“The Komizar has some matters for me to look after in the Tomack quarter.”
“Isn’t that what the quarterlords are for?”
“Not this matter. It has to do with soldiers.”
“I could go along with you.”
“No.”
His reply came hot and clipped and not like Kaden at all. I turned and gave him a long dissecting stare.
“I’ll take you back another way,” he offered. “Past some of the more interesting ruins.”
A compromise, because whatever was in this Tomack quarter, he didn’t want me to see it. Again we traveled down narrow lanes, alleyways, and some paths that seemed little more than rabbit trails, jumping over rain-washed gullies and slipping on trampled dead grass. We came at last to a wide, well-traveled street, and Kaden walked me over to a large cauldron bubbling over a fire. There were rough wooden benches scattered in a circle around it, and an old man offered mugs of the brew for a modest price.
“It’s thannis,” Kaden said. “A tea brewed from a weed.” He bought one for each of us, and we sat down on one of the benches. “Thannis is another thing that Venda has in abundance,” he explained. “It grows almost anywhere. Ledges, cracks, the rockiest of fields. Sometimes the farmers curse it. Once it takes hold, it’s hard to stop it from spreading. Thannis is a survivor, like a Vendan.” He said the leaves were purple, sprouting bright above the snows of winter, but in late autumn, for only a few days before seeding, it changed to bright gold. That was when it turned sweet, but also to poison. “A drink of the golden thannis will be your last.”
I was glad to see ours was a strange purplish brew and not golden. I took a sip and spit it out. It tasted like dirt. Sour, horrible, moldy dirt.
Kaden laughed. “It’s an acquired taste but a tradition in Venda, like the bones worn on our belts. It’s said that thannis was all that kept Lady Venda and the early clans here alive those first few winters. In truth, it’s probably all that kept me alive more than one winter. When other supplies run out, there’s always thannis.”
I braved another sip and forced a swallow down, then immediately tried to summon saliva to my mouth to wash the taste away. I was sure it wasn’t a taste I’d ever acquire, not even in the bleakest of winters. I glanced up at the old man stirring the cauldron, singing a chant to passersby: Thannis for the heart, thannis for the mind, thannis for the soul, thannis, live long the children of Venda. He repeated it over and over, a snaking song with no beginning or end.
Hovering above the steam of the cauldron, I spotted someone standing on a distant high ledge watching me. A woman. Her figure seemed to ripple through the steam, hazy, fading, and then she vanished. She was simply gone. I blinked and looked down at my steaming cup of brew.
“Just what’s in this?” I asked.
Kaden smiled. “Only a harmless weed, I promise.” He called to the old man and asked him if he had any cream to sweeten my drink. He happily obliged, for though he nearly gave the thannis away, the cream, honey, or spirits to flavor it came at a greater cost. Even with a hefty dosing of cream, the thannis was only marginally palatable. The spirits might have helped more.
We sipped our drinks and watched children chasing after those who passed by, begging to do anything that might bring something in trade.
“They seem so young. Where are their parents?” I asked.
“Most have none, or their parents are on another street corner doing the same.”
“Can’t you do something for them?”
“I’m trying, Lia. So is the Komizar. But he can butcher only so many horses.”
“And raid so many caravans. There are other ways of managing a kingdom.”
He glanced at me, a smirk on his lips. “Are there?” His gaze turned back to the street. “When the ancient treaties were drawn and borders established, Venda was not part of those negotiations. The fertile lands of Venda were always few, and each year more fields have fallen fallow. Most of the countryside of Venda is far poorer than what you see here, which is why the city grows. They come searching for hope and a better life.”
“Is this how you grew up? On the streets of Venda?”
He swilled down the last of his thannis and rose to return the mug to the old man. “No, I would have been lucky if I had.”
“Lucky? Are your parents that bad?”
He stopped mid-step. “My mother was a saint.”
Was.
I stared at him, a raised vein snaking at his temple. This was it. His weakness. The buried part of him that he refused to share. His parents.
“We need to go.” He put his hand out, waiting for my empty mug. I wanted more answers, but I knew what it was like to ache with memories of a mother and father. My own mother had deceived me, trying to thwart my gift, and my father—
My stomach squeezed.
It was only a single small notice in the village square. Walther had told me that as if it might comfort me, but the notice was still a call for my arrest and return for treason, posted by my own father. Some lines should never be crossed, and he proved it when he hanged his own nephew. I still didn’t know what role my father had played in the bounty hunter’s attempt on my life. Maybe he’d seen it as a convenient way to eliminate a messy court hearing altogether. He knew my brothers would never forgive him if he executed me.
“Lia, your mug?”
I shook off the memory, handing him the mug, and we continued on our way. Here, as in the savanna, ruin and renewal lay side by side, and sometimes it was impossible to discern one from the other. A massive dome that must once have topped a great temple was sunk in rubble, and only a glimmer of carved stone peeked through the earth to reveal that it was more than a mound in the landscape. Next to it stone was piled upon stone, creating a pen for a goat. Animals were carefully guarded here, Kaden told me. They tended to disappear.
We walked on for a long way until Kaden finally stopped at one unassuming ruin, resting his hand on a tree that engulfed one wall like gnarled fingers. “This one used to reach higher than any tower in Venda.”
“How would anyone know?” I looked at the partial walls that formed an enormous square. Trees grew atop the remains like twisted sentries. None of the actual remains were more than a dozen feet high anymore, and one wall was almost entirely gone. It seemed a fanciful notion to suppose that it once towered over the entire city. “It may have been only the walls of a manor,” I said.
“It wasn’t,” Kaden said firmly. “It rose almost six hundred feet into the sky.”
Six hundred feet? I grunted my disbelief.
“Documents were found that confirm it. As best as they can decipher, this was a monument to one of their leaders.”
I didn’t really know much about the Ancients’ history before the devastation. Little was recorded in the Morrighan Holy Text—mostly just the aftermath. We knew only of their demise, and the scholars had collected the few relics that survived the centuries. Paper documents were rare. Paper was the first thing to crumble away, and according to the Holy Text, when the Ancients were trying to survive, it was the first thing they used for fuel. Survival trumped words.
Ancient documents that had been interpreted were even more rare. The scholars of Morrighan had years of schooling in such things. The Vendans seemed barely able to keep their people fed, never mind educating them in other tongues. How would they accomplish such an enormous task?