Chapter 18: Salora’s Shadow Stirs
Awake, Aware
"You look like death warmed over, my love," her voice was far fuller than it had any right to be after almost three suns unconscious, "when was the last time you slept?"
Jasmin was the picture of comfort. If I hadn't been waiting so long, I might have believed she was okay immediately.
"Hard to say, really," I confessed. "I know I've been waking up, so I've probably been sleeping. Though I did struggle to sleep when Vaelis showed back up." She raised a brow. "Don't worry. I didn't almost die this time. Though you did."
She sat bolt upright. "Tell me you did not let that lunatic near my body." Desperately inspecting herself, she finally noticed what I was waiting to tell her. "Roisin. Please tell me I'm imagining that my hair is silver. I'm not even thirty years old."
I gave her a weak smile. "Would you prefer me to lie to you or get you a mirror?" Her glare said enough. "It changed when I healed you. Turns out, cold-flame can be used to heal people. And for whatever reason, it didn't hurt you."
"We'll put a pin in that. Get me a mirror."
Moving across the room to get her a hand mirror, I tried for reassurance. "You do look beautiful like this. Just keep that in mind."
Jasmin stared at her reflection for a long time, shifting her head left and right as she moved the mirror into various positions. "How does one sleep for two full suns and look like she put on ten pounds?" She eyed me, clearly looking for confirmation. When I didn't answer, she returned to the inspection. "I don't hate it, but I have to admit it's not what I was expecting to see when I woke."
"I'm not sure it can be undone, so you'll need to get used to it." She pouted at me. "Also, how'd you know it's been two full suns?"
"How? I'm starving. Feed me, Lady Thornleaf, or I shall revolt!"
I had to cook breakfast three times before she was satisfied. I'd never seen anyone eat so much in one sitting, but as she said: she was starving.
When Jasmin, in her haste to stop being treated as an invalid, removed herself from the bed and began dressing herself, I nearly forced her back into it. Only nearly. She did overpower me at the last, teasing that no matter how far I'd come she was still stronger.
I wasn't so certain.
Throughout the morning, I waited on her relentlessly, disallowing anything too strenuous. When I wasn't actively getting in the way of her doing too much, I was watching with the resilience of a predator, unwilling to miss any sign that she was overdoing it.
"Stop staring, dearest," she said after a while. "You have far more important matters to attend. Like lunch. Or combat practise. Or learning to properly read."
"I'm not staring. And even if I were, you did the same thing every time I —" the words choked themselves in my throat. "The point is that this is fair play."
"No." It wasn't an argument. Her word was equal parts denial, command, and final.
"Very well," I certainly couldn't blame her. "What are your plans?"
"I need to see Aidan about another book. On the ecology of carnivorous predators." There was something behind her eyes. Worry? Determination? It was hard to say. "I have – had – a copy in the first district. There's a chance I may need to leave Blue Stone."
She'd noticed the larabrins' deadly focus on her. I knew she would, but that didn't take away my hope she wouldn't feel responsible. And she clearly felt responsible for putting me in danger.
"We may need to leave. If you go, I do as well."
"Where are we going?" Vanara's voice was that same wobbly lost and wild character as always. I still didn't know how she managed to show up so stealthily.
Jasmin turned her gaze on the unstable goddess-vessel. "Well, I might be leaving for the tenth district to keep Blue Stone from another terrible attack. But that depends what I find in further research."
"But if Salora goes, then Va should follow." Their words were resolute, but I saw their legs shaking. "And Salora cannot leave without Afina. That is not the way."
"If Va comes with me," Jasmin's soft tone told me she was considering it, "then we're travelling back to Powell's Square. We have to find the Crucible and hopefully Nara's Riddle. But Afina is staying here."
"Then so is Salora," I said gently. "Where you go, I go. If that larabrin attack told me anything, it's that even you can be overpowered, but together, we can look out for each other. Unless you'd prefer to have been crushed and eaten?"
"But I can't protect you from everything," tears threatened to fall from Jasmin's eyes, amplifying the amber in them. "At least if it's just me, you'll be safe."
"For how long, Jasmin? Until you collapse and fall off the highest phobward cliff? Until the next unwinnable fight? The next ambush? The next time you forget to look out for yourself? I won't have it!
"And if you choose to go, knowing the dangers out there, then I'm coming along, even if I have to follow you from just outside your view. Even if I have to chain myself to you. Even if I have to throw myself off that cliff to break your fall.
"Where you go, princess, so do I. Who knows if or when the poison in your arms will suddenly start advancing again and kill you? I will not let you die before me again." That was it. The words were out.
She sat, staring, for several silent seconds. "What do you mean? Poison? Again? Roisin, tell me everything you know."
"It's not a curse. It's poison. You should have died when it happened. I didn't know how or if I should tell you. Because I didn't know what it meant."
"A gift, for surviving." Jasmin's hand was at the scars across her collar. The tears that had been threatening began to fall, streaming like rivers to the floor.
"Do you know who Indra from the poem was, Jasmin?" Indra's Whisper. Winter's lady love. Her garden in Thornwood Hallow.
She was sobbing, barely getting her words out. "I don't. I don't know anything."
"Salora, the silver-haired goddess," Her tear-soaked eyes met mine, wider than I'd ever seen them. "The silverthorn goddess. Whose expert hands tend the deadly flower. Whose eyes watch over time and space. Whose misfortune saved her from destruction."
I tore my eyes from hers. It was one thing to know what I had known. It was another entirely to be there as Jasmin realised the truth. To understand just why I couldn't let her leave to 'protect' me.
"Who you saw die, in your visions," she said at last, her whole body shivering. "Who looks like —"
Our eyes met again, my silver against her gold. "Yes. And I can't let you go. You're mine, and I will do whatever I can to keep that from happening. I will burn the world down for you if it means you're safe."
"My Thorn."
"Or your Leaf. Whatever you need. Whenever you need."
She reached her hand out and took mine. "Fine. But you better not die. I like you too much. And if you go, who will feed me?"
It was all I could do not to fall to the floor laughing. Of course that's what she would say. There was only one thing she could have said.
My laughter continued for several seconds before she cut me off. "No. Really. I'm hungry from all this arguing. Go make lunch."
"As you wish, my lady."
Suns, Study, Silence
The rest of that sun was spent in a tense dance of not saying what we both knew. I fed her, and she began her planning. What to do if she was wrong. What we would do when she was right. When night fell, she held me just as she always had, the scent of Queen's Heart almost burning my nose, the warmth of her arms leaving me frozen, her lullaby rough as gravel.
The next sun was sweat and swords with Aster as Jasmin pored through the book Aidan found for her. Not the one she wanted, but in his words 'the one you needed, Mrs. Thornleaf'. Jasmin didn't protest either the claim or Aidan's use of my family name instead of the one she'd taken for our journey.
When Aster gave me a moment's rest, I joined Jasmin in the dining hall and sat in silence for several minutes.
"Any way I can help?" I offered, knowing she'd not accept.
Jasmin started to brush me off, but instead she looked up, "I think I'll be fine, my love." She twisted up her face. "Besides, you look like hells and you smell like slime pigeon droppings."
"Fair," I forced a smile. "Don't work too hard, okay?"
"I'll take a break as soon as this nonsense about snow-iris starts making sense."
My face must have made my interest clear.
"Alright," she turned the book toward me. "Here it says, 'some dire beasts are attracted, like their prey, to certain botanicals' – that means flowers." I stuck out my tongue, drawing a light giggle. "Kidding. Anyway. 'Consider, for example, the snow-iris and the affinity of mountain landaax to it. It is not uncommon for the beasts to trample whole villages where the flowers bloom'.
"Now what I don't get is why would a landaax be interested in snow-iris?" When I just shrugged, she continued. "And for that matter, what in the hells is a snow-iris? Or a landaax?"
"And this, dear, is why we have Aidan. Ask him for more information. I'm sure he'll have it."
Jasmin insisted I take a break from 'being Lady Thornleaf' the next sun, and we took some time around the town. There was a tension in everyone we saw. I couldn't tell if they were shaken from the attack or if they suspected like we did that something was wrong.
We stepped down to the piers and found Ingrid cleaning her fish counter after the morning rush.
"Hello loves," her cheer was strained. "What brings the Lady and Mrs. Thornleaf this way in the heat of the sun?"
"Just Afina and Salora, Ingrid," I corrected, "even in public. Please."
Jasmin lightly elbowed me. "And to answer your question, I needed to mull something over, and thought a lap around town would clear my head. That we get to see our local guard captain's favourite fishmonger is a bonus."
Ingrid blushed at Jasmin's words. "Well, I don't know about all that, Salora. But if it's a clear head you need, the salt sea air is a treat."
Silence fell as we realised there wasn't much more to say.
After several wordless seconds, Ingrid added, "Well you two probably have more air to breathe. If you see Aster, do have her stop by." Her blush returned as she said it.
"That was odd," Jasmin said as we walked away.
"You mean how she called you Mrs. Thornleaf? I noticed that too with Aidan."
She gripped my hand tightly and jerked me around to look at her. "No. Ingrid is the most talkative person I know," she shot me a grin, "except maybe you. And yet she had nothing to say."
"Are you worried people are staring?"
"People are staring, Roisin."
The rest of Jasmin's studying that sun was accompanied by mutters of 'argent rose', 'gilded aster', and similar names I'd never heard. As night fell, Aidan delivered several more books, all but one of which were requested.
As I prepared lunch the following sun, Jasmin joined me in the kitchen, talking through various theories she was considering.
"What if each of these flowers is related to the goddesses."
I nodded lightly, humming a halfhearted assent as I finished chopping the various fruits and vegetables that would be going into the meal.
"Like the 'argent rose' is almost certainly silverthorn. And the 'tenebrous bush daisy' is likely the voidstem that Vaelis mentioned."
Checking the pan for heat, I idly mumbled agreement and slid the aromatics into it.
"And if that's the case, maybe this thing, the 'landaax' is an old name for larabrins. Mountain, plains, desert, and so on. Different varieties of the same beast."
"You would know better than me, darling." I stirred the aromatics, watching them steam. Jasmin wasn't looking for my input, and I knew it. She wanted a body to bounce thoughts off of.
I didn't get more out of her. She left the room and returned to her books.
She hardly touched lunch.
The next sun, Aster sent for us to join her at the main city gate. She'd found something that worried her. When we arrived, she didn't speak until we were in her office with the door closed and locked.
"Cousin, Jasmin," I watched Jasmin almost leap at hearing her name from someone other than me. "The informant who warned us about the out-of-season herd change just came back with a full report."
She produced a map of the region with several arrows and circles drawn all over it. One thing was clear: despite moving chaotically, the arrows were slowly settling into Blue Stone.
"The larabrins have stopped migrating. Something has their attention, and they are sniffing it out." Jasmin's grip tightened on mine as Aster spoke. "Unless I'm wrong, we've got about two sevensuns before they realise their target is here."
"You mean me, don't you," Jasmin was resolute, her stable voice not letting any worry through. "Because during the last attack, they didn't want anyone or anything else. They wanted me."
Aster stood and placed a hand on Jasmin's shoulder. "I only wish I understood why."
"Why' doesn't matter. We'll be leaving before they arrive."
That night, Jasmin climbed out of bed, thinking I didn't notice. I followed her to the foyer where she was clumsily handling the rapier I'd seen her wield with deadly precision before. She didn't seem to notice me, as she continued on with her drills.
In frustration, she threw the weapon across the room where it clattered next to my training sabre and leathers. Jasmin's silverthorn scent somehow clung to the blade despite her near-religious attempts to clean it, a fact I couldn't miss as the room's air brought the blended aroma of her blade oil and the flower to my nose.
I was in bed before she returned, but instead of joining me, I heard her take something else before kissing me on the forehead.
The silverthorn blade was gone when she left the room.
A warm sun greeted me in a lonely bed as I awoke. My weapon was back in its place, but Jasmin was not. I dressed and began my search for her. It didn't take long.
Jasmin was standing outside by the table where we'd eaten breakfast our first morning in Blue Stone. I stood by the window and watched as she moved about the not-quite-a-garden that stood between the house and the street.
She produced a cold-flame. It was emerald green and shone barely visible in the early morning sun. I watched her bend to the ground and whisper something as she pushed the flame out from herself. A silverthorn vine grew where her hand rested, every thorn somehow missing her fingers.
"You remember me, don't you," I saw her lips form the words. I could almost hear Salora's impossible voice filling the entire space of the manor's foyer as she spoke them.
"And you're remembering how to tend your garden, my lady," the house's walls kept my words from reaching Jasmin, but I was sure Salora heard.
I was back in the bedroom when she returned, a fresh silverthorn in her left hand. We didn't speak as she put it into the ugly vase that used to be Delia's.
"Jasmin," I said finally when she sat and took my hand.
"Roisin," her voice told me she hadn't slept.
"We have to leave Blue Stone," it wasn't a question but a clean statement of fact. "When are we going?"
"A few suns. I found my answers, and it's worse than I thought."
"I assumed so."
"You're not going to ask?"
"We're going to Violet's Repose. The first district. Because your answers are all there. Except the two most important ones, which you've already answered. Top of that list: they are attracted to your scent."
Her silence was admission enough.
"You know I don't have all the answers, right," I finally said when she didn't respond, "like why are they attracted to your scent? And why isn't the silverthorn poison killing you? And what are we going to have for breakfast?"
She finally laughed. "You are a mess. I need to go to bed. You can feed me when lunch arrives and not a moment sooner."
Jasmin pushed me out of the bed and lay down, spreading out to cover the whole surface.
"This is mine for the next three hours. Go make yourself useful and bathe. I miss 'apologising' about getting buried in research, and I've noticed you stopped disrupting me after the attack. If we don't deal with that, I'm going to burst."
Our mood shifted after she slept, ate, and 'apologised'. Something about making a decision seemed to have that effect on her. The rest of the sun was spent preparing, and we went to bed with renewed spirits. Never mind that neither one of us was prepared to address the new flower at our bedside or the growing sense that nothing was okay.
With our course resolved, and 'a few suns' before we left, her sweet silverthorn scent and gentle embrace left me at peace as her breathy lullaby softly delivered me to dreams.