You cannot conquer a people. This is often how it is phrased, but our own experience under Ghars boot taught a different lesson. Land is conquered, people are subdued. So of these people rage and wither under the harsh light of change, others sleep dormant, waiting for their hour. This second faction is by far the largest and most dangerous.
Ghars mistake was to assu that a span of years would render these sleeping seeds impotent and safe; history has shown the error in their logic.
- Saleh Taskin, On Reclamation, 687
The morning was clear and cold; Michael splashed his face with water that was barely shy of freezing, relishing the icy sting against his skin. He dried himself with a spare shirt.
Sobriquet stared at him incredulously. My finger is still numb from testing the temperature of that water, she muttered. Youre insane.
Its refreshing, Michael objected. But, if you insist- He turned towards the rising sun, noting its play over the side of their house; the light blurred into jewel-toned splendor, dimming and twisting. The pail of water began to steam, and Michael let the sunlight return to catch the rising drifts of vapor. All yours.
I take back everything I said. Sobriquet swept in to kiss him on the cheek. Ghars blood, I dont know how anyone travels without an Ember. Can breakfast be hot too?
Sounds like aristocratic decadence to , Michael said. Probably best if- He broke off to dodge a thrown sock. Ill take a look.
He walked up to where the n were quartered, casting his sight about until he found a few bleary-eyed soldiers huddled in their houses kitchen. Michael walked inside. He stepped gingerly over a few sprawled bodies on the floor - n who clearly felt their liquor - and made his way to the kitchen.
The soldiers blinked, then straightened as he entered; one even managed a salute. Morning, milord, he slurred.
Michael briefly contemplated telling the man not to call him that; he felt the vague, ominous pressure of Zabalas disapproval. Morning, Michael sighed instead. You have any extra in the pot?
Plenty, milord, the man said. But itll be a bit, its all groats. Theyre not quite soft yet. He rattled a colorful, half-full tin of grain; as he set it back down on the kitchens table Michael saw that the side had been decorated with an image of the Caller in the Safid style, painted on with a careful hand. The face, however, was bare tal where the paint had been scratched away.
A chill that had nothing to do with the weather crept into Michaels gut. He reached to pick up the tin, feeling the heft of it - the weight of the food within. Thomas gave you this? he asked.
And more besides, the man confird, stepping back so that Michael could see a small pile of goods - more grain, dry crackers, salted at, a few rinds of hard cheese. The refugees will have taken all they can, Zabala had said.
His sight drifted outwards almost by instinct, checking over the rooms of the house. Marks lay on the floor where furniture had stood, clean spots on the pantry shelves where food had once lain. He let it go out farther, combing through the other houses, the bare ones where the Safid had lived and the full, warm Daressan ones.
A few of the Safid houses had carts outside, idle and unused.
Milord? the soldier asked; Michael ignored him. His sight combed through the town, finding the absences. The things left behind. The broken doors on the empty houses, the burnt church, the defaced paintings there-
He shook his head, frustrated. There were threads here, pieces of a story that didnt make sense. He needed to see more of it, all of it at once. His vision flew high, high enough to view the whole town from a birds eye - but the detail muddled together, lost in the morning mist.
Michael grimaced and tried another tack, rembering another misty morning weeks ago as they fled north. He had changed his sight, then, pushed it beyond an imitation of his own eyesight. The mory was still there, and the mory of Sibyls borrowed sight in the garden.
He pushed, as before, but this ti a dozen flas flared within his chest; his sight stretched out until he saw all around him - a disorienting view of the kitchen, and the increasingly-concerned soldiers within.
But it still wasnt enough. The flas burned brighter as he grasped at the mory of Sibyls sight, of knowing everything rather than simply seeing it. He strained against that mory - and fell short.
In the end, he was not Sibyl. His sight warped and fractured, though, bending to show him a thousand thousand views from every corner of the village. He saw the commons, the tavern, the bare and beaten dirt of the roads. The houses, from shingle to floorboard - to doorless cellars below, to fresh-turned dirt, to bones and rotting flesh-
Michael heaved, his head spinning with nausea and disgust. He heard the soldiers shouting as though from a distance. His sight spun in a horrific kaleidescope, showing a dizzying wheel of sky and ground and wood and bone, never ceasing even as he pulled to wrest it back into sothing more familiar, more controlled.
Then he did, the flas asserting themselves once more, and the world settled back into its unpleasant order. Michael was on the floor, his lips wet with bile. The soldiers in the kitchen watched him uncertainly, not daring to draw too close to an insensible potens.
Im fine, Michael muttered, pulling himself upright; he rose shakily to his feet. Im - where is Thomas?
The headman, milord? One of the soldiers pointed away. By the tavern, last I saw, helping to tidy up from last night.
Thanks. Michael wiped his mouth, then grabbed the tin of grain. Stay here.
The cold weight of the grain shifted within the tin as he walked; Michael barely felt it. He stalked outside towards the tavern. The village headman waved as he approached, leaving his broom to the side - then let his arm drop as he saw the set of Michaels shoulders, his expression growing closed.
Problem, milord? Thomas asked.
Michael tossed him the tin of grain. The headman caught it, his eyes registering the details on the outside. There was a pulse of recognition from him, then sothing milder that might have been distaste; his face remained inscrutable. Sothing amiss with the grain?
Whered it co from? Michael asked.
Thomas blinked slowly. From the village, milord - from Rouissat. The innkeep had co out to stand behind him, looking curiously. More villagers and soldiers were watching from doorways and windows, pausing in their chance transits of the common.
From the Safid who were here? Michael saw a change co over Thomass face at last, his brows drawing together at the question.
So of it, aye, Thomas said. But it was only our due after so long under their heel. Every scrap of grain, of timber, of stone that cos from this village is ours by right.
Michael took a step forward. Strange that the Safid didnt want it for their travels, he said.
The headman took a step back from his advance; his eyes flicked to the side, where his rifle was leaning against the stone wall of the tavern. They got their due as well, he said.
Sotis there was ambiguity in what Michael felt from others. Fear was stark and unmistakable, while more nebulous emotions often felt like a tune he didnt quite recognize. The satisfaction that rolled in waves from Thomas, though - Michael could not mistake it for anything but what it was.
Their due, he repeated, taking another step closer. I saw the bodies, you bastard.
There was a mont of surprise, fading quickly to flinty anger. A man has the right to defend his ho.
Defense, was it? Michael asked. Lets see. He sprang forward and grabbed Thomass arm before the headman could do more than squawk in surprise; Stanza flooded outward and touched upon the tangled paths of the mans life.
There was a child of little note, save that his father was the villages headman. His family was neither poor nor prosperous, and if there was an air of worry about the encroaching war it was far too much for a young child to understand.
But then so soldiers left and other soldiers ca - foreign soldiers, with veils upon their hats and odd mannerisms. The childs father was still headman, though, and for a while things continued as they had before.
Then ca the builders, who chopped down the towns old orchard and raised a church in its place. The townspeople protested, threatened the builders. More soldiers ca, that night, and the boy never saw his father again. There was a new headman who lived in the church, and the boy was nobody but a widows son.
The boy beca a man, and the man watched the village grow. New houses went up, and new families moved in. They were polite, kind even - but never friendly to those who didnt attend the new church. Prosperity lived behind those doors, for there were no Safid jobs for nonbelievers, no new allotnts of land or contracts at the market.
So of the villagers began to attend; the mans aging mother forbid him to go. His father did not die, she said, for her son to sing the invaders praises.
The man grew older. The invaders had families and warm hearths while he huddled alone in his fathers house. The tavern was a refuge, one of the few places left to the old guard of Daressans in town. There they would sit and drink, commiserating. Few Safid ever wandered in, and fewer still after the tavern developed a reputation for being unfriendly to churchgoers. There were fights - once, Thomas was brought up on charges for breaking a mans nose. He grit his teeth and paid the fine to the church coffers, hating every coin that slipped through his fingers.
Ti passed, and the winds changed. This ti it was the Safid who were nervous, their eyes looking to the horizon for the stomp of soldiers boots. So left right away, others with the exodus of the towns small garrison. There were a few who stayed behind, though, hoping for the best. The headman in the church who would not leave it behind, the miller who reasoned that all n needed grain, the carpenter and his painter wife, who didnt want to risk the road with their newborn daughter.
The church burned on the first night after the garrison left, with the headman still inside. The miller went down with a shovel to the head, the carpenter barred his door - but that was no obstacle. The man kicked the door open with five decades of pent-up rage, storming into the house and seeing all that had been denied to him. The cozy furniture, the plentiful food, the beautiful wife turning to protect her baby, the baby that wouldnt stop its crying-
Michael released his grip, his stomach twisting; Thomas sprang backward. He grabbed his rifle and leveled it at Michael, breathing hard.
What was that? he yelled. What did you do?
I wanted to see what defense looked like, Michael said. He straightened up, looking around at the small crowd that had ford. Mixed soldiers and villagers alike were watching the two n, scattering quickly out of the way as Thomas raised his weapon. Sobriquet stood in the back next to Unai and Charles, watching but not concerned.
Thomas bared his teeth. What does that an? he hissed. What do you know about any of this, Ardan?
I know you burned the old headman in the church, Michael said. That you killed the miller, the carpenter with his wife. He took a step forward, staring down the rifles barrel.
His infant daughter, Michael whispered. He had been too slow to avoid all of that mory, and a fragnt of sound and color still festered in his mind. What defense was that?
Thomass face had gone pale as Michael spoke, but he kept his weapon high. They were Safid, he hissed. They ca here to steal, to take what was rightfully ours. They took everything from . It was mine to take back.
The conviction radiated from him, pure and unshakable, backed by a simring rage - no.
That was Michaels own. He hadnt felt the anger creeping up on him amid the shock of seeing Thomass murders through the mans own eyes. His indignant manner, though, his victimhood and lies - there was a disgusting familiarity to them, an echo of the impenetrable self-justification that had pervaded his fathers every oily word.
The change in Michaels eyes must have been evident; Thomas gripped his gun tight. A golden line of light lanced from the barrel towards Michaels chest. He moved a hand as thunder split the morning, its echoes fading under the shouts and frantic retreat of those standing nearby.
When the smoke cleared, Michael had not moved; he opened his hand and let the bullet drop to the ground. Thomas gawked at it for a mont, but that was all Michael allowed him. A brisk stride closed the distance. He plucked the rifle from the headmans hands and bent it over his knee, backing the man against the stone wall of the tavern.
There was proper fear from Thomas, now, but only fear of consequences. Consequences from yet another intruding foreigner who wanted to ruin his life. Michael saw it all clearly, now that he recognized the pattern.
Zabala had been correct again - there was only pity and contempt for such n.
Michael grabbed Thomass head with one hand, leaning in close until their faces were nearly touching.
You murdered a child, you self-obsessed bastard, Michael rasped. You murdered a child. Thomas gasped as Michaels soul flooded into him - not Stanza, this ti. He seized the countless facades that the man had thrown up around an ugly truth. Excuses, justifications, self-deception-
Michael tore them away.
And left him with it.
He turned to face the crowd that had gathered; those who had not been drawn by the shouting had certainly heard the gunshot. Michael felt shock, anger - and fear, of course. So of his soldiers wore wary expressions, others looked downright mutinous. Michael found that he didnt much care.
If anyone has sothing to say, say it. Michael spread his arms. Go ahead.
The innkeep took a step forward, looking down at Thomass huddled form. What did you do to him?
I let him see who he was, Michael said. There was a strangled, animal sob from the man behind him; the innkeep scowled and rushed over.
The rest were silent. Michael nodded. Pack up, he said. Were leaving.
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