“Only by a Miralyith, and all of them serve my father. It will never be taken off, not while she’s alive. That’s why Vasek is doing the dirty work. It all has to be done by hand.”
Imaly considered this and nodded. “I see. Well, at least she poses no threat. Thank you for setting my mind at ease. I don’t know what we would do without you.”
The two walked a bit farther, passing by the crypts of the previous fanes. When they got to Fenelyus’s tomb, Imaly said, “You know, many see you as the true inheritor of her legacy. They say the talent for leadership skipped a generation.”
The weather had turned colder. Most of the trees had lost their leaves, their naked branches clapping hollow, woody applause as their clothes danced in the streets. Imaly lifted the hood of her robe.
Mawyndulë recalled Vidar’s warnings about trusting Imaly, about her being dangerous, and he knew that was just so much dusty thinking. Since their first meeting, she had endeared herself to him, been the one true rock in the turbulent sea of his life. Hearing Imaly say words he’d recently thought or knew he was about to think, Mawyndulë realized that in all the world, Imaly was his only true friend. A shame she had to be so old and ugly.
Imaly began walking away, but in a quiet voice she said, “Your father is not a very good fane, Mawyndulë, but you will be. What’s more, everyone else sees that as well.”
Mawyndulë felt a rush of warmth. He wasn’t used to such compliments, even though flattery had been part of his life since birth. People had praised his looks, his clothes, and his sheer luck at being born son of the fane. All of it was excessive, noisy, and false—just like the trees’ applause. None of the approval had come in response to anything he’d achieved or from anyone whose opinion he respected. But Mawyndulë admired Imaly. Most people did. Even those who hated her—and she had plenty of enemies—held Imaly in high regard. That was something else he appreciated about her. She made her own current, moving against the tide until the water followed, and she never cared about the hostility forming in her wake. She was right; they were wrong, and doubt remained a stranger on her doorstep. He wanted to be like that. He would have to be when he was fane.
Pride rose to Mawyndulë’s lips as his self-conscious smile became an open grin.
Imaly gestured at the streets around them. “Everyone knows what happened. They saw how your father floundered helplessly in water that was far too deep. He would have drowned and taken all of us with him. During the Battle of Grandford, you distinguished yourself, and he . . . well, he fled. The city knows how you captured the Rhune and brought her here. They know it was you who—”
“But it wasn’t me at all. Jerydd was the one who actually caught her.”
“Pishposh.” Imaly waved a hand at him.
Pishposh?
He liked Imaly, but sometimes the things she came up with mystified him.
“Catching a Rhune is nothing. But you! You killed Arion,” Imaly said. “I shudder to think what might have happened if you hadn’t. Who knows how many dragons we’d be facing?” She grinned, and he noticed she didn’t have the best of teeth.
“You knew that was me? Not many people do.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised—word travels. I’m the Curator of the Aquila, so I hear it all, and the people have been talking about you in the most complimentary of terms. I can’t tell you how good that is to see in these trying times. Do you know what the people want? What they need? I’ll tell you: heroes to believe in. Don’t try selling Jerydd and Lothian. No one wants an old bureaucrat or an impotent coward. They want to be led by a dashing young prince who saved the Airenthenon and the Aquila during the Gray Cloak Rebellion. The same one who defied his father to capture a Rhune with the secret that might save us all from destruction.”
“I didn’t disobey my father. He sent me.”
“Details don’t matter. The story is better if you ventured out on your own, and that’s what the people will think. That’s what they’ll remember.”
“But it’s not true.”
“Mawyndulë, the best chronicles are never true, not completely. But make no mistake, it is our stories that define us both as individuals and as a civilization. Long after we’re dead, people remember. And those memories form the building blocks of who we are, what we value, what we believe in, what we stand for, and what we fight against. Truth comes from how we view ourselves and how others see us. Our stories are the most important things we have. The better the tales, the greater the legacy we leave, and the more worthy a world we create.”
They walked across the plaza to the old residences, which Mawyndulë now realized had more interesting lines and character due to their age.
“You’ll see,” Imaly went on. “You turned the tide in this war. That’s what people think and what they need to believe. It was you—not your father—who braved the frontier and returned with our salvation. You are the legacy of Fenelyus, the one coming to our rescue in our most desperate hour.”
Imaly paused in front of her house, which long ago had been the humble residence of the first fane. “I knew Fenelyus well. She and I didn’t always agree. We often fought about policy. I wrestled with her over the totality of power that the Miralyith wielded, and I reminded her that in our society, authority was meant to be shared. I was against the forming of the Miralyith as a new tribe because Gylindora Fane had decreed there be six, not seven. Your tribe has great power—there was a time when I was certain the Miralyith would destroy our civilization. And oh, how we fought about that! I swear we nearly came to blows over the subject. But then I met you—a Miralyith I could believe in. You give me hope, Mawyndulë. I want to thank you for that.” She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.
Before he’d met her, such an action would have made him want to vomit, but now he felt a tear well up. He was honored, honored by her.
Maybe she saw his eyes water, because she quickly continued the conversation. “Do you want to know something? Fenelyus actually threw a cup at me once. Can you imagine!” Imaly smiled warmly at the memory.
Mawyndulë couldn’t conceive how Imaly could recall the event so fondly. Arion had done the same to him, and it was just one in a long list of reasons he hated her. But Imaly was unusual in ways he was still trying to decipher.
“That cup smashed against the wall in the Airenthenon. A chip struck me in the cheek here.” She pointed to a faint red mark and smiled again, further bewildering Mawyndulë. “The old fane, who had raised the world’s highest mountain, formed Avempartha, and single-handedly came within a hairsbreadth of wiping out the entire Dherg race, threw a teacup at me!” Imaly laughed. “But for all our wars, for all our disagreements, I understood there was a greatness in her. Fenelyus was special. You could hear it in her voice, recognize it in the way she walked, and see it in her eyes. She was regal.”
Imaly reached out and placed both hands on his shoulders. “I see the same in you. You have her eyes, but I fear—I know—that the greatness of Fenelyus did, indeed, skip a generation.” Imaly lowered her voice to a whisper. “Let us pray to Ferrol that we can endure the wait. I know this will sound awful, but in some ways, I almost wish the Gray Cloak Rebellion had succeeded. Makareta and the others might not have been as foolish as we thought. I often wonder what happened to her.”