by Janice Hardy
Kione shrugged. “That was before Nya arrived. Maybe they’ve changed their minds now that she’s here.” He turned to me. “What are you going to do?”
“Me? How am I supposed to stop a whole army?”
“Pynvium,” Aylin said, eyes bright. And a little scary. “You have two sets of armor full of pain that need to be emptied, right?”
My stomach twisted. Wear the Undying’s armor? But there was a lot of pain there to flash. Maybe even enough to bring down those soldiers before they slaughtered everyone on the isle. “Right.”
We raced back inside. The warehouse folks were gone, but others were there now, grabbing weapons off the racks and armor out of the wardrobes. Soek had pulled Tali to a corner, and both were staring at the rush of people in confusion. She’d listened to him? I said a quick prayer of thanks but didn’t have time to be happier than that.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re under attack,” Kione said, telling him about the soldiers marching toward us.
I scanned the floor for the pynvium armor. It was still where we’d left it. “Aylin, can you take Tali upstairs?” I tipped my head at the armor. I had no idea how she might react if she saw me putting it on.
“Got it.” She smiled at Tali and held out a hand. “Tali, come with me, okay?”
She took Aylin’s hand without a word, and my heart soared again. Maybe she’d recover after all. If you can keep her from attacking people.
Soon as they were out of sight, I went to the armor. I grabbed the smaller of the two chest pieces, and Soek and Kione helped me put it on. It dug into my shoulders, heavier than I’d expected. How had Tali worn one of these things?
“Um, I don’t think that fits,” Soek said. The armor hung on me. “Can you even walk in it?”
I tried. The chest piece slid on my shoulders and dragged me sideways. “Not well.”
“You can’t do this by yourself,” Soek said. “Not without armor.”
“What choice do I have?”
“Let me go with you. I’ll wear it.”
“Soek, it’s too—”
“That set will fit me. You’ll need protection out there, and I can heal us if”—he gulped—“when we get hurt and give you time to get deep enough into the soldiers to catch them all in one flash.”
He clearly didn’t want to do this any more than I did, but he was right. What good was all this pain if I couldn’t get it close enough to reach them all?
“Together then.” I went to the wardrobes where the leather armor was stored. It wouldn’t stop every blade, but it was better than nothing. “Kione,” I said, sweat already dampening my skin, “like her or not, you’d better get Lanelle. If we’re going to survive this, we’re going to need all the Healers we can get.”
“It sounds bad up there,” Soek said on the way to the tradesmen’s corner. A cord bound our hands together and they trembled as one. We couldn’t risk being separated.
Shouts ahead. Metal hit metal, bodies hit stone. I couldn’t see much, but it sounded like Ipstan had gotten some of his army together and had met the blue-boys near the bridge. More shouts, warnings, alerts. A horn blew, a single clear note in the morning air.
Fear had chased away some of my exhaustion but the reprieve wouldn’t last. Neither of us had the strength to fight for long. If we stumbled or fell and couldn’t get back up…
I never even got to tell Danello good-bye.
Our soldiers appeared ahead, outnumbered but holding up for now. The fighting split, and a small corridor big enough for Soek and me opened up between the soldiers.
“Run!” I burst forward with Soek, our arms and legs pumping together. We ran toward the narrow opening, the best hope we had of getting past the outer fringes and deep into the attacking force.
We dodged past our people and skirted around a group of theirs. The soldiers ignored us at first, Soek’s blue armor disguising us in all the confusion. Then a soldier noticed us, realized we weren’t on their side. He thrust his blade at me. I ducked left and it glanced off Soek’s armor. A second blade pierced my shoulder, cutting right through the leather, tearing through flesh. My hand tingled and the pain was gone, drawn through my fingers into Soek’s.
More soldiers charged at us. I swung Soek around hard, slamming him into a pair of women on our right. He tucked his shoulders, banging against them with the heavy back of his chest plate. The soldiers went flying.
We kept running.
Men with swords closed in fast. Blades came from every angle, stabbing, slicing, jabbing. Pain flowed from me to Soek so fast, my hand stung as if I’d been flashed. My lungs hurt, still raw from healing Danello all night.
We’re not going to make it.
A soldier tackled Soek. He went down, dragging me with him. My arm twisted and cracked, and fresh pain shot through me. I flung my other hand across the soldier’s back, grabbed his hair, and pressed my fingers against his scalp. I pushed and he jerked away screaming, cradling his arm. I scrambled to my feet and hauled Soek up with me.
We kept running, kept bleeding, kept healing. Step by step. Soldier by soldier.
A man shouted orders, his voice deep and oddly beautiful. For the strangest of moments, I wondered if he sang.
A wall of soldiers turned toward us, one in chain-mail armor, with silver commander’s marks on his collar. More soldiers were behind him, so thick I couldn’t see anything but shadowy blue and steel.
I spun and flattened my hand against Soek’s armor. He tensed and squeezed his eyes shut.
WHOOMP! Whoomp! WHOOMP! Whoomp! WHOOMP!
Five bright stings in a row—the chest plate, plus all the other pieces I hadn’t even touched. A ring of soldiers ten men deep around us screamed and collapsed. The ones past them tripped and toppled over their bodies. Angry shouts became confused cries. I sank to the street as Soek fell, knocked out by my flash, the skin on his face red. Under the screams, softer sounds reached me, more felt than heard—
Whoomp—whoomp, whoomp whoomp…
More flashes, but not aimed at me. People screamed, and beneath the screams, a chain of soft thuds one right after the other. More flashes. From what?
Who cares? Move!
I drew in Soek’s pain. His face cleared, his eyes opened. I gave him a moment to get his bearings, then yanked him to his feet.
Flashing still rippled away from me like rings on a lake, jumping from soldier to soldier.
And then it was silent.
SIXTEEN
Soek and I clung to each other, swaying from pain and shock.
“Sweet Saea, what did you do?” he asked, gaping at the unconscious soldiers on the street all around us. Hundreds of them. The streets were eerily quiet.
“I have no idea.”
“But you did something.”
The pynvium just, I don’t know, chain flashed? Jumping from piece to piece, each flash triggering the next pynvium piece it touched?
But that was impossible.
Soek wiped the sweat off his upper lip. “What do we do now?”
“I…” I had no answer for that either. Our people were also unconscious, lying next to the soldiers on the street.
We needed to move, to act, to do anything, but I couldn’t stop staring.
“You do realize you took out an army by yourself,” Soek said, awed. “Two if you count ours.”
Not the full army. Our people were starting to move forward, hazy forms at the end of the flash range. But Soek was right. I shouldn’t have been able to flash so much so far. Pynvium had specific triggers to make it flash—it couldn’t do what it just did.
Only it had.
I walked to the commander. Knelt down and rifled through his pockets. I pulled out a pynvium orb the size of a walnut.
“They had pynvium on them.” Personal healing orbs. How many soldiers had them? Officers only, perhaps, but enough orbs to keep triggering from one to the next. They couldn’t have all been for healing or they would have been empty. Were some ca
rrying weapons?
“Nya, you are amazing.”
I didn’t want to be amazing. Who else would want to use me or kill me because of this? I felt more like the abomination the Duke claimed all unusual Takers were. Worse than anything he and Vinnot had tried to make—
He pumped them full of pain to see if they developed unusual abilities…
Wait, is that how it happened? When it happened? Vinnot’s twisted experiments had proven that pain brought out unusual abilities. He’d pumped me full of pain when he’d connected me to that horrible glyphed pynvium device and cycled the pain of dozens and dozens through me for hours.
“We need to get our side awake,” I said, bile stinging the back of my throat. “The main flash was strong enough to keep the soldiers at the center unconscious for a while, but the soldiers on the edges probably won’t be down long.”
Soek held up our still-tied hands. “Be easier with two hands.”
I grabbed my knife and sawed through the cord. Soon as our hands were free, we ran from person to person. Kione was sprawled across a Baseeri soldier, his arms cut and bleeding. I knelt and grabbed his hand, drew in the flashed pain and healed the wounds he’d taken.
“Wha?” He rolled up, his hand flapping around, probably looking for his sword.
“You were knocked out by the flash.”
“What flash?” He got to his feet, looking around at the bodies as if trying to figure out what had happened.
I found Ipstan in the pile of bodies and Soek healed him. It took him a little longer to clear his head; then he gaped at the soldiers around us.
“What happened?”
“I flashed Soek’s armor.” I’d have preferred not to admit that, but trying to hide it would be foolish. People were running toward us even now, and some of them had to have been close enough to see what I’d done.
“You did this?”
“It flashed stronger than I thought it was going to.”
Ipstan got to his feet, excitement on his face. “Get our people moving. We can’t waste this opportunity.”
I winced. I wasn’t an opportunity.
Soek and I ran from person to person, drawing away injuries and flashed pain as fast as we could. He paused every dozen and reached for my hand, healing me and shoving that pain back into his armor.
Slowly the resistance rose. Ipstan shouted orders, sending people among the unconscious soldiers. I kept my gaze on the people who still needed healing, trying not to hear the distinctive sounds of swords into flesh behind me.
It’s war. You have to kill in a war.
Resistance members were looting the pynvium of the blue-boys on the ground. The two other Healers were getting folks back on their feet. Not everyone woke up. Not everyone could be healed.
Some of the faces were red like Soek’s had been, like those in the Duke’s palace had been when I’d flashed the weapon. But they’d been blocks away from the main flash. They shouldn’t have been affected at all, let alone this badly.
Now that Ipstan realized what I had done—what I could do—he’d want to lead every battle with me. Throw me into soldiers and blades and pain. He wouldn’t want me to leave.
The other Healers pushed their pain into Soek’s armor, more for me to flash when the blue-boys regrouped and came at us again. He went with them to treat the last of the wounded.
I dropped onto the front step of an abandoned bakery, too exhausted to take another step. Shame it wasn’t open. Food would be good. Almost as good as sleep. Men and women flowed past me, calling out thanks, cheering, stopping to shake my hand or pat my shoulder.
Aylin found me, Tali trailing behind her.
“Are you okay?” She ran a hand over my armor, but most of the blood had been blasted away in the pain flash. Bits remained, trapped between cuts in the leather.
“Tired.” It was hard to speak, like my tongue was too big for my mouth. “How’s Tali?”
“She’s fine. Well, fine for her.” Aylin cocked her head and looked at me. “You don’t look so good. You don’t have any injuries you forgot to heal, do you?”
“No, I’m—”
“Nya!” Ipstan ran toward me, waving his arms around and giving orders to those he passed on the way. “That was incredible! Do you have any idea what this means? We can beat them, really beat them.”
“A few soldiers maybe,” I said, but my words sounded wrong. “They’re not the problem. We have to prepare for the Duke.”
“I don’t—” Ipstan made a face and turned to Aylin. “What’s wrong with her? Should I call over a Healer?”
Aylin dropped to a knee in front of me and took my face in her hands. “We need to get her…”
Her voice faded away with the rest of the street.
I woke to singing.
At first I thought I’d died and was being welcomed into the afterlife, but the smell of bacon chased that idea away. I doubted they had bacon in the afterlife. Or cinnamon muffins, though the really good ones were at least a possibility.
I sat up. Typical boardinghouse walls surrounded me, a decent-size window—which was open—and a bed that wasn’t very comfortable. Voices drifted in from outside, more prayer songs, saying farewell to those who’d died.
“Feeling better?” Aylin was sitting on one of the small chairs around an even smaller table. A slice of bacon dangled from her fingers. A plate of it sat in front of her.
“I think so.” I stretched, wincing. Last time I’d felt this worn down, I’d spent three days hauling crab traps out of the lake. But it was still better than I’d felt last night.
Last night. Poison and soldiers and too many friends in trouble.
“Where’s Danello? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. About like you, actually.”
Thank the Saints. I wouldn’t stop worrying until I saw for myself, but breakfast would go down a little easier now.
“Hungry?”
“Starving.” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and my toes thumped something warm. Tali squeaked and popped up from the floor like some deranged toy.
“Tali! Oh Saints, I’m sorry.”
She rubbed her shoulder and glared at me, seeming like her old self. The moment was gone just as quickly, but she did turn and look over at Aylin. “Hungry,” she said.
I smiled. Asking for something had to be a good sign. It might not be laughing and talking, but it was a start.
“Plenty of food over here.” Aylin set a muffin in front of a chair. “Come help yourself. Both of you.”
Tali took the muffin but not the chair. She sat under the window, the sunlight warming the back of her neck. My throat caught. I pictured her sitting on the edge of her bed not long ago, dressed in her Healer’s apprentice uniform. A sunbeam had shone over her then too.
“Where’s the enchanter’s book?” I asked, heart racing. If we’d lost it…
Aylin patted something by her feet. “I have it right here, along with the gems and pynvium strips. And that creepy cylinder.” She shuddered. “I’m not letting any of it out of my sight.”
“Thank you.” I took a seat at the table and a handful of bacon. “Any news about the attack?”
She shook her head. “Not much. No one else has tried to cross the bridges. Ipstan’s people have been dealing with the bodies since yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I muttered around a mouthful of bacon. “How long was I asleep?”
“About twenty-two hours. Soek too, though I think he woke up around dawn.”
I glanced at the window. Midmorning light, same as it was yesterday when the attack bells had rung. I’d lost a whole day.
Wind gusted and the singing grew louder for a moment.
“Can we go ask Ipstan if he can arrange a boat to the shore?” Aylin said. “If we leave before lunch, I bet we can still make it to Veilig before Onderaan leaves. We can afford to hire a carriage now.”
I chewed slowly. The sister in me wanted to leave and keep Tali safe, just like I’d promised.
But the daughter—the one whose parents had fought to defend Geveg—wanted to stay. Whatever I’d done yesterday had worked. I still had no idea how I’d done it, but it was a better defense than poisoned spears.
“Onderaan might have already left. It’s been what—five days since we left the farm? Veilig is only a few days from there. Maybe it’s better if we stay for now.”
But you promised to leave.
She shook her head. “I’m sure he hasn’t left yet. It would have taken a while to get everyone settled, and then he’d need supplies and everything.”
“Maybe, but—”
“Ipstan had someone bring us some clean clothes. Was nice of him, wasn’t it?”
She went to a basket by the door and tossed me a faded pair of pants and light shirt. She pulled out two more sets just like it.
“Pretty,” said Tali. “So many flowers.”
Aylin and I turned toward the window. Tali leaned on the windowsill, chin in her hand, staring down at the street.
“What flowers?” I hurried over, eager to see what had brought her a step further out of her shell.
Aylin nudged in next to me. “What is it?”
People lined the street again, just like when Danello was hurt. Some carried wreaths of white violets—symbols of Saint Moed, courage, and protection. Others held candles, flickering in a light sun shower. The fine mist sparkled in the sun as it fell.
“I thought you said Danello was better.”
“He is. They can’t be here for him—he’s not in this building,” Aylin said. “He’s with his da over on Mangrove. Maybe they’re worried about you. You did collapse right in front of a lot of people.”
“We should tell them I’m alive and well then.” Not that I wanted to go out there. It would be worse than the people last night. The ones who’d watched me heal Danello. “We can’t lose if she’s with us.”
What must they think now?
And what will they think when you leave?
I couldn’t face that, not yet. “Right after we finish breakfast.”
I stepped onto the street and people … cheered? I nearly tripped over a pile of wreaths.