She couldn’t have been more relieved to see the festival come and go. She’d been in the back, playing the flute, masked by the other performers, overwhelmed by the gaze of a single person. Then she’d been given so many compliments, from familiar people and practical strangers alike, that she was surprised she never once said, “Those dancers all worked hard for this, too! Go praise them! If it weren’t for them, there really wouldn’t be that interesting of a performance!” After the festival came to a close, they all went back to the castle and talked about their plans from there. They were leaving for the Lake tomorrow.
And Philyra was just staring up at her bedroom ceiling, unwilling to go back to the fragments of dreams that haunted her.
And, after a while, some annoying thing started hitting against glass. She’d first intended to ignore it, but after about an hour passed and she was no closer to sleeping nor the noise to stopping, she willed herself up. She was just as driven to do it out of irritation as she was made to remember some near-forgotten memory.
Ihu would knock against her window, sometimes, when they’d gotten separated from Natheniel while they were outside. Why they always came to her, of all people, was something she didn’t try to understand, but… they seemed as grateful as a bird could be when she let them back in. She doubted this sound was from anyone familiar, but a part of her couldn’t help but muse if it had been.
She put on a thicker robe to resist the nighttime chill, then opened the balcony door—right as a pebble bounced off of it. Seeing it join a small pile of pebbles caused her frown to deepen.
“You know this isn’t funny,” she called, though still quiet, as she walked onto the balcony. “Go home before I get a guard to make you!”
“Sorry, sorry! I just needed your attention and I didn’t know how to do that.”
She stepped back on instinct when something moved in front of her. But to see that it was Jesper, using some careful use of Life magic to make a ladder of sorts out of vines, made her relax a little.
Until she thought of one important question: “Why are you throwing rocks up here in the middle of the night?”
“You know that place I mentioned earlier?” He was leaning on the railing, eyes only on her, apparently nowhere near as afraid of falling as she would’ve been. “I want to show it to you.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” she repeated.
“It’s still the perfect time. No one’s going to notice if you leave the castle for an hour or so. There’s not nearly as many questioning eyes on the street, either.”
“Isn’t that just going to look more suspicious to anyone who does see us?”
He smiled. “I have my ways.” He held out his hand to her. “Won’t you come with me? A couple of people are waiting to meet with you.” Then, noticing the way she glanced back into her bedroom, he continued, “You won’t have to worry about anyone realizing you’re not there. My grandfather’s going to take care of it.”
Slowly, she nodded. “Just give me another moment to get ready. Then I’ll go with you.”
She went and changed into something more suitable for walking outside, making the half-conscious decision to leave her hair down. When she came back out, she was partially surprised Jesper was still there—the longer she went through with this, the more it felt like she must’ve actually fallen asleep. Still, she said, “I’m ready.”
He offered his hand and she took it. She carefully got to the other side of the railing, setting her feet down on that vine-ladder. She found herself holding on to him, unable to look at the ground, as the vines shrunk. Words couldn’t describe her happiness to have her feet on the ground and the vines back to their normal size… though she already dreaded having to do that again when she got back. She didn’t even consider how skilled he must’ve been at Life magic to be able to do something like that.
He simply guided her through the streets, taking some lesser-traveled roads. She’d assumed that, wherever their destination was, it was within the city. But once he took her out of it, she had no idea where they were going.
Jesper stopped at a building just outside of the city. It looked pretty unassuming, really, seeming more to be a merchant storehouse or some other mundane thing.
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That is, until he turned to her and announced, “This is the base of the White Ravens.”
She’d let someone lead her right to the base of the heretics.
And, though she had mixed feelings to acknowledge it, she felt more willing to go inside than she was to return to Hyasari.
“Why are you trusting me enough to show me this?” she asked slowly.
“I think we both know the answer to that.” He performed some special knock on the door in order to get it to open, then held it open and gestured for her to go inside. “You’re already one of us.”
There were a lot more people than she would’ve expected for how late it must’ve been. Every single one of them looked at them when they entered—and nearly all of them had their eyes on her.
“Jesper,” one of them sighed in a tired, but affectionate kind of way, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m following Boss’s orders!” Jesper quickly defended.
“I think you just made a friend and want to get the rest of us killed,” someone else, younger than the other but older than the two of them, grumbled. “I’m surprised you didn’t die before now, honestly. I was hoping you wouldn’t make it back…”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you were around for Allen,” a third remarked. “There’s still a damn hole in the wall from when Boss found out about it.”
“At least Allen sounded to be moderately capable of doing something!”
“Eh, I think Jesper’s pretty competent, too.”
“He’s half blind!”
“And if I threw a shiny rock you’d jump off a cliff to grab it.”
Jesper looked between them and Philyra with an embarrassed expression, before finally bringing his attention to her. “Boss wanted me to show you around, so I will. Those two are Aravind and Farrar. I’d probably ignore them both if I were you…” Whether he realized it or not, he quickly guided her away to a different room.
It seemed to just be… average. A small bookshelf, several chairs, and a fireplace suggested they might’ve held more casual gatherings here. Jesper sat down and Philyra, after a moment’s hesitation, joined him.
“I’ll make this clear now, not all the means we’ve used are good,” he said solemnly, “some of them were even evil. But we’re not here to throw Qizar into anarchy. We don’t want to hurt so many people. Maybe there’d be a day where everyone could look back at what we did and call them necessary steps in a better nation. Maybe it’ll all be the fuel to the fire that’ll put every ‘heretic’ to death. I’m not going to say I know or understand everything… but I will tell you what I do know, and let you figure out exactly where you stand on your own.
“The Ravens have been around for as long as the modern Qizarn church has—when it became more than people wandering Qizar, and turned into an organized effort to spread the Commandments’ truths. It took a long time for anyone to realize that we were there. Several of them found positions beside Holy Queen Norah, trying to let the truth be known. Let the world know that Orestis wasn’t watching—that he isn’t guiding anyone. The other gods can’t interfere with mortal lives and guide us, either. They were all just as flawed as we are, not beings meant to have sacrifices made in their names. We weren’t saying that the faith itself was a lie, just to draw that distinct line between reality and the images they were made to be. People are hurting each other over things that don’t matter. They’re making decisions and risking things for a being who doesn’t have the will or power to give them anything in return.”
It seemed he didn’t like sitting still, because he stood back up again and started wandering around the room.
“But, spreading word alone won’t convince them. They won’t change their beliefs, make their life-altering choices become void, just because someone talks to them. We need to show them… and, most of the time, it doesn’t turn out well. My grandfather’s done a lot. He’s had to do things he never wanted to—he did things that should have him executed, and he’d gladly take the blame for it. I’ll be honest, he killed someone very important and poisoned another. But it wasn’t because he didn’t care about them. They were both like family to him. It was exactly because he cared, because he wanted them and others to have a better life… but whether or not that excuses it is completely up to you.”
He took a small book out from the shelf and walked over to hand it to Philyra. She cautiously leafed through it to find picture after picture, along with names and dates… the names, the faces, and the date of execution of heretics that burned at the stake.
“We’ve always tried to get a queen on our side,” he continued, sitting back down. “With someone like her, we could convince a lot more people of our goals and not nearly as many would need to get hurt. But we already face a lot of possible consequences if we end up getting caught… and trying to win over the queen pretty much guarantees getting caught. Allen tried to talk with Queen Zofie, to convince her that the Ravens weren’t as bad as she thought they were. It was a very careful plan, but he failed at the most crucial part. She found out who he was when he left. After he came back, it was like all their time together meant nothing. She had him burned at the stake as a heretic.”
He sighed and gently took the book from her. “You’ve got somewhere important you’re going to be tomorrow, right? Let me walk you back to the castle. Then you can at least try to get some sleep.”
Oh, she certainly wasn’t sleeping tonight.