10 – 5

Here I am, forgiven. Just like that. The relief it brings is staggering, leaving me unsure of my footing as I climb up the sunken pool's smooth-hewn steps. Water streams from my sodden hair, tracing lines of sudden cold down the heated skin that surrounds the long, thick scab on my back. Shivers follow, crawling gooseflesh across my arms and legs as I hurry to where Clarke told me the towels were kept: a footlocker set against one of the walls. I swathe myself in two of them and luxuriate in their dry softness until those qualities leave them. As I dress, a scrap of cloth falls from my sleeve. I stare at it, at the emblem stitched into its center.

A looping curl of wind, gusting high over cresting waves.

I had forgotten.

I had forgotten everything: that it was hidden there, tucked away in safety; that I found it, caught on the charred hull of a sunken fishing boat; that it heralded the return of the Windrunners, or those who would claim to be them. I gather it up and smooth its crease-and-wrinkle over my knee. If not for this little scrap, I would have gone south, like I should have. I'd be among my people, like I should be. There wouldn't be a scar smoothing itself into my back, or bruises painted onto my skin. I would be safe.

Wouldn't I?

No, I wouldn't. The bramble-beast didn't come for our cart, or the brave and nameless horse that drew it. It didn't come for Clarke or Adelaide, for Milo or Lavinia. It came for me. It hunted me, toyed with me, tortured me! I close my eyes and breathe in deep. It's dead. I watched it burn to cinders. It's dead. Breathe out slow. Open my eyes. I'm strangling the scrap of cloth in my clenched fist. That'll show it.

Back in my sleeve it goes, there to remain until Fort Tanner. Dry and clean and clothed, I unlatch the bathroom door and push it open. Step out into the hall and the conversation drifting down it. Milo and Adelaide telling the story, Clarke and Lavinia filling in the pieces. Morrow's grumbling hums and attentive grunts, and another: a woman's voice, resonant and powerful. The questions she asks imply doubt and disbelief, yet I hear neither.

Whoever she is, she believes them. Hopefully, she'll believe me as well. My arrival coincides with Milo bringing the telling tale to a precise close by saying, “We made sure to burn it to cinders, then patched ourselves up and walked here.”

Four adults fill the table's seats: Milo and Adelaide together on one side, Morrow and the woman on the other. Short, black hair pressed flat against her head by sweat and the helmet at her elbow. Her broadly square and weathered face is dominated by a crooked nose, a thunderhead brow, and a narrow squint of dark-blue eyes. The muscle of her arms, shoulders, and legs fill the lines of her clothing. Her boots are armored in scuff-scarred metal, are are the bracers that cover her forearms and the plate that crosses her chest. I see neither weapon nor shield.

She doesn't need them.

She's magnificent.

“You must be Zira,” she says. Her voice is richer than I had heard, back in the hall.

“I am,” I answer, though I have to clear my throat to do it.

“Well met,” she greets, “I'm Juliana, the Knight-Captain at Fort Tanner. Clarke, here, tells me you've got a message from Valdenwood.”

I nod. Try to marshal myself. Whatever silliness this is, it needs to be done away with. It must be remnants of what I had felt so strongly, during my talk with Clarke. Nothing more. “We do,” I tell her, and then find myself stuck. How do I begin? Where, even? It's not helping that there's five pairs of eyes on me.

“Well, don't leave us in suspense,” she chides gently, the corner of her mouth twitching in a smile. I feel myself flush and reach up my sleeve. It would seem the Fort has come to me. I pull the scrap out and lay it flat on the table, smoothing away the wrinkles once again. Everyone present bends over it, save for me. Me, and Clarke. We've studied it enough. Juliana leans back with folded arms, tension in the roll of her powerful shoulders. She's waiting. Begin at the beginning, I should think. I clear my throat once more, and do just that.

I start with my arrival at Valdenwood. Everything before that: my final lesson from Mother; my last day to play with Djan and Tals; and the guidance of the wood-spirit are too private to share with a stranger, no matter the strength or size of their arms. Then the fire, and how we put it out. Something flickers across Juliana's dark eyes at the mention of magic, come and gone too quick to name. From there, I tell of the string of lucky circumstance that led me to find the torn emblem, and how I learned what it meant. Two days of sun-blessed peace on the road, blood and fear looming ahead. She stops me there with an upraised hand, and tells me she knows the rest.

- - -

After that, there's a moment where the Knight-Captain seems to struggle with herself. Her thunderhead brow descends and darkens, her lips purse, and she taps her fingers on the table. Blunt nails and calloused fingers strike a drumbeat on the polished wood. From fourth to first and back again, until the conflict within her is resolved. “What I'm about to tell you,” she warns, “I'm not supposed to, which means this doesn't go beyond us, understood?” She turns her squint on Morrow. “Especially you, blabbermouth.”

He rolls his eyes and folds his arms. His beard twitches. “Who am I gonna tell?” he protests.

“You run a – bar –, Jer.” She answers. He grunts and waves his hand, which apparently concedes the point. Satisfied, she turns back to the rest of us. Taps the emblem with a finger. “We've been getting word of this mark from all over the Timberland, lately. With the fire in Valdenwood...that makes every town with some kind of trouble. People are disappearing in Sockeye Bend, no sign or sound of struggle. The fields are going bad, here in Amberdusk. Well-water, too. Lot of people have gotten sick.” She's seen it herself, I should think, from the weight of her next words. “Some didn't get better.”

“And Port Viara?” I ask hurriedly, concern for my people overcoming my sense of propriety or awe of her. “Is there – what's happening there?”

“Boat captains keep turning up dead,” she answers, “They found the fourth one just recently. She'd been drowned, with a cloth like that one stuffed in her mouth. Whoever's doing it is trying to scare people, and it's working. Things are good for now, but it won't be long before they aren't. On top of that, we've got the usual highwaymen on the road, smugglers on the water, and now, apparently, demons in the forest.”

She stops there, and the room falls into quiet. Everyone in it handling what they've been given in their own way. Morrow frowns thoughtfully at the emblem, arms folded and beard twitching. He knew some of this already. The rest did not. Adelaide's gone ashen and distant-eyed, reaching for her family to give and get back comfort. There's a hollowness to Milo's face, memories in his dark eyes. He has seen exactly how bad things can get. Their daughter, the Queen of Splinters herself, bears a look of profound confusion, as if she can't quite grip the entirety of what her little ears have heard.

Clarke's arm slides around my waist. Mine curls around her shoulder. I press my nose, my mouth, into the side of her head. Smell the soap she washed her hair with. Feel the warmth of her on my lips. My people are near Port Viara, close enough to visit without trouble. Close enough to see. Close enough to blame. It's happened before.

It will again, if nothing is done. I can't bear it.

I won't. “What do we do?”

My question breaks the quiet, pulling everyone's attentions from themselves and onto me. It's Adelaide who asks, out of concern or confusion or something other thing, “What do you mean?”

“All of that – those things,” I answer, “How do I – How do we make them stop?”

It's Juliana now, squinted eyes of dark-blue heavy and piercing. “You don't,” she says, and there's no room to argue. “I do.”

“But – !”

“No.” She says, and though she doesn't raise her voice it cuts through mine with ease. “You have done – more – than enough, do you understand? Surviving all this way, with everything that happened? It's incredible. Both of you are incredible. But you have to stop here. This what I do, and I'm really good at it, alright? You need to let me do this.”

“Let me help you,” I beg, “Please, they're my people, and if anything happens to them –”

“It won't,” she promises, with the surety of the steel she wears.

But it's not enough. “– while they're waiting for me, it'll be – my – fault! They're waiting for me! Me! They won't leave until I get there! That's at – least – a week from now! I have to do something! I have to!”

Sympathy. Empathy, in narrowed blue eyes. She understands, does the Knight-Captain. She's stood where I stand. Felt how I feel. Begged, how I beg. “I don't – Zira, what could you do for them,” she asks, “that my knights or I can't?”

A question she thinks I can't answer. “Put them first!” I snarl. I hear the accent on my tongue. For the first time in my life, I hear myself sound Royah.