Meirge looked desperately as though he wanted to argue, to complain. To say anything.
“Make sure it is done, love. She…” Another cough. It seemed to drain the light from her face. Her eyes lost their focus. “She is the best of us.” She smiled at that. “Socair?”
“I am here, Deifir. I am sorry. I am sorry. I do not know…”
“Shhh.” Deifir weakly moved her hand to Socair’s leg. “Do not fret, Socair. I have… I… I have seen the Waters.” She breathed harder, horrible sounds came with each bit of air she pulled or let go. “You must… must save us. You will. I have seen it.” She smiled and her eyes turned to Meirge. “I love you, Meirge. You were my light.” Her hand reached for his face but she lacked the strength. He took it and pressed it against his flesh, weeping. “Do not let them refuse her.”
A rattled sigh was the last breath Deifir of Abhainnbaile took. Socair looked at her. She could not force a thought to her mind. There was nothing. Meirge laid Deifir’s hand upon the ground and stroked her cheek, smiling as Socair had never seen him. He closed her eyes gently.
“I did not want to believe you. You… you laughed at me. Just last night.” He looked across at Socair then to Deifir’s peaceful face. “I will see it done, love. Sleep easy, now.”
Socair watched him blankly, shifting her eyes back to Deifir. Sounds of fire filled the air above her for a breath. Meirge kissed Deifir’s cheek one final time and then looked at Socair with eyes, cold and serious as she always knew them.
“I hope you are prepared, Socair.”
“Prepared?”
“You will lead us. You will be Treorai.”
Socair shot to her feet, backing away. Her eyes could not find a place to rest that made sense in her mind. Deifir to Meirge to Nath and back and again. She opened her mouth, but no words put themselves in the air.
“W-why?”
Meirge stood, lifting Deifir’s body from the ground.
“Because you must.”
v
Óraithe
It had been two days since the gate was taken and there was little semblance of order among the Low District. Though hundreds had joined to their cause, most kept quiet and stayed in their houses. Óraithe and Scaa had discussed it at least a dozen times since breakfast. What could be done, what the hold-outs would do. Scaa was convinced that they would come over to their side when the tide had turned, that there was still proving to do to win their hearts. Óraithe found reason in that, but figured it would account for minor gains at the best. She felt sure she knew the Low District sort well enough. They were cowardly, underhanded. Not all, but enough.
The decision was to acquire what they could. Óraithe was alone in assuming there would be others who would seek to take advantage of the chaos. She had been wrong, but two days was not the time she’d had in mind. The decision to acquire every bit of unclaimed food and armor and the like was received without complaint, at least. There was a delicate balance to the whole thing, Óraithe was beginning to understand. They would see her as a child if she was not careful with them. It was a danger of letting them near but she could not know everything. She did not understand horses or steel. She understood nothing, in truth. She had only inklings of what they ought to do at large, the beginnings of an intuition about how she could use people and how to have them allow that.
Perhaps among the more curious things was the seeming trickle of new guards into the Low District. They had chased as many as they had seen in the passing days but still new faces came among them. Perhaps they had hidden. Some fought. Others dashed their colors and fled, rarely successfully. She had kept some as prisoners, let others go if they were vouched for. Killing friends of her own for working as a guard could not bring her closer to any sort of useful future. Cosain had lectured her on the nature of honey and salt after every one of her run-ins with the guard in a life that seemed so long ago. The guards they had caught had painted a sweeping picture of the state of the High District. Sparsely populated, Briste considered it the whole of Fásachbaile. There were some stories of the woman herself that Óraithe was unsure whether to believe. Tales of her acting as though she were wholly unaware of the loss of the Low District in some moments and screaming, raving about it in others. Ordering fruit delivered from Abhainnbaile though the cold and Óraithe’s presence made such a thing nearly impossible. She had killed the first to tell her otherwise. Or so the guards had said. Gossip and rumors. Or stories meant to lead them to underestimate the Treorai and her remaining guards.
She stood now with Scaa in an abandoned shop. A clothier, from the looks of the wreckage left after what must have been a dozen lootings. There were a few lengths of cheap cloth left to them. Thread but no needles. Buttons. Things that would be useless to looters, but their people needed the ability to mend what they had and patch it. To piece together blankets where they could. Scaa had pointed the building out to her, a place they both knew. Óraithe had not noticed it. So much of the city felt unfamiliar to her. She recognized the shapes and the turns of the streets, but the city felt as though it had changed.
“It feels so long ago…” She said the words aloud for no reason at all.
Scaa looked up from the drawer she rummaged through. “Hm? What does?”
“That I set foot here. That I walked a street in my home.
