I
sat cross-legged in the garden, watching as Max dragged a circle in the dirt with a stick. Then, he
punctuated his drawing with three lines, all running through the center at various angles.
I held back a grin of anticipation.
A week of delicate, tentative normalcy had crept by, and it had taken about that long for Max and I to slowly settle back into our own heads. When we got there, it was as if we both mutually looked at the calendar and realized, with a start, that my evaluations were only two months away. All things considered, that was not a lot of time at all. Which was why I was thrilled that Max had finally decided to tackle—
“Stratagrams,” Max announced.
He dropped the stick, held out his hand, and various flower petals appeared in his palm, as if snapped to his skin by a magnetic force.
My smile faded. I looked at him, unimpressed. “Only this?”
“Only this. Please.” He spread out his fingers, picking through the flower petals. There was one lily petal. One hydrangea. One violet. And more and more, never more than piece of any given flower. “What I just did,” he said, “was provide instructions. I want one single petal of every
type of flower in this garden. That requires magic to go in a lot of different directions at once, and it requires it to think.”
“Think?”
“I need to tell it that I want one of every separate species of flowers, and it needs to recognize that. It may seem simple, and in a lot of ways, it is. But it does require magic to go in a lot of different places at once. Controlling it is easier with Stratagrams, though they aren’t necessary. This is why most Wielders need to use them for travel, for example. They need to tell the magic where to take them, where to leave them, and how to get them there. Complicated to do mentally alone.”
He reached into his pocket and a produced a small stack of paper. Then into his other pocket, revealing the bottle of black liquid I had chosen at Via’s.
“It’s ink,” I said, in realization.
“In a sense. Ink with a little something extra built in.” His eyes glittered and I got the impression that I was about to be on the wrong end of a joke. “Now, I want you to do what I just did. A petal of each flower. Since you find it so unimpressive, it should be easy for you.”
I opened the ink and Max handed me a pen. I observed Max’s circle, drawn in dirt on the ground. Then went to draw the same thing—
— And let out a yelp, tumbling backwards. And as soon as I touched the pen to paper, a shock ran up my hand, releasing a puff of sparks and smoke and slapping me in the face with a force that I was thoroughly unprepared for. By the time I got my bearings again, the first thing I heard was Max’s laughter.
I glowered at him. “Thank you,” I sniffed, sarcastically. “You’re so very welcome.” Max composed himself,
though the laughter remained in his eyes long after it faded from his mouth. “To be fair, you picked a particularly fierce one. Fitting, I suppose. Ready yourself for it this time.”
I settled back onto my knees, steeling myself before I touched the pen to the parchment. When I was ready for it, I only jolted slightly, but quickly got a handle on the magic flowing from my fingertips — like I was grabbing the reins of an unruly horse.
“Good,” I heard Max say, but I was too focused on glancing from his circle to mine from beneath a furrowed brow. I copied it stroke for stroke, and then I opened my palm in preparation for the flower petals.
…And nothing happened.
I flicked my eyes up to Max, who looked far too amused. “I wonder why it isn’t working?” he said. “Here. Let me
demonstrate again.” He used the stick to draw another circle in the dirt. And another series of lines. And just as before, a flurry of flower petals rushed to his hands.
But my brow furrowed. This circle was completely different from the first. They didn’t even have the same number of lines within them, and the positions of the ones that remained were wildly different.
“I do not understand.”
“Magic is just as much of a living being as you or I. So the way you direct it needs to change. This Stratagram is how I needed to direct it five minutes ago. But this one is how I needed to direct it thirty seconds ago. And if I were to do it again, that one would be different, too.”
My lips tightened. I drew a circle, then paused. “But,” I asked, “what do the lines mean? How do I read them?”
“Do you know what I hear, when you ask me that?” Max narrowed his eyes at me. “I hear, ‘Max, how do I ram my head through this with unrelenting and methodical brute force?’”
“That’s not what I meant.” It was, a little.
“Well, you can’t force these,” he said, smugly. “You just have to feel it.”
I tried another circle, then another. Nothing.
“They do tend to be more difficult for Valtain,” Max said, after several failed attempts. “You magic is just more nebulous than mine.”
“Does Nura use them?”
“Yes. I’ve seen her do some incredible things with them. For all her flaws, she is an exceptionally talented Wielder.”
At the mention of Nura, I thought back to my odd conversation with her in the garden. There were many times when I almost asked Max the questions that lingered at the tip of my tongue. It never seemed like a good time — especially not when we were both still recovering from our time in Tairn. Now, my frustration made me bold.
“So,” I said, drawing another circle. “Nura was your lover. Yes?”
“Excuse me?” Max let out a strangled chuckle. “What a topic change.”
“It’s true though. Yes?”
Another circle. Another set of lines. No response. “Yes,” he said, finally. “Long time ago.”
It was no great surprise to me that Nura and Max had been together. But I still couldn’t quite envision them as a couple, like they were two puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit. Then again, maybe that was because Nura was still such an enigma to me.
“You seem very different,” I said.
A long pause. I kept my eyes trained to the paper, repeating circles.
“As much as it pains me to say this,” Max answered at last, “Nura probably knows me better than any other living human being. I’ve known her since we were children. But when we were together, we were very different people, and far more… aligned.”
Aligned. Hm. “Why did it end?”
“Our views had become totally incompatible, and that became obvious in the most violent possible manner.”
I glanced up at him, and he scrunched up his nose. “Don’t give me that look,” he said, “as if I owe you the dirty details.”
I gave him a cloying smile. He rolled his eyes. “And after?” I asked. “Other lovers?”
“Nosy, nosy.”
My hand stopped. I pressed my finger to the tip of my nose, raising an eyebrow. “Nose-ee?”
Aran was a strange, strange language.
“It’s a term for someone who sticks their nose where it doesn’t belong. The definition might as well include your name.”
I chuckled as I drew another circle.
Max’s face brightened. “Look,” he said, pointing. I peered over my shoulder to see a smattering of random flower petals scattered across the ground. “That’s something.”
“Not what I wanted,” I scowled.
“Better than nothing. It’ll work when you think about it the least.”
I watched as the smile faded on his lips, though it still clung faintly to the corners of his mouth.
I would admit it: he was handsome, with those high cheekbones and, of course, those delicate, striking eyes that peered out from beneath his perpetually thoughtful brow. My gaze swept down, over the solid line of his shoulder, then following his arm and landing on the ropey muscle of his forearms.
Surely, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to find female companionship if he wanted to. But he never brought anyone home. Then again, bringing someone home implied that he left in the first place, which he didn’t. Ever.
His eyes dropped. I wondered if I had been staring too intently. Too-quickly, I looked back to my parchment.
“You did not answer,” I said.
“I haven’t had anything in a long time that went beyond the… uh… physical. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Physical?” I echoed.
“Well— You know. More shallow romantic interactions.” “Shallow?” I leaned forward, doe-eyed. “How shallow?” “Well — poor word choice.” A slight but distinctive flush
rose to his cheeks. “Definitely not shallow, but—” He stopped short as I struggled to contain my laughter, eyes narrowing at me in realization. “You shit.”
I shook my head, still giggling, drawing another attempt at a Stratagram. I caught a glimpse of a flurry of directionless flower petals out of the corner of my eye. Not good enough.
“Why am I the one being interrogated here?” He crossed his arms. “What about you? How long have you been with your lover?”
He said the word “lover” in what I could only imagine was supposed to be an imitation of my accent — loov-ear.
“I have no lover.” “The blond?”
“Serel?” I laughed, shaking my head. “No. He would be more interested in you than me.”
“Ah. I see.” Max was silent for a moment. “So… no one?”
I didn’t speak. A different reality flashed through my mind — a reality in which I was a normal Aran girl who lived an unremarkable Aran life, and could tell him a story of an innocent first love or a dimwitted ex-beau. And that false reality just seemed so… appealing. Simple.
Compared to my truth. My complicated, painful truth.
And yet, somehow I got the impression that he knew what he was really asking me. It was there in the gentle tone of his voice: an open door.
“Well. There was Esmaris. And the men I… performed for.” I tried to speak as casually as possible, even though the words suddenly grew thick, like rancid honey. “But that
was survival, not love. I knew my value, and I needed to use it.”
I chanced a glance at him, and his lips were tight. “That shouldn’t have happened to you.”
I shrugged, even though the movement was stiff, forced. “Many had much worse.”
Are you aware of how well I treat you? Esmaris had asked me, minutes before he tried to kill me.
“That doesn’t change anything.” He shook his head. One burning movement. “It doesn’t make what they did to you any less terrible, Tisaanah.”
His words hit on something within me. A wound that I had covered up, deep within my chest. I’d told myself so many times that I was lucky. I survived, after all, when the people I’d left behind had not.
And yet, I knew too that Max was right. I’d known it since the day Esmaris tried to beat me to death. I had seen such terrible things, lived such terrible things, that I mistook Esmaris’s meticulous care for love. Even though he cared for me the way one cared for a prize horse: pampered it, groomed it, broke it and rode it, and discarded it when it began to kick.
After all, I was the lucky one.
“The day I tried to buy my freedom,” I said, quietly, “he told me that I forgot what I was.”
When I glanced at Max again, his jaw was set, his gaze sorrowful, contemplative. He did not speak.
“Perhaps in a way, he was right,” I said. “But I forgot what he was, too. I forgot that he was someone who could never see me as more than a possession.”
I had been just a child, when I met him. Just a child, and he had taken me in, told me I should feel grateful because he only beat me sparingly, because he waited a few years to rape me, because he didn’t send me off to my death like he did to so many others.
Aren’t you lucky, Tisaanah. Don’t I treat you well.
My knuckles were tight around my pen. When I tore another vicious, mindless stroke over the paper, my fists were suddenly full of flower petals.
 |
I SPENT the night drawing Stratagrams, though unsuccessfully, other than that one singular victory in the garden. Max and I had settled into a comfortable routine. I was in my typical spot near the hearth, crouched on the ground, paper scattered around me. And Max, as usual, draped himself over an armchair with a book perched in his hands.
The night ticked by, and in the flickering flames my ink was beginning to waver and blur in front of my eyes. Sometimes we both fell asleep like this, waking up to greet each other bleary-eyed in the harsh morning.
“Tisaanah.”
Max’s voice was hoarse with almost-sleep, so quiet that I almost lost it in my own exhaustion and the crackling of the fire. When I looked up, he peered at me from behind low, slightly crooked reading glasses, face taut and thoughtful.
“The way I look at it,” he said, very solemnly, so quietly that his words slipped into the air like steam, “you didn’t forget what you were. I think you remembered. And I hope no one ever again has the fucking audacity to tell you otherwise.”
For a moment I blinked at him in silence. An odd, fleeting sensation rustled in my chest — like I had swallowed a handful of my silver butterflies.
“I know,” I said at last, as it if were nothing. “I am wonderful.”
Max shook his head, rolled his eyes. And in the dying scuff of his chuckle, we lapsed back into that quiet, comfortable silence.
