Exiles of Forlorn (12 page)

“Fair enough,” I answered. “That still leaves the matter of timing.”

“Centuries it has sat, waiting for those who would first breech its walls,” protested Reiwyn. “Centuries more it will wait, if we leave it undisturbed. Another few months mean little, in the grandness of time. If helping these people means delaying our adventure for a season, it seems immoral not to do so.”

“I disagree.” Uller spoke up. “The graybeard told us there were other seekers of the ruins, treasure hunters and the like. His research was shared with the University—”

“Where it was rebuked by the scholars,” interrupted Reiwyn. “And he was derided as an old fool for proposing the notion of an advanced civilization existing this far outside the continents.”

“No one believed him,” reiterated Antioc.

“What if someone did?” Uller asked. “Who’s to say the next group of exiles won’t bring with them a whole new batch of treasure hunters, unimpeded by our communitarian scruples?”

“Exactly.” I nodded to Uller.

Reiwyn looked at him. “The odds of that are too ridiculous to consider.”

“One might also ponder if the ruins have already been breached,” added Antioc.

Reiwyn looked at me. “Or if the whole thing were a myth to begin with.”

I snapped my head to Antioc. “Don’t help her.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re taking her side. You know full well this isn’t about time, or the desire to help out the community.” He gave me a look, not quite angry but screwed up in the eyes like he didn’t want me to say what was coming next. I found I couldn’t look at him anymore; he was unsympathetic to my reasoning. Uller understood, though. Unlikely as it seemed, he was my only ally here, so it was to him I turned. “He knows what I’m talking about. Don’t you, wizard?”

He nodded without looking up from the lagoon. Blackfoot stared at him, confused. Reiwyn’s expression grew toxic.

“You just don’t want to abandon your cyclopean boyfriend.” I tossed down my empty waterskin. “We should have known this would happen.”

Reiwyn’s back stiffened. “Should have known what would happen?”

“You’re not blind. I know this place wants for mirrors but there are still enough for you to see it.” She stared at me expectantly. “You’re beautiful. Breathtaking, Reiwyn. Everyone sees it. Everyone sees
you
. What’s more, you’re a woman, and women want for nothing but a man to take care of them. The more beautiful they happen to be, the easier a time they have of it. Well, you’ve found one, and now you’re interested in little else, including great treasure, adventure . . .” I cast my eyes about the others, who had fallen silent as tombs. “Or friendship.”

“Is that what you think I am?” she simmered, like a pot nearing boil. “You think I came to this place to find a husband?”

“Nothing so overt.” I understood why this was such a shock for her. She couldn’t have anticipated I’d see it. She thought I was like the others: blind, naïve. Maybe I was about some things, but not about this. Not about her. “But it remains a constant need, to find a man to take care of you. It’s how you were taught.”

“You know me so well, Lew?”

“I know
women
. I had three sisters, and they constantly tittered on about which man at court would seek their hand. My mother taught them, little noblewomen-in-training, how to stay pretty and fresh, all in anticipation of the day the proper suitor came sniffing about with flowers in one hand, the other open for a dowry.”

“I’m not one of your sisters. I’m
no
noblewoman, and there is certainly no dowry to be had for my hand.”

I tried to ignore her fiery gaze by turning my attention to my food. Even without seeing her eyes, I felt them on me. Looking deep into me for a weakness, a crack in my resolve. She would not find one. I’d watched her cavort about with that one-eyed muscle-thug Ferun in silence long enough. I scooped a wooden spoonful of rice into my mouth and chewed it; slow, deliberate chewing meant to project an image of inner serenity. In truth, I was as afraid of her now as I was the day we met, where our introduction came at the edge of a blade. I wouldn’t let that show, even if she did still bear the dagger in question.

“Perhaps no dowry,” I said after swallowing. “And you may not be a noblewoman, but you
are
a woman, and unless the Daevas planted you here in a holy beam of light like the Adoni, you have or had a mother, from whom all your lessons of femininity would flow. Whether you will to admit it or not,
she
made you who you are, as much as our fathers made us who we are.” I gestured to the others with a wide sweep of my empty spoon. They seemed to want nothing to do with this. “It’s not your fault. You can’t help being a woman any more than Blackfoot can help being a thief, Antioc a warrior, Uller a pretentious blowhard—”

“Hey!”

“Or me . . .” I made a circle in the air with my spoon. “A genius.”

Reiwyn stood fast, casting her leaf and half her food from her lap onto the sand. One of the eggs rolled into the lagoon and floated away. “Jetsam!” she roared, loud enough to make everyone jump a little.

“I still don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t know anything, Lew Standwell!” Her skin flushed as her eyes widened. “You most certainly don’t know me.” With that, she turned and stormed away, her black hair dancing in the breeze before the pink evening sky. We watched her, seemingly unable to speak until she’d climbed the hill and reached the gate, well out of her range of hearing. Then everyone looked at me.

Rightfully so that Antioc would be the first to breech the silence; he was the warrior, after all, bravely charging in where others feared to tread.

“Genius, eh?”

“I’m only saying what we’ve all been thinking.” I scraped my spoon along my leaf for remnants of rice.

Blackfoot jumped to his feet. “Maybe you should have Uller’s witch check your indisible ears, because I wasn’t thinking
any
of that at all!” He didn’t wait for a reply before tracing Reiwyn’s path up the beach. For someone so little, he ran markedly fast.

“Fair, then.” I licked the bottom of my spoon and tossed away my empty leaf. “He’s a child. He doesn’t think about these things like us.” I dunked my spoon in the lagoon and swirled it around. Once it was clean, I shook it in the air to cast it dry. My lingering fellows were discernibly silent. “What? Am I wrong?” I looked to Antioc, then Uller.

The former shrugged. The latter took a second before coming out with a reply, “I have no sisters, noble or otherwise, but I am fairly certain you shouldn’t have said any of that to her.”

I stood and tucked my spoon into a pouch on my belt. Antioc and Uller cleaned their spoons in the lagoon as I slapped sand from my pants and legs. “But you do not dispute it?” I asked.

“That isn’t the point, Lew.” Uller rose and shook sand from his robe. He still had the same robe he’d worn when I met him, but it had faded and torn in places. He was lucky enough to find a seamstress in the colony to repair it, as he didn’t seem ready to abandon the memories it held for him just yet. It was equal parts pathetic and poignant. I wondered if there was anything I could have brought of my past worth hanging on to so hard.

“Enlighten me.” I scratched my head.

“There are just some things you shouldn’t say.” He didn’t look me in the eyes when he said it. “Some feelings are like nests of stingers inside us. They are best avoided.”

I laughed. “Your metaphor doesn’t make sense, Uller. You would ignore a nest of stingers in your path?”

“They can’t be ignored.” He looked at me for a moment. “But you don’t have to go poking at them, and you don’t bring friends around them and kick them over like a mule.” He looked down before stepping away from us. “It just gets you and those around you stung.”

Then he left us.

“But you admit that I’m right?” I shouted down the beach at him. He cast a gesture over his shoulder. I couldn’t make it out in the fading light, but I assumed it wasn’t friendly. “I’ll take that as a yes,” I hollered.

Antioc took in a deep breath of the fresh breeze curling in off the ocean below us. He stretched and flexed before grabbing up his stone-headed club and lashing it over his broad shoulders. He didn’t go anywhere without it, especially not outside the colony after what had happened with the gluttons. I knew at least
he
would not abandon me, no matter what I said. Still, I thought it best to say nothing.

It surprised me when he spoke, “She never knew her mother.” He said it modestly, not a hint of judgment or scorn. Just stating a simple fact and letting me absorb it. “She died just after Reiwyn was born.”

Absorb I did. The stinger’s nest unfurled and the black swarm washed over me like a flood. My skin prickled and turned red as I fought to maintain composure; like when you’re drunk trying to feign sober, and you’re just certain you’re doing so well at it. Everybody knows. Lucky for me, everybody meant just Antioc. Less humiliating, albeit, just barely.

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“It’s not something she likes to talk about. For obvious reasons.”

“She told you,” I said. Antioc shrugged. “So she didn’t have a
mother
, doubtless there was some other female influence in her life. My original point stands, unless you have something better to rebut with than a deceased matriarch?”

Antioc shook his head and waited for me to pass.

“Well, good then.” I said, walking on. He followed close, saying nothing as the darkness around us grew and the pink evening sky turned to purple, then black. I caught a last glimpse of the mountains on the horizon, scraping the sky.

I sighed. Right or wrong, it didn’t matter. I needed Reiwyn.

We
. We needed Reiwyn. She had the disc in her thigh. Whatever it was, we needed her. It. We needed it.
I
needed it.

I needed her.

10.

T
he five of us globbed together on the
Songwillow
rather naturally. There weren’t many people our age on board. A few of the Plainsfolk came close, but they were rather insular. The Volteri were the same way, even though it was just the two of them. No one really wanted to have anything to do with them, anyway. Most people were superstitious about the vulture-people. I wasn’t, I just found them a bit . . . off, with their bald heads and tattoos, and vulture-feather robes that smelled of graves. The girl never spoke, not even to the other Volteri. She was with him constantly, so anytime someone asked her a direct question she would just look at the other one and wave her hands around in some exotic language of gestures until he answered for her. He always seemed to know what she was saying, which didn’t exactly make them less creepy.

Only about half the passengers were going to Forlorn. There was a small band of six adventurers headed off to Ortoos to seek their fortune plundering ruins of old empires long forgotten. The rest were getting off at Morrisport or travelling further east. Then there was the charter passenger who got his own room and received meals from the captain’s personal mess. He was an old graybeard who had more books than Uller, more tattoos than Reiwyn, and a small locked box that he carried and guarded at all times like it was his infant. He walked with a crooked back, but his eyes were sharp, and he reacted to any movement with a quick glance that told of his sensory prowess. He spoke to no one except the captain. Shipboard rumors and speculations abounded, but it was the general consensus that he had some great fortune in that box, and he was taking it with him to Ket or Morrisport. I just assumed he wouldn’t be going to Forlorn or Ortoos. Uller and Blackfoot had some fun tossing around theories about him, but I had no interest in such idle speculation. I was much more interested in Reiwyn.

We arrived in Morrisport after two weeks, and several people chose to depart there. I suppose the prospect of three months at sea was more daunting than they had imagined once they got their first taste of it. The graybeard was not among them, but Uller almost was. Two weeks of being unable to hold down a meal had taken its toll. We didn’t allow him to go. He was too weak to resist us, anyway. For my part, I got over the seasickness rather early. Two days of gurging and sweating, then it was gone. I had my “sea legs,” as Reiwyn would say. Antioc got sick too, but held his meals like a soldier. He got used to the undulating deck and rocking stern shortly before I did, and better. I won’t say I ever got completely comfortable with it, but I fared far better than Uller. Reiwyn of course had no trouble at all, having spent more time on boats than off them. The real surprise was Blackfoot, who adapted so well we’d have sworn he was raised on a boat, too.

Uller and I competed for Reiwyn’s time with as much vigor as we could muster. Truth is, for the first three days of the journey we both all but gave up when we saw how fascinated she was with Antioc. We weren’t fools, we knew we couldn’t compete with
that
. Antioc was built like a war monument, and had a relatively nice, square face at the end of a muscular neck. Then there were the scars that told heroic stories of fearlessly facing death in mortal combat with multiple opponents in the blinding heat of battle . . . some girls like that kind of thing.

So that was that, we thought. Uller and I wordlessly acknowledged we’d been bettered and left it at that. For two weeks, Reiwyn hung on Antioc’s arm like a draped sleeve. Blackfoot seemed a constant companion as well. They almost looked like a little family. Father, wife and son, even though they weren’t really that far apart in age. It made Uller’s eyes simmer when he saw them, at least until he had to run to the edge of the deck or find a bucket. I found it somewhat pretty, in a bittersweet way. I barely knew Reiwyn, really. All I knew was that she was beautiful and strong, stronger than the courtly women I was used to dealing with. Outside that, what mysteries lay beneath her raven locks of hair? In her mind, and heart? Would she open those to me? We hadn’t exactly gotten off to a good start. Though, neither had she and Antioc. But, they seemed to have overcome it, and with some bittersweet reservation, I accepted that this might just be the way things were meant to be.