Evening stained darkness over the forest and chased the last hints of the sunset from the sky above the trees’ crooked fingers. On her horse, Alize watched her shadow stretch eastward. The crisp air pried at her sleeves to caress the skin underneath.
Alize shivered. Whenever she hunted at twilight, she could sense the world’s transience. Sometimes the shadows teased her, moving like a bounding young antelope, always just a pace ahead. Twilight promised her that the next turn would reveal her prey instead of hints of tails and cloven hooves.
Too many nights the deception had left her hungry.
But tonight Alize wished for hunger to distract her from her thoughts. She had hoped the Hrumi would understand the connection between the earthquakes and her strange precursor headaches, but since arriving she had heard only that the earthquakes were a sacred message to the Hrumi. According to Celillie, they augured a divine blessing from Rehsan, a pride to the clans, an attestation to their success in their mandate and their service to the steppes. Celillie’s claims gave strident answers to questions that no one had asked.
In contrast, Alize’s warning headaches did not feel victorious, but foreboding. But since Celillie’s version was already canon, Alize swallowed her misgivings.
Twilight found Alize seeking comfort by silently reciting an epic poem of the clan leader Touma. All the events of recent memory had been told and retold a thousand times since her rescue and introduction to the Hrumi. Celillie assumed leadership of the Western clan the summer before Alize’s dagger binding ceremony, after pensive Touma was ambushed by Sargons. Before her, the clan leader Idir had single-handedly saved one hundred girls from the Western provinces. Alize knew all the names and all the songs.
Up ahead, Celillie spoke to Essa, who nodded in silent agreement. As Alize watched them, Celillie’s gaze flashed over her. Celillie shook her head and shut her eyes, as if in annoyance.
You’re imagining it, Alize thought.
But the trees echoed her uneasiness.
For her whole life, the trees’ voices had granted Alize courage against the silence, sturdiness against all her faltering. Their consciousness framed her days as much as the sun and the stable constellations. They promised that even when salt harvesting took Alize further west than any sister, she was never truly alone.
Like thrushes in the foliage, she had described to Hesna once, the trees’ voices are always present, but they are easy to overlook.
Hesna had laughed. No amount of patient observation will grant me their voices. But listen well, Alize, and guard your gift. And remember always, Celillie must never know of it.
Because she would make me a sentry? Alize had asked.
Hesna had remained smiling, but her gray eyes had dimmed. Because I want your fate to be your choice.
The trees’ voices, after all, had been part of the reason Alize delayed meeting Celilie. Any earlier, and Alize would have reached the assembly in the rolling expanse of the silent steppes. Celillie was easier to face with the trees. They provided solace from Celilie’s saccharine smiles.
Abruptly Alize slowed Josoun to a halt. It was not her turn to forage for the evening meal, but she dismounted and ventured into the darkening woods, away from the lure Celilie wrought on her sisters.
All Hrumi trained to walk with upright posture to belie their dignity, but Alize executed this with a certain amount of unintended grace. She retied her braided hair at her neck, pushing the remaining loose strands behind her ears and under her cap. The evening chill prickled her skin, but she would warm soon enough, if she kept moving.
The woods’ silence enveloped her like a secret. The last of the daylight filtered through the yellowing leaves and Alize navigated between the sinewy trunks, filling her lungs with the soothing air of decay and damp soil. In the forest, death formed the foundations of everything else.
Because no princes laid claim to the northern forests, they became sanctuaries for thieves and outcasts. As a matter of precaution, any travelers on forest roads moved only in the large contingents or under the cover of darkness.
Unless they possessed the studied concealment of a Hrumi.
A Hrumi could navigate the forest as swiftly as daybreak over cloudless steppes. All Hrumi children honed the skills of horseback riding long before their feet could reach the stirrups. The lessons all stressed a single theme: agility is our best armor.
It helped every sister complete their assignments for the clan. The Hrumi Western clan members herded the Hrumi sheep and cattle, hunted gazelles, mined iron and tin, or harvested honey. At each new moon, their caravans hauled the supplies east through the steppes and forests, by darkness always, to avoid the Sargons. The Hrumi Eastern clan wove the clans’ octagonal tents, forged the sacred Hrumi daggers, raised the clan’s horse’s and trained the newly rescued children. Their children’s camp was the only Hrumi settlement and every springtime it hosted the dagger binding ceremony for both clans.
Every Hrumi child had to learn to defend herself. Hesna, with her sharp eyes and quick reflexes, had taught Alize to ground her weight, thrust her punches, and to always wait for her opponent strike first. In theory, Alize noted with chagrin.
Hesna had also prepared Alize to train alone, a skill proven more useful than Alize had ever suspected before her dagger binding ceremony. Alize had been thirteen or fourteen years old, by Hesna’s estimates. Afterwards, Alize should have assumed salt duty for the Western Clan. But in the intervening four years, Celillie had insisted on using the Eastern Clan salt mistress. This year, Celile’s unseasonal summons east meant that Alize would not even be able to harvest the halite. Celillie can’t do this forever, Alize reminded herself. Both clans needed a salt mistress, and would eventually need new halite. But for all her ruminations, Alize had not determined a way to broach the topic with Celillie.
Alize paused beneath a tree with broad limbs. To clear her mind, she began climbing into the canopy, towards the sky’s last blue before the stars began blinking through the night’s black palette. The constellations had been shifting all summer, faster than Alize had ever seen before. The Northern Spear, the Backbone, the Two-Faced Horse and the Drum, they all swarmed with bright new pin pricks in the darkness. The recent additions distorted the familiar shapes Hesna had taught Alize to follow. But those anomalies would fade with time. They always did. They were not the stars meant to endure.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
In the stillness, Alize heard footsteps plodding towards the camp. It was another Hrumi safe in her clan’s protection, to move so audibly. The sister paused when Alize began her descent from the branches.
Alize’s steps on the forest floor were silent.
“Peace, sister.”
"Peace.” Alize smiled to recognize Sosje’s thick curly hair and cautious smile. She was one of the bird trainers, initiated two years before Alize.
Because Hesna had insisted that Alize learn to identify Hrumi eagles and falcons, their time at the children’s camp had always involved an interlude with Sosje and her mentor. During the summers, Alize and Sosje traipsed everywhere together, hunting for lark eggs and goading each other to eat them raw.
Sosje devoted her time to tending injured birds, far beyond a trainer’s normal purview. The work left her hands puckered with scars from angry beaks. Sosje called it love but Alize had heard other Hrumi scoff at her behind her back.
“Nice night for stargazing,” Sosje spoke as Alize fell into step beside her.
“Only if you know what you’re seeking.”
Sosje flashed Alize a grin. They both remembered Alize’s first and only attempt to hunt with an eagle. The bird had flown out of range and Alize had been too mortified to admit it. She spent the night scanning the sky, claiming to be stargazing, until Sosje realized her true task and called the bird back with her own signals. Somehow Alize never minded when Sosje teased her about it.
But the memory faded and Sosje grew serious. She gestured her mangled fingers east. “Celillie says the signs grow stronger as we approach the Sun Priestess.”
Alize grimaced.
“You don’t agree?”
“I don’t see any signs.”
“Hm. But others are moving too.”
So Sosje had also noted the commander’s words, however Celillie denied any similarities. Even soldiers felt the pull.
Alize scrunched her nose in irritation. “But since when do we justify our actions by the governments?” Under her words, the trees’ tone changed, but Sosje interrupted before she could catch the meaning.
“But Celillie feels a sensation that precedes the earthquakes – didn’t you hear her describe it?”
“This afternoon, yes.” Celillie’s description of searing pressure in her skull before each quake exactly matched Alize’s own experience. The similarities made Alize distrust Celillie’s conclusion: where Alize had felt a pressure in her temples and then aversion, Celillie had felt the same accompanied by an insatiable desire to return the entire clan east. “It certainly eludes explanation.” As she spoke, Alize tried to keep an ear to the trees. They were alert but not afraid. Perhaps an animal hunted in the vicinity.
“You doubt the legends?”
“What if it’s only a legend? If the earthquakes-” Alize swallowed her words, halting.
As she had suspected, a soft treading of footsteps sounded nearby, stopping abruptly. Both she and Sosje whirled to appraise the darkness. Before them, the forest loomed empty. But someone followed them. Someone who did not intend them to notice.
The two women separated wordlessly with their daggers drawn.
Alize faced away when she heard Sosje’s shout. Her scuffle ended before Alize crossed the twelve steps separating her from her sister.
“Nocturne!” Sosje cursed in a whisper. The figure of a cloaked man collapsed at her feet while blood stained his upper chest. Alize yanked back his felt hood, inviting the starlight into his features.
The man shifted his eyes to regard her. The wrinkles on his face convened at the bridge of his nose and just under his eyes. When he shuddered in pain, they all folded, his skin assembling itself as if remembering its true form.
Alize gruffly checked the man’s robes for weapons, and, finding none, pressed him fully to the ground.
The pain kept him wincing, but he uttered no protests.
“Who are you?” Alize demanded.
The man blinked at her before gesturing weakly to the discarded short staff beside him.
Alize followd his gaze. When she caught sight of the intricate carvings in the wood, she froze. It was myrtle wood, sacred for tending the fires of the temples. “Sosje! He’s -” she dropped her voice, “he’s a Mage.”
“Rehsan have mercy,” Sosje choked, “I’ve poison on my dagger.”
Alize flushed cold. If she believed in omens, this would be the worst of them. The Magi were Conjurers trained to wield great power and usually great restraint. Their creed dictated strict pacifism for belief and necessity: through their vows of non-violence and relinquishment of political intrigue, they moved freely within the realms of forests and steppes.
Everywhere except the Ginmae plateau. No one was safe near the Silver City.
Not only did Alize know in her heart that it was wrong to attack a Mage, she knew in her head that it was dangerous. The Magi kept constant communion with each other, though separated by distance and geography. They – all of them - would know of Sosje’s transgression.
The Magi’s hands flew to his wound while he gasped his breath.
Alize’s heart hammered. Even in the darkness she could see Sosje’s wide eyes. Alize knew her thoughts exactly. Magi, though pacifists, would defend themselves bitterly when attacked. As part of the Mage creed, each individual swore to avenge any violence inflicted on them with the death of the aggressor.
Contrarily, it was this threat of death that so often allowed them their safety and their pacifism. The saying went, attack a Magi only as you would attack a mirror.
“We’re going to need some hellebore.” Alize whispered.
The Mage’s charcoal eyes traced the two Hrumis’ every movement. Hellebore carried a toxin, but also, when prepared correctly, a powerful antidote. When Sosje pressed the poultice to his chest, the Mage acquiesced to the treatment in silence. But as the moon arched over the sky, Sosje’s poison proved potent even against the hellebore’s medicine.
Alize drew away from Sosje, uncertain how to respond to her sister’s brimming anxiety. Fear was meant to remain private, even between sisters.
The Mage closed his eyes while the blood continued to flow.
Alize rolled up her sleeves and faced the darkness. “I’ll light a fire.” It would risk attracting bugs and bandits, but they needed to protect this man’s life above all else. Since Sosje was clearly Hrumi, her aggression put the entire clan at risk of the Magi’s reprisals.
By the time the fire blazed, the Mage’s wound reflected green. The skin surrounding it swelled gray and splotchy.
Together, Sosje and Alize prepared the hellebore and tended the wound in shifts. At one point, Alize reached for her water skin only to find it empty. When Sosje offered up her own instead, Alize blinked at her in surprise. Because obtaining water in the steppes could be grueling, Hrumi custom recognized that offering water to someone denoted great respect. Alize had grown up sharing water with Hesna, and remembered the pride she felt the first time Hesna had shared water with her. She scarcely deserved the honor from Sosje.
The trees remained disquieted during the night, but their unrest stemmed from something more complex than Alize could untangle. Despite their tension, they betrayed no immediate concerns, no imminent danger. Instead, their voiceless murmurs rang in Alize’s ear with an urgent hush unlike anything she had heard before. As the night grew old around her, she listened, unable to fathom a reason the trees would greet the circumstance of an injured Mage with cautious eagerness.
The stars wheeled across the sky, their light catching on Alize’s eyelashes while she watched the Mage suffer. Only when the clouds began to lighten, respite from night, did Alize again find her voice.
It cracked when she spoke. “Someone should stay to look after him.”
Sosje swallowed. “Do you think -?”
“I don’t know.” Alize interrupted to avoid hearing the question said aloud. The Magi might resolve to punish Sosje. They might punish the Western clan, or all the Hrumi everywhere. “Someone should stay with him.” Alize repeated. “For your safety, it shouldn’t be you.”
Sosje hesitated before nodding in agreement. She gathered her bag together then paused by the fire.
Alize could not meet her gaze, could face neither her sister’s terror nor her gratitude. Sosje’s life might still be forfeit, beyond their control. Alize gestured for her to leave.
But Sosje remained. “If it were in my power to bless you, I would,” she murmured. The Mage slept and Alize realized Sosje addressed her. “I pray the gods will do it for me.”
Alize nodded solemnly, embarrassed.
Inhaling, Sosje drew her hands to her chest and performed the ceremonial sign of subordination.
Inwardly Alize cringed but she bowed to accept it. Sosje rose, slightly reddened in the soft light.
Alize watched the woods swallow her.
Beside Alize, her future slept uneasily.