After the trial of Skau Vanja, 16 Summer 218
The Beauty
Warbler
Warbler spent the moments after the battle for the Beauty tending his garden. He was still shaken by the fight itself, and his part in it, but the aftermath … Well, that shook him in a completely different way.
The pots and beds are now in less disarray, the bonsai seem to have survived the ordeal, and the vegetables will grow back with time and care. He’d be sure to thank Tarin and Garth for watching over things the past several grasps. There’s a new addition with its own place on a bench, a small terrarium containing the strange flowers Sav plucked from the forest behind the fog, and there’s one plant that has to go.
Ringo looks over his shoulder and sees Vanja heading to the deck with her bags packed, and looks down at the little northern fir tree. It had just started growing back, tiny little branches starting to form a canopy of needles.
“Vanja!” he says waving the little tree in the air as he hobbles toward her.
Vanja
Vanja left the kitchen with a small parcel of potatoes and a loaf of hard wheat bread. She’d hugged York without any explanation other than a few words in low Jorungun. A thanks for a warm hearth and a gracious host. Old words. York seemed thrown, responding in a grumble of questions. Maybe it was a farewell that was purely Jorungun, unknown to the dwarves of Isendel. Or maybe it had been even smaller. A blessing that had only been for people leaving Linjor, and unlikely to return.
Vanja had been quiet then. Her body had wanted to cry but she had only ended up shaking gently as York had clasped her wrist and wished her well. Here in the kitchen with the smell of salt and smoke and roasting potatoes that used to be comforting but now was only another small pain of loss. She lied to York, to set him at ease. Said she was fine, but she was leaving. He’d hear the whole story eventually, and for these last few minutes at least she could try to speak it into truth. She would be fine, she said. She was strong. Blisterkere. She had been through worse than this, and she had survived.
Vanja had gone to the infirmary then, and taken a few moments to collect her things and compose herself. She’d washed and rebraided her hair, pulling it away from her good eye but letting it fall in a wave of red over her blind side.
A quick assessment. Take the carpentry tools. Leave the medical supplies - they’d need them more than she would - then rethinking, repacking, leaving half. Keep the breastplate, leave the heavy armor, take the leathers, the furs, her old fur-wrapped boots. The map. The diary. Eyeblack and soot-ink and a small hand mirror. Leave the parcels of cocoa and tea. Leave the whiskey. No, keep that, rebottled in a wineskin, the bottle left behind.
She stops and hesitates, before moving quickly again, removing a few sprigs of peppermint and dried bits of camphor from a small pouch. She’d leave something behind, maybe, some salve to help Avarian’s wound heal, or a tea to help Sylas sleep. Some inside joke to Roux or Talith, or a note even, at least for Athelia… something for them to remember her…
But she doesn’t.
Instead, Vanja finishes packing. She steps out into the hold and pulls Olev’s cloak over her shoulders. The cloak had been cleaned, since she’d worn it last. Stains brown and red washed away, the wool pilling where it had been scrubbed. A tear at the hem repaired with thread the color of mulberry wine. Vanja presses her thumb against the break in the pattern and closes her eyes.
She takes a long, deep breath, and climbs up to the deck.
Only a few steps into the open, Vanja hears her name. It’s Warbler, waving her down with a small potted tree.
Vanja stops, setting her backpack on the ground, taking a moment to loosen the laces over her shoulder. She had filled the arrow wound with Riverlight, and repaired the damaged buckle, but her shoulder was still stiff from remembered hurt.
“Hei, Warbler,” Vanja said. Then, sheepishly, automatically, “I’m sorry.”
Warbler
“No … no, no I’m sorry. I … I should have.” he paused for nearly a minute, looking at his feet, unsure what to say, how to fix what’s been broken.
“It’s grown a lot, the tallest bonsai in the garden … straight and strong just like you’d hoped …” he mumbled.
Ringo holds out the tree in both hands not looking up, “I was alone for a long time … too long I think, you should take this with you. People are better when they have something to care for besides themselves …”
Vanja
Vanja smiles at Warbler, and moves to him. In an arc of movement she takes the pine tree and sets it on the deck, before sweeping Warbler off his feet and into a hug. Vanja had thought she was done with tears, over this at least, but she’s unsurprised by the blurring of her vision, by the streak of eyeblack she wipes away with her sleeve.
“What could you ever have to be sorry for?” Vanja says. She sets Warbler down, and touches his cheek with a careful hand. “You’ve been nothing but kind to me, and good for the group. And you knew none of us to start… Still you’re so…” she pauses, “you’re dedicated. To getting to Galoring.”
“I’ll never understand that,” she says, softer, “how you really seem to believe we can…” Vanja stops, her words sour in her mouth, “How you seem to believe they can do it. Get in without being caught.” She shakes her head, scanning the deck, but it’s quiet. Most of the crew trying to salvage what they can from the debris; her…friends… all hidden in their bunks or studies.
Warbler
Warbler chirps with surprise as he feels himself scooped off the ground. His body goes stiff for a moment as his head spins, and his stomach turns. He shakes his head, clearing his vision, and assesses the attack.
Oh, a hug, Ringo thinks as he returns the embrace. Sorry … I’m sorry for more than I can tell you.
“Oh … it’s not that I don’t think we’ll get caught,” Warbler states with a shrug as Vanja plops him back on his own two feet.
I’m counting on it, he thinks.
“… it’s that I know that they’ll fight,” he says looking down at his balled up fists. “We just need to remember who our enemies are.”
Vanja
A sharp, sudden pain. Vanja’s good hand goes automatically to her shoulder, a pulse of green light pressing its way into her collarbone and down into her stomach.
For a moment she’s tempted to do more. To make this easier on herself, on everyone, by tempering her emotions with riverlight.
Vanja wonders, briefly, if Warbler will be asked to take over the infirmary, or if Athelia would dare to hire another physician at port. Vanja would be easy enough to replace, in the end
She shoves the thought down, and instead she turns her full attention to Warbler. “Sure,” she says, “They’ll fight. Just…be careful.”
“Look. You remember Northgate,” she adds. Her tone is flat. She’s not trying to convince anyone anymore. “The Swans had no mercy, when they found me…the only grace I got was from…” she shakes her head, “In Galoring, it will be worse,” she says. “More crowded, with more soldiers, more security…and they know you’re coming. All of you - Athelia and her crew, too. Just…” She stops and her voice falls. Breaks. “You’re brave, Warbler. You may not enjoy the thrill of the fight, but you’re brave. And…and it’s genuine.” She laughs a little, “From what I can tell anyway. You’ve still never said what’s really bringing you to Galoring. And I know you’re no believer in Fate as I am.”
A moment of quiet. The wet air settles heavy on Vanja’s hair, beading on the shoulders of her cloak where it is wicked away by the tightly-woven wool.
“Der en vanskljir en yeder veijlvare,” says Vanja under her breath. “It’s harder than I thought it would be.” Vanja crouches, slightly, and looks Warbler in the eye, “Don’t sacrifice yourself for them,” she says. The words are harsh, but steady with her own conviction. “They have their own agenda - rescuing Danica - and anything else is second or lower. If your plan - whatever it is - isn’t aligned with theirs, then you cannot rely on them. Don’t let them get you killed.”
“If it comes down to it, run. Fly. Quiet your steps and get out of the city. Become a mouse or a stray dog or something.”
She straightens her posture, and continues to speak without looking directly at Warbler. “Find me, if you want. Whenever it’s over - whether you win or you run. We can go South, and East. Track down my brother, if he can be found, see if our villages are still standing, and count what remains of our families. Our real families.”
Warbler
Killed… he ponders … I can manage that well enough on my own.
Warbler smiles widely “I won’t let them get me killed, but … I’m not running away again. The path, my path is bringing me to Galoring; to where the Swans came from. I’m, I’m really sorry you aren’t going with us …”
One less weapon in a nearly hopeless war … he thinks … real family … gone, lost … generations of them, centuries of memory, of story, history, all ash.
Win … no … when it’s over.
“You should find your brother, and when you do plant that tree,” he says pointing at the bonsai resting on the deck, “share your stories with him, and …and make some new ones.
“I’ve packed some rations for you. They should last a week or two,” he says rifling through a bag, “and … remember to keep your socks dry, change them every day, there are a lot more insects in the south, so chew on these leaves in the morning, and use this herb if anything stings you …”
He continues to ramble for several minutes about what to eat or not, what terrain to avoid, what sounds in the wild signal danger, how to smell a storm before it hits, and the best places to make camp.
Vanja
Vanja nods along to Warbler’s wilderness instructions. Some of this she knows - wet socks in the North could lead to rot and frostbite. But she’s never had to deal with swarming biting insects or the slick threat of layers of wet leaves.
“That’s good to know,” she says, “about the insects, and the land.” But she shakes her head at Warbler’s comments about her leaving.
“You know, I don’t want to go. And I especially don’t want to do this alone. I’d rather have someone to watch my back. To keep me safe when I sleep.” She finds her hand moving to her opposite wrist, where she’s tied Bax’s eyepatch. She can almost hear his reminders of caution, his self-aware jokes about rushing into combat. She pulls at the cord, absently. Feels it cut into the welts her shackles have left. “But I’m looking forward to firm earth under my feet again.
“I’ve been in the wilds before.” She hesitates, laughs a little. “I used to be the kind of person to stay busy. If there was no goal in mind, I would make one. I’d get…so frustrated when we were in Northgate. All those clandestine meetings that seemed to result in nothing.
“I was so anxious to do something, anything worthwhile that I tried to hunt the yeti of Jorung. Alone. I thought - here’s a thing that needed to be done, that the others weren’t interested in doing… I’d just do it myself.”
She laughs again, but there’s no humor there. “I’m lucky I didn’t find it. Well… on my own at least. It would have killed me.
“I liked that much, about Jorung, though. It’s so much easier to fight monsters than people.
“And if I find Lumotu, or Aric, maybe I’ll see you again in Galoring!” Her face cracks into a smile, “A joke. I’m not eager to be arrested again.”
Vanja hefts her bag onto her shoulder, taking a moment to lash the additional rations to the side of the pack. It is heavy.
“If you do survive,” says Vanja, “send word to Northgate. It might be I’ve got no one left to find and I’ll settle back there. Be a proper physician, like I was before.”
Vanja looks down at Warbler, and at the small, straight pine in the pot. “I can’t take that with me,” she says, softly, “it should stay with the rest of the garden. Looks strong enough to support some of the others, if they need it.
“Un skau, right? One forest?”
Warbler
“I … hmm, I wouldn’t go back to Northgate.” Warbler says thoughtfully as he recalls trudging through the sewers, the pain and poverty of its citizens contrasted by the opulence and comfort of its nobility, and the cold dead tree in the square. “Find somewhere else to put down roots … let that place grow without you.”
SNAP
Suddenly and without warning Warbler breaks the bonsai in half leaving a stump in the clay pot and holding a twig with a few pine needles still growing from it. There is no malice or anger in the action. There is a mourning to it, a finality, an end.
He places the twig into Vanja’s hand and mutters, “It can’t stay …” as he shakes his head.
“Sha desh, Skau Vanja, till our next crossing.”
Vanja
Vanja looks down at the tree in her hand. No. Now it was just a stick. Just wood. No longer growing straight and strong. Vanja can feel the pitch bleeding out into her hand, seeping from the smaller branches destroyed in the larger break.
“Yeah,” she says to Warbler, “Ska det.” She nods to Warbler, clasping his hand with her free one. There’s certainty there, though, and it isn’t ska det, not really. She watches as he bobs away across the deck. She knows she won’t see him again.
Vanja blinks once. Twice. She sniffs, taking in the sharp scent of pine, and then attempts to break the tree again. The bonsai resists it - the wood still unaware it’s dead, plump with water, its fibers flexing against the violence. She braces it against her knee and snaps it again. Once more. Again. Each time taking the smaller piece and adding them to an empty pouch of her medicine kit. Until there is nothing but the stump in the pot, and a small pile of pine-scented debris in her kit.
She’d burn it into charcoal, and mix it with the oils of these southern hardwoods and make more soot-ink. Vanja turns her arm, studying the pale flesh inside her bicep. Five. She needed to add five more marks. Her stomach twists. Names too, maybe. There was room, where the rune for Bax was pressed into her skin above Mikael’s, and his above Sasha’s. Space for Vanja to carve mourning runes. Vanja pulls her sleeve down over her wrist and takes up her pack. Her weapons. For the first time in more than a season, she has an axe at her hip again, and it thuds softly against her gifted warhammer as she straightens up, and looks over the deck.
Warbler has returned to the garden, his words said. There’s no one else.
In another moment, Vanja is over the rail of the ship and down the ladder. She speaks down to the water below, praying for it to hold her weight, praying it allow her to float. Green riverlight drips down from Vanja’s hands as she climbs, flowing with the fog.
Vanja’s boot sinks into the water, but only just. The surface of the water still rippling in the wake of the ship, turbulent where it’s churned by the end of the rope ladder, loose without Vanja’s weight. She braces herself for wind, but as she leaves the wake of the ship, the air calms, the rain slowing.
Vanja pulls the hood of Olev’s cloak close around her face and imagines she’s another girl. A girl who has no magic. A girl who went to the city with her brothers, maybe, to arrange a shipment of pine and salt fish, and who met a man who loved her, maybe, and who trusted her and who she could trust in return. A girl who was never called a runemaker. Or a witch. Who never met Bax Demir or Ethan Fairchild or joined a conspiracy to overthrow the government of a country she cared so little about.
She imagines she’s the kind of girl who fights for sport, but whose work is healing. A girl who would never betray her friends.
A girl who fate had tried to drown, but who had survived.
The face under the hood of the cloak shifts, the cloak itself appears longer, darker. Vanja would follow the river for now, close, keeping to the edge, and when she reached a place unravaged by the River God, she’d stop. She’d say she was a castaway. Survivor of a ship sunken by the River Serpent. She’d barter for a horse. She’d go North.
As she walks, plan in mind, Vanja’s step gets steadier.
It would be a long walk, but Vanja is blisterkere. She is Blood of the North.
And she is strong enough alone.
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