Indigo’s Lyran tutor educated and cared for her daughter? Her mother cried for her father not to go whenever he left them, sometimes for months at a time, and wept harder still when he returned and took his frustrations out on her. Indigo resented them both in that moment, but her mother most of all. Perhaps, if her mother weren’t so weak, her father wouldn’t stay away so long or be so angry when he was home.
Never, she promised herself then, she would never be like her mother.
A hand opened next to her in offering. Indigo took it, the rough calloused surface so different from her mother’s, and the soldier led her to an adjacent sitting room to wait.
•
Indigo woke to the sound of a horse nickering as it passed in the street below. She sat up, keeping the cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders. Judging by the light, not much time had passed since she lay down. She brushed her cheek with one hand and felt tears there. The dream came back to her then, not so much a dream as a memory banished to the vulnerable realm of sleep.
Her father did come home eventually, about a week after a court inquisitor came to question her mother. He arrived in a wooden box that she remembered thinking was a bit too short for him, along with an escort of ten soldiers. A soldier had come to the door a few hours after dawn that day. Her mother took her along when she answered it, perhaps seeking whatever comfort Indigo’s presence provided.
“It is my duty to inform you that Desgard Milan was tried and found guilty of numerous counts of treason and sentenced to immediate execution,” the soldier had informed them, his professional tone offering no sympathy.
Serana had said nothing. She took Indigo’s hand and led her out into the courtyard of the estate. There was something terrible and ominous about the wagon waiting there, so much so that Indigo folded her arms about herself even now, remembering it. Such a common thing, made cold and foreboding amidst an escort of soldiers who sat their mounts in irritable silence. This traitor had paid the price for his crimes and they were ready to be done with him. Even at seven, Indigo had recognized that sense of annoyance in the air and lifted her chin in defiance of it, taking pride in the fact that her father had defied them for so long. For all that he’d been an infrequent father and a terrible husband, he had been brave enough to stand against the slave trade and free many of its victims, giving them the time and effort he couldn’t seem to give to his own family.
When they approached the wooden box, two men removed the lid. The man beside it, garbed in healer’s robes, had regarded her with pity, an expression that undermined her courage and slowed her step so that her mother had to tug her the last few feet to the back of the wagon. The healer was there to preserve the body until it was properly set into the ground.
Her mother had taken a deep breath, a sound like a wailing wind in Indigo’s ears at the time, and looked into the box. Indigo looked as well. Within the box a man lay, his head tucked in under one arm like a satchel. She remembered staring at his face, familiar in animation, familiar in life, made foreign by this unnatural stillness. When she tried to move away, her mother’s hand tightened on hers again, forcing her to stay. Her gaze drifted away from his face, moving up to the bloody stump where his head belonged. Perhaps she remembered it worse than it was, but the stump had seemed so ragged. Not as clean a cut as they had made when her Lyran tutor, Hadris, was executed for illegal ascard use several months earlier. It was almost as though the headsman had used a dull sword to do the deed, hacking away as one might at a tree.
Her mother spoke with the soldiers then, though Indigo remembered almost nothing of what they said. Her father had left them for the last time. That reality had been stark. Painfully real. The quiet of his flesh and the blood
Never, she promised herself then, she would never be like her mother.
A hand opened next to her in offering. Indigo took it, the rough calloused surface so different from her mother’s, and the soldier led her to an adjacent sitting room to wait.
•
Indigo woke to the sound of a horse nickering as it passed in the street below. She sat up, keeping the cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders. Judging by the light, not much time had passed since she lay down. She brushed her cheek with one hand and felt tears there. The dream came back to her then, not so much a dream as a memory banished to the vulnerable realm of sleep.
Her father did come home eventually, about a week after a court inquisitor came to question her mother. He arrived in a wooden box that she remembered thinking was a bit too short for him, along with an escort of ten soldiers. A soldier had come to the door a few hours after dawn that day. Her mother took her along when she answered it, perhaps seeking whatever comfort Indigo’s presence provided.
“It is my duty to inform you that Desgard Milan was tried and found guilty of numerous counts of treason and sentenced to immediate execution,” the soldier had informed them, his professional tone offering no sympathy.
Serana had said nothing. She took Indigo’s hand and led her out into the courtyard of the estate. There was something terrible and ominous about the wagon waiting there, so much so that Indigo folded her arms about herself even now, remembering it. Such a common thing, made cold and foreboding amidst an escort of soldiers who sat their mounts in irritable silence. This traitor had paid the price for his crimes and they were ready to be done with him. Even at seven, Indigo had recognized that sense of annoyance in the air and lifted her chin in defiance of it, taking pride in the fact that her father had defied them for so long. For all that he’d been an infrequent father and a terrible husband, he had been brave enough to stand against the slave trade and free many of its victims, giving them the time and effort he couldn’t seem to give to his own family.
When they approached the wooden box, two men removed the lid. The man beside it, garbed in healer’s robes, had regarded her with pity, an expression that undermined her courage and slowed her step so that her mother had to tug her the last few feet to the back of the wagon. The healer was there to preserve the body until it was properly set into the ground.
Her mother had taken a deep breath, a sound like a wailing wind in Indigo’s ears at the time, and looked into the box. Indigo looked as well. Within the box a man lay, his head tucked in under one arm like a satchel. She remembered staring at his face, familiar in animation, familiar in life, made foreign by this unnatural stillness. When she tried to move away, her mother’s hand tightened on hers again, forcing her to stay. Her gaze drifted away from his face, moving up to the bloody stump where his head belonged. Perhaps she remembered it worse than it was, but the stump had seemed so ragged. Not as clean a cut as they had made when her Lyran tutor, Hadris, was executed for illegal ascard use several months earlier. It was almost as though the headsman had used a dull sword to do the deed, hacking away as one might at a tree.
Her mother spoke with the soldiers then, though Indigo remembered almost nothing of what they said. Her father had left them for the last time. That reality had been stark. Painfully real. The quiet of his flesh and the blood
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