KAZI
Glints of autumn slivered through the trees, shaking the few sparse leaves with one last quiver as if saying good-bye. Winter was impatient, already frosting the early mornings in white. I wondered what Tor’s Watch would look like in winter. The dark towers would be striking against a white, snowy landscape.
Today we would arrive. Jase thought it would be just before nightfall, but even darkness closing in could not stop him. He sat forward in his saddle as new vistas came into view, eager, scanning the horizon as if he expected to see someone he knew, his skin itching with the closeness of home. Tonight we would be sleeping in beds at Tor’s Watch. We would be eating dinner at the family dining table. Our new life would be beginning.
The yearning stirring in me came as a surprise. Maybe Jase’s unflagging belief that this was just the beginning was taking hold in me too. I was eager for what was to come, but at the same time, a swarm of nervous bees hummed in my chest. Somehow, I would have to fit into a close-knit family that shared a history and traditions. And there were other worries.
We’ll get our answers soon, Jase had promised, because uncertainty was a worm that ate through both of us. We both desperately wanted to know the meaning of the note and what had really happened to Samuel, but my stomach twisted at the thought of Zane. It wasn’t that I was afraid of him, at least not afraid of what he could do to me anymore. Natiya and Eben had taught me all the ways to kill someone, even without a weapon. I was far better trained than Zane. But I was afraid of what he might tell me.
I had been terrified the night that I asked him about my mother. In an instant I became a child again, my bones turned to liquid, the uncertainty I had punched down for years suddenly alive. And now I would have to face that moment all over again when I faced Zane. That fear had warped into a new question—could the answers be worse than not knowing?
Just kill him, Kazi, I told myself. It’s what you always planned to do. Kill him and be done with it. You don’t need answers. I had lived with doubt for this long—I could live with it forever. Justice was all I cared about. Answers wouldn’t change anything. My mother was gone.
How can you be certain she’s dead?
Jase’s question had been as fragile as a robin’s egg in his palm. He had held it out carefully to me, as if the shell were already cracked. Of course, I couldn’t be certain she was dead. Not really. I had never seen her body, but I had taken a dream and molded it into a conclusion somewhere along the way, a carved piece of puzzle that fit into the shape of my life.
I had been certain, for so long, that one day she would find her way back to me, or if I only looked a little harder, one day I would find her. And then one bitter winter, when many Vendans had died already, I was curled up, shivering in my hovel, blue with the cold, thinking I might be next, and I heard a noise.
Shhh.
It was only wind, I told myself.
Kazi.
It was only my rumbling belly.
Shhh.
I was so cold already, frozen to the marrow, but I raced outside anyway, searching, desperate, not
wanting to be alone, the snowflakes whirling in cutting blades, drifts numbing my feet, wind whipping at my face, and then … there was a curious calm. Against the startling white that made the empty streets of Venda unrecognizable, I spotted something.
Had it been a shivering frozen dream? Delirium fueled by hunger? Even then, none of it had really seemed real. How could I explain to Jase something that even I didn’t understand? I saw my mother, her long raven hair trailing in a loose braid down her back, with a crown of fresh green vines woven atop her head, like the kind she used to weave for me on holy days. She was spring in the middle of a harsh winter. She turned, her eyes warm amber pools, looking into mine as if trying to send me another one of her silent signals, her lips mouthing my name—Kazi, my beloved, my chiadrah—and then she turned and walked away from me, but now someone was beside her. He looked at me too. Death. She looped her arm through his and then she was gone. But Death lingered a moment longer. He looked at me, then finally stomped his foot in warning, and I ran back to my hovel.
Maybe you saw what you needed to see so you could move forward? Jase suggested.
I had mulled that possibility over in my head countless times since then. Had it only been the desperate loneliness of a girl finally letting go? She had already been slipping away from me for months and years, my guilt rising as my memory of her faded, and that guilt would spike a renewal of my search for her.
Maybe seeing her that night was her message to me to stop waiting for her to return. So I would stop looking.
Except some time after that, I began looking for someone else.
One way or another, I couldn’t quite let go.
Since that night I had seen Death many times—and that was no dream. Maybe he had always been there, and in the busyness of trying to survive, I simply hadn’t noticed. Or maybe once a dark door has been opened it can’t be shut again. Now in unexpected moments I heard the warning whispers of ghosts, and Death took pleasure in taunting me, pushing me. He became like a quarterlord I was determined to beat, and the prize was my life.
“Apples!” Jase called out suddenly. He was already steering Tigone to the low branches of the trees, plucking ripe red apples as he went. He tossed some to the ground for the horses and gathered more in the folds of his cloak before he dismounted. He bit into one, slurping up its goodness, then shrugged. “I called them first, but I might be convinced to share with you.”
I looked down at him from my elevated position. “For a price, I suppose?”
He grinned. “Everything comes with a price.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course it does.” I slid off Mije and ambled toward him. “But even for an ambassador?”
“First it’s an apple. Next thing you know, you’ll be wanting your own office.”
I wrinkled my nose. “A little office for an ambassador? Oh no. I had my eye on one of those big fancy apartments at the arena. Top level.”