It’s another half an hour before Lark comes out of the study with Queen Mona, Rou, and Eloise. By now my voice is hoarse from telling the others the story of our trip, and I’m glad attention can finally shift away from me. Colm is the first to rise when the others come in. He approaches Lark, who looks bleary-eyed but not nearly as anxious as she did when we first arrived. She starts to apologize to him for wrecking his coach, but he doesn’t let her finish. He wraps his big arms around her, nearly lifting her off the ground. I grin and lean back against the couch as the others get up and head toward her.
Vynce stays behind with me. He combs through his coppery hair.
“This is wild,” he says. “I can’t believe you did all that.”
“A lot of it was dumb luck,” I say, watching Mama introduce herself to Lark, first with a handshake and then with a kiss to her forehead. Lark has to bend down to accept it.
“That stuff in the water scrape, though, and in the canyons . . . I mean, damn, even on all our training runs, when Ma likes to set stuff on fire and all that, we still know there’s water somewhere. We still know there’s someone to bail us out.”
I squirm on the couch. Lark is talking to Mama and Papa now, and her hand keeps flicking in my direction. Over the murmuring of the others, I can’t hear what she’s saying, but they’re listening closely, and it’s making me nervous.
“It’s like any other landscape,” I say absently. “There’s power in it, and you have to respect it. It’s just a different kind of power from home. I wouldn’t have made it without Lark.”
He snorts. “Always quoting right from the handbooks. I swear, you know more by heart than my entire rank.”
“Mm.” I tear my gaze away from Mama. “I notice you’re not in uniform. You’ve decided to travel as a civilian now?”
He takes a jam pastry from the coffee tray. “Now and forever—I turned in my badge.”
“You what?”
“Yeah, a few months ago. I guess you’d left already.” He takes a bite and says through it, “Not my thing.”
“Not your . . .”
He wipes his mouth. “Well, it was always kind of a guilt thing, working toward Woodwalker. We all thought it would break Ma’s heart if none of us took up scouting, and everybody else had one reason or another not to. Viya’s always been eyes-deep in politics—it’s her first time as regent when both Mama and Papa are gone, we’ll see if the mountains are still standing when we get back—and dear old Fighting Ida was always headed to the Armed Guard. And then of course you, and Susi hates to do anything that might tweak a knee and keep her from dancing. You know she’s taking lead for the Festival of Emergence this year? Anyway.” He shrugs, polishing off the pastry. “I always felt like it was sort of me or nobody. But I never really wanted Woodwalker. I’ve always enjoyed my music lessons more. I kept showing up late to training because I was playing with the canopy ensemble . . . you should see the drum Hiley’s got, it’s got three kinds of jingles . . .”
The rest of his words wash over me without registering. Instead, that one phrase cycles in my head over and over, like a moth around a flame.
And then of course you.
And then of course you.
You, who never had a reason to not be a scout. You, who just were—you, who just are, inherently, by nature of being you, unfit for it.
I stare into the space between us and the group around Lark while Vynce rattles on about fiddle strings and whistles. The thought of him so casually picking up and then tossing away the thing I’ve wanted my whole life boils in my stomach. Just because he didn’t want it. Just because he didn’t feel like it.
Lark is still talking to my parents, but now the group is drifting back toward the couches. Beside me, Vynce is still going.
“. . . so after I missed the next ridge run, Ma sat me down and told me that I shouldn’t be training if I wasn’t going to commit to it, and that if there was something else I’d rather be doing, I should do that instead . . .”
“We’re one seat short,” I say abruptly, shooting to my feet. Before he can respond, and before the others can fully turn their attention away from Lark, I scoop up my coffee and sidle out of the cluster of furniture. On the pretense of heading toward Professor Colm’s study for a chair, I slip instead to the staircase leading up to the second floor.
I pad as quietly as I can, leaving the murmur of their voices behind. Clutching my coffee, I head down the hall between the bedrooms—through the door to the spare room I see the floor littered with blankets and pillows, where Lark’s campmates have been sleeping. I reach the smaller staircase at the end and climb up it to the door to the roof.
Like most homes in the canyon hobs, the roof of the house is another living space, with a corner filled with garden plants, and another occupied by a hutch of nesting grouse. I go to the corner nearest the canyon and set my coffee down on the adobe wall. I lean forward on my hands, my gaze on the space between my thumbs. The sun is sinking toward the far rim, bathing everything in a rich golden light and throwing purple shadows. In the street below, a line of my parents’ guards stand quietly around the house, drawing stares from passersby.
I drag in a breath, my fingers tightening on the wall. I have to remind myself that I’m not angry at Vynce. There’s no one to be angry at, because it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just my stupid life, always bringing me right back to this reality. Lark was right, all those weeks ago, way back when she and I were traveling toward Utzibor.
Life can’t be changed, she’d said. We’re just meant to react to it.
I’d disagreed with her then, but I’m not sure I do now. Frankly, she’s the one who probably thinks differently now. Her life has changed. Her reality is completely new. But even with everything that’s happened, everything we’ve been through . . . my reality is still the same. It’ll always be the same.
The hatch to the roof creaks. I turn to see Mama appear from below. She climbs through and beats some of the dust off her uniform trousers.
“I saw you sneak off,” she says. “What’d your brother say to get you all hot and bothered?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “I just wanted to give everybody some space with Lark.”
“You might want to reconsider.” She joins me at the wall and leans on her elbows. “She’ll probably want a familiar face close by these next few days.”
“I’ll go back down soon,” I say. “But you’ll see—if anyone can take care of themselves, it’s Lark. She doesn’t really need me.”
“Sounds like you both needed each other on more than one occasion.” She looks sideways at me. “Navigating the water scrape with no gear, huh?”
“And flirting intimately with dehydration, yeah,” I say, not meeting her eyes. “Not to mention seizing a couple of times and making Lark deal with it.”
“Did you expect anything different?” she asks.
“No,” I say automatically, before realizing that yes, I absolutely had been expecting something different. I’d expected to make it to Utzibor and back without my body giving out.
She hooks a finger under her silver shoulder cord where it’s gotten twisted. “Seems to me taking on the Ferinno—more than once—is pretty significant even for someone who doesn’t have to listen quite as closely to their body.”
“If I’d been by myself I’d probably have died of exposure,” I say flatly.
“I didn’t say taking on the Ferinno by yourself. What’s that got to do with anything?”
I stop short of pointing out the two-night solo trip every trainee has to go through before becoming a scout, but I can’t stop my gaze from flicking sideways, landing briefly on the silver florets tacked to her collar, the first mark of rank any scout earns. Hers are tarnished with age, standing out against the more brilliant silver of her badge and the circlet over her brow. Badges and pins may come and go, but scouts don’t replace their florets unless one gets lost or broken beyond repair.
I let what I hope is a decent amount of silence lapse before I can change the topic.
“Vynce said he’d quit the Guard,” I say casually.
She puffs a strand of hair out of her face. “It was about damn time, too. He was setting a bad example. I’ve been telling him for years he didn’t have to keep it up, but like all my darling children, he doesn’t listen to me. He kept thinking he was going to break my heart if he quit.”
“Didn’t he?”
“Earth and sky, no. I kept telling him I’d rather he commit to something he really loved, but instead he drove me to insanity and made himself miserable in the process.”
“You don’t have any of us as scouts,” I point out.
“Your lives are yours, not mine,” she says. “I’ve always tried to push you all to make your own decisions.”
I nod, lifting my coffee cup. “Except me.”
“Why except you?”
I wave a hand to appear flippant. “Like the time you wouldn’t let me join the Wood Guard.”
“When you were ten?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I take a hasty sip from my cup.
“When you were ten you were having three or four seizures a week. You remember that time as well as I do—the cushions around your chair, the flock of folk who traveled with you all over the palace, the ban on riding and wading and standing at the top of a staircase. Those years, we were all trying to figure out how best to keep you safe and let you live your life.” She sighs. “I never thought you weren’t capable, just inconvenienced for a while.”
I force myself to stare out at the canyon—which hurts, because the sun is beaming directly across the rim. I drop my gaze to avoid the glare. “Then why didn’t you let me start later, when I started having fewer seizures?”
She looks at me, and from the corner of my eye I can see her eyebrows lift. “Because by that point you were getting ready to go to university. You’d been writing to Colm for a year without telling me. I thought you’d moved on, settled on something else. And after you left for Alcoro, you were here in Callais more than you were home.”
I hadn’t told anyone about writing to Colm because I was so afraid he’d say No, you’d better stay at home. I was so afraid he’d say I don’t think we can accommodate you. I was so afraid he’d say It’s too risky, Veran. I was so afraid he’d say all the things that I’d internalized after realizing the Wood Guard was out of my reach. If I didn’t tell anyone, nobody would have to know when I was turned down.
But he’d said yes, and then to my surprise, my parents had said yes. And I grabbed on to that yes like it was the last slip of air in a bottomless pool.
I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. “I liked the university, and studying Moquoian. I’m good at it. But I still wanted to be a scout.”
“Want, or wanted?”
“What?”
“Do you still want to be a scout?” she asks.
I lift my cup. “Kind of late now,” I remark over the rim.
“Why?”
“Ma, most kids start at age ten.”
“And we’ve established why you didn’t,” she says, turning to face me fully. She leans sideways on the wall and puts her fist on her hip. “That didn’t stop you from building fires on your balcony, or memorizing all the handbooks. You used to steal them from your brother’s room—I’d find them under your pillow.”
He never noticed, because he barely read them.
“Memorizing facts is a lot different from actually training,” I say bitterly. “Case in point—you know how I said we stopped the ashoki’s coach outside Giantess and tried to talk to her? We didn’t just stop it. We mounted a full-scale attack. It was my idea. I was up top, coordinating everybody with the scout birdcalls. And guess what? I screwed up. I screwed up so bad that Lark got captured and hurt and nearly executed, and Tamsin fell hundreds of feet and nearly died, and we all got separated. I had all the knowledge right here in my head, but I panicked, and it all fell apart. Bet Lark didn’t tell you that.”
“She did,” she says, with that sharp tone that means I’ve been disrespectful. “She said you made some mistakes, but afterward you beat a path to Tolukum Palace and tricked the bigot behind everything into outing herself.”
I take a breath, gripping the wall. The sinking sun is flooding the hob now, plunging the far side of the canyon into dark blues and purples.
Mama sighs and shakes her head. “Veran, I admit I didn’t do as much as I could have when you were younger to make a place for you in the Guard. But part of that, I think, was that you heard the not now as not ever.”
“Not now and not ever are the same for me, Ma,” I say. “Life . . . can’t be changed. I just have to react to it.”
“That’s crap, Veran,” she says flatly. “If life can’t be changed, why did you work so hard to undo the Moquoian labor system?”
“My life can’t be changed, then,” I say bitterly.
She snorts. “Not with that attitude. Can you wish away the bows? No, and that’s not insignificant. But you never seemed to see it as a lock and key before. What’s different now?”
I’m silent, flooded suddenly with the vision of Lark on the ground beside the carriage, of Tamsin disappearing, of Fala hurting so many people.
I take a painful breath, lift my cup, and then set it unsteadily back down again. “I just . . . I made so many mistakes, Ma, so many. Mistakes that cost other people . . .”
“Earth and sky, Veran, who hasn’t? When I was your age . . .”
“You were a Woodwalker,” I say quickly. “Don’t try that on me—when you were eighteen, you’d been a Woodwalker for two years, the youngest in decades—”
“And I made piles of mistakes,” she says, quirking an eyebrow.
“You stood up for the other Woodwalkers, you challenged everything that was happening in the Silverwood . . .”
“You’re not listening, Veran.” She raises her hands and face entreatingly toward the sky. “Mercy, that I should be blessed with five children who never listen to their mother! Yes, at eighteen, I was a Woodwalker, and a good one, and I knew it—and I let myself believe I owned the place. Shouting at a king may seem brave or legendary a few decades down the line, but it was stupid, and it ruined my life for five years. It would have been longer if I hadn’t gotten lucky a few times. It was a bad choice, Veran. And yes, it eventually led to the Allied East, but it just as easily could have not. I was a hundred times more likely to die nameless in some Paroan port. Don’t conflate mistakes with failure. Folk don’t tell legends about people who made no mistakes. Folk tell legends about the people who overcame them.
“And what’s more—look at me, Veran.” I glance at her and then slide my gaze down to her florets again, just so I don’t have to meet her eyes. “What’s more—you making mistakes isn’t about the bows. You might not be able to change the bows, but you can work past your mistakes. They’re bruises, not scars. Are you going to let them control you instead?”
My chest squeezes, and I look back out at the sky. It’s an honest sunset now, with a few slips of clouds glowing pink and orange near the horizon.
Mama isn’t looking at the sunset—she’s still looking at me, with her fist on her hip again.
“How long were you out in the Ferinno?” she asks.
“A couple days. A week, I guess, after finding Lark, and then a few more days in the water scrape.”
“Did you really revive Lark from dehydration? She didn’t make that up?”
“I mean, I was a mess—”
“Yes or no?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And you tracked her to her camp?”
“Which time?”
She gives me an appraising look. “You did it more than once?”
I try to wave away her scrutiny. “It was just lucky—the first time I used a powder that made her leave a trail, and the second time the ground was all soft . . .”
“That’s not luck, Veran, that’s skill, and knowing what you have. Final question—did you rescue a sick person from a burning building and carry her through the desert to civilization?”
“Tamsin? It . . . it wasn’t like that, Lark was there, too . . .”
“Good,” she cuts me off. “That’s not just knowing what you have, but who you have. Remote camping.” She ticks off on her fingers. “Tracking. Wayfinding. Medical emergencies. Knowing your gear. Knowing your team. Knowing yourself. Learning from your mistakes. I think that just about covers it.”
She steps back and points at the ground. “Kneel.”
My face heats. “Why?”
“Because you’re supposed to kneel. Everybody else has to—you’re not special.”
“Mama . . .” I fidget like a little kid, flattening my tangled hair, rubbing the back of my grimy neck, straightening my beat-up tunic. I know what she’s trying to do. I think of all the dozens of ceremonies I’ve spied on, watching trainees fresh from their nights in the forest get down on their knees in front of her while she swears them in. I think of all the pomp and symbols of the event—the bugle fanfare, the silver florets in a carved box, the presentation of the green shoulder cord, the other scouts watching, the row of Woodwalkers up front, the trainee taking off their smooth boots and putting on their first pair with fringe, the retelling by one of the older scouts of their two nights in the wilds of the forest.
I realize I just went through that last bit, and it wasn’t lit with a blaze of glory. It was awkward.
“I didn’t do any of it by myself,” I protest one last time. “And I don’t want to get a spot in the Guard out of pity, just for folk to have to babysit me the whole time.”
To my surprise, Ma’s face hardens. “Out of pity? Do you think I’d place anyone in the Guard out of pity? I have a scout who’s blind, and one who can’t move his legs, and three who think and interact differently from their peers. I expect them to do their jobs, and do them well. Do you think I instated them out of pity?”
“No, that’s not what I . . .”
“I instate people because their skills meet the needs of the job and their team,” she says, her voice iron. “You do the whole organization a disservice by assuming otherwise. You’ve got to overcome this fixation on doing things by yourself. Nobody in the Guard does anything by themselves. Everyone has a cadre. Everyone has peers to rely on. Even the trainees doing their solo nights have people to help them if they get into trouble. I always have someone to get me out of trouble. You are so good at knowing what you have, but so stubborn when it comes to knowing who you have. You’re not alone, Veran. You’re not a rock in the sea. If you’re not willing to rely on anybody else, who can you demand to rely on you?”
She takes a breath, her gaze still locked on me, and when she continues, her voice is a bit gentler, but still firm. “It’s your decision to make, Veran, but keep this last thing in mind: if even half the things Lark told us are true, then you’ve been field-tested more than every single one of my Woodwalkers.”
I swallow, my racing thoughts landing on Lark. Lark, who once accused me of living my life all or nothing. There’s got to be something in between.
Something. Not all, not nothing, but something.
Maybe in chasing after the all I missed the something.
At long last, I lift my gaze from Mama’s collar to her eyes. She must be able to see the resolution in my face, because she nods and points to the ground.
“Kneel,” she says.
I kneel.
Mama reaches up to her collar and unpins one of her florets.
“What name do you take?” she asks.
Normally achieving rank would be an opportunity to take a new epithet. But that process deserves thought, and I find myself thinking of the uncomfortable, ant-riddled patch of briar that nettled me to my feet and down the road to Tolukum.
“Veran Greenbrier.”
“Do you pledge yourself to the care and keeping of the Silverwood Mountains, the defense of its resources, the preservation of its monarchy, the well-being of its folk, and the upholding of its alliances?” she asks, then, going off-script, adds, “Or whatever country you happen to be in at the time?”
Hot damn, I wouldn’t have thought those words would make me emotional. But the number of times I’ve stood off to one side, listening to her say them to someone else . . .
I swallow, vainly trying to keep my eyes from burning. “I do.”
“Address.”
“I do, Woodwalker Heartwood.”
“Do you dedicate yourself to the Royal Guard, to the Wood Guard, to the deference to your superiors and the support of your fellow guard?”
“I do, Woodwalker.”
“What pledge do you make?”
“My might is in my diligence,” I recite, my mouth dry. I spent an entire childhood gazing at the words carved over the Guard wing. “My honor is in my loyalty. My strength is in my integrity.”
“To which we’re all held.” This last phrase is normally a shout, ringing around the courtyard and then echoed back by everyone present. But now she says it simply, straightforwardly. No response from a boisterous crowd. The echo instead settles deep in my chest, feeling as big as the canyon yawning up to the sky in front of us.
Mama takes my fraying, sweat-stained collar and pushes the first floret pin through the fabric, tacking the wing down. She repeats it with the other side and stands back. Her collar has two little discolored marks where they’ve been pinned since she first got them.
“Veran Greenbrier, I bind you to your pledge and pronounce you a member of the Wood Guard of the Silverwood Mountains.” She holds out her hand with her seal ring facing out, the carved firefly flashing in the sunset. I lean forward and kiss it.
She jerks her thumb upward. I get to my feet, looking down at the space between our boots, trying to tamp down the stinging in my eyes. Behind her, the sun has finally slipped below the canyon rim, bringing rich new pinks and blues to the arching sky.
“Veran,” she says. She sets one finger against my chest. “You are worth so much more than you think. To me, to your pa, to your brother and sisters, to the people around you, and to the good of this beautiful, hurting world we live in. But your worth isn’t dictated by how much you accomplish, and nobody loves you because they feel sorry for you. We love you because you’re exactly who you are.” She prods my chest, gently. “Don’t forget it.”
I drag my thumb under my eyes and sniff. I nod.
She leans back. “You know you’ve saddled yourself with another layer of superior rank? Mother, queen, and Woodwalker. It’s binding now. Sworn and witnessed.”
“That’s a stretch, Mama,” I say hoarsely, grateful for her familiar banter. “Who’s my witness? The hens?”
In reply, she reaches up and plants her palm on the top of my head. Slowly, she turns me around, away from the sunset, back to the other side of the roof, where the door to downstairs is still propped open.
Standing on the staircase, her elbows hooked over the hatch and a grin on her face, is Lark.