I brought Sam back because I knew that when everything fell to pieces he was the only one who was going to be on your side.
She could have killed him for that, for loving her enough to think she was worth Sam risking his precious self, but Thorne beat her to it. She stared impassively at the body, because she could see Thorne looking for a reaction and she'd be damned if she'd give him one other than bored disinterest and dignity, and thought 'you were wrong, even he wasn't on my side.'
The Seeress had lied to many people, but she never bothered trying to fool herself. It hurt, that she was no longer Sam's instinctive priority. He had fled when she told him it was time to go and she had been glad, so glad, to think of the safe life he was building. She had insisted on not knowing where he was so that she couldn't lead their enemies to him, or their father. Despite everything she knew awaited her brother in the cellars and basement below the plush halls they walked, Sandry had many more nightmares of the Giantkiller or the Slayer finding Sam. Their father would at least bring him back home in one piece.
But she had never thought he would go to the Academy. She could never have dreamt he would befriend the Giantkiller, the Piper's kin, the spawn of a Walking Star. She'd thought he was smarter than to go and become a hero, even if he had a grey badge and called himself a sage. He still walked into danger, with only these student heroes and hidden vigilantes to guard his back.
Sandry was supposed to keep him safe. She was supposed to be scarier than anything that could try to harm him.
Handcuffed to a railing in her fallen empire, she watched her brother leave her to face the justice she still coolly thought was an undeserved lie. Sandry Graves still thought her only sin was her brother's life. She looked at Spider's cooling body and knew Sam could have set them free, easily, if he wanted. She knew the Giantkiller, the soft sentimental fool, would not ask, and would not come to check. She looked at the delicate splatter of Spider's blood and wondered calmly when Sam had stopped needing her to scare the nightmares away.
She wasn't certain whether or not the young Miss Jones knew who exactly she was bringing in, long weeks later, until Laney was murmuring protective threats as the siblings bickered, longer weeks after that. It wasn't until later that it occurred to her she should have been proud that Sam was keeping himself hidden from people who could hurt him. It wasn't until later that she realised she had just thrown out a reason to hate him to the woman who'd shot their father in front of them. It wasn't until the smug satisfaction of hurting the Piper's kin faded into cold realisation that she wondered if she had become someone Sam needed protecting from.
Rupert was a puzzle, even to eyes as keen as hers. He was a self-proclaimed hero who ran with the Giantkiller, yet he spoke politely. He judged but he did not condemn. They had been on the opposite sides of a war, but sleeping either side of a thin wall they became allies. She did not deny that this meant something to her, by the end of their stay, but she believed that would end once Rupert forgot. She underestimated him, or perhaps she was simply unused to other people being in a position to promise themselves they'd look out for her. She was not certain whether she liked Rupert's calm, moralistic weighing if her life as not being worth the weight of her eyes or loathed it. Her sight had always been the most important part of her. Once the Giantkiller laid his own eyes on her, once she felt the stares of Rivertown on her, she shuddered internally. Here, her sight was not valued. Here it was hated, despised. It was still the cost of her life and worth, though, so the Seeress drew herself tall and dignified.
Miz Eliza called her sight beautiful. Wren threw a bag of Elsewhere cracks on Sam's bed because of the things she had seen (the things she had ordered done to those she saw). She held a blade to Cassandra's throat, but nothing could hurt Sandry so much as her baby brother gasping for air, the desperate struggle for life she had condemned so many to and slept easy.
She was not sleeping easily now. Here she was no protector. In this room, the scariest thing was the mountain woman who had fled, who was proving her nightmare was mortal and that her mercy was stronger than her hate. The scariest thing here was the scattered orbs that dragged at Sam's soul.
The scariest thing in the room was still Cassandra Graves. She was the reason for Sam's pain, here. She was not his protector. She had blood on her hands and he was the price of Wren's furious victory. A knife was at her throat and Sam was choking, and she wished for Jack Farris to burst in. He might let the woman press a blade through Sandry's throat, but he'd carry Grey to the end of the world to keep the child safe, and that was what mattered. Cassandra knew well what lengths the Giantkiller would go to for his friends.
He could be the scariest thing in the room for her brother, so when she had the chance Sandry left. She was lost, in Rivertown, in her brother's new life. She was lost wherever she was, both halves of her identity shattered. Her father's righteous cause had been hers. People never understood that she thought - knew - her father was right, that what she did was what needed to be done. They spat her actions at her like crimes, and she let them slide off as irrelevant, or spat back if she thought it would better serve her. Cassandra had never been lying to herself. She knew what she had done, all of it, and she had called it right. Necessary. Sam had been her sin, her exception, her beloved joy and her contradiction. She had planned to rebuild, to continue her father's legacy. For a shining moment she thought Sam would help after all, that they were of one mind, and then he flipped a simple switch, and the world lit up.
She had told herself it was right, they did, that it was unavoidable justice to the world. But she had never wondered of there was an alternative that came without a price paid in the suffering of others. She had assumed her father knew best. She wept, in that cold electric light, because while she had seen her future in legacies Sam had been looking to change the world. If it had been unnecessary, could she be certain it had been right? If there had been an alternative all along, had it truly been responsible sharing or simply theft?
Sandry did not say goodbye to Sam. She had seen him hurt by her enough for a lifetime. Let Farris break the news on her behalf. The Seeress had been called cold, all her life, but these days she felt it. She did not lie to herself, so she knew she was afraid of the undeserved warmth of her brother's presence. She was not surprised that Farris let her go, but Jack did surprise her by giving her the gun. It's weight was heavy in her hands, comforting and grounding. She made a point of letting no one see her fear, but she had not relished walking the world with no defence to hand but the ability to throw secrets in people's faces. She missed Spider and his comforting ability to toss people into walls without a thought. Once she was out of the battle torn city, she tucked the gun under her cloak. You didn't have to be a seer to know hitching a lift was easier if you didn't look like you might be a highwayman. She didn't watch the battle end. She only knew who had won because a farmer slowed his cart to gossip. She did not ask about her brother. She would not know if he lived or died - she would imagine him safe, happy, and free. The farmer was happy to chat, when she asked the right questions, and eventually he asked where she was going. She told him she was headed past the village she could see swirling in his heart, and he patted the spare seat with a smile, happy for some company.
"Ah, then I can save you a days walking, miss -?"
"Cass." She didn't hesitate to let the name trip off her tongue. Cassandra was a memorable mouthful, and Sandry was sacred to Sam. Rupert had called her Cass and told her if she was locked up it should be for the crimes she committed and not for being born with a power someone else didn't (yet) understand. He had asked her why she wanted to get out, and thought her life was reason enough.
She went south. She wanted to go somewhere no one knew her name. She had no direction in mind except away, so she put her back to the mountains and went south and east. The Forest was hostile in a way she knew she could survive, but she was not looking merely for survival. She was not looking for anywhere her brother might venture, and this was Farris' territory. The farmlands were livable but…dull, in a way she did not want her life to be. They were still in the long shadows of her mountains too.
The desert came into view slowly - she walked the last day, feet still aching, though less than they had when she first set out, blisters grown slowly to callus. Her first sight of the true desert expanse was a shimmer of gold on the horizon. When she was far enough along the road to be surrounded by lone dunes she paused. Cass had always seen the world in shifting swirls of gold, and here so did everyone else. She scooped sand up, surprised that under the scorching surface the grains were cool to the touch. She let it trickle softly through her fingers and drift in the wind. If she were a more fanciful person she might have thought it was a golden trail leading her somewhere new.
By the time she reached the big desert city she was sun browned and ragged hemmed. She took shelter by a wall to watch the bustling crowd, who spared her no attention other than to step by without bumping into her. For a dizzying moment she felt weightless, something like panic clawing at her throat. Here she was, but for what? She had fared well enough on the road, spinning lies and stories from what she saw in others' hearts to beg lifts and a share of supper, when it could be spared. But these were not travellers who might be glad of some new company for an hour or so, or be sympathetically empathising with another travel stained wanderer.
She snapped out of her daze at a twist of intention, whirling to close a long fingered hand around the pickpocket who'd seen her distracted. She arched a dark eyebrow, coolly disdainful the way she had been in the face of bitter stares in her hometown. Who are you, that dares try to touch me or mine? She watched the child scurry away, wondering if it was a weakness or a kindness, to not exact any revenge. She examined her hands instead. They were no longer smooth and cared for, but they were not calloused or marked. You could not see the history of her work on her fingertips, unless you could see the slight dust that coated them in golden specks.
She had slept in the desert without shelter just once, on her way into the city. She had been shocked at how cold it was, one minute baking in her layers and grimly ignoring the sweat trickling down her face and the next shivering as it chilled. She had been far colder, of course, but she was mountain born. She'd had clothes suited for it. She was the mayor's daughter - she had had warm fires to sit by and the certainty that any discomfort was transient.
But the stars - the mountain skies had been glorious but distant, removed. She had curled in her worn coat on the sand and stared at the moon that seemed close enough to touch. There was nothing to block her sight of the sky except the horizon, curled into a rocky hollow by the roadside. It had not been comfortable, but she had traced stars and constellations until she drifted off. In the morning she had walked on, unpleasantly warm and face itching with sunburn, mind still half in that cool, glittering sky.
When she saw Rupert in the market, for a moment she thought her eyes were fooling her. He looked about the same. Free of their shared prison, the war for Rivertown distant and hard won, she wasn't quite certain if they were still allies.
"You won't tell them I'm here." It was not a question. She looked at the gentle curl of intention tucked under his collarbone and knew it was not duty bound, upholding a pact to escape and live. It was friendship, or something perhaps a little before friendship - the space where a friendship would grow, in a different life. "Please."
She tacked it on, respect and acknowledgment of both that this should be a request, from someone with eyes less keen, and of that tentative bond strung between them. Cassandra had learnt long ago not to expect kindnesses and small mercies. Asking for one, even knowing it was already a given, was an unfamiliar but welcome taste on her tongue. It was a weakness that felt like a victory.
He left her with sun lotion and a meal in her belly. He left her calmer, centred, reassured. She wondered if he knew what gifts dripped unseen to most from his words and hands. She disappeared into the crowd, and looked for someone who could be convinced to take her in - she knew about running a network of slavers and how to build machines to drain mages dry, but these were not exactly skills that would earn her bread and board.
But she could read and write in multiple languages - Sam was not the only one to take some solace in books, in being the cleverest one in the room - and managed to find an ageing woman who needed someone to help manage the paperwork side of her family business while her daughter was away visiting her own children. She was glad to take in a young girl, travelling alone with no family to guide her. It meant acting innocent and a little more naive than usual, but the Seeress was used to building a mask for herself. It also meant not letting her eyes catch on the gold that drifted from the mage's hands and bedecked her wares, but she was used to that too.
She supposes she shouldn't really be surprised when Miz Eliza finds her. Of course they'd run into each other somehow. Still - she is surprised when a familiar face peers over the counter she's minding while the shopkeeper has her lunch. Without quite knowing how it happened, Cass finds herself cautiously surveying the woman's office - empty apart from them, her coworkers all at some training seminar - as the older woman digs a tin of taffy out from a heap of tins full of archaeological knick knacks to go with their tea.
"George sent it, it's quite good." Cass glances sharply up at her, then relaxes. Eliza has no intention of telling the Dragon Slayer the Seeress had been taking afternoon tea with her.
Cass carefully avoids asking about Sam, but Eliza chatters away happily about all the tid-bits of Grey's life she's heard about in Rupert's letters. Sandry is grateful for the scraps - alive, happy, a life's work spilling at his feet. Somehow they drift into talking about Rivertown, what happened after she left and then what happened before. It's no surprise that Eliza mostly wanted to talk about the box that only a seer can open. Idly, she mentions that she was planning an expedition out to the same site in the desert, and could do with a pair of keen eyes to help.
The old woman's daughter is home again, and Cass feels something stir deep in her stomach at the thought. She wants that feeling back, she realises, the knowledge that things had been built for people like her. She wants that moment in Sally-Anne's back, this weatherbeaten, eccentric woman telling her that her cursed sight is beautiful with every speck of her meaning it. She asks to go along too, nervous and not showing it. She isn't used to asking for things. The Seeress gave orders, demands. She did not ask people for things they could refuse, unless she knew their refusal made no difference to her. Sandry had decided as a child that it was easier not to ask for things you might not be allowed to have. It hurt less.
"I was hoping you'd offer." Cass smiles a little, shaken, because her eyes are still keen but she hadn't been certain. She had learnt not to ask for things she might not be given, so she hadn't dared to see the offer she hoped was there. Eliza sends her home with a list of what she needs. At the market the next day, Cass picks up a new sun lotion, which wasn't on the list. She buys a second, amused, and isn't certain if it's for Eliza's sake or Rupert's.
The trip out takes twice as long as expected, because the tiny motorboat Eliza rented from a regular contact turns out to have a dodgy engine, and it gives up on the second day. Eliza flips the motor open and peers in, oil over her face within seconds, while Cass looks over her shoulder.
"Bugger." It's a cheerful exclamation. "I've never fixed one like this. Oh well, let's see what I can see…" Cass hands over tools and watches keenly. A day later, it stops again - some kind of loose valve, Eliza establishes, a little fiddly and in need of replacement. The third time it breaks, Cass fixes it while Eliza makes sandwiches for lunch. Oil stains her hands and she wipes them as clean as she can with a rag, but it's gotten into the whorls of her fingertips. For a moment she sees Sam's ink stained fingers instead, and wonders if he ever looks at the stains and feels tired pride in the accomplishment that put them here. Eliza looks her over and smiles.
"Remind me to show you how to fix my old truck when we're back. Everyone should know their way around a car engine. You picked that up quickly, didn't you?"
The site is largely unexplored, the remnants of a nondescript small village from before the river changed it's course, but to Cass it gleams in traces of gold. Footprints, hand-prints, even writing on the few fragments of standing wall. Eliza lights up when told, babbling excited theories and scrawling notes. It takes Cass a while to realise the world is slightly blurry not because of the dazzling sun or the dizzying gold around her, but because she's crying.
She learnt not to cry when she was young, too. Her father's daughter wasn't allowed fear, or sadness. Crying into Sam's shoulder in that Rivertown room had been a victory that felt like a loss, still certain she was not allowed the luxury if being wounded.
But she is not her father's perfect daughter anymore, far from the mountains where her name is still whispered in fear, oil stained fingers and eyes open wide. There's a pattern painted in invisible gold on the vase fragment Eliza is carefully freeing from the sand, and it is beautiful. Somehow Eliza's arm is around her shoulders, and she is talking about machines, about legacy and innovation, about things she thought were right and things she had thought were impossible, her sins and her graces reversed.
She thinks she talks about stars, too, about how they're too far away to see any gold around and how she thinks they're the only thing she sees the way everyone else can. She tells Eliza about her father's disgust, her brother's unconditional, all-forgiving love. Spider's lies and his few, heartfelt truths, the red spill of his blood at her feet. Precious few people had loved her, and Thorne had made it fewer still - one heart in the whole wide world that would break a little if she ceased to exist.
Eliza's hand falters a little in the soothing circles she's rubbing on Cass' back. After a moment of silence broken only by Cass' dying sobs, the older woman nods briskly, as though she's just done figuring out a puzzle.
"I'd care." It's a matter of fact, almost throwaway statement, and she means it entirely. Cass smiles weakly and gives an undignified hiccough as she tries to catch her breath.
Later, Eliza points out constellations she's never seen and they talk about patterns in the sky that aren't really there but everyone can learn to see. The stone foundations around them gleam gently golden, patterns only she can see. Maybe Eliza is right, and there is a way for other people to learn to see them. Maybe she isn't, but once upon a time someone had drawn messages and locks only a seer could open. Someone had drawn a yellow flower on a vase for someone to see, and what did it matter if they'd been born with that sight or learnt it? Once upon a time, someone had known there were people who saw the world in gold and wanted to give them something to look at.
When Eliza wakes in the morning, an hour after Cass, she watches in puzzled interest as the girl walks seemingly at random, dragging one foot to leave deep grooves in the sand in her wake. Eventually she picks her way over the lines until she can climb a dune and look down to see if there's a pattern. There isn't, or at least not one she can see.
"What are you doing?" Cass glances up, not stopping.
"I'm drawing what I can see for you." When she'd tried to draw out her vision as a child her father had scolded, seeing only a fussy child playing with her food, scribbles rather than pretty pictures, tangled ribbons that hadn't been tidied away properly. He hadn't cared about what she saw except when he demands other's secrets trip off her tongue for him to use, as surely as he used her useful but hated eyes. But Eliza scribbles notes, fascinated, and Cass knows she probably has a hundred questions already lined up. She stops drawing and waits for the surely inevitable quiz. Eliza tucks her notebook in her pocket and stands, shaking sand off her trousers and surveying the abstract, incomprehensible pattern before her, golden lines drawn out in golden sands.