29

The response came back in the afternoon, sooner than she'd expected, she held the letter out to Cessa.

Cessa took it, unfolded the parchment, and read it aloud.

"The subject, Ryska Aen of Viana, arrived at Aethoria on Basar Vad, the fourteenth. She travelled with public service horseman, unaccompanied by any escort of her own house or other houses. On the same night of her arrival, four boys of the university went missing and then they were found dead the following morning, Avad Sud the first, at dawn."

"No escort? Brave little girl," s slow smile spread across Naervyn's face as she listened. "The universe does play sometimes," she said. "Doesn't it?"

Cessa lowered the letter slightly. "It does, Madame."

"Draft a letter requesting that she be placed under Morvaeth’s investigative authority as a Vianian national," said she. "Cite the unnatural deaths of the four boys on the night of her arrival. Have her declared a potential danger to humankind, and permit Morvaeth to conduct its customary investigation into matters arising from the war.”

“Madame.” Cessa nodded and began writing.

“Cite Precedent Fourteen, the one regarding foreign nationals under investigation in protected institutions.”

“It does not apply to this situation, madame.”

“It does now," she looked at her, "demand her surrender for questioning within the fortnight,” she turned her attention on the report she was reading. “Find out how she travelled, where she crossed, who helped her in Viana and in Miranda.”

“Shall I have the agents watch her?” Cessa asked.

“Quietly,” Naervyn said. “I do not want Cordaelae aware that we are looking," she signed the letter with her full title and the royal seal. "Let him believe the letter is the whole of my interest in her.”

Cessa nodded, said nothing furthermore and tied the letter on eagle's leg. “The man,” Cessa said as she came back.

"See that he is served the finest food in the kingdom," said Naervyn. "Let him enjoy it while he can, for it may well be the last kindness he receives from me.”

Cessa nodded with relieved heart, stepped away from her studies, and returned shortly. "The bath is ready," she said.

Her handmaidens took her hands and helped get her in when she arrived, Naervyn rested her neck on tub edge once she was in and closed her eyes. She sat in the bath long after the water had gone cold, and no one came to disturb her, for the handmaidens had learned the shape of her silences and knew this one was not to be touched.

She thought of Aethoria's gates, white stone against a white sky, and of the scholars there who wore their neutrality like armor. She thought of the Charter, older than two empires, older than the war itself, which no crown had dared test in four hundred years.

She thought of the Aldaene and the pride they carried for their untouched university, the way they had refused to side with either empire when the world was burning around them and had held the power to make that refusal stick.

Naervyn hadn't liked it then, she didn't like it now and she found she would go on disliking it until the day Aldaene met Solari's fate.

"Cessa," she turned to her. "Why does the world hate Draconians, but love Mother Amara?"

"She's a goddess, madame," said Cessa.

"A Draconian goddess," she sank back until her head rested against the edge of the bathtub and her eyes found the ceiling above her. "Centuries ago, the world was at war, and Mann man summoned Mother Amara," she took a moment. "The war lasted seven days and in those seven days, she nearly wiped the world clean of men."

She turned toward Cessa slowly, the water barely stirred around her.

"She is not worshipped because she is a goddess, she is worshipped because she is the Goddess of War."

"Your Highness!" Cessa said nothing further.

She relaxed for a long while after that, until without warning her eyes snapped open. "Leave us," she said.

The attendants filed out at once until only Cessa remained standing where she was.

"Summon Lord Nyssar," Naervyn said.

Cessa nodded and left the bath to carry out the summons.

Lord Nyssar arrived at Naervyn's study not long after, a human man of twenty-seven, and took the seat across from her. Naervyn glanced toward Cessa, who bowed and slipped out, drawing the study door shut behind her, and then, a moment later, the second door of the main chamber as well.

"The eyes you keep on the roads," she said. "Do they see the path Ryska Aen walked from Solari to Aethoria? Do they also see the hands that helped her along the way?"

"They do," Nyssar said. "The mind simply needs a little time to catch up to what the eyes have already seen."

"I would appreciate haste in it," Naervyn said.

"I will do what can be done, as soon as it can be done," Nyssar said.

"Tell me Shadowlord," she held his gaze, "did those eyes of yours ever chance to see anyone reading the charter?"

Nyssar's expression turned serious at once. "My Princess."

"Find out if the Charter has ever been read by anyone still living, or if it has simply been believed in."

"My Princess," Nyssar hesitated. "Aethoria is... a delicate ground to walk," he choose his next words carefully. "Some things there are better left undisturbed."

"Delicate," she repeated. "Do you know why a thing is called delicate, Shadowlord?" She rose from her seat and crossed to the window. "Because no one has yet had the courage to set their foot upon it."

Her gaze lingered on the distant, vast mountain that had been split in two since Shynae fall shattered it a thousand years ago. The two halves stood silently, facing each other across a wound the centuries had never healed.

"A bridge is called delicate until a man walks across it and finds it bears his weight," she turned back to him. "A reputation is called delicate until someone tests what it is truly made of."

"And if it is as fragile as they claim?" Nyssar asked.

"Then someone must walk upon it to prove that it was never as strong as they said, or if it is, then someone must walk upon it to learn exactly how much weight it can hold before it breaks," her voice had gone quiet, the way it did when she meant every word. "Either way, Shadowlord, the only way to know a thing's true nature is to test it."

"And if it holds, my Princess?" Nyssar asked after a long silence.

"Then I will have learned something no one else alive knows," Naervyn said, "and that in itself is worth the walking."

Nyssar held her gaze a moment longer, as though weighing whether there was anything left worth saying against a mind already made up. There wasn't and so he inclined his head. "As you will it, my Princess."

Naervyn remained at the window a while longer after the door clicked shut and let her gaze drift back to the mountain.

The broken halves stood as they always had, facing one another across that ancient wound. She wondered whether the mountain remembered being whole, or whether a thousand years was long enough for even stone to forget what it had been before it fell.

A girl who survived a war precisely because no one thought she would, a university certain its Charter kept it untouchable.

Naervyn was determined to prove that nothing in this world was so untouchable as those guarding it believed.