"I understand, Spin. You did the right thing. What happened to the big silver lady?"
"The Archer dragged her away," Sid spoke. His eyes were hard. "She was badly hurt."
"Good," I grunted. Royal nodded.
"Rumour has it that the Archer brought her before his people and Challenged her."
"What does that mean?" I asked. I knew enough about Travellers to know the capital C in Challenge was a given.
"I do not know. Their people are very secretive." He paused, "And violent. Whatever it is, it cannot be good."
"So was I just on the ground during all of this?"
"It all happened very fast," Spin replied. "We moved back into the caves so quickly."
"I think I can answer that," Royal spoke. He shifted in his chair, and his wings unfurled a little. "When I got there you were lying at the bottom of a big crater, no more than a smoking skeleton. No one was around, and it looked like the force of your blast had caused a rock slide in the area. There were piles of rubble everywhere."
"Yes," Sid interjected, "after some time, a few minions were sent to check the scene, but the entrance to our caves was blocked by rubble. It took us a few hours to dig out and by that time you were gone."
"Well, I scooped her up right away and brought her back here."
"Okay, so if I may recap for my still slightly crispy brain; after I burst into flames, the minions were forced to take cover in the caves, Archer dragged Mhyr off to some silver person tribunal, and Royal found me and brought me here."
"That's about it," Royal confirmed.
"So now what happens?" I looked at Sid and Spin. "Why are you here?"
I knew why. Royal had told me. I was the new leader of the minions. I'd felt the title upon me the moment I'd separated Big G's head from his body.
"You are our leader," said Spin.
"Yeah, but I'm hardly in a state to lead," I replied.
"Without a leader, the minions will descend into anarchy and chaos; chaos that could threaten the Void itself," Sid explained.
"Oh, that's just great." Sarcasm, my trusty friend.
"The Guard sent a convoy," Sid continued, "They requested that our leader presents themselves to the Guard and take their seat."
"Who was in the convoy?"
"Mastyx and his cronies."
"Ah yes, Tweedle Pervert and Tweedle Violent."
"Um, I don't think those are their names." Spin looked confused.
"It's a human joke," I replied.
"Oh."
"You must make an appearance," Sid interrupted. "In your current state it will be difficult, but the Guard will get increasingly aggravated the longer you delay. And the more aggravated they become, the more unpredictable."
"By which you mean Cosima."
Royal shot up from his chair with such force his wing slapped the side of my head.
"Ow!" I rubbed my skull gently, the flesh wiggling under my hand.
"Sorry about that," Royal muttered. He stood completely still for a moment before rousing himself. "I just realised you hadn't had lunch. I'll get on it." He walked swiftly to the kitchen. I looked over at Spin who shrugged as if to say 'he's your friend.'
"Yes, Cosima," Sid continued. He was harder than I remembered. His time held by the Guard and then by Big G must have been very difficult for him. I wanted to feel compassion for him, but it was hard. He had betrayed me to the Guard, whether by choice or because Yeren had dragged him into her web of crappiness, it still had almost gotten me killed.
"Ignore her too long, and Cosima will come for you. And she will use your refusal to appear as an excuse to challenge you. Something that in your current state you have no hope of surviving."
"Right."
"Lunch."
"That was fast." I smiled; Royal's eyes were tense, his lips drawn into a straight line. "Thank you."
"It's not much, but it'll do."
Royal placed a plate in my hands. Two rough cut slices of bread spread with mashed avocado and a few strips of bacon he had cooked up the night before. Royal's 'not much' was every brunch place's speciality.
"It looks great." Royal nodded and turned to the minions.
"You two hungry?"
Spin opened his mouth to reply; Sid beat him to it.
"No, thank you."
"Okay," Royal turned towards the door, talking as he went. "I've got stuff to finish up for tonight. I'll be back." And then he was gone.
"Did he seem okay to you guys?" I asked.
"He looked upset about something," Spin replied.
"It does not matter," Sid spoke across Spin. "You have a return to plan; you cannot be concerned with trivial things."
"Sid, am I going to have to tell you again to watch it? Royal has taken excellent care of me for weeks; his emotional state is not 'trivial.'"
"I am sorry, I misspoke."
"You've been doing a lot of that lately." His eyes flashed, but he didn't answer back. "We are a long way from those first days I Travelled with you. And I have survived a great deal more without you by my side. I don't want to pull the leader card, but you need to treat me with a bit more respect."
"Yes, my lady."
Wow, he was bringing out the old 'my lady' line. This friendship was quickly going from rekindled to kindling. I so did not have the energy for this. I took a deep breath. I could feel every one of my ribs straining against it. Could I actually join the Guard? Was I strong enough? Physically the answer was a screaming no, but my power, could my power stand up against the others? Cosima was a petulant siren I'd already had the pleasure of besting, and Mastyx was a snake man who seemed to be secretly on my side, so I wasn't worried about those two. Silverwood was incredibly powerful, scary powerful, but he had helped me find the Archer. Well, sort of; we'd both thought that portal would go to him, but it turned out to be a one-way ticket to the silver people's torturous stronghold. Bad times, real bad times. The only way I'd gotten out of that one alive was because Mhyr had helped me. And then she tried to kill me, so, blow. This is my boom stick! Sorry, I digress. Then there was the leader of the yetis, Wendiga. I hadn't had much interaction with him, but he looked like some sort of cryptid biker, so I'm going to hedge my bets and say I can't take him.
The last member of the Guard is Archer. My Archer. We hadn't seen each other since that night in the City of Caves, and as far as I knew we were keeping our relationship a secret for the time being. If I showed up at the Circle of the Guard looking like this and it was the first time he'd seen me, could he handle that? Could we both handle that? My heart ached for him, but I just couldn't bring myself to let him see me like this. I freaked out when I looked in the mirror, how could I ask more from him?
Meeting with the Guard to take my seat was going to be a sticky maze of do’s and don'ts and political posturing. I needed to be stronger. I needed a few more days. I needed to see Archer. How could I be so cold as to make him deal with seeing my grotesque appearance for the first time in public? He must be so worried about me. I owed him a sneak peak before I took this show on the road.
"I will go to the Guard in three days."
I had been quiet for so long that my voice made Spin jump. Sid did not move; he was as still and silent as a rock.
"I will do the full moon healing here, tonight."
"That's a relief," Royal's voice called from the doorway as he strolled back into the room. He looked much better for his brief time outside.
"And then tomorrow I will return to my home."
"What?" Royal rushed forward. "You won't be completely healed!"
"I know, Royal." I took his fleshy palm in my gloved collection of sticks. "And I won't get fully healed here. I need to go home to my healing circle to really get things cooking, but I won't be strong enough for the Travel until after the full moon."
"Right." He pulled his hand away and sat down heavily in the chair beside me, his good mood slipping away.
"And then I'm going to call Archer."
All three
of them went silent. What is about men? Doesn't matter the species, they've all got issues with legit alphas. Oh, Sid fancied himself an alpha, but he couldn't keep Yeren in line, Royal spent most of his time alone, which didn't give him much leadership practice, and Spin... Actually, Spin looked completely okay with it. Huh, Spin was proving to be quite the well-adjusted minion.
"May we accompany you?" Spin asked. "It would be best to arrive at the Circle with a few minions by your side."
"That's a good idea." It also made me think of something. "Should I go to the Caves first? Do the minions need to see me before the Guard?"
"That would be advisable," Sid rolled the words out slowly, but not quite mockingly. I ignored him and added another day to my plan.
"Alright, in four days I will go see the Guard. Day one," I stuck out a bony fabric covered finger, "Full moon healing. Day two, healing at my place." Another wrapped finger. "Day three, call Archer, and day four," I stuck out the fourth finger. Spin's eyes widened. I looked down to see the wrappings on my arm had come loose. A few inches of beef-jerky raw meat goodness was sticking out. "And day four," I wrapped it again as I spoke. "We go to the City of Caves."
"An excellent plan." Sid's voice was nearly as dry as my bones.
7
It was a long day waiting for the moon to rise. Lots of pacing to pass the time as the sun beat down on the landscape, forcing my fragile skin to stay inside. And then there were two minions to entertain. Well, one, Spin. Sid slinked off to somewhere, and we didn't see him for a few hours. Very fishy. Where could he possibly go in the desert?
Royal kept going out to work on the Moon Circle, coming back in every few hours to force me to eat and then to take a nap. I resisted the napping until later in the afternoon. Spin declared himself my guard and took up a post outside my bedroom door.
There was no guile in Spin. You looked into his moist little eyes and what you saw was the truth. He wasn't thinking about other things, or some great plan, he was just present with you. It was very Zen. Or the biggest con job of all time. There was a cynical part of me that was waiting for him to rip off his mask and reveal that he was Big G brought back to life by some dark minion magic. But it was a small part. I was more worried about Sid and what the hell he was doing with himself. Sid was always a little edgy, a little tightly wound, but after the torture by Ganaraj, he seemed extra dark, like he couldn't shake what had happened to him.
I closed the door to my room and heard Spin slide down it to settle on the floor outside. I listened there for a few moments and soon his normally ragged breaths had settled into a gentle rhythm. My little guard was asleep. It was just as well; he'd probably been up for over a day travelling with Sid as they searched for me. Sid. Hmmm.
I did something I hadn't done since I'd found myself in this room all those days ago. I locked the bedroom door. And then I walked over to the window and with some effort closed the giant shutters that flanked it. They hadn't been used in years and screeched as I pulled at them. I heard Spin give a harrumph from outside the door, but he didn't wake up. I closed the shutters and slid the three locks that lined the joining into place. Satisfied that I was as secure as I was going to get, I laid out on my bed and tried to get some sleep.
I hadn't been asleep very long when something woke me. Some kind of sound. At first, I tried to go back to sleep, but the sound kept going. A scratching sound. A light scratching sound at my window. I slid as silently as I could from the bed, which is pretty difficult when you don't have much in the flesh department. Ample thighs help to soften the creaks of a bed, and right now my ample thighs were nowhere to be found. I missed them.
I walked around the periphery of the room, staying close to the wall. I was hoping I could get a glimpse through the shutters as to who was out there scratching, scratching at my chamber door. Sorry, chamber window. Sorry, bedroom wall hole.
The slats were too tightly milled for me to see through, so I went with plan B.
"Who's out there?"
I said it as sharply as I could while standing right next to the window. Whoever was on the other side yelped. Point for Phoenix.
"It's me," Right away I knew it was Sid. What was he doing?
"Who's me?" Wake me up, and I will screw with you.
"Sid."
"What do you want Sid? I was sleeping."
"I wanted to talk to you without the prying eyes of the others."
"You wanted to get me alone?"
"Yes."
"Right. So what do you want to talk about?"
"Are you going to open the window?"
"I may open it; I may not. That depends on what you want to talk about."
"What I want to talk about is not best bellowed through a closed window."
"Oh, Sid, you're hardly bellowing and the longer you stall on the topic sentence of this proposed tete a tete, the more I don't want to open the window. So I'll ask you one last time; what do you want to talk about?"
I could hear him breathing on the other side of the shutters. Underneath his rough breaths was the unmistakable silence of someone thinking really really hard.
"I believe you are in danger."
"Come on, Sid, I've been in danger for weeks, you'll need to do better than that."
"I believe that you were allowed to kill Ganaraj, that someone on the Guard used you to get rid of him."
That got the shutters open.
"What are you talking about?" I pulled the last lock and sat down on the deep window sill; Sid took a seat opposite me.
"No one has been inside the City of Caves who is not a minion. No one. It has never happened. In all our endless time, a non-minion has never set foot inside our most powerful stronghold. And yet, in the space of days, you are taken to the City in the Trees, and then allowed to go to the very bowels of the Caves. It just isn't probable. Possible, yes, but most definitely not probable."
"I didn't know that."
"How could you? We minions guard our secrets well."
"So I was set up?"
"It is a possibility. How else could you have gotten into the Caves?"
"Well, Archer and I didn't really ask permission. We took out the two minions guarding the entrance and then we pretty much hacked our way through." I shuddered. It had been horrible down there. So much evil emanating from the walls. It had triggered something in Archer, and he'd gone totally nuts down there. It had gotten so bad that he'd run away from me, leaving me alone in the passages. If Spin hadn't been there to help me... Well, it wouldn't have been much fun.
"Wait," I snapped from the vision. "Do you think Spin was in on it?"
"It is a possibility."
"That's super annoying, Sid. Just say what you mean."
"No," he sighed, "I do not think Spin was in on it. He is too innocent. How he held onto that innocence while in that terrible place is a mystery. I do not think the minions themselves, en masse, knew about the plan, and most would not know that you were the first non-minion to enter the Caves. They are too stupid to remember our lore."
"So it was someone higher up. But who? There's only Big G ruling you guys, yes?"
"Oh," Sid giggled; it was a combination of coughing and gagging. He hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat it into the sand. "I had forgotten your nickname for him. Very funny." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Yes, there is only Big G. So someone must have coerced him into relaxing the magical bounds around the entrance. But who?"
"Well, they probably told him they wanted me dead and that he'd be rewarded."
"Rewards wouldn't hold much weight with Big G; he has everything he could want. No, I think he would be in it solely for your death."
"Damn."
"Yes, damn indeed," Sid nodded.
"So who would conspire with him?" I stood up a little too quickly and felt something on my left side tear. "Shit!"
Blood blossomed across my torso. Without thinking of who was in the room, I ripped the cloth from my chest and grabbed a clean towel from the
pile by my bed. The tear was a small one but bled freely. I pressed the towel to the wound and sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. I looked up at Sid, he hadn't moved, but tears streamed down his face, splashing onto the stucco. I realised then that my entire torso was fully exposed. The visible ribs, the shadow of my lungs, the deep concave curve where my stomach had once been. I didn't say anything, and neither did Sid. After a moment of silence, we continued with our conversation.
"Did they expect me to survive?"
"No, my lady, I do not think that they did."
And then he was gone.
I couldn't believe I'd let him see so much of my body. I had planned to keep that from as many people as possible. I still wasn't sure I could let Archer see me so raw and bloody. But Sid had taken it in with a good deal of grace. The tears were genuine. I could see that. So maybe his offer of friendship was too. I felt like I could trust him, but I'd felt that way before and gotten burned. Argh. There were too many things to figure out, and I needed to focus on the night ahead. If I had any hope of putting some more meat on my bones I had to get my head on straight.
I took a short nap. It seemed important considering I'd be up all night howling at the moon. Well, not howling, just letting the moon's glorious light ignite the healing properties within me. Well, that's how Royal described it. He could be quite the poet when he wanted to be. I was contemplating a bath to wash the dried blood from my torso when there was a knock at the door.
"Miss Phoenix, you have a visitor!" Spin called through the thick wood.
"Who is it, young Spin?" I could almost hear the smile spread across his face as I played along.
"It is the one they call Royal."
I unlocked the door and found Royal standing exactly two paces behind Spin who stood before the door his chest high and his chin forward.
"Your visitor, my lady." He bowed and stepped aside.
"Thank you, Spin. Could you find Sid and see what he's up to? It'll be dark soon."
"Yes, Miss Phoenix." He smiled and, dropping to hands and feet, scampered up the hall.
Mend the Flesh (The Phoenix Series Book 3) Page 4