Chapter Two – Part 8 – “There’s nothing to return to is there?”
BONUS EPISODE
In apology for the massive delays I’ve had the last week, Leila and I got together to make sure we could leave you all with something special over the weekend to say thanks for sticking around and putting up with the delays. So thanks, guys! This week’s going to be tense! – Ian
Dawn. A dull and inauspicious one, at that – dark clouds broiled with malcontent overhead to match the steel sea, white caps boxing at the sides of the boat, wan fingers of pink crawled across the sky. The night had felt endless, Mireya had asked herself question after question, the answers as distant as land. Now, with dawn marching relentless toward the boat, Mireya made her way to the deck with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Scratchy, cheap wool. Few of the crew were moving about yet, but those who were moved with an urgency that clearly betrayed their wish to make landing as soon as possible. Perhaps the deck was not the best place to keep out of the way. Making to turn back to the murky oppression of below decks.
Except there was Rhayd, wrapped in that awful cloak of his from neck to jackboots, leaning against a grain sack beside the entrance to the below-deck cabins. His eyes were obscured by the dark rings about them, hair a disheveled mess. He, too, had clearly suffered a sleepless night.
“He told me he spoke to you as well,” Rhayd said simply, his eyes not deviating from whatever mote it was in the middle distance he had focused on.
Of course the Curia would talk to Rhayd, she would be stupid to think she’d had his sole attention, that his words had been just for her. The bitterness shouldn’t show, trying to call it back from her face. If there was one thing she’d learnt it was holding back her feelings, forcing her tone into the familiar dusky indifference. Drawing the blanket further around her shoulders – the dull fabric draping her like a sack. She narrowed her eyes, pursing her already narrow lips in an effort to bite back a response. Better to remain civil, this early in the day. Instead of making a remark she knew would just start a fight, she turned away to lean on the rail just beside her.
“He?”
“He has plans for us all, it seems.”
Mireya turned her head to look down at him, managing to do it whilst looking down her nose. It was a look she gave Kintere often enough, usually when drunk and proclaiming his undying adoration. Rhayd had just said something as stupid.
“I don’t think they’re plans, not so much as the only way he can see to hold back the tide he knows is advancing.”
Rhayd shook his head, his eyes sinking shut as he leaned back against the wood of the rear castle.
“They’re plans, at least insofar as they apply to me. You and Kintere, you get to progress, move forward. Me he wants to drag back into the past along with him.”
Mireya blew an errant strand of hair from her face, trying to un-hear the words, to erase the sinking despair in them. She recognized that tone of indignation all too well – had heard it from her own lips far too often.
“For the first time in my life, I know the truth today,” Mireya said at last. “Last night and every night before that, I thought I knew the truth – or at least what I could have learned when Auss would not let me learn more than he found convenient.”
Instantly, she found she was uncertain of the curse in her tone, tried to divert it with a toss of her hair and a change of her posture – but realized it would mean nothing. The toss was too harsh, the jut of her hips too exaggerated. Too late now.
“You’ve progressed every day of your life since you were eight, since the Curia created an Ioun Stone for you…Last night I found out they existed.” Really, all he needed was her understanding, but she couldn’t give it easily to him, not him, with her revulsion and scorn.
Rhayd blinked, brows knitting together.
“An Ioun… Oh, right, the testing. I never understood the point of one of those things – he wanted me to light it up somehow, but it wouldn’t shine. I could make it brighter, change its color when he had lit the stone, but I failed that test. And a number of others after. I assume you passed his challenge, then?”
Mireya rolled her shoulders, folding her arms under her breasts – again, a gesture lost to exaggeration, and she found herself frowning again. How did he manage to put her in such a foul mood with so few words?
“How can you pass something if you don’t know it’s a test?” She knew it was the wrong thing to say, but something lit inside her, and she found herself mimicking the mockery in his tone. Casting needles at him as he did at her. “I don’t think this is about us though, about Kintere, or me, or even you. We have these rare talents…Whatever they are, and it is for us to do what we can to do what is right. Even if it means doing things we may not want.” The strength of the words surprised her, all the disjointed thoughts that had run through her head over the last evening had come together. “No-one talks of the truths, just the stories that victors tell to make it all sound finished and themselves sound brave. I’d rather the dirty truth – would you?”
“I’d rather knowledge. Any knowledge, as long as its true, to having any decision made in my best interest without my allowance.” The first thing he had perhaps ever said which meant he agreed with her.
“So what makes you think you will not be moving forward?” Finally, the beginnings of a straight question.
But then he laughed, though it could barely be called that. A chuckle of desperation, perhaps.
“I will be moving backward. My role in all this is to take up the work that Edvard is doing, under his replacement. After three years away and uncountable days of immense training and study, I am to return to Ckuien Penance.”
So that was it. Plans. Mireya shrugged off the wool blanket, turning to face him properly at last, leaning back against the rail.
“Last week, my life was working in the Inn, that was all I could foresee and yet, here I am, on the way to a future that was not planned. The Curia told me that we would learn together, you, Kintere and I…Whatever the next years bring, your role will be defined by you and ultimately….By things not even the Curia can control. War may come, Rhayd.”
“My future, just as yours, will be defined by my abilities. Like it or not, Mireya, we are spiraling toward something of cataclysmic proportions. The work that is required in Penance is vital to our survival of this. And I am the best suited to it. That is why I am angry. Not because Edvard has forced anything on me, but because I know why he chose to plan the way he has.”
“Then we had best be ready” An easy roll of her shoulders, the hint of a smile on her lips. Not polished, not comely, just…A girl, with the weight of the world on her shoulders. At least, that’s what she hoped he saw. “Ready to use our abilities to the best they can be, if they define us then we need to shape them. These abilities, whatever they are…These are the only things we truly have that can’t be taken away. I can’t do anything else.”
“None of us can do anything else,” Rhayd agreed, sharing a weak smile with her for a moment, before turning his eyes to the ship’s crew, their bustling to prepare the ship for landfall. “Tomorrow, we’ll be on Lockwood isle. Everything will be new. Rhayd Khalenn the noble won’t exist. Nor will Kintere Toralyon the Namari tribesman, nor Mireya the serving girl. We’ll all be replaced. Rhayd, Kitere and Mireya. The exiles.”
“We’ll just be students, Rhayd…Everyone there, we’re all the same, all children of a changed world where more and more of us are born to be more than we should.” Again, echoing the Curia. “We’ll still be the people we carry inside though, Rhayd. You more than most I’d guess. You’ll still be a noble, I’ll still be known as a whore and Kintere will still be a tribesman who’ll bass heads at the first provocation. Everything will be different, but we can’t be new.”
“I won’t be known as a noble,” Rhayd demanded. “Kintere won’t tell anyone. Nor will you. Nobility is looked down upon, and I’ll have none of it. My family name can’t be known.”
“But you’ll still be a noble. Denial and untruths or not.” She looked down her nose at him again, the woman barely about his chest in her boots, and was made aware of how silly her haughty posture was as he stood, eyes narrowing at her words. “Being known as one or not, we’ll still carry it with us. I won’t tell anyone anything, Rhayd…I’m not here for socializing, the secrets you want to hide are as safe with me as my own.”
“As safe as the port of Yeun, perhaps,” he said cryptically, nodding to the fore of the boat. “Look, smoke.”
Mireya turned, her eyes widening first at his words, then at what she saw. Land, coming over the horizon. There was smoke, indeed, though that was almost an understatement. Where the land broke across a wide delta, the skeletons of buildings could barely be seen. It must have been a beautiful city, straddling the wide river the delta was at the end of. Now, however, the port of Yeun was ablaze, its light, and its great column of smoke, straining toward the sky as if to blot out the sun rising behind it.