this one too. It’s good to have many strengths.”
As we walked, she pointed out the thin clouds overhead and their slow march over the mountaintops. She pointed to the gentle shimmer of leggy willows along the bank, and then she had me turn around to look at our footprints on the meadow grass, already springing back as the breeze ruffled like a hand across them.
“This world, it breathes you in, sniffs, it knows you, and then it breathes you out again, shares you. You’re not contained here in this single place alone. The wind, time, it circles, repeats, teaches, reveals, some swaths cutting deeper than others. The universe knows. The universe has a long memory. That is how the gift works. But there are some who are more open to the sharing than others.”
“How can the world breathe you in?”
“There are some mysteries even the world doesn’t reveal. Don’t we all need our secrets? Do we know why two people fall in love? Why a parent would sacrifice a child? Why a young woman would flee on her wedding day?”
I stopped, sucking in a small gasp, but she pulled me along with her. “The truths of the world wish to be known, but they won’t force themselves upon you the way lies will. They’ll court you, whisper to you, play behind your eyelids, slip inside and warm your blood, dance along your spine and caress your neck until your flesh rises in bumps.”
She took my hand and rolled it into a fist, pressing it hard to my middle just below my ribs. “And sometimes it prowls low here, heavy in your gut.” She released my hand and resumed walking. “That is the truth wishing to be known.”
“But I’m a First Daughter, and according to the Holy Text—”
“Do you think the way of truth cares about your birth order or words written on paper?” she asked. If Pauline had been there, she’d have been saying a penance for Dihara’s sacrilege, and the Scholar would have snapped Dihara’s knuckles for even thinking such a thing. The gift she described was not the one I had learned about.
“It’s just supposed to come, isn’t it?”
“Did your reading just come to you? Or did you have to devote effort to it? The seed of the gift may come, but a seedling that isn’t nourished dies quickly.” She turned, leading me down closer to the river. “The gift is a delicate way of knowing. It’s listening without ears, seeing without eyes, perceiving without knowledge. It’s how the few remaining Ancients survived. When they had nothing else, they had to return to the language of knowing buried deep within them. It’s a way as old as the universe itself.”
“What of the gods? Where are they in all this?” I asked.
“Look around you, girl. Which tree of this forest did they not create? They are where you choose to see them.”
We walked down to where the river curved sharply back toward the mountain, and we sat on a thickly pebbled bank. She told me more about the gift and herself. She wasn’t always a vagabond. She was once the daughter of a fletcher in the Lesser Kingdom of Candora, but her circumstances changed when her parents and older sister died of a fever. Rather than live with an uncle she feared, she ran. She was only seven at the time and found herself lost deep in the woods. She probably would have been eaten by wolves if a passing family of vagabonds hadn’t found her.
“Eristle said she heard me crying, which would have been impossible from the road. She heard me another way.” Dihara left with them that day and had never been back.
“Eristle helped me learn to listen, to shut out the noise even when the skies quaked with thunder, even when my heart shook with fear, even when the noise of daily cares crowded my head instead. She helped me learn to be quiet and listen to what the world wanted to share. She helped me learn to be still and know. Let me see if I can help you.”
* * *
I sat alone in the meadow, the shoulder-high grass brushing against my arms, and I practiced what Dihara taught me. I shut out my thoughts, trying to breathe in what surrounded me, the waving grass of the meadow, the air, blocking out the noise of Griz chasing after his horse, the shouts of children playing, the yelping of wolves. Soon all those things swirled away on a breeze. Stillness.
My breathing calmed just as my thoughts did. It was only one morning of quiet. One morning of listening. Dihara had told me I couldn’t summon the gift. That is exactly what it was, a gift. But you had to be ready, prepared. Listening and trusting took practice.
The gift didn’t come to me fully known or clear, and I still had a lot of questions, yet today when I sat in the meadow, it felt as if my fingertips had brushed the tail of a star. My skin tingled with the dust of possibility.
As I stood to return to camp, the tingle turned sharply to cold fingers gripping my neck and my footsteps faltered. Something Dihara said reached out and took hold of me. You’ve had much practice in ignoring it. I stopped, the full weight of her words finally settling in.
It was true. I had ignored the gift. But I hadn’t done it on my own.
There’s nothing to know, sweet child. It’s only the chill of the night.
I had been trained to ignore it.
By my own mother.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
KADEN
I woke up on the floor of Lia’s wagon and thought she had finally planted an ax in my skull. Then I remembered at least some of last night, and my head hurt even more. When I saw she was gone, I tried to get up quickly, but that was as big a mistake as drinking the vagabond fireshine in the first place.
The world splintered into a thousand blinding lights, and my stomach lurched to my throat. I grabbed the wall for support and yanked down Reena’s curtains in the process. I made it out of the wagon and found Dihara, who told me Lia had just walked back down to the meadow. She sat me down and gave me some of her slimy antidote to drink and a pail of water to wash my face.
Griz and the others laughed at my state. They knew I didn’t usually drink more than a polite sip because of who I was trained to be, a prepared assassin. What made me lose my good sense last night? But I knew the answer to that. Lia. I’d never been on a journey across the Cam Lanteux as agonizing as this one.