Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Seventeen
By the time she’d reached the steps that led down to the dungeons, Ashe had managed to re-secure her trousers. Her shirt was almost beyond help, so she held it closed with one hand as she approached the cell in which the karg lay sleeping. Betany, Rhea and everyone else had done everything they could to make Gowdie’s confinement as comfortable as possible, but the karg was sleeping fitfully.
Ashe knelt down, reached a hand through the bars and stroked the soft fur. The karg shifted a little, twitched and though still unconscious, licked Ashe’s hand. The Guardian said, softly, “You’ll remember this when you wake up, so listen hard. What’s happened to you is something for which you have no responsibility; it ain’t your fault. Biting me meant nothing; the inability to stay in one form is nothing. When you wake up, you’ll be Gowdie for a time; I’ll fix you in that shape for as long as I can, and when you next change, it won’t be so painful and it won’t be for as long. Alright?” She stroked the fur and her voice achieved an almost monotonous, almost sleep-inducing rhythm. “The powers that have been holding you prisoner will be dealt with, Gowdie, and I’ll do my best to sort that out as quickly as I can.” The gentle stroking persisted. Ashe stood up to go.
“And don’t you worry too much about Alexis,” she added. “I’ll see that she gets back to you.” She turned for the doorway, adding, in a low tone, “In one form or another…”
One last visit and then she could go. It wasn’t hard to find Rhea, though the wise-woman nearly went into orbit when she turned from grinding herbs to powder and saw Ashe standing there. The only thing Rhea could think to say was: “What happened to your shirt?” Ashe blushed so hard that Rhea was embarrassed, too. Quickly she said, “Of course. Of course.”
“This is a flying visit,” said Ashe, “but then you’ll know that.” She smiled at Rhea, and Rhea, who hadn’t had the first idea to expect Ashe, just smiled back.
“You’ve seen Betany.” Not a question, just a statement of fact. Ashe nodded. “And Gowdie? That was good of you. Was there… Have you been able to help her at all?”
“A little.” Ashe was pacing the floor. “I’m sorry; I have so little time and I’m not sure about very much. Gowdie should get better but it won’t happen overnight. There are all sorts of things I have to do.”
Rhea said, “It’s the imbalance, isn’t it? That’s making Gowdie unable to change back.”
Ashe nodded. Rhea, who had thought long and hard on the subject, went on, “Is it possible that the Guardians are struggling against one another? I see that it is. Can you do anything to stop it, or to…” Her voice trailed off. It had struck her suddenly that if there was nothing that Ashe could do, they were probably all going to hell in a handcart.
Ashe said, “I’ll do what I can. It’s hard: I don’t want to be there. I want to be here, with Betany. That’s where I’m meant to be. It’s where I should be. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I did.” She sighed very hard. “Rhea, I have to ask this of you… When she comes back here, if she comes back here, you must forgive Alexis.” A line formed between Rhea’s eyebrows, and her hands made a neat, convulsive movement. “She fucked up, I know, but Murah had been at her. And I know that you’ve met Murah.”
Rhea nodded. “As nasty a piece of work as any I’ve met.” Then she frowned harder and said, “Calypso’s sister apart.”
“No,” said Ashe. “They’re much of a muchness but Murah’s worse. Berrach is… I think that Berrach could be contained. It’s a question of finding the right container, of course.”
“If you think that, you clearly haven’t met her yet. I did. Ardan, too.”
“How is Ardan?”
“Changed. Unhappy. I can’t get her to tell me what is wrong but it’s clear that something is.”
“And Laure?” Ashe didn’t want to speak the name and Rhea could see how much it cost her. “Do you hear anything about her?”
“No,” said Rhea. Then she sighed and said, “Do you want me to look out for her, too?”
Ashe smiled. “Please.”
“Even though she’s a manipulative little monster? Even if she’s somehow corrupted Ardan?”
“Laure lacks the potential for corruption. She’s blind and ambitious and stupid sometimes but she’s not that smart.”
Rhea rolled her eyes. “Says you.”
“I ought to know, surely?”
Rhea laughed out loud. “Ashe, you’re a Guardian, you’re Betany’s chosen partner and you know nothing about Laure. But if you want me to, I will keep an eye on her. So much as I’m able to, with her in Lammor and me here.” Ashe smiled at her. “Alright, I’ll do what I can.”
“Murah is a danger,” said Ashe. “And seeing as she’s wandering round in the land of spirits I suppose that Janu might be, too.”
“I thought Murah was the head priestess?”
Ashe looked awkwardly away. She said, “No, that’s Janu. Murah’s the second-in-command, so far as I know.”
“You… You cut off Murah’s hand, right? And Janu? Did you kill her too?” She laughed again. “No wonder the world’s in disarray.”
“And now I have to go.” Ashe hugged Rhea quickly, something she had never done in the old days. “I leave Betany in your hands, old woman. Keep her safe, alright?”
“As if there’s anything much that I can do now that…” But Ashe was gone, and missed the last half-hearted complaints that Rhea would have liked her to have heard. The wise-woman sighed and turned back to her mixing. “I tell you now… She would have done better to have stayed in the tower with me and learned to mix potions.” She addressed her words to the air. She sighed again and added one last thought: “But that time and world have gone. And she knows it. Do I? Does Betany? Get on with your potions, old woman, and let the world look after itself for a little while. It managed quite alright before you came into being.”
*******
Sweeter dreams than any that had ever passed through her mind before lulled Gowdie. Had anyone passed – and in those dark hours no-one did – they would have seen the karg slide into human form, twist and sigh and stretch like a cat in the sunlight, before becoming again the other half of its being.
*******
Alone and wakeful, Ardan stared at the ceiling of her room.
She had been greeted warmly by Betany, and Rhea had been kindly and undemanding, both of which kindnesses had eaten a little way into the apprentice’s soul. One cannot be absorbed, night after night, into another’s world without it taking a toll. Ardan was infinitely tired, and more than a little heartsick.
She observed, and in part experienced, Berrach’s adventures, but they left her feeling hollow and exhausted. The world that had seemed so simple and understandable had gone, or so it seemed to her. That short golden time, when she had been taken on board by Rhea, and her training begun, had lasted only a little way into a second season. Ardan missed that time. She remembered seeing Ashe, as Ashe left Lammor and set out into the world, and for a moment she had felt a link between the two of them. She had thought the link to be spiritual, but now she had begun to think that it was nothing more or less than their connection in Lammor’s queen.
Ardan missed Laure, but only in the abstract. Berrach’s power had poisoned her a little, and Rhea had picked up on that, although the wise-woman was at a loss to know how to treat the condition. She could only do her best to be kind and patient. Neither, she knew, were among her virtues.
Lying in her room Ardan lit a candle and let its simple, spluttering light (the night was brisk and windy) illuminate the frescoes that decorated the walls that held her safely within them. Berrach could not reach her there, but the impression she had made on Ardan’s mind when they had met – fortunately with Rhea to keep them apart – lived on and repeated itself, over and over.
Ardan was like that: an injury, an experience out of the ordinary, a matter of pain or shame so vital that it still had the power to burn her, all had the potential to be revisited and suffered afresh.
She sighed and turned restlessly in the bed. The top blanket shifted and slid onto the floor, making a puddle of a shadow, leaving her cold. She struggled out of bed, rescued the blanket, flinging it across the bed, and then crossed to the window.
The window of Ardan’s room looked toward the west, and so the view before her was the last to dim into night. But sunset was long ago, and although winter was a long way off, the nights were autumnal and fresh. Ardan thought about the village she’d done her best to grow up in, even if she’d always known she wouldn’t be staying there, let alone growing old and/or dying there. She’d never fitted in, as her sisters had done, to the almost sequestered life of the farming community. Each season was marked off in terms of crops sown, of the birth and slaughter of stock, of crops harvested and stored. Each day lasted a necessary time and carried with it nothing of poetry or opportunity. Ardan had balked at the life and wondered how anyone could bear it. Even her youngest sister, Moss, who seemed to Ardan to be by far the most spiritual member of the family (herself excluded), seemed to have no trouble in accepting the life into which she had been born. Had Moss ever expressed any kind of dissatisfaction with the life of the village, Ardan might have found an ally to make her stay. But the girl was happy, looked happy, and showed no sign of wanting an alternative.
Alone and unhappily rebellious – it was one thing to want something different and to strive toward it, another entirely to do little more than express discontent over everything – Ardan stood out in the farming community. When Rhea had visited them for the purpose of collecting herbs and flower-heads specially gathered for her every seven years, Ardan had done her best to be noticed and to be, for want of another term, rescued.
Rhea, strong and single-minded, sometimes humourless, often sharp, had quickly picked up on Ardan’s unhappiness and her potential usefulness. Desirous of an apprentice – deep inside Rhea had long-since known that Ashe would never throw over the princess and come to her senses in the tower room – she had eventually offered Ardan a place in her home and a job for life. Ardan’s family were only just less keen than the girl herself for the opportunity, although Moss did cry, then and when Ardan and Rhea left the village.
Ardan missed Moss, but that was all. For so long she had been so determined that nothing in the world mattered but leaving home, having left home she felt suddenly too light, too free and unexpectedly lonely. Rhea did not even attempt to fill the gap that Ardan’s family had never successfully filled. Even if she had thought Ardan truly homesick Rhea could never offered the girl any real degree of love or comfort: it was possible that so much kindness did not exist within the wise-woman’s heart. To be a wise-woman Rhea had had to sacrifice a fair degree of everyday compassion; there was insufficient room for the emotion left once the many demands had been catered for. Rhea was less than kind because she had sacrificed much of that quality. Even when she had broken to the news to Ashe about Laure’s defection and her forthcoming betrayal, Rhea had held back from demonstrating an affection that might have comforted Ashe. At the time, Rhea had thought herself fair, but Ashe might not have agreed.
Ardan had heard the stories about Ashe and the princess, now the queen. She knew that Rhea had called Ashe an educated puppet and that image had stuck with her. Whatever Ashe might have achieved since her Lammoran days, Ardan wasn’t that impressed by the stories she heard. In her heart she thought that she was a thousand times better suited to the role of apprentice than Ashe would ever have been. And once she began to absorb the power that Rhea carried with her at all times, Ardan thought she might still become a force to be reckoned with. Anything would be better than one day returning to the village and the seasons, and the ebbing and flowing of the tides. Anything.
*******
She slid into Berrach’s dreaming state and looked around her. Ashe knew it was a dangerous act of trespassing, but she had concerns about Berrach that went far beyond her passing use of Ardan. Berrach had all of Calypso’s fire and determination, but in Mercia’s new leader these forces had been restrained for so very long that Ashe feared their eventual release might bring down the world.
She was sorry for Berrach and she couldn’t get past that emotion, even while she guessed it to be an unwanted sympathy. She had thought long and hard about what Rhea had said about Ardan’s being corrupted, and the thought bothered her badly. The term corrupted seemed unnecessarily severe, but then Rhea had never pulled her punches. It was always necessary to bear in mind that Rhea had never liked Laure, and that to her mind, anyone involving themselves with the Lammoran was asking for trouble. Ashe knew that Rhea had thought her a fool for being in love with Laure, for wanting to stay with her, but while she accepted that knowledge she reminded herself that to the best of her and everyone else’s mind, Rhea had never loved anybody. Not in that way.
Ashe walked about on the edges of Berrach’s dreams and by slow degrees insinuated herself in the woman’s past. She found endless plans and desires, endless day-dreams that could have filled a palace from cellar to roof, anger and loss and a continuing sense of unfairness and ill-treatment.
Those of the Mercian court who had known of Berrach and who had done their best to maintain the country’s best-kept secret could have little knowledge, thought Ashe, of what Berrach had in mind for them once the need for politic rule was done with and her reign was properly begun. The day-dreams and fantasies that edged Berrach’s conscious thoughts were nasty things that Ashe was happy to touch upon and promptly leave. She wondered if she might have any chance of preventing that degree of bloodshed and desecration and thought it unlikely, considering all the other things she would have to do. She couldn’t erase Berrach’s past for her and she could empathise with how it must have been for the girl to be taken from the luxury and elegance of court and as good as imprisoned within the heart of the palace. Oh, hang it, thought Ashe, sadly: as good as imprisoned? Incarcerated, more like.
She saw Berrach as the woman stood in the centre of a vast square that hung between the elements like a cloud in the sky. All around them the world was wide and fine, and the sun shone warmly on them both. But Berrach’s eyes were blindfolded. Ashe looked across to the white towers and bright banners of Caer Arianrhod, and the recovering landscape that was Lammor, pushing itself back up from ruin in the centre of Lascar. If she looked hard enough, she could see Rhea’s tower, currently unoccupied. She could see the fine, simplified construction work going on. If she concentrated very hard she could see beyond the brick to where the karg snuffled and snored, and to where Betany lay awake and worried, wanting Ashe.
But Berrach was blindfolded and probably would remain so. Despite the cloth covering, Ashe was aware that the woman’s spiritual and magical capacities probably stretched to the depths of the earth. She walked the square a little longer, fascinated by the distant views of the world.
Ashe emptied her mind of thoughts of Betany, Gowdie, Rhea and even Alexis in order to test out the more vivid and recent dreams that Berrach had been exploring. She was smart and she was curious, but her recent endeavours had tired her much more than she knew. She should have gone straight back to Teinne and Cairo, but the news about Berrach had worried her and she had thought it only sensible to make one last stop before her return.
Sometimes it is better to quit when you’re ahead. Ashe might have claimed that she never got ahead.
*******
Alone again, but this time alone by choice.
If my reckoning was anywhere near correct, I judged that that the little apprentice would have reached her destination. Once she’d passed the Lammoran city gates I felt myself just… let… her… go. There was an ease to the sensation; a kind of relief, even, as when the most giving and demanding of lovers has quit the room and left one to enjoy the width and breadth of a double bed. I stretched out my arms and legs and rested them against the cool relief of the patchouli-scented sheets. I had tired of experiencing life through Ardan, but I still minded her leaving Lammor. Rhea had ordered her little apprentice’s company, and although distance should mean nothing to me, I knew that it would weaken the contact between us. To be honest, I had become a little bored. I wonder what the attraction had been? I know that Laure misses her, too, I can tell that. Or does Laure simply miss the physical closeness? For such a long time I’d kept the Lammoran on the verge of sexual release that now I almost pity her state. Me. Pity her. I must be losing my grip.
No, I’m not losing my grip. It’s just that the other night I let my thoughts wander far further than they have done before and I found something a hundred times better than the impressionable Ardan. I found Ashe.
Oh, the image was not that recent: when I first saw her I thought that she was dying. Then I knew that she must be dying. She was lying still on the ground, her gaze fixed on the sky above her – above us, as I stood there and watched her – and her blood was everywhere. For all of that, she looked oddly calm, oddly resigned, as though death was not a thing to be feared.
I know that in dying she was in agony, because I felt with Alexis when she saw how the dead fingers had torn into the earth. I regretted this, less because it would have hurt her and more because I simply wanted her departure to have some element of grace attached to it. It wasn’t hard to see that she had finally moved beyond pain and fear and into some other state that prefigured death. And then I felt the strangest sensation. Not pity, though that would have shocked and confused me – why should I possibly pity Ashe? – but something like envy.
As soon as I saw Ashe, I knew who had done the damage: Alexis. I stayed with the images and followed them to their natural conclusion. I watched Alexis stagger from the site after she had had committed Ashe’s body to the flames. I watched my sister’s former lover become so eaten up with the horror of her own actions that she could hardly think at all. I wondered why she had killed Ashe, and where she was going, but I didn’t care enough to let my thoughts follow her. I was more concerned about Ashe.
In my mind I stood beside the burning pyre and felt a wash of finality and ease slip over me. For an instant I understood the futility not just of fighting and killing and seeking to maintain a rule over some aspects of that life, but of seeking always to struggle. What if the struggle ceased and that burning desire that motivates almost everything I ever do, just ended? Whatever the future holds, there will be more pyres, their flames leaping up toward the night sky. All that I needed to do was to shake off the trappings of my new rule, throw a cloak over myself as a lightweight disguise, and leave the city, never to return. I could live out any life I chose out there. I could go to Ardan’s village if I wanted to, look out Moss and maybe win her heart. I could let the whole thing go and join the others in applying my life to the changing seasons.
As dreams go it didn’t last long. A heartbeat or so. For that time I was as definitely there within the simple village with the smell of wood smoke reaching me as if I had bent and struck the flints myself. Then I came back into myself and wondered what was wrong with me. I didn’t want a simple village: I wanted power and control and everything positive that my future held for me. I thought that perhaps Rhea had left behind a few impressions to colour my dreams and create a little unrest. One day I’d make it up to her for that moment of appallingly domesticity. Maybe I could burn her alive.
*******
There were days when she wondered why her life had gone so appallingly badly wrong; days when from the moment her feet hit the marble of her bedroom floor she felt nothing but anger. Laure dressed herself, briskly and badly, and went out into the courtyard.
Autumn was in full possession of the day. The air smelled clean and cold and soon the sunshine that was already blessing the distant trees would warm up the courtyard. Laure stood silently staring into the sun. It didn’t matter if she blinded herself just a little: nothing bad could come from obscuring a few minutes of truth and stark reality, but she disliked the dizziness that accompanied the sensation, and so she looked away.
What did the season mean to her, she wondered, crossing toward the small dining room that had replaced the magnificent hall in which she and Calypso had sworn their various oaths before going off on a night of wild passion while Ashe dragged her unwilling feet from Lammoran soil. What a very long time ago it all seemed. If she closed her eyes and concentrated very hard, could she bring them all back for just a moment? Could she see her mother and Jura sitting in their chairs, watching over her and smiling their approval while the scent of a thousand flowers rose up from the decorations that the kitchen staff – through immensely hard work and a passing touch of genius – had woven from flower heads and sugar-water? In her fantasy she could bring back Calypso, tall and fine and entirely hers. She could force a smile onto Rhea’s usually dour expression, and if she could achieve that minor miracle, could she not also reproduce Ashe, and have her smile, too, and nod her respect and approval before turning away and…
Before turning away and. That was the point at which Laure’s fantasy struck the rocks, day after day. She had tried to imagine Ashe being with Cairo, their arms happily around one another’s waists and their relationship already sanctioned, already on-going. She imagined Ashe turning at the palace doors to smile and wave a goodbye over and over again, and the image refused to stick, refused to work. Refused… entirely.
There was no laying that particular ghost. It might even had pleased her had she had Berrach’s ability to wander dreams to see Alexis pile high the timber that she would in due course ignite and leave to burn. In some dark recess of her mind, Laure was going to blame Ashe for everything, for ever.
The people of Lascar had fallen into their old roles without much hesitation, and with the likes of Ruth around, changed and modified as she was, there would always be someone to make sure that the building work did go on, that food was cooked and properly presented, but other aspects of the city had become faded and dull. Lascar needed a fresh injection of blood and at the very least, some degree of leadership from its leader. You can’t run a city forever on auto-pilot.
She was angry. She was never not angry, to be wholly honest. She’d had a short and pleasant time with Ardan, once Ardan had learned the rules and decided to ignore them all. For a short time Laure had remembered what fun it was to be happy. Now Ardan was gone and the world seemed a little less colourful in response.
Her breakfast awaited her, and sooner or later no doubt Ruth, or one of the others like Ruth would come in to give her an up-date on the building work, or to present some or other piece of information about which she cared less than nothing, but which she would listen to because it made a change from silence. Ruth’s brains had unscrambled themselves as the months had passed, but she had not regained her old arrogance. The shade of Calypso might as well have hung about the corners of the rooms, for the degree of nervousness with which Ruth observed them. Ruth’s love for Laure had not faded in the slightest, but she was a less vital servant than she had once been. The image of Ruth dripping blood in the time of that fucking awful transfusion, about which Laure still had distasteful dreams and Ruth quite appalling nightmares, lived on and possessed the new palace like a very small and nervous ghost.
Fresh bread. Honey from the palace bees. Fresh figs. Yellow wine mixed with water. Laure observed the table and shivered a little: she had forgotten her cloak, and the morning was fresh but by no means warm. A willing servant would have observed the need and fulfilled it, but there was no-one left with such a degree of alertness and concern. Laure sat down and pulled her chair close in toward the table. She ate, spooning honey over the bread and enjoying the taste. There was, at least, a basin of rose-water and a towel, so that she might wipe the stickiness from her fingers. As if from a great distance Laure regarded herself as she sat in solitary splendour at one end of the long table, then she began to cry.
*******
Alexis walked on. She had not stopped walking, except to drop to the ground at the end of each day and to sleep, since her encounter with Rhea in which the wise-woman had barred her forever – or so it felt – from the city of Caer Arianrhod. Sent on a soldier’s errand, with a soldier’s power and containment returned to her, Alexis had fucked up par excellence. As she walked, the dust rising up from the paths as they had been two weeks without rain, Alexis muttered her litany: Ashe, Ashe, Ashe… The only time she refrained from the words was when she slept, and even then all she dreamed of was the murder and the subsequent happenings.
Rhea had told her that Ashe was still around. That Ashe had to be around. But it was easy for Rhea to talk: she hadn’t seen Ashe all over blood, and then not twisting or moving in any way at all as Alexis had carried her to the pyre and then lit the dried grasses that formed the basis of the bonfire. And the sensation of the blade slipping in to flesh: that had been a little too vivid, thanks. Surely it would take more than Ashe being a Guardian to set all of that to rights? Maybe Rhea had lied to her, wanting her to go out on some pointless, endless quest that would only end when Alexis herself did.
It wasn’t fair, thought Alexis, but she still walked on.
*******
Ashe moved more briskly and with a profound sense of knowing what she was doing. Teinne was waiting for her; Cairo was waiting for her, so why was she taking her time in going back? If Betany had asked her, Ashe would have replied: because this is where I want to be.
*******
I was still dreaming about what to do with Rhea when a new consciousness invaded my thoughts. My favourite site in which to sit and think or simply to sit is not one of which I am proud. The simplicities have been attended to: the door has been fixed and there will never again be any slamming those bolts home, so one of my oldest nightmares can be dismissed. It is a little shaming to think that my old prison still exists. I deliberately chose to maintain it.
It’s a case of the devil we know, I suppose. I’ve certainly read far enough to know that I’m meeting some of my demons in doing this, but the knowledge that this is the place I sometimes yearn to get back to… throws me. I’m sensible enough to appreciate that perhaps it is some womb I’m crawling back toward, or striding purposely toward, if the truth be known. And yet it’s not that I feel wholly safe there; it is that I feel I belong there.
The freedom that I possess now grows by patient stages. My people continue to feel the unrest I have inflicted upon them. As each day goes by I am more and more aware of how despised are the soldiers from Caer Arianrhod. I take time out to feed this sensation, but more and more the sensations that assail me feel hollow.
I was sitting there earlier this evening, as the court was beginning to cool and as the sky was darkening, ever so slightly. I was sitting on the ground with the eastern wall at my back, watching the shadows lengthen, when she arrived.
I knew her and yet knowing her didn’t make much sense to me. She walked easily along the corridor toward me and smiled before sitting down on the ground opposite me. The shadow in which she sat did something to obscure her features, but I knew by her voice that she meant nothing aggressive or threatening toward me. I knew too that calling for assistance (even if I actually wanted that) would fail. My words would be eaten up by the air.
She stretched out her legs. Her boots were very worn and they were dusty, too. Her clothes were shabby, by no means the type I would have expected. If you’re a queen’s favourite, surely you take slightly better care of your appearance? But she seemed careless of her lot. She said, “I understand from Rhea that your powers are exceptional.”
“I have some powers, certainly.” I didn’t bother asking her by what means she’d come into Mercia, or how she’d known where I would be: none of that seemed to matter. “Why? Were you thinking of asking me for something?”
She might have smiled. I couldn’t see her face but I heard a smile in her voice as she said, “I’m going to need someone very powerful.”
I said: “I have power.”
She said: “I wonder if you’re strong enough.” It wasn’t said to test me, or to press me into a response: she was honestly uncertain.
“As powerful as you are, I’m sure.” And even as I spoke the words I knew that I wasn’t as strong as I had thought myself to be. She said nothing for a long time and it was during that silence that I knew I was dreaming.
Then she spoke my name. “Berrach.” She sighed very deeply. “What does that word mean?”
I said: “It has no meaning. It simply is. I am the leader of Mercia. I took on the role on the death of my sister.”
She said: “Oh.”
I waited and waited, but she stayed quiet. At last she scrambled to her feet and looked down at me. She put out a hand to draw me up and when I took her hand I knew that I was dreaming: no flesh ever felt so steadily right and fixed. I stumbled a little in rising: I’d been sitting for so long. She steadied me and she ruffled my hair before turning away and fading out on the air. There was nothing of her left, not even a footprint in the dust.
Then some of my courtiers came to fetch me, and the afternoon became something else.
*******
Cairo was sitting on a flat-topped rock from which she could look out across her new world. She knew that Ashe was approaching, but her friend had been gone too long and Cairo wanted to mute her own response to the return, wanted to hurt Ashe just a little: did the former Lammoran not know how much she’d been missed? Cairo wasn’t entirely impressed by the whole Guardian thing: Ashe hadn’t honestly changed that much. And so what if she was the favourite of a queen? That had been done before. At least, almost done before.
Teinne seemed to share Cairo’s reservations: though neither of them had said as much, Ashe wasn’t quite what either of them had expected. She hadn’t leapt to the defence of those Guardians not rebelling. She hadn’t agreed to accompany the two of them from that moment onwards, her attention fixed on the outcome of what would surely be a battle the like of which no-one had ever seen before. Basically, it seemed as if Ashe was just failing.
When Ashe had said that there were things she had to do, they’d both assumed she spoke of her own additions to the already-established battle plans. But of course, that hadn’t been it at all. No sooner had she recovered her own form and heard the news, she’d been off to check on Betany at Caer Arianrhod. Teinne had been clearly shocked at Ashe’s intentions and she’d been less than positive in her acknowledgement that Ashe had the freedom to go. How could either of them have kept her there? And now that she was coming back, far later than they’d expected, a smile on her face, Cairo felt her heart shift not with love but with something else. Anger? Loss? Disappointment?
“Hallo,” said Ashe, sitting down near to Cairo but maintaining a discreet distance. “How are you?”
“Fine. Thanks. Ashe.” She couldn’t look at her friend. Ashe yawned: the last few days had been demanding to say the least and she was tired to the bone, almost sick with it, to be wholly honest.
“Cairo, you can stay pissed off with me for as long as you like, but it’ll get in the way of things, you must know that. If you want to fight, then let’s fight. Just get it done. Come on,” looking at the top of Cairo’s head, which was all that her friend presented. “Get it over with.”
Given the opportunity for speech Cairo didn’t know what to say. She took a very deep breath and then the order of her objections broke out all together. “What is it with you, Ashe? We’ve got all these terrible things happening all around and what happens when you finally get here? You can’t wait to get away again is all. It seems as though everyone else matters more than what’s happening here and now and I don’t understand it.” She looked down at her feet. “We were friends, Ashe.”
“You don’t think that we still are?” Ashe tried to conceal her hurt. “You died in battle beside me; you kept me alive. You were the finest soldier I ever met, the best friend I could have had. What’s changed?”
The reply came bursting out: “You have, Ashe! You’re the one who changed. What happened to you?”
Ashe said, very gently, “My feelings for you haven’t changed in any way. My… role in the world has altered, but I never for an instant stopped liking you.”
“Teinne has told me all about the Guardians.” Cairo was still angry.
“Oh, great. How nice for you. I wish she’d tell me all about them. I’m still guessing; feeling my way around.”
“You are one! If you don’t understand their rules and concepts, who does?”
“Teinne, by the sound of it.”
“She’s only told me about your people so that I won’t feel left out.”
Ashe grinned sourly. “And in telling you about my people, did she leave you less isolated?”
“Well… At least I understand about your lot. About the rules. About the things you can and can’t do. Like how you survived being stabbed. Like the children thing.”
“The children thing?”
“Oh, come on, Ashe. About the fact that Guardians can’t ever have children. Teinne told me all about how you can’t increase the number of Guardians, because it’s always been twelve and always will be.”
A little time came and went. Cairo waited for Ashe to speak but she was going to have to wait forever for a response. She said, “So that takes a bit of the pressure off the whole Betany issue, doesn’t it? No pun intended, of course,” smiling a little nervously. “Now you can settle down to be a Guardian proper and take your place in the war.”
*******
And in that salient moment between knowledge and acceptance I made my move.