It was a flag, I saw. There was a symbol woven into it, a symbol I didn’t recognize. It was a sword pointing up, with a bat’s wing stretching outward from the hilt. The sword was gleaming silver, but the wing was a leathery red.They were set on a field of pale green. The flag was rotten and filthy—it must have sat here in the Runehold since it first fell.
“What is that?” I asked. “Do you recognize it?”
“It is the ancient symbol of the Runegard,” said Cara. “Ancient beyond knowledge. It is still the mark of our acceptance.”
“Mark of your…I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
Cara smiled at me. “Of course. You haven’t seen it.” She folded the flag reverently. It folded surprisingly small into a four-inch square, which she stowed in a pouch on her belt. Then she came to me and reached up, tugging down the neck of her leather jerkin.
Tattooed on her chest, a few inches above the heart, was the same symbol on the jacket. It was cruder, of course. There was no room for the intricate detail of the stitching in a tattoo. But it was the same symbol, certainly. The same sword pointing up, and the same leathery wing stretching out from the hilt.
“Wow,” I said quietly. “You all have that?”
“Everyone who graduates their training and is accepted into the Runegard,” Cara confirmed. “You would not have seen it before because you children of True Earth have such strange standards of personal modesty.”
“Strange to you, very important to us,” I said. “Anyway. Thank you for showing me. So that flag was replaced by the new Runegard flag?” The flag of the Runegard that I had seen had a hand holding a silver sword on a field of red.
“Yes,” Cara said with a nod. “Although I do not know when—”
She stopped and turned to the Runehold’s front door. I hadn’t been paying it any attention. But now I saw, standing there, a dirty man with long, greasy hair hanging over his face. A sword hung at his belt, and his rotten yellow teeth were bared in an ugly smile. There was something about him that was familiar. Something in his face, the look in his eyes.
“Evening, gels,” the man said. “Word about town is that you lot are wandering around with a purse that’s much too heavy for you. I’ve come to help relieve the burden.”
The air was filled with the hiss of steel as Cara drew her sword. “Leave now, unless you wish to die,” she said simply.
The man chuckled. Then he stepped forward, and through the open gap of the doorway, four others followed him in. Two men and two women. All of them were dirty and run-down. And all of them were armed.
“Care to rethink that?” said the first man.
VULTURES
SARAH
I HELD OUT MY HAND and reached for my power.
“Sarah,” said Cara. The tone of her voice and the dropping of my title of Lady caught my attention. I shot her a look. She looked at my hand.
I understood. We weren’t supposed to use our powers. If word got out that a girl who could use Earth and her bodyguard were traveling, we’d be discovered by Chaos in no time.
So instead, ignoring every fiber of my body that was screaming to use my magic, I drew my sword from my belt. It seemed such an insignificant thing in my hand, neither as long nor as broad as Cara’s blade. I could barely keep my hands from shaking as I held it before me in the stance Cara had drilled into me over and over again.
“Try not to kill them,” I said to Cara.
“Accidents happen,” she said.
The man who had come in first seemed to be the leader. He had a brown jacket, black hair and a cruel scar running the length of his chin. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he looked somehow familiar. He laughed and looked at the other four. “Listen to this one, boys,” he said in a cruel voice. “‘Try not to kill them.’ Insolent little witch.”
“Leave now, and I promise none of you will be hurt,” I said in a louder voice. “Stay, and I can’t promise anything.”
“I can promise you a split lip and some broken bones, you don’t shut your mouth,” snarled one of the women in the party. I spotted the gap of missing teeth between her lips.
The leader looked at her. “Hey! None of that. Nothing more than you need to do to get the gold.” He gave us a sickly smile. “We’re not monsters, after all.”
They moved slowly across the room toward us, fanning out until they had us surrounded against the wall. Most of them seemed to be eyeing Cara rather than me—she was clearly the greater threat. But Cara held back from striking first, trying to keep herself in between me and our attackers.
“Last chance, girl,” the leader said, looking back and forth between us uncomfortably. “Believe it or not, we don’t want trouble. But we want that gold.”
“We left it back at the inn,” I said quickly. It was probably a lie—Cara wouldn’t have let the purse out of her sight. But if it would buy us some time…
The woman who had spoken earlier coughed a phlegmy laugh. “She’s a liar. I’m gonna gut you, you lying little wretch.”
Cara snarled in response and attacked, batting the woman’s club from her hand before she could blink. The woman leapt forward, trying to grapple with Cara and render her sword useless. Instead, Cara’s hand swept upward, curled into a fist, and I heard the sickening crunch of bone as the woman’s jaw snapped shut. Her eyes lolled back in her head, and she fell unconscious to the ground.
The others cried out in anger and attacked. I barely had time to register that only one of them was coming for me. I was grateful, but I lost sight of Cara immediately as my vision tunneled down to my assailant—a short but bulky man who was old enough to be bald. He was one of three who carried a sword.
The sword came down, but on instinct my own leapt up to meet it, sweeping it aside. Training told me to strike with my backswing across his belly, but I held back. I didn’t want to kill anyone. He attacked again, a clumsy swing that parted the air more than half a foot away from me. I didn’t even bother to dodge. I just stepped back and assumed a defensive posture once more.
I’d been worried, but my training was more than enough to deal with a guy like this. But I’d been trained to maim or kill when striking. I didn’t trust myself to hit him without doing some sort of permanent damage. I had to hold him off until Cara could dispatch her own opponents and come help.
I backed up slowly, cautiously, step by step away from him. Cara was in the middle of the room, effortlessly evading swing after swing. But being outnumbered, it was hard for her to strike back. I kept a watch on her out of the corner of my eye.
The man solved my problem for me. He took another angry step forward, swinging his sword wide. The tip caught on the wall beside us, and it glanced off and away. Off balance, the man took a jerky step to the side, where his foot became entangled in a mass of rusted iron. He went down hard on his back, all of his breath rushing out in a whoosh. I stepped forward and held the tip of my sword a few inches away from his neck.
“Stay down,” I said harshly. The man gaped up at me with wide eyes and didn’t move a muscle.
My attention freed up, I looked up to Cara. Two of her opponents were facedown on the floor. From where I was, I couldn’t see if they were dead or merely unconscious. The leader of the group was the last man standing. He was backing away quickly, practically running backward as he fought to keep Cara’s sword away. She lunged, swung, lunged again, and suddenly the flat of her sword slammed into the man’s temple. He crumpled to the ground like a sack of flour. Just like that, silence settled within the Runehold once again.
Cara turned to me immediately, looking angrily at the man on the floor. “Are you hurt, Sarah?” she asked. She wasn’t the least bit breathless.
“No, I’m fine,” I assured her. “I get the feeling these guys aren’t exactly trained fighters.”
The man on the floor spat. I slid my foot back a bit to avoid the phlegm on the floor. “More than enough to handle you, girl, if I hadn’t tripped,” he said angrily.
“I’d
be nicer to me,” I said mildly, pushing the sword forward an inch or two. “My sword’s very sharp.”
Cara came to stand beside me, looking down at the man in fury. “Have the men of Kirsch really turned to banditry and highway robbery?” she demanded. “You sicken me. You don’t deserve to live.”
“Spare me,” the man said angrily. “You ain’t gonna kill me. This little one doesn’t want you to.” He leered up at me with a look I didn’t like. “You high and mighty nobles, think you can just ride into our town with mountains of gold and keep it all for yourself. You’ll get what’s coming to you in the end.”
My upper lip twitched, trying to turn into a sneer, but I kept my face passive. “We’re not nobles. And we’re not trying to make trouble for ourselves or anyone else. We just wanted a bed to stay in for the night.”
“Hope you sleep well in it,” he sneered. “Meanwhile there’s women and children starving in our streets. Enjoy your mattress and your blankets, Realm Keepers be damned.”
I twitched at the phrase. The man didn’t know about us, of course. He couldn’t. But it set me on edge all the same. This place truly had been abandoned by the Realm Keepers and the other kingdoms long ago. They were suffering, and they had no one to turn to.
“Sarah, I understand your impulse for restraint,” Cara said carefully, never taking her eyes off the man on the floor. “But I warn you—if we leave them alive, these men and women may be trouble for us before we’re able to leave.”
The man looked up at her nervously, fear dawning on his face for the first time.
I glanced at Cara. “I’m not going to kill them in cold blood,” I said firmly.
Cara’s face jerked in irritation. “They’re a danger to you. By rights, I could remove that danger.”
“I order you not to,” I said immediately. Cara’s face flushed. I’d never given her a command before. Even before, when I’d ordered Greystone to tell us what he’d known, I left Cara out of it. But I couldn’t let her just go around and stab all these people where they lay. They probably had families in this town. Maybe some of them had kids.
“Very well,” Cara said carefully. “What would you have me do?”
“Tie them up,” I said. “Bind them tightly in a way that they won’t be able to escape until at least tomorrow morning, long after we’re gone.”
“No need for that,” the man growled from the ground. “I know there’s ten more of you back in the inn. We ain’t stupid, you know.”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “If you think for one second that I’m stupid enough to trust a scumbag like you, you’re dead wrong.” His face contorted in anger. I wondered what the magic had translated “scumbag” to.
Then I realized suddenly that I was talking way too much in front of this man. Who knew but that he’d already noticed something funny about the way I spoke. We needed to wrap this up.
“I place them in your hands,” I told Cara. “I’ll be waiting outside.”
I felt like a pompous jerk, but I sheathed my sword and walked out of the great hall, out into the bailey of the Runehold. The sun was obscured below the top of the walls above me, and the sudden shadow of the late afternoon sent a chill through my skin. I shivered and rubbed my arms briskly, trying to get some more circulation going through them.
It seemed like forever, but it was probably only a few minutes before Cara emerged from the Runehold. The look on her face was grim.
“It seems…unclean somehow,” she said. “Leaving them in the Runehold, a castle meant to be a home for the Realm Keepers.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “No Realm Keepers have stayed here for a long, long time.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Let us return to the inn. No one else should split off from the group until we are well quit of this town. We do not know who else may be watching us, waiting for an opportunity to strike.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Cara did, taking me through the hole in the wall and through the streets of Kirsch, a city that suddenly seemed dark, ominous and threatening in its filth.
I walked through the front doors of Roosevelt High on Monday, and though I’d been gone for just over a week, it felt like far longer since I’d seen the familiar red lockers and linoleum floors of my school. Being awake even when you were asleep could do that to you. I had four day weekends while everyone else in my school had only two days. School weeks were ten days long for me, half of them spent here, half on the other side.
I caught a few stray looks as I walked through the halls, but no one seemed too interested. That was a relief. When we’d first developed our “sleeping disorder,” most people had shunned us, no one wanting to be associated with the “weird kids.” Now, however, everyone seemed to be taking my most recent episode in stride. Or maybe no one cared.
I found my locker and opened it up to grab my advanced calculus books. When I closed the locker door, I almost jumped to find Kurt standing there.
“Hey,” he said, flashing his teeth in a grin. “I had a lot of fun on Saturday.”
“You did?” I asked, fighting down the butterflies that fluttered in my stomach. “I mean, um. Me too.”
His smile grew wider. I felt his warm fingers close around mine, and suddenly it was like someone flipped the “Off” switch in my mind. I could barely move.
“Great,” he said. “So what do you think about next weekend? Still want to do it again?”
“Um, yeah,” I said weakly. “Of course. That would be awesome.”
He leaned in, aiming for my lips. This time it was intentional when I turned slightly, letting his kiss land on my cheek. He backed up a bit and smiled, though it seemed a tad forced.
“Okay then,” he said. “Let’s do Friday this time.”
“And my treat this time,” I said firmly, finding some more of my wits.
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
“I’m totally not,” I said with a smile. Then, on an impulse, I leaned in to give him a hug. I definitely wasn’t bold enough to initiate a kiss, but this I could do. His arms wrapped around me, and the butterflies increased.
“Well, I’d better be getting off to class,” I said, not sure how much longer my mind would keep functioning. “I guess I’ll see you later.”
I turned on my heel and left him standing at my locker, making my way down the hall toward my first class. I breathed a long, heady sigh as soon as I was out of earshot, hoping no one else in the hall would notice.
Then suddenly, all of the doubts I’d had on our date came crashing down again, and I realized what a fool I was being. This thing with Kurt couldn’t last, whatever it was. I couldn’t expect to build anything truly long-term with him. Heck, even in the short term, most high school relationships didn’t make it past graduation.
That took me aback. A thought slowly germinated in my mind. If it was unlikely that we’d even be going out long past graduation, then why shouldn’t I give it a try now? So it couldn’t last forever. So what? Was I never going to be with anybody unless it could last forever? In that case, my dating options were pretty much limited to Miles or Blade—and that wasn’t happening.
Thoughts of Kurt, our date on Saturday and our second date on Friday took a back seat as soon as I sat down to calculus. Fortunately it wasn’t a test day, so I was able to simply sit for an hour and listen to a lecture from the teacher. French, on the other hand, had a test. But I was ready for it. I burned through the answers in no time, asking Mrs. Thoburn for permission before spending the rest of my period doing some last-minute cramming on biology.
By the time lunch rolled around, I felt like I was back in my groove. The days of the siege of Morrowdust, I’d walked around school in a haze, barely able to concentrate on anything that was happening. I couldn’t even remember if there had been any tests or not, but if there were, I was sure I’d bombed them. Now, however, my focus was laser-sharp. Even with the incident of nearly
being mugged in Kirsch’s Runehold, things had calmed down considerably in Midrealm. I found it easy to focus on the here and now, applying myself fully to my schoolwork when I was in the classroom.
I walked into the cafeteria with a pep in my step and a smile on my face. Kurt saw me from across the room and waved. I waved back, but I wasn’t going to sit with him today. First of all, I wasn’t sure I could even hold a halfway-decent conversation. But more importantly, I needed to talk to the others.
I’d brought lunch like I usually did. The stuff they served in the cafeteria was so unhealthy. It was one of the things I wanted to fix as the student president.
Oh my God, I thought with a shock. I was the student president now. I’d nearly forgotten with all the insanity we’d gone through in the last few weeks. The first student government meeting was two weeks from today.
The election had almost completely faded from my mind. And now I realized I had to make a choice. Would I keep my position and try to do it as best I could with everything else I had to do in school and in Midrealm? Or should I step down as president, handing the reins over to someone who could devote themselves to it fully?
No, I thought fiercely. No, I wouldn’t drop out of my responsibilities here on Earth. Student president would look fantastic on my application to Stanford. And I was still going to Stanford. I was. I’d promised myself right from the start, I wasn’t dropping my life on Earth in favor of my life as a Realm Keeper. I’d just have to work harder.
I wound my way through the tables to the other side of the room where Miles was sitting, first among us as usual. Clarissa was sitting right beside him, her head bowed over the table. Too late, I saw the telltale shake of her shoulders that told me she was crying. But I was too close already, and she looked up to see me standing over the table. I was right. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she gave a big sniff. Without a word, she stood from the table, scooped up her bag and turned to walk away.
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 6