“That is extremely risky.” Shyronn said. He smiled. “I love it.”
“What would Willian think of us now?”
Shyronn laughed. “Willian would hate this.”
“I hate this,” I said.
Shyronn and Rath ignored me.
“We’ve sent messengers to negotiate Canron’s ransom. That will buy us a little time. But if you want to save your Lord,” he looked to me, “you will need to leave now, before the ferrymen know to look out for you.”
“Just the two of us?” I asked, my voice uncomfortably shrill. “A farmer’s son and his one-legged protector — out to rescue a Lord accused of treason?”
Rath scoffed. “That is the One-Legged Protector, Princeling.”
“What happens when we draw the king’s attention to us? How are we supposed to get out of there alive?”
Shyronn’s smile was grim. “We can’t risk having a large group leave Hazeldown. You would be too easy to track if there were many of you. As much as I would like to join you, I cannot abandon this village right now. While Lord Brenden is gone, they need protection if the king chooses to strike.”
“I want to see my family,” I said.
To my great relief, Shyronn allowed me.
My heart raced as I approached the front door of the cottage. Rath walked on his crutch beside me. I found his presence both inexplicably comforting and upsetting. Zarra was standing guard outside the front door. When she saw us, she grinned and whooped. The front door flew open, and Mum screamed my name in relief.
“Donald!”
We were hastily dragged inside.
“Oh, my poor Donny-Boy,” Mum said, shoving me into a seat at the old, beat-up family table. “Eat,” she commanded, fetching me a biscuit and some cold stew. “You look pale as death.”
I had no appetite, but upon eating a single bite, I found that I was famished. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast the previous morning. I barely tasted the food as I shoveled it into my mouth. While I ate, Rath spoke to my family.
“We have to leave,” he told them. “Soon. Today.”
“Why?” My sister Lily asked. She sat beside my father, carefully cleaning a gash in his arm that he must have acquired in the riot. He was quiet and swayed a little where he sat. I could tell from the red rims of his eyes that he had been given some strong spirits to calm him. His head was wrapped in rags, and one of his legs was propped up on a stool, his bare foot bandaged with blood-soaked cloth.
“If Izzy and I can create a diversion elsewhere, the king may be too distracted to send his troops here,” Rath explained. “We have to convince him that Izzy isn’t here anymore.”
Zarra added, “Safford is already short-staffed. It takes the majority of his troops just to keep the capital safe from the deadmen. Even the safeguards protecting the villages are spread thin, and their allegiance doesn’t always lie with the king.” She sat perched atop a storage trunk, lovingly sharpening every kitchen knife my mother owned with her whet stone. “Just to arrest you,” she nodded to me, “Safford had to ask for volunteers and send fresh recruits. That’s how I was able to sneak in unnoticed. Unfortunately for Safford, it turns out most of his volunteers were actually members of the Order. Good for your lot, but bad news for him.”
“This stunt we pulled today saved Izzy’s life,” Rath told Mum. “But it could very well start a war. We want to avoid that if we can. We have to go.”
“His name is Donald,” Mum whispered.
Rath chose not to respond.
My brother Marcus was led from our room by my sister Dove. When he saw me, he started to cry. I almost knocked my chair over as I hurried to him. I knelt before him and took his hands in mine. Normally, I would have lifted him off his feet in a giant hug, but I was sensitive to the pain in his side.
“Oh, my good, strong brother,” I crooned, peppering kisses all over his hands.
“We thought you were going to die,” Marcus mumbled tearfully.
“But I didn’t,” I reminded him. “You helped save me. You were very brave yesterday.”
Marcus’s eyes lit up. “I was? I didn’t feel brave. I was scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” I said. “Being scared is part of being brave. I was so scared today, but I had to be brave at the same time to save Pa. I learned how to be brave like that from you.” Marcus’ hands trembled in mine. I squeezed his fingers tightly. “Now I have to go protect other people, like you protected me.”
“I want to go with you,” Marcus said.
Mum looked like she was going to faint.
“No no no,” I said quickly. “I need you to stay here and be brave. The family needs you. Can you do that for me?”
“Okay.” Marcus’ voice was thin as he fought to speak through his tears. Dove leaned over and kissed him on the head.
“Don’t worry about Don,” Mel said. “I’ll take good care of him.”
I stood and turned to face her, half full of elation and half full of dread. “You’re coming with us?”
Mel snorted. “Of course I am. You need me. Have you ever killed a deadman?” I shook my head, even though she already knew the answer. “Well, I have. My parents were safeguards. They taught me how to survive. And you, Don, you need to survive.”
“Please never stop,” I said.
“Never stop what?” she asked.
“Please, never stop calling me Don.” I needed her to remind me that beneath all of this Prince Izayik nonsense I was still a person.
Mel wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me into a violent hug. In my ear, she whispered, “You will always be Don to me.”
And just like that, I knew I had the strength to carry on.
Mum tried to convince us to take as much as we could possibly carry with us, but we worried about being too conspicuous with large packs. Zarra went out ahead to meet with the ferryman and arrange our crossing to the mainlands. I hugged Mum and each of my siblings and knelt down beside my pa.
“Pa,” I said.
He blinked blearily at me. Then he reached for my hands, cleared his throat, and said, “Donny-Boy. Never forget that you are enough.”
I kissed Pa on the forehead, took one last look at the home I had grown up in, and stepped outside into the sun. The clouds had escaped the sky, chased away by the sun. The misty rain that had brought me such comfort in my moment of terror was gone. I felt sad about this. Or maybe I felt sad about a lot of things, and the only one I could really focus on was the weather.
“Don,” Lily called. I turned back to the cottage. Lily stood in the doorway, holding the pitchfork I had held as I declared myself the prince. “Take this with you,” she said.
“Lily.” I was not carrying a pitchfork with me to the capital.
“No, really, Don,” she insisted. “This is a symbol now. People see this, and they remember the man who wouldn’t die. And they remember that he grew up in the fields, just like the rest of us. Like it or not, you are going to be some people’s hero and some people’s enemy. And people like heroes they can relate to, you know? So take it. Besides, you’re much, much better with a pitchfork than you are with a sword.” She giggled, likely recalling the sight of me wobbling a sword uselessly at the general.
“Alright, you win.” I took the pitchfork from her, ignoring the little aches in my hands. “I’ll take the pitchfork. Who knows? Maybe somewhere I’ll find another Lord who really needs some help with the harvest.”
Lily hugged me tightly. A goodbye hug. She bid me farewell, and I turned to join Mel and Rath at the gate.
“Oh, and Don?” Lily called to me again. I smiled as I turned to face her.
“Yes, Lily-dear?”
“I don’t care if you are a prince.” She pointed her chin at Mel. “You better marry her.”
I propped my pitchfork against my shoulder. “I’m working on it,” I promised her.
There was no dramatic fanfare as we set off. We just went.
We were the only ones on the ferry as i
t pulled away from shore. I watched Hazeldown grow smaller until it was just a long dark line on the horizon. The smell of the burning funeral pyres drifted away on the breeze.
Aside from my little adventure with the Imposter, I had never been to the mainland. It was like setting foot in an entirely new world. It looked as though an immense battle had been fought, and lost, and the battlegrounds abandoned. As we walked, we passed crumbling buildings and forgotten farms. We had not seen another living being since the ferry. The roads were full of holes and overgrown with shrubs. They seemed rarely used.
Mel wore pants now. Braced to her thigh was an unlit torch. She carried flint and kindling in the bags attached to her belt. On her back, she wore the bow I never knew she possessed and a quiver with only four arrows. She seemed so much more comfortable out here on the open road than she ever did in our cramped little cottage.
I tried to get information out of Rath as we walked, but he was stubbornly resistant. He clung to knowledge like a miser to his riches.
“Rath, please,” I begged. “There’s so much I don’t know.”
“Good. I worked hard to preserve your innocence.”
“Innocence isn’t going to protect me now.”
Rath pursed his lips. “Four. I will answer four questions.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” I said. “One: Is my family safe back there, with Commander Shyronn?”
Rath kicked his leg back and forth in the air as he thought. “There are only two people in this entire world who I would trust with my life. One of them was your father. The other is Commander Shyronn. Yes, your people are safe under his command. He would give his life to protect them.”
That was a satisfying response. I cocked my head and studied Rath. I had to think of a complicated enough question that would yield more information than he realized. “Two: Do all of your people fly?”
“I’m not flying,” he said. “I’m up-lifting.”
“Which means?” Mel prompted him, saving me from having to waste another question to get him to talk.
“I am using energy to push down at the ground, holding myself above it.” He pulled his coat open to show us what he wore beneath. Around his waist, he wore a thick metal belt with two ribbed plates of armor attached that fell half-way down his thighs. “These faulds are part of the Insurgent’s Armor. It was enchanted by the seraphim long ago. The armor is incredibly powerful, each piece granting its wearer a unique ability. The armor was spread across the world to prevent one person from possessing too many of the pieces. I was given this part of the armor by another member of the King’s Order. I used to use it as a weapon at the time. When I lost my leg, I realized that its power would allow me to regain some of my mobility.”
“Question three,” I counted. “How did you lose your leg?”
Rath was quiet. I had never seen him look so uncomfortable. I was about to excuse him and ask another question, but he said, “It was taken.”
“Taken?”
Rath pressed his tongue against the inside of his mouth, making a little bulge in his cheek. “Before you were born,” he said, “before the deadmen, there were creatures called haunts.”
“I didn’t know haunts were real.” My pa used to tell such awful stories about haunts. He claimed they stole people’s limbs to create bodies for themselves.
“Oh, they were real. Very real. The King’s Order — your mother, your father, Shryonn, myself, and a couple others — our job was to hunt the haunts. One night, I was caught unprepared. When the haunts attacked me, I couldn’t defend myself.”
“Why not?” Zarra asked.
“I was protecting something precious.”
“Which was…?” I pressed.
“You,” Rath said. “My leg was taken the night your parents died.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“How did you survive?” Mel asked, her eyes wide with wonder.
The corner of Rath’s mouth twitched. “Willian told me to protect Izzy. That was his wish, and I am bound to uphold it. I gave him my Oath. That is a power greater than any in the world, greater even than the powers of the Insurgent’s Armor. I am bound by the very fabric of my being to fulfill Willian’s request.” His gaze found mine and held it. “That same power summons me to your side when your life is in danger. It gave me the capacity to run on one leg for a time — until you were safe. Thanks to your father’s wish, Izzy, everything that I am is dedicated to your survival.”
We had stopped walking. Rath and I stood in the center of the pathway, staring at each other. There was an intensity of emotion that I couldn’t quite discern emanating from Rath’s brown-gray eyes.
“Four,” I said, not taking my eyes from Rath’s. “What are you?”
“In the ancient tongue, my people are called …,” and he said something full of guttural noises and phlegm that I couldn’t possibly make out. “In the modern tongue, we are called the Jinee.”
“Genies,” Mel said. “You’re a genie.”
Rath looked down at what was left of his leg. “My people have the blood of the seraphim running through our veins. We have incredible powers, but those powers come at a price. We cannot use our magic on ourselves — only on others, in the form of wishes. When a human, like your father, does a kindness to a Jinee, we are bound to him until our debt of gratitude is repaid. We must fulfill their wish or die trying.”
I felt a little sick.
“Your father saved my life,” Rath said. “In return, I granted him a wish. That wish sealed me to him until it was fulfilled. Your father was an incredible man. He was the greatest friend I had ever known. He refused to force me to use my powers on his behalf. When I was sealed to him, I was the freest I have ever been. I was content to stay by his side and serve him with my real talents, exempt from granting wishes to others until I had granted the wish I owed your father. He saw me as a person, not a tool.” Rath took a deep breath. He had a far-away look in his eyes that made my heart ache. “And then, the night he died, when he could have used my power to save himself, he instead…” Rath’s voice trailed off.
“He wished that you would protect me.”
“Yes,” Rath said. “He gave me to you. He had already lost one child. He would rather lose his own life than lose you. You are my purpose now, Izzy. If I fail to save you, I die as well.”
“Oh,” I said. How could I respond to that? I remembered all of the times I had put myself in harm’s way, deliberately trying to summon my strange and powerful friend. All of those times, I had been endangering his life as well. No wonder he was always angry with me.
“You were so young when your parents died,” Rath continued. “You still needed to be nursed. I found a family with an infant, and I stole him from his cradle and placed you there instead. His mother would be able to feed you, to comfort you and nourish you, and she would never know that you were not hers. I thought I could create a new life for you. I thought that if you never knew who you were, you would be free from the darkness that always surrounded your parents, free from the forces that overwhelmed your mother. But as it turns out, I only managed to buy you some time.”
I cleared my throat, trying to shake the uncomfortable cold that had just wrapped around me like an unwelcome hug. “What did you do with the other baby?” I asked.
“You’re out of questions for today,” Rath said.
No one really had anything to say after Rath’s revelation. I was grateful, of course, for his help. But I felt dirty knowing that some great force was making him protect me. He had no choice but to fight for my life and his own. And here I was, a useless brat, completely undeserving of all that he had done for me, riding on the coat tails of my father’s greatness — a father I had not even known I had until two days before.
Evening was falling, casting a friendly pink and purple hue over the trees and the mountains in the distance. It occurred to me that we would need a place to stay for the night. Certainly, we weren’t going to continue w
alking when darkness fell. Wouldn’t that be an invitation for disaster?
As darkness encroached upon us, the air grew colder. I was grateful for the heavy coat Mum had given me to fight off the chill, its pockets stuffed with biscuits. I had never spent a night away from home. I had also never nearly been beheaded, declared myself prince, or caused a riot. Today was a day of many firsts.
The calm evening air was disrupted by the sound of a horse braying in fear.
“What was that?” Zarra asked.
Horses were rare, even on the mainland. Lord Brenden only had two, and he treated them as if they were family.
In the distance, we saw the horse running, screaming in its horsey way. It appeared from the trees along the side of the road and fled into the distance as if terrified for its life.
Stranger than the horse was something else I saw in the trees from whence the creature had come. The spirit of a woman stood in the long evening shadows. That was nothing new. What was unusual was the way she was waving at me, as if desperately trying to get my attention.
“There’s someone over there,” I said.
“Wait.” Mel threw out her arm to stop me as I tried to take a step toward the trees. “You can’t be sure she’s still alive.”
“I’m sure she isn’t,” I said, brushing Mel’s hands away. “She’s calling for me.”
“Can you hear her?” Rath asked, alarmed.
“No. But she’s … waving at us.” I gently pushed Mel aside and left the path. The spirit didn’t look dangerous. It was hard to make out details — it always was with spirits — but I could tell that she wore a dress and cape, her hair piled up on top of her head. When she noticed my approach, she stepped into the trees, turning back to see if I was following.
There was a sudden blaze of light as Mel lit her torch beside me. The spirit vanished.
“Put that out! I can’t see her anymore.”
“You want to step into a grove of trees, at dusk, on the mainland, without fire?” Mel asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
I jogged away from her. I heard her mutter a few choice curses, but the torch was soon extinguished. I saw the spirit again several paces ahead. As I approached, she pointed further into the trees. I squinted in the odd half-light of the setting sun. There was a large something visible through the trees. I heard a repetitive creaking sound, like wood against metal.
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