River of Souls (River of Souls 0.50)

The tea burned his throat. Yvonne the cook had predicted his needs this morning, evidently. He finished off the cup, then warily picked up the letter. Magic ran over the surface, nipping at his fingers. Immediately the outer covering fell open to show two more, smaller sheets inside. Asa took them up and scanned the first.

To my son Asa, I write this knowing you will have reached Duenne. I have no news for you—not of good fortune or bad. I only wished to send you this note of recommendation to House Yasemîn. With it, you may draw money as you need.

The second was just as she described, a formal recommendation of Asa, fifth son of House Dilawer, to those who governed House Yasemîn. Many complicated phrases followed that one declaration, but the sum of their meaning was clear. He would have whatever funds he needed, with no restriction. House Dilawer pledged not only all restitution, but the good will of the house for as long as Benaw and her daughters governed.

An alliance. She offered them an alliance.

It was such a valuable thing that his skin prickled, in spite of the warm autumn day.

She thinks to bribe me to come home.

He nearly crumpled both letters and tossed them out the window. But as his hand closed, he stopped himself with a sour laugh. This…this was undoubtedly a bribe, but a subtle one. And he might need the money.

That thought, which came too easily to him, gave him pause. Nevertheless he set the letters aside and devoured his breakfast with greater appetite. Then he washed his face and dressed in clean shirt and trousers. Tanja Duhr waited for him.

She waited, but not as she had on previous days. She sat under the trellis, with her desk on her lap, writing. Rose petals drifted down from the vines, a soft rainfall of yellow, crimson, and dusky red. There was a faint edge to the breeze that blew from the north.

“You asked for me,” he said at last.

Still writing, she nodded. Her hand gripped the pen with assurance, but her skin seemed more transparent than usual, and the lines in her face stood out much clearer. A trick of the sunlight, he told himself; but he noticed signs that the night had taken its price from her, as well. The sharper angle of her wrist bones, the bruises under her eyes, the slight tremor when she set her pen aside.

“Your mother sent a letter,” she said.

He nodded. Minne had told her, obviously.

“She wrote to me as well,” Tanja said. “A precaution, in case yours went astray.”

He snorted. Tanja’s mouth quirked into a smile.

“Beware the enemy,” she said softly. “But first, be certain who your enemy is.”

With that, she dipped her pen into the inkwell. “No dreams, today. Today I would like to hear about your future.”

* * *

Of course Asa could not predict his future. What Tanja wanted, she explained, were those ephemeral glimpses of what might be. The future blooms from the seeds of our desires, she said. A hundred different answers occurred to him, all of them like the trivial dreams he first recited at her command. She wants the hardest truths. She always did.

So, the truth. He met her gaze directly and said, “You asked me what I desire. You. You are what I desire.”

For the first time, she appeared shaken.

So was he. Until today, he had only comprehended the most obvious reasons for coming to Duenne. His dreams. Their love interrupted. The need to bid farewell to the past before he could truly face the present. He had no wish to recall the words, however. They were true. Nor could he utter facile declarations of love. Theirs was an uncommon desire, divided by death and years and the void between lives.

“I desire you,” he repeated. “Not as we are, but as we might be someday, in some life.”

Tanja shook her head. “The gods make no such promises.”

“How could they? We are the ones who make our futures. We make them from all the moments of today.”

Now she smiled. “We have changed our roles, it seems. You speak immortal words, while I stutter about the commonplace.”

“Is that what I did?”

“At first.”

And so the conversation wound through the morning, easy and comfortable, ranging through dreams and memories of past lives. For the first time since he arrived they dined together in the early afternoon, and again that evening. They spoke of lives together, of those long separated, though these were fewer. Asa remembered more of the wartime years. Tanja told him about those in Duenne, after the Empire suffered its defeats, and those she learned from correspondents in Károví and elsewhere. It was like stitching together a cloak from many varied pieces, a thing that could never be whole. And yet was.

The pattern continued throughout the autumn and into winter. As the season changed, Tanja Duhr retired to an airy room just under the rooftop garden. She no longer went barefoot, and the number of robes she wore increased, even though Minne built generous fires in the fireplace, and lit several braziers around the room. Of that time, Asa remembered the flames illuminating Tanja’s lined face, the murmur of her voice, the scent of magic and oil. His dreams lived on as well, more vivid than before. These fed the conversations, which in turn called up new memories of past lives. In between, she wrote, the script flowing onto the paper, while Asa watched in silence.