Chapter 250: The Letter

Mara’s letter arrived on a Thursday in week four.

He knew it was Thursday because she had dated it in the upper right corner, day and time to the nearest quarter-hour, which was how she dated everything including her practice parchments and her grocery lists. She had used Villa 1 stationery because Villa 1 stationery was in the desk and she was using the desk.

He read it on the eastern wall in the late afternoon.

Vane.

The villa is fine. I renegotiated the kitchen budget. Henri was charging too much per meal. I worked out the cost per calorie and showed him the numbers and now it is better. He was annoyed but he agreed because the numbers were correct.

I am up to the full alphabet. Ashe said she wanted it by Friday but she is not here so I am going at my own pace. I am also doing numbers. I got to 200 before I got bored and drew a dragon instead. It looked better than the last one.

There is a bird that sits on the outer garden wall every morning. It is very loud. I have named it Kaito because it is annoying and has opinions.

The villa staff think I am in charge. I have not told them I am not.

The library sent a book you did not return. I paid the fine with the household account. You owe me.

Come back before second year.

Mara

He folded it and put it in his jacket.

He sat on the wall for a while with the mountain range in front of him going dark at the peaks as the sun dropped behind them. The letter was exactly what he had expected it to be, which was Mara conducting her life with the flat efficiency she brought to everything and not performing anything she did not feel. Twelve years old in a villa on a floating island, naming birds after Master-rank cultivators, negotiating kitchen budgets.

He thought about Henri’s annoyed face.

He thought about the bird on the wall.

He thought about the dragon.

He was still sitting there when Ashe came up from the middle ring and found him, which she did by the direct method of walking toward where she had last seen him heading and continuing until she arrived there. She dropped down beside him on the wall with the ease of someone who had been climbing on compound walls since childhood.

She looked at the mountains. He looked at the mountains.

“Letter,” she said.

“From Mara.”

“What did she say.”

“She renegotiated the kitchen budget, named a bird after your brother, and is running the villa staff under an arrangement where they believe she is in charge.”

Ashe was quiet for a moment. “Is she.”

“Effectively.”

“Good.” She settled her elbows on her knees. The mountains were going the deep iron color they went in the last twenty minutes before full dark. “I like her.”

“I know.”

They sat in the quiet. The compound below them was settling into its evening sounds, the specific texture of a place going from active to still. The lamp in the dining hall came on, the pine-resin smell of it reaching even up here.

After a while Ashe said: “What did you want. Before all of this.”

He looked at her. She was looking at the mountains.

“Not the academy,” she said. “Not the ranking. Before you were in any of this. What did you actually want.”

He thought about it honestly, the way he tried to think about things that mattered. Not the answer that sounded like a speech. The real one.

“My mother died because she was in the way of something that didn’t have to look down to step on her,” he said. “A knight looking for a fugitive. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t look. She was just in the building.” He looked at the mountains. “I wanted to make sure nobody could ever do that to someone again. Not just to me. To anyone. The kind of power that steps on people without looking — I wanted to be able to stop it.” He paused. “That’s still true. But it started smaller than that. It started with one specific knight with a name.”

She nodded slowly. She did not offer sympathy for the mother. She received the information the way he had offered it, straight.

“Your turn,” he said.

She was quiet for a moment, the jaw doing the thing it did when she was deciding how much of the real answer to give.

“To stand in front of anyone,” she said. “Anywhere. And have what I am be the thing they see first.” She looked at her hands. “The name opens doors and closes them and people see it before they see me. Ryuken’s daughter. Kaito’s sister. The Warlord of the East. Every room I walk into, the name got there first.” She turned one hand over, looking at the palm. “I want to fight in front of someone and have them see me before they see anything else.”

“I’ve never seen the name when I look at you,” he said.

She went still for a moment.

It was not a performance. He had not said it for any particular effect. It was simply accurate and he said accurate things.

She looked at him. The red eyes very direct, the way they were when she had stopped managing them for something.

“I know,” she said.

The mountains were fully dark now. The lamps in the compound below were all on, the warm yellow of them visible from the wall. The dinner smell was coming up, the compound cook’s version of the braised meat that had been on rotation all week.

She stood. She looked down at him. “You have things to deal with when you get back.”

“I know.”

“Do them,” she said. She was not soft about it and she was not harsh about it. It was the same register she used for everything that mattered. “And then we’ll see.”

He looked at her.

She held it for a moment. Then she turned and went down from the wall toward the dining hall, and he sat on the wall a little longer with the dark mountains and the letter in his jacket and the specific weight of everything that was waiting twelve weeks away.

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