. name. . . .” She stopped as Lizzan drew back her hood, her reddened hands over her mouth, blue eyes filling. “Lizzan?”
“I am here.” With throat aching and her chest a solid lump of emotion. “I am here.”
“Oh, you should not be, but I do not care.” With a sob, Yuna flew to her, clutching her tight before drawing back to look up into Lizzan’s face. “I am not sorry. But did anyone see you? They will not—”
“All is well.” With a tear-filled smile, Lizzan glanced over her shoulder as Aerax ducked into the tent. “I am married to someone who is above Kothan law.”
“Aerax.” Yuna held out her hand to him, then instead flung her arms around him and held him tight. “So glad I am to see you both. All three of you,” she corrected on a laugh when Caeb’s big head pushed into the tent.
She moved aside the bark divider to offer them more room and continued, “Farzan is away. He is always away. No one has use for a magistrate here, but they all have need of a healer—though of course most will never admit who attended to them,” her mother added wryly.
“And Cernak?” Lizzan asked, her heart aching.
Worry filled her mother’s expression, followed immediately by the stout reassurance that Lizzan knew so well, as if her mother would make things be all right simply through force of will. “He is with the king in the crystal palace. But they must be safe. The island still stands, so they are safe.” She shook her head. “But I do not know for how much longer we will last, here or there. The walls of this camp do not keep out the beasts that can climb, full half the people are sick with a cough, and food is more scarce by the day. And a message came by falcon two days past that there were cracks in the palace doors and to see if there was word of the Krimatheans’ approach. But now you are here, Aerax. Do they come?”
“They are coming,” said Lizzan, who could not bear to completely crush her mother’s hope. “But we have arrived with warriors and a monk who knows of magic, and will see if we can stop the demon before that. First I need to know, Mother . . . where did Father come by this medallion?”
Her mother’s lips parted as Lizzan drew the chain from beneath the neck of her tunic. Drawing closer, she whispered painfully, “I thought it was lost when your father was slain.”
“It was,” said Lizzan. “But Vela herself returned it to me.”
Yuna’s gaze shot to hers, as if searching for a jest. But no doubt or surprise did Lizzan see in her mother’s eyes—as if her mother easily accepted that a goddess had spoken to her.
That did not seem at all like her mother, who had a magistrate’s habit of questioning and interrogating the truth of everything.
“How did my father come by it?”
“He came by it through your soft heart.” A sad smile curved her mouth when she rubbed the medallion between her fingers, as if caught by a memory. “He had gone with my parents as escort when they took their healing wagon into the outlands. I was not there, though I might have otherwise been, because I was heavy with Farzan.”
Who was nearly four years younger than Lizzan. So little more than a toddling child she must have been. “This was during the Bitter Years?”
Her mother nodded. “Already you talked of becoming a soldier. You always talked of it. But Cernak was already on that path and we thought if you spent time with my parents, you might take an interest in healing. Especially after you saw how many needed it.”
Something they had attempted for years afterward, too. “You thought my soft heart would sway me, even then?”
“We did not know then the depth of your stubbornness,” her mother said, and grinned when Aerax grunted an agreement. But her grin quickly faded. “Everyone whom my parents passed in their wagon on the outland roads and every village they went to, they would ask if anyone suffered from an affliction so they might help. So when they came upon an old traveler sitting on a fallen log at the side of the road, you went up to them and asked if they had an affliction. And the traveler told you that they were in good health, but were fiercely afflicted by a bothersome fly