Obedience on Fire

by J D Morganne

Beck hit hard, but rolled herself into a ball of earth, every agonizing breath jolting her with a painful cough. Nano was all she could think about. Like always, she had to protect him from Cayman. Her earth ball was the fastest way out of there, but it didn’t make it far. She bounced inside it, while Torchers’ heavy boots chased. Flames whooshed from their guns, radiating heat onto her fingertips where she held her ball together.

  Something blasted her sideways, into the air, against the barren land, where she rolled until a man’s foot stopped her. He wasn’t the Torcher from before. Beck searched for that man and spotted his lump of a body where Cayman was still standing. He had told her the truth because he was against Cayman and Cayman had killed him for it.

  Beck gasped, but her breath caught.

  “Children don’t respect their parents anymore.” The Torcher’s wide hand engulfed her face. She reached up and slammed the heel of her hand into his chest. He locked eyes with her but, disoriented, stumbled. His eyes darted from side-to-side like he was watching his memories play before his eyes. It should’ve given her enough time to get free, but Torchers surrounded her.

  At least she had his gun, though it was two times bigger than her thigh. She perched it on her leg before wobbling it in front of her. Everyone stayed still, but Beck had revealed her hand. She didn’t know how to use their guns. In two smooth moves, one Torcher snatched it and rammed it into her side. Before she fell, he spun her around and pounded his fists into her ribs. They absorbed the rage of a thousand burning coals. She screamed. On the third hit, she cringed into herself, but the Torcher didn’t stop. He went in for a fourth.

  Cayman, coming out of nowhere, grabbed his arm. “Enough.”

  The Torcher dropped Beck. She curled into the fetal position at his feet and held her pain within her infirm body.

  “My beautiful, baby girl. I need that Enkindler.” Cayman bent low. “Where is he? Tell me, My Angel. You can move on from this. Do better things.”

  Better things? What was better than where she was right now? What was better than protecting her people, her home, her family? She spat at his feet.

  “I’ll find The Flame despite you. And you’ll never see Zo again.”

  “Emiir!” Eshauna’s screech could’ve herded sheep.

  Beck blinked through the sweat and dirt in her eyes to see Eshauna charging toward them and hundreds of Lions flooding from the trees. She wiped blood she didn’t know was there from her lip. “Should’ve… killed... me.” The ground beneath her swept her away. She watched Cayman shrink out of sight. “Wait,” she screamed at whosever manipulation was pulling the strings. “Wait!”

  “Yahid.” Eshauna rushed to Beck and took her by the arm.

  Her breath hadn’t come back to her, but that was the least of her worries. Her whole world was tumbling around her. They had pulled her out of view of Cayman and his Torchers, but she needed to see him die.

  “Cay-m-man.” She tried to stand, stumbled and crashed into the side of a building.

  “Let Lions handle’im,” Eshauna pleaded, and wrapped her arm around Beck’s waist. “Come.”

  “No.” Beck had to see him die! He wouldn’t stop coming for them. She had to see him buried beneath the earth. But she was too weak to move on her own and Eshauna had huddled her within a troop of Lions. “Where’s Robot?”

  “I assumed he made the rain,” Eshauna said, and nodded at the puddles of blood slapping under their feet.

  Beck couldn’t help noticing the tears blooming in Eshauna’s eyes. Cayman was her father, too. Yet, she had chosen Jerus. She had chosen Beck.

  Twelve Lions got them to the skyrail and before Beck knew it, they were leaving the turmoil behind.

  Part III

  A P P L Y

  29

  It wasn’t visions of blood-rain that woke Jaxon. Someone had dropped koloberries and they made a path to where Eshauna was fighting Beck to stay on a homemade gurney. The fetor of the rotting fruit churned his stomach.

  “You could’ave broken ribs.” Scooping the inside of a rotted koloberry, Aria pinned Beck’s arm with her elbow and tried to rub the gunk over a bruise on her shoulder.

  Beck didn’t seem the least bit concerned about broken ribs or anything else, as she floundered to get free. “You let him get away,” she screamed. “I could’a stopped him myself.” She jumped up, flipping the gurney as she did. It crashed on the floor.

  “It’s under control,” Aria screamed at Beck.

  Groaning, Jaxon rolled over and faced the wall, the compression in his head too much to bear, intensified by Beck’s commotion. He climbed to his hands and knees, eventually, his feet.

  “You’d be dead if not for Eshauna.” Nano locked Beck’s hands behind her and dragged her into the infirmary. Aria had stopped when she spotted Jaxon trying to stand.

  She bolted to him and offered her arm. She smashed what was left of the berry between her hands, but Jaxon didn’t want any of that stuff on him. Not after he’d seen what he could do to it. He shouldn’t touch it but looking at the trail of dead fruit on the floor, it appeared he already had.

  He grabbed his head, tried to ground himself against the tilting hall. He remembered his impulsive reaction. Kurohi flames. He remembered leaving Beck and Eshauna before everything. “You should be helping Beck.”

  “Didn’t you hear all that fussing?” Aria forced herself to look at Jaxon. “I don’t touch her when she’s like that. We called in more experienced medics from Jerus.”

  “Why? What happened to her? Where is she?”

  Aria jumped in front of him when he tried to leave. “Nano and Eshauna are with her. Try’na keep her from doing somethin’ stupid. Like going after her daddy.”

  Her dad had hurt her? Jaxon had believed her dad died in The Wars.

  “Cayman,” Aria said, examining a bump on his head.

  Cayman was her father? Because he could relate, the twisting pain in his chest was real. His dad was a monster, too. “I wanna see her.”

  “I don’t think so.” Aria stopped him. “You’re covered in blood.”

  Jaxon looked himself over, recalling the blood rain and chunks of unbison meat. Now, he felt it sticking to his scalp and eyelashes.

  “Take a shower and I’ll let her know you’re coming down.” Aria had the same cadence as when they’d first met, like a mother. It often calmed him. Not now.

  “I’ll be quick.” In his rush to get clothes from his closet, he stumbled over a stack of books and bumped his shoulder on the casing.

  “Jax! Be careful. Look, take your time. You passed out. You need’ta rest, too.”

  He would rest after he saw Beck safe.

  He went across to the bathroom, pass the stalls and urinal to the sink. He stuffed his blood-drenched clothes in the garbage bin underneath the sink. In the mirror, his bruises looked like a smeared canvas. Purples, crimsons and blues over his ribcage turned him into abstract art. He stepped into the shower. The hot water was gone, but even these icy droplets were good enough to wash away the stickiness. He wanted to shove the cucumber soap up his nostrils, anything to dry out the Koloberry and unbison’s acrid mixture.

  The tiled floor distorted his reflection. In eight months, he had become his own stranger. He brushed his fingers through his shoulder-length hair, trying to smooth down the flyaways. He tried to smooth the bags under his eyes, but he needed sleep for that. He didn’t deserve sleep.

  In Obedience, he’d done atrocious things to complete his training. He’d whipped ten “criminals” before his eighteenth birthday. He remembered one woman well. Her name was Sora, a fifty-two-year-old nurse, convicted of stealing healing tape from the palace infirmary. Jaxon had whipped her until she threw her arms around the post, screaming for mercy. She’d survived sixty lashes, the most whippings he’d given. Her screams haunted his memories. His hands had trembled for months. Like they did now. He’d done to Jerus the same thing he’d done to that woman. Destroyed it. He deserved no sleep.

  He felt eve
rything now, even the smallest pang of guilt. He didn’t know how to hold up the dam of anguish, beginning to collapse.

  Out the window, Lions secured the perimeter. Jaxon had to force his eyes away from the lanterns, rising into the night, one for each death. Children. Their bodies and blood sprawled in the sand like old toys, long forgotten, left to rot. To make matters worse, it was storming now, as if solidifying all the awful things that had happened. Thunder boomed outside the window, rattling the tin can chandelier.

  Images of Beck’s goofy dances when she manipulated flashed in his head, and of her in her bathing suit, of her heavy boots on the table and her heart sunglasses. He would save all those memories if he could, play them on his cornea tab. The visions of blood-rain coupled with thoughts of Beck wouldn’t let him rest.

  He pulled on his gloves and went to the kitchen. He could suppress his worries with cookies.

  The rest of the house was quiet, save for the timed sprinklers hissing in Beck’s garden room. A man scrubbed blood on the floor, humming in tune with the swishing sponge. A few Lions swept the house, closing and locking windows.

  Jaxon wanted to help.

  “Loving night,” a Lion in the front room said, peeking from the curtains.

  “Can I get you anything?” Jaxon said, thinking it was the least he could do.

  “No.” The soldier avoided him.

  Jaxon hated that he felt like he owed him an explanation. He was starting to feel people would hate him anywhere he ended up.

  He winded into the quiet kitchen. The plate where Aria kept cookies was empty. Tonight, the kitchen was immaculate. Someone had even wiped the chore board clean. Jaxon settled for half a raisin bagel.

  Aria staggered through the kitchen door, soaking and hugging a wool coat over a sheer nightgown.

  “Where the hell’re your clothes?” Jaxon bit his bagel, which took more effort than it should’ve.

  Aria arched her eyebrows up at him, a giggle breaking through her lips. “Watch ya mouth. Why you up?”

  “Because I’m up.” The bagel tasted and chewed like rubber. He spat it in the sink.

  “That’s… disgustin’. Don’t do that again. Use the garbage.”

  “Wasn’t close enough.” He swiped his mouth with his hand.

  “What’s wrong with my bagel?” Aria leaned around him and took it. She bit into it and her eyes rolled.

  Jaxon got a whiff of pecan moonshine as strong as hot batteries on her breath and clothes. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “Oh, you want this.” She went to the refrigerator, shuffled through the jugs on the top shelf, and came back with a cold chocolate-chip cookie.

  Jaxon took it, though he didn’t have an appetite. In Obedience, this small treat would’ve gotten him whipped. He bit it. “Why’re you outside?”

  “Lookin’ for Nano. You seen’em?”

  “No. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Her eyebrows slouched with her shoulders. “I can’t take anymore. I can’t.” She closed her eyes for a long time. And when she exhaled, it was with the fatigue of a woman who had fought all her life. She opened her eyes and blinked her tears from her eyelashes. “Why would he—Torchers sent their unbison to slaughter Earthens! He thinks now is the time to go runnin’ off?”

  “How many casualties?”

  “What?” Aria thumbed the tears from her cheeks.

  “How many people died?”

  She turned with a sigh. “Don’t burden yourself with… the politics. Beck’s handling everything. She’ll protect you. We’ve got Lions patrolling the perimeter and forests.”

  The politics? Jaxon couldn’t believe she would say that. People and politics were different and if Aria thought they were the same, she was no better than Farah or Dasher. He failed at concealing his anger. “How many people died? Fifty? A hundred?” His hands started to tremble again. In his mind, he was holding a whip and there was unbison blood on his palms and Beck was screaming. He should’ve left when he wanted. He turned to wash away blood that wasn’t there.

  “Cayman needed an excuse,” Aria said. “This was gonna be the outcome, despite you.”

  Jaxon nodded. Her words were enough to avouch an obvious fact. He couldn’t stay there anymore. He wouldn’t let them use their resources on him when he was getting them killed.

  He went to grab a towel to dry his hands, but Aria already had one.

  She wrapped it around his hands with a frown. “Forty-three.”

  “Dead?”

  She nodded without a word.

  “Children?”

  Aria looked up at him. “Five.”

  Jaxon bit the insides of his cheeks to combat his tears. A hot lump formed in the back of his throat. Torchers had killed children. They’d killed Naamah. And had tried to kill Beck. “What’s happening in town?”

  “Fire crews is taming wildfires in Tifu. The attack disabled the working district.”

  “Perfect. I can help.”

  “You won’t be helping any of them being there.”

  “I can’t sit here.”

  “Listen. No one wants to see you.”

  Hot air blistered at Jaxon’s fingertips. He balled his fists and released. Control yourself, he thought. He would be gone by morning. He would get an early start before Cayman could come for Beck again.

  “Hey.” Aria grabbed his arm, caressed his shoulder, his neck and rested her hand on his calescent cheek. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  Her lips were wet with moonshine. In her rush, Jaxon stiffened, a tender feeling of betrayal settling over him. He felt like he’d lost her even though she was right there.

  She stepped away and her expression changed from curiousness to strange humor.

  Jaxon didn’t realize he was glowering or that his veins were slick as glass and bulging from his skin. There was enough tension in the air to form a tornado.

  “Sorry,” Aria chirped. All amusement drained from her face as she backed away to the other side of the kitchen. With a heavy sigh, she ran her hands over her hair. “So sorry. I’m… clearly…”

  There was something strange about being aware of everything at once: his aching veins retreating, the raging storm outside, the new, heavy wall Aria had formed between them, annoyance… deceit. Her lips weren’t as mesmerizing as her voice. Naomi had kissed him like that—the kiss that had put his avalanche in motion. It was still crushing him.

  “That was selfish.” Aria crossed her arms, kept her gaze on the faux fur slippers, muddled in a wet heap at the door. “I wanted to see if”—

  “Weren’t you doing something?”

  “I was”—

  “Looking for Nano.”

  A Lion opened the kitchen door on cue, leaning inside to hold the door and an umbrella for Nano. “Thanks, bait,” Nano said, shaking water off his jacket. “Stormin’ horned-pigs out there.”

  “Where were you?” Aria went to him with plenty of exaggerated ebullience.

  “In Jerus.” Nano wrinkled his chin. “Where else would I be after today?”

  “Loving night,” Jaxon said, even though it was anything but. “Is there anything I can”—

  Nano didn’t let him finish. “You don’t need to be outside right now. Trust me.”

  “Fine.” Plus, Nano and Aria had their own issues to work out.

  Jaxon left before Aria decided to confess her sins. He left, feeling uneasy. Aria had done something to their friendship he didn’t have the experience to explain. With no one and nothing to redirect his anger, he was forced to direct it at her.

  30

  Ugly, black roots coiled on the walls on Jaxon’s way to Beck’s room. He’d always hated this dark hall, and tonight—with Beck’s roots— it was more sinister.

  Aria’s kiss had pushed him over his ever-timid edge. All he wanted was to see Beck’s face. After her day—after Cayman—she couldn’t be okay alone with her thoughts.

  But he felt silly standing outside her bedroom.

 
“You want me to let her know you’re here?” the Lion guarding said, not looking at him directly.

  “No,” Jaxon said. He realized he was in jeans, and his t-shirt was still wet from his shower. He had no business being there. He was about to go, but the soldier knocked on the door and let himself in. After a minute, he came out shrugging, his face flat with indifference.

  “She ain’t in there.”

  “And what about that is okay?” This soldier would be the icing on Jaxon’s explosion cupcake. Beck had survived Cayman within an inch of her life. On her own. Yet, this kid was standing there with the cockiness of a hero.

  “It’s not uncommon,” he said.

  Jaxon folded his arms. “You’ve been standing here all day and haven’t thought once to open the door?”

  “I ain’t seen her leave, but like I said, her leavin’ ain’t uncommon.”

  “How commonly does she get attacked by unbison and almost killed?”

  “A lot more since you got here.”

  Jaxon snorted. This guy. Even if he was right, what did it have to do with him securing the Emiir? “Leave.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ka,” he said again. If he wasn’t doing his job, he had no business there.

  “You ain’t nobody to be telling me to”—

  “I just did.” Maybe it was the anger still festering from Aria’s kiss, or he was tired of fostering stupidity, or the boy leaving was the only thing keeping Jaxon from banging his face into the floor. “Ka feendi Emiir da do’e.”

  The soldier registered something with this and ran off to do his duty.

  Jaxon had a different idea. Was the soldier being honest about not seeing her leave? Her door was still open. He peeked inside, ran his eyes over the lavender votive candles lighting half her room. Moonlight took care of the rest, stretching the window’s shadow across the floor and her empty bed. Rain and hail rapped at the window.

  This room was more accustomed for ponytail-Beck than messy-haired, flippant Beck. He had expected to find a demon caged in the corner, but there was only pastel furniture and fluffy rugs to amplify the peace of the airy space. A painting of vast, coal-like mountains hung over a bed fit for a goddess.