by Cheree Alsop
“And how will we do that?”
I slid my sword into Dathien’s ring. “Any way we can.”
Pyth followed me down the hall that led to the Luminos’ quarters. The door to their bunks and the captain’s cabin were closed and a quick check inside showed no Duskies and the Luminos still safe and sleeping. We shut the door and climbed to the deck that was now empty of Nathos and suspiciously bare of Duskies. I leaned against the mast and waited. The swell of nerves that had always risen in my chest at Firen Caves before a Sathen attack made me edgy and I fought to stand still.
We listened to the Nathos turn in for the day, and I wondered briefly how thirty Duskies planned to control over two hundred Luminos and Nathos soldiers. The simple solution would be to wipe out each race when they were at their weakest. My stomach ached from more than just the roll of the waves. Footsteps sounded up the ladder. Pyth and I glanced at each other. I cleared my sword of the ring and leaned against the mast with the blade resting casually in my hand.
The Duskies stopped as soon as they saw us. The leader, Yaden, a big, burly man with dark skin and jagged gray marks along his cheeks stepped forward. “What are you doing here?”
I shrugged. “Just doing our duty.”
The Duskie glared. “You were with the dusk crew. Your shift ended several hours ago.”
I met his gaze. “So did yours.”
His eyes widened and a faint blush of color rose to his cheeks. Then he shook his head and stepped forward. I lifted my blade so that the point touched his chest. He stopped and blinked at me in surprise. I glanced past him at the other Duskies. “You really think this is the right choice to make?”
When no one answered, I lowered my sword and ran a finger on the back edge of the curve. “You might think you’re helping your families, taking a ship, going home conquerors and perhaps what, leading the Duskies in a revolt again the Nathos and Luminos?”
The thick doubt in my voice made several of them drop their eyes. I took a breath to ease the tightness in my chest. “Do you realize what that would do? Do you know how long it took to get the Luminos and Nathos to trust us? And you’re going to throw it all away because one lamak told you it could be better?” Yaden glowered at the name, but it did as I wanted and made several around him step back a bit.
I met the eyes of all who would look at me. “What do you really think would happen when you went home? You really think they’ll let you just sail back in and return to your lives like nothing has happened, or honor you like soldiers returning in glory?” I shook my head. “No, because the men aboard this boat have lives and families waiting for them, too. They deserve to go home just as much as you do.”
No one met my gaze, but I saw hands drop from hilts and more distance form between the Duskies and Yaden. I softened my tone. “I understand what you’ve been through, believe me. We fought together, and I know how brave each and every one of you is. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.” I opened a hand. “Rethink your actions and remember that things in Lumini are changing. Duskies are gaining equality with the Luminos and Nathos. They respect you, and our people are meant to work together. We are stronger as one people. Don’t give them a reason to doubt us. Your families deserve their trust.”
Several Duskies glanced up at me and the humility and embarrassment on their faces lifted my heart. “Go back to your shifts and we’ll forget this ever happened,” I offered. Others looked up and relief and gratitude showed in their eyes.
Yaden stepped forward and grabbed my sword arm with his left hand before I could react. “Things aren’t changing fast enough,” he growled.
I didn’t fight his grip and let my arm go loose. “Be aware, Yaden, that whatever action you take right now will mark the rest your journey one way or the other,” I warned softly.
He frowned as if thinking about my words, then his blade cleared its sheath and he attempted to drive it through my stomach, but I was ready and moved as soon as his weight shifted from his back foot to his front one. I pulled my sword arm back and he stumbled toward me, then I spun and used my body to block his blade, receiving only a shallow cut across the ribs instead of a life-ending wound like he intended.
I stepped back quickly and parried his next attack, cut low across his thigh, then drove the heel of my other hand into his face. He grabbed his nose and backed up with blood dripping through his fingers.
“Give up now and you still have a chance to make this right,” I said, hoping he would listen to reason.
But rage at the humiliation and the way I had thwarted his plan curled in his eyes. He attacked with several powerful downward slashes, one of which caught my left forearm and laid it open to the bone before I blocked his sword to the side, and caught him in the throat with another heel palm. His eyes widened and he gurgled out something ugly before he lunged forward and stabbed me in the shoulder.
A cry of pain escaped my lips and when he pulled the sword back, I spun and sliced across his throat. He staggered back with wide eyes. Blood spilled from the gash and he leaned back against the deck rail, then his feet went out from under him and he fell over backwards into the ocean. I ran to the side in time to see his lifeless eyes stare up at me before a dark creature with smooth black skin and white eyes wrapped four thick tentacles around his body and pulled him under.
I leaned against the rail, my legs suddenly weak. My sword dropped from my fingers and I thought for a minute that I would pitch over after Yaden. Then Pyth’s steady hands caught me and he carried me back to the mast.
“I killed him,” I said, feeling sick and light-headed.
“He would have killed you if you didn’t,” Pyth reasoned, checking my wounds.
Someone put pressure against my shoulder. I tried to pull away, but they held firm, reminding me of Staden. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the mast. “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”
“None of this was supposed to happen,” Pyth said with angry rebuke in his tone toward those around us. “That’s why I chose men I trusted.”
I could feel the remorse in the air without opening my eyes. I took a breath and felt it pull against the shallow slice across my ribs. “Freedom and trust take time to get used to,” I said with the heaviness of experience to my words. “Commander Thursten told me that trust is based on knowledge. With all the separation of races, there hasn’t been much time to really get to know one another. We’re all still learning.”
“We are deeply sorry, Commander Nexa,” a voice said. I opened my eyes to see an older man with gray peppered black hair and a short trimmed beard. “We didn’t think beyond what Yaden told us.” Several Duskies around him nodded.
I winced when Pyth put pressure on my arm and sat up a bit straighter. “You want to do what’s best for your families?” I challenged them. At their answering nods, I gave a small smile. “Then make the use of the trust the Luminos and Nathos have placed in you. Become valuable, become irreplaceable, and they will consider you the equals you already know you are.”
I gestured toward where Yaden had fallen overboard. “Don’t throw all of our hard work away following some overwrought, under-thinking sot. Instead, take charge of your life and give your families the future they deserve.”
The group fell silent for a few moments and I closed my eyes again to calm the nausea rolling in my stomach at the loss of blood, then the older man spoke up again. “What do you want us to do, Commander?”
I thought of a million different ways I could respond to that question and chose the simplest one. “Go to your shifts and earn your forgiveness by fighting with all your heart against the Sathen when we reach Lysus.”
“Yes, Commander,” came replies from all of the men. Several of the voices were sullen, a few reluctant, but most held the gratitude and relief of a released breath and a life that was pushed back from the brink. Footsteps sounded around me until only Pyth and two other Duskies remained.
Red light brushed my eyelids and I opened my eyes to se
e dawn on the horizon. Steps sounded up the ladder and I watched Axon climb up.
“Nexa, what are you-“ Axon froze at the blood on the deck and my clothes. He met my eyes, “What happened?”
“Attempted mutiny,” I replied quietly. Tears stung my eyes and the pain of my wounds didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the pain in my heart, pain I had kept at bay until faced with the one man who could see my soul at a single glance.
Axon knelt without further questions and picked me up in his arms. He spoke quietly to Pyth, then carried me to the edge of the deck where dawn bathed the wood in gold. Axon eased me down and ran his hands softly over my body. Several of his men joined him. My wounds closed with a healing ache until all that was left was the pain of their memory.
I studied my hands and avoided looking at anyone. I had killed a Duskie with my hands. He hadn’t been a merciless Sathen or soldiers trying to destroy someone’s home. He was a Duskie who wanted what he thought was best for his family, and I had killed him.
“Nexa?” Axon’s voice was soft in my ear but I couldn’t respond. I saw only Yaden’s lifeless eyes that had moments before been filled with passion and self-righteous fervor. I saw the same eyes wide as he clutched at his throat, at the wound I had made that tore him from the world.
Axon breathed in a quick breath and picked me up again. He carried me gently down the ladder into the captain’s cabin and laid me on the bed.
“Pyth told me what happened,” he said softly. “You did what you had to do.”
“I know,” I forced out. “But to kill him?”
He sat on the side of the bed and tenderly brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “You did what you had to. You don’t have anything to regret.”
“But I do regret it,” I said. I met his eyes and mine brimmed with tears. “What about his family?”
Axon’s gaze softened in understanding. “They’ll be well cared for, trust me. They won’t want for anything.”
I stared at blood on my fingers and wondered how it had gotten there and whether it was mine or Yaden’s. Axon grabbed a clean cloth and the small bowl of water from the shelf by his bed and started cleaning my hands. I watched as the water in the bowl slowly turned dark and my fingers lightened. When he was through, Axon traced the swirl up my arms, comparing the light patterns on gray skin on my right hand to the dark patterns on light skin on my left. “These are beautiful, you know.”
I frowned at them. “I’ve never seen a Duskie with patterns like mine, or skin that was half and half.”
“I haven’t either,” he admitted. He traced the dividing line down my face and the swirls on my cheeks. “But the effect is very beautiful. I wouldn’t blame the others if they were jealous.”
I looked at him to see if he was joking, but his light blue eyes met mine with stark honesty and compassion. “I should have had you stay back at the palace. You’ve been through so much already.”
I shook my head and sat up. “I don’t know why I’m taking this so hard. It’s just that it’s different this time. He was just doing what he thought was best.”
“We all are,” Axon agreed. “But someone has to draw the line when it endangers others, and unfortunately you had to be the one to do it.” He motioned to my clothes. “Do you want to wash up so you’re more comfortable?”
I looked down at the bloodstains and nodded. He helped me rise from the bed, then left the room to give me some privacy. A few heartbeats later, a knock sounded at the door and someone set a change of clothes on a chair by the door without looking in the room.
I pulled off my torn tan shirt and stared at the dried blood on my shoulder where the sword had stabbed me. The wound had healed with only a slightly raised scar. Another scar showed across my arm, a thin white line where the bone had shown through. I sighed and scrubbed at the blood until my body felt somewhat clean again. I rinsed the rag and hung it on the side of the bowl of brown water, then pulled the clean clothes on and sat back on the bed.
I thought of Axon’s hands, so gentle as they washed the blood from my fingers, and how easy it was to rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat as if it pounded for me. I wondered at the love that burned in my chest like a fire that threatened to consume me. I had never loved anything before, at least anything beyond a little bat I had rescued once from the kitchen and fed rice milk and bits of meat until the guards found it and killed it, then whipped me for wasting food. I didn’t eat for the next few days, afraid they would feed it to me as punishment.
I felt Axon’s kiss on my lips again and again, and wondered that he could love me. His icy blue eyes and kind smile had melted away all of my walls before I knew what was happening; and there was more to it than that. It was the way he looked at me like I was the only person in the world, and when our eyes met, a jolt of lightning ran down my body as though it recognized something in Axon it was drawn to. His touch was so soft when every touch I had felt was in anger, being whipped and slapped and shoved around like something lower than animal, lower than a Duskie. I feared the kindness of his touch almost as much as I longed for it.
A soft knock sounded at the door and when I called an answer, it opened and Pyth stepped in. He looked a little worse for the wear, his dark hair disheveled and green eyes dark and sad. He sighed at seeing me. “I just had to make sure you were alright.”
I nodded. “Thanks to you. I wouldn’t have known what was going on if you hadn’t been there.”
“I should have been the one to fight him,” he said.
I glanced up at his tone and shook my head. “I’m the Commander. It’s my job.”
“You’re also a girl,” Pyth pointed out.
I fought back a sad smile. “I guess no one told Yaden that.”
He sat down on the chair by the door he left open. A sea breeze swept through the room and left the air salty and crisp.
“Do you have a girl back home, Lieutenant?”
He looked up at me and after a minute, nodded. “I do.”
“What’s she like?”
He leaned the chair against the wall and let his head rest back with his eyes closed. He sighed as though letting go of the feeling that he had almost been separated from her for good. “She’s beautiful. Everywhere she goes, the men watch her like they’re waiting for a miracle to happen. She does this thing with her hands.” He made little swirls in the air with his fingers. His smile showed at the corners of his eyes. “It makes the children laugh and they follow her around begging for sweets.” His laugh ended in another sigh. “I think she’d take every one of them home if she could.”
“You’re married?” I hazarded a guess.
He nodded. “We have two sons and another baby on the way.”
I stared at him in surprise. “Aren’t you young to have so many children? You can’t be much older than me.”
“And how old is that?” he asked with a lifted eyebrow.
“How old I am or how old I feel?” I replied with a heavy heart.
He looked me over carefully, his eyes serious. “You act older than you've got to be.”
I took a small breath. “Let’s just say I’ve been through a lot. But not as much as you, apparently.”
He grinned. “We married young, and she wanted to make up for the cruelties of her own parents by having as many babies as she could and raising them the right way.”
At my searching gaze, he continued softly, “She was from Firen Caves.”
The words hit me like a mace. I thought through all of the babies that died of neglect, all the toddlers that didn’t survive to adulthood. I felt the lashes that had made the scars along my back and remembered the times I didn’t think I would make it through. “When, how?” I forced past the surprise.
“A caravan rescued her from the Caves when she was young. She was raised in Lumini, but never forgot what it was like to live there.” He met my eyes. “She is amazed by you, you know.”
I couldn’t meet the admiration on his face and dropped my ga
ze. “I’m just another person fighting for change.” I gestured vaguely to the hallway. “But I wonder if I’ve gone about it the right way.”
He tossed something to me. I caught it by habit. “You are doing it right. I believe in you, and so do the others. This is just a minor setback caused by a confused person. We’ll get past this.”
I looked down at the white and gray stone necklace in my hand. It was the one the woman had given me in the market square. I remembered the expression of hope on her face, the gratitude and appreciation from the other Duskies around me. I sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” I looked at him with a small smile. “There’s no going back now, is there?”
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. He grinned at me and stood up. “I’ll let you rest. We didn’t get much sleep this morning.”
“No, we didn’t,” I agreed. I could already feel the ache in my muscles from the long fight and knew I would be sore when I awoke. He turned to leave. “Lieutenant?”
He paused and looked back at me expectantly.
“I’ll make sure you get back home to your wife and little ones.”
He nodded and a look of gratitude passed through his eyes. “Thank you, Commander.”
Chapter 29
I awoke to find Axon lying on a blanket on the floor next to the bed. My heart turned over at the thought that he watched over me, even while I slept. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and his brow was smooth and unlined with the worries of a ruler in his sleep. I watched him breathe and dream. His eyelids twitched and he let out a rushed breath and moved his feet. I touched his hand and his movement stilled. I caressed the calluses on his palm from years of practicing with a sword and wondered how many times he had defended himself and his loved ones. I traced my own palm and found similar calluses forming there. I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
My stomach growled and I rose and quietly left the room. I went to the galley and picked up a bowl of potato soup and chicken and rice left over from the last feeding frenzy. I didn’t envy the kitchen staff that had to make food for three races on three different schedules, but the two Nathos men in black aprons merely nodded at me and continued cleaning.