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On the way to Gallia, Vika tries not to stare. But she can’t help it - herons and wolves are still very new to her. The wolf queen is magnificent, muscle-bound and stoic and rather scantily clad, and Vika has never seen a woman with such presence. Or so many tattoos on her biceps. Or such biceps. Or such spectacularly muscled thighs.
But for all her beauty, Queen Nailah is also very intimidating, and Vika is inclined to stay out of her way. The queen’s one-eyed stare is not hostile, but it is piercing, evaluative, with the distant chill of royalty - the kind of chill that says Think before you speak to me, for my time is valuable, and I do not suffer fools.
And Vika does not trust herself not to be a fool. So she keeps her trap shut while they travel, and lets the boss handle most of the talking.
When they settle down and make camp the first night, Tormod immediately moves to engage Queen Nailah in discussions of ecosystems and the politics of beorc-laguz coexistence in Hatari and suchlike. Despite both coming from desert communes, their cultures can’t possibly have much in common; but if there is common ground to be had, the boss will locate it. It’s remarkable, how Tormod’s will and circumstance have shaped him into a leader of singular charisma: straightforwardly honest, boundlessly well-intentioned, aggressively optimistic, and bewilderingly friendly, such that both beorc and laguz have no choice but to meet him on his own terms.
Vika can’t relate. She had felt a cautious, baseless kinship with the queen’s wolf-man guard, who had observed everything silently and given no input at all. Who knew what he was thinking? If he had opinions, he had kept his mouth shut, which Vika reckons was the right idea. But he’s not here now, so she does what she imagines he would do, and sits silently by the campfire while she eats her travel rations.
The heron man, on the other hand, while quiet, wears a comparatively open face and seems much more nonthreatening. Tormod had warned Vika not to judge the herons by their fragile appearances, but Rafiel’s smile is gentle and inviting. He looks as delicate as a lily, and seems to shine as bright and ethereal as the moon. He’s all the more noticeable for his stark contrast with his companions - he’s not friendly, exactly; he seems rather shy, and hasn’t spoken much as they’ve traveled. But then, he’s among some big personalities.
Vika is loath to bother him - too anxious to try, more like - but presently Muarim turns to address him. “Prince Rafiel,” he begins.
The heron smiles with polite embarrassment. “Just Rafiel, please,” he says softly. “I have not considered myself a prince in some time. I serve my queen.”
“Just Rafiel, then,” Muarim amends. (He’s a stronger man than Vika - some people really seem to beg honorifics.) “I understand you have only recently returned to this side of the desert, but we had no opportunity to hear the whole of your story. If I may ask - how came you to the lost country in the first place?”
Rafiel seems to shrink a bit at that, and Vika tenses. But then, after a moment’s pensive silence, he answers. In spite of herself, Vika leans in to hear.
The heron relates, unassumingly, his story of being kidnapped out of Serenes Forest by human slavers and sold to a Begnion senator - an elderly beorc who pitied him and nursed him back to health, promising to eventually free him. The senator would have kept his word, Rafiel is certain, had the Serenes Massacre not come to pass. Rafiel had felt the horror of the Massacre intimately, even at a great distance. In his anguish he had fled his captor blindly, and hurtled without aim through the wilderness, until he had reached the borders of Hatari where the queen had found him.
Vika listens silently. As he goes on, she finds that she regrets listening. She’d thought Rafiel might be easier to engage with than Nailah, but now she thinks she was wrong. He’s certainly harmless, even soft. But maybe that’s the trouble. She finds her stomach twisting oddly at his story, her throat tightening as if she’s swallowed something bitter.
Must be nice, she finds herself thinking. Being so soft and lovely that everyone wants to help you. Being so perfect that everyone just wants to make your life easier. Even the kinds of people who pay money to own other people.
What an awful thing to think! She shakes her head, feeling disgusted with herself. The heron had been kidnapped and sold, his entire nation slaughtered while he felt it from miles away, powerless - he had nearly died, and on the other side of that crisis had ended up in a foreign land as a refugee. He’d spent two decades there, among strangers, thinking himself the last of his kind, grieving his family and his countryfolk who had been destroyed in his absence. That’s not exactly getting off easy.
Someone says her name, and she realizes that Rafiel has finished with his story - and, horror of horrors, is looking at her. Worst of all, his clear green eyes are full of concern.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
Vika remembers what Tormod said: that heronic senses give them the ability to perceive your emotions, your fears, your desires - that they can even sense the kind of person that you are in your heart of hearts. Vika is sure she’s not being a very good person right now. Maybe if you were a better person, they would have been nicer to you too, stupid bird. She shakes her head - that’s not a productive line of thought, either. “I’m fine,” she says firmly. She stands, flicking leaves off her primaries. “I could use a walk. Be right back.”
She feels the heron’s eyes on her as she prowls away into the trees, and knows he’s felt her petty resentment. She needs to get a grip - all the man did was answer Muarim’s question. Vika is the one with the damage. She will take responsibility for it.
She walks into the shadows. It’s dark, so she puts out her hands to feel her way past the trees. She goes until she’s just out of earshot of the others, and then leans back against a tree, putting her hands in her pockets. She feels the absence in her right pocket - she used to have a tiny carving of the goddess, but she gave it to that silver-haired maiden as a token of friendship, and now she can’t have it back, because that’s how gifts work. Maybe that’s why she feels so out of sorts. She’s still finding new ways to soothe herself. She can find some other lucky item, if she happens upon one at a good moment. She lets out a long exhale, trying to will her pulse down, and wonders if it would feel wrong to pray without that little icon in her hand.
“Deep breaths,” says Muarim.
Vika nearly jumps out of her skin. “Goddess,” she says, her feathers bristling. “Don’t do that. I’m on edge as it is.”
“Sorry,” Muarim says.
“You didn’t need to follow me,” she says, slumping back against the tree.
“You’re a bird,” he points out. “I was worried you’d get lost in the dark, or hurt yourself. You seemed anxious. Are you doing the breathing exercises I taught you?”
“I was going to, before you scared me out of my feathers,” she says plaintively. She should have expected that Muarim would notice her upset - Muarim always notices when people are unhappy, and dislikes any level of tension. She folds her arms around herself, as if she can shield him from her nonsense. “My head got noisy back there, is all. It’s nobody else’s problem.”
“It will take longer to calm down if you’re hard on yourself,” Muarim says. “Remember what we’ve talked about.”
Vika remembers. They’ve come up with a strategy that works for her. Don’t fight the thoughts. Let them happen. Inhale for a count of four, exhale for a count of eight, and think about baby foxes instead. Muarim withdraws, honoring her privacy - but no sooner have her bad feelings started to ebb than she sees hears movement, and sees a blur of light out of the corner of her eye.
She turns to see that Rafiel has wandered into the trees as well - much less purposefully than Muarim, thanks to his poor night vision, but he carries a half-shuttered lantern so as not to crash through the undergrowth. It makes a pale specter of him as he drifts her way, his garments trailing over the leaf litter, his wings likewise trailing after him. Most bird laguz couldn’t abide their primaries dragging on the ground like that, but his wings are limp and useless. It’s tragic, and yet he carries it well, without cynicism or self-pity - it hardly diminishes him.
Vika feels worse. When she sees him glancing around, lost and unable to discern her dark form in the night, she relents. “Hey. Over here.”
He halts at once. “Vika,” he says, and she realizes that he is - oh no - visibly distressed and contrite. “Please forgive me if I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean...”
Vika scrubs a hand through her hair, avoiding his gaze. “You didn’t upset me, Highness,” she mutters. “I upset myself.”
“Just Rafiel, please,” Rafiel says. “I understand - it’s a painful subject. There’s no shame in reacting to it. Many have similar stories.”
“Yeah,” she says. “But that’s not your fault.” She hesitates. “Sorry for making you feel it. I know herons can… feel that sort of thing.”
“I was once the eldest of seven,” says Rafiel. There’s a twinkle of sad humor in his eye. “I assure you, a bit of resentment is not difficult for me to absorb. Besides, you’re not entirely wrong to feel that way.” His humor fades, his earnestness returning; he shifts his delicate fingers on the lantern’s handle. “Whatever happened to you - I’m sure it wasn’t fair. Things rarely are. Your emotions are your own - you oughtn’t fear that you’ll injure me by having them.”
He’s so sincere. He’s correct. He’s flawless. Vika can’t think of how to respond, except, “That’s nice of you - to say. Thanks.”
“Of course,” says the heron. “Would you like a hug?”
Vika is not a hugger. She is rarely offered hugs, and accepts them even less, if she can help it. She definitely doesn’t like them from strangers. But goddess damn if she doesn’t kind of want a hug from the heron man, who is somehow still a comforting presence, his every word and mannerism promising that she need fear no rebuke, no retribution - even though she has just been thinking some awful things toward him. She still feels rather awful about it, but she swallows a lump in her throat, and says, “Sure.”
Rafiel gives her a hug. His embrace is soft and reedy. She doesn’t know him, and it shouldn’t do anything for her. She probably doesn’t deserve it. Yet, for no good reason, she feels better. For no good reason, being held by Rafiel feels the same way her little icon used to make her feel - sheltered, comforted, someone watching her, someone understanding her without explanation. She’s probably projecting, she thinks, but all the same she nearly cries about it on the spot. She just barely keeps ahold of herself. It’s no wonder, she thinks, that people say the herons were the goddess’s favorite children.
The peace doesn’t last, but while it does, it glows.
They’ve scarcely walked through the doors of the palace at Zarzi when they’re accosted by two glittering creatures with diamond-white plumage, who hone in on Rafiel like bees to a flower. All three of them look very similar to each other, but while the two men speak in musical tenors, the third exclaims in a crystalline soprano, and Vika knows that this must be Princess Leanne.
When Vika gets a good look at the princess’s face, it nearly takes her breath away. They’re all lovely - she’d thought she’d gotten used to how lovely they were, during those campaigns and subsequent travel with Rafiel - but the princess is something else. Silvery lashes like a deer, a sheet of flaxen hair flowing nearly to her knees with nary a tangle to be seen, silken white garments that drape softly over her willowy frame. She is a flurry of trailing sleeves and rustling feathers, not a stitch or a strand out of place. Whe she smiles, it’s like desert rain.
Vika can’t help ogling all over again. How could anyone? How does anyone get anything done around here?
The heron princess mainly has eyes for her brother, of course, which makes sense, seeing as they’ve both presumed each other dead for decades. Vika gets a grip, and prepares to make herself scarce along with Muarim, to leave the family to their privacy and the boss to his politicking.
But as she moves to follow Muarim, she finds their path blocked by the princess. Leanne first addresses Muarim, thanking him profusely in broken Modern, which he acknowledges with his habitual stiff politeness. But then the princess turns her gaze on Vika - and looks right at her - and smiles, smiles at her, smiles, at her, and Vika nearly goes weak. It’s like staring at the sun. Vika should really stop staring, but she’s frozen on the spot. She feels like a mangy pigeon looking at a beautiful swan.
But before she can properly remember how to act normal, the princess takes her by the hands, and begins speaking right to her. “You,” she says in halting, heavily-accented Modern - still smiling, eyes brimming with emotion - “you help… bring my brother - to me. Thank you. Thank you.”
Vika almost recoils from the outpouring of gratitude - it’s so deliberate, so subdued yet so impassioned, that she feels it might scald her like a firebrand. She is not accustomed to effusiveness. “Don’t mention it, Princess,” she manages, in what is probably a semi-articulate mumble.
The princess beams at her - could she do anything else? It’s hard to imagine her in a less radiant state. “Leanne,” she says. “Call me - Leanne.” After a momentary pause, in which Vika bites her tongue to stop herself echoing the name in wonder, Leanne adds, “And you? How is… your name?”
The princess, Leanne, the princess, is looking right at Vika with eyes like springtime, and is still holding Vika’s calloused hands in her little smooth ones. Herons are so touchy, Vika notices in the back of her mind, so comfortable in their own skin as to offer affection so freely, even to strangers. It’s not really fair to expect Vika to produce cognizant speech under the circumstances. She remembers how she’d messed up with Rafiel, and can’t bear the thought of stepping out of line now. “Vika,” she mumbles. Awful, spiky name to have, when Leanne flows like summer breeze.
But if Leanne perceives her discomfort, she’s merciful enough not to show it. She just beams again, and is off in another direction soon enough: she floats back toward her brothers and the wolves, leaving Vika feeling a bit like she’s just spent two solid minutes staring into the sun.
“Whoof,” says Tormod, approaching them; evidently the beast royalty have shaken him off to have their own discussions for a while. “You are beet red, Vika. How did that go for you?”
“Not fair,” Vika mutters. “She’s stunning. How was I supposed to talk to her?”
“Oh, the herons, they’ll surprise you,” Tormod says airily. “They’re not so different from anyone else, really.”
“That can’t be right,” Vika says. “Look at her. She barely touches the ground. I made a fool of myself.”
“Ah, come on,” Tormod says, nudging her. “You can handle yourself just fine. I mean, I even saw you getting chummy with Micaiah, after you started off being nervous around her. You’ve been doing great!”
Vika isn’t sure how to respond to that. Her efforts to talk to Micaiah had been a personal effort, a rebuke to whatever innate prejudices had initially repelled her - not that it hadn’t been nice, to have someone new to trade smiles with around camp. Sure, there was something a little unnerving about the way Micaiah looked at people, like she could see right through them - but it had been sort of good, as well, kind of satisfying to break past that initial tension and find that Micaiah’s calm, knowing demeanor could be reassuring in its own right.
Whereas talking to Rafiel had been an inevitability of traveling together, and she’d almost mucked it up before they’d actually said a word to each other, so she’d had to set it right.
But she has no immediate reason to approach the princess again, does she? There’s nothing she needs to accomplish with Leanne, no reason to be around her, no greater purpose to pursue or space to fill, so surely it would be weirdo behavior to try.
And moreover, when she glances over at the princess, and sees her radiant among her two brothers - she feels a strange twinge of… jealousy? She’s not sure. She doesn’t want to be jealous, but maybe she is. Maybe she just wishes she were more like Princess Leanne.
That must be it, she decides. Because if that’s not it - she feels a twinge of dread - if that’s not it, then it could be something worse: it could be that she wants Princess Leanne, that Vika is attracted to her in the way crows are attracted to beautiful things, to glittering stones and shiny metals and glistening fabrics. Vika does not want to think of a person like a trinket. If that’s what she was feeling, she hopes to the goddess that Leanne didn’t perceive it in her.
She crosses her arms, and decisively stops looking at the herons. “I think she’d probably like some space with her family,” she says firmly.
“‘Space’,” Tormod scoffs. “‘Space’ is overrated.”
That gets a chuckle out of her. “You would say that, boss.”
The Gallians offer them hospitality, which they accept, because Tormod says they’d better rest up - there’s going to be a lot of work to do in the coming days. Vika is grateful for both the hospitality and, in a way, for the incoming work. She needs a hot bath, and something to occupy her mind. Maybe that way she’ll stop thinking so much about silver-haired maidens and golden-haired birds, all of which seem to strike far too easily at the deeper, less-appealing parts of her soul.
Vika avoids King Kilvas like the plague on the battlefield, when they’re on opposing sides. Then, when they’re on the same side, she goes on avoiding him like the plague regardless. She has no idea what they’d have to say to each other. Assuming he even deemed her worth speaking to, which she doesn’t imagine he would - she doesn’t feel like finding out.
And because the princess is often hanging around the man, Vika ends up avoiding her too. This bothers her somewhat more - it’s not like herons are territory, it’s not like Vika has any reason to defer to the raven king, or so she tells herself - it’s just that she finds him off-putting. And if he happens to be near Princess Leanne - well, more’s the pity, but Vika is within her rights to avoid his attention.
And yet Leanne always seems pleased to see her - almost aggressively pleased to see her, even seeks her out when they find each other in proximity, which is both perplexing and a little flattering, and also makes Vika a bit nervous. Once Leanne descends on her, babbling sweetly in Ancient, just to give her a handful of blackberries she found. Another time, the princess, spying Vika freshly-washed in the river - clothed, thank the goddess - offers to share her comb. She even once furtively offers a bit of perfume, which she daubs on Vika’s wrists from a phial that she’s apparently had this whole time - a little frivolous thing, but then, Vika has always liked taking the simple inconsequential joys where she can get them. Maybe Leanne senses that in her. Maybe that’s why she picks Vika for these little comforts. Or maybe she just gives them to whomever is at hand.
The princess still doesn’t speak Modern fluently, but nonetheless they share a sort of a passing, unspoken friendliness, in the manner that young women of similar clans often share a presumptive camaraderie. They are the only two bird-women around, after all. And with the language barrier, there’s little opportunity for Vika to fully embarrass herself. At least that’s a mercy.
Still, she never feels entirely confident enough to approach the princess uninvited. Especially not when the raven king is near her, hovering like a dark shadow - she supposes his protectiveness is warranted. But the princess keeps taking the initiative to come to Vika, which is kind of… nice.
But after the fighting is over, there are political talks to be done. And Naesala has always worked closely with Begnion, and the Apostle intends to work closely with Tormod and company, and everything is interconnected. Therefore sooner or later Vika ends up fidgeting anxiously at Muarim’s elbow while Tormod talks to King Kilvas and the Apostle.
Vika pays little attention to that conversation. All throughout, she swears she can feel him looking at her. She feels a childish urge to hide behind Muarim, but she’s not a baby, so she stands and endures; but her skin prickles viciously. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking behind those cold blue eyes, but she doesn’t like being looked at. It’s not safe. She focuses very hard on the Empress instead, not absorbing a word she says.
Then Tormod and Muarim are taking their leave, and turning away, and Vika almost dares to feel relieved. She moves to follow them.
Then King Kilvas says, “Beg your pardon. Have we met?”
It’s a casual-sounding question, but it contains multitudes. Vika feels each and every one of those multitudes shifting around in her stomach. She halts, but doesn’t look at him. “Long time ago,” she says.
(Which is accurate. She remembers seeing him around. Before. In her childhood. And then not again for a very long time. Not until this war. But it’s not as if her name would mean anything to him, either way.)
“Family in Kilvas?” he says, as if this is not an extremely loaded topic.
“Somewhere, I guess,” Vika says doggedly. (She’d gone back, in the lull between her emancipation and the beginning of this war. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and a strange unsettled impulse had borne her to Kilvas, to an unassuming door in those barren cliffsides. To a tough, wiry woman with a face half-scarred from some piratical skirmish, so familiar and yet alien at the same time, like something out of another life.)
“What’s your name?”
She dodges both his gaze and his question. (It had felt all wrong.) “I’m a nobody.”
He pauses. “If you say so,” he says. He’s got a reputation for cutting remarks and biting smirks, but his tone sounds fairly mild at the moment. She doesn’t let her guard down, because that’s surely what he wants. “Should I expect to see you around the archipelago?”
The bird nations may be moving to Serenes Forest, but of course the Phoenicisian-Kilvasi islands will always belong to the hawks and the ravens respectively. And the subtext is clear. Are you rejoining? he’s asking. Do you intend to acknowledge your heritage? Return to your countrymen? Are you one of mine?
(And what would he say, if she said yes? What would any of them say? What’s the use of explaining that Vika, indeed, remembers being a child in Kilvas? How to explain that Vika hadn’t known what to expect, when she’d gone to find her mother, and had told herself to expect nothing, and it had still felt all wrong, and somehow she’d wished she’d been too much of a coward to go and find out in the first place? How to explain that she tries, like a coward, not to think about it too much? That she hasn’t been back, because she’s told herself over and over that she is just too busy, too needed first in the desert amongst the freedom fighters and then in the war, and now she’s about to run out of excuses and she doesn’t know where to start? How to explain any of it?)
But she doesn’t need to explain, she reminds herself. She doesn’t owe anything to Naesala. Because she is not one of his. She isn’t anyone’s. She is her own. That’s what Tormod would say to her, so she says it to herself.
(Even though she hasn’t the first clue how to explain it to herself, either.)
Her mouth is dry, but she meets his gaze at last. “I’ve got my own work to do, chief,” she says. “Don’t wait up.”
Naesala’s eyes glint. “Well,” he says. “You’d be welcome.”
Vika’s stomach drops strangely - she doesn’t know what to say to that. But she’s saved the trouble. Prince Reyson materializes at Naesala’s side, flawless and chilly, and asks Naesala if he hasn’t got anything better to do than bother young bird women. Vika decides right then that this conversation is no longer her business, and turns to leave immediately.
“Vika!” trills a voice behind her. “Wait!”
She turns. Princess Leanne sweeps up to her, and hugs her, as if nothing terribly fraught has just happened. “I see you again!” the princess pronounces. “Soon. You come to Serenes - you tell me. Yes?”
Vika fumbles, trying to think past the knot of anxiety in her stomach. “Sure, Princess,” she says, helpless to formulate anything more considered. “If I… have time.”
The princess releases her with a beatific smile, and then glides back to Naesala. Vika feels all kinds of out of sorts. Has she just been offered standing invitations to, not one, but two ancestral avian territories? They’re yours as much as anyone’s, she imagines Tormod saying. You’ve got a right. You should cultivate those relationships, or something.
But another part of her, much more deep-rooted, shrinks at the idea. She doesn’t believe it, that these things are hers for the having. It will take more than that.
Before her contingent takes their leave of Begnion, she catches one last glimpse of Princess Leanne - at Naesala’s side this time, hanging onto his elbow. It’s an innocent enough touch, yet it carries a casual intimacy. Her hand is a snow-white glimmer against the dark shadow of him.
Again Vika’s stomach drops. She doesn’t have a problem with the two of them being close - she has no right, and besides, why would she? It makes sense. They’re both bird-laguz royalty, and not dissimilar in age. But just like during the war, it makes Vika want to avert her eyes. How could Vika ever follow through, ever cultivate a deeper friendship, when she’s too much a coward to look either of them in the eye? She can’t make head nor tail of her own messy feelings, and tries to put them out of her mind until she forgets about them.
When she and Muarim go to work in Begnion, with Tormod an itinerant wanderer between the city and the desert, Vika spends her days trying to link up freed laguz with housing in Sienne. She petitions the senate and the Empress for space, or funds, or resources. She helps set up adjustment programs, building community, helping her brethren adapt.
And yes, she meets with people in the laguz district of the capital. Some of those laguz are birds, and some of those birds are ravens.
They look at her with an uncomfortable and peculiar supplication, those birds - as if they anticipate her understanding - while they explain that no, they don’t want to leave the city, they don’t want to go to Serenes or Kilvas or anywhere else. They just don’t know what they’d do, if they tried. Their companions in bondage are their neighbors and their family now, and they don’t know if they can readjust to anything else. It might go wrong. It might be painful. Nothing can be as it was. What’s the point? Would it be worth the pain? They speak with a sort of shame, and a sort of resignation, with the somewhat hangdog affect of people who would like Vika’s reassurance but aren’t pinning their hopes on it. She tries to give it anyway.
And she keeps it professional, but she has never been good at avoiding things that she doesn’t want to know. Her mind and her heart never lets her leave well enough alone, for better or for worse. Somehow, in the course of her life, she always ends up on paths that seem deliberate, even if they’re not always pleasant. It’s the kind of thing that always made her believe in the goddess.
Now there is no goddess, which leaves a hollow in her heart. And so, she supposes, now she believes in people instead. For better or for worse.