Shatter (The Children of Man)

by Elizabeth C. Mock

  "No," Faela responded, "I'm here. They've gone away, not me. They left me."

  "See," Sheridan hissed under her breath with genuine concern. "You know that any severe emotional distress can push a mind healer into madness."

  "Sheridan,” Kade said in a monotone, “go see if anyone’s left."

  Sheridan nodded and trotted back across the entryway her lips beginning to turn white.

  “And be careful,” he called after her as she disappeared from sight. "Faela, where should we start looking?"

  At the question, understanding passed over her face before the fear took over. She wrenched the handles open and pushed the doors aside. Papers, books, broken glass, and dirt from overturned planters littered the floor of the room, but Faela registered none of the destruction. A single object occupied her world, a woven reed bassinet standing next to the desk.

  She didn't remember crossing the room, but within the next breath she stood over it, looking into its shadows. She pushed back the soft, tickling folds of the green blanket, a part of the same blanket that she carried with her. The cradle was empty.

  When her fingers grazed the bottom of the blanket, it felt stiff. She pulled it out and it unfurled to her knees. Clutching it in her hands, she saw dried blood caked the fabric. Soundlessly, her legs buckled unable to hold up her own weight and she stumbled to her knees.

  She stared down at the fabric, remembering the last time she had held Sammi. He had been wrapped in this blanket. Now it was empty, just like the bassinet. There was a patch on the end where the fabric frayed. Sammi used to cling to that edge of the blanket when he slept.

  She ran her thumb over the frayed fabric. She jumped when she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She looked up. Kade knelt across from her.

  "Sheridan is trying to find someone. We'll discover what happened here, I promise. Is there anywhere else we can look?"

  “Gone,” Faela told him as she lifted the blanket toward him. Her thumbs glided over the stains of blood as scarlet light covered her eyes, but nothing appeared. It had been too long since the blood had been spilled. She would discover nothing this way.

  Sheridan strode into the room her eyes dry, but rimmed with red. Inclining his head to her, Kade waited as Sheridan crouched next to him.

  She shook her head. “No one's left. The bodies,” she said glancing sidelong at Faela, “they were taken to the great hall and dumped there. I didn't see...” Sheridan cleared her throat. “I couldn't find anything. Who could have done this, Kade? For there to be as many as I saw in there would have required strong magic and a good deal of training. Tereskans are far from helpless.”

  “I can't see,” Faela interrupted holding up the blanket to Kade again. “I can't see anything. It's been too long. The life is gone now.”

  “That actually made sense,” Sheridan said leaning forward.

  Kade ignored her. “Faela, I hate to ask,” he said as gently as he could, “but do you know whose blood it is?”

  Faela swallowed, letting her hand fall into her lap. “Samuel’s. It’s Sammi's.”

  “He could still be all right, Faela,” Sheridan suggested though her tone revealed that she couldn't even convince herself that her words were true, not after what she had seen in the great hall. “Whoever did this may have taken him.”

  Faela swiveled her deadened gaze to Sheridan. “Don't lie to me. Don't try to make this all right. Nothing about this is all right.” Faela stood without warning. “Look around you. Look at it. My home has been destroyed. My brothers and sisters murdered. Even if Sammi is,” her voice caught as the numbness gradually wore off, “even if he's alive, he's gone. But you mark my words, I will find him. Just don't try to make this all right.”

  Her hand clenched around the fabric as she avoided Sheridan and left the room.

  “At least she sounds lucid now,” Sheridan said in a weak voice as Kade stood and ran after Faela. Alone in the room, Sheridan said to herself, “Brilliant, way to be comforting, Sheridan.”

  Kade caught Faela easily in the hallway as she headed toward the strongest source of the bloodshed, the great hall. “Faela, wait. Where are you going?”

  She stopped with an echoing slide. “He's not here. I can look in every corner, but from the moment we arrived I knew. I knew before we even came. He's not here. I need to know what happened here. I need to know who did this."

  "So we can find Sammi." Kade concluded stepping next to her.

  Faela said nothing and started to tremble. It felt like the void in her chest had ripped open and would swallow her.

  "Please stop," she said in a choked whisper.

  "Stop?" Kade asked confused.

  "Stop saying his name," her voice shook, "just please stop. If you keep saying it, I won't be able to keep my hold here. I'll go away again. I can't help if I go back there."

  "Go where?" Kade asked trying to understand.

  "The place where nothing can reach me. No other voices, no other emotions, no other thoughts, just me," she said with a small voice and slumped shoulders as she stared at another brownish smear of blood leading away from them. "I shouldn’t even think about it or I risk getting pulled back there again and I have to be here. Don't let me go back. Please, Kade. Without Ianos, I’ll get trapped if I stay there too long."

  "I'll stop," he assured her. "What do you need?"

  "I need to find him."

  Kade nodded as he looked at the cascade of strawberry blonde waves obscuring her face. "Then I'll go."

  "Go?" Faela gripped the edges of her sleeves and pulled at them. “Go where?”

  “Not where, when.” Kade corrected her with a half-smile.

  “But it will take days to search each room of the temple trying to find the right time and place,” Faela argued finally raising her eyes.

  Kade shook his head. “No, it won't. Not with your help and with my abilities.”

  “Anything,” Faela agreed without thinking. “Anything you need.”

  “You need to let me in,” he told her looking into her eyes. “I need to see him the way you do. I need your blood connection to him as his mother. You need to take down your barriers.”

  Faela looked at him from under her eyelashes as if weighing her options. He could see the slight tremors rippling across her frame.

  Doing this would require her to sacrifice what little privacy and autonomy she had left. That possibility scared her almost as much as the prospect of losing Sammi. That fear for her son, however, overcame any fears she had of losing herself. Without him, she would have nothing left.

  Only one thing caused her to hesitate. Her skin crawled at the thought of using Kade this way, but he had suggested it, not her.

  “I know I'm asking much of you,” Kade began.

  “You don't know what you're asking,” she said her usually steady voice wavering. “You couldn't understand what you're asking.”

  “It's the only way I know how to help,” he said closing the gap between them as he looped a strand of her hair behind an ear. “Let me help.”

  Faela let out a shaky breath and nodded her head once. “Are you willing to accept the consequences?”

  “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I weren’t.”

  “Understand that once I do this,” Faela said searching his eyes for a glimmer of hesitation, “I may never be able to sever the connection again. It will always be there for the rest of our lives. Do you still want to do this?”

  Resolutely, he returned her gaze and nodded. “Of course.”

  Faela stepped toward him and slid her hands against his. Their palms flush against one another, she twined her fingers through his. Scarlet light sparked from her hands and enveloped both of them. She looked deeply into his warm amber eyes and pulled a single thread in the weaving of her barriers. They unraveled around her mind and waiting just on the other side of the link was Kade's.

  Focusing her thoughts on Sammi, she remembered the first time she had seen his squished and wrinkled, red face when Ianos had pl
aced him in her arms. She remembered his thoughts brushing hers the moment he looked into her mirrored silver eyes, how he had captured her finger with surprising strength. She remembered how boneless he felt in her arms when he slept and how he would always kick his left leg when he dreamed.

  She felt Kade's wonder as he experienced each of these memories as though they were his own. Halting the tide of shared recollection, she focused instead on the unique signature contained in Sammi's blood, like a bouncing harmony to her smooth melody, similar in key but with decidedly different arrangements.

  Finished, she opened her eyes. Kade’s eyes shone bright and his cheeks were wet. Faela shoved the thoughts away again for fear of being overwhelmed by them. Kade winced at the abruptness with which the wall appeared.

  Faela apologized and began to ask him if he had what he needed, but he interrupted before the words left her mouth. “Yeah, it was.” Kade had heard the thought a half second before she had spoken it. “Well, that's new.”

  Faela forced herself to think about what Kade had to do now instead of the consequences of what she had just done. “What happens now?”

  “Now, I step back,” Kade said letting go of her hands as he physically took a step backward and disappeared in a flash of violet light.

  When the light vanished, Kade surveyed the hall. The blood was gone from the floor and the walls. It was before the massacre had occurred. Now he just needed to find Sammi.

  Kade jogged down the hall back toward Ianos' study where they had found the bassinet. He passed Tereskans going about their business, but none stopped or even acknowledged him. As he turned the corner, a girl with curly blonde hair in a seeker’s sickroom apron looked back over her shoulder. She thought she had seen something moving out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look, she saw nothing. Despite the fact that Kade stood directly in her field of vision, she looked right past him.

  Crossing the entryway, he opened the doors to Ianos' study and shut them behind him. As he turned to examine the room, he heard a voice.

  “Can I help you?” the man's pleasant baritone inquired.

  Kade froze. No one should be able to see someone who had stepped back. He turned assuming the person had directed their question to someone who had entered moments before him. But when he looked, Ianos stood behind his desk staring directly at Kade.

  Clearing his throat, Kade walked further into the room. As he approached Ianos, he saw behind his desk. A green blanket spread out on the floor and lying on his stomach Sammi pushed himself up on his arms babbling to himself. He continued pushing until he managed to awkwardly shift into a sitting position. Quite pleased with himself, he looked up at Ianos with a wide smile that revealed a few tiny white teeth. Seeing Sammi alive and happy halted Kade in his tracks rendering him speechless.

  When he offered no explanation or reason for his intrusion, Ianos looked from Sammi to Kade. “I know my office isn't the most likely location for a nursery, but I trust you've seen a baby before.”

  Kade tore his gaze from Sammi who had just managed to wrap his hands around a stuffed lamb and happily gnawed on one of its legs. Trying to keep Faela's emotions and memories surging within his mind restrained, he said, “Not this one.”

  “Do I know you?” Ianos asked him watching him even more closely now.

  “Kaedman Hawthorn, jha’na.” As he resisted the urge to grab Sammi and run, he added lamely, “I studied here during the war.”

  Still assessing Kade, Ianos watched his eyes and saw the edges around Kade’s face shimmer as though transparent. “Ah, yes, I thought you looked familiar. You’re taller than I remembered. But what brings you back here that requires you to barge into my offices?”

  Kade was unsure how to explain or what to even say. As a stepper he should appear as little more than a shadow to any who caught sight of him, yet Ianos Wilkerson stood conversing with him.

  “Ser, I wish I could tell you, but I can't,” Kade answered him truthfully, but his eyes kept searching out Sammi. Drool covered his chin as well as the lamb that he now bounced off of his legs. Kade couldn't stop the smile it evoked.

  “Can't or won't?” Ianos said folding his hands together.

  “Can't, ser. I wish I could, you have no idea how much I wish that I could.” Kade's eyes held a tortured glint as they slid back to Sammi. The slight shift in his posture caused Ianos to see right through him as though he vanished.

  “You're a stepper,” Ianos told him point blank with a penetrating gaze.

  “Yes,” Kade admitted shocked by Ianos' bluntness.

  “And you're not here for me, are you?” Ianos said already knowing the truth of the matter.

  “Not entirely, no.”

  “I won't ask you what's happened, I wouldn’t put you into such a compromising position. But please at least tell me how she is?” Ianos asked the lines around his eyes deepening with concern.

  Startled again by his perceptiveness, Kade answered without really thinking. “You really don't want me to answer that.” When he saw the pain shadowed in Ianos' eyes, he drew in a breath and exhaled. “She misses you, but she never says so. But being separated from Sammi is like a part of her is missing and she's trying to overcompensate for the absence. She tries to hide it, but the sadness never really leaves. It's the same with the guilt.”

  “She never was one to let the past go,” Ianos said with an affectionate smile. “But I'm glad to see that she's no longer alone. But if you've come back here, then I have a feeling she's going to need that bond more than ever.”

  “Bond?” Kade was surprised by the stress he had given the word.

  “Brother Hawthorn, I trained her,” Ianos said with a quirk of his mouth. “Her work is distinctive and unique both in ability and execution. I can't say I'm entirely pleased by this, but I know that young woman. She would not have forged a permanent link without compelling reasons. Reasons that I trust have to do with the young man drooling all over himself on the floor.”

  “I can't say,” Kade evaded. He hated tiptoeing around what awaited them. He wanted to yell at Ianos to evacuate the temple before it was too late, but he knew that he could not. What was done was already done. It was then that Kade heard the first shriek.

  Ianos shot a glance at Kade whose eyes fixed on Sammi. Kade did not know who was coming, but what.

  “So, it comes at last,” Ianos said under his breath as he opened his bottom desk drawer.

  The sounds of shouted orders and boots came muffled through the heavy doors.

  Ianos grabbed a thin-bladed knife from the worktable behind him and pulled it across his palm. “You knew what you were coming to find, Brother Hawthorn, yet you still came. That tells me much about the kind of man you are. If they've made it this far into the temple, then we're already lost.”

  He dribbled the blood running from his cut palm into the vial he had removed from the desk. With his thumb, he pushed the stopper back into place.

  He shoved the vial deep into a crack in the mortar where the window met the wall. “You must make sure she finds this.”

  “I can't change anything,” Kade said, his eyes flitting to the door as the noises came closer. “You shouldn't even be able to see me.”

  “You aren’t the only one with a room at Wistholt,” Ianos said in explanation. “How else do you think I kept her sane all these years? Though my ability works in a slightly different manner than yours as I'm sure you've noticed.”

  Ianos knelt down and scooped an agitated Sammi into his arms who promptly grabbed the sleeve of his robes.

  Hugging him close, Ianos placed Sammi in the bassinet with his blanket. “They will be here soon. I can feel the lives of my Order being snuffed out one by one as they move toward this room. Do you think me callus for not having fought back to protect them?”

  Kade did not know how to answer such a question. “I don't know what to think.”

  “There are only a handful of ways these butchers could have survived their initial assault a
nd none of them bode well for our chances. Whoever has done this will try to hide their involvement. Don’t let them. Bring them into the light of the truth. This is the tragedy of a stepper, you must watch atrocities that have already occurred and can do nothing. I am sorry, but you must witness this. Someone must give the dead a voice.”

  Kade could hear them just outside the door now. His voice was clear. “This is why I came.”

  “Because the men coming through that door are Daniyelans, Kaedman Hawthorn. They won't be dressed like them, but they alone possess the knowledge necessary to set any of the spells that could neutralize my people.”

  The door began to give way as Ianos picked up a staff resting in the corner and twirled it in his right hand. Two men spattered with blood burst through the door. At the noise, Sammi's whimpering turned into bawling. It distracted the invaders and the first did not see Ianos as the staff caught him under the chin shattering his jaw. The second fared little better as Ianos brought the back end of the staff around to crush his skull, but they were only the first wave. Ianos backed into the study to give himself more room to maneuver.

  “Don't harm him,” came the bark of a command behind the men. “We need him alive and intact. Any mark he receives, I'll give you its twin myself.”

  A man with bronzed hair tied back into a high ponytail swept into the room. He flashed Ianos a grim smile and bowed low. “It's been too long, jha’na.”

  “Eli Westington,” Ianos said lowering his weapon, but not dropping his defensive guard. “I wouldn’t have thought even Tomas would have the gall to send you.”

  Kade felt like the man writhing on the floor. He had trained with this man, served with this man. Eli Westington was the Daniyelan liaison to the militias of every nation. He always was a little too interested in the politics behind the militias, but that was what made him good at his job. He was a man of conviction, conviction that Kade had always respected.

  “You misunderstand, jha’na,” Eli told him with an appalled stare. “We're here to save you. We caught wind of this uprising of the Virds and were dispatched at once, but I fear we were too late. You mistook two of my men for the invaders. I wanted to ensure my men did not retaliate without identifying the target. Thank the Light we made it to you in time.”