The horses kicked up clouds of dust on the road and the landscape seemed to become browner each time Alize blinked. The travelers reached the southern crossroads before noon the next day. Alize kept silent as she listened to the forest usher her forward. The trees hummed with urgent reminders that something was following them, seeking Alize. For her part, she bit back her exhaustion and kept alert. She nodded when Davram mentioned that Kell’s family came from this area, but her thoughts drifted elsewhere with the wind and the leaves.
Behind Alize, Kell spoke little, though each time she turned back to him, he met her eyes as if he had already been watching her. Alize might have begrudged the attention, as she had when she first met him, if not for the wry grins that lit up his face each time their eyes met. Not prideful, not cruel, but a bittersweet reminder that he too was keeping vigilant in this unstable new world. She had a partner in the silent battles she fought. Alize would never admit it, but she appreciated his company.
At the next crossroads, the trees beckoned Alize off the main road. The lesser trodden path skirted the edge of the forest as the mountain faded into steppes. These were steppes far from any cities, rarely traveled. At their boundary with the forest, the path faded into nothing, leaving Alize to wonder where the trees meant for her to go.
Surveying the landscape, Alize saw smoke, rising up in a thin trail, just over the horizon. Several rolling hills obscured its source.
“There’s an oasis there,” Kell spoke from beside her. “A common camp for herders.”
“You must know this area well?”
“A herder must always know where to find water.”
In an instant, Alize’s mind painted a picture of Kell as a herder, enveloped in furs, with his cheeks flushed red from the cold wind, and his felt boots fastened tightly. She could imagine his exasperation as he chased down an unruly sheep, or his diligence as he loaded up a cart for market. Could he gallop a horse across this empty landscape, chasing off his family's herd’s predators? But all that would have been before he was a Sargon, and she could not quite picture him as a child. Alize shook her thoughts free. They needed a direction. As Alize directed her gaze to the smoke, the trees’ urgent tone relaxed. That would have to be hint enough.
She led the men east into the steppes, keeping the smoke ahead of them. The sun slanted towards the horizon but the dips and folds in the landscape did not reveal the smoke’s source. Behind them, the shadows of the mountains grow longer, chasing their their horses’ tracks.
Finally their destination appeared in the distance, a spot of brilliant blue amongst the low brush. Its form became clearer as they approached. It was a solitary tent, identical to the round tents that the Hrumi used when traveling through the steppes. Its felt fabric, draped around a collapsable wooden skeleton, protected the inhabitants from the extremes of summer heat and winter blasts that struck the open landscape. Thick ropes wrapped two bands around the tent to hold the fabric in place. The tent style was meant to be sturdy but impermanent. Herders had to move seasonally to find pastures for their animals.
The animal herd crowded on the southern side of the tent. Four horses stood silhouetted against the darkening sky. The herd’s high proportion of sheep relative to the goats bespoke the herd’s purpose: wool, not meat.
Davram spoke lowly to Kell. “Am I wrong that the door is familiar?”
Although the felt was unadorned, the wooden door was painted with a blue tulip, flanked on the left and right by red and yellow bands. The patterns in the decorations followed carvings in the wood.
Alize turned to watch Kell for his answer.
He had dropped his jaw. “Not wrong.” Kell answered, his eyebrows raised. “That’s my grandparents’s tent.”
Alize whipped her head back to the tent. Kell’s grandmother, the former Hrumi. A withering ache tugged at Alize’s courage. The woman who had left the clans behind for something she felt was better, and Alize dreaded to hear why. But at least Kell’s grandmother would have no reason to know about Alize’s renunciation. There was safety in that secret still.
At Davram’s suggestion, Kell rode ahead and Alize watched him disappear into the tent. As Davram, Alize, and Onder arrived to the tent’s periphery, Kell emerged flanked by a woman standing tall and wearing a man’s riding outfit and boots. Wrinkles framed her face, but they were the kind that indicated that she had spent a great deal of her life smiling.
Kell’s grandmother took a moment to scrutinize Alize before nodding curtly without introducing herself. Kell began to say something for her, but the old woman preempted him. “Come inside everyone, the cold is setting in.”
Swallowing, Alize entered the tent. Like a Hrumi tent, the inside was open and the center stood at nearly twice Alize’s height, held up by two wooden poles. Between them, a vent in the felt ceiling released the smoke of the open fire below it. A small table next to the stove was currently strewn with garlic and small onions. Three full jugs of water sat beside it, and the massive pot on the fire was not yet steaming despite the throaty flame beneath it. To the right of the entrance, long strips of meat hung from strings, drying for winter. Behind the meat, bags overflowing with grains and legumes sat beside metal tools and pots. On the tent’s other side, a large white fur covered the floor, punctuated with a few square pillows. Alize could smell cumin and ginger, and it brought back memories of goat stew at the children’s camp.
So this is a home. The scene was disarmingly familiar, so much of it resembling Hurmi tents. There too the hearth had burned over crackling embers. Here it was laced with the crisp scent of wood and hot metal from the chimney. When Kell shut the closed behind her, Alize realized how chilled her hands had become, and how rigidly she had been holding them.
The Hrumi painted government homes as places of danger, where power rested in privacy and children could be exposed to every type of abuse. This contrasted with the unexpected beauty of the painted plates on the table, and the gentles curves of the wooden furniture, the stylistic patterns of the rugs. Everything in the room testified that a great deal of care had prioritized each simple pleasure for its occupant.
Kell’s grandmother embraced Davram and bowed formally to Onder. “I am honored to host you as my guests,” she told them before directing her bright eyes to Alize, “And Alize, with whom I share so much, will you assist me in preparing the goat?”
Alize nodded with a stiff neck and followed the old woman out of the tent. She could sense the eyes of the three men on her back as she closed the door behind her.
The temperature outside was dropping rapidly, as it in did at night on the open steppes. Kell’s grandmother directed her in silence to the herd, and pointed to the animal she had selected. Together they followed the same process of slaughter that Alize had learned with her sisters. In silence, they moved the meat to a large flat stone on the ground’s surface. They would carve a serving for their dinner, and the rest would need to be prepared to be dried. They both settled next to the stone to begin the work.
Alize was rolling up her sleeves when the old woman drew a deep breath. “I knew you’d come eventually,” she spoke. She made the first cut in the rump, and sliced upwards, just under its matted hair. “I have lived for so long with this magic.”
“This magic?” Alize sliced under the skin with her own dagger. Her movements were less elegant.
Kell’s grandmother ignored her comment. “I understand it is no longer mine to keep, but the sacrifice that you ask of me today is not something I can provide for the Hrumi at this time.” She spoke her words with crisp authority, and set aside her first strip of meat.
Alize placed her dagger on the stone surface. “Sister,” she faltered, wondering if it could possibly be the correct address. “It seems that you know more of my task than I do. I only-”
“Kell says you will go to the Temple - I intend to go too.” Kell’s grandmother began a second slice, drawn neatly next to the first. She glanced at Alize. “I ask you that you give me that time.”
The conversation seemed to be rapidly spinning out of Alize’s control. “You speak of a sacrifice - I know not what you mean.”
“You are here because the Hrumi want the echo magic back.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon.” Alize murmured, flushing, “I am not on any mission from the Hrumi.”
“Do not goad me child! It belongs to the clan. But I cannot return it now.”
Alize opened and closed her mouth. She could not bear to speak of the Hrumi to a fellow exile, not when she had made that choice and Alize had not. “My business does not concern the clans. It’s about-” there was not really a reasonable way to finish the sentence. Alize had no idea.
She looked to the mountains, far in the distance now. The forest was no longer visible against the rising darkness, but she remembered the trees’ encouragement.
Alize drew her breath once more. “All I know is that I feel the earthquakes, there are people pursuing me, and if they die their echoes fling into me.”
“How many have you killed?”
“Me? None! One died by the Sargon’s hand,” Alize nodded towards the fortress. “And the other by his own master.”
The old woman narrowed her eyes. “How do you know about the echoes and not about your own role?” She turned the carcass, continuing to skin it.
“I’m unlucky, apparently,” Alize groused. “I have no answers for you.”
“I see.” Kell’s grandmother continued in her even, practiced movements. She glanced at Alize’s dagger on the table and handed Alize a wooden bowl. “We’ll use the lungs and liver for the stew tonight.”
Alize recognized the instruction, and grasped her dagger to begin opening the goat’s cavity. She could hear the gentle shuffling and bleating of the herd, and her companions’s voices drifting from the tent with the smoke.
“If you don’t know about the echoes,” Kell’s grandmother said, “then do you not know that I recognize you?”
“What?”
“I can feel the earthquakes too. All echo bearers feel them. And when they first began, I could see you, your soul in my mind, like a beacon. Kell told me that Onder shielded you, but you stand here before me and I can feel my echoes are drawn to you. Before they were corrupted, I could have given them to you freely, but now the only way to retrieve that magic from me is to kill me.”
Her words hung in the air before Alize could fully comprehend them. Then her head spun, and she looked at her hands, one clutching her dagger, and the other covered in blood. Disgust rose inside her, and she coughed her words. “Then I’m not meant to take your echoes!” She released her dagger again, this time letting it clang on the stone. “I don’t even want the magic - it makes me sick beyond anything I have ever known. The trees guided me, but none of it makes any sense.” Alize shook her hands, as if that could remove the blood.
“You have not come to kill me then?”
“Kill you? By Rehsan - no!” Alize would never kill a Hrumi sister.
“What of a sister who has left the fold, and taken a piece of it with her?”
“Especially one who has left the fold!” Alize whispered, unwilling to elaborate on the significance of her words. “The worst part is that I thought you would be able to help me.” Alize cast her gaze to the purple clouds above her and heaved a sigh. “What am I doing here?”
Her companion’s face softened. “If you come in peace child, we may yet be able to ascertain some answers to the question that you are trying to articulate.” She tilted her head to Alize’s dagger, and then to the goat
Alize haltingly resumed her work in the cavity. Her dagger felt clunky in her hands. “It’s incredible that you still have echoes from the Hrumi.” Alize murmured.
“And it shouldn’t be like that,” her companion responded, “the word “echoes” is a rather poor translation from the original Gontvi word afuriu which means something more like ‘gathering voices.’ In that language, it is also the root of the verb ‘to restore’ or ‘to return’. The echoes were never meant to accumulate, but to return to their original bearers. I hate to think of the clan having so few.”
Alize nodded. She was organizing the organs before her. It had been at least a year since she had slaughtered a whole animal, but the memories were coming back to her. Her initial work had been clumsy. “Well, now the Southern and Western clans have merged, so-”
“Not enough girls?” Kell’s grandmother asked.
Alize nodded self-consciously. “Of course, that changed with the Kogaloks.”
“Mm. Well, the clan deserves these echoes, but now the only way to assemble them is to have the blessing of a dying bearer. Forgive me, but I thought you had come to collect.”
“Not like that.” Alize demurred, still horrified at the notion. How brave this woman had been, to speak with her at all. To let her wield her dagger.
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“Yet I know you are the seeker, I feel it in the magic. I can hear the calls of the Priestess in the East as strongly as I feel your pull.”
Alize chewed her cheek. These ideas profoundly disturbed her. How many other echo bearers felt the same thing? Then a darker thought occurred to her. “Have you seen the pale-faced man, ever?”
Kell’s grandmother’s hands slowed in her motions and she knotted her brows.
“A lingering vision?” Alize elaborated, “When I held the echoes, before, his presence haunted me.”
“Recently,” the woman’s face turned a little gray, “I have felt another force, something…cold.”
Alize swallowed, unwilling to pursue that thought. Instead, she voiced another question plaguing her. “But, why do you have echoes?”
“Bless me, I’ve forgotten all my manners. My name is Idir.”
Alize gasped. She had heard that name a thousand times, shouted with good humor. “Idir who led the battle in Badga?”
“The very same.” Idir began to smile.
Here another stone fell from the wall Alize had constructed to represent her world. Another untruth, untold.
“You were clan leader! The stories say you’re dead!”
“Stories are not always true. Some are enslaved for the storyteller’s purpose.”
In her mind, Alize tried to remember who told her that story, but everyone told it. Everyone repeated it. “Well, what really happened?”
“A man. Kell’s grandfather pulled me from the Hrumi.”
“Nocturne take him.” Alize cursed obediently.
“No, Alize, no.” Idir spoke softly but frowned. “Let me start over.” She shifted the carcass and resumed slicing the meat. These would be the long strips that would dry in the tent. “My mentor was clan leader before me. She designated me as the person best trained to lead after her time. Most of the echoes I bear came to me when she died.”
“Who killed her?”
“She died in childbirth.”
Alize’s dagger slipped in her hand, nearly cutting her skin. “What?”
“From what I hear, a lot has changed about the Hrumi now.”
“A woman cannot conceive,” Alize stammered, “without…associating with men. It would make us dependent on them.”
“Yes, well, the clans have not always felt that way, in fact, when I became clan leader, many members advocated it. We faced a crisis that extended into the very roots of Hrumi identity. What do they teach you about the beginning of the Hrumi clans?”
“Oh,” Alize gathered her thoughts as Idir waited. “The Hrumi formed a thousand years ago under the Priestess Rehsan.” Alize looked to Idir for confirmation as she started chopping up the goat lungs. “Rehsan had suffered greatly as a child and her journey to the Temple was plague by her family’s cruelty. When she finally arrived, she astounded the Priestess, to have much power and so little control. After years of study, she learned to wield her magic and she vowed she would use her power to change the world. Never again would a child suffer simply because she could not defend herself. There had to be another option.”
“You’re saying that she wanted to empower the weak.”
“Of course. That is her legacy. I mean, she also did many other great things – she stilled the greatest dust storm the steppes had ever seen, and cured the scourge of Yellow Bone Illness. But the Hrumi remember her because she vowed that the children in the provinces would never again be victims of the cruelty she had suffered.”
“She vowed to give them a choice,” Idir amended. Her hands moved quickly. Like Alize’s, they were slick with blood.
“I guess,” said Alize. She had never heard the story told that way. “Rehsan tasked the Hrumi to be the protectors against family violence. We find the weak girls and we save them. It is the perpetual fight against the apathy of the governments.”
“This is a bit different than I remember.” Idir said dryly.
“What do you mean?”
“In the version we told, the Hrumi’s task was family specific, for anyone suffering at the hands of their family. But Rehsan advocated helping refugees, not just children and certainly not just girls. Any victims of floods or famine, soldiers injured in wars, all the trials the gods send upon us to teach us resilience and lay our souls bare for our earthen mirrors.”
“Rehsan could not have advocated helping soldiers.” Alize objected, “Not all the world is a victim. Some are the aggressors.”
“Then the Hrumi possess the authority to rank victims?”
“No - no. But when Rehsan died, she made us the inheritors of her soul so we could protect the weak from their abusers. And of course the princes and all the civilized people hate us for that,” Alize dropped several chunks of lung into the wooden bowl. “They care not for the good work we do! And they hunt us down and reap our souls like the Kogaloks or Deku they so despise. We only want to grant this land peace.”
“Have you ever thought,” Idir spoke, “that the Hrumi rhetoric of peace is a little disingenuous considering the combat training all the children receive?”
“Not at all,” Alize tried to say politely, “we are always prepared to defend ourselves.” Silently she admonished herself - she should not be referring to the Hrumi as though she were still a part of her clan. In front of her, she chopped the meat into uneven pieces sizes. The soup would be a casaulty of her distracted thoughts. “A Hrumi is always vigilant. Well, obviously except around other Hrumi.”
“So Hrumi cannot kill each other?”
Alize raised her gaze slowly to Idir. How had the conversation come to this? She could deny it. But the truth sat in the back of her throat, in the pit of her stomach. It was with her always. She did not want to speak these words, but neither did she have the strength to deny them. And she saw something in Idir’s eyes that reminded her of Kell, something calm and even a little safe. A kindness that created space for this terrible truth. “My mentor,” Alize choked. “My mentor was killed by our clan leader.”
Alize had never spoken of Hesna’s death. With her sisters, she had never had anyone to tell. Though she had been forbidden to watch the fight, they had all witnessed it. The gods had granted Celillie victory, and there was no conversation beyond that. To resent Hesna’s death meant resenting the gods themselves.
Idir’s movements all froze. “Sister,” she murmured, “why?”
“A dispute. Before my dagger binding ceremony. She was the best fighter, everyone knew it. But the gods granted our clan leader victory.” Alize could not help spitting her words.
Idir response was both gentle and measured. “I am so sorry. I do not like to hear that violence has a place within Hrumi society.”
“Only for our protection,” Alize whispered.
“But not for your mentor,” Idir’s eyes seemed swarming with light.
“The gods judged that my mentor was wrong.” Alize hated these words. Heat rose in her face and she stammered Celillie’s phrase. “It is not for us to question.”
“Mmm.” Idir murmured. “So perhaps it is not always obvious where power rests. Strength does not have meaning in isolation. I know that can be a hard lesson for a Hrumi to bear. And I beg you consider its implications for everyone else, Alize. What does power mean, then? If, by all accounts, the Hrumi are stealing children from families that don’t want the children stolen, which of them is more powerful, the families or the Hrumi?”
Alize shook her head while she took up Idir’s abandoned task with her own dagger. She found Idir’s topic shift a small mercy, for her eyes had begun to grow hot. “The governments are more powerful.”
“That answers a different question.”
“It’s all the same! Either way, they hunt us relentlessly; they are our greatest enemy.”
“Yet no government has ever defeated the Hrumi, only driven them away. Perhaps the princes are more merciful than the clans care to recognize.”
Alize watched Idir. She had been a clan leader, and for that Alize owed her utmost respect. Yet at the same time, Idir acted as if she expected Alize to surrender the stories she lived by. She could not help fighting back. “If the princes were merciful and cared for the weak, the world would not need the Hrumi.”
“And isn’t that a frightening thought?”
Inwardly Alize recoiled. Outwardly she worked to keep her face composed and spoke with as much disinterest as she could muster. “If it were true, perhaps. But I do not trouble myself over falsehoods.”
“Water can be every color, but those who learned it as blue will always paint it that way.” Idir’s voice was utterly steady, her even temperament betraying only patience. The most powerful of weapons.
So this was where Kell learned it.
“You speak in riddles.” Alize jabbed at the meat, ending her cut too early.
“I speak in poetry. Language is sometimes too brittle for truth.”
“Then you’re saying that everyone who raised me lied to me!”
“No, child. Only that sometimes the stories we tell escape our control and we cannot see it.”
Alize inhaled, taking a moment to let her pulse slow, to let the evening air cool her face. Idir had been a clan leader, the highest rank a Hrumi could attain. Alize wanted to rebuff her words, but even under all her denials, something rang true. Something to do with Celillie and rotting onions. Celillie had concocted stories and lost control of them. What if Hesna too had suffered from Celillie’s wild untruths?
“Is this why you left?” Alize asked.
Idir’s gaze swept over the landscape. The wind rushed against her face and she tilted her chin upwards, for just a moment, to savor it.
“No. I was not so clever. But it is something I have learned, once I stood on the outside.”
Her response dissatisfied Alize. Idir knew of the government’s persecutions. There was no denying those were real because Alize had experienced them herself. She could not resist prodding further. “But how can you prefer the governments?”
Idir laughed and resumed trimming the meat. “My life played out a smaller stage than that.”
“But you chose…” Every way Alize could think to end tthat statement sounded accusatory. It would be unfair to Idir, who answered her questions so earnestly.
“I made a choice, which is more than I’d ever been raised to do. The Hrumi judge willow women too harshly. You pity us without understanding us, and that is both demeaning and somewhat self-serving on your part. You can’t see that this world,” Idir gestured around her, “has none of the tension I lived with as a Hrumi, always fearing attacks, always identifying adversaries. Here I laid down my arms, and I found I did not need them.”
“Then our soul protection works!” Immediately Alize’s heart soared. Her sisters, captured by the Sargons, did not suffer abject torment. But almost as fast, her heart fell, because that would justify everything Kell had ever said. Alize could not think which truth was more horrifying.
“My safety has nothing to do with the dagger binding. The Hrumi go to all those lengths to protect their souls and the Sargons know nothing about any of it. They have no reason to know.”
Alize balked. “But our souls have value, for the pain we’ve lived through.”
“Do you think Hrumi children are the only people who experience pain in this world?” Idir asked gently.
“The Sargons want our souls,” Alize repeated the truth she had always heard, waiting for it to resonate in her mind.
“Yet you happen to know two Sargons. Do you still think that is true?”
Alize inhaled. Davram and Kell and Onder had not mistreated her. On the contrary, they had been unwavering in their kindness despite her own brash behavior. She felt a swell of frustration.
“The Hrumi,” Idir said gently, “find purpose in this war. They confuse the right to make a choice with the choice they construe themselves to have made. To fight. And they blindly defend it though they have lost sight of what it means.” In Idir’s voice, Alize could hear all the confidence she herself had failed to muster. “We always spoke of peace, but I never found it until I learned to stop fighting. All the fires in the world cannot compel the rain.”
Alize’s thoughts swam in quicksand and her words drowned in their own desperation. “You abandoned your sisters, and did what? Settled down? Had a family?”
“Responsibilities can give our lives meaning.”
“That’s not freedom.”
“It is if I choose it.”
Alize’s heart hammered. All her life she had prepared to defend herself, to hit hard and expect a return blow. According to Idir, Alize had nothing to fight against but hot anger, and it was all her own, the same that burned in her cheeks. Without contempt, Idir sat before her on a barren steppe and had revealed the Hrumi’s very foundations to be pebbles.
Alize remembered Hesna explaining the dagger binding ceremony, how she had activated the rune in her wrist as evidence of her connection to her dagger. As a child, Alize had thought rune’s light under Hesna’s skin to be the most incredible thing she had seen, but Hesna had shaken her head and directed her gaze upwards into the night. Keep your perspective always, she had said. We count the stars because we all may be stardust. It takes humility to imagine how far we have fallen, how dimly our skin now glows.
Hesna would have known how to respond to Idir. But she was dead and Alize had done nothing. And for all Alize’s loyalty to Celillie, she had been rewarded with suspicion and ultimately renunciation.
If Idir speaks the truth, what am I left with?
But something inside Alize rebelled, something merciful, reminding her that against all her failures, she was not without virtue. She had saved a Mage from Kogaloks, treated a Sargon with hellebore, walked in peace within walled cities. She had kept her own moorings all along. Yet, to take pride in these actions separated her ever further from the Hrumi and their narrow confines. And maybe it was finally time to address that.
Maybe, just maybe, she was not so profoundly alone.
“Idir,” Alize said slowly, “I haven’t been completely honest with those men. I don’t know why, but after all of this began, with the earthquakes and the magic and Onder and,” Alize itched her cheek on her shoulder, “everything, my clan leader renounced me.” Meeting Idir’s eyes, she choked her words. “I am no longer a Hrumi at all.”
The old woman’s eyes widened in dismay, “Renounced? On what grounds?”
Alize shook her head, suddenly afraid her voice would betray the depths of her despair. “She didn’t tell me, but perhaps it has something to do with the echoes.”
“If she is the clan echo bearer, she would be able to see you as I did. Perhaps she too believed you meant to kill her for her magic.”
“But I never threatened her.” Alize’s voice hardened as her anger coalesced. “And I was ill, I couldn’t defend myself.”
Idir observed Alize before reaching out to cover her hand with her own. She squeezed lightly but Alize could feel her strength.
Alize closed her eyes. How strange that an action with so little consequence could yield so much comfort. Like the trees. Like Hesna, years earlier.
When she opened her eyes, Idir smiled sadly before releasing her hand.
“My child, it sounds like you have been given a difficult path to walk. I promise I will do what I can to make it easier.” Idir set another bowl next to her and began piling the strips of meat into it. “You look Hrumi enough to me. Why didn’t you tell Kell?”
“The situation never presented itself, uh, in a suitable way,” Alize stammered.
“I see. Has he told you about his special assignment from the High Prince?”
Alize nodded.
“And you’re still talking to him - very impressive.”
“Well, I wasn’t happy about it. And I have no evidence that what he says is true.” Following Idir’s lead, Alize began gathering the meat to transport inside.
“If you seek an opinion about the veracity of the claim, you’re welcome to ask.” Idir offered.
Alize hesitated. She was not certain she wanted to hear Idir’s version of this sacred truth. “You believe that the Hrumi steal baby girls from their families?”
“In my day, I ordered it done. We used considerable more discretion than the Hrumi seem to today, with all the reports I hear from Kell. Certain sisters that could be trusted with the task – we called it poaching. The ‘perpetual fight’, as you said. But I know now it was a terrible thing.”
“But you saved them! To be taken out of situations where they were ill respected and harmed under the guise of love!”
“Children can encounter all sorts of ills that aren’t the fault of cruel parents. I look back and question our confidence in those judgments. And now the princes recieve more reports every year. When we poached, we didn’t find so many children in crisis and the clan numbers were dwindling. Some women tried to become pregnant instead - but that created a slew of entirely different problems. It seems the Hrumi have abandoned that and wholeheartedly embraced kidnapping. But with the amount of children now reported, I am sure the Hrumi have made mistakes. That will forever guarantee the princes’ persecutions.”
“But, the Kogaloks leave us more children than we can handle now! And I was rescued by the Hrumi. I would have never survived my childhood otherwise.”
“I only ask that you consider the families’ side. Not even Rehsan could change her mind in a day.”
Alize frowned and rose with Idir, her bowl in her arms. “Should I tell Kell about the renunciation?” she asked as they approached the tent.
“I don’t know how much it matters, but I’m sure he would be honored if you confided in him.”
Inside, while the soup boiled over the fire, Idir dominated the conversation with questions to Davram, whom Alize quickly ascertained she had known for many years. The conversation flowed as Davram and Kell made jokes, and Onder and Idir laughed.
Alize’s stomach was growling when they finally took their places around a low table on the floor. Hands flew over the dumplings and hard cheeses while the soup steamed. Its texture was heavy with fat and the goat meat dissolved in Alize’s mouth.
Alize was leaning back in her chair to accommodate her full belly when Idir broached the more serious topic at hand. “Alize and I discussed the situation, and agreed that she has come for the Hrumi echo magic that I possess.”
“Hrumi echoes?” Onder repeated.
“You have magic?” Kell asked at the same time, dropping the pistachio he had been prying open.
“I’m not Hrumi though.” Alize added quickly, hoping it would get lost under the scuffle.
“What?” All three men asked.
“This is too much.” Davram said. “One at a time. First you,” he focused his black eyes on Alize. “What was that you just said?”
Alize cleared her throat. “I didn’t hurt myself tripping in the forest.” She told the story of Celillie’s renunciation, ending with a succinct apology about being too uncomfortable to mention it before. Kell listened carefully, but Alize did not miss him shaking his head after she finished.