40: A RUTHLESS FOCUS

Kalindra’s memories

One month after arriving on Devors

If the monks at the Devors Monastery ever contacted the high general to let him know that someone had tried to assassinate the man’s daughter-in-law and kidnap his grandson, Kalindra never heard about it. She pretended at brightness and innocence, or at least the humble dedication of the grieving widow. She found herself ignored except for the occasional lapse best described as “small toddler in a library.” But mostly, Nikali behaved himself and left her to read.

There were a truly astonishing number of books dedicated to the Devoran Prophecies, and under the best of circumstances, they existed in a constant state of scholarship, rearrangement, and analysis. In times like these? With demons on the loose and the very events the prophecies seemed most concerned with finally coming to pass? The library was full to capacity with scholars, including at least two Voices.

The library itself claimed to be the largest in the whole world, and while just on principle Kalindra doubted that was true, it was impressive enough to make such a claim plausible. The building was three stories high, each floor equal to two stories in any other building. All of it the most beautiful glowing white marble, veined with gold. It was all pillars and tall shelves and soft, quiet areas filled with tables and couches where one might read undisturbed. No fire was allowed inside the building—not that fire was prohibited, but that some magic simply made lighting a fire impossible—and the air smelled of old books and ink.

She hadn’t a clue in all the seas where to start looking.

Since everyone was reading, it was no particular obstacle to include herself in that number. In theory, she should have had advantages the others didn’t. For example, being able to definitively recognize certain passages that had already come to pass, as well as pinpointing exactly how. That should have made it relatively easy.

If there just weren’t so damn many books. She’d been looking for weeks, and still found nothing.

Then one day, while sitting on one of the cushioned couches, Nikali playing in her lap, Kalindra overheard something interesting. She’d been listening to the steady drone of scribes arguing the merits and origins of the prophecies. Did they mean anything? Were they predictions? The age-old prescriptive versus descriptive debate was alive and well here, with several of them arguing the prophecies were recipes and completely alterable, while others thought they described inviolate events.

“Bah!” a querulous voice protested. “Idiots, the lot of you. They’re none of that. They’re not prophecies at all. They’re histories.” Something hard, possibly a cane, tapped angrily against the tile floors.

A chorus of groans met this pronouncement. “Master Linyuwan, not this again!” someone much younger complained.

“Histories,” the first man, Linyuwan, repeated. “Histories of what have come before! Time is not what you lot think it is. I’ve memorized every prophecy. Every single one! I know what they really are.” A Devoran sect known as the Preservers once existed who used to attempt this very thing, although they typically divided the prophecies into sections rather than for any single person to attempt to memorize the entire collection.

More complaints. Nervous laughter.

Kalindra didn’t care much about the old monk’s statement on the true nature of the prophecies, but she was exceedingly interested in his claim to have memorized all of them. That might be the break she needed.¹

So after the group broke up and the younger scholars retreated to their respective cells, she set Nikali on her hip and followed Linyuwan. He evidently had a room in the library itself—proof of his seniority.

Just as she was about to knock on the doorway, he said, “Come in, Kalindra.”

As “wise old seer” tactics went, that one was effective, even if it was logical that he would know who she was.

She walked inside.

The office was a scrambled mess of messages and writing pinned to walls, or in several cases, written directly on to the plaster. And much of it did indeed seem to discuss the prophecies.

“You’re not safe here, you know,” Linyuwan said. Then he looked up from his papers. “Do you want something to drink? I have brandy and ginger wine.” He pursed his lips at a pile of bottles in a corner. “At least, I had ginger wine. Might be out now.”

“Uh, I just wanted to, uh—” She collected herself and repositioned a squirmy Nikali, who’d spotted the beautifully carved dragon inkstone on the monk’s desk with a determined hunger. “I was going to ask you about some prophecies, but what was that about not being safe?”

“Close the door behind you and have a seat.”

She did. The monk piled a mass of scrolls to the side, then wiped ink-stained fingers on his robes. “Ah, sorry, sorry,” he said. “Place is a bit of a mess.” He gave her a keen look. “Of course you’re not safe. There’s a whole gaggle of monks here who want to kill you. Idiots.”

She blinked. Kalindra had been operating under the assumption that it was the Royal Houses that were trying something and bribing the right monks for access. This implied …

“Why … why would monks want to kill me?”

It really wouldn’t do to forget that this man might just be lost in fantasies, considering his previous statements about the prophecies really being “histories.”

Nor would it do for her to lower her guard.

“Hmm,” he said, making a face. “You spend centuries collecting every scrap you can find that talks about the End Times. Not you you. Us you. We’ve spent centuries doing that. How long do you think it takes before some of us decide that maybe it’s possible to change things? To stop the impending catastrophe?” He sighed. “If only it worked that way. Those idiots just don’t understand.”

She was starting to feel distinctly uneasy. “What don’t they understand?”

“There’s a pattern,” Linyuwan explained, pointing to rows and rows of quatrains tacked up on the walls in messy columns. “Spent my whole life studying it, trying to piece together the connections, until finally I did: each loop, he leaves notes to himself for the next time.”

“He? Who’s he?” Kalindra asked.² Nikali started to grow antsy, so Kalindra pulled one of his favorite toys out of her agolé and gave it to him.

“Not sure,” the old man muttered, “but that’s not important. Someone’s doing it. It’s not what will happen. It’s what has happened.” He taped a stack of papers to the side. “And you, Daughter of Death, have been a very naughty girl in some of these previous cycles. Pretty easy, I think, to look at all this and think, Might be best for everyone to just kill her now and get her out of the way before she marries her demon husband and starts killing gods.”³ Linyuwan shook his head, tsking.

Kalindra’s throat felt dry. She had known the prophecies hinted at things that might reference her. Mother had never denied it. But Mother had always made it sound like those were slight, unimportant references, easily overlooked and not at all certain. Nothing like …

Demon husband? Really?

She clenched the fist she wasn’t holding Nikali with and let herself be grounded by the sharp bite of nails digging into her skin.

“I—” She cleared her throat. “I’m only staying as long as it takes to find out a piece of information. I’m trying to locate a Cornerstone called Grimward. I thought the prophecies—or histories—might hold a clue.” She kissed the top of Nikali’s forehead. “No, you can’t have that, dear.”

He sighed and chewed the ear of his toy elephant.

“Hmm. Grimward, Grimward, Grimward…” The old monk stood from his desk and walked over to one of the columns of paper, searching for a few seconds before he plucked a half dozen little stanzas off the wall. “Here we go. Any of these help?”

She scanned the list. She started to say no, then she noticed the last one.

The stone of death

Will chain the lash

Of favored daughters

And the wide, haunted sea⁴

Kalindra pressed a hand over the passage. Linyuwan had put a notation in the marginalia suggesting the passage might be referring to the Cornerstone Grimward, as well as a note that the normal (and apparently “ridiculous”) interpretation of the passage assumed it spoke in metaphor.

Like Linyuwan, Kalindra did not assume it was metaphor.⁵

Kalindra chewed on her lip. She had led a life that might charitably be called “interesting” and done things that she had hoped never to reveal to her husband, Jarith. Not all those sins could be laid before the doors of the Black Brotherhood. In her youth, for example, fresh from her own escape as a slave, she had taken a fellow escaped slave named Kohi Luzaka as a lover, and together they had plotted vengeance on all the spoiled, rich bastards who had ever profited off putting one human in chains for the pleasure of another. Later, Luzaka and Kalindra had parted ways, as lovers sometimes do. He’d become too violent, too unstable. A cult of assassins had seemed like a less violent choice.

A few years later, she’d heard he’d taken to calling himself the Lash.

Kalindra leaned back and stretched. If the Lash had Grimward …

She set Nikali down for just long enough to stand and then picked up her son. “Thank you,” she told the old man. “But I’m afraid none of that seemed familiar.”

He snorted, and she knew that he didn’t believe her even a little. Still, he didn’t press, for which she was grateful.

She made her farewells and hurried to pack.

---

The next day, Kalindra went down to the village, escorted by Wixan and several other monks he was quick to assert were most certainly not guards, even if they held swords no monks wore normally.

Kalindra looked out over the rolling green hills of the islands and found herself frowning.

“Yes, Lady Milligreest? Do you have a question?” Wixan smiled gently at her.

“I just—” She sighed. “It’s a shame Quur never let anyone build a city here.”

Wixan shrugged. “The currents here make that awkward.”

She adjusted Nikali on her hip. “On the western side of the islands, of course, but not everywhere. And this would be so much closer to Zherias, to Doltar. Why not use the islands as more than just—” She scowled. “What do they use the islands for? According to your maps, there are a few villages here and that’s it, but these islands could support so many more people than that.”

Wixan made a moue. “Oh. I honestly hadn’t considered that. I mean, I suppose it’s probably just … I mean…” He seemed at a loss.

Kalindra looked back at him. “You know what it is, right? Someone didn’t want to give the islands to Khorvesh, and letting them be their own dominion would break that sacred ‘eight’ number we’re so fond of. It would throw all the prophecies off.”

He laughed. “Maybe so! I never really gave the matter any thought, to be honest.”

Kalindra shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s go find Aego.”

Nikali clapped his hands together. “Aego!”’

“That’s right, little cub. We’re going to go play.” She smiled at her son and used blowing kisses into his hair as an excuse to look at the fishing boats tied up in the small harbor. While most of the boats were too small to be any more than local fishers, meant to be taken out for an hour or two and then returned, the larger ones seemed capable of proper ocean voyages.

Manning one by herself would be difficult. Not impossible. Just difficult.

“You really didn’t need to escort me yourself, you know,” she told Wixan. “I’m sure your men are more than up to the task.”

He nodded, the smile bright and warm on his lips. “I know that. But I know how it must seem here, with no familiar faces and with so much going on. After—” He paused and grimaced before forcing himself to continue, “After everything that’s happened, I would feel terrible if anything bad were to occur. So this is really the least I can do.”

Kalindra sighed. She liked Wixan.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s very kind of you.” She let that be the last of their conversation while they finished the walk to the village, where all the locals looked at her and her soldiers with a kind of thoughtful wariness. It wasn’t fear so much as the natural caution of a small village that had existed for years in a large shadow. Kalindra wondered if they even realized they were part of the empire, or what they thought about the idea.

Together, the group found Aego’s small cottage and knocked on the door. There was an almost immediate squeal of delight as soon as the child opened the door, as Nikali wiggled out of Kalindra’s arms to go run after his new best friend for all time. Really, Kalindra had been so pleased with how the boys had immediately gotten along. Nikali had a few friends at the duke’s palace in Khorvesh too, but they had been nobility, and their keepers quick to point out that Nikali was not.⁶ Aego probably didn’t even know what nobility was. The boy’s mother only cared that her son was happy, and that Kalindra was paying good metal to have her watch over Nikali.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Kalindra told her as she placed several coins on the table next to the door. “Thank you so much.”

Wixan frowned slightly when Kalindra left. “I’ve never seen you leave him behind before. Do you want me to leave some of the guards?”

She paused. “Would you? I don’t really want to leave him, it’s just…” She paused and gave him a weak, watery smile. “One does occasionally need a bit of time to oneself. All the stress—honestly, I just wanted to go back to our room and have a long, hot bath.”

Wixan smiled. “Of course.” He gestured for two of his guards to stay, and they peeled off and took up positions, one at the front of the cottage, one at the back.

She resisted the urge to lecture them on their work. As if any assassin worth their metal would be so foolish as to attack so obviously. They were really worse than useless.

But it meant two fewer guards, so she let them be.

As she started to walk back to the monastery, she paused. “Hmm. Would you mind if we took a slight detour? I would very much like to look out at the waves.”

Wixan gestured for her to lead the way.

So she did, bringing the men along with her to a narrow, private little stretch of cliff overlooking ocean rocks, not quite up to the monastery’s high vantage point but out of the view the valley and its village below.

Kalindra checked the basket she’d brought with her, wondering why Wixan hadn’t asked about it. Maybe he assumed that she’d prepared to go on a picnic and had changed her mind. He’d have thought something very different if he’d seen the contents or felt how heavy they were, but when he’d offered, she’d pointed out that there was no sense in having guards if they were going to keep their hands too occupied to do any good.

As she reached into the basket, Kalindra heard the sound of a sword being drawn.

She looked up. All the men had unsheathed their weapons and were slowly starting to circle her, to draw close.

She met Wixan’s gaze. “Why?”

His smile was kind. “I am sorry. You seem lovely. But you cannot be allowed to live.”

Kalindra snorted. “You were in league with Oliyuan.”

“I was detained,” he mourned, “but don’t worry; we’ll make this fast.”

She allowed the concern she felt to show. “What happens to my son?”

Wixan smiled. “I promise you that we have no issue with him.”

She exhaled. He didn’t seem to be lying. He had no reason to. “That is a comfort.” Kalindra pulled her dagger from the basket as the men closed on her.

When she was finished, she collected her basket and Wixan’s sword and made her way back down the hill, toward the village harbor. She resisted the urge to check in on the cottage, to see her son one last time before she left. She’d have to take Wixan’s word that the guards meant her son no harm.

She had a boat to steal and an old lover to find.

Qown’s story Inside Vol Karoth’s prison After volunteering to find Galen

Sheloran and Qown appeared in the middle of a city street. The architecture was strange, and the road was paved with some unknown substance that resembled stone but seemed too elastic for that to be true. The city was even pleasant looking but had a neglected air about it, as though all its residents had simply set down their belongings and walked away one day.

Qown realized Sheloran was giving him a startled look.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

She pointed to him.

Qown looked down at himself.

He looked the way he used the look, the way he’d look when he first arrived in Jorat. Which was to say, overweight.

It made sense, he supposed. He’d grown up plump, and the only reason that had stopped being the case was because he’d nearly starved himself to death while he lived in Yor. Whatever Caless had done to him had kept him slender, and he’d certainly been extremely active since then. But in his mind, in his heart, he always pictured himself as he’d been for most of his youth—an overweight boy who’d become an overweight man.

Qown felt himself blush. “Oh.”

He supposed at least this would simplify the situation with Galen. There seemed little possibility the royal prince would have any interest in carrying on a relationship once he knew what Qown really looked like.⁷

Sheloran had a small, sad smile on her face. “This is how you see yourself? This isn’t even what you looked like when we first met.”

“This is what—” Qown shrugged. “I’m used to this. I’m sorry—”

“Why are you apologizing? This isn’t anything to be ashamed of,” Sheloran said. “If you’re more comfortable this way, then that’s how you should look.”

“I don’t know that I would say—” He trailed off. “It’s not important.”

Sheloran narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t press the point. She waved down the street. “Let’s head that way.”

“Do we know where we’re going?” Qown asked.

“Oh, not in the slightest,” Sheloran admitted, a wide grin on her face. “But why should we let that stop us?”

Which is precisely when their friends attacked.

Kihrin came first, sword out, screaming at the top of his lungs as he lunged straight at Qown, who barely got out of the way. Janel was right behind him, her hands heated to molten levels, attempting to grab Sheloran. She caught the edge of the woman’s agolé, which immediately fried to a crisp, flakes of ash floating away in the air.

“What are you doing?” Qown cried out.

But neither of them answered. They kept attacking.

Qown grabbed the back of Sheloran’s raisigi and pulled her toward him, then made a cutting gesture with his hand.

In front of him, a wall tumbled into place, cutting them off from Kihrin and Janel’s path.

“Run!” He grabbed Sheloran’s hand to make sure she kept up.

“What? But you—!”

Taking her hand was the right call, clearly. “Later,” he promised her. “Now we run!” He pulled her after him, pausing only after several street blocks. Qown turned around, took a deep breath, and concentrated.

A giant section of building and block just flipped upside down, shifted, and reslotted into place in an entirely new position.

Sheloran gaped.

Qown didn’t have time to explain. Honestly, he didn’t understand why this was even something to be surprised about. Surely, she’d been paying attention to the explanation of what this place was?

They stopped an interminable distance from the point of the attack. Qown led them inside a building, summoning up a table and chairs for them to use. Sheloran continued to stare at him like she’d never seen him before.

“It’s a mental construct,” he explained.

She continued staring.

“None of this is real,” Qown explained. “It’s a mental construct created by someone. That means that it can be modified. It can be controlled. There’s nothing particularly mysterious about it.”

“It’s a god’s mental construct,” Sheloran told him with wide eyes.

Qown paused. Oh.

“Oh,” he said out loud. “I suppose I just didn’t really, uh … look at it that way.”

“Clearly not.” Sheloran leaned back in her chair. She was still watching him with a look that wasn’t quite wariness as much as confusion. “So if this is all so easy to manipulate, why do you still look like that when it clearly bothers you?” She gestured toward him.

He felt himself flush again, this time as much with anger as embarrassment. “Because this is what I look like. Or at least, I looked like this for a lot longer than I’ve looked like anything else. Why wouldn’t I be most comfortable this way?”

“Comfortable?” she repeated.

Qown grimaced. “I’m used to it.”

“Very well,” Sheloran said. She leaned forward and took his hand. “I need you to stop and think about this before you answer. Is this the appearance you want or the appearance you deserve?”

Qown snatched his hand back. “Oh, fuck you.” He put his hand to his mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It was honest,” she said, smiling. “And I was being rude. There’s nothing wrong with being overweight. A better option than when we first met. You looked like you’d been starving yourself.”

Qown shuddered. “I, um, sort of had been.”

“Well, I want you to understand something—however you look is fine as long as it’s what you want. And it’s not going to injure you. Poor health would be unacceptable, in my opinion.”

Qown swallowed thickly. “Thank you. That’s sweet of you to say.”

Sheloran stared. “You think Galen will care, don’t you?”

“Of course he would. Why wouldn’t he? He’s—” Qown waved a hand. “He’s gorgeous and a royal prince, and he can have anyone he wants. So of course it would matter.”

“And if—say, hypothetically—it didn’t?”

“But it does,” Qown insisted.

“No.” Sheloran batted him on top of his head with her fan. “We’re playing my game, and in my game, the rules are that it Does. Not. Matter. If it didn’t matter and you could look however you wanted. Like whatever you wanted at all. What would you look like?”

“You can’t remove the context of society, Sheloran,” Qown told her. “You can’t remove how people act and react. I just … oh hell, you’re really going to make me sit down and figure this out now?”

She nodded. “I really am, yes.”

“Fuck.” Qown lifted a finger. “You’re both a terrible influence on me. I hope you realize that. Dorna wasn’t this poor of an influence on me!”

“It’s what you love about me,” Sheloran said.

Qown’s eyes widened for just a moment, and then he quickly looked away.

Sheloran tucked her closed fan under his chin and turned his face back to meet hers. “My oh my, what a complicated relationship you and I are going to have,” she told him. “I like to think we’ll be such good friends. And I am already so fond of you. Can you handle that? Just friendship? It can’t be anything else. Not unless you decide you’d really rather be a woman, and that would rather wreck things with Galen, I suspect.”

“No,” Qown agreed. “I wouldn’t want to be female. I had that conversation with Dorna once. Not for myself—”

“Who’s Dorna again?”

“Oh, Janel’s nurse. Elderly woman I met in Jorat. Only it turned out that she hadn’t been born a woman. She’d petitioned the goddess Galava to turn her into one. It’s a thing they do over there. I asked her why she’d done it. I mean—” He blushed. “I was rude. I didn’t know any better. I actually asked why she would turn into a woman if she sexually preferred other women when she could just have stayed a man and no one would have questioned it.”

“I do hope she hit you,” Sheloran said.

“Oh, she did. She said it had nothing to do with who she liked to, uh, sleep with—she’d grown tired of lying to everyone, including herself, about who she really was. So that’s why she did it.”

“That sounds perfectly sensible to me. And who are you?”

“I don’t know,” Qown answered honestly. “I think I’ve been letting other people tell me that for all my life. It was just so much easier when no one was paying attention to me. When I was just … invisible.”

“Hmm. I understand.”

“Do you?” Qown blinked at her. “Everyone looks at you. All the time.”

“Yes,” Sheloran said. “That’s why I understand. What you’re saying sounds so very appealing. I have no trouble imagining the lure of it.” She tapped his knee. “But that doesn’t seem healthy. Everyone needs to be seen, at least a little. Everyone should be comfortable in their own shell. You looking like this”—she waved at him—“that’s fine. If that’s comfortable. But if you’re using it as a sort of security blanket, a way of running from something you’re scared of, as a way of maintaining that invisibility, then you may want to ask yourself if it’s what you really want.”

“And if it is?” Qown asked. “If it’s what I really want?”

Sheloran smiled. “Then you’ll still be perfectly beautiful.”

Kalindra’s reaction The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor
After Kalindra’s memory of escaping Devors

Kalindra sighed. If only that had been the worst of it. She didn’t really think anyone there would blame her for defending herself. “I really want to go back and talk to that old monk.”

“Oh indeed,” Thurvishar agreed.

“You don’t think he set you up, do you?” Senera mused.

“You have a very paranoid mind,” Talea told her.

Kalindra snorted at the same time Senera said, “You do know me, yes?”

Xivan and Thurvishar chuckled.

Then Kalindra stood up. “Someone want to escort me to the restroom?” Because they had all agreed not to be alone, and even she understood the wisdom of that.

As she did, her eye caught a flash of red, and she realized her hands felt wet.

Kalindra looked down to see her hands were covered in blood. Just sopping in it, crimson, thick, and shiny. She gasped. Kalindra hadn’t felt … what …

“Fuck,” Senera cursed and rushed over to her. She grabbed a blanket on her way and began wiping Kalindra’s hands, looking for the injury.

There was none.

“Maybe this is just Vol Karoth’s way of saying, ‘Don’t forget me.’” Kalindra’s laughter fooled absolutely no one.

“Why don’t we take that break,” Thurvishar said, “and then we’ll continue?”