gentry, you...' He sat beside me and was quiet for a while. I kept my eyes on his hands until he spoke again.
'Lady Saren's father visited Song for Evela when I was eight. I remember at a banquet, my father pulling me in close and saying, in almost a teasing way, 'He has a daughter named Saren. You might marry her one day, you know.
What do you think about that?' When I was fourteen and received her first letter, it didn't seem strange because I'd had her in my mind all those years.'
'You were meant to marry her,' I said.
He shrugged. 'The letters were a game. I was young, I felt as though I were playing at being in love. I read poetry to try to learn how one courts with words, and I failed at it miserably. But it was fun, anticipating a new letter, hiding it from my father and hers, and we kept it up for a few years. When my father died before declaring who he wanted me to marry, I realized I might actually wed Lady Saren. I looked over her letters again, and I saw them anew-
-they were simple, little humor or life. To tell the truth, I was apprehensive at best. And then came news of the tower.
'I felt responsible, but I was dreading the meeting, too. It was you, wasn't it, Dashti? You were the one who spoke to me.'
I nodded. I was wrapped up in the weave of his story and didn't want to speak.
'Of course it was you. I never should've left you in there. I should've risked war with Titor's Garden and Thoughts of Under. We met war anyway. When I spoke with Lady Saren in the tower, with you, it was a wonder. It felt right.' He smiled. 'Then I met you as Dashti, but when you told me you were Lady Saren, that felt right, too. And all has seemed right until... Ancestors, it's all wrong. You weren't Lady Saren in the tower, you weren't when you faced Khasar, you're not now and you won't ever be, and for that the chief of order says you must hang.'
I thought I'd prepared myself for that end, but hearing him say it made my heart sting.
He rubbed his face again. 'Dashti, I don't know what to do. I don't know. Can you, will you sing for me?'
So I sang him the song for clear thoughts, and after a time he leaned back against the wall with me and rested his head against mine, humming along. It was strange, as I think back on it now, that I'm the one scheduled to die but I was comforting him. At the time, it felt just right. It was a moment of peace, and it gave me space to think. We were betrothed once. I always knew it was ill-fated, but he truly believed I would be his bride. I guess I'd never realized that before. He had taken my mucker hand and looked at my mottled face and believed we would wed. And he hadn't seemed sorry. In fact, he'd swooped me up in the corridor and kissed me.
That set me to crying. He sat up and took my hand, the one mottled, holding it to his lips.
'Dashti, oh Dashti, I'm sorry.' He smoothed my hair against the back of my head, he held my forehead to his.
'Please, I'm so sorry. Listen, nothing's settled yet. The chiefs may vote to preserve your life.
A lesser sentence might be banishment from Song for Evela.'
Ancestors know that I never would've said aloud what I thought then--that living didn't matter to me if it meant I'd be alone, that I'd have to leave Tegus behind. Is that silly? And yet I really feel it. Here's what I wished I could say--
Tegus, I'll not find a better man than you, not on the steppes, not in any city or in all the wilds of the Eight Realms. You're better than seven years of food. You're better than windows. You're even better than the sky.
But I couldn't tell him that, and since I had to hold back words, I wanted to give him something. 'Take my book of thought keeping,' I said. 'It's all I have that I care about.'
'Haven't you destroyed it yet? I gave it back to you so you could. It's the best evidence against you.' He put it back in my hands and stood at once. Before he passed through my door, he turned and said, 'I'm sorry, Dashti.'
And I guess that's the last time I'll ever see him.
After he left, I sat on the ground and stared at the door for a long time. A very long time. I didn't want to move ever again. Eventually I got myself up so I could write what Tegus said. To keep telling my story seems like the last bit of living I can still do. I feel like a dragonfly clinging to a grass blade in a windstorm, but I can't just let go. I can't.
I stare at the candle, how the flame shivers and bends when the wick is too long. The light is small and unsteady, but unless it's snuffed out, it'll keep burning for as long as the wick runs.
There's a stinging, cold sensation that shivers through my blood. I look at my hands, stare at how they're shaking, and wonder if this is how Osol felt the night before he died. I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.
Day 171
What a long, cold night it was. I guess I can admit that I wept instead of sleeping. Odd how much that made my throat hurt. With no window, no way to track the time, I felt as though I spent days here alone. When Shria came with breakfast, she assured me that it was just barely morning out in the world. Along with cheese and bread, she brought news.
'There's quite a tumult in your kitchens,' she said. 'The family of one of the girls made it out of Goda's Second Gift and came here. Seems it was pretty rough going, traveling into winter, but they didn't stop until they found their daughter.'
'Gal,' I said. A grin took over my face and felt like an old friend come home.
The news changed me, and I've been thinking and buzzing for hours. Though the only light I have is a candle and even wrapped up in my blanket my bones are cold like stones, I'm filled with a kind of wonder, I guess. A wonder that burns. If Gal's family is alive and found her, if her impossible wish came true, what else can happen? It makes me almost believe that everything works out somehow, and even if the best possible ending for all this is for me to speedily join my mama in the Realm of the Ancestors, then so be it. That is an ending to be proud of.
