And with this question behind her, Mena interrupted him. “You say that a prophet of the mines dreamed of Aliver? Tell me, did this prophet describe his features? Did he know what my brother looked like, how he spoke? Did he know of his character? My brother never saw the mines up close; how is it that somebody in the mines knows so much about him?”
It was hard to tell whether Melio’s stunned expression was in reaction to what she had said or just to the fact that she had strung that many sentences together. He stared at her more fixedly than he did while speaking, when his eyes tended to bounce around from object to object. “I cannot say from where a prophet’s gift comes,” he said, “but I believe there is something to it. And I believe your brother has strengths he has yet to discover. I always thought that about him, even when we were boys. To the people at large he is a symbol. Few people in the Known World ever set eyes upon your brother, but they all know his name. They all imagine him as they wish him to be. He is hope in a time when people desperately need hope. Maybe that is as much what the resistance is about as anything. We meet secretly, spread our messages by word of mouth, seek one another out through personal references. I met with a group in a household near Aos once. There were perhaps fifteen of us, but as soon as the doors were closed and we felt safe in one another’s company we opened up and spoke like old friends. We spoke of the hardships we’d seen and the loved ones we’d lost and the dreams we have for the future. It was a wonderful evening, and at the center of it was the hope embodied by the young Akarans. It doesn’t surprise me that you know nothing of this here. There are few in the resistance living as far out as Vumu. Although, fortunately, I am here, and here you are as well.”
Without drawing attention to the act, Mena ran her fingers through her hair, parting it in the back and pulling strands over her shoulders. Thus she hid her breasts. She had never before felt embarrassed by her semi-nudity. With Melio, however, she was increasingly aware of her body. She said, “You say that we-the Akaran children-are poised to appear again, leading an army that will overthrow Hanish Mein’s empire. What are you talking about? Look at me. I’m an Akaran. We both know that much. So where is my army? Look around. Do I look like I’m about to wage a war?”
“I’ve thought about that,” Melio said, making sure his eyes stayed fixed on hers. “I cannot explain it. Perhaps in your case something went amiss.”
Her dead guardian certainly qualified as something gone amiss. But Mena admitted nothing. Instead, she told him he had to go. He could, however, return in the morning. They might as well speak in the light of day for once. She had not planned to say this. The words rose out of her of their own accord. Afterward, she wondered why. And then she realized, and it seemed strange to her that she might act in a certain way and only know afterward what had prompted her.
The next morning Melio stood at her gate. She signaled for him to be let in. As he walked toward her, squinting in the sun until reaching the shade, she said, “I never caught the fever.”
“Everybody got the fever,” Melio said. “It swept the world.”
“Yes, it came through the archipelago. But it did not sweep me.” She said this matter-of-factly with a clipped tone that closed off any dissent. She changed tack with the next breath. “In Vumu culture women are not allowed to wield weapons. That was not so in Acacia, was it?”
Melio, reluctant to leave her earlier statement, took a moment before deciding to answer. “In our country any girl who was inclined could receive training. So long as they met the men’s standard they weren’t restricted from service.”
“Did many meet the standard?”
“Most who tried did, I believe. The Seventh Form is that of Gerta. She fought the twin brothers Talack and Tullus and their three wolf dogs. It took her two hundred and sixteen moves to defeat them, but she did. Both brothers lost their heads, and the dogs each a limb or two. So at times women did not just meet the standard, they set it.”
Mena stared into the middle distance, lost in thought for a moment. She knew why she had arranged for Melio to be here and what she was going to ask him. She had regained herself enough to control the moment. Even so, her own desires surprised and confused her. They had nothing in common with the role she had grown so accustomed to. She was a priestess of Maeben. She had been so for years now and been content. But still she opened her mouth and moved closer to what she wanted to ask. “And you know all the Forms?”
“I learned only the first five properly.”
“And the rest?”
“I know them,” Melio said. “I learned the last Forms in a rush, more from texts than from real training. The world was already falling apart then…”
“Melio, I want you to teach me to use a sword.” There. She’d said it. She knew it as a betrayal and departure from all that she had become, but she had to admit that she felt calmer at the center than she would have imagined. She did want to learn. She had wanted to for a long time. She had often entertained violent thoughts while Vaminee lectured her or dreamed of dancing about with her Marah sword at night, waking to wonder if something was wrong with her.
“Are you serious?”
The question bolstered her certainty. “Of course I am.”
“Princess, I’m no instructor. And I have no weapons anymore. I cannot teach without-”
Mena cut him off by shooting to her feet. “What you lack the goddess will provide. Come.”
A short time later, in a storeroom at the rear of her compound, with light filtering down through the thatch of the walls and roof, dust thick in the air between them, Mena stood with her arms stretched out before her. Her palms cradled the sheathed sword she had swam to the shore of Vumu with nine years before. It was stained with a rust taint in some of the engraving. There was not the shine on it that there should have been, but still there was much underlying beauty in the artistry of it.
“This was the only thing I carried with me from Acacia,” she said. “It would not let me go. The priests never dared to take it from me. It must have seemed a sort of charm to them. So long as I agreed to hide it, they left it with me and have not spoken of it since. Do you know this weapon? Ones like it, I mean.”
Melio’s eyes nodded before his head did. “It’s a Marah sword. It is much like one I had myself once.”
Mena gripped the hilt and tugged the blade free of the scabbard. The sound it made as it slid was absurdly loud in the hushed space, a grating noise that rose to a lilt as the blade cut naked into the air.
Melio pulled away and said, “I thought that being Maeben was your destiny.”
“Why do you back away from me? You came and found me, remember?”
“Of course, but-”
“You may not have found me as you expected, and now this thing I ask of you may also surprise you. But so what? You’ve been surprised by life before.”
He had no direct rebuttal for that. “The priests will-”
“They have nothing to do with it.”
The wrinkled expression on Melio’s face managed to say that the flaws in such a statement were obvious. Before he could try to put them into words, Mena continued. “I’ll worry about the priests. They are of no concern to you. Have you any other excuses?”
Melio appeared to be stumped, unable to withdraw but at a loss for how to proceed. He looked behind him toward the door by which they had entered the storeroom, as if it might be possible to retrace his steps and gain the more stable ground he had stood on only a few moments before. Mena, impatient now, asked him what the First Form was. Edifus at Carni, he responded. Was it a sword Form? Yes, of course, he said. Most of the Forms are.
“Show me,” Mena said, tossing him the scabbard without warning. He caught it spryly enough. A moment later she stepped out into the center of the room, her own sword in hand. She kicked a few crates to mark out a cleared space. It was not as if she’d never come here before, never unsheathed the sword and swung it around her. She had done so many times over the years. It had been little more than a test of her growing strength, or so she’d thought. Now, it seemed, part of her had felt a need to touch the weapon, to remind her she had not entirely forgotten it. Since she had held it often she knew well how best it fit her hand. She chose to hold it awkwardly, however, with a finger hooked over the guard, with her wrist cocked over as if the blade were too heavy for her. The point of it traced a short, jagged scar on the dirt floor.