Page 44 of Angel in Absentia
“Despite your strained cooperation in many ways, in others, you have resisted this path at every turn. You educate yourself in every practice not our own. You most closely ally yourself with others not our own—a Virdain outlaw and a Ruedom-born woman who openly defies our laws. You were intent on taking responsibility for healing the Insednian. If I had not known you better, I would have even called it pride,” he continued.
They sat in silence for a long time. “Can’t I be more than one thing? More than just a Lodain woman?” she whispered.
He placed his hands on the desk, his fingers intertwined. “You have a lot of your mother in you,” he said at last. “She had the same inclinations, though she never pursued them with such fervor. You have the last of her. I admit, I am at a loss being any guide to you without her presence. I don’t know what you can be,” he said in a rare admission of vulnerability. The apology in it hurt. For as long as she remembered, her father had never apologized. There was a strange loss in hearing it for the first time.
He continued slowly, “You are a creature far from me. I am afraid, perhaps, we are at an age where you must choose alliances. Go to Ruedom,” he urged, “and should you find your soul at rest, then perhaps you’d be best to stay there.”
Her heart twisted. Clea was struck by the words despite the fact that perhaps she could have predicted them. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Freedom? And she admired Ruedom and its people. She had often told her father that if only to needle him. She swallowed and straightened with a nod. Unable to grasp the complexity of her own hurt, she marched from the room, walking through the door and shutting it behind her, breathing in sharply to stifle tears.
She couldn’t have expected a better outcome, could she? No yelling. No scolding. Freedom. Just freedom. Why was it so surprisingly painful? She had invested so much into Loda for the last few years if only for this moment where she would no longer have to. She’d sacrificed and sacrificed for this, and yet the reward felt empty in an awful way.
“Clea,” she heard and turned to see Catagard standing down the hallway. She composed herself at his approach.
“Catagard,” she greeted and swallowed.
He stopped, and they stood a measured distance from each other. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but remained there, still.
Tired of the silence, she nodded once to him and walked off in another direction.
Now, she felt relieved to be unburdened by her city, a city and its people who seemed dismayed by her very nature. She knewshe could never be what she truly wanted there, and looked forward to Ruedom, looked forward to trying it on perhaps like a different costume to see if it fit better.
“He was fine,” Clea said. “He has his wife and his new child. I’m no longer a piece on the board.” She waved Idan off. “Idan, you’re just fixated on him because you’re afraid of him.”
“Do you hear how she talks about him?” Idan said, gesturing emphatically to Iris. “His own and final daughter, just a piece on the board, doesn’t care if she offers herself up on a suicide mission to try and assassinate the Warlord of Shambelin! He’d roast me for breakfast and serve me with a side of toast and jam.”
Clea and Iris both snickered. Exasperated, Idan whipped back into the covered interior of the carriage, yelling back at both of them where they sat at the end, “Neither of you understand what I’m saying!”
Silence settled again, Clea looking back into the darkness as if leaving another world behind. It was a world of ghosts, totems, relics, symbols and legends. It was archaic and steeped in the heavy weight of traditions as sacred and burdensome as gravestones. She had once been a goddess and now found relief in being none of those things.
Given flesh at last, she could be touched. Her long hair flurried down her back, casual brown clothes an earthy break from the Lodain blue, white, and gold. There was warmth in the traveling, and in the midst of debates or jests between her, Iris, and Idan, she remembered what it felt like to be young. So often, she forgot that she was.
“How are you feeling about all of this?” Iris asked, having offered to come with her almost immediately after Clea had given her the news. Iris had taken the reveal of the Insednian better, even, than Yvan. Clea knew that Iris had likely put some of the pieces together already.
“I feel strangely…” Clea started with a sigh, shaking her head back and forth as if she could hardly understand the feeling, “light.” A few seconds passed. “I feel great,” she added, glancing over at Iris.
“That will go away,” Idan called. “Trust me, the embarrassment comes next!”
“Idan,” Iris scolded.
“I’m just saying, her people never get a chance to be reckless. I do it all the time. It’s a high right now, but later, you’ll realize how absolutely un-strategic it was.”
Iris laughed. “I suppose that was very Ruedain of you. Disrupting a Lodain High Council and spilling your secrets in audience was something for the theater.”
“Ruedain enough that her father probably thinks it’s my influence,” Idan called back.
They both ignored him.
“So, you’re serious?” Iris said. “It is mad. I suppose not so much if you think it will help save your city, but I’m almost worried that you don’t seem more concerned.”
Clea pulled one knee up to her chest thoughtfully. “For the first time in a long time, I’m strangely…not afraid. I mean, I’m afraid, but not…not like the kind of fear you live with, you know?” shesaid, looking over at Iris. “The kind that makes you dread? I don’t have that. I’m feeling so…” She shook her head. “Hopeful, like I’m finally myself. And the council hasn’t agreed to the proposed plan anyway. In the end, I guess, neither have I.”
Iris smiled, looking off and nodding but not adding anything. “Well,” she said, “if you do decide to go through with this, at least stay in Ruedom for a night. We can all go out and celebrate your newfound freedom”—she leaned over, lowering her voice as she added sarcastically—“before the embarrassment apparently sets in.”
They laughed again, and as their discussion continued, Clea at last looked away from the dark tunnel behind her, knowing that when she returned to Loda, she could see where the chips had landed, but until then, there was a different journey ahead.
†††
The ride through the tunnels, though dark and sometimes daunting, felt full of anticipation and even laughter. The three of them moved out from the cover of the canvas as they bumbled along a large bridge only a mile from Ruedom’s walls. Massive in every way, the chasm was a gaping hole that had taken years to bridge. As they crossed the massive bridge, she marveled at it.
