Morn, Fir of Julyla: 33 Xiven

Ikan, survivors to Kunnu.

Urbana, likely.

Dorr, unlikely.

Tornah, likely.

Kingsland, maybe.

Meet at Kingsland docks on Morn, Fir of Junla.

Kayin stared at the crumpled paper in his hands. Today was Morn, Fir of Junla. According to Tidesa’s notes, to what she predicted the future would hold, he would be in Kingsland, meeting her.

But instead, Kayin sat in his room in a borrowed house of a city that smelled like sewage, clutching the letter with white knuckles while the sun, Rinesa, kissed the rooftops good morning.

The morning already grew to a sweltering heat; it was the Stow Season, when farmers would gather their crops before they dried up and fermented. Up until now, Kayin had never felt a morning so warm, or nights so unforgiving as here. The stench of the city grew harsher in the heat; people sweat more, and though they had better hygiene than anywhere else Kayin had visited, the pipes smelled.

It wasn’t only the heat that kept Kayin awake through the night. He anticipated this day for four months, now: this predicted day that he would, supposedly, have met Tidesa after sailing across the ocean for weeks. Now, he sat hundreds of miles away, on a bed she thought he’d have abandoned by now.

Up until now, there was no proof that any future Tidesa saw could be altered.

But now, he stared at a useless paper that didn’t give any more guidance than a gut feeling.

“What’s that?” Kayin jumped at the sudden voice, and instinctively crumpled the paper into a fist as he looked up to his friend, his new mentor, Karsarath. The man stood with his usual, skeptical and suspicious expression, at the door to his bedroom, already dressed in his athletic wear.

“Um,” Kayin sounded as he balled his fist even tighter, “old shopping list I just found. Trash.” Karsarath’s expression fell to disappointment; despite only knowing each other for a few months, the perceptive man seemed to always know what was on his mind. Perhaps a family trait he shared with his late niece, Kayin’s childhood friend.

“Kayin….”

“Ready?” Kayin sprung to his feet; although the gravity of the bed was exceptionally strong this tired morning, he put on an excited smile. “I could use a good run!”

Thern, Fir of Julyla: 33 Xiven

Karsarath, Fero, and Kayin collected at the dining table this fateful evening over a shared plate of vatch stew. It was a delicacy in this part of the world, something they’d only treated Kayin to a couple times in the past because it cost so much to import all the way across the sea. Although Fero and Karsarath exchanged quiet glances, Kayin could read them easily.

Their tense relationship grew quickly in moments Kayin never witnessed. Instead of relying on Kayin’s gut feeling for what’s to come, they now looked to one another with a silent communication that probably held the world’s secrets. More often than not, he could disappear into the background while Fero and Karsarath argued or stared at each other.

“So what’s the news?” Kayin prompted as he grabbed the ladle. He poured a good helping of broth and meat into his bowl before handing it to Fero. She cleared her throat, but offered nothing. Kayin looked to Karsarath for the entirety of Fero serving herself before he prompted, “Karsarath, what’s the news?”

The man deflated a bit before he returned the ladle to the serving pot.

“The, um….” He sighed. “You know how I apprentice at The Pointy End, and I sell things, and all that….” An unnecessary exposition, but Kayin nodded as if it was helpful information. “Well, ah…. I’m not sure if you remember….” More stalling, but Karsarath waved his hand. “A few weeks ago, the owner—you know her, Jensine. Well….”

Kayin now stared at him, abandoning all pretense of politeness.

“Karsarath, if you get to the point, I’ll tell you what I was hiding the other morning.” Not that Karsarath knew he was planning to tell him tonight anyway.

Now, the man spat the words out as if they were rehearsed: “Jensine is suspecting I don’t have Cigam. So what was it you were hiding?”

That was a snag. Ignoring the question, Kayin took a moment to let the news settle in.

Cigam, a subconscious addition to a person’s natural abilities, granted someone unique skills beyond average capabilities, from using one’s thoughts to create fire to manipulating a growing tree. In most places in this continent, it was an expected attribute; where Kayin grew up and in very few other places, not having it—an affliction Kayin and Karsarath shared—was either a secret joy or a hidden shame.

Kayin was raised in a sheltered village that vocally rejected Cigam and claimed it was a fairy tale; Yatora was a haven for people without it, a poor and tiny kingdom that defined its economy by birthright rather than skill. Karsarath, though, was raised in a city where Cigam was the norm. When his mother gave up her Cigam during her pregnancy, she unknowingly doomed him to exile: his Cigam never surfaced, despite years of deception.

Now, in Tornah, a populous city in which they now lived, Cigam was an unspoken expectation: not having Cigam was never even a consideration, as rare as the idea of being born without lungs.

Kayin skirted this expectation by expanding his skills in herbalism. His natural understanding of the world around them, of the natural flora of their continent, earned him periodic coin from the local alchemist; people just assumed he communed with the plants to get them to do what he want, but he really just relied on chemistry and alchemy. Fero was lucky enough to possess influence over flame and busied herself with lighting and snuffing the town’s lanterns at dusk and dawn. Karsarath, though an established swordsman, worked at a metallurgist as a salesman. Until now, he’d been resting on his natural charisma.

“You’re not escaping my question, Kayin,” said Karsarath after his silence. Kayin hovered his spoon over his stew, thoughtful.

“Are you going to quit your job?” he asked.

Karsarath’s eyes narrowed. “If I can manage to get fired over something not Cigam-related, I’ll do that to distract from her questions.” He cleared his throat. “That note you were hiding from me?” Satisfied, Kayin nodded, and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper he’d kept under his pillow until today, and placed it, unfolded, in the middle of the table.

“What’s that?” asked Fero with furrowed brows. She squinted at it, but didn’t move to grab it so that Karsarath could look at it too.

“Before—uh, before Dhekk and I ran into Karsarath by Ikan, Dhekk showed me this letter Tidesa gave him. Instructions on what to do next.” Now Fero reached for the paper, her movements rigid, lips pursed into a thin line.

“These are instructions from Tidesa?” she asked carefully as she flattened the page along its folds, “From four months ago?” That was a tone Kayin associated with their late friend, Dhekk, a careful warning that yelling was on the horizon. He was never happy with anything Kayin did, always looking for an excuse to yell. Fero didn’t usually wait to yell.

“Hear me out—” Kayin started carefully. “Tidesa predicted that.” He pointed to the note, but didn’t touch it. “Dhekk knew what was going to happen because she told him. He said we were supposed to be in Kingsland on—well, a few days ago.”

Fero missed the point. “We’ve been waiting for instructions you’ve had all along?”

“Well—” Kayin’s tongue ran dry when Fero slapped the table.

“Are you serious right now?” Now came the yelling she usually saved for Karsarath whenever they disagreed on a disarming move or a counter-attack when they trained. “We’ve been sitting here for half a year—”

“Keep your voice down!” spat Karsarath. With the front door open, as was customary in Tornah, anyone walking by could overhear them. For a brief moment, Kayin almost felt relieved. “Kill him quietly.”

“No, no—wait, listen to me—!” Kayin hushed his own voice to a whisper; he hoped, desperately, that the urgency in his voice would at least stay whatever fire-themed torture undoubtedly popped into Fero’s mind; her eyes, amber and sharp, made it hard to speak. “Listen,” he started again. “Up until now, we didn’t think there was any other path! Dhekk sacrificed himself for me because he thought there was no other outcome possible! Now we know there is!” He watched Fero open her mouth before he could finish speaking, so he continued, “No, no! I need you to listen!” At least now she hesitated. “Everything, everything until now was predicted. Even Xiven—” If that woman was, indeed, Empress Xiven he met at the gala— “just followed Tidesa’s vision, because she thought there was no other option. And yet….”

“You are sacrificing this entire movement for an experiment,” came Fero’s sharp reply. Karsarath, though, kept his mouth shut, his brows furrowed in thought. Despite the urge to yell back, the past few months did teach Kayin that there was no winning against someone who could conjure fire on a whim, and so he managed to keep his reaction to a soft scowl.

“No one else has to die,” he said.

“Wait,” Karsarath finally uttered after a tight silence, “this is the only—the only time we’ve seen a deviation from what Tidesa predicted?” He gestured to the paper. “And this is really, really vague. It’s a bunch of maybes.”

“That’s because this is a communication to someone else,” spat Fero. At least her fury was drawn to Karsarath, now. “To prevent this from happening, from someone just challenging everything to give us a worse option for a future than the one she’s trying to help us get to!” She rose from the table with her hands in the air; small bits of smoke shook from her fingertips. “I—I can’t believe you. I’m going for a run so I don’t burn the place down.” The men let her leave the table without argument, staring down so as to avoid her glare.

In the silence of their dining area now that she’d gone, Kayin waited for Karsarath to digest what had just been said. It was difficult to know how he would respond. Anger? Disappointment? Or would he return to his skeptical “I doubt Tidesa can really see the future at all” tirade?

In looking up to him, though, he didn’t see anything other than a pensive sadness. He murmured something under his breath, something Kayin couldn’t hear—but it sounded as if he repeated what Kayin did: “No one else has to die.”

“Karsarath?”

This prompted him to share his thoughts: “Do you think it was your fault, that Dhekk got…taken?” It wasn’t an accusatory tone, but one that hinted more was to come, so Kayin didn’t answer. Dhekk behaved strangely ever since they came to Tornah, up until the night of the gala, when he slipped the house key and a health potion into Kayin’s pockets without explanation. After setting Kayin up to continue without him, Dhekk was taken—bloodily—by whoever worked for Xiven. Their last health potion saved Kayin from bleeding out, but only because Karsarath was hiding in the sidelines.

Karsarath continued, “It’s not your fault, you know. No one’s life is your responsibility.” This prompted Kayin to roll his eyes, but he let Karsarath continue: “Whether or not whatever Tidesa says she sees happens isn’t up to you. Dhekk chose…. He chose his path. It was never up to you.” The words hardly registered. Karsarath was a smooth-talker, he could say anything to anyone to get them to do anything. None of his words actually meant anything when he up-sold customers, so they didn’t mean anything now when he just echoed whatever Kayin wanted to hear.

“He didn’t know there was another choice,” Kayin said finally. “Now we know. And Xiven doesn’t.”

“Kayin—”

“Karsarath,” he interrupted, eyes wide, “do you understand? That vision Tidesa saw of me meeting Xiven—she knew about it. Xiven knew about it. She followed it without question. And she was afraid.”

“And you did this without telling us.” Maybe that’s why Karsarath was upset; though he kept his expression smooth and cool, he held just a bit too much tension in his eyes. Fero, though, Kayin knew was upset because of the deviation in the first place. Her loyalty was always to Tidesa first.

“We’ll—we’ll continue with our plan like before,” said Kayin. “But now we know we can change things.”

“Unless this was part of her plan when she gave Dhekk this paper, if she could see any of this happening at all,” said Karsarath as he lifted it from the table. That tiny paper that told them so much, but left out Dhekk’s disappearance. “This is only the bit you see. You don’t know what else Dhekk was told, how he knew what was going to happen to him.” For a moment, Karsarath’s frustration leaked, but he pulled it back with a breath. “Fero will calm down. Just….” Now he rose from his chair, shaking his head. “But this….”

Kayin didn’t look up, just shrugged as he suggested, “We can get started on the next phase.”

“You can get started on the next phase,” he corrected. Kayin looked up. “Alone.”

“What?”

“Do you want Fero talking to Ivar while she’s upset at you?” He made a good point.

Through pursed lips, Kayin asked, “Do you think that if I make good on setting us up, that she won’t set me on fire in my sleep?”

Karsarath shook his head. “I think that if you make good on setting things up, I won’t help her.” And with that, he left Kayin to sit with his stew, fighting off pings of guilt and anxiety for things to come.