An Accident of Stars (34 page)

“As you can see, I did get my movement back in the end. But it took a lot of work and a lot of time, and all the while… in the middle of everything, when I was at my weakest, that's when I heard that Leoden had married you. That his Cuivexa was little more than a child, the daughter of one of his followers, practically given to him by her mother, and thereafter never seen in public. I heard you were spoilt, reclusive and stupid. I heard you were a pawn, a hostage to ensure your secondmother's good behaviour. I heard you were Kadeja's plaything.”

“I was all of that,” Viya said softly. “Once.”
And not so long ago. Far away, yet not so far. Like a moon-tale.

“And I hated you. I hated you because you were young and whole and alive, and because as much as you didn't deserve what was being done to you, you didn't deserve the slender chance at power it gave you either. I was… very bitter. I still am. But not towards you, now.” She reached across the table, her fingers ghosting above, but not touching, the scar on Viya's face. “We have both been marked by this.” She let her hand hover a moment longer, then pulled it back.

“I came here thinking we'd argue. I came here thinking you would demand the crown despite being ill-suited to wear it, and wondering whether I'd have the strength to tell you no when in my heart, I'd gladly give it up.”

“Your heart…” Viya stared, unable to comprehend what Amenet was saying. “You don't want to rule?”

“I want to rule. But I fear, despite all I've done, despite everything… I am not what I was.” Abruptly, Amenet looked away. “I have seen the dark, and the dark has seen me. Once all this is done, as you put it, Kena will need strength – strength, and will, and courage. But mine has been spent. I have fits now. Seizures that strike me when I'm stressed, when I'm cold, when I'm tired. I have nightmares–” her voice broke on the word, wavering awfully, but somehow she gathered herself and continued, “–and waking dreams, sometimes, when it feels as though the paralysis has returned and I'm trapped again. Some of this will fade in time, the healers tell me. Some of it will not. But worst of everything is the self-doubt, this feeling as though I've missed my moment. I was
there
, Iviyat, at the start of Leoden's scheming. As much as he fooled Pixeva ore Piexeva and Gwen Vere, he fooled me too. I might have prevented all of this. I didn't.”

“Maybe it wasn't for you to prevent,” said Viya. “Maybe Ke and Na planned all of this.” But though she said it, she couldn't make it feel true. For the first time in a long time, reaching for her faith felt like worrying the socket left behind by an empty tooth. She believed in the gods, she did –
you have taught me so much; I have so much to learn
– but just at that moment, with Amenet ore Amenet ki Rahei sitting opposite, her dark eyes reddened and her left side slack, the will of Ke and Na felt alien and unfathomable, as far distant from this moment as the faintest stars were from Karavos.

Amenet didn't answer; she only smiled, and said, “So where does this leave us then? If neither of us can rule…”

Her voice trailed off, and for a moment, Viya felt utterly defeated. But something in Amenet's phrasing niggled at her. “Alone,” she said, slowly. “I'm sorry?”

“You said that neither of us can rule, but that's not right. It's that neither of us can or wants to rule
alone
, or with some other stranger as Cuivexa or Cuivexa. So what if we rule together?” The rightness of it sang through her, a rush of joyful purpose. “Not as Vexa and Cuivexa, I mean, but as equals:
Vexa i Vexa
, side by side. Like Irivet and Alixat, in the Year of Broken Moons.”

That's ancient history!” said Amenet, startled.

“But still a precedent,” Viya said, leaning forwards. “And it solves our problem. Alone, I wouldn't be taken seriously; I'm too young, too much an unknown quantity, and tainted by marriage to Leoden. And I… I'm spoilt, as you said. I have a temper about it. Sometimes I speak when I ought to think, attack when I ought to retreat. I'm learning, but it takes time, and right now that's something we don't have.” It hurt her to admit as much, and even as the words left her mouth, she tensed up, her anger preempting the condescending agreement that was sure to come from Amenet. But the other woman did no such thing, and in an instant, Viya deflated. Her reaction had only proved her own point, and while part of her struggled to deal with that, the rest of her kept talking.

“And you – you're healing. You said it yourself: the problem isn't what's been done to your body, it's learning to cope with it afterwards. You need time too, and support, and if you were Vexa alone, you wouldn't get it; not in the same way, not like you need. You'd have to show everyone a strong front, pretend you'd taken no hurt. It doesn't matter how poor Leoden's rule has been, how many nobles he's alienated by his marriage to Kadeja. Once he's overthrown, whoever takes his place will still have enemies. The first few months will be crucial–” she remembered that Kadu had said as much, once, “–and if you show any hint of weakness, they'll use it against you.”

Amenet frowned, and for a brief moment, her whole face went blank. And then she said slowly, “You may be right. If I were Vexa and you Cuivexa – or if those roles were reversed, even – there'd be those at court who would cleave to one of us over the other, looking for a way in, some disparity to exploit. And whichever one of us took the secondary role, they'd take it as a sign of inferiority; they'd say that either I'd lost my nerve, or you were still only a figurehead, a remnant of Leoden's reign. But as co-regents – as Vexas together – we would be strong. Just by announcing it, we'd be forcing people to recognise that we'd negotiated the match on an equal footing.”

Viya heard the warming enthusiasm in Amenet's voice and seized on it. “It's unexpected too,” she said. “It'll throw people off balance, and we'll need that among the courtiers. As for the people, well – the ballad of Irivet and Alixat is classic. Everyone hears it in childhood; stop anyone on the street, and I'll bet they could sing at least part of the chorus.”

At that, Amenet cracked a smile and obliged, her voice true despite a slight lisp:

“
T
he younger held
the elder's arm;

they bore each other's weight –

two heads to a crown, two hearts, two minds

within the wheel of fate.”

U
nable to help herself
, Viya joined in:

“
A
nd tongue by tongue
, they swore their vows

beneath the palace stair,

and the gods, who are three in one, looked down

and saw one ruler there.”

They sang the last verse together, voices rising in fragile, strengthening unison:

“And from that day, when one soul spoke

she used the other's voice –

they lived and died at each other's side

and ruled as one by choice.”

T
hey fell silent
, smiling at each other. Viya extended a hand across the table.“By the grace of Ke and Na, and at their will, I will rule with you, Amenet idi Kena ki Rahei.”

Amenet clasped her palm. “And I with you, Iviyat idi Kena ki Rixevet.”

Viya shivered in anticipation. “Well,” she said, “there's only three things left to do now.”

“Oh?” asked Amenet lightly. “And what are they?”

“First, regain contact with our allies in Veksh. Second, defeat Leoden. And third, and most importantly, decide which of us has the honour of telling Pixeva and Kisavet that they've been outmanoeuvred.”

Amenet laughed – the first truly happy sound that Viya had yet heard from her. “Why, Iviyat! Is it really so hard a decision to make? I say, begin as we intend to go on.”

“Together, then?”

Amenet's eyes shone. “Together.”

Rising, Viya was halfway to the library door when a distant sound stopped her. A sudden chill coiled in her stomach.

“What is it?” Amenet asked.

“Did you hear that? It sounded like–”

A thin wail clawed the air.

“Screaming.” Amenet paled. “Someone's screaming.” She forced herself to her feet. “We're under attack.”

S
affron woke from the deepest
, most restful sleep she'd had in months to find herself looking up at Gwen. As the events of the trial came back to her, she flinched back into the mattress, fully expecting the older woman to start lecturing her – to say she wasn't
angry
that neither Zech nor Saffron had trusted her with their plans, just
disappointed
; to say they should never have done something so foolhardy and dangerous in the first place; to point out, with weary resignation, how her new scars and tattoo would make everything back on Earth so much more difficult to explain.

But Gwen did none of those things. Instead, she fondly touched two knuckles to Saffron's cheek, a slow smile spreading across her face.

“You're alive,” she said. “You impossible, wonderful girl! You're still alive, and near enough a queen.”

Saffron's mouth went dry. “You're not… you're not cross with me?”

“I was cross, yes. But not at you or Zech.”

“Zech.” Saffron forced herself to sit up, looking around for the other girl. “Where is she?”

“She's safe. She's fine.” Gwen laid a gentling hand on Saffron's shoulder. “Mesthani had her moved to another room. She's sleeping, but you can see her soon. The Council is meeting in session from dawn tomorrow, and the two of you will be expected to be there. That's when you'll make our plea, so it's best that you and Zechalia sit down beforehand and figure out what you're going to say. As much as I'd love to be there with you, it's not permitted. Anyway.” She pulled her hand back to her lap. “That isn't why I came to see you now.”

“It's not?”

“No.” She hesitated. “I've been thinking about what happens when you go home again. When we go back to Earth.”

Saffron tensed.
Here it comes.
“And?”

“I told you, when we first arrived, how I came to be a worldwalker?”

“You did,” said Saffron, remembering the story. “Trishka's magic broke loose and opened a portal to Earth; you fell through it, you had some adventures, and then you ended up liking it here.”

“More or less,” said Gwen. She took a deep breath. “I also said that going home raised questions.”

Saffron tensed. They'd had a variant of this conversation too, the morning when she'd awoken without her fingers. Ever since then, she'd been doing her best not to think of it, but in the wake of the Trial of Queens, she could put it off no longer. “When I finally went home again,” Gwen said, “the hardest part wasn't keeping the truth secret – it was making up lies to replace it, and remembering them, and telling them over and over until eventually people believed me.”

“What… what lies did you tell?”

“Poor ones,” Gwen said, with a quirk of her lips that was half a wince and half self-deprecation. “What does matter, though, are the lies we'll tell together.”

“Together?” Saffron blinked at her. “But I mean, haven't you been doing this for a while now? Why do you need to lie?”

Gwen gave a sad smile. “Because I accosted that boy at your school and made myself conspicuous. Maybe the police know I was there, and maybe they don't, but I'd rather err on the side of caution, and either way, you'll need an excuse for why you wanted to talk to me. We need to explain my presence in your story first, or else they'll assume that what happened to you was me. And they'd be right, in a sense – just not the way they think.”

It took a moment for the full implication to sink in. “They'll think you're a suspect?” Saffron said, not wanting to believe it.

“We vanished off the face of the Earth. Literally. There's no other evidence to suggest I didn't do it, because we didn't leave any behind. I twisted that boy's arm; we were seen together. There's a link between us.”

Abruptly, Saffron remembered something. “Oh god, Gwen. I went looking for you, too – my sister said her friend had seen you behind the chem labs, and I ran straight off. She'll have told them about you for sure.”

Gwen blinked, surprised. “You said you wanted to talk to me when we first arrived, but I don't think we ever reached the point of you telling me why. What was so important that you followed me through a portal?”

Saffron let out a strangled laugh. “I don't even really remember.” The words came from far away, too calm and flat for comfort. “Isn't that strange? It feels like it ought to have mattered more. I think I just wanted to talk to you, but I don't know what about. Just talking in general, maybe.” She looked up at Gwen, her throat too tight. “Why do I feel like this is going to haunt me, if I can't remember?”

“Because it might,” said Gwen. “If you don't. Or even if you do, depending on what it was. So before you start racking your brains, take a moment to think about which would be the worst option.”

Saffron forced a smile. “I'll do that.”

“In any case,” said Gwen, after a pause, “it works in our favour, that you went looking for me. It's not exactly an alibi, but it puts a hole in the theory that my abduction of you was premeditated, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Which brings me back to my original point: once Trishka sends us back, we need to know what to tell everyone. We need to have our stories straight.”

Saffron nodded. “How much time do we have? I mean, when do you think Trishka will be ready?”

Gwen looked at her. “Well, that depends, doesn't it?”

“On what?”

“On you. You've come this far, girl – you've been branded a heretic, dabbled in politics, fought at the side of queens and damn near become one yourself. Which isn't to say I'd blame you or think less of you if you wanted to head on homewards the very second Trishka was able to manage it. But right here, right now, you need to make a choice. Do you want to see things through to the end?”

“Do I have a choice?” Saffron held up her left hand, three-fingered at the end of her tattooed wrist. “This world has sunk its teeth into me. I'm bound to it, now. I never asked for any of this, but going back will be hard enough without spending the rest of my life wondering what might've happened if I'd stayed a little longer, if I'd been there to help. I mean, I don't know that I'll ever get to come back again, do I?”

“You could,” said Gwen, carefully. “If you wanted to.”

“But I don't know that yet, do I? Right now, it's all just hypothetical – get home, explain why I was gone, and then what? Years of therapy? Years of alcoholism? Both? I'm already having nightmares, Gwen, and sometimes I think the only reason they're not worse is because I haven't really processed everything yet. Since I've been here, we've never really stopped – so many people have been hurt, and I fucking
killed
someone, Gwen. I took an axe and I killed her and that horse–” her breathing became rapid as she spoke; she could smell the blood as though it were still happening, and it took all her energy just to fight the memories off, “–but it's all been
normal
, somehow. I mean, I don't mean
normal
normal, just that everyone else has kept on going too, because we've had to; because there hasn't been a choice. And so I keep waiting for someone to come along and say to me,
You're traumatised, you need help,
only nobody does, and so I can keep pretending I'm not and that I don't, but that's the point, isn't it? As soon as we get home again, that's all anyone will ever say to me, all they'll ever see in me. Because–”

“Because,” Gwen finished softly, “there's no lie you can tell to explain all this that won't leave people thinking you're a victim of something horrific.”

For a moment, the world fell away from her. “Am I, then?” Saffron asked hoarsely. “Is that what all this has made me? Just a victim? Nothing else? Because I still can't decide whether coming here was the best or worst thing that's ever happened to me, or if it can somehow be both and neither at the same time.”

“I've spent thirty-three years trying to puzzle out that question,” said Gwen, “and the closest I've come to an answer is, maybe. It depends.”

And in that pinpoint moment, when the terrible weight of everything came crashing down – the air gone glassy and thick, her stomach clenched like a boxer's fist at the thought of going home – Saffron burst out laughing, because it was laugh or cry, and there were tears enough in her past and her future that just this once, she could set them aside. And then Gwen was laughing too, the pair of them holding their sides and roaring as the tears leaked out of their eyes; and only after they'd finally stopped, when the last wrenching chuckle fled her lungs and healthy silence reigned again, did Saffron look back to Gwen and say softly, “I know what the lie should be.”

V
iya and Amenet
stared at each other. The screams grew louder and louder.
Outside,
Viya thought numbly.
It's coming from outside, not downstairs.

Which means there's still time to defend ourselves.

The spell broke. Wheeling, Viya strode across the library, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. There was a small, ornate hand axe mounted on the far wall, which was certainly an option, but apart from being too high up for easy access and too securely fastened to remove without difficulty, it was clearly made for display: the blade was heavily decorated with gold and other soft metals, and with every second potentially vital, Viya disliked expending precious energy to obtain a weapon in whose usage she wasn't schooled and which might well break or buckle under the strain of actual fighting. That left a wicked-looking letter knife she'd pushed to the side of the desk when she first came in; it was small, but undeniably sharp, and made from a strong enough metal that even if she couldn't use it to turn a blow, it could still acquit itself by landing one. Decision made, Viya reached for it – but Amenet got there first, closing her fist over the handle and drawing it slowly into her lap.

They looked at each other again.

“They're here for me,” Amenet said calmly. “You know that. I can't fight, and I won't be taken by them. Not again. The best I can hope for, if they make it up here, is to ensure there's nothing left to take.”

Viya's mouth went dry. She fumbled for words, but couldn't find any, and all the time the screams were growing louder. Instead, she stood by and watched as Amenet pulled aside the folds of her clothes, revealing a leather belt hung with two proper Kenan throwing knives.“I carry them out of habit,” she said, using her shaky right hand to unbuckle the belt, which she handed over. “You take them.”

Quickly, Viya donned the belt, drawing one blade and making sure the other was loose in the scabbard. “They won't make it this far. I promise.”

Amenet's smile was equal parts cold determination and kindness. “My Alixat. Make no promises you can't keep.”

“I never do,” said Viya, and left before fear could stop her.

As she hurried downstairs, she could hear shouts coming from the front drive, intermingled with those same screams as before. But who was it? The loss of Hawy suddenly struck her afresh, and she almost doubled over at the sudden fear that the screams could be coming from Kadu or Pix.
I can't lose any more family.

I can't do this again.

And then she was shaking in earnest, Amenet's blade dropping from her hand with a clatter – she was right back at the battle of the Envas road, rolling beneath a horse's hooves and feeling her head explode in lines of fire as the skewed blow raked her face. She dropped to her knees at the foot of the stairs, unable to move, unable to do anything except think, distantly, that if she died now and nobody saw, then at least she wouldn't be remembered as a coward.

The screaming cut out, though the distant shouting continued. Viya barely noticed. Her awareness of the world had shrunk into tunnel-vision, her pulse erratic, her breath too quick, and yet she was frozen in place, unable to move despite an absolute, bone-deep conviction that staying still meant dying.
I'm going to die. I should be dead already.

Suddenly Pix appeared, crouching before her. “Iviyat,” she said softly. “Viya. Can you hear me?”

After a moment, Viya managed to nod.

Pix exhaled. “A group of soldiers attacked the house. Not many; only seven or so. They weren't after you or Amenet, though; they didn't even know we were here. We took them by surprise, and now they've all been taken care of. It was one of them who was screaming. Everyone else is fine.”

Very slowly, Viya came back to herself. “The soldiers,” she said, her voice as thick as if she'd been woken from a deep sleep, “what were they after?”

“Apparently, they've been dogging Rixevet for days. She kept beating them back, so they thought they'd try a different tactic – riding hard to beat her here, and taking Kadu hostage. Instead, they found us.”

“Rixevet?” Hope swelled in Viya's heart. “Is she here?”

Pix shook her head. “She won't arrive for another day; that was the point of the ambush, apparently. But the soldiers are all gone now, either dead or fled or captured. You don't have to fight. It's over.” She hesitated. “Viya? I'm going to hug you now, if that's all right.”

“It's all right,” Viya whispered, and as Pix put her arms around her, she collapsed against the courtier, not even sobbing, but
howling
, a raw, ungainly sound that felt strong enough to be shredding her lungs as she made it. Her whole body shook, but Pix just stroked her braids and held her close, her voice a sad yet comforting murmur in Viya's ear.

“You've been so strong, little fox. You've done so much, I let myself forget that there's always a cost. I let myself believe we weren't making you choose between grief and respect, but we were, we were, and it's pushed you too far. I'm sorry. I'm still a mother. I should've known better. I'm sorry.”