“It’s perfect,” Gabriel said. “But why did you come back, after all these years? And why did you make it in the first place?”
“To hide what’s behind it, of course. Why else?”
18
Derik
Mykel, Nara and the soldiers walked at an agonizingly slow pace for three days. Traveling with over two dozen men from Junn to Keetna was taking forever, and Mykel was having trouble keeping his patience in check. Jahmai insisted that they were making good time, but Mykel disagreed.
With the staff strapped to his back, Mykel walked in the middle of the road. The wagons jostled and shook on the uneven terrain. Quiet conversations between soldiers could be heard, but there were few other sounds. No birds, no animals, and no children. This was a different experience, walking among these men as they were, armed and armored. Perhaps this was the life of a soldier, but it seemed menial and uninteresting, without the excitement he always imagined a martial lifestyle would bring.
As they encountered other travelers, they were given a wide berth, merchants and couriers stopping as the soldiers passed, or stepping into the trees to avoid them entirely. It was a journey in stark contrast to the exhilarating run he and Nara had experienced when passing through these parts just days before. Worst of all, the monotony of the march allowed too much time for his thoughts to wander.
He thought of Pop and of Sammy. Of how they would rest in the earth for all time. Sammy would never grow up to have a family of his own, never catch another coney. Never laugh again. Never cry. The loss of his sweet brother would go unpunished if the effort against Kayna failed, and that task seemed all too daunting right now. He thought of how he now marched alongside men who were responsible for crimes against boys like Sammy. And against other villages. These men were the unwitting stooges of powerful people, perhaps, but they still had blood on their hands, and he was their ally. It felt like a betrayal.
He thought about Nara. His friend was changing. She was no longer the enthusiastic young lady he knew in Dimmitt; neither was she the frightened companion overwhelmed with her circumstances. She was giving orders. Fighting. And she was powerful. Fast like a racer. Strong like a bear. A leader and a thief. A very different person than she had been just months before. It reminded him of Anne’s words so long ago, when she said that Nara wasn’t ready to love him. Not like he wanted. It made sense now. There were bigger things on her mind, and a grand weight on her shoulders.
He looked ahead to see her. She walked at the front of the group, alone, carrying a pack on her back when she could easily have tossed it into a wagon. What was she thinking right now? He figured the weight of her new responsibilities must have lain heavy on her, and he could do little to lighten it. His job was to protect her, and he would do that to the best of his ability, but how much protection did she really need? She could do everything he could—and much more.
Mykel glanced at the wagon in front of him. In the wagon's bed rested an archer who had suffered an arrow shot to his leg so severe that he could not walk. Yet the man still wanted to accompany them to Keetna. It surprised him that Jahmai had allowed it.
Mykel veered to the side of the road to speak with another soldier. “Will he recover?” Mykel asked, referring to the injured archer.
“Who, Derik? Dunno.” The man scratched the hair on his head, which was meager and graying over the ears. “Jahmai’s nephew, that one. Took him to a knitter, but he said the wound was deep. Hit the bone hard. May not walk again. May not even live.”
“Why did he want to come?”
“Same as the rest of us, I s’pose,” he said. “Do something good for a change. Maybe you should ask him.”
Mykel kept walking, but after a few moments, he hopped up into the bed of the wagon. Derik winced as the bed of the wagon lurched.
“Sorry. Hurts, eh?”
“Yeah. Bumps are the worst.”
Derik was young, no more than twenty. Probably closer to eighteen, actually. Mykel’s age. They’d wrapped and splinted his leg to restrict movement, but the erratic motion of the wagon surely aggravated the injury beyond bearing. He shouldn’t be moving at all.
“Arrow, I hear,” Mykel said.
“I deserved it.”
“How so?”
“I’m an archer. I shoot arrows all the time. Now I get to know what it feels like to take one. It hurts more than I thought.”
“Only hurts if you survive it, my friend. Pain means you’re still breathing.”
“True.”
Mykel untied the staff from his back and sat cross-legged next to Derik.
“Tell me about yourself.” He hoped the conversation might distract the man from the pain.
“What do you want to know?”
“Brothers? Sisters? Where you from?”
“Little town outside Junn. Uglas. No brothers or sisters.”
“Fishing?”
“For fun and for dinner, but not for money. My dad would never have approved. He always told me to work and work hard. He was a logger. Cut big trees. Huge shoulders, always sharpening his saws, moving, lifting. Couldn’t sit still. He worked at a mill for a while, with my uncle.” He pointed back over his shoulder, then winced with the movement. “Captain Jahmai. He’s my uncle. He quit the mill and joined the army when my parents died.”
“How did they die?”
“Rockslide took ‘em. Mom liked picking berries in the fall. Wrong spot that year, I guess.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay. Uncle kept food on the table when I was young, but he left a lot. Long trips. Months, sometimes.”
“Yet, you still wanted to be a soldier. Like him.”
The wagon lurched when a wheel hit a pothole, and Derik winced, then breathed hard for a moment.
“You’re hurt,” Mykel said. “You should be in a hospital. Why are you here?”
“Same as anyone. I want to matter,” Derik said. “Cutting trees like my pop—well, that might feed me, but I wanted to do something more. It didn’t work out as I hoped. When you two showed up, well, I thought we were all dead. Then I thought maybe I’d join up, get my chance to do something different. Something better.” He looked down at his leg. “That may not happen.”
“It might heal,” Mykel said.
“I’m hopin’.”
“Knitter worked on it, right?”
“Yeah, but he’s bad at fixing bone, so he just did the muscle and skin. Bone is broke. Broke bad. Hurts a lot.”
Mykel nodded. “Wish I could help.”
“It’s okay. Your girl, though. Wow. She’s the fastest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard of racers and what they can do, but I’ve never heard of that. Caught my arrow and threw it back even harder than my bow. More than a blessed, they say. Dei must really love her.”
“She doesn’t think so.”
Derik’s eyes went wide. “What? Why not?”
“She lost her pop,” Mykel said. “Um . . . and someone else. Someone special. We both did.”
“Heck, I lost my parents, but that doesn’t mean Dei did it. He’s magnificent,” Derik said, looking around at the mountains on either side of the road. “Look at what he created!”
It surprised Mykel to see the faith of this man, but it also puzzled him he would have taken part in such crimes against the people of the Great Land. What made good people do bad things? This soldier wasn’t a villain—or didn’t seem like one. It put Mykel at ease, experiencing a feeling he almost didn’t recognize. Hope.
“She’s gonna fight the Queen, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Can she beat her?”
“Maybe.”
“She has you, though. And you can fight.” Derik glanced at the staff lying on the floor of the wagon bed.
“Yes, I can. I hope I’m enough.”
“Couple dozen of us here to help, but you don’t even need us.”
“If we get a hundred of you, that’ll help.”
“They’ll come,�
�� Derik said. “I know they will. When they hear. More soldiers. Farmers too. Simple folks. What the Queen is doing, it ain’t right. People are mad. That’ll bring a bunch. Not the family folks—no, they won’t come. But younger ones like me and you.” He smirked. “Well, not like you.”
“I hope so, Derik. I really do.”
The wagon lurched on a dip in the road, and Derik winced again.
Mykel leaned over to speak with the driver. “Can we take a break? This soldier is having a rough time with his leg and could use a rest. Just a few minutes.”
The driver whistled and Jahmai came near, pacing alongside the wagon from atop his horse. He spoke with the driver and then raised his hand to call a halt.
“Take a break. Right here.”
Mykel looked down at Derik.
“Thank you,” Derik said, smiling.
Mykel nodded. “Heal up, Soldier. We’ll need you at fighting strength. And soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nara sat on the side of a high hill, looking down on the soldiers who rested on the road below. Mykel took a seat next to her.
“How’s he doing?” she asked.
“He’s hurt bad. Shouldn’t be traveling at all.”
“Femur?”
“I dunno. The big leg bone,” he said, tapping his leg. “Arrow.”
“I know–I was aiming for his heart.” She couldn’t believe that she just said that. What was happening to her?
“Can you heal him?” Mykel asked.
“Probably.”
She didn’t move.
“You don’t want to?”
“He deserves the pain.”
“Wow,” Mykel said, shaking his head.
“I’m still angry.”
“I can see that.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. But these aren’t the men who attacked Dimmitt. Once I got that through my head, it was easier. And if you talk to them, they don’t seem like monsters. They’re just men. Maybe you’re right about evil and selfishness. I don’t see evil here.”
“Mykel, they’ve done terrible things, and they are every bit as bad as those who killed Sammy. You know they are.”
“And they know it too. Trust me. They are down there, hating themselves just as much as you hate them from up here.”
A breeze picked up, not a warm one, but it wasn’t cold, either. Snows were still melting, and the cool wind was a reminder that summer wasn’t here. Not yet. But it was coming. Time marched on, and there was much to do. Although they now carried stolen coins from the bank and two dozen men to start their push against Fairmont, it didn’t seem as if they were making enough progress. Nor fast enough. And now they were being delayed by a slow entourage and a wounded man who should have stayed behind.
Nara’s hair fluttered in the breeze as she considered healing the soldier. He shouldn’t be traveling at all, but letting him sit in the back of the wagon, bumping with each jolt, that wasn’t good either. It must have been torture, and she was allowing it. It wasn’t like her. Not at all. Punishing that man would do nothing to reverse the pain Kayna was bringing, wouldn’t bring back Sammy, and said more about Nara’s character than it did about that of the soldier.
“I’m horrible,” she said. “What’s his name?”
“Derik. He’s Jahmai’s nephew.”
“Okay.”
She stood and walked down to the wagon where the soldier rested. Not tall enough to see over the side, she climbed up into the bed. Standing over him, she spoke. “Derik, right?”
“Yes, miss.” His eyes were wide, fearful, but she didn’t blame him. She had been caught up the fervor of battle and must have looked fearsome when she tried to kill this man. She had very nearly done so. Without further care, he might still die.
“You tired of the pain?”
He nodded, but his eyes widened further and he seemed to draw back as she crouched in front of him.
“Relax, I’m not going to put you out of your misery. I would like to fix your leg.”
“Oh. You, uh, you can do that?”
“If you want.”
He nodded again, smiling, and his eyes grew teary. “Would you?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Please?”
Nara felt terrible, the man’s tears melting her heart. Despite the things he had been part of, his pain defied reason. Pain she should have stopped. Maybe he had deserved the wound, but this ongoing suffering was her responsibility. It would have horrified Bylo to see his little girl acting this way.
“Don’t move,” she ordered. “This will take a moment and I’m no expert, but if it’s as bad as I think, I can’t make it any worse.”
Nara turned to two nearby soldiers. “Hold him down. This will hurt.”
As the soldiers climbed into the wagon and grabbed Derik by each shoulder, she dropped to one knee and placed her left hand low on his leg, the other hand higher. Moving her right hand along the femur, she closed her eyes, summoning both the knitting rune and the sight rune. With sight, she didn’t need to memorize the biology, the organs, the structures—she could see them. In fact, Anne said sight would make her a supreme knitter in a short time if she practiced.
She visualized the skin under the bandage. It was intact, so this was not a compound fracture. The muscle was almost completely healed, but the fracture itself was a mess. The impact of the arrow had done terrible damage, shattering the lower part of the bone. Marrow leaked and blood pooled around the injury, deep inside. Nara flared the knitting rune, and, ever so slowly, the pieces of bone came together. Derik screamed.
“Stop moving,” Nara ordered. “Not a muscle!”
Again, she flared the knitting rune, and the chips fused further, the fracture healed, and the femur became a single bone once again. She lifted her hands from the leg and opened her eyes.
Derik had passed out. Good. She turned to see that the other soldiers had gathered around to watch. All of them, even Jahmai. Mykel was behind, standing on the side of the hill and grinning.
“It’s not done,” Nara said. “Blood has pooled inside, so it’ll bruise and swell yet. Probably for a long time. I doubt he’ll be able to walk for a week, but the bone is whole.”
They still stared at her, wide-eyed.
Jahmai moved to the side of the wagon and reached in and placed his hand affectionately on Derik’s head. He looked at Nara. “Thank you.”
“You’re an angel straight from Dei,” another soldier said.
“Hardly,” Nara said, then hopped down from the wagon and started walking back toward Mykel. “I’m no better than the rest of you.”
19
The Grand Square
The Grand Square of Fairmont was a beautiful, open area between the Chancery and Fairmont’s central park district. The square was constructed from thousands of stone tiles, a beautiful checkered pattern of granite and slate that must have looked interesting to the ravens that passed above, flying back and forth as they searched for food among the throngs of people below.
Kayna looked upon the attendees from her throne atop a tall stage that rolled along behind eight horses. Purple velvet covered the stage, and two stone gargoyles guarded the front corners. She wore a fine white gown, a modest silver circlet on her head and carried an ornate scepter in her left hand.
A ring of soldiers made their way forward, covered in polished plate armor, directing the many citizens back to allow for the Queen’s entry to the square. From behind Kayna, a blaring of trumpets made her arrival official, the noise so loud that she almost covered her ears to shield them from the noise.
The entourage came to a halt, and the trumpets ended their painful tribute.
“Behold, Queen Kayna, liberator of the Great Land. Champion over the barbarian hordes, and bringer of justice,” the royal crier announced. With his strong voice, the people could surely hear his well-articulated words across much of the square. “We revere her above all. She is our light and our salvation, blessed by Dei to protect her peopl
e.”
She wished he would get on with it. There were things to do.
“She comes among us to show her love. To shower you with gifts of her affection and to declare undying loyalty to our nation.”
Many servants came forward into the square at that moment, each bearing baskets full of bread that they distributed among the people in the crowd. Kayna stood and smiled, arms out wide, scepter held high in a gesture of generosity.
“Thank you, my Queen,” she heard from not too far away. “Thank you, Majesty,” from someone over to her left. “Bless you, milady,” from another.
But handing out bread and showing off her wealth would not be enough. They would forget this within a week and be grumbling again. More was required, and more would be done. She proceeded according to the plan, placing the scepter on the throne, and leaped into the air over the crowd. The air caught her and propelled her higher as she directed herself over the middle of the square.
“This is your Queen,” said the crier.
Kayna flared the light rune, becoming a blinding, scintillating beacon rising ever higher above the crowd, now fifty feet.
“Behold,” yelled the crier, “an angel of Dei!”
With that, Kayna extinguished the light rune, summoned fire, and shot it out to the sides, turning as she did, the flames heating the air in a circle around her. The crowd below her gasped in awe. Some ran away. Others were transfixed. She held there for a long time, sending the fire, then flaring light again, turning, basking in the air and the heat and the colors.
She imagined what it must be like for those below. Hungry, misbehaving people who sought only their own comfort. They now saw a deity above them; pure power they could never comprehend. Scriptures talked about miraculous healings and signs of wonder, but simple people rarely witnessed such acts. What stood as an annoying interruption in her schedule would be, for many of these, the most memorable event of their lives. The contrast was interesting and further showed that she was in her rightful place above them.
Finding Kai Page 12