The nice thing about being responsible is that duty often interrupts you just when you’re about to sink into melancholy. My heart wants to linger on Silfia’s decline; my head tells me I now have a cavalry unit without a captain, which is not a situation I can allow for long. So I take myself to that part of camp and do my commander’s stalk, the one where you meet no one’s eyes but you can see them straighten and work harder anyway. After a time I have a casual seat, as if to rest—not a pretense, that, as I’m still mending—and I watch the unit.
And I am surprised to find Tam Vinter, the native from Black Vines, among them. Talking affably with those who can talk back, patting those who have no speech and showing that great simplicity of manner that seems to come so much more easily to the Shraevenese than it does to us Godkindred. We are embarrassed at the mistakes thrown by our quest for godhead; the people of Shraeven have no such guilt.
I study him for a time, then go to find the mongrel healer. While he checks my wing and back, I ask about the youth.
“Good child,” the griffin says. “Still a child, of course. But with potential.”
Perhaps not as much of a child as we think; he’s old enough to be out on his own, and farm children grow up quickly. I thank him for re-applying my bandages. By the time I reach my tent I know what to do and send a messenger out.
“It’s time,” I say when Oweir joins me, “for you to get back to being a captain. You’re taking the cavalry unit.”
“Mistress?” Oweir asks, eyes wide.
“And if I were you,” I say, “I’d make your squire your second.”
His hesitation is slight; I notice it only because I’m staring at him, gauging his reaction. But he salutes and nods. “Yes, Mistress. Thank you.”
“Go.”
He goes. I sit back, pleased but tired. Oweir has the military experience and the seasoning to lead the cavalry; Tam has the sensitivity to the mongrels and the wisdom of Shraeven’s guiltless relations with them. Together they’ll do well.
* * *
My satisfaction at having solved the cavalry problem is just wearing off when Ragna appears, followed by two men and a tub. I eye it as they position it in the tent; when she sends them off to get hot water, I say, “Is that a good idea?”
She says, “We’ll keep your wound above the water.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a proper bath. Come to that, didn’t I start this entire venture by bathing in a barrel? I sigh and let her organize things, me included, until I am sitting hunched forward in the steam, eyes closed and wings splayed carefully over the rims.
As she washes me, Ragna asks, “Will you go yourself to tell the Godson your answer, or send a messenger?”
Good question. “I’ll go myself. I want to look around.”
“He won’t do something dishonorable,” Ragna says.
I shake my head. “He doesn’t need to. He has something to prove if I defy him, and he can’t do it if he takes me without displaying his extraordinary godlike powers.”
“Then this is the end,” Ragna says presently. “You will fight him and either win, and everything will change…or lose. And you will be dead.”
I think but don’t say that ‘dead’ is the kindest of the alternative endings to this story. “Yes,” I say. “What will you do if I lose?”
“I suppose become one of the Godson’s harem,” she says.
I eye her. “That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t intended so,” Ragna says. “I saw his interest. I am not sure there is an easy escape from it.”
I shudder. “Yet another reason not to lose. Even if I do become Angharad, Empress.”
“Will you?” she wonders. “Or will you leave the Kingdom to itself, but with a new ruler?”
“How should I know?” I ask, irritated. “Maybe I’ll give it to Donal for a prize and then marry him.”
Ragna nods. “That would create alliances between Shraeven, the Godkindred and the Neshanti. It is a good plan.”
“Ragna!”
“What will you give Silfia?”
I stop and stare at her. “What?”
“Silfie,” she says. “What will you give her as a love prize?”
“A…a love prize?” I sputter.
“You don’t think she deserves one?” Ragna asks, unruffled.
“I don’t love her anymore,” I say—blurt, really. And then horrified, I sink deeper into the tub.
“Nonsense,” Ragna says. “Of course you do.”
“No,” I say. “I really don’t.”
Ragna sighs. “You ask me to believe the Godkindred are so different from us, then? That they can just stop loving someone because the path grows difficult.”
“The path didn’t get difficult,” I say. “The path diverged. She went one way, I went the other.”
“So you don’t even write letters,” she says.
I press a hand to my closed eyes. “I think this metaphor is approaching uselessness. I can’t love her anymore, Ragna. She doesn’t want to be loved.”
“Those are different things,” Ragna observes. “What you do, and what she wants. You can still love her, whether she claims not to want love or not. Your loving her does her no harm.”
“And me…what, much good? I think not,” I say with asperity. “You don’t hug thorn bushes.”
“Love doesn’t have to be hugging,” Ragna says. “Love can also be pruning. Or watering.”
I stare at her. “I don’t think that metaphor is working either.”
“We don’t need metaphors, Mistress,” Ragna says, meeting my eyes with her insufferably calm ones. “You will always love Silfia until you are dust, whether that love brings you pain or joy, whether you are together or not. Love is never done. It only sleeps. So…what will you give Silfie for a love prize?”
“She can’t even handle her own duties,” I say. “What could I possibly trust her with?”
“Is this about the baby?” Ragna asks.
“What, don’t you already know?” I ask.
“No, on this I have no understanding,” Ragna says. “You will have to tell me.”
I sigh. “She shouldn’t have done it.”
The pard tilts her head, sponge in hand. “This is your belief.”
“This is our belief,” I correct. “Which is why it is not allowed in the Kingdom.”
“If it is not allowed, how did she know to find the herbs?”
“Because the military is the only place in society that looks the other way if an ‘accident’ happens,” I say.
Ragna is silent. Then she says, “It is…not allowed, in the Kingdom. So males always choose when females have children?”
“No!” I exclaim, surprised. “It’s a mutual decision.”
“How do you stop them from lying with whomever they please, when they please?” she asks.
I remember abruptly that where Ragna comes from, most males roam in wild packs, dumb beasts half-mad with unbridled desires. I shake myself. “Ragna, men are not animals.”
“Silfie seems to think so,” Ragna says.
“One bad man does not make all men evil,” I say. “Or shall we punish the Donals and the Magwens for the acts of your brothers?”
“That is perhaps more nuance than Silfie is capable of,” Ragna says.
“It’s a complicated world,” I say and rub my forehead. “You don’t always get to choose the path you find yourself on.”
“That,” Ragna says, “is the first wise thing you’ve said in a while.”
I eye her. “Thank you. I think.”
Ragna arches her whiskers in amusement.
I am still thinking up a rejoinder when a brown blur swoops into the tent with a rattle of feathers. I duck, Ragna sways to one side and the corvid messenger drops with a self-satisfied squawk on the edge of my cot.
“Well, well,” I say. “You’ve been missing a while.”
The messenger preens while Ragna unties the note on his leg. She brings it to me wordlessly and begins washing my hair.
Godhead in a person presents itself very differently than it does in gods.
I am uneasy.
No more. Just that. I frown and look at the messenger. “Who did you get this from?”
A gaping grin, but no response.
“What does it say?” Ragna asks. After I read it to her, she says, “Unrest in the Godson’s camp?”
“I wonder,” I say. To the messenger, I say, “Can you take something back to this mystery person?”
The messenger bobs his head.
“Strange,” Ragna says. “One would have thought this would be a thing of celebration, to have the Godson express the powers your people are working toward.”
“Sometimes,” I say, “what one wants and what one thinks one wants are not the same.” Before she can say anything, I add, “Don’t worry. This penchant for wisdom will wear off.”
Ragna arches her whiskers again.
* * *
Later, I pen the response to my anonymous contact.
What is given by gods can be taken away.
What is bred into blood and bone is forever.
Who will guard us when some become gods before others?
It is, I think, heretical. But I’m damned for our religion anyway. I watch the messenger wing into the purple evening sky and wonder.