out of empathy.
I hope he’s miserable being a bald and rounding man, hopefully he’s lower-tiered and doesn’t possess much power too, I’ve heard that pisses a lot of males off.
‘Samuel Foran. Rafe Foran.’
I give both names as I’m unsure what would be recorded for Sam or at what point they found out his identity.
He stares at me blankly, holding out a palm. I roll my eyes, thumping down a coin and slide it across the counter.
“A moment.” He jerks his head to a plush, leather chair beneath a large window.
It’s nice here. Clean, tidy and smells of books, beeswax and lavender. There’s a library across the corridor, and I wonder if it’s similar to this records room. I should come here and read. Why have I never done that before?
Because we don’t have time to read when we’re running around after our husband.
The tightness in my shoulders refuse to ease and the minutes stretch. A moment turns into two, and then four, and six, before I know it, my eyes have become heavy, everyone’s footsteps grow softer and I drift until a bell rings for lunch, the balding man still hasn’t made an appearance.
Panic floods me, and my legs are shaky as I stand, I grip the arm rests for support as the blood rushes to my limbs. I swivel left, right—still no balding man.
I come full circle. Nothing.
He took my coin. And for what!
Heat rises in my stomach, the old fury and adrenaline I felt in the alehouse with Sam runs through my veins and I might end up living up to his nickname for me and start a brawl.
“Miss…”
I spin, ready to unleash whatever venom I can fashion without a voice. I spot the man behind the desk and stalk to the counter.
“You fell asleep, didn’t want to wake you.”
Well, if you didn’t take so fucking long.
“It’s not,” he hesitates. “… the greatest of news, I’m afraid.”
No.
No, no, no. NO!
He adjusts his glasses, reading directly from a thick leather-bound record book.
“Rafe Foran, missing in action.”
The words don’t make sense. They tangle and stick.
Missing in action.
Missing in action.
Sam’s missing. I shake my head. Over and over and over trying to restore my sanity. No. No this can’t be happening.
“In fact, his whole unit is MIA.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“Goodness me, miss, are you alright.”
I don’t register the pain in my knees, nor the tears streaming down my face, nor the balding cleric helping me up from the floor and ushering me to a seat.
Missing. Not dead. Not alive.
“Not deceased officially but presumed because they couldn’t find a body. I am sorry.”
He can’t be dead. Not after all we did.
‘He could still be alive, right?’
I don’t miss his grimace. “I see this label often, usually on soldiers caught in magic warfare. Fire, usually. Nothing left to bury.”
Fire. He was seared to ashes, is what the cleric wants to say. No body, because his bones are now dust.
Nothing left.
The ache swells, choking me. I press my hand to my mouth. I should have gone with him. Should have watched his every move.
I sit in this too-clean, too-quiet room, watching the motes of dust spiral in the shaft of light.
I rise, the cleric standing with me. He murmurs something but nothing filters into my brain, and I start walking.
I walk through the still halls, out into the grey-streaked daylight, the mist much thinner now, but the cold a little biting.
Every step is like wading through bog water.
My limbs heavy, my chest splitting with an aching weight of something I can’t quite name. Grief, disappointment, failure?
Sam.
Missing in action.
Gone.
But maybe not.
Maybe.
I find myself by the same alley I once stalked Rafe from, fingers curling tight around my Taka pouch. Maybe the sub-consciousness of my brain wants to see him. Maybe seeing him will lighten this ache. Or maybe seeing him will make a decision for me.
I could go back. Right now. Find Sam again in 830, pull him out before the fire finds him.
Though, I don’t know if I’m strong enough to lose him again, and I barely know him.
To say goodbye to him twice. Or thrice. Or ten times. At what point do you stop. The pouch grows heavier in my hand, and I close my eyes against the burn in my throat that crawls behind my ears.
Do I go back or accept maybe his fate has now been carved into stone.
The universe is silent.
Though my heart is not.