Enna Burning (16 page)

Sileph tightened his jaw. His face was red. “You will change your mind. When battle after battle the war does not end, and your precious Bayern stubbornly resists, willing to be wiped out entirely rather than surrender, then you will know you could stop it, decisively, beautifully. You will want the war over then, and you will come to me.”

He hesitated at the door, as if still expecting her to change her mind and go with him right then. She folded her arms.

“I am not letting you go, Enna. I will be back for you, and you will come.”

He swept the tent flap out of his way and was gone.

Enna slumped down on the ground and cursed herself richly. She had acted boldly, but she felt torn up, split like a log. Her heart was hammering out a rhythm in her skull, and her stomach felt iced over. She was the greatest fool of all.

.

Enna was uprooted. She could not stay, but she had nowhere to go. She would not burn for Sileph, and she could not burn against him in Eylbold for fear of hurting Razo and Finn. Never had she felt so imprisoned.

Leifer was dead. She had no more family, and the impatient nature of the fire that was a part of her now would never allow her to return to the slow, quiet life of the Forest. One night she had dreamed of the Forest reduced to steaming black stumps.

And what of Isi? She had tried to kill the queen. Enna had not thought that word before—
kill
. And now she had set fire to Bayern outposts and witnessed the death of at least one of their scouts. If she returned, she might be jailed or even executed for treason. How could she explain? No, she could never go back.

Razo and Finn. Perhaps when the war was over, she could agree to go to Tira with Sileph on condition of Razo’s and Finn’s release. The desire to burn rose blazing in her chest like a cough, and she choked it down. It worsened after Sileph’s departure, and Enna wondered if without an enemy to burn, without targets like the gallows or Bayern outposts, if the fire would slowly consume
her
instead. Maybe, she thought bleakly, when Sileph came back from his current mission, she might agree help him end the war. She shook her head at how quickly she had changed from being tormented by desires to burn Tira to a willingness to burn Bayern. Just like Leifer. Perhaps Isi’s warning had been right after all.

Two days after Sileph had ridden east with a small army, Enna heard a second army depart Eylbold. The camp was quieter after that and her evening stew a little thinner. As night softened the camp, several soldiers built a fire near the tent, and through her tent crack Enna watched the flames and their hot, twisting colors. She found herself daydreaming of Ingridan, Sileph’s city of white arches and houses and bridges spanning blue rivers, and of being a Tiran warrior, a fearsome and famous woman.

From just beyond the fire, the tones of a Tiran woman caught her attention. All the Eylbold women she had seen were Bayern, and, curious, Enna eavesdropped on her conversation with some soldiers about her ride up from Folcmar and passing news of the war. In addition to some message from Folcmar, the woman brought several skins of wine that she passed around. Enna could hear the sounds of drinking, and the laughter and conversation took on a slightly higher pitch.

“They sent you carrying messages alone from Folcmar?” said a soldier.

“Now, sir, why should I be afraid to ride through my own country?” There was a pause. “Is this not Tiran land?”

Several soldiers laughed. “Indeed, lady, it is, and will remain so.”

Enna felt irritated by their talk, and she was tired of waiting. She burst out of the tent and was immediately stopped by her two guards’ crossed spears.

“Back inside,” said the larger one.

“Sileph said I could join the camp,” Enna lied.

“The captain said to keep you hidden away until he returned, witch. Back in.”

“Ooh, is that the fire-witch?”

Enna met eyes with the Tiran woman and could not stop her mouth from widening into a silent gasp. It was Isi.

Enna almost did not recognize her in the Tiran clothing and speaking with a Tiran accent. But she knew her. And she clutched at her stomach to keep herself from crying out. Isi’s yellow hair was uncovered and cut to her shoulders in the fashion of a laborer.

“Yes, that is the fire-witch, our own little Bayern demon,” said a soldier with some disdain. He prodded Enna back inside by a spear tip. She sat down by the flap and watched through the gap.

“I have never seen a fire-witch before,” said Isi in her perfect accent. That had always been her talent, Enna remembered. When Isi had first come to Bayern, she had imitated the Forest accent to hide her identity, and she could distinguish different bird sounds and repeat their words so perfectly, a crow thought she was another crow—or, apparently, a Tiran another Tiran. “May I go in and talk to her?”

“No, not a chance. This is no ordinary prisoner. This is our captain’s special pet.”

Enna winced at the word, and she saw Isi raise her eyebrows.

“Is that so? Would this be Captain Sileph, then? A great leader. He has his way with words, does he not?”

Some of the soldiers snickered.

“I heard a tale once,” said Isi, “of the gifts of languages. Do you know it? How in faraway places, there are people who can speak with birds or horses or rain, and some when they speak to other people have the unnatural power to persuade, their every word a kind of magic? Once in Ingridan I heard Sileph speak and wondered if he had not just walked out of that old tale.”

“Indeed,” said a guard.

Enna’s skin tingled with an icy chill. Isi was trying to tell her something—Sileph had the gift of people-speaking.
A dangerous gift
, Isi had said once.
When one with this gift speaks, it’s not easy to resist the power of their persuasion. It’s difficult not to adore them.

Alone in her tent, Enna scowled.
Honey-tongued goat bastard.

“Do you know some tales, then?” said a soldier out of Enna’s sight. “Go on. It has been a long night since we have had entertainment.”

There was a rumble of agreement.

“All right, but just one, as I am to ride back to Folcmar tonight.”

“Slave drivers,” someone said sympathetically.

Isi closed her eyes as though visualizing the story. “In a mountain kingdom, a landslide awoke a long-defeated dragon. She stretched her neck, sharpened her claws, and tore her way out of the cave. In the rush to freedom, the dragon burned the nearest village, gorged herself on cattle, and returned to her cave to sleep on her bulging belly.”

“Oo-hoo, I would like to try my hand at one of those beasts,” said a young soldier.

“They are not real, you fool,” said the guard.

“Oh,” he said, and hiccuped from the wine.

Isi cleared her throat. “So. A brave prince rode to the cave on his fastest horse. He entered, quietly stepped over burnt cattle bones and charred bits of armor, and got close enough to spear the beast through the eye. But it had been long since one of his kingdom had faced such an enemy, and he did not know that the great old wyrms slept with eyes half-closed and nostrils wide open. When he neared, the dragon woke and raked her mighty tail against the cave wall. The prince stumbled away from the falling rock and was trapped against the cave wall by a barrier of unmovable rubble.”

Occasionally Isi batted the air around her face or paused a moment, gazing at nothing, but for the most part she seemed as much in control as she could be. Enna thought of that tea Isi took to help deaden the wind’s touch, and she guessed that Isi had taken some recently. It might keep her mind focused, but Enna also knew it lessened her skill with wind and made her more vulnerable. The thought made her proud and sad, like watching a bird battle a cat to save her chicks.

Isi looked right through the crack in the flap as though she could see Enna watching, could meet her eyes. “The prince’s many friends wanted to rescue him, but it was useless to try to get past the sleeping dragon. So they waited near the cave for an opportunity. For a great while, none came.” She looked back at the soldiers. “When at last the dragon stirred, she took flight directly toward another village. The prince’s companions knew they had a choice—free the prince or protect the land. With heavy hearts, they turned their mounts to the flying dragon and sped toward battle.”

Isi stopped. There was a silence in which all Enna could hear was the fervent crackling of the fire as it feasted on a green pine bough.

“So, then what happened?” said a soldier.

“That is all I know of the story,” said Isi. “What do you think happened?”

“I guess the companions caught up to the dragon and slew it, and then went back to rescue the trapped prince.”

Isi smiled. “That would be a very good ending.”

“Or,” said another, grumbling that the tale had no ending, “they all got toasted, no one knew the prince was trapped, and he died, too.”

“Yes,” Isi said softly, “that could be an ending, too. Or perhaps while the dragon was gone, the prince found a way to free himself, though digging himself out of a collapsed cave could not be easy.”

“Hmph,” said one of the guards, his voice slurring slightly. “If you do not mind my saying, lady, you are fine at telling tales but lousy at ending them.”

“But you bring good wine,” said another cheerfully.

Isi wished them well and stood to leave, glancing once again at the tent flap, her eyes sad. Enna watched her depart and felt as though Isi had tied a string to her heart and pulled it as she walked away. Enna remembered Isi once bemoaning the fact that she did not have the gift of people-speaking. To Enna’s mind, Isi did not need it.

Isi had come all that way just to tell Enna in a story that they could not rescue her. The thought made her chest burn. She thought of Sileph’s assessment of the queen—a mousy woman with covered hair and lowered face. He never could have foreseen Isi entering the camp disguised as a Tiran woman, risking her life just to comfort her friend.

There were two details that kept returning to Enna’s mind and twisting her heart with a painful wonder. First was that in Isi’s story, Enna had been the royalty and Isi the friend. And second, the possibility that just to disguise herself as a Tiran, just to tell her a story, Isi had cut off her hip-length hair.

Enna sat by the slit in the tent, hugging her knees and thinking about her quickly shifting future. An hour before, she had been ready to give up on Bayern and run off to the enemy country with a smooth-speaking captain. She had thought her friendship lost, but Isi would not let her go. The rumor of the campfire’s heat threaded through the tent flap and battered at her skin, but her chest filled with a different kind of warmth. She yearned to do something, right then, to show her loyalty to Isi and Bayern.

Enna grimaced as she ripped open her Bayern skirt and pulled out the vellum. The leather was supple from sitting so close to her body heat. She ran a finger over the black writing, letting random phrases catch her eye:
Heat remembers that it was once a part of something living, and it seeks to be so again. That small, hollow place. Burns best in what once lived.

She could destroy it right now. Isi had not believed the power for creating fire was contained in the vellum, just the knowledge of how to do so. But what could happen to Enna’s gift with fire if the vellum was not just hidden but reduced to ashes? It felt like a worthy risk. But she hesitated, read over it one last time, rubbed the vellum between her fingers. She sighed a surrendering sigh, pulled in the loose heat from the fire, and lit the vellum. A corner burst gold as flames crawled up its side. She held the far corner until the bite of the heat was blistering, then threw it on the ground, stomping out the ashes before the ground cloth lit.

And then she closed her eyes and just felt. Cold air swirled around her; then a stab of heat came in from the fire through the flap. Wrapped around that heat thread was the paler heat from the guards and bare wisps from the nearest trees. The hollow place in her chest throbbed, ready to take it in at her will. The vellum was gone, and nothing had changed.

She rubbed her forehead and thought of being angry or upset, or even relieved, but she could not pretend surprise. She had wanted to show herself that she was willing to give it up, just as Isi had been willing to cut her hair and risk her life. But she admitted to herself that she had not really believed burning the vellum could take away the knowledge that seemed to be branded into her mind and mingled with her skin, until she could not remember what life had been before fire.

From what Enna could hear through the tent walls, there was no end to the wine Isi brought, or it was particularly strong, for the soldiers seemed to get drunker by the moment. Even Enna’s tent guards were sitting on the ground now, laughing and hooting at some slurred joke. She heard someone say “Bayern” and leaned forward to listen better.

“They won’t know to run . . . to run or what.”

“Bayern don’t know terror till they have met Captain S-SSileph.”

“It is Tiedan leading the army to the capital. Sileph’s just going to Fedorthal.”

“I know, I know.” The speaker began to giggle. “But isn’t the plan mav . . . marvl . . . fine? To attack some out-of-the-way place like Fedorthal and draw their army there, only to send our biggest force to the capital when no one’s looking.”

“Who would suspect us to march right on their capital? I wish I were going.”

“You would be, you cowherd, if you had not been on watch duty twice when her highness the fire-witch there had come a-burning.”

Enna stood, pacing again in the small space. Sileph harassing Fedorthal, Bayern responding and leaving the capital exposed, Tiedan on the march to the capital. She had to act. Sileph had seduced her with his people-speaking lies, but maybe Bayern was not lost after all. Besides, what of the augury? It said that Bayern would win, but with Enna’s help. For a time, she had forgotten.

This was Enna’s chance to set things right. Perhaps she could still catch Isi, warn her, and be back before they noticed and harmed Razo and Finn.