of his thesis?” The Lord of Bhrudwo’s voice was devoid of inflexion.
“I… ah, perhaps I would defer to one who actually lived in those days,” she said, proving she was not only knowledgeable and brave, but wise.
“No matter her tactic, we all know her ultimate goal. With Lenares’ cleverness and our strength we have rid the world of Keppia, but he was the less intelligent of the siblings. I fear we have a far greater task ahead of us.”
Lenares agreed with the Undying Man’s assessment. Umu was very clever. She had tricked Lenares into letting her go just when she might have done the most good. She was much sneakier and less direct than her brother had been. And she was bent on revenge against Lenares for having ensnared her.
Lenares had been thinking about Umu on that first night in Mensaya when someone approached her.
“Sister, might we not speak?”
Fear prickled anxiously in her stomach as she swept her lank hair aside, looked up and met Cylene’s troubled gaze. “I don’t really want to,” she said.
“I know you don’t,” Cylene said, nodding slightly. “No one understands that while everyone else has gained something today, you have lost.”
“Do you see this?” Lenares said, on the verge of tears. Don’t cry. You must never cry in front of others. They will tease you and call you names.
“Of course I see it. But I haven’t come to offer you counsel. Sister, we have both lost mothers today. I have only just learned the fate of my… our family. I know she deserved it, but… ”
The tears came, and soon neither girl could tell where one’s sorrow ended and the other’s began.
“I don’t like you,” said Lenares, sniffing. “They kept you and got rid of me. What made you so special?”
“You were the special one, Merla,” Cylene said, seemingly unoffended. “You stood up to what Daddy did to us. You were always getting beaten. It hurt us to see it, and made us frightened to disobey him in case we were treated like you.”
“I’m Lenares, not Merla. Merla is dead. She fell from a cliff nearly ten years ago. I don’t want to hear her name any more.”
“And you don’t remember… ?”
“I remember nothing.”
“It’s as though you lost something essential in your mind and you became a new person.”
Lenares scowled. “Or maybe I gained something extra that no one else has,” she countered.
Cylene nodded. “I’m sorry, Lenares. Forgive me for my rudeness. I, too, have gained something, thanks to you. I now have a small capacity for magic.”
“Can you hear Mahudia? Does she speak to you?”
Cylene shook her head sorrowfully. “No, sister. Our mothers are gone. You and I will have to do for each other.”
Lenares grunted an ungracious reply, but had not really expected to drive her sister away. Nor wanted to when it came to it. Cylene was her sister, after all.
Sister. She wished to deny it, but the word brought a warm glow to her chest. Though her sorrow at the loss of Mahudia was almost unbearable, she knew she could not have resisted her foster mother’s last request. Some people might feel they were betraying the newly departed by talking to the one responsible for that loss, but Lenares prided herself on always seeing the truth. This wasn’t Cylene’s fault.
“What’s it like to be dead?” she asked her sister.
Cylene’s face fell. “Noetos asked me that and I couldn’t give him a satisfactory answer,” she said.
“Is he your… is he special to you?” He’s so old. As old as our father would have been. The thought made Lenares uneasy.
“Noetos and I are very good friends,” Cylene said, smiling. “We don’t yet know what we might become.”
“Do you love him?”
“He asked me that too. I’m not sure I gave him a satisfactory answer to that question either.”
“Do you remember Keppia?”
Cylene sighed. “I wish I could forget. I’m not sure where I went after the ship crashed down on me, but it was a place of wide-open spaces and twinkling lights, filled with countless voices, some laughing, others weeping, arguing or speaking quietly. I was drawn back into my body, and he was there, filling it up. I can’t describe to you what it feels like to be inside your body but not filling it. To me it seemed as though my whole body was a blister I needed to slough off, or perhaps an unnecessary layer of clothing.
“Then he started to hurt me. It was horrible.” The colour faded from her face. “Lenares,