“W
ell, this is cute.”
I opened my eyes to the aggressive, blaring sun, which seemed like a personal insult to my throbbing head. I blinked again and a silhouetted form took shape, backlit to illuminate silver braids, arms crossed over her chest.
“Late night?” Nura asked.
“Just who I like to see first thing in the morning.” Max’s voice, still hoarse with sleep, came from beside me. I glanced at him only briefly as we pushed ourselves up from the ground. We hadn’t so much as touched, though we had fallen asleep inches away from each other. Still, something felt uncomfortably —- though not unpleasantly — intimate about the whole thing.
“Still? That’s flattering, Max. Maybe a little sad.” Nura watched us get up, not moving. Despite her quip, her voice was flatter than usual. Once I got to my feet and got a good look at her, it was obvious that she was exhausted. Purple shadows circled her eyes and the hollows of her cheeks. Whereas I had always thought she looked lithe and powerful, today that same body seemed thin to the point of frailty.
“Besides,” she added, eying us, “it’s actually nearly noon.”
Max grumbled something wordless.
“But then, I can’t judge you for doing whatever you have to do to get some rest after all that. You deserve it. I didn’t get the chance to tell either of you how well you did.” She looked from me, to Max, to me. “Clever idea.”
“Someone had to figure out something that didn’t involve crushing a few thousand people to death.” Max rubbed his left eye with the back of his hand, glaring at Nura with his right. “But hey. They shit in their own beds, right?”
Nura visibly flinched. “It didn’t come to that,” she said. “Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to her.” Max jerked his chin to me. “Now what can we do for you, Nura?”
“I came to speak to Tisaanah.” She looked me up and down. I crossed my arms over myself, suddenly very conscious of my cotton nightgown.
Taking that as his cue, Max grumpily excused himself. As he sauntered off to the cottage, he cast one glance over his shoulder, meeting my gaze for the first time since we woke up. There was something rawer and more honest in the look we shared.
“How has he been?”
I turned to see Nura staring after him as well, brows furrowed slightly, the corners of her mouth turned down. Her voice sounded so different in that shade of understated concern. But then, everything about her seemed so different. I almost wouldn’t have recognized her.
“Fine,” I said. Not entirely true — not all the time — but I knew it was what he would want me to say.
“A good teacher?” “Yes.”
A brief, faint smile tightened her lips. “I knew he would be.”
Nura’s gaze flicked back to me, and something grew more distant in it. “You did very well in Tairn. Better than I
even thought you would, I’ll admit. And beyond that, I owe you a personal thanks. So do the people of Tairn.”
I thought of the ruins. That stuffed dog. The devastated looks on the residents’ faces as they emerged from the basement of the tower. “Even still, they lost very much.”
“Yes,” Nura agreed, solemnly. “I’m sorry that you had to witness what you did.”
I knew instantly, even with the vague phrasing of that statement, that she was talking about herself — her vicious, brutal display in that tower. Even now, it was impossible not to look at her and remember it, a silhouette of stark white in a room of darkness, emanating terror.
“Why did you lie to Pathyr Savoi?” I asked. “Before his death?”
Nura’s face hardened. “It was only minutes away from being true. He was ready to make sacrifices that didn’t belong to him for his own personal vendetta. I have deep sympathy for his loss and his pain. But I have no patience for such terrible, dangerous selfishness.”
Right now, she looked like she had no patience left, period. Like whatever shields she had constructed between herself and the world were worn down.
“But I’m sorry,” she added, more softly, “that what I did affected you, too. No one prepared you for that.”
“No one ever does.”
A biting, humorless chuckle. It reminded me eerily of Max’s. “True.” Then, she said, “You fulfilled your end of the deal. And we’ll fulfill ours. Zeryth wanted me to give this to you.”
She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a wrinkled letter, sealed with silver wax pressed into the shape of the moon. The outside said only one word, rendered in perfect, curling script: Tisaanah.
I turned it around in my hands. Despite the fact that it was stored in Nura’s pocket, the paper was so cool to the touch that I nearly flinched.
“Thank you,” I said. Nura didn’t answer, and when I looked up again, her chin was tilted towards the cottage. Max had come outside again and was rearranging piles of firewood near the door. I couldn’t quite decipher the expression on her face. I prided myself on my ability to understand people — but Nura remained such a mystery to me, visible only in blurry, broad shapes, like a figure lingering behind ice-glazed glass.
“He went out there for you, you know,” she said. “So you wouldn’t be alone.”
“I know.” I felt the weight of that responsibility, even though it was oddly warm and comforting in my chest.
Nura’s eyes flicked back to me, a dull glimmer glittering as the corners of her eyes crinkled — the one sign of a small, distant smile. “I knew he would.”
Then, before I had the chance to say anything more, she raised her palm, uttered a tired goodbye, and folded away into the air.
 |
I WENT BACK to the cottage before opening the letter, reading it aloud as I paced around the living room. Max watched me with a cup of tea in one hand, the other loosely hanging into his pocket.
Tisaanah –
It made my day the first time Nura mentioned your name. I hear you have been trying to reach me. I offer you my deepest apologies for my absence and my silence.
I return to Ara shortly and I will not come back without every possible effort to fulfill your noble and well-deserved requests. You have my personal assurance, along with my deepest respect.
Always knew you had it.
– Z.
I LOOKED up when I was finished, catching the end of Max’s exasperated eyeroll. I flipped the paper over. Folded it. Unfolded it.
That’s it? A few sentences with a vague promise of… something?
“Zeryth and his personal assurances. I’m sure that was what you were hoping for.” Max slurped the final sip of his tea, shooting a sardonic stare to the letter in my hands. “But at least he gave you that sweet, patronizing little bit at the end. I’m sure it was all worth it to know that the dazzling Arch Commandant always believed in you—”
I didn’t even hear his bitter sarcasm. I nearly let the paper slide from my hands.
“Arch Commandant?” I squeaked. Max blinked at me. “What?”
“Zeryth is Arch Commandant?” “You didn’t know?”
“How I would know?” “How would I know.”
“You would know what?”
“I was correcting your Aran.” Max cocked his head. “You really didn’t?”
I looked down at the letter again, brow furrowed. I never would have imagined that the man I had spent so much time with could possibly be the most high-ranking member of one of the most powerful organizations in the world.
“He never said.”
“I’m shocked. I thought he’d start to melt if he went more than an hour without mentioning it.”
I paused, silent, turning this new information around in my head.
On one hand: this was good. Just to be known by name by the Arch Commandant had to be a good thing. No question.
On the other…
I felt something bitter and acidic seep into my stomach. I had dismissed Max’s anger on my behalf before, but now, to think that the damn Arch Commandant had befriended me in slavery and then left me there…
I clenched my teeth, allowing the tension of my jaw to cut off the rest of that thought. And I placed the paper on the table, folded neatly.
“It makes nothing different,” I said, curtly. “We’re late on training.”
