“Did you say something?” Eban asks.
I shake my head, concentrating on the voice I hear in my head.Tadhana?I ask.Is that your name?
Don’t make me say it twice.
-Thank you, Tadhana.
That’s better.
-Are we going the right way?
What do you think?
-Are you a fairy?
A fairy! Excuse me, are all Ophir this dense? I told you, I’m Tadhana.
-My ancestor?
Something like that. I’m not a fairy, I was a warrior. One of the shieldmaidens of Queen Bulakna. Only the best of us become spirits who channel the gods. I’ve been waiting a long time for one of my line to wake me.
-I don’t know anything about Queen Bulakna. The Laconians—they scrubbed our history. They don’t want us to know anything about Ophir.
That’s a pity, says Tadhana.Then you must learn. But now that I’m awake, I find I need a little nap.
I turn back to Eban, who is rowing furiously, watching the arc of his broad shoulders in the dim light of the relic, the corded muscles in his arms as he rows, the faint tan line at his chest. He looks up and catches me staring and now we’re both blushing. With the heat rising in my cheeks, I remind myself that I’m determined to see Rollo again.
Luckily, Eban doesn’t say anything. To fill the silence I ask him a question about the Lashing.
His demeanor softens. “What do I know about it? Not much.” He takes a few moments to concentrate on pulling on the oars, then continues. “There are many different stories, some more fantastical than others. Most pirates say it’s nothing more than a collection of rafts, always moving from place to place, which might explain why it’s hard to find.”
I hope that’s not the case, that we didn’t survive all this just to find a ragtag collection of dinghies. “What do you think it is?”
He focuses on the vast open sea in front of us, squinting as if that will help him see in the endless darkness beyond. “I don’t know. I guess I’m hoping it’s an actual city and not just a fairy tale. Not just something they told us as kids to make us feel better about our miserable lives. To give us hope.”
There is hope!
“There’s hope,” I echo. “I mean, Tadhana—the spirit in the bottle—she says there’s hope.”
He narrows his eyes. “You still hear the voice?”
“Yeah, and it’s a she. Her name is Tadhana and she was an Ophir warrior who served Queen Bulakna. Have you heard of her? I don’t know anything about our history.”
“Queen Bulakna was the last queen to stand against Lacon. She led a battalion of warriors against Lacon but was caught and executed. They burned her.”
It’s true, Tadhana says softly.I saw her die. She held her head high, she never screamed. Her mage turned all of us dying warriors into spirits and hid us in the reliquary. It was the last thing I remember before falling asleep. How long have I been asleep, by the way?
-Five hundred years.
Tadhana is silent after that.
I tell Eban what Tadhana tells me, and his brow furrows. “What I really want to know is how did Ophir relics end up at House Dominant? And how did House Eternal know they had them? And what do they mean to do with them?”
The boat drifts slightly as Eban has stopped rowing.
“Beats me,” I say. Maybe I’m just an illiterate street rat, but most of us are. What we know about our heritage, our culture, is only what Lacon allows us to know. We’ve been stripped of our kingdom, our land, our history, our language. The only thing we do know is that we are not Laconian. That much they make clear.
“Are we going the right way?” I ask aloud. A soft sigh comes from within, and then the bottle glows brighter while tugging my hand forward slightly. “That’s a yes,” I tell Eban.
