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Nailah gives a furious shake, head whip snapping like a rattler’s strike, and the hare dies instantly. Blood drips across the painted sands where her canines dislodged its organs. Among the thick stalks of blooming chuparosa and sage brush her beorc guard follows, metallic feet clicking at a distance only her laguz ears can hear.
The rabbit’s eye that stares glossily up in space reflects her silver coat and the sneer of her white teeth. It smells like warm soil and other small, living things, but those she will leave. Collecting its warm body in her mouth, Nailah considers how pointless this chase is. These prey animals can never look directly in front of them no matter the direction of their flight. They run parallel to her and the wild coyotes that stalk these places, clipping along in the same direction without end. Is it self-soothing to run, like it is for her? For the small hare who bounds so far, these wide spaces of yawning, sprawling plains don’t feel immeasurable anymore. It’s beginning to feel like a problem.
Nailah’s paws scrabble across the cooling sands and stir small insects to wakefulness. All around, crickets sing their evening croon. Her blood hums still, instinct loud in her ears. Haria waits for her in the shade of a palm, a light streak of silver and blue in the unending yard. To the east, the walls of Pilirani shine white from the descending sun.
She says nothing, turning to follow Nailah, and she’s silent as such, normally. Nailah admits that she has new curiosities about why this quiet companionship is acceptable, and why those she shares with her fellow wolves has been — tumultuous. It’s her inheritance cursing her, she thinks — gifted to her by her name like the beorc tradition, for their lives are so short; earned by her silver mane, the boon of her long jowls and those her family has sharpened theirs on in turn; sometimes, she considers herself as in-between as the children born of a dual heritage, and it smarts. Like this desert yard, stripped of the humidity and pleasure of water that lets the capital grow palms and orange trees heavy with fruit — she might grow stronger with more stalwart companions at her sides and become a real queen and not a stand-in.
Haria mutters her thanks, strips the rabbit of its soft fur, removes the organs, and smokes it in a low pit of sand with hot coals and desert brush. Their sentry work is old and familiar, for Haria had come with the title of rulership like a belt or a purse. Nailah had bristled at her father for saddling her with a plain beorc until, smiling, Haria swept behind her knees with a halberd and Nailah did not catch herself. She permits her company now. The old wolves who followed grumpily at her heels were nosy little things, still; they should feel embarrassed that her naked equivalent could threaten them soundly, and their future queen in turn who’s attuned firmly to these sands.
“My Lady,” Haria says. “Will you turn in for a while?”
“No. I don’t need rest.”
“Very well.” Haria shares her water, her wisdom, and her mobility.
After numerous years of study and stalking her borders for deserters and highwaymen present around the capital, it seems time has passed quickly.
There’s more silver in Haria’s crop of black hair now than Nailah remembers. Her wolves have fallen into line to answer her commands. The beorc representatives of her father’s council have found peace in retirement, sharing words of wisdom in letters and rare visits. They are moving in the same direction like always, paralleling a chase between a coyote and a hare, but times moves with consequence for her older companion. The hare can’t keep running forever.
She makes a decision.
Nailah tuts and holds out her hand. Haria pauses with a knife hovering over the thin skin of a mango. “Hand me that. I’ll make short work with your little beorc tooth.”
Haria looks at her. “It’s been two decades of attendance, Lady Nailah. I dare not stop now.”
“And it occurs to me you may not grace me with much more than that. Sit, be still, don’t talk back.”
She laughs. Haria takes the proffered golden slice of fruit with thanks.
Later, bored with waiting, Nailah wonders what other curiosities she can draw out. The back of Haria’s hand is warm beneath her own. Her vassel turns her almond eyes on her. “After laboring for years without complaint, have I finally fallen into your curiosities?”
“You’re no wolf, it’s true. But you’re consistent and dear. I appreciate that.”
Her blunt nails carefully curl against Nailah’s upper arm, tracing her newly painted marks that denote her as a leader coming into her own; they swirl over muscle and sinew, bending with the motions of her body, transforming her into something harder. After a week of laying still in a dark room, feeling the needle press upon her skin over and over, she’d only remembered taking the servants passage to her wing in the palace to rest, and Haria’s cool palm against her tired skin, whispering calming congratulations.
Haria eases backward into her resting place. “You can’t have everything I have, but you will surely find it if you keep this up.”
Nailah laughs and turns away. “It will always be an open offer for you.”
Now, Nailah returns her thoughts to the rabbit. Prey things bolt still when they see her approach and real soft things seem to rarely earn a mastery over themselves. That Haria could turn and face her severity and youthful frustrations endlessly — well. Well. She still died to an enemy’s cleverly-timed pitch.
This is why, her advisers tell her later, much later, after Haria’s laid to rest beside her family’s graves, which are honored by residing in the same courtyard as that of the family they serve, we must not wait too long to act. The beorc live short lives, and we all live in this same place. There can be no hesitations if we are to provide for everyone unanimously.
Of course, Nailah thinks. It makes sense.
Haria is replaced by another. Nailah’s new favorite is a swordsman of dual heritage who spends his days reading poetry and later reciting them to her in her bed. Later, he knocks a wild cat back and slits their throat, blood spraying pink across the boggy wetlands of the east. There’s something elegant about violence from soft things too, and death, but poetics are not her forte. Nailah appreciates it and tells him so. Her wolves simply watch. They snarl at each other, slinking around, in search of a hare that won’t turn to face them. They are still trying to remember how to be more than the sum of their parts and instinct to pursue.
Not me, she thinks, the years thick in her mouth, It won’t be me.
The softest things belong in other worlds than Hatari, Nailah believes; it’s why the Goddess left them here alone, enemies of their own dwindling resources and drought, to rot. After two hundred years of caretaking, Nailah expects that inherited violence will claim her someday too. She closes her eyes, feeling the breeze tickle her neck. Someone else will carry the mantle, a cousin or a half-sibling, and she must only live long enough to ensure they do it right.
Opening her stride, she parts the doors of the antechamber and descends down the steps to disappear into the palace garden. Rosemary blooms summon bees and they hum against her skin among the other insects chirping, fluttering past her vision with great yellow pockets, taking flight toward home and their own royal division.
At the intersection of pathways, her wolves are distracted before her arrival. Her arms prickle with a warning and, skirting to a side door and dislodging the beaded curtain, slips into the barracks toward her own military chamber.
Only a few seconds of brewing uncertainty in the echoing, winding passages and her answer is delivered.
Volug enters her room nearly soundlessly save for the wheezing, parched thing in his arms. “You were right,” he says, flat, meeting her gaze head on. There was someone wandering the desert, but not for long.
Nailah’s tail bristles and she hurries forward. Sliding matted hair away, and robes that smell of smoke and sage brush, a face reveals itself, red and gray from sunburn and illness. It reminds her of a deadwood signaling its last light in the evening before sunset, flaring bright and glittery on the horizon before fading to careful plainness. The white wings of the laguz she extends carefully so they may not be crushed against his back as Volug lays him down — a handsome figure, even made of ruin — though the bones don’t bend as they should and creak like a tired wheel.
“He’s a heron,” Volug says, voice low. He kneels and they lay him delicately on the cool mosaic. Nailah rips a fabric hanging from the wall and shoves it under his long neck to elevate his head. “Is he not? Nailah --” he snaps.
She spits over her shoulder, low and firm, for a cleric to be fetched. The wolves outside the door disappear immediately.
When the women arrive to treat him, staves and salves and plain shock upon their faces, Nailah takes the heron’s hand on impulse. If he will die, then let him feel held; if he should die, let her know which of these magic wielders have failed him. If he should die, she should witness his last, shuddering breath and honor its passing.
“Where did you find him,” she murmurs to Volug.
“Where you asked me to look,” he says, quiet. Nailah drags her bangles up her arm for sound, and when the healers finally lean back and conclude he need only rest, darkness, and water — Nailah bundles his form up and carries him away behind the thick veil of many wolves who will honor this precious secret.
In his new sickroom, sliding a warm cloth between the webbing of his fingers and up a pale arm, Nailah ponders on what certainty the foundation of her world is being broken. The veneer is peeling away like low cloud cover, revealing hopes she was denied, soft muses from books and stories she never let clutter her judgment in all her long years, but hesitantly, wished to exist. One can want clarity and easy answers. It’s alright. She should she glad for this one’s safe arrival in her care — though if he never wakes, she will never know peace or ignorance again.
When Volug stations himself outside the heron’s room without her orders, she asks outright what he thinks. Volug raises his great head from the floor but does not shift to answer her. He does not think much outside his role, and it makes him consistent and trustworthy where it counts. He wags his tail in jest at her frequent coming and goings, and occasionally delivers updates of the heron’s slow and lucid ramblings; for the most part, Nailah only wants to hear them from the source and scolds him his plain words.
Nailah rarely leaves the dim abode, taking audiences only when she must, and returns quickly with hands still sticky from fruit she’d cut in the kitchens. When his palette is stronger, she wants to bring him hearty soups with lentils and citrus, and darks breads sweetened with molasses — pleasurable things; there’s not much else she can do.
He eats slowly, mechanically, dim gaze following her around the room the same way she looks at him. She regards him with her day’s events and find a common language to relay them in. His smile brightens day by day and soon she finds they both look forward to each other’s arrival. It’s how, Nailah realizes, they have much they can learn from each other.
Rafiel gives her little information in the beginning, and picks at the thick blankets heaped upon him, and asks small measured questions one turns to when they believe they know nothing and know not how to broach it.
“Would you like to sit outside? The sun is warm, unless you’ve had your fill,” she teases.
He moistens his lips, pale legs stretched out before him, and twists his hair away from his face, comb resting between his fingers.
“If you insist,” he says, as if it’s a grand struggle to indulge her. He’s convincing no one, she thinks. He looks at her then, eyes startled, then down again. “Forgive me. I know I’ve been poor company.”
“No, you’ve simply been dying. That’s forgivable.” Wordlessly, she gestures and helps him up with a hand hooked on his belts. He stands weakly from the low bed, wings stretching out behind him all wrong -- Nailah keeps her eyes forward, and Rafiel tentatively holds on to her shoulders. When she’s settled him on the pillows and thick rugs and rearranged his blankets around him outside, his eyes look at her in disbelief.
He never quite stops looking at her, and to be fair, Nailah wonders if he won’t disappear like a wisp of smoke if she turns away even once.
As the days turn to weeks and whole seasons pass, it’s not long before Rafiel requests her company before dawn one morning, quiet and austere, startling her to silence when she goes to meet him.
“Rafiel. What is it.”
“You should know — about Tellius,” he whispers. “My home. My family.”
She stills. “Do you wish to tell me?”
“No. I think it will disappoint you. But I want…” Silence. Then, he grimaces a little and stretches forward, a cramp in his back forcing a painful twist in his wings. She soothes him. His hair tickles her legs where it pools before him. “I don’t believe that I was brought to your side by chance anymore,” he finally relents.
Nailah touches a dry cheek in jest, then sweeps his bath damp hair over his shoulder. “It was auspicious,” she says. “But the Goddess certainly has not heard our voices in years. It’s a mystery how you possibly heard our own.”
“I did not hear anyone. I simply fled.”
“Well, flee over here, perhaps, where you may be comfortable. Say whatever you like.”
She helps him up and steers him to the open balcony where they sit under star light and she takes his hand, feathering it out over her knee, holding it steady. Jasmine blooms on a trellis and stone lanterns below dim for the passage of morning. Rafiel watches her from one eye beneath silver lashes, then inclines his head, seeing his weakness on display, as he hears her wordless answer.
“You say the first laguz were birds — does that make you divine?”
He laughs a little. “Maybe in another world. Or maybe here,” he says. “If my kind had ever found themselves with wolves.”
“Would you like to go home, someday?”
“No,” he says, and clasps her hands in his own. “Not anymore.”
She smiles slowly.
Inevitably, time demands that they do.
As the sands swirl around her ankles and Rafiel whispers conversations into her large furred ears, he keeps a firm grip in her coat and doesn’t let go. Volug treads behind her, dark muzzle low to the ground and following her scent.
The girl who finds them at the desert’s edge is appalling. Despite the violence, the warnings Rafiel has imparted, Nailah thinks she could find some answers here.
She finds more than she likes.
The Duke of Persis cajoles her into a conversation she’s no patience for having. Had blood not been spilled without end in this country, and if she could believe the goddess’s will did not also strike her people to stone in Hatari who were guilty only of existing — she would pick his mind for answers.
But he can’t read her heart or the complexity of questions she might like to ask him. Instead, he dies, and the two women left in his place, sisters, cannot give more clarity outside of their immediate grief.
In time, all things.
For now, only this: Micaiah holds Rafiel as firmly as he holds her, his fingers soothing through her silver strands, murmuring words of assurance her pricked ears cannot help but overhear. Call on me anytime. I should like to come see you. And Rafiel’s parting is only the beginning of many departures.
While he sleeps in a bed repurposed for those who climbed Ashera’s tower with Volug firmly at his side, numerous soldiers down the hall experience their own restless dreams, and Nailah slides out of the thin sheets and prepares to make her own. She pads silently out of the room.
The city is dark still but the air is lighter. Through the guest lodging she exits into a courtyard and listens, breathes. The scent of blood that ran in Sienne’s streets a week ago had been all but washed away by subsequent storms that painted the stone pathways in blue and gray pools. Yellow clouds blow east high above, toward the desert, and whatever moisture is left will surely empty itself over the parched landscape before truly reaching home.
Now that she is allowed to consider other things, she longs for Hatari, and the humid, temperate climate, and warm, painted things around every corner. This world of stillness is alien to her.
Nailah climbs the final steps through the double doors of the small if respectable beorc manor before her, their white reliefs depicting a woman in prayer — Altina, or Meshua, or some representative of the goddess as she has been described — and enters the gilded foyer. The pegasi captain startles to her feet but makes short work of calling the young Apostle from her rooms.
Empress Sanaki does not keep her waiting for long.
Red carpets spill forth down the chamber and split it into colors that jar her from the gentle plainness of the outdoors. Silver and gold accessories cross over mantles and paintings of women Nailah knows nothing about hang above the walls. Thick curtains are pulled back to let in the gray light. Sanaki doesn’t look well when it touches her face, even for a child. Nailah can’t blame her. If Rafiel were to betray her, or Volug, after so many years — she dare not think it, and hopes she does not live to see it.
“All this rain,” Sanaki starts, voice without inflection, “will Hatari see any of it?”
“Unlikely,” Nailah says, “Unless it comes from our southern coasts.”
“From what I’ve gathered, you live there among all people. The Branded, beorc, and laguz — all of your people are equal?”
“Yes. Civil disputes are unwelcome. However, it does not mean that they never occur.”
“I would like to know when our history went so wrong.” Sanaki pauses, answering her own question as she speaks it, then stands quickly. Her robes drag behind her, purple hair long and silky nearly drapes to the floor, proof of her heritage with none of the consequences; she’s done well without — she had to. She moves to stand by the low burning fire and warms her hands. “Of course I know the answer. I wish Sephiran would have met you years ago, Queen Nailah. You may have revealed things to him that he could have learned to believe in.”
Nailah skirts the edges of the room. Fine upholstered sofas with nail heads and embroidery clutter the space. Some are obscured by dusty cloth covers. She realizes this may have been the residence of the one she held so dear. “I do not believe a man set on destroying a world such as him would make a halfway attempt, even with new information.”
Sanaki scrubs the sleep from her face, then sighs. “He has always been devoted to his work. It’s what I liked about him so. I’ve always been his priority. I was never alone in my war against the senators, petty as it is.”
Nailah smiles a little, then turns to join her in the amber glow, jewelry cold against her skin without the sun to warm it. She sees, through the tall window behind them, a splash of color far off; rain still cascades, flooding the streets into a blur. Perhaps the goddess is weeping again; may they be tears of relief that wash the slate clean.
“Nevermind me and my idle talk,” Sanaki says. She clasps her hands, proper and firm, and peers up into her face. “Tell me what you’re here for,” she commands. “I can’t imagine a queen such as you wants to hear my problems anymore than I want to hear yours, but I suspect you have something to share at this hour.”
“I want to join your alliance with the laguz here. I want my people to know there is a world outside of our own.”
“How so? How many people have you?”
“Pilirani is nearly as large as Sienne here, if you would believe it.”
Sanaki stills. “A population that large has lived far removed from us for centuries. Well. It makes sense there would be many of you — nevermind that, you will be after land, and resources, and you would consider needing all these things —“ she waves her hand, robe falling down her arm to her elbow, “—when, exactly?”
A door opens nearly silently, Tanith holding the handle.
“Excuse my intrusion — as soon as we’re able to make room would be the likely answer — the queen is not a time waster.”
Nailah sighs and extends her arms as Micaiah flies for her. “Silly girl, I had hoped you were still here. The majority of you beorc scurried away like startled birds.”
Her laugh is short and radiant — Nailah knows why Rafiel likes her so; there’s not a bit of malice in her, only strength, and cleverness, and they are traits that make her unusually kind. “Yes, but not for long. I needed rest, but more importantly to meet with —“ she pauses. “Listen, please. First — you have done Daein so many favors and been an unwavering source of support for me — I would like it very much if I could hear more about your kingdom, and the people.” Micaiah’s smile flickers at the edges, then brightens at the long, silent stare Sanaki gives her by the fire, winded by more than her abrupt appearance; sisters, Nailah thinks, worshiped under different pretenses, will have much to reconcile. And Crimea’s queen made her intentions clear, that however Gallia moves they will follow after — only if it means for bettering relations. As to the rest of the laguz — Tibarn will have many hatchlings to pluck to make a worthy repository in light of Lehran’s treachery. It’s not easy to betray, and it’s less certain to find allies after.
These beorc have a shorter memory, though these violent days will not leave any of them for long. Daein and Begnion will only find resolution with a union between them. Nailah won’t wait for what she wants to arrive however, it must be secured with force.
“There’s not much more I can add to what I have already shared. Besides that, I don’t think my solutions will be so easily applied to your politics. And I myself am leaving within the week.” Micaiah’s face falls. “It’s time to go home. Don’t look at me like that.”
Sanaki and Micaiah both quiet at once. At the back room, a knock sounds, and lady Sigrun enters with a tray of delicacies and a ceramic clay pot. Nailah saw no unfamiliar faces or guards within the palace, only pegasus knights who’s shrewd eyes begged her confidence; Nailah thinks it will take longer than she would like to strike an agreement that wouldn’t shatter what fragile contingency already exists. She can make time for this.
“You have a place here, with us,” Micaiah says forcefully. “Whether our country looks it or not — it won’t be unified without you here, too.”
Nailah squeezes her branded hand and strokes roughly over the back of it, brown fingers curling around the mark where she knows it’s obscured by her sleeve. Micaiah’s silver hair spreads over her shoulders, tickling her bare arms. She glances at Sanaki; the little Empress, despite her youth, understands more than what words have been said.
“What of the herons, and Prince Rafiel — I can’t imagine his family letting him slip away again.”
Her sandals slap against the floor and she tugs Micaiah with her to the low table. Sigrun retreats out the door, hands empty. Sanaki stays by the fire, watching them.
“I should hope so,” Nailah says. “He will be needed here to put things right.”
“He’ll wake his father,” Sanaki says.
“Yes,” Nailah answers.
“Then there is much to welcome back to these lands,” Sanaki says smoothly. “There should be a celebration as soon as word is sent here. I will have no bad blood between us.”
“It will remain up to the herons to forgive the crimes of your politicians,” Micaiah interjects. “And mine, for crimes against the laguz. And they may choose not to.”
“Yes,” Sanaki agrees. “We will have our work cut out. I look forward to having zero opposition for now.”
Satisfied, Nailah leans forward and pours the beorc tea.
The edge of Serenes Forest is cool and dark still, wet with autumn rains, and skeletal staghorns that reach upward from blackened trees in parts. Most of the greenery is lush and cool against her legs, making her linen skirt unwieldy and soggy against her skin, and Rafiel’s robes are caught by many hands from the overgrown brush. Frogs croak deep within the wet wood and owls tut their call from unseen places. It is a living, breathing thing, and if Nailah were superstitious she might call this place haunted still. Crossing the Ribahn was easy enough — it was what came after, moving southwest toward Miscale, and where Tibarn would meet them before taking Rafiel with him to Gallia, that worried her.
“My sibling’s galdrar did much good here,” Rafiel murmurs. His wings stretch as he cranes his neck back to look up through the branches toward the gray sky. Snorting, Nailah pauses to shake beads of water from her fur and he steps away hurriedly to avoid the spray.
Stone coffins haunted Daein across every threshold and archway with evidences of battles fought and lost everywhere, but the wind touches the back of Nailah’s neck as they exit due south toward the ocean and lifts her hair and she immediately breathes easier. This country had not been thrilled with her arrival since she left the desert to follow a song, and it was Rafiel’s assurances and their garnered company that lead her here — to the beginning of what she had hoped for but refused to give voice to. She must speak it aloud now and not trifle. She must believe her absence has all been worth it.
She knows now too who will benefit her dream the most, and it’s one well suited to quietly observing the affairs of others.
Ahead, the white columns of an old temple shine. Part of the roof is broken where the weather has battered it to ruin like the rest of lost laguz lands. Winged guards await them, brown feathers sleek and folded against rigid spines. The vultures of Nailah’s desert were more impulsive and threatening and were rather made of worn leather, where these ones have dark eyes that rove, catching every small movement around her. They greet her quietly, but acknowledge Rafiel with an astounded murmur, then shuffle in discontentment, wings slotting against their backs. They do not know her and deem her unimportant, just as they are ultimately to her.
Nailah fusses with a bandage around her wrist, the heat of her own skin trapped against her palm. The tissue has scarred where the Goddess struck her, and it itches still.
“Is your brother making the journey?” she asks. Behind them, Volug’s nails scrabble against the rock as he paces through the open columns. Her ear angles to hear him better, then stills.
“Likely,” Rafiel says. “So we may travel together.”
“Hm. I think Tibarn is keeping him.”
He laughs, soft, and stares unrelenting at that long horizon. Below, the roar of the ocean broadcasts the storm far over the sea. She imagines falling and being battered senseless against the pale cliffs, or an unlucky Raven, or Rafiel even, dislodged from the safe embrace of another. She is not stripped of power, still. They are meeting on the earth, after all, and there are no laguz or beorc that can live on the sea too long without the resources of the continent.
Rafiel stares at the horizon. His eyes see what hers cannot and twice as much. “Oh, the wind is carrying him,” he says, threading his fingers together. His wings shift at the memory, tugging into the air like a beorc’s kite, feathers bright against her eyes. They fold messily. “What a draft.”
The sea breeze coils against her skin. Melancholy has touched her too. She shakes it off, jewelry tinkling against her collar and steps forward toward the wide balcony, and the stairs leading to the open cliffs just beyond. Sparse among the rock, tall field grasses tickle her brown skin, brushing against inky patterns and leaving their seeds in her robes. Mayhap they will grow there and she will have brought truth of this other universe home with her. A scar won’t be enough. Her foolish words may have to contend against that of other, more clever fools.
Volug shifts behind her and steps forward to assume a position on her right. The heat of his body is like a coat. His fingers flex and still at his sides. Gray spots grow close over the sea, tumbling together, then apart, touched by joy. She despises them momentarily, for this display before Rafiel like he does not still long to see great heights himself is cruel — though his feet let him climb all the floors of Ashera’s tower and lead her westward toward this new horizon, his grip around her arm is still determined by how available she lets herself be.
Nailah considers. Through the tender years of their courtship they shared a pillow and a purse, but now they may add one more.
Tibarn shifts before reaching the cliffs and Nailah squints against his brightness and blinks spots away from her vision. Tawny feathers rain down in soft tufts and catch in the damp grass. The rest sweep away south back from where they came, winking gold before quickly disappearing out of sight with the breeze.
“Nailah,” he greets. “You look recovered.” Then, before he can say more, Reyson shifts beside him, silver hair flying loose over his shoulders, and teeth showing, pulls his brother against him with a laugh. They stumble together over the uneven ground, arms about each other. Nailah bristles only a little — what is hers deserves careful handling, not the flummoxed approach of his brother, who — she notes with some amusement and distaste — carries a silver knife against his hip. That’s new. His ornate robes nearly conceal it entirely. Eye flickering away, she shoves the useless concern away — that when Rafiel returns to her, he will be nothing like the devoted man she intends to leave behind. Her confidence should not waver; his certainly will not.
She extends her arm to grip Tibarn’s — it’s warm and firm, muscle pressing against her own, and their hands sound like papers sliding together.
“You’re late,” she says. He pats the top of her hand with his other and smiles, the scar tissue pushing under his eye and into his cheek in a messy curve.
“I know. Forgive me. I did not mean to hold you hostage.”
“Only a virtuous man can admit fault,” she says. “Forgiven.” He squeezes and releases her. Reyson takes his place, matching Tibarn with his hands — an anomaly in what she knows. His mouth tugs down and his vibrant eyes pin her with an accusation; she reorders her thoughts to spite him less. Her only understanding of Reyson is from Rafiel. If Rafiel had not cried out in hate in his sleep in the back of her apartments, blistering from the sun and cramped space of his own mind, she would know little of complexities. Violence spares no one its marks and there is no going back.
Reyson softens and embraces her stiffly instead.
“You look well,” she says, tempered. He shrugs around her.
“I’ve slept. You might do the same before you leave,” he cautions, then wavers, just. “And Nailah — thank you for bringing my brother back to me. I won’t forget this.” Rafiel murmurs something inaudible in his ear as he pulls away and his mouth twists weakly. “Safe travels.”
Nailah smiles. Reyson’s palm grabs hold of Rafiel’s, fingers threading together, and they disappear up the stone steps, luminescent in this broken place. Rafiel will soothe him, he will be an excellent peacemaker between them — and Nailah will consider her own parting here carefully.
She can make an enemy of herself if it means the birds will unify against her. Or she can let the pieces fall as they like.
She turns to Tibarn sharply. “Shall we walk?”
“Should I take your arm?”
“Only if you want to lose it,” she answers.
He tosses his head back and laughs. Away from prying ears and winds that would carry her words, Nailah does not hesitate. A great, curled tree groans in the breeze. Her jewelry jingles softly against her skin.
“Where is Naesala?” she asks. Tibarn’s smiles fades.
“Absent, as usual,” Tibarn says lightly. “Why? Were you expecting him?”
“Yes,” she says. “I thought the blood pact explained his behavior.” Tibarn is stony and silent. His feathers flare out red and golden in the pale light; she still remembers what it was like to pluck one with her teeth and feel the blood tip out onto crusted snow. Now, she will press upon the wound until is bruises. Just enough for words.
“That’s dirty business, you know. There’s much more than what’s transpired these last three years. A pact does not make anything forgivable.”
“You have had your dealings with him, I thought, and planned to move forward.”
“Thank you for negotiating on my behalf,” Tibarn snaps. “I wasn’t aware his wellness interested you, or that you had no intentions of communicating that.”
Nailah smiles roughly. “Don’t get your feathers ruffled. I knew you would be reliable. It was a question, nothing more. I would not entrust Rafiel to him.”
“Those were some mixed signals.” Tibarn shakes his head, then laughs in disbelief. Nailah rubs over her scab with the dry pad of her thumb. He’s too emotional, too hasty with his conclusions — she knows the type. She’s fought them in her ranks of wolves, left them struggling in their own blood in rooms she commanded. It’s the problem with powerful laguz — she cannot help but want to push and study the result.
He gestures at the fallen columns behind them. Their pale alabaster must have stood thirty feet above her and been a meeting place for gods once — but now there is only them, and Nailah doesn’t believe grandiose heights will ever exist in this place again.
“Proposition me, then,” Tibarn says, raising his voice above the wind. His eyes cut back to the ridge. “I’m still amicable. You didn’t want to be heard by them? Say what you like then.” Nearly out of sight, the heron’s hair shines pale and bright as the storm breaks over the ocean. They look all together foreign in this broken world — but it’s not enough to make her walk away for good.
Rafiel’s the one weakness she can’t hide and she wants for soft things for him here: he should have warm sunlight, and restful sleep, and good company among his companions, and not want for anything.
To want is to live, to have ambitions is to be a leader. Nailah muses she’s not strayed from her path with her absence from her people, only taken the longer detour to make this right. In her youth everything was more clear. She would take what she liked and feel enamored in the moment and walk away the next. She cannot do that anymore. The hare is with her now, racing parallel to its doom.
“You should make good friends with the beorc, but do better than Naesala. That’s all.”
Nailah slides a thick stalk between her fingers, its leaves fuzzy and wet with dew. She cannot think of anything else.
Tibarn’s picking his blunt nails as he considers her, the width of him impressive in the yellow sunlight. He is a man built to endure, and had their paths overlapped she would have delighted in a chase. Now, he’ll make a fine ally. His blood had coated her lips in the snowfields, and he knew how her fur matted with her own. It’s as intimate as they can be and all that she will allow. Haste will make waste in this changing world and they will be no better than the goddess they killed; he surely understands this, too.
She turns smoothly on her heel. Her sandals clap against the rocks and Tibarn sighs, looming after her. “I’ll take you to task on that,” he says. “The royal family has always been in the care of the hawks.”
Her eye slants. “That is good.”
“However, there is one thing I’ll ask of you in turn. Don’t assume you know my feuds, or my fights, or my politics. I won’t take responsibility for your impudence, even if you’re worthy.”
She waves her hand dismissively. “I’ve already settled my affairs here, Tibarn. Good luck with your own.”
Tibarn quiets. Their strides are long and Nailah watches Rafiel’s hair toss in the breeze. “You know, you don’t have much to say about your intentions often. I would almost believe you don’t trust your fellow laguz here to support you,” Tibarn says. His words drag slow and nonchalant.
Nailah halts and considers him. “Would you?”
“…Yes,” he says. His wings raise in his quiet fury. “Because that is the way of laguz.”
Were she younger, and still angry at the line she walked between worlds as a leader of dualities, she may have laughed. Now, she knows what ignorance looks like. Eye sliding away, she sees his promise falling apart within a year — surely, she will find time to fetch Rafiel and bring him home before then —
“I’ll be transparent: I don’t have your pride. But your commitment is at least honorable.”
“Hatari sounds like a different country entirely,” he snaps. “Maybe the wolves belong there.”
It irks her, like a stone in her shoes, impossible to dislodge. “That’s what the goddess thought too. But we found ways to live. For your sake I hope you will too.”
She lets her stride carry her with purpose, uncaring if Tibarn follows at a distance or not. He jogs to catch up, then bends down, voice quiet. “I hope for the same, Nailah. I’ll ask of you one thing. Don’t leave Rafiel waiting. I won’t fail him. Will you?”
Nailah thinks of these weary leaders of Tellius, who have left a tapestry of blood in their history. This world is stained, but Hatari is not less so; eye shuttering, she knows what debts she owes and what duties she must discharge. And Rafiel can assist her, from here, by gathering information, living, and staying perfectly mindful of his safety — something she may not even guarantee for herself when she returns.
She doesn’t answer him. The wind stirs, shoving at her. She doesn’t need convincing to depart. She trusts Rafiel, and that is enough.
“They will earn your favor eventually,” Rafiel murmurs. “And if not they will be convinced when you return with the wolves at your heels that you are welcome here.” She laughs, but not meanly.
“As if this country needs any more reason to be nervous.”
Rafiel hums. “And it will all fall apart if everyone is not equally considered.”
Nailah dares herself to meet his accusing eyes. “I would not ask you to throw away your family for me, Rafiel. Only that, while you are here, to take stupid care of yourself.”
It’s a foregone conclusion that her anxious dwelling would be put on unhappy display. He pivots on his heel, brow furrowing, and refaces a jewel around her neck to press flat and cool against the heat of her skin.
“I don’t need to stay for long,” he whispers. “You could wait another two weeks and take me back with you—”
“No,” Nailah says firmly, “you do. You will.”
He smiles weakly. “I thought this was about what I wanted.”
“It still is. I haven’t said goodbye now, have I?”
Rafiel laughs wetly and throws his arms around her neck, mouth pressing soft and dry against her own. Nailah closes her eye and traces her fingers through his golden hair. It parts like silk between her fingers, tangling in his feathers and the intricacies of his robes. He’s different here, she thinks, paler in this watercolor light, but so is she, a dark splotch on the page of a story that future troubadors will sing of. She recognizes what her safety has offered him, and what his safe keeping will demand of her from afar.
She can understand the harsh lines of his brother better: it’s difficult to endure a necessary thing without consequences on body or spirit.
“You’ll collect me when you’re free to do so,” he says, demanding. He’s deliberately ignoring their audience, but she can give them a show.
“You know where to find me,” she says simply.
She’s unprepared for the way he wraps himself around her in finality. For a moment her heart races parallel to the hare of long ago, when Haria’s fingers still touched the raised markings on her arms and soothed them with cool incantations. Rafiel smiles crooked and sweet and bids her well. She brushes his wet eyes and wills herself to relax. There is no going back to a time where Tellius did not exist.
Tibarn and Reyson wait patiently along the sparse tree line. Their path will take them west, along the edges of Goldoa, and back into the safe, dappled forests of Gallia, where Rafiel will wake his father with a song and finally begin to reconcile with all that remains. It will bring him joy to have a reunion unburdened by war. She must not interfere. By the clumsy smile adoring his face, he knows her thoughts well.
“Travel well, My Queen. Thank you for indulging me,” he says, voice cracking.
Nailah spins on her heel. Her sandals slap against stone, than sparse grass. Winds buffet her back, the sun illuminates her arms; she understands why these birds fancy the sky, and she’s a liar to think herself indifferent. The whole world has been boiling for centuries, simmering in its discontent — and now with a new dawn, in a place with an understanding of all the inner workings and trajectories the goddess Yune made one certainty clear: they must live together or die apart.
Yellow gray skies sprinkle across the north, and east the sun will have already graced Hatari’s orange walls. Time moves strangely here. Nailah breathes deep, imagining. The lemon trees and jasmine will be in full bloom in the courtyards, bees will hum against the gardeners’ skin and settle within small blooming cacti. The air will be sweet and moist and nothing will chafe, save for all that she’s already endured, and what she will face to come.
Suddenly, she is ready for home.
Nailah nudges at Volug’s heels to make him move faster. He merely looks at her, great head swiveling with intelligent eyes, then clears the sheer toasted rock before them in a powerful leap. Sand flies in her face from his heels, cascading over her fur like glitter, and Nailah lets the delight of the ensuing chase guide her home. Volug lunges ahead, shoulders and rippling legs churning up coarse sand, running for joy and pleasure, until she overtakes him and knocks him sideways.
This place holds her no matter the distance. Nailah knows how this nations operates and what fruits her labors will have yielded. There will certainly be a rebel faction who will need bit, and there will be inane rumors to soothe, but all of that will mean nothing before the magnitude of what she can now offer.
When Nailah enters the highway that turns from sand to softer soil, blood across her mouth and her skin from a hunt outside the city proper, the first murmurs are painful, suspicious things. Next, gasps and grateful praises slide across her; she’s given water to drink, fruit to eat, and an escort with only one man she recognizes among them. Then, less certainly, whispers of what promises she’s brought to soothe the uncertainty she’s left in her absence clamor together and chase her all the way to the palace, flooded with wolves and beorc welcoming her home. Word travels faster than her feet here.
Some do not look at her; she can imagine what’s happened in her absence.
An ox is killed amidst a mix of pleasure and real hunger and she asks that haste is made to the kitchens to prepare a celebratory feast. Next, she summons an old attendant to call a meeting of her councilmen. She will take a bath while they sort themselves. She wants her guard restored to Volug before end of day, the rest will not suffer their new officer for much longer.
“Drag those tired pups from their beds, if you must. It’s too early on a nice evening to turn in. Ridiculous.” She strides through the hall toward her old room. Bracing herself, she enters alone, but does not feel as such. It’s as she’s left it down to the blankets Rafiel enjoyed sleeping beneath.
When she glances out at the porch where she often lay in the evening, those same stars look down at her still. The sky slides slowly from blue to velvet, then pale like moss of a forest unfamiliar to her, and finally a warm darkness. Volug arrives to escort her to the audience chamber after a few careful knocks. He lets no emotions show, as settled and calm as ever. The wolves, she suspects, missed his quiet orders too.
“And where have you been?” Her clansmen ask. “What have you found? It’s been nearly two years, Queen Nailah. There’s much you must answer for—”
“Enough,” she barks. “Give me your furies later.” They quiet. Volug watches from beside her, ear pricking for her speech. “There’s a place we may make better across that desert the heron prince came from, and I’ll tell you about it. Now, gather your cups — and some paper. I do not want to repeat myself more than necessary.”
They murmur, discontent and troubled, but obey.
This world still lives on with or without the hare running alongside her and there is work to be done.