She expected to be reawakened as soon as they encountered Stamentaast or other unfriendly patrols, yet as the dawn bloomed pale above mountain peaks, she awoke to find the wagons rattling along the road up the Andal Valley, with the city outskirts approaching ahead. The city was silent, and the streets as they entered were deserted. Sasha did not particularly fear Stamentaast; they only moved in smaller groups and this party was eighteen strong and able to defeat militia many times that number. Bergen and another man with cavalry experience rode in the saddle, and they'd brought additional horses tethered behind the wagons. Two more men they'd sent riding ahead to reach the Steel garrison up-valley, and tell them what had been discovered in the Altene. Sasha had no expectations of what the Steel would do when they heard, but thought it might be nice if she did not have to do all the persuading and motivating herself for a change.
She did not expect that the column would be abruptly stopped on the deserted city road by a group of serrin talmaad, all with arrows nocked to bowstrings, and all looking dangerously ready to fire.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Sasha called up to the lead wagon, and they reined to a halt. And to the serrin, “I am Sashandra Lenayin! To whom is your ra'shi?”
A serrin woman came around a corner, beckoned to them, then she walked back the way she'd come. The lead wagon driver looked back to Sasha, who indicated they should follow. Not liking the wagon when a saddle was available, she leaped off, untethered one horse from the rear, then mounted. Ahead, the serrin woman also retrieved a horse hidden in a lane, mounted, and the pace accelerated.
Andal was deathly quiet. It had been two days since the night of the Stamentaast's attack and the purge of Andal serrin. They passed market squares where morning trade should be commencing, past bakeries whose chimneys should have been smoking with the fires of morning bread, all barred and shuttered. Yet the serrin woman ahead rode with confidence, and did not fear ambush.
Sasha took the lead on her horse, ahead of the first wagon with Bergen beside. They passed familiar streets now, near the lakeshore where Father Belgride's temple sat, on the easternmost edge of the lake where the city was densest.
Finally they entered a large square, deserted like all the rest. Deserted, that was, save for talmaad, who sat beneath the large central tree and prepared breakfast, and trained, washed, or slept. It was a camp for a serrin army, and Sasha guessed there were at least eighty men and women here. She wondered how many more that meant there were throughout the city.
Another woman came out from the tree to meet them, and Sasha dismounted fast before her wary soldiers, ran to Aisha, and embraced her. “I'm sorry I couldn't come after you,” she said with emotion. “Something came up.”
“We stopped the riders you sent,” said Aisha, releasing her with a smile. “We heard what you did. Then we sent the riders on their way, to talk to the Steel.”
“What happened here?” Sasha asked, gesturing for her men to dismount, and gazing about at the talmaad camp. “These came across from Saalshen?” The defences of the Altene were so strong in fear of precisely that, she recalled.
Aisha nodded. “The Steel guarding the eastern border have basically retreated to garrison and stopped patrolling the border. And the locals are all friends to serrin out there, so there was no one to stop them. These talmaad were about to hit Andal, but Kiel got word and rode out to find them. Arendelle, too.”
“What happened, where are they?”
Aisha looked over her shoulder, as Rhillian appeared, with her familiar, swinging stride. “I think I'll let Rhillian explain.”
Sasha embraced Rhillian also, and made an introduction to Arken, who cautiously shook her hand. “Bring your wounded down so we can treat them,” Rhillian told him, and gestured to some serrin to help. “Then some breakfast-you must be hungry. A serrin named Tershin came to tell us where you'd gone, and I've been waiting for you. If I'm to move any further, I'll need your help.”
Rhillian explained events over breakfast and a small fire. Sasha couldn't believe it. For a long while she could think of nothing to say.
“How did you do it?” she finally managed. “I mean…the vel'ennar…”
“I know,” Rhillian said mildly. Her eyes had a faraway look. Thoughtful, and faintly sad. Yet not regretful. “I'm unsure. Errollyn is not the only serrin born with unusual instincts. You did tell me in Petrodor that you'd once thought he was the strangest serrin you'd met, only to become convinced that it was me.”
Sasha remembered that day, sitting atop dockside buildings in the sun with a view of the harbour. “I did,” she recalled. “But serrin cannot fight the vel'ennar. I've seen them try. It's paralysing.”
Rhillian shrugged. “He deserved it.”
Sasha blinked in amazement. The strangest serrin she'd ever met indeed. “And Arendelle?”
“That I regret,” Rhillian said sombrely. “Yet he was at an untested moment also. The vel'ennar led him two ways at once, to fight Kiel's killer, yet the killer was me. Kiel's ra'shi evidently won that conflict, and left me with no choice.”
“And all these other talmaad? All in preference to Kiel's ra'shi at that moment? They just accepted your actions, and went along with you?”
“Oh, no,” said Rhillian. “Quite a few of them wanted to kill me. Yet they could not. Most serrin cannot. Evidently I can, to my own astonishment as much as anyone else's. It does place me in a unique position of influence.”
“Obviously.” It was coldly phrased, put that way. Rhillian had influence because she could kill other serrin, but they could not kill her. Such a person could have unfettered power in Saalshen. All were defenceless before her. Sasha suddenly understood the thoughtful, faraway look in Rhillian's eyes.
“So how is it that you can?” she pressed her friend.
Rhillian's emerald gaze fixed on her. “Kiel's plan was evil,” Rhillian said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I do not do evil. Should Saalshen begin to do evil, Saalshen should cease to be worth saving.”
“There were times in Petrodor when I heard you reject such logic.”
Rhillian shrugged. “I've been through a lot since then. Life is not worth having if it does not serve some greater purpose. Perhaps this is a new phase of the serrinim, a new direction of our people. It is good that the vel'ennar unites us, that unity has served us well. Yet if it can also drive us to commit horrors, unthinking and unresisting, then that is no good thing at all.”
“Morality over unity,” Sasha murmured.
“Exactly.”
“You've done it now. If Saalshen enters a new age of the individual above the group, you'll find that each individual's morality is different. And that, my friend, is why humans are always fighting.”
Rhillian sighed. “We'll see. I think that the vel'ennar should remain intact enough that we do not all suddenly leap at each others' throats. In time, we may come to see that it is not my behaviour that was the aberration, it was Kiel's. I surely could never have done what I did had not Kiel forced my hand, and probably had not Errollyn's previous actions given me many thoughts to ponder. Our fates are interlinked, and not merely amongst we serrin.”
“And so what happened then?” Arken asked. “After you killed those two?”
“That will be discussed for many generations in Saalshen, I'm sure, should we survive,” Rhillian sighed. “There was a rupture in the vel'ennar, for certain. A confusion, a tul'an aehl.” Arken looked askance at Sasha, who shrugged and smiled. “A lot of us simply stood around in shock, or sat and could not speak. A few fainted. It took a while to resolve. Some of those most aggressive took to arguing, as though by argument they could bring Kiel and Arendelle back to life. I told them that any attempting to carry out Kiel's former plans would also die. When the shock of that faded away, I argued plans with them. You know serrin, we argue like rabbits fuck.