“They’re keeping that open? I would have thought, with the abolishment of the nobility, that it would be closed.”
“It is a great resource for Galitha, and now it can serve her greatest resource—her people. Anyone may enter, if he has a will to work and the capacity to excel.”
“You sound like you’ve become an idealist all of a sudden.”
“A man cannot run against his own current forever,” Sianh murmured. “You have given me a second chance at a life with some meaning.”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. You and whatever fate compelled our meeting. It was your word that gave me a place among this company. I am grateful.”
“No, we are grateful. We would never have succeeded without…” I shook my head.
“That,” Sianh said with a lilting grin, “is likely true. But now. I will be leaving for Rock’s Ford within the week. And you?”
“And me?” I stared at my hands, the shadow colors of the dying sunset fading swiftly away. “I don’t know. I loosed something on the world and now I suppose it’s my responsibility to wrangle it. But, Sianh, they don’t—they don’t know what they’re asking.”
“What do they ask?”
“They want me to train others to cast as I do. To bring that power under their control, to wield it—but they don’t understand.” I met his eyes, surprised to see them fixed steadily on me as I spoke. “But you do, don’t you? They want you to teach men to kill each other, and you will. Even though you know what that looks like.”
“I will. Even though I carry with me every life I have taken.” He said it simply, without pain, without pride. A fact only, though perhaps the most profound fact that defined him. “You do not need to do as I do. But they will learn, one way or another. Once humans know what is possible, they reach and pull and claw to get it for themselves. For my part, if I teach them to kill, I may also teach them duty and responsibility and respect. Another might not. But I will.” He didn’t press me further, but I took his meaning. I was a more responsible acolyte for the discoveries I had made than others would be.
“It’s this—this going forward,” I whispered. “Going forward alone. I miss—” I choked on his name and buried my face in my hands, words impossible.
Sianh didn’t speak, or even move, except to lay his calloused hand on my shoulder. I leaned against him until weeping had spent me and my eyes were dry. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Why? Why do you apologize for the most natural thing, the most true thing that you might do? We do not respect grief as we should,” he said, “if you apologize for its presence.”
“He would have known what to do,” I said.
“It seems to me,” Sianh said slowly, “that very often, Theodor said he did not know what to do and you were the voice who spoke through his confusion and doubt. I am not at all doubtful that you would know very well what to do if he were asking you for advice.”
“He said that?”
“Only every day.” Sianh handed me a white linen handkerchief. “If it were anyone else, what would you tell them?”
I wiped my eyes with the handkerchief and refolded it carefully. “I would remind them that Galitha needs all of us more than ever,” I said. “And that we all have our talents and knowledge that no one else has. But I also—I also would have rather this all stayed hidden.”
“Such things cannot stay hidden forever. I even suspect that, in the end, it will be for the best. No more subterfuge. No more hidden casting. Do you fear your own power in effecting that new world?”
I started—Polly had asked me the same thing, but I bristled at the question all the more, coming from a friend. “I don’t want it. I don’t deserve it.”
Now it was Sianh’s turn to break the silence with a snort of laughter. Several praying women turned and gave him sharp looks, but he didn’t seem to notice. “If you don’t deserve a place among the victors, no one does. It hounded me that you would be relegated to your brother’s house, forgotten.”
“I figured I was a cup with a hole in it.” I smiled wanly as Sianh started at the old reference. “My use was over. I suppose… I suppose maybe it isn’t.”
Sianh shook his head. “Far from it. I foresee your resonance in the world only just beginning.”
69
“DON’T EAT ALL OF THOSE PLUMS YOURSELF!” VIOLA SWOOPED between a basket of fruit and Kristos’s outstretched hand, earning a playful swat to her shoulder for her trouble.
“I was getting another one for Penny,” he countered, swiping three golden plums so ripe I expected them to burst. Penny laughed as he tossed her one, catching it with one hand as she let a squirming toddler down to run to her father.
“Thea, don’t play in the dirt,” Penny chastised her. “Auntie Sophie just finished that dress, don’t muss it all up.”
“There’s a reason I made it in white cotton,” I answered with a grin. “It might get dirty, but it can be laundered into the ground, too.”
“Now, don’t you take the rest of my plums!” Viola protested as Thea plucked a plum from the basket with her plump, sticky fingers. She looked like Kristos, with a mop of dark curls and a winning grin that she deployed on Viola at that moment, earning herself another plum.
“Where is Sianh with the lemonade?” Annette asked, scanning Fountain Square as though assessing the waves from the prow of a ship. The sun pelted down on all of us, heating the crowded square that pulsed as though alive with the press of people. Republic Day, celebrated to commemorate the passing of the Reform Bill, had become a settled rite in Galitha in the three years since the Civil War. It was fitting that the Galatines should choose to celebrate, not a divisive war or its bloody battles, but the moment that it tried to effect change peacefully. Of course, that meant the national holiday was near Midsummer, and the heat was worse than it had been in years.
“He’s there,” Penny said. “Just past that big tree.” She sat down on one of the few chairs we’d set up, visibly relieved to be off swollen feet brought on by her second pregnancy. She fanned herself with a napkin so hard that the fat pearls hanging from her ears bobbed in the breeze.
“Aren’t you glad we’re in the shade?” Kristos asked, handing her a metal cup beading condensation. More than merely being in the shade, we had a reserved pavilion along with the rest of the Galatine government. “Being a governor has its perks.”
“Yes, but we have to listen to one of your speeches, don’t we?” Penny laughed. “I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
“This one will be short, I promise.” Kristos handed me a cup of water as well, flavored, I saw with appreciation for Kristos’s ever-refining palate, with mint.
Sianh schlepped a keg of lemonade toward us, and Thea clapped her hands with delight. “She is not excited to see me, I know better,” Sianh said as he set the lemonade down on our table. “It is either the lemonade or that I promised her she might pat the horses I brought north for the races.”