girl, helping my mother mend fishing nets and thinking about promising my life to an ordinary boy from one of the riverstrider clans.
But for this woman …
For who could be so selfish, so uncaring, so heartless that she could turn her back on the entire world, leaving every person in it to suffer so that she might experience a fleeting pleasure?
Heartless, I think. And all the while my own heart reaches out toward North with the thin, weak arms of a beggar child.
Jezara clears her throat, the first sound she’s made in hours. She opens the door and then stands, waiting, for North and me.
She is older than I imagined, for when I thought of her, my mind always conjured up some dark shadow-self containing all the terrible decisions I would never make. But this woman looks to be in her forties, somewhat shorter than I, and round of hip and face. She wears a robe—not red, but a deep purple—with no belt, and her hair is black save for a thin vein of silver spilling down across one side.
Our escape from the mist-ruined village is a blur of fear and astonishment—I remember North leveling his gaze at the woman, naming her, and then … nothing, save a roaring in my ears, until I came back to myself, running along a path toward the mouth of the canyon. Since then, Jezara has led the way without speaking but to say that we can shelter in her home.
Now she looks me up and down, an eyebrow raised. “Welcome, Divine One.” My face must give away some reaction, for she laughs, a quick, dry rattle of a sound that quivers and shakes loose the heavy air. “I never expected to meet you.”
The words are not exactly hostile, but there’s an air about her that unsettles me.
I have noticed that fighters often have a way of standing, a display of competency and physicality that permeates their natures even when they’re relaxed; Elkisa has it, a tinge of tension at all times that reminds me of her readiness.
But the best fighters, the older ones who have seen more, done more—they don’t stand that way. The tension is gone. They have no need to perform readiness, for they know they are ready, and it doesn’t matter if anyone else does.
That is how this woman stands.
I open my mouth, but it’s some time before the words come out: “Thank you for helping me. How did you know to save us?”
Jezara’s lips give an unpleasant twist. “When they destroyed the guardian stone, there was a mist-storm over that canyon like I’ve never seen before. I’ve been patrolling the area since, looking for survivors.”
“They? Who? Who would destroy the guardian stone and leave so many helpless against the mist?” But even as I ask, I realize the answer.
I remember the woman with the gray armband speaking to Daoman the day I returned alive from the forest-sea. Her request was to dismantle a guardian stone for its sky-steel, to see if they could build one of their Havens. I look away from Jezara’s pointed stare. “You knew who I was. You could have let us die.”
Her keen gaze flickers over toward North. She doesn’t miss the red sash he wears at his waist, my colors firmly knotted there. “Then I would have no answers to my questions,” she says. “And you no answers to yours. Come inside. I will show you to the room you can use to rest.”
She leads us into the entryway, leaving her weapons by the door and removing the heavier mantle she wears over her robe. Then she stoops and lifts the hem of her robe, revealing a brace strapped over one leg. The skin is swollen against the leather cords, and she loosens them with a sigh of relief. Hanging the brace next to the weapons, she reaches for an earthenware lamp and a flint-striker.
How could you abandon your people? The words bubble up in my mind like water from a deep spring under great pressure. Every question I’ve ever wanted to scream at her, every cut and dig and blow from a decade of trying to put this land back together after she broke it. What sort of person chooses her own happiness over the needs of an entire world?
How? How could you do this?
How could you do this … to me?
“Why do you not use spellfire?” I ask instead, watching as she lights the lamp and raises it up, revealing a corridor