Ven scooped up his sword again just in time.
Chapter16
From a platform with drying laundry, Naelin watched Ven and his mother continue whacking at each other as if nothing would give them greater joy than to decapitate the other. Keeping a safe distance, Naelin sipped at a mug of willowbark tea. Beside her, Sira hummed and swayed side to side.
“It’s nice to have Ven home,” Sira said serenely. “Mother’s happy.”
Zenda landed a vicious strike on his thigh. Yelping, he flinched, but then lunged only an instant later to hit her shoulder. The impact sounded like a branch cracking. His mother didn’t slow. “She is?” Naelin asked.
Sira waved her hand at the two fighters. “This is how she and Ven talk.”
Taking another sip of tea, Naelin watched them for another moment. “They should try nouns and verbs.”
Sira giggled.
Naelin put down her tea. Maybe they’d stayed long enough. Especially if Ven’s mother was this angry. “We should keep traveling.” If she summoned a few nocturnal flying spirits, they could fly through the night and be at the capital of Semo well before dawn.
“You shouldn’t cross the border in the dark—the Semoian spirits won’t like it. Stay here tonight, and cross at dawn. Please, Your Majesty.” She was smiling at Naelin with a hopeful, childlike expression. “Let them have their reunion.”
Looking at her, Naelin couldn’t say no. She couldn’t crush the light in those eyes.Now I see why Ven has his hero complex.His sister was exactly the kind of person he’d be drawn to defend. She may have been his older sister, but there was an innocence to her that made you want to protect her. Naelin thought that Ven’s decision to become a champion might have had as much to do with wanting to protect Sira and make the world safe for her as it did with his mother’s training and expectations.
“The first stars are about to appear, and it’s time for me to welcome the night. Would you like to come with me to sing them into shining?” Sira asked shyly, as if she’d asked and been denied a hundred times. Naelin would rather have kicked a kitten than say no. She glanced once back at Ven and his mother, who were dodging between shadows as they leapt from branch to branch.
“I’d love to come with you,” Naelin said.
With a happy chirp, Sira scrambled up the side of the tree, swinging from rope to rope as she climbed even higher up. Naelin hesitated for only a second, then climbed after her.
Sira was as nimble as a squirrel with apparently zero fear of plummeting to her death. Reaching out with her mind, Naelin reassured herself that there were ample air spirits to catch them both if they fell again, and then she sharply withdrew her mind.I’m doing it again. Depending on them, as if they were trustworthy.She climbed higher, not as nimbly as Sira but equally without fear.If I fall, I fall, and that will be my fate.
They rose higher into the canopy than Naelin thought possible, or wise. The branches that held them bent and swayed, and Naelin clung to them, trying to convince herself they weren’t going to snap, that Sira wouldn’t lead her too high for humans to climb.
“You’re afraid of the forest floor, but not ofthis?” Naelin asked.
From above her, she heard Sira’s tinkling laugh. “Ven told you that story, did he? I’ll happily walk on the ground, but only when it holds an interesting story to sing. Right now, the best stories are up in the trees.”
Naelin climbed higher until she was above the canopy. Her hands and feet splayed wide on four different branches to keep her balance.
She felt the sun on her back before she saw it.
“Look, it’s nearly set.” Sira’s voice was filled with reverence, and then she lifted her face toward the soft rose light and began to sing. From across the canopy, other distant voices melded with hers—her melody wrapped around another’s, at first discordant then blending together, the notes dancing around one another, touching and breaking apart.
Naelin heard a touch of sadness inside the sweet melody, and at first she thought she’d imagined it, but then the minor notes began to pile on top of one another, sung in Sira’s sweet voice and echoed by the countless other canopy singers across the roof of Aratay. The dying sun hit the yellows and reds of the autumn leaves, and fire spirits danced in the light, and then the sun sank and spread into the west.
A single note, low and vibrating, sang out as the final drop of gold disappeared. Naelin felt the note deep in her bones. And then the note soared up and up, higher, and Sira pointed to the east, where a single star shone, bright against the deep blue. “I call the first star Hope,” Sira said. She then pointed to a faint dot in the northeast, a hand’s spread away from the first star. “And the second star Courage.”
“That’s lovely,” Naelin said.
“It’s from the Song of the First, about the first queen of Renthia, who looked to the sky for hope and courage in the days when the land was only wildness.” She looked shyly at Naelin. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” Naelin wondered if it was going to be about her and Ven.
“All the rumors said that when your children were attacked, the wolf Bayn was driven into the untamed lands. How could that be? I know the creatures of the forest, and no animal would willingly cross into the untamed lands.”
“He ran into the untamed lands to escape.” Naelin sighed, thinking of the wolf who had been a guardian and friend to her children—and to me.“He probably died soon after he crossed. At least, I’ve never heard of anyone surviving the untamed lands.” Still... shewantedto hope. After all, he wasn’t like other ordinary animals. Crossing into the untamed lands wasn’t the first unusual thing he’d done. He always seemed to know exactly what they were saying and what they needed. “Have you ever heard of any animals coming out of the untamed lands?”
“No.” And then she brightened. “But I do know songs about the untamed lands.”
“Could you sing one for me?”
