Page 14 of Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame

SO IT IS that the party of guildknights tumbles from the guts of the earth and limps back to Mithrandon, broken but victorious.

The company was persuaded, by their guildmaster, to embellish their own roles in the defeat of the dragon, although none were present to witness it, a suggestion taken up with great enthusiasm by the four knights.

Captain Joufrey retired with great honor, while the other three rose in esteem within the ranks of the guild.

Emory Deerland’s report on the affair painted the girl-king of Quentona in such glowing terms, so generous with her hospitality and her aid, that it would seem churlish and petty on the Sun Emperor’s part to invent some form of offense as pretext to invasion.

In the years to come, Emory Deerland would take it upon himself to negotiate a trade agreement with the kingdom of Quentona, acquiring for the Empire a few ores of precious everstone per year, and His Radiance was swayed into conceding that this state of affairs would be better than engaging in a long and expensive war he can hardly afford.

But that is to come, and in the present moment the masked guildknight is mourned within the walls of Mithrandon.

At the same time, the girl-king of Quentona, of Quanbao, gains a new companion, a stranger with a pale and handsome face, said to be a daughter of a close friend of the late king.

Not even the Imperial envoys sent years later ever stop to consider that she might be the masked guildknight.

So I hear you say, does that mean that the masked guildknight of Mithrandon did not perish in a hunt, but continues to live in Quanbao till this day? And to you I say: that is not true, and the masked guildknight did indeed meet her end down there in that cavern under the earth, never again emerging to face the light of day.

But let us return again to the present.

Just over the border between Quanbao and the Empire, a single horse trots up a long, dry path to a village that sits between paddies in fallow, its breath crystallizing in the mouth of the early spring.

On its back rides a young woman, wrapped in plain indigo robes, black hair folded into a braid that hangs down her long back.

She is unarmed and unadorned, riding up to the cradle of her youth, from which she has been separated for so long.

Nostalgia sweeps through her, not like a gentle breeze of recollection, but emotions in tidal waves, breaking over her head and soaking her to the marrow, from which she rises like a goddess, or a newborn child, with eyes that see everything differently.

There stand the distant twin peaks she used to watch the sun sink into; there lies the pond full of mudskippers she and her sister used to chase after the rain; and there—there are the familiar roofs of houses, her neighbors’ houses, the gray tile of the community hall, and over there—concealed between edifices of white plaster, the shape of her childhood home.

She pulls on the reins and the horse slows.

The creature is new to her, a gift from a close friend, and their bond of trust is slowly growing.

She has rushed headlong from the capital of Daqiao to this familiar hamlet, but now her resolve stutters, stumbling over its feet in anxiety.

For years her return here has been a promise, an abstract thing she could put away as she pleased, tucking it out of sight from her heart.

Faced with the chill of the mountain air and weight of the mud on her horse’s hooves, she falters.

Once she crosses that boundary, once her head passes under the shingled roof that marks the village gate, she will be greeted by the faces of those she left behind so many years ago, and she will see in their eyes what they think of her, so deeply changed by the burdens placed upon her by the Sun Empire.

And yet she has shed those graven stones; in the present moment they no longer press upon her.

Her armor she left behind in Quanbao, and her sacred blade she paid a merchant to deliver to Mithrandon.

The woman who waits before the gates is only flesh and only blood, one hand curled stiffly around the woven reins of the horse, face bare and chapped by the wind.

The molting of that rigid, protective shell has allowed many things to grow in her that have spent years being suppressed.

Her chest rushes with questions like a river in spring.

There is so much she wants to ask her mother.

So much that she needs to learn anew.

None of that will come to her if she stays stiff and still on this thawing path.

She knows what she must do.

Nudging her heels gently against the horse’s flank, she urges it forward.

Yeva is going home.