What updates Róisín spoke of were those that’d been said when Oswin came to the Peak, so she nodded in agreement and wondered about her future meeting with the Lagoon leader Rade. When she was at the Peak, Cullen had just begun his reign as boss of the bachelor stallions. A part of her wanted to feel comforted, knowing Božena had worked with this stallion to dispose of Cullen. Maybe he was the lesser of two evils, but Oswin would take what she could get. She had enough on her plate just trying to get a sense of who was living on each island and what their individual politics must be like.
Róisín mentioned the war, and Oswin frowned. The last time she was here, when she tried to bring Mariael, Maziel, and Zevulun back to the islands, the war had just been brewing. She was warned about it and even wanted to join the side of the righteous, but family drama wound up taking her away before it all happened. She felt a bubble of frustration well up inside her, wondering how much she could have helped if she had been here, but then pushed it back down. The past regrets would always be there, but Oswin had the present and the future to make up for it all.
She perked her golden ears as Bane spoke of her time in the Peak. She had been here even before Oswin and, when she said Black Heart Machine’s name, Oswin’s blue eyes brightened. “My mother met Black Heart Machine years before I was born. She’s the reason I sought out the Peak when I was old enough to leave home. She’d tried to get my mother to be a part of them, but she wouldn’t leave my aunt’s in the Forest and then, later, my father in the Prairie.” Oswin had always remembered her mother’s story of the great black mare of wisdom and pride. It had made her want to be a part of something like that. Like the mission the mare held, rather than be a herd member for a stallion.
Oswin listened, enraptured as Bane told her tale. When the conversational pull turned toward her and she was asked about her time in the Peak, she cleared her throat and thought back…
“Much the same as you experienced,” she admitted, nodding, “the numbers would rise and fall. At times the Peak would be bursting at the seams with sisters all standing our ground together, the next it would seem to only be myself and one or two others. I became General early on, the position was empty and I proved myself a valuable Warrior.” Oswin grinned. She may be a little cocky, sometimes, but she’d earned every scar on her body and was proud of each of them.
“I was here when Cullen, the stallion Božena schemed to dispose of in the Lagoon, took over as boss.” she remembered as Kunžak had informed them all. “I was taken prisoner into the Lagoon at one point. Well, I offered myself. I had lost the fight against the bachelors and didn’t think it fair if I sent another sister in my place. Thankfully I had a…” Her eyes went to Róisín and then to Bane and she couldn’t help but smile. “I had a friend who lived in the Lagoon.” A friend who’d sired her last child and thus far the only stallion to pull Oswin toward romance.
“I fought the bachelors each season until I earned my freedom back. Then, I fought them again and took my friend captive to try and get more information about Cullen from him.” Risky schemes. “But, really, I was tired of the games the Lagoon kept playing and starting to wonder about the islands themselves. My sister’s voted me to be their Prime Minister and I took the responsibility very, very seriously.”
She looked between the two mares and smiled at Róisín. “I know you’re too young to have lived when mares weren’t allowed to have herds of their own, but I was already a grown mare when the tides shifted. My niece was one of the first mares to take over leading a territory and I witnessed something… disturbing when I went to visit her. She’d taken a Lagoon stallion captive because she was having trouble getting members to willingly come live in Tinuvel. It was a quiet island at the time, practically abandoned but for her family. The stallion didn’t want to be there and she was holding him against his will. She told me if a stallion could do it to a mare after all this time, then a mare could do the very same to a stallion. That it was herd business and I, a Peak mare, had no business being involved.”
Oswin trailed off and looked toward where the ledge dropped away and the world opened up. She sighed. “When I came back to the Peak from that visit I told my Codebreaker the Peak’s mission needed to change, that the islands were able to become oppressed by mares, too. So that’s what I’ve come back to see done, though I’m happy to see that the same message seems to have been carried through even in my absence.”
oswin
this is as brave as I know how to be.
I know it’s gonna hurt you, but please… be a little proud of me.