Page 76 of Salt in the Seas
“You don’t have to be coy about it. You think I’m covering my tracks because I was wrong. But I’m telling you the truth.”
“And you know this because the braid on your wrist hums.” His words held a disbelief so thick it bordered ondisrespect.
“I won’t pretend to understand the way you direct your men, so I don’t expect you to understand the way my magic works.” She stepped forward and called out to the winex. “I have your fish laid out in the kitchen.”
Several of the soldiers turned and made faces, but the winex all loped toward her, weaving around her with tongues lolling in their eagerness, nearly knocking General Nels over in their zeal. Orra hid a smile as he cursed and dodged out of their way.
She’d started feeding the winex separately from the soldiers because the men couldn’t stomach watching the winex eat, especially now that there were so many of them. As she followed them in and served up their plates, some of the creatures thanked her, but most merely grunted.
She wasn’t sure if it was the particular labor the soldiers had asked them to do this cycle, or if Emeris hadn’t shown them enough memories of their past cycles, but she suspected some of the winex were unhappy enough to leave before Aeliana and the others returned. She settled in a chair next to Felk, folding her hands under her chin as she studied him.
“What?” Fish and spittle flew from his mouth with the question.
Orra ignored his poor manners. “Immortality is a difficult thing. It sounds enviable. But it comes with burdens others don’t feel.”
His brow furrowed, and juice from the fish dripped down his chin back into the bowl. The tear mark on his cheek that made him stand out from all the others felt poignantly symbolic of the weight he carried with his constant rebirth.
“Why are you telling me that?” Felk asked.
“I imagine having infinite lives and no memories would come with similar burdens that others couldn’t understand.”
He slowly spooned a fish head into his mouth while holding her gaze, and Orra tried not to grimace at the way his dozens of teeth mutilated the flesh. “Maybe,” he said around the mouthful.
Even though they were full-grown and past their middle age, he still had a sullenness that normally only appeared in the first third of his cycle, when his attitude was that of an adolescent. “Maybe forgetting my past lives is a gift that keeps getting taken when you peoplegive me memories.” A flicker of hatred that shocked Orra crossed his face.
Perhaps they’d pushed their luck in having the winex stay with them for so long. Or perhaps the Sun had never intended for them to relate in this way.
She knew he’d questioned the need for sharing memories, but she hadn’t realized it might have felt intrusive to a fresh start. “I suppose when Emeris and Gaeren gave you memories, it gave you the burdens of immortality instead of infinite lives,” she mused.
“We know how to start over each month. How to nest and prepare. When you make us do something else, it feels wrong, even if you say you’ll help us transition.”
She nodded, understanding far more than he probably realized. “And yet we haven’t helped you as much this cycle. You feel like slaves.”
His gaze darted around the room as if afraid they might be overheard. Perhaps it was something the winex had discussed. Or perhaps he feared there would be some sort of retaliation for his rebellious words.
“The gates are currently open,” she said. “No one will prevent you from leaving if you so choose. But know that in a future cycle, you will be prevented from returning. We have survival instincts as well.”
He nodded slowly, and it looked like he might say more, but a hum started in Orra’s braid, and she lost all awareness of her surroundings. She closed her eyes, wrapping her fingers around the braid to absorb the life flowing through it. She longed to reach out the way she had with the arrow, to let her soul leave her body and follow the thread connecting the braid to the stone. But her power remained limited. Following the stone could drain her completely.
“Miss Orra?” Felk mumbled. “You all right?”
Her eyes fluttered open, the sounds of a dozen winex smacking and slurping their fish soup bringing her back to her present reality. “She’s come back again,” she whispered.
Emeris glared at General Nels, whose face remained stubbornly skeptical.
“You said this almost two weeks ago.” General Nels and two other generals sat across from Orra and Emeris in the quarters they’d deemed the war room. Outside of chairs, desks, and maps, the room was bare and scrubbed thoroughly clean since it had been one of the rooms overtaken by winex in the fight against Mayvus’ Zealots.
“As I said,” Orra repeated, barely holding on to her patience, “she left seventeen days ago, then returned eleven days ago, then left five days ago, and now she’s returned again.”
“We would be fools not to listen to her,” Emeris said. “If Mayvus is going back and forth, she’s rebuilding her army.”
General Nels sighed and glanced at the other generals. One shifted in his chair, glancing out the window as if Mayvus might somehow fly through the glass at any moment, but the other remained stoic and unreadable.
“I will continue to keep our normal guard up, but I will also inform the men of your… update,” he conceded. “But I can’t put out any extras. I can’t make the men labor all day and stay on guard all night.”
“Perhaps instead of waiting for her to come,” Orra suggested, “we should go look for her. I told you the stone drops her off at Ahmranan’s Viewpoint.”
“It would take a week or more for me to send scouts,” General Nels pointed out. “Isn’t it likely she’ll leave again before they get there?”
