by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Forty-Four
Late that evening, Chris left the palace through a side entrance. Twilight covered the courtyard in starless darkness. Sometime during the blur of the last ten hours, the hail had finally stopped, and the palace Guard had cleared the townspeople from the courtyard. The whole place was still abuzz. Soldiers tromped across the cobblestones, and a steady stream of wagons and horses clattered through the stable yards. Overhead, the royal skycar ran with load after load of soldiers and officials.
He crossed the yard to the long wing that extended from the palace’s ground floor. Somewhere in the hubbub, a message had arrived, saying Worick had transported his family to the relative safety of the palace. This was the first opportunity Chris had gotten to check on them himself. He knocked at a curtained window. One of his twin nieces peeked out at him, and he walked the rest of the way down to the door.
Shouts from within the city echoed over the castle gates, and the skyline glowed with the heat of fires. Word had come sometime during the afternoon—he had forgotten exactly when—that riots had broken out. What remained of the Guard was stretched from one end of the island to the other, trying to restore order.
His mother opened the door and stood aside to let him enter. “You’re exhausted.” Her face was soft in the flicker of the lamps.
He pulled her against his chest and leaned his head into her hair. “What a terrible day.”
So many things had gone right. The very fact that he had reached the city in time—that they had held off Mactalde—that they had survived the hailstorm—was something to be grateful for. But exhaustion pulled at his body and mind alike. He needed sleep. Even more, he needed Tireus to get here. He needed the storms to end. He needed the city to stop tearing itself apart. He needed more miracles than he could count.
She patted his back, between his shoulder blades, same as she had when he was twelve years old. “This day is over now. We never have to live it again.”
He straightened. “I came by to make sure you all made it here safely.”
One of his nieces—Miriel, he thought—sat in the inglenook at the back wall, her legs dangling over the edge of the seat. She peeked one eye around the corner and grinned when he noticed her. The door to an adjoining room stood ajar, and Tielle’s and the other twin’s voices murmured from the other side.
He walked over to squeeze Miriel’s shoulder. “Where’s Dad?” he asked his mother.
She shut the front door. “He and Tielle’s husband went out again to see what could be done to help. I sent Sirra with their supper not long ago.”
He turned back to her. “She shouldn’t be out there by herself.”
She wrung her hands. “Tell me what happened today.”
“We lost the battle for Glen Arden.” He studied his dirt- and blood-encrusted fingertips. “Probably the most important battle in the whole war.”
Miriel craned her head around to peer up at him. “What’d you do all day?”
“Too much, not enough.” Same as always.
She pulled the delicate golden fuzz of her eyebrows together in a frown.
He fluffed her hair. “Let’s just say I didn’t do what I was supposed to do.”
“Mactalde?” his mother asked.
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t get hurt,” Miriel said.
He pressed his thumb against a hailstone bruise on the back of his hand. “Can’t say the same for a lot of people.”
His mother smoothed both hands down the front of her apron. “You’re wrong, you know. Glen Arden isn’t the most important strategic location in Lael.”
“Then what is? Réon Couteau?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know about that.” He sank into the inglenook bench across the hearth from Miriel. “What happened here today . . .” He propped his elbows on his knees and scraped his fingers through his hair. “Glen Arden’s the center of the kingdom. It controls the Karilus Wall and the rivers.”
“But Réon Couteau is the home of the Gifted.”
He chewed on that a minute, trying to find some great positive in Mactalde’s having blockaded Glen Arden instead of Réon Couteau. There wasn’t one.
The door to the adjoining room swung open, and Tielle and Ireth, his other niece, entered.
Tielle glanced over his face, and a hard line in her forehead eased. “At least you’re safe. At least we’re all safe. The Searcher too?”
He nodded.
She gripped Ireth’s shoulders. “The city’s a mess. Just listening to it all is a nightmare. Nateros is behind most of it, did you know that?”
“Not much of a surprise there.”
Her direct gaze held him, demanding his attention and a truthful response, just as it had all their lives. “Did you know they tried to kill the Searcher this morning?”
No wonder Allara had tensed when he’d let half the mob into the palace grounds. His scalp prickled.
“No. She didn’t tell me.” But she should have.
He leaned his forehead on his folded hands, eyes closed. Had he ever been this exhausted in his life? If he managed to lie down tonight, at least his body would get some rest. But his mind would wake up back in Chicago and keep going and going and going. How had the other Gifted sustained a lifestyle like this? Or was it maybe different when someone wasn’t trying to kill you every other day?
His mother crossed the room and laid her hand on the back of his head. “Be careful. Please promise me that. I believe we can all survive this. You may be the Gifted, but you’re still my son, and I still love you. When this ends, we will start over, and we’ll learn to know each other again. I promise you that.”
He reached behind his head to take her hand in his. “Let’s just hope this thing ends with people throwing roses in front of my horse, instead of something a little less pleasant.” He looked at Tielle and forced a wink. “How often does someone like me get the chance to hobnob with kings and princesses, right?”
She shook her head. “I don’t care what you do. Just stay alive.”
He sighed. “I’ve got to go have a look at what’s going on in the city.” He rose and crossed the room. “I’ll only stay out until I find Sirra. Dad and Markham are probably with the Guard. I’ll pass word along for them to come back as soon as they can, but if things are bad out there, they may be gone all night.”
“If they’re bad,” Tielle muttered.
If she had anything more cheerful to say, the click of the door closing behind him blocked out her words.
_________
Chris left the palace and moved through the square to the streets beyond. One hand gripped his chewser and the other rested on his sword hilt. Guardsmen on horseback blocked the roads to the palace, trying to hold back the mob. Someone lobbed a lit torch at the line of soldiers, and one of the horses spooked and reared, nearly throwing its rider.
Bonfires raged up and down the posh streets of the Taïs district, and the flickering light danced mad quadrilles with the shadows of the men who sparked them. Windows popped and shattered, and homes and businesses alike surrendered their goods to the hands of looters. People darted everywhere—some of them running from Guardsman, some of them just running. The wind swirled the shrieks of laughter and the shrieks of pain and fear into one prolonged wail and smeared it against the night’s raw canopy.
A drunk, his arms full of dry goods, staggered against Chris’s shoulder, fell to one knee, and dropped half his load. Huffing, the man grabbed with both hands to gather his plunder back to his chest. He snatched once at Chris’s foot and, when it didn’t move, left it in favor of more portable spoils.
Chris gripped the man’s shoulder.
Blindly, the drunk ratcheted up his head. “What you want?”
Chris regarded him. “Did you fight in the battle today?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
The man’s tongue lolled as he licked his lips. “I ain’t got no reason to get killed.”
His expression flickered with uncertainty, then he shrugged. “Here.” He dumped his armload at Chris’s feet. “You take it, aye? I don’t need it.” He laughed. “I can get more. Maybe from the palace next time.” His eyes wandered to something in the street behind Chris and narrowed.
Chris turned and found Sirra backed into a doorway, something heaped in her arms.
He twisted back around, and the drunk’s eyes darted to his. “Go home.” He released the man’s shoulder. “If I see you again, you’ll be arrested.”
The drunk scrunched up his face. “You ain’t no Guardsman.”
Chris left him and jogged across the street. The taut lines in Sirra’s face slackened, but her hold tightened on the dark shape in her arms.
If his own sister was out here looting, he might as well feed the whole city to the Koraudians. He seized her elbow. “What are you doing out here?”
“Talan—Chris—it’s a jiswar cub. I found it. I don’t know where it belongs, but I thought somebody might kill it, just for the sport of it.” The pile of blond fur in her arms stared through ice blue eyes. About a foot in length, with upright ears springing from a wide base, it huddled against Sirra’s chest. Its bushy tail, ringed by one red stripe near the end, spiraled around her arm.
He breathed out. “This is the last place in the worlds you should be tonight.”
“It’s all right. Father and Markham are just back there.” She nodded over her shoulder to where a group of civilians were helping Guardsmen board up broken windows. “I left them the food Mama sent and was starting back to the palace when I found the jiswar.”
“Come on then. We’re leaving.” He turned and nearly ran into the drunk.
“I think I knows you. You really are a Guardsman, eh?” The man stuck a finger in Sirra’s face. “Why you let little girlie here run off with what she wants and make trouble for everybody else?” He yanked one of the jiswar’s ears.
The cub yelped and flopped to the ground. Before Chris could reach for the man, Sirra smashed the hard, sensible toe of her shoe into his shin. The man screamed, and Chris grabbed his shirtfront and shoved him aside. Up ahead, Sirra scrambled after the jiswar, chasing him between legs.
“Sirra!”
“Just a minute!”
People turned to investigate the commotion, and he started after her. At the edge of the crowd pressing against the Guard’s roadblock, a white-clad arm reached down and collared the jiswar by its scruff. Sirra stopped short, and Chris took one more stride to catch up with her.
Crofton Steadman looked from the cub, extended in his hand, to Sirra. “A jiswar is an expensive pet to lose. Though I must say you have a beautiful night for chasing after him.” He glanced at Chris. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Chris’s hand darted to his holstered pistol. Sirra gathered the cub into her arms, and eased back behind him.
Steadman’s eyes never wavered from Chris’s. The scar on his upper lip twitched. “Perhaps you didn’t know. We’re having a riot.”
One of the Guardsmen had stepped forward in an attempt to calm the mob, but he had only succeeded in whipping them to a higher frenzy. Their screams filled the plaza.
“Down with the Searcher! Down with the king! Up Nateros! Up Mactalde!”
Chris’s hand sweated around his chewser’s grip. “Yeah, I see that.”
Steadman stepped closer. “It’s time for certain changes to be made in our country. It’s time for freedom to replace religious mores. Time for worn-out traditions to give way to a future that does not doom us to the ignorance of superstition and sorcery.”
Chris looked at him levelly. He wasn’t about to dignify the man’s rantings by playing along.
Steadman grinned. “Not even you, a natural-born Gifted, can stand against us. You and your pitiful attempts to lead this people deserve to be terminated.”
Chris refused to let himself falter. Steadman was just prodding for a weakness. Chris had punched Steadman in the face the last time they’d met, and his knuckles itched for a sequel.
“If you’re so sure, why not take me out right now? Why leave it for Mactalde to do?”
Sirra tugged at his sleeve.
Steadman’s smile remained frozen, but a muscle in his cheek churned. No doubt, he wouldn’t mind repaying that punch one bit. But he shook his head. “No. No, I don’t think so. When the time comes, I won’t have to kill you.” He took a step back, then another, and the crowd swallowed him.
Chris took Sirra’s arm and led her away, past the drunk.
The man tottered and leaned his head back to squint at Chris down the length of his nose. “Hey, wait, I do know you! You’re the Gifted. Aye? The Gifted, right?”
The last thing Chris needed right here was a Nateros mob knowing who he was. Steadman might be willing to let him go for the time being, but his followers wouldn’t be so eager.
The man trotted in front of him. “’Cause if’n you’re the Gifted, you should’ve just said so, governor.” His laugh blasted the sour taste of cranok into Chris’s face. “I’d’ve given you the stuff to start with, what?”
They reached the corner of the street, and Chris shoved the man aside. The drunk groped for a windowsill, missed, and toppled to the ground. His laughter chased Chris and Sirra down the alley.
As soon as they were around the corner, Chris pulled her into a run. Their footsteps slapped the cobblestones, and their breath clouded in front of them. The streets twirled past in flashes of fire and shadow and a cacophony of laughter and destruction.
Sirra stumbled behind him, and he reached back to take the jiswar. He hung the cub’s hot body in the crook of one elbow, his pistol clenched in the opposite hand. Not until they passed through the roadblock did he slow.
In silence, he crossed the square to the palace gates, and he hung his head back and sucked at the cold air. It seared his throat, and he coughed.
Sirra slid her arm deeper into his. “Was that who I think it is?”
“If you think it’s Crofton Steadman, then, yeah.”
She clenched her fingers in his sleeve. “He could have killed you!”
Yesterday, Steadman probably wouldn’t have had enough support to target a Gifted. But a lot had changed today. Lael had lost its first battle. Who knew how much of the people’s faith had been lost along with it?
“Maybe,” he said. He shifted his hold on the jiswar. The huge copper ears perked, and the blue eyes studied him. It snuffled at his collar. “I can’t believe you risked your neck for this thing.”
“I could hardly leave him.”
He held the cub at arm’s length. The jiswar propped a paw on each of his hands and stretched out his nose.
He let himself smile for maybe the only time today. “Reminds me of a puppy I wanted when I was a kid.”
They walked over the cracked and dented stones, past the fawa-radi fountain at the center of the crossroads. The fire had gone out, and the water had run dry. Now the fountain’s decapitated figurehead stood an eerie, useless guard beneath the clouded moonlight.
Sirra clasped his arm. “I’ve been wanting to tell you I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you in the other world.”
As if it were her fault she hadn’t been. “Doesn’t matter.” He cradled the jiswar in both arms. “You’re here now. We’re both here now. Nothing’s going to change that, not Crofton Steadman and not Faolan Mactalde.”
They didn’t say anything more after that. In the aftermath of everything that had happened today, his words were only wishes, and they both knew it.