Deep magic second coll.., p.52
Deep Magic - Second Collection, page 52
part #2 of Deep Magic Collection Series
“The war?” a dark-skinned merchant said. He slapped his belly. Draped in yellow robes, he played with the handle of a cutlass at his side. His clean-shaven head pronounced him from Fordar.
“Yes, the war. Surely you are worried for business?” another man asked. His skin was lighter, and he stood a foot taller than the Fordar merchant. He kept glancing over his shoulder, as if he expected to find a saptor behind him.
“You Mistlanders are all the same,” the merchant said, grinning. “You wake up every day to a little rain and think yourselves masters of the storm.” He clapped the fairer man at the shoulder. “But war and trade are the same business, my friend. Maybe the only difference is ours is bloodier.”
Neladi shook her head and guided Emmi away.
The Mistlands and Fordar weren’t the only ones who’d risked the journey. Not to be outdone by their Fordarian rivals in Ulvor Bay, the fire-city of Ragril had sent the harvest of their furnaces, stacks upon stacks of weapons that drew far more interest than usual. Nearby, the cities of the Leaflands had brought a much greener crop, a yield of produce so large Neladi questioned how one province had enough good land to grow it. At the centre of the square, however, were the traders Neladi knew her daughter was most taken by.
The island of Arlien had been part of the empire for centuries, long before the Frontier had even been conceived. Governed from the city of Dardin, the nation prided itself as much on its taming of the sea as it did on its penchant for luxury. The latter, nevertheless, was what made their traders so successful.
“So pretty,” Emmi said, praise oozing in her voice. “Please, Mama.”
Neladi looked at all the glittering pieces of jewellery and shook her head firmly. The Arlien might have diamonds or sapphires or streets lined with gold, but they didn’t have her love. There was no place for that kind of wanton frivolity at the Frontier.
“Some of those trinkets cost a few copper simples,” an elderly woman called from behind. “Even you’re not that mean, Neli.”
Neladi approached the vendor, whose stall listed to one side. The shelves were cramped with goods, no two of which were the same. Neladi picked up a plum and inspected it.
“Of course I’m that mean,” she said. “Winds know I wouldn’t shop here otherwise.” She tossed the fruit to the vendor, who caught it and slipped it into a bag.
“You’re paying for that,” she said.
Neladi shrugged. “Guess I won’t deny myself something sweet.” She picked through the vegetables on the table. “How much for the turnips, Mrs. Edden?”
Mrs. Edden scoffed. The wrinkles on her face multiplied. “It’s a simple a piece, same as it’s always been. And I told you not to call me that.”
Neladi grinned. “Even after all these years, you’re still gonna pretend you’re the Frontier’s youngest girl.”
Mrs. Edden’s face betrayed a wry smile. “Well, if you won’t believe me, perhaps I’ll ask someone my own age.” She reached out and squeezed one of Emmi’s cheeks.
“A very pretty girl,” Emmi said, swooning in her dress.
Mrs. Edden laughed. “That girl of yours will be a handful one of these days, Neli. It’s a shame my sons are either twice too old or three times too foolish for her.”
As if to answer his mother’s summons, Mrs. Edden’s eldest son appeared from the back of the shop. He had a dozen melons cradled in his arms. He heaved them into a crate and gasped, wiping sweat from his brow.
“A different sort of handful?” Neladi said.
Mrs. Edden rolled her eyes. “Where’s your manners, young man?” she said, when her son tried to escape back inside. “That fancy knight has you treating this shop like a palace.”
Mrs. Edden’s son turned. It was Roy, the newly promoted captain that Neladi had chased from her house a few nights before. His face flushed red the moment he saw her.
“It’s wonderful to see you, Neladi,” he said, then dodged away before she could return the sentiment. Mrs. Edden huffed and started to pack the turnips.
“Sorry about that business the other night,” she said, as Neladi passed her a few coins. Meanwhile, Emmi took the turnips with both hands.
“He has his orders,” Neladi said. “He meant nothing by it.”
Mrs. Edden eased back into her chair. “No, but Sir Kelvin did. He has the whole place in an uproar.”
Neladi studied the back of the shop. Captain Roy was in there, spinning one of Mrs. Edden’s grandchildren around in his arms. The rest of his nieces and nephews pleaded with him for a turn.
“He keeps you in the know, doesn’t he?” she said.
Mrs. Edden nodded. “Not the brightest son I have, but I’d take your teeth before I’d call him disloyal.”
Instinctively, they both glanced around the square. At the Frontier, spies were another form of currency.
Mrs. Edden licked her lips. “He tells me Sir Kelvin received a letter not two days ago. What it said only the wind knows, but I bet he’s bringing some of those Silvers down out of the Clawhold. I wager he’s itching for a fight.”
Silvers. That was what the people called knights from the great castle at the coast.
“Those Clawhold men are nothing but trouble,” Neladi said. She felt Emmi tug her dress.
“Mama, wasn’t Dada from the Clawhold?”
“Hush now, my sweet. The adults are talking.”
Three guards on patrol passed the stall. They were chatting at leisure, but Neladi decided to drop the topic all the same. Not even the Arlien traders, fists filled with gold, could afford to buy trust at the Frontier.
“Could be rain,” Neladi said, gesturing to the dark cloud on the fringe of town.
“I don’t know about rain,” Mrs. Edden said. “But there’s a storm coming all right.”
One of the woman’s grandchildren appeared at her side. She held out her hand, showing one of the silver rocks that dotted the desert.
“What’s that? Is that for me?” Mrs. Edden asked, plucking the little stone from the girl’s hand. “Thank you, Teleba.”
Another girl appeared at the woman’s unguarded side. She scooped a few oranges from the stall into her shirt. She froze when she noticed Neladi was watching.
Neladi held a finger to her lips. The little girl winked, took one last prize, then dipped back inside as Mrs. Edden turned.
“They keep me young,” she said, laughing. She glanced at Neladi, and her face grew thoughtful. “You know, you shouldn’t encourage them.”
Neladi flicked the woman another copper simple. “They remind me of myself.”
Mrs. Edden gave the coin to a passing beggar. “A couple of amateurs. You were smart enough never to get caught.”
The two women shared a look.
It had been over a decade since the last time Neladi had stolen something. It was back in the time between her mother’s passing and Baylian’s arrival, when she was alone in the house. Neladi might have starved, had Mrs. Edden not turned a blind eye to her theft once or twice.
The same woman who’d saved Neladi’s life that winter now squirmed in her chair. “Speaking of couples, it’s been some time since I last asked.” Her eyes fell to Neladi’s waist.
Neladi hugged her stomach, felt her heart empty inside her. “We’re still trying.”
Mrs. Edden nodded, tapped her fingers on the counter. “You know, the Aelia have priests who—”
“I don’t want some conjurer,” Neladi snapped. “I’m not a cauldron that needs stirring.”
Mrs. Edden breathed a sigh. “I know, child. It just hurts to watch you suffer.”
A silence descended. The gap seemed to stretch between them, but Neladi still couldn’t find a place to put her words.
“Home for dinner, then?” Mrs. Edden offered.
“Yes, yes,” Neladi said, taking Emmi’s hand. “We’ll make her favourite.”
* * *
“I love you,” he said, as he led his horse out onto the road.
Neladi folded her arms, waited for her husband to turn.
Baylian paused. “What? I thought you wanted the last words between us to mean something.”
She cocked her head. “I still do.”
He rolled his eyes and laughed, so loud that the other men looked up and were glad for no reason at all. “I’ll be home by dinner, Neli,” he added.
This time Neladi smiled. That felt like the goodbye—the real one, but suddenly Baylian’s face filled up with fright. He reached an arm out towards her. “Mama?”
She staggered. “What?”
“Mama,” he screamed.
Neladi blinked, and realised her husband wasn’t there. The desert was gone too, and instead she found herself at the dining room table. The voice belonged to Emmi in the chair alongside.
“What is it, my sweet?” she said.
“Daddy hasn’t touched his food.”
Neladi glanced to the other end of the table. Baylian’s dinner sat there, growing cold as steam bled away from it. The plate was filled with the same dish she’d finished making moments before—meat, spices, and what little vegetables could be salvaged from the garden. The peas had been among the survivors, and now two of them, fixed in a mound of flesh, stared back, indifferent. Even Bunchy, the doll Emmi had propped on the stool beside her, wore a less vacant expression.
“Your father mustn’t have worked up enough of an appetite yet,” Neladi said. “But keeping the empire safe is hungry work. He’ll be home sooner than you think.”
As usual, Emmi muttered something under her breath and returned to her food. Neladi took a bite of her own and said nothing. She’d lost the will to chastise her daughter the week before.
“May I be excused, Mama?” Emmi said. The little girl pushed herself to her feet and nudged her plate into the centre of the table.
Neladi sipped her wine, frowning at the contents of her daughter’s dinner plate. There was enough missing to distinguish it from Baylian’s, but only just, and even then it could have been clever rearrangement. She waved her daughter away all the same. Emmi didn’t eat much, but a bite here and there was better terms than confrontation.
“Thank you, Mama,” Emmi said. She was no longer looking at her meal.
Neladi raised her arms to offer an embrace, but Emmi was already floating to the stairs. Her feet were invisible beneath the hem of her dress; the rest of the garment swished about her waist.
How long will it be until this house has another ghost?
Emmi’s feet teased out all the sounds of the stairs as she climbed. Bunchy, like an animated corpse, traipsed behind. Soon, Neladi was alone.
Perhaps not alone, she thought, listening for the silence that warned her the three ghosts were at hand. Two of them, father and son, stared at her from the mantelpiece. They wore far livelier expressions than the last time she’d seen them.
Her brother’s face sat in the smaller frame, but the drawing was truer to life. The artist had captured his eyes, their all-assuming nature included, with mirror precision, as if the two had known each other years. Neladi poured more wine before she regarded her father.
The man the town had called defiant sulked within the trappings of his portrait, like he’d only realised how small the piece was when it was all he had left. He had one hand on the hilt of a sword, the other curled into a fist near his chest. Neladi still remembered the day he’d asked his wife whether she wanted something in her likeness too.
“My likeness?” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “Likely to be to my dislikeness. Immortality is better left to the important.”
Her father’s face flared red. “Those Kelvins have pictures like this in every room. Are they more important than us? Are they so deserving of immortality?”
Her mother passed a needle in and out of an old shawl. She loved to stitch, to fix things so that they felt new. Even the machines the king’s men brought couldn’t match her pace. But in that second, the woman, whom Neladi had never seen shed a tear, hesitated in her work. The idle needle held its breath in her hand.
“Even time has its price,” she said. “The world waits for the wealthy. The wealthy wait for none.”
With that, she went back to her stitching, and her husband sank into his chair. He was defeated, but too stubborn to tell anyone about it. Fortunately, the three people in the room all knew enough about war to imitate a peace.
Sadly, such luck couldn’t be relied upon twice at the Frontier.
Because in that moment, they were so busy arguing in silence, that Neladi didn’t hear the snapped-twig sound of an ambush on the other side of the desert. Her mother never heard the saptor hunting horns. Her father, ears sharp as flint, never heard the panic of a dozen horses. The only noise they knew was their own impatient breathing.
Far away, Neladi’s brother took a breath too. Except it was his last. Like silver mist, it puffed from his arrow-laden chest, joined the blue cold of the mountain pass. But the owner didn’t mark it at all. He only watched as the dark claws crept closer, and then he died.
A fist against the door shook Neladi awake. She tumbled out of her chair, hitting the floor so hard she let out a voiceless scream. She scrambled to her feet as the visitor pounded faster.
“Who is it?” Neladi called, circling towards the stairs. She’d hidden her brother’s sword in one of the rooms above. Whether Emmi had enough sense to grab it, she didn’t know.
“It’s me,” a low voice said. “Old Tom.”
“Sheriff?” Neladi edged closer. “Present yourself.”
The doorknob, more amenable than its cousin out back, rolled and rattled in Old Tom’s meaty grip. It yielded fast, and the door opened into the room. A kindly man’s head poked around the frame.
“I’m sorry, Miss Neli. Didn’t mean to frighten you, but you better come quick. There’s a rider.”
“A what?” Neladi’s balance nearly betrayed her. Old Tom, sweet as honey, hobbled forward to catch her. That was when Emmi decided to make her escape.
“Dada,” she shouted, bounding down the stairs. She slipped between the sheriff’s arms and wriggled through the half-cracked door until she was free.
“Emmi!”
Bones still burning from the fall, Neladi hurried after her daughter. Again, she was running through time, tracing footsteps she’d not noticed in years. Flicking through the pages of her faded memory, she arrived back at a chapter in the house where she was the only child. It was a few years after the saptors had claimed her brother.
“Dada,” her younger self had cried, searching the street, expecting him to pop out and surprise her at any moment. But her father hadn’t been hiding. Or at best, he had been hiding in plain sight.
“No,” she had said, collapsing to the dust.
A few feet away, a group of men had borne him on a stretcher. He was torn up like a dog after a fight, curled to one side as if to nurse his injuries. But Neladi knew he was dead. He had to be. If her father’s heart risked even a lazy beat, everyone west along the Frontier would have heard it.
Neladi’s mother had staggered to her husband’s side. The woman had spent her whole life building a brave face, a structure with foundations so deep even her son’s death had struggled to shake them. But, cupping the droopy hand of the man who’d shared in her story since she was a girl, the whole thing finally crumbled.
“Wake up, wake up,” she had wailed, wringing his shoulders with trembling hands. She pawed at his face, tugged each of his fingers. To the empire’s credit, not a single one of their soldiers had tried to stop her.
Nobody did.
Instead, the whole Frontier had paused, watching, hat in hand, as one woman’s tears washed the blood from her husband’s wounds.
“It’s not time to go to sleep yet,” she had choked.
That night, not a soul disobeyed the widow’s order. They all lay awake, listening from their beds to the house sobbing at the edge of the town. It would be some time before anyone who heard the dirge knew any comfort.
Two dozen or so years later, Emmi raced around the corner of the house towards the desert. Neladi chased up behind, kicking through the cool evening sands. Old Tom, one hand to the house wall, grunted and waved her forward.
“Emmi,” Neladi shouted. The gate to the yard banged.
She’s already in the desert.
When Neladi reached it herself, she saw her daughter climbing the fence at the end of the garden. The little girl swung her legs over the top, perched there, and waited. Neladi ventured closer.
The sun had abandoned the Frontier, the only memory of it one long bruise smeared across the sad sky. Neladi peered into the desert, counted the catch-breath moments of twilight against the slow beat of her heart. The land was pregnant with hush and half shadows.
Emmi sat there, motionless, as her eyes scoured the horizon. She didn’t seem pleased with what they found. But then, even as Neladi opened her mouth to offer another empty promise, Emmi’s hand rose from her side. It grew taut with purpose, so that when she extended a finger too, it pointed to only a single spot on the desert plains. Neladi squinted at the same time that the watchtower blew its horn.
“Seems lost,” Old Tom said, marching to her side. “Saw him a mile out an hour ago. Keeps getting all turned around.”
Neladi returned her gaze to the plains. Eventually, one shadow became clear. It was a solitary mounted figure, silhouetted against the pale ghost-light of the desert.
She swallowed. “Is it him?” she said.
Old Tom wavered. “Neli, you have to understand—”
“Is it him?”
Old Tom dug into his cloak. He pulled out a rod, a foreign device made of metal that the king’s sailors called a spyglass. He sighed and brought it to his face.
But Neladi already knew the answer. On the fence, Emmi was smiling.
II. Ash
Neladi watched her husband drain his cup. He took a damp cloth and rubbed it down the length of his arm. It drew a colour far darker than the wine he’d just swallowed. He leaned over and planted a kiss on Emmi’s forehead.
