Chapter Two
Outside the Fatherhall, the world looked calm. The tolling had ceased and the Square of the
Fathers, basked in the warming light of midstorm, looked almost serene. Scribes and lawmen milled about, speaking in
quiet but relaxed voices with each other, reading broadsheets or taking their
tea. In the center of the square, the Fount of Remembrance splashed cascades of
water over fallen stone men in their
memorialized last moments. The
crimson and violet blossoms of the ancient yrlych trees lining the approach to
the Fatherhall lent the scene a sort of softness in this light, as if here
reigned peace.
Maryth might have gasped at this beauty, had she not
known it all so false.
Though she felt relief to be finally free from her
son’s wyrdlit cell, to be again in plain air in plain light, she felt more like
a woman just out of her sick bed, rather than a traveler soon to be home. She craved not rest but strength—much must be
done that had been left undone. She did
not know if it was too late.
Maryth searched the sky above the square. Her eyes were just adjusting to true light,
but it did not take her long to find what she feared against the backdrop of
storms. Three oblong shapes, barges
tethered to the mooring towers of the Garrison’s Isle just west of the Council
District—the Queen’s Wyrdships.
She started down the steps of the Fatherhall, but
then had to catch herself. Though her
mind had willed only haste, the long days of sitting in that cell under those
foul lights had weakened her--she had not quite yet caught the earth. She steadied, tried the steps more
cautiously, and made her way with slower, surer footfalls across the Square of
the Accord.
Maryth ignored the interested gazes of two men who
passed her as she descended the stairs.
Perhaps they’d seen her stumble, perhaps they knew of her son. She cared not what they thought, but she
imagined how disheveled she must look after her long vigil.
She thought to turn her mind from this image, but it
suddenly amused her. She, the Lady of
Elen, co-regent of the third most powerful land of the Accord, was wandering
bleary-eyed, her hair tangled and her clothes rumpled, across the Square of the
Accord during an insurrection she’d helped nurture and fund. She laughed for the absurdity of it.
“The
Justicar’s arrested the wrong person,” she muttered, just under her
breath. “The true heretic just walked out of the Fatherhall.”
Delirium swept over her. Her son would be Examined today, interrogated
under the harsh light of unshielded wyrd.
It occurred to her suddenly to turn around, ascend the stairs back into
the Fatherhall and declare her crimes before the assembled petty prelates,
demand an audience with the Justicar himself and confess all to him. But just as suddenly, she knew this wouldn’t
help her son. And who, besides perhaps
the Queen, would believe such a thing?
The sudden frenzy left her, and she
felt suddenly alone.
But she could give this thought no attention, for
another beckoned her, an upwelling of memory as she neared the center of the
square and the splashing of the fountain’s water.
A bitter irony that she could never seem to pass the
Fountain of Remembrance without being overcome with her own memory. The statues of fallen men, unnamed, half-submerged in the circular stone
pool had been carved and placed to memorialize the unnumbered dead who’d fought
to found the Accord against the savagery of What-Was-Before, but memorials
never meant to her what they were meant to mean. They were stone men, unmoving, drowning
perpetually under the weight of eternally cascading water.
But here, at this monument waited a memory of her
own.
She’d been fourteen, he was not older than
sixteen. He had stood next to her,
silent, and she had felt his breath—heavy, sad, pained. Maryth had worn black to avoid notice,
stealing through the streets of Thalyrest.
Daurun had worn black because he mourned.
They’d stood here, before the Fountain, its torrent
of water at once indifferent and mocking, drowning out her lover’s
silence.
She had waited, chilled, her dark cloak moistening
from the fountain’s spray. She had turned to regard his face, to await his
words, to divine his thoughts. She had
seen there tears and met them with a question.
“Daurun, what’s wrong?”
And he had said to her, without emotion: “This is
where they killed my mother. A year
ago. Wyrdfire. For heresy.”
Maryth shook her head.
She was alone before the fountain, reluctantly struggling against the
memory. Outside the recollection was
the pain of the day, the fear for her son, the fear for herself. The water falling in thin cascades, some of
it trickling, some of it plummeting down the channels, over the ledges, out
through spouts that were the stone lips of the faces of the fallen, the
fountain named Remembering—because she refused to add to its volume the salt
droplets of her tears, because Daurun had--
In
its arms again, the memory made her laugh.
“Heresy,”
he’d repeated, and pissed in the fountain.
She’d
met Daurun in the market one summering evening. She’d heard his shouting before
she’d seen him, great declamations against the Council and the Accord echoing
off the set-stone walls and the loose cobbles.
What he had been saying was lost to her now, but what he’d looked like
remained. She remembered wild dark hair,
fierce grey eyes, the dust on his sleeves, the sweat in his brow. He’d been lanky, tall, beautiful, his
features hard, his voice bellowing, but his face betrayed a restrained kindness
which she had suddenly wished to unbind.
She’d watched him for a minute, forgetting herself in the passion of his
edged words, and then took a stamp-printed leaflet from his hands with a wry
smile.
“Wait,” he had said, when she had begun to walk away.
“Your name?” he’d called, his earlier ferocity stumbling from sudden
uncertainty. And after Maryth had told
him, he asked another question. “Can we
meet again?”
“Of
course,” she had said. “Of course,” she said aloud now, here before
the fountain where they’d executed his mother, some thirty years before,
remembering.
Maryth was clutching the worn wooden
pendant, smooth from years of her fingers rubbing, wondering, across its
grained surface. Memory haunted her,
memory taunted her, memory mocked her.
She started again across the square,
unwilling to be caught here, before the Fountain of Remembrance, seeking yet again for those lost years she
could not forget, nor for those lost years she could not recover. In her ears danced the rush of water over
stone, the distant mutterings of other people in the square, voices in present
echo.
The worries came to her again now,
filling the space in her head she’d cleared from the assault of the past. Enad, carried or marched out of his cell
without more than a moment’s recognition of his imprisonment. They’d fought over something, she
thought—he’d said something, and she’d fallen from the earth again.
But what had he said? She felt with
the tips of her finger the worn grooves marking the foreign rune across the
surface of the pendant. She knew their
shape, their direction, the flowing soft gouges in the wood by sight and by
touch, but no matter how often her fingers or eyes learned its form, understanding
never came.
She crossed the square, passed under
the arched stone gate vined with fragrant wisteria, out onto the Way of the
Nobles. She made no sign to the Templars
flanking the entrance to the square, nor they to her. She wondered what they must think of their
comrade, charged with heresy for aiding rebels.
She did not care what they must think of her, mother of such a heretic.
She quickened her pace across the
cobbles of the grand boulevard, escaping the Fatherhall’s inertial tug of
memory and sorrow. The clawing throb of
the wyrdlights in Enad’s cell had not quite ebbed, and that lingering pain
behind her eyes drove her to even greater urgency. She strode with greater, more certain steps,
barely noting the emptiness of the streets which crossed the Noble’s Way.
She passed a waiting carriage, its
driver loitering nervously against a tree.
She thought almost to hire him, but she did not think she could summon
the words to speak with another human, such anxiety and confusion welling within
her. The driver met her passive glance,
and turned away, perhaps noting her inner state written across her face and
rumpled clothing. But a sight further
along the boulevard granted her the words she’d need to negotiate her
destination with the man.
She’d walked not twenty feet past
the carriage when she saw their approach, obsidian black reflecting the soft
storm-light of the afternoon. Dark
polished metal, great silver wheels rimmed with the same indigo scripting which
patterned the sides and front, iridescent even in the bright illumination of
the day. Two of them, abreast, rolling unheeding down the boulevard towards
her, on their way to the Fatherhall.
“There are wyrd-carts in Thalyrest,”
she said aloud, shaking.
From behind her, the driver,
thinking perhaps she spoke her words of indignation to him, answered back,
“they’re like to put me out of a trade now, aren’t they?”
A new foulness had swept over her at
their appearance, but Maryth summoned to herself enough gentleness to answer
the driver. “More than a trade, good man.
A home, mayhaps a world.”
Prying her eyes from the object of
her horror, she met the man’s inquiring stare with a question. “Are you for
hire? I would like to get as fast as four days ago to the embassy district.”
The man nodded, though Maryth saw he
did not meet her eyes—they were, instead, trained upon the strange sight which
she wanted more than anything to be rid of.
“I don’t need help in, good man.
Just—just hurry.”
Her tone roused the coachman from
the vision, and he was on the reins almost as soon as she was in the cab. But he didn’t start, nor did she blame him,
until after the wyrd-carts had wheeled past.
Maryth had quickly drawn the curtain across the window—she did not want
to see wights today.
“Something to be seen, I guess”
muttered the driver to her once the wyrt-carts had passed far enough away that
the disquieted horses finally obeyed his promptings.
“Or to be feared,” she answered
back, before she’d thought better of the words.
The driver remained silent for a
time before speaking again. “Seems you
and my missus would have a lot to say. She don’t like nothing of the wyrd.”
Maryth’s darkness lifted
slightly. “You’ve married well,
then.” But because she wanted to speak
nothing more of the great vise tightening around her, she spoke more formally
to him. “I require transport to the Embassy of Eleth. Inform the gate that the
Lady Regent Maryth Arich has returned.”
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