“This one?” Sofy asked. She'd heard enough tales of pursuits and hunts, Jaryd reckoned, to know what was up.
“No, there's plenty more,” said Jaryd. “Let's confuse them.” Sure enough, they passed several more spots where bedrock met the stream bank. At one such, Jaryd finally directed them left and out of the stream. The horse's hooves left no trace on the rock that any but an expert tracker would see. Then they were riding uphill, twisting through the dense forest. After a long period of climbing, Jaryd was finally convinced that their pursuers were no longer on their trail.
They rested the horse for a moment by a small stream, allowing the tired beast a long drink while Jaryd checked it for injury. Sofy watched, standing close behind, curious to learn more.
“How far do you think we are from Teriyan and the others?” she asked, tugging at her dress in some discomfort.
“Not far. They'll be heading up one of these ridges too. Hopefully we'll find them ahead.” He replaced the horse's right foreleg to the ground, content that the shoe fit well and no stones were caught beneath. “Why did you come back for me? Seriously?”
“Seriously?” Sofy repeated, with some incredulity. “How can you ask ‘seriously’? All of you heroic young men with delusions of grandeur, taking ridiculous risks whenever there's a woman around…I thought you were going to get yourself killed, and I was right!”
Jaryd straightened and stretched an aching shoulder. And he almost surprised himself when he smiled, a little cockily, and said, “In my case, Your Highness, they're not delusions.”
Sofy half gaped at him. From the old Jaryd Nyvar, such a statement would have been expected. But from the new, the humour had been rare. Something had changed. Jaryd was not entirely sure what. Well, he had a journey back to Baerlyn to think about it. With Sofy.
“The biggest annoyance with this whole thing,” Sofy remarked, her eyes lively, “is that I'm not going to be able to tell anyone about how I saved your life! Probably I'm going to have to deny I was ever here!”
“Half the Falcon Guard know you were there,” Jaryd replied. “No stopping those rumours once soldiers start them.”
“True.” Sofy seemed pleased at that.
“And you'll have this vicious red scar to explain,” said Jaryd, indicating her cheek.
“Is it really that bad?” she asked in dismay. “I thought it just stung a little.” She felt at it with her fingers.
“Let me look.” Jaryd peered close. Very close. He was half aware of what he was doing, the old, reckless reflexes kicking in. He knew it was stupid, but he had to test the reaction. He had to see…had to see if what she felt was like…
As he peered, he could feel Sofy's breath on his face. She smelled sweet. Her eyes were fixed on him, her breath tight, her body suddenly rigid. He hadn't really expected that. Or maybe he had. Or maybe…somewhere in the midst of his indecision, their lips touched. She tasted sweet too. The force of it stunned him. She was just a girl, really, and not even his type anyway. And he'd had women who were…well, who were…but it was no good, he couldn't think straight, and his heart was thudding like a wild thing.
His hands went to her back, and he kissed her more deeply and passionately than he'd ever kissed any woman before. Sofy's hands were against him, clutching as if in indecision. She made a low moan, that might have been protest, and might have been something else entirely. But her body pressed close, and then her hands were at his back, clutching his shirt, pulling him closer. It seemed to go on forever. The way it felt, that would have suited Jaryd fine. Only now, his hands were wanting more, a reflex slide on the back of her dress, searching for a lace. Wondering what the smooth white skin beneath would feel like, bare beneath his hand. Wondering what her body would feel like, pressed skin to skin with his own.
They parted. And stared at each other, clutching to each other's arms. Sofy's lovely eyes were big and dark, wide with hungry disbelief. Slowly, her fingertips went to her lips, as if savouring the memory of the kiss. And, perhaps, in a gesture of simple shock. Sofy, who was betrothed to the heir of Larosa. Sofy, upon whose marriage a great war hung, and the fate of multiple civilisations. Sofy, who was staring at him now in the realisation that all of these things, however difficult they'd been before, had just become enormously more complicated still.
“Oh dear lords,” she murmured. “We're really in trouble now, aren't we?”
Rhillian strode the dock as a cold wind gusted off the ocean and the boats heaved and tossed at their moorings. Grey clouds hung low, foretelling an end to summer. Halrhen and Shathi walked at her sides, serrin from the three Saalshen trading ships at anchor in the harbour, the last refuge of Saalshen on this bleak, forsaken shore. Halrhen cradled Aisha, half conscious and in pain, barely larger than a child in the big man's arms.
Smoke swirled across the debris-strewn and puddled pavings, and the stink of burning flesh. Pyres lined the dockside, at least fifteen, with several more under construction, piled high with the wood from half-demolished buildings. What little oil Dockside possessed was being spent to dispose of thousands of corpses, before disease set in. Raggedy men and women worked in groups, piling bricks to form a retaining wall, then hauling bodies by the cartload. Men wrapped themselves in dirty old cloth and leather to ward the blistering flames, wrestling stiff bodies onto the blaze. Priests and caratsa blessed the cartloads of stiffening corpses with holy water and prayers, mouths and noses covered with cloth to ward the smoke and smell.
They needed pits, but there were none on Dockside-the dead were normally disposed of at Angel Bay, but passage across Sharptooth remained treacherous as some of the Riverside mob continued to haunt the alleyways. There had been some suggestion that fishermen could haul boatloads of corpses out to sea and dump them, but the boats were needed for fishing, spare men to sail them were few and far between, and the winds now prevailed onshore, not only making sailing difficult but threatening to blow the terrible cargo back onto the docks regardless, all bloated and floating.
The uniform line of Dockside buildings was broken in places, where a blackened hole appeared, and a pile of collapsed masonry and charred wooden beams. Men and women climbed amongst the ruins, collecting valuables or anything salvageable. The dock markets had reappeared, stalls hawking wares amidst the carnage and smoke. People needed to eat and life went on. Rhillian knew that they would rebuild-humans had been killing and destroying each other's civilisations for as long as serrin had been recording their history, and yet the sum total of humanity never ceased its upward march. Once, she might have found some admiration for their tenacity. Now, she saw only bleak futility. They regenerated like rabbits, or like weeds. They needed to destroy each other, it was how they progressed, from one era to the next, in successive waves of creative obliteration. Serrin had thought to try to restrain this impulse in humans, to control it, to teach them better. Now, she saw it was pointless. This was what they were, and to wish it otherwise was to teach wolves to eat cabbage, or deer to lust red meat. She'd come to Petrodor three years ago, with dreams of finding a symmetry between humans and serrin. But humans and serrin, as Kiel had always warned, were fundamentally incompatible. Now, there was only survival.
They turned onto a pier as frothing waves rushed against the pylons below. Masts waved back and forth, and rigging whipped and clacked against the sail arms. Then Rhillian heard footsteps thumping on the pier planks behind. She turned.
“Errollyn,” she announced to the others, for warning. They kept walking. Rhillian fell several steps back, but did not stop.
“Rhillian.” Errollyn seemed out of breath. “Where are you taking Aisha?”
“Out to a ship, where else?” Rhillian said coldly. She did not look at him.
“You can't just grab her without telling anyone!” He was upset. “I didn't know where she was! I thought she'd been kidnapped, or-”
“She is serrin,” said Rhillian, “and she belongs with serrin. We're taking her home.”
“You asked her?”
“I don't need to ask her. Those of us who matter, just know.” Silence from Errollyn. She could feel his hurt, radiating like heat from the fires. Barely a day before, she might have been shocked at herself. Now, she barely cared.
“At least let me say goodbye.”
“You had few such compunctions with those at Palopy. Many are dead, who departed without your farewells.”
“Fuck you,” he said in Lenay.
They reached the end of the pier. A rowboat was moored there, its oars shipped, two more serrin waiting on its heaving deck. Halrhen simply held Aisha to his chest, an arm beneath her backside as she grasped his shoulders, and began climbing down the ladder. The serrin in the boat held it steady as best they could, and called warnings of an approaching swell.
Rhillian turned to Errollyn. The wind tossed his shaggy hair about a face marked with soot. There was a defiance there, and a pain, and a confusion that perhaps only Aisha would have understood. Rhillian was beyond caring about that either.
“You'd best change her dressings as soon as you're aboard,” Errollyn said. “I've done my best, but Dockside is short of clean dressings today. Also her fever is a little higher than it should be, despite my medicines. I've been mixing fenaseed and gilflower in her tea, so don't let her eat bread, they don't mix well-”
“We've healers aboard who surpass your skills,” Rhillian said. “She'll be better cared for there than here.”
“She hates boats. She'll be sick.”
“It won't kill her.” Errollyn stared at her. Rhillian could see the retort forming on the tip of his tongue. She knew what he wanted to say. All the deaths he wished to blame upon her. He refrained, with great difficulty, and heaved a deep breath. His judgment, however unspoken, did not make her angry. Rhillian felt beyond that. “You could come with us,” she suggested, bluntly.
“No,” said Errollyn. He reached within his jacket and withdrew a folded parchment. It had been sealed with a cord, tied in a bow. “I want you to deliver this to the council. I wrote it by Aisha's bedside this morning, when I could not sleep. They are my reasons for staying. In case anyone is interested.”
Rhillian tucked it into a pocket within her own jacket. Below, Halrhen stepped into the boat with Aisha. “You can write what you like,” said Rhillian. “Humans have better words for what you have done than we. They call it betrayal.”
“You can call it whatever you like,” Errollyn said coldly, “but you can't disguise your disaster here. I warned you, you ignored me, and now look. Go back to the council. Impress them with your pretty words and excuses. Fool them, like you've fooled everyone else. Like you've fooled yourself, most of all. And then soon enough we'll all be dead.”
They stared at each other, two old friends atop the furthest pier from shore, as the wind blew and the air smelled more for a moment of salt and freshness than death and charcoal. Rhillian had always known the serrin indivisible. Now, that certainty seemed shattered.
She climed down to the waiting boat and the company of true serrin. Errollyn watched, forlorn and alone, as she found a bench and the sailors pushed the boat out into the swell. He stood and watched for some time as the boat rowed steadily out into the harbour, lifting and slapping on the rolling swell. The only living serrin left in Petrodor, the last in a continual habitation lasting at least three hundred years. Then, finally, he turned and walked back toward the line of fires.
Rhillian took the parchment from within her jacket and considered it. The cold water heaved and splashed just to her side. It would be such a simple thing to toss the parchment away and allow the waves to claim all of Errollyn's vaunted wisdom. His writing would no doubt speak ill of her. It would no doubt make his own stance seem wise and reasonable. Things would be simpler if the parchment were to disappear.
Instead, she tucked it back into her jacket. Whatever had happened, she was still serrin. She would never betray her heritage, nor the justness of what she knew to be true. The rowers’ arms were strong, and drove the boat hard through the waves. Beside her, Aisha sat wrapped in Halrhen's supporting arms. Her eyes were half closed, her head bobbing as the swell took them up and down. Rhillian clasped Aisha's hand. The fingers tightened faintly in return.
“Soon,” Rhillian promised her. “Soon you'll be home.”
The Velo household was all blackened stone and charcoal. The fire had engulfed the neighbouring residences too, the wind swirling a haze of ash amidst the smoke from the pyres. Sasha embraced Mariesa Velo, her hands and dress black from searching through the ruins, and gazed at the desolation.
“We'll rebuild it,” she assured the older woman. “Everyone will help, you'll see. It'll be better than before.”