The Lessons Never Learned, page 17
The others are stirring. I've already packed away the camp and I can see the Portamancer's horse on the trail behind us. We'll be away soon. I'm coming, Eska. In Death's wake, I'm coming for you.
Chapter 24
There is an area of Ro'shan known as Craghold where bits of the mountain long ago started to crumble and fall away. Metal struts were driven deep into the side of the rock and a massive wooden pier was built. It is upon that pier that the flyers sit, Ro'shan's own little fleet of flying ships; its only real way to and from the surface of the world below. I, of course, do not count climbing the great chain and for good reason, only the truly foolish even attempt such a thing. I had seen the docks before, having spent quite some time around them trying to reason out how the flyers worked, but I had never been out on the piers or stepped a single foot onto one of the flyers. It was a lack I was about to change. There would be no climbing the chain for me this time.
Silva was waiting for us by the flyer, dressed in a more serviceable shift than I had ever seen on her, though still dazzling and elegant by comparison to anything I had ever worn. Several pahht loaded crates onto the flyer and then crowded on board. It appeared we weren't going down alone. A tall terran woman stood next to Silva and wore a look as sour as wine left out for too long. She was as dark as Tamura, with eyes bluer than my own, and had thick braids of hair reaching down to the small of her back. I had never seen her before, but she seemed familiar with Silva. I approached with caution.
"Eska, Hardt, Tamura," Silva greeted us all with a smile and then gestured to the woman next to her. "This is my sister Coby."
It's fair to say I was a little confused. I had met Coby once. I had been locked in a cell and a little delirious from both pain and exhaustion, not to mention a bleeding hole in my shoulder, but my memory served me well enough to remember that Coby was pahht, not terran. I think my look of shock and confusion was rather obvious. Coby let out a savage laugh and then turned, striding up the gangplank onto the flyer.
Tamura, never one to pass up the opportunity for laughter, joined in and followed Coby up onto the flyer as though it wasn't a marvel of wood, metal, and magic. "I may wear many clothes, but I am still me," he said with a giggle.
Hardt did not seem so easily persuaded. "What is she?"
Silva shrugged. "Coby is Coby. Take your eye from her for just a moment and she will be someone else, but still Coby. I'll explain on the way down, we should have an hour or so before we reach the outskirts of the city."
"You're coming with us?" Again, that eagerness in my voice I couldn't quite withhold.
How else would she betray you? She needs to be close to drive the knife between your ribs. Or perhaps it's all just a ploy to get you back down on the ground where she can abandon you to your enemies.
I tried my best to ignore Ssserakis, but it is a lot like ignoring yourself. The horror was relentless and always knew just where to prod to draw forth my fears.
"Only to the ground," Silva said. "There will be merchants coming soon and all trade deals must be negotiated with a city official in attendance."
"Only way the Rand makes sure to get her full cut," said a richly dressed pahht as he strolled past us and up the gangplank. The pahht have a way of speaking the terran tongue that makes it sound almost musical and this one was no exception.
"Must I remind you that the Rand is my mother, Eivful?"
"How could I ever forget, most glorious Silva? After all, you have her eyes, though thankfully not as many of them." Eivful barred his teeth in an expression I've since come to understand is the pahht equivalent of a smile.
There was a second flyer being readied and I saw several tahren climb aboard, and even a garn slithering up the plank and down into the hold. Despite my months on Ro'shan I had had very little interaction with any of the garn. They were still very much a fascinating mystery to me. Almost slug-like in appearance, the garn don't so much have arms as fleshy tentacles that can extend or shrink back into their bodies. They have eyes, though they are little more than shining pits in what I consider to be a face, and mouths that are more like gaping holes leading down into their bodies. They are as alien and wondrous as the mur. And they smell. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but the secretions they leave—and they leave a lot of secretions—are offensive to me. I'm told it's quite insulting to point that out.
"Shall we get under way? Coby will give us all grief if we delay any further." Silva said, gesturing to the flyer.
"I think I'd a prefer a real boat," Hardt said as he walked up the gangplank. "Better than climbing a chain, I guess."
Silva stopped me as I made to board, a hand held up in front of my chest. There was something in that hand, something small and almost spherical. Something that caught the light and hinted at power. A new Source. I felt the urge to snatch at it, to cram it into my mouth and swallow it down. I already had one Source sitting in my stomach and it did much to relieve the hunger, but power is addictive like that. Some always leads to a desire for more, and more leads to yet more still. Power is a road with no end. At least not for me.
"An Arcmancy Source." Silva took my hand, her touch warm and soft and sent a thrill through me that had nothing to do with the magic I now held. "From my mother. She's only loaning it to you, so don't lose it."
"Little chance of that." I wasted no time popping the Source in my mouth and swallowing it down. It was larger than I was used to, and I had stop myself from gagging, but the desire for power won out. I felt a new energy inside, almost too much of it, as though my limbs struggled to keep still. I raised my hand and rubbed my fingers together, sparks of lightning crackling between them. "How did you know my attunement?"
"I didn't. But my mother knew the moment she looked at you. Given the condition of the ruins down there, she thought that particular magic might be useful to you."
Silva took my hand again and didn't even flinch at the spark that shocked us both. She led me up the gangplank and onto the flyer where Coby was waiting, a harsh look in her eyes. Within moments the ropes were tied away and the propeller above started up until it was so loud I could hear little else. Then the flyer was pushed away from Ro'shan and for a terrible, lurching moment we dropped, but it soon steadied into a gentle swirling descent, like leaves on the wind.
I stood up on deck for a while, near the bow to be out of Coby's way as she operated the flyer. I call the flyers small, but in truth they are quite large, far larger than our little home up on Ro'shan. The flyers are built to carry cargo and have large hulls. The deck itself is often crowded with those making certain everything runs smoothly. I wanted to look at the system that turned the propeller, to figure out what made it work, but I did not dare get close or interfere, not when we were so high up that even a moment without power could send us dropping to our deaths. Eventually the noise of the propeller was too much and I trudged down below, where I found Hardt and Tamura and Silva, and much more surprisingly, Imiko.
The thief had stowed away without anyone noticing. She grinned at me from the gloom and I knew just how pleased she was with herself at my shock. I tried to hide it and ignored her, refusing to ask how she got on board, or why. It was a petty victory really, but Imiko often brought out my pettiness. I'm told sisters are often like that, and I had started to consider her a little sister, one that I never wanted. I approached Silva and slumped down against the wall next to her. I could feel the thrum of the propeller through my back. It was both reassuring and disconcerting all at once.
"What are you? Really?" I asked Silva. It was perhaps not the best time for it; there is nothing in the way of privacy aboard a flyer and, though many of the pahht were up on deck, I could see a few were down in the hold with us. But the noise of the flyer was oppressive and I hoped our conversation wouldn't travel much further than each other's ears. "I've heard people call you Aspect."
With neither beds, nor chairs on our little flyer, Silva and I were sitting on the floor, leaning against each other shoulder to shoulder. It was comfortable and exciting all at once.
"People should be more circumspect." There was hesitation in her voice, but I was sick of hesitation and misdirection. I wanted the truth.
Ssserakis laughed at that, a vindictive mirth full of mocking. This creature is of the Rand. They don't know how to tell the truth.
"That's not an answer," I said, ignoring the horror inside.
"Can't it be enough that I look terran? I sound terran. I feel terran."
"No. It's like a bard playing the first two notes of song then getting up and leaving." I heard her smile. I didn't need to turn my head and see it; I already knew exactly what it would look like. I took a deep breath and prepared myself to ask the dangerous question. "Are you Rand?"
"Yes." At her admittance I felt my heart skip a beat for some reason. "No. A little bit. Maybe."
When you ask someone a direct question, the same question you have asked them dozens of times before, and they are purposefully, maddeningly vague, it starts to get a little tiresome. I tensed and moved away from her just a little and she sighed. I hoped, tricked myself into believing Silva was evading my question because the others were nearby. Because it was something she would tell me and me alone.
Or because she doesn't want you to know the truth. Because it's too horrible. Because if you knew what you were sitting next to you would fear it even more than you do me.
"I wasn't born like you, Eska," Silva said. I glanced to find her staring at me and quickly turned away in case my obvious interest convinced her to stop. "I was… created. My mother took a piece of herself, an aspect of herself, and with it she created me. She calls us her children and we call her mother, but we are a part of her. Separate, individual, but still a part of her. Some of us are terran. Some of us are pahht. Coby is something else, though she certainly likes to look terran most of the time. I think that's because of me. We're twins, of a fashion, created together. We each of us had childhoods. We grew, were raised. We each have had time to discover ourselves; who we are. Who I am. What I want from my life."
Silva fell silent and I heard her let out a soft sigh. I leaned back in, once again resting my shoulder against hers, providing what scant comfort I could. Even then, I had the feeling that it was far harder for her to reveal her true nature than it appeared. I had questions still, dozens of them, maybe more. I didn't entirely understand. I failed to see the purpose behind the Aspects. But then it is difficult to see the truth behind the lies when so many of the facts are hidden. And she was lying to me then even as she told me the truth.
"What aspect are you?" I couldn't help myself. I needed to know more.
"I don't know. That's part of my purpose, to discover what I am. When I die, all that I am becomes part of my mother again. So, in discovering what I am, I help her understand herself better."
I felt I was closer to the truth and further away all at once. "So, the Rand removed a part of herself and turned it into you, but she has no idea what part of herself she removed?"
The silence again. This time I waited. It takes time to construct a believable lie.
"Yes."
"Does she control you?"
"No." Silva let out a ragged laugh. I think she might have been crying, but I didn't want to look; I knew if I did, I wouldn't be able to continue questioning her. Her tears would break me. "But she asks things of us and none of us have ever refused her. Well, there was… She is our mother and we are part of her. Why would we refuse her?"
I could think of a hundred reasons. These days I can think of even more. Have I mentioned how much I hate the Rand? Trust me when I tell you I have good reason. I thought it better to change the subject slightly, rather than argue. I didn't want to argue with Silva. I wanted us to stay as we were; close and comfortable.
"What did you mean when you said Coby is something else?" I could see the shine from Tamura's eyes, watching us. I could see Hardt staring as well. Whether they could hear us over the sound of the propeller above and the grinding of gears, I don't know.
Silva let out a moan. "She'll hate me even more for telling you. Each of us is given a gift when our mother creates us; something unique that only we have or can do, a power of our mother, given to one of us. Coby was given the gift of being everyone and no one all at once. It is a glamour of sorts. When you look at her you see what she wants you to see. She can appear as male or female, pahht or terran or tahren. I don't think I've ever seen her take on the guise of a garn, but it must be possible. But no matter how many of her faces you might have seen, she cannot show you her real one, and yet every time she looks in a mirror she can see nothing else."
"Sounds like a curse as much as a gift."
I felt Silva nod. "All gifts are also curses, Eska. I gave you the gift of Arcmancy and yet if you hold onto it for too long it will kill you."
We both fell silent then. Maybe I should have left it at that. Maybe if my curiosity had let me, I wouldn't have pushed for the rest of the truth. Maybe if I hadn't known Silva's gift, things might have turned out differently for us all. But there is no point in second guessing myself so far into the past. I am what I am, and I asked what I asked. And I have done what I have done.
"What is your gift?"
"When I look at a person, I sometimes get glimpses of who they really are underneath all the masks we wear and the lies we shroud ourselves in," Silva said without hesitation.
You can't trust a person who sees the real you. Perhaps you should ask her if she sees you or me.
Some answers only pose more questions and sometimes it seemed like Silva only gave those sorts of answers. Regardless, it had me quite intrigued.
"What do you see in Imiko?" The little thief had vanished again, though whether she was skulking around the shadows of the hold, or up on deck annoying Coby, I didn't know. I hoped it was the latter.
Silva laughed. "I'm not your personal crystal ball into your friends' minds, Eska."
There are ways in which a person can say no when what they actually mean is ask me again. Silva knew how curious I could be, and I knew she would answer me eventually. We were dancing, though I didn't know the steps. "What if I asked nicely?"
"Do you even know how to ask nicely?"
"No. But back at the academy my tutors used to say the word please had something to do with it." I flashed her a grin. "Please?"
Again, Silva laughed, falling silent for a moment before answering. "In Imiko I see a girl chasing the spirit of adventure, her name forever written on the horizon. Always looking for trouble that can't be fixed, and she forces herself to move on before comfort sets in. Most people in her life are just shadows to her, things to hide behind before moving on."
"Is that what we are to her? Just a shield from the trouble she gets herself into?" I knew there was a reason I never liked Imiko. Just a shame it wasn't the whole truth, but then Silva never told the whole truth.
"I don't know. You'd have to ask her that yourself. I only see what I see, Eska. Sometimes the visions are clear, sometimes not."
I was angry, tensing at the thought that Imiko might be using us. I was also dancing around the real question I wanted to ask Silva.
"What do you see in Hardt?" I knew he was watching us, listening. I half expected him to stop Silva from answering, but sometimes we need someone else to look into our soul to shed light on the things long hidden. Sometimes others can see things in us that we cannot. Or will not.
"I see a man surrounded by a storm. He stands in the eye, clinging to the calmness of it, refusing to move lest he be swept up into the torrent. But the storm is moving, the eye is moving, and the more he stays still the closer the chaos gets."
I looked up at Hardt then and saw him staring not at Silva, but at me. There was a hard look to him, his face drawn in sharp lines. I think Hardt was tired of struggling so hard to resist the storm. I wondered why he refused it so. I saw him down in the ruined Djinn city. I saw what he could do, what he had done to the Damned. I had also seen what the violence had done to him. The Damned are monsters, little more than soulless beasts and killing them had caused Hardt so much grief. I sometimes wonder if Silva failed to mention the woman standing beside Hardt in the centre of that storm, slowly pushing him towards the edge.
"What about Tamura?" The old man giggled when I asked. I was still trying to work up the courage to ask the real question.
"In Tamura I see a man surrounded by mirrors each one reflecting only himself. Every one of the mirrors is cracked and along those cracks are reflections of who he used to be, his past leaking out along lines. But he is stuck there, trapped by the mirrors. They are somehow more real than the rest of him. And a shadow, something great and terrible and dead for longer than any of us have been alive."
I half expected Tamura to say something then, some pearl of wisdom hidden behind madness. But he said nothing, just stared at us, a smile on his lips and at the corner of his eyes. Again, I tried to summon the courage to ask Silva what she saw in me and again I failed. I'm not sure if it's because I was too afraid to find out, or too afraid to ask her to look. We settled into a comfortable silence then and rode out the rest of the trip that way. I have rarely felt more content.
Chapter 25
I think it's fair to say that Picarr changed a little since I had last been there. I remembered a vibrant city, expansive and alive. Even towards the outskirts there was never a lull in the activity; homes and shops, people and animals, guards and thieves, all moving about their daily lives. It was a farming town for the most part, with plenty of arable land to the east, some of the only Orran land to allow crops to grow.
When I was just eight years old Josef and I ventured out into the streets of Picarr for the first time since arriving at the academy. We were both foolish, but I was also awed by the hive of activity that was the city proper. You have to remember, I spent my first six years in a forest village with just two dozen families as company, a hectic day was seeing more than five people. We roamed the streets and soon found ourselves quite lost. When we asked a candlemaker how to get back to the academy, she scoffed at us and told us to go peddle our lies somewhere else. I suppose she took us for thieves rather than students. Eventually we found a kindly guard, a man with grey hair spilling out from under an ill-fitting helmet, and he took us back. I thought of it as my first adventure since leaving Keshin. Back then everything seemed like an adventure. The world seems so much bigger through the eyes of a child, and so much smaller once the innocence washes off.
