HER OTHER SELF

“I am sorry,” Karigan told Fastion, “about Ellen and Willis, and the others who died.”

They stood in an open space of the encampment set aside for weapons training. The day was gloomy, the summits of the mountains cloaked in clouds.

“They died well,” he replied, “doing what they devoted their lives to. They will be honored on Breaker Island. And avenged.”

Death is honor, Karigan thought.

“No more talk,” Fastion said. “You will show me what you are able to do.” He handed her Colonel Mapstone’s sword.

She licked her lips in trepidation. So here they were, her first true training session since the wounding of her back. She hadn’t had time to think lately of what the consequences would be if she could not fight at the level she once had. Too much had been going on. However, on her journey from the north, she’d had more than enough time to worry about it, and now it all came flooding back. She’d lose her status as swordmaster, of course. No more black silk knotted around the blade of her sword beneath the hilt. They’d probably revoke her status as an honorary Weapon, as well. She’d worked hard to attain swordmastery, and being an honorary Weapon? She still wasn’t quite sure why the Weapons had bestowed such a distinction upon her, but it had made her proud. It was a mark of respect from the realm’s most skilled warriors. Nyssa’s work may have stripped her of all that.

Worse, if her sword work was found to be lacking and mastery taken from her, how would she ever have confidence in herself again? What would she do? She’d be a failure.

Failure . . .

That word again. She did not know if it was Nyssa or herself who had thought it, but what was the difference?

“You can avoid this no longer,” Fastion said. “We must find out the extent to which your injury limits you.”

He directed her through a series of forms. She was slow and stiff, the finer points of the forms awkward. The stiffness of her back muscles eased as she warmed up, but not entirely. Her extension, and thus her reach, were poor. She could feel her efforts pulling at her damaged back, which limited her reach and threw off her footing and balance. In a fight, an opponent could easily push her away, or even knock her down.

When she finished the series, Fastion’s expression remained impassive. He gave her another set, and she did her best, but experienced the same difficulties, but this time she began to tire. Not only had the muscles of her back been affected, but others in her arms, shoulders, and torso had lost conditioning from lack of use.

Afterward, she felt the taut discomfort in her back and found herself stretching this way and that to ease it. She wished for the healing hands of Gweflin in Eletia.

“We’ve work to do,” Fastion said, “but you are doing better than I feared.”

“Really?”

“You are surprised?” he asked.

“Well, yes. I—I thought I’d be stripped of my status as a swordmaster and everything.”

He raised an eyebrow, which was almost all the emotion she ever saw from a Weapon.

“The lashing you received,” he told her, “might have prevented you from lifting a sword ever again, physically or mentally. Probably the fact that you have had to remain active despite the pain has served you well. Yes, you have work ahead of you, and yes, we’ll have to start with basics, but strength and speed can be rebuilt, and technique refined with practice.”

“Are—are you sure?”

Now he raised both eyebrows. “When you lost the use of your right eye, did you find it difficult to adjust?”

She had. She’d walked into door frames, tripped down steps, and had felt generally unbalanced. “Yes, but—”

“What of your Weapons training?”

She thought back. Before she had ever lost the sight in her eye, Drent had trained his swordmaster initiates to fight with various deficits, such as having to use their nondominant hand, or having their hearing muffled. One of the toughest exercises he put them through required them to fight with one eye covered. It had changed how she perceived angles and movements and depth. With her peripheral vision obscured on one side, her sparring partner was able to sneak up on her. She’d gotten pretty bruised during the swordplay because she kept miscalculating where her opponent’s sword was in relation to her own. Thank the gods they’d been using wooden practice blades at the time.

And then she had actually lost the use of her right eye and despaired of ever becoming a swordmaster, but Drent worked with her, and worked her hard, so that she could learn to compensate for her impairment. He taught her to use all her senses rather than rely solely on her vision.

“You overcame the difficulty of your sight,” Fastion said. “It will be the same for your back.”

She thought she’d drop to her knees in relief, and fleetingly thought of kissing him, but Fastion already had her working on stretches with forms used as the basis of many of them.

“If the pain becomes too uncomfortable,” he said, “we must stop. It makes no sense to injure your back anew.”

By the end of the session, there didn’t seem to be a part of her body that didn’t feel the strain and ache, but she was more hopeful than ever that she’d be back to her old form, or some version of it, with consistent work. She noticed Nyssa didn’t have anything to say about it. If the torturer had wanted to cripple her, she was the one who had failed.

When she left Fastion, she slowly made her way through the camp. She came across a group of workers taking a rest near a massive pile of firewood they’d been stacking. Sitting by herself on the ground was Lala. She gazed intently at a black-and-yellow tiger butterfly perched on her finger, beating its wings. Her hair was tousled by the breeze and shone brilliantly in the sun. She looked like any young girl admiring something beautiful she had found, when in reality, she wasn’t just any girl, but one endowed with powerful magic. Could she be swayed from the ways of Grandmother and Second Empire, or was it too late for change?

Karigan glanced at the other workers who chatted among themselves or sipped water. They seemed unconcerned by Lala’s presence among them. Perhaps they were unaware of who, exactly, Lala was, or what she was capable of. Farther afield, she spotted Donal keeping a close eye on her.

When Karigan’s shadow fell over her, Lala glanced up. “Do you like my butterfly?” she asked.

Karigan opened her mouth to respond, but did not know what to say. Lala’s voice was a younger version of Estral’s, and it was not only disconcerting, but a reminder that this girl was not normal.

“Butterflies start as ugly caterpillars,” Lala said, “but then they change and grow pretty wings. You shouldn’t have killed my grandmum.”

“I did not,” Karigan said, finally finding her voice, though the abrupt change of topic jarred her. “The aureas slee did. There are things you shouldn’t have done, like steal the voice of my friend. You must give it back to her.”

The girl was unmoved. “You were supposed to die.”

“So you’ve told me.”

“If you hadn’t escaped, Nyssa would have finished you.”

Karigan sighed. What did one do with a child like this? She thought about Connly asserting she was indeed a child. What Zachary intended by keeping her alive and unfettered was difficult to know. Had he some plan for her, or had her tender age caused him to hesitate?

“I am gonna make my grandmum proud,” Lala said, “and Nyssa, too.”

This was not, Karigan believed, a child who could be reformed. She would only grow more dangerous with time. Someone would have to make the ultimate decision of what to do with her.

The butterfly beat its wings more rapidly and lifted off Lala’s fingers. It flew in the erratic way of butterflies, carried to and fro on air currents. Karigan tensed, suddenly on guard though there was nothing unusual she could see about it. She started to step out of its way as it drifted in her direction, but it blurred suddenly and drilled into her forehead, into her skull. She gasped and staggered. A spell! Her sight burst with a kaleidoscope of yellow and black wings beating, beating, and then everything and everyone fell away into blackness.

She stood in a shaft of light surrounded by dark nothingness. Where was she? Where had everyone gone? What had Lala’s butterfly done to her?

Then she perceived she was not alone. Another stepped into the light, her very reflection, her twin. And yet, her twin was not entirely the same as her. She wore not green, but dark charcoal gray. No winged horse brooch was clasped to her longcoat. Her hair was long and loose as Karigan’s had once been before Nyssa cut it. It was also darker. This had to be some sort of dream, a vision.

“Who are you?” Karigan asked.

“I am your other self.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am the darker you. The darkness within that you fight so hard to repress.”

Karigan tried to shake herself out of the dream, but could not. If it was even a dream, she could not say.

“You wanted to kill the child,” her other self said. She slapped the end of a riding crop against her palm.

“Kill a child? I never—”

“You wanted to kill Lala,” the other self said. “You know you did. I know.”

“I never would.”

“Not even for a greater good? To prevent her from doing anything devastating in the future?”

Karigan had considered the future and what Lala could be capable of. She could rival Grandmother in power, lead another generation of Second Empire.

And yet, she could not bring herself to kill a child.

“Then you may have doomed our people,” her other self said. “All the innocents, including children. What is the greater evil, I wonder? Killing one child so all the others may live, or letting her go?”

Karigan placed her face in her hands. It was an impossible choice. She remembered the small graves at the farmstead in Boggs. The death of innocents.

“I am not like the Raiders,” she said. “I don’t kill children. And who is to say Lala will become like Grandmother?”

“If I am not mistaken, you have. She enjoyed helping with the torture of Zachary. She took Estral’s voice. What are the chances she does not take after her grandmother?”

“Because there are chances,” Karigan shouted, “she won’t necessarily grow up to be evil. It’s not a predetermined path.”

“Is it not?”

Was it? Karigan wondered. Were they all set on a predetermined course? No, she would not believe it. She had seen too much, the workings of the very universe, the threads that intersected and diverged across the heavens, the threads of fate that snapped or endured.

Paths could be altered.

Suddenly her other self was right in front of her, grabbed her chin.

“You haven’t the guts. You are too afraid. What was it you were thinking when Nyssa was lashing you and destroying your back? Let me think . . . Oh, why me? Why me? You were ready to tell Nyssa that Sacoridia’s king was right under their noses if only it would make her stop.”

“No!” Karigan pushed away from her other self even as a small part of her mind said, yes. “I don’t want to think about it.”

Her other self smiled. “Of course not, but true is true. You blamed Estral for your capture and torture, so why wasn’t she the one to suffer?”

“She—she did suffer. I’d never—”

“Admit it!” The other pointed the riding crop at her. Light flared around it. “You blame her.”

“All right. I blame her for going into the Lone Forest on her own, for getting us captured. She hadn’t listened when she was told to wait. She had to run off on her own. She . . .” Karigan stopped, her breathing was harsh. Every muscle in her body was taut. She unclenched her hands. “I forgave her. It was Nyssa who tortured me. It’s Nyssa who I blame.”

The other paused, half in the light, half in the dark. “But it should have been Estral chained to that beam.”

“No.”

“In your fear and agony, that’s what you wanted.”

Karigan turned her back to her other self. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

“Poor thing can’t handle the truth.”

“Go away.” She didn’t know how to leave this place she was trapped in.

“I can’t go away,” the other said. “I am part of you.”

Karigan whirled. “No, you’re not. You’re just Nyssa trying to trick me, torture me again.”

“I could tell you the names of the barn cat kittens you smuggled into your room to cuddle when you were seven and how unhappy your aunts were about the fleas. I know the boys you liked in school, then despised when they bullied you. I know your favorite chapters from The Journeys of Gilan Wylloland. Nyssa does not know these things. Nyssa is only a vengeful spirit and does not care. But I do because I am a part of you. I am you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“The truth is, you do believe me, you just don’t want to. Without me, you’d be dead.”

“Oh?” She and the other had begun circling one another, in and out of the light.

“You have killed. We have killed. Do you remember the first?”

Garroty, Karigan thought. A mercenary who happened upon the traitorous Weapons who had taken her captive as she attempted to deliver a dead Green Rider’s message to the king. Garroty had tried to— She closed her eyes and shook her head, not wishing to relive it but unable to forget his weight on her, the stench of his unclean body. The ghost of F’ryan Coblebay had urged her to action and she’d slammed her head into Garroty’s face. She’d caused the bones of his nose to shatter into his brain.

“Yes,” the other said, “we killed him.”

“Had to, or else he’d have . . .” Karigan shuddered, unable to say more.

“Without me, he would have succeeded and killed you after. Without me, you wouldn’t have killed him, or Torne the traitor, or any others who wished you ill. But why do you even fight? There is so little reward.”

A third stepped into the light. Karigan stilled. It was Zachary, and she watched as the other walked around him, as if inspecting a prize stallion.

“Is it all for him?” the other asked.

“Of course not.”

“He is your reward, is he not? You could take him. It is what you want, isn’t it?” The other ran her hand down Zachary’s cheek. He smiled as he gazed down at her. “Why wait? You could have him now. Who cares if he’s married? A king taking a mistress is practically a requirement of the position.” He took her in his arms. She rose on her toes to engage in a long and deep kiss.

Karigan turned away in disgust. Her heart pounded. Yes, she wanted him, but not like that. “Stop it,” she said. “Just stop it.” When she turned around, Zachary was gone, but the other stood as her dark reflection.

“Remember,” the other said, “you can take your reward any time. You deserve it. I’ll always be with you to help when it is time to claim it, or when it is time to kill. It’s all right to take a life when we’re saving our own, yes? It is all right to be angry, too, when we suffer because of the mistakes of others. Anger is good. You must not deny yourself. I am with you always, you are me.”

“I—”

And suddenly she was blinking in the sunlight, standing in the very same place as she had been before the strange dream or vision. The workers who’d been taking their break gave her strange looks. She’d been talking with Lala when a butterfly . . .

“Lala?” She looked around herself. “Where’s Lala?”