Today marks sixteen years. Sixteen years since ruin arrived on our shores, and I’ve a bone to pick.
Tempest and Wyrm above Lumia. We know the story.
What grinds me is why the damned Conclave is so dead set on squeezing blood from our stone on account of that day. Yeah, the war took out the noble hill. So what? It also took out the tenants, the western merchant quarter, main street, the docks – on and on, honest men and women worth every bit as much as some Lordling!
So what does the Conclave do? Squeeze the lot of us like we’re the morons that called for death from above in the first place! Demand we disappear from this place with one breath and demand we pay for the privilege of deportation in the next!
There’s a better way, folks. I need your help. We gotta make our voices heard and get some sense knocked into noble heads!
Spring 18
Alisandra snagged an audience with one of her merchant backers at seventh bell in the morning.
The old Guildsman, always a morning bird, ranted with vigor. “Every year they bring back this same filth. ‘Declare as an offense against the state and the faith to operate with intent to aid or abet those pursuing heresy against the one true God.’ With intent! This law passes, and I’m out of business for selling blue skirts!”
“We will not let it pass,” she assured, hands on her crossed knees.
She pointedly ignored his real reasons: given manpower shortages in the last few years, the Guilds had taken to tapping Azure workmen to fill the gap.
Discretely contracted for one-tenth the pay of course.
Now, after years of sagging contracts and less bread, the Guilds were dependent on these black book contractors to finish their projects with any semblance of profit.
“And they’ll bring it up next year! As the Holy Receivership nibbles at our toes! Another House or two on our side goes down and we’re done!”
Alisandra spoke as to a child. “My contacts within the church pressure the Holy Receivership as well. Just last week they successfully blocked the deacon budget on this very issue.”
Father Lucas continues to be a stalwart ally. With his help, the Holy Receivership must fulfill its duty and auction the House votes.
She kept her doubts tucked neatly away, though they whispered in turn: Nine years since the last auction, and that for only a third of what was lost. The Receivership today holds more votes than House Visage did before…
“We need assurances.”
She tried to channel her father. To imagine Gabriel reclining in such a seat, sipping his coffee, offering advise that guided without demanding. “I understand that this legislation has spooked your investors. My coffers are open to cover the difference. Zero percent interest between friends, of course.”
The Guildsman leaned back, mollified better than a bottle of warm milk. “Of course. I am glad someone in the Conclave can see reason.”
He soon departed, promising to carry the conversation to the other Guilds.
Alisandra changed clothes with the eighth bell and leaped across the world to Highbranch.
The Whistler capital sprawled across the green plains, less a city and more a jumbled collection of permanent camps. Wide stretches of beaten grass separated the tribes, occupied by shepherds and herds, with nary a permanent road in sight. Though the Whistlers used the site year-round, the eighteen chieftains had yet to admit the city forming under their feet.
Most the camps still dumped their sewage into the nearby river, and it ran effluent colors in the summer.
Glancing to the north, however, Alisandra spied one interesting new form of infrastructure: a long strip of flat concrete surrounded by competing hangars. The field around was littered with scorch marks and craters, but that work continued undaunted.
She landed just west of those fields, startling a shepherd boy from his doze. His sheep fled her presence, and the boy stumbled after them with a harried curse.
“My apologies!” she called after, unheeded.
Though sheep startle at my approach no matter how softly I step…
Shrugging, Alisandra approached the hangars. Inside, six teams of engineers fussed over bizarre contraptions: one with six stacked set of wings and an engine of belching steam; another thin and long as a seagull, its wings stapled with joints every six feet; a third rotating in place with thin bamboo blades.
The wild dreams of flying machines.
Mirielle’s schedule might lay cold and dead, but some spark lingers here.
Cupping her hands, she called, “Tura!”
An engineers called back. “That way!”
Following directions, she approached the last hangar and spotted a jaunty figure flitting between destroyed prototypes.
The Inventor Tura swept his hands like a maestro before his film crew; those poor sods lugged the latest, greatest, and heaviest in portable camera technology, straining to keep up with his gesticulation.
“As you can see, failure is no cause for alarm!” the Whistler explained, his braid swinging at hip-length behind him. “The skies will yield, no matter how long it takes!”
“And what of the safety of the pilots?” asked one of the film crew, acting as interviewer.
“A matter of gravest concern, my good lad!” Tura agreed, clapping his hands. “I am proud to report that not a single pilot has died!”
Though I’ve saved three from their last moments, Alisandra added.
“One day soon, you will be able to take your breakfast in Highbranch and your lunch in Moros!” promised Tura. “You will radio your family for a festival and arrive before dinner!”
A slight exaggeration on the speed of a prop plane, but Alisandra had decided to let this theater run its own course years ago.
Father would have offered them just enough advice to avoid disaster and let them decide the rest.
Tura caught sight of the angel and cleared his throat. “Two minutes.”
His cameraman sagged to the ground in relief.
“Alisandra! What brings you to my training grounds this morning?!” Tura hurried over and offered a sweeping bow. “Radiant as ever, you dazzle us all with your brightness.”
“Does your wife know your habits?” Alisandra teased.
“Taught me everything I know!” he agreed.
One late night after a meal, Tura’s wife had offered quite the blunt suggestion involving the three of them and a camping trip. Thankfully, neither held ill will when she declined.
“How is your son?”
“Causing trouble, of course!” The last Inventor swept back his hair and smiled. “How might I be of service?”
“Today? A gentle reminder. Spring is a busy season. I would appreciate if you would crash less of your test pilots directly into the prairie for the next few weeks.”
“Ah, seeking to lighten the Tempest’s load?” he smirked.
Secrets unspoken and obvious to all concerned.
Such tedious things.
Though the phantom of her father whispered:
Walk with gentle steps, Alisandra
“She may have to charge if you keep this up.”
“An interesting proposition!”
“Tura…”
He laughed. “Your point is understood, grand Lady. Please do not trouble yourself on our account.”
“We’re ready for the next take, sir!” the film crew called, armed with a fresh camera.
Simply put the reel on the outside! Alisandra despaired, but she held her tongue. Innocuous suggestions would lead her down the demon’s road. Would she deny these men their own destiny?
Watching the cameraman haul the hundred-pound contraption back onto his shoulders, a part of her noted that at least one person present would welcome it.
Shaking her head, she spared the ten-minute walk south to a small, solitary ranch house on the outskirts of Tura’s clan territory where Emilia Erudite waited on their next appointment.
Emilia had been a child the night that Alisandra smuggled her and her sister from Lumia, but she had spent the intervening years better than most adults the angel knew. Fully grown, she waited on the veranda with two cups of tea on the table. Limber, tanned, and adorned with tiny gems in her hair, she beckoned the angel closer.
“A beautiful morning, Alisandra. How are you?”
“Well enough.”
“That bad, huh? Tea?”
“A small cup.”
She always allotted ten or fifteen minutes at the start for small talk and tea. How was Highbranch? Windy this year. How was her sister, Jasmine? Still overseeing operations from that smuggler’s harbor in Moros. Any word from the old family in Ruhum? Limping along like always, one vote blitz from insolvency.
Eventually, Emilia admitted, “Grandfather has asked me about the schooling situation here.”
“Rather unstructured, yes?”
“That’s one way to put it.” Tapping her now empty cup against the table, Emilia played with a lock of her immaculate hair. The gems clicked together in thought. “If my nephews and nieces come here, they will grow to be Whistlers in everything but skin tone.”
Like me
“There is beauty in these plains. Freedom in the expanse. Wisdom in the sylph-songs of their mountain,” Alisandra reassured. “Additionally, with your connections, you will be able to secure them excellent apprenticeships.”
Emilia shrugged. “Yes, but…”
There is no way back
Once you have stepped beyond the circle of Fire
Once you have realized what you thought was warmth was just burning
“Do what is best for your family,” the angel urged, “and cast sentimentality to the side.”
The Erudite behind Alisandra’s vast smuggling empire sighed. Fiddled with her tea cup. Finally nodded. “You are right. Grandfather is right. Let them come. They will learn to sing with the sylph and braid their hair as warrior or scholar.”
But will they hate me
The one that yanks them into a strange new world?
Quite likely, conceded the angel.
Emilia shrugged. “Thank you for humoring me. To business?”
“Yes, please.” Alisandra set down her tea, still mostly untouched. “I have been contemplating worst case scenarios…”
“Again?”
“Yes. Again. I would be remiss to ignore my own weaknesses. Too much relies on my person.” In politics and in battle, but I repeat myself. “Ruhum shivers under a foul wind, and I cannot guarantee my full attention to the Conclave.”
Little monsters were an inconvenience, and she could tolerate the tardiness of Lady Mishkan to an appointment or symbolic vote. Yet she thought of the Wyrm’s black scale in Iris, almost awake, and reflected on his cruelty.
Jörmungandr would wake at the worst possible moment just for the hells of it.
Like, perchance, during a crucial Conclave vote.
He would enjoy taunting her as the Conclave alliance crumbled – and such a tenuous thing it was!
“Difficult to predict the day the world will end,” Emilia shrugged, resigned.
“The world shall not end on my watch,” Alisandra asserted. “Regardless, prudence is appropriate.”
The smuggler queen smirked. “Lady Mishkan, you truly are my best client.”
Brushing aside the flattery, the angel folded her hands across her knees. “If you would permit, I would consider the deplorable state of Ruhum’s military logistics – and how they might degrade further.”
The duo spoke for a bell, reaching agreement on goals and costs. Alisandra sealed the bargain by pulling a rock of gold notes from her blouse and dropping them beside the untouched biscuits.
“As generous as ever,” Emilia praised.
“For those who deal honest and fairly, money will be no object.”
“As you command, my Queen.”
Alisandra’s halo of war shivered pleasantly.
She ignored it. “Should you encounter any difficulties, call for me.”
Alisandra walked to the edge of the ranch, a fig leaf of deniability, and then leaped skyward.
From here, she proceeded on her rounds. East first, eyes locked to the horizon. With each step, the landscape jerked into a new picture. Drinking horizons, she breezed through the vistas. She barely registered the scenery, her focus turned within for the faintest rattle of the drums of war.
Alisandra streaked over the low, ancient mountains where the Whistlers raised their sylph flocks and further east. Beyond those mounts, the plain dried into scraggly brush; then cactus and thistle; and then ruddy sand. This desert stretched for nine hundred miles, its deepest reaches a desolation of sand dunes and silence rather reminiscent of the moon.
Few monsters rose in this desert. They seemed to prefer the margins of civilization – just close enough to nip in for lunch.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Or maybe no one has yet delved black scales beneath these sands.
For another two hundred miles, the desert yielded to the eastern forests.
Thirteen minutes after departing Emilia’s ranch, she arrived at an outpost of the eastern tribes.
Their pointed shrines peeked out between the trees, leaking pungent incense heavenward.
A young hunter, watching the shrine, spotted her in the sky and shot an arrow.
She plucked it from the air and examined the arrowhead.
Ulyssian steel, of course. It will not be long before I hear the rumble of electric generators from their tents.
“Mine now,” she hummed, bending back the tip with her thumb. The metal protested this abuse by a mere thumb, but her Will was greater than its steel.
Sometimes the matter felt pale and distant beneath her hand; everything from the softest silk to hardest steel rendered clay before her.
He fired another; she let it bounce off her belly.
“All clear on this front.”
She leaped back west, planning a zigzag over the Jungle before her next appointment in Waves.
***
“How dare you dictate how we raise our beasts! The cragbear is our steadfast ally, gift of the Lord of Peaks, and no water-drunk lowlander shall tell us how to raise them!”
Alisandra pinched her nose. “Dearest envoy, we both know that the cragbear population is in great decline.”
The other elemental beasts were on track to return to their pre-Wyrm levels in a few decades, but the cragbear population had declined by seven percent in ten years!
The damned beasts kill their handlers on a whim. Only the Plateau tribes have learned how to breed such steadfast loyalty – and such bonded power – with the rock.
“Our elemental beasts are no concern of yours.”
Do you not see how that power could benefit us all when the Wyrm returns? How many more civilians would have survived Lumia under such protection?
Aloud, she stated, “My offer is for additional habitat. I do not require administration.”
The Plateau envoy scoffed. “That is how all such deceit begins! With free gifts!”
She grit her teeth. “Then tell the other elders that you swindled it from the Tempest!”
“And owe you a secret debt?! I shall not part with a thing!”
If I truly desired this thing, I would already have it, whispered the bitterness in the back of her head.
But she exhaled, thought of her father, and clasped her hands together. “Then you tell me, dear envoy. What terms would you find amenable?”
***
While mortals took lunch, she met with her spymaster. The same cunning schemer that helped track Donovan, he entered his seventies with a persistent tremble in his hands and a mind sharp as a razor. He could no longer raise his voice to a warrior’s shout, so he lashed his many apprentices to the deck with a whispered word.
Alisandra had no idea how she would replace him.
“The latest leads,” he stated from his desk, waving towards a tower of papers.
“I need the ringleaders.”
“The investigation stalls in Iris,” the spymaster replied. “A crook might be persuaded by fear of the cudgel; a conman by the love of his purse; but the rich invoke every statute and scripture in defense of their deeds.”
“I should dissolve the town,” she grumbled.
“Please inform me first so we might recoup our investments there and point them towards the next incarnation. Should we name it Walter?”
Alisandra spread her hands. “Your point is taken. The continuity of evil and such. What of the ambassador?”
The spymaster once more jabbed a finger at the stack of papers.
“I will require a sanitized version to disseminate.”
He jabbed his finger at the slightly smaller stack beside the first.
“You are lucky you are competent,” she muttered, taking both stacks.
She read through the dockets, her mood steadily dropping at the report.
Victim M3 age 13. Ran away from home (father possibly instigator). Taken in by a priestess and charged service for rent.
Victim S11, age 15. Encouraged by mentor to participate in services; mentor also participant. Fifty-fifty profit sharing. Heavy substance abuse.
Victim T6, age 21. Former service, ceased when friend (see Victim L13) caught. Defends time in service. Several discrepancies in funding suggest may operate as a scout for other…
Fifteen years ago, she had bent herself to eradicating the practice of sold girls. She liked to think she succeeded.
Yet here was the evil, grown anew like next year’s crop.
A thousand girls a year. A thousand failures of my watch.
She tried to reason with herself. At least this disgrace operated on the periphery of society, consigned to backroom deals! A thousand girls, one twentieth of the number freed by her dictate!
But still a thousand girls, every bit as deserving of a new life as Esmie, bound in her name.
Changing into the traditional skirts, Alisandra marched into the throne room and stepped over Apophis’ petrified corpse to take the throne. She leaned to the side, her chin on her fist, and called, “Bring me the man.”
The ambassador of Ruhum.
In her mortal life, she had known him as an affable uncle, always ready with a sweet or a joke. Had approved him as the envoy from the north based on those memories in the – vain! – hope that he would bring some sliver of that affability to his posting.
And now she saw what he spent his spare time on.
When the ambassador arrived, the throne room echoed with his steps and the servants hid behind the pillars. He was a stout, self-possessed man, his bushy beard thick enough to hide a pistol. Even in the heat, he wore a full suit with cummerbund.
He marched straight forward, provoking her honor guard to leap from their places and bar his way with spears, and sniffed. “To what do I owe this dubious pleasure? Such abrupt summons are an imposition.”
“Have I called you from your pleasures, Magnus?” Alisandra crossed her legs at the knee and leaned back, hoping the movement would break the icy anger in her gut.
You once called me the rising star of House Mishkan.
Yet the ambassador snapped his jacket in disdain. “You speak of pleasure in this den?”
For here he speaks only to the Tempest.
Callow men, their approval reserved for those that shined in their own image. Change the clothes; change the hair; change the skin; change the gender; and watch all their stalwart principles reverse.
“I do. We are displeased,” she stated. Her frustration seethed: the dual image of a kind uncle against a depraved man! The air responded, and the temperature plummeted. “We have seen the company you keep.”
Magnus sucked his lip warily. “The company I keep? As ambassador, is it not my duty to swim with the folk?”
He does not know the topic of my ire. Does he think I have discovered some conspiracy to dethrone me?
Her spymaster kept a special filing cabinet just for those, its drawers bulging.
I have not the patience for games. “You have paid for temple girls.”
“I have done no such thing!” he denied instantly.
She pulled the sanitized dossier from her cushion and tossed it to his feet.
Pictures spilling out across the cerulean tiles.
“What I have done in my own time as a private citizen is no concern of the Azure throne,” he amended.
“With temple girls, paid for by gold and silver.”
Magnus stole a glance at the pictures, surprised at their quality. These were no grainy movie frames but crystal-clear snapshots of the man at a cushioned bar, one hand full of drink and another full of a young woman in Azure skirts.
Trinkets left over from Thea’s work. The better to outline your deceit.
“I have paid for no such thing!” he objected, raising his voice. “It is no crime to be adored by the fairer sex nor to enjoy the taste of a fine beverage.”
“The age of majority in my land is sixteen.”
Injury rose to a full salvo of denial. “If one lied about her age, prosecute her for the deceit. I was told nothing of such things; I paid for nothing but a fine meal!”
So aggrieved. Look how I sully his honor. Not for his deeds but for their revelation.
“I did not answer these summons to suffer accusation!” he declared loftily. “If you wish to discuss matters of import, then what of the renumerations still owed to our fair land?”
“Three times have these renumerations vanished into the aether. If you cannot track your own books, prosecute your accountants for your deceit. Who introduced you to the bar in the picture that you might buy the enjoyment of these ‘fine meals’?”
Ice crackled and crawled outward from the base of her throne.
“Need I remind you of the responsibility you bear for every lost soul of Lumia?”
The servants fled, and her honor guard steeled themselves as the air cooled until their breath puffed on their lips.
The angel on her mother’s throne exhaled, one finger pressing a new dent into her armrest. “I keenly remember all my responsibilities.”
Magnus shook his head like a disappointed father. “Madam Tempest, it remains my most fervent hope that we come to an accord, but how can we arrive at an agreement when you refuse to face reality? We must strive to–”
“Enough!” Alisandra hissed, rising to her feet. “You wish to speak of reality while the proof of your indiscretion lays at your feet? You wish to speak of renumerations while your benefactors squeeze ever tighter on the twenty-five thousand of my faithful that still reside upon your shores?”
“The boroughs are an internal affair!” the ambassador answered.
“The fate of this star is my pre-eminent affair!” roared the Tempest.
Or would you rather bend to the Wyrm?
Though Magnus stumbled back, rime biting into his beard, he managed to gasp, “Any violation of our sovereignty is tantamount to war!”
Alisandra laughed, imagining.
All of Ruhum’s navy arrayed and gleaming. Vessels rocking as their cannons thundered. The sky filling with burning steel aimed for her breast!
And with a flick of her wrist and the call of her Will, she would answer with a wave that swelled higher than the highest mountain.
Oh, she would not let it crash down.
Merely let their vessels sink into the mud of the coastal shelf and consider their position in this order.
A simple demonstration. Nothing more, she thought.
“I can pencil in an hour,” the angel mused.
Magnus flushed, struck in his national pride. The ambassador drew himself to his full height, beard a-quiver, and shook his fist. “We do not fear the Tempest! We who live and die by the righteous Fire of the One True God will–”
Even with the beard, I can see his jowls jiggle. He lives fat and well off what we pay him to scream at me and befoul my temple.
“His name is Aure,” she corrected. You petulant piglet, puffed up on diplomatic immunity and faith.
In the back of her mind, a thought: We could pop him.
Raising his voice to a pastor’s righteous shout, the ambassador called, “Do not profane his holy–”
“Or what?” the Tempest snapped, her hand falling to the Blade always at her side.
“You shall not–”
Alisandra crossed the throne room in a step, bathing the fountains in frost, and caught the ambassador by the scruff of his jacket. Hauling him off his feet, she stepped down the long corridor from her throne room – to the center of the temple square – and up into the sky.
From there, to Ruhum.
Not directly, of course.
Alisandra chose the long route: south across the waters, bathing briefly in the biting cold of the pole, and then an instant later the blast of heat from the desert on the way back north, and then another blast of cold, and finally to Ruhum’s smoky shores.
Could a mortal even tell the difference? Or did Magnus experience it as a single moment, frozen and scalded in equal measure?
They erupted just above a corn field in the country north, the dirt tilled and ready. Behind them, the sky rolled with peals of furious thunder, and fragments of clouds caught in Alisandra’s wake rolled in every direction from her point of egress.
Alisandra dropped altitude; then she dropped the ambassador.
He released a piglet grunt, his face purple.
Impassive, she watched him vomit.
“We tire of your semantics,” the Tempest mused. “You think to quote the law? It is from my pen that it flows forth, and we shall dutifully close your loopholes. In the meantime…”
Alisandra leaned down to make sure he heard.
“We would advise you and your replacements to refrain from informing us of what we will not do, mortal.”
She stepped back to her temple square and used the walk back to her throne to cool her head.
The room remained as she had left it, deathly silent and coated in frost.
“I have cracked the fountain,” she noted, annoyed with herself.
Well, better the fountain than the ambassador.
Servants trickled back in, strenuously ignoring the fresh damage.
Dusting the frost from her skirts, Alisandra sighed. Unfortunately, revoking the man’s post was the limit of her jurisdiction. Association broke no laws, and rich men could twist enough levers to delay justice long past due.
Before her servants let their imaginations run wild, she stated, “I have returned Magnus to the north. He is no longer welcome in our lands.”
“Most merciful, Holy Tempest!” a priestess stated.
“You believe so?” she shook her head. “I fear I was rather rough with him.”
“Your mercy instructs us all,” the woman replied. “If he had touched one of my daughters, I would have castrated him and left him to bleed.”
Now the servants began to chatter, nodding in agreement.
Our Tempest was too kind to him by far!
If only those northern lunatics would learn!
She shivered against the undercurrent beneath their jokes.
This room of mortals that would have accepted summary execution as her right.
Squeezing her palm against the Hand of God, Alisandra reminded herself of the dangers from every corner. How the mob might exult in peace and violence to equal satisfaction.
I must shape this too.
“We must temper ourselves. Let there be no rage in our judgements,” she reasoned.
Her chorus agreed, of course, and she wondered what they really heard.
“Enough of this,” the angel sighed. “I will be heading to check on the cleansing of the eastern temples now.”
But then a heavy drumbeat sounded against her halo as something foul stirred in the deep sands of the Plateau, and Alisandra had no time to worry about the details of state.
***
“We could have handled it,” the men of the Plateau told her from astride their cragbears, wrapped in their desert cotton so only their eyes glimmered suspiciously at her.
“Then you should have finished before I arrived,” she replied, sheathing the Hand of God.
One less black scale in this world.
“These are our lands!”
And this is my planet. My home.
But she bit her tongue and leaped away.
***
Another hour later, Alisandra finally ducked away from her duties. Forsaking her official escort, she set out on foot from the temple complex and through the crowds of her city. Soaking in the Spring sun, she relaxed a little under the bustle of a growing land: the chatter of afternoon tea from the cafes, the ringing of the tram across the Dragon bridge, and the distant horns of ships on the delta.
“The delta is clogged and the shell full. Perhaps I should cut a new shipping channel…”
Good projects for Winter.
She leaped the Dragon, enjoying the burst of energy through her legs. How gravity yielded to her inhuman strength.
I might float by ignoring gravity’s call, but somehow it is not as satisfying.
Finally, she reached a new temple property, built from a reclaimed factory after the owner went bankrupt. She vaulted the gaily painted wall and landed in the play yard of the Learning Hall. Her landing shocked the children playing hopscotch into a high, collective shriek.
“Coming through!” Alisandra sang.
The priestess nanny by the door covered a snicker with her hand. Recovering her composure, she chided, “Holy Tempest, please use the normal entrance. You will set a terrible example for our youngest!”
“On the contrary, the lesson is clear. If you can vault a ten-foot wall, you may skip lectures!” she countered, stepping carefully between chalk drawings on the concrete patio.
Behind her, two of the boys shared a glance and broke into a run for the wall.
The nanny swore under her breath and raced after them.
Smirking to herself, Alisandra entered the hall proper. She paused at the assignment board, scanning names, and then navigated to classroom six.
Inside, Esmie sat on the plush carpet among the children, a boy of about four summers on her lap. All listened to the nursery rhymes read from a picture book.
Stormmother grand, Stormmother bright
Our guiding star, our guiding light!
Stormmother big, Stormmother loud,
We will make you proud!
The teacher paused on each picture, repeating the verse at least three times with the patience of a saint. Half the children listened intently, and half squirmed to peek at Alisandra instead.
Esmie ignored her big sister, attention devoted to the boy on her lap.
He mouthed the words after the woman, brow furrowed in concentration.
Alisandra leaned against the door and waited for the reading to end.
Soon Esmie offered the boy a sheet of paper and asked, “Let’s write, okay?”
The boy accepted a charcoal stick and started to drag ham-fisted letters down the page.
Watching him mangle letter after letter, Alisandra murmured, “Upside down…backwards…combined…”
“I know,” the Maiden muttered, one hand resting atop the boy’s head. Her eyes fluttered closed, and her other hand began to twitch in sync with his laborious scribbles.
At last, he finished a verse!
“Very good!” Esmie praised, releasing him to the group.
The teacher quickly ushered the children together and then off to recess before someone exploded from wiggling.
Once alone, Esmie immediately groaned in frustration. Legs sticking out, she leaned back on her hands and grumbled, “I can’t figure it out!”
“His letters?” Alisandra asked, picking up the paper. Even knowing the verse, she could not read most the words.
“He hears fine! He sees fine! He talks fine! Well, he’s shy, but that’s fine at his age. He can color; he can sing; he can swim. Sleeps fine. Potty trained fine. But letters! Why does the written word scramble his brains?!”
“How do his parents read?”
“Both illiterate.”
“Perhaps the act of writing intimidates him?”
“Doesn’t taste like anxiety,” she groused.
And how does anxiety taste? The angel repressed a smile. “Mortal minds are vexing things. You need not solve them all today. Tell me – how many patients have you seen today?”
“Seven.” Esmie yawned. “I was scheduled for twelve, but there was a pregnant mother…”
Hard enough to heal one
Try healing two while they fight each other!
“You need to rest.”
“Look who’s talk–”
Alisandra scooped the Maiden from the carpet and tossed her over a shoulder. “Consider this an executive mandate. You need a nap.”
“What? I do not!”
Ignoring the staff, Alisandra carried her sister out of the Learner’s Hall and a short hop back to the temple.
Long desensitized to angelic leaps, Esmie pounded on her big sister’s back. “You’d never get away with this if I was the Tempest!”
“I suppose I would be over your shoulder instead.” Swaggering into her private quarters, Alisandra set her little sister to her feet. “Teasing aside, Esmie, you need to rest. The brand draws its strength from you.”
From your merely mortal flesh.
Esmie sighed. “Fair, I suppose, but you have to take a break too!”
“I do not require sleep.”
“Are you doubting my Maidenly senses?!” she huffed, pout hot enough to melt butter.
Alisandra raised a hand in defeat. “Very well. We will take a nap.”
Nodding, Esmie spun on a foot. “In your bed, then. It’s too big for just you anyways.”
Six foot wide and deep enough to swallow a mouthy girl.
Alisandra drew down the curtains against the afternoon sun and poked her head out to shoo the servants away. The priestesses withdrew, allowing the illusion of privacy, and Alisandra locked the door.
As though we were ever truly alone. How many peep holes do the servants drill? Does someone write down every word we say to analyze for holy insight?
She was spending too much time with the spymaster.
Esmie hopped onto the bed, sinking, and stretched to touch her fingers to the top of the elaborate posts covered in Azure cotton. “I’d rather take a nap than go to lessons anyways.”
“They are important.”
“They’re repeats.”
Alisandra paused. “I was informed your new instructor began a new course of material for you.”
“Yeah, new for her,” the Maiden sang. “They don’t know what to do with me. When does the Maiden stop being a kid? What can be done with her? What will her holy mother think if she is left to her own devices?”
The Maiden smeared with blood
Exposed to all that nasty medicine!
“I will speak with them,” Alisandra growled.
Esmie released the post and fell into the bed. Hidden by the comforters, she muttered, “I don’t want yet another set of tutors, Ali.”
“I will speak with them tactfully.”
“I just want someone to talk to…”
Alisandra’s idle idea bloomed.
She knew two listless young women, both lonely in their cages.
She remembered being that age, battered by the winds of her own fickle heart.
The solution could be as simple as a visit to the spymaster’s supply closet.
Esmie, meanwhile, screamed into a pillow. “Dominion is such a pain in my–”
“Stewardship,” Alisandra corrected. Dominion is for demons.
“Fine. You can be a steward, but I’m at least a demigod!”
“A kind, gentle demigod. We step lightly; we advise and coax.” All of Alisandra’s misgivings swirled just below her words. “We are ceremonial, the pillars of continuity until Mother awakens.”
Esmie hurled a pillow at her big sister. “So it’s not dominion when you do it?”
Batting the pillow away, Alisandra scowled. “I never wanted to prance about on Mother’s throne wearing two bits of gold filigree and a smile!”
She recalled that indignity and a hundred other, meeting men like Magnus or Plateau chiefs with a smile while they heaped scorn upon her, and her halo flashed.
“S-sorry…no need to rattle the tea cups…”
The angel of Valor sighed, reigning in her emotions before her echoes ruined their time together. “No, you are right.”
Alisandra sank to the edge of the bed.
“Esmie, you have gifts I cannot match. These waters only heed my rage.”
“You can teleport. That’s pretty neat at least.”
“I shall teach you the trick one day,” Alisandra promised with a smile.
“You better! Then I can visit your diner boyfriend in Sevensborough!”
This warranted a severe tickling.
Afterwards, they slipped into bed together, and Alisandra grabbed a book from the nightstand.
“Don’t you have appointments this afternoon?” Esmie whispered.
“They can wait. We were on chapter…”
“Nine,” the Maiden smirked. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember. You remember everything.”
Alisandra smiled mysteriously. “Maybe someday you’ll learn that trick too.”