Chapter Forty-One: New, Liberated Person

I am returning to this entry by candlelight because I think I have to record the not-so-pleasant things running through my mind, too. Sakina thinks it may help, anyway.

1. We don’t know who stabbed the gryphon with that dagger, or whether they’ll be back. Cemil claims no such weapon was in the wyrm when he went with his riders to inspect its body, but surely the incidents aren’t unrelated. Did someone return and remove a dagger like the one we found? And if they did, then why?
2. Are these the same people involved with Emre, including whoever put the spell on that old house to try and lure me in? According to the Anshan, they saw strangers camping around the village right around when the gryphons started acting strange, but no one spoke to them or saw their faces. What if they come after me again and I can’t resist this time?
3. After we return to Şebyan, will I have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, hoping I never hear about Lord Pravin again?
4. Is it really okay to hide who I am (and what I’ve done), after Cemil has shared his whole heart with me?

Osmund caught himself making a gloomy expression as he packed the notebook away carefully into his things along with the enchanted ink Sakina had given him. It remained unclear whether this new journaling habit was hurting or helping, but he was certainly reckoning with his emotions more thoroughly than ever before. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“You can’t ask him just for one more day?” Sakina pleaded. She was flitting to and fro busily, though Osmund couldn’t tell if she was accomplishing anything other than “moving things from place to place, then back to their original spot”.

He sighed. “We’ve already had to beg for the time we’ve gotten,” he reminded her—again. They’d had this same conversation (in different phrasings) several times by now. And that was just this morning! “Cemil also has to consider all the soldiers here with us… They’re really eager to get home to their families.”

“He shouldn’t get back on that wild horse so soon,” Sakina fretted, as if she hadn’t heard him. “He’s still not strong enough. Why must he always be like this?!”

Osmund shifted uncomfortably. His own concern was starting to feel a bit inadequate next to Sakina’s relentless worrying. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything more,” he confided quietly. “He’s absolutely determined to leave today. You know how he is!”

He’d taken the subject—that is, delaying their departure for the sake of Cemil’s recovery, after using so much of his healing magic and the cursed sword—to the Meskato prince himself twice already. The first time, Cemil was very sweet and indulgent with him, fresh off the lovely time they’d spent together the previous evening, but the second time he was annoyed and told him to stop taking directions from Sakina. Osmund didn’t want to push his luck.

“What if you say you’ve started feeling poorly again? I bet that would do the trick.”

Osmund blinked at the question. “You mean lie?”

He must’ve sounded startled, or even appalled. Sakina waved the matter away like an insect, frowning. “Forget it. You’re much too good and honest of a man for me to ask that of you.”

“You wouldn’t think so if you knew more about me.”

He regretted saying it at once, but it was the first thing that seemed to shake Sakina out of her funk. “What’s this? You think yourself a bad man? Try me.” She stepped closer, peering at him with a cat’s curiosity. “Do you steal from children? Beat helpless vagabonds in the street? Cheat people who are desperate? Tell me this grievous sin you’re hiding.”

“N-no.”

“Hmm. Do you have a secret wife and children you’ve abandoned somewhere?”

An unhappy image of Lady Selenne flashed through his mind. Osmund shuddered. “No. Sakina…”

“I know! You’re a notorious killer. A murderer.”

“Please stop!”

Sakina’s smile died away. Osmund couldn’t take it—he faced away from her and his body locked up.

“I’m only joking,” she said quickly. “Oh. I’m being such a pest, aren’t I?”

Heavens, what was he doing? “I’d just rather not talk about it,” he said, shaking away the memory of Father’s lifeless eyes forever frozen in an expression of dumbfounded horror. He attempted to salvage the situation as he continued methodically packing. “I didn’t like my life before I ended up with Cemil.”

A pause. When Sakina spoke again, she sounded so small and penitent, and Osmund felt wretched. “You say you’ve tried writing about it?”

“I’m just not sure it helps me the way it helps you,” he admitted.

Why, oh why had he gone and made things awkward? He didn’t want her to think differently of him. Why couldn’t he have simply ignored a bit of innocuous teasing?

But instead of going back to her restless fidgeting, Sakina asked,

“…May we talk?”

Osmund nodded. But he had no idea what to expect as she took a seat beside him, so close they were almost sharing body heat. They’d spent so much time together the last few days, laughing, cooking, and swapping stories about the man they both cared for, but they still hadn’t…well…talked. Not really.

“You’re right. Writing in my journal isn’t enough. I want to finally tell someone. After I’ve pressed you so mercilessly for details on your life, it’s only fair I open up to you first.” She was looking at her folded-up hands as she spoke. “I’m…leaving Kaliany.”

Osmund’s eyebrows shot up. “Y-you’re coming back to Şebyan with us?!” He felt many things about that—enough to waste several pages’ worth of ink! But Sakina shook her head.

“No.” She didn’t lift her eyes. “I think I must keep my distance from Cemil. Maybe you understand why.”

“You’re still in love with him.”

This time, they did share a glance. Sakina’s first response died on her lips, whatever it was. Then she laughed privately to herself, conceding.

“Well. Perhaps. Perhaps a part of me always will.” She shook her head. “Can you imagine loving another man after him?”

Osmund didn’t engage in that little thought exercise. “Well—but if that’s not the main reason, what is?”

“You can’t tell? Osmund, we’re horrible for each other.”

This was wholly unexpected. “But—that can’t be right,” he protested. “You’re best friends. You—all the servants at the governor’s mansion said you were soulmates.”

“On the cliffs, I nearly got an entire unit of soldiers—and you—killed. Just to impress him.”

“That’s not true! You were controlling your constructs. You were doing it to protect him!”

But Sakina didn’t say anything.

Osmund studied her drawn features. He was very familiar with what a spiral of self-loathing looked like.

“I’m the worst version of myself when we’re together,” she said softly. “I worry that when I’m with him, I’ll never stop feeling like—like that little boy who was always trailing at his heels as he charged forward towards his destiny. Always so eager to earn his approval. Devoted to the point of self-destruction. Happy to be a tool before I was a friend.”

Osmund’s face fell. “You mustn’t view yourself that way.”

“I know I shouldn’t!” She looked endlessly amused with herself, as if she’d stumbled across a joke only she could appreciate. “I’ve been so determined that of the two of us, I would be the one who changed. He could be stubborn and obstinate and devoted to the Empire until the day he died, but I would find the strength to break free and learn to love my life. I would become a new, liberated person. And yet here I am. He’s the same, but I am too.”

For a moment, Osmund had the wild idea of pulling her into a hug. He simply didn’t know what else to do. He’d always thought it’d have been nice, personally—to be held steady while his thoughts whipped in the wind.

But he didn’t. “I didn’t know you before, well, all this. But,” Osmund attempted instead, hoping his words could be somehow enough, “I think you’re an amazing person. A-and you should be proud of what it took to go after the things you wanted, even though it was hard. I can’t imagine the strength it took.”

Sakina made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sniff. Osmund decided to look at the wall for a little while. “You’re far from where you started, too,” he heard after a time. “I don’t know what lies behind you, but I hope you’re able to look ahead. You’re…good for him.”

“I—you think so?”

He saw her smile from the corner of his vision. “Annoying as it is, I can’t find some fault worthy of being exaggerated in my head until I convince myself he settled on someone lesser only to spite me. That’s a joke, Osmund. I really do like you.”

“Must you leave?” he found himself saying in a rush. “I mean—leave to go somewhere else. You could come to Şebyan. Even if it was just for a little while. I-I could try and find some of my favorite Tolmish novels for you, they might even have Meskato translations, I still haven’t been to a proper bookshop, but maybe—”

She shushed him. Quite literally, with a finger to his lips.

“Maybe one day,” she said. She sounded much lighter than before. “But I have somewhere I need to go, first.”

They gathered near the village entrance, a standing row of horses and their readying riders out in the brisk midday breeze. The mood was upbeat, Osmund noticed. The mission in everyone’s view was a total success. They’d showed up, hacked apart some gryphons, saved a helpless child, and retrieved some kind of mysterious evil weapon. It would make a great story for the coffeehouse crowds and for their waiting lovers at home.

Some of the Anshan townspeople watched them getting ready to depart from a distance. Osmund wondered what they were thinking. He’d heard there’d been a great celebration after the little girl was recovered, and that her family had been so grateful to Cemil, he’d had to spend an hour turning down their outrageous attempts to repay him. (Presumably that was just before he’d collapsed into bed for nearly a solid week.) Even so, it looked like Kaliany’s citizens were relieved to see the last of these Meskato on their streets for a while.

“You’re really leaving as well?” Cemil looked perplexed as he studied Sakina. “You’ve built a life here.”

“You’re the one who told me I didn’t belong in a place like this, you absolutely shameless man!” Sakina scolded him good-naturedly, pushing a hand into his chest. “Turns out you were right.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Cemil clearly didn’t like having his own words used against him. “What will Widow Anlar do without you? You’re like a daughter to her.”

Sakina answered too flippantly. “She survived before me and she’ll survive after. Personally, I think she’ll be happy imagining I’m out there in the world, finally on the hunt for a handsome husband.”

Cemil snorted, caught off guard. Sakina laughed too. They both lowered their heads, as if this shared smile were too much to endure eye-to-eye. Osmund got that sense again, like he was intruding almost.

“Give me that broken dagger,” Sakina said after the moment dragged long. “I’ll take it to my mother.”

Cemil’s mirth instantly vanished. “You’re returning to the palace?” he demanded.

“You know there’s no one out there who will understand its purpose better than her.”

“…You swore you’d never go back.”

Osmund’s heart dropped hearing this. Sakina’s freedom was so important to her. That she was even considering going back to one of the places where she must’ve felt so alone, so small—

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” he found himself saying, stepping into the scene. “I-I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“Osmund, I’m a grown woman.” But she looked fond. “This is my choice to make. I have a debt of gratitude to repay to the Anshan of Kaliany. If anything I can do helps to ensure this never happens again, to them or to anyone else, I’ll do it. Plus, perhaps I really will bag a handsome husband somewhere on the road.”

Cemil embraced her. “I’m sending some of my people with you,” he told her in a tone that left no room for argument.

“Please, promise you won’t send anyone who was up on the cliffs with me?”

“Hah. I promise.”

Sakina approached Osmund next. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Find me one of those Tolmish novels,” she requested.

Osmund nodded, firming his lower lip. It turned out he was terrible at goodbyes. “I’ll do my best.”

“I mean it.” She levelled him with a very serious stare. “If I wind up in Şebyan one day with nothing to read, I’m going to hold it against you.”

Cemil had turned away to field a question from one of his people. Sakina stepped still closer. Osmund thought she had been struck with the urge to embrace him, too, but then she murmured:

“Please watch out for him.” Her voice was small. “I’m…worried.”

His breath stilled. “About the sword?”

Sakina nodded minutely. “You know the story of cursed weapons. You can control them, until they control you. Just…” Now she squeezed his wrists, which she had gathered in her palms. “Promise you’ll be there for him.”

It was a promise he could make easily. He only prayed he’d be equal to the task.