Heroes' Reward

by Moira J. Moore

  “In case your cast fails for some reason. If they can see us, we want them to think they’re being attacked by their own people. Add to the confusion.”

  I assumed the uniforms had been taken from Gifford’s dead. Just another disturbing element to this whole affair.

  But the only thing I said was, “Good luck,” before casting the spell.

  Risa and her cohorts weren’t the only soldiers present. There were two dozen others to help fight off any of Gifford’s people, should they follow ours back to us. There were casters and healers and Pairs, including the Premier Pair and Taro and me.

  Then Aryne just showed up out of nowhere, Druce silently following behind, looking more than a little beleaguered.

  “Your presence isn’t needed,” Sato informed them.

  “I disagree,” Aryne said formally.

  “You can’t cast, heal, or channel effectively.”

  Well, that was brutal. True, though.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m useless.”

  “We can’t have anyone distracted because they’re trying to watch over you.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I can take care of myself.”

  The Commissioner gave her a look, then rolled his eyes and said to Sato, “I recommend we get started.”

  In other words, Aryne’s presence or absence was relatively unimportant. Aryne knew this was what he meant, of course. She crossed her arms and grinned triumphantly.

  Sato hid his irritation at being overruled. He told the Commissioner, “Proceed.”

  The Commissioner nodded at me. “If you would, Shield Mallorough.”

  “Are you ready?” I asked Taro.

  “Of course.”

  I licked down a palmful of kyrra powder. I placed four candles on the ground, the corners of a square, grinding the bottoms into the soil to keep the candles standing. I placed the two fans within the square, opened to their full width. I put the moss in my mouth and chewed it fifteen times before swallowing. Its flavour combined with that of the kyrra powder almost made me gag. Drinking the water made me feel a little better.

  “Sharpen my mind. Narrow my focus.”

  With my fifth candle, I lit one of the candles in the ground.

  “Winds of the north, bide by me.”

  I lit a second candle.

  “Winds of the south, bide by me.”

  A third candle.

  “Winds of the east, bide by me.”

  And the last.

  “Winds of the west, bide by me.”

  I felt the buzzing the spell taking effect and wind against my face. I picked up the fans, one in each hand. Taro lowered his shields and let the forces flow through him.

  This particular cast was meant to bring only wind, but for some reason, the wind brought fog with it. It had always been so. I had no idea why. Sometimes spells didn’t make sense.

  I raised the fans, fighting through the wind that strove to keep them down.

  “Bide by me, winds of all.”

  I waved the fans through the air, curving them up in an arc, then down to my right, and to my left. I moved the wind with them.

  Fog swirled around me, threaded with translucent strings of blue. It surrounded all of our people, thick and white against the dark night air, heavy with cool moisture.

  I waved the wind towards the northeast, where Gifford’s forces had settled.

  “Bide by me, winds of all.”

  I assumed Risa and her comrades left.

  “Bide by me, winds of all.”

  The first difficulty that hit me was my hands tiring, which I hadn’t anticipated. The weight of the fans had seemed insignificant when I’d started, but they seemed to grow heavier as time went on.

  “Bide by me, winds of all.”

  The scraping of the wind against my skin increased until it felt like it was burning.

  “Bide by me, winds of all.”

  The wind began to creep into my mind, raking against the back of my eyes. It was hard to keep the words and the movements going.

  Don’t let go.

  “Bide by me, winds of all.”

  I could hear it. Wailing filled my ears. It hurt.

  Don’t let go.

  It was utterly unnatural.

  And like before, my stomach flipped over. From the exclamations I heard, those around me felt equally queasy and disoriented.

  And then, it was everything. It was all I could hear. All I could feel. All I could think. Dark time passed.

  It took me a while to realise I was being shaken. Hard. An earthquake?

  “Stop,” Taro said into my ear as he raised his shields.

  So I stopped. The fog disappeared immediately.

  I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “It’s done?” I asked. “Did it work?”

  “We don’t know,” said Sato. He was standing right beside me. “We had to stop you. No one could bear it anymore.”

  “People were starting to vomit,” Taro added.

  “Oh.” Disappointing. “Sorry.”

  “I think it was good enough,” the Commissioner told me. “They’ve had a couple of hours.”

  So we waited.

  And I, ringing with the effects of the kyrra powder, paced. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t keep still.

  I couldn’t help talking, either. “There are too many people in Gifford’s camp,” I said. “Too many of them. I couldn’t have surrounded all of them. Risa’s going to be killed. I should do it again. So what if people can’t bear it? We’ve been pushing through rain and hunger. What’s a little fog?”

  “We need some water here,” Taro ordered.

  “What if they realise it’s a cast and figure out how to do it?”

  “You found it in a book written by the First Landed and translated by – ”

  I spoke over him. “Reid had to give Gifford a copy of his notes.”

  “Water!” Taro demanded.

  “Risa’s going to die.”

  “Shut her up!” I heard the Commissioner snap.

  How dare he?

  The last time I had been in such a state, Taro had just let me walk around and ramble. He hadn’t tried to restrain me. This time, he put his arm around my shoulders, which help me calm a little. He put a mug of water to my lips and I took a sip, which soothed my thirst a bit but didn’t help my mind stop whirling.

  “Hold on to me,” said Taro. “Listen to me. Breathe. In slowly, out slowly.”

  It was easier to breathe following his instructions. In slowly, out slowly.

  My mind narrowed to his voice, his touch, and my breathing.

  It worked, sort of. Yet when my thoughts finally settled a little and I became aware of what was going on around me, I was still experiencing an unpleasant reaction. It felt as though my brain was vibrating, and I couldn’t stop squirming.

  What if none of them came back? What if we’d accomplished nothing more than giving Green a useful tactic and she could do the same thing to us, only better, because she had more people? What would we do then? How many more ideas could we be expected to come up with?

  Suddenly I heard laughter and shouts. The soldiers around us drew their swords.

  “Show yourselves,” the Commissioner ordered tersely.

  They all appeared, rubbing the powder off their brows. Twenty figures. Some were injured, needing help to walk, but everyone who had been sent out was alive, and Risa appeared perfectly fine.

  Two men were dragging along the ground a bundle of about six feet in length. It was wriggling. “Sir!” one of them called out. “We’ve got the Emperor!”

  My jaw dropped.

  Abduction hadn’t been part of the plan, but hey, initiative was great.

  The Commissioner and the Premier Pair trotted over to the two soldiers. The Commissioner knelt and pulled the canvas free. A moment or two later, the Emperor started shouting.

  “You will all be executed! All of you! Your families! Everyone you love! There will be no hangings for you, but whips a
nd knives!”

  I covered my mouth with my hand. We had the Emperor. I had a hard time believing it. That would change everything, wouldn’t it?

  “What happened?” the Commissioner asked.

  “It was brilliant!” The soldier’s grin was wide with triumph. “We were able to walk right up to their tents and attack. Our rapiers could be seen, but that just seemed to frighten them more. Most of them just screamed and ran away. Only they didn’t know where to go, because we were able to run circles around them, hit them from different directions.”

  “And the Emperor?”

  “He was cowering in his tent. There were two idiots standing in front, barely holding themselves together. They couldn’t see our people, of course. Calley just yelled at them, a beautiful high pitched scream, and that was enough to send them running off. No one came back, even when we collapsed the tent to drag the Emperor here.”

  Had they really been that disoriented and panicked, or had they just tossed aside their loyalty?

  “What about Green?” the Commissioner asked. “Why didn’t you take her, too?”

  “She wasn’t there.”

  The Emperor was still shouting threats, indignant and astounded. Not afraid, it seemed. A private laughed and kicked him. The Commission cuffed the private up the back of his head. “None of that,” he snapped. “We’re better than he is.”

  Browne walked up to me. “You look terrible.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You should get some sleep.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “I won’t be able to sleep for hours, with all the kyrra powder I took.”

  “Still, we should get out of everyone’s way,” said Taro.

  “Our tent is too small to pace in,” I complained.

  “People will get nervous seeing you fidget. You’ve done your bit, it’s time to let everyone else do theirs.”

  I let Taro prod me back into our tent, but it was awful being confined when all I wanted to do was move. It took hours for me to calm down enough to sleep.

  Then I just dropped.

  It was the early afternoon before I woke, starving and thirsty. Taro had lingered with me, and as soon as I had washed up, we headed for the mess tent.

  The camp seemed disorganized. No one was drilling or performing any kind of chores. There was a sense of excitement, and a lot of talking. And laughter. There hadn’t been much of that, the past great while.

  We were stopped by a young private and told that the Commissioner wanted us in his pavilion. I held in a sigh. I wanted to be left alone for a while.

  The Premier Pair and a handful of soldiers were waiting with the Commissioner.

  “Good afternoon, Shield Mallorough,” Sato greeted me. “I hope you’re well rested.”

  So now I felt guilty. I’d been sleeping while everyone else, from the looks of it, had been running around doing useful things.

  “Green has taken the last of the Imperial forces and retreated,” the Commissioner told us. “From what we can determine, she plans to return to Erstwhile.”

  I stared at him. “She’s leaving Gifford?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Seriously, she’s not going to try to get him back?”

  “It doesn’t look like it.”

  I couldn’t wrap my head around it. This was insane. Her Emperor, her partner, her fiancé, had been captured by the enemy, and she just deserted him? What kind of person did that? “What’s Gifford’s reaction to this?”

  “We haven’t told him yet.”

  “We’ve decided,” said Sato, “to have you and Source Karish with us when we speak with Gifford. We have questions for him. Given your time in his presence, we think you might be able to provide us with unique insight.”

  It was petty of me, but I anticipated enjoying watching Gifford learn he’d been betrayed by someone he’d trusted more than anyone else. He’d betrayed so many others, so many who had sworn loyalty to him. He’d been vicious. He deserved to be abandoned.

  The Emperor had been put in a small tent under guard, and we all crowded into it.

  He was asleep when we entered, curled up on the floor with his hands and ankles in thick shackles. There were bruises on his face. I hoped they were the result of his being dragged over the ground, not deliberate abuse.

  I didn’t understand why I cared. So many people had been killed on his orders. Why should it matter to me, what was done to him now?

  Because I wanted our people to be better than his.

  He didn’t look well: pale and thin, with deep dark circles under his eyes.

  The soldier standing over him knelt briefly and shook his shoulder roughly. “Up!” he ordered.

  Gifford jerked awake. The soldier dragged him to his feet and kept him upright when he almost stumbled.

  It took a few moments for him to rouse completely, and then to recollect where he was. His gaze immediately settled on Taro. “How dare you!” he hissed. “You swore an oath!”

  That he chose Taro as his first target was interesting. Surely he understood that it was either the Commissioner or the Premier Pair who were in charge?

  Taro responded without hesitation. “An oath I was forced to give. I don’t need to honour it.”

  “You don’t decide whether your oaths are to be honoured!”

  Taro shrugged.

  Gifford was about to say something else, perhaps make another accusation, but the Commissioner cut him off. “Lady Green has deserted you,” he announced bluntly. “She has taken your surviving forces and gone back to Erstwhile. You’re alone here.”

  Gifford snorted derisively. He didn’t believe it.

  Well, that was anti-climactic.

  “We have spies among your troops. We always have. They’ve reported to us Green’s movements.”

  “You will release Us immediately,” Gifford countered. “Immediately, and We will spare your lives.”

  I didn’t think for a moment that he wouldn’t kill everyone who’d opposed him.

  “You’d spare no one’s life,” said the Commissioner. “You’ve demonstrated for years that you have no respect for the lives of others, for laws or customs. Your reign has been nothing but bloodshed. We won’t allow it to continue.”

  Gifford laughed. “You are delusional. You can’t remove Us from Our throne.”

  “You’re already removed. There are no thrones here.”

  “Our people will slaughter you.”

  “Your people are running like the cowards they are.”

  Gifford didn’t say anything to that. He just stood there and glowered, his head held high.

  In spite of myself, I was impressed. I had expected him to get all hysterical. Instead, chained up in the middle of the enemy camp, he was calm. Calmer than I would have been.

  After a long moment, the Commissioner said, “You’ve had a difficult time. Perhaps our questions can wait.”

  What? Was the Commissioner conceding? So easily?

  “Time will make no difference,” said Gifford. “You will live only if you release Us immediately.”

  The Commissioner bowed slightly. “Have a pleasant day.”

  That was it?

  We followed the Commissioner out of the tent. “Let me know if he changes his mind,” he ordered one of the soldiers guarding the tent. “Or if he talks at all.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’d ask that no one speak to the Emperor without my knowledge,” the Commissioner said to the rest of us.

  We all murmured our agreement. I had no interest in speaking with the Emperor ever again.

  “May we know your plan?” Sato asked.

  “We’ll wait a bit. If there’s no attempt by Green to get him back, his spirits will plummet. And he’s not well. It shouldn’t take much to render him malleable.”

  And that seemed to be the end of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Early the next day, the Commissioner sent word that he wanted Taro and me to attend at the Emperor’s tent.<
br />
  I could hear the Emperor long before I arrived. He’d lost his serenity and resumed his threats. They were the same threats he’d used before, mingled with furious complaints about how he was being treated.

  But he wasn’t able to maintain the constant stream of words. There were long pauses between ultimata. He was tiring.

  And during the breaks, the Commissioner injected his own verbal blows. “Lady Green is far gone. She is driving her forces as hard as she can on the road back to Erstwhile.”

  Gifford glared at him. “Our forces.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “As though you have the wits to comprehend Our strategy.”

  “Right now, their strategy is running away.”

  “They’ll come back.”

  “No.”

  “Your opinions are worthless, and your honesty is suspect.”

  “You’re still here.”

  “Not for long. We have thousands of loyal fighters craving your blood.”

  “You had thousands. Those who haven’t defected to us are dead or running away.”

  “You’re all dead.”

  It was strange. This threat didn’t disturb me at all. I was confident he would never have a chance to carry it out. Had I already come to believe it was all over?

  “You have no power left,” the Commission claimed.

  “You have no true understanding of Our power.”

  “Then why don’t you tell us about it?”

  “Enough power to have you all executed, that is all you need to know.”

  “If that is all the information you have, perhaps we should execute you right now.”

  The Emperor’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Clearly he hadn’t contemplated such a possibility.

  They wouldn’t actually do that, would they? The law didn’t support such an action. And how could anyone accept Aryne if the previous monarch had been deliberately killed to make room for her?

  “We’ll leave you to contemplate your options,” said the Commissioner. He gave the Emperor a shallow bow and we all followed him out of the tent.

  No complaints or threats sounded after us. The Commissioner had dealt a solid blow.

  The rest of the day was odd. For the sake of common sense, we all – soldiers, casters, and Pairs – resumed drills, but we were distracted. The Emperor was right there, tied up and humiliated. People didn’t know what to think about it.