A Strange and Stubborn Endurance (The Tithenai Chronicles #1)

by Foz Meadows

though I was hardly indifferent to the prospect of greater wealth, I deemed myself allergic to the increased responsibilities it so frequently engendered.

“Yours is a strange and stubborn endurance, Velasin.” And then, more softly still, such that I might almost have imagined it: “Just like your mother’s.”

Growing up, I didn’t exactly have a frame of reference for female warriors. I didn’t think less of women, exactly; I just assumed they were capable of less, or less capable at certain things, though I suppose that’s much the same thing when you get right down to it. Until one day, I watched a fishmonger’s wife first lay out four grown men in a bar-brawl, then quick-talk them into paying her damages, and—well. It was hard to maintain my old views after that, not least because it made me wonder why it took excelling at something masculine for me to be impressed by female competence.

If women were meant to be valued for their feminine skills, then why were the skills themselves devalued?

“So many people think magic useless because it works on such a small scale—what good is it, if you can’t wield lightning or summon dragons like the heroes in a story? But tiny levers can do big things, if you only know where to apply them. Body-magic is proof of that.”

A newborn babe doesn’t have the same skull as an older child, for instance—they have softer plates of bone that help with being, excuse my bluntness, squeezed into the world. They don’t even have kneecaps, did you know that? Little babies have no knees!” He laughed, delighted by the kneelessness of infants. “Which makes us wonder: How do our bodies know to change? What elements do we contain from birth that only emerge as we grow, to compel that greater development?

“Sorry,” he said, “I was whittling trees from firewood.”

“Travel high, saints mark your passage; we remaining set you free.” And the crowd sang back: “The earth is paid, the sky is waiting; pass softly through the great between.” Velasin’s hand closed gently around Cae’s wrist; he startled at the contact, and then realised that it was Velasin’s way of joining in, as neither he nor Markel knew the words. “Ayla made you, Zo watched you; now Ruya leads you into mystery.” “Go well, go well; saints mark your passage; you who were known, be known again.”

“Marriage to a man—an open, true marriage—it’s not a thing I ever thought would be possible; but in my secret heart, I think perhaps I yearned for it. To show that part of me to others, to be seen for who I am … and this is that, in a way. A real way. And whatever the context otherwise, it feels … I don’t know. But it makes me feel, and that’s what’s making me snappish.”

For a while, I wanted to be angry that she chose herself over her children, but the older I get, the more sympathy I have with, with a fear of abnegation, if that makes sense? I can wish all I want that she might’ve stayed a few more years, but what would they have cost her? Perhaps nothing; perhaps something; perhaps everything. It’s the not knowing that makes me angry now, the feeling that it’s too late to ask, or that she might not tell me if I did. I want to be able to judge for myself, to see the truth of things, but I can’t—” He made a frustrated noise, fingers flexing as if in physical search of a word. “—I can’t expect that, even if I did so, it would make as much sense to me as it did to her.”

Caethari’s eyes were impossibly soft. “Of all the things you have to fear in Tithena, Velasin, being unwanted is not among them.”

if you have a chance, a real chance, to make this the sort of marriage you deserve to have, then you should take it.”

Velasin murmured, half to himself, “I have lived a cramped life, it seems. So shy of having my greatest indiscretion discovered that I seldom dared indulge in simpler ones.” He lifted his head and looked at Cae, his gaze both soft and piercing. “You must be patient with me, dear Cae, as I learn to inhabit myself.”

Swallowing hard, he said, “You fainted?” “Only a little.” “You fainted.” “Yes.” “Out of the way of a crossbow bolt?” “I am a man,” croaked Velasin, with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances, “of many talents.”