Page 59 of Fate of the Argosi

Much as I admire the Argosi talent of arta forteize and all the ways it can strengthen you, there’s a reason why sane folks repress their traumas. Nothing more natural than burying the bad things deep until you feel safe enough to let them out, even if secretly you never intend to let them out at all. Our minds and bodies may fail us, but it’s our emotions that can tear us apart the fastest.

Shame. Guilt. Grief. Inadequacy. Failure. Coward. You were ready to die. Had to be saved by a horse and a damned goat. Never been as strong as Durral or Enna or Sir Gervaise or Sir Rosarite or Rosie or Arissa or Arissa or Arissa or Arissa . . .

Arissa.

Yeah, Arissa. You left her behind. She left you behind. All a big joke. Nothing real between you. Just putting up with you, like everyone else. You let Durral down a thousand times. You nearly killed Enna. Remember that? Stuck your sword right through her lung, you ungrateful little sow. Ugly. Cruel. Mean down into the marrow of your bones.

Tears dripped down my cheeks, drops of black oil that clung to my upper lip, trying to get inside my mouth so they could repeat the journey all over again.

Crybaby. Eighteen years old. Supposed to be an Argosi. Dozens of your people out on this cold, black graveyard, dead because you couldn’t keep them from killing themselves. And here you are crying because you’re what? Lonely? You’re lonely? You think you’re lonely now, you stupid little bit—

Okay, now. That’ll do.

I blew air out between my lips, almost like Quadlopo when he’s telling me he needs a brushing.Not a bad idea, I thought.We all need a good brushing now and then to get the dust off of us.

Single best lesson of arta forteize Durral ever taught me was years ago when the two of us were trapped inside the mind cage in which Ala’tris had been ordered by her mother to keep us locked up. He’d started with jokes. Ear-splitting, belly-busting, pants-peeing jokes. That was arta valar: a declaration to the universe that he wasn’t going to take his fate sitting down – or even seriously. I guess that’s where I’d gotten that nonsense about swearing in order to break out of the summons towards oblivion that had been created by, and was now consuming, my fellow Mahdek.

What had come after the jokes, however, was something entirely different. Durral started telling stories about Enna. Big majestic tales of love. Little insignificant anecdotes, light as a lover’s finger tracing the knuckles on the back of your hand. At the time I hadn’t fully understood what he was up to. Part of it had been drawing our captor’s emotions so deep that she couldn’t hold her concentration on the mind cage, sure, but the rest? That was Durral strengthening himself for the real fight to come. That was him donning his armour, only his armour wasn’t made out of metal but from the love he shared with Enna. Stronger than steel, impenetrable to despair.

That’s what I had to do now, because I could hear what Ala’tris was saying and Sar’ephir was shouting. I knew that this abyss to which my people’s sorrow and her people’s spells had brought us was swallowing all of us whole. The ship was sinking into the onyx ice of this shadowy land where death itself must come to die. Even as they lay unconscious, the Mahdek were still anchoring the spellship to the necropolis. Up on deck, Jir’dan and Ba’dari were near killing themselves trying to spark their bands so they could cast the spells necessary to rid them of that anchor. To save the ship, they were going to have to kill its passengers.

My own dark feelings assailed me, showing me the worst moment of my life, when I’d almost killed Enna in a sword fight.She forgave me, I reminded those cruel memories.Enna came for me months later in the desert, helped me find myself and my path, never doubting – even in that terrible instant as the tip of my sword had pierced her lung – the woman I could one day become.With my right hand I brushed the dust that wasn’t there off my left arm. A simple, ritualistic gesture, but one that brought my mind, body and emotions a little closer together. I could almost see the vambrace and gauntlet of a knight’s armour where I’d brushed away the shame.

‘Jir’dan, no!’ Ala’tris cried out from the deck.

‘We must! We’ve followed you this far, given up our families, but I won’t let you or any of this coven die for these people so consumed with their own doom that when we offered them paradise, they brought us to a hell!’

Durral’s love now, his might be strongest of all, I reminded my self-pity, brushing off my right shoulder this time. The black dust that hadn’t been there disappeared, in its place an armoured pouldron like those Sir Gervaise and Sir Rosarite might’ve worn over their shoulders.

‘We must find a way to untether ourselves from this place!’ Sar’ephir shouted. ‘The ship is melding into the shadowblack, becoming one with this graveyard!’

Never thought I’d hear Sar’ephir lose her cool. She always seemed so—

No. Focus. Assemble your armour. You’re going to need all your arta forteize for what comes next.

I brushed the loneliness off the front of my ratty travelling shirt, leaving behind a hundred hugs from Sir Gervaise and Sir Rosarite, and a breastplate that solitude’s arrow simply could not pierce. Next I swept the doubt from the tops of my legs, felt them strong and sure around Quadlopo’s sides. Cuisses and greaves, that’s what they call the curved armoured plates that protect a knight’s thighs and knees. I patted the horse’s neck. ‘You complain all the time, but you just keep coming back for me, don’t you, old fella?’

He nickered. A reminder that I should pay attention to the task at hand, because Jir’dan, Gab’rel and Ba’dari were becoming overwhelmed by their own dread, and any second now they were going to overpower Ala’tris for what they believed was her own good.

A helm, I thought.Can’t have proper armour without a helm.

I brought my hands up to my cheeks, wiping away the tears so that my fingertips could trace the kisses left behind by the Path of Thorns and Roses during those brief, impetuous hours in the mountains when we’d been stalking a mystical plague together. Sure, it hadn’t worked out between us, but that hardly mattered at times like these. Besides, there were other kisses with which to complete my helm.

Arissa.

Foolish kisses, sure. Reckless and wild, just like her. They made an excellent visor.

The last vestiges of my self-doubt clawed at me, dragging my gaze downward to see that I wasn’t really wearing armour. I was nothing but a rumpled, shivering girl so frightened of what lay ahead that she’d already wet herself. Didn’t matter though. An Argosi always keeps a little self-doubt in her pocket, just in case she needs a good laugh now and then.

I made sure Conch was properly settled on my shoulder, then gave Quadlopo a gentle kick to get us moving. ‘Come on, fella. Time we ride out a ways.’

I’d expected to get a gentle trot out of him, but I guess he was riled up some. That horse exploded like thunder across the expanse of that necropolis, tearing up the onyx ice with his hoofs, leaping over the still-sinking bodies of my people.

‘Ferius, where are you going?’ Ala’tris cried out to me.

‘She’s lost her mind,’ I heard Jir’dan tell her, his frustration clear as a bell despite the growing distance between us. ‘This mad venture has met its end. We must act to save ourselves now.’

‘Sister, please!’ Ala’tris kept on shouting to me, even as her words faded to dying echoes the further I travelled into the necropolis. ‘Why are you abandoning us?’

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