She woke that morning before the dawn.
Normally Kiva was a late sleeper, Matthew an early riser—and in the months since they’d begun sharing a bed, Matthew had learned how to get up in the morning and slip out of their hut without waking her.
But on this particular day, as Matthew rose quietly from the bed, Kiva was already awake, lying on her side with her face toward the wall. She closed her eyes and listened to Matthew’s movements as he slipped his clothes on in the darkness and splashed his cheeks with tepid water from the clay bowl in the corner. When the sound of splashing water had stopped, Kiva turned over onto her other side and watched him mop his face with a dry cloth, then sat up when he walked to the doorway.
“You aren’t even going to say good-bye?”
Matthew looked back toward the bed.
“I thought you were asleep,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” Kiva answered. “My back hurts.”
Kiva stretched forward, wincing into the pain. Then she sighed and set her hands on the shelf made by the curve of her pregnant belly, her body aching and swollen with the weight of the life that grew inside it.
Matthew crossed the hut and, still standing, leaned over the bed, propping himself up with one hand while he hooked a finger under Kiva’s chin with the other.
“I’m sorry your back hurts,” he said.
He gave her a long, slow kiss. Kiva closed her eyes, then tucked her lower lip between her teeth as Matthew rested his forehead against hers.
“You’re going to the ship?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Kiva opened her eyes and put her hands on Matthew’s cheeks, tilting his head to look directly into his eyes.
“Be careful,” she said.
Matthew nodded. “I will.”
He went to the door, then paused again with his hand on the frame. “I’ll be back soon.”
Then he was gone.
The sun hadn’t crested the horizon yet, but its glow was already beginning to warm the dark edge of the sky as Matthew walked quickly through the camp toward Dunne’s hut.
She was waiting for him just outside her door.
“You’re up early,” Matthew said.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Today’s the day, right?”
Matthew nodded. “It is. Everything’s ready.”
“You want company?”
Matthew shook his head. “No. This is something I need to do alone.”
“Take the shotgun.”
Matthew grimaced. “I don’t want to.”
“Well, I’m going to insist, and you need to respect your elders,” Dunne said.
Matthew laughed and nodded his assent.
He grabbed the ion shotgun from where it leaned against the outer wall of Dunne’s hut, then climbed on the speeder. He and Dunne had managed to fix the damage done during the battle with Sam, but the speeder had never been quite the same. Now the steering was, in Dunne’s word, persnickety, and the thrusters couldn’t push the speeder as fast as it had gone before. Still, it was the best and quickest way to travel across the plains of Gle’ah.
Matthew hit the throttle and shot out across the grass. He leaned left, then right, feeling the way the speeder responded to his shifting weight. Then he glanced at the navigation display under his nose and corrected course, pointing the vehicle’s nose toward the Corvus.
Kiva lay in bed for a while after Matthew left, but when the Great Mother rose and began to curl her golden tendrils across the floor, Kiva rose and padded to the door.
She leaned against the doorframe and surveyed the small village before her. There were only a handful of huts scattered here and there, but more were built with each passing month, as more and more Vagri left the old village to join the new settlement.
Grath and Liana had been among the first to settle in the valley. They’d never gone back to the old village; instead, they built a new hut in the valley shortly after Kiva told them that she and Matthew had decided to stay there. Thruss and Rehal joined them some time after that, along with half a dozen other young Sisters and young men—ones who hadn’t yet chosen mates or borne children. They came bearing news of how bad life in the village had become. Kyne’s promise of a community made equal by the maiora hadn’t come to pass—if anything, power and influence were even more concentrated among a lucky few. Kyne was technically the new Vagra. But she was just a figurehead, Thruss said. Xendr Chathe was the one who really ruled. He had weapons, he commanded the Forsaken—and he also knew how to find the maiora, which had become a kind of currency among the Vagri.
In the new village Kiva and Matthew had founded, life was different—and, for the time being, better. From the doorway, Kiva looked to Dunne’s hut at the edge of the village. Nearby, most of the villagers were busy tending a vegetable garden. Grath bent over the dirt with his hoe, then paused and pointed as he gave some instructions to Liana and Rehal, who were working a few rows over.
Kiva smiled. Though they all worked the soil now—women and men toiling side by side, with no official leaders—Grath was effectively in charge of the garden. Perhaps, one day, he’d teach the new children of the village to bring life out of the dirt as well.
Kiva walked through the village. She ambled slowly past the garden, smiling and nodding to the workers as she went by. Beyond Dunne’s hut, at the foot of the ridge marking the unofficial border of their new village, Kiva paused for a moment, ambling around the bottom of the hill with her eyes on the ground. Soon, she paused and crouched, picked up a rock the size of her fist. She stood and weighed the rock in her hand for a moment. Then she began to hike up the ridge to the tree, the place where they’d buried Quint’s body.
The tree, dead when they’d first arrived, had begun to bloom. Tiny white flowers and a smattering of red leaves quivered in the wind at the tips of the jagged branches. Below, Kiva stepped into the tree’s paltry shade and looked at the place where her sister’s body lay.
There was a small pile of rocks on the grave, a cairn heaped to Kiva’s knees. Each morning since they’d buried Quint, Kiva had returned to this place with a rock in her hands to mark the spot. She’d built the cairn day by day, stone by stone. And now, she leaned forward and placed the rock she’d picked from the bottom of the hill on the top of the pile. The capstone.
Kiva knelt and put her hand on the cairn. She closed her eyes. Sighed deeply.
And thought of the dead.