by Becky Allen
“They’re following!” Elan yelled in her ear. Not just meaning the Closest who’d come with them, but guards and panicked Twill and Avowed, too. Jae sprinted faster, coming up toward one of the bridges between cities, overhead from this vantage. She stopped short on the other side but gestured everyone on past her, even Elan, then whirled around to see the bridge—and, grabbing for the land in its base and the stones across it, she dropped it.
The world rumbled, dust rising from the mud, smoke, and screams above them in the distance. She turned away from it all, running again, her people separated from the others by the fallen bridge.
After that, it was just moving forward, getting one foot in front of the other. She could see the ruined stone city in glimpses above her. Most of the buildings had toppled already, but now they were nothing but piles of rocks. The houses that still stood beyond them would be flooded again, whole neighborhoods practically impassible from water that had nowhere to drain, thousands of people’s possessions and livelihoods destroyed. But Jae had no time to mourn or regret what it would do to the Twill who lived there—she had to get her people out.
Finally they reached the city wall, with a gap where the channel carried its water out to the countryside. They burst through it, leaving the cities behind, flooded and burning, rioting, caught up in chaos.
Jae caught Elan’s eye and they slowed their pace, let everyone with them stop to catch their breath. His expression was serious, but she couldn’t hold back a smile, something dark and joyful unfurling inside her. She’d done it. The Curse was broken, and her people were free.
“It’s over,” Elan said, looking back at the column of smoke that rose above Danardae.
“No,” Jae said. “It’s just beginning.”
Though the central cities were ringed by a wall, the town that sprawled outward from them was nearly as enormous. Not as built up, and there weren’t many mage houses, but it was full of people. Some of whom screamed at the site of a contingent of bloodied, battered Closest and their Order allies pushing their way through the channel and up onto the street.
“We have to keep moving,” Lenni said. “Get out of this town, get as much distance from the cities as we can.”
Jae nodded, letting Lenni take the lead through the winding roads as people shouted in alarm. But no one moved to block them—not yet. No one knew what had happened in Danardae yet.
Then, like a headache that had begun slowly and built to agony, Jae felt it. The connection she had with all the other Closest, not just around her but across the world, flared, going white hot. Not with the Curse—that would never happen again. The Curse was gone. This was just pain, violence. Death.
She stared into the distance, but the town seemed unchanged. It was somewhere else, farther outside the cities, not just at one estate but at dozens, maybe every estate. The Closest had felt their freedom the moment the Curse had broken. Few of them would have known the why or how of it, though, or if it would last. They’d seized the moment, taken their chances. The Avowed they struck against wouldn’t have known it was happening, either, would have no way of sensing the impending storm. The first few would have been easy prey.
After that initial fight, nothing would have been easy. Jae pushed herself forward, the heavy weight of other people’s pain slowing her down. She knew what had happened: the Avowed, at least in some cases, had regrouped, grabbed their weapons, and moved to put down the rebellion. Out there in the world, Closest were being slaughtered.
Yet flowing within the agony was a river of triumph, of fierce joy. Despite the pain, there were Closest celebrating. Even as they died, they laughed. They were free.
In some cases, they were even winning.
“Look!” one of the members of the Order said, stopping short to point at the horizon. A column of smoke was clawing its way into the sky somewhere in the distance, mingling with the dark clouds that hovered above them. Jae glanced back. Fire still raged at Danardae, too. Jae used other-vision to fling her mind forward, toward the smoke on the horizon, and saw people fleeing toward them—bodies left in their wake, people trampled in terror, dozens of Twill and a very few Avowed all running directly to this sprawling town.
No, to the central cities. For safety.
“We shouldn’t go any closer to that than we have to,” Lenni said. “We can circle around toward Kavann—”
“No,” Jae said. “We head for the fire. It’s a Closest victory. We’ll be safe there.”
“I don’t know if that’s…,” Lenni said, trailing off. “There are places where the Order can hide us—”
“There are survivors coming toward town,” Jae said, walking again. She didn’t miss that the Closest followed her, leaving Lenni to hurry for a few steps to catch up.
“They’ll spread word of what’s happening,” Elan realized. “People will panic. We’ll want to be out of town by then, and find somewhere for Jae to rest. Using that much magic exhausts her.”
She nodded absently. It was the strangest feeling. Her body was tired, but her mind and her power were sharp. Yes, she had to push through the bloodstained pain of her connection to the Closest to really do anything, but she’d lived with pain for most of her life. She could focus, she could act. As long as she had this much connection, she could do anything.
But the more people died, the weaker that connection would be. And if she couldn’t figure out what the Highest had done in the midst of the fight to suddenly rob her of magic entirely, they’d be left even more defenseless.
Her magic was all that had protected them, gotten them out of Danardae. It commanded the Well, saving the world from the desert. It was what would win the war that was just now beginning. If she was ever left without it, they had no hope.
They moved forward, and sure enough, they hit the wall of incoming people. It was unavoidable: the panic rippled outward from the Twill as they saw the Closest with Jae, and they roared.
Jae gathered her magic, and next to her, Elan held a sword he’d taken from one of the guards at Danardae. Nearly everyone in their group was armed, and absolutely everyone was ready, still jangling from the fight in Danardae. Jae couldn’t even tell which side struck first.
It was all noise and violence, almost too much to follow. Jae was ready with her magic, but everyone was too closely intertwined. She couldn’t think of a way to attack that wouldn’t affect the Closest just as much as their enemies, so instead she pushed back, out of the way. She didn’t know anything about fighting, and neither did the rest of the Closest.
But they were strong, and angry, and armed. It seemed like there was blood everywhere she looked, bodies hitting the ground, people screaming. Elan grabbed her hand and she almost kicked him in the knee before she realized who it was.
“Run!” he shouted at her. “If you go, the Closest will follow!”
Jae took off. He was right. The fight had actually been a nearly even match, and she didn’t want her people to take any more damage, to get hurt any further. As she sped off down one of the streets, still heading in the direction of the rising smoke, others did follow. The Closest first, and then the Order.
That was how it was until they finally broke onto the main road and out of the town: skirmishes, some more deadly than others, depending on how well armed the people who attacked them were. They couldn’t afford to stand and fight, just flee. Especially since they didn’t know how long it would take the surviving Highest to regain control in Danardae and the cities. Once they did, they’d send all their Avowed guards after Jae, and she had to be prepared for that.
She was relieved to still have Elan at her side after everything. The way he’d gone into shock when he’d seen his father fall…She glanced at him, brushed a hand across his elbow to get his attention. He startled, faltering as he stepped.
“I know that must have been…hard,” she said, hesitant, not wanting to ask.
Elan nodded. “It wasn’t—I knew we were going to try to get to him, but—” He swallowed. “I d
idn’t expect Erra to be there. I knew she would be, but somehow I thought…I hoped she’d get my message or…that she’d hear me. When I said it was all lies. That she’d believe me.”
“Maybe, if you’d been able to talk to her alone,” Jae said.
“Maybe.” Elan glanced at Jae, then away. “If he’s really dead, then…then she’s the Highest now. If she didn’t get the message, we’ll never be able to reach her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Elan said.
But it was, in a way. Jae didn’t speak up with that thought, but she couldn’t let go of it, either, especially not as she looked around at her wounded followers, at the smoke that marked chaos on the horizon. The world was burning; her people were fighting for their lives. All because of what she’d done.
She’d broken the Curse. It needed to happen, and she didn’t regret that. But if only there’d been some other way…
It didn’t matter, now. It was done. But just because she didn’t want to dwell on the past didn’t mean she could ignore it, either.
They hit the main road at last, as the sun was climbing, light streaming through the few breaks in the clouds, and the view that rolled outward was terrifying.
The fields were on fire. The moisture in the air wasn’t enough to dampen it, and the fire would rage until the clouds burst. The air seemed to waver in the distance. This wasn’t the dry, steady heat of sun and drought, but something fiercer and more alive, a terrifying heat that Jae wasn’t at all used to and couldn’t control.
The road itself was still passable, the nearest fields not ablaze yet, but the whole area had been trampled. The people who’d come this way had been in such a hurry that anything dropped had been left, run over in the fierce rush toward the town. Bags of clothes, hastily thrown together; jewelry, a doll, a single boot that had stuck in the mud.
It was only as they got closer to the nearest estate house that they saw the bodies. Some had just been trampled, but as they came nearer to the fires and the town and estate house, there were more. There had been fighting here, and the dead they passed by had been injured first. Blood stained their bodies, their clothes, puddled and pooled on the ground.
Jae made herself look at them for long enough to get a sense of what had happened. The Closest, when they’d sensed their freedom, had banded together and attacked. They’d come through the fields, killing anyone they found, and the Avowed in the estate house had put together a force and struck back. That fight had happened here. It seemed that more than half of the bodies were Avowed, but there were plenty of fallen Closest, too.
Soon, they spotted a group of people standing in the distance, blocking the road. Elan’s hand caught Jae’s elbow and she nodded. She saw them, and with other-vision, she could see detail from this distance.
“Closest,” she reported. They were barefoot, still in muddied robes, and most of them showed the wear of battle. They were all armed, either with weapons taken from the fallen Avowed or with the same sickles they’d used to work the fields. Those blades were meant for harvesting but were deadly even so.
“Be ready,” Lenni said to her people, as one of the Closest opposing them stepped forward.
Jae stepped up to meet her, holding up a hand with her palm open, gesturing that it was safe. The woman hesitated, staring at her, taking in the sight of not just Jae but the whole exhausted, bloodied crowd, in tattered clothes and bare feet. Recognizing them as their kindred, not enemies.
The woman returned Jae’s gesture, and Jae let out a breath of relief. “It’s safe. We’ll be fine.”
“Talk to them,” Elan urged Jae.
Jae hesitated, but everyone who’d followed her was looking to her now. Even Lenni and the Order. So she stepped closer to the others, meeting the Closest woman between their groups, and said, “We’re friends. Closest. We’re with you.”
“We fled the city,” said a Closest man, stepping up even with Jae. “When she freed us. She did it. She’s our mage.”
He was looking at Jae as he spoke it, and now the woman—and the Closest behind her—stared at Jae. Jae swallowed, and remembered how she’d proved it in the past. She held her hand out, palm up, and concentrated. It was so much easier now that the Closest magic was unfettered, that her connection to them was so strong, and it only took a moment for the flower to shimmer to life in her palm.
The expressions on everyone’s faces changed, from wariness or fear to shock to something joyful. Jae smiled back. It was still strangely thrilling that she could create like this. Yes, it was the same magic she used to shake the land, to control the Well, stir the air. But it felt different to create something rather than just moving pieces around.
She handed the flower to the woman and said, “My name is Jae. I was born Closest, and became a mage. And yes, I broke the Curse.”
“Lady Mage,” the woman gasped, and took a step back—then fell to her knees, the flower held gently in her hand. The rest followed suit a moment later, and so did the Closest man who’d stepped up to join Jae.
Jae stared, shocked, out of her element. She looked back at Elan, who gestured upward with his hand. He didn’t say anything, but they rose anyway, and she let out a relieved breath.
“I don’t need that,” she told them. “I’m not…not one of them.”
“The cities are in chaos,” Elan said, joining them. “It looks like there was plenty of that here, too. If there’s anywhere safe, we’d like to rest. We’ve been on the run for hours.”
“Yes. We took the house,” one of the Closest said. “Please follow us, Lady Mage. All your people can follow.”
The Closest woman gestured to the others, and they all started forward, two groups mingling and becoming one. Jae glanced at the man who’d stepped up to help her and said, “I’d like to know your name.”
“Karr, Lady,” he said. “At your service, for the rest of my days.”
As they walked, the woman who led them toward the house explained, “We’d heard…someone had slipped into our enclave. Told us to be ready for freedom.”
“The Order’s doing,” Lenni said.
“We didn’t believe it,” the woman continued. “But then at dawn, we all felt it. First it was pain, like being ripped in half, but then…”
Jae nodded. She knew what the release was like: it was flying, after a lifetime of being weighed down. It was a drink of water after a day of working in the sun. It was breathing for the very first time.
“We’d just gotten to the fields. The fight wasn’t hard,” the woman said. “At first. When we felt it, we all fell in together, and…” She brandished her sickle. “There weren’t many Avowed in the field. They fell fast, and we rushed the house before anyone could realize.”
“What about the fighting on the road?” Lenni asked.
Almost as one, Jae and the other Closest shot her a glare.
She held her hands up and grimaced. “I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to that.”
“We didn’t have as easy a time taking the estate house,” another man chimed in. “There weren’t many guards—most of them had been called in to the cities, I think. But the ones who were left…it was a real fight. We couldn’t get in, had to retreat, to regroup. They came after us, wanted to kill us, I suppose. It was a mistake. There were more of us outside—who hadn’t been in that first rush. We outnumbered them. Simple as that.”
“They were scared,” another of the Closest put in. “Terrified. But not us—we had nothing to lose. We fought harder. Any of them who didn’t run, we killed. And we put guards up all around. We didn’t know who’d come for us, try to put us back in our places, but we wanted to be ready.”
Jae nodded. “Wise.”
“I’d be interested to know about the fires,” Elan said, as they headed through a small town and toward an estate house.
“We didn’t know what was happening,” the Closest who seemed to be their leader explained. “But we know the central cities depend on the
se fields. We thought Highest would come for us, try to take back the house, enslave us again, bring enough guards that we could never win. So we decided to be ready—if we can’t live free, we’ll weaken them when we die. I don’t know how much food they’ve got saved in the cities, but they won’t be getting any more. Not from us. Not ever.
“But now…” She peered at Jae. “We’ve got a chance to stay free, to live. We’ve got you, and your magic…I never even dreamed the Curse could break. I never dared. I’d’ve died for that, and—and I’ll follow you anywhere, Lady Mage. Swear vows to you.”
Her voice was joyful. Despite the battle, despite the blood and fire, despite the dead—and that surely some of her friends were among the fallen. Maybe she’d mourn later, but Jae knew with certainty that even that mourning would be a celebration. The Closest who’d died had helped win the day, and today…today would be celebrated by their descendants for generations. Maybe forever.
Jae bowed her head as she walked, awed by all of it, by her place in it. She didn’t feel as if she deserved the looks she was getting, the way even the quiet Closest leaned in to speak to one another, gazes fixed on her. Talking about her, what she could do, what she’d done. She didn’t deserve the way they’d knelt for her, or offered such unquestioning loyalty.
She’d done what she’d had to, because she’d been able to. Because it was the right thing, and because she’d promised Tal. That was all.
But it wasn’t all to anyone else. Now they saw her as their leader—their savior. She held their hope and their futures in her hands, and they would listen to her, follow her. Die for her, if they had to.