The Compass Rose

“I know.” Kallista grinned, knowing he couldn’t see it in the dark. “But they are in the Handbook of Rules for Friends. Right after ‘See that your friend gets back home after drinking all night.’”

Torchay turned his back to her. “Go to sleep.”

Kallista turned over and settled her back against his, as they slept in the field while hunting bandits. “Yes, Sergeant.”

She slept the sun around before waking early and alone on the second morning. A smiling acolyte in the yellow-trimmed white of a South naitan-in-training led her to the baths on the floor below. Kallista paddled about in company with a trio of chubby toddlers and their pregnant minder before being escorted firmly but politely to breakfast in the prelate’s office with her hair dripping down her back. There she not only found the green-robed elder, but Torchay looking entirely too comfortable. The first finger on his left hand wore a white-bandaged splint, but it didn’t seem to interfere with his ease.

“Eat, child.” The woman indicated a tray near overflowing with food.

Torchay picked up the plate and began filling it, ignoring Kallista’s sour look.

“I am sorry, Mother,” she said. “I don’t know your name.”

“Mother is fine. Mother Edyne, if you insist on more.”

Kallista took the food Torchay handed her and began to eat, discovering an appetite she hadn’t recognized.

“Your guard has told me what he observed that morning,” Mother Edyne said without waiting. “Tell me what you experienced.”

Over sweet buns, early melon and steaming cha brewed from leaves shipped over the southern mountains from the lands beyond, Kallista told her. When she had finished, the prelate frowned.

“This magic…” Mother Edyne shook her head. “It has frightened people. It smells of the mysteries of the West. That is why I’ve kept you here, you know. So that their fear would have no target.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” Kallista shuddered. No one had been found with West magic in over fifty years. “But I am a North naitan. I’ve always been North. Not West.”

“I admit it puzzles me.” Edyne peered at Kallista, her eyes sharp green. “Have you found a mark somewhere on your body? One that you did not have before.”

Kallista felt Torchay’s gaze on her as she lied. “No. Nothing like that.”

The magic she had already was enough to bear. She didn’t want more. Maybe if no one knew, it would just go away. She reached back and combed her hair down closer over her neck. She didn’t have to wear a queue. It wasn’t regulation for officers the way it was for other ranks. She could grow her hair longer.

“Hmm,” the prelate considered. “Has there been anything else? Any sign of other magic? Foreseeing perhaps? That has always been the most common sort of West magic.”

“No, Mother Edyne.” The dream had been merely a dream. Nothing more than that. It couldn’t have been anything more.

Kallista could feel Torchay’s agitation rising off him in waves. Next, Mother Edyne would be claiming that was a sign of West magic, and not part of knowing him so well for so long.

“Well, that’s that, I suppose.” Mother Edyne stood and the other two scrambled to their feet with her. “No, no. Stay. Finish your meal. And then I suppose you must return to your duties. Unless there is something more you wish to tell me?”

Kallista widened her eyes, doing her best to look as if not only did she have no secrets at this moment, but she had never had any secret in her entire life. “No, Mother. Nothing.”

“Very well.” She motioned them back into their chairs and let a hand rest on each head as she passed from the room. “Be well, my children.”

When the door was closed and Mother Edyne gone, Torchay drew his little blade and stabbed it through a melon slice. “And why,” he asked through clenched teeth, “did you not tell the prelate the truth?”

Kallista hunched her shoulders, embarrassed by her fear and by the lies she’d told to cover it. What she had done terrified her. She didn’t wish it undone. Ukiny would have been taken and thousands more dead or enslaved if she had not done it. But she feared the consequences of her impulsive request.

Already, according to Mother Edyne, people whispered. West magic involved the unexplained and the unexplainable. It dealt with hidden things and with endings, including the ultimate ending: death. No wonder people feared it.

“I’m sure it’s temporary.” Kallista focused on the last of her meal, unable to meet his eyes. “Now that the enemy has been cut down to a reasonable size, I’ll have no need for such a magic. Why bother the prelate with it?”

“When the One gives a gift, She rarely takes it back.”

“But a onetime event is more common—more likely than my having permanent magic from two Compass points.”

“You have the mark.”

She refrained from smoothing her hair down over her neck only through sheer force of will. “Legend. Fable. Nothing more.”

Torchay growled, a sound of utter disgust. She’d heard it countless times.

“Besides,” she said, risking a glance in his direction, “talk is already circulating. I have no doubt word is already flying to the Barbs. How much quicker would they come to investigate if the Mother Temple here added its weight to the gossip?”

The Order of the Barbed Rose believed an ancient and stubborn heresy, that West magic was evil, and that if it and all its practitioners were eliminated, death itself could be eliminated. The Order had been suppressed for centuries and yet could not be entirely crushed. The fear of death and the will to conquer it was too strong. Even the One’s promise of life eternal after physical death was not enough to quell this persistent falsehood.

Everyone feared the Barbs. Their secret membership fanned out through all Adara, investigating any magic that seemed the least bit out of the ordinary. It occurred to Kallista now that perhaps true West magic hadn’t been seen in so long because the Barbs had somehow found a way to identify those rare ones so gifted and eliminate them before or as their power manifested.

“I can deal with any Barb who comes calling,” Torchay said. “As could you. But do you really believe Mother Edyne would contribute to gossip in any way?”

She didn’t, but she shrugged her shoulders. “The fewer who know a thing, the easier it is to keep it secret.”

“Lying to a prelate has its own consequences.”

“I’ll risk it.” Kallista set her plate aside and stood. “We should report in.”

There were funerals to attend. Flames competed with the blaze of the setting sun as Kallista stood with General Uskenda and the honor guard in the plaza west of the Mother Temple. She let the tears flow, blaming them on the sun’s glare, and commended the souls of her entire troop, all five of the naitani and their five bodyguards, into the welcoming arms of the One. Never had she lost so many.

Never had the Adaran army and its naitani been cast into a battle of such size. They fought bandits. They patrolled remote mountain passes and distant, lawless prinsipalities. They did not fight pitched battles against massive armies. They’d never had to. Until now.

Kallista fought back her grief. So many bright young lives, so full of promise, ended here. Adara could not afford such losses. She feared that they would be facing many more such funerals if changes were not made. But Blessed One, did she have to be the one to change?

When the sun had set and the fires burned to embers, there were letters to be written, paperwork to be done. How could she write so many at once? How could she put it off?

The breeze, not so strong inside the city where it was broken by wall and building, stirred her hair. Kallista tucked it behind her ears yet again as they walked back to quarters.

“If you will not braid your hair,” Torchay said from his place at her shoulder, “you should cut it.”

“Oh, that will cover my neck so well.” She pulled her hair back from her face and held it with one gloved hand.

“Don’t cut the back. Just the front, so it can’t get in your face. Or you could—”

“This is not a time to be thinking about hair.”

“True.” He picked up his pace and took her elbow to escort her quickly through a crowd spilling out of a public house. “But it was noticed. Today it was taken as a sign of mourning for the death of your troopers. If you continue to wear it so, it could be taken as a sign of something else. Perhaps that you attempt to hide something.”

Kallista sighed. She was a soldier. That had been her duty, her destiny for twenty-one years. It kept things simple. She would rather things stayed that way, but the complications kept mounting. “We’ll work out some explanation later.”

The sun must have hurt her eyes more than she realized. They kept watering during the short walk, even as Torchay ushered her into their too-empty billet. The setting sun must bother his eyes as well, given the way he was blinking them.