Remnants

by Honor Raconteur

  “Something like that.” It struck me as very strange to see Chi like this. He was such a prankster, always with a grin on his face, as if he knew a joke the rest of us didn’t. I’d rarely seen him serious. Having to kill those three familiars today had to weigh heavily on him. My heart ached at the loss of his smile. He’d done so much for me. What could I do to bring this amazing man some peace?

  He reached out and patted my hand, his face turning away to hide his expression. “I’ll be alright, Rena.”

  The words popped out of my mouth before I could think to stop them. “Those words are the biggest lie in the world. ‘I’ll be alright.’ Do you know how many times I said that growing up?”

  Chi turned his face towards me, just slightly, enough to study my face. “But you were.”

  “Chi, I was dying.” The words choked me and I had to suck in a breath, remind myself that it wasn’t like that anymore. Still, a part of me was desperate for him to understand. “Before Bannen came to me, I was dying. My lungs were failing. My skin would literally crack and fall off of me like a leper. My heart could barely sustain my body. We all knew it. Everyone knew it, but when they asked how I was doing, I always smiled and said the same words: I’ll be alright. I wasn’t alright. I wasn’t ever going to be alright. I was dying and there wasn’t a single sarding thing that anyone could do to help me.”

  He turned fully onto his side, hand grasping mine firmly and warm, eyes searching for something in my own. “Until Bannen.”

  “Until Bannen, and no one expected Bannen—least of all me. And even when he came, they tried to rip him away from me.” I was losing my original point. Shaking my head, I went back to it. “That’s not what I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to tell you is that when you tell me ‘I’ll be alright,’ I hear ‘Help me.’ Chi, please. I see the strain your body is undergoing. It desperately needs rest. What can I do to help you sleep?”

  His mouth worked for a moment and then he slumped onto his back, eyes falling to half-mast. “Rena, it’s not that I won’t sleep. I can’t.”

  Now I was getting somewhere. “Tell me. Please.”

  “When…” he paused, his hand tightening on mine, as if anchoring himself. He sucked in a breath and started again. “When I was a kid, money and food were scarce. My parents were sharecroppers, they had eight kids, it was…tough. We all helped out as we could but it was barely enough to make ends meet. My grandfather taught me how to hunt, mostly snares and traps, and then when I hit about seven he started teaching me archery. I took to it like a duck to water. I liked it better than the snares, it was more active, and I could choose what to hunt. Snares, you take what they give you. With archery, I had options.

  “It took a few months, but I got good enough at it that I never lost an arrow. Everything I aimed at, I hit. I had to; losing arrows meant that I potentially lost the future meals I could have gotten with them. I brought in rabbits, ducks, squirrels, grouse. On one memorable occasion I brought in a deer, and believe me, with the bow I was packing, that took some doing. It was enough to put dinner on the table, enough that we weren’t on the brink of starvation anymore. By the time I hit double digits, I stayed in the woods or out on the open fields all day. I brought in extra most days, enough that I could trade with other people. The skins I sold for cash, the extra meat I traded for honey, sugar, flour.

  “Then, when I was twelve, something happened with the contract. I don’t know the details, my parents never said, but we had to move at the end of the season. I hunted more than I normally did, bringing in whatever cash I could to help pay for the move. I got four or five hours of sleep a night, this on top of a growth spurt. I was exhausted by the time we packed up and headed for the train station.

  “My parents, they went and got our tickets, told us kids to wait. The train wasn’t going to be in for another hour, so I told my brother I was taking a nap, asked him to wake me.”

  My eyes closed with the inevitability of the story. “He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t,” Chi confirmed hollowly. “No one did. I woke up four hours later and they were gone. I couldn’t find them anywhere. I was only twelve. I had no cash on me, as I’d given everything to my parents. I had some jerky, the packed lunch my mom had prepared, my bag and bow, but that was it. I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed put. I just waited. For three days, I waited. I was paranoid about them coming and missing them again, somehow, so I stayed awake. I rationed out the food, and I moved up and down the platform, and I refused to sleep.”

  My heart broke. I wanted to wrap both arms around him and hug him, but he was so brittle I wasn’t sure if he’d let me.

  “Eventually someone in the station reported me for loitering. I got kicked out.” He laughed humorlessly, eyes blindly staring upwards. I was unsure if he realized his hand clung to mine in a bruising grip. “I went for the nearest stretch of woods, as I could survive out there, and I was starving. I hunted and created a lean-to with some of the larger logs, and lived out there for about three months. I’d come into town, to the station, check to see if anyone was looking for me once a day. No one did. I realize now, my parents likely didn’t have the money to afford another train ticket to come back for me. At least, I hope that’s all it was.”

  I hoped so, too. I hoped that they hadn’t just abandoned Chi because it was easier to feed seven mouths instead of eight. I prayed that was the case. “Then what?”

  “Well, winter was setting in by that point. It actually already had. It got so cold at night I couldn’t sleep, I had to keep the fire going to avoid freezing to death. And the first snow hadn’t even come yet. I realized eventually I couldn’t stay out there. I didn’t have the right gear for it. I headed back into town, taking the pelts I’d collected over the past three months, sold them for a nice chunk. As I was in the market, I came across a flyer announcing that the MISD were looking for anyone with good fighting skills. I’d always thought of the MISD as this magic-only group, so it surprised me that they’d be interested in mere common folk. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try. I was good at archery, after all.”

  Snorting at this understatement, I drawled, “Good. Right.”

  He came out of himself long enough to give me a fleeting grin. “I didn’t know I was exceptionally good at that point. I had no one to compare myself to. So I showed up at the training yard two days later, lied about my age—that was actually easy. I was always big for my age, I looked sixteen—and ran through their tryouts. Passed with flying colors. That’s when things got a little sticky. I didn’t have any identification on me, I was still young enough at my supposed-sixteen that someone should be signing for me, and I had to tell them. That I was abandoned.”

  I couldn’t take it any longer. I just couldn’t sit there and listen without doing something to offer comfort. Without letting go of his hand, I climbed over him to wedge myself between the back of the couch and his supine body, and used our joined hands to haul him into a hug. He turned into me with a sigh, of relief or pleasure, I couldn’t tell which. Both of those massive arms closed around me, his head in the crook of my neck, as I held him like a child. He felt so cold to me that I had to wonder, how many hours had he been out here? Had he been stewing in these dark memories all this while?

  After a long moment, he stirred, his breath whispering across my collar bones. “The story does have a happy ending, I promise.”

  “I’d love to hear it,” I answered truthfully, stroking his hair. “I mean, obviously you did make it into the MISD.”

  “Yeah. One of the agents handling the tryouts, he heard me say that, and he took me aside and asked me for the full story. I told him—well, everything but my actual age—and he was livid. I’d never seen someone get that mad before. He told me that if I needed an adult to sign for me, he’d do it. He marched me straight to the city office, filled out the paperwork for identification cards, and gave me his name. Ensign Franklocke is his name. I actually lived with him and his family for six
months while I went through the orientation training. In fact, I basically lived with them for about five years, off and on, in between missions. When I told you about my family, it was them I meant, as they became my adoptive family.”

  I found that a little surprising. I remembered him telling me that he had an older brother and sister, that he had parents and extended family, but that was who he’d meant? “Wait, he just hauled you home without talking to his wife about it first? She was alright with that?”

  “You have to understand, Ensign is the oddest man I’ve ever known. He’s like the crazy uncle in the family—the one you love, but you’re pretty sure they’ll accidentally burn the house down or run away with the gypsies at some point. I think Emma—my new mother—was more or less resigned to the crazy by the time he brought me home. I mean, they’d been married twenty years by that point. She was good to me from day one. I’ve never felt like anything but a son to her.”

  That relieved me in many ways. It was hard being in this world without a family, and if he was lucky enough to gain a second one, all the better. “Did you ever tell them your actual age?” I couldn’t help but wonder.

  “Yeah, when I turned seventeen. I felt guilty for keeping it secret any longer, and Ensign wanted to throw me this grand party for my twenty-first and get me drunk. I had to say something then.” Chi paused, then chuckled, his chest jerking with it. “I seriously thought he’d kill me. He chased me all over town for hours, outraged that I hadn’t told him the truth, that I’d been working as an agent since I was twelve. Took him a long time to calm down. He gradually changed all the paperwork to reflect my real age, sneakily, so that neither of us got into trouble.”

  I wanted to ask if he’d ever gone looking for his original family, but I had a feeling he hadn’t. As an MISD agent, he’d certainly have the resources to find them, but perhaps it was better he left it alone. I didn’t care if I had to walk—if I’d lost one of my children, I’d go back for them or die trying.

  Now, at least, I understood why he couldn’t sleep. The stress of the situation reminded him of then, and as irrational as it might seem, he was paranoid about being left behind again. Just telling him that I wouldn’t leave without him likely wouldn’t make a dent. Vee surely knew all of this, had given him that very promise, and he believed her. But fears were fears because they were not rational.

  Thinking about it from every angle, I tried to come up with a solution. There had to be some way to work around this fear—something that someone else hadn’t already tried. A niggling thought occurred to me, but I wasn’t sure if it would work. Still, I had to try something. “Chi.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re a light sleeper, right? Like Bannen?”

  “I’m worse than a cat,” he informed me. “Anything unusual, I’ll instantly awake.”

  “That’s what I thought.” More thinking aloud than anything, I tried to walk him through my logic. “Say that something happens. That we get word in the next ten minutes they found Toh’sellor. The one person they absolutely need in order to defeat it is me, right? They literally can’t do the job without me.”

  A little suspicious, he pulled back to eye me and agreed slowly, “Right. I mean, that’s obvious.”

  “Well, you’re half on top of me at this point. They’d have to reach past you to wake me up, right? Wouldn’t you come instantly awake?”

  “Aww, Rena. Are you offering to be my security blanket?”

  “If it’ll work, sure. I don’t care if you just cat nap. Will your mind accept that you can’t be left behind as long as I’m next to you like this?”

  “No idea,” he answered with a yawn. “But a cat nap sounds lovely. You’re really fine in this position?”

  I strangely was. With the couch pillow supporting my head, and the way we were stretched out, I wasn’t at all cramped. “Yup.”

  “Because I don’t want you to feel…” his words slowed and slurred, dropping in volume, his head dropping back to rest on my collarbone, “…un…com…fort…”

  I blinked as he started snoring. Seriously? That worked? People didn’t snore during catnaps. He was out. I kept my breathing even with effort, not moving even a single finger for fear of yanking him back awake. As the minutes ticked by, however, it became obvious that he was deeply asleep. My insecurities faded and I relaxed as he slept on.

  If I had possessed any idea that this would work, I would have offered it days ago. Not that I preferred sleeping out on the couch with a man who wasn’t my husband, but I loved Chi like a brother, and I was perfectly willing to do it for his sake. How we’d manage to get him to sleep again in the future, I didn’t know, but for tonight, I would not question it.

  Relieved, I let my eyes fall shut as well. Not that I imagined I could sleep out here like this, but it felt nice to stare at the back of my eyelids for a while.

  The next thing I knew, I heard a whispered conversation going on above my head.

  “—I don’t know,” Bannen whispered to someone, thoughtfully. “I didn’t hear her get up.”

  “I really want to know how she got Chi to sleep,” Vee responded, and she didn’t sound the least bit upset, just relieved. “He only snores like that when he’s dead to the world.”

  “You have to sleep next to snores like that?”

  “Trust me, it took some getting used to. He’s worse than a hippo with a sinus infection some days. Aw, she’s awake.”

  Blinking my eyes open, I looked up to find Bannen and Vee staring down at us. Light streamed in through the windows, making it obvious that I’d fallen asleep as well at some point. That pleased me, because it meant Chi and I both got the sleep we’d desperately needed. With a smile, I greeted, “I am victorious.”

  “We see that,” Bannen whispered back, grinning from ear to ear. “What did you do?”

  “Talked him through it? Then offered myself as a security blanket.”

  They exchanged looks that spoke of confusion.

  “I’ll explain later,” I promised with a stifled yawn. I still felt tired. “Just throw a blanket over us, let us sleep?”

  “We’ll make your excuses at the meeting,” Vee promised, already turning for the bedroom to fetch a blanket.

  I wasn’t really needed for today’s meeting anyway. It was more important that I let Chi sleep for as long as possible. They needed Maksohm’s input more than mine at this stage.

  Vee returned with the blanket and threw it over us, very carefully, just in case the movement woke up Chi. He almost did, snorting, head lifting a bare inch. But when I didn’t move, he settled right back down, snores starting up like a badly tuned engine.

  I vaguely noticed Maksohm and Nora joining us in the living room at some point, that people quietly got ready and left, the door clicking closed behind them softly. But mostly I lay there dozing, enjoying the snuggling.

  The curiosity nearly ate me up alive. Just how had Rena gotten Chi to sleep? I barely kept myself from fidgeting all throughout the meeting. Honestly, I couldn’t have said what they discussed. I didn’t hear much of it. I was impressed that neither Maksohm nor Nora gave on to the fact that they nursed serious hangovers. Of course, I’d seen them down three hangover cures in quick succession before the committee called us in, so maybe they’d worked enough to where the two senior agents felt like human beings instead of something the cat dragged in.

  When we broke for lunch, Maksohm pulled me in close and murmured in my native tongue, “Just go check on them, will you? You’re driving me crazy.”

  I grinned at him. Yup, that hangover cure of his had apparently worked. He was back to his usual self. Maksohm was barely conversational in my language, but I did appreciate it when he used it. “Yes, boss.”

  Rolling his eyes, he pushed me towards the door.

  I wasted no time returning to our hotel suite, although I took care to not just barge in, but try and stay somewhat quiet. Not too quiet, stealth woke Chi up faster than an
ything else, but subdued enough that it wouldn’t jar him awake. As I entered, I found the two still on the couch, although they’d changed positions. Rena sat up with a book in her hand, a cup of tea and a half-eaten pastry on the side table. Chi still slept, his head in her lap, and she absently carded her fingers through his hair as he snored on.

  Her head came up as I entered, and she put a finger to her lips, shushing me. Nodding, I assured her silently I wouldn’t wake him, but we could talk over his head quietly without disturbing Chi. This was a proven fact. I sat on the coffee table, leaning towards her, speaking at something just above a whisper. “You both okay?”

  “Better rested than I’ve been in a while,” she admitted frankly. “Not sure why on my end, but I’m very glad I finally got him to sleep.”

  “We all are, trust me, but how?”

  She pursed her lips, eyes flicking down to Chi’s slumbering form, clearly weighing how much to tell me. I felt a little surprised by this, as Rena didn’t really keep secrets. Just what sort of confidences had these two shared last night? Did I need to be jealous?

  “I think most of what he said was in confidence,” she finally stated. “You’ll have to ask him for the story. Gist of it is, Chi’s been abandoned before, when he was younger. He fell asleep, someone didn’t wake him as they should have, and he was forever separated from them.”

  I winced. “Yeah, that would do it.”

  “I think most of the time he’s able to work past the fear, because he knows where the next assignment is; he’s an adult who can get there under his own power if need be. But in this situation…” she trailed off significantly.

  In this situation, no one knew where we’d end up, or when. Anyone left behind would eventually be able to figure out where to go, but it would be a significant delay, and they might come too late. I could completely understand why his fears were triggered in this situation. “So how did you convince him to sleep?”