Chapter 156: A Godblade's Memory.

Sleep was difficult to find.

None of the difficulty came from soreness -an apparent lingering effect of that girl's healing. I had turned it down to nothing the second it had started. None of it came from Sere, currently asleep on top of me, either. I was more than used to her by now. The only difference tonight was that she was clingier than she usually was, not that I minded.

It was hard to sleep because there was simply too much to think about. None of it was anything more thinking would solve, which only made the whole thing more annoying. In two days, I would open the Council and put amendments to a vote. In two days, there would be an attack on the city. If all went well, we would strike quite the blow against Julian and remove the roadblock he had built between Veyne men and their wall. If not…

I shook my head. Slowly, I rose. Prying Sere off of me was the hard part. I did it gently, careful not to wake her. She shifted in her sleep and frowned as she slowly let me go, and for a moment I thought she might actually wake. She didn't, thankfully. I reached down and brushed her hair. It was tangled, as always. The frown eased, and Sere dug herself deeper into the covers.

I left her there and wandered out. It was dark. Dark enough that only some of the Magical Implements were lit. Violet wasn't in the room next to mine, as she had been for days and weeks. Since becoming Duchess, she had to be at least slightly more careful about spending all of her time in my home. I knew she would be back with the first light of morning anyway. I glanced at her door, and walked on.

The manor wasn't entirely asleep. There was still the occasional maid, and the occasional guard, and both would have had quite a few questions if they saw their Lady wandering the halls this late in nothing but a shift. With my Gift, avoiding them was simple enough. I could hear them from quite a distance away, and by now I had a rough idea of who would be awake and where.

I had no destination in mind. Truthfully, I wasn't even sure why I was out here at all. Maybe the walking would tire me out enough to finally sleep. That was the idea, anyway.

And so I eventually found myself at a window near the back of the manor. It was latched. Estovan would sooner sleep on the roof than allow an open window these days. I unlatched it myself and slipped out into the grounds, coming out beside the old east garden -a place that could only be described as neglected. The grass here was distinctly overgrown compared to everywhere else. The whole place was lit by the dim blue of a single Magical Implement near the wall, and even that one looked like it was faintly flickering.

I glanced around. A chill wind blew in from somewhere to my right, and I shivered.

Click. Click.

The cold went away. Vaelin stirred in my mind. Pointless risk, the Godblade muttered.

I blinked. That was the last thing I had expected from Vaelin right now. Risk? You mean…what? Like, getting sick? I asked the blade, mid-walk.

Vaelin was quiet for several moments, until I thought he might not answer at all. Yes, he said eventually. And then, perhaps because Vaelin was feeling downright talkative tonight, he added: Humans are frail.

"Well, that much is true," I agreed. I didn't know what exactly Vaelin was. He was a God's Tenet, one half of their power, turned into a blade. Whatever else one could say about Vaelin, he certainly wasn't human. "Since I do have your attention," I murmured, "I don't suppose you can tell me about this 'traitor' thing that girl was talking about."

I took several more steps. Vaelin did not answer. He did not even stir. I stopped by the lone bench. "Really? Now you go quiet?" I grumbled out loud. "Don't act like you can't hear me. You were just here." Still nothing. If someone did stumble across me right now, whether maid or guard, they would conclude their Lady had gone quite insane.

I sighed and took a few more steps. Then a thought occurred to me. Reasoning with Vaelin had not worked. But where reason failed, maybe shame would not. I turned my knobs back to exactly where they had been, took two more steps, and extended my hand. The Godblade settled into my palm. Pristine, but not glowing -the last thing I wanted tonight was to actually be seen.

I stepped forward and stabbed Vaelin into the overgrown grass. Then, in a gesture that was the very height of a Lady's manners, I sat down in the grass across from him and folded my arms. I stared at the Godblade. I felt Vaelin then. Vaelin's sheer…confusion.

"Tell me what I want to know," I said. "If you know something, tell me." My gaze never left the Godblade.

Moonlight slid along Vaelin's edge, and the blade glimmered with it. A breeze rolled through and set the long grass swaying around the both of us, and it cut clean through my shift. I shivered. How annoying that I could not use my Gift and the Godblade together, not without the Flicker technique. And I was not about to do that now just because I was cold.

Vaelin shifted in my mind, and then shifted again. It was not exactly easy to ascribe meaning to what I felt from Vaelin, but I thought the Godblade was…uncomfortable. "I am not looking away until you tell me," I said.

The Godblade tugged. My hand twitched toward his hilt, and I forced it flat against my knee. "Nope," I said. "I am not dismissing you until you tell me. So either you stay buried in the dirt until morning, or you give me something."

There was very little hope of this actually working. And the more I thought about what exactly I was doing, the sillier I felt. Even Violet would hesitate before doing something this dumb.

Night. Rest. Vaelin all but protested. The meaning behind that much was clear.

"It's one night. I'll live," I said. "What, do you think I can't handle this without my Gift?"

There was nothing. The bond between me and Vaelin gave me nothing at all. Not for several long seconds, which soon turned into even longer minutes.

Vow. Broken.

"Vow? What vow?" I asked. This was the first I was hearing of any vow. I certainly did not recall swearing to do anything, but given everything, the Godblade was likely referring to the last person who had wielded him. Illiana. "What is this vow, Vaelin?"

In one moment, I was in the grass. In another, I was somewhere else.

Men and women stood before me, in lines upon lines that stretched farther than I could see. I recognized them. Or rather, I recognized the kind of people they were. All of them with shaved heads, all of them draped in the same flowing white robes I had seen on the Nox siblings at the exam center, marked in that same faint blue.

It was bright, and the air smelled strange. Purer than I had ever smelled air, with hardly any scent to it at all save for the faint scent of flowers.

One man stood ahead of the rest. An older man. His face was deeply wrinkled, and distinctly kindly all the same. He was smiling, and he was bowing to me.

My lips moved, and yet no sound came out. I held my hand out before me -a hand larger than I remembered- and in it was a burning crimson sword. The blade plunged into the stone floor, sinking in to the hilt. I spoke more soundless words. And beneath the words was determination that burned as bright as the sun.

The chapter was copied from www., where its author publishes, without permission from the author.

The old man bowed lower. And this time, everyone bowed with him. There must have been hundreds of them, if not thousands, and every last one of them bowed.

I blinked, and I was back. My hand was in the dirt. At some point, my sitting had become falling over. There was no Godblade. The hole he had made in the earth was still there, but Vaelin himself was gone. He was back in my mind. I must have dismissed him somewhere in the middle of…whatever that had been.

"Vaelin?" I croaked. "What the hell was that?"

The Godblade did not answer me. He retreated somewhere far into my mind, and left only an impression behind. An impression of being tired. I almost called him back out anyway before I stopped myself. He had given me something. Even if what he had given me left me with more questions than I had started the night with.

But one thing was clear enough. Illiana had sworn something to those people, and she had not held up her end of whatever oath she had sworn. And now two children from North Bairam resented the girl carrying her Godblade for it. It had nothing to do with me…and yet it had more to do with me than I had first thought.

"God damnit," I muttered, and rose. "It's always something, isn't it?" I swayed. However Vaelin had shown me that strange vision, it seemed it had taken something out of me, even as it had taken something out of him.

It is said that only a few people can grant miracles. Gods, Heroes, and Saints. I was the only Hero at Veyne Manor, and I had done nothing at all, and yet a miracle had somehow happened anyway.

Violet Indri was reading a newspaper.

"This one's awesome. Esra, Esra, come on, look at this one!" she said, turning the newspaper toward me so I could see. The paper was called The Aelheim Post, and the article was about the King's Tournament. Violet was pointing at a Scrylens picture, one that had somehow captured the exact moment her warhammer slammed into a girl and launched her out of the ring. The girl was making a rather…undignified expression. In her defense, she had just been hit by a massive hammer. "And the title's totally awesome too, isn't it?!"

The article was titled The Mad Red Duchess: Even More Mad Than We Thought? It was not outright defamatory, but it was written in a way where one could easily read between the lines. Not exactly surprising, considering it was one of the dozens of papers under Greenward's thumb. I did not quite have the heart to rain on Violet's parade.

"Yep. It makes you look especially cool," I said with a small nod.

We were in my room, sitting on the floor. Violet had chosen to barge in before I was even properly awake. Apparently she had caused a real commotion at the gate, one Anias had quelled -which was good, for otherwise I would no doubt already be hearing the funeral rites of several of my guards.

Sere wrote in her notepad and slid it toward the two of us. Having fun. Wanted to fight too.

Violet nodded seriously. Then she looked at me. "You should have let her fight. She would have destroyed everyone."

"Yes, I know," I said. "That's exactly the reason why I didn't."

Violet nodded seriously again, as if she were hearing this for the first time and not the third, and turned back to Sere. "Sorry, Sere. Knock everyone down when you can take part in the Senior Division, alright? Bet she won't mind letting you take part then."

Sere looked genuinely hopeful at this. Then she turned the full weight of her pout on me. Against an attack like that, I had absolutely no defense. "...Sure. Why not." It was far in the future. Years away. That was a problem for future Esra to worry about.

Sere beamed and went back to one of the other newspapers. Violet had apparently bought a copy of every single paper in the city before coming over, and we had already spent the better part of half an hour going through them.

While most reserved their front pages for the Senior Division -which had gone well, apparently- many of them devoted at least some space to our qualifiers. And much of that space went to either me or Violet. Some few of them talked about the Nox siblings instead. They described Sharon Nox as a 'brute' from a brutish land. Yesterday, I might have skimmed right past a line like that. Today, my gaze lingered.

They described Aaron Nox as…creepy, or strange. From what I read, his bout had ended almost as soon as it had begun. There weren't even any good Scrylens pictures of it, save for one of him standing alone in the ring at the end. The only people who had qualified from that round were the ones with the luck to hit the ground outside last.

Paper crumpled beside me. I turned my head. It was Violet. She had evidently read something she did not like. I leaned over to look. She was reading a short piece about Julian having opened up a food bank in his District. The fourth, apparently. I hadn't known he was doing that, but I did not spend much time reading Greenward papers. A food bank. Rather like what I had done before I'd left for the expedition. Was he taking inspiration?

"Why the hell are we waiting?" Violet said.

"For what?"

"For that bastard to do whatever the hell he wants," Violet growled. She crumpled the paper more, until it became a ball in her hands. "He does this shit one day, and tries to get the city attacked by monsters the next. I say we go and just kill him."

I blinked. Sere looked up at me too. It was an unusual question. Or rather, the timing of it was unusual. Violet had been remarkably restrained in not asking it until now. No doubt she had trusted me, but even that trust could only go so far.

"Because it wouldn't do anything. Whatever he has planned, I doubt it will end if we kill him tonight. We wouldn't change a single thing, and then we'd almost certainly end up going right down with him too," I said.

"We didn't do anything!"

"We did." I smiled at her. It was not quite a smile. "We killed one Duke. And if another dies within mere months…there would be an Inquisition. Even if we had all the proof in the world, the Inquisition would still come for us." I met Violet's gaze, trying to make sure she understood. "And we can't survive someone in our heads, Violet."

Violet slowly nodded, but her face looked like she'd eaten an entire lemon whole. "So we just fucking let that bastard do whatever he wants?!" she growled.

"No," I said, "We let it fail. This is clearly something he has planned for a very long time. There are only so many cards one man can have. We take all of them away, one by one. Then, we play our own hand at the King's Tournament. It's the only way to stop him, without ruining ourselves too."

"I still don't like it," Violet said.

"Neither do I. But this way you get to kill a lot of monsters."

"...I like it a little bit more."

I smiled. Sere slid her notepad between us. She had drawn the three of us standing atop the wall, and beneath us a great many monsters, every one of them with X's for eyes.

"I sure hope there are more than just three of us," I said and ruffled her hair. She grinned. I went back to the paper I'd been reading.

"Hey." Violet reached out and poked my arm. "Did she say anything yet?"

"Hmm?" I looked up from one of the papers. "Who?"

"The Do- Cordelia," Violet said. "You gave her that fancy thing, didn't ya?"

I nodded slowly. "She hasn't reached out yet," I said. It was hard to make my voice even, but my attempt was reasonable.

"So you reach out to her," Violet grumbled. "It goes both ways, doesn't it?"

"That would be risky. The Magical Implement is hard to detect, but if I contact her first and catch her by surprise…that surprise might be all it takes. It's safer to just wait." It was a sound line of reasoning, and it had been one of the main causes of my sleeplessness last night. It was sound. That didn't mean I had to like it.

"Hey, cheer up," Violet said. "She's one of those smart-as-hell types. I'm sure she'll find a way to talk to you." It sounded like a thing she did not enjoy saying, but she said it with her chest puffed out anyway.

So she'd noticed, huh? Violet knew me well. "Yeah. I know," I said. "Thanks."

Violet nodded and went back to her papers. I looked at her, and at Sere. I was a rather lucky girl, wasn't I? My eyes drifted across the stack of newspapers and landed on one I hadn't read yet. I couldn't make out the words from here, but I could see the image on the front page well enough.

It was that moment at the very end, when all twelve of us had stood in the arena. The image was focused on me and Violet, for some reason. Huh. I wondered what that article said. No doubt more thinly veiled libel.

Click. Click.

"'The Golden Five, closer than ever?'" I mumbled. "'Is the Hero of-'"

Violet attacked me. That was the only word for it. She tackled me until I was flat on the ground and she was on top of me, her hands pinning my arms down. Her face was very red. Almost the color of her hair. Her braid had slipped over her shoulder, and the end of it brushed my cheek. Between that striking hair and the rest of her, I was sure Violet would someday have to fend off boys with her warhammer.

Now was not the time to think about that. Though, I didn't know why I'd thought about it at all.

"Er…what is it?" I asked. I was fairly sure we weren't under any kind of attack.

"It's-" Violet's mouth slowly opened and closed. She looked behind her, and then back at me. "I want to do some training."

"Now? I thought you liked the reading you were-"

"Fuck the reading!" she said. "I need to prepare. You need to prepare. Come on!" She rose, and made me rise right along with her, so fast I nearly stumbled and fell all over again.

Sere rose with us. I smiled, and let her drag me out. Soon, I would call for the Great Council. The previous wielder of Vaelin had apparently sworn some kind of vow that was now coming back to bite me. Cordelia still hadn't reached out.

For now, it didn't matter.