Ayae approached the ruins of Mireea on foot.
Half an hour before, as the afternoon’s sun reached its zenith, as the shape of the city began to take shape, she had climbed out of the cart Jae’le drove. He said nothing, only offered her a glance, before returning to his own silent contemplations. In the back of the cart Tinh Tu, Eidan and Anguish said nothing to her, either, but it was the latter who continued to stare at her while the cart pulled ahead, his blind eyes unconcerned with what lay before him. Ayae had asked Anguish, two nights before, if he planned to open his eyes to search for Zaifyr’s spirit, and he had chuckled, his laughter strange and not quite human. He had told her they had been open since they left the shore of Yeflam. More and more lines were appearing, he said, but if he was happy about this, Ayae could not tell. She could not tell if anyone was pleased to be drawing close to Mireea, in truth.
She was not. There was, she thought, as she stepped through the broken gates and onto the cobbled streets, an infinite sadness in what lay before her. She had heard it said that you could not return to the places of your childhood once you left them, or at least not return to them in the same way, and while a part of her could accept that, she struggled with the destruction. Alone, she made her way along a splintered road covered in the debris of fallen buildings and wooden walls, the latter part of the defence that Captain Heast had built in preparation for the Leeran siege. But it was not the debris that bothered her the most: it was the sense of neglect and abandonment, as if it had all been meaningless, as if what had been invested in it did not truly matter. But wasn’t that true? After all, the buildings that sank into the ground fell into the caverns that held the ancient Cities of Ger, and all that had been held within them was now gone. The loss of culture was not unique, the death of cities, of nations, was cyclical, as if the world was forever devouring itself to create new permutations.
A tremor ran through the ground, but it was not the first Ayae had felt. Around her, the buildings shook a little and, after they had fallen silent, she decided to head not to the market square, where she assumed Jae’le and the others had headed, but down the broken paths to her house.
The trees that Captain Heast had cut back in preparation for the siege had, over the last year, begun to grow back. It would be years – decades, perhaps – before they took on the thick canopy that had once been over Mireea and had provided shade during the hottest days of the summer, but the sight of the slim branches and new foliage pleased Ayae. She thought that, even if no one else came to fill Mireea, then the trees and wildlife of the area would. They could join the ghosts she had not seen yet.
Ayae’s house, indeed her neighbourhood, had suffered little in the quakes that had ravaged the Mountains of Ger. It appeared before her much as it had when she last saw it: square and simple, but with an overgrown garden and broken windows. At the door, she fished the key out of a pocket, and unlocked it.
Inside, she could smell rotten fruit, and there were seeds and animal faeces, though nothing overly large of the latter, thankfully. Just black pellets from small creatures that had slipped through the broken glass with their food. She could see tiny prints in dust across the counter and in the fireplace where she had cooked. Gently, she ran a finger along the back of her couch, and along the wall to her bedroom, where the unmade bed looked the same as when she had left it. What remained of her clothes hung in the wardrobe, and for a moment, she stood there and stared at them, her current leathers and heavy cloth a contrast to the linens, shirts, pants and dresses kept in there. It was another life, Ayae told herself, reaching for a black shirt she had once loved. She could not imagine a point in her life where she might wear it again.
A sound came from the living room and she released the shirt, closed the wardrobe door. Half a dozen steps later, she saw Tinh Tu easing herself onto one of her couches, a roll of paper in her lap. Her long staff leant across the arm and, as Ayae approached, she saw that the old woman was staring at a collection of drawings, nearly two years old. The first was of her ex-partner, Illaan.
‘I did not know you were an artist,’ Tinh Tu said. ‘You have a good hand. You could have made a living out of it.’
‘I was a cartographer,’ she said. ‘I was apprenticed to Samuel Orlan.’
Tinh Tu unrolled a second, revealing Zineer. ‘Could you have been the next Samuel Orlan?’
‘No, I would have just been . . .’ her voice trailed off. ‘Just myself,’ she finished with a shrug. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be gone for so long.’
‘You do not need to explain yourself.’ The old woman unrolled a third scroll and Faise stared over her shoulder at Ayae. ‘I certainly wouldn’t.’ Tinh Tu offered half a self-deprecating smile. ‘Still, my brothers did send me to find you. Anguish has disappeared.’
She imagined Eidan’s concern and felt in herself a sudden apprehension, but could not find it replicated in any fashion in his sister. ‘He ran away?’
‘No, he disappeared. It happened when we entered the market square. Eidan said that he was there one moment, but gone the next.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘Interesting, is it not?’
‘Do you think there is more to it?’ That he was a deceit for us, she wanted to say.
‘I think he is where our brother is, myself. When Anguish returns, Zaifyr will likely be with him.’
For Tinh Tu, Ayae knew, the prospect of her brother’s return was not a cause for celebration. What she had shown Ayae in Asila left the latter with no doubt that Tinh Tu viewed Zaifyr’s return as one that would be difficult. Ayae suspected that the other woman believed he would be mad, and that because of that, they would be required to take him, as they had done a thousand years ago, to the tower in Eakar.
‘Eidan would say that this house felt very much of you,’ Tinh Tu said. ‘My brother has long said that stone and wood hold memories, that they remember who has lived inside them. Perhaps it is why he goes around the world, rebuilding what has been broken, keeping the memories of history alive. Personally, I think he makes the mistake of believing that his own memories and his own relationships with cities are shared throughout the world. Life is much more temporary, like blooms of flowers in spring. Still, for those who live as long as we do, his words are worth listening to. After we have finished, I am sure he would help you rebuild this city, if you asked him.’
‘Mireea?’ Ayae was shocked. ‘I just had a home here, nothing more,’ she said. ‘It is not mine.’
‘It could all be yours.’ She rolled the paper up tightly and rose from the chair. ‘I do not think the people who lived here will return, if it helps. But you should not be afraid to take what it is that you want. You need not be trapped by who you are. You need not put aside all of who you once were in the world. You can still have your dreams and your futures.’ In the broken window, the white raven settled itself with a flutter of wings. ‘To be who you wish to be is the greatest struggle for men and women like us,’ Tinh Tu said, the roughness of her voice slipping momentarily into something gentler, but not yet kind. ‘We lose all that defined us when our power emerges and, over our lives, we are threatened with our loss again and again, as if we were the tree that bore the blooms of the season. But unlike the tree, we are not planted by another. We are not stationary. We decide where it is that we set our roots. We decide how we weather the seasons.’
In the doorway, Tinh Tu paused and looked out into the broken sun, into the regrowing trees. After a moment, she tapped her staff down. The move called the white raven to her. With it on her staff, she began to make her way back to where her dead brother waited.