Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Two
The first day we were on the road neither of us talked much. From time to time I changed to karg; it’s easier to walk on four legs. Sometimes I ran off by myself for a while – caught us a good supper that way – and when evening came we made a fire and cooked and ate what I had caught, and drifted off to sleep without any remarks breaking that silence. We camped – by mute agreement – near a river. It was useful for cooking and washing, of course, but we both knew it mattered much more than that. Ashe was mourning Calliope and I was missing Sam. Out there on the plain, with the noise of the water and just the odd tree to mark out the distances, life felt very simple, and very real. Sometimes I find that life within the castle, with all that it demands, is vaguely unnatural.
*******
I suppose the changing must seem odd to an outsider. Of course, to kargs, the inability to change is what really stumps us. It’s like having a great racing potential and never running for anything, your whole life. I…I had wanted to be Sam’s lover. We came so near… But there was always some strange barrier between us. I didn’t understand it, nor I think did Sam, but we were both aware of it. I suppose I could have asked Ashe or Betany how things went with Calliope, but somehow I didn’t find the courage to do that. I suppose I was envious of their happiness. It had a finite quality for sure, but I don’t think any of them regretted a moment of it.
The second day out was much like the first in that we walked and said virtually nothing. I was beginning to think that someone had bewitched Ashe, long-distance, and tied her tongue. Perhaps Alexis had regained her powers. No, that was simple paranoia. The Gods knew that Alexis on the loose again would mean a lot worse than a simple loss of voice. That evening we ate together and then Ashe excused herself and went to the river. I know where she went because I followed her. I think her endless control was beginning to irritate me. It wasn’t hard to follow; easier still to settle in the comfortable shadow of a tree. It was just hard when I saw that she was leaning out over the water, touching it with just a fingertip. And crying. Her tears struck the water. I’d never seen Ashe cry before. I didn’t know she could.
She never heard me go.
*******
In Lascar, by slow and measured stages, the new palace rose. But now it was a simple two-storied building, and there was nothing inherently luxurious about it. Ardan watched it grow, bit by bit. The wonderful tiles that illustrated every Lammoran flower had been saved, picked up from the floors of the ruined palace and woven into the new walls. This made for occasional surprises: beside a pillar there might be a poppy, or on the ground by the main entrance, half a dozen roses. The bright colours of the flowers stood out so vividly that Ardan found them quite hypnotic. She would stand within the outline of the new palace, a cloth over her nose and mouth to cut out the clouds of sandstone dust. Perhaps, she thought, those tiles were the most pertinent comment on the old Lascar: a bright and colourful detail where it was least needed, where it could only ever be decorative. The new rule did not look to be purely decorative.
Those Mercians captured in the battle had been placed on building detail while the form of their ransom were being established. Each week another handful of Mercians would be given their freedom, and sent off toward Mercia with a packed lunch and no weapons. It was a gradual process but it worked very well. Had Mercia won the war, all those left over would have been butchered: everyone knew that, most of all the Mercians themselves. So while there were muttered remarks from the prisoners about Caer Arianrhod’s weakness in not executing them, most of them were just plain relieved.
Laure walked about the new palace like a woman in a daze. Betany had met with her, and had come away with the sense of talking with a dreamer, whose grip on the concrete world was long-gone. Something in Laure that had never been tested had been found to be… unstable. She had more in common with Calypso than might have been expected. No wonder Laure had not recognised Ashe. There were days when she seemed to have forgotten everyone.
As she walked about the rising city, Laure talked to her mother and to Jura. She seemed satisfied by the silent replies they provided, but something of the past must have stuck to her thought, for she never ever addressed Ashe. The dead were more reliable than the living, and eminently kinder.
*******
Betany worried about Lascar. She worried about the whole of Lammor, but its chief city had collapsed so spectacularly that she could not see any lasting security in the new growth. For this reason the buildings erected were lower and easier to run from. Lascar’s last collapse had hurt no-one. Betany wanted things to stay that way.
Arkana came to visit Caer Arianrhod, and stayed longer than she had meant to. Between the two of them a good relationship was growing, and there were subjects that Betany could discuss with no-one else. The chief subject for the quiet hours was the story of the Twelve Guardians. Betany had heard the story – who had not? – but the idea of the Guardians truly walking about on the surface of the world, growing up, growing older, getting sick, getting hurt, getting… the Gods help us, killed; that was almost impossible to accept. The point that Betany returned to most often, albeit it with the most reluctance, was whether she and Ashe might continue together. How in the world could Ashe not know what she was? That point stopped Betany every time.
“I don’t know.” Arkana’s voice was tired, and its owner was going the same way; the flask of wine that stood on the table between them was almost empty, and it had been a long day. “She obviously doesn’t know, or surely she’d be constantly going mystical on us. You know the sort of thing… Talking about omens, judgements and phases of the moon. Going cosmic on us. Did you ever know Ashe to do that?”
Betany considered and then shook her head. Ashe was inherently human and as simply kind and clumsy, depending on the day. What made Ashe most human for the leader of Caer Arianrhod was – oddly – Ashe’s occasional liking for things entirely mundane. Take for example that fucking purple shirt. The shirt Betany had described as a great big target when Ashe had worn it into battle. Gods! And hadn’t Ashe joked about that? Surely one of the Twelve Guardians of the world wasn’t going to have a favourite shirt.
Shirts, maybe; a whole rainbow of them. Just the one shirt, no.
“That,” said Arkana, “is what clinches it for me, too. Oh, and there is something else: have you noticed that she never seems to remember the details of the really amazing things that happen to her? The fight at the river, for instance…” She found it hard to add, “when she came back from the dead again. She seems to take these things in her stride. She should have an ego the size of Lammor and Mercia combined, but she’s about the most modest person I’ve ever met.”
“I know. There are times when I want to ask here, what’s it like to fall off a ravine, die and end up mended by the river spirits? Or, as you say, when she ends up beating Calypso and Alexis after having ended up face-down in a river.”
“It would be interesting to ask… But I can see that it’s not something you could.”
“Just one more of the many conversations we’ll never have.”
*******
Later that night Ashe came back to the camp. I’d stayed where I was for some time, just in case she did something rash, like taking a moonlit swim fully clothed with a pocketful of rocks. Then I decided that I was intruding: if she wanted to talk, she’d knew where I was. Except of course that I wasn’t there. I was too busy hiding behind a fucking tree.
When we were about to sleep, the embers of the fire glowing between us, the stars seemed to shine extra bright. It was odd: it was like my vision had suddenly gone ultra-clear but at the same time, I couldn’t see. And there was this strange, strange sound. To be honest, it scared me for a moment. Ashe must have heard it too, for after a moment she got up and came over to me. The strange sounds were me, were mine. I guess that thinking of Ashe and Calliope, I’d ended up thinking about Sam. I had forgotten that I could cry. The only thing more alien than that was ending up with Ashe’s arms around me while I sobbed my fucking heart out. When it got too painful to bear, I changed. I probably got fur all over her shirt.
I don’t think she’ll mind.
*******
They had me brought up separately and in secrecy. That’s the usual way, and it does make sense of a sort: Mercia may now be a total fuck-up, but we once possessed a notable power. Other countries bowed down before us, and I’d swear this on anything going: they will again. Tributes will be paid, notice will be taken, and people will again be afraid of us. I grew up into an inheritance of acknowledged power. Mercia was strong and will be strong again.
I grew up in a private world. You could call it a prison of sorts.
I saw the light. I saw the sky, and I wasn’t kept back because of the limitations that the first law of Mercia inflicted upon me because I was born. It was soon pretty clear that I’d inherited most of the qualities one hopes a child of Mercia will exhibit. Clear-sighted, strong, decisive, smart. And I got to play games without allowance made for my age or my status. The city children against whom I played never knew my name, and I certainly didn’t mind not socialising with any of them. In a way I didn’t have such a bad time of it. Within the confines of the tower and the walled yard, I learned how to fight and I learned how to kill – in theory at least – I plan to prove my capacities in that area as soon as I get the chance.
Every day I woke up and looked to the sky. That’s how I’d know, they told me. Whenever a Mercian leader dies, there are fires lit with bowls of herbs that colour the smoke. When a Mercian leader dies the smoke is red. Red as blood. Red as the depth of the fire that consumes the bodies of the dead. Every day of every week of every year I looked toward the sky for news. And what happens? When news finally does seep through, like poison into the bloodstream, what drama does it evoke? None. No red smoke because no death. Just the sordid return of the leader of Mercia, crippled, broken and left as useless, half-mad, and wrapped in chains.
Yes, when she finally returns to Mercia, the mighty and powerful Calypso, who’d set off in such elated spirits to mate with that bitch whore of a princess, comes back to Mercia like a monkey in a cage. The news filtered through the layers of bricks that divide this place, this tower, this necessity, from the rest of the Mercian world.
Then came the discussions. Oh, the endless, endless fucking words. I can smile and nod and bend my head and bow, and say to myself that when I am free and when I am empowered, I am going to go through this world like a fucking fire. I shall scorch the sun with the fury and colour of my passing. Whether my reign lasts a day or an eternity: no-one will ever forget me.
I forget: you don’t know me yet. Fucking Mercia doesn’t know me yet. A few know my story and a few – a neat and valued federation of such scared and law-sick ingrates that it makes me gag to even look upon them – now debate my future a room or two away. A floor or two away. I wish it were another world. I eye the bricks and begin to believe that I can see through them. Not through a layer of badly applied plasterwork, because this tower of all towers must be perfect, must be infallible, but if I concentrate my will and keep my eyes open, inside my head I begin to see.
You wonder who I am or why I am? I am the necessary and the hidden. I am the imperative and the unnecessary. I am both the fire that burns and the water that puts out the fire now and forever.
I am the second daughter and that is my inheritance and my sentence. We are determined types, we Mercians. We are not even safe with one another. My mother had two daughters and only one of them has ever been acknowledged, had ever been known. Not, you may have guessed, me. For generation upon generation we have been born and lived and died in seclusion, held in case the female heir to Mercia dies. How strange to live out your life in the knowledge that the person nearest to you in blood is the reason for your imprisonment. I have never even seen my sister, but I know that because she is, I am not.
Forgiveness is not a Mercian trait.
I am fortunate: I was born bereft of certain characteristics. Unlike the many that have gone before me, kinder and a little forgiving, who died unknown and unregistered, I have no forgiveness in me and no love, either. The Gods know, I’ve heard the stories: I know that even though Calypso wanted Laure (and got her) she never let go on her leash on one Alexis, a captain in her army. I have never met Alexis but I should like to. I am still curious about people; I suspect that that is my most humane trait.
It’s the only one.
And now they are talking, talking, talking, and I see them through the walls. I open my eyes wide and hold them without blinking – even once – and I look. I see the words forming on their lips: they are faced with a situation that leaves them in the insidious position of having to make a decision. The question is simple enough: will Calypso recover her wits, her throne and her country? Already – the Gods have seen to this one – she has lost face and future: the leader of Caer Arianrhod and her friends have decided on a new and external governing body for Mercia. They have put the first bars in place. A prison is going up around Mercia even as I think this, even as I see their lips move around the words they must – I know, and they know – soon speak aloud to me.
It’s life within a prison with a sickly, dying or demented leader for them, if they adhere entirely to the old rules set down for our country’s government. Or they can come in here and with a golden key unlock the bars to my cage and let me go free.
I do not allow myself to imagine freedom beyond the primary details, even though I know that it is coming nearer with each passing day. The bars with which they have surrounded me all these years are nothing in comparison with the bars that I put up by myself. When they come in to see me – as come they will – with their long faces and serious looks, they will find me sitting here on the floor, my face fixed in an expression of contemplation, my legs crossed, my hands upturned and resting on my knees, the very picture of concentration and control.
They will tell me the news and they will unlock the door. They will robe me in blue and scarlet and they will escort me to the ritual bath and then the throning ceremony. All this will have to take place in secret and behind closed – bolted and barred – doors. And I shall nod and be serious and look serious, and I will hear them out, all of them.
In due course I will go through this city in flames. I shall take down the walls that have surrounded me for so many years. And everyone who has helped to teach me, who has helped guard me and keep me a live and living secret for so long, will be remembered.
I shall arrange their heads on spikes all around the city. The ravens will feed upon them. The dead will bloom like black-feathered flowers.
I hear them coming closer. Freedom is a breath away.
The key is in the lock.
Let it turn.
*******
Betany was lonely. Caer Arianrhod seemed to have lost its heart. When she had first thought of persuading Ashe to accompany Gowdie (and persuading Gowdie to accompany Ashe…) it had seemed like a good and sensible idea. Both of them had lost someone they valued, and although in times of battle they worked well together, there was for the rest of the time an invisible barrier between them that Betany wanted to see gone. When they came back… If they came back… Oh, Gods, when they came back. Betany, don’t go out to greet disaster before it’s even on its way to you. When they came back, if Ashe agreed, she would name her as joint consort of Caer Arianrhod. Betany wasn’t sure that Ashe would agree: recent events had probably dulled Ashe’s desire to be part of any legally binding relationship.
With the two of them gone the place was definitely quieter – Gowdie – and life much less passionate: Ashe. Betany missed the noise and passion both. She knew that Ashe mourned Calliope, but she had not been surprised to find that the space left by the water spirit had become such a sharp daily hurt. She knew that a three-fold leadership of Caer Arianrhod would have met with some reservations, but Betany had loved them both: she would have persuaded even the most disapproving inhabitant of castle and country.
Lying in the bed that now seemed endlessly wide, fathomlessly deep, and lonely as an empty island in a cold sea, Betany could not get warm. Heated bricks were wrapped in cloths and left to warm the royal bed, but their usefulness was over in an hour or so. She’d felt lonely before, and there had been other relationships that she’d valued, but at the end of none of them had she felt so lonely or so sad. Even her dreams were lonely.
She had finally broken a promise made to herself and asked Ashe how long the journey might be. She knew that an accurate answer was impossible: how could Ashe know how long she’d be away when she had no idea even of where she was going? Should she have tried to persuade Ashe? Begged her not to go? Betany gave up, got up and went down to the kitchens. She took up Ashe’s cup. Ashe had refused to take it with her, entrusting it instead to Betany. A flask of mulled wine had been left ready for her: Betany’s insomnia had become a household secret.
She sat with a cup of wine resting on the table before the dying kitchen fire and wondered where the travellers were.
*******
Ruth was a shadow, flitting round the new construction like a butterfly with ragged wings. She was never there if Laure looked for her, and on the days when the Lammoran leader (on kindly sufferance, perhaps) had no earthly use for Ruth, there she would be, tripping round the edges of the new court, almost mute, eyes rolling, tongue uttering expressions of simple madness. The transfusions hadn’t been given happily by anyone, but Ruth was the only donor harmed in the process. Laure blamed herself. Ruth, had she still possessed mind enough to consider it, would probably have blamed Ashe.
Had anyone cared to establish an anti-Ashe society, there would have been at least three life-members, and no difficulty in collecting subscriptions.
******
Ardan paced about the room. Rhea had gone for a walk. She was renewing her friendship with the Elders, those who had not decided that their old life was far too stressful and would be much better lived elsewhere. Ardan had books to read, herbs to dry and sort and a sufficiency of mending to do, but she was restless, unwilling or unable to settle to a single task. Eventually she gave up and went outside.
The summer was moving toward autumn. Sometimes in the early morning Ardan felt the first soft bite of change. She had taken with her a flask of water and a hunk of bread and cheese. She and Rhea lived easily, and did little cooking, which pleased Ardan; almost every evening there would sound a tentative knock on the door and the sound of feet descending. Then Ardan would look out and see the parcel of food that had been prepared for them by someone in the city. Perhaps it was one of the Elders seeing that they were well-supplied; Ardan never knew and Rhea never said. In this manner they lived on comfortably and easily enough, from day to day and month to month. And around them, the walls of Lascar grew.
It was easy enough to pass out of the city, although there were guards on duty, and had been ever since Betany’s forces had won the battle against Calypso. No-one seemed to want to blame Laure for her part in the insurrection: it was felt that no-one had ever been so painfully abandoned – by fate as much as any other cause – as Laure. Ardan was not alone in thinking that the queen had pretty much brought a justified punishment upon herself, but she was one of the few who would have said it out loud. Ardan was not a fan of Laure, although in one of the odd turns of the world, she was spending a certain amount of time in the young queen’s company.
Ardan nodded to the guards at the gateway, all of them Betany’s troops, which meant that not only were they exceptionally well-trained, decisive and reliable, they were also very good-looking. Ardan smiled at this fact, although she never spoke it out loud. The guards nodded back. They all knew Ardan’s recent history, and it seemed that they all knew about Rhea. Some of them had already been to see the wise-woman, for readings or advice, or both. Ardan always slipped out when such visits took place. This enabled her to maintain a dignified relationship with them all.
*******
I don’t cry. I never cry. And yet last night I started and I couldn’t fucking stop.
*******
Ashe stamped out the ashes of the fire. the karg watched her expend what seemed like a lot of energy on something comparatively minor, but after the night before she was reluctant to criticise Ashe. So much for thinking that Ashe knew nothing of Gowdie’s own problems. The valley was broad there; the land seemed to unroll into infinity. Ashe rolled up the cloak that she used as a pillow and added it to her pack. They both could have had horses: Betany hadn’t believed they wanted to travel on foot. All very well for kargs, but for Ashe? Was it really necessary? They’d both said that it was.
“Gowdie?” Ashe looked at the karg, who had been engaged in an excessively demanding grooming session. “It’s your turn, I think, to decide where we’re going. Which direction?” The karg snuffled slightly and then headed toward the north. Ashe hesitated for a moment, and then followed the karg’s new path.
Ashe wanted more time that she wasn’t sure she was going to get. It had been love that had made her hurry back to Betany after that first visit to the newly-demolished Lascar. On some level she was aware that she was not wholly innocent of that destruction, although she was damned if she knew how that came about. And once she’d gotten back to Caer Arianrhod everything had felt so nice and so good… And neither Calliope nor Cairo were around to share the celebrations. Had Betany known exactly what was going on in Ashe’s mind she might have been able to do something to help her. But Ashe wasn’t going to confide her guilt to anyone. At best she might whisper it to the water when she found a river and thought – instantly, painfully, intently – of Calliope.
*******
At Caer Arianrhod Betany had said goodbye to Arkana and returned to her own offices. A replacement guard for those currently stationed at Lascar would be ready to leave first thing the next day, and Betany had papers to give them. It would be embarrassing for her to admit that she had no idea of the whereabouts of her new lover and her sister, but Betany did hand over a sealed scroll to be passed to Ashe, on the off-chance that the guard might encounter her.
Arkana’s last remark on parting had been, “Betany, she loves you and she’ll be back. Stop worrying.”
Betany thought: words are cheap.
*******
Another long, hard day, with neither of them saying much. Ashe pushed herself far too far and was almost asleep by the time they’d finished eating. Gowdie eased the cup from Ashe’s hand and lowered Ashe back into the ground. She waited to see that Ashe really was breathing. This was something had been bothering her: Ashe’s deep sleep had been something of death about it. Betany had been worried, too.
Ashe dreamed. In her dream she and Calliope crossed the valley floor to the where the river lay like a silver path in the light of the moon. On the bank, Calliope undid her clothes and shook herself free of them. She looked at Ashe, who shrugged off her clothes with her usual air of neither owning or belonging in them. The night air struck cold on her skin. Calliope took Ashe’s hand and led her into the water.
Ashe winced at the sharp bite of the water but as they moved out into the centre of the river, where the current tangled past them, she was more concerned with Calliope’s kiss. Ashe did not even know when they were both beneath the surface of the water and immersed in a world that was closer to pure night than anything on land could have been. All that she knew was the strange, binding kiss that tied the two of them even more closely than Laure and Calypso in their ruined, muddled bed. There was no specific act that Ashe was aware of, just a shared embrace so simple and so intense that it became an element that she never wanted to leave. It was not a light-hearted embrace: Ashe had the sense of falling through years of experience and change as the river pulled them on, sent them back, and finally returned them to the bank-side.
Breathing hard, reaching out for someone who was not there, Ashe broke back into consciousness. This time it was she who woke Gowdie. They exchanged mutually embarrassed looks and both dropped back into sleep, Ashe a little before Gowdie, who first transformed and went to lie at Ashe’s back, curled nose to tail. Somehow as the karg, such closeness was acceptable. It was not something she could have done in human form.
*******
There were times when it seemed that Rhea’s new lease of life was almost too much for her. Ardan, watching the wise-woman move from one task to another, never content to work on one spell alone, or one batch of herbs, or some collection of incomprehensible things bubbling in a pan over the wood fire, wondered if Rhea was testing herself. That the wise-woman had limits Ardan was sure. It was just a question of where they were and how they might be reached. It was all very well to say that the tower was safe from Alexis, then and forever, but Ardan had seen the walls of Lascar collapse from the use of another power, one that she could not name. The only thing she was sure about was that the collapse had involved a magic probably deeper and more profound than Rhea’s own. The post had not been advertised – probably never would be – but Ardan would have thrown over her much-envied apprenticeship with Rhea in an instant had Ashe ever shown a desire for a trainee.
The smell of the herbs rose into the air; the steam that accompanied it formed strange and grotesque shapes above the wise-woman and Ardan. The shapes became indeed so compelling that Rhea gave over stirring the substance and like Ardan sat down on the floor to watch. The shapes writhed and twisted and became the ghosts of giant serpents. Ardan watched, mouth open, as a green serpent marked with a line of scarlet that ran along its spine faced a second serpent, its colours a blend of blue and gold.
The serpents swayed, recoiled from one another and came up close enough to strike, hissing steadily. It seemed to Ardan that within the lighter smoke that continued to rise from the cauldron there swayed another hundred smaller snakes, their colours taken from a dozen rainbows. These serpents wove themselves into a something like a cloak. As Rhea put up a hand to her mouth, the two largest serpents struck at one another, and having struck, stuck tight. They circled the room, time and time again, until a wall of colour seemed to surround the two women. Then there came a sound like a thousand fireworks and all the snakes – small and large – were absorbed into the air.
Ardan stared at the sudden absence of colour and then at the black soot that liberally covered the walls, ceiling, floor and… everything and everyone else. She stared at her newly-blackened hands, and when she turned to look at Rhea, saw that the wise-woman was similarly decorated. Ardan thought it better not to ask the obvious and began cleaning up.
Rhea sat and frowned. Her thoughts must have taken her far away because she said nothing to Ardan for the rest of that day and much of the next. It would not be until the next evening that Ardan would dare to break the silence with a question or two.
*******
There is nothing like being beaten and humiliated to sharpen one’s nerve and increase one’s ambition. So thought Alexis, pacing backwards and forwards in her Mercian cell. It was not an easy stride: the room was not large. At least she could still pace. Well, she couldn’t pace properly: Alexis limped, would always limp, and as things stood, no spell in the world could fix that. The powers that Alexis had been so delighted to regain – such a short and rich time that had been – had been more than lost, had been stripped from her. And the struggle to regain just the slightest impression of that power was eating up what little strength she had.
She had not been permitted to visit Calypso… Gods, was there not a subtle and sickening tone of self-congratulation in those who guarded them? No visits, even though they again shared the same city. Ashe had had no part in the planning for the two: after their last fight she had turned her back on Alexis and Calypso for ever. Calypso had been in a far worse state than her captain at the time of their separation. When Alexis had last seen Calypso, it was to look upon a shocked and half-crazed shadow of a one-time leader. Some of the damage was simply physical: Calypso could not use her right arm properly – it was as good as useless. She could not have held a sword, let alone employ one.
Alexis had thought about using the only method of escape left to her; the Gods knew, her jailors had neither handed her lengths of rope or sharp implements, but they had made suggestive noises. It was clear that if she’d asked for assistance in shuffling off the mortal coil, she’d have half-a-dozen willing accomplices. But Alexis was not shuffling anywhere if to do so would make easier for Betany or Arkana or Laure or… That was a word she could not frame, fit or not. The little Freak had no ordinary name. The little Freak was what Calypso had called her. Now Alexis began to do the same.
*******
You know, if I had a faith, I would consider this a moment of religious merit. Fortunately, I don’t.
The discussions have brought forward a decision. I would have to accept the burden of leading Mercia. Calypso would be cared for, fed and dressed and kept from harm. She would never lead another army into battle; she would probably never even speak again.
Air all around me. It’s only by the greatest effort that I do not behave as a child might, and run off through the streets with my arms outstretched, yelling in excitement and fulfilment. The control on which I have worked for so many years has an absolute quality now. I do not think that I could shout or scream in delight even if I had a knife to my throat. I have hidden my feelings so far underground that I may have mislaid some of them for ever.
A brief moment in a room surrounded by serious faces and serious remarks. Then a walk along one of this city’s seemingly endless hidden tunnels to the quasi-hospital that they have established – that Betany and her people have established – to house those racked and ruined in battle. And up the slight and secret stone staircase leading to the comfortable cell that contains the still-living remains of my sister.
I asked for privacy. I could have demanded it, but while Calypso lives, I am still in second place, and both vulnerable and powerless. The governors of this city are desperate and frightened. They do not understand the kind of changes that are going on all over the world. I asked for privacy, my expression downcast and serious. My tones were so grave that I could hear tears forming in their eyes.
They gave me the privacy I requested. And they distanced themselves. They are a floor or two away from me, and it might as well be another world for all the control they now hold.
I approached the cell in absolute silence. I must have breathed, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I was almost afraid of what I would see: would some kind of blood-tie make itself felt and overwhelm me? I know that I have had years to prepare for almost every contingency – I am better prepared for death than life – but this alone had the power to shake my convictions to their core.
There she was. I stood outside the cell and regarded Mercia’s leader. Mercia’s great and powerful leader. I think I stood there for a very long time. There was neither entertainment nor education in surveying the broken and misshapen shadow of its former self that lay writhing and groaning on its bed.
Oh, Gods! Better by far that she had died on the battle-field. I was free to speak out loud, should I feel so inclined, as the sensitive and well-informed servant of Caer Arianrhod on guard had been detained – she would be sick and feverish a week or so but she would live – and I was alone with my sister for only the second time in our life.
And she looked at me. I saw an expression on her face, something intelligent that permeated the idiotic stare that had been all she’d worn since something small and utterly necessary had given way within her heart or brain. The look she gave me might have been recognition, might have been something good. Who knew? She was so small and so weak. So very much smaller than I had anticipated. Perhaps in armour and health and capable of standing, she would have cut a fine figure. Lying on a narrow bed with its insult of well-laundered linen she looked like a dying clown. Perhaps the analogy wasn’t so inappropriate: since when has a Mercian leader made any ruling decision from anything so specious and permeable as lust?
As she looked at me, her eyes the same green as my own, her features not dissimilar – I had only seen my reflection for the first time that day – to my own, I saw the beginning of something like clarity breaking through.
I pulled open the barred door, the lock – if lock there was – lightly broke beneath my touch, and I went in to her.
She tried to speak but could not. Her eyes were full of wonder. I sat down on the edge of the bed. I saw the bandages that covered wounds still not closed, still not healing. In Mercia we have long since believed that no wound could heal when the mind was disordered. Who came up with that one I do not know, but looking down on her that day, I could believe there ran within it a simple truth.
She put out a hand to me. I felt its touch against my own. This was shocking enough: the first physical contact I had been allowed in so many years. I thought that I was prepared for all eventualities, but that shook me a little. I took her two wrists gently in my left hand and she began to smile at me. Then I placed my other hand over her nose and mouth and smothered her.
A glow of utter confidence flooded through me. There followed – as follow there must, and I was not unprepared for it – an attempt at an exhalation, the jolt and jar of struggle, a little stream of spit and blood and then nothing. I rose from the bed and left the cell. Had I known how to sing or whistle, I might have exercised that skill. Sadly, I had neither.
I had to content myself with smiling.