“I’m not sure why I came,” Signe continues. “My mother didn’t want me to. They did not force us to come. I suppose I just wanted to prove myself to them, just like the rest of the children. To show I wasn’t just some princess.”
Mulaghesh stays silent as Signe talks. Every few steps she sees something odd in the dirt at the edges of the stone staircase: the imprint of a shoe with an intricate tread. A sort of shoe you would see in the modern world, not at all something you’d expect to find in ancient Voortyashtan. The imprint is deep in the mud, deep enough that the rains must not have completely washed it away.
“At first we tried to share,” Signe says. “But one of us—the son of some relative of a chieftain—he was bigger than the rest of us, more developed. Stronger. Crueler. He beat one of the other kids terribly badly, in front of everyone, to show us what he could do, I suppose. And he set himself up as the petty king of our little island, monopolizing our food and water, forcing us to do things to survive. Humiliate ourselves. Fight among ourselves, all for his amusement and that of his cronies.”
“Sounds like a real charmer.”
“Yes. Far from the surveillance and laws of society, not sure if you will live or die…Who knows what you will become?”
Mulaghesh does not tell Signe this is a sensation she knows all too well.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” says Signe. “But this place…It brings it all back.”
“All of us need confessions sometimes.”
Signe glances over her shoulder. “What makes you say this is a confession?”
“The same thing that makes me think I know why you wear scarves.”
Signe is silent for a few paces. Then she says, “He took an interest in me. I knew he would. Blond hair…it’s very rare on the Continent, you see.”
“I get it.”
“He told me that if I wanted to eat again, ever again…I would need to come to him at night. He’d set up something like a throne, behind one of the arches. We would be alone there. I would do as he told me. I agreed, and he was pleased.
“Before I went, I visited an old sparring ground here on the island, and in the earth there I found an arrowhead. And I sharpened it, and sharpened it, until it could cut flesh. I tested it on the back of my wrist. And then I hid it in my mouth.
“He was no fool. He made me strip bare before he took me into his privacy. Made me do it before everyone. I didn’t care; Dreylings don’t really care about things like that. We don’t have such arcane ideas of how the human body should be seen. But he never looked into my mouth.
“He took me behind a tall, flat stone. And then he tried to take me. Tried to pin me down. And as he readied himself, I spit the arrowhead out into my hand…and then I rammed it into his eye.”
She pauses, perhaps awaiting something, as if she expects Mulaghesh to gasp. When she doesn’t, Signe continues. “It was a foolish thing to do. I should have jammed it into his throat. He started screaming, shrieking in pain, flailing about. It was not a fatal blow. So I got up, and I took a nearby stone…and I hit him on the head. I hit him, and I kept hitting him. I kept hitting him until I could no longer recognize him at all.
“Then I went out. Cleaned myself up. Clothed myself. I went to our rations. I told the other children to come near. And then we ate—sparingly—in silence.”
They walk on. The peak is a few hundred feet above them now, the sea a distant, undulating darkness.
“I thought the elders would kill me when they finally returned. I’d killed a boy of serious standing. And I’d done it in cold blood, carefully preparing for it. But they didn’t. They were…impressed. I’d defeated someone larger and meaner than myself. It didn’t matter that I’d done it through deception—to Voortyashtanis, a victory is a victory, and to win through cunning is no small thing. So…they made me a full member of the tribe.” She uses one finger to pull down the neck of her shirt, revealing the elaborate, delicate, soft yellow tattoo there. It’s beautiful, really, artful and strange. “And from then on, when I spoke, they listened. It was a curious thing.” She pulls the collar back up. “But I still hated what I’d done. I still hated everything I’d gone through. And I hated, later, that I’d become like…him.”
“Him who?”
“My father. Who else? He’s killed more people than anyone, I think, except perhaps the Kaj and Voortya herself.”
Mulaghesh knows that, statistically, this is unlikely: odds are she and Biswal are responsible for many more deaths than Sigrud je Harkvaldsson could ever aspire to.
“I thought I was better than him,” says Signe. “More…I don’t know. Evolved.”
“People don’t get to choose what the world makes of them,” says Mulaghesh.
“And that is what you think this is? The world made him, made us? Or is there some cruelty in us that pushes us into such situations?”
“You aren’t born this way. None of us are. We’re made this way, over time. But we might be able to unmake some of what was done to us, if we try.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I have to,” says Mulaghesh.
There’s a bird cry somewhere out in the darkness. Signe shivers. They plod on.
“I don’t remember what my father looked like,” says Mulaghesh. “I thought I’d never forget it, once. We only had each other in the world. Then one night I ran away from home and joined the army. Off to serve my country and find my fortune. It seemed such a fun idea at the time, such a lark. Such a childish thought. When I first landed on Continental shores I wrote him a letter explaining what I’d done and why I did it and what I expected to happen. A bunch of na?ve shit, probably. My life seemed like a storybook at the time. I don’t know if he ever got it.
“After the war was over I went home and I knocked on the door. I remember waiting in front of it, our red front door. It was so strange to see, it hadn’t changed a bit since I was a kid. I had changed, but the door had stayed the same. But then a stranger answered it, a woman. She said she’d been living there for over a year. The previous owner had died some time ago. She didn’t even know where he was buried. I still don’t know.”
They walk on for a moment longer in silence. Then Mulaghesh stops. Signe walks on a few steps, then pauses to look back at her.
“Hundreds would kill to be where you are, Signe Harkvaldsson,” says Mulaghesh. “And more still would kill to have what you have now that your father has returned: a chance to undo a wrong done to you long ago. Such things are rare. I suggest you treasure them.”
“Perhaps I should. Perhaps you’re right. Shall we continue?”
“No.”
“No? Why no?”
“Because the tracks I’ve been following have split off from the main stairs.” Mulaghesh points west, where a stone trail runs through the twisted trees. “That way.”
“What tracks? What do you mean?”
“I mean someone’s been here before us. Recently, too. I can see their boot imprint in the soil here and there.” She points at the ground. “It’s a modern shoe type, nothing that the Voortyashtanis would have used. It’s been consistent all the way up here. When you didn’t step on it and mar the prints, at least.”