A scene of carnage was laid bare before my eyes as soon as I emerged from the companionway. The sanded deck had been darkened in smoke, the surface broken. Where the mizzenmast once stood, now a splintered stub lay covered under torn, burned sheets. Casks of water had been brought aloft and made the centre of our firefighting effort. The now somewhat controlled fire evidently had been threatening during the fight. Damp and blackened were the planks under my feet as I wended my way across the deck. Here and there, shattered remains of timbers and flesh still lay strewn - the oozing dark meat of the severed tentacles and red blood of ours. Most of the gunwale to starboard were gone, and no doubt so were large chunks of the hull that side.
I found Thea as she was drawing water with her blackened bare arms revealed under rolled tattered sleeves. Her long hair tied to the waist of the charred tunic and her white skin tarnished in ash. She swayed to the weight of the bucket, but otherwise, as far as I could see, was unharmed.
“By the Under, Star!” The bucket dropped, she rushed to me.
With a briskness rarely seen in her, the girl crossed the deck and flung her arms over me. Relief was great in us both. I sighed on her shoulder. Her presence washed the unbearable nerve off my tattered body.
She parted my hair with trembling fingers, touched where the blood was yet wet. “Does it hurt?”
“It will heal,” I said coolly. She knew that well, we both did. Betimes I patted her back then pulled away. We had our duties to return to. Knowing that she was fine was good enough for me. Plenty to brave what would happen next.
I did not join with the people quenching the fire, but threaded my way to the quarter-deck, across the scarred battlefield. At the port side under this deck astern was the sickbay. I arrived clenching my teeth, knowing what to expect.
Too many to be contained inside, dying and grievously wounded women lay all the way from the inner cabins to the exposed deck. I saw one who had only small strips of fabric stuck to her naked skin, in all entirety burnt and wrinkled, lying bundled like a fetus. A dazed-eyed one whose left scalp – skin, hair, and all – had been scorched away. Another heaved laborious breath in her chest that was torn by a splinter from the broken mast - that was still there, coated in blood and flesh. And moving between their screaming and crying patients like goddesses of the night passing judgments in a morgue, the exhausted medics gave calm instructions to their groaning patients. Though careful with their rulings, those women, a handful at most, were swift with their hands, dressing and bandaging wounds. And swift were they too, in passing by the too-far-gone, whispering in their aids’ ears to take the poor souls outside. And there were not so few of them.
Sickened as I was, I followed orders to undress the patients, wash wounds, give water to parched lips, and carry dying bodies. Soon many sailors arrived to help when the fires had been put under control. In times of crisis, the rule forbidding unauthorized sailors from entering the quarterdeck is seldom enforced.
Presently, a still-armored alaris limped in. Her countenance blackened, the edge of her golden hair charred, her eyes eerily wild.
“Valerian!” cried Salvia, our chief healer, “Haste! Where be Primula?” Desperation leaked from the weary woman’s voice.
The alaris stared back, wide-eyed, for an answer. Something like mocking irony came to life in those eyes. Then, as plainly as those paled lips could mutter, she blurted out, “Dead.”
The both of them paused. Salvia was the first to turn away. The old woman’s hands shook, but she was our chief healer, the last salvation for every soul onboard, and her nerves were still before long. “Help then, if you can, nay, be here and help, can or cannot. The mourning must wait.”
There was no objection. There was no more of a heart in her for it.
More and more were carried in. Herbal pastes and medicines helped somewhat, if only to lessen the pains, while here and there some runed tools were employed, but only sparsely and for grave operations: the replenishing of blood and cutting of limbs. A great part of the healing effort came from Valerian. I saw her hand glow as it hovered over the patients, and gradually, though very slowly, the blood stopped trickling and, on their faces, pain subsided. A strange thing to see someone so reduced by grief to routinely aid others now. But I understood well how it worked, if not the pain itself. Distraction is the best painstopper for fear and all other unfavored feelings.
At length, we moved on to those with only flesh wounds. But all along, I did not find the ones for whom I had come in search.
When the chaos had subsided and the groaning and sobbing were not so chilling to the ears, some of the healer’s aids rewarded themselves with the leisure of breaks. I went aloft again, still in search as I had been. The sky had not yet cleared of clouds, but midday’s warm lights had peeked through the layers of darkness to reach us. I looked among the covered faces, and found them not. So I trudged back, carefully not to step on the patients arrayed against the walls. Without stopping at the entrance to the sickbay, I pressed on along the hallway, until it felt dubious if I would not be chased out by an officer. They were all elsewhere, I had not seen an officer since the battle, save the chief healer and the boatswains who had been overseeing the firefighting.
Eeriness. Both the stench and the groans grew subtle as I moved further in. Compared to the mayhem in the sickbay, this part of the hallway was as still as a graveyard. The people here, sitting or lying, were quiet—some too quiet, too still.
At length, I found those two in an unlit corner, leaning as many others against the wall.
Something, an invisible vision perhaps, was occupying Litzia’s mind, as she stared wordlessly at the ceiling overhead. Her face was grim, but in the dark she seemed beyond pale. Begonia was beside her, which I knew even if I could not see the knight’s face, which lay unmoving beneath a cloth sheet.
Litzia lowered her gaze soundlessly. “Ah, it’s you, Star. Did you come to look for me? Certainly not, I think you’re on an errand perhaps.”
I considered her conversational tone. For how cowed I ever had been in her intimidating presence, I could not bring myself to feel aught but pity for one who grieves, if what in me as an azure could be called pity. Though the glare was there in those eyes. Though icy be the expression. I looked at a cornered beast growling to hide her grievous wound.
I crouched to her level, her eyes followed me. “Are you unharmed, ma’am?” I asked.
She did not answer directly. “Do I ever look harmed? No, I am not. A bruise or two there. But when the healer’s time is spared, I shall be fixed up anew.”
“If you are sure,” I said, not without feeling some heartlessness in my own words.
“Why, I am certain. Save for those fetters upon my soul, I am swell. But it was nice of you to stop by to give me a little of your time. How very grateful I am.” Her voice was monotonous, the obscuring mockingness I had known in her slightly lacking. And in those eyes that fixed shamelessly into mine, I saw a crack in her veil.
Bewildered by her behavior, I was unsure if I should leave her alone or stay for a little while. I would that she stated plainly her desire.
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“Do you wish to talk about it?” I ventured. Thea had always said that nothing relieves a pent-up sadness better than a listening ear. But being pent up seemed Litzia’s natural state, that she was always on guard, wary. I daresay she thrived in keeping up that poised, haughty, distant appearance. And she took comfort in leaving others in the dark as to her real feelings underneath, like a baby burying her head in a warm mother’s embrace. Do I want to pry? Do I want to force out of her something best left unsaid? And leave her to wallow in where she is safest? In short, I had not the slightest idea. None. I was an azure. An azure. An azure. A changeling. There’s nothing complex or understanding or even sympathy in such a creature. Do not ask of me what I have not.
“I’m sorry.” I lied. And yet I lied. The lie that is perhaps the foulest one ever uttered by an azure in this limitless sky. An azure cannot be sorry.
I didn’t have anything else to say. Why, she was too good for my pity—I had not a single word to comfort her, a single expression that should feel appropriate, not even an act of kindness for the sake of a well-mannered gesture. If only she would ask me to fetch a cup of wine to drown her sorrow. That I could do. I could understand mindless observance to clear and precise orders. But asking me to navigate someone’s emotions, why, that task exceeded me.
And to begin with. She was a wyverness. Our stations in this world were so different it was passing ridiculous to even consider. Even a cat, with all his lovely and furry virtues, may soothe a pained soul by his mere existence; a scrawny, skinny azure cannot.
To take my mind off the moment’s awkwardness, I rested my eyes on the covered body. The clean sheet Begonia lay under had been taken straight from the sickbay, unlike the dirty make-shift canvas over those who were exposed on deck. Litzia must have been one of the first alares to bring her partner to the medics at the conclusion of the battle, only to be told to take the body away along with an unused sheet. And as she sat there with the lifeless corpse, they had come and told her wordlessly, again and again, to make a place for the living, until she finally settled in this dark corner of the hallway, with only this haunting silence for company. And for hours she had been there, until I came.
Litzia suddenly inhaled deeply. “Only now,” she said, “I was thinking to myself that I would say something clever if you simply passed me by, you know that?”
I shook my head.
“I did. It would have been a thing clever, at once spiteful, to cause such a keen regret for having committed a heartless act… An azure’s heartlessness is no excuse, you know? That cannot pardon yourself from blame. Not if you leave me in this place to myself… here with her. And if you didn’t feel sorry then, then surely you would to-night in your bedsheet, wracked with guilt, that you would come to me and apologize for being so cold, so cruel when I, when I…”
Her voice broke. She broke at last. If only for too brief a moment.
And then no more the proudly lifted chin. Her gaze dropped to the floor, where she would not look up again for a long time, but only the black tresses veiling her could be seen.
A part of me wanted to hug her, to console her, just like Thea had when she had been overjoyed seeing me alive. But I could not. It would not be an earnest embrace without pretense. I did not have the sympathy for that. I didn’t know how. There I was, half kneeling, half sitting, trying to reach out but could not. Even I could see that she was in need of something. Something that didn’t have to be my pity, not even my affection. A distraction perhaps, from what was otherwise unbearable, the same way the alaris Valerian had forgotten her grief through the healing of others.
“Oh well, here’s something clever,” presently she said, regaining some of her ineffableness, and yet her words were halting and in a jumble, “She died thinking I loved her, do you know that? I do. And it is mayhap better that way to go out thinking you saved someone who loved you.” She pressed the word with seeming hatred. “Perhaps it is good enough, plenty, to feel loved, though not actually loved. Think you so? Have you ever felt loved? You say it, again and again, that your kind could not feel. But I am not certain of it. I can tell you the gist of it, at least. Even if it was all in your head, you need but think that you are loved, and then, suddenly, you’re happy now! That’s the secret to happiness, is it not? Delusions, I mean. All the better if death comes for you before the truth shatters your happiness. How’s that for something clever? So I say, why care? Who cares if you’re merely pretending, just sitting there with pity writ on your face, as though you feel sorry but are also admirably considerate? Do it anyway. Even if it would only be a lie. Give me that damnable lie! What’re you so afraid of? Lie! Are you not capable of even lying?”
I sat there dumbly. Where should I even begin to lie? I didn’t know what lie to tell her. Maybe I could hug her. I could say that everything was going to be alright. I could even tell her that I love her, that I want to be her friend, as a fellow slave. But exactly what was it she wanted? What words would be right, should be needed? I hesitated.
It was so very clumsy. I pulled her near. She did not respond, but let her face buried in my shoulder. Her hair was a mess, strands of which strayed messily over her horns, down her dampened face, down my neck, and fell softly on my dirty skin. Her breathing heavy like the burden of living, that though I did not support her body entirely, my limbs and chest trembled under the great mental strain she had shared with me.
But no resistance. Nary a defiance to mend a temporary lapse of composure. The closed wyverness let herself be wrapped up in my clumsy arms. Everything. Her unseen core. Even her impenetrable icy mask. I accepted everything into me, though in doing so, I knew well my action would not provide even a shred of warmth. For I was a stranger, with nothing but physical contact as the sole connection to her. But that was the only thing I knew to do. A mere pretension. A big fat lie. A great illusion. Just for the appearance that with this much, with such a half-hearted gesture, she would be able to be comforted and taken away from the unbearable pain. And that shall be the truth for so long as we both believe it to be true.
“Tell me then,” still wet upon my shoulder, yet composed now, she asked, “Is it right for a babe still in her cradle to be enslaved, the first word yet to be spoken, her thoughts unformed, unaware even of her sentenced fate to lament? Justice for that baby then, that her first steps in this world were in running from the shadow, only to nevertheless be captured in the end, rendering the memory of lasting freedom a passing, longing dream? Justice that forever after the fetters command her life in place of dignity, conscience, and love?”
I sighed.
”No, Litzia, I do not see justice in such things as you say.”
“Then righteous it must be then, for an innocent girl, who for a young and foolish love pledged unwittingly to the wrong wyvern, to be enslaved and killed for the sin of her loveless sister?”
“No, Litzia, by the Under, no!”
“So; so,” startingly, she lifted her face, and at so close a distance, the blackness deep beneath those icy lakes from which she peered out glinted dangerously. It seized me, and compelled me, just like it had before. So close, the faint dark of her soul swelled like a great storm cloud. And there, by my words alone, she should collapse or endure for another day. Such a burden crushed me. And at that moment, it corrupted me forever. “So,” she said, “so if she be injustice, if she be wicked, then she will fall, by my hand or another. But fall she will. For her fall shall be just, her punishment rightful, that is inevitable, that is right, is true, is imminent, is it not? is it not? Star the Azure, is it not? Say it!”
“Yes, Litzia.”
And so, that day, Litzia the Wyvern taught me how to lie.
It was only the first of many. And greater, perhaps, was the worth of a lie, the price of a fleeting comfort sought in the pit of despair. For the opposite of truth is not one that words alone can preserve.
“Alaris.”
An icy voice broke our embrace. Justitia, the chief mate, was standing right beside us. My veins went cold, and I parted in haste from the wyverness to make way. Had she heard our exchange? Had she heard Litzia’s thought of mutiny?
“On deck now,” she said, “the captain calls for all hands. You too, azure. Everyone.”
Litzia rose, her face beyond darkened. I did not make an attempt to read her, or tried to get close to her now that an officer was there. But before I went away, she glared at Justitia, and I feared the worst.
“Am I not even allowed to mourn?” she said.
“The beast is yet alive, wyvern. And so your duty for the oath is yet required. But I suppose,” she chuckled with her wonted cruelty, “in your case, it is the mark that masters you.”
I could not read Litzia then, for once again her usual icy mask had taken the place of the vulnerable girl of mere seconds ago.
Not long after, the ahoy for all hands echoed over the whole ship, where the lifeless bodies of our comrades lay still with failing warmth.