“How did it happen?” Vak-Lav asked as soon as Tif caught up to her. The nondescript tunnel they walked along had some small torches, but they were spaced far apart, leaving a great deal of shadow, much like the room they had left. Tif could also hear Vak-Lav’s guard, Ssuran, following from a close distance behind, which, all things considered, made her feel less than comfortable.
So, Tif focused on the question. She didn’t need to ask what the mysterious creature meant, and she didn’t see the harm in telling what she knew. The Archon’s brother was clearly going to do everything he could to ensure that no one else had a combination of Gold and Tears ris, and with the Archon dead, he likely had plenty of power to make such a ban happen.
Tif sketched out the bare details for Vak-Lav and elaborated when asked. When Tif got to the specifics of how the Archon’s dual shroud had been bested by Rof--since she saw no reason to change her story--Vak-Lav chuckled in an unfriendly way. “Just as vulnerable as the rest of us now, eh? Bet that put their tail between their legs.”
“The division leaders weren’t happy,” Tif agreed. As she spoke the words, Tif and Pep were conferring with silent looks. The snake-woman seemed much more interested in the information Tif was giving her than finding out that Tif had treated her people well. And if that was true, Tif might be able to get some answers of her own out of the exchange. While questions like, “What are you?” were certainly top of her list, there was one thing that she and Pep cared about even more…“Were you in Lercel during the Life Trade?”
Vak-Lav eyed her but answered. “I was here long before that, nearly forty years now.”
“The previous Archon started it then, didn’t he?” Tif felt her gut clench as she asked. It had to be true, everyone knew it was. The recently killed Archon had nothing to do with it. In fact, she had liberated them all from the terrible practice.
“Most thought so, yes,” Vak-Lav said, looking up to the tunnel ceiling as she did, like she was remembering, “much to his demise due to its eventual unpopularity. But the idea actually came from one of his division leaders, Kur-Sha-Veh, who became Archon after him. She knew what it would do to his rule and got rid of it as soon as her's began, gaining her much favor. She had been plotting for years--someone after my own heart if her efforts weren’t spent on such unimportant things.”
Any other time Tif would have said that anything the Archon chose to do was important, but she had also just learned that her hero was responsible for…for…Tif balled her hand with Pep in it, and the words of Sur-Rak whispered in her ear: getting ahead is called planning. But what a terrible thing to plan.
“Why would the old Archon agree to something like that?” Tif asked. She was having to make herself breathe, in and out, just like she was having to think about putting each foot in front of the next--nothing felt natural right now. “And why isn’t this common knowledge?”
“The old Archon won his position because of his accomplishments on the battlefield, not because of his cleverness elsewhere. And Kur-Sha-Veh kept it quiet.” Vak-Lav stopped, watching her closely. “Why, was that what she was killed for? One of her orphans came back for vengeance? Now that would be poetic.”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Tif said.
Vak-Lav appeared to take her at her word, continuing down the seemingly endless tunnels. As they traveled, Tif thought of Rof and how serious and removed he'd always acted. She’d believed him tired, but maybe his life had wrung all the joy from him. Tif suddenly wanted to know his entire story: Who was he? How had he managed to get his ris? Rof must have been part of the conversation she had heard during the challenges. In fact, him leaving the candidate’s tent had probably woken her in the first place. But who had he been talking to that night, and how had they convinced him to try and kill the Archon?
With him dead, so many answers were gone as well.
“You know,” Vak-Lav said, “that wasn’t the question I thought you would ask.”
Tif frowned at the old half-snake. “Why would you expect me to ask you anything?”
“The crest, of course. You’ve had it for a week now, and from what I hear, even used some of its power.”
Tif glanced down at her chest, though she couldn’t see the oddly patterned ris that sat beneath her shirt. Being able to transfer to someone else was one thing, but growing when sacrificed to? It was powerful alright, and if the last two days hadn’t been the wildest of her life, Tif was sure that she would have had a whole slew of questions ready to ask.
“You took quite the risk,” Vak-Lav said, “with my property I should add. Giving it all to your father when there was no guarantee he would give it back.”
Tif shrugged. It’s not like there had been much of a choice. Just because her fa had sold her winning lotto ticket didn’t mean she was going to let him die for trouble she had caused. And the fact that he had given it back to her had healed their relationship in a way that even Blood ris couldn’t. Tif wasn’t sure if someone like Vak-Lav would understand that though, so she kept quiet.
“Did you find out anything else about the crest in your travels?” Vak-Lav asked over the scrape of her scales against the tunnel floor.
“No.” Tif said, not seeing any benefit in revealing what she knew. “Why?”
“I had been planning to torture your parents in front of you if you required an incentive to part with my crest and ris,” Vak-Lav said conversationally, “but your little speech makes me believe that you value the good in others. So let me tell you about our good works.”
Tif couldn’t help it, she snorted.
Vak-Lav gave her a fey grin, fangs showing. “Oh, I don’t mean our various enterprises that you’ve surely come to know us for in the lows and mids. Those just keep us in flats and information. No, what I’m trying to do is…much larger in scope. And because of that, I prefer to convince people when possible. I find they are more likely to follow through with what I need of them if they have a vested interest in the outcome. Just as you are following me now because you care about what becomes of your parents, yes?”
That rankled, especially after the face eating and torture threats, and Tif didn’t mind letting it show.“So you’ve already convinced me. Why go on about it?”
“Yes, I’ve convinced you to walk with me. But what about when your parents are before you? Will you still do what I say, or will you decide that, with your power,”--Vak-Lav gestured at the red tattoos on Tif’s arm--“that you can free them? Escape even? Particularly since I won’t have nearly as many people on hand to stop you as I did when we first met.” She eyed Tif from the side and then smiled as if she knew the answer. “No, much better to have you understand and then freely do as I wish.”
“There isn’t a tunnel long enough for you to convince me of that,” Tif said.
“Perhaps,” Vak-Lav said, though she didn’t sound put out. “Would it surprise you to learn that each Aspect has their own crest? You carry the one of Blood but there are also ones for Gold and Tears and so on.”
Tif supposed that made a sort of sense, just like each different Aspect presented itself in the form of a different race, but she didn’t see how knowing such a thing would convince her of anything. Truth be told, Tif was much more interested in the series of wooden doors that they were approaching on the right of the tunnel--maybe her parents were in one.
“Or would it surprise you to learn that when someone with a crest dies,” Vak-Lav said, “it transfers to the very next person of that Aspect’s race who is born?”
Tif believed that claim far less. No one was born with ris, not even nobles in the highs. Ris was to be earned, like anything else of value in the world. They moved past the four doors without even slowing, and Tif reversed course to check them. However, she found Ssuran right behind her, and there wasn’t enough space in the tunnel to easily get around him.
When Tif resumed her march, Vak-Lav was still beside her, meaning she had noticed Tif’s attempt. The elderly snake-woman smirked at her, picking up her little speech where she had left it. “Or perhaps what would surprise you to learn is that sometimes when a person with a crest is killed, the crest is not reborn, and without it, all ris like it fades and its Aspects crumble.”
Tif stopped thinking about the rooms they had passed. “The Aspects…die?” The golden keshe Tif had grown up with were a fixture of her life, and those of Tears in Sah’Sah had felt equally stable. To say that they would perish was like saying the stars would vanish or all the trees would disappear--ridiculous.
“Ah, here we are,” Vak-Lav said, stopping at a new series of doors on the left. The old creature opened the first in the row but instead of Tif’s parents being on the other side of it, it was none other than Awt.
Tif reached forward, grabbed the door handle, and yanked the wooden slab closed with a thud. “What is he doing here? I thought you were taking me to my family.”
“I know you did,” Vak-Lav said with a wrinkled and quite infuriating smile.
Awt opened the door on his side and looked at Vak-Lav. “I told you she wouldn’t like it.”
Tif rounded on him. “This is why you couldn’t come with me? Because you had a room to sit in?” She could feel some of her bitterness about the Archon and her confusion about Vak-Lav’s bizarre story bleeding over onto Awt, but she didn’t care. After all, she was really, really mad at him.
“Don’t be too hard on the boy,” Vak-Lav said. “He’s just following my orders, and in his defense, good work is hard to come by. Now, I believe you were wanting proof that Torgath was paid.” The creature motioned at Awt.
“It’s true,” he said, “that’s why I left Lercel. To take Torgath’s payment to him and then escort him back to Lercel.”
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“Why would I believe you?” Tif said.
Awt crossed his arms. “Really, Tif, after all we’ve been through?”
“You mean after all of your lies?”
“When have I lied to you?”
“The lotto!”
“That wasn’t a lie, Tif. I was stopping you from making a mistake.”
“Children,” Vak-Lav said, getting both of their attention. “Whether or not Awt acted as you wished is not the debate. You have heard from someone’s lips other than my own that Torgath was compensated, and that means it is time to return my property.”
Tif looked between Awt and Vak-Lav, feeling like she was caught between a living pincer. “You could both be lying.”
“Of course we could,” Vak-Lav said before Awt had a chance to protest, “just like you could be lying about the kindnesses you claim to have done for my people. The question you must ask yourself is, are you willing to keep the fate of an entire tribe on your person? Are you that confident in your ability to keep it safe? From what Awt tells me, you were scheduled for execution. In your ignorance, you almost destroyed a culture and left them vulnerable to the forces of Death.”
Tif felt cold all over. She certainly didn’t want to die, but if she did it would be her loss, no one else’s. What Vak-Lav was describing was a nightmare. It couldn’t be true, could it? “You said that when a person with a crest dies, it is reborn.”
“Dies, not killed. And do you think that rebirth will happen when the crest resides on not just a human but one who isn’t of their tribe?”
Tif shook her head, not about to be so easily convinced. “If what you’re saying is true, Torgath would have never given it to me. He wouldn’t have put his people at risk like that.”
“Torgath,” Vak-Lav said, some acid returning to her voice, “was a fool who thought himself blessed by the Aspects with a unique gift. He knew nothing of the crests or their history.”
“He didn’t know, Tif,” Awt said. “Almost no one does.”
Tif looked between them again. If what they were saying about the crest was true, even remotely…without their ris to protect them, Vak-Lav was right, the people of Blood Plains would be overrun by Death. Tif couldn’t gamble the lives of so many like a back alley das match, she just couldn’t. Tif took a long breath.
“Promise me that my parents and I leave here safely and find a cyclops, and I’ll give it to them.”
“You’re giving it to him,” Vak-Lav said, pointing at Awt.
“What?” Tif said, glancing at Pep to make sure she hadn’t misheard, which to her shock she hadn’t. “Why?”
“I don’t have any cyclops or Blood tribe members in my employ,” Vak-Lav explained. “And I thought it would be easier for you to give the crest to someone you know.”
“You thought wrong,” Tif said, biting off each word.
“Really? No guilty conscience from spending a night in Jer-Rix’s tent so soon after ending things?” Vak-Lav asked, raising a white eyebrow as she did. “Byr confirmed that it was well past morning by the time you left.”
Tif colored, and now it was Awt’s turn to look between them. “Who?” he said.
“Just the late Archon’s son,” Vak-Lav answered.
“I’ll give it to him,” Tif said, pointing to Ssuran, trying to stop this discussion from going any further.
Strangely, instead of being elated to be offered a fortune, the look the old guard with his dull pink tattoos gave to Vak-Lav was…pained.
“If you can convince him of that, I would happily agree,” the snake-woman said, “but some of us keep memories alive in ways that are different than others.”
“Someone else then,” Tif said, exasperated.
“The fewer who know of the crest, the safer it is. Surely you can understand that.”
“But Awt?” Tif said. “How will him having it help anything?”
Vak-Lav rose up on her white snake torso, looming over Tif. “It will help,” she hissed, “because he won’t parade it in front of every knight in Lercel, nor will he go strolling from one great city to the next, inviting himself to be killed. He will stay here, safe, where I can teach him what I know. The same I will do for every crest if I must, even if I need to live another eighty years to see it so!”
Tif felt the heat of the snake-woman’s words--who she had clearly pushed too far--but that emotion and what was being said with it were only part of what Tif saw. What really struck Tif was that Vak-Lav cared, cared in a way that couldn’t be faked, and Tif had seen her share of fakes across the das board. Tif dropped her head and looked at Pep. They had been wrong about so much: about poor Rof, and the Archon who she had idolized, and even Jer. But mostly, about the Blood ris, and what she should have done with it. They had made mistake after mistake because they hadn’t known enough, racing around blind like a hornet trapped in a beehive and causing as much damage.
When she looked back up at Vak-Lav, Tif smiled at her. “You’re like me.”
“Excuse me?” Vak-Lav replied, clearly as surprised to hear the words from Tif as Tif was to have found them.
But the tells were all there, right in front of Tif if she just looked and listened carefully: a race of snake people she had never heard of before; alive eighty years, but in Lercel for forty; tattoos that didn’t shine like true ris, and what Vak-Lav had just said about the way some people kept memories.
“You’ve been through it, haven’t you?” Tif asked. “What you described with the Aspects? You lost someone.”
“I lost…everyone,” Vak-Lav said, drifting down to her regular height, and Tif didn’t miss the hitch in the snake-woman’s voice. She also didn’t miss Ssuran taking a step closer to Vak-Lav, and neither did Vak-Lav. “Almost everyone,” the leader of the underground amended.
Tif nodded. “And now you have a dream, to protect all of us. It’s…beautiful.” She looked from Vak-Lav to Ssuran to even Awt for a moment. “I’ll give the crest back, and I’m sorry, for everything. I just didn’t know.” Tif got down on the ground and bowed her head to Vak-Lav. “Please don’t hold it against my parents.”
Vak-Lav was quiet so long that Tif eventually peeked a look up, to find the snake-woman staring down at her with such stillness it reminded Tif of a stone asp before they struck.
“Perhaps…,” Vak-Lav said, “perhaps there is some hope for the youth of today. You have my word, child, if you will believe it now: once the transfer is complete, you and your parents will leave here safely.”
Tif nodded. At some point one of them needed to trust each other, just like at some point someone needed to flip the first das tile, and considering that it was Tif who had done wrong, it was right that she should make the first move. She stood, taking two steps and grabbed Awt’s hand. At the contact, her Blood ris naturally pulled at his energy, and she saw a touch of fear alight in his eyes at the memory of her almost knocking him out before. She could have accelerated it, and for a moment she was tempted to, but instead, before she could change her mind, Tif stopped the pull and pushed, just like she had with her fa. She pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until she couldn’t feel a speck of extra heat on her body--that’s when she let go of him.
No longer holding onto anything, Tif dropped to the stone floor in a crouch before she fell her way there--the tugging of ris across so much of her flesh was not only unpleasant but made her feel a touch light-headed. There was also a chill in the air she hadn’t noticed before, so she wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her hands up and down.
Awt reached down with his now red dotted fingers, but he stopped himself short of touching her. “Guess I’ll have to get used to that,” he said, quirking a tight grin. “But you can help me, Tif. You can stay and teach me what you know.”
“Why would I do that?” Tif asked. She shifted her bare feet on what seemed like very uneven rocks, already missing discomfort that didn’t go away.
“Because you don’t have anywhere else to be, and I didn’t save you from the prison so you could be killed the moment the knights find you.”
His whole plan suddenly snapped into focus for Tif, and seeing it for what it was, there was no way she could stay on the ground. “You did it for the ris, not me,” she said, standing to face him.
Awt barely frowned at the accusation. “I did it for both. I love you.”
“How can you say that after what you put me through?”
“I did what I could to keep you safe.” He sighed. “But you don’t cooperate.”
Tif clenched her fists, beyond frustrated that he wasn’t taking any responsibility for his actions. “Trying to keep someone safe doesn’t mean you love them.”
“It does to me.” He said it so earnestly, and Tif could see behind his dark eyes the deep regret she knew he carried of being unable to save his parents. The look made her old feelings for him swell, but Tif held her ground against them.
“I already told you,” she said. “I saved me. Those were my lotto winnings that I earned, not you.”
“Fine,” he said, spreading his Blood ris covered hands, “you saved you. That doesn’t change the fact that everyone thinks you helped assassinate the Archon.”
“And neither will staying here with you.”
“Tif, please. Let me protect you like your family did me.”
“I never wanted you to protect me, Awt. I wanted you to believe in me.” Before Awt could respond, Tif pulled the fairy bracelet he had given her off, letting it fall to the ground between them.
Awt watched it go, drifting lazily downward, but when he looked back up at her he didn’t seem any less determined. That was until a white snake tail wrapped around his clothed torso.
“You two have said enough for now, I think,” Vak-Lav said. “Awt, we have much to discuss. Ssuran, see to the girl.”
The guard stepped toward her, and Tif did her best not to expect a blow. He jerked his head to the side, and she followed, but before she had gone more than a few paces, she heard Vak-Lav use her name.
Tif turned, meeting the snake-woman’s gaze.
“If we are the same,” Vak-Lav said, “you have a dream, too. Good luck with it, child.”
Tif nodded to the leader of the underground in thanks, pointedly avoiding looking at Awt as she did. Then she fell back in behind Ssuran. The silent man led her down the twisted tunnel, and Tif wondered, after all their walking, if they were finally beneath the lows now. It didn’t really matter, but it was better than thinking about how her body was feeling sick again. Tif’s guess was that it was an after effect of losing so much ris so quickly, while Pep said it was because she had just broken up with Awt all over--but Pep didn’t know everything.
Ssuran eventually stopped in front of a door that looked much like others they had passed before, but this one had a wooden bar going across the width of it, stretching past the frame on both sides, making it impossible to open from within. Ssuran didn’t move to lift the bar from the holders it sat in at chest height, and before Tif did, she turned to him.
“What was it an Aspect of?” She wasn’t entirely sure why she asked. Maybe to convince herself that she hadn’t made another mistake in trusting Vak-Lav and giving up her ris, or maybe because she thought if he finally said something, he wouldn’t be nearly as intimidating.
He looked at her, stone-faced, and Tif thought the tunnels would collapse before he broke his silence. But then he spoke a single word in a honeyed baritone. “Sound.” The answer given, he stepped back and leaned against a nearby wall, waiting she supposed for her to collect her parents and then lead them out.
Tif, however, stood there for a moment. What she had been waiting for only a slab of wood away and yet she couldn’t help but look down at the spidery, gray ris she still had on her fingers. If crests worked like Vak-Lav said, a single blow to Death could set the other four tribes free. What would Lercel be like if it’s people didn’t need to hide behind the city's walls? What would the world be like?
Tif shook her head, back to agreeing with Pep, as she usually did. That wasn’t her fight, not yet at least. First, she had to see to her family.
Quick as she could, Tif lifted the plank that kept their door barred, placing it aside, and then pushed the door open.