I settled with tipping my chin up. "Yes. We're attacking tomorrow. We're leaving in the afternoon, and it won't take us more than hours to get there. Cole, you can't tell anyone this."
"This isn't fair," he said dejectedly. "You should have told me sooner—"
"You're impossibly privileged that I'm telling you now. Do you think I've told anyone else? I haven't. You can't tell anyone, Cole."
He groaned. "I won't. Stop saying that. I'm not stupid."
I twisted my lips into a frown. "You're perfectly cruel when it comes to fighting, Cole. I don't feel much like a princess at all now."
Cole's head jerked up. His hands were on his hips. I couldn't see his eyes at all in the light of my room. I was surprised to feel a tear slide down my cheek. His hands dropped loose to his sides. I brought my fingers up to wipe it off as quick as I could, then turned around where I couldn't see him any longer.
I blinked until my eyes were clear of tears, working at the same time to still my breathing. "This doesn't have anything to do with you," I said, "It's just battles. It's not as if they're easy to have hanging in front of you. Maybe you've fought in some. But they couldn't have been the same as fighting a city as large as Karatel. I'm not like Luffie, and I don't like battles at all, but you're not making it any easier telling me how outnumbered we'll be. As if I'm not already anxious enough. Don't worry; we'll take back Karatel, then you'll get your turn to fight Akadia. I'm sorry you can't go, but I promise that we'll win."
I had settled my breathing. Now I was trying not to think of Cole's lost loved one; who my mind had run away and decided by now had been a sweet and beautiful woman that he'd adored, or if not that—perhaps a younger sister. Someone that he would have taken care of, being so tall, and strong, and capable.
I heard the wood creak as he stepped up behind me; I could tell his breathing.
"You have to let me go," he said, his voice carefully soft, but still ragged. "Please let me go, princess."
"I can't," I told him honestly. "It's already planned out. And you can't fly with me. Luffie will need her strength for the battle. I'm sorry."
"I can take a boat," he offered, just as carefully.
I shook my head. "It won't reach in time. Even if you could go straight to Karatel."
"Byako then."
"That'll be even longer. The White Tigers are fighting with us, but they've already gone on to Selket... Even if you left tonight, you'd never get to Karatel in time. Not even if you could find a horse, which I haven't seen any of in Byako, anyways. I really am sorry, but you'll just have to trust that—"
"Wait," Cole said. Then I felt his hands on my shoulders, and he spun me around to face him, energy running through his fingertips. "Are you saying that I can fight with you if I can get there in time?"
I frowned. I hadn't even thought about this. I wasn't sure of the answer to that all. Probably not, not unless I got permission from one of the first-order Warriors, or maybe Lucian. But that simply didn't matter... "Cole, there's just no way that—"
"If I can get to Selket before the Byakoans leave," he interrupted, "Can I go with them? Will they get to Karatel at the same time as you?"
"Yes, we're meeting up out in the plains," I answered, "but Cole—"
I didn't get to finish. He took one last long look at me, up and down—easy to see now that he was close—then he let go of me to make for the door.
"Cole," I repeated, "You'll never make it there!"
But he didn't stop. He just took off into the wind.
I huffed a heavy sigh of exasperation, sure that I had gone about everything all wrong. Sure that Cole cared much too deliriously much for taking his revenge on Akadia. Even so much that that he imagined he could accomplish the impossible.
And yet, I thought of my previous conclusions of him. That he could be given any sort of obstacle and climb it, or any strange weapon and wield it. I actually wondered for a moment if he could make it there; I didn't know how but he'd seemed so certain after all...
I'd barely thought this, when suddenly my eyes widened; I drank in a breath of air as if coming up from water. Then I shook myself clear. I went to grab for the sword sitting out beside my bed, then raced out into the cold wind.
"Cole!" I called again, looking in both directions. I pressed close to the rail and looked every way I could see. "Cole!"
"I'm here," he answered back, shouting from a bridge a level down. He'd stopped and he was looking up at me, but his feet were placed so that I didn't think that he would wait for long.
He hadn't even made it as far as I'd expected he would have, yet I was overwhelmed with the sensation once again that he might actually succeed reaching Karatel in time.
"You'll need this when you get to Selket," I said, holding up my sword, then I tossed it down to him. He barely caught it in time, seeming surprised as he looked back up at me. "If you reach the Byakoans before they leave. Show it to one of their officers. They'll know I sent you. Otherwise they won't let you fight."
Cole looked back down at the sword. I thought in my mind that I must have been truly crazy. Then he looked back up at me and gave a nod—before gripping the sword tight and making off back past the bridge.
I watched while he disappeared into darkness—disordered by the fierce wind; holding tight to the railing. And all I could think was that it was the sort of blackness that Cyric never would have raced into.
Chapter Twelve
CYRIC:
I should have been happy.
I should have been really happy.
I'd reached Byako only hours after I set out to. I'd found Tosch even sooner, waiting for me before the sun had even risen. We'd arrived in Selket long before the White Tigers meant to leave it. I'd shown their leaders Ellia's sword—which I'd discovered then was a pledge from the Tigers. I'd used the uncommonly fortunate position to give them last minute information "from the Yanartians" on the city, its defenses, and the usual tactics of its commander: Scanth. I'd gone to Karatel with them. I'd found Ellia just as I'd meant to. We'd fought. We'd won. No one had ever found out about what I'd told the Byakoans, because they'd taken credit for it from the start. I'd kept Ellia safe. Scanth had been captured. Nain had his home back.
Lucian and Estrid and all of Ellia's friends hadn't minded that I was at the battle. And once we'd returned to Yanartas—the days following afterwards—they'd welcomed and even encouraged me to continue training with Ellia. She'd wanted me to as well and so I had, much more often now in the upper levels than the lower ones.
Most of the Byakoans had stayed in Karatel after the victory, to hold it. Along with many of the Selkians. The plan went that slowly Yanartians would be ferried there, as it was to become the new front for the attack against Akadia; just as Lox had used it to strike at the eastern kingdoms.
I should have been happy.
I should have been really happy.
But I wasn't.
I stood on one of the Warrior's high training platforms. It was only just breaking into dawn, but I hadn't been able to sleep, so I'd come up early for the training I'd do with Ellia later. I was alone on the platform, and the sky around was misty and grey, and everything was silent. But I was interrupting it every so often with the loud thud of my knives stabbing into their target.
A man could only be expected to lie on his bed in the dark with nothing but his own imagination to keep him company for so long. And he could only pretend that there was nothing bothering him for so many hours in a day.
Throwing knives helped.
And so I did, even going so far (when I heard the distant call of a chimera that sent my muscles cringing) as to think on Amalia, and what there was that I could do as Cole to make any sort of anything up to her.
I was feeling settled enough before long, but that stopped the second I turned around—having just plucked the knives from my target—and saw Gael standing across from me on the platform.
The first time I'd seen him since the battle at Karatel.
The knives in my hands—they were tempting, yeah? Cyric, if not Cole, wouldn't have thought twice about it....
"You're here early," Gael greeted pleasantly. Hands in his pockets. Expression easy. Thick hair tousled. "Cole, right?" he added, stepping forward. "You train with Ellia all the time."
Ellia. Right; Ellia. So that's what he calls her. Not princess, but Ellia. That's fine.
I didn't reply. I just walked my paces forward, then turned, facing back towards my target. But Gael didn't get the hint. He stopped up beside me—into my line of sight.
"I saw you fighting in Karatel," he went on, "You're very good. I meant to introduce myself properly afterwards. I'm Gael, second-ranked of the second-order."
He stretched his hand out. I looked at it. I thought about seeing it held out in front of Ellia the night he'd come to take her from the palace. I thought about the urgency with which he'd spoken to her, and what I'd easily gleaned from it—even back then; when I'd never gleaned much from anything, ever. —As if his behavior the morning I'd first come to the top of the complex hadn't been obvious enough. But just in case it wasn't, I thought about how unlikely it was that any man wouldn't fall in love with Ellia; let alone one that got to see into her thoughts.
"I know who you are," I told him, going on to throw my knives, then cursing myself right away, thinking how he might just as well show anything I did to Ellia. I glanced at him, then held up my hand, palm-flat. "Sorry, I don't usually do handshakes," I explained. Then I went back to my throwing, not giving him more than a second to examine the scars. He didn't need to anyways; it wasn't as if he didn't know about them, everyone did. They were always the first thing people noticed; I'd learned that much.
"Right, that's fine," he said. "I should have guessed that."
He got quiet. I moved back to ignoring him, tossing my knives.
"So, you're from Kanth..." he broached.
"Are you trying to start a conversation with me?" I asked, freezing to turn on him.
Gael, with his thick hair, flashed a white-toothed smile at me. "I was."
"Is there a reason that we should talk?" I replied.
Gael narrowed his eyes, fully dark for a moment, then he tipped his head up, crossing his arms. "Ellia has you training with her. She lets you around her chimera. She even made a way for you to come with us to fight in Karatel. You're very lucky; these things aren't usual for her."
Should I reply that I might have preferred not to have gone to Karatel at all than learn what I had there? It had been just before the battle, on the plains. I'd been feeling pretty good because I'd just heard the Byakoans bragging to the Yanartians about how they'd already learned everything I'd told them about Karatel—and all in such a way, that the Yanartians never suspected it as anything more than posturing over the information. Also, Ellia was clearly pleased that I was there. She kept smiling when I looked at her, and when she thought I wasn't, she watched me with wide eyes that said she still couldn't believe I had made it to Selket in time.
I'd stopped feeling so good, though, when it had become apparent that Gael (rescue Ellia from Akadia, Gael) was going to be Ellia's partner for the battle. —which, it seemed, he always was and had been through the eastern wars.
And the last of my good feeling had vanished completely when it had become apparent that Luffie and Gael's brown-streaked chimera, Yurei, were something rather more friends.
All the things I'd heard over the past weeks, about Tris and Arrin (Lucian and Estrid's chimera) and all the other chimera couples, had come crashing back into my mind then. One after another, topped off with the worst of all which I'd heard from Ellia's own lips. That paired off chimera's minds were connected; so a Warrior could show their chimera something, and their chimera could show their mate, and then that chimera could show their Warrior, thus linking the two Warriors together. Which was something that Gael and Ellia had used to great effect in the battle of Karatel, and I myself had been privileged to witness.
So here was second-ranked, second-order Gael coming to have a friendly conversation with me while I was holding so many knives, and I was supposed to resist putting them to use—even knowing that he had seen Ellia's thoughts.
That he had seen things that I would never see about Ellia, my Ellia. And what else? That he would continue to see them. Sure, Ellia had told me that the other Warrior could only ever see what you meant for them too. But that was hardly enough to console me. I wasn't sure that any penalty I'd received yet for not coming to Yanartas when I should have was worse than this. And yet it wasn't something that I could have stopped if I had come. It wasn't as if I ever would have become a Cirali Warrior. And with Luffie being so desirable and everything, it had been bound to happen.
It just was. And it would continue. And I had no say about it; I couldn't do anything.
Not even show that it bothered me.
My grip had grown painfully tight on my knife staring at him, but it gave way. "What's that have to do with us talking?" I asked.
"I've just known her for a long time," Gael put forward, "I'd just like to know who she—"
"Look, you might have a lot of influence around these parts. You might even have a lot of pull with Ellia. But as for me, I keep my business my own. Before you start interrogating whether I'm safe or not, try putting the question towards your own person."
"Excuse me."
I forgot my knives. I tossed them off into a crate. "You heard me."
"You think I don't take the princess's safety to the most careful extreme?"
"I think I saw the battle, and if I were you, I—"
He gaped, staring.
I studied the face. He was younger than myself, by a ways, I wasn't sure how many years—maybe only months, but all things about his expression, if not his tact in battle, told me: he was just a kid, much too alike to me, and we weren't going to get anywhere by this. Nowhere, but further argument, which would end in distressing Ellia.
"Never mind," I spared.
I went to pluck the last of the knives, and put them away; perhaps I would go to the lower platforms today. I had a new plan: avoid Gael, second ranked, of the second order entirely.
"Never mind?" he asked, "That's it. But I wasn't done."
"I am."
"I'd rather have this matter sorted. If you've a problem with me, state its nature. We don't take kindly to dramatizing things here in Yanartas."
I couldn't help but laugh at that one, but I supposed as a Shaundakulian, I had no room to talk.
"If you'll just explain it..." he began.
"I'm no good at explaining."
"Well, neither am I," he confessed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't settle—"
And then he trailed off suddenly. He'd sort of been chasing me, as I'd headed away—meaning to exit the platform entirely. My back was turned to him, one foot nearly prepped to mount the bridge, when he said, "Perhaps we could settle things, by a different route."
There was something about his tone, that gave me the pause. Something that sparked the fire in my blood a little. I turned my head, just enough, and asked, "What do you mean by that?"
"Well, the neither of us, like talking, right?"
Then I heard something fall to the wood behind me. I turned full around. It was a sword. Gael held out another blade. He asked, "Winner could be considered the argument's victor? No need to trouble with words."
No need for words, hunh? That much I could understand. I leaned over and took the weapon. Gael of the second rank, of the second-order, was about to find out what it meant to challenge Cyric Dracla.
ELLIA:
Each morning when I woke up, the first thing that I thought of was Kraehe. And I would make a silent petition for her well-being, as I had done in the granted temple on Byako. This was since, when I first came back to consciousness, mine and Luffie's minds were at their most disconnected, and while she never expressed any distress over the fact that there was another granted animal living to which I was already
bonded, I didn't like to think on Kraehe where she could hear.
It was too strange. Painful. Unheard of. Only the evilest sorts in our histories had ever attempted to bond with more than one granted animal, and even fewer out of them had succeeded.
But this was not something I concentrated long on, since there was nothing to be done about it. By the time I had risen out of bed, and dressed into my Warrior's garb, it was distant in my mind, whereas Luffie's consciousness was trickling in.
I was surprised to find her thoughts fully occupied, and likewise surprised to find them closed off to me. But then, this happened sometimes since she'd settled herself on choosing Yurei. I'd been glad for that event, because it had meant the end of all of her being chased, at a time when I couldn't bear well thinking on such things. It had also been a distraction for her, from my own state, which was persisting then in making her sad.
I was also glad of course, because Yurei was such a good match for her. Luffie was wild, and often moody; she pretended not to care about things, but then she always did, maybe too much. Yurei was solid and steady. He appreciated her playful flaunting, but didn't get jealous when others did as well. And he could match her at least in battle, speed, and was even far more impressive in fire-breathing—which had been the thing to catch her interest in the first place.
As often as she'd fallen in love with one chimera or another during a battle, it really hadn't surprised me that she wound up choosing the one she fought most often with. And that was a great advantage as well. I hadn't been forced to switch battle partners. I hadn't been forced to become attached to some Warrior that I hardly knew. Gael and I had already been well-acquainted, if not friendly. And even better, Gael was the type to be just as adept at giving women their space as Yurei was at giving Luffie hers.
I scoffed to myself as I exited my cabin into the bright silver cold.
At least he was when I wasn't considering going off to Akadia to give myself up to Lox. Only that had probably been Luffie's fault; she'd been angry enough with me to actually ask Yurei to warn him.
The first thing I noticed when I left my room, was that the complex wasn't as crowded as it normally would be at this time of day. Then, before I'd even considered another thing about it, Luffie's mind caught mine. She wasn't busy as I'd thought she'd been, because she was fit to warn me not to wonder about the un-crowded complex, and not to head off for training yet either, because I wouldn't like what there was to see there. She accomplished this by showing me a slew of images of things I didn't like: unkempt hair, rain, prickered plants, battles. On this last one, she grew a little too excited herself, giving me pause to realize that she was rather enjoying whatever she'd decided I wouldn't.
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