by Callie Bates
Jahan and I stand alone on an unmoving patch of ground amid the tumbled remains of the battlefield. Dust lingers in the air. It is all that remains of everyone we lost. If we lose many more Caerisians, there won’t be a Caeris left to claim its freedom.
This cannot be the answer. It cannot be the only way.
Jahan catches my hand in his, and I feel a tremor running through him. There are tears in his eyes, but I feel too hollowed out to weep.
“Come on, El,” he says. “Let’s see what they’ve found.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Gunfire reports as we approach the forest. We break into a run just as Rhia and Sophy burst from the trees with a few others.
“They’re behind us,” Rhia shouts, throwing me my horse’s reins.
We swing into our saddles and gallop off a moment behind the others. Shots echo after us. Jahan swivels in his saddle and makes a gesture, nearly falling off his horse.
“What did you do?” I demand.
He grins. “I broke their guns.”
Sophy and Rhia curve around, leading us off the field and up a hillside into another patch of forest. We slow in the woods, the horses snorting, branches whacking riders in their faces. I ask the trees to make us a clear path. The branches draw aside.
We can ride a bit faster now. Most of the mountain lords remained at the battlefield, along with Ingram Knoll. It’s just us and a handful of others riding this way. As we reach the hilltop and plunge down the ridge on the other side, I realize we’re tracking someone.
“A party of cavalry went this way,” Rhia pants at us, “followed by Ereni. We don’t know who, but—” She stops, reining in. “Shift! Halt! There’s a line in the land—”
But it’s too late. We’re already plunging through—I feel the line crawling over me, prickles and sparks of light—blind as any southerners, the land pulling us where it will.
We stumble through to a patch of green outside a village. Buildings lean close to one another before us, timber roofs colliding. Somewhere beyond them, muskets fire. I hear the sheer sound of glass shattering. A woman screams.
Rhia and Sophy rein in, exchanging a glance. Maybe the land shifted to send us after the people we’re pursuing. The horses are sweating.
Jahan’s head comes up. “What do you—” I begin, but he’s already bolting through the riders, bursting away from us down the street, toward the fighting.
We plunge after him, all together.
They’re in the town square. A brigade of Ereni are lined up on this side of the fountain, shooting into a building on the other side of the square. A pale face shows through the jagged remains of a window, and I see exhausted horses let loose down a side street. These are our people, then, hiding in the houses.
The Ereni are reloading as Jahan rides up behind them, Rhia close on his heels. At a shouted order, some of the Ereni start to fire across the square, while others turn to gape at us.
The guns don’t fire. I hear the clatter as they begin to explode, one by one, then all at once. Men scream, clutching faces and throwing up their hands.
Jahan throws himself off his horse, hitting an Ereni man—the captain?—in the chin. Then the others close in and I can’t see Jahan anymore. I’m thrown off my horse, onto the ground. A soldier thrusts his bayonet at Sophy. I duck under his unprotected left arm and thrust my dagger into his sternum. It catches on a rib, but I twist it up and it digs between his ribs, deep into his flesh. He chokes, trying to hit me, but his hands are clumsy with the bayonet. I get my knee between us and thrust him back with all my might. He falls, convulsing, to the ground, my dagger embedded in his chest.
My hand is soaked with cooling blood.
I start to shake. I just killed a man.
A shout rises from the building across the square. A man with spiked hair—Alistar—runs toward us, crying his ululation. Then more Hounds pour from the building—a small band, but enough. I glimpse a shock of pale hair among them.
Finn.
He’s alive.
We’re locked in now. I kick a man in the groin. Sophy rushes up to me; she has pulled my dagger from the man’s chest. As we put our backs together, she presses the dagger into my hand—and I slice at an Ereni soldier, who falls under a blow from one of the mountain warriors.
I wipe the sweat from my eyes, glancing around. We’re winning. We’re win—
Lights shine from the street we just rode down. An explosion of shots deafens my ears. More lights flood in from the other side of the square. Blue-and-gold sashes catch my eye. Ereni. I swivel around, but I can’t see Finn anymore. It’s chaos.
An Ereni soldier hits my arm. My dagger goes flying. The man wears a savage grin, swinging his bayonet into the air.
A blow strikes the soldier from behind—an ax between his shoulders. He falls, and I see Finn, standing there with the bloody ax in his hand, his blond hair uncovered, his face white with terror and battle-joy.
“Finn!” I’m crying out his name, dazed with relief. He’s alive, alive!
“El—”
Something explodes behind us.
Finn stops. The ax falls from his hand. Slowly, he brings his hands to his chest. Blood blossoms over his jacket. His heart is running out.
No. No no no—
“Finn!” I scream, lunging for him as he staggers onto his knees. His eyes are glassy. I catch him against my stomach. He’s speaking, saying something, even as he slides toward the ground. I scrabble my fingers in his jacket. It does no good.
Hooves. A horse pulls up beside me, a dappled gray. I stare up at the Butcher, blood on his lace cuff, at the gun he’s pointing into my face.
It seems my mother has failed in her mission to reform him.
And all at once, something in me shatters. I scream at him. “Murderer! Criminal! Shoot me, if you’re going to! I know what you are!”
His eyes have widened, just a fraction; the barrel of the gun lowers. And then his horse jostles backward—Sophy has rammed into him. His pistol fires, exploding wildly over our heads. Finn has fallen to the ground. Sophy strikes the horse’s hindquarters with all her might, and it bolts away across the square, carrying the Butcher with it.
Finn. I drop to my knees, my own ragged breathing harsh in my ears.
An enormous crack sounds around the square. Jahan has broken all the guns at last.
It’s chaos. I have no idea who’s winning, but Finn is the most important thing. Between us, Sophy and I heave him up and carry him toward the quiet side of the square, into the shelter of a building. It’s a bakery—racks half filled with pastries and bread, a still-warm oven. We lay Finn on the floor. His eyes are shut, and it’s so dim I can’t make out whether or not his chest is moving. I lower my ear and feel the cold weight of blood against it.
Cold. The blood on Finn’s jacket is cold. Congealing.
Beneath the blood-soaked fabric, I feel nothing.
No.
No, no.
I tear his jacket open, scattering buttons everywhere. Sophy’s face is chalk white. I feel the smooth skin of Finn’s chest, and then the terrible hole—the deep, inset wound.
I drop my ear against the place where his heart should beat, but there’s only blood.
Only a body. No Finn.
I sag back on my heels. My chest burns with pressure, but I can’t cry. I want to take a pistol, I want to kill the Butcher. After all this, he kills Finn and not me?
A strangled sound pulls me from my shock. Sophy crouches above Finn’s head, her hands fluttering around his face, as if she doesn’t quite dare touch him, even though he can hardly stop her. I remember Granya’s augury—Finn’s death, another will come—and I feel cold, so cold.
Sophy is weeping—ragged, undignified tears. “He was my brother. He was my brother, and I never told him. He never knew.”
I reach for her grasping hands, trying to hold her steady, but she fights me off. She turns her face up to mine and whispers, “What good is waking the land if you can�
�t bring him back?”
My lips part. We stare at each other. She’s panting. “Soph,” I begin, my voice shaking.
The door bursts open behind us. I whirl, snatching a bread knife from the counter, but it’s Jahan and Alistar. They’re both covered in blood.
“It’s getting bad out there,” Alistar says. “We have to get out.”
Jahan sees Finn first. His mouth opens. Then he makes a terrible noise—a gut-wrenching sound that tears upward into a shout. He falls to his knees at Finn’s side.
“He’s dead,” Sophy spits. “Can any of your magic bring him back?”
“Sophy.” I kneel beside her, reaching for her arms, but again she pushes me away.
Jahan is breathing hard. He’s stopped making the horrible sound, but his lips remain parted.
“Can we bring him back?” Sophy screams at him, at me.
“Be quiet.” I shake her. “You’re giving us away.”
She stares at me. I grip her hand. A breath pours out of her; her forehead bumps against mine. I feel her whole body shaking. Cold tears bunch behind my eyes, but I can’t cry now.
The door bangs again: Rhia, blood crusting her nose. “We have to get out now. They’re setting fire to the town.”
“The men?” Alistar asks, his voice high and tight. “My Hounds?”
“They…” she begins, but falters, meeting Alistar’s eyes. I have never seen Rhia Knoll be gentle before, but her voice is soft when she says, “A few have escaped into the woods.”
Only a few. I swallow hard; Alistar is fisting his hands. We can’t afford to lose anyone else. There has to be another way.
“We need to go,” Rhia says. “Now.”
—
WE RUN OUT the back, into an alley where the baker and the butcher must empty their slop. Just behind us, I hear the roar of the flame, the sound of breaking glass.
We leave Finn. We have to leave his body there, to be consumed by the fire.
Jahan grabs my hand. We’re running, pelting down the alley, onto another street. There are no Ereni, but the town behind us blazes. We run and run, out into the farm fields, where we stumble through another fold in the land, emerging into deep woods, running again until we come upon an empty, abandoned croft. There we throw ourselves onto the floor like animals, all pressing together. It’s dark outside, but for the first time in my life, the woods seem full of danger.
—
THE OTHERS SLEEP, I think—or something close enough to it. But I lie, staring into the darkness, my hand balled up in a twist of Jahan’s coat. Again, again, I feel Finn’s body slide to the ground even as I try to hold him. The slick, dead weight of him. How his limbs flopped when Sophy and I carried him across the square. How Sophy screamed at me and Jahan.
The Butcher lowering the pistol. The rawness of my throat when I shouted at him.
The man I killed, the dagger silver in his chest. How his mouth opened. The weight of his terror between us. How I kicked him and he fell. How the blood was sticky on my hand.
Around and around the memories churn. My stomach is sick and tight but I don’t feel like vomiting. My eyes hurt but I can’t close them.
Finally I get up in the timeless dark. Jahan shifts as I move, but I don’t turn back for him. He will be blaming me for Finn’s death—and if he isn’t, he should.
The croft lacks a door. I step out into the night. A mist is falling. I let the delicate drops wet my face; I pull off my hat so they can spangle my hair. Maybe the earth can cleanse me. Maybe the land can absolve my guilt.
The mist lessens. I look around. There’s not much to see—the bulk of trees in shadow upon shadow, an ill-repaired wall. We don’t even know where we are. The Butcher’s presence in the town could mean we’re close to Barrody, or it could mean he got there through the shift. How far did the land take us?
And does it even matter? We’ve lost so many of the Hounds, and so many more Caerisians in the battle. We’re cut off, for the moment, from Ingram Knoll and the mountain lords. Are they still alive? Free?
Finn is dead. My father, too, for all I know. My mother is a prisoner, perhaps being forced to reveal the secrets of the land’s shifts. Denis Falconier rules Caeris, the man who killed a king so he could make himself one.
He’ll probably succeed.
As many times as I’ve been captured, threatened with death, I never really knew what it meant until I lost Finn today.
A sliver of moonlight cuts through the clouds. It shines on a cedar tree growing beside the stone wall. I walk to the tree and curl into its roots. Somewhere beneath my numb body, the land pulses its awareness. But not even the land can save us now.
From the croft’s gaping doorway, a shadow emerges, sees me, and comes over to the tree. Jahan settles down on the other side of the roots, our hands near but not touching.
There is nothing to say. We sit for a long time in silence.
“I failed him,” Jahan says out of nowhere, as if we’ve been having a conversation the whole while. Maybe we have, in a way. “He asked me to make this revolution a success, and I said I would. He—”
I am shocked to hear his voice thicken with tears. Alistar Connell cried when his Hounds died, but not after. I remember that horrible bellow Jahan uttered when he saw Finn’s body. I can’t bear to hear that again. I can’t bear him to feel the same grief I feel, the grief that should be mine.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I didn’t bring the black ships. I didn’t even try to persuade the emperor to send them. I thought starting a revolution would be simple if we used our magic. I never thought we might lose.” He turns to me. “I never thought it would kill him.”
My throat clenches. Why do people die so easily?
“It should’ve been me,” I mutter.
“What? No!”
“I was there. Right there. The Butcher was going to shoot me, too, but then Sophy—” I stop. The Butcher should have shot me right there, a fast death. But he didn’t. Did he even recognize me until the moment I shouted at him? Did he mean to shoot? And I realize I didn’t see him fire at Finn. He came up beside me immediately after.
Immediately. With no time to reload his gun. It fired into the empty air.
He didn’t kill Finn.
But it doesn’t matter, does it? Because whether or not he killed Finn, the Butcher has committed enough other damning crimes. He’s still leading this war against us, despite my mother’s hope. And how can we possibly win against him?
If he were on our side, he could bring the military over to us. It would be an easy victory then.
Jahan is cursing in Idaean, oblivious to my internal strife. “All the gods damn it. I hate battle, El. I hate it—I hate what it makes me into. It makes people’s lives seem not to matter. But they do. No one should have to die like that, not even for freedom.”
No. No one should; and no more of us will, if I can stop it.
I reach for his hand, and Jahan grabs onto me, his grip so tight it seems about to crush my bones. But I welcome this small pain, as if it can make me share, somehow, in Finn’s greater pain. I whisper, “Did he even want to rule? He never…he might have…” I stop. I can’t say it aloud, not now. I can’t say that Finn was a good man, but he might not have been the king Caeris needs.
Jahan doesn’t say anything. I suppose he knows what I was trying to say; even Finn knew he wasn’t cut out to be a king. He tried to take on the duty. He gave his heart to our cause. And it killed him.
“He believed in Caeris’s freedom.” Jahan’s voice rasps. “He would have tried to rule well, when the time came.”
I hold Jahan’s hand tighter and the terrible truth comes to me. He could die, too. Just as easily. And my mother, my father. Sophy. Alistar. Rhia. They could all be taken from me so quickly, by a single explosion of gunpowder and shot.
It’s wrong. It’s so wrong.
I crawl over the roots, directly into Jahan’s lap. He stiffens, startled, but then his arms come around me.
I tuck my face between his shoulder and his neck, closing my eyes. He rests his chin on the crown of my head. His breath stirs my hair.
The cedar’s roots shift under us, coming up and around to clasp us, to hold us there, tight in an embrace with the tree.
“I won’t lose you,” Jahan whispers in my ear.
I swallow hard. “I love you, Jahan Korakides.”
There’s a breath, a pause, before he answers me. For a moment I think he isn’t going to say it.
But then he does. “And I love you, Elanna Valtai.”
—
DAWN ARRIVES: a lightening of the gray sky. I stir against Jahan. I don’t think either of us slept, but though we’ve been outside for hours, we’re not cold. The earth warms us.
There’s a murmur of conversation from the house. Rhia emerges, squinting for us in the shadows under the tree. She comes over and perches on the roots. Her face is drawn, as if she hasn’t slept, either.
“We need to find my father and the mountain lords,” she says abruptly. “And figure out where we are.” She doesn’t quite meet my eyes.
I don’t like the way she’s acting. “What’s the matter?”
“Sophy and Alistar have been talking. All three of us have.” Rhia looks off at the sagging roof of the croft. “We have no leader. No king. We all know Euan Dromahair will never come back from across the sea.” Her eyes meet Jahan’s, fierce with challenge. “Will he?”
Jahan’s lips press together. He shakes his head.
Rhia lets out a sigh. “So we have no king, except in name. Our army is scattered. We need my father and the others; we have to make sure they’re safe. Then we should retreat to the safety of the mountains. We’ll keep there for the winter, in Dalriada; my father can hide your presence. When the thaw comes, you can—”
I’m on my feet, rage spitting from me. “That is your plan? You’re going to give up? You’re going to retreat?”
Rhia backs up. “We don’t have a choice, El.”
El. This is the first time Rhia Knoll has ever called me by my name, not my title.
“We have no leader,” she’s saying. “We have no organization, just a mess of scattered rebels. All we have is the safety of the land.”