361. Salt and Ash
Liv had long since sent Rianne off with Keri and Rei, so that the children could be put to bed, by the time that Caspian Loredon had passed. Sidonie, Lia Every, and Chancellor Blackwood had trickled in, one by one, to fill up the chairs and benches in the office, so that the five of them constituted a sort of vigil, sitting watch over the archmage’s final hours.
It was a formality to call the chirurgeon in to check the body, but they did it anyway.
“Who is there to clean the body?” Liv asked, once the healer had departed again.
King Lucan had stood, and turned himself toward one corner of the room, where he quite visibly struggled not to weep. “My great-uncle has no surviving female relatives,” he said.
“Artemesia?” Liv pressed. She hadn’t heard that Benedict’s former queen had died, but it was possible that she’d overlooked such a thing, if it had happened recently. The woman had to be in her sixties by this point, and with her husband dead, she had no claim to the throne in her own right.
“My grandmother was permitted to return from exile, once my grandfather died,” Lucan explained. “So long as she remained within her birth family’s lands, and took no interest in politics. I offered to make an exception for her to come to Coral Bay with me, but she has – complicated feelings about my great-uncle.”
Liv sighed. “It shouldn’t be done by strangers,” she declared, though if she was being honest she certainly had misgivings about the offer she was going to make. “If Julianne was here, she would take care of him without a second thought. I may not be her daughter by blood, but I am willing to take her place for this.”
“It isn’t proper for the task to be left to one person.” Sidonie rose from where she’d been seated, and walked over to Liv. When her friend’s hand settled on her shoulder, Liv reached up to place her own hand over it. “Let the female professors help. The guild was like a family for him.”
Lucan’s mouth twisted. An uncharitable woman might have interpreted it as a sneer, but Liv suspected he was simply fighting back tears. “Very well,” he said. “I will see to it that the pyre is built.”
Liv almost asked who would help with that task, but at the end of the day it simply wasn’t her concern. That part of the funeral was for the men, and Lucan would choose his assistants as suited him. If he was thinking politically, it would be an opportunity to strengthen his ties with his favored barons.
Chancellor Blackwood followed the King of Lucania out, and for the second time in her life, Liv busied herself with the task of washing a dead man’s body, and preparing him for the pyre. It had been years since she’d helped her grandmother, after the assault on the Hall of Ancestors, but she remembered what needed to be done.
Servants brought warm water, soap, and cloths to do the washing with. Liv, Sidonie, Annora and Lia Every stripped the blankets off the bed and set to work – Liv noted the absence of Professor Atwood, but made no comment. They combed out what hair Caspian had left, and found one of his finest robes to dress him in – one of heavy dark wool, and subtle embroidery in purple thread. They were able to close his eyes, but in the end Professor Annora needed to tie a linen cloth beneath his chin to hold his jaw shut.
“It happens sometimes,” the professor of healing murmured. By common consent, none of the women spoke loudly as they worked, as if it would be disrespectful to the dead. “More often than most people think, in all honesty.”
At dawn, Liv sent one of her guards to High Hall with a request for the kitchen staff. She wasn’t certain whether Lambert was still head chef there, after so long, and in fact it was Heather who returned, no longer in the uniform of a kitchen maid.
“I’ve brought the packets of herbs you requested, Your Majesty,” the no-longer-young woman said, making a deep curtsy at the door. “Chamomile, lavender, rosemary, and sage.” She carried the sort of basket one might use to transport food for a picnic up in the mountain meadows, and Liv accepted it with a grateful smile.
“Thank you, Heather,” she said. “I wasn’t certain whether there would still be anyone in the kitchen who would remember me, after so long. Is Lambert gone, then?”
“Retired five years ago,” Heather answered. “But not before training me to take his place.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Liv couldn’t help but smile, though even doing that made her want to cry. She took the sachets of herbs into the bed chamber, where she and the other women tucked them into Caspian’s robes and boots, so that the sweet scent of herbs might cover the stench of burning human flesh once the pyre was lit.
“What should we do with his staff?” Professor Annora asked, nodding to the length of wood leaning against one corner of the room. “Should we put it on the pyre to burn with him?”
“No,” Liv said, after thinking for a moment. “That would be a waste. It should go to someone who will make use of it.”
“Blackwood,” Sidonie said, after thinking for a moment. “He’s the one running the college now, after all.”
The four of them exchanged nods, and took the staff with them when they left.
☙
“Where were you all night, Momma?” Rianne asked, turning her head to look up at Liv.
They’d been given a place of honor, at the head of the pyre with Lucan and his closest advisors. Liv didn’t recognize most of them at a glance, but Thurston Falkenrath, now duke after his father’s heart had failed, stood near the young king, along with Tephania and her oldest son. Keri stood at Liv’s side, with Rei, but she’d kept Rianne in front of her, where Liv could place her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.
“When someone we love dies, it is the task of the women in the family to wash the body, to dress it, and to prepare it for the funeral,” Liv explained quietly. “We do this while the men of the family, and their close friends, build the pyre. And we burn the bodies so that the old gods, such as Costia, Antris, or Ractia, can’t make use of them.”
Rianne cocked her head to one side, a motion she often made when considering something. “Should I have helped, as well?” she asked.
“No,” Liv assured her. “I did so because, long ago, the archmage’s niece took me in and adopted me. Julianne, your cousin Ettie’s grandmother. But you aren’t actually related to Caspian Loredon by blood, my love.”
The pyre had been built tall, high enough that Caspian’s body rested at Liv’s eye level. She couldn’t decide whether it was the act of a young man with something to prove, or of a calculating king who’d wanted to be certain that a former regent could be seen by everyone in the crowd, before the fires were lit.
They’d done the work down on the beach, using as much driftwood as could be gathered. Where that had run out, Liv could see fresh-cut logs from the nearby forest where she’d once run with the other first year students, hounded by journeymen determined to beat a bit of stamina into their charges. The entire pyre had been doused in oil, and priests of the Trinity had come all the way from the great temple at Freeport to give the rites.
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For the most part, Liv let the words wash over her: she’d heard them before, more times than she would ever have wished. They took her back to the funeral of her grandfather and old Master Cushing, who’d first taught her to bandage a wound; to the rites when they’d finally put her aunt’s remains to rest, and even to the passing of Vivek Sharma, only a few years ago.
The entire strand, and the bluff that loomed above the beach, were crammed tight with people. Every member of the mages guild wore their best, even if that was less impressive than the barons who clustered around King Lucan. Chancellor Blackstone held Caspian’s staff in his left hand, the butt jammed into the sand, and the professors had clustered either around him, or Lia Every, depending on which school they had come from.
Liv couldn’t help searching the crowd for one face in particular, but she didn’t catch sight of the person that she was seeking. As the pyre was finally set alight, she began to think that she might have been mistaken after all, and that her mind might have been playing tricks on her.
When the smoke first wafted in their direction, Rianne shifted on her feet. “It smells like a kitchen.”
“That’s because we filled his clothes with herbs,” Liv explained, leaning down to whisper in her daughter’s ear. “No one wants to smell a human body burning. It’s horrible. Remember that, when you need to do this for someone, some day. All the best smelling herbs, as much as you can get.”
The pyre took hours to burn down, and by the time it was finished, nearly the entire crowd had drifted away. Once again, Liv was grateful to Keri when he took the children. The professors remained, of course, along with the barons closest to the king, and Lucan himself. But by the time there was nothing left but a circle of smoking ashes, and a few blackened hunks of wood, the crowd had been reduced to perhaps two dozen.
Lucan turned to Liv. “Thank you for coming,” the young king said, with his barons at his back. “I know that it meant a great deal to him.”
“He meant a great deal to me,” Liv said.
The younger monarch shuffled his feet in the sand for a moment: it was the sort of self-conscious gesture that Liv had discarded long ago, in her first years as queen. “You’re really fifty-seven years old?” he said. “That’s nearly as old as my grandmother, but –” he shook his head.
“One thing to be taught it, and another to see it?” Liv asked him, not without sympathy. “Yes. I was already thirty when I first went to Freeport, after the Day of Blood.”
“I’m the youngest king to sit the throne of Lucania in over a century,” Lucan said. “Barring war, murder or sickness, I might reign as king for fifty years. That’s even longer than my great-grandfather Roland – who you met, didn’t you?”
“He was a very old man by the time I saw him,” Liv said. “And I wasn’t really important enough to meet him personally, at the time.”
Lucan shook his head. “But fifty years is nothing to you, is it?”
“I wouldn’t say it was nothing,” Liv said. “So many people from my childhood are dead now. So much has happened –”
“Will you look any older, by the time I’m dead and my son rules Lucania?” the young king asked.
Liv was silent.
“I thought not,” Lucan said. “I won’t make the mistake my mother and grandfather made. I won’t make myself your enemy. I have no desire to see an army come tearing out of the waystone at Freeport. I’m aware that you’ve executed quite a few of my guild masters –”
“With cause,” Liv pointed out. “They tried to kill me, and they kidnapped my niece.”
“You’re more than justified.” Lucan waved the matter away. “I take no issue with it, so long as it stops here. But in return, I ask a favor of you.”
“What is that?”
“Take the Temple in hand,” Lucan said. “Pull them back. Twenty years of hunting cultists is enough. People my age don’t remember the war at all, and they don’t see why it's necessary. Every burning of a heretic just builds resentment. You know some of them call you the Pyre Queen?”
“I have heard the term,” Liv admitted, unable to keep her eyes from tightening at it. “But I think you have the wrong impression. I don’t tell the Temple of the Trinity what to do. I work with them when I can, but I can’t simply order them to stand down.”
“They preach that you’re a goddess walking among us,” Lucan said. “The Lady of Winter, who stood against the Lady of Blood and won. If you tell them to back off, they will do it.”
Liv sighed. “Allowing the cults to proliferate is what caused the war between Lucania and the north in the first place,” she pointed out. “If your grandfather had listened after the Day of Blood, we might have prevented everything.”
Lucan shook his head, and gave a smile with no humor in it. “I think we will have to agree to disagree on some of the causes of that war,” he said. “But I ask this as a favor, in return for supporting what you did to the guild masters. I’ll speak publicly in support of your actions, if you rein in the priests.”
Liv turned, and looked out to sea, at the breaking waves. “Ractia has completed her machine,” she said, slowly. “I’m not certain how aware you are of her plans, and how we’ve been trying to disrupt them all these years. But supposedly, when she activates it, what happens will be so obvious that no one can miss it.”
“After I’ve faced her, and killed her,” Liv said, “the cults won’t pose a threat any longer. I will leave instructions with a few priests I trust to that effect. That way, even if I don’t return, they’ll know my intentions.”
“You stand here and speak casually of fighting a goddess,” Lucan said. “If I ever thought we were the same, you’ve well and truly disabused me of that notion. I may be a monarch, but you are something else entirely. I only hope there is never cause for conflict between us.”
The young king of Lucania set off down the beach, surrounded and trailed by his barons and guards. Liv watched them go for a moment, until they were out of earshot, and then turned to the professors, to Sidonie and Lia Every and Chancellor Blackstone.
“I will meet you all back at the college,” she said.
Guild Mistress Every gave her a brief embrace, before turning and following the king. Blackwood nodded, and then they were all walking away, save for Sidonie, and two of Liv’s guards.
“What is it?”
Liv shrugged, and took a step closer to her old friend. “I thought I saw someone that I haven’t seen in a long time. I thought I would wait here for a moment, and see if she turns up.”
Sidonie looked her in the eyes for a long moment, and then nodded. “Don’t stay too long,” she warned. “You’ll be expected to make an appearance at the funeral feast, and people will talk if you aren’t there.” Then, she turned, and set off along the strand, leaving Liv with only her guards and the smoking circle of ash.
“Leave me,” Liv commanded. Her guards hesitated a moment, but then they walked off as well, going far enough that they would only be able to just keep her in sight. Liv walked over to the ashes, knelt, and drew the stormwand – the very same one that Caspian had given Julianne, when she’d been at Coral Bay so many years before. Liv carefully stirred the ashes with the tip, until she found a fragment of bone which had survived the fire.
“Seems a bit morbid,” Rosamund Lowry said, her boots grinding against the sand as she approached.
“You didn’t come with me to Lendh ka Dakruim,” Liv reminded her. “There’s an additional step to the funerals, there. They grind up the bones after the pyre is out, so that the magic that Costia left behind can’t raise them.” With a whisper of her intent, a shining blue hand of mana coalesced out of the air, wrapped its fingers around the shard, and crushed until nothing but powder was left. Liv stood up. “I was starting to think my mind was playing tricks on me.”
“No.” Rose shook her head, and it set her gray-flecked, dark hair moving about her shoulders. “No, it was me in the crowd. I probably should have stayed away, but I suppose I just wanted to see you again. You don’t look a day older.”
Liv laughed. “That’s a lie. I certainly do – I’ve had a daughter. That brings all sorts of changes.”
“You haven’t aged like I have, though,” Rose said, and it was true. Her skin, which had once been so perfect and vibrant that it had practically glowed, so that Liv had loved to run her hands over it, now had the look of someone who’d spent much of their life in the sun. Rose reminded Liv of an old sailor, like Coram Athearn, before he’d been lost at sea.
“No,” Liv admitted. “I suppose I haven’t. What have you been doing? Where have you been?”
“Calder’s Landing, at first,” Rose said. “No one particularly cared much whether I had a taste for men or women, there. And they needed someone good with stone to help turn it into an actual city. I actually did go east, after that. There’s beautiful architecture in Lendh ka Dakruim, and I wanted to learn how they did it.”
“Have you been happy?” Liv asked.
“As happy as anyone, I suppose,” Rose said, with a shrug. “And you? I watched you up here, a crown on your head, your husband and daughter at your side. I can hardly believe it's the same girl who demanded someone come up and fight her, even with a broken arm.”
“I still am, though,” Liv said. “But yes. I’m happy. Frequently overworked and exhausted, often frustrated, but – it’s good.”
“I’m glad,” Rose said. She turned around, and headed up the beach, in the opposite direction that the king, the barons, and everyone else had gone. “Be seeing you around, Liv.”
“Goodbye, Rose,” Liv called after her.