Two days had passed since the Inking, and my marks had grown.
They had not grown by much. The Sparks were slightly larger now, their edges less defined, as if the ink had begun to seep outward along pathways I could feel but not yet see. They did not grow past this point, no matter how I tried, and I certainly tried.
The Requiem's black had deepened and the Cradle's white had softened. Neither had become something else. Neither had become the Line I had seen on Marsh's arm. Even this much was fast progress for people of this time, I was told. It took most dedicated users months before their Sparks grew, if they ever grew at all.
The Line. It was a simple word. Spark at least had some creativity. Perhaps this stage was named by an especially lazy creator?
I had settled into a routine I had not chosen -I trained at dawn, then trained again at dusk. The hours between were usually filled with people who would not leave me alone, despite my best efforts. Today, the village had found a new way to torment me.
Martha's tiny kitchen smelled of flour and something faintly sweet.
I stood at the table with my arms folded, watching the old woman work. Her hands moved through dough with a speed that was hard to reconcile with her age. Every motion was practiced. I knew it well -the kind that only came from doing something ten thousand times.
"Your turn, Lily."
"I did not agree to this." And do not call me that. I almost said it. It would have been the fiftieth time. The woman would not have listened, and so I didn't bother.
"Your friend said you'd be happy to learn." Martha smiled without looking up. "She was very insistent."
Ash -that treacherous wench. I would deal with her later.
The dough sat in front of me. I had faced challenges before and this was beneath every single one of them. I pressed my hands into it. It tore almost immediately.
"Go softer, dear," Martha said, already beside me. Her hands guided mine. "It's not fighting you, you can be gentle."
I tried again, still using too much force. The dough bunched and split under my fingers. It was like being by the riverbed again, trying to work mud that wouldn't take. These hands of mine were no better at kneading bread than they had been at making vases.
"Let your palm do the work," Martha said. "Just your palm. Push gently with it, then ya fold here, and then you turn. That's all there is to it."
I pushed. The dough slid off the table and found the floor. Martha picked it up, brushed it off, set it back down, and during this she did not say a thing. I would have -my patience with my subordinates had always been thin.
On my new attempt, the dough held. It moved sluggishly under my hands, but it held. I pushed and folded and turned, and with each repetition the motion became less foreign. It did not become natural, it never would.
The door opened. Ash stepped in to fill a cup of water. She was already sweating through Martha's clothes again -her work had started far before mine.
"Here you go love," Martha said, handing her a cup without looking away from my dough.
Ash stopped. It was half a second, perhaps less. Her hand tightened on the cup and something in her face shifted before it settled into a smile. She took the water and left. I watched her go.
"What was that?" I asked.
"What was what, dear?"
I frowned, turned the question over. I could not recognize its shape.
The bread came out terrible. One side was the color of ash while the other was barely cooked at all. It sat on the table between us. Martha cut a piece, ate it, and chewed thoughtfully. "Not bad for a first go," she said.
I had heard many lies in my time. That one would have made my Court Whisperer weep with admiration. I ate a piece myself and it was dreadful, dense enough that it might have served as a weapon. I ate all of it. It was still better fare than I was used to, and I had made it, with no powers at all.
Martha watched me finish the last crumb with an expression I was beginning to recognize. It was the same one she wore when she refilled my bowl without being asked. The one I still had no name for.
I sat outside at my usual spot, by the low wall.
The afternoon had just begun. I was pushing mana through both Sparks simultaneously -Requiem on a stone with my right, and Cradle on a dead twig with my left. Days of this, and the motions had become almost comfortable. It was rather convenient to have the power to make and unmake. I moved the twig over to my right, the stone to my left and began again. I suspected this would not do anything, but I did it anyway.
Martha came out a few minutes later. She did not come to speak to me. Instead, she sat nearby, on a stool she had brought from inside, and began shelling a basket of dry beans. The cracking of the shells was rhythmic. That was a task I had not liked when I'd been forced into it.
We sat in silence for some time. I did not mind it. Her silences were different from most -they did not demand filling.
"Sara's been making something new," Martha said. Not to me, exactly -to the air between us. "Saw her down by the river this morning with a whole handful of clay." I said nothing. "She started that after Edrin passed last winter." Martha cracked another shell. "Think it keeps her hands busy."
"And who is this Edrin?"
"Her father," she said, still shelling. There was no change in the rhythm at all.
I said nothing. I did not know what I could say.
"Used to follow him everywhere, that girl. He taught her to work the clay and they made pots for the whole village. He wasn't much good at it neither." She smiled at something I could not see. "She used to make 'em too, with him. Never did again after he died."
And then she had made one for me. Just because she'd thought I was pretty. No, maybe it had been more than that. Something inside of me twisted and pulled. I moved the stone to my right, the twig to my left.
"Doesn't have a mother neither," Martha volunteered without being asked.
"What? I have seen her with my own eyes." She had been with the girl at the Inking. I had seen her.
"Oh, you mean Tamara," Martha said, still shelling. "She's the girl's aunt. The mother died in childbirth. Now...now we all take turns caring for her, helps split the load. The girl doesn't really take to many, but we try."
Martha kept shelling. She did not seem to expect a response. That was good, because I did not have one. The stone beneath my right hand cracked. The twig beneath my left grew another bud.
It was mid-afternoon when I saw Ash walk toward the hut she had been avoiding for days. I almost missed it. I had been focused on the marks, running through another cycle of my new powers. When I looked up, she was already halfway there.
Her stride was different -slower and more deliberate than I was used to seeing. I watched from my spot. Ash reached the foot of the hut. The mother was there, as she always was now. The woman looked up and there was a moment where her face tightened.
Ash sat down on the ground in front of her. She stared at the mother, who held her son. She did not do anything besides sit there. If she spoke, I could not hear.
I watched from across the village. A Hero, stripped of power, choosing to sit in the dirt beside a broken child she didn't have the power to fix. What was the purpose of it? She could not heal him. She could not bring back whatever the boy had lost when those black veins had crawled up his arm. All she could do was sit there.
They stayed like that for a long time. Distantly, I saw the mother sit up a little taller. More distantly, I realized I had forgotten to train my marks altogether.
Ash came back later. She moved to walk past me and our eyes met. I thought of the night I had stood outside her door and heard her weep. The question still didn't come. It sat like a lump in my throat. Still, I held her gaze for a moment longer than I needed to.
She held mine back.
Later that afternoon, Ash was helping patch the roof of a hut near the square. She was balanced on a beam, holding a bundle of thatch steady while an old man tied it down. A small crowd had gathered to watch. Ash's strength made the work easy, and the villagers seemed to find this entertaining.
I had come to sit nearby, under a large tree. One needed small changes like this, if only to freshen the mind. That was why I was here.
"That girl's worth three men!" someone called out.
"Five, at least!" another voice.
"Let me see those marks of hers! Sovereign, wasn't it? Can't believe I wasn't here! Which one was-"
Ash's shoulders climbed and her smile went tight. She kept working, but something in her posture had changed. I wondered how many of these people were here for those marks, and not for the work at all. There was a particular hunger power always inspired in those that had very little of it. I had seen it often.
There was a whisper of mana and something shifted, so faintly I would not have noticed if I hadn't been sitting so close. I inspected Ash and didn't see anything at all. Not until I looked. The Sparks on her forearm had faded. My eyes trailed over them, almost wanted to slide right off without finding purchase.
The man mid sentence lost his train of thought. The woman beside him turned to say something to her neighbor and stopped. The gathered eyes drifted. Slowly, so slowly I would not have noticed had I not already been watching.
"Need to get the stew done."
"She's just a hard worker."
Ash exhaled and her shoulders dropped. She kept working, and nobody stared. The crowd dispersed.
That had to be her mark -her Cypher mark. It seemed to have done more than just hide her marks from the people watching. They truly had been there only to gawk at them, or they would not have left.
It was natural that I could still make them out. My mind was too sharp to fall for such a petty illusion, as diminished as I was. Or perhaps it was something else. I did not examine that thought. I added it to the list of things filed away. The list was getting long enough to warrant its own archive.
Evening approached.
Tom was sorting goods from his last trip, arranging jars and sacks in the space beside the cart. I had not decided to sit nearby. My feet had simply carried me there after training, and I had not corrected them.
Tom talked because this was what Tom did. "-four days to Koralis and back, if the roads are clear but they're never clear, are they? Always something. Last month it was mud and the month before, it was those damn wolves -same ones you fought. Now I hear the eastern route's got beast sightings too, so that's another detour. What in the hell's is happening to the world late-"
I watched him load the cart. He placed a sack of grain at the bottom, then stacked two crates of jars on top, then wedged a bundle of cloth in the gap beside them.
"You are loading that like an idiot."
Tom paused. "Pardon?"
"The grain is at the bottom and grain absorbs moisture. You have placed it directly against the cart bed, where rain collects and pools. Every trip, you must lose a portion of your stock to dampness before you arrive." I gestured at the sacks. "The cloth should go at the bottom -it can be dried out later. The grain goes on top, where the air reaches it. The jars are heaviest and should sit in the center for balance, not stacked where a single rut in the road will topple them."
There was silence. "You can also see that the left axle sits lower than the right," I continued, because I had started and there was no reason to stop. "You have been loading heavier goods on the left side. Over time, this warps the frame. Distribute the weight evenly, and the cart will last twice as long and won't ride like some demonic beast." And it had ridden like a demonic beast.
Tom stared at me and then at the cart and then back at me. I had only told him because of the unpleasant journey he had subjected me to.
"How do you know all that?" he asked slowly.
"I managed armies," I said. "Your operation is one man and a cart. It is not difficult."
Tom scratched his chin and looked at the grain sack at the bottom of his cart, then at the cloth bundle wedged in beside it. Without a word, he began to unload and restack. He asked two questions while he worked, and I answered both. Somewhere in the middle of the second answer, I realized he was looking at me the way his wife so often did.
"You're a sharp one, Lily," he said.
I let it pass -correcting him would mean acknowledging I had heard it.
It was dusk when I went looking for Ash. Martha had asked me to fetch her for the evening meal. A simple errand. I should have refused on principle, but the old woman had a way of asking that made refusal feel like more effort than compliance. Ash was not in the village.
I found her behind the treeline, just past the low wall, in a clearing barely wide enough for two people. Ash stood there, alone. A coil of rope lay at her feet, and beside it, several stones of varying sizes. As I watched, Ash knelt beside a large stone. She pressed the tip of her Hero's Sword to its surface and drew it slowly across. The blade's touch was light, almost gentle.
The stone parted. There was no force behind it that I could see. The two halves simply came apart along the line her sword had traveled. The surfaces where it split were smooth with no debris at all. I watched from the edge of the clearing. She had not seen me. There were other split stones there, at least two dozen from a quick count. I moved closer and a damned twig cracked beneath my foot.
Ash turned. She saw me and straightened even as something crossed her face. "Training like a thief in the night," I said. "How very unlike a Hero."
Ash's jaw worked. When she spoke, her voice was hard. "I didn't want to worry anyone."
It tasted like a lie, even though it made sense. I could have pressed. Instead, I sat down at the edge of the clearing. She watched me. Perhaps she waited for me to say something. I said nothing. After a long moment, she turned back to a stone, pressed her blade to its surface, and traced a slow line. The stone fell apart in her hands, and the cutting was clean and silent.
We stayed like that until Martha's voice carried through the trees, calling us both for supper.
The large fire in the village square was had not been planned. Someone had first set it for warmth, then Martha had brought her pot, then Tom had dragged a bench over, and then another, and eventually the rest of the village had joined in.
I stood at the edge of the square, close enough to feel the fire's warmth on my skin, yet far enough that I was not a part of it. The fire was far larger than the one Ash had built in the forest. It crackled and threw shadows that danced along the walls of the huts. Orange light painted everything in warmth.
Tom was arguing with another old man about the proper way to roast meat. Children ran between the adults' legs, chasing each other the way children always seemed to.
Someone had brought a stringed instrument. A man sat on an overturned crate and played it. He was not good. His melody wandered in directions that even I, who knew nothing of human music, suspected were not intentional.
It did not seem to matter. A woman began to hum along, then another, and then a few of the children.
Ash sat near the fire. She had found a place among the villagers easily. She was eating and talking to the woman beside her. When Tom said something I could not hear, Ash laughed. The firelight caught the marks on her arms. Few people looked at them now and she looked happy. I wondered if this was what she had wanted all along.
Occasionally I would catch a furtive glance from someone in my direction, gone almost as quick as it had come. Whatever glue joined Ash to this village, it was clear I did not quite share it.
A hand found mine.
I looked down. A little girl stood beside me: Sara. She took my hand and held it, her small fingers wrapping around two of mine. Her grip was warm and firm. She had been wandering close to me for some time now. I had not said anything then.
I did not pull away and did not move closer. I just stood there with a child's hand in mine, watching the fire. The hand felt warmer by far.
The terrible music played. I had heard the warhorns of my horde. I had heard the deathsongs of the Elven people, which were said to be the most beautiful sounds in existence. I had heard a Goddess sing, once, in the days before I had killed her and her brother. I did not leave.
My gaze found Ash across the fire. Her eyes were searching for mine and hers was a strange look -not one between a Hero and a Demon Queen. Not one between a person and someone who had killed their friend. Not one between friends either, I think.
I held the look and did not know what to do with it. I held it anyway. Sara's hand squeezed mine. It was small and warm. The Cradle mark twitched and stirred.
Nearby, two of the children from the ceremony were sitting cross legged by the fire's edge. The boy who had received his Somatic mark was showing it to one of the older children, holding his arm out proudly.
"What was it like?" the older boy asked.
"It tickled! And then I felt really strong." He flexed a small arm. The dull Spark on his wrist didn't even glow. "Makes me feel really strong! Mummy says it might be something else, but I'm sure!"
People did not stand in that darkness and see that screen as I and Ash had. I had asked the questions as subtly as I could, and for them, it was a trance they woke from, their new marks on their arms. Moreover, the villagers I had asked had told me they only vaguely knew what their marks did, barely knew what they were. That was a small advantage I had -I, who had seen them spelled out for me. The thought didn't matter right now. Sara's hand was still in mine.
The warmth seeped up my arm, up my shoulders. It swirled and eventually came to settle somewhere around my chest.
I had once thought that Hamel was nothing. It was still nothing. For one night, it was enough. The fire crackled and the music played. The stars sat above us in a sky so vast it made even me feel small.
The sound came from the north. It was a rumble I felt in my chest before it reached my ears. The music stopped and the man's fingers froze on the strings. Every head in the square turned. Sara's hand tightened in mine. The sound came again, and it was closer. The third time, it was close enough that the lanterns shook.
The fire popped and a child began to cry. The night was no longer enough.