“Then, you know that this is cyclic. Gods, love, two people against the world hoping against hope that it’ll see reason and allow them to live instead of survive.” Pity and something bleaker underpinned Méherre’s voice.
Please stop.Kadra’s stern but increasingly haggard features flashed to mind. Sarai’s throat constricted.
“Love was your salvation. Now, it’ll be your ruin.” Méherre’s voice wasn’t cruel, but every word felt like a blow. “As much as you try to put the land first, it’s been trapping you using him, hasn’t it? And it’s been targeting him using you.”
Stop.Head bowed, Sarai braced her elbows against the railing. But it was all true, wasn’t it?
“You’ll always be each other’s greatest weaknesses, saving people from their own stupidity while saving each other from their evil. And little things like northern towns and their woes will go forever unnoticed, won’t they?”
“Godsdammit!” Sarai snarled. “What would you have me do? Kill Aelius’s Quarter? The Order?”
Unfazed, Méherre crossed her arms. “I grew up in Komis, where Clan Kader once exerted a reign of terror from the Drust Mountains, and the Tetrarchy did nothing. They had a motto that everyone knew well.Violentia nervus potesta. Violence is the sinew of authority.” Shards of gravel paved her voice. “Use your authority, and raze those in your way. History won’t call you a tyrant when the rest of the land lives inpeace.”
Sarai’s mouth worked in incomprehension. A resonant clanging broke through the town’s quiet, coming from the main square.Another death.“Do people really not deserve the chance to change?”
“Not at our expense, Sarai.” Méherre turned a thoughtful eye to the square. “Even the gods won’t allow that anymore.”
It was only once the Bridger left that Sarai gave into the urge that had tormented her for weeks. Pressing her head against the platform’s railing, she wept.
Long hours later, Sarai wandered back into the town square, quickly finding her worried vigiles and assuring them that she was fine.
Méherre’s tall figure was easily visible within a crowd that had gathered around an acting troupe. Sarai made her way toward her, flinching at the accidental brush of a man’s shoulder and at the tragic tale the actors were recreating—an apparently well-known part of the town’s history. The burning of a heretic from Sal Flumen who had served Time a millennium ago.
Fascinated, she stared as Time granted the priestess Faragathe his favor and began giving her detailed visions of the future in her dreams. This, of course, angered Ur Dinyé’s long-dead Seers, who’d prided themselves on meditating for years to receive an out-of-context glimpse that could mean anything. And it had infuriated the Elsarian Order, who hadn’t been granted anything at all.
Sounds familiar. Sarai winced as the Order forced Faragathe to a Hearing and demanded that she recant her prophecies, vowing punishment if she dared refuse.
Faragathe’s answer had been a single word. “Audeo.” Or “I dare,” in the ancient tongue.
They had lopped off her limbs and burned her alive that same day.
“The Order’s mellowed a great deal, haven’t they?” Méherre remarked beside her. Her eyes flickered to Sarai’s, then dropped to the ground. She scratched her head. “Look, I shouldn’t have said all that—”
“Can you Bridge Kadra here?”
Méherre cleared her throat. “He isn’t going to kill me, is he?”
Any lasting awkwardness dissipated like snow. Sarai laughed. “He’ll know how to help Florus. No one has a better understanding of the Corpus.”
Méherre blinked. Approval glinted in her eyes before she held out a hand. “Welcome to the battlefield,PetitorSarai.”
Sarai clasped it with a wry smile. “I’m not saying that you’re right.”
“Notyet.” Méherre’s grin turned her features so elfin that Sarai gaped. Releasing her hand, the Bridger sauntered toward the town’s gates, whistling all the while.
Sarai shook her head.Anek is doomed if they ever see that.She resumed watching the troupe bring their tale to a close.
“The Elsarian Order’s records end at the fact that Faragathe died that day,” an actor pronounced. “But one by one, every priest involved in her indictment died afterward of mysterious causes, their bodies contorted like they’d been consumed by fear. Some say Time elevated his protégé to the pantheon of the Naaduir and made her a goddess. Some say she still watches this land and controls our dreams now, as Time did hers. So, if you see her in yours tonight, tell her that there are some in this land who remember. And that there are some in this land who need to.”
Sarai clapped enthusiastically as the actors took a bow. A feathery snow began to fall, peppering the crowd’s faces in a thousand kisses as though in silent thanks.
And perhaps it was. She glanced up at the gray sky above a town where the gods had never seemed closer.
Perhaps it was.
Eleven years ago, three weeks before escape
A boot slid against tile, then paused. A ragged breath. The saw of fingernails scraping wooden panels. Another slow step.
