The shadows beneath Max’s eyes the next morning told me he had slept about as well as I had. And then his
pointed silence told me that he certainly had no interest in talking about what had happened the day before.
I had so many questions — about the war, about his family, about the Queen’s father. But I’d spent enough time reading people and massaging my interactions with them to know that outright asking was not the best way to find out what I wanted to know. So I had obliged his unspoken request, sitting in silence, watching out the window bleary-eyed as the sun rose over the horizon. It wasn’t hard. I felt like I had been trampled by a few dozen horses.
We were halfway through breakfast when the front door abruptly swung open, revealing an unamused-looking Sammerin.
“I hear that you had a very exciting day yesterday,” he said, calmly, in place of a greeting.
Max grunted something wordless. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Absolutely. So lucky.”
Sammerin gave him a cold, hard look — one of those looks shared between friends who knew each other well enough to speak silently.
Max shrugged.
“She’s a child,” Sammerin said. “You should have controlled yourself.”
At this, my mouth went sour, the image of the blood rolling down the steps overtaking my vision. “A child?” I said. My voice was raspy with exhaustion, like my headache was seeping into my throat. “She killed that man.”
“That isn’t the first one, either.” Max scoffed. “Someone had to say something.”
“Very noble of you.” Sammerin let out a silent breath, invisible except for the lowering of his shoulders. “If Tare had given her any other sign, it would’ve been your body kicked down those stairs.”
Max laughed bitterly. “Good point. All those years ago, would you ever have thought Tare would be the one holding so many lives in his hands? Tare?” He shook his head. “Ascended above. What a time to be alive.”
“The Valtain with her?” I asked. Max had addressed him by name yesterday, too, I recalled. “You know him?”
“The Orders are incestuous,” he replied. “Everyone knows everyone, mostly because everyone has either screwed or screwed over everyone else. Sometimes both. Occasionally even at the same time.”
“In-ses-tu…?”
“It means…” His brow furrowed, then he shook his head. “Nevermind.”
Sammerin sighed. “Just tread carefully, Max. You won’t get chances like that again.”
Something softened in Max’s expression, just slightly. “I know.” Then he stood up, turning to me. “Are you ready?”
I blinked at him, trying to clear the cloud from my thoughts.
“You look like death. But you don’t think you get a break because of this, do you?”
I had assumed, judging by Max’s foul mood, that I’d be practicing on my own today. But this was a pleasant surprise. “If you can do it,” I said, “I can do it.”
A smirk glimmered at the corners of his eyes. “That’s what I like to hear.” Then, to Sammerin, “Excuse us, Sammerin. We have work to do. Besides, I’m sure that Moth is probably destroying something as we speak.”
“Probably so,” Sammerin muttered. His gaze went far away from a moment, as if imagining what he would go home to find.
Poor Moth. I hoped that they didn’t talk about me that way.
Sammerin turned to the door, then paused for a moment and looked back at Max. “What were you doing in the city to begin with?”
“Just picking up some things from Via.”
“And then you stayed? Some might dare call that out of character, Max.”
Max shrugged. “And paid a price for it. Lesson learned.” “Hm,” Sammerin gave us one of those quiet, unreadable
looks, and slipped out the door.
 |
“THIS IS AWFUL,” Max said, drawing his arm across his forehead and making a face of disgust.
I couldn’t disagree.
Summer had come in the span of a few days, it seemed. I was used to the heat. But Ara’s heat was a whole different beast altogether, so wet and sticky that I couldn’t tell whether the slime on my skin came from sweat or from the air itself.
Neck craned, I watched Max stand at the top of a modest pile of rocks, wiping perspiration off his face and looking down at the lake below him. Water lapped at my bare toes.
We had stepped out of the cottage into this wall of humid heat, and Max had immediately announced, “I am
not even remotely made for this.” Then, after a moment of pondering, he led me off much further beyond the tree line than we normally ventured, deep into the woods. I was dripping in sweat and half eaten alive by bugs by the time we arrived at this spot: a break in the forest cradling a beautiful, idyllic-looking pond.
Max yanked his sweat-soaked shirt off over his head with one hand. As he curled his back in a stretch, the tree leaves above flickered light and shadow over the muscles of his shoulders. He crouched to kick the crumbled fabric out of his way and those delicate flecks were shattered by the brutal scar that sliced across his back.
I stared more intently than I meant to. The Queen’s words echoed in my head: Captain Farlione is nearly solely responsible for the end of the Great Ryvenai War.
This was a body that was capable of things powerful enough to end a war. Powerful enough to commit whatever acts had inspired such intense, divisive reactions in that crowd, the awe and disgust that had shocked through me like lightning.
Gods, I had so many questions.
Max peered down only briefly before he hurled himself off of the rock in one sleek, graceful leap. His head bobbed back up a second later, shaking his wet hair out of his face. “Much better. Your turn.”
I looked from the rocks to the water and strangled a whisper of uncertainty in my stomach.
I mimicked his path up the cliffs, then removed my wrapped shirt and trousers, leaving me in my undergarments — a chamois shirt and shorts. They were far less revealing than many of the things I wore every day in Esmaris’s servitude, and even in those days, I was never thought twice about having so much of my body exposed. Now, I didn’t feel self-conscious, exactly, but I was acutely aware of Max’s gaze.
That distraction, however, was far from my mind as I hung my toes over the edge of the rock and looked down.
Seconds passed.
“Are you afraid?” Max asked, at last. “No,” I lied.
The cliff was only about ten feet high. Not far.
“There is…very little water in Threll,” I added, haltingly. “You don’t know how to swim?”
When I finally made myself look at Max, he was suppressing a smirk of amusement. “I promise I won’t let you drown. Unless, of course, you’d rather not jump.”
“Of course I will,” I said, as if suggesting otherwise was outright ridiculous. And then, since I knew that that tone of voice meant I had to follow through…
I squeezed my eyes shut and then a moment later I was falling, falling, until the water slapped me.
And then I was sinking, surrounded by cold and darkness.
Fear seized me as my limbs flailed. You said you wouldn’t let me drown, you ass! I wanted to screech. But of course, I couldn’t speak, or breathe, or see—
Until I felt a force solidifying beneath me, as if the water itself was propelling me up and up.
My face broke the surface and I sputtered, coughing. My hands instinctively shot out in a wild flail, grabbing at Max or at anything that might keep me afloat.
“Relax, Tisaanah. Stop moving long enough to feel it.” Feel it?
And then I noticed: I was floating all on my own. The water pushed up beneath my feet, catching me and supporting my weight. I curled my toes, squirming as the current caressed them.
My head whipped to Max. “You can do this?”
“No.” Ripples circled his shoulders as he treaded, looking pleased. “You can.”
Me?
And, as if on cue, the current sputtered and I dropped. This time, Max’s hands snaked out to catch me, and he guided me toward the shore until I felt the squishy relief of earth beneath my feet. I let forth a fit of coughs again when my head emerged from the surface.
Unpleasant. So deeply unpleasant.
“You alright?” Max’s palm did not leave my arm, as if he were afraid I might float away. When I nodded, he said, “You’ll get better, or at least more consistent, I’m sure.”
I swirled my hand through the water, watching my spotted skin through the pulsating surface. I willed the water to move with me, and it did, running circles around my fingers. A satisfied smile twisted the corners of my mouth.
I had done little tricks with water before, for my performances. But nothing like this.
“You look far too pleased with yourself.” Max beckoned to me. “Again, you have no control. Show me some of those butterflies you like so much and we’ll see how much you earned that little smirk.”
I obliged. The first ones were sloppy, heavy and dripping. But soon they grew more delicate, more controlled.
“Better,” Max said. “It’s like speaking another language. Once you learn the accent, it comes easier. I was curious how far you’d be able to go.”
“Can you do this?”
“Water isn’t quite a language I speak. The general rule is that water and air tend to be the domain of the Valtain, while Solarie are more attuned to the more physical elements like fire and earth.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Really? Nothing with water?” I intentionally infused the shade of a dare into my voice. As much time as Max spent instructing me, I had never seen him perform much magic of his own. And now, after yesterday, I was more curious than ever.
“Some things.” He looked at me like he knew exactly what I was doing. It was always the same skeptical look: pinched eyes, slightly narrowed, mouth pursed towards one side.
“Like what?”
He paused, as if deciding whether to accept my challenge.
Then that wary look gave way to a more focused spark, and I knew I had him. He moved a few steps into more shallow territory, until the water lapped around his waist instead of his chest. Then he flattened his hands at the glassy surface.
At first, there was nothing. Then, bubbles started to rise around him, faster and faster, like the water was leaping to a boil.
Or…
A particularly childish image popped into my head and refused to leave.
I couldn’t help myself. I pinched my nose. “Max!” I breathed, aghast. “In Threll, it is very rude to do that in front of others.”
For a moment, Max just looked confused. Then realization swept over his face and his mouth flattened into a very tense, very straight line. “Tisaanah… Ascended help me, was that a fart joke?”
I just stood there, pinching my nose, grinning.
Serel and I had wielded this kind of immature humor with nothing less than mastery. And I hadn’t known until this moment exactly how much I had missed it. Joking — even clumsily.
Max’s mouth twitched. First the left side, then the right. And then, all at once, he burst into wild, unrestrained laughter. I realized then that I had never heard him laugh before, at least not in a way that wasn’t some biting chuckle or a sarcastic scoff.
I could, I admitted to myself, get used to it.
“Sorry,” I said, not meaning it. “I could not resist.”
He shook his head, laughter slowly fading. “I don’t know what impresses me more. That you made a joke or that it’s one befitting of a five-year-old. Now that that’s out of your system, will you let me focus?”
His final chuckles disappeared as a line of concentration formed between his brows. The bubbles rose more frantically.
At all once, a wall of steam burst from the surface of the water, temporarily blinding me in warm grey. Slowly, the cloud dissipated, and it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at: a massive serpent carved from cloudy mist. It rose and rose and rose, and I craned my neck to follow its ghostlike face, transfixed.
And then, it lunged for me, circling around my body in wet, warm heat before launching into the sky. It was nearly enveloped by the clouds when, at last, it dissipated into — and here, I could not help but smile — hundreds and hundreds of little butterflies. It must have been visible for miles.
When I looked back to Max, sweat glistened over his skin. He dunked his head beneath the water and came up pushing his hair away from his face.
“That’s it?” I said, casually. “Is very… performative.” Fine. I was impressed.
“Throwing all kinds of words back at me today.” He looked pleased with himself, even if he was trying to hide it. “I don’t recall saying you could stop.”
I managed a butterfly with wings so finely crafted that they were translucent and smiled at myself.
“Good,” Max said, giving a little nod of approval. Then his voice grew slightly more serious as he said, “You’re feeling better today?”
I’d managed to distract myself enough to forget about yesterday’s events, at least for a few minutes. At the
thought of it, self-consciousness burned at my cheeks. “Yes.”
“You were having a hard time.”
It wasn’t a question. And— of course it wasn’t. It had to have been obvious, how much the emotions of it all had overwhelmed me. Drowned me.
“I felt very much yesterday,” I said, quietly. “The thoughts of the crowd. The Lord. The Queen. Very much.”
Even that small admission of vulnerability nearly stuck to my tongue.
But Max’s face softened, and his voice was surprisingly gentle as he asked, “Do you often struggle in large crowds of people?”
I thought of the day I first saw Serel, when I had choked beneath the emotions of the slaves in that pit. Torture. Absolute torture. “Sometimes,” I admitted.
“It’s a common problem for Valtain,” he said. “There’s another reason why I brought you here. I wasn’t sure, at first, how I was going to help you with this. Totally unfamiliar to me, after all.” His fingers skimmed over the surface, releasing tiny waves. “But as a Valtain, you’re sensitive to what other people’s minds release into the world. All of those… ripples.”
A realization clicked into place as I watched his hands move over the surface of the pond. “Like water.”
“Right.” He gave me a faint smile. “The nature or degree to which individual Valtain feel and interpret them is very different, as I’m sure you’re well aware, but we know how you feel them.”
“Emotions,” I said.
“Generally mild, as far as Valtain mental abilities go. And when it’s just a few, there’s nothing to be concerned about.” As if to demonstrate, he dipped his fingertips into the water, releasing delicate circles across its surface. “But when you’re looking at a big disruption…”
I lifted my hands and brought them down in a violent splash, spattering myself and Max in water.
He winced. “Exactly.” He gestured to the surface, now shuddering with hundreds of indistinguishable ripples.
Right. It was simply too much, all of those waves of feeling clashing together until my mind was as disrupted as this water was. And that was almost exactly what it felt like: like everything that had once been clear and smooth, defined waves and circles, had become a tangled mass of movement.
“In Ara, it’s a universal and necessary skill to learn how to shield your own thoughts as much as possible,” Max said. “There are a lot of Valtain around, and no one, Wielder or no, wants them poking around their thoughts. I’ve always thought of it like putting up a wall… or, if we want to keep this metaphor going, a dam.”
He gestured to the other end of the pond, where an old stone barrier extended towards the center, crumbling. Maybe once it had created a reservoir of some kind, though by the looks of it those days were long gone.
I thought of the one time I had attempted to so much as brush Max’s thoughts. Whatever he did, it worked.
“But,” he went on, “you’d probably require something a bit more… sophisticated. You need to cull what comes in, and what goes out.”
An old memory whispered through my mind — my mother and I, kneeling beside a muddy stream, thirst clawing at my throat. She held a swath of thin, delicate fabric in her hands, and together we ran the water through it until it came back clear.
“Like filtering cloth,” I murmured. A small smile. “Like filtering cloth.”
I closed my eyes and imagined it — imagined draping a filter across my own thoughts and building a barrier between me and the world. The faint echo of Max’s
presence dimmed further, as did the thrumming presence of the birds and fish. My own head felt quieter.
I lifted it, felt those tiny awarenesses bloom back to life.
Lowered it again.
I felt a smile begin to tug at my mouth.
“It’ll take some time to master, like most things,” Max said. “And you’re probably always going to feel it to some extent.”
“Good,” I said — and meant it. I wouldn’t want to cut myself off completely from that part of myself, even when it was difficult. As much as it hurt me to feel the overwhelming weight of all those slaves’ emotions at the marketplace all of those years ago, their pain was already mine. I would never want to turn that away.
And the fear and anguish and anger that I felt yesterday…
My gaze fell to a little waterfall above Max’s shoulder. The water trickling over the stones reminded me so vividly of the blood on the Palace steps that I suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
Max followed my gaze, paled slightly. I knew we were both thinking the same thing.
“There are many things I must know,” I said, quietly. And when Max’s eyes found mine again, a resignation had settled into them.
He sighed. “I suppose there are.”
