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Jullanar is tired.
Well, everyone is tired. She can see it in the downturned faces, the dirty hands, everyone, everywhere, trying to learn to live in a world that’s ended.
But Jullanar has never been a person who could walk by someone who needed help she could give. And there are so, so many people who need help. (There is so, so little she is able to fix.)
She had been thinking about settling down. She had always talked about a nebulous someday , when she might have children and a cat and a little shop called Elderflower Books. Sometime in the last year or two, without her notice, it had slipped from someday to any day now.
Maybe it was Damian and Pharia who had put the idea in her head, with all their talk of taking their little children and going to live in Astandalas, beneath the very nose of the Emperor. A final jab, a fitting retirement.
Well, anyway. Someday had been left too late.
She isn’t certain there had been an ordinary life left for her on Alinor, in any case, or anywhere. Her face and crimes had been plastered across the Empire-that-was. The truth was known, too, of course; there would always be people who passed along stories of the good the Red Company had done. But the Empire's propaganda had been strong, and moved between worlds faster than they did. Bad public relations, that was the trouble.
Well, now the Empire is no more. A final jab, and no kind of retirement at all.
So here she is, alone. She wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for the others, and with the Empire’s crossings closed, Alinor is lost to her. She has never been good at navigating the Borderwood; that had always been Faleron’s job, or Sardeet’s, when they felt a need to navigate at all.
Jullanar doesn’t bother to navigate these days. There are people who need help wherever she goes.
She’s handling the grief well, she thinks. There are people who have lost so much—family on other worlds they may never see again, whole continents fallen into the sea. On the road she met a man who had gone out to tend his sheep and returned to find that a thousand years had passed in his village, and everything he knew was gone. Jullanar is certain enough that her friends are alive and well, wherever they are, and she gave up her family and home on Alinor years ago; she has no right to mourn their loss. Everyone is grieving, and there is work to do.
Still. Sometimes she sits by her campfire at night, and the silence around her is so empty it hurts.
But not tonight. Tonight, the traveler's camp just off the road is already occupied when she approaches just before dusk. She nearly turns around to find another place to make camp. But it's nearly dark, and she has a sword, even if she's not the strongest fighter. She stands a minute out of sight, listening; the muffled chatter and occasional bursts of laughter tug at her heartstrings. (She's so very lonely.)
The traveler's camps she's encountered since the Fall have not generally been much the worse for wear; the Empire rarely did much to maintain them in any case. This one has a simple fire pit, gray with the ash of many, many fires; a few weathered logs to act as benches; and a crude shelter, little more than an awning on sticks. There's also a small stack of kindling, but whether it was kindly left by a previous traveler or gathered by the two men already here, she can't say.
One of the men is bent over the fire pit; his clothes are plain and practical, his face alight in response to whatever joke his companion has just made. Jullanar likes his smile immediately. The other man has the looks of a highborn aristocrat, but none of the bearing, sprawled out in the dirt heedless of his fine clothes. He holds a small harp in one hand, and gesticulates widely with the other.
They don't seem to notice her approach. She feels she should disapprove; Pali would have noticed her a hundred yards off. When she scuffs a shoe on the ground deliberately, they turn towards her in surprise, but don’t startle or reach for weapons.
She says politely, “My name is Jullanar. I was hoping I might share your camp for the night.”
The one with the harp springs to his feet and sweeps her an archaic sort of bow. “Come, traveler, rest your feet and be welcome of our hearth and table till dawn’s light.”
She recognizes the line, and returns, “I give you thanks, and will fill your hall with news of the road.” Then she adds, “Though you have neither hearth, hall, nor table, I will point out.”
He waves this away. “Details! No one else we’ve come across has recognized Oloris. You have good taste.”
As she sets down her pack and begins to set up her bedroll, the bard strums his harp thoughtfully. "Jullanar," he says. "You have a fantastic name for song, did you know? Ju-la-nar. It could use another few beats, I think. Do you have a surname?"
"Thistlethwaite, much to my regret."
"Oh, my." The bard makes a face so exaggerated Jullanar can't help but laugh. "No, no. A toponymic, perhaps? Where were you raised?"
"Fiella-by-the-Sea, Fiellan, Rondé, Alinor." She feels a pang at the thought of that infinitely distant place, the house where she grew up, the laughter of her sisters. She wonders how it's fared since the Fall. She hasn't had any word of Alinor at all, but that's not unusual, these days.
"Hmm. Ju-la-nar of A-li-nor. Not bad, but a touch generic."
"What about Jullanar of the Sea?" the other man suggests diffidently, looking up from his fire. It's the first time she's heard him speak. His accent is pleasant; his voice surprisingly melodic.
The bard grins at him like the sun. "Perfect! An epithet worthy of a hero, I do believe."
She raises her eyebrows at him. "Now that you've granted me a new name, may I have the pleasure of knowing yours?"
“Oh!” He sweeps another bow, this one so elaborate that from anyone else it would seem sardonic, but she has no trouble at all believing in the sincerity of it. “Fitzroy Angursell, madam, at your service.”
“Kip Mdang,” the other man says, his eyes laughing. He offers a seated bow over folded hands. "I'm afraid neither of us have much in the way of social graces right now. We must have been sailing for a good long while, and we were both alone even longer before that. How long has it been for you, since the Fall?"
Jullanar has lost track. She makes a token attempt to count the days, weeks, months, then shrugs and says, "Six months, perhaps?" It seems like yesterday, and forever ago, all at the same time. In the village she visited yesterday, the lights had gone out only a few days before; there had been no visitors since then and she was forced to be the one to tell them that the magic would not be coming back. A week ago, she visited a town where no one alive could remember the Empire at all. “Time is unstable here.”
“Yes, we’ve found that too.” Then, "Fitzroy, do you have a broom in that bag of yours? This fire pit is abysmal."
Fitzroy produces a full-sized broom from somewhere, and Kip sets about sweeping the ashes out of the old fire pit. He is humming to himself while he works, too low for Jullanar to make out the tune. He notices her looking and gives her a brief, unselfconscious smile. For a moment something about his expression reminds her of Faleron, and she misses them all so fiercely and suddenly that tears spring to her eyes. She blinks them away hard, hoping that the growing dark will cover her falter, but no such luck.
"You have lost someone, haven't you." It isn’t a question.
“Everyone has.” She tamps down on herself, hard, drawing on the iron control drilled into her as a girl.
“That doesn’t make the loss less real,” Kip says, so gently that she has to frown furiously at the ground for some time before she can trust herself to speak again.
“I had been traveling for some time with… a group of friends,” she says slowly. The Empire that wants her head no longer exists, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful. “At the moment of the Fall we were scattered, somehow—I think we must have been caught up in the magic in just the wrong way. I don’t doubt they’ve all survived, but I—” Breathe. “I don’t expect I’ll ever see any of them again. The nine worlds are a big place.”
Fitzroy is looking at her thoughtfully. His eyes flash a startling gold when they catch the light. “A big place,” he agrees, “full of serendipity. I don’t doubt you’ll find each other again when the time comes.” He makes this pronouncement with such casual certainty that she finds herself, somehow, believing him.
Kip says, “I left my home and family after the Fall. That was a choice that I made of my own free will, but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss them. Someday I’ll cross the Wide Seas back to them, but until then—” He shrugs. “A big place.”
Jullanar smiles at him crookedly. “I chose to leave my family on Alinor over a decade ago. I wonder if they’re still pretending to believe I’ve been at university. I visited once, oh, seven or eight years ago now, and my sister asked if they were holding my degree hostage.”
Fitzroy rests his chin on his palm. “So where have you been, if not at university? I was serious about the song.”
“And here I was with the impression you were never serious about anything.”
He places a hand over his heart. “I’m always serious about music. You’re avoiding the question.”
“Just traveling, by and large. With the friends I mentioned.”
"Oh, please tell me you aren't going to be modest," Fitzroy cries. "I've been after Kip to give me enough detail for a decent song since we met. He forces me to make things up and then complains that it's inaccurate."
"That's because the things you make up leave something to be desired," Kip says. "I've never even seen a sea monster, let alone fought one off with a shard of obsidian and a sharpened stick. Before I met you my journey was really very boring."
"Boring!" Fitzroy scoffs, in a way that makes clear this is a beloved and well-traveled conversational path. "Boring, he says! Jullanar, this man sailed alone between deserted islands for at least a year, in a boat he made with his own hands, through tempest and typhoon, his only map a dance passed down from his ancestors, and he calls it boring!"
“I do imagine there was quite a lot of sitting around,” Jullanar allows.
“Thank you,” Kip says, pointing at her. “You could cover the whole thing in one verse. Half a verse, even.”
“I’m sure there’s a way to make it interesting,” Jullanar says. “If the songwriter is good enough.” She raises her eyebrows at Fitzroy, who looks back at her in mock affront.
“You challenge my skills, madam!” he says, raising his harp like a weapon. “I demand you tell me the least interesting thing that’s ever happened to you. In the morning I shall sing you a song about it, and we’ll see who’s good enough.”
They spend the evening swapping stories. The company is good, the night is warm. Jullanar is able to cobble together a surprisingly tolerable meal out of the bizarre odds and ends Fitzroy pulls out of his magic bag and her own meager offerings. There’s no wine, but Jullanar feels half drunk on laughter, as if she’s lost her tolerance for it and will have to build it back up again. When she gives up on secrecy and speaks openly about the Red Company, it’s like a thousand pound weight has been lifted from her heart. As she talks, Fitzroy composes snippets of songs on the spot, and where she expects to find grief, she finds… not joy, but the echo of it, a ghost that she thinks she could coax back to life, someday.
But she demands fair trade, story for story. Kip describes his home and his family with such fervent love that Jullanar swears she can see the green slopes of Mama Ituri rising before her eyes. Fitzroy tells stories from books, or from his sea journey with Kip, and tells them so well that she almost doesn’t notice there are no stories of his own past. Well, it’s only the first night of their acquaintance, after all. (And when has she come to expect there to be a second…?)
Kip built the fire, Jullanar cooked the food; Fitzroy, accordingly, is given the washing-up. She can tell he is not a person raised to menial tasks; he does his work with careful concentration and hard-won pride. Jullanar and Kip sit back in companionable silence, listening to the splashing and snatches of song rising from the nearby creek.
“Where are the two of you headed, then?” she asks.
“Oh, anywhere,” he answers, smiling like there’s an old joke behind it. “Lately, we’ve been working our way north up the coast, but we decided to travel inland for a spell. I say we, but Fitzroy chooses where we go, by and large. He has a remarkable talent for serendipity, you see.” He raises his eyebrows at her. “And you?”
“Oh, nowhere,” she echoes his answer, and is surprised by how hollow she sounds. He cocks his head at her and she feels compelled to continue, “I’ve just been traveling. People are short on hands these days, and news even more. I’ve gotten by. People need help, just—” she gestures uselessly “—not the kind of help I can give.”
“Yes,” he says quietly. “We’ve seen that, too.” He nods in the direction of the creek. “When I say he has a talent for serendipity, I mean we just seem to stumble into people who need exactly the kind of help we’re able to offer. That he’s able to offer, mainly. He seems to be straightening out the magic, one little scrap at a time. I’m just along for the ride.” He shrugs modestly.
She studies him in the flickering firelight, thinks about his quiet competence, his steady kindness. She says, “Somehow, I don’t think you are.”
He smiles at her and changes the subject. "You’re not on your way back to your family on Alinor, then?"
"The gates between worlds are closed. I wouldn't even know where to begin."
His eyes are uncomfortably shrewd. "You don't seem like the kind of person to let that stop you."
She draws a slow breath inward. "You are remarkably good at cutting to the heart of things, Kip Mdang."
His lips quirk. "Most people tell me I should leave well enough alone." Julianar’s eyes flicker to Fitzroy, lit by bobbing magelight as he picks his way back up to the camp, and Kip's smile softens as he follows her gaze. "Not him. He's never left anything well enough alone in his life."
“Oh, are we talking about me?” Fitzroy tosses down his bag and passes Jullanar her utensils back, clean and dry. “One of my favorite subjects, you know.”
“Only incidentally.” Kip leans back against Fitzroy’s knees and smiles lazily up at him. “Actually, we were talking about whether Jullanar might like to come back to the Tui-tanata and sail with us.”
Jullanar blinks. “Is that what we were talking about?”
“Well, I hadn’t quite gotten there yet. But yes.” His eyes spark with mischief. “The Tui-tanata is our boat. There’s plenty of room for three.”
Fitzroy is looking at him, an odd expression on his face. "Our boat?"
Kip frowns. "Well, yes. We sailed her together."
"You built her."
"And you must have helped repair her half a dozen times. Our boat," Kip repeats firmly, and that seems to be the end of that. He turns his attention back to Jullanar. “You don’t have to decide now. You can come with us back to the coast, if you like, and give us your answer then.” He opens a hand as if offering something she can’t see. “I think the three of us together can do more good than any one of us alone.”
Her breath catches. Hadn’t she said something similar to Pali, back in those early days before they were anything more than strangers? Or had Damian said it to Jullanar…?
The coast is perhaps two days’ walk away. Plenty of time to make a decision, or to change her mind. It’s been a long time since she’s seen the sea, any sea; it will be good to taste salt in the air again.
When was the last time she thought tomorrow might be better than today?
She smiles and says, “I look forward to it.”