"Are you all right?" The mechanical voice rumbled through her frame as much as it came to her ears. "I can slow if you need."
Sword shook her head, then realized how foolish that was: there was no way Tiawan would feel that through his armor. "I'm all right!" she shouted over the rush of the air. Opening her mouth at this speed, the wind nearly sucked the breath from her lungs. She gasped, then added, "Go faster."
The last words were less a request than a hope. How much time did they still have before Malal died – if he hadn't already? And how long before more blood was spilled?
She didn't know if Tiawan heard her request or not, but the roar of the fires grew still louder and now the wind didn't just batter her, it felt like heavy weights had attached to her skeleton and were trying to yank it directly out of her flesh by way of her stomach.
She almost vomited. Managed to control her stomach and throat. Curled a bit tighter against Tiawan, and wondered how long they would fly.
It wasn't much longer. She thought. Her brain told her the last leg of the trip had gone fairly quickly, though her body argued that it had lasted a lifetime.
The fires that pushed her and Tiawan forward changed in tone. She was dimly aware of her body changing position as well. Unlike Cloud and Wind, who flew through the air as though standing upright, Tiawan's flight strung him out in a long line, face to the fore and legs behind as though he were laying on his stomach in the wind. Sword had been hanging below him, held against his chest. Now she sensed her orientation moving from horizontal to vertical.
She opened an eye. The wind was nearly gone, but she shut her eye quickly nonetheless: the land was so far below it seemed both unnatural and terrifying.
She felt her stomach pitch again as Tiawan dropped from the sky, and she almost screamed. It wasn't a need to appear brave that kept her from doing so, either, but the simple fact that she couldn't find the breath necessary to do so.
Then there was a thud. The roar of the fires all but disappeared, and a voice spoke.
"A present. Would you like me to kill her, or do you plan to do so yourself?"
Sword opened her eyes, barely able to see anything through her still-streaming tears. Turned her head.
It was the girl. Perhaps twelve Turns, dressed in the fur coats of the farthest northern reaches, seemingly oblivious to the sweltering heat of Fear. She stared at Sword with an empty expression.
But her eyes seethed. In them, Sword saw hatred. Death.
The look in the girl's eyes was so surprising, so out of place with the innocence that should have been, that Sword forgot for a moment what danger she might be in.
What happened to her?
And then, a second thought: Was I so different?
She thought so. She had been a Dog, and a Dog had to be ferocious, merciless… but not even a Dog had to hate like this girl did.
Tiawan placed Sword on the ground as his helmet slipped back and disappeared. "No one will kill her, La'ug." He eyed Sword as the suit changed back to the motorized chair that gave him movement. "At least, not yet."
Sword's eyes narrowed. She had had enough of this. She was not a girl to cower, to writhe in terror – not even when in the midst of her enemies. "You talk much of death, Tiawan," she said through gritted teeth. "So did you bring me here to kill me? If so, let's be on with it." She looked at the girl – La'ug. "Though I suppose you may be trying to bore me to death."
The girl was stroking a small ball of fur – the woolly Sword had seen earlier, which joined with her to become a monster. Now her hand froze, and the complacent mask cracked as a scowl peered through. Then she relaxed and looked to Tiawan, pointedly ignoring Sword.
Tiawan only laughed. "Little girls," he said ruefully.
"Hardly a girl," said Sword. She wasn't sure if she spoke of herself or the child with the woolly – anyone that could hold such hatred had lost what remained of their childhood.
Tiawan chuckled again. "At my age, anyone younger than fifty Turns is a girl."
Sword looked away from La'ug. Surprisingly, she saw no anger in Tiawan's face. Just amusement, and an open affection for La'ug.
It was that look that convinced Sword to relax – at least a little.
She looked around. They were in the middle of some kind of camp – groups of underfed men and women who lay in lean-to tents or beneath tarps or moved around with a clear sense of purpose.
"They're going back to Halaw," said Tiawan.
"These… these were prisoners?" asked Sword.
Again the old man chuckled. "What did you expect them to look like?" he asked. "All murderers and worse, horned heads and black souls hanging around them like ash?" He sighed. "Most of the people of Halaw are nothing more than dissidents and their families."
"People who dared speak against the Emperor." La'ug nearly spat the words, and this time Tiawan did not speak to hold her back. "People whose greatest sin was to be unhappy in a land where one man controls who may laugh, who may smile… and who dies in pain."
The woolly in her hand roused, looking around with eyes that blazed just like those of his mistress. Sword tensed, sensing that La'ug was on the verge of… whatever it was that turned her to a creature of destruction.
"Yet they return to Halaw?" Sword asked.
Tiawan nodded. "The thing that made it so terrible was the guards, the walls, the fact that they relied on others to provide all their needs. If the food didn't come, they died. If the guards shot at them from the walls, there was no one to stop them. Now the walls are down. And the guards…."
"You killed them," Sword said dully.
"Of course," said Tiawan. "They deserved to die, so die they did." He leaned toward Sword. "They were judges, juries, and executioners. But their prey were not the guilty. They hurt the weak, the helpless. And they laughed as they did."
"Not all of them," said Sword. It was true there had been – still were – corrupt men and women in the Imperial Army, just as there were still nobles who resisted the new measures Malal and her other friends had instituted in the past few months. But she had seen enough to know that many – most – of the people weren't evil. Just scared, or perhaps simply lazy. Afraid to take any course that might lead them to disfavor, or unwilling to fight against what seemed to be the easiest and safest way.
"All of them," La'ug insisted.
Tiawan nodded. "They starved the people. Any who weren't actively involved in the harm committed it by not standing up. Those who do not fight against evil agree to its commission. Those who do not struggle against injustice become themselves the unjust."
The quiet fervor in the man's voice unnerved Sword. But below that, she sensed something else, something almost… rehearsed. As though this speech had been written for him by someone else.
And who might that someone be?
"So will you kill everyone in the Empire?" Sword asked. The words were quiet, but she saw a number of the men and women around them tense, as though expecting at any minute to be destroyed – and this to be the sign of their doom.
Tiawan laughed. "Not everyone is evil as the guards around Halaw. Not everyone starves the men and women of a walled city as did the old Emperor. And," he added with a pointed expression, "not everyone helps by watching the pain and doing nothing as this 'new' Emperor does."
Sword shook her head. "Our Malal increased the disbursements to Halaw months ago. He more than doubled them when he found out about the conditions there."
"Liar!" La'ug's composure utterly cracked. The woolly scampered to her shoulder and hissed.
Sword faced her squarely. "No. I saw it done. I saw the gold leave the treasury."
Tiawan looked openly startled. Then his face settled back into cool anger. "If he did so – and I don't know that he did – then he didn't care enough to see if the people actually got the benefit of the money. He tried to solve a problem the easiest way – the way of the fool, the corrupt – with money, and with a blind eye to what was actually happening."
Sword threw up her hands in frustration. "What would you have him do?" she nearly screamed. "He is one man, and trying to fix an Empire of millions – an Empire that has run to corruption in the last century and more. Do you think he is a Greater Gift with the power to simply wave his hand and fix all in an instant? Do you think it possible –"
"I think it possible for him to do the honorable thing. To step down – and kill himself, if he really were a man of honor – and let the people rule."
Sword sighed and closed her eyes. "What do you think he has been working toward?" She opened her eyes again and saw Tiawan – even La'ug – looking at her quizzically. "The Emperor – our Emperor, the people's Emperor – has no wish to cause suffering. But that means he can't simply throw the Empire into chaos by abandoning the Silver Seat and letting things fall apart around him as people battle to see who will control what remains."
"Why not?"
The simple words, spoken in a near-whisper by Tiawan, surprised her. "Because people would die."
"People are already dying. At least this way they would be able to have a hand in the choices that led them to happiness or to a lesser reward." Tiawan pressed himself hard against the back of his chair, as though trying to push himself out of existence. As he did, his shirt fell against the spot that Sword had seen glowing yellow. She saw a bulge there, and almost asked what it was. But Tiawan relaxed, and continued, "I am not the Emperor. I have no wish to control people, nor illusions that I am worthy to do so. I wish merely to give them back their freedom." He nodded at the men and women around him. "They return to Halaw, but they return of their own will. Without the guards who murder them at every turn, with the possibility of a life." He swallowed hard. "Food is scarce, even outside the walls. Much of the water in this part of Fear is corrupt. Many will die." He aimed a hard gaze at Sword. "But they will die as their own masters. As people."
Sword tried to think of something to say. Before she could, a huge man – the child-man she had seen become a berserker who killed everyone in sight – approached. He was even bigger up close than he had seemed before, with hands the size of dinner platters and muscles that stretched and strained against the confines of his simple shirt.
She saw another bulge beneath his clothing as well, and suddenly wondered if La'ug had a similar lump under her thick coats.
The big man saw her, smiled broadly, and waved. Not the look and gesture of someone greeting a friend – it was the motion of a child opening his heart to a stranger.
Small children have no sense of other – everything is part of them, so no one is to be feared, only loved as they love themselves. And this man had frozen in that moment in his life.
Sword, strangely, envied him. She did not remember a time when the world was not composed of "I" and "they." And for most of her life, all who were "they" had also been enemies. This big man knew no such hate, no such fear. She could see in his eyes only joy, and that joy reflected doubly as he hugged Tiawan, lifting the entire chair in one hand and clutching the old man to his breast with the other.
A Strong.
But that couldn't be, could it? Strongs were all small – tiny, even.
More important, people who were Gifts had only one power. So if he was a Strong, how could he become that berserker? Even when Greater Gifts discovered they held a Second Gift – itself extremely rare – that Second Gift was always connected to the first. Sword's Great Gift was that she could wield any weapon that used her own power – bladed weapons, thrown weapons; but not guns or bows that used the weapon's own power to move – with preternatural ability and speed. Her Second Gift was the ability to call such weapons into being, blades and cudgels of flame that she could use at any time, anywhere. Her Greater Gift was skill with the weapons, her Second Gift was simply that she could never be separated from such.
Yet the big man – being a Strong was not a Greater Gift, and he should have had no more than that strength. Even if it had been such a Greater Gift, she could see no way for his Second Gift to create an unkillable monster out of him.
The big man went to La'ug, picked her up, and put her on his broad shoulder in much the same way she held her woolly. She said, "Wahy, where have you been?" as he lifted her, hugging him as she spoke the words in a tone that clearly expected no answer. There was only caring there. Love.
The girl, for the first time since Sword had seen her, looked happy. Sword didn't understand. Couldn't comprehend how people who had killed so many could share this love. How a man who injured and actively tortured her friends could command this kind of loyalty from others.
She shook her head. "I don't disagree with what you've said. At least, not that something has to be done, but –"
"But you work for a corrupt Emperor. You rest in luxury while others starve." La'ug looked disgusted.
Sword barked a quick laugh. "You know nothing of what's happening around you, little girl. And even less of me."
La'ug looked ready to climb down from Wahy's shoulder and claw out Sword's eyes. A dagger of light appeared in Sword's hands. The woolly scampered down from La'ug's shoulder to her outstretched hand, and at the same time the girl hooked her other hand around Wahy's head, nails planted firmly against his cheek. They didn't draw blood, but it was clear that with the slightest movement her nails would tear his flesh.
Sword suddenly remembered: the trio's attack at the castle. The man in the armor had come in ready for battle. But La'ug and Wahy had looked normal at first – as normal as a fur-coated girl and a man so large he was nearly a giant could appear when clambering in through a smoking crater in a giant wall.
Then they had changed. The girl had thrown the woolly in the air, and had somehow joined with it.
And Wahy – he had remained himself. Riding the monster with glee, shouting and laughing… until Arrow shot him in the head. Then he changed. He became a monster the equal of the one he rode.
It's when he's blooded. It happens when he is wounded.
Now she understood the reason for La'ug's strange hold on her friend. She was ready to turn him into a maniac even as she turned herself into a horrific monster that would no doubt come for Sword.
"La'ug!" Tiawan's voice snapped out. "Not here. There are innocents."
La'ug's visage only hardened. "We can keep him away from them." A wicked grin split her face. "We can keep him on her."
Tiawan looked suddenly tired. He turned to Sword and said, "Please. Let's not turn this bloody. Not yet, at least." He nodded at her – at the dagger of light she held. "Please," he said again.
Sword was motionless for a long moment. Then the dagger faded from existence. She held up her empty palm. But at the same time, looking evenly at La'ug, she said, "Don't ever presume to know me. You haven't earned it."
La'ug nearly threw the woolly. But Tiawan's voice snapped out. "La'ug!" The girl stopped moving, but didn't lower the creature. Nor did she let go of Wahy's cheek. "We are speaking in peace. I brought her to tell her story, so do not stop her from doing so."
"Who is she that we should listen?" spat La'ug. Wahy, finally seeming to pick up on the fact that bad things were on the verge of happening, grew suddenly serious.
"She is the Judge and Jury!" Tiawan roared. "And by that alone she has earned the right to speak and to be heard!"
La'ug's teeth ground together again, and she flung herself off Wahy's shoulder. She landed with animal grace on the hard ground, then took the big man's hand and, with a last, angry backward glance, led him away. Soon they disappeared among the crowd of people – though Sword could still see Wahy's head from time to time, well above the level of anyone else. Burdens appeared on his shoulders as he used his great strength to move things for people – presumably helping them get ready to return to Halaw.
"Are you just going to move them?"
"What?" Tiawan looked confused at her question.
"Is this an army? Are you preparing to attack the palace again?"
As soon as she said it, Sword realized th
e ridiculousness of the question. Tiawan snorted. "I don't need an army, child. I already went to the palace and did as I wished. When I decide to level it, my family and I will do so."
Sword noticed that he said, "When I decide to level it," and her blood felt cold inside her. Not least because she suspected he was right: what could stop them? Certainly she had failed.
A man clad in armor the like of which had never before been seen.
A child who became a beast of horrific power and force.
A man who transformed into a creature that lived only to kill, and would never die.
More than enough to level a palace.
More than enough to destroy an Empire.
13
"Wake up."
Arrow had known Colonel Alya was a soldier, and even someone without his gift for seeing the paths of things would have known she was a good one. But he was still surprised at how quickly the slim woman went from deep sleep to complete wakefulness. She sat up before he had finished speaking the two words, leaning forward and peering through the front window of the auto-car. No stretching, not so much as a single confused blink.
"What is it?"
Another surprise: she didn't say it with curiosity, she said it was caution. As though she expected bad news. Danger.
Good. Because I think we've found both.
Out loud, Arrow said, "Is this the way the Strongholds are supposed to look?"
Colonel Alya looked out the windows. The land here was craggy, but lush – a mix of the harsh rock of Fear and the verdant growth found in Center and Faith. Though itself a mountain, great spires of rock speared upward throughout the land, like taloned fingers of giants clawing their way out of the earth. A dozen of them ringed a large space on the mountain, and it was here that the Strongholds hid, cupped in the center of the giants' unseen palms.
Colonel Alya shook her head. "There should be… more than this."
Arrow nodded. "That's what I thought." He kept the auto-car moving forward, though he slowed it considerably.
They passed the first spire – the one that served as both a lookout tower and a warning to those who would enter the Strongholds without permission. Arrow had never been here before, but his father had. Creed – the real Lord of the Southern Grasslands, as far as Arrow was concerned – had served in the Army in his youth, before returning to sit in the Heathered Hall. And he had told Arrow many tales of his time – most of them centered in the Strongholds. The place where the Army trained, where men became soldiers.
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