3 Summer 218
The Fallen Aasimar Ruin in the Mountains
Athelia
Athelia stared at the fading light where the Swan and their commander Kelwin had vanished. Her own song unraveling, the power fading and leaving her empty. The battle was won, in a way, and they were alive. But she stood quietly in the rain, it felt like failure too. Water wetting her upturned face, she let it run over her, keeping her eyes closed for a moment. She wanted easier choices. She wanted to make the right decisions. Taking a deep breath she opened her eyes and looked around. In the distance she saw Vanja, going off to sit alone.
Smaller now, not just in size, but seemingly diminished by a burden. Athelia considered the way the battle had gone. The swans, their magic, and their leader. And through the entire battle, Vanja had been vital to their success. But also Vanja, still a young girl, had made the brutal decision to end three lives.
Athelia’s heart ached and she turned to follow. Vanja chose to sit on a wooden crate just beyond the ruins. Her shield propped against her knee.
“Vanja,” Athelia said softly, approaching alongside her. “Wasn’t an easy battle, was it?”
Athelia had watched Vanja struggle just hours before, fighting for the life of a swan soldier who had no will to live. She knew Vanja was similar to herself, not soft hearted necessarily, but trying to be her best, to do her best. But these circumstances were far from simple or even straight forward.
“What I mean, really, is it’s never easy. Taking a life. Making that choice.” Athelia looked at Vanja’s face, maybe catching her eyes. “I don’t think we had any other options, no good ones. So I wanted to thank you. I have trouble shouldering that responsibility, and if I’m honest… I avoid it as much as I am able to. But in that fight, I hope you know, there were no other choices left to us and if it hadn’t been you, it would have been me. Or one of the others. I think you care in a similar way that I care.”
“It’s hard not to see them as whole people who are fighting just like we are.”
Athelia sighed, her heart felt heavier acknowledging that, remembering the way the men fought and recognized their nobility. “But I speak honestly when I say, in that battle. There were no good options.”
Vanja
Vanja looks up at Athelia’s approach, then back down the gentle slope toward where they had entered the battlefield. The body of one of the Swan soldiers is only a few feet away. If Vanja were still in her giant form, she could have picked the corpse up without taking a single step.
As if called by the scent of death, Vanja hears her mother’s voice in her mind, singing songs of warriors fallen, noble in battle, weapons clutched in hand, crossing the River to be at peace, at last. Vanja feels the words on her own lips but doesn’t speak them.
: You must be from such a beautiful place. :
A slow ache spreads through Vanja’s stomach, and she finds her fingers tracing the runes on her arm. Not magical ones. Not powerful ones. But the names of her lost brothers. Sasha. Mikael. Bax.
It wasn’t worth praying for the Swan at her feet. It wasn’t worth the air from her lungs.
For all her runecarving and repetition, for all that she saw the Riverlight - proof of her own soul - coursing through her veins and out of her hands, her prayers had never been answered. Not really. She had done incredible, impossible things, yes, but the cost had always been too high. And Vanja knew now that on the other side of the River wasn’t the peace of fields of wheat and the embrace of lost loved ones, but a Pale Land, with bare trees and dark birds instead of leaves. The River had always flowed on, regardless, pushing Vanja into danger time and again, overwhelming her, threatening to drown her, and she had never been able to change its course.
:Those aren’t the right prayers. :
And so instead of prayers, what comes from Vanja’s lips are just words. True words, but without any power behind them.
“No,” says Vanja, “it was easy. It was the easiest fight I’ve ever done.” She lifts her arm, turning it to reveal a patch of pale skin, tattooed only by freckles, where she would need to add her marks. “They’re just people.”
Athelia
Athelia stays quiet for a moment, “it’s not the ability to kill, but the choice that is heavier. But you’re right. They are only people. Like us.”
Looking behind her a moment she sits down on a crate there. Letting a full moment pass between them.
“I can’t look at a Swan soldier without thinking that they might be just like Avarian,” she smiles. “I love him. And I respect who he was before I knew him. So I see men and women serving their duty with honor. But I also know that the way Isendel is now, they’d kill me if they knew what I am. They’d justify it by saying I’m not human or they’d be ordered to do it and duty would come before humanity. Maybe not every Swan is like that.”
Vanja
Vanja’s brows knit together at this. “I didn’t know he’d been a Swan. Avarian,” she says. Her voice is quiet.
“It’s like I’ve said, before. There are so many people who are Swans. And some who have been pressganged into it, and some who have volunteered because they believe they’re doing the right thing, protecting the country from the danger of witches. And all of them have people who care that they’re dead. Families, friends, comrades-in-arms,” she looks down at the dead soldier again. His face is obscured by mud, but he is young.
Vanja’s quiet for a moment.
“I knew a man. In Northgate,” she says. Her voice catches, but she clears her throat and continues. “He was a Swan.” Vanja turns her face away from Athelia, feeling color rising in her cheeks, a mix of shame and self-conscious youth. “Private Deren Lake.” She smiles a little. “Lieutenant now, I think. I was supposed to talk to him, get information about the guard movements in the White Ward, but I didn’t just…”
“I lied to him. Just pretended I was a normal girl. And he was kind, and genuine. A little awkward,” her smile widens, at the memory, and she bites it back. “And he liked me, not just the fighting or healing I could do. And when we were together in the city, sometimes people would say things about me,” at this she gestures to the thick plait over her shoulder, woven of smaller braids, in the intricate style of Jorung, “but he never… it was nice,” she says. “He’s the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
Vanja stops. Chews her lip. She tastes blood. She hasn’t broken her own skin, but the bitter iron taste fills her mouth just the same. Swan blood.
“Deren asked me to stay with him, in Northgate. And it never…I’d have had to maintain the lie forever. But it wasn’t an easy choice. I don’t…” Vanja hesitates, and wipes her hand across her mouth, smearing the stranger’s blood across her cheek. “I don’t really have anyone left,” she says, “At that point, I’d just lost my brothers and…and Bax was already…”
Vanja closes her eyes and lets herself picture Deren, in the moment where she’d been thrown at his feet, broken and bleeding. How she’d looked up at him and seen confusion. The hurt on his face, when he realized she was a liar and a witch.
Then - in what should have been a rescue - Ethan had left her alone in that prison rather than fight to free her. Telling her to summon the River. Telling her to save herself. Making his own escape with a blade through Deren’s eye and a flourish of blood.
: They don’t love you. :
Ethan had abandoned her.
No. She couldn’t blame Ethan.
They had all abandoned her.
Making their choice that it was more important to race to Galoring than to try to rescue her. To save Danica, instead, when they knew that Vanja was alive.
And from her cell Vanja could see Deren. Crumpled to the stone-flagged floor in a growing pool of blood. And Vanja couldn’t move… couldn’t speak… but she had still pulled from the River. The sky pale and lifeless so she tore the River from her own body, pouring the green life-light into Deren, watching as the bleeding stopped, as new skin knit itself over his ruined eye, as he’d climbed to a knee and looked at her with the one eye that remained and she had seen confusion there, and pain. But also love. And later, that kindness again. The forgiveness. The taste of soup and the sharp scent of cleaning balm, and the touch of his fingertips on her face, his hand in her hair, gentle and understanding and so like the same touch that had traced her scars into constellations and reminded her she was alive that night in the inn.
“He loved me,” Vanja says, “and he was a good man. And I lied to him. Betrayed him.” She laughs at this, the unkind, painful laugh she used only against herself, “and then I betrayed all of you, too.” She shakes her head, “This…pain…”
: This suffering. :
“I brought it on myself.”
“But I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll probably never see Deren again. And it isn’t as if I can change any of it.” She pulls the cuff of her gambeson over her hand and starts to use the wet cloth to scrub her face. “The River flows on, regardless, my father would say. So it’s all just another stupid thing I’ve done. Trusting the wrong people.”
: You’re stronger alone :
“And I’ve made this kind of mistake before, too,” Vanja says, looking once more at the Swan at her feet, still half-crushed by the cannon above him. Her voice is muffled, slightly, now. Her sleeve is still pressed to her face and now it’s absorbing more than blood, as Vanja wipes her eyes and nose, too. For once she’s thankful for the seemingly always-present Isendelian rain.
“I keep thinking that each one deserves that chance. That because they’re people, whole people with lives beyond this fighting and witchhunting, with homes and families and people who love them, that it would be more important than this. Than dying for this… that they’d be willing to keep a secret or tell a lie or run and hide and start over rather than…” Her voice catches again, but she twists the sob into another humorless laugh, “But I just keep being wrong.”
She looks up at Athelia, tilting her head to compensate for her blinded eye, “Still. Not all Swans, though. If Avarian is of a kind. And he wasn’t bothered?” she asks, “When he found…that you’re…who you are?” Vanja can feel the heat on her cheeks again, “You and he seem…well matched.”
Athelia
“Ahh, when he and I met I didn’t know about his past, and we both carried secrets that are too dangerous to share without trust,” she says while seeking Vanja’s gaze. “You weren’t wrong for keeping your connection to the river a secret. Isendel is dangerous. The Swans have been turned against anyone with abilities like ours. And I suspect this has been made so much worse because of the Baroness. It wasn’t like this, not this bad; mistrusted but not hunted.”
“Actually, I was surprised to see those soldiers wielding the very powers they hunt us down for. I’ve never known such a thing. Hypocritical,” she scoffs softly with a heavy frown. “But Avarian, we met because he rescued me from a group of Swans. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t been there.”
Athelia rubs her neck, an unconscious movement, a shadow of a memory.
“Had I been caught, had my friends been caught…” she trails off before clearing her throat. “They weren’t planning to ship us to Galoring.”
Athelia rests her hands on her knees, staring at the mud. And then nods, maybe to herself, acknowledgement of a future best avoided.
“So Avarian saw some women in trouble, he even saw me control the water to protect myself, and the Swans saw a witch who should die,” Athelia looks up. “I like to think they made their choices when their hate and fear made them attack us. We just tried to run. We weren’t even fighting, just running.
“I imagine there are other soldiers like Avarian, who see us as people too. And I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt if they ever tried to just not attack us. I don’t want to end up like the others of my kind. I don’t deserve to die for the song I sing or that I’m not human.
“And I don’t hunt down these soldiers. I avoid them, I keep their peace. More so, I tried to find a peaceful means to remove the Inquisitor from my ship. And yet they carried you aboard my ship bound and helpless in a box. They call us monsters, and they do monstrous things.
“And after it all. I tried to imagine a path where we spared the final soldier’s life. I wanted him to be innocent of the atrocities of his superior. To be ignorant and not a true believer in their cause. I wanted to see him off my ship. I did not want the responsibility over whether he lived or died. I examined every alternative path and my mercy would have put my people in danger. And that day Sav made the necessary yet gruesome choice.
“Had we let the Inquisitor go his way, we would have never discovered that you still lived.”
Vanja
Vanja’s mouth twists at the mention of the soldier on the ship and she spits, a mix of snot and blood. “That man had his chance to atone,” she says in a voice level and low. “I don’t care what Sylas said after the fact - that the other Swans of my…escort…didn’t know what their cargo was.”
Vanja’s hands are shaking and so she busies them, pulling her new blade into her lap and using her same soiled sleeve to wipe the blood from the stone, scraping with her fingernail where it’s begun to dry in the intricate filigree near the hilt.
“He knew there was a terrified girl locked in a box, and he chose to do nothing,” her voice breaks again, “I was gagged, but I screamed, Athelia. I screamed until there was blood in my throat. And I fought. I broke my knuckles and my knees on the roof of that box, and I tried to grow large and cracked my own ribs doing it…” she takes a breath. “I don’t know how I was able to grow massive just now, and my clothes and weapons with me…but the shackles..the box…that didn’t grow when I tried.”
She shakes her head, pushing wet hair away from her good eye, “If the soldier on the ship didn’t know - and that seems impossible - then he should have been on his knees begging forgiveness for what he put me through.” Vanja’s eyes narrow and for a moment she grips the white stone blade hard, feeling the edge cut through her sleeve and into her palm. “I’m a good person,” she says, her voice suddenly sharper, “If he’d shown any regret at all, I’d have fought to save him!” Vanja’s voice falls again, spiraling into a series of low Jorungun cursewords before she rallies, continuing in common Isendelian, but still with the cadence of Jorung. A reminder of her grasps without speaking the language. Of her current exhaustion.
“My only regret about the soldier on the ship is that Sav did it instead of me.” Vanja laughs drily, “Talking of hypocrisy, though…the…those” she searches for a word and says something in Jorungun that she doesn’t translate, “Falkvenner. The others having such a problem with poor good-hearted Vanja wanting to kill a man who tortured her…but no one but you says anything when I skewer a man a quarter of my size. When I run him through like a rabbit on a spit. Nothing.”
: They don’t care about you. :
It was true. They didn’t.
She really had no one, now.
Vanja shakes her head. Blinks a few times. Sniffs. Clears her throat. When she speaks again her voice is steady, “So. What will you do, when we get to Galoring? Kelwin’s probably there now, setting another trap. And he knows your face, and Avarian’s. Is this rescue mission worth your life? Or his?”
Athelia
Athelia considers Vanja. “I have a problem with torture in general. With killing as a first choice. But I also know that staying my hand at the wrong time could mean terrible consequences for those in my care.
“I have to rely on those who make up for what I lack. I have to trust in the judgment of others, and your friends know more about that man Kelwin and the trouble the Baroness is causing than I do. But. I do have some questions about the danger that man is to us, now that he got away. Now that he’s seen my face.”
Gently Athelia rests a hand on Vanja’s knee. “I’m not about to throw my life away for no reason. And I won’t lead my crew, including you, into uncertain or insurmountable danger. But I don’t want any witch to rot in a prison if maybe I can find a way to help. It’s worth seeing if there’s the possibility we can help them. And I’m sorry I believed you were dead In North Gate. You didn’t deserve to be left behind. But I’m very glad your river brought you to my river and my ship.”
Hearing Sav’s call for her and Roux, she gives Vanja an apologetic look and heads inside the ruins.
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