“Was it worth the life of Kuista Blodestone? Myrar Yaspir, was it worth the death of a child?”
If cold rock could turn its head, if rock could turn the fissures of its eyes upon a living man, this rock was Myrar Yaspir.
“What did you say?”
“My wife is hunting for you.”
Myrar Yaspir became flesh. Flinched. Began to shudder. Shursta did not loose him from his gaze.
“I give you three days, Domo Yaspir. Turn yourself in to the Astrion Council. Confess to the murder of Kuista Blodestone. If you do not speak by the third day, I will tell my wife what I know. And she will find you. Though you flee from coast to bay and back again, she will find you. And she will eat your heart by moonlight.”
Glass shattered. A stool toppled. Myrar Yaspir fled the Thirsty Seagull, fast as his legs could carry him.
Shursta closed his eyes.
The next three days were the happiest days of Shursta’s life, and he drank them in. It was as if he, alone of all men, had been given to know the exact hour of his death. He filled the hours between himself and death with sunlight.
For the first day, Sharrar watched him as the sister of a dying man watches her brother. But his smiles and his teasing—“Leave off, Nugget, or I’ll teach Laric where you’re ticklish!”—and the deep brilliance of peace in his eyes must have eased her, for on the second day, her spirits soared, and she was back to playing tricks on her mesh-brothers, and kissing Laric Spectrox around every corner and under every tree, and reciting stories, and singing songs to the children of the house.
Hyrryai, who still prowled Droon every night, spent her days close to home. She invited Shursta to walk with her, along paths she knew blindfolded. He asked her to teach him about spinning fire, and she said, “Let’s start with juggling, maybe,” and taught him patterns with handfuls of fallen fruit.
Suppers with the Blodestones were loud and raucous. Every night turned into a competition. Some Shursta won (ring-tossing out in the courtyard), and some he lost (matching drinks with Lochlin, now known to all, thanks to Sharrar, as Lunkhead), but he laughed more than he ever had in his life, and when he laughed, he felt Hyrryai watching him, and knew she smiled.
On the evening of the third day, he evaded his brothers’ invitation to play hoopball. Sharrar immediately volunteered, so long as she and Laric could count as one player. She would piggyback upon his shoulders, and he would be her legs. Plankin, Orssi, and Dumwei were still vehemently arguing against this when Shursta approached his mesh-mate and set a purple hyacinth into her hands.
“Will you walk with me, wife?”
Her rich, rare skin flushed with the heat of roses. She took the hand he offered.
“I will, husband.”
They strolled out into the scented night, oblivious to the hoots and calls of their kin. Their sandals made soft noises on the pavement. For many minutes, neither spoke. Hyrryai tucked the hyacinth into her hair.
An aimless by and by had passed when they came to a small park. Just a patch of grass, a bench, a fountain. As they had when they met, they sat on the ground with their backs to the bench. Hyrryai, for once, slumped silkily, neglecting to jolt upright every few minutes. When Shursta sank down to rest his head in her lap, her hand went to his hair. She stroked it from his face, traced designs on his forehead. He did not care that he forgot to breathe. He might never breathe again and die a happy man.
The moon was high, waxing gibbous. To Shursta’s eyes, Hyrryai seemed chased in silver. He reached to catch the fingers tangled in his hair. He kissed her fingertips. Sat up to face her. Her smile was silver when she looked at him.
“The name of your sister’s murderer is Myrar Yaspir,” he said in a low voice. “I met him in a tavern at the edge of Droon. He had three days’ grace to confess his crime to the Astrion Council. ‘Let them have him,’ I thought, ‘they who made him.’ But when I spoke to your grandmother before dinner, she said no one had yet come forward. I believe he decided to run. I am sorry.”
The pulse in her throat beat an inaudible but profound tattoo through the night air.
To an unconcerned eye, nothing of Hyrryai would have seemed changed. Still she was silver in the moonlight. Still the purple flower glimmered against her wing-black hair. Only her breath was transformed. Inhalation and exhalation exactly matched. Perfect and total control. The pale light playing on her mouth did not curve gently upward. Her eyes stared straight ahead, unblinking sinkholes. The gleam in them was not of moonlight.
“You have known this for three days.”
Shursta did not respond.
“You talked to him. You warned him.”
Again, he said nothing. She answered anyway.
“He cannot run far enough.”
“Hyrryai.”
“You—do—not—speak—to—me.”
“Hyrryai—”
“No!”
Her hand flashed out, much as Myrar Yaspir’s had. She took nothing from him but flesh. Fingernails raked his face. Shursta did not, at first, suffer any sting. What he did feel, way down at the bottom of his chest, was a deep snap as she broke the strand of pearl and teeth and stone she wore around her throat. Pieces of moonlight scattered. Fleet and silver as they, Hyrryai Blodestone bounded into the radiant darkness.
One by one—by glint, by ridge, by razor edge—Shursta picked up pieces from the tufted grass. What he could salvage, he placed in the pouch he had prepared. His rucksack he retrieved from the hollow of a tree where he had hidden it the night before. The night was young, but the road to Sif was long.
Despite having begged her in his goodbye letter to go on and live her life in joy, with Laric Spectrox and his dream of a distant horizon, far from a brother who could only bring her shame and sorrow, Sharrar came home to Sif. And when she did, she did not come alone.
She brought her new husband. She brought a ragged band of orphans, grayheads, widows, widowers. Joining her too were past-primers like Adularia Yaspir, face lined and eyes haunted. Even Oron Onyssix had joined them, itching for spaces ungoverned by crones, a place where he might breathe freely.
Sharrar also brought a boat.
It was a very large boat. Or rather, the frame of one. It was the biggest boat skeleton Shursta had ever seen. They wheeled it on slats all the way along the sea road from the outskirts of Droon where Laric had been building it. Shursta, who had thought he might never do so again, laughed.
“What is this, Nugget? Who are all these people?”
But he thought he knew.
“These,” she told him, “are all our new kin. And this”—with a grand gesture to the unfinished monstrosity listing on its makeshift wagon—“is The Grimgramal—the ship that sails the world!”
Shursta scrutinized it and said at last, “It doesn’t look like much, your ship that sails the world.”
Sharrar stuck her tongue out at him. “We have to finish it first, brother mine!”
“Ah.”
“Everyone’s helping. You’ll help, too.”
Shursta stared at all the people milling about his property, pitching tents, lining up for the outhouse, exploring the dock, testing the sturdiness of his small fishing boat. “Will I?” he asked. “How?”
Laric came over to clap him on the shoulder. “However you can, my mesh-brother. Mend nets. Hem sails. Boil tar. Old man Alexo Alban is carving us a masthead. He says it’s a gift from all the Halls of Ages on the Last Isle to Sharrar.” Taking his mesh-mate’s hand, he indicated the dispersed crowd. “She’s the one who called them. She’s been speaking the name Grimgramal to anyone who’ll stand still to listen. And you know Sharrar—when she talks, no one can help but listen. Some sympathizers—a very few, like Alexo Alban, started demanding passage in exchange for labor. Though”—his left shoulder lifted in a gesture eloquent of resignation—“most of the grayheads say they’ll safe stay on dry land to see us off. Someone, they claim, must be left behind to tell the tale. And see?”