4.

 

Ayae sat quietly beneath the open window, the morning’s sun filtering over her. She had spent her time since Orlan left searching herself, trying to find the seed of warmth Reila had mentioned, the burning ember that she could quench. So far she could find nothing. No, that was not true: as the minutes passed she became angrier at Illaan’s behavior, furious at the defacing of her house and bitter at the loneliness she felt. But that, she admitted to herself as the sun lazily made its way down her light brown arms, was not her “curse.” That was just her, as Faise had said.

Faise.

How would she react to the news? Her friend, with such a quick and ferocious intelligence, had left Mireea eight months ago. She had married Zineer, who owned a small accounting business in one of the cities of Yeflam, and who did work for the Traders Union. She wrote weekly, telling Ayae everything, asking for the same in return, but how could Ayae write that she could still taste smoke in her mouth such that even drinking three glasses of orange juice did not rid her of the taste? How could she explain that if she relaxed her internal search, the memory of the burning shop returned and panic set in? How could she explain how she stared at her arms looking for scars she did not have?

Nothing would come of this, Ayae knew. It was a self-designed trap of smoke and flames, a hunt for a cause that she could not identify in the ruin of her life. She could not sit here and stop her life. Orlan had already shown her that not everyone in Mireea was like the people who had damaged her house.

Slowly, pushing herself up from the floor, she opened her neat and orderly closet and chose clothes that did not smell of smoke.

Outside, the sky showed empty through the cut branches and the defacing of her house was clearer. Under the morning’s sun it appeared both more violent and more pathetic: the words on her walls were misspelt, her garden only half destroyed and salvageable. It would take a day, but she would be able to clean up both—but her footsteps along the narrow cobbled path did not take her to a shop, but to the Spine of Ger. It was not habit that saw her make her way to the morning’s training, but rather a desire to do something, to be active; a self-conscious doubt began to seed in her, but that only strengthened her resolve. She would not let the words of a Keeper, or the rejection of her partner, stop her from taking part in an exercise that she enjoyed.

The thought strengthened her as she climbed the last step of the Spine and saw the heads of men and women turn to her. She knew they were not her friends but they were normally civil to her, as she was to them: they nodded and smiled and said hello. It would be no different, she persuaded herself, walking through them as the Captain of the Spine began his torturous climb up the stairs. By the time Heast reached the podium, Ayae had made it to her position, behind Jaerc, ignoring how the baker’s apprentice shifted forward slightly.

Next to her, Keallis, the tall city planner, whispered harshly, “Are you witless?”

Ayae whispered, “Nothing has chan—”

“You’re scaring him,” she said.

She stared at Jaerc’s hunched shoulders.

“You’re cursed!” the woman whispered. “We all know that!”

She could not reply.

“Do you want to burn us alive?” the woman hissed again. Around her, others began the first of their stretches. “We have all heard how your skin splits beneath fire! You destroyed the shop of Samuel Orlan!”

“I did not!” Her voice was raw, struggling for composure. “There was another man there. He set it on fire…”

“Don’t you understand?” Around her, men and women turned, their attention drawn by Keallis’s raising voice. On the podium, Ayae saw the captain staring at her. In his usually stern face, she thought she saw sympathy there. “We are meant to die,” she continued, not bothering to whisper now. “That’s what the gods taught us.”

Through the disordered people, a Mireean Guard was making his way toward Ayae, the order given from a slight nod by Heast. Closing her eyes, squeezing them tight, she said softly, “I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Leave!”

And without another word she fled, aware that their eyes followed her every step.