Shatter (The Children of Man)

by Elizabeth C. Mock

  "Am I a farmer?" she continued without acknowledging his response.

  "Is that rhetorical?"

  "No," she said shaking her head. "Answer the question."

  "Of course you aren't. I'm not sure you would even know which end of a hoe to use."

  "Are you a tradesman?" she continued her questions.

  "Sheridan, what are you trying to get at?" he asked his patience wearing thin.

  "So, if you aren't a farmer, a tradesman, a tavern keep, a smithy, or a sailor, then do you think you could be thrown into their professions tomorrow and be able to do it as well as a man born with soil under his nails or salt in his lungs?"

  "That's unlikely and gross," Kade said referring to her analogies.

  "Irrelevant," she snapped. "Answer the question."

  "No, I could not."

  "Then why do you think you should be telling them how to run their farms, sail their ships, or keep their taverns?"

  Kade slapped his free hand on his leg, dispelling the dirt dusting his trousers.

  "Then if you can't run their lives better than they can run them, why would you ever want our Order to consolidate that kind of power over the people?" When he didn't respond, or object, she barreled forward. "Kade, we have authority over life and death as the enforcers of the law. When there is so much injustice in this world, why should we busy ourselves with trade squabbles and negotiations? Let the darkness-blighted Merchant Houses deal with that nonsense. We are to protect the people, Kade, not dictate their lives. Let the people make their own choices."

  "But look what people do with their choices," Kade objected. "How can we enforce justice in a thousand small ways, but let the people make choices that endanger everyone’s safety?"

  "When our Order was founded, we were charged with the task of protecting the people of this world, to be the voice of the Light's justice for all people. How can we make broad decisions for all the people of each country because it is just for the majority? What about those in the minority? Who will seek justice for them if the Daniyelans are ensuring justice for most? That isn’t what our Order was tasked with, Kaedman Wilfred Hawthorn, and you know it."

  "What you propose is chaos." Kade's gaze swept over the wide vista in front of them that blurred the line between earth and sky as he ignored her invocation of his name.

  "What I propose is justice for every man, woman, and child in the world by ensuring they have the right to determine their own lives."

  "What about them?" Kade asked pointing with the reins to Faela and Jair who walked with Mireya and Dathien. "Are they determining their own lives?"

  "But their individual choices brought them to where they are, their choices. No one forced Jair to alter the Balance. No one forced him to try to restore it. If the Light uses those bad choices to accomplish something good and true, who are we to claim that their right of self-determination has been removed? Is it your right to take away their ability to choose to follow Mireya? When she showed up, did she force herself on Faela?"

  "Not exactly," Kade admitted after a time of silence. "She told Faela she had been sent to help her and Faela agreed to allow them to accompany us to Kelso."

  "It was Faela's choice, right?" When Kade did not answer, Sheridan sighed gustily and tried a different approach.

  "The Brethren's philosophies don’t align with the Light, Kade. War is a horrible, ugly thing that should never happen, but the only thing uglier is to not fight back in the face of injustice. Out of great destruction can come life, Kade, just like a forest after a fire."

  Kade still remained stoic as they crossed the hills. After several minutes, Sheridan broke the quiet by leaning forward and tapping his shoulder with the flat of the throwing knife. "Kade, what happened to Gareth after he left the cellar?"

  "He disappeared almost immediately," Kade responded taking the blade from her. "But I recognized the traces left by his popping. Who knew the blighter had purple?"

  "I don't think he did," Sheridan interrupted unable to keep her theory to herself any longer.

  "But he did,” Kade disagreed, “I saw it myself.”

  "No, I don't mean that he didn't pop. I mean he never had purple. I think he used black to do it."

  "How’s that possible?" Kade's voice was controlled, but insistent.

  "Well, think about it. Black can touch and use any color of magic, right?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "So, if black can use any kind of magic, shouldn't a wielder of black be able to mimic any form of magic?"

  "But the risk in using a magic you’re unfamiliar with…" Kade trailed off, "especially purple. At best you might destroy yourself."

  "At worst you could unravel the fabric of reality," Sheridan finished the basic lesson they both learned at the Amserian temple.

  Kade shook his head in disbelief at Sheridan’s theory. "It's possible. Regardless, I was able to track him. He was trying to flee by boat hoping that the water would displace any tracking I could do, I guess. It wouldn't have been very effective, but it would have slowed me down considerably. I found him at the docks. Catching him wasn't hard. Gareth was never very good at obscuring his trail. I didn't kill him at first."

  His choice of words sent a shudder down Sheridan’s spine.

  "I took him back to the cellar with me to check on Nessa." Kade's voice though only a couple feet from Sheridan sounded very far away. "But when we returned, she was already dead. A life for a life, the Deoraghan say. I didn’t want him to die quickly."

  "You questioned him?" Sheridan asked without any hope of a positive answer.

  "To find out what?" Kade asked with scorn in his voice. "I knew that he was guilty of kidnapping, extorting a member of the Orders, murder. What else did I need to know?"

  "What about who had sent him? Who gave him his orders?"

  "They didn't kill her," Kade said dismissing her questions. "He had. They didn't want her dead."

  Sheridan shook her head. "No, Kade. There was a veiled man who came and spoke with Gareth before you got there. He told Gareth to clean up his mess. Kade, he meant Nessa. Nessa was never supposed to be involved from what I gathered from the conversation."

  Kade said nothing to her assessment of the situation. He just kept walking his eyes ranging across the open, rolling hills they traversed. Ahead to the left the moor skirted the edges of the Auchneid forest. With a clear day and nothing to obstruct his view, he could see for leagues. Behind them near the tree line, he saw two riders heading north along the river.

  *****

  Chapter Twenty

  For reasons that Mireya couldn’t explain, she refused to camp under the cover of the nearby forest regardless of how convincing Kade and Eve's reasons were. After almost a half hour of arguing, they set up camp under the open sky of the unprotected moor, a fact that pleased no one, except Mireya. The sun had already set, but it had yet to turn to full dark. Under the gentle glow of the blue sky that contrasted with the darkness growing around them, they made camp. As they worked, the chirping of the bugs that lived in the grass provided an odd serenade.

  Crouched in the dirt, Faela had clumps of loam surrounding her as she continued digging a fire pit. Jair and Sheridan had already left to hunt for firewood.

  "Are you sure it won't rain tonight?" Faela asked again stopping her excavation of the soil.

  "Sure as lightning bugs in summer," Mireya answered as she searched to add more rocks to the pile next to Faela.

  Pushing the loose dirt up the sides of her small pit, Faela shook her head. "I don't like being out here, Mireya." She shuddered feeling as though unseen eyes watched her, but maybe it was just the singing insects watching.

  Bent over, Mireya stood from her waist and put her hands on her hips. "We cannot stay in the forest."

  Faela pushed her hair off her forehead with the back of a dirt-covered hand as she watched Mireya return to her scavenging as if that were the final word. "Why," Faela stressed the word, "can't we stay in the forest?"

  Looking throu
gh the veil of her wild mane, Mireya's nose scrunched in frustration. "I told you. I don't know why. I just know that we can't, okay? Something about it puts my stomach in knots."

  "But we traveled through the southern tip of this forest on the way through Dalwend and Jair and Kade and I made it through just fine. Besides, there's no such thing as curses."

  "I never said it was cursed," Mireya protested as she hefted a good oval stone with a flat side off the ground.

  "This is perfect," Faela observed as Mireya deposited the rock into her hands. Faela turned it over and brushed the dirt off the flat side.

  "And they do too," Mireya said heading off in the opposite direction looking for more rocks to ring the fire.

  "What?" Faela said as she situated the stones into a rough circle around the depression. "What too?"

  "Curses," Mireya said pushing the scrubby grass aside.

  "They're just in stories, Mireya. They aren't real."

  Mireya waggled a finger at Faela and said, "Just like a Gray is only from the stories."

  "Just because that story is true, doesn't mean places are cursed. We were in that abandoned town, Moshurst, and nothing happened. It wasn't cursed."

  "A place with no animals, where nothing grows, and if you stay you'll get sick," Mireya recounted. "If that's not a cursed town, then what is?"

  "But it wasn't a curse. There's a perfectly normal explanation."

  "You call what Jair can do normal?" Mireya asked bringing an oddly bulging rock to the diminishing pile as the ring took shape.

  "No, but it wasn't a curse," Faela disagreed as she wiggled a rock into the dirt to secure its place.

  "I don't know," Mireya said. "There's a place in Vamorines, it's just ruins now. No one goes there. I only found it, because I got lost when I went for a ride by myself. That place is empty of all life, there's just an absence there. I found a stone marker. It said this place is cursed and that any who enter must step into the void where there is no light."

  Mireya shivered remembering the crumbled marble and moss growing over the bones of the place, as if trying to bury it. "I turned my horse around and didn't look back until we were leagues away. Curses exist, Faela."

  Faela opened her mouth to reply when Sheridan and Jair returned with armfuls of big and little pieces of dry wood. Jair just smiled as Sheridan explained something, but her telling of the story was impaired by her hands holding the firewood.

  "You really used to pop into Kade's room and rearrange his books every night?" Jair asked.

  Sheridan nodded with a barely contained smirk. "Oh, yes. It was while we were still training in the Amserian temple. It was a challenge to pop into his room while I knew he was on his way back. Usually right after we'd parted ways for the night, I would go around the corner, pop to his room, rearrange them, then pop directly to my room. It took him three weeks and two days to figure out that I was doing it."

  "It took him that long?" Faela asked with surprise as she rocked back onto her heels. She slapped her hands together and began brushing off the earth.

  "Well, he didn't know I could pop yet."

  Faela drew a conclusion from the snatches of conversation she had heard so far. "So, that's how you decided to tell him."

  Sheridan nodded with a wicked grin. "I knew it was my only chance to get away with something like that. Once he knew, I would be his primary suspect for any pranks like that. It was the only time I had the upper hand and I used his ignorance for my entertainment. Some of my finest work really."

  Faela shook her head. In the last few days, she had come to enjoy the tall woman's constant good humor. But more than her enjoyment of Sheridan, she loved watching the side of Kade that Sheridan illuminated. When she was around, a smile was never far from his face. The lines of pain and stress around his eyes never really went away, but they softened considerably in this effervescent woman’s presence and Faela appreciated that. That appreciation had quickly turned to affection for Sheridan herself. Even Eve's bristly facade had begun to show cracks here and there revealing a woman Faela could respect and even at times enjoy.

  A month ago, Faela traveled alone, which was how she liked it. People meant complications and complications meant trouble. Look at the trouble Kade and Jair had brought her. Though looking back, she couldn’t bring herself to regret helping Jair that morning near Ravenscliffe despite all the complications it had brought. So tonight, she set up camp with three other people without any reservations. As she focused back on the trio, their conversation melded from noise into words.

  "So, Mireya, how does the whole blue thing work?" Sheridan asked as she crouched by the pit. She had the wood stacked by her as she began setting one on top of the others in a pile within the pit.

  "What do you mean by 'work'?" Mireya asked as she settled herself next to Faela.

  Jair had taken a seat next to the stack of wood and watched Sheridan his hands twitching as she continued placing the wood in the pit.

  Unable to contain himself, he snatched her wrist. "Have you ever made a fire before?" he asked her bewildered by the wood strewn about the pit in no pattern he recognized.

  Sheridan blinked in surprise. "Um, no, actually," she admitted biting her bottom lip in embarrassment. "I don't really do the whole camping out thing."

  "But you do circuits," Jair said.

  "I'm a popper, Jair," she explained in exasperation. "Who needs to camp, when I can go back to my quarters in Wistholt whenever I want? Besides, no one would deny a Daniyelan lodging."

  "This," Jair pointed to the haphazard pile as if mortally offended, "is a travesty."

  Sheridan glared at him for a moment, then swept her arm toward the pit. "Fine, oh-master-of-all-things-incendiary, you do it."

  With her arms crossed, she tucked her legs underneath herself and stared at Jair waiting for him to begin.

  "You weren't allowing for any air to flow through the fire," he explained as he removed all of the wood from the pit. He picked the sturdiest pieces and stood them on their ends leaning them into each other creating an open pocket in the center. "Without air the fire will die before any of the wood starts to burn."

  He started another ring around the initial tent and added smaller sticks at the base for kindling. Pushing a stick with a finger, he reached beside Sheridan to grab some more when the wood burst into flames. With a yelp, he scooted away from the flames. Sheridan sat with an angelic expression on her face, the traces of orange lines vanishing from her forehead.

  "What possessed you to do that?" he demanded sucking on his singed finger.

  Her dark eyes wide, she said, "I was helping."

  "That was not," he emphasized the last word, "helping."

  Sheridan nodded emphatically. "Helping."

  Jair squinted an eye and glared at her, his finger still in his mouth. At Sheridan’s answer, Faela could no longer hold back her laughter at the situation.

  "Traitor!" Jair cried. "Don't you encourage her."

  Faela clapped her hand over her mouth trying to stop and nodded with mock sobriety.

  "Oh, don't worry," Sheridan said trying to sound comforting. "I need no encouragement. My own entertainment is encouragement enough."

  "Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better," Jair protested.

  "You big baby, give me your finger," Sheridan commanded, her hand held out her fingers beckoning him. "Trust me."

  Jair hugged his hand to his chest protectively. "Oh no, you don't, you darkness-loving woman. First the river and now this. If I give you my hand, I'll never get it back in one piece."

  "It's part of the healing process," she promised and waggled her fingers enticingly again.

  "Whatever you have planned, is not," he stressed, "part of the healing process."

  Rolling her eyes, Faela grabbed his hand causing him to yelp again. A soft red glow flowed over her hand and covered his. When the light receded, the minor burn had disappeared.

  Sheridan stuck out her bottom lip pouting. "Aw, why'd you ruin my
fun?"

  "This is my life, woman, not your entertainment!" Jair declared cradling his hand again.

  Deciding that Jair had provided enough amusement, Sheridan turned her attention back to Mireya. "So, prophetess, now that you've had time to think about it. How does it work?"

  “I'm still not sure that I understand what you're asking exactly,” Mireya said as she hiked up her skirt to hug her knees to her chest.

  "Well, everyone here had to go through training with the different temples in the Orders to learn how to wield their colors of magic," Sheridan explained, then amended and gestured to Faela and back to herself. "At least Faela and I did. You have to learn to control the colors within and around you. Otherwise, you can accidentally reach out and tap the magic and kill yourself and, well, destroy everything around you.

  “I had to spend years in the towers of the Amserian temple at Wistholt to learn to manipulate purple magic. While my ability to wield red is minimal compared to Faela, we both spent years at the Tereskan temple at Kilrood. But no one in the other Orders ever goes to the Nikelan temple beyond the Boundary for training. Why is that?"

  "As far as I know, I have no other colors," Mireya said as she considered Sheridan’s words. "I never went to any other temples. I've lived almost my whole life at the Nikelan temple. Last year when Dathien and I left searching for Faela that was the first time I've crossed the Boundary since Tobias collected me when I was a toddler."

  "Is that how it is for all Nikelans?" Sheridan asked leaning forward both in curiosity and for warmth from the fire. Her hair slipped over her left shoulder like streams of silk.

  "Nikelan seekers are either called by the Light at birth through Rivka's visions or they feel the calling when they are old enough to choose. I was the first kind," Mireya explained. "That's why Tobias came for me."

  "Is that method typical?" Faela asked. "For your Scion to have a vision of a child when they're born?"

  Mireya shook her head, her lips scrunched to the right side of her face. "Most Nikelans feel the call when they're older. That's how it was for Dathien."