“The servants’ quarters!” Jaimin yelled to an Arran captain at the infirmary doors. “Bring the patients there.” Far off down the corridor they could see Arran soldiers streaming towards the courtyard.
Elaina clenched Jaimin’s hand tightly. “Don’t worry, Jem, they’re not going to capture the castle,” she said.
“I don’t want them near the castle,” Jaimin said. “This is my home.”
Just then, they saw Princess Tori running toward them, being pursued by her assigned guard. “Tori, stay with us!” Jaimin said.
She ran into his arms and he squeezed her. “I’m scared,” the little princess said.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Jaimin said.
The three royals headed downstairs to the servants’ quarters in the sub-basement, where they reunited with Galen and waited for soldiers to bring them more unconscious Frakkers to redeem.
After quickly adjusting the jamming signal, Nastasha ran out to the courtyard with Alethea to assess the immediate threat. They were just in time to see Arran soldiers clashing with a cadre of about a dozen purple army warriors who had come in by the main gate.
“Why is the drawbridge still down?” Nastasha asked.
“It shouldn’t be,” replied Queen Alethea. The queen activated her communicator and demanded that the bridge be pulled up.
Nastasha saw two Frakkers slip away from the fight and disappear into the colonnade.
Without a second thought, she took after them.
Drawing the Dagger of Shen Yan as she ran, Nastasha quickly located the two foes, and they saw her coming. They were both young men—twins.
Foomp! One of them launched a gel canister at her from a small launcher. It smashed just short of her, bursting into a flaming puddle. She felt the heat pulse against her legs as she skirted the burning goo. The same enemy loaded and fired another canister, and this one she dodged. She closed more of the distance.
The other twin was trying unsuccessfully to open an access door to the east wing. As Nastasha neared him, the first twin cast aside his launcher and drew his sword. His brother drew a longbow.
What am I doing? Nastasha thought. I’m pregnant…I’m not wearing armor… She knew she could probably take down the sword-wielder with a few slashes of her dagger, but not the archer. She’d heard that purple army archers had impeccable aim.
She sprinted for cover: the nearest column. Just before she reached it, shick! the Frakker’s arrow grazed her across the back. The sting of the wound came on quickly.
She hoped the arrow wasn’t poisoned.
You damn fool! She told herself as she caught her breath. Why do you always have to be the hero? Get back inside!
She peeked around the column and saw an Arran arrow strike the neck of the Frakker archer. The arrow belonged to the junior guard Arin, who was approaching. The archer fell.
Nastasha leapt out of hiding and rushed the twin who had the sword. He thrust his blade at her, but she parried, slicing his weapon in half. She lunged in with a backhand slash and lopped off his hand. Stepping further in, she carved into the left side of his chest and ripped her dagger out his side, finishing him.
“Great work, Your Excellency,” said Arin. “Now, please get to safety.”
Nastasha sheathed her blood-drenched blade. “I take far too many risks,” she said to Arin. “Again, you were there for me just when I needed you most.”
“It is my honor,” he said.
As she headed back inside, Arin followed her, and he noticed blood soaking the back of her uniform shirt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Jaimin and Elaina re-established their clinic in the wide corridor of the servants’ quarters, and, with Galen’s help, the couple continued healing the knocked-out enemies. Tori called the newly restored foes over one by one and gave them a short speech about her being their princess now, and how she would take care of them.
Galen was running out of his lethal doses; he wasn’t even sure there was enough for the two dozen patients who remained untreated. He tried using just a bit less on the next two bodies—twin teen girls—and he then ran upstairs to see if there was more of the chemical in storage. As the injection took effect on the teen girls, they turned ashen as had the other patients. Elaina and Jaimin laid their hands on the girls and waited for the divine light to flow.
But it did not flow.
“What’s going on?” Jaimin said.
“Dunno. Maybe he didn’t give them enough of the stuff?” Elaina said. She reached for a syringe, drove the needle into the vial of the dwindling toxin, and drew back the plunger.
“Do you know how much to use?” Jaimin asked.
“No idea,” Elaina said, holding the syringe up to the light so she could see how much she had drawn. Her hands were shaking. “If you need to be closer to death, here you go…” She stuck the girls, one at a time, and delivered half the dose to each. Setting aside the syringe, she lay her hands on her patients one more time, and so did Jaimin.
But no light came.
“I feel nothing,” Jaimin said.
“Come on,” Elaina said, “you’re not supposed to die.” She held one girl’s face in her hands.
“There’s no reversing it,” Jaimin said.
Elaina held the girl’s nose, put her lips over her mouth, and delivered a breath. The patient’s lungs filled. And the air rushed back out.
“We need ideas, Jem.”
“I don’t have any—they’ve had a lethal dose for sure.” He placed his hands on both girls, closed his eyes, and searched for heartbeats. Their hearts were already still. Their blood had stopped flowing. Just then, a thoonk! behind Jaimin snapped him out of his mending trance. He spun around.
Tori was holding a longbow that was as tall as she was. One of the next patients in the queue had fallen to the floor, with an arrow in his back.
“Tor?” Jaimin said. She pointed to the downed Frakker. “Did you shoot him?” he asked her.
Tori nodded furiously. “They’re waking up! He was about to stab you—I was so scared, I tried to warn you, but I couldn’t get my voice to work.”
“Guards!” Jaimin yelled. “Where are the damn guards?” He ran to Tori, who was still clutching the bow with white knuckles. Her knees were shaking. “Drop it, Tori. Just drop it.” She couldn’t. He pried the bow from her grip and threw it to the ground.
“Fix him next,” Tori begged, again pointing to the boy she had shot. Her tears were flowing.
Elaina ran over and scooped Tori up into her arms. “Where did the guards go?” Elaina asked Jaimin.
More of the waiting patients were stirring now, and many were still wearing their weapons. They hadn’t been properly searched.
The guards had heard Jaimin’s call and they came running back. Jaimin led Elaina and Tori away from the waking enemies. “Seize their weapons,” Jaimin commanded. “And send someone to find Galen urgently.”
The Arrans moved in at once, searching the groggy young enemies for weapons. Some of the captives woke up enough to fight back. More soldiers arrived to help.
“We need to leave,” Jaimin said. He and Elaina, who was still carrying Tori, ran down a flight of stairs to the second sub-basement. Marco followed.
“Our sincerest apologies, Your Highness,” said Marco.
“Where were you?” Jaimin asked.
“Distracted,” Marco said, “which is unforgivable.”
“What have I done?” Tori whispered in Elaina’s ear. “The boy I shot, can you save him?”
“I don’t think so,” Elaina said. “But you didn’t do anything wrong. Look, you saved your brother’s life.” Tori sobbed and sniffled. Elaina held her tightly.
The ruckus continued upstairs. They waited it out.
Soon Nastasha came running downstairs. “Are you all right?” she asked Jaimin.
“Yes, we’re fine,” Jaimin replied. “But we’ve run into problems with the healing.”
“You’re wounded,” Elaina
said to Nastasha, “on your back.”
“Turn around, hero,” Jaimin told Nastasha. She did. A huge blood patch surrounded a tear on the back of her uniform.
“Eeek!” Tori squealed.
Jaimin opened the rip in Nastasha’s shirt with his fingers and examined her wound. “You’ll need stitches,” Jaimin said.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “It’s just a scratch. And I don’t feel any poison.”
“It’s a little deeper than you think,” he said. “I can work on it.”
“No, Jaimin,” Nastasha said. “I won’t have you falling asleep when the castle’s under attack.”
“How is everything upstairs?” Elaina asked Nastasha.
“Looks like it’s…tsss…Ow! Easy, Jaimin! Looks like it’s under control. What in the world happened with the prisoners?”
“Elaina and I can no longer bring people back. It’s not working anymore.”
“You mean the light isn’t flowing?” Nastasha asked.
He nodded.
“It’s like the divine spirit has said ‘that’s enough.’” Elaina proposed.
“Could that mean…that we’ve won the war?” Nastasha asked.
“We don’t know what it means,” said Elaina.
Dawn arrived. The hundreds of purple army warriors who had been healed by Jaimin and Elaina now wanted to be let out to fight in defense of their saviors, even if it meant deceiving and killing their fellow soldiers who had not been converted. General Valeriy allowed them to fight, but he ordered them to be branded with a small mark on their calves so they could be distinguished from the true enemies. As quickly as they could get tagged, they formed squads and set out.
Once the castle was declared clear, the Arrans and the reformed purple warriors cleared the surrounding streets. Meanwhile, the allied armed forces closed their circle and surrounded the city to prevent the foes from fleeing.
The infirmary was declared safe once again, although it still smelled of smoke and chemicals, and cold air was pouring in through the broken windows. Jaimin, Elaina and Tori escorted Nastasha there so she could get stitched up by an army nurse. She nearly went mad with impatience. There were reports to consider, decisions to be made, orders to be issued, and she was stuck shirt-off with her chest to the bed, getting laced up, her entire back numb with local anesthesia.
Arin came over and stayed by Nastasha’s side as she was stitched up. He told her a few decent jokes to lighten her mood.
Before leaving the infirmary, Jaimin took a pair of medical scissors to his hair and Elaina’s, mainly because hers was already touching the floor and she was tripping over it. “I’ll cut yours off the same length as Nastasha’s,” he said.
“That’s too long,” Elaina said. “How about at my waist?” He snipped her hair off as evenly as he could. Thousands of brown silken strands fell into a mound on the floor.
Jaimin then had Elaina cut his hair back to the length he normally wore it. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Elaina said.
“Don’t worry,” Jaimin said. “Just cut it straight across for now.”
An officer arrived and reported to Jaimin, Elaina and Tori that in Destauria hundreds of purple army soldiers had been captured or had surrendered, and that the Destaurian army was scouring the hills and forests for any holdouts. On the east side of the mountains, a major operation was about to begin against the purple army training camps.
CHAPTER FORTY
Marco escorted Jaimin, Elaina and Tori up to Elaina’s room in the west wing. He encouraged them to get some rest, and reassured them that they were now surrounded by many layers of defenses.
While Elaina drew a bath, Tori curled up against Jaimin on the bed, and the brother and sister were asleep within minutes.
Simmering in the bath, Elaina tried to clear her mind. She felt so much—the spiritual noise from the souls of those she loved battling outside mixed with the chaotic cries and questions of her own inner self. It bothered her that the white light had stopped flowing. She had viewed the light’s flow as a sign that what she was doing—killing people, essentially—was acceptable, even though she still felt awful each time someone died at her direction. Now that the light had ceased to flow, Elaina couldn’t help but to wonder whether it was she who was no longer worthy of it.
She tried focusing on the feeling of the white light, and this practice helped her to find peace. So much peace, in fact, that she fell asleep in the tub.
When she awoke, she had no idea how long she had been out. She dried off, slipped on a gown, and came out to the bedroom, where she found Jaimin and Tori still asleep. She sat on a rug on the floor and meditated.
After going through the steps her mother had taught her, she appeared in spirit form on the seat of a coach, opposite Alessa and Eleonora.
“Baah! You scared me,” Eleonora said. She was nursing Ia.
“Sorry,” Elaina said. “I can’t very easily announce myself.” Alessa giggled. Ia started to wail. It took a minute for Eleonora to calm her down.
“You’re up and about?” Elaina asked Alessa. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I can’t just lay around, kid,” Alessa said. “Not if I’m able to help.”
“Well I’m glad you’re feeling better. Just please don’t get yourself into a situation like that again.”
“I learned a lot from the experience,” Alessa said. “About myself, and my limits, and about Makias, and how wonderful he is, which I guess I knew.”
“Well, what is going on down south? Where are you headed?” Elaina asked.
“Toward danger again,” Alessa replied.
“You won’t believe it, Elaina,” Eleonora said. She had Ia settled and feeding again. “Mascarin sent a transmission out over the enemy’s repeaters at the training camps. He offered to spare them if they surrendered. He must be a master with words, because it worked brilliantly. Some in the command tried to hold on to power, but they were diced by their underlings.”
“So, the training camps are secured?” Elaina asked.
“They are. Now all that remains is the baby mill. We’re on our way out there now, to meet up with Mascarin.”
“That’s wonderful!” Elaina said. “But be careful. Shouldn’t you stay home with Ia where it’s safe?”
“We’ll be all right,” Eleonora said. “What’s happening up in Arra?”
“We’ve got some stories to tell when we see you again,” Elaina said. “We turned hundreds of the invaders to our side. We survived an assault on the castle, and there’s still some fighting on the edges of the city, but I sense things are coming under control now.”
“How is Tori?” Alessa asked. “I sensed trouble with her.”
“She…killed a man who was about to attack Jaimin.”
Alessa raised her eyebrows.
“We’ll help her through it,” Elaina reassured her.
“Once things calm down,” Eleonora said, “you and that man of yours can finally get married.”
“Look, once this war is truly over, I’m not waiting long,” Elaina said. “Just long enough for all of you to get here for the ceremony.”
“We’ll ride day and night,” Alessa said.
“I love you all,” Elaina said. “Stay safe.”
“We love you too,” Eleonora said. With a smile, Elaina vanished and returned to her body.
Jaimin was stirring. “Is that you?” he asked Elaina.
“I have amazing news,” Elaina told him as she stood. “Mascarin got the purple army to surrender at the training camps.”
Jaimin remained quiet. He’d been through so much, he found good news hard to process.
“We’ve done it, then,” Elaina said. “It’s a new world.”
“I need to let it sink in,” Jaimin said.
“Me too,” Elaina said, leaning over and kissing his forehead. “It’s all so much. Can anyone really ‘win’ a war?”
Tori flipped around and started curling Jaimin’s hair around her little
fingers. “How are you doing, kid?” Jaimin asked her.
“I’m still thinking about the man I shot,” she said. “Trying really hard not to.”
“If you ever feel bad about what you did,” Jaimin said, “you come straight to me and tell me, okay?”
“I feel bad about what I did,” she said.
“You saved me,” he reminded her.
“My mind knows I did the right thing, but my heart still feels bad.”
“Why don’t we all get dressed so we can see what’s going on downstairs?” Elaina suggested. “It sounds to me like there’s a celebration underway. Tori, help me pick out something to wear.”
“Really? Sure,” said the little princess.
The sandy area surrounding the baby mill smelled of sage and dusty trickweed, the only plants around. What had been a very cold start-of-winter morning was becoming tolerable as the sun climbed higher in the blue sky. A few clouds drifted toward the area, as if they were curious to see what would happen as the Destaurians closed in on the last vestige of the purple army’s power.
The Destaurian general, Tokashan, would have normally sent a few spies to assess the target site, but that would have taken time, and with the enemy on high alert the innocent captives of the purple army were in imminent danger.
Over a hundred Destaurian soldiers rode up on the baby mill compound, spilled from their wagons, and spread out in an arc around the structure. Hares scurried off at the approach of so many people. Voles and lizards sensed the vibrations and stayed in their holes.
Mascarin was there among the troops. It was hoped he could get a line into the enemy’s repeater so he could talk them into surrendering like he had at the training camps. However, there was a complication: at the camps, the communications apparatus had been near the perimeter of each facility. Here, the repeater was deep within the complex.
The baby mill was a large, roughly circular compound half buried in the desert sand. Although its interior spaces were refined and modern, its frame was made from rough timber and bricks of compressed sand.
When Tokashan and his troops approached, they noticed that what might be called the “front doors” of the compound were fully open, as were all the other exits. As they encircled the place, a few dozen young men and women in white shirts and grey pants began to emerge from the main doors in small groups, cautiously, keeping their hands raised in the air. The Destaurians directed them to a patch of sand a safe distance away and commanded them to sit.
The Fallen Mender Page 27