Six: Entanglement

They didn’t speak of the kiss or of conjuring again. True to her word, Ra made an earnest effort to learn to do as her hosts did, and Peta, oblivious to Ra’s abilities, seemed pleased to take her under her wing.

Jak spent the darkening days building a set of furnishings for Ra in the empty chamber along the front spoke of Mound RemPeta. It was a custom for the mounds to be dug with one room greater than the size of the moundhold, a gesture of the openness of their familial communities. Ra hadn’t precisely been welcomed with open arms, but it was winter, and she was without kith or kin, and she had come to them, for whatever reason. More practically, Jak wasn’t enjoying the hard bed of the hearth.

From an afternoon by the fire learning to spin the fine qirhu wool, Ra wandered in to watch Jak sanding the posts of the new bed in her burgeoning den. “You do beautiful work,” she said from the door.

Jak grunted a vague acknowledgement without looking up.

“I appreciate it, Jak. It’s such labor.” Ra sat on the bare frame. “It’s getting so much colder at night. I’ll need to make myself one of those thick blankets. A quilt,” she added, as if to herself. Almost as an afterthought, the exquisite threads of a delicate, embroidered blanket flowed into her hands in a reverse unraveling. She wrinkled her brow as she smoothed the fabric against her lap. “How long would it take you to make this?”

Jak grabbed the blanket from her, eyes on the door. “Don’t, Ra. I thought we talked about this.”

Ra gave Jak a childlike frown. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Get rid of it.”

Her expression shifted into something unreadable, and the dark eyes narrowed. “Do you want to see destruction, Jak? Do you want to understand it?” She stared at the quilt, her face smoldering with an emotion that seemed to have little to do with Jak’s disapproval of this incidental conjuring. “Destroy.”

The quiet word hurtled forth like a snake striking without warning from a nest in the grass, and the fibers of the blanket burst into a thousand bits of thread and fabric. Dozens of minute splinters pierced Jak’s skin, tiny needles made of wool, and Jak fell against the wall, blinking back sharp tears, hands shaking in a spasm of astonishment.

But Ra seemed more shaken than Jak, her face paler than normal, and her wide eyes dripping once more with those alarming tears.

“Sooth, Ra,” Jak whispered, taking out a handkerchief and stepping toward her to wipe at the dark streaks.

Ra stopped Jak’s hands and held them palm-up. “I injured you.”

“Just a sting. It’s nothing.” Jak looked about. “Much like the quilt.”

Ra bowed her head, hair falling over her face. “It’s difficult,” she said. “Suppressing one’s nature.”

“Yes, I know.”

She stroked Jak’s calloused palms absently. “I’ve begun to dream. Weaving the tapestry of my former life thread by thread. So slowly, like the making of a quilt by hand. What I’m learning is not so much the certainty of what was, but convictions. I don’t believe the fluid nature of matter is the sole province of some unfortunate mystics who received their just deserts—nor that my conjuring makes me one of them.”

Jak moved Ra’s hair aside to see her face, and the dark eyes came into focus. “Their just deserts, Ra? That seems harsh.”

Ra shook her head. “I rise each morning with convictions,” she repeated, her voice taut with something like hatred. “The Meer were cold and cruel and deserving of death.”

There were still light marks on Ra’s cheeks where she had scored them with the simple act of weeping. Convictions, thought Jak, could be dangerous things.

Jak was careful around her afterward and tried to keep some distance between them, but even without effort, Ra drew Jak irresistibly into her orbit like some dark, exotic sun. Whatever she was—magical being or madwoman—one thing was crucial: Jak had to keep her away from Ahr.

It didn’t prove difficult. Jak avoided Mound Ahr, and Ahr, in turn, made no attempt to patch things up. By the time the Heart of Winter was upon them, it had been nearly two months since they’d argued. Shortly after the solstice, Haethfalt weather generally took a turn for the worse, and they might not see each other again until spring. The prospect was unsettling. Not talking to Ahr was unsettling.

Chosen to host the annual feast marking this shortest day of the year, Mound RemPeta bustled with activity as they prepared for their guests, but a trip to see Ahr the next morning was in order. Whatever secrets they kept from each other, Jak needed to know that they were still friends—and if they weren’t, that at least he was okay.

A steady fall of snow had turned to windy drifts by early afternoon, and Jak worried it would keep the guests away, but the clans came, and Mound RemPeta was soon pleasantly filled with people shuffling off the cold in the spiral stairwell and piling their wraps in Jak’s arms. Geffn and Keiren plied the guests with warmed kettles and drew them in toward the scent of chestnuts on the fire, while Rem finished up the roast. But the party began in earnest when Peta and Mell came from the kitchen with their magnificent trays of breads and pastry, sap sugar drizzled on the tops and blending in the air with the smell of the savory dishes. Ra followed somewhat shyly, bearing a tray of delicate little cakes she’d baked herself after spending days ensconced in the kitchen with Peta learning her secret techniques.

Jak tensed with misgiving when Ra was at last introduced as the mound’s newest member, but the neighboring clans welcomed her and the party toasted her health. In a small ceremony in which the members of the mound passed a blessing cup and each took a sip, Ra’s name was written into the moundhold.

Rem was the last to drink, and he held up the empty cup with their neighbors as witness. “Mound RemPetaJakGeffnMellKeirenRa welcomes you. Blessed Heart of Winter!”

The Haethfalt clans cheered and drank to the mound, and the feast began.

Ra smiled at Jak as she helped Peta and Mell dish up the plates for their guests. She’d never seemed so happy or at ease. Perhaps everything would work out after all. Nothing alarming had happened in weeks—no conjuring, no tears of blood. She was one of them now and had thrown herself into mound life with enthusiasm.

When she filled Jak’s plate, she leaned across the table and planted a kiss on Jak’s cheek. “Blessed Heart of Winter,” she whispered.

“Blessed Heart.” Jak resisted the urge to touch the warm cheek Ra had blessed and ignored Geffn’s glower from across the room, determined not to let him spoil the day.

Plate heaped with food, Jak removed to the cool steps to wait for the best part of the celebration. Once everyone had been served, the lamps were extinguished, and then the flicker of individual candles began to burst from the darkness as each person added a light in turn. The glow was low and beautiful from the dark entrance.

In the midst of this ritual, a faint rap came at the door above, and Jak jumped up to answer it, setting the plate and the candle in its canning jar aside.

Ahr waited in the breezeway, looking over his shoulder at the darkening sky. Heavy clouds had shrouded the settlement since morning, and the snow was now coming down thick, driving against his back as he’d crossed the moor from the valley. He shouldn’t have come. The invitation had been extended before his falling-out with Jak. He had no idea what kind of reception he was going to get.

The door swung open, and he turned to see Jak staring with a frozen smile, obviously not expecting him. Shit. He inclined his head in a vague nod of greeting, not knowing what else to do. “Jak.”

“Ahr…” For once, Jak was at a loss for words.

He hunched his shoulders into his collar as snow trickled down the back of his neck. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come.” Ahr turned to leave, but Jak stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Ahr, wait. Please. Of course you’re welcome. I just—I’m surprised to see you.”

It wasn’t the most enthusiastic of invitations, and Jak looked profoundly uncomfortable, but the smell of the feast rising up from below made his stomach grumble, and he’d be damned if he was going to walk all the way back in this biting wind without something warm in his belly.

Jak took his coat, leading him down the steps toward the low din of voices amid the glimmer of candles, and Ahr suffered an unexpected flash of memory: lights from a thousand candelabra reflecting in the dark obsidian of a temple floor. He clenched his fists, the sharp pressure of his nails against his palms driving the unbidden vision away.

Someone handed him a plate and drew him toward the table, and he tried to keep himself together, ignoring the looks he was getting from Haethfalters who were none too fond of him.

“Ahr, dear, I don’t believe you’ve met our new moundmate.” Ahr glanced up at Peta’s welcoming voice. A dark-haired woman serving the roast raised her head. “This is Ra.”

The name assaulted him, and Ahr fought the urge to recoil. He gripped the edges of his plate with whitened hands and stared with the rush of the flooding Anamnesis in his ears. He’d misheard. That couldn’t be what Peta had said.

She peered at him through the wavering light, lithe and long-limbed, with a face framed in tresses of black that shone as though anointed with oil. Candlelight danced in its depths like the glinting of gemstone beads and gold pieces—the wealth of a soth swinging at the ends of a god’s locks.

His insides seemed to have turned to liquid. Ahr was afraid for the first time he could remember.

The pale cheeks drained of color as she met his eyes, and she dropped the serving fork with a clatter onto the floor. Ahr set down his plate with monumental control and turned toward Peta beside him. “Excuse me. The water closet?” The older woman motioned toward a darkened hallway, and Ahr stepped away, making his way to the room at the end of the hall as though he weren’t completely undone. Once inside, he closed the door and sank against it, no longer able to stand.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be Ra. Ahr had seen the Meer bludgeoned unrecognizable long after the life had left him, wasting on the steps of his temple without a proper cremation. Ra couldn’t have returned without the purifying ritual of fire; it was impossible. Ahr buried his head in his arms and attempted to weep, but the air choked from his chest in a dreadful way. He was a man, and unused to crying.

When he at last drew himself together and opened the door, Jak was waiting in the shadows like a hooded executioner. “I need to talk to you.”

“Jak—”

“I want to know what your intentions are.”

Sweat dotted his forehead and his stomach churned, the circular corridor seeming to spin beneath his feet. “My what?” Jak stood blinking at him in the flickering candlelight, eyes drawn to Ahr’s hands as he turned the ring on his finger in agitation, an unconscious habit he couldn’t seem to break. The red center caught the light as it appeared and reappeared in its nervous revolutions. He lowered his hands, trying to keep them from shaking. “I think I should go.”

The gray eyes were shadowed with a look of mistrust. “Are you a Meerhunter? I want the truth.” The words barely penetrated. Ahr couldn’t speak, as though trapped in a waking nightmare, unable to draw breath enough to cry out. “It was yesterday,” he’d told Cree. Hell, it was today. It was always.

Jak gave him a sharp nod and turned away to use the water closet. “Maybe you should go.”

Ahr’s refusal to answer had spoken volumes. Returning to the gathering room in the wake of his wordless departure, Jak looked around for Ra but didn’t see her. Geffn, who’d been hovering at her side like her faithful squire, was standing alone near the staircase. Jak glanced at him. “Have you seen Ra?”

Geffn answered in clipped tones. “She needed some fresh air. She said she’d only be a minute.”

Jak looked up at the door. “Was that before or after Ahr left?”

“Ahr left?”

“Shit.” Jak hurried up the stairs. Ra’s cloak and boots were gone. Outside, the breezeway was empty, and the moor was deserted.