Chapter 23: Balanced Scales
It was only a matter of time. She would fall, just as all the others. She'd seen it. I'd seen it. There was no question. The Sapphire light had foretold the end. It would not be denied.
Homecoming
Nothing can describe the feeling of returning home, save the relief of at last letting your feet rest, smelling the familiar air you wish you'd never left, and knowing everything will be okay. But Powell's Square wasn't home any longer. We all felt it as we were greeted by the youngest Danner boy at the deimward gate.
This wasn't home. It was a barely breathing husk of a haven that longed for us to leave or put it down out of pity. Something had changed after we left, and none of us wanted to admit it as we made the trek to our house on the far eveward reaches of the city proper.
Where should have been children playing gleefully in the spaces between houses, there were missing houses, foundations laid bare by scorcher or storm. The cobbles that laid the main path had been thrown up and about, leaving a pockmarked path covered in patches of void. Doors slammed as four divine souls passed, unwelcome company far from home and farther from normalcy.
I knew their faces, but their names were absent. Just people, lost hearts and minds, holding on by threads to a hope they should've lost long ago.
My own home was in decent shape, considering. But an abandoned shelter has little value in the path of chaos, so that shouldn't have been surprising.
A message was pinned to the front door, penned in a hand I could hardly forget after years of notes passed through Roisin when she left work for the sun.
Delia and Little Roisin,
Kovar's sent word of your journeys. I pray you reach us safely. Your missing friend has passed through here, but we've not seen her in a moon or more.
If you find yourself home before the next frost, you'll find me and what remains of the Danners in the deimward gorges, rooting out the vile plague that near levelled our home. If that nice girl who cared for Roisin is with you, bring her. Make sure and arm yourself with your Ma's tools. I know you've kept em in the cellar.
— Mrs. Reed, Iron of the Sisters, Thorn of the Daughters
It was dated the first sun of the fifth moon. Time had flown in our travels. I'd been gone for a year when the Violet Cathedral fell in the tenth moon of the previous year. It'd been almost eight moons since. The note wasn't old, but it certainly wasn't new. We didn't have time.
Handing the note to Asha, I started walking toward Mrs. Reed's store. "Asha, read that letter for Aunt Rosie as we walk. It'll go smoother that way, and I can talk to Aunt Jazzy about the problem."
"You're right that it'll be easier," Roisin didn't bother protesting, "but that was rude, Deels."
"Not my problem, Ros." I looked to Jasmin. "I assume you read it as I was, and you can talk me through this." She nodded. "Good. Any questions?"
"Your Ma's weapons?" She looked to my hip where the sabres hung. "Those aren't your Ma's weapons?"
"Ma was an expert with a sabre, but her one true love was something else. A blend of her home and Da's heritage." She processed a second before nodding again. "Great. Now, you're a smart woman. How long would you say it's been since that house burned down? Take into account that it was the same fire as the Devourers."
She thought for several seconds. "About a sevensun. Maybe a bit less. But the note is from about ten suns past, based on the dating."
"What does that tell you?"
"Something else has been through, or else the date on the note is a lie."
"And if I had to guess," I said softly, "Mrs. Reed needed us to know something. She's at the heart of Kovar's operation. The titular Iron of which the Sisters are."
"And the Thorn of the Daughters. I see." She kept working through it. "The note was to throw someone else off. Someone who shouldn't know Mrs. Reed was still in town?"
"Vaelis?"
"Vanara, probably." Jasmin fell back a bit to listen to Asha. She was just about finished reading to Roisin. "Dearest."
"Darling?" Roisin replied instantly.
"If Va thought someone in Powell's Square was the new Linna," Jasmin said, getting Roisin caught up with as few words as possible, "what might she have done?"
"Depends if the person knew they were Linna." Roisin held up her left arm. "And if they had access to their cold-flame."
"Only a few people in Powell's Square have proper cold-flame. You told me that." Jasmin's mind was an impressive machine. "Do we know about Mrs. Reed?"
I remembered what Nico had told me when the gold cold-flame shone out. "A blue-yellow, brilliant and hot."
"Where would Mrs. Reed go if she were hiding from someone like Va?"
"She'd go to the cellar. Where Ma's weapons wait for us to pick them up and use them again."
Reunion
Mrs. Reed's general store was Roisin's place of employment, but it was also a central feature of Powell's Square. To see it run-down, almost rubble, barely a building at all, was a horror. The entrance to the cellar was behind the shop, unassuming, blending near perfect with the ground around it. Most folks didn't know the store even had a cellar.
When Ma was taken, Mrs. Reed and I spent a lot of time down there, working and fighting to make certain we would be ready. It was only a matter of time before the whole town went the way of the sixth district. And the way things looked, it might have done just that while Roisin and I were gone.
Now, the entrance to the cellar was a sight that gripped my heart. It stole my breath. Covered with large stones, there was no way anyone could get out of there from inside. There was plenty of ventilation, but I had no way of knowing if the food was safe.
"Jasmin, rocks. Toss them anywhere but here." She moved without words, lifting and tossing the dead weight away from where it sat. "Roisin, keep Asha with you and guard the door when Jasmin and I go in. Asha, sweetie," she smiled up at me, "get your bow ready and protect Aunt Rosie with all you have."
As she moved rocks, Jasmin spoke with little effort. "Delia, did you hear it, or do you just know something?"
It was both. I could hear the shrieking before we stepped through the gate. But the knowledge of the Voice had become integrated to some extent. We had minutes before the first Devourer got past the Danner boy and started wrecking the town.
"Aurelin stole your future sight. All of it. To give us an advantage." It was easier to explain up front. "A million of me have been telling me everything for seven moons now. But now's not the time."
She threw the final rock out of the way, and I moved to open the cellar. It was locked in a way it shouldn't have been, and the hinges were melted still. Someone didn't want it open, but that wouldn't stop me.
The whole frame of the cellar door ripped away from the stone it was built into as I yanked it out of place with a bit of cold-flame behind my effort.
"Took you long enough, girl," Mrs. Reed's voice was steady as she spoke. "Damned witch followed me when I came to get supplies. Fortunately, I'd already left the note."
She stepped into the sun, a huge but soft woman with all the warmth of home. Something was different about her. Not in an 'I couldn't spot it' way, but in an immediate, pressing way.
"Your hair," I whispered, marvelling at the sapphire that replaced her previously dull salt-and-pepper mane. "Your eyes. It's you." Her eyes shone gold, bright as my cold-flame, with sapphire flames round the outside.
"For better or worse, my gilded Lady," she chuckled at her words. "Most of the town is in hiding if they listened when I warned them. The Danners found they could fight the beasts without my help, and they went to fight. Your lost soul has been terrorising the town for an age." She took in the four of us. "Oh grand. I won't be the only odd one in the group."
"You said Ma's weapons are still down here?"
"What, not satisfied to carry sabres? You need her labrys as well?"
"I could make my own, but there's something about using hers."
She looked at Jasmin, tracing from head to toe. "Am I to call you Mrs. these suns, Jasmin? I see you're wearing Omela's dagger, so I assume you must have married her other daughter."
Jasmin curtsied. "A pleasure to see you again, ma'am," she said softly. "And yes. Mrs. Jasmin Thornleaf."
"Good girl," Mrs. Reed chuckled again. "Alright Delia Primrose. Let's get ourselves ready."
Armament
Ma's labrys was well-balanced and deceptively manoeuvrable, carrying a weight I hadn't held in almost twenty-five years. I was still a girl when last I swung it, showing an unsettling aptitude for the thing, like it carried me and not the converse. Now its tarnished surface moved with lightning precision as I remembered its heft.
"You said you could make one, girl?" Mrs. Reed was picking up daggers of every shape and metal, disappearing them into various places and she went. "How?"
I stopped swinging Ma's weapon about and went to my pack, where a goldroot flower awaited me. "Take this, put your cold-flame into it. Picture your soul through it."
She took the flower, raising a brow, but following my word without question. I watched as the stem thickened into a haft that gleamed in a brilliant gold. The head of the thing formed from a flower into a silvery platinum labrys head with gilded edges. Along the entire surface from tip to tip were names. Some I knew, others were unfamiliar.
"The names of the lost," she explained as she swung the thing around. "Every girl who came to me begging for help who eventually fell in my care." She paused her efforts and ran a finger along to one at the balance point. 'Omela of Powell's Square'. "My dearest friend, and my greatest tragedy."
"She was a heroine in the resistance." That was all anyone could talk about in the Sisters. Omela was the Sturdy Heroine. Tarant was the Meek Bulwark. "No one will tell me how she escaped conscription, but she served well until the end. Da as well."
"Hope drives me. One sun no new names will go on this list."
A long silence passed between us. We knew the weight of that wish. Everyone passes. Everyone is lost eventually. There is no avoiding that. But it was a dream we could all long for.
The shrieking interrupted our silence. A dozen or more of the Devourers were getting closer.
"Do you think the Danners are okay?" I knew the answer, but it had to be asked.
"We'll worry over them once the town is safe." Jasmin, Roisin, and Asha had gone ahead. There was a reason I told Asha to watch her Aunt. Mrs. Reed seemed aware. "For now, we need to catch them up. Do we have other warriors coming?"
Tenebra's group. They should've arrived before us if all went to plan. "Four more. I don't know how far out they are, so we have to hope they're close enough."
"Shall we away, then?"
"Let's."
Terror
It was worse than I knew. Not a dozen blood-red Devourers, but a hundred at least. Only a few were making the awful sound as they approached the town, lending an illusion of security to their advance. But that was just the start of it.
Larabrins ran with the lizards. I never knew them to travel in such large packs, but the wolf-bear creatures of the forest were half-again as large as the lizards, and filled in the ranks to make a horrid cacophony of fur and scales tearing across the land.
Riding the back of the largest beast was a creature decidedly similar in appearance to Vaelis, but their hair and eyes were wrong. Empty and soulless. Lost to their despair. The Huntress had returned, and they couldn't find her.
"Vanara," I said with confidence. "Or something worse. They're inhuman in a way I couldn't have imagined when Roisin and Jasmin told me." I searched desperately for a moment. "Where are they and Asha?"
"Guard tower. Mornward." Mrs. Reed was looking the wrong way, so I traced her gaze. Asha was up on top of what passed for a guard tower in Powell's Square. "And below her is your sister. Jasmin can't be far off."
"Excellent. Best place for her is up. Gives her the best view." I took Mrs. Reed's hand for a moment. "When this is over, you and I are going to discuss all of this. For now, if we can get the vaguely human thing away from the beasts, that's ideal. I know you hate them, but they are important."
"I don't hate them, Delia." Mrs. Reed squeezed my hand before releasing it. "I hate what they were doing to my town. If you say we save the witch, then we save the witch." She began walking toward the creatures, and called back to me. "But one thing at a time. We march."
The ground shook under my feet as I took up a spot beside my childhood mentor and my mother's best friend. Perhaps 'hundred' was too small an estimate as well. As the beasts drew closer, I at last got a good look at the scarlet Devourers. Each scale looked like a flower petal dripped in blood, a ruby cut to resemble some floral memory. These were built not for speed but for strength. One strike would be enough to break a normal soul.
Fortunately, there was very little normal about any of the five of us after all that had happened.
I didn't choose to use my mother's labrys at first, opting for the sabres I carried instead, but even without the Devouring soulfire protecting them when I put forth a cold-flame blast, the sabres recoiled, removing themselves from my hand, and forcing me to change.
A fantastic thing it was, to fight with a weapon that told you how and where to move. The labrys was in my hand, covered in gold cold-flame and pressing through beast after beast before I could think. It was almost automatic enough I could think about something else.
· Focus, Delia. It gets worse. ·
'So you are still there,' I thought at the Voice. 'Any suggestions, or are you just here to heckle.'
· Don't die. ·
'Rude.' I kept moving, putting effort into the swings that the labrys begged of me. 'I would never give you the satisfaction of being wrong.'
· I'll hold you to that. ·
I'd worked my way through a dozen or more of the Devourers when the first larabrin collided with the blade. This was not going to be an easy process.
The fight went on, my breathing shortened a little further with each beast down. Larabrins, Devourers, and my own body. More opponents than any one woman should have to fight at once. And yet I had to. Asha's image flashed in my mind. Her cold-flame was crimson like the Devourers'. There likely wasn't much she could do.
As the thought processed, a screaming piercing bolt of red came down like lightning directly in front of me, tearing through a larabrin about to pounce.
"Right," I said around my already mounting fatigue, "larabrins. Almost forgot about those."
"So we focus on the lizards, hmm?" Mrs. Reed was quick and sturdy. "Good. My old bones can't handle switching back and forth like that."
Revelation
I knew Vaelis – or Vanara or Va or whomever they'd become – was too far gone when Asha's red flames began raining down on the battlefield and the assault didn't stop. Or else the goddess as she was had no control over the beasts, which was a more terrifying prospect.
One by one, the larabrins fell, their numbers thinning faster than we could manage the Devourers. At some point, the growled howled horrid sounds of the predators became nullified by the overwhelming ocean of shrieks they were bathed in. The Devourers just kept coming. It was worse than in the Thicket. But progress was progress.
Every inch of me glistened with sweat, but Ma's labrys clung happily to my slick palms. I was grateful Asha didn't have to face this so close. Trusting that Jasmin and Roisin would keep up their position, I pressed forward through the horde.
The ground quaked. Not the pounding of beast claws across the land, but something more. Even the Devourers paused a moment, and I looked back. A wall of silverthorn had spread across the entire path between the beasts and the town. Jasmin stood atop it, Roisin in her arms fighting against the care of her wife. It brought a smile to my face as I turned back to the fight.
Being blocked by Jasmin's impenetrable defence, the beasts that had slipped by circled back around, blocking Mrs. Reed and me in on all sides, pushing us back to back. I remembered one of my dreams.
Two powerful warriors, gilded labryses, surrounded, fighting back to back. One elder with sapphire hair. One younger with orange-gold hair. Both mistresses of their trade.
Everything came to a stop.
Gideon's Bargain
"It doesn't have to be this way." The voice wasn't mine, but Aurelin's. She'd been watching me all my life, and at last she was making her presence clear. "Your friends falling, your life ending soon."
"Shut up and look around you, coward." I didn't need to hear her hopeless lies. "It's not happening that way this time. Am I surrounded? Yes. Are my friends falling? See for yourself."
Jasmin was atop the silverthorn vines, midway through kissing her wife. Hundreds of scarlet cold-flame bolts were flying through the air as Asha kept up her work of suppression. Shadows spread across the field of battle, and something new was arriving. Late, and not a moment too soon.
"How?" Her voice cracked. "We've made it this far only once before."
I pointed to my sister. "She came back. How? Your guess is as clear as mine. But I'm guessing Salora could answer if you hadn't hamstrung her at the catastrophe."
"One soul shouldn't make so much difference, Delia."
"No? One soul can destroy all Lafleur, Elia Gideon. Why can't one soul be the difference between failure and success?"
"But she isn't special. She's just the next Afina."
"She's not." The finality of the words shocked Aurelin. "She's the first Roisin Thornleaf, wife of Jasmin Thornleaf, sister of Delia Primrose, aunt of Asha the Huntress." I raised my mother's weapon. "Daughter of Omela the Heroine, the Gilded Axe, the Sturdy Healer. One soul can change everything, you poor, sad thing."
"The worst still comes, Delia."
"Let it come. Let the Sapphire light consume us all. But we will stand together." I looked over the battlefield one more time. "Give all of them their strength back. Go save your Town. And let me become what I was meant to be, for better or worse."
"You are a fool. But perhaps that is what Lafleur needs."
She was gone, the noise returned, and the battle turned all at once.