Asha
Asha wondered if spirits actually did help when you were in pain. Everybody else had had their cups filled, and refilled, and refilled again. She knew she was old enough that no one would question her, they might even understand. But every time she thought of crossing into the circle of light from the fire, she saw Thomas and how his life was controlled by the drinks he had, how he was consumed by the spirits rather than them consumed by him. He was a good man, a much better person than she was, but he was held back.
So there she sat back, alone, sipping from her tea. Above her, she could hear the rain pouring down onto the terrace above her. Somewhere where she sat, leaning against a wooden pillar, there was a leak. Every now and then, a drop of water would drip into the wet soil.
“Kahari,” someone greeted her. At first, she did not react. She had yet to get used to that name. When she finally looked up she found Equem leaning over her. His body took up her vision and shadowed for the fire behind him.
“Yes, Equem?”
“I am so very sorry for your loss.” He sat down, his knees in the height of his broad chest, his arms resting on them.
“So you’ve said.” She was tired of people being sorry for her. Was it not enough that she was sorry all the time? She tugged her own knees closer to her chest.
“Aren’t you cold?”
She was, actually, and drenched wet, but she liked that. She liked feeling. “No.”
He swallowed, putting one hand on her knee. “Very well then.” He rubbed it gently before standing up. “You know you can always come to me, don’t you?”
She nodded; she knew. In fact, she could not forget. He had saved her what seemed like an eternity ago, when she was nothing but a helpless little child. She was not a helpless little child anymore, and she did not need his help.
He left her wordlessly. Those who had collected around the table were looking at her anxiously, surely worried for their Kahari. Asha had always looked forward to this day, never thinking that it would mean the old Kahari, her father in every sense of the word, would be gone. She let her head fall forward against her knees. When she looked up, a good while later, her eyes were brimmed with red and she was no longer alone.
Anaïs smiled kindly. “Asha?”
Her voice was as kind as her smile. Asha had never liked her particularly, not until this day. She saw a pain in the eyes of the woman who had been her father’s lover, a pain that she recognized. Now that she knew the North, she could only imagine the terrors that Anaïs had been forced to face while working as a serving girl.
"Asha, are you alright?”
She nodded. “I’m alright.”
“Good,” Anaïs whispered. “I brought some food for you.”
The pale hand that was reached out to her was full of bread. Gratefully, she took it and chewed on it. The very second the food entered her mouth, she wanted to throw up but she forced it down. “Thank you.”
“Eat it,” Anaïs told her. “It’s good for you.”
“I’m not that hungry.”
“I know.”
Asha smiled a small smile and held the bread to her mouth for a few seconds before finally taking a bite. “It’s so strange.”
“What is?”
“Sadness,” she said. “I don’t know… This is the first time I’ve really… felt it.” When they had dragged her father’s body out, throat cut open, and begun throwing accusations here and there, Asha had cried. Of course she had. But after that… nothing. For five days, she had felt strangely numb. “What are they saying about me?” She nodded towards the group of people around the fire.
“Just how strong you are,” Anaïs said sweetly. There was something about the way she spoke that made Asha feel that she was talking only out of care for Asha.
“I don’t feel that strong,” Asha admitted.
“No?”
“I feel weak and I feel scared.”
“But still you sit here,” Anaïs said wonderingly, “alone, rejecting any help you’re offered, refusing to drink the spirits that the others use to calm themselves.”
“Someone once told me that if you drink to avoid the poison of your life, the spirits will take the poison and they will destroy you.”
“Still, it must be tempting,” the woman said. “From what I’ve learned, it takes a lot of strength to avoid drowning your sorrows. I’ve seen many men and women be consumed by wine in my time.”
“How do you tell the difference?” Asha rested her chin on her knees.
“Between…?”
“Between those who are consumed and those who just drink wine? You only drink wine in the north, after all.”
“Wine and tea, yes.” The northerners believed water to be poisonous. “But there is a difference between drinking because of a need born from survival and a need born from pain. It’s not hard to see it.”
For a long time, Asha just sat there, staring into space. Thomas had certainly been of the latter kind. Suddenly tears fell from her eyes. Like little streams they fell from her eyes. “It’s just so, so unfair.”
“I know.” Anaïs took her hand, eyes filled with… not regret, but something else. Something close.
“I just lost Thomas, my mentor. I think I grew to care for him but I had to leave him. I had to go home, and I had to see my real father, and now I’ve lost both of them.” Asha trembled with sorrow and her stomach seemed to be cramping from the pain. “They say it’s the northerners, that he was assassinated by northerners, and I think it’s my fault.”
“How could it be your fault?”
Once more, she appreciated how Anaïs did not feel the need to talk, just to listen. “I… I asked Thomas for advice on war and maybe he… he told someone and…”
“No,” Anaïs said certainly. “No, that’s not it.”
“But how can you know?” Anaïs did not answer. “Who do you think it was?”
She frowned. “I don’t know, honestly. It would make sense if it were the northerners but we cannot just assume. It would be to start a war not needed.”
“What do you mean, ‘a war not needed’?” Asha looked at Anaïs in question.
“You don’t mean to carry out the war your father planned, do you?”
She nodded her head forcefully. “Of course I do! They took our lands, Anaïs, and now they have taken my father.”
“Asha, dear, don’t… don’t act upon emotions. You can’t. You have to be the Kahari now, you have a responsibility.”
Sometimes Asha forgot that Anaïs had spent two years here, that she was now almost a fully trained jakeen, that she knew the meaning of being Kahari. “I know that. And as Kahari, I will take back the lands rightfully mine and act out the revenge my people needs.”
Anaïs shook her head slowly, eyes closed in what resembled disappointment. “Your people do not need revenge, not now. Now they need rest and time to accept their loss. They can’t go to war, not like this.”
“They have to,” Asha said. “My father said so, he wanted to go to war now because the northerners are weakened. It cannot wait.”
Anaïs put a pale, white hand on her arm. She envied its daintiness, the fragility that men seemed to fall for so easily. “It can, and it will. The omens do not favour war, as I have tried to tell your father. He would not listen. I beg you to.”
Something cold settled deep in her stomach. “Are you happy that he died? Did you see it as an opportunity to prevent the war against your homelands?”
Anaïs already white face paled visibly until it seemed to glow in the darkness. “How dare you?” She seemed breathless. “I loved the Kahari. Believe it or not, you are not the only one that he loved or was loved by.”
Shocked at her reaction, Asha pressed herself into the pillar behind her until it hurt her back. “I’m sorry. I know you do. I’m sorry.”
After drawing in a steadying breath, Anaïs nodded slowly. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
"Do the omens truly not favour war?”
“They promise only defeat.”
Asha watched silently as Anaïs stood up and walked away, leaving her to her more and more distraught thoughts. Her father had lost a war in his lifetime, Asha remembered, the war where he had lost his lands. She knew they were hers by right. It would have been different, had it not been for the treaty. They still had the parchment somewhere, the one where they had signed their lands over to the King Clement – King Clement, not King Raphael.
But even if they were hers, by any and all laws, perhaps she would need to live with injustice for a little longer. She listened as the rain pattered against the terrace above her, as the water leaked through the hole behind her, and decided that she would at least wait the season. Who knew – perhaps the northerners would have destroyed themselves by that time, and she could claim whatever she wished. She knew that was not very likely, but it was a nice fantasy.
If it comes true, she thought to herself, I will only take what is mine by right and law.