Nausea roiled in her stomach. Even the limited sunlight that passed through the clouds turned the dull ache in her head into a stabbing pain as she stepped suddenly into it. She blinked until her eyes adjusted better to the light of the outdoors. Why did she feel so awful?
The path split at the bottom of the hill, and she took the northeast route that ran further up the North Run, away from the city. Tor ran to catch up with her, bolting past her and continuing up the path ahead. Oleja broke into a jog.
Thoughts of Ardess filled her mind, but every time they bubbled up again Oleja only pushed them out. Now was not the time—she had to focus.
She had told her story to quite a few people the night before—a start in the right direction on her new plan, but already it grew dull and showed few signs of growing to the effectiveness she hoped for. The people enjoyed the tale as she told it, but to them it was just that—a tale. If she wanted them to rally to her, she needed to inspire them, to really break through and make them connect with her story. She had to make them feel.
But what were feelings except terrible and confusing? She didn’t understand Ardess’s—hell, she didn’t even understand her own. How did she expect to gain the unending trust of others through the strength of empathy when she couldn’t even figure it out for herself? Feelings made no sense. They weren’t tangible and concrete like a well-constructed contraption. They certainly abided by no sort of rationality. She couldn’t even take them apart and examine them bit-by-bit when she found something she didn’t understand.
Perhaps she needed to tell the story in a different way. Ude was a great storyteller, but Oleja could never pick up the art from him. Listening to his stories, she always felt so close to them, so invested in the folds of the adventure and ensnared by the words as they danced from his lips. Practicing her craft to have the same effect on her listeners required time—time she didn’t have.
Tor growled beside her. Oleja looked up. In her mindless walking, she had made her way to the forge.
She let her shoulders slump. Work could be good for her; tinkering and building—or just using her hands—always helped when she needed to slow her mind.
“Stay out here,” she said to Tor. Not that he needed to be told—she already knew he wouldn’t dare set foot within. She pushed through the door.
Sreovel worked inside, pouring metal into molds. When the door opened, she glanced up, but returned her focus quickly to her work. Molten metal was among the worst liquids to spill.
“You’re here early,” she said.
“Yeah.” Oleja went to the bench she’d claimed as her own and threw her bag down. She pulled up a stool, took a handful of random materials from her bag, and began to tinker with them mindlessly, searching for the inspiration she needed to form something new. The sharp sounds of the forge filled the air, each one striking her throbbing head like the tip of a blade.
“How was the festival?”
Oleja took up her hammer and flattened a bent piece of metal with one swift strike. “It was good.”
Now finished pouring metal into the mold, Sreovel put down her tools and wiped her hands on her apron. She strode around to another workbench and sat.
“Your hair looks nice like that. Did you take it down for the festival?”
“No.”
Sreovel nodded for a few long moments. She bit at the inside of her cheek. Glancing back up, her eyes met Oleja’s for just a moment.
“Well, you had a good night at least.”
The pounding of Oleja’s heart rose to match that of her head. She met Sreovel’s eyes again. The eclipser smirked, eyebrows raised. All the heat of the forge filled Oleja’s face.
“What… do you mean? How…”
Sreovel only shrugged. “Earthborn sense of smell. Plus, I was a mother once. I can read these things. The first time my daughter snuck a boy into our house—oh, I knew about it before she even got him inside. But I say first time, because even after that she never lear—”
Whatever semblance of control Oleja still held over her anger snapped at once.
“I don’t know what you think you know about me, but it’s nothing!” she shouted. “I’m not here to sit and talk to you. I don’t like you, or any of your kind! And I don’t care about your daughter! That’s all great, I’m sure she’s off somewhere happy with that boy, or some other eclipser lover, right? The end!”
The muscles in Sreovel’s jaw and hands tensed. Oleja almost wished the eclipser would leap across the room in a bloodthirsty rage.
But Sreovel didn’t move. She said nothing.
Oleja threw her things back into her bag and grabbed it by the strap. Nearly breaking into a run as she crossed the room, she left the forge in a rush.
Outside, she broke into a sprint. Tor sat in the grass down the path, but darted forwards to catch up with her as soon as she took off. She hardly paid him any mind.
Weaving between trees, she left the path and dove deep into the woods. The river ran along on her left as she ran uphill, farther from the city, farther from Sreovel and the forge, farther from anything she knew. She wanted it all as far behind her as she could leave it.
Slick stones lined the river, and she slid over a few of them but managed to keep her balance as she ran. The peaks to her left and right closed in as the valley narrowed. The forest grew denser, and the river calmer. Finally, the terrain got the better of her; a stray stone ensnared her foot and pulled her down into the gravel. There she remained for many long minutes. The strength to stand had left her. She pulled herself into a sitting position.
What would Ude say if he saw her now? There she sat, in some land entirely foreign to her where everything from the people to the customs to the plants and animals confused her. And she had turned her path there on a whim, on some gamble that she could find exactly what she never wanted, but what he always told her she needed: help. And what couldn’t she get, no matter how hard she tried, but that very same thing. She had played some game and lost. Nothing she did would convince the people of Ahwan to help her, and she did not possess the strength to force them. If she did, they’d be as useless to her as she seemed to be to them. Useless, foolish, barbaric.
And now the only plan she had left consisted of wandering around the city just to tell people about herself, as if that meant anything to them. They had proven it didn’t. Every passing hour was another she wasted, every day was one more that the people exchanged their lives and their strength for food. She set out because the eclipsers killed that boy who committed no wrongdoing—some change in their motives, whatever it was. How many had they killed in the weeks since? Was Ude among them? The young girl, Palila, or her parents, or any of her friends, all still too young to life a pickaxe and help out in the mines? Any of them could be dead—all of them could be dead—and she sat in a ditch hundreds of miles away and went to festivals and worked a job. How could she prove herself to be the hero they needed if she could hardly get even one person to fight for her cause?
She couldn’t do right by even one person. Ardess was proof enough of that.
Turning her eyes upwards, she looked to the sky, shattered into a thousand pieces by the tree branches hanging above her. Pale grey clouds hung in one great sheet.
If Ahwan could offer her nothing more, she had to leave it behind. If she wanted to prove she was a hero, she had to finish what she set out to do—with help or alone, it didn’t matter.
Pahlo told her to get help. She tried. But to force it when the plan just couldn’t succeed—that was foolish.
The time to leave Ahwan had nearly arrived. And it looked quite likely that she would be returning to her people alone.
Chapter Fourteen
Though her conversation with Sreovel made her want to avoid the forge at all costs, Oleja just couldn’t keep herself away. The materials, the facilities—all of it was too great an asset to pass up. So she went late—later even than before—to make sure she never ran into the eclipser.
Days pass
ed and she saw no one except a handful of strangers on her trips into the city for food. Not Sreovel, not Cyrah or Wil or Brashen, not Maloia, not Ardess—she and Tor went to and from the forge or hiked up and down the woods of the North Run, exercising, gaining the strength of her leg back a little at a time. She practiced her fighting too, using the handle of the old shovel Brashen found in her closet in place of a spear, sparring with her shadow through the days and nights. The dirt behind her cabin became a training ground of her own, a place for pushups and for heaving large stones around. The low-hanging tree branches gave her somewhere to do pull-ups, and she threw punches at the air.
Plans floated through her mind in a constant stream, then floated back out just as quickly bearing the swift mark of rejection. Old plans returned, but they received the same treatment. To return to the village alone meant letting Pahlo down, but what choice did she have?
The stillness and dark of the late hour hung about the outside of the forge one evening, but within the brick walls the hearths were ablaze. Oleja pieced together a new set of armor—similar to her old one that lay in a hollow back in her village, constructed from many scraps of metal all fitted to her body to form one mosaic-like suit. Not only did the new suit already look better than the last, but it was better quality as well, as she now had a full forge and strong, durable metal at her disposal in place of her makeshift workspace and old rusted bits. The armor still had a long ways to go before it could serve as any sort of protection, but she worked swiftly through the evenings one after another.
A rapid series of thuds struck the heavy wooden door of the forge. Oleja turned. If Sreovel stood on the other side, Oleja had no desire to open it. But Sreovel never knocked on the door of her own forge—it was, after all, her forge. The knocks came again, louder and more rapidly. Oleja put down her materials and approached the door.
She opened it only a crack at first, just enough to peek out into the night beyond. Cyrah stood there, a heavy black cloak around her shoulders, hood drawn up and pulled tight around her face so that the shadows concealed most of her features. Yet no amount of cloth or shadow could conceal the fright on her face.
“Oh, hi,” said Oleja, pulling the door open wider. “What are you—”
“You need to come down to the city. Now.” She thrust a bundle into Oleja’s arms—a cloak of brown, heavy like her own but more worn. “Put that on and stay hidden.”
“What is going on?”
“I’ll explain on the way, just hurry.”
Oleja packed her things and grabbed her bag, then donned the cloak. She and Cyrah left the forge. The heavy garment kept her nice and warm despite the chill that rode through the night air, soaring around on the periodic gusts of wind as it hunted for a bit of exposed skin. Cyrah reached over and pulled up Oleja’s hood.
“Why is all of this necessary?”
“Something happened down in the city.”
“Well that much was clear. What happened down in the city?”
Cyrah met her eyes. The look she shared seemed to let the night’s chill in through Oleja’s cloak.
“A group of earthborn turned up on the outskirts of the city. They’re looking for someone.”
Oleja stopped in her tracks. Neither her heart nor her mind obeyed the command to halt. “What?”
“I came to find you immediately. I went to your house, but you didn’t answer, so I tried the forge too. I don’t know why you’re actually working there…” she shook her head. “But that’s beside the point. The earthborn are in the city asking around for information. Some people are rioting, trying to get them out, but others are listening to what they have to say. I don’t know who they seek, but they came bearing the flag of Itsoh. I left before I heard anything else. They could be after you.”
“Then why am I going into the city?”
“To figure out if it’s you. No one but you will know for sure. And you’re safer there than out here in the woods. The earthborn could have gone around outside the city and approached your house from behind. They could’ve dragged you out and no one down in the city would’ve even known. You would’ve had no warning.”
“They wouldn’t have been able to take me anywhere,” said Oleja through gritted teeth. “But all right, let’s go—if for no other reason than so I can remember their faces later when I kill them.”
They followed the path down from the North Run and into the heart of the city. When they reached the city streets, their movements became more calculated—winding through side streets and alleys, checking around corners before heading swiftly down a new street, never walking blindly into any group of people. In the late hour, the crowds of the city streets had thinned, leaving only scattered people walking alone or in small groups, and typically hovering closer to the city’s taverns. But as they moved farther south through the valley, the number of people increased, and noises flew freely on the breeze—sounds that grew in volume and anger the closer the pair got to the source.
As they rounded a bend, Oleja saw a large group up ahead. People leaned from windows and doorways all along the street, rubbing sleep from their eyes. At the heart of the crowd towered half a dozen figures, several feet taller than the humans around them and all clad in armor—eclipsers. Oleja sucked in a breath. She pulled her cloak tighter around herself and pressed forward to stand at the fringes of the crowd.
“There, see?” Cyrah pointed in the direction of the eclipsers to where something waved above their heads. One of the beasts held a long staff in both hands. Two flags waved in the breeze, one above the other on the single pole. Cyrah indicated the top one. “The symbol of Itsoh.”
In the low light of the night, joined only by the few lampposts that lined the streets and the candlelight that poured out from the windows of the homes on either side, Oleja squinted to make out the symbol. Orange fabric comprised the background. The center depicted a yellow sun, rays emanating out, set above blue water. A black handprint covered most of the sun, larger than the hand of a human, as if an eclipser had dipped their hand in dark ink and pressed it over the design. The symbol carried a vague familiarity—she must have seen it the day she escaped.
The second flag, flying just beneath the one bearing Itsoh’s symbol, was white, and showed the silhouette of a soaring bird in purple. Above the bird was what looked like a crown, like the one the king of Ahwan wore.
“What about that one, what does that flag mean?” asked Oleja to Cyrah, keeping her voice low.
“That’s the envoy’s flag. Bearing it means that a party is sent directly by the leader of the land they represent, and they go to all other towns or cities on errands of diplomacy, not war. Attacking or killing a party that carries an envoy’s flag is an immediate declaration of war. Although if they act in hostility, it carries the same weight. Personally, I think earthborn should be exempt from that rule because earthborn never have good intentions, but that’s not for me to decide. That’s a matter of kings.”
“So, if I kill them right now…”
“Itsoh will wage war on Ahwan. And the king would probably have you put to death for recklessly placing the entire city in harm’s way.”
“Excellent.”
The two of them inched closer to the eclipsers until they could hear their words more clearly.
“The girl we seek is highly dangerous. She tore through our town, murdering our guards. She would have done far more damage had she not fled at the threat of a larger force approaching to deal with her. We sent an agent of ours after her—one of the strongest among us, Honn of Itsoh—to capture her and bring her back to face justice for her crimes. We found his body dead in the desert a hundred miles east of here, killed by her doing. We believe she may have taken refuge here. All we ask is for cooperation in our efforts to see justice done by our people and town, just the same as we would do for you, the people of Ahwan, if a criminal to the name of your king hid themself away in our lands. Someone must pay for the blood that has been spilled and for the deaths of our
people. Any aid you can lend us will be repaid mightily in resources and fair relations between our two civilizations.”
“Are they after you?” asked Cyrah, her voice hardly audible from mere inches away.
“Undoubtedly.” And that truth sat in Oleja’s stomach like a boulder.
“What makes you think she’s here?” called one man.
“The soldier we sent to track her reported back to us during his pursuit. He traveled back and forth from our town to her fresh trail, updating us on her whereabouts and company and the direction she traveled. Twice, he attempted to apprehend her. Twice, she evaded him. When he failed to return for some time, we sent a search party out, and found him dead. His last report said she headed northwest, and the tracks we found leading away from the site of his death indicate the same. That pointed us here, to Ahwan.”
So Honn had been reporting back to the other eclipsers of Itsoh—that was grim news indeed. It meant they knew much more about her and her journey through the desert than she thought. Certainly it was not only Honn who knew of the raiders, then. Did the other eclipsers go after them? They could kill Casmia for all she cared, but what of Kella? Hylde? Trayde, or Onet, or the others? Were they safe, or had Itsoh already questioned and disposed of them all?
At least none of the raiders knew anything of Oleja’s plans. She told them little, and left without a word of her travel plans—due in no small part to the fact that they drove her out themselves. Or rather, Casmia did. The others knew nothing of her treachery until after the fact.
She would have to be more cautious. She could no longer be sure what information the eclipsers possessed, nor what they may do with it.
“It might be time to get out of here,” Oleja whispered to Cyrah. Cyrah nodded in agreement.
“Why should we turn her over to you?” spat one woman from where she stood in a doorway. Bold; Oleja liked her.
“You don’t want this girl in your city,” said the eclipser. “She is dangerous. She seeks to disrupt governments. I am willing to bet that if she does reside here as we suspect, she is plotting to overthrow your king and seize the full power of the city for herself at this very moment. Her wit, like her malice, runs deep and knows no bounds.” The eclipser took a few steps towards the woman in the doorway, and then a few more. The crowd parted around him as he moved. It was no surprise the people of Ahwan wanted to give him a wide berth.
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