I strode through the streets with my hands shoved into my pockets. The sounds of the city did nothing to drown out my thoughts, and the fresh air did nothing to distract me. The memory of Tisaanah’s voice when it was not her own still lingered constantly in the back of my mind, and with it came the looming dread of all that would come next
— like an avalanche groaning above us, while I clutched the first broken stone in my palm.
I knew it would be bad. But I still had been caught off-guard by how hard it hit me — just to see Tisaanah when she awoke. How just looking at her made words tangle and fear tear through me like a mouthful of broken glass. I knew she had questions, and that soon, I would have to answer them. And I knew that I’d been too abrupt, too distant, this morning.
But I just… couldn’t. Not until I figured out how to confront all of this, and scraped up the courage to pull the lid off the box I’d sealed shut for nearly a decade. Soon, I told myself. Soon.
But for now, I just walked.
The shop was in the outskirts of the city, where buildings were still nestled closely together but far from the hustle and bustle of its center. It was a little thing, squished
between two much larger businesses, but had a stateliness to it — even the front steps were immaculate, the plants neatly groomed, the burgundy paint gleaming. Esren & Imat read a sign above the door.
It was unlocked. I slipped in quietly and leaned against the frame, feeling awkward.
The inside of the practice was just as neat and quaint as the outside. Immediately within the door was a small waiting area. Two folded paper barriers hid the entrance to the back section, and I could hear voices from behind.
“—still can’t open these fingers, Healer.” The first sounded as if it came from an older man, audibly anxious. “And I told you that if I can’t do that then I don’t know how I’m gonna keep at my work.”
“I understand.” Sammerin’s voice. It couldn’t be a starker contrast to his patient’s brogue — smooth, steady. “And from the beginning, the goal has always been to make sure you regain full use of your hand. That’s happening somewhat slower than I’d anticipated, but that is completely normal.”
I took a step to the side, so I could peer around the barrier. I could see Sammerin’s back, and the back of his patient’s sun-spotted, balding head.
“There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand, and four major tendons,” Sammerin said. “When you first came to me, twenty of them were crushed, and three of those tendons were totally severed. Not to mention all of the muscle and skin that had been torn apart. See?” There was a rustling of paper. “Today, you only have five fractured bones left, and the tendons are re-growing nicely. We just need to take our time to be certain that all of the delicate connective tissues reattach properly.”
He said all of these things as if they were simply a collection of facts, steadfast and gentle. He was good at that. Taking the insurmountable and, quietly, making it surmountable.
It wasn’t a surprise — or, shouldn’t have been a surprise. But here I was, peering into the life of a man I called my best friend, and it hit me all at once exactly how selfish I had been, how uncompromising. I could count on one hand the number of times I had deigned to visit Sammerin’s practice over these last years, all the while he dropped in on me four times a week just to make sure I hadn’t hung myself.
All the things I’d missed, just so I could lock myself up in a fucking cabin somewhere and pray at the altar of my own isolation.
Behind me, I heard a door swing open, and a familiar voice pipe up. “Max? What’re you—”
But then, a thump!, then a crash!, then a shatter.
When I looked behind me, Moth was on the ground, surrounded by scattered instruments and broken glass, and an overturned side table.
“Hi, Moth,” I said.
“Hi, Max,” he replied, somewhat sheepishly.
“Moth. How many times have I reminded you to—” Sammerin appeared from behind the barrier, then stopped short when his gaze fell to me.
“Max.”
His demeanor shifted, falling into seriousness, as if something about my face or posture alone told him that something was very wrong. And, of course, as always, he was right.
I gave him a smile that probably looked more like a grimace and a weak wave. “Hi.”
 |
SAMMERIN LISTENED, ever-patient, as I told him the whole sorry thing.
It all sounded so ridiculous. Borderline insulting, actually. After all, he had spent roughly eight years holding me together after the war and the Orders and Reshaye had all ripped me apart — holding me together as if I was just a collection of limp limbs, like any of his grotesque battlefield corpses.
And here I was. About to step back into it again. A slap in the face.
When I was done, he sat there silently, digesting everything he had heard.
“I knew something was wrong,” he said, at last, “when you voluntarily appeared in public.”
I mustered a weak scoff. “In my defense, I’ve been downright social lately.”
Sammerin crossed his arms and watched me, a slight furrow in his brow. One would think that after all this time, I would be better at reading him, instead of just sitting here squirming under his assessing gaze like a child waiting to be scolded by a parent.
“So.” I cleared my throat. “That’s it. And you know. I mean. You know what I have to do.”
He lowered his chin in the ghost of a nod. “Yes.”
“Yes? I was expecting something more along the lines of, ‘This is a terrible decision, Max, what the hell is wrong with you?’”
A tiny, humorless smile. “I know exactly what’s wrong with you.” Then it faded as he asked, “It’s done, then?”
My answer physically hurt. “Blood pact and all.” He winced. “This is ugly, Max.”
Ugly was the kindest possible term for what this was.
When I spoke again, my voice was rougher than I had intended. “Those bastards should know better. They saw what that thing can do. I can’t just let it go. And I can’t just leave her there.”
The wrinkle between his brows deepened. “You would be giving them exactly what they want.”
“I know it.” I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “And… there is one other thing.”
“You’re asking me to go, too.”
He said it as a smooth, matter-of-fact statement, not a question. Ascended, how did he always know?
I cleared my throat. “The thing is… If you don’t do it, who will? I don’t trust those people. But you know her. You know she’s not— a tool or a monster.”
Sammerin gave me a small nod, still unreadable.
“I know that this is a big thing to ask of you. And I would understand if you wanted to tell me to where to go.”
There was a long, agonizing silence.
“There have been a lot of bad days,” he said, slowly. “During the war. After. But the one I think about the most is the day after it happened.”
He didn’t need to say what “it” was. There was always only one “it”, one event that loomed over them all. Even though we had never broached this subject. At least not so directly. To have it thrown out there in the open now left me momentarily off-kilter, especially in the wake of these last few days.
“I don’t remember,” I said. The days after my family’s death were a smear of nightmares, dark and runny like bleeding ink. Hours, days, weeks. Gone.
“Good.” His eyes flicked to me, and there was something in them that I rarely saw on Sammerin’s face. Regret. “I hope you never do. But I think about it often. And I think about what would have happened if I had been there one day earlier.”
He said this, as always, calmly. So calmly that it took me a minute to realize exactly what he was admitting. When I did, I was stunned. Speechless.
All these years, and I’d had no idea that he had been carrying that kind of guilt. He’d never told me. Never so much as revealed a hint of it.
“You shouldn’t,” I murmured, at last. “It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
But Sammerin just shook his head and said, “It was my job.”
To keep me — to keep Reshaye — under control. His particular abilities, control of human flesh, made him the perfect failsafe. He could force my body down, force my lungs to shrivel or limbs to lock. Terrible. Humiliating. Painful.
But effective.
That was, after all, why the Orders had partnered us. He was the leash.
“I told you to go,” I said, and even as the words left my lips, I knew they were an understatement. I’d forced him out. I was grieving the lives lost in Sarlazai, horrified by myself and the creature that lived inside me, heartbroken by Nura’s betrayal. And I let all of that consume me until I was cruel and selfish and fucking stupid. I just wanted to be alone.
Well. I got my wish, didn’t I.
I leaned forward. “Listen, Sammerin. That day was a tragically perfect set of circumstances. A flawlessly aligned, cosmic event of cascading shit. It doesn’t matter what might or might not have happened if you were there, because you weren’t. But even if you were, maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe the shit would have just cascaded a little differently, and there would have been one more body dragged out of that house.”
I blinked away that brief flash of possibility before I let it settle.
Because therein lay the one certainty: if that had happened, I wouldn’t have made it through these last eight years alive.
He let out a long breath, but said nothing, his eyes lowered.
“Alright?” I pressed.
“Alright.”
Then his gaze met mine, and the well of emotions in it was so unnervingly stark — the reluctant setting down of a weight.
“I never want to see a day like that again,” he said. “So yes. I will go.”
Relief flooded me.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
The only words I could find, even though it was too weak of a response.
Sammerin shrugged. “You’ve saved my life enough times. And…” His expression hardened, just for a moment. “…Tisaaanh deserves better.”
Then he cocked his head, smirking. “Perhaps next time, though, you could choose a more mundane paramour. Maybe a baker. Then we could just sit around eating pies instead of throwing our lives into such exciting disarray.”
I barked a scoff, grateful to let the tension break. “It’s not like that.”
“Hm.” His eyes narrowed. Then he added, “I expect to be paid exorbitantly, of course.”
“Of course,” I replied.
As if there was enough money in the world.
|
I HAD one more stop to make before I would return to the Towers, and I dully dreaded it. Yet another thing that I never thought I would have to do again. I wove through the dim alleyways of downtown, stopping at a familiar, dusty storefront. I couldn’t help but eye the place where we had passed the man with the green coat and matching bird last time Tisaanah and I had come here. Nowhere to be found now.
Via looked thoroughly unsurprised to see me — so unsurprised that it was a little unnerving — and invited me in with casual nonchalance. She wore only a garish, silky robe tied loosely around her waist. As she led me back to her workshop, I earned a lazy wave from an equally half-dressed man lounging on a sofa.
I was glad I didn’t arrive ten minutes earlier.
“So, Max. What can I do for you?” She lit the lights in the back room, one by one. With each new flame, more blades slit the darkness, cleaving through shadows with shocks of reflected gold.
“I need a weapon.”
“I remember a time when you said you wouldn’t need one again.”
Ugh, don’t remind me.
“Turns out I was wrong.”
“I knew something was going on when you asked about the Chraxsylis. That’s heavy shit.”
“You’re coming perilously close to asking questions, and I thought that went against your policy.”
She cocked her head. The dim light enhanced her severe features, cutting shadows across the dramatic panes of her face. She looked downright otherworldly. Via wasn’t a Wielder, but I’d bet my life that she had some kind of magic sensitivity. She needed it to make the kind of weapons she made as well as she did, and beyond that, her perception was nothing short of uncanny.
“It doesn’t need to be anything fancy,” I said. “Just something better than whatever standard-issue garbage they’d try to—”
Via padded across the room and opened a closet. My words were drowned out briefly by a series of clatters as she dug around — and when she turned, I forgot what I was about to say.
Ascended, I hadn’t looked at that in years. Wouldn’t have expected the sight of it alone to punch me in the gut
quite like it did.
“You kept it,” I breathed.
“You think I was going to let one of my best pieces get dumped in the trash or gambled away? Left in a brothel alleyway somewhere?” She clicked her tongue, shaking her head.
“You could have resold it.”
“I knew you’d need it back one day. Besides, it loves you. Here.” She extended her arm, holding the weapon out to me. “Don’t be so scared of it.”
Truth be told, I was a little scared of it.
I reached out, and my hands slid easily into memorized, well-worn position.
Via had crafted this for me almost ten years ago. It was the length of a spear, but double ended, forged from bronze that was so lightweight that it seemed to stretch the bounds of feasibility, elegant swirls and scrollwork dancing along its length. The blade on one end was pointed, made for stabbing. The other slightly curved, for slashing. But more importantly…
I spoke to it as I had years ago, and it understood me just as easily. It would have been easy to mistake the divots that curled over its length for decoration. But with the addition of my magic, they lit up like trails of molten fire. Flames pooled along the blades’ edges.
Another thought, and —
The staff split in two in my hands, separating in the middle into two separate weapons. I put them back together, melding them into one. Spun it. Separated again. Seamless.
“Need any tweaking?” “No, it’s…”
Perfect. It was almost terrifying how right it still felt.
“Of course it is.” Via gave me a little, pleased smile. “And I have one for her too.”
I must have looked as startled as I felt, because she let out a laugh. “The world isn’t as unpredictable as you seem to think it is, Max. Besides, I heard she was going to go save the world or something, wasn’t she? I thought she’d need something one day, and I felt… inspired.”
Sammerin, you gossip.
The truth was, I was going to bring something back for Tisaanah. I wasn’t about to let her walk into chaos with some clumsy, standard Guard sword. That would be downright insulting.
“You know,” Via went on, returning to the closet, “women always come in here looking at the pretty silver bows or the little dainty daggers and those kinds of asinine things. But I thought… well. She seemed interesting.”
She turned around holding a long, curved, burgundy sheath. Then she slowly withdrew one of the most exquisite blades I had ever seen.
It was long and delicately curved, with an angled, pointed tip. But most strikingly, it was made out of two shades of metal, gold and platinum twining together in a wild, organic dance, like the roots of two trees tangling underground. In a few gaps between the two, I could see that the center was hollow — offering veins that would accommodate magic, like mine did.
She handed it to me, and I examined it. It was impossibly light, considering its length.
“This had better not snap in two on her.” “You insult me with that implication.”
She was right. For all my grumbling, I had never known Via to produce anything less than an impeccably crafted weapon.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, admiringly, and I had to nod.
Beautiful and functional. Just like Tisaanah. “I named it,” Via said. “Il’Sahaj.”
“Il’Sahaj?”
“It’s Besrithian. It means, ‘blade of no worlds’ or ‘blade of all worlds.’” At my confused glance, she clarified, “In old-tongue Besrithian, ‘aj’ means both ‘none’ and ‘all.’”
“That’s impractical.”
“Impractical, sure. But certainly poetic.” “Seems a little far up its own ass.”
“My art pieces are my children, Max. I name all of my children. Even yours.”
“I don’t even want to know.”
She smiled, shrugged. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you. But I figure, you can’t go around breaking chains and freeing civilizations with a boring weapon without a name.”
I could hardly take my eyes off of it. It was, I admitted, the perfect thing for breaking chains and freeing civilizations. And it fit — fit Tisaanah so perfectly that it was hard to believe that Via had only met her once. She wouldn’t know how to use it at first, of course, but what a thing to grow into.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “You’ve outdone yourself. How much do I owe you?”
“Consider it moral reparations for all of those dirty, dirty weapons contracts I do,” she said.
She ushered me to the door, waving away my further insistence on payment. “Go do something with your lives. And Max…” She paused at the entrance, mouth twisted in thought. “Try not to slide back into the shit.”
No promises. “I’m doing my very best.”
“Well, good luck. To both of you.” And with that, she melted back into the warmth of her apartment, leaving me standing there holding two beautiful weapons that felt at once painfully familiar and deeply uncomfortable in my hands.
I dropped a bag of gold coins in her letter box before I left.
