*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
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They rise in the fields like men from graves, tottering to their feet, swaying in the wind. Their heads are the last to raise before turning toward her, flat, still, waiting.
The metal rests, carefully molded, around her left arm, like a sleeve, a shimmering glove, and unlike most metals, even when unSkilled, it shivers, slithers, sinuously, around her wrist, her elbow, her shoulder. She can hear them in there, murmuring, whimpering—men too far gone to be brought back.
It's okay. She will take care of them. This flock will come back with her, back to Keesark.
Back to the after, she thinks, the mother metal twisting, turning, so carefully, purposefully. To Ben and everything else waiting for me.
Jin is dealing with the survivors, with the wreckage and the ruin and all the other ugly consequences of war. But Allayria is looking out, past it all to that western horizon, to the unseeable kingdoms in the distance.
She is ready to move.
It's easier now that it's all over. Easier, and she knows it shouldn't be, but it is. It's the reassurance of an irretrievable choice made finite, immutable with all its consequences.
You did this, you bitch, you fucking—
He was right of course. Hiran. More right than he knows, than he understands.
Allayria had just watched him for a moment then, watched how he had struggled, like a fly caught in the trap of Lei's arms. She had thought it might bring fury [shame], but there was nothing inside of her. Nothing at all. It won't bring Finn back. Nothing will bring Finn back. That's not how this works.
He's always had it so easy, Hiran. Doesn't he realize, doesn't he understand, that you cannot win a war—you cannot ensure that you, and you alone will be on top—if you are too afraid to make the ugly choice? In the end, no one was going to protect Allayria but herself, and if she wanted to emerge from this war strong enough—no, stronger than when she came into it—she had to choose the path to victory that achieved that best. Protected her best. The cost for others... well, that was their choice. Their problem.
That's the crux of it, she thinks. The lesson learned from Isati.
She's not what she was anymore; there's enough left in her to recognize that. She cut off her face and grew another stitched together from the patchwork of memories and lessons that she has taken in. Some of it is from Ruben, the lessons he taught about alliances, networks—the necessity of other human beings. Other parts of it are from Ben, who taught her to guard her heart against them, to keep it cold and unreachable. And last, finally, the polishing veneer, the icy shine is Isati, who taught her how to wield that hardened heart in ways that would make weaker souls quail. How to smile through a snarl.
Because when Allayria opened Keno's note, when she saw how far Ben had gone, she made a choice. She wasn't playing to win against the Jarles; she was playing to win against everyone.
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Hi everyone! Lumbering back in (again) after being struck down with the flu this time. I swear on all the medical masks I do not own that it wasn't the coronavirus, but it was a bad enough flu that I inadvertently used dishwasher soap to wash my laundry... so that kind of sums up my recent functionality. 😬
I know it's been a minute but I'm also genuinely shocked we're already at the end of Part 4. I'm planning on setting up stuff for Part 5 this week so if you see any changes to anything (*ahem*TableofContents*ahem*) that would be why. On a scale of 1 to 10 how nervous are we about this next part? Don't worry, I may not have been posting while stricken with the plague but I have been writing, hahahaha....
