Page 50 of Angel in Absentia
She couldn’t remember the last time she was so unconditionally giddy. She barely recognized the feeling, her body buzzing from the dancing, lights, and music of the night. She meandered back into her room and lay down over the covers, staring at the ceiling and not wanting to fall asleep and waste the feeling. Veilin bodies recovered faster from everything, and she knew the dizzying feelings of the drinks wouldn’t last much longer.
Hazily, she thought about Iris’s request to stay, and looked to her right to see Ryson’s weapon in its case in her bedroom. Maybe she really was being brash? Maybe she really had done all she needed to do for her people. They’d let her go, and after her confession in the council, it seemed they might not want her back after all. It had hurt, but maybe this was where she really did belong.
No one had asked her to go on a mission to visit the Insednians, and at this point, they might think her too corruptible to even try it. Regardless, waiting another few days to go back wouldn’t hurt her case. Her father had welcomed her to stay here for as long as she wanted. She could get married here. It could be a quick wedding, and Idan would likely let her get involved in different academies, learn what she wanted, explore what she wanted. He’d always encouraged that. Maybe at last she’d find a place where she felt she belonged.
Clea turned her head in bed and stared at the ceiling. So many of her Lodain people thought Ruedain ways excessive and frivolous, just as they thought Virdain people barbaric and brash. Clea had been unable to agree with either sweeping statement, though she understood what habits might fuel the thoughts on either side.
She’d always felt neutral despite any effort to ally herself with a given side. Sometimes it gave her perspective, but other times she wished she could belong somewhere. Another cost of healing, perhaps. Connection to everything by default seemed to mean there would be no one place to call home.
She closed her eyes and listened to the steady beat of Ryson’s heart, that faint echo behind her own. It took her a moment to recognize that Ryson was perhaps that one place that captured her bias, where she reflected back on her journey with him with a one-sided fondness. Her hand drifted to the necklace around her throat. Maybe the isolation that ailed her, and the immersive pull of those memories, were two sides of the same coin.
She realized in that moment that the very heart she clung to for comfort was likely the same thing that drew her away from the rest of the world. In a murky realization, she knew she’d need to release that heart, let the memories of him go back into the world. That, perhaps, was the true solution, nested in her people’s warnings about healings, nested in Ryson’s own warnings against forging a connection with him. The entire world had been shouting the solution to her, and she’d only just now been able to accept it. She would never belong anywhere until she no longer felt she belonged with him.
Clea rubbed her face, whispering to herself, “You certainly created a mess to get here.” She really was stubborn, and for a healer, surprisingly destructive.
She was never going to see Ryson again, right? It’s not like he would show up one day, and she didn’t want him to. Maybe in more ways than she wanted to admit, this was about what her journey with him meant. She needed to accept it had ended.
She mumbled to herself, arguing again with the imaginary high council in her head before she at last rolled over to fall asleep.
†††
She drifted in and out of slumber, waking up several hours later, hot and in need of more water. She crawled out of bed in the dark with a much clearer head, only to hear Iris snoring on the couch as she grabbed a drink of water and wandered out to the air of the open porch. She rested her arm over the railing as she drank and looked at the vastness of Ruedom. It was beautiful at night, buildings stacked like lit honeycomb. Loda would be dead quiet in such darkness, with only fiery lamplight on distinct corners and the silver cast of the moon.
She considered Iris’s offer to stay. It gave her some strange freedom to think that she could live here. Ruedom was truly safe, and life blossomed without fear of retribution or thought of imminent suffering.
She grinned, thinking of the night and taking another sip just as she smelled the vague whiff of smoke drifting from a lower abode.
“…if I can help it,” Idan said as he came out on the balcony below her. He was speaking with Merune.
Clea prepared to call down to him, but he continued speaking.
“The people are solemn and deprived, with no concept of life or humor at all,” Idan said with the subtlest slur in his speech. “You should hear their speeches about honor and sacrifice, trying to justify armies that recruit men and women as young as fourteen. It’s like being cast back to the post-war survivalism where everyone survived off of carcasses. The Lodain people, even the royalty, still refuse to discard any piece of the animals they kill. Down to its bones, they have a use for every part. I barely eat when I’m there. I’m hardly sure what I’m being served.”
Clea leaned slowly away from the balcony, lowering her hands by her sides as she listened, too surprised to alert Idan that she was there.
“All this talk about honor and sacrifice, but it’s just a balm so the people can tolerate the sacrifices they have to make just to live another year long. It was painful to tell the king we’d be withdrawing support. It’s clear that Loda is now in the crossfire and we can’t do anything else about their situation. We’re safe here, and we can’t risk sinking the whole ship like they did with Virday. It never pays to be a saint, and if people can afford not to, they never choose that life anyway. The campaign for Virday was such a waste. The city fell anyway. What does it matter that they saved more mouths to feed in a time when everyone is worried about the future?”
She eyed the empty glass in her hand if only to look away from the vastness of the city’s wealth as she digested his words.
“I’m not obliged to marry, but her father did everything but beg me. They’re so desperate to secure an alliance because they know we don’t need them. That city is bound to go under,and it just took in refugees from Virday. Barbarians from that backward city. How do they expect us to want to stick our necks out for them when they make decisions like that?”
“Their princess, though, she’s not half bad, is she? Seems pleasant enough, easy to look at, and it doesn’t seem like she expects much from the marriage,” Merune said and seemed to pause to either take a draw of a cigarette or drink something. “I’m sure you could just do what you want.”
“No, she’s not half bad,” Idan replied, and his voice softened. “And I can at least feel like I’m saving her from that wretched place. She’s smart, but she’s not natured for politics. Her father was saving her getting her off the throne. She’d be better served with me anyway, especially since her city is on the course that it’s on. She wants to learn, just doesn’t know how to live. I just wish her father would stop requesting aid. We took his daughter. What else does he expect? They just have nothing to offer. You learn, you gain resources, or you don’t survive. That’s the world. Principle is a luxury or an opiate. It’s not something to build a city on.”
Clea looked back out at the beauty of the city, understanding her father’s plight at last. She felt the dismay, stirred with inklings of betrayal, but having enjoyed the night she had, she was surprised at the lack of her own reaction.
Her father had been requesting aid. Ruedom had been refusing it. She looked at all of the wealth and prosperity and wondered even to herself, if she had all of this, would she risk it for someone else?
She acknowledged that there was a very real chance she might not. In that moment, listening to Idan, she didn’t feel anger, butunderstanding, and a sudden calm covered her as she looked out at the brightly lit city and took in the smoke of the air.
In making the decisions she had to push to protect Virday, she had strengthened her city’s spirit, but had she weakened its chances of survival? Made them seem reckless and untrustworthy in the eyes of their Ruedain neighbors?
Survival or truth. That had once been the choice Ryson had offered her. Ruedom, the city of the mind, had chosen survival. Listening to Idan and his criticism of her people, of their lifestyle, even by extension, of her, she was calm and realized in the quietness of the night what her choice would be, maybe not every time, but this time.
In the strangeness of the night, she wanted to laugh, and almost did, out loud. There was humor in it, thinking back on how she’d been zealous to offer her life on a sacrificial mission to the Insednians. What a mad idea, and now it was humorous because she realized it wasn’t Ruedain at all for her to have done that.
Just as Idan had said, martyrdom was certainly a Lodain quality, one she had disliked in everyone she knew, her mother especially. She had once resented them all for it, not understanding why everyone was so eager for death when she had been so eager to live. Now, she was, in a way, just like them.
