Book 6: Chapter 32 - Aftermath (RAW)

The song of Mana is the most predatory lender. It advances itself sweetly and collects with compound interest—first from the hours of your effort, then from your thoughts and habits, last from the very shape of your name. Many who boast of mastery are merely debtors who have forgotten the day the note comes due.

- Unknown.

“You are leaving again?” Estaza asked, each word clipped short. She had gone sharp as a drawn knife of late.

“We’ve more jungle to clear,” I said, while the sisters fussed at my straps—Marimae with quiet and sure hands, Saranea with quick ones—settling Adamantine plate, mail, and the futuristic underarmor where it bit least.

Estaza wore her jealousy like a cloak of nettles, for all to see. She barely tolerated the two elves who, by a few twists of fate, had come into my service. Their thaw toward me had brought a frost to her. She made a sport of setting them the hardest work and the dullest tasks among the hundred-and-one chores that camp life breeds. A man might think a tent full of women a paradise. A fool’s thought. There was a sort of warmth in it, and other comforts besides, but more knives as well. Not the physical ones, at least not yet.

Saranea finished the last buckle and smoothed a strand of white-silver hair from her cheek. “There. All done,” she said with a perfunctory smile.

“Good hunting this day,” the twins said together, and the sync of their voices was almost musical.

Estaza drew herself up to her full height—no great thing, as she barely reached my shoulder. “Leave us,” she ordered.

They bowed shallowly and slipped from the pavilion, smiles fixed as masks.

“I don’t mind if you bed the pair of them,” Estaza sniffed once they were gone. “I’m sure they would not mind either. They prattle about learning the sword, or so they profess.”

I drew a breath. The talk had circled here for days, worrying the same sore spot. Women have a way of wearing a man thin, grinding until resistance feels more trouble than it is worth. There is a sweetness in surrender. Sweet and dangerous, for it becomes easier with repetition.

“I know, Estaza. I know,” I said, hooking my heavy helm to my belt. “There’s a reason I don’t. You’d never approve.”

Women say one thing and mean another, and set a thousand-and-one small snares besides. The trick is not to tread where they want your foot to fall.

“I just said it is all right,” she shot back, color rising, ruffled like a moody hen.

“Besides, you are woman enough for me,” I told her, half in earnest, and hoped even my low Charisma attribute would be enough to pass this hidden roll.

She colored like a maid despite herself. I drew her in, felt the slightness of her against my plates, gave her a quick kiss, then set her gently back and made my way outside. A pillow thumped my shoulders as I lifted the flap and stepped into the glare of the day.

It was time to see how much jungle there was left to burn.

***

Smoke lay along the horizon in a low gray wall, so much of it that the clouds of the sky seemed to sink and kiss the earth. But these clouds held no moisture, no promise of rain. Ash floated there, a dim, dirty thing that would turn the world to grey. At this distance, it looked almost like fog, but fog does not sting the eyes or taste of pitch and sap. Nothing, and no one, living could have abided that heat. The Black Flames left nothing behind—only blackened earth and trees cooked to cinder. If any creature had survived the sorcery, the smoke would have filled their lungs and finished the killing.

Damien de Savant, being no fool, had kept his camp at the very hem of the burn, where black of the burned soil met the white of the Whispering Wastes. Should the wind turn treacherous, we could run before it. It had not turned yet. The breeze came steadily off the distant sea, pressing the smoke back into the jungle it had devoured and fanning whatever unnatural flames remained.

Larynda and I rode the margin where charcoal trunks stood like a murdered orchard. Larynda and I were scouting. Wishing to avoid my current domestic situation that was slowly getting out of hand, I had volunteered Larynda and me to scout. There are fights that can be won with sword and spell, and there are those that are best avoided altogether. This was very much the latter.

“Those two are going to be trouble,” Larynda said, shading her eyes against the pale glare of the high sun.

I tightened my grip on Theodore’s reins. He snorted, unhappy with the ash that puffed at every step. “Of that I am sure,” I said. “What am I to do with them?”

“They’re not children, Gil. They can look after themselves.” She kept her gaze on the horizon as if answers might be written there. “And Estaza, well, I could very well say the same of her.”

“What is this now?”

“You know what she is. You know she’s like the ladies in the Flower Quarter.”

Theodore plodded on, hooves sinking in the soft crust of the burn. “Yes. Of course I do.”

“I mean… It’s not as if you two have a future together,” she added. The words came soft, but they came.

“I know what you mean,” I told her. “But you cannot always judge a person by the street they started on. Their circumstance. That is what she was, and that is what she is. She is not a bad person, Larynda. You yourself had to make certain choices when you were younger. When you are older, perhaps you will understand—when the present is all bleak, talk and thoughts of the future is a luxury. You take your happiness when it comes, and in the shape it comes.”

“You do know it’s… very transactional,” Larynda said. “You pay, she smiles. There it is. That’s all it will ever be.”

“I know. We both make no pretense of it being otherwise,” I replied with a shake of my head. “All bonds are bargains, little one. Even the holy ones. We trade time for warmth, silence for company, pride for peace. Only saints pretend otherwise, and saints, being men, are liars more often than not. But why this sudden interest in my domestic situation?”

All this talk felt oh-so pointless in the grand scheme of things. It wore upon, but it was important to humor Larynda.

She made a face. “I don’t know. Because sometimes I have to deal with it. And maybe, just maybe, because I’m a part of your domestic situation? Or perhaps because I just care a bit. Not too much, of course.” A crooked smile. “And because it only takes a little to make you go on and on. You’re older than me, Gil, but you’re not that old.”

“Sometimes I feel old enough to be your father,” I said, and she laughed, quick and bright, and for a while we went on in easy silence, the kind that sits well between companions.

I spotted a small dot. It was a bird, a hawk in fact. The aerial predator wrote lazy circles overhead and thought better of stooping, for there was no prey that remained, and charcoal made for a poor lunch.

After nearly an hour, some dark and heavy thoughts caught up with Larynda.

“We killed… sorry… I killed a lot of people. You killed a lot too, but that’s just you being you,” Larynda blurted. “I mean, when I called down the Black Flames.”

As if to disagree, Theodore swatted his tail hard, thwack against the blackened soil. The sound made Blossom, the Lirkud Larynda rode, undulate uneasily beneath her.

“Eeep,” Larynda said, grabbing at the saddle.

“What we killed were not people,” I said, harsher than I meant. “Animals at best.”

“That’s one way of looking,” she said. “But they walked and talked, Gil. Some probably even had names. They might have had families, friends. The books say they’re kin to the Mer.” She swallowed. “I keep thinking about it. How many died because I lifted a hand and spoke the words?”

I did not see why the girl was working herself into such an emotional knot over some little green creatures. “If you think it sin, I absolve you from all responsibility. You did it because I told you.”

She shook her head, green eyes flashing. “That won’t stand. ‘I was only following orders’—that’s a coward’s thin shield. You know it.”

“Perhaps. Does it matter?” I said. “They were Goblins. Lesser things. I do not see you weeping over the meat in your stewpot.”

“It’s not like we butchered them to eat them,” she shot back, a spark of defiance threading her tone. “It’s not the same.”

“No,” I hissed between my teeth, “we had a better reason. Them or us. That is the oldest equation there is. They have killed many before—there are records and graves enough to prove it—and they would kill again: caravans out of Al-Lazar, adventurers, the list will go on and on. We did what had to be done. Save your mercy for those worthy of regard. We are doing this world a favor.”

“This is their home,” she said, small but stubborn. “Was their home. We are the trespassers here. I mean, umm, at the very least, we didn’t have to kill all of them.”

This was dangerous ground. I didn’t want my ward carrying a weight of guilt around her neck—especially if I needed her to cast great magic again.

“Their home?” I snorted. “Tell me plain and tell me true: is the world a better place with them, or without them?”

“You’re dodging,” she said, voice rising slightly.

“Because your point is nothing but wind. Answer me. I repeat: is the world a better place with them, or without them?”

She looked away. The hawk above gave up and flew further inland. At last, so softly I nearly missed it, “Without,” she said. “It’s a better place without them.”

“Good,” I said. “Hold to that. Your actions have made this world a better place.”

“Umm… Gil?” she went on, and now the bravado was gone. “I’m scared. Of what I can do. Of what I did. I’m afraid I’ll… lose myself.”

“Lose yourself?” I kept my voice level.

“To my Path,” she said. “To the power. I don’t want to wake one day and find there’s no me left under it.”

“No, I do not think you will,” I said with another shake of my head. “You won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?” Her voice trembled, and I saw that she hated that I heard it.

“Because I have eyes,” I told her. “And because not all resistance is pushing back. Sometimes the best way not to be carried off in a flood is to swim with it.” I grimaced. “Heavens, I must sound like one of those useless mystic types. Their mode of speech, it seems, is infectious. What I mean is this: take hold of your power and direct it to where you wish it to go. You can control its flow, and in that, a portion of the self remains. It becomes your choice.”

“You’re not… scared of me?” she asked, half a whisper.

“Why would I be?” I said.

“Because I can do that,” she said quickly, and there was the smallest pinch of pride in it. “The sisters, they say I shouldn’t be able to do what I do. Call down Black Flames and...”

I laughed then—too loud, too long. Her mouth went tight, wounded. “Larynda,” I said at last, gentling my tone, “little Larynda. You give yourself far too much credit. Why would I ever fear you when it would be the easiest thing in the world to end you? That is the truth of the matter.”

She flinched, and in my mind I heard myself as she must have heard me. It was time for a different approach.

“I misspoke. Listen. I do not fear you. I have not, and I will never fear you. You could grow three heads and breathe fire, and still I would not fear you. The only fear you stir in me is the fear of harm finding you.” I held her gaze until I was sure she had the words. “The promise I made in Al-Lazar. Do you remember it?”

“Of course,” she said, very softly.

“My word is my bond. A thousand, a thousand thousand Goblin lives—an easy trade in my ledger. If there is even the smallest chance of danger to you, I will pay the price to remove it. That is how I balance my books.”

Her throat bobbed. She nodded, slow as a candle burning down. “All right,” she said. “All right.”

We turned our mounts toward camp. The wind teased at the exposed earth, lifting small devils of ash that danced among new tufts of growth. 

“I’ll tell de Savant we wait a day or two,” I said. “Let the fires gutter to embers before we press on. He will not like it, this waiting, but it is, I believe, the wisest path.”

There were other truths that needed to be rationed. The elves had crossed half a world to end this girl. Thousands died so that she might live. However, there was no sense in putting that stone in her pocket yet, as I had heard the people of this world say