by A. G. Henley
I wipe my irritated, running eyes, hesitating. C’mon, Fenn, now or never. Get it over with.
“Kai, there’s something I need to tell you—”
“Don’t bother. I know you heard me talking to Alev last night,” she says. “You were in bed when I got up, then you were in the chair in the front room when I came back in. Wasn’t much of a stretch.”
My face flames hotter. “I’m sorry I eavesdropped. And… I’m sorry about your father. Really sorry.” It’s truer than she could know.
Her body stiffens beside me when I mention him. I tense, too, waiting to get an earful about what a nosy, interfering waste of space I am.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
Wait… no scorn or derision? I rush on, taking a chance.
“Listen—there’s a lot I’m sorry about. I wish I’d been friendlier when we first met. I wish I’d tried harder to get to know you. I was… I was jealous, to tell you the truth. You befriended Peree so quick. I still wasn’t sure how he felt about me, or how I felt about him, and it seemed pretty easy between you two. So I sort of… thought of you as a threat. Which made me keep you at a distance. And, of course, I didn’t know how hard things had been for you. That you’d been Gathered as a girl, or that you lost your father, or that the anuna maybe didn’t treat you all that well after you came back from being with the sick ones.”
Kai’s laugh is short and hard. “Do you know how rare that is for me? To make a friend? At home, they all treated me like some kind of charity case, an escapee from the runa who barely managed to be human again. Poor Kai.” She spits. “But Peree didn’t know all that about me, and even if he did, I thought maybe he wouldn’t mind. He liked a blind girl. He obviously didn’t care that you were less than perfect.”
I wince, but I let it go. Kai is talking—really talking—for once. Her voice speeds up like she’s wanted to get this off her chest for a long time.
“I meant what I told you after the ants attacked. I couldn’t understand why everyone loved you. Peree, Nerang, Kadee, Kora. They all worship at your feet. And for what? You can’t hunt, you can’t track, you can’t fight. You can barely find your way with both hands in front of your face. But everyone seems to hang on your every word and decision, like because you’re Sightless, you know something they don’t.”
I swallow hard. Her words are cruel, but she’s being honest about how she feels. And it’s true that I can’t do any of those things. Half the time, when I’m making decisions, I’m sure they’re the wrong ones.
“I never asked for anyone to follow me.” I fight to keep my voice level, to not sound whiny or defensive. “Except for when I went home and presented Nerang’s offer of living in Koolkuna to my people. But I only wanted them to be safe, not to make decisions for them. I didn’t want to control them.”
Kai slaps the stone wall behind us, startling me. “That. That’s what bothers me the most about you.”
I raise my hands, bewildered. “What?”
“For some reason I can’t figure out, people want to follow you. The anuna even named you Mirii, star, because of it. But you shy away from it. You doubt yourself, and you flounder. Why don’t you just step up, make decisions, and lead like you should?”
Anger flashes through me, a white-hot stab of emotion. “It’s not like I haven’t tried! Every time I do, someone gets hurt or killed! An entire family back home—a man, his partner, and their unborn child—died because of a decision I made. Peree almost died in the caves when I led him in there. Aloe, my mother, was killed when I tried to intervene between my people and Peree’s. Then… then… my brother—” I choke. I can’t say his name. “Even now, I came up with this stupid plan, but it might get all of us killed. Including the children.”
Kai scoffs. “That’s the way it is when you lead. You have to make the hard decisions and hope they’re the right ones. Even I know that, and no one follows me anywhere. And when you fail, you damn well better learn from it, because people are counting on you to get it right the next time.”
She takes a long breath. “Look, I’ve realized—and this isn’t easy for me to admit, believe me—that unlike some, you’re usually thinking about what’s best for other people. I didn’t know that about you before we started chasing the Sisters.”
I blink. She’s praising me now? After all that?
“It actually makes me hate you a little more,” she adds. “Your heart’s in the right place. People want to follow you, but you still throw it away.”
“Throw what away?”
“Power! What else? You have power over your people, my people, Peree. Even the Fire Sisters sense it in you. You have the chance to really lead, to use that power the right way, but you’re scared of it. You’ve got a gift, and you’re wasting it. That’s what disgusts me the most about you.”
My legs give out; I sit hard in the dirt. Is she right? Am I powerful? And am I throwing it away? I think back to when Bear called me an unlit torch. Am I afraid to let myself lead?
You bet I am. Because every time that fire sparked in me, I lost someone I loved.
“I don’t know how to deal with it.” My voice is rough, scratchy with tears I won’t shed. “When my decisions go wrong. When I… hurt people.”
“Oh, get over it,” Kai says. “Don’t you think every honest leader in history has felt that way? Sometimes, their decisions kill a lot more than one or two. But people know that, and they still want to follow them, follow you. Because they also know you want what’s best for them. A leader like that is worth dying for.” She pauses. “Hell, I would follow you if you’d show me you’re willing to lead.”
I push a shaking hand through my hair. Kai’s said too much, given me too much to consider. I might not even live long enough to digest it all.
“Well, that’s it.” She coughs out a breath. “Or that’s most of it, anyway. Not that it matters what I think.”
As she speaks, the horn blows, sharp and loud. The Sisters must know we’re all missing. They’re looking for us.
“That’s our cue,” Kai says. “Let’s go.”
I grab her arm before she can stand.
“I’m glad you told me how you felt. It does matter… to me.”
Kai pauses. “Of course it does. Because the best leaders care, even about the people hardest to care about. Now get off your sappy butt and let’s go burn this place down.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Staying low, Kai and I jog parallel to the Eternal Flames, keeping it to our left as we head for the western wall and the Cloister gate.
The horn blares. Shouting female voices echo from on top of the wall and up the hill toward the heart of the compound, although not very close. The Fire Sisters sound as focused and intense as always, never panicked.
Firelight and shadows dance around us as we run. Kai guides me. The guards atop the wall must be able to see us now. They just don’t seem to be looking down yet. Their words float to my ears.
“What is it?” one Sister yells.
“Something about the Initiates. Be vigilant,” another answers.
My heart speeds up, sending a burst of energy to my legs. At least the voices are coming from farther down the wall, on the other side of the gate, and not from directly above us. Still, the Sisters will be able to reach us quickly enough when they spot us.
“The gate is maybe fifty paces down the wall. Are you ready?” Kai asks.
I am. I think.
We move toward the Flames. They reach high into the air, a roaring, fiery tower of death. I clutch Kai’s arm as we inch closer, not wanting to misjudge the distance.
“As soon as we get the staffs lit, we need to get to the gate fast,” Kai says. “They’ll be able to see us moving with them.”
“Got it.” It’s hard to believe the guards haven’t already seen us.
Dropping her arm, I take a staff in each hand and move a few steps toward the flames. The scalding heat sucks sweat from every pore. My instincts shout at me that I’
m in danger, that I need to retreat. Instead, I pull even closer and thrust the cloth-ended staff into the glaring wall of light, doing my best not to overshoot the mark and push my hand into the fire.
After a few moments, Kai says, “They’re lit. Go!”
Following her flaming staff, I run. It feels like forever before she slows. Every step we take with the torches in hand makes us targets.
“We’re here!” she whispers.
I stop a few paces shy of the light of her torch and find the wooden gate with my hand. The surface is familiar—the rough texture of bark. It’s made from greenheart tree trunks, Peree told me days ago. Greenheart wood contains a lot of sap. When dried out, as this wood surely must be, the sap is incredibly flammable.
Which means it will burn nicely now.
Sap flares, smelling strongly, as I move the lit end of my torch against the wood from spot to spot. I’m not sure how long it will take for the gate to catch fire, but if the interiors of the tree trunks are dry, the burning areas should spread the flames to the rest of the gate.
Hurry, I urge the growing tendrils of flame in front of my face. Hurry, please.
Guards yell out from above. Do they see us? If so, we don’t have much time. But we can’t leave until at least part of the gate is on fire. If the Sisters are able to easily extinguish it, our plan won’t work.
My hands shake, and my limbs twitch with the desire to run, but I force myself to stay calm. This is the key to getting the men in and the children out. Kai and I have to give them that chance.
The gate lights up in patches, the glare hurting my eyes, and I hear the menacing pop and hiss of wood being devoured, fueled by the sap. Smoke drifts to my nose; good, old wood smoke, not the fumes of the Eternal Flames. I step to the side, running my torch along the wood as I go, hoping I can set a few more pockets of dried sap on fire before we have to really run. Pounding feet and shouting voices are coming toward us along the top of the wall now. How long before a spear is sent our way?
“Guards,” I say to Kai.
“I know; we have to go.”
“Have we done enough?” Desperation thickens my voice.
“It’ll have to do. Let’s go. Now!”
Kai tugs on my arm, and I drop the flaming chair leg at the foot of the gate. Hopefully, the burning gate will distract the Sisters for as long as posible. My friends didn’t notice a source of water nearby, so it should take them a while. Ironically, if the Fire Sisters have a weakness, it’s that their home can burn.
A spear thunks into the ground at our feet. My hair rises at the now-familiar sound. More will come.
Kai takes my hand and we sprint, flat out, faster than I have since the night I became the Water Bearer, the night the Scourge first came, the night I met Peree and started the journey to Koolkuna. My feet are all too willing to upend us both. I stay close to her as arrows zip by.
It feels like she veers us away from the light of the Eternal Flames, heading back in the direction of the abandoned stone shelter where we had our talk, but a moment later, she whips us to the left, and we charge up the hill. The blazing light fades behind us as we run. Smoke rushes in and out of my lungs, making me choke, but we can’t stop. We’re too exposed here. We need to get the treed interior of the Cloister, where the children’s compound sits. And avoid guards if we can.
More shouts ring out on both the eastern and western walls. The loudest and most insistent are back by the gate. We crest the hill and keep moving forward. If I had to guess, I’d say we’re back at or near our quarters. That seemed to be the direction we were running.
Kai suddenly grabs me, slapping a hand over my mouth.
“Shh.”
I freeze beside her. A few moments later, footsteps rush by, heading toward the gate. Probably Sisters going to fight the fire.
My thoughts travel to Amarina and Frost. Did they make it to the damaged section of wall? Have the men gotten over? Are they meeting any resistance? My gut clenches with the thought. Peree and the others will be vulnerable while climbing. Our diversion at the gate has to attract enough guards to keep the focus there, and not on them. We’ll have no way to know if they made it until we get to the children’s compound.
“I think we can go again,” Kai says.
As I press off the wall, I hear a familiar, hated sound: the scratchings and rustlings of the wasp enclosure at night. Even after the sun sets and the majority of the insects go dormant, there’s that ominous noise. I imagine the thousands of tiny bodies shifting and moving inside their nests. During the day, the buzzing is enough to drive me crazy. It’s bad, but something about this sound is especially revolting.
I pause.
“Should we open it?” I say. “In all the commotion, the Sisters might not notice, and at first light, the wasps will find their way out. It could take years for them to collect this many insects again.”
Even if we fail tonight, we can take the sting, so to speak, out of the Sisters.
“Let’s do it,” Kai says.
“Carefully,” I add.
“I’m not stupid, Fenn.”
The usual scorn in her voice is missing. Instead, she sounds like she’s teasing—something I’ve heard her do with Peree, but never with me. A smile plays on my lips.
We hurry to the enclosure. We don’t have time for this, but it feels important. A small victory over the Sisters, even if this one win is all we get.
“Do you see a door?” I ask Kai. The sounds of the wasps shifting around in their nests make my own skin crawl.
“Yeah, it’s here.”
She lifts my hand, putting it on some kind of latch, and, together, we tug the door open. We back away.
“Stop there!” a stern voice calls.
Deliberate footsteps move closer. A Sister has found us.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Get behind me,” Kai says.
I do what she says. We can’t let ourselves be taken, and I think I’ve adequately proven my worthlessness in a fight. Even with Grimma’s training, I’m still more of a danger to myself than anyone else. I ready myself anyway, holding the staff lightly in my palm, balancing it as Grimma taught me. It feels like a betrayal of sorts to use the skills she gave me against one of her own.
Uncertainty swirls through me. Moray tells me I care too much; Kai tells me I’m not embracing the power that my caring gives me. Who’s right?
Kai and the guard seem to circle each other, their feet sliding against the ground. Why hasn’t the Sister called for help? It hits me: she doesn’t need to. She must be confident that she can overpower two bumbling Initiates, especially a Sightless one. And she’s probably right.
There’s a burst of sound: a few quick footsteps, a sharp crack, and a grunt. And just like that, Kai goes down.
I wince. At least for us, the attempt to rescue the children is over. Probably our lives, too. For the children’s sake, I pray the others have better luck. I let my staff drop and wait, defeated.
“What are you doing? Pick up your weapon. We need to move.”
My mouth drops open. “Kai?”
“Yeah, what did you think?”
“That the Sister beat you, of course!”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. C’mon.”
I search on the ground for my staff, and then jog to follow her. “But… in training, you never seemed like you—”
“Knew how to fight? I was faking it. I didn’t want Grimma or the other Sisters to know my skill level. As soon as I returned to Koolkuna from the Cloister as a girl, I continued to train with weapons. Staff, spear, knife. The only one I didn’t know how to use well was a bow and arrow. That’s why I asked Peree to work with me. I never wanted to let myself be caught weak and helpless like that again.”
Shame washes over me. I was envious of the time Kai and Peree spent together practicing archery. Understandably, Kai wanted to be able to protect herself after what happened to her as a girl. Sure, she made no secret that she liked spending t
ime with him, but I can’t blame her for that. I like spending time with him, too.
We enter the forested area in the middle of the Cloister that shelters the Sisters’ homes and the children’s compound. I get hints of where we are from the rustling leaves overhead, the darkness cast by the tree branches, the slope of the ground we’ve now traveled for days. Sound is muffled here. A whiff of soap tells me the laundry is somewhere to our left.
The horn has stopped, and the shouting has died down. In fact, it’s growing ominously quiet inside the Cloister. What’s happening?
Kai pulls me quickly behind a dark, shadowy tree. I press myself against the trunk, trapping the staff and my shaking hands against it. Someone runs by, this time heading in the same direction we are. That’s not good. We need the Sisters to be pulled away from the children, not toward them. As the footsteps fade, we go forward again, moving more slowly, ducking in and out of doorways of shelters when we hear noises. No other Sisters materialize.
“The children’s compound is here,” Kai says after another minute. “Looks quiet for now.”
I listen hard. “Guards?”
“I don’t see any.” She sounds uneasy.
I am, too. There should be a few, at least. We thought we might have to fight our way through a crowd of them once the alarm sounded. Where are the Sisters? They can’t all be at the gate.
Kai in the lead, we start moving again, still among the trees. If Amarina, Frost, and the men are here, we need to find them.
In the quiet, a bird calls. A part of my brain catalogues it as a thrush. Hold on… thrush usually sing in the morning, a melodic section of the dawn chorus. It’s nowhere near dawn.
A thrush.
“Peree’s here!” I whisper.
“Where? How do you know?”
“That bird call… it’s him.” We hear the sound again.
“The other side of the compound.” She takes my arm, leading me through the gloom.
My body tingles, anticipating being with Peree again, but the utter silence from the children’s compound to our right distracts me. The Teachers and whatever guards are normally here must have heard the horn. What are they doing in there? Is this their protocol? Stay silent and hope the threat passes?