ENCORA, RANUAK
The blonde woman taps on the study door, a door slightly ajar.
“You may come in, Alya,” responds the Matriarch.
Alya slides through the door and closes it behind her, if gently and nearly silently. “You have heard, Mother?” Her eyes focus directly on the round-faced Matriarch, who wears gray and black, not the usual garb of brighter colors.
“About the fate of the freewomen in Elahwa?” The Matriarch looks up from the sheet of parchment on the table-desk and nods somberly. “Your sister still lives. Beyond that, I do not know.”
“Did you … have to … send her?”
The Matriarch looks up at her older daughter with eyes that are reddened, and ringed with black. “What would you have me do? Should my own daughter not follow the rules of harmony, the laws of Ranuak?”
“Why … why didn’t Veria listen?”
“Because she could not accept that harmony is paid for again and again, endlessly. Or that harmony requires what it will and not what we wish. You see this. Even the sorceress from the mist worlds understands this.” The Matriarch offers Alya a sad smile. “She does not know how dearly she will pay.”
“She will pay … most dearly,” interjects Ulgar from the corner of the study. He has been so still that Alya had not even noted her father’s presence. “Even now, the young Prophet of Music gathers his forces to assault the western lords of Defalk.”
“He is proving more cunning than his sire … and less perceptive,” says the Matriarch. “All too many will suffer for that.”
“The Regent of Defalk will turn back, then? When she has barely begun to march into Ebra?” Alya’s voice is almost flat.
“Since young Hadrenn has pledged to her, she remains in Defalk,” explains the silver-haired Ulgar. “And she will not turn back.”
“Father … you know what I meant.”
“Yet your father is correct,” answers the Matriarch, “for what was western Ebra is now Defalk, as well may be all of Ebra.”
“Why did the sorceress wait so long?” asks Alya plaintively. “Why did she stop to use sorcery to wrench gold from the ground?”
“Without that gold, daughter, the sorceress could not afford to march to Elahwa. Who would lend her the coins? Certainly not the Exchange. And how would she guarantee them? Nor could she let the Thirty-three know of such resources before she marched, or they would demand that she use the coins to reduce their liedgeld.”
“Men …” Alya’s voice is close to a sigh.
“Women are no better. Consider Abslim. Like those of the Defalkan Thirty-three, she considers the weight of coins first and sees what she will see, and not what is there to see.”
“Still … I would that the sorceress could have reached Elahwa before the dog of the north.”
“Your sister could not expect to be rescued by the very ruler she condemned,” points out Ulgar. “Not even by the twisted laws of Darksong.”
Alya draws a long, slow, and silent breath.