Liberio: The Road: Indas
On sunny days like this one, you could be forgiven for thinking the world wasn't a terrible place. Liberio knew the sun differently. He knew its burn and he knew the dryness of a parched mouth as water nibbled at every inch of him. Flies buzzed and fed. The smell—
He shut his eyes, casting a veil over the pale morning light that slipped past the tent flaps. When he awoke lying on his back like this, it was like the tub still surrounded him. Turbid water licked at his neck as his limbs rotted beneath the milky yellow film on the water's surface, and the air was as stagnant as the pool on which the tub floated. The firm ground under his blankets ought to be enough to shake him out of his reverie, but it wasn't. His mouth was chalk-dry like he'd swallowed charcoal, and sweetness cloyed his tongue as though his father's executioner had knelt above him in the night spooning honey into his mouth.
It wasn't the only memory his dreams left him with. The words of dead and dying men—men, but mostly women—hissed in his ears. He rarely remembered the specifics. Half-images as indistinct as the scratched-out faces of the gods from Ipsis's temples paraded before his eyes.
Today was different. This one clung to him: a child pushed underwater as she clutched her father's robes. Liberio had felt her blood melt into the pool as if it were his, while her father's tear-streaked face blurred as the water filled her vision. He'd felt fear swallow her reason even though she knew she should trust, even though she'd been weak from blood loss. Even though a princess ought to be brave and he would be so disappointed in her, so—
A whine born of a stranger's pain slipped out of him.
As always, the memory of drowning was followed by that incessant tug toward Qemassen: a compulsion. A wish.
Hadn't he dragged all of Ipsis across the desert with him? Hadn't he abandoned everything he knew to chase these dreams?
He was doing what he was called to do. Why did the force that asked continue to press him?
And who was doing the asking?
Grains of sand drummed against the side of the tent, kicked up by a hoof or maybe a cart. It was enough to wake him more completely, though his chest still felt as though his ribs had shrunk to a cage around his heart.
Roewyn. He needed her.
He patted the empty space beside him, in case she'd only rolled away, but she was gone. Her body hadn't yet caught up with the fact that there was no longer any need to rise with the sun.
Roewyn.
Liberio sat up and reached for his mask. For a long time, he'd worn it even sleeping, especially on nights when Roewyn rested beside him. But in the morning his skin would be sweaty, the mangled flesh beneath it damp like he'd just emerged, rotting and monstrous, from the Haven.
And lying next to Roewyn he'd felt shame.
There probably wasn't a worse way to die, because beyond the pain and the sickness, it was shameful. How unfair to feel shame alongside the knowledge that you were dying.
Liberio hadn't died, but the shame remained. People looked on him and saw not him but what had been done to him. They imagined skin sloughing from muscle, a body bathed in its filth. They wondered at the miracle of his survival and then questioned whether it ought not to have been better if he'd never woken.
The buckle holding Liberio's mask clinked as he tugged it tight, and the soft leather underside scuffed the skin above his cheekbone with a familiar tickle. He tugged it tighter—one sharp pull. His skull seemed to pulse from the pressure.
