11 – 4
“What happened?” Clarke asks softly, cautiously, and I snort a bitter laugh through my nose. Isn't that the question of the hour? Three times now it's been asked, and not a scrap of charm to be found. She and I sit together on the edge of the bed, one of two in the room we've rented for the night. The lamp on the side table separating them is out, wick cold, the closed window behind it showing in a soft, cottony glow from the moonlit fog.
“I...” It's the first word I've spoken since leaving Juliana's embrace. “I don't – It doesn't make any sense.” My voice is hushed, near a whisper, hardly louder than the creak-and-groan of the inn's timbers. Clarke hums, in question and encouragement, but I don't know what more to say, “It just...I don't understand.”
Her hand curls over mine, teasing apart the clenching tangle of my fingers. Her touch is cool and calming, like her magic, like her. I know I'm confusing her, worrying her, yet what she asks of me is, “Are you all right?”
“No,” I answer, and look up to her eyes, “I'm not. I'm not ill, or – or injured, or anything, I just...”
“Don't understand,” she finishes gently. I nod. So does she. She cups my elbow with her other hand, sliding up past my shoulder to my face, cradling it in her palm. “What don't you understand?” she asks, brushing my cheek with the pad of her thumb.
Within the whole of the story of Leda, daughter of Lenn, there is only a single piece of it I can't make fit. It's not that she was coveted for her beauty, or that someone sought to take what she refused to give, or how she defended herself so ferociously. It's not that her assailant used their position of power as a sop to their wounded pride and punished her, had her arrested as a thief.
It is the last part of it all, the smallest and saddest one: that her mother, marked a fighter by the scars on her hands, meant to do nothing more than wallow in her sadness and her grief.
I tell all of it to Clarke, finishing with, “It's like she already thinks her daughter is dead! That – that nothing she could do would bring Leda back to her, but shouldn't she at least try?! If it were – my – mother, and this happened to – me –, she would...” What? What would she do? “She would at least try.”
Wouldn't she?
Clarke's answer comes after a moment she clearly needs, one that I am glad to give. With careful hesitation she says, “I...suppose...there could be something missing? Something we don't know? Didn't she say as much?”
I roll my eyes away from her with a scoff, her thumb dragging across my cheekbone as I turn. “Yes,” I admit, “ But – what does it matter? What could possibly excuse that?”
From the corner of my eye, I see her lift and drop a shoulder. “Maybe...they threatened her?” she offers, “Lenn, I mean? Something like: 'try anything, and your little girl gets it'.” She drops her voice for the last part, doing her best at a man's gruff threat. “Oh, hush,” she admonishes, even though I did nothing more than twitch my lips.
“I feel threatened,” I assure her, and she rolls her eyes.
“It makes sense!” she insists, squaring her shoulders up to defend her idea. I've a sudden image of her at the front of a room full of desks, robe on her shoulders and cap on her head. She must've been an incredible student, to be so gifted a magi. “Think about it!”
She's right, it does make sense. In a rare moment of quiet, Father once told me that to have a child was to pull your heart from your body and set it walking in the world. He'd said that any parent worthy of the title would do anything to see that heart safe and strong. I'd asked, even die?, and he'd said, if it meant you'd live? Yes.
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So. Was Lenn worthy of the title? Would such a woman, one marked a fighter by the scars on her hands, sit and do nothing to keep her heart safe, even if the doing was killing her? I don't know. I'd like to think so, but I just don't know.
“Well?” Clarke prompts softly, pulling me from my thoughts. “Doesn't it?”
“It really does,” I answer, “but why didn't she – say – anything? Why just...let me leave, thinking all these horrible things of her?”
She shrugs, does Clarke. Her confession of, “I don't know,” falls easily from her. I might, though. I look back to the long, painful hike from the Thorngage home to Amberdusk, to the thought and feeling that plagued me through every jarring step.
“Maybe,” I suggest, “Maybe she thought she deserved it,” and before Clarke can process what I've said, let alone respond, there comes a thundering of steps towards our door. From the weight of their fall and the length of stride between them, it can only be Juliana.
The woman herself swings the door wide, fear and fury in her blue-dark eyes; her jaw locked tight, her skin turned pale. When she sees us, hale and whole, some of the fear leaves her in a breath of relief. “You're alright.” she says.
“Why wouldn't we be?” Clarke asks.
There's a moment where Juliana doesn't answer; where she seems to war with herself on how much or if she should tell. “Someone's died,” she answers, “Murdered, just like the others.” She leans on the doorframe, closing her eyes for a moment, “– Just – like the others.”
- - -
Before we'd left Amberdusk, before we sailed three days south upon the lake, I gave the Windrunner emblem to Juliana. In part, it was because I'd come all this way to do just that. In large, though, I simply didn't want to carry it anymore, not after hearing how lives were ending under its sign. It had changed how I saw it: from a ragged scrap of embroidered cloth to something altogether more sinister; closer to how it was seen by people like Agnes, who had been here the first time the Windrunners held sway and remembered well what they had been.
There's been silence since Juliana spoke, since she closed the door and locked it behind her. Clarke hasn't removed her hand from the piece of ice at the hollow of her throat, its fierce gleam peeking through a gap in her fingers, catching in the corner of my eye. With the other she clings to my wrist, keeping me close to her. Her eyes are distant, turned inward, thinking what thoughts that news of awful death bring.
It's like a tether, with her arm the chain and her hand, the manacle. I've this rush of energy coursing through me, urging me to act. It urges me to stand, to leave this stifling room and go sprinting into the fog. To run, until my throat burns with cold air's cut, my body's wounds with sweat, and I can run no more. To what end? I don't know. It doesn't matter, I won't do it. Bouncing my heel is a pitiful release by comparison, but it's the only one I'll accept.
Juliana has gone still and grim. She's rounded her massive shoulders into a hunch, folding over her clenching fists as she sits on the edge of the other bed. Her brow has dropped, its thunderhead promising an almighty storm, turning her already narrowed eyes into mere slits through which she studies the bare, wooden floor. The proud line of her jaw has gone taut, her bite flexing as she sees whatever sight that sent her running to ensure we were safe.
How badly could this poor life have ended, to so rattle a knight?
Do I dare ask?
The silence drags on. There is nothing to break, not the creak-and-groan of the inn's timbers, not the whistle of distant wind, nor the shuffling thump of someone falling into their bed. It's as bad as the camp, without even fresh air to keep us sane.
Eventually, blessedly, Juliana clears her throat. She says, “There's a boat leaving tomorrow, taking cargo to Valdenwood for the rebuilding.” Her gaze lifts from the ground, a rumble of thunder in her narrowed eyes. “I want you both on it.”
“What about you?” Clarke asks. There's something in how she does that sticks with me, as if it's already understood that we agreed to do as we're asked.
I don't recall that.
“I have to stay,” Juliana answers, “There's only a few other knights here, and the town guards, they're...” She flexes her bite once more. Shakes her head and I, at least, understand. “Word's spreading. People are going to get scared, they're going to want answers. I can't...I can't do that and look after the both of you.”
Before Clarke can say anything, I do, telling Juliana that, “You don't have to look after us. We can see to ourselves.”
“Zira,” Clarke breathes from beside me. My bouncing heel hasn't slowed. If anything, it's going faster.
“We – can –,” I insist, to her, to them both.
Blue-dark eyes travel over me, from my tapping heel to the bruise smeared across my face. “Can you?” Juliana asks, calmly doubtful and vicious with it.
“Yes!” I growl back. My heel plants solid and I push up to stand, shaking free of Clarke's grasp.
As always, Juliana is unaffected, “I see it differently,” she tells me, and it hurts to hear.
“So do I,” Clarke says, and it knocks the breath from me, dropping me back to the bed. My mouth lies open and empty of words, betrayal stinging in my eyes. Fourth time's the charm, it would seem, for in my mind there's only one question: What's happening?