97. Husband

I pushed past hundreds of keep residents and infantrymen.

Something, perhaps not my goddess, but something was pulling me towards her temple.

Were these the fates she had mentioned to me, the forces that even she did not understand? Was it they that drove me towards death? And if they were, why did I let myself go?

The antechamber of Mother Earth’s temple was empty, all the desks abandoned, papers and ledgers strewn haphazardly, so unlike the orderliness Cian liked us to keep, almost as if someone had been looking for something amongst our work areas.

I pushed open one of the large temple doors and sat in the very last pew.

I looked down at my hands folded in my lap, the left on top, my eyes tracing the lines of the ranunculus petals.

“Help,” I said.

If you do not run now, girl, this very moment, you die today.

“I cannot run.

I cannot abandon him, knowing he goes to his end and I live on.

And something in my breast is compelling me to stay.”

The old woman’s grating broke in my ears, like a sob.

She tried to speak but the sound of a crack came through to me instead, a tree branch snapping off in a storm, a deer’s leg bone crumbling down a stony valley, two rocks scraping against each other.

She paused and then was able to say, I will be with you in the end.

I will not abandon you.

If this be your choice.

I closed my eyes.

“If I stay, others will live.

That’s what it is.

How do I know this?”

She did not answer but the scraping of stone continued, her way of weeping.

“Talk to me,”

I prayed.

“I want to hear you, Mother of mine.”

A sigh full of scraping and then, I have loved you, girl.

More than any lover ever could.

I am you.

I am the magic and the marrow in your bones, the blood in your veins.

We are one and will be forevermore.

This is the end.

There is hardship ahead.

“But you are here.”

I be here.

And then I felt it, something every child wants, a mother’s embrace, two strong arms all around me.

Her warmth filled me and I pressed my hands over my heart.

Then, at the far end of the temple, behind the altar, the large carving of Mother Earth’s wooden face, one side human, the other foliage and creature, split open and from out of Cian’s office, stepped Ormond Thrush, my first husband.

Run, girl.

Please.

Run, came my goddess in my ears.

I spotted him before he spotted me and I stood abruptly.

This movement was a poor choice as it drew attention to me.

Down the center aisle that separated the stone pews, he stared at me, several house lengths between us but close enough to identify me.

“Good morning, Edie Thrush,”

he said, a grin on his face.

He still looked handsome, his dark hair without gray.

His clothing was simple but well made, a sword strapped to one hip and a dagger to the other.

He stepped down from the altar, saying, “Or I should say, good morning, wife.”

Girl, said Mother Earth.

“Although, Cian tells me you call another husband now,”

said Thrush, his steps unhurried, a hand in the pocket of his breeches.

He pulled out a small item and it sparkled pink and red in the sunlight that streamed through the narrow windows.

“You left this.

Stupid, if you do not mind my saying so.

You could have pawned this but you left it.

Now that told me that perhaps, once you were done being a rebellious, adulterous woman, you might return to being my wife.”

That word, that precious word that Alric had so recently claimed as his word for me, sounded like a curse on Thrush’s tongue.

“And now,”

he said, putting the ring back in his pocket, “you have gone and married another.”

I stepped out of the pew, into the aisle and then took a step backwards to the double temple doors, right hand on the head of my sagaris.

“What are you doing here?”

I asked, my voice sounding like it came from someone else.

“I would think it obvious.

What happened to you, Edie? You were always so quick.”

He had slowed his steps to a halt, seemingly unbothered by seeing his estranged wife of eleven winters.

“I am here because Perpatane invades.

With Ruskar.

With those barbarian Helmsmen.

With Eccleston, although their troops are meager.

With contingents from smaller countries.

Tintar falls today.”

“Why?”

“Why do anything?”

he said, shrugging.

“For power, for gain.

Our king, and I mean our king of Perpatane, not the madman you now are in service to, not your Shark King, our king, rightfully has declared Tintar to be a country that refuses to progress into modernity.

Threat of invasion for a broken trade agreement? How backwards.

This is why the Cloudlands are leery of our trading with them.

All they know of our continent is Tintar, a country of illiterate thugs bleeding over little bowls praying to pagan idols.

Can you blame them?”

“So you, in critique of their warrior’s way, invade them in an act of war?”

“A war to end all wars.”

“That is what every warmonger has ever said.”

“There she is, my intelligent wife.”

“Do not call me that.”

“Why? Is that what he calls you now? Your captain?”

I swallowed.

“What do you want from me, Ormond?”

I had not used his first name in so long, my lips could barely say it.

“I want you back, Edie.”

I opened my eyes, having closed them, perhaps to try and blink away the sight of him here in Tintar, in her temple.

“You want me back?”

I spluttered.

He smiled.

“I was too hard on you.

I put all of my ambition into your womb.

That was unfair.

I have lost my faith in our saint but, I ask you to keep that to yourself.

No praying or boxing can make a barren woman have a babe.

I know that now.”

I winced at his casual mention of the worst days and nights of my life.

“I missed you,”

he added.

“You cannot tell me you did not miss me.”

I could not.

That first winter, working as a maid, I had longed for his arms around me.

I had dreamed of the beginning of the marriage, the coupling, the gifts, the long conversations, his teaching me what he knew about running an estate, Perpatanian law and taxes, unknowingly preparing me for independence winters later in Eccleston, able to read and decipher documents as a scribe.

But too much time had passed between those newlywed days and my flight from Perpatane.

Too much coldness had been shown to me so that when my first casual lover in Eccleston showed me the cheapest warmth, enjoying my body for how it felt not regretting what it could not do, I had lost any love left for Thrush.

And I had never missed him again.

And more importantly, Helena and little Maureen had become a part of my life and then Mischa and my heart then knew what love was.

“I forgot how to miss you,”

I said.

“Why would you want me back? I still am barren.”

“I got a son on a woman.

She died and I made him my ward.

The way is clear.”

Breath expelled from my mouth in half laughter, half outrage.

“So, now my barrenness is forgiven? Now, I am to be loved without condition.

Did your father grant you the estate and the mines? Did your brother not have a son then?”

He shook his head.

“It is all mine now.

I am a very wealthy man, Edie.

You will live as a queen, I promise you.

Our marriage bed can be one of pleasure again.”

“Declare me dead and get yourself a younger woman,”

I spat.

“I know too much now.”

Thrush cast his gaze up and down my form, returning to my face.

“You are yet, after all this time, so beautiful.”

“I do not like that word,” I said.

He looked confused, but said, “I will call you whatever you wish.

I love you still.”

Hearing those words, the words I had wanted Alric to say and now never would hear him say, was all too much.

“Never,”

I gasped.

“You broke my heart.”

“I know,”

he said softly.

“I broke my own too, Edie.”

Run, rasped my goddess in my ears.

I took another step backwards.

He held out his hand.

“Come back to me.

I will keep you safe.

This invasion will be over soon.

We have all of the ships.

Your navy is gone and while your army is large, you cannot keep us from docking and our men from pouring into your city.

There are no Tintarian warships to prevent this.

And there will be a flood of them, Edie.

Each of those Ruskarian-built ships holds nearly four hundred men.

And there are eighteen ships.

How big is the infantry? Most of your cavalry is deployed to the south.

Your navy is in the north.

There is no chance Pikestully holds today."

I took another step backwards, trying to breathe.

More than seven thousand men were on their way to raze Pikestully.

Thrush went on.

“Come to me.

I will keep you safe and once Cian is on the throne, we can return to Perpatane and I will not allow any priest to ever touch you again.”

“Once Cian is on the throne?”

I could not understand him.

“He is third in line and also wishes for Tintar to advance,”

my first husband explained, taking another step towards me.

“We will execute Hinnom and his brother and then give Tintar to Cian.

He is a reasonable man.

He has agreed to a co-regency with Perpatane, but he will be allowed to be seen as a fully seated king who brings peace to this wilderness of magic.

Oh and he tells me you have magic.”

Thrush smiled fully now.

“Did you know that? I certainly did not.

Always surprising me, Edie.”

I believe Pikestully has a rat, Alric had said.

“Was it you on the other end of the enchanted slate?”

“Ah, he let you get quite close to that discovery,”

Thrush grumbled.

“I think him a little in love with you from his dispatches.

You were always mentioned.”

“Were you in Eccleston the day of the restrained invasion?”

I demanded.

“To get you out, Edie Finch,”

he snapped.

“Why pick such a stupid alias?”

His use of my third last name made me think of Yro’s white eyes.

The vole tried to be a bird twice, but she fell from the second nest into the mouth of the fish.

She has no feather or fin.

And soon she be without a paw.

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“One moment professing undying love, the next criticism.”

He looked up at the bluff rock ceiling above us.

“I eventually found you and kept eyes on you, you and all of your adulteries.

So many men in your bed, Edie.”

He tutted.

I bless any man who brought you some kind of pleasure.

I laughed again.

“You just admitted to having a son with someone else!”

I shut my eyes, my right hand gripping the top of the axehead to steady myself.

“So, if you missed me, why not come for me in Eccleston before?”

“Because,”

he shouted, taking another step.

“You too broke my heart! I was heartbroken by your abandonment, Edie.

It took me winters to forgive it.”

“You threatened to have me killed!”

I shrieked.

“I fled for my life.”

“I was desperate!”

he burst out.

Our shouts ricocheted off of the rock walls.

Outside noises came through the windows, hoofbeats and wagon wheels thundering over the streets, crowds of people screaming, civilians in agony and fear, soldiers in dutiful cadences.

I shook my head.

“You and I cannot be.

I am wedded to another and I love him.”

“He will die today if his Procurers stay to do battle.”

“I would rather die the same day as him then.

Without him, my heart will not beat anyway.”

“No— No one,”

Thrush said, “no one will ever love you like I love you.

You are mine.

You always have been.”

He began to walk towards me with purpose, no longer strolling.

Girl, I beseech you to go, said Mother Earth.

And I ran.