With Empty Hands

Wet winter air met Rishi at the mouth of the Sanctum.

It clung to his bare scalp, crept beneath his collar, and settled into cloth already heavy with sweat. Before him, dark trunks shone with rain.

Seamwarden stepped out beside him. Their runes gave back a little of the forest’s dim light, then faded.

Rishi turned toward the Twilight-Stream family’s home, where they had taken Maeril. He walked as quickly as his aching legs allowed, leaning on the Living Staff when the wet path shifted beneath him.

The household emerged through the trees in curves of living wood and woven screens. Moss softened the paths. Banked smoke and bitter herbs touched the damp air.

Lirae crossed the central path with an armful of folded linen. When she saw Rishi, she stopped.

Her eyes moved over his face, the staff, the tired set of his shoulders. She gave a small bow and turned toward the private quarters without asking him to explain himself before the household.

Rishi followed.

Seamwarden came behind him, leaving enough distance for silence.

Lirae drew aside the drape of the small living-wood house Rishi shared with Maeril.

Warmth breathed over him.

The room had been made ready for recovery. Thick screens covered every draft. Wrapped heat stones sat in clay cradles. Dried herbs hung from the beams, and jars of salve stood in a clean row beside folded cloth. Extra blankets padded the sleeping plank against the wall. Supports held Maeril’s injured leg straight and slightly raised.

She lay among them, still enough to stop him at the threshold.

Then her chest rose.

Rishi crossed the room.

He found her pulse at the wrist. Steady. Her breath remained shallow but regular. Fresh dressings covered the burns along her head and neck. Her left eye lay beneath a careful wrap. Splints held her leg.

He kept two fingers against her pulse after he had learned everything it could tell him.

Lirae set the linen beside the other supplies.

“I know you. And I know what your hands can do.”

Rishi looked up.

“You are the right person to tend her now.” Her gaze rested briefly on Maeril. “I leave her in your care. If either of you needs anything, ask.”

“Thank you.”

“There is food waiting in the next room. Your hand is shaking too, Rishi.”

He looked down at the fingers resting against Maeril’s wrist.

“I will eat when she wakes.”

Lirae nodded, then turned to Seamwarden.

“Elenya is in council with Thiarel and Sirael. You should join them. I will take you.”

Seamwarden bowed to Rishi and followed her out. The drape fell closed behind them.

The room grew quiet.

Rishi began with the small work. He took the circlet from inside his robe and laid it on its linen among Maeril’s papers. He checked each jar by scent and texture. He warmed water, laid out clean cloth, and cut fresh bands of linen. He examined the splints without disturbing them and shifted a support beneath Maeril’s heel when pressure reddened the skin.

Maeril’s brow tightened.

Her fingers moved across the blanket, searching.

Rishi covered them with his hand.

“Easy.”

Her uncovered eye opened to a narrow gleam. It wandered before finding him.

“Rish.”

The broken rasp of his name tightened his chest.

“I’m here.”

“Seamwarden?”

“With Elenya.”

She attempted a deeper breath and abandoned it when her ribs objected.

“Good.” Her eye moved from him to the low beams. “Our room?”

“Yes.”

“Try not to organize all of it while I’m asleep.”

A laugh escaped him, no more than breath. He adjusted the blanket where it threatened the dressing at her shoulder.

“Rest.”

“Tyrant.”

Her eye closed, but her fingers tightened once around his.

Fast footsteps approached through the wet hush outside. They slowed only at the drape.

Nessari pushed it aside, damp-haired and breathless. A question had already reached her lips. Then she saw the splinted leg, the dressings, the white patch over Maeril’s eye.

She went still.

“Rishi,” she whispered. “Is she going to die?”

He turned toward her.

Maeril answered first.

“Do you think you can get rid of me so easily?”

Her eye had opened again. Pain roughened every word.

Nessari’s breath caught.

“I am not finished scolding you,” Maeril said. “You shaped that spell badly. Go practice.”

Relief struck Nessari hard enough to bend her mouth around a laugh and a sob at once.

“You’re horrible.”

“Correct.”

Maeril let her eye fall shut.

Nessari wiped her cheek with the heel of one hand, embarrassed by the evidence there. She looked to Rishi for something she could do.

He nodded toward the nearest clay cradle. “Turn the heat stone. Then sit with her.”

She obeyed at once. When she settled beside the sleeping plank, she held herself rigidly quiet, as if good behavior alone could keep Maeril alive.

Rishi washed his hands again.

Only the dressing over Maeril’s eye remained unchecked. He had delayed it until her pain had eased and her thoughts could reach the room. Now he drew a hooded lantern closer and turned its opening away from her face.

“Maeril.”

Her eye opened. “What?”

“I need to look beneath the wrap.”

“Do it before I change my mind.”

Rishi loosened the dressing layer by layer. Nothing pulled. No fold dragged across burned skin. When the last pad came free, he angled the lantern until only a narrow wash of light crossed her face.

The injured eye did not answer it.

It had gone white, the iris and pupil lost beneath an opaque stillness. Lightning had left no wound that time might simply close.

Rishi forgot to breathe.

Maeril heard the pause.

“Is it lost?”

Rishi kept his hands still.

“Yes.”

Maeril stared at him with the eye she had left.

Her face did not break. It emptied.

She exhaled through her nose.

“Oh, gods.”

Rishi waited.

Her mouth tightened.

“How am I supposed to hit anything at a distance if I cannot judge depth?”

For one heartbeat, he could only stare.

Then laughter broke out of him.

It came too loudly for the small room. Rishi bent forward and braced one hand on his knee. Nessari startled, then covered a smile.

Maeril watched him with solemn satisfaction.

When he could breathe again, his eyes were wet.

“You are impossible.”

“Yes.”

She held out her hand. Rishi took it. For a while she watched their joined fingers.

When he reached for the fresh dressing, her grip tightened.

“A moment, Rish.”

He set the linen down.

“I can learn to aim again. I know I can. I just don’t want to have to.”

Rishi rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. There was nothing he could lay out beside the bed that would give her this back.

“I wish you didn’t. I wish I could mend it.”

“So do I.”

She looked past him toward the covered window.

“I want to see Elisa. I want to buy a book I do not need and complain about the price. I want a day when no one has to save me.”

“I want those days too. I would like to sleep beside you without waking at every sound.”

Her fingers moved against his palm.

“We will have to practice.”

“Gladly.”

She held his hand a little longer. Rishi stayed beside her with the fresh linen waiting on his knee.

Only when she let go did he clean the skin and replace the dressing.

The drape moved.

Elenya and Seamwarden waited outside. Neither entered unasked. Elenya’s hands were empty; Seamwarden’s were folded before them.

Rishi straightened. “Come in.”

They crossed the threshold and bowed to Maeril.

“We will soon gather for Midwinter,” Elenya said.

Maeril’s eye narrowed. “Already?”

“This year will be special.” Elenya’s formality softened. “Our family would be honored if you both attended.”

Maeril glanced at the layers of blanket pinning her to the plank. “In this state?”

“For as much of it as you can bear.”

“You make it sound irresistible.”

“You will not want to miss this one.”

Maeril studied her. Curiosity won ground over fatigue.

“Please do not invoke too many dead spirits this time.”

Elenya frowned as though Maeril had insulted the household’s hospitality.

“Quite the other way around,” she said. “You will be surprised.”

Nessari leaned forward. Elenya offered her no rescue from wondering.

Seamwarden stepped closer to the sleeping plank.

“I have come to ask something of you both.”

“Of course,” Maeril said.

The ease of the answer made Seamwarden pause.

They faced Rishi first. “Would you be willing to part with the Living Staff?”

Rishi’s fingers closed around the wood. The staff held Maeril’s work, the grove’s life, and the memory of every road it had walked beneath his hand. Its warmth had become part of how he knew himself.

Seamwarden turned to Maeril.

“And would you part with your circlet?”

Maeril’s eye widened.

The circlet rested on the unfolded linen among her papers and inks. Its green stone showed above the cloth. Her brow looked strangely bare without it.

“Anything but that,” she said.

Seamwarden waited.

“Couldn’t you ask for something easier? A limb, perhaps? Or my one good eye?”

Nessari made a choked sound.

Rishi rose. Every bruise objected, but he set the staff upright and carried it to Seamwarden. He offered it across both palms.

He did not release it.

“You would not ask this lightly.”

Acknowledgment warmed Seamwarden’s eyes.

“You know what this is to us. I trust you with it.” Rishi looked back at Maeril. “But the circlet is not mine to give.”

Maeril regarded the staff, then the circlet. Her fingers rose toward her bare brow and stopped.

“I have grown used to that much room in my head.”

Nessari looked from the circlet to Maeril.

“I remember what it felt like,” she said quietly.

Maeril’s hand lowered to the blanket beside her.

“Yes. You do.”

Nessari took the offered hand. Rishi waited while Maeril looked back toward the desk.

At last, she sighed.

“All right.”

Elenya remained beside the desk, waiting.

Maeril gave her a reluctant nod, then looked at Seamwarden.

“I still want it, you understand. There are things I haven’t learned yet.” Her fingers tightened around Nessari’s. “But it gave me a beginning when I needed one. I want you to have what it can give you, too.”

Her eye returned to Rishi. “And spare me a monk’s sermon on non-attachment, Rish. I am giving away my circlet. I do not have to be happy about it.”

“No sermon.”

Rishi smiled and bowed to her.

Then he opened his hands.

Seamwarden received the Living Staff as though accepting a sleeping child. Its green warmth passed from Rishi’s palms into theirs. The absence in Rishi’s grip felt immediate and physical.

Elenya folded the linen back over Maeril’s circlet before lifting it from the desk. Maeril watched until the last glint of metal disappeared.

Seamwarden bowed to them both. “Thank you.”

They did not explain. Not yet.

Elenya and Seamwarden left together, carrying the Living Staff and Maeril’s linen-wrapped circlet into the winter air.

The drape settled.

Rishi stood with his hands empty.

Maeril shifted beneath the blankets and winced. “So. We are attending a festival.”

He returned to her side and laid his hand over hers.

“We are.”

“If they surprise me, I am allowed to complain.”

“Always.”

Outside, wet cold pressed against the living walls. Inside, Nessari turned the heat stone before it could cool. Maeril’s fingers rested beneath Rishi’s palm, warm and stubbornly present.