I gave him an expectant look, preparing for a barrage of insults. Instead, he stood and ducked out through the tent flap. A bit reluctantly, I followed. To my surprise, he neither rushed nor led me south. At an almost leisurely pace, our horses walked north and a smidge east. Moment by moment, the world awakened, near to dawn as it was. Animals skittered in the underbrush, birds began to call against daybreak in that soft way that keeps morning peaceful.
Several leagues to the west, the tips of the Solden range showed the sunlight gradually working its way down the mountains as the sun rose in the east. Before it reached the valley, Baylet stopped. I came up beside him and looked out over a vast field riddled with humps of freshly dug earth. There might have been eight hundred that I could see. In the distance, the field sloped away from us.
“I told you before. We’re losing the war.” Baylet took a deep breath, one that sounded like acceptance.
The graves of soldiers, then, I imagined. Unmarked barrows of the thousands who had fallen. It was a grim thing to see.
“The histories tell of the Sellari. Of the devastation when they lay hold of a place or people.” Baylet surveyed the field left to right before continuing. “Rough hands, Belamae. They’ve no interest in servitude. They’re glad to make sport of the living before putting them down for good. That’ll mean indignities for families before the blessing of death.”
“We could retreat north—”
“And leave the Refrains for the taking, you mean.”
I shrugged. “Sounds like that’s going to happen sooner or later.”
The field leader became reflective. “Maybe. But trying to move so many so fast . . . and the Sellari would follow. The feud is an old one. It goes beyond the Refrains.”
I’d not heard of this, and Baylet didn’t offer to explain. So I let it pass.
“Rough hands,” he said again. “They’re coming. I don’t have anything to stop them.” He surveyed the field from right to left this time. “They knew it. And they did not wait . . .”
That’s when I realized what I was truly looking at. Not the graves of his men. But killing fields. All Mor nation children were taught a simple, dreadful lesson when they reached their twelfth name day. If invasion should come, and defeat appear inevitable, our people would not wait for cruel foreign hands to take our lives. By our own hands, we would go to our last sleep with quiet dignity.
“There are at least a dozen more killing fields.” Baylet’s tone was filled with self-loathing. “They’ve begun to lose hope. By every abandoning God, this is too much!”
The field leader’s voice boomed out over the field in long rolling echoes.
I wanted to say something. I wanted to say I would try. But my mind felt like an open wound that even a stir of wind would sear.
Baylet rode forward before I could find any words. I followed again, and soon we were navigating carefully between the graves. I noted the awful sight of patches of earth not much longer than the length of my arm. My mind conjured images of mothers offering their babes what they thought of as a mercy. If I’d felt disheartened before, if I’d thought I was too far from shore, now I felt lost and empty in a way only one song had ever taught me.
Before I could run that song through my mind, Baylet stopped and dismounted. I did the same. We stood together as the sunlight finally touched the field where we were. Our shadows fell across a pair of graves.
“I don’t understand what it’s like to sing an absolute,” he began. His voice sounded strangely prayerful in that day’s first light. “I’ve read the music of countless composers who’ve tried to write it down. Black scores. The kind whose melodies never go out of your head, though you wish they would.” He shook his head slowly. “But they’re just approximations. The ability to actually do it . . . it’d be a burden. A lot like keeping the Mor Refrains is a burden, I suppose. I’d like you to know, before I sent for you, my petition to the king for access to the Refrains was denied.”
It seemed obvious now that all along Baylet had meant for me to find and sing the Sellari absolute. I felt duped. But I didn’t have the energy for anger, and simply nodded.
Later, as the field began to warm in the sunlight, I asked, “Why are we here?”
He continued to stare down at the two graves. “Some by tincture. Others by rope. And more by blade drawn across blood veins.”
Then it dawned on me. We must be standing over the barrows of his family. He fought for Y’Tilat Mor. He fought for his men. But after it all, he fought for those closest to him.
“I’m sorry,” I offered.
For the first time, he looked up from the graves, giving me a look that passed from puzzlement to understanding to sympathy in a breath. “No, Belamae. We honor your mother and sister this morning.”
My stomach tightened, and I felt instantly shaky. Baylet put a hand around my shoulders. Some faraway part of me thought again of how the field leader was orchestrating, influencing my decisions. But I’d have wanted to know. And no matter when or where, I’d have felt the same.
I drifted in a haze for I don’t know how long, while grief pounded at my chest with its insistent rhythms. I couldn’t keep from picturing ma and sa putting a knife to their own flesh. I felt their powerlessness and despair. And the dignity with which they went to their final earth, avoiding rough hands that—if things were left unchanged—would surely come.
Without realizing it,
