The boy on the ground was her brother. She knew it.
He was here and her grandfather—their grandfather—had died almost a year ago, and was only now, only now gone from her, and she understood what he’d done, and she knew it was forever.
The world was an inconceivable place, Danica thought. It was vanity to think you could understand even your own life.
“I killed you,” the boy said, in accented but clear Sauradian.
She shook her head. She had no idea what to say.
“You . . . you are a woman,” he said.
She still couldn’t speak. Words felt far away. She heard Marin coming up with the old warrior, Skandir. She felt light-headed, dizzy, afraid. There was a hard, heavy pain in her breastbone. You could say in her heart. It was there, too.
“Danica,” Marin Djivo said. “Oh, Jad. How are you . . . ?”
His voice was so strange. He, too, looked frightened. Which meant that he, too, had seen the arrow strike. She remembered a warning: yes, he had cried out. That was why she’d turned to the bowman. The boy. Neven.
She remained silent. What was she going to say?
“I killed you,” her brother said again. “I saw my arrow hit.”
“Be silent,” said Skandir grimly. “Make your peace with your god and stars.” He looked at Danica, then at the artist.
“He hit you? With that arrow?”
She looked at the arrow she held. She nodded.
“You wear no armour?”
She shook her head. Zadek, she wanted to cry. She wanted to say it aloud.
“I have seen a man survive an arrow when it struck a talisman he wore.”
She shook her head.
“This was too close, in any case. That can only happen at the limit of an arrow’s range.” He sounded calm, but this man, too, was beginning to realize something unnatural had happened here.
Well, it had, she thought.
“You are all right?” Marin asked. More his normal voice.
She looked at him. Such a handsome man, and he . . . she mattered to him. She knew that. Which was unfortunate, in all the circumstances.
“I am,” she said. “My chest hurts. There’s blood. It is . . . it is on the arrow.” She held it up, as if that would clarify something for them.
“I killed you,” her brother said for a third time.
“And I told you to be silent,” Skandir snapped. “I won’t say it again.”
“What will you do? Kill me sooner?” Neven was clearly in pain. He’d been struck on the back, then clubbed on the head or shoulders.
He has courage, she thought. And, Of course he does, she thought.
“I can do that,” the old warrior said.
“Then do it!”
“No,” she said.
She knelt in the tall grass by the woods, before the old warrior.
“Please, no.”
He raised two thick eyebrows. “You will need to say why.”
She drew breath again. It was so painful to do that. This was all impossible, she thought.
She said, “I have promised to come with you. To join you. Do you still want me?”
“You killed ten men here. I do.”
“Twelve,” said Marin Djivo. “She killed or wounded twelve. I counted. You would have lost this battle. You would be dead, Ban Rasca.”
“I am not the ban of anything,” the old man said, a reflex. “But yes, she is good with a bow. I will take her with me. What does that have to do with this one?”
“He is my brother,” she said.
There was no way to not say it, and no way she could think of to make it less blunt. The world didn’t allow that, or wasn’t allowing it. They were both here.
“What?” Skandir exclaimed. He made the sign of the sun disk. First time she’d seen him do that.
“Holy Jad!” Marin whispered. She was looking at him. A moment later she looked across at the other two. The artist still held a branch in one hand. Her brother . . .
“That is a lie!” her brother said.
Tico growled, she silenced him with a gesture.
She stood up again. You should not say this kneeling.
“Your name is Neven Gradek. You may know it, or you may have been too young. Mine is Danica. I don’t know if you’ll remember me. You were named for your grandfather. You were born in a village called Antunic in the borderlands northwest. You were taken by hadjuks in a summer raid. We fled to Senjan—our mother, our grandfather, me. You were not quite four years old. You . . . you were born in autumn.”
There was silence. What could any of them say to this? she thought. Swear, pray, cry aloud?
Skandir cleared his throat. “This is . . . this has always been known as a strange place. There is a glade somewhere back in this forest. People here say . . . there were said to be powers here.”
“It isn’t so far back,” said Pero Villani. His first words. “They have cut the trees up to it. I went through it. I saw . . . I saw talismans there, amulets.”
“Did you take anything? Tell me you didn’t!” Skandir cried.
Danica looked at him. Saw him make the sign of the disk again.
Villani shook his head. “I touched one. A metal bird. But I put it back. I took a branch.” He lifted it a little, as if to show them. He was looking at Danica. “I heard . . . I thought I heard a voice, just before the arrow. It said . . . the voice said, Children.”
Danica stared at him. Too much was impossible to explain here.
“I heard that,” her brother said.
A different voice this time. He sounded young. He is fourteen, she thought. She had always been aware of how old he’d be if alive, wherever he was. Skandir didn’t silence him this time.
The old warrior shook his head. “And the world keeps surprising me. I don’t like being surprised. There were beliefs about this forest. Maybe that is how this . . .” He looked at Villani. “You touched an offering, you said?”
An offering, Danica thought.
The artist nodded.
But that isn’t it, Danica thought. That isn’t how this happened.
She was looking at her brother. Staring, hungrily. He was fair-haired, more red than she was, freckles, big for his age, broad-shouldered. Their father and brother had been big men. And now she saw something change in his eyes.
She asked, “Did you know your name? Mine?”
After a long moment of birdsong and the wind she saw him nod his head, once. He pointed at Marin. “And I heard that one call it, as I released.”
She began, appallingly, to weep after all. Furiously wiping tears away, she said, “You were aware of someone, weren’t you, this spring, when you fought a man?”
His mouth gaped. “How do you know that?”
“I do,” she said. “A knife?”
Fear in his eyes. He was a boy. He nodded again, that same single downward motion. She had carried him through their village, teaching him the names of things.
She said, “You have been loved, Neven. You never stopped being loved.”
“My name is Damaz.”
“You were named for your grandfather who—”
“My name is Damaz! I am a djanni of the army of the khalif. What you are saying means nothing.”
“That last is untrue,” said Skandir, but not harshly. “What we come from matters.”
“Not to me! Go ahead, kill me, the way barbarians do.”
“I can do that,” the old warrior said for a second time.
“Please, no,” Danica said. “This is my one request.”
“It is a large one, even from a good archer.”
“Then let it be a large one.”
Marin Djivo said, “It might be good if a man survives, goes back to the army to tell them Skandir destroyed th
ose sent after him.”
“And if he tells them a merchant party helped?”
“We hid in the woods. An archer from Senjan helped you and rode away with you. If he says it was a woman, their shame is greater. He might not say it.”
Marin was, Danica thought, as intelligent as anyone she’d ever met. And courageous, and a good man, and he cared about her and . . . and she was riding away with Skandir, whatever else happened now. Because her life, since the fires in Antunic, had been pointed towards exactly this, killing, revenge, war—just as this old warrior’s had been.
She was more like Skandir, she thought, than anyone in Dubrava could ever grasp. It was a sorrow. But that didn’t make it false.
“You may go,” Skandir said, looking at Neven. “No weapons. I grant you your life. Ride back to your army.”
“I am a djanni. We do not ride.”
“You will be hard-pressed to make it on foot, but I am sure a heroic djanni of the great khalif’s army has his means.”
Neven stood. She saw him wince. She said, she had to say, “You can stay. You are Jaddite-born, you were taken as a child. You can turn your back on those who did that to you. You can fight them. Take your own revenge. They don’t get to decide what you are, Neven!”
“No,” he said. “Almost every djanni was a Jaddite child. It is what we are. Why would I be the one to betray those who taught me, honoured me?”
“Because they stole your life,” she said.
“They gave me a life.”
“Not the one you were born to, with the family you had!”
“And the faith,” Skandir added, quietly.
“I am not the only one this has happened to.” He swayed a little, but his voice was firm.
“No, you aren’t,” Skandir said. “But you are now one who has a chance to return. It is not a thing to turn your back upon.”
“Why not? Why would I leave everything I know?”
“To find everything taken from you,” the big man said. “Ask me a harder question, boy!”
Her brother was silent, and in that silence Danica said, “Maybe . . . maybe stay because I’m here, too, and asking you.”
“Why are you here?” he asked. “You said Senjan? Why here now?”
Too hard to answer, too much that would need explaining. She said, “Neven—”
“My name,” he repeated, “is Damaz. I am from the garrison of Mulkar, fifth regiment. I am a djanni in the khalif’s army.” He turned to Skandir. “If you are letting me go, may I leave?”
She wasn’t weeping. She wanted to. She reached down again, a hand touching her dog.
“You may,” said Skandir. “I said as much. Though if you stay, there is a place for you with me, because of . . . because there is a power in this.”
“A power,” her brother mimicked, and in his tone she heard their older brother, Mikal, who had died the night of the raid.
“If you leave we will never see each other again,” she said. Her turn to sound desperate. She looked only at her brother now.
He shrugged.
“Think, lad! What will they do to the one survivor?” Marin Djivo said suddenly. “They will decide you fled.”
“They might,” Skandir agreed. He sighed. “If you are wise, you will tell them your leader ordered you back as the battle turned, to report that it was me you fought.”
Another shrug, but Danica saw a hesitation.
Clutched by fear, she said, “You think you were made to throw that knife in that fight only to go back now to their army?”
“I threw the knife in a fair fight!”
“And I know about it!” Her voice was urgent. “His name was Neven, too. You were named for him. Neven Rusan. Our mother’s father.”
She was telling too much, with three others here and the clerics of Jad constantly inveighing against witchcraft, and with Senjan said to be a place that knew dark arts, especially the women.
Even so. This was, she thought, her last chance. She wanted to walk across the grass and touch him. She knew she could not.
“Neven, I don’t want you to die.”
“Why? You don’t know me at all.”
“But I do. I did. There hasn’t been a day when I haven’t thought of you, and revenge. That is why I’m here. You asked. That is my answer. It is about you.”
She could feel three men looking at her. She kept her gaze on her brother. His eyes held hers a moment. Then he turned away, to Skandir.
“I will not tell about the merchants,” he said. “In return for my life, which was in your hands.”
“No. In your sister’s hands,” the big man said. “Without her you are dead here, for the forest creatures to feed upon.”
Another shrug. A boy’s shrug. She tried to imagine what he must be feeling. She failed. He turned back to her.
“I thank you, then,” he said coolly.
And turned. Turned and went away, through tall grass, past flowers, the sun bright above. They watched him go, a well-made boy, back down towards the ditch and then the road. Someone there, seeing him, called to Skandir. The old man held up a hand, staying his men.
Her brother never looked back. Afterwards, days and nights, Danica would see this moment in her mind, clearly, as in that same spring light, and find herself unable to believe he hadn’t looked back at her, not once, and that she’d let him go.
The borderlands, what they did to people there.
—
HE IS AWARE OF DRIFTING, he is very high. He understands that whatever it is that has held him here, to her, whether his own fierce will or a gift of Jad, or of something else, older, is spent now, is finished. He broke whatever it was when he stopped that arrow. He pushed—and that feels to be the right word—too hard.
That is why he is floating now, rising. So high on a bright day. Last bright day. He can see them both far below, apart, distance growing. Granddaughter, grandson. The boy, walking stiffly away, is sheathed in pride and fear. Neven. Named for him. He understands pride and still feels fear. For him, for both of them. Even now, even leaving, finally. How long is forever?
He is not a man who had ever offered words of love when he was in the world. He hopes, now, that it has been understood. He hopes they will be all right, as much so as is ever allowed.
He himself is allowed this aching, far, final glance. His last thoughts are their names, the one and then the other, then he is air, sunlight, lost, gone.
CHAPTER XVII
It is Skandir who takes charge after the boy disappears down the road to the east.
He does this effortlessly, an easy assumption that it is his task. There are people who lead, it can be as simple as that.
Looking at Danica as they come down from the trees, Marin wants to comfort her and is afraid to even try. Without a word spoken he has an understanding with the old warrior and Pero Villani that nothing will be said about what happened at the forest’s edge. The others were too far away, they will have seen nothing that needs explaining.
Well, one thing. Skandir tells his remaining men that he let the last Osmanli go, weaponless, so he could tell the serdars of the khalif’s army who had destroyed them here. If he gets back alive, he adds.
There are no tools in the cabins, but a little farther off they find some buried by the woods. An attempt at hiding them from thieves. There are shovels, axes, woodcutters’ saws, in three graves. They set about digging a true grave on the far side of the road for Skandir’s men.
Marin is blunt with the Seressini merchants who want to move on immediately—leave these raiders who’d rashly endangered them. He makes clear that if they leave now they do so without Dubravae guards. He invites them to do so. They decline. They actually look afraid of him. He hasn’t taken this tone before.
He is uncomfortable with how angry he feels, in fact. Men from Dubrava, h
e thinks, taking a turn with a shovel in the sunlight, are so discreet and diplomatic. It startles people when they are otherwise.
Danica had told her brother that her entire life was about vengeance. Said it was why she was here. She’d said the same thing to Marin, in fact, one night within Dubrava’s walls, within his family’s walls, in his room.
And he, Marin Djivo, younger son of a merchant? What was his life about? Trade? Clever, profitable dealings? He was from a city-state that flourished by letting no one hate them enough to do anything disagreeable. Where you are situated in the world, Marin thinks, digging a grave in a Sauradian meadow, shapes how you act in the world.
Then he amends that thought: it is one of the things that does so. Rasca Tripon and Danica Gradek might frame it differently. Or the old empress living with the Daughters of Jad on Sinan Isle might do so. They are all exiles, he thinks, taken from what they were, where they were.
He digs hard, sweating in the sunlight though it isn’t warm. They need large graves, there are many dead. Pero Villani works beside him. When their eyes meet, both men look away.
They’d touched the half-world this morning.
There is no way to deny it. The artist had actually touched something in that world. He’d said as much. And they’d both seen a woman take an arrow in the heart—and rise up, alive.
Skandir had said this was alleged to be a spirit-haunted wood. They have reason now to believe this is so, whatever clerics might declare.
This is a place to leave, as soon as they can, he thinks. They finish laying to rest the dead in the afternoon. Ban Rasca speaks the prayers—he’ll have done this many times, Marin thinks. More than two decades of his men dying. It is astonishing, really, that he is still alive, still fighting. They move on, along the imperial road, headed east.
They stop to bury some other men towards day’s end—from the first ambush set by Skandir’s archers. There are Asharites dead here, too. Marin sees Danica moving about, claiming arrows. Archers never let arrows go to waste. She moves stiffly, is pale and silent. They haven’t spoken. He has no idea what words to offer. The boy, her brother—Neven—had walked away, returning to Ashar. What did you say?