“Alric, please,” I said, my words tired but a surprise in them. The tonic was finally having an effect, but I sensed he was on the edge of a collapse. “Please don’t cry.”
“Don’t cry?” he rasped. “Don’t cry? Edith, I thought you weregone.”
“I came back. I came back to you,” I offered. “I had the chance to leave and I came back.”
He collected himself and then said, “Tell me what you mean.”
I tried to lean back to see his face but I could not quite see him. “I mean I was as a spirit in Nyossa. And I saw you there. You were praying. I called to you, but you did not hear me.”
“I prayed at this bedside day and night.”
I smiled, hoping he could see it though I could not see him. “The goddess told me to claim my life. So, I did. Because I wanted to live. Because I wanted to see you again, to be with you again. But,” and here I paused, my voice tearful again. “I am afraid. I am afraid to live a life with one hand. Does that make me weak?” I began to cry again, softly this time.
He did not reply at first, but then said, “If it does not hurt you, can you stand enough to look out at the balcony? I can carry you, if not. I want you to see something.”
“Alright,” I answered, blinking away the fresh tears.
“Walter thinks you can walk tomorrow, but perhaps it is too soon today.”
“No,” I said. “I want to see. I can do it.”
As delicately as he could, Alric stood, laying my now unsupported head down on the pillows. He came around to the right side of the bed, lifting the covers and pulling my legs out and setting my feet on the floor. He then sat next to me, on my right side, his left arm around my waist and helped me to sit up and we stood together. He took my right hand with his right hand, guiding it around his neck to rest on his right shoulder.
My legs were unsteady, but I could actually move them, unlike my arms. My left arm hung loosely, the lightning strikes of pain in it dulling now.
“Is my forearm tied with something other bandaging?” I asked as we carefully stepped together to the balcony, my progress slow.
“It is a splint. The bones are broken, remember?”
“Oh, I have already forgotten. Thank the gods for lightleaf.”
“I will show you this and I should not, but I want you to see it. Then you will rest.”
“Then I will rest,” I repeated.
We shuffled out onto the balcony, which was a rocky ledge with wrought iron fencing on the edge. I realized the prince’s chambers looked out over the Pikestully side of the bluff, not out at the sea. And what I saw took my breath away. From every rooftop of every house and business, every stable, every inn, every forge, shop, shed and sign, a flag in the shape of a left hand waved on the breeze. They were cut from all varieties of cloth, old capes, bolts of fresh fabric, striped tents and blankets. They were in different colors, each one, some muted shades and some vibrant. Some were small and some were the size of a bear’s pelt. The wind twisted some so that they looked like right hands from where they were strung.
“Oh my,” I breathed.
“Do you see that?” Alric asked, his mouth on my ear. “Every person in that city below us owes you their life. Every single one. Perch told me that all four temples are filled with those in prayer for you. Especially the women.”
“They— they pray for me?”
“Every citizen, but the women are the ones who sit continuously, asking for you to live.” He kissed my temple. “That is what I asked for.” He rested his head against mine, his chin at my cheek and we looked out at Pikestully over the balcony.
“All those flags are for me,” I said.
“Edith, you saved our city and our country. You brought peace to the continent for the gods know how long, perhaps forever. You are the savior of Tintar and master of the stone drakes. The people will never cease in thanking you.”
We slept together in a prince’s bed that night, his arms around me, his kiss on my brow.
105. King
I spent a week in Peregrine’s chambers, my husband by my side at night, sleeping with me and spending as much of the day as he could attending to me. He was often called away to meetings with the king and his council on how to go about negotiating peace with countries that had threatened Tintar. But what time he could spend with me, we spent walking back and forth across the bedroom, recapturing the strength in my legs. Or he would read to me, having brought up all of our books. I asked him to also ask Hazel to collect and deliver Cian’s historic handwritten account of Tintar’s terrain, the first book I had read in my temple training. I wanted to hear a description of the country for which I had just sacrificed my left hand. Whenever I grew forlorn about being one-handed, if I could, if I had the strength, I would walk to the balcony and look at all of the hand-shaped flags.
Friends and family visited, Helena, Maureen and Mischa first. They came to spend the day after I woke with me, by my side while Alric bathed and ate and met with Hinnom’s council. They helped me bathe with pitchers of warm water, carefully avoiding my bandages. Helena recounted all of the rumors flying around Pikestully, most of them true, about my summoning of the stone drakes and how people were calling for me to have my own holiday. She informed me her pregnancy was now making eating meals unpleasant and that it was most definitely a daughter. Maureen brought me a sleepy Tabitha in a basket and told me she sang me a bedtime song I had sung to her when she was small. I thanked her for that and did not tell her that, in a spirit realm, I had seen this. Mischa, sitting next to me on the bed after they helped me stand up, clean myself and put on a new shift, asked me if my right hand had any pain in it. When I said no, she asked to see it. I held it out to her, it having returned mostly to my being able to use it, though the joints were stiff. I pulled it back to me when she slapped it.
Maureen, startled, paused in her tucking the sheets around my legs.
