Chapter Fourteen
18 Teretar, evening
I don’t know how long it was after I finished that last entry that I woke up—I didn’t realize I’d been asleep either—to find Cederic shaking me gently and saying my name. I felt so numb, it was as if I didn’t recognize him. As if he meant nothing to me. He was sitting on the edge of our bed, so I sat up to face him, and he clasped my hands and said, “Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t talk about it,” I said.
“You have the look of someone who is being eaten from within,” he said. “You need to tell someone. Please, Sesskia, let me share your burden.”
Him saying that—I don’t know what happened. Usually, as I’ve written before, I tell him everything. But it infuriated me—all those days of never seeing him, of trying to reach out and being ignored or passed over in favor of something more important, and it took nine deaths for him to decide he wanted to be with me?
I screamed at him—I won’t even try to record what I said, it was horrible and vicious and I felt myself growing harder and colder with every word. He just looked at me, and before I’d fully wound down he withdrew his hands, stood and walked away, silently, his face as expressionless as always, and that shut me up. I clenched my hands and listened to his steps, listened to the door open and shut, quietly, and then I threw myself face-first onto the bed and howled.
I was making so much noise I didn’t know he’d come back until he picked me up and put his arms around me, laid his cheek against mine, and held me, whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I cried and cried and clung to him and cried some more until my throat ached and my eyes ached and I ran out of tears. Then we sat like that, silent, until I said, “I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t mean it.”
“I think I may have deserved some of it,” he said. “I have been incredibly stupid not to realize how little we were seeing of each other. Lady Radryntor has consumed so much of my time I told myself my own needs could wait—but I never thought of yours, nor that my needs are now to an extent those of the Empire and should not be neglected.”
“Even so, I should never have spoken to you that way,” I said. “Please forgive me.”
“As you forgave me, once,” Cederic said, and my heart lightened.
“I should have pushed harder,” I said. “I knew we were drifting apart, but part of me was selfish and believed because I was exhausting myself, you should be the one to make the effort. So I never did anything beyond trying to stay awake until you came to bed.”
He smiled. “You don’t know how many times I thought of waking you,” he said. “But I knew you needed your rest, and I told myself there would be time, eventually.”
“I wish you’d woken me,” I said.
“I wish I had too,” he said, kissing me. “But we have nothing but time now.”
“Even if Lady Radryntor decides to evict us from Pfulerre?” I said.
Cederic gestured, and a heavy chair flew across the room and wedged itself under the doorknob. “She will need several men with large axes to do that,” he said between kisses, “and if she is able to get past that door, there are more chairs in this room I will use as projectiles.”
I started unbuttoning his shirt. “Are you sure your concentration can be divided like that?” I said.
“No,” he said, sliding his hands under my shirt and unfastening my breast band, “but I thought you might like the reassurance of knowing I am so committed to making you cry out in pleasure I would attack the servants of one of our vassals to ensure it.”
“That is the most romantic thing you have ever said to me,” I said, and then we were done talking.
I love him so much.
We made love, then we held each other, and talked, and made love again, and part of me wanted to feel guilty that I could be so happy when nine of my friends were dead, but I know it’s foolish to think that way, because my being miserable isn’t going to bring them back. And I needed this so much.
I told him about Roda, about what we’d said to each other, and he listened intently and held me close, and this time I didn’t cry. When I finally wound down, he stayed silent, just played with my hair the way he does sometimes when we’re lying close together. Eventually, I said, “Well?”
“I was not sure whether you wanted my opinion, or just a listening ear,” he said.
“I—actually, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I want reassurance.”
“If you are looking to me to tell you whether or not to forgive your sister, you will have to ready yourself for disappointment,” he said, “as I think it is not my place to tell you what to do with your pain. But I think you are wrong in believing that forgiveness means behaving as if the sin never happened.”
“Then what does it mean?” I said.
“What did it mean when you forgave me the cruel things I said to you in the palace?” he said.
“That was different,” I said. “That wasn’t years of pain and abandonment. Besides, I was in love with you and I wanted a reason to forgive you.”
He laughed. “The two may be different in, let us say, intensity,” he said, “but the principle is the same. You chose to let go of the resentment you might justifiably have harbored against me. That is not the same as pretending it never happened. Much as I personally would like not to have that memory.”
“And it meant being able to love you, so it’s not as if nothing good came of it,” I said.
“It’s up to you to decide whether something good came of Roda’s actions,” Cederic said. “But I think, if you choose to let the past bury the past, you may feel happier. And your happiness is paramount to me.”
I put my arms around his neck. “Show me,” I said, and he did.
Finally, it grew dark, and we got dressed and went to eat, not with Radryntor but with the mages elsewhere in the palace. That was a lot sadder, and then I felt guilty that I’d had such a wonderful afternoon when most of them hadn’t, but we remembered our dead together, and that made things easier. I think we’ll be able to go back to our work soon—not before the funeral, naturally, but soon.
Cederic’s right. I’ve been carrying around a lot of anger toward Roda for years, even though most of the time I wasn’t aware of it. And it hasn’t made me happier. It seems like she really does regret the choices she made, which means she’s going to carry that burden whether I forgive her or not, so if I’m worried that forgiving her means pretending none of it happened, I shouldn’t be. If I could forgive Cederic for his deliberate cruelty, maybe I can forgive Roda too. But I don’t think anything good came of her actions.
Well, maybe. I was able to survive on my own after I left Thalessa because of what I’d had to learn to keep the three of us alive after Roda left. And it would have been harder to go out on the road the way I needed to if Roda had still been there. But I’m not ready to think like that. I’m sure as hell not going to be grateful to her for what she did. If she’d been with us, she would have gone for the medicine and I’d have been with Bridie when she died. I guess I’m not as over my resentment as I thought.
True God help me. I re-read that last paragraph and realized something I’ve failed to see all these years: it’s myself I can’t forgive.
I was supposed to take care of my baby sister and I failed her right at the end. It doesn’t matter that I was only fourteen and working myself to exhaustion every day, I was doing it for her sake, because she was small even for a ten-year-old and couldn’t do much more for the family than scrounge along the tide line. I had to go out for the medicine because there wasn’t anyone else, and it was just stupid bad luck that’s when she had her final seizure. It’s just been easier, all these years, to blame Roda or Mam so I wouldn’t have to face how much I blamed myself.
It doesn’t change anything I wrote above, but…maybe if I can forgive Roda, I can forgive myself too.
I don’t know. Letting go of this pain is hard. I’ll see how I feel in the morning. And now I’m going to bed with my husband, and while we probably won’t be having sex again, we will sleep close together, and bring each other comfort, and tomorrow I’ll be able to face whatever the future holds. And I don’t feel one bit superstitious about writing that.
19 Teretar
Today was a rest day. We each, Balaenic and Castaviran, prepared to bury our friends according to our different customs, but we also wanted to do something to honor them as mages irrespective of their nationalities. So we went into Pfulerre and bought nine blank books, and everyone wrote messages in them—nothing maudlin like “We’ll never forget you,” because that’s either true or it isn’t and writing it under these circumstances felt trivial. Instead we wrote about magic, how we felt when we used it and why we could still go on using those pouvrin and th’an that killed them because it wasn’t the magic’s fault what had happened.
Then we wrapped those books in red silk—red for celebration, since we already had enough white for death, and it turns out Castavirans associate white with death like we do—and laid them with the bodies. They’ll be buried tomorrow, the Castavirans in one of the Pfulerrian cemeteries, the Balaenics in the burial ground outside Lethess. We’d wanted them all to be buried together where the kathana circle was, but I judged it was better they lie with the rest of the dead so their burial place wouldn’t be forgotten, or disturbed by one or both of those cities expanding beyond its current boundaries.
When I wasn’t participating in those things, I stayed in our room and read a book I’d borrowed from Granea, something light and mindless like I haven’t read in years, and ate off a tray they brought me at lunchtime, and basically did nothing of importance. I did have dinner with Cederic and Radryntor, who wasn’t quite as cold as she’s been lately, probably because she’s not an evil person and respected the fact that I’m in mourning. We talked about a lot of things, and I think she wanted to bring up the failed kathana but couldn’t find a graceful way to do it. Probably she just wanted to be assured that Castaviran magic isn’t what caused it to fail.
In two days we’ll have the funeral. After that, it’s time to get back to work. We still have to bring the magics together, and we still don’t know how to do that, and there’s still the problem of magic diminishing, so that’s a lot of work. But we’re not giving up. (I almost wrote “we’re not giving up yet,” but that implies there’s a point in the future where we will give up, and I’m too stubborn to ever do that.)
21 Teretar
The funeral was the same as any other, which is all I’ll write about that because it’s bad luck to record the details of a funeral. It draws Death’s attention, and I don’t need any more of that. We were all able to go to both because Balaenic funerals are traditionally held at dawn, and the Castaviran funeral was mid-morning. So many of the funeral traditions are the same that for the first time, I could see how our cultures might once have been one. How terrible it’s our death rituals we haven’t changed in all these centuries.
It was nearly noon when the final body was laid to rest, so I went back to my room to change. Cederic had worn the Kilios’ robe, and I’d been given the robe of a Castaviran priest because I’m a mage. It was uncomfortable, emotionally, like I was betraying the true God, but I didn’t do anything religious so I’m sure it was all right. Then we ate in our room, without saying much, and I dawdled, and played with my food, until Cederic said, “If you wait too long, your sister may leave before you have a chance to speak with her.”
“How do you know that’s what I’m thinking?” I said.
“You fiddle with things when you are putting off an unpleasant task,” he said, “and that shrimp is looking rather tattered now. And I know of only one unpleasant task you might have to face today, given that the mages will not be working until tomorrow.”
I ate the shrimp, thinking I would need to be more careful if I wanted to conceal my emotions from Cederic. Then I realized I never wanted to do that. “You don’t mind if I don’t ask you to come?” I said.
“Not at all,” he said. “This is a private matter. But I would like to meet her eventually.”
“We’ll see how this goes,” I said. I kissed him and left the room.
It was tempting to slip away from my bodyguards for this. They’re good soldiers, but not equipped to contain a thief with years of experience eluding men just like them. But I think they’d be disciplined severely if they lost me, even if it was my choice to elude them, and that’s not fair to them. So I told them where we were going, and we set off for Lethess. I was glad Roda wasn’t in Pfulerre, though why would she be? I know my bodyguards are uncomfortable in Pfulerre because they don’t speak the language and because they’re so conspicuously Balaenic, and the Pfulerrians aren’t exactly hostile, but they’re not friendly either.
We drew some attention as we made our way down to the docks, but not much. Lethess sees a lot of soldiers going in and out of town, and most of them head for the dockside entertainment despite the strong warning they’re not to get into any fights with the sailors. I was inconspicuous in my regular work clothes, which are of a Balaenic design except for my trousers, but you can only make trousers so many ways and these didn’t really draw the eye. So we looked like four Balaenic soldiers and a Balaenic mage headed into town for a day off. If you looked closely, you’d see they had me surrounded and looked extremely alert even for soldiers, but nobody shouted my name or told everyone to make way for the Empress-Consort.
The Salten Arms was easy enough to find because it was the largest inn near the docks. It was also fairly upscale, not the sort of place an ordinary sailor could afford, and it made me wonder what business brought Roda here. We went inside and found it had the same floor plan as most Balaenic inns built about seventy years ago: a small entry room flanked by the taproom on one side and a dining room on the other, and stairs to right and left going up to the upper floor (or, in this case, floors—it had four stories).
There wasn’t anyone at the desk, but there was a bell, so I rang it. Pretty soon someone thundered down the stairs. It turned out to be a skinny man I wouldn’t have imagined could make that much noise. “Yes?” he said, breathlessly.
“I—” I began, then realized I had no idea what name Roda was using. “I’m looking for a woman who’s staying here,” I said, and described Roda. “I’m her sister.”
“What’s the name?” he said, pulling a large register from under the desk and opening it.
“I, uh, don’t know,” I said. “We don’t have a surname. We haven’t seen each other in sixteen years and we…didn’t have much time to talk the other day.” I realized “the other day” had been most of three weeks ago, and suddenly I felt sick, remembering what Cederic had said. I didn’t know if she’d even still be here. I deeply regretted all those days I’d held onto my anger.
“We register under surname or placename here,” he said, shutting the book. “Can’t help you if you don’t know one of those. Sorry.”
“Wait,” I said, feeling desperate, “she would have arrived at least three weeks ago, and her praenoma is Roda.”
The innkeeper regarded me curiously. “I’ve seen you before,” he said.
“Probably,” I said. “My name is Sesskia. I’m the Empress-Consort.”
His mouth fell open, and he let the book fall back on the counter with a thud. “You are at that, true God defend me,” he said. “Your Majesty. You said your sister? True God help me, royalty staying at my inn.”
I didn’t correct him. “Please say you remember her,” I said.
He flushed. “I’m not sorry about this. I can’t give out information to just anyone,” he said, “’specially since I had no proof she’s your sister. I mean, not that I don’t trust your word, your Majesty, but you might have been anyone.”
“That means you remember her,” I said.
He blushed some more. “Wait here,” he said, and rushed up the stairs again. We waited. Eventually I heard more measured footsteps, and Roda appeared. She looked awful, her hair matted, her nose and eyes red from a cold, and she moved as if she ached everywhere. “Sesskia,” she said. Her voice was hoarse and as painful-sounding as the rest of her looked.
“Hi,” I said. “Can we talk?”
She glanced at my bodyguards. “Alone,” I said. I turned and told the soldiers, “You’re going to wait here, and no one’s going to tell Mattiak we were separated for a while, right?” They nodded, uncertainly, but that was good enough for me.
Roda turned and went back up the stairs, and I followed her to the third floor and into a cluttered room that smelled stuffy, like the windows had been closed for too long. I saw the innkeeper hovering at the far end of the hall just before Roda shut the door.
“I’ve been sick for about a week,” she said, clearing some clothes off one of the room’s two chairs. The bed was unmade, and there were some plates stacked on a table near the door. “Housekeeping is good here, but I told them I don’t like being disturbed. Hard enough falling asleep without people banging in and out all the time. You want to sit?”
I nodded and took the newly-cleared chair. Roda sat in the other. She looked impassive again. Impassive and ill. “I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you,” I said.
She waved that off. “I feel much better than I did,” she said.
“You look all right,” I said.
“I look like hell,” she said with a short laugh. “Not that Merrikun—the innkeeper—is put off by that. Too bad for him he’s not my type.”
“I wondered why he looked so embarrassed when I found out he’d been stringing me along to protect you,” I said.
“Well, I doubt anyone in this part of town is going to say no to the Empress-Consort,” Roda said.
That dried up our conversational reserves. Finally, I said, “I thought you might have left.”
“I should have left five days ago,” Roda said. “The cold got in the way. I’ll be leaving in three days, cold or no.”
“Oh,” I said. More silence. I felt really stupid about coming. I looked in the direction of the window, took a deep breath, and said, “I didn’t think about how brave you were to contact me. You must have known I wouldn’t be happy to see you.”
“I thought it was a chance worth taking,” she said.
“What did you think I’d do?” I said.
I heard her take a deep breath of her own. “Pretty much what you did,” she said. “Yell at me. Blame me. Accuse me of a lot of things I was guilty of. I hoped, once you’d done that, you might be willing to forgive me.”
“You think you deserve forgiveness?” I said, and memory hit me so hard I felt dizzy, me saying that to Cederic and him saying I think we need forgiveness most when we do not deserve it. I cut across whatever Roda was about to say with, “But it’s not about deserving, is it? You can’t make up for the past and I can’t live the past over again. And I think maybe forgiveness is about not being angry that you can’t do either of those things.”
I turned my head to look at her again. Her mouth was still open from whatever she’d been about to say. “I think we both wish we’d done things differently,” I said, “but right now I just want you to be my sister.”
Roda wiped her nose on her sleeve and laughed, embarrassed. “When I pictured this, I wasn’t quite so runny,” she said. Then we were hugging and crying until I was a little runny myself. When we both calmed down, enough to sit, I said, “You don’t really have to go, do you?”
Roda shrugged. “I can send word to my partners I’m taking a few weeks off. They know I’m owed it. I just—Sesskia, why are you the Empress-Consort? Don’t they know who you are?”
“I won’t say my upbringing isn’t a problem for some people,” I said, “but when my husband became the Emperor, I didn’t have a choice.”
“We have some long stories to tell each other,” she said, and we did. Though there wasn’t enough time today for more than me to tell her about my travels, and coming to Castavir and marrying Cederic, and for her to tell me about settling in Garwin and getting a job with a shipping company, then working her way up until she was part owner.
That was as far as we got before dinnertime, and we ordered food sent up (I arranged for my guards’ dinner too, and tried not to feel too bad that they were no doubt bored out of their minds) and I tidied up the room while we were waiting for the meal. Roda didn’t try to stop me. By that time she was lying down again, saying only, “That’s something I remember well, you keeping that awful little shack clean right up until you had to go out to work at the fishery. And Bridie did her best to mimic you.”
“She was never very good at it because she only ever wanted to read,” I said. “I used to, um, borrow books for her and return them again when she was done. Had to be careful or Mam would sell them for gin.”
“Probably just as well we didn’t qualify for membership in a lending library,” Roda said. “Though it sounds like you invented your own personal one. I never meant for you to become a thief, you know.”
“I know,” I said, feeling no resentment. It was wonderful. “But it’s a skill that served me well over the years.”
“Just so you made good use of it, I suppose,” Roda said with a laugh. I’d forgotten how cheerful her laugh was. It’s not like either of us did a lot of laughing back then. “Though putting a thief on the throne—”
“I had the same thought,” I said.
“Why didn’t you get someone to restore our name? Wouldn’t that make your cause easier?” she said.
“I don’t even know what that name was,” I said. “Just what Mam always said, that we used to be wealthy and live in a manor. Dad certainly never talked about it.”
“I was too young when we lost it to remember it myself, but I looked into it once,” Roda said. “After Mam died, and I couldn’t find you, I thought if I could regain our surname, maybe that would make up for everything. It was stupid, I know, but I was consumed by guilt. But I never got anywhere. Dad’s name—it was like there were a million Aleniks of the right age.” She sat up straighter against the pillows. “Though it did feel as if my not getting anywhere was on purpose. Like someone had gone out of their way to bury our family. The only thing I learned was we weren’t just rich, we were noble. As in we had the “ssar” after our name.”
“Not that that makes it any easier to trace us,” I said, “if our name was eradicated. But I wish I could walk up to Arron Domenessar and use that name to spit in his eye.”
“Somehow the idea that you have any relationship with Domenessar is harder to believe than the Empress-Consort thing,” she said. “You know he wants to be King, right?”
“I know we’re probably going to have to fight him in the spring,” I said. That’s when I realized it almost was spring. It’s hard to remember because the weather’s so nice here, but it’s almost the end of Teretar, and that means the snows are lessening and the skies are clearing. A few weeks now, and we’ll be off to Barrekel, and true God alone knows what’s going to happen then.
We haven’t talked about it at all, because Radryntor takes up all of Cederic’s time and magic takes up all of mine, but we’ve made no progress toward anything that might sway Domenessar or bring the Black and Brown Armies under Mattiak’s command. And I had such a nice day, too, right up until that occurred to me.
We had dinner, and talked some more, and then I had to go back to the camp because it occurred to me Cederic might have started wondering where I went, and although he knows I can take care of myself, he has a very strong protective instinct I find endearing. I told Roda I’d be back tomorrow—I think I’ll ask her if she’d like to move into the consul’s palace with us, so there’s not so big a distance to travel. I don’t know how she’ll feel about that. She’s not overwhelmed by my new status, probably because when you’ve changed someone’s nappies you don’t have a lot of illusions about them, but I don’t know if she realizes the kind of scrutiny I’m under would necessarily be extended to her. Or maybe she does. Anyway, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.
Cederic’s still not here. I warned him that if he didn’t come to bed by a certain time I’d track him down and drag him away by force, or at least stand in the doorway and make loud comments about how late it is and shouldn’t everyone be in bed already. I think—no, I can hear him coming now. Time to put this away so when he comes in, he’ll find me waiting for him wearing nothing but the quilted robe that fastens only at the waist and leaves nothing to the imagination.