Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(17)

After the effort of killing the bandits and taking a new manifest, I assumed Ina would have to stop in the city of Valenko to rest and gather her strength, but not once did I see any sign of her—no white wings overhead, no shed scales or scorch marks anywhere alongside the road. Ina was far too clever to make herself obvious. My heart grew heavier each day that passed. So did the weight of all the death for which I was responsible. Even if I caught up to Ina and confessed the truth to stop her from doing any more damage, it still wouldn’t make amends for the lives already lost.

Every evening I left the road and found a secluded place to say my prayers at sundown: a copse of spindly pine trees that shivered and swayed in the wind; a nook near a waterfall that surged with muddy snowmelt, so loud it drowned my words; an abandoned farmhouse, the remains of the stone structure covered in climbing vines.

I made my offerings to the gods by chanting vespers. With my eyes closed, I made monophonic songs of the most sorrowful melodies given to me by all that surrounded me on those lonely nights—the wind rushing through the trees, the lilt of water over rocks, the distant calls of night birds waking. The music allowed me to sink into my Sight, widening its reach, and I used it to search for any sign of Ina. All I sensed was a soft tug to the north, and when I opened my eyes, it was only ever to the same solitude and grief.

I crossed beneath the stone arch into the city of Valenko at midday almost half a moon after my departure from the mountain, feeling like a wild animal caged for the first time. Guardsmen stood sentry on either side of the road, wearing brown jerkins bound with wide triple-buckled belts of red leather. They had their weapons sheathed and bored expressions on their faces, but passing by them still made my skin crawl. I didn’t like that violence might be required to keep order in this place.

As I wandered deeper into it, the city tore away the last threads of my connection to home. I had never seen so many people crowded so close together. Their skin ranged in tone from milky pale to dark brown and every shade in between. They lived stacked atop one another in stone buildings and shouted to their friends and neighbors across the cobbled streets. None of their business was quiet. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get to where they were going, knocking me out of the way if I didn’t keep up speed. The warring smells of roasting meat, baking bread, and the dirty sludge trickling through the gutter alongside the road assaulted my nose. Every touch and sound felt like flames on my raw nerves.

I had no idea where to begin searching for Ina. I had never dreamed Valenko could be this big. In spite of Miriel’s warnings to stay away from mortals in case they noticed I was something else, I felt more invisible than ever now that I was among them. I ducked down a narrow alley, trying to find a quieter street, only to be buffeted by the churning wings of an entire murder of manifested crows that burst out of nowhere. Every space in the city seemed to belong to someone or something, and territory was not something to be shared. I gave in to the flow of the crowd until the street opened up into a cobbled square. A communal fountain adorned the center, water spouting from the mouths of stone animals all along its length. I swallowed, my throat dry.

I wound my way through the crowd, some human, some animal, and a few mortals traveling stealthily in manifest form. Many of them were hungry, cold, or otherwise suffering, lean from a hard winter. The pressure of their woes made me feel as though I could barely breathe. Amalska had been so peaceful and the people’s lives so easy by comparison—at least until the winter fever. Why wasn’t it like that here? Had the king refused to help these people, too?

My hands shook as I hastily scrubbed off the dirt before cupping them to drink from the horse-shaped spout above me. After slaking my thirst, I traced the symbol of the water god beneath the surface of the fountain, hoping they might share some news of home, but I had traveled too far for the city aqueduct to have a direct connection to the lakes or streams of my mountain. Before I could open myself to the Sight to reach farther, a boy shoved me aside so that his pony could drink.

I fled from the square, nerves jangling even after the crowds grew thinner in the more residential part of town I’d entered. I needed to find somewhere quiet to think. Eager to escape the crush of people, I followed my Sight to a silent oasis amidst the bustle of the town. I stepped through a stone archway into what appeared to be a small park. Wooden buildings towered on three sides, faded shutters tightly closed.

A large tree with barren branches stood at the center of the area. I slumped beneath it and let my heart rate slow, grateful for the silence, then puzzled by it. Polished stone plaques lay on the ground all around me, and it dawned on me that it was not a park, but a place of rest for the dead. Miriel had mentioned that in cities sometimes the deceased were not given to fire, especially war heroes or the wealthy—those whom the crown chose to commemorate or who could pay for the privilege of being remembered. Amalskans scoffed at such ideas and told superstitious stories of the dead rising from their graves to pull bad children under the earth. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but after the chaos of the streets, the graveyard was a welcome haven. These people had been laid to rest in peace, unlike those who haunted me.

I closed my eyes and thought of home, of summer, of Ina. Of all the beauty in my world that I might never know again. The Sight came to me softly, bathing the graveyard in a gentle glow. There wasn’t much to see in this peaceful place, just the barest hint of grass preparing to unfurl from beneath the earth.