1.5: Echoes and Afterthoughts

Something shifted in her expression then and I finally really saw her, not as my memories had made her but as she really was. She sat her throne with a familiarity she had grown into since I last saw her, one hand resting on the black wood, the other propping her chin up on her knuckles. She slouched in her seat but despite her casual pose and even in her own Keep she was dressed as if a fight could break out at any minute- in furs and leather. She work a cloak pinned back with her own bloody feather but her arms were bare to the shoulders, the pale muscle whipcorded and criss-crossed with vicious scars. The scarring was worse on her right side where Fetheveren had tried, and almost succeeded, in hacking her arm off halfway between shoulder and elbow. The flesh there was a knotted, shiny, warped mess of scar tissue standing out in stark relief against her white, freckled skin. Her matched hatchets hung from her heavy belt, their old edges gleaming like ice, and her eyes above them matched their thirsy shine.

               For a long moment we just looked at each other while our past settled down around us like a layer from ash from some vast fire. Then Grenja took her chin off her hand and surged to her feet. She descended the dais with rapid steps, her arms opening wide, her hatches swinging at her belt. Almost of their own volition, my own arms opened too and she stepped forward into my embrace, resting her head against my chest like she used to do. I hugged her. She smelled good, like spice and Lveni blossoms, and I breathed her in as she pressed her face against my wet chest and wrapped her wiry arms around my back and shoulders. I almost raised a hand to stroke her red hair but both much too late and far too soon, I remembered where we were and who we were, and I pulled back, holding her at arm’s length. She stared unselfconsciously at me from a face that had new lines in it, but the tiny smile that curled up one corner of her mouth was unchanged. “Eight years, Valis,” she said. “Eight long years. Can you believe it?”

               “I try to,” I told her honestly. “Sometimes it’s hard.”

               That lopsided little smile grew. “Well, welcome back.” Then, “I’ve missed you.”

               I think her sincerity was what floored me. I blinked and tried to think of something to say. Grenja’s attempt at a grin turned sad for a moment, then she looked past me and back to Ezra. “And you must be the Lady Ezrana Ril.”

               “Just Ezra is fine, Furl.”

               Grenja nodded and the conversation abruptly stalled. Grenja might be the ruling authority in Kipana but this wasn’t the Southern Court and she had never been a Southern conversationalist. Born into long winters, cold snows, and hard living was Grenja and the edge of the north clung to her as closely as a second skin. She looked at me again and everything flashed there in the brightness of that gaze. Old violence, old loss.

               “Where’s the rest of your group, Valis?” she asked as length.

               “We split inside the city. They wanted to sightsee, I wanted out of the rain.” I shrugged. “Seerhus is fetching them now, I think. He’d be your Champion currently is it?”

                “A relatively old promotion but new since the last time you saw him, yes.”

               I smiled briefly but dropped it because it was having a hard time reaching my eyes. “It’s cute. Fits him.”

               Grenja just looked at me. “A lot of people have done well for themselves here,” she said. She turned and walked back to her seat, her blue cloak swish-swishing behind her. Settling herself, she once again rested her scarred chin on her scarred hand. “Surprisingly well, if I may be honest but then again things have changed here in the intervening years, Valis. It hasn’t been all wars and insurrection you know.”

               I nodded noncommittally.

               “I see you’re unconvinced.”

               “Wouldn’t say that. All I’m saying is that almost a decade later and the north is still living under the rakesh shadow.”

               Grenja leaned back in her throne. “It’s true that the same whispers come back to haunt us. The same old fears. But I’ve come to realize that this place just has echoes to it. We carved out a large chunk of this land and some of the noise of that carving returns every now and again to whisper in our ears.”

               “With respect to the Furl,” I said, “Something is different about this new set of whispers or we wouldn’t be here right now.”

               “Granted. Occasionally, if you follow the echoes you do wind up stumbling across something real.” She shifted in her chair and seemed about to say something else but was interrupted by the slamming open of a heavy door set in the wall to the left of the dais. Someone stepped through and immediately the soldiers on either side of the doorway moved forward to intercept them, hiding them from my view. The mutter of conversation drifted up, clearly some kind of argument based on how the quiet insistence of the guards kept getting cut through by an argumentative higher pitch. Grenja had got to her feet the moment the door opened and she shook her head at the noise and called out in resignation, “Let them through.”

               The soldiers backed away and two figures all but pushed through them and my heart did something funny again as I looked at the children walking toward me. Illen led and I would’ve recognized her face anywhere, her mother’s fine red hair and strong jaw and a brow that was lowered like a thundercloud. The frown she wore now was the same she’d worn when she was little and for a moment she was six again, tugging at my sleeve with worry in her eyes, and then she was suddenly fifteen, and very close, and her open palm was connecting with my face.

               “Illen!” Grenja snapped behind me, shocked but not as shocked as she could’ve been. I raised my own hand in surprise, only to have her smack me a good one across my other cheek. I saw it coming this time but let it go through anyway.

               I met her eyes. Her color was up, her freckled cheeks flushed deep pink, her blue eyes glittering with rage. Some of her hair had come out of her braid and it stuck up around her head as she stared at me furiously and pulled back her hand for another blow. But then Lind was there, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her back. She struggled a little but I could tell she was obviously shocked she’d actually gotten those blows in and she didn’t fight against her brother half as hard as she could’ve.

               “Mother, I’m sorry,” Lind was saying, still with a firm hold on his sister. “She wouldn’t listen to me-”

               I wiped a tiny trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand. “Hello, Illen,” I said but she whirled away at my voice and succeeded in breaking free from her brother, only to spin right around into Grenja. There was no escape from that. Grenja grabbed her by the chin and held her there with their faces only an inch apart. She had the height advantage on her daughter but not by much and yet Illen’s shoulders slumped and some of the anger bled out of her stance. Grenja said something too low for me to hear and the rest of the fight went out of Illen. With one last word, the Furl released her none too gently and the girl stalked rapidly back the way she’d come, but it was an obvious retreat and I thought I saw the glitter of tears on her cheeks as she fled.

               Grenja raised her gaze and nodded at one of the soldiers along the wall. “Terne go after her. I’ll be there soon.” The knight saluted and turned smartly to obey. Behind me, I felt Ezra relax incrementally from a tenseness I only now noticed and I tried to imagine how little sense all this was making to her but I got distracted by Lind’s stare. The boy was looking at me with big, somber eyes and I looked back, hypnotized. In the place of the slightly chubby, perpetually solemn little boy there was now an equally serious lanky young man who watched me like I was a ghost that had just appeared in front of him. There was less of his mother in him than in Illen, his hair darker, his face broader and he stood uncertainly on his feet, supporting the weight of his right side on a polished cane he held in that hand.

               I spread my arms and the kid startled a little. “If you want to take a swing at me too, Lind, go ahead,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

               His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment or two. “Why, I, why would I,” he tried and then the words failed him and he just stood there, helplessly, like a fish hauled up and left to flop on a ship deck.

               Grenja stepped up beside him. “I’m sorry, Valis. Illen took your leaving very hard.”

               I shrugged, my face still burning. That girl had an arm on her. I could taste the faint tang of blood on my teeth and resisted the urge to spit. “I should’ve expected as much,” I said.

               “Are you alright?” Lind finally managed, his face pale as milk. “I-”

               “I’m perfectly fine,” I told the kid. I was starting to get worried that he was going to pass out from mortification right then and there. “Really. Wouldn’t say I was ready for it but can’t say I’m too surprised either. But. If you aren’t going to punch me how about a proper hello?” I offered him my hand, a bit of blood smeared on the back, and Lind took it with an uncertain glance at his mother. Where Grenja went sleeveless and wore fur and leather, her son wore a long, thick robe trimmed with wolf fur, something that was more scholar or scribe than soldier. I squeezed his fingers gently but then felt the raw blisters on his cool skin. Someone had recently been trying to teach this one swordsmanship, probably with little success. I released his hand but pain still flashed across his face before he could hide it.

               I tried to think of something to say, but before I could, Seerhus and the rest of the caravan made their entrance into the throne room. These were the people Grenja would really want to see- the new merchants coming to negotiate lucrative trade deals with the Furl, two new advisors straight from the King himself sent to augment her Council, a master architect and his apprentices commissioned to work here. These were the people Grenja had to welcome properly. Me? I was an after-thought, a rumor chaser who came to track down ghosts and now was the time to make an escape.

               “That will be Masters Dvit and Falos and the rest,” I said needlessly as behind me, the announced confirmed named with Seerhus just inside the double doors. “No doubt Ezra and I have dripped on your floors enough.”

               She looked at me and for a long second I thought she’d tell me stay. But then she flicked a hand at her son who started. “Of course. You two must be exhausted. Lind will show to your rooms. There will be a welcome dinner at the third bell.”

               I bowed. Ezra bowed. And then we followed Lind as he led us, limping on his cane, stride hitching and awkward, out a second side door. We slipped past the rank of armored guards on either side just as the double doors swung open behind us and the announcer began calling names.