The Habits of Water [ narrative ]
The world was white, but not in the way she last remembered. What she did not see pulsed against her eyelids -- shades of oblivion flickering back and forth constantly. Here the air was sweet instead of ash, it moved gently over her body instead of disappearing into the ground beneath her. Her cheeks were warm, not on fire, and her hand did not hurt. Vera could hear seabirds calling to one another, the rhythm of waves, and the soft humming of a baritone voice she did not know. She wondered if she had died, if Armas had taken her into his arms at last and carried her as his daughter to the halls of great, dead kings. Was that him? Humming as he turned his hands in the world?
Vera wished she could open her eyes and see as she once did. She wanted to see him, to know that he stood over the world and watched all of the battles she fought. But that required confrontation. Memories waited patiently at the gates of her thoughts, wanting to speak with her in urgent flashes. The painful reminders of where she had come from. Oh Vera was too weary. She did not want to know. This warm place, this blank comfort, was where she desired to remain. Listening to the great sea god, knowing the world still flowed without her in it...
"If you won't do your duty, then I'll do it for you."
The words were as scathing now as they had been then. She hated Eragos for making her remember. Hated him for reminding her that in her absence others would bear her duty. What would that mean? Weren't there reasons she strove to ride alone? Would there be a subtle knife for the Captain, a subtle knife for Eragos? Vera leaned harder into the whiteness, only to find her refuge receding in the wake of that terrible dream...Simanel burning in the night. If she opened her eyes, if Armas truly stood there, spinning the world with his waves…what would be in his face when he looked down upon her? Vera, who wanted nothing but to forget, suddenly knew why she longed for such oblivion: duty had split her, her House disgraced her and her country was slowly breaking her heart. She suffered many things in her life and begrudged the gods none of it, but she did not know how to bear these memories.
She did not know how to return.
Hands touched her face. Tears welled beneath her lashes.
"Be at peace, Lady Vera, for you are well," Naevain Auvraeshel whispered above her. "I swear, the gods have saved you. You should be dead."
A rough laugh pushed from her chest, through her lips and was almost painful. Vera opened her eyes too fast and her vision was flooded by the colors around her: red silk stretched across a make-shift canopy, blue sky beyond the end of the chaise, orange satin on Lady Naevain's arms, brown canvas worn by the sailor sweeping the deck. She laughed again when she heard the sailor's humming and smelled the salt of the ocean, strong on the wind. She moved her fingers against the soft blankets that surrounded her. This was a merchant's ship, not a branch of the heavens. Vera was likely on Lady Naevain's personal ship, though how long she'd been kept here was beyond her ability to know.
Lady Naevain backed away carefully. "Why is that funny?"
"Elves are always telling me I should be dead."
"Perhaps you should stop getting stabbed around them, then," Lady Naevain said in a sharp voice. The elf sat down on a chair at her side. She did not look as beautiful as she had when they first met. Dark circles were around the woman's eyes and her skin, though dark in complexion, seemed paler. There was a thinness to her that Vera thought made her seem fatigued or sickly. She immediately felt regret over laughing.
"I am glad for your help."
Help. Yes, here she was, provided with more than she could ever expect. Vera did not understand the gods nor the allotment of fortune. Surely there were more pious beings, more deserving servants who actually attended the worship of the divine. Vera never expected very much from the gods. And even when she had convinced herself she was in the presence of her patron god, she had not begged in the name of great ideals or world changes. She had begged for a warm place with no memory. There was nothing brave, nothing noble in that.
"You did not see Lord Faxril when he thought you dead," Lady Naevain said quietly. "The entire city was in an uproar over the burning brigantine and my kidnapping. A man fleeing down the ramp of the ship was cut down by Lord Faxril's sword before anyone could question him. I was unaware he was capable of such rage. It did not end until you appeared from thin air on the dock. As if you'd been plucked up by the Goddess and dumped there by her grace."
"You are talking a lot about the divine today." Vera's voice was dry. She moved her arms and managed to sit up slightly in the odd, reclined chaise she was in.
"Does that make you uncomfortable?"
"Yes."
There was a long silence between them. Vera took the opportunity to reflect on the events that Naevain described to her. She was certain that Lorien had no hand in her surviving the fire. The only explanation was that she had done what she had been unable to for years. She remembered the warrior of fire, her mother’s presence in her delirious mind and the focus that shook her very blood. Was it possible? She had moved forward on the Path of Fire? The excitement of the idea... Vera struggled not to try to duplicate the technique that saved her life in that very moment. It was the respect for Naevain, the woman who saved her life from poison, that stilled her. The elf had not said she had healed her, but Vera knew from her appearance that she had battled the High Lord‘s concoction. Lady Naevain was adept in water magic. There was no better route to combating poisons.
On the stool that sat beside her chaise was a small leather book, her Rider’s mask and a glass vial in the shape of a sea lizard. Vera glanced once at Naevain, who was looking away from her now, before she reached over and took the objects onto her lap. Her fingers ran across the leather of the journal first. “Something to take back to Simanel,” she muttered. It was the book she’d thought lost when she fought the man in the pointed hat. He must have been the man that Faxril cut down. Had her brother known the book?
“I took it before they carried the corpse away,” Lady Naevain said. “The book was rightfully yours. As was the mask.”
Vera frowned and lifted the vial. It looked to be filled with water. “And this?”
“A gift that I will explain later," Naevain smiled and leaned over, taking the vial from Vera's hand. "After you've rested."
"I've rested enough. There is too much to do to sit here under the sun and do nothing--"
Before Vera could protest further, another elf was at her side, shoving a cup against her teeth with expert grace. She hadn't noticed or heard him and felt suddenly like she was being treated as a small child. Vera choked on the sickeningly sweet medicine that had been poured down her throat.
"I promised Lord Faxril to make sure you recovered before we reached Trone. It is absolutely necessary that you have your wits about you there."
Vera tried to keep a firm grasp on Naevain's words as she continued to speak, but the bright sky was dimming fast. Her heart clenched in a private irrational fear as her body remembered the slowing of her blood back in the burning ship. Poison, she thought, though she knew Naevain to be an ally. She tried to push herself up and failed.
"She's escaped from the lion's pit only to be cast down with the snakes, he said to me. Your fighting has not ended. So you must sleep and allow me fulfill my promise. I will protect you until our time has ended."
At the firm cadence of the elf's speech, Vera felt the world crumble. She was dragged farther and farther from it, like sand being dragged from the coast by the grasping fingers of the sea. If this had been poison, then surely she’d been done for. Her breaths became slower and deeper, until finally everything around her stopped and, for the first time in recent memory, her world was dark.
***
After she first woke on Naevain's ship, time was beaded in an endless series of vignettes. Each time she rose from medicated sleep, the sky was in a different phase of being. Vera could not tell where she was or how long she'd been there. Always she conversed with Naevain. The longest she stayed conscious was to write a letter to the High Lord of Beit-Arnil, a brief and pointed account of her journey to Axis Betelgeuse. Vera did not like that she was being kept in bed. She did not like the feeling of the drugs that continuously pulled her back into unconsciousness, but she did not distrust Naevain enough to struggle free. Vera remembered the words Naevain passed on from Faxril. She thought of them so often when she was awake that she dreamed of the snakes. They slithered with open mouths, showing fangs glistening with a poison that had failed to kill her twice. The snakes came in all sorts of colors: green ones that zigzagged along the bark of trees and hissed in the quiet of the night, red snakes that curled up in pools of blood and rested their heads on colorless lips of dead soldiers, black snakes that dropped from black skies and thrashed wildly at the feet of children... gray snakes that rose from the ruins of cities and swallowed the sky. The gray ones were the most strange. As the light of her mind pushed through their smoky bodies, the gray snakes' coloring became iridescent, carrying as many colors as a garden.
Vera broke from such a dream when she found herself in an apartment rather than on a ship. Beautiful turquoise veils were strung through the ceiling rafters like garland gently twisted. Vera saw the morning sky from where she lay in bed and as the wind pushed gently through open windows, she smelled spices and meats of a busy kitchen. She heard carriages passing. Trone, she thought instantly. The city's presence was in her bones, she loathed and loved it so. Vera pushed herself up and found that no one was in the room to warn her against moving. She ran her hand through her hair and found it brushed and smooth. Vera scrunched her nose as she sniffed at the skin of her wrist, which had been doused in the strong scent of roses. She'd been bathed without her knowledge and would likely have to endure the perfume until it wore off. While she wasn’t unfamiliar with perfume, she did not often apply the scented water to her body. There were bath oils that were far less powerful and much more modest…
Well. At least she was clean.
To her right was a nightstand built of glass. On the table sat her mask, the journal and the lizard-shaped vial. A chair was just beside the table and on it was her uniform, perfect and white and whole. Her knife belt, her boots and the sword Faxril had given her were arranged nicely on the seat. Resting against the chair was a staff, though not the one she'd lost to the fire. Vera swung her feet over the side of the bed and, though she wore little other than her own skin, she grabbed the staff first. While the weight differed slightly from the staff she’d carried over the past fifteen years, Vera liked the feel of it. There was a spiral of metal that ran through the length of the staff and the metal surfaced as in a section at the center as a handle adorned with engraved leaves. They swirled in a pattern she recognized from clerics robes she’d seen in one of Lorien’s temples. Along the edge was the flowery script from her locket -- a personal touch indicating Naevain had this weapon made for her. Vera swung the staff once, before setting it down reverently.
The day was young. Vera prepared to leave Lady Naevain’s home as quickly as she had woken. Once her uniform was on and her weapons were secured on her person, she was walking the empty halls in search of Naevain. She did not find the Sun Elf until she came to the front hall, where the Lady stood with a robed man and a letter in her hands. Naevain turned and smiled her welcome to Vera, before gesturing to the man at her side.
“You have someone here to see you,” Naevain said. “I am glad you found your belongings in order.”
“Yes…thank you, Lady Naevain. For everything.”
Her words were not eloquent at all. What she said now was not what she’d structured in her mind while searching for the elf. Vera felt she could have knelt to the woman and it would not have been enough. Before she could think to add anything, however, the robed man stepped up to her with his own letter and removed the hood from his head. He was an older gentleman with shaggy, graying hair and eyes that were as intense as they were blue. They were odd eyes that did not match his face, which seemed it could belong at the back of a dim tavern. His eyes should have been brown or even gold…He smiled at her as she took the letter from his hands. It was sealed by the sign of Beit-Arnil.
Vera quickly opened it.
Dear Vera,
I have sent this message in the hands of an old and trusted friend, Elden Trygve. He is a respected sorcerer who migrated from the Far South before it was destroyed. He comes to you as a favor to me. I saw a need for you to have additional assistance in your journeys. Elden is expert at navigating the conditions that you will face. He also knows of the work we have done together. I allowed him to read the letter you sent from the Western Sea. I suggest you allow him to look at the journal you have obtained. Solving puzzles is a great strength of his. Elden is no White Rider, but please have him travel at your side. Grant me some peace.
As you requested, I have obtained records from Beit-V’ronha of imports and foreign merchant complaints. I have given Elden those which I have found to be of interest thus far.
Be wary, Vera. I can not save you from what you learn. You have stepped into the underworld of this country and I am confident you will expose the roots of what ails it. There are things you will lose that you shall never regain, but strengths you will gain that you shall never lose.
As always, I keep faith in you.
High Lord Arand of Beit-Arnil
“He didn’t even allow me to introduce myself, did he?” Elden asked. His arms were crossed over his chest, exposing his wrists and the insides of his sleeves, which had many different patches -- another odd thing Vera noticed. His dark brown robe was not torn in the least.
“No, he didn’t,” Vera said, looking up from the letter. She smiled, but only slightly. “It seems he did not trust me for a proper introduction either.”
“He isn’t a very trusting fellow all around, but then, how can you blame him?”
Naevain cleared her throat. “I suppose this means you’re--”
“Leaving. I...we are leaving for Simanel, immediately,” Vera said. By the way his eyebrows shot up, she knew Elden was surprised by her quick acceptance of him. He must not have known the full contents of High Lord Arand’s letter, but knew she was used to working alone. Vera looked down at the letter again. Only a fool would take a warning from High Lord Arand lightly. Beit-Arnil was the cornerstone of wisdom and forethought in the Beiten-K’danav. Elden’s mere presence was as big a warning as any. The High Lord feared she would be without allies and that she would need them.
“Before you go from Trone, you’ve received a summons,” Naevain said, showing Vera the unsealed parchment in her fingers. “The High Lord of Beit-Orane is waiting for you at Clair Danc. I am sorry. You do not have to meet him, Lady Vera, if you...”
Vera shook her head. “He knows I am in Trone. He would not have wasted his time with a summons if he didn’t.”
“But isn’t it too soon?” Naevain asked.
“One thing I have learned from the sea, Lady Naevain, is to never let a storm creep up on me. Thank you for all of your assistance and your offer, but our time is up.” Vera took Lady Naevain‘s hand as a gesture of farewell. “Now I return to protecting you.”
**
Clair Danc. The ancestral home of Beit-V’ronha was more splendid than any mansion, monument, castle or tower could ever aspire to be. The love and responsibility this House held for money was evident in the curve of every shrub, the stone of every walkway, every single tapestry that draped across the cold marble walls of this tomb of wealth. She could hear Elden’s breath catch as they passed paintings in the hall; one he said had to have been at least five hundred years old, done by an artist he’d heard of in the most southern woodlands. She couldn’t help but smile at the awe Elden felt; truly, if there was an example of high power, it rested in here. She did not know of one lord who would not long to spend a night in the company of Trone’s High Lord and Lady. Yet Vera found Clair Danc beautiful for reasons other than the extravagance. Behind the gleam and glimmer, Beit-V’ronha incorporated the spirit of Trone into its very home. What other lord would set up a fresh flower market in the center of his courtyard and invite guests to buy from it, as if he were handing out party favors? What lord invited gypsy entertainers, despite their reputation, and then housed them the night they performed? Held conferences with merchants who likely came from dirt before they ever sold a jewel? Nothing from the High Lord or Lady was free, but in the end anything could be purchased fairly. The greed living here followed every letter of the law and recognized anyone proficient enough to practice its arts.
Vera wondered what place High Lord Gavrie held in these halls.
When the servant leading them stopped at an ominous pair of oak doors, Vera turned to Elden and handed him the journal she had won. “You must stay here until I am finished,” she said. “Start reading this so we can discuss what you find before we reach Simanel.”
“I must echo Lady Naevain’s concern,” Elden said, glancing at the doors.
“As I must go in alone despite it.”
Vera wanted to give her new traveling companion reassurances, but there were none that could be easily explained. Or trusted. She could not even smile as the doors opened and she saw the High Lord standing at the front of a desk, dressed almost completely in black, with guards remaining shadowed in the corners of the room. Vera turned from Elden and stepped inside, feeling the air go stale as the doors closed behind her.
Indeed, Clair Danc might have once been a tomb.
“My lord, you summoned me?” Vera asked, giving her father a half bow. She stood just across from him, with her hood down and her Rider’s mask in her hand. Vera had not bothered to remove her weapons before entering Beit-V’ronha’s residence and the single golden knife used against her in Axis Betelgeuse rested snugly in the leather belt at her waist.
The High Lord’s eyes were cold. The black he wore, she realized after watching him a moment, was representative of mourning. Her father’s clothing had none of the bright brass buttons that were typical of a uniform of high rank, nor did he wear his honors on his breast. The guards who lingered in the shadows were clothed in the same fashion. Some great tragedy must have happened in the eyes of Eistocene. Vera felt unease flutter up into her throat.
“That you come here in that uniform speaks your ignorance more loudly than anything else,” he said.
“I have been abroad and cut off from this country’s news.”
“Cut off from everything, apparently. I have not received any news of Faxril.”
“As a loyal servant of this country’s interests, he is obviously busy, father.”
A pause passed between them, as if she had delivered him some sort of insult without realizing it. Vera felt the silence between them grow awkward in its intensity and she struggled to remain still. Whoever the High Lord wore black for was important and from Eistocene. He had expected her to arrive in traditional Oranian garb in honor of him or her.
“What of Faxril?”
“He fights pirates in the Western Sea,” Vera said. She saw frustration rising to his eyes, if not his face. So all of his spies had been slain. Her father knew nothing of what happened on Axis Betelgeuse.
“And?”
“I was no longer needed to negotiate contracts, so all must be well. He was fine when I left him. I travel back to Simanel.”
There was another tense silence and she wondered if her father was coming close to hitting her and naming her a liar. But to do either was admitting he was further involved with the pirates than giving Faxril his mission. The High Lord normally conducted himself with absolute confidence and spoke in a sly, chilling tone of voice. Now his shoulders were drawn too tight and the conversation was limited, to the point. As if he were close to interrogating her until she said whatever it was he wanted to hear.
“Going to see Agrippa, no doubt.”
“He is my Captain,” Vera said. “That should not surprise you.”
“No, neither does his character in these dark times. Simanel, your dear city, has become a soft lit haven for more than whores.”
“It is a haven for any citizen. White Riders protect the citizens of this country.”
“Lord Sarta was killed in the street by one of yours. Was he not a citizen, my daughter?”
Vera’s heart pounded hard for a moment. She was standing on a line -- no, no not a line, but the line, the one that she’d only heard about in stories. Here she was, looking into her father’s eyes, knowing that he was carving that line in the soil of the Free Cities as surely as he’d tried to carve it in her body. In the same breath he was demanding she be whole, that she respect the thing splitting her in twain, that she be whatever it was she seemed predestined and molded for. And what was that? What was it, this thing he was trying to break? She felt as if her father had blindsided her in an argument she couldn’t remember beginning. And still he continued:
“Was he not a citizen, when he was cut down without trial? And what of his men that were slaughtered in the daylight? Good soldiers with families and honors and histories…were they not citizens? And not a word of a trial or justice behind that screen of white in Simanel. Where are those noble crusaders of justice that Beit-Arnil throws in our faces whenever we ask, who will make the unjust accountable?”
“And who is this Rider that you accuse?” Vera asked.
“I believe you know him,” High Lord Gavrie said. “Lord Eragos Fearborne.”
There was no love lost between her and Sarta. The Lion of the Fire Mountains was someone she endured more than respected, but she knew his importance to her House. She knew his importance to Seca, his loyalty to her father and the bite of his words whenever they encountered each other in passing. But still, when her father uttered Eragos’ name with such disdain, Vera felt a blow had been struck. Sarta was dead. He was dead because, like an idiot, he’d fought Eragos. Everything that might have kept Eragos from Beit-Orane’s eye evaporated in that swing of the sword. And what of those with Eragos? What of the Captain who was, based on her father’s words, sheltering Eragos in the aftermath? Not that Eragos needed sheltering from a battle, but what Beit-Orane engaged in now was no war she had ever seen. And all this time she thought she could outrun the reaches of this nightmare before it dipped its fingers into Simanel...
“I know him. Lord Feareborne is a good man,” she said, quietly. Vera felt the precarious middle ground she held between her loyalties was being swallowed up. As if sensing it, her father came closer.
“So Simanel is a haven for murderers.”
Vera swallowed and looked the High Lord in the eye. The line, that invisible sharpness, pressed into her body so hard she would have bled if only she knew where exactly it cut her.
“If that is truth, then I am sure the city only sought to widen her arms for you, father.”
As soon as the sentence fell into the stale room, she was hit in the method perfected by men angry with women. The back-handed blow made her face bloom in pain as her head snapped to the left. Vera did her best not to stumble, not to wince. She could have stopped him, but the action of hitting her said more than anything he could have shouted at her. Perhaps Faxril was right, perhaps she did think that she deserved this abuse. She looked at High Lord Gavrie as her eye throbbed in its socket and found only coldness.
But maybe...perhaps...she had wanted to be his mirror, if only for a moment. Let her father see all the greatness of Beit-Orane, for what he’d made it.
Only silence dwelled in the room until Vera turned her back and moved for the door. Neither doorman moved to let her out, so she grabbed the handles herself.
“Pity, about Anantal Manor,” the High Lord said, as if he had not stuck her only moments ago. “They say you could see the smoke for miles, that it was burnt hollow.”
Vera paused. Her fingers, hidden between her body and the door, trembled slightly as she put her mask over her face.
“Where is your home now?”
“I have none.”
The words had a finality that had guardsmen in the room shifting on their feet as her shoulders tensed. Did they think her a fool as well as a traitor? Vera drew her hood up and leaned against the door handles before she pushed at the doors. Light danced into the room from the hall and she followed it, as if stepping on the blotches of brightness would take her to a completely different place.
Elden was at her side as soon as the room closed to them. She did not stop, but rather continued walking back the way they had come. The sorcerer’s hand touched her arm as he kept up with her brisk pace.
“Lady Vera, your eye..."
“I will be fine,” she snapped. The tone was unfair to Elden and she regretted it. She placed her hand over his. “I am fine. We have a long ride and a lot of reading to do.”
“I should have gone in there with you.”
Maybe he should have. Maybe she wouldn’t have allowed her father to hit her, if she’d had sense. Vera doubted they would have time for a healer before she went in to see Captain Agrippa. But then, she had not wanted to explain Elden, much less name him, to her father. There were too many cards she had played under the table -- Elden, Faxril, Naevain, High Lord Arand -- and she would have been an idiot to expose them. So she shook her head negative. There was no reason for him to feel guilt over something she would have never allowed.
“Focus on the journal,” Vera said, removing her arm from his grasp. “I will read the documents you brought while you figure out the writing. I don’t need your protection. I need your help.”
Elden nodded. It was enough, for now. The sorcerer did not ask her to slow down or explain, he did not force chivalry upon her, but Vera could see in his face that he felt her description of his duties was wrong.
She sighed.
“Let’s get to Simanel, before something else happens.”