Lazlo had a sense of the colliding emotions on both sides of this meeting, but he knew that his understanding could barely scratch the surface.
He had flown on ahead, talked to Sarai and the others, gotten their agreement to bring the visitors. Now they were here. They dismounted. The garden seemed like a magical menagerie, with the gryphon, winged horse, and dragon joining Rasalas. Everyone on both sides was pale and wary. Lazlo introduced them, hoping to act as a bridge between them. He wondered if it was possible that all their jagged edges might fit together like puzzle pieces.
Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but wasn’t that the best kind?
He found himself talking too much, drawing the introductions out, because everyone was so silent.
Eril-Fane had meant to speak first. He had words all lined up in his head, but the sight of Sarai sent them scattering. In color and figure she was so like her mother. At first it was all he could see, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. But her features, so similar to Isagol’s, were wholly recast by what was in her hearts: compassion, mercy, love. These changed everything. He had been braced for her rightful anger and blame, but in her face he saw only her hesitant hope.
There was a signal beacon on the Cusp and another atop the garrison in Weep. When one flared alight, the other was lit in immediate response. That was what it was like in Eril-Fane’s chest when he saw Sarai’s hope. His own flared in answer. It hurt. It swelled inside him. It was the same species of hope as hers: fragile, and sullied by shame and fear.
Their shames were different, but their fear was the same: of seeing rejection in the other’s eyes.
Instead, each saw hope, a mirror of their own, and brightened like new-polished glavestones that had been muted under dust. Eril-Fane groped for words, but only one came to him:
“Daughter,” he said.
The word filled a space in Sarai’s chest that had always been empty. She wondered if he had a space like that, too. “Father,” she answered, and he did have a space, but it wasn’t empty. It had long been filled with small bones and self-loathing. Now the word dissolved them and took their place, and it was so much lighter than what had been there before that Eril-Fane felt as though he could stand up straight for the first time in years.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. The words scraped up from some pit within him, and shreds of his soul seemed to cling to them like flesh to the barbs of a scourge.
“I know,” said Sarai. “I’m sorry, too.”
He winced and shook his head. He couldn’t bear for her to apologize to him. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“That’s not true. I’ve haunted you. I’ve given you nightmares.”
“I deserved nightmares. I don’t expect forgiveness, Thakra knows. I just want you to know how sorry I am. I don’t…” He looked down at his big, scarred hands. “I don’t know how I could ever do such a thing.”
But Sarai understood: A person could be driven mad by hate. It was a force as destructive as any Mesarthim gift, and harder to end than a god. The gods had been dead for fifteen years, after all, but their hate had lingered, and ruled in their stead.
And yet…these three were standing here and Sarai saw no hate in them. What made it possible? Lazlo?
He was at her side, and Sarai felt that as long as he was there, she could do anything: See the world, make a home, help Minya. Help Minya, so that she could stand here, too, with hope in the place of her hate. Why not? Right now, with her father in front of her and Lazlo beside her, Sarai felt as though anything was possible. “Can we leave the past behind us?” she asked.
Could they? The question was everything.
“That’s an excellent place for the past,” said Suheyla. “If you don’t leave it there, it clutters everything up and you just keep tripping over it.” Holding her granddaughter’s gaze, she smiled, and Sarai smiled back.
And the last link in Eril-Fane’s mind between Isagol and Sarai was broken. Yes, Sarai looked a lot like her mother. But Isagol’s smiles had been taunting twists that never reached her eyes. Sarai’s was radiance and sweetness, and there was something in it….He himself saw only light, but Suheyla and Azareen saw an echo of him, of the way he used to smile before Isagol broke him.
Suheyla reached for Azareen’s hand, and they clung to each other and to the memory, and to the hope that they would yet see that smile resurrected on his face.
There was so much emotion rushing under the skin of the moment—not like blood, but spirit, lighter and clearer, Lazlo thought. He was elated. Sarai was overcome. Sparrow and Feral were moved, though they held themselves back, shy and awkward. Ruby was inside with Minya, and didn’t even know what was going on. (And when she found out that they had visitors and hadn’t even come to get her, she wouldn’t be wrathful for all eternity, but half at the very most.)
As for Minya, she was lost in a lull fog, unaware that the enemy had come, and that her family was smiling at them in the garden, forming another “us” without her—an unthinkable “us” that spat on everything she’d done to keep them alive.
At least, that was how she’d see it, if she were to wake up.
Chapter 33
The Unmourned
It was Feral who broke the ice, asking about the bundle Suheyla carried, from which emanated a glorious warm fragrance that could only be bread—not saltless, oilless kimril loaf that tasted of purgatory, but real bread. Suheyla peeled back the cloth right then and there and watched with satisfaction as the young people reached for it with trembling hands and nearly wept for pleasure at the taste of it—except for Sarai, that is, who had to be content with the fragrance.
“I’ll save some for Ruby,” said Feral with a pang of guilt that this tremendous occasion was passing in her absence.
Suheyla complimented the garden. “It takes my breath away,” she said, surveying its wild lushness.
“It wasn’t like this before,” said Eril-Fane, trying to match it to his memories, and failing. It had been formal back then, clipped and snipped within an inch of its life, no leaf or shoot daring to sprout out of place.
“It’s all Sparrow’s doing,” Sarai told them proudly. “And it’s not only beautiful. It’s also all our food. We couldn’t have survived without her gift.”
Feral’s jaw clenched with the effort it took him not to chime in and say, Or mine.
“Or Feral’s,” Sarai added, and that was so much better than having to say it himself. “We call Sparrow Orchid Witch,” she told them. “She can make things grow. And Feral’s Cloud Thief. He can summon clouds from anywhere in the world. Any kind, snow or rain or just big, fluffy ones that look like you should be able to walk on them, but you can’t.” She grimaced a little. “We tried.”
“You tried to walk on clouds,” said Azareen.
“Of course,” said Feral, as though it were a given. “We piled pillows under them first.”
“Magical gardens and walking on clouds,” said Suheyla, trying to reconcile their abilities with the ones that had terrorized Weep. She bent to examine a flower that looked like a ruffle of lace an empress might wear at her throat. “What’s this? I’ve never seen it before.”
“It’s one of my own,” said Sparrow, blushing. “I call it ‘blood in the snow.’ Look.” And she parted the pure white petals to show brilliant crimson stamens that did indeed look like droplets of blood on fresh snow.
With that, the two were in a world of their own, going flower bed to flower bed, while the others faced the reason for this visit, and what was to come next: moving the citadel, leaving Weep. “I’m sorry to ask you to go away.” Eril-Fane swallowed. “None of the blame for any of this is yours. You shouldn’t have to be the ones to—”
“It’s all right,” Sarai said. “We’re ready to leave. We couldn’t before, and now we can.”