The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (95 page)

“The firebird requires our aid.  The white roots have spread too far.  How does it desire that we aid it?  What is its plan?”

Geraad chewed his lip.  It didn't feel right to divulge information to this strange entity, but Enkhaelen was obviously a spiritist, and just as obviously sympathetic toward metal-folk.  If Geraad was supposed to be his proxy here...

“I don't know much.  I'm sorry,” he said, watching it closely for a reaction.  “Anything that he's planned is happening far away from here, so unless you have some way to join him...”

“Where?”

“The Palace, I think.  The Imperial City.”

“When?”

“The Midwinter Festival.  Maybe.  I'm not sure—“

“Why?”

Geraad squinted at the thing.  It had not changed expression at all, not even moving its false lips.  Its voice came from somewhere down the hollow column of its throat, the rest more like a husk than a body.  And yet it was undeniably metallic, so he didn't fear that it was some wraith in hiding, or any kind of scry.  No artificer's work was this weirdly natural.

“Honestly, I don't know,” he said.  “He doesn't confide in me.  I can make an educated guess, but all I have is pieces.  And I don't know how to reach him.  I can probably open a portal to the Palace”—the frame had to have at least one pre-set that went there—“but he told me to stay, or run if he didn't return.  If you have another way of getting there...”

The creature said nothing, and Geraad had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd overstepped his bounds.  Enkhaelen had never told him to stay silent, but perhaps it was because he'd thought it was obvious.  Treason at the highest level, and perhaps an assassination attempt...  Perhaps a civil war...

Then the copper creature jerked its head slightly, its leaf-like lips moving into a strange facsimile of a smile.  “The Houses beneath the hills thank you, human.  We will seek the firebird on our own.”

And it turned, and strode from view.

He felt its retreat through the minds of the wolves, their hackles slowly settling.  Exhaling through his teeth, he looked to Tarren and Wydma, but their faces held the same bemusement.

“It couldn't hurt, right?” he said.

No one answered.

Chapter 25 – Shaken

In Cob's opinion, walking would get them to Keceirnden faster than the hog-drawn caravan they rode.  But walking would mean breaking from the herd—being a three-person group instead of a sixty-person wagon train—and thus being under scrutiny from the blue-coated soldiers who patrolled the Finrarden-Keceirnden road.

There had been unusually few at the exit gate this morning: just a handful of harried-looking Riddishmen checking manifests and travel papers before shooing people out.  But now the road buzzed with them, riding back and forth on Ten-Sky horses like messengers, and Cob wondered if they had realized he was here.  That he had entered civilized territory again and they had missed him.

He kept the hood of his pilgrim's robe drawn up and his scarf wrapped around to obscure his face, even though it made him feel stifled.  It was for the best, though; no one else had the Guardian's resistance to cold, and the morning had settled a veil of snow over the Riddish hills so fine that it could be taken for fog until its grains stung the eyes.  His fellow travelers were bundled up just as heavily, and at his side both Fiora and Arik shivered in the chill.

They had been assigned space in one of the middle wagons along with half a dozen other pilgrims, but by mutual agreement had moved to the porch-like ledge outside the back door.  Being cooped up in a creaking, bench-walled space with four coughing elders, a hefty clubfooted woman and a vague-eyed young man was not their idea of comfortable travel.

“Do you think the weather will cut into our time?” said Fiora, half-leaning on him.

He tightened his arm around her waist.  They had been like this since Lark left: in contact but not connected really, their discussions always about the trip.  He wanted to talk about the baby, but the potential for a misstep was prohibitive, and no one needed to hear them fight.

“Dunno,” he mumbled.

“What if we miss it?  Darkness Day.”

“It's fine.  Not like the Palace is goin' anywhere.  Goin' in during the Darkness Day celebration jus' feels...right, though.  Y'know?”

“Like it's supposed to happen.  Destined.”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

“No?”  She tilted her head to look up at him, the white scarf loose around her chin and her cheeks reddened by the cold, and he found himself leaning in as if drawn—as if her lips had a gravity of their own.  To be hip-to-hip like this but unable to do anything, say anything...

“It's not destined,” he murmured.  “It's jus'...convenient.”

She wrinkled her nose.  “I wouldn't say planning to walk a hundred and fifty miles in three days is convenient.”

“Well, it's better than doin' this in the summer.”

“Do you feel more powerful?  Than when we started, I mean.  The dark parts of the year are supposed to be better for you.”

He looked away to find the draft-hog of the next wagon gazing at him with adoring black eyes.  With his feet dangling off the ground, he couldn't feel its life-force, but certainly felt its attention.  He was just glad he had figured out how to mute the Guardian's aura enough to keep every animal in a league's radius from crawling into his lap.

“Hard t' tell,” he said.  “It's only been a couple weeks since I was unbound, and with everythin' happenin'...  I feel more in control, I guess.  Mostly.”

Fiora pursed her lips.  “So you don't have any sort of impending-victory feeling?”

“I've got a colony of moths in my gut.”

“That's nerves.”

“I know.  And I don't think I'd have nerves if I was destined to win.”

“So you think we'll lose?”

“Lemme ask the gut-moths.  Oh gut-moths, I beseech you, tell me—“

She rammed him with her shoulder, snickering, and he swayed with it then pushed back against her.  With a squeak, she slid into Arik, who had been snoozing with his cheek against the porch wall.  The skinchanger made a disgruntled sound and automatically leaned into the push.

“Augh, you're squishing me,” said Fiora.

“You started it,” replied Arik.

She responded by mashing his face with her palm.  So he licked it.

The ensuing tussle nearly knocked all three of them off the ledge, and ended with Cob pulling Fiora bodily across to his other side before Arik could get too snuggly.  Yawning, Arik slung a brawny arm across Cob's shoulders and said, “Jealous?” while Fiora righted herself, still giggling too hard to speak.

Flushing behind his scarf, Cob said, “No.”

“Ooh, lies.  You wanted to get closer to me.”

“We can share,” said Fiora, and rested her head against Cob's shoulder with a wide-eyed look of adoration.  Arik did the same on the other side.  Cob considered jumping.

“Uh oh, he's got the grumpy face now,” said Fiora.

Cob exhaled heavily and made a conscious effort to let it go.  He had always felt like there was a line drawn across his heart, over which he might stumble at any time and transform everything that was fun and bright into agitation and annoyance.  Which was fine—he understood the concept of boundaries—except that his line kept moving, like it was explicitly trying to trip him.

He hated it, but he was learning to manage it.

“And now it's a...sad face?”

“'M not sad,” he mumbled.

“It's all right, you can be sad.  I'm sad.”  Fiora settled against him better, getting comfortable.  “I miss Lark and Ilshenrir.  And Rian.  Even Dasira.”

“Thought you two hated each other.”

“We don't.  Well...  I don't.  I can't speak for her.”  She shrugged.  “In honesty, I respect what she's done—not the murdering parts, but the self-determination, you know?  The defiance.  It's impressive.  We could never be friends, but as a Breanan I can appreciate that kind of fire.”

“But you're not a Breanan.”

It just slipped out.  Feeling her stiffen, he could have punched himself.  But she didn't shout; she just sighed, her breath warm against his shoulder.  “I am in my heart.  Even if the goddess will no longer have me, I...  That's what I want.  I'm sorry about the baby.  Sorry we messed up and sparked this new life when we probably don't have much time ourselves.  And I've compromised myself; Brigyddians aren't allowed to do harm.  I wasn't thinking, and I...I...”

“Hoi,” said Cob softly, concerned.  She looked up at him with watery eyes, and when he pulled her close, she buried her face in the front of his white robe and gave a stifled sob.

“Hoi, Fiora, shit,” he rasped, “y'couldn't know.  And it's my fault too.  I didn't even think about it, and the Guardian did pike-all.”

“I'm the one who came to you in Haaraka, Cob.”

“So what?  Y'can't make a baby on your own.”

“But—“

“But nothin'.  I was into it too.  Maybe I didn't think we were close enough t' make the first move, but I was happy enough when y'did.  And I know it's been patchy since.  There's jus' so much goin' on in my head, it's hard to concentrate on the real world—like I'm not allowed to.  I have to deal with Enkhaelen first, and then, if there is a then...”

She nodded slightly.  “You're right.  The mission first.  I have a duty to my former order.  If using a sword means I'm breaking my vows to Brigydde...well, I didn't pledge to her anyway.”

Cob pressed his face to her hair, not sure what else to say.  They had their own roads to walk, and whether they would stay parallel or diverge, or end, he couldn't begin to guess.  He wouldn't be the Guardian forever, and who could gauge the state of her faith?

He'd let her go, if she wanted that.  Was there something wrong with him?  Love wasn't supposed to be so easily given up.

I don't love her.

Then why did his heart twist like her fingers in his robe?  Why was it so comfortable to stay like this, and so difficult to pull away?

On his other side, Arik still rested against him, alert but unspeaking.  Loyal to a fault.  It pained Cob to think that either of them would follow him into the disaster that awaited—the disaster that Enkhaelen and the Guardian had cooperatively created for him.

I'll beat you both
, he thought. 
I'll pull my friends through this alive, and we'll dance on your graves.

Nevermind the aftermath.  Nevermind the ruins.  They would slip through the cracks in the falling empire and escape into obscurity, the victorious vanished.  That was winning, to him.

*****

Later in the day, the winds picked up.  Granular snow and sand sheeted against the wagons, forcing Cob and his friends inside to stew among their fellow travelers.  Conversation was stilted, the old folks reminiscing in bits and tatters, and the clubfooted woman was not at all pleased to be seated next to Arik and often elbowed him away.  Cob grimaced as he watched the skinchanger scoot further and further into the corner, but Arik did not complain or look to him for help.  He seemed accustomed to such things.

For the first time, Cob found himself wondering where Arik had come from, and how he had ended up at his side.  They rarely talked, and he'd never asked.  He resolved to do so soon.

Fiora stayed slumped against him, more to avoid the old woman at her other side than from any need of comfort.  Her tears had dried swiftly—her nature too sunny to sustain them—and she drifted in and out of sleep, hand alternately clutching his robe and slumping limply to his leg.  She snored a little too.  He thought it was cute but the old couple on the opposite bench kept glaring at them.

Lunch came in the form of smoked meat, buns, butter and jam provided by the caravan, and there was enough of a pause to piss off the side of the road.  Fiora, muzzy and a bit cranky, insisted on standing guard for the old people in case someone fell, and Cob wondered if that was Brigydde already rearing her care-giving head.

Or perhaps she'd always been like that.  They'd never been together around other people, and Cob didn't think that way.  For him, dignity and privacy outweighed infirmity; he'd rather be piked than have someone waiting on his business.  But they had to rescue one old man from a snowdrift and corral the vague-eyed boy when he started drifting toward the woods, and while it annoyed Cob, it seemed to awaken something in Fiora.  By the time they reentered the wagon, she was chattering away with the clubfooted woman—a widow from Thyda.

Yendrah, as she introduced herself, was bound for the Palace to deliver her sister's soft-headed son and herself to the healing judgment of the Light.  “We should have done it years ago,” she expounded, “but my sister thought perhaps he'd grow out of it, and we never had someone to take him before.  With my husband gone to bones now, I've no further responsibilities toward my clan.”

Cob saw Fiora sit forward, eyes bright with the urge to argue, so he covered her with, “How'll the Light fix him?  I mean, the Light burns away impurities, it doesn't, um...”

“Give wits?” said Yendrah, then chuckled and clapped her placid nephew's shoulder.  “No, it won't make you clever or pretty or strong.  Not on its own.  You have to be worthy of the change.  The Light burns away the bad to clarify the good, and this boy has plenty of good.  Soon he'll be as he always should have been.”

In his mind's eye, he saw the throne room open up to swallow Ammala Cray and her kin, and his throat tightened.  “It...fixes people?”

“Of course, child.  What did you think?”

“I'm not here for fixin'.  Not sure about...”  He looked around at the older folks, dimly aware of a baseline of pain and illness from all of them.  The old man at the end of his bench was asleep again, jaw hanging open and a half-chewed samarlit leaf stuck to his lower lip; the others ate gingerly from age-spotted fingers, their bodies brittle and birdlike beneath their robes.  None had escorts, and he couldn't recall the faces of those who had brought them to the wagon this morning—there so briefly and then gone.

“Well, not everything can be fixed,” said Yendrah matter-of-factly.  Crossing her meaty arms over her chest, she surveyed their companions and said, “You must not be from a clan that requires this.  Yours do cremation?”

He blinked.  “Uh, no.  Sky burial.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she grunted something in the Ridvan dialect that the Guardian translated as
'accursed bird-fuckers'
.  Then she said, “The way to the Light ain't through the sky.  It's through the Palace.  When our elders are too weak to be of use, they take the pilgrimage to bask in the undiluted radiance of the Light and shed their bodies like ash.  Your folk leave them trapped in their corpses, waiting for the birds to peck them free.”

That's not how it is.  Souls escape immediately; birds just eat the meat.
  But Cob knew better than to start that argument.  He almost wished Lark was there to witness him not sticking his foot in his mouth.

“I didn't know that,” he said instead.  “So what about you?”

She gestured to her twisted foot.  “I've been destined for this since birth, my boy.  My mother was too soft-hearted to send me off as a child, and I was useful enough for looking after the babies once I was older.  Even got wed—just had to take care not to catch.  But now I've got the flutter in my heart, the aches in my bones, and someone has to take Kirim to the Light.  If it clarifies him, he can make it home on his own.”