by Jeff Wheeler
Chellis held very still.
After several breaths, he said, “Being born the way I was—with Widow’s Blood—people treated me differently. My mother coddled me, always afraid I’d get hurt. I wasn’t allowed outside, like you. Wasn’t allowed to take off my shoes unless I was in bed. She even tested the temperature of all my meals until I was twelve.
“But my father, my brothers, they were different,” Ahad-dian continued. “They treated me like . . . well, like I was a Merdan. Please don’t take offense at that.” He glanced at her. “I barely know my brothers, even my younger ones. They saw only the disease. But they never hurt me. Not like this, not physically. I would have died if they had.”
He rewetted the rag and leaned over the tub sill, pressing the cloth to the side of Chellis’s neck. Chellis lifted her wet arms and wrapped them around his.
He froze.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her nose pressed against his unpierced ear.
A second passed, and another. Ahad-dian shifted, palmed the rag, and returned the embrace, his sleeves soaking up the water along Chellis’s back, his wrist pressing into another laceration there.
“I’m sorry, Chellis,” he said. “I never meant for this—”
“I know. But you’ve done more for me these past two weeks than any other Hagori I’ve known, even before your war. Thank you.”
She released him, and he pulled away, not bothering to wipe away the saltwater along the side of his neck.
“You are not a dian,” Chellis said.
He chuckled under his breath and ran his free hand through his hair. “I know. God above, I know.”
He resumed his work, and Chellis leaned forward so he could treat her back. He had nearly finished when he said, “You aren’t a slave, Chellis. Or you shouldn’t be. None of them should be, but you most of all.”
She turned toward him.
He held the rag in one hand and the cloudy bottle in the other, but did nothing more. His eyes focused on the rim of the tub. “It’s all I can think about, after taking you there,” he murmured. “I’m out of excuses to defend it, to defend myself. It’s a war over land, did you know that? A border dispute because the river dried up. Six years of war because of a river. My older brother died for a few miles of infertile desert.”
Chellis fingered her split fin. “I’m sorry.”
“Gaylil’s been here for four. I looked up her records.”
“Almost four,” Chellis replied.
“Older sister?”
“Younger, by three years.”
Ahad-dian nodded. “How many others have been captured?”
“I don’t know,” Chellis said, drawing her knees to her chest. “Gaylil and my father before me. But since . . . I don’t know.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Just her. We aren’t a numerous people.”
Ahad-dian whistled. The sound faded, and he remained quiet for a long moment, still holding the rag and bottle. “It isn’t right.”
Chellis didn’t respond.
He shook his head and dumped the rest of the bottle’s contents onto the rag, then pressed the rag to the stripes along Chellis’s right arm. “It isn’t right,” he repeated as he worked his way down.
Chellis soaked in the saltwater for a long hour. Ahad-dian helped her from the tub, gave her a new, rough-spun dress to wear, and sat in silence as she ate. She slept for a time, and when she woke, Ahad-dian still lingered in the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back against the door, rubbing his chin, his eyes looking somewhere beyond the walls.
She fell asleep again, but when she woke, it was to a hand pressed against her mouth, the lamp in the room turned low for the night.
“I don’t want to raise any alarm,” Ahad-dian whispered to her. “Chellis, can you walk?”
She nodded against his hand.
“Good,” he said. “We have a long way to go.”
He stood and pulled the fine chain leash from his belt. Chellis sat up and rubbed a sore spot on her hip.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “Back to the collection room? So soon?”
Ahad-dian hooked the leash onto her collar.
“The sea,” he answered.
The room fell away from Chellis’s vision and she stood in a realm of shadow, empty save for Ahad-dian and the chain that connected them.
Tears filled her eyes. “The . . . sea?”
Ahad-dian wiped the tears from her lashes with a knuckle and placed them over the lashing on Chellis’s jaw—the dull pain there vanished within seconds, healed. “I can try,” he whispered, “but if it doesn’t work, neither of us will have a second chance. Do you understand?”
She nodded, a surge like a volcano bursting from the deepest parts of her. The shadows around her reformed into her chambers. Chambers she might never have to see again.
“What do I have to do?” she asked.
Ahad-dian held up a summons card. “I stole this. A midnight summons is believable, given the high demand for Merdan tears. This will, at the very least, get you past the guards outside your door. I’ll have to hope my standing can get you out of the citadel. From there, we run.”
Chellis nodded. “Anything. I’ll do anything.”
Ahad-dian let out a long breath and wrapped the leash around his wrist, tightening it. “Act as subservient as you can, and forgive me if I fail.”
Ahad-dian didn’t flash the card as he pulled Chellis from her chambers, much rougher than usual. The guards must have noticed, however, for they didn’t ask questions. Chellis didn’t see them for herself; she kept her gaze fixed on the floor. Once Ahad-dian led her around the corner, he snapped blinders over her eyes. He guided her down the hall. Chellis heard someone moving toward them, and Ahad-dian jerked the leash as though Chellis had been walking too slowly. He didn’t need to explain; Chellis whimpered and quickened her pace, hoping that whatever stranger saw her would see only another worthless Merdan on her way to the vat.
She knew when they passed the collection room. She had walked the path to and from it enough times with blinders to gauge its location. Ahad quickened his step, then, and shortened the leash. She didn’t know the citadel’s layout beyond the collection room. Not by heart.
The marble turned cold beneath her feet, then hot. She heard men talking, a conversation that stopped as she passed by, then resumed as she and Ahad-dian rounded another corner. Ahad-dian paused, and she heard the subtle jingle of keys.
A voice made her scales rise.
“Where is Naki appointed this time of night?” Lila-dian asked, her soft footfalls nearing. She paused a moment and added “And I thought I beat her hard. I’m surprised you have it in you, Ahad-dian.”
“I don’t,” he replied, spitting the words. “This wound-licker is beyond saving. I’m taking her to be drained before she’s turned over for labor. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you set me up for this.”
The accusation rubbed Chellis like sand under her skin. She focused on her breathing.
Lila-dian snorted. “The better. Save me a piece for my collection.”
The soft footfalls moved away, and Ahad-dian opened the door, pulling Chellis up a set of steep, high stairs.
She was panting by the time they reached the top of them. “What,” she asked between breaths, “is draining?”
“I made it up,” Ahad-dian said, fumbling with his keys again. “But Lila has never worked outside maintenance. She wouldn’t know.” A lock clicked. Ahad-dian pulled the blinders off Chellis’s eyes. The stairwell was dark, save for a high, horizontal window that let in a few speckles of starlight. “Come,” he said, opening the door.
Chellis stepped into a wide marble hallway with circle-top windows lining one side, letting in the warm desert breeze. Every other lamp in the hallway had been lit, casting an orangey glow over the stone. One hand on the leash and one on her upper arm, Ahad-dian led Chellis down the hallway and through the first junction on the
left.
Ahead of them walked a cluster of guards. Their eyes narrowed at Ahad-dian, but instead of trying to walk past them, Ahad-dian cursed and pulled Chellis back into the main hallway. Two of the guards shouted after him.
“What are you doing?” Chellis hissed as Ahad-dian broke out into a run, tugging her alongside him.
“I can’t lie to those ones,” he huffed, taking the next left, then a right. He slowed, scanning his surroundings before hurrying to another set of stairs. “I’m a dead man,” he said.
He half dragged Chellis up the stairs and took a hard right down a poorly lit hallway, slowing when they neared another, tired-looking guard outside an ornate door. The guard said nothing as they passed, but Ahad-dian picked up the pace again when the previous guards’ shouts echoed up the stairwell.
He cursed again.
Chellis writhed from his grasp. “Where are the waterways?” she asked.
He wiped his palm over his forehead. “What?”
“The waterways,” Chellis repeated, the shouting getting louder. “Where the river branches off to feed the citadel. I’ve seen them before. The moat.”
Ahad-dian’s eyes widened.
“We don’t have time, Ahad! Where are they?”
Ahad-dian seized her arm and ran down the hall. Chellis struggled to keep up with his long strides; her legs were not made for running, and they hadn’t had decent exercise for eighteen months. Ahad-dian tugged her left, guards’ footsteps echoing behind them. Someone all in gray, carrying a candle, started at the sight of them; Chellis darted forward and slammed both hands into his chest, pushing him as hard as she could. He dropped the candle and hit the wall, banging his head. Ahad-dian pushed Chellis forward, then out an open window onto a narrow precipice some four stories above the earth.
Below them flowed the moat, silver by the light of a crescent moon, covered by the curving roofs of a balcony to the left and a walkway to the right. They left a ten-foot gap of water between them. If Chellis jumped and hit one of the roofs, she’d break.
“I don’t know . . . how deep,” Ahad-dian said.
“There, the window!” a man shouted inside. An arrow flew between Chellis and Ahad-dian, tearing through the gray fabric of Ahad-dian’s shirt. He hissed as the tear filled with crimson.
“Hold your breath,” Chellis said, wrapping her arm around Ahad-dian’s waist.
She kicked off of the precipice and fell into silence.
The cool water hit her like a storm-tossed wave, and Ahad-dian’s weight thrust her down far enough that her shoulder blades grazed the moat’s cement floor. She swam with the current, avoiding the surface. An arrow sailed past them, leaving a line of silver in the dark water.
She pulled Ahad-dian forward until they reached the cover of the exterior walkway, then brought him up for air. Hagori could hold their breath for only a minute at best, and Chellis didn’t know how much air he had gotten on the way down.
Not much. Ahad-dian gasped, his long limbs flailing without grace. Chellis held him up, the base of the walkway only inches above their heads.
Ahad-dian took a deep breath, and Chellis took his arm and pulled him down into the water.
The fresh, unsalted water rubbed her like unsanded wood, yet its depths invigorated her. Her bruises and abrasions turned to memory beneath the current, and her fins opened and propelled her and her dian forward, around the corner of the citadel. She swam until the moat forked. Ahad-dian pointed to the right, and Chellis swam through the channel until Ahad-dian tugged at her, desperate once more for air.
They rose to the surface, and almost immediately Chellis heard the shouts of angry guards, saw the waving of torches on the looming citadel. Ahad-dian gasped several times before diving back under, kicking his sandaled feet to swim.
They met a grate, and Chellis pulled Ahad back to the surface.
“Climb,” she ordered.
He did, finding footholds in the grating. An arrow whizzed by, dangerously close to his head.
Chellis shoved Ahad-dian from the top of the grating to the other side, and his body splashed into the water. She submerged, swam back, and then propelled herself forward as fast as her limbs would allow—the unused muscles remembered the movements, even if they protested it.
She burst from the water, arcing up and over the grate, and dived into the water on the other side. She grabbed Ahad-dian’s belt and swam as hard as she could, urging both of them forward. If Ahad-dian were to swim alone, his slowness would kill him.
They swam. Even with Chellis’s help, Ahad-dian had to begin swimming at the surface to prevent hyperventilation. Chellis came up every five minutes or so to gauge their surroundings, though she could hold her breath for ten. Each time the guards’ cries sounded a little quieter, their torches a little more distant.
Finally, Ahad-dian could go no farther, and he lifted himself onto the river’s sandy banks.
“I can feel it,” Chellis said, wading in the water, her breaths searing but alive. “The sea. I can feel it.”
Ahad-dian breathed heavily. “Good,” he said, more voice than air. He clutched his left shoulder.
Chellis pulled herself onto the bank and moved his hand, then gasped at the amount of blood running down his arm. It soaked his entire sleeve, and he’d been free from the water only a moment. In the starlight, he looked ashen and pale. Too pale for a Hagori.
“Ahad,” Chellis whispered.
“Widow’s Blood,” he said with a tired grin. “I told you . . . it doesn’t stop.”
“Lean over,” Chellis said, pushing him onto his good arm.
“Chellis, you can’t—”
“I can certainly cry for you, Ahad,” she said, the tears already coming forth. “If I can cry for anyone, it would be you.”
The vision of Ahad-dian bleeding out and dying on the sand filled her consciousness. She thought of his arrival as her dian, his kindness, his risk to bring her there. It was more than enough. Chellis pressed her forehead to Ahad-dian’s shoulders and wept into his wound, watching the skin seal itself with every drop.
She laughed. “There,” she said.
Ahad-dian sighed and lay back on the bank, still ashen.
“Ahad?”
“Thank you,” he breathed, “but I’ve still lost too much. I can’t go any farther. Not tonight.”
“I’ll carry you,” she said, taking his hand. She searched for the citadel, but didn’t see it. “Twenty miles to the coast from the citadel, isn’t it? We must be halfway there. I can hear it, Ahad. We’re so close.”
He chuckled. “I can’t live in the ocean, Chellis. You must go on alone. That was always the plan.”
Chellis’s heart stopped beating for several seconds, or so it felt. “We’ll stay on the coast,” she said, almost whispering. “You and I, land and sea.”
But Ahad-dian shook his head. “I have to go back.”
New tears coursed down Chellis’s cheeks. “But why?”
“Gaylil,” he said. The name pricked her skin as though lightning carved it there. “I have to . . . get Gaylil.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“I think I can do it,” he said, pushing himself into a sitting position again. “I have to get her too.”
Chellis shook her head. “You can’t save all of them, Ahad! Neither of us can! Not until this war . . . not until my people can gain allies. I’ll go back to them. I’ll find them and report my stories. Surely someone will listen to our plea for aid, if they haven’t already.” She squeezed his hand. Perhaps in her absence, someone had rallied supporters. Surely her people didn’t swim around complacent, awaiting a man-given fate. “We’ll save them together, but I need time.”
Ahad-dian smiled. “War takes time. Gaylil may be dead by then, Chellis.”
She shivered.
He cupped the side of her face with a sand-covered hand. “Believe in me. I have friends in the city. No one will expect me to come back. I’ll sort it out, make a stronger plan. I’ll save her,
and I’ll save you.”
Chellis blinked away another tear, letting it fall, useless, to the sand. “You really want me to leave you on the bank of the river, with our enemies following behind? Come with me, Ahad.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Then when?”
He tilted his head to the side, studying her.
“One month,” she answered for him. “Enough time for you to recuperate and plan. Enough time for me to learn what has happened to the remnant of my people. Do you understand?”
She stood, squinting through the darkness. She pointed toward the squat mountain range far to the west, a black wedge against a blue-black sky. “Spear Peak. I don’t know what your people call it. The far end of the range, where the rock turns dark. One month from this night, Ahad. Meet me there.” She turned toward him. “Promise me.”
He nodded. “I promise, Chellis.”
She knelt down in the sand beside him, searching his eyes for truth. The night was too dark for her to see it, but she believed him.
“Promise,” she repeated, and she leaned forward and kissed him, her lips against his. One tradition that meant the same in both their cultures, she knew.
At that moment, he smelled like the sea.
She pulled away. Ahad smoothed her hair behind her ear and whispered, “Promise.”
Chellis nodded and imprinted his face onto her memory. One month.
Leaving her savior on the bank, Chellis dived into the river and swam for the ocean.
About Charlie N. Holmberg
Charlie Nicholes Holmberg was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to two parents who sacrificed a great deal to give their very lazy daughter a good education. As a result, Charlie learned to hate uniforms, memorized all English prepositions in alphabetical order, and mastered the art of Reed-Kellogg diagramming a sentence at age seven. She entered several writing contests in her elementary years and never placed.
In summer 2013, after collecting many rejection letters and making a quilt out of them, Charlie sold her ninth novel, The Paper Magician, and its sequel to 47North with the help of her wonderful agent, Marlene Stringer. Someday she will own a dog. (Did she mention her third book, The Master Magician, totally made the WSJ bestseller list? Because it totally made the WSJ bestseller list.)