be alive? Spink and Amzil saw you killed. Spink saw you beaten to death on the streets, by his own fellows, his own regiment. Do you know what that’s done to him? Do you know how that’s made him hate everything he was once so proud of? Amzil saw the end of everything that she had just begun to hope for. But here you are. Alive. I don’t understand, Nevare! I don’t understand anything!’
She took two hesitant steps towards me. If I had opened my arms, she would have rushed into them. But Soldier’s Boy did not. He stood before her, naked and unlovely, my arms folded on my chest and asked her solemnly, ‘Why did you come here? What do you want?’
‘Why did I—what? I came to avenge you, you great idiot! To make her suffer for your death as we were all suffering. I came to make her sorry for betraying you, to punish the magic for not keeping its word! And what do I want? I want my life back! I want my husband to see me when he looks at me instead of looking through me. I want Amzil to stop scowling and snapping at the children. I want her to stop weeping at night. I want my baby to be born healthy and happy, not into a house where daily we endure floods of desolation or tides of panic. That’s what I want. That’s what I came for. I knew I wouldn’t get it, but I thought I could at least kill one of those who had taken it from me.’
I felt as if I was dying. I threw myself against Soldier’s Boy’s awareness, trying to break through. I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her; I wanted something for Epiny. It seemed that everything I’d thought I’d purchased for her by turning my back on Gettys was hollow and sordid by the light of day. I hadn’t solved anything when I’d given way to the magic. I’d only left them to muddle through grief burdened by guilt that none of them deserved.
‘I won’t let you kill her.’ He spoke flatly to Epiny. ‘You should just go home. Pretend you never saw me here. Accept that I’m dead. Then leave Gettys. Go back west where you and your kind belong.’ He lifted his eyes to Lisana as he spoke, but I had the oddest sensation that he could not see her. The strangest part was that I felt Lisana definitely could see me. I stared through his eyes at her, begging her for some kind of mercy, for some splinter of kindness for my cousin. What had she ever done to them save try to protect me and stand by me? Why did she have to suffer so for the magic?
Lisana spoke softly to Epiny. ‘As you see, Gernian, I spoke truth to you. The magic keeps its word. Nevare isn’t dead.’
Epiny swung her head back to look at me. Her lips were parted and she swayed slightly. The whites showed all round her eyes. I’d once seen a horse that had been ridden near to death. She reminded me of that poor beast, as if she stayed on her feet more by sheer will power than by physical strength. She stared at me for a long time, then looked back at Lisana. Her voice was flat. ‘Don’t try to deceive me. That’s not Nevare. I know Nevare and that’s not him. You forget that the magic touches me? You forget that I can look at his aura, and see that something is very wrong? You can’t cheat me again, Tree Woman. I intend to kill you or die trying.’ She stooped down. For the first time, I saw the small hatchet she had used to cut her firewood. Against Tree Woman’s thick stump, it looked ridiculous, a child’s toy. But it was a toy made of iron. Its presence burned against my skin. When Epiny raised it over her head, her teeth bared in a grimace of hatred, Soldier’s Boy acted, springing between her and the stump and catching her falling wrist. He squeezed hard and the hatchet fell from her grip. He caught her other wrist when she tried to rake his eyes with her nails. Despite his wasted condition, he held her easily. Epiny snarled and shrieked at him wordlessly. She kicked out at him; he accepted the blows.
‘Her mind is gone,’ Olikea opined. She sounded appalled, as if Epiny’s loss of dignity was shameful to her as well. ‘It would be a kindness to kill her.’ She spoke in Speck, her words directed to Soldier’s Boy. The lack of malice in her voice chilled me. She meant it. She thought Soldier’s Boy should put Epiny down as one would a diseased dog. She ventured closer to pick up the hatchet. I feared she would do the deed herself, just sink the shining blade into Epiny’s spine.
‘No!’ I bellowed. ‘Lisana, help me! Please! Don’t let Epiny be killed! It will be too much for me to bear!’
I made no sound. I had no command of lips or lungs or tongue. I spoke not in words, but in a flow of thought that dismissed the need for words, just as Epiny and Lisana spoke to one another. They were the words of my heart, voiceless in the world. All I could do was to plead and threaten. I was helpless to stop what was happening. My hands held my cousin helpless and waiting to be slaughtered.
Lisana looked at the scene before her. Epiny’s struggles against Soldier’s Boy had become increasingly feeble. His big hand trapped her thin wrists. She all but dangled in his grip. Behind Epiny’s back, Olikea had raised the hatchet. Likari watched the drama with the rapt attention of a small boy staring at the unintelligible behaviour of adults. The hatchet began to fall.
‘Epiny!’ I cried out mutely. A stray beam of sunlight moved on the blade as it travelled.
My impotent threats had not moved Lisana. Soldier’s Boy looked at her stump; again, I had the feeling that I was seeing Lisana in a different way from him.
‘If I help kill my own cousin, I’ll go mad! My hatred for him will be unending. Can Soldier’s Boy serve the magic while a mad man gibbers in the back of his mind?’
When Tree Woman slowly shook her head at me, my heart sank. She spoke.
‘Stop.’
Now that I knew what such magic cost, I saw the effort go out of her. Tree Woman’s presence dwindled when she spoke, but for me, it had the desired effect. Olikea’s resolve failed. She lost her grip on the hatchet. It tumbled to the ground behind Epiny. Soldier’s Boy did not release his grip on my cousin, but he set her back on her feet. She twisted one wrist free and folded that arm across her belly, in a gesture that was both supportive and protective. When he released her other wrist, she staggered a few steps away from him and then burst into tears. With both arms, she cradled her pregnancy. She didn’t look at him, but past him at Tree Woman’s stump. ‘Why?’ she demanded of Lisana. ‘Why did you do this to Nevare? Why my cousin, why me? We were innocent of any crime against your people. Why did you reach all those miles to take him hostage to this fate? Why?’
Lisana stiffened. Her presence wavered for a moment, then seemed to grow stronger as she gathered her reserves and retorted, ‘Blame the Kidona, not me! He is the one who took your cousin and tried to make him a warrior to use against me. I, I was the one who had mercy. I could have just stripped his soul from his body and he would have died in all worlds. If I had not thought to offer him to the magic, he would have been dead all these years. The magic chose to keep him. Not I. I didn’t know its reasons. But the magic chose him and now it has taken him. You’d best accept that, Gernian woman. Just as he must accept and become whole to the magic. Nothing is going to change it. What the magic takes, it keeps.’ Perhaps only I could hear the old resignation in her words. She, too, had been chosen and kept by the magic. She, too, had never lived the life she had imagined for herself.
‘Please,’ I thought to Lisana, hoping she still had some influence with Soldier’s Boy. ‘Please. Let me talk to Epiny. Let me send her home. Let me have that small comfort before I must bend to the magic’s will.’
Soldier’s Boy was staring intently at the stump. ‘Lisana?’ he asked. There was a world of longing in his voice. He ignored the sobbing woman, and Olikea scowling in puzzlement at them. He stepped up to the stump and put his hands on it. ‘Lisana?’ he said again. He glanced back at Epiny angrily. I felt the indignation in his heart that the Gernian woman could obviously see and speak to his beloved when all he could behold was the stump of her fallen tree.
Lisana sighed heavily. ‘I’m a fool,’ she said. ‘I know I’ll regret
