It took a moment for this to fully sink in. When it did, his eyes came back to hers, not so hopeless anymore. “You have it?”
Corinn nodded, and then playfully nudged him on the shoulder.
He understood. “Of course, you have it,” he said. “You didn’t send the Santoth to it. You sent them away from it. My clever sister.”
The way lines formed at the edge of her eyes was the only way she could indicate that she was smiling. She saw that Aliver saw it, and was glad.
“What will you do with the book? Can you destroy it?”
She shook her head and wrote, It’s not mine to destroy.
Aliver thought about that for a time. “All right, it’s not yours to destroy. It was here before us and it might be wrong to take it from the world completely. That could be another mistake. I understand that. What, then?”
Return it.
“Return it to whom?”
To the worm.
“I don’t understand.”
Corinn looked at him, and then at where Barad slept. She seemed to consider waking him, but then shook the thought away. Pulling the tablet onto her lap, she leaned to write her response. With her posture, she told Aliver not to begin reading until she was done. She wrote for a long time, and then slid the tablet back into his hands. She moved away to the railing as he bent to read.
She had written: From the day I began to study The Song, I felt a living force protest. In my mind it was a great worm. I sometimes imagined it rising from the floor of the sea, its jaws so large they could close around all of the isle of Acacia. I knew it to be angry with me, and I thought it a foulthing.
I know now that’s not right. That creature was always telling me to return the book to it. That creature is its protector. It was of the world before Elenet. Edifus called on it to devour the book, to eat it and hold it inside its body. That’s what it did. Tinhadin should have left it there.
“How do you know all this?”
She pressed her fingers to her chest, indicating that she felt it in her heart. I know it, she wrote.
“How do you take the book to this worm?”
I find it. I don’t think it will be hard. It is somewhere beneath the Gray Slopes. Po will fly me there.
The two siblings sat in stillness for a while. She thought of Leeka Alain in the moment just before his death. What do you think Leeka was trying to tell us?
Aliver shook his head. That was all the answer he had. Eventually, Corinn asked the question Aaden would have wanted her to. She wrote, Might it be untrue?
Aliver did not have to ask what she was referring to. “I know I should wonder that myself, but I don’t. I feel the truth of it. I feel nearer to returning to where I should be. I feel no fear of it. Sadness, yes, but… I don’t doubt that Dagon wrote the truth.”
She wrote, Nor do I. I wish the first time he was truthful wasn’t this. So much conspiring. He and I-we’ve conspired our lives away. That’s the only part of this that feels right. I couldn’t live with this guilt. The Santoth. The vintage. Jason and Kelis and Barad. The things I did to everyone. I couldn’t live with it, but knowing of my approaching death helps. We have little time and much to do.
Seek Paddel, the vintner on Prios. Make him tell you everything about the vintage. It’s mist by another name, Aliver, another of my crimes. Make him tell you.
Aliver nodded. “I will. What of Elya’s children? They’re monsters, Corinn. I know you didn’t intend that, but-”
She stopped him by beginning to write. I did intend it. They are monsters, but they are our monsters. Use them. As long as I live they will be true to us. I sang that into them before they were even born.
“After that?”
I cannot say. After I die it will be different, but trust them until that. She paused a moment, and then wrote, I don’t deserve this day. The fullness of it. The time to talk with you, even like this. I don’t deserve it
“Of course you do.”
Corinn exhaled through her nose. I’ve planted nothing but evil seeds. Now they have sprung to life, none of them as I imagined.
Aliver’s hand stopped hers. He had been reading as she wrote. “Don’t. That’s the past. I look at you and I see so much to admire. It means a great deal to me that you treat my daughter with love, and that you are kind to Benabe. I barely knew her, yet… still, it matters. And I know that the sister I had but a few days ago would have seen only challenge in them. Only foes and dangers to be clipped and controlled. You don’t have to explain that to me. That’s what it means to be siblings. I do know the worst of you, whether you like it or not.” He smiled. “But I also know that you would not be here as you are today, with them sleeping over there after such a wonderful day, if the love that you are showing wasn’t in you always. That’s why I cannot be angry with you. Anger would be a waste of the moments we have, and it would make us weak in the face of the things we have yet to do.”
It sounded so good when he said it. She sat with that a while, hoping it was true.
After a while, she wrote, Did you love her? She pointed her chin toward Benabe, who slept with her arm over Shen.
“I might have. I was too young to know.” He thought a moment. “She was very beautiful. Still is, really.”
If we had more time.
“Yes, if we had more time.”
Still later in the night Corinn sat at a table not far from the others, quills, paper, and ink at hand. She had a note to compose.
Hanish stood with a hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t tell him about the hard part,” Hanish said. “About the fact that you’re planning to lure the Santoth into the worm’s mouth as well. That will not be ‘easy.’ ”
She thought, No need to worry him. That’s for me to deal with. Now, be quiet. I have only a few hours to write everything I can for Aaden. You can watch over my shoulder but don’t say anything.
When she had confirmation that he would not, she lifted the quill and considered what she wished most to say. She knew how she would begin and how she would end it. The same phrase. The truth. It was all the things in between that would take some sorting.
She wrote his name, and then, I love you. In all the long life that you have before you, I hope that you find love in all its complicated variations. And each time it confounds you and surprises you, hurts you and heals you-remember me, for the love I mean includes all those things.
Pausing, she wondered how much she should say, what she should withhold. It pained her to think of some of the lessons she had given the boy, things she did not believe now and doubted she ever had, not completely. Hopefully, some of that would fall away from him. Hopefully, he would be better than she had taught him, less afraid, more trusting. It was dangerous to be all those things, but it was even more dangerous to be as she had been. One cannot be whole unto themselves. She knew that now. She would tell him as much. She would tell him everything she could, so that this letter spoke to him in the years to come.
She dipped the quill, and continued writing.
T he next morning she and Aliver met as the sun rose. They laid out the future as they agreed it should be, had it put in writing, sealed and official, and then locked away. The business of it took every moment up until the expiration of the single day.
Corinn kept her parting brief. Private. It was not vanity that stopped her from addressing the populace. She would proudly enough have stood before them. She was still herself in Aaden’s eyes, so no one else could hurt or embarrass her. Nor did she mind asking Barad to be her voice to the world. He had a good voice. She had always liked it, and the fact that he gave it to her of his own free will did much to comfort her.
The reason she said good-bye to her family in private was that she wanted no pomp on her departure. She did not wish to speak grandiose words, to instill either hope or worry. Aliver would stay after her to speak with the people in ways that brought the best out of them. What she needed to do, she had to do alone, so that’s how she set out.