The walk to the mountain was hard, made harder by the fact that Yethyr’s guards got little sleep. They were down a man due to the death of Umbar, and that made their nightly shifts awkward. They had to be in pairs all through the night, and it was only Vezemar, Grokar and Kettir left.
Even though she was exempt from their rotation, Jaetheiri could not sleep well either. Shiress’ needles had hit her after all. It was just a scratch between the ribs, but it stung and woke her up repeatedly throughout the night. I knew Jaetheiri took great care to clean and dress the small wound when she was alone. I could feel it, but it did not seem to help the burn.
Some selkie poison, I had to presume.
She did not mention it, forging on beside Yethyr in a grim, grouchy silence. On the second night, when she still struggled to sleep, she volunteered to help with shifts, seeing as she was awake anyway.
Grokar asked her if she was alright.
“Perhaps Hegrir could be convinced to become a huntguard,” he said. “He has no experience in defense, but we have so few for our watch and you need your rest—”
Jaetheiri must have waved him off because he asked no more questions that night.
I could now see why we had gone through the effort to get the boats. It way was slow and arduous toward the mountains. Had they still been on The Wily Seal, the party would already be at the base of the mountain. On foot, they still had at least five more days.
On the third night, Yethyr sat on one of the few sleeping bags they were able to recover from the wreckage. He had not abandoned his bone armor yet, or me for that matter. He held me across his knees and mindlessly fiddled with the new wraps he covered my blade with.
He was watching Jaetheiri set up their tent. Due to the shortage of tents, they had taken to sharing one.
“Jaethe,” he whispered, low enough that Grokar and Kettir guarding at the entrance couldn’t hear them, “will you at some point stop pretending you’re not injured?”
Jaetheiri pretended to root for something in her sack. “I got scratched by a selkie, nothing more.”
Yethyr sighed. “You’re allowed to be in pain in my presence.”
Jaetheiri stiffened. “I don’t believe I am.”
“I do know you are still a mortal woman.”
She whirled on him. “Do you?”
Yethyr rolled his eyes. “Yes.”
They glared at one another, equally obstinate.
“It is a minor pain,” she said at last. “You would scarcely feel it.”
I knew that to be true. I had become quite familiar with Yethyr's constant bone aches, and the pain I felt from Jaetheiri was more or less similar to what her prince endured perpetually.
Yethyr did not think it was the same at all, though.
“It disrupts your sleep.”
“My sleep?” Jaetheiri scoffed. “My prince, I don’t think you have had one unmolested dream since I met you.”
“I have had dreams, real dreams before…” Yethyr shook his head. “We stray from the topic. You need to sleep. I cannot afford to have a sleepwalker for a shadow. I will have Mandorias look for something that you can take for your relief.”
“It is unwise to tell any of my weakness.”
“And it is wise to let you get weaker?”
Jaetheiri said nothing.
“Well?” Yethyr pressed. “Do you have an answer, or have you been arguing with me just for the practice?”
“I don’t need practice to argue with you,” she shot back, which made Yethyr laugh, and that was the end of that discussion.
The next morning, Yethyr quietly charged Mandorias to find a solution. Apparently, there were plants one could eat that forced the brain to sleep. That was news to me, but Mandorias spent the day at the back of the line, scavenging for one such herb. Wes volunteered to help him look, if only so he could talk to him.
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Mandorias’ voice was too soft for Yethyr’s ears to hear, but my senses were much sharper than his. “With all this sudden extra time, I wish I hadn’t lost my scrolls. The reading I could get done all these long nights...”
Wes laughed. “There is a comedy, I suppose, in our prince commanding ones who cannot sleep to aid the sleep of another.”
That Yethyr heard. His ears were more finely tuned to deathsong than ordinary sound. He slowed his step so that he could hear Mandorias' responses.
“It is brazen to call him your prince. You are not Brinn.”
“Well, when he tells me to address him properly, I will do so.”
“Do you even know how?”
“Master,” Wes said. He used the Brinn word, not the Datrean one, and it sounded strange in his voice. “Don’t worry. That terrifying deathsinger teacher of his—”
“Flavrir?”
“Yes. Him. He told me when we had been alone, before we left Datrea, that I was supposed to use that term of address, but I don’t understand it. It is what the Prince called Flavrir, and it is what you call the Prince, but I would hardly think those relationships comparable at all. Slavery and apprenticeship are not the same. It does not make sense.”
“Ah,” Mandorias said sagely, “that conflation dates back to the fall of the Oredreirium when the Brinn began venerating the bond between teacher and student. It is a sacred thing to them. A deeply personal exchange of power.”
Wes scoffed. “I know of the Brinn’s obsession with strict apprentice lineages. We always laughed at them for it. But we were grateful too. It allowed our spellsingers to be so much more advanced in songcraft than them.”
It was said so casually, and yet, Yethyr almost whipped his head to gawk at him.
Thankfully for him, Mandorias voiced his question. “How do you figure that?
“In Datrea, the passing of our songcraft was not strictly defined by lines of mentor or student.” Wes shrugged. “The First Steelsinger led us all and taught us all, but any among us who had something new to share were always encouraged to share it. We sang as a choir after all. Together. Experimenting together. Always.”
Wes’ deathsong voice cracked, moved by tender longing and grief.
“It was Domida who figured out that steel can change its sound in the presence of powerful stonesongs. She taught us all how to listen for it. If I was only the apprentice of Daened, I would never have known powerful stonesong lurked in that red mirror.”
“Daened didn’t know?”
“He didn’t know everything. No one does. That’s the point. You can’t rely on one person like the Brinn do. They fumble with the craft in stunted separation, their slowly won breakthroughs easily lost after one spellsinger dies before taking an apprentice.”
I felt a strange melancholy settle over Yethyr as he overheard this analysis of Brinn teaching methods.
“And so Lord Ored never weeps alone,” he murmured under his breath. He said it like he was quoting something.
“My prince?” Jaetheiri frowned at him. “Are you alright?”
Hegrir was nearest to them and was looking at Jaetheiri strangely.
“Hush.” Yethyr frowned back at her. “I’m eavesdropping!”
She rolled her eyes.
“...a Brinn overcame your whole order of advanced deathsingers.”
“Yes, and what’s the likelihood of that power being passed on among the Brinn? It is locked in a dying man who probably doesn’t have enough time left to train an apprentice.”
Yethyr shuddered. Few were bold enough to talk about his condition so openly.
Mandorias hummed. “Aren’t you his apprentice?”
“No!” I could hear him fidget. “...maybe. I don’t count anyway. What he teaches me cannot go beyond his lifespan. The moment he dies, I will become a bone heap for Z’krel to drag back down to Hell, where I’ll be tortured for my betrayal for eternity.” Wes snarled bitterly. “I wish you better luck when he comes for you.”
“I don’t think he wants me at all—ah!” Mandorias bent down and rummaged through a nearby thicket and then scurried off to approach the Prince.
“I found Nemet’s Kiss, Master!” Mandorias said cheerfully, thrusting a nondescript bundle of leaves in Yethyr’s face. “With this, the Lady Jaetheiri would be able to sleep through a karkadann stampede.”
Jaetheiri and Yethyr hushed him, but there was no point.
“Are you struggling to rest?” Nisari asked loudly. “I recommend stretching! Puts me out, even on this hard ground.”
Half the party at least had to have heard, and both Yethyr and Jaetheiri winced.
Mandorias saw their grimaces. “Oh.” He lowered his voice. “Was that supposed to be secret?”
Yethyr waved him off, but when they camped for the night, Mandorias brewed Jaetheiri as discreetly as he could and offered it to her in the privacy of Yethyr’s tent.
Jaetheiri was dubious. “I don’t like it, my prince. What if there is an emergency?”
Yethyr stared at the dark circles under her eyes and said gently. “If you had to fight, right here, right now, do you think you would be very effective?” Jaetheiri pursed her lips, and he pressed, “say that is so, and I will not bring it up again.”
She deflated. “No. No, you are right.”
She took the tea, but only after she had helped Yethyr take off his armor, settle into his sleeping bag, and bind him to prevent Spryne from killing everyone in the night.
It was an hour later, after she had settled into her own sleeping bag, that I felt her finally, finally fall into a deep sleep.
Naturally, that was the night her prince was attacked.
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