The Hammer Unfalls

4.59 The Three Strikes

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Glim felt eyes on him in the dark. He cracked his eyes open slightly to see the form of his father in the firelight, blurred by half-closed eyelashes.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.”

Glim stretched and yawned. “What time is it?”

“Time for a talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Get dressed and get something to eat. We’ll talk at first light.” His father left the room and walked down the rampart.

A vague sense of dread weighed on Glim as he dressed and ate a couple of dried apples. He checked the stewpot hoping to find some gruel, but it was empty.

The windows lightened from black to dark blue, and finally turned a wan yellow-gray. Glim sat on a crate and watched the colors shift, uncertain of what awaited him.

At first light, Glim left the room and looked around. He saw no one, and headed for the stairs, where his father met him.

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“The glass house.”

His father’s words made no sense, but Glim knew one thing for certain: the gardener’s involvement made him nervous. Whatever his father had to say, surely Minerva and her fellow ‘gardeners’would love to overhear it.

As they walked the path into the gardening area, Glim shuddered. He remembered emerging into the sunlight on these very flagstones to greet the crowd. When his father opened the door, and the scents of algae and the sweetness of rot hit his nose, Glim nearly choked. Memories came rushing back: Ryn handing him a pea pot. A stinging slap. Emerging from an Elderkin shuttle with her blood on his hands.

Father held the door open, looking at Glim intently and gesturing into the building, where two people sat waiting. Minerva passed a steaming mug across the table to Master Willow. With her gray cloak against the dimness of early morning, she seemed almost like a floating head with straight blonde hair attached to a pair of delicate hands.

“It’s a waste to drink good tea in here, with the smell. This humble brew is a crude substitute.”

“I certainly understand,” Master Willow said, with less of a sneer than he typically had. Did his beard seemed less neatly trimmed than usual?

The pair stood at Glim’s approach. They looked at him with inscrutable faces. Minerva’s evaluated him with unblinking eyes. Master Willow’s scowl mellowed into a half-scowl, half-worried expression.

Worried for Glim? Or for himself?

“Why is she here?” Glim asked, with a bit more disdain than he intended.

“Because Ryn is not here to speak for herself,” she replied.

Father joined the others standing at the table, nodding to them in silence. The four looked at each other for a moment.

“Have you invited me here for standing training?” Glim said at last. The men did not seemed amused by his words, but Minerva’s lips twitched upward into a smirk she quickly suppressed.

“What training would you prefer?” his father asked, with the patient-but-judgmental tone Glim had long ago learned to be a trap. Glim kept his mouth shut.

“You seem to have a path in mind,” his father pressed. “How to kill, if I’m not mistaken?”

“The fastest way, specifically,” Master Willow added.

Glim sat down and slumped in his seat. He looked at hands that hadn’t been fast enough, through eyes that hadn’t seen keenly enough, to save Ryn. Tears hovered somewhere, just out of reach.

“I wasn’t fast enough. I heard the hinterjacks and just stood there. If I’d been faster—”

“—Daryna might still be alive?” the gardener said.

“Y…yes.”

“Tell us about it,” his father said, placing a steadying hand over the ones Glim was wringing on the table.

“I heard what sounded like laughter on the wind. I didn’t think anything of it. It was just a weird echo from the tanks against the cliff walls.”

“—what tanks?”

“—what cliff?” his father and Master Willow said at the same time.

“I don’t know. Down a really, really long tunnel.”

“They are holding tanks,” Minerva said. “To feed nourishment into our garden beds from other places. It is how we sustain the system.”

“Can you show me?” his father said.

“I don’t know where they are either, Captain. I’ve only been here a few days. But it doesn’t matter. The hyaenas don’t live on the side of a cliff. They came from somewhere, and are well on their way back to it by now.” His father sighed and nodded. “Glim, keep telling your story.”

“I heard laughter again, and Ryn told me to run. She stood between me and them. Trying to block them. But they already had us surrounded. Three of them were behind me.”

“Three?” his father said, then pressed his lips together into a white line.

“I cast ice at them and hit two. The closest got the sword, and the second one too.” His father and his tutor shared a look. Glim felt a hint of pride. “I could do nothing about the third. It ripped her back open. The other hyaenas stopped and I guess decided to eat the dead rather than face us again. So we ran.”

Glim fell silent. His tutor stroked his beard in thought. “What would you do differently?” he said at last.

Glim looked at him as if the man were addled. “Save Ryn!” Glim nearly shouted.

Master Willow ignored the disrespect. “How?”

“If I’d run faster, or turned around faster, or drawn my sword faster.”

“Glim,” his father said. “You took on three beasts who had the drop on you at close range, and defended yourself from all three without getting hurt. I think everyone here would agree that speed was not the issue. Nor skill.”

“What is the issue, then?”

“Mindfulness,” Master Willow said.

“Awareness,” his father added.

“Observation,” Minerva agreed, confirming their conclusions.

Glim looked around the table at the three adults, judging the situation with one mind. His father to the left towering above the others, Master Willow to the right, and the gardener between them, her head emerging from the gray billows of her cloak. It reminded Glim of something: a picture he’d once seen depicting The Trine. Two men facing each other, one clad in armor, the other in silk, with a woman wreathed in cloud between them. Master Willow had once told him that people will put faces to anything. Even rocks on the ground, or tree trunks, or the swirls of essentiæ in the air. Glim never really thought of the essentiæ as people. But even if The Trine itself sat across from him now, he could not feel more judged than he did at this moment.

“You’re planning to hunt down the hyaenas,” Master Willow said. “But it’s not in your nature to kill. When you attack beasts, you’re plying unbalanced. I’ve seen it. How sickened you are by it. The remorse you try to bury, even though every fiber of your mind and body revolt. Seeking this end is not balance.”

His father nodded. “A guard bent on revenge is one who has abandoned the protection of those he watches over. You no longer see with clear eyes. You become a threat to yourself. And to others.”

“What are you telling me? To let Ryn’s death go unanswered?”

“No,” the gardener said. “Not unanswered. Answered in the proper way. How would you feel if you slashed the throats of every hinterjack and hyaena from here to the sea? Would you find peace then?”

Glim slammed his hands on the table. “I can’t just do nothing!”

“No one is suggesting that, son.”

“You weren’t there!” Glim felt heat flush his face, and heard the unhinged tone in his own voice, but didn’t care. His desire to hunt the hyaenas was perfectly justified, and nothing they could say would change that. “I won’t sit by when I can do something about it!” Spittle flew from Glim’s mouth as he yelled. “Observing is not going to avenge Ryn.”

“It most certainly will,” Minerva said, straightening. Her eyes glittered with an intensity that scared him. “If Daryna were here, what do you think she’d tell you? To hunt down every last hyaena? Or find a way to protect your next companion?”

Glim screamed in frustration. Hot tears welled in his eyes, which he batted away. He pictured the dead hinterjacks, recalling his indignation and remorse, and knew they were right. It did nothing to calm him. He knew his feelings were justified.

“You seem angry,” Master Willow said. “It’s been interfering with your plying lessons.”

“And your swordplay, at that,” his father added. “Your recklessness is going to get someone hurt. Probably you.”

Glim tried to get a hold of his breath and calm down, but it didn’t work. Hot anger coursed through him.

“You need to get a hold of this,” Master Willow said. “If you’ll do what I ask of you, right now, I can help you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go outside and stick your forehead into the snow for a minute.”

“You can’t be serious.” Master Willow scowled in the way Glim had come to learn meant his tutor in fact was serious, and had his reasons. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

“I’m not finished. Next I want you to run to the south gate, and back to the north gate.”

Glim stared at him. “Is that it?”

“No. While you run, I want you to ponder something.”

“Which is?”

“You are not merely angry. Only by realizing your true conflict can we make progress. When you’re done running, come meet me and we’ll resume.” Master Willow leaned across the table. “Now get to it. Head in the snow. Run. Ponder.”

Glim stood, shoved away from the table, and walked out the door he’d been covered in blood the last time he’d walked through. The blood had been washed away. Somehow, he still felt it.