by Adam D Jones
They stepped over another body and stumbled onward to join the rest of their people.
The soldiers pushed them together just outside of their burning settlement. The last thing they would see was their homes on fire and the Republic soldiers grinning as they fired and fired until every Lodi from Sirap fell dead.
He had always told himself it wouldn’t come to this. That he would fight or run if the Republic came. Something brave. Others said it too, wearing their bravado like a badge. But when the Republic showed up they had all been gathered like sheep, just like in every other Lodi town.
A few had resisted. They stood in front of their homes with their arms crossed and their faces stern. And they had been treated the worst. One of them, a man named Corwal, still lived. He had been mutilated in front of the others and still writhed in the sand next to his hands.
Others followed. But by the time Raine’s family was facing guns they had already surrendered to join the rest of the settlement in a solemn march.
A wavering voice came from nearby. “Going...going as fast as I can...”
Maddock, the old man who cut everyone’s hair, had fallen. The soldiers shouted for him to stand. To his credit, the old man was trying.
“Don’t go over there,” said Raine’s sister. “It won’t do any good.”
The soldiers were gathering, ready to kick Maddock for not standing up.
“I said don’t,” she repeated, grabbing his arm. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Raine shook her off. “This is no time for a man to be alone.”
He made it to Maddock without any soldiers stopping him. He knelt and began to lift the old man up and onto his feet. “Come on, brother.”
Soldiers spoke in mocking tones. Raine made sure not to hear any of it. Maddock leaned on Raine and they pushed through the desert sand to the gathering place.
Raine had never expected so many soldiers. He’d heard of towns being wiped out by a sandship or two, or by a few well-armed companies, but this morning the town of Sirap had been surrounded by hundreds of men, more than twice the population of the settlement.
Raine and Maddock made it to the others and stood at the front of the crowd. Maddock patted Raine’s arm and gave him a grim nod of thanks. They would stand together in the end. That had been something Raine understood might be part of his life when he began training to be a Keeper. Training he would never complete.
Rifles were raised. A few of the Lodi gasped, but most stood ready.
The shots erupted louder than anyone expected. Gunshots were always like that.
Maddock fell. So did the man next to him.
Another round of bullets; Raine felt nothing even though he been staring down two rifles as they fired. Even saw the yellow flash in the muzzle.
Raine let his knees buckle and collapsed backward like he’d been hit. More gunshots filled the air. Groans and screams rang out, and even when the shooting finished Raine heard sounds of suffering.
The soldiers stepped through the bodies and fired at those who lived. Raine knew he could try to hold his breath, try to avoid moving, but he didn’t have the energy to do more than close his eyes and wait.
“Here’s one!”
Raine heard soldiers rushing his way and laughing.
“Didn’t get a single bullet!”
“We’ll take care of that. Open his eyes an’ make him watch!”
Rough fingers pried open Raine’s eyelids. He saw leveled muzzles gather in front of him.
“Ever see a bullet fly?” one of them shouted.
“Start with his legs, boys.”
Their weapons lowered.
Another man ran over to them, his badges showing a higher rank. “Guns down, idiots.”
They lowered their rifles.
“the Sovereign asked us to bring one back,” said the leader.
“We left one in the courtyard.”
The leader slapped the man who was talking. “That one’s in no condition to travel, and you know it! Now load this kid up and keep him alive ‘til we’re in Gamon.”
The leader left. Raine was roughly brought to his feet.
“Lucky boy. Gonna meet the Sovereign!”
“Say somethin’!” Someone shook him. “He’s gonna have a lot of questions for you.”
“We know you got hidden settlements all around here,” said a soldier as he drew a knife. “We’ll be asking all about it on the way.”
Raine closed his mouth and promised himself he would never speak. He would never recite the stories again.
◆◆◆
The steel belly of the sandship hummed all the way to Gamon, and Raine waited in the hold, seated on the metal floor with his arms tied above him. They promised him food if he talked. He didn’t. They fed him enough to survive.
He screamed at first, when they hit him, but eventually he didn’t even do that. He had promised himself he would never speak again; when he felt pain his mouth now refused to cry out. No sound passed his lips.
He couldn’t stop the beatings or the starving. Now, the only victory he could reach for was the single method of rebellion open to him: they wanted him to talk, so he was going to keep quiet. Each visit from the men gave him a chance to confound their plans, to show them that their power wasn’t absolute.
◆◆◆
He didn’t see the city.
The sandship had stopped inside of a building and Raine was dragged out. He had expected to be marched out in chains, but being nearly starved to death had made him too weak to protest or run. The men prodded and shoved. He marched along, his head fallen.
The hangar doors opened and he struggled to raise his head high enough to study his surroundings.
His training kicked in. Being a Keeper meant hearing a story one time and being able to repeat it. It meant reading a letter or a book and committing it perfectly to memory. It meant Raine could memorize the layout of the building and remember everything he saw on the paperwork being handed around.
Across the room, two narrow windows revealed a glimpse of the largest city he’d ever seen. More details were etched deep into his mind.
Raine was dragged up countless stairs, falling a few times before reaching the top, where the company waited before a pair of large doors. The men around him stood quietly, no longer acting like the crude, loud men who had tormented him. The doors soon parted, and the silent soldiers ushered Raine through.
The doors led to an office. Behind a wooden desk, a man leaned back in his tall chair, where shadows hid his features. Raine saw only parts of his face. An ear. His cheek. Hairline. Each glance another piece.
The soldiers looked away, always fixing their gaze elsewhere.
“You asked for a survivor,” said the commander. “We can take him anywhere you’d like. The Grey Quarter?”
“This is not a test subject.” The voice rang out deep and dark. “Leave him.”
“Sir, is it safe...”
The man behind the desk stood and crossed the shadowy room in a few long strides.
The soldiers stepped away, toward the hall. The commander stiffened up. The Sovereign threw his big fist into the commander’s chest and Raine heard the sound of breaking bones. But that wasn’t possible. I must be delusional. The commander screamed and then fell, and the room filled with a disturbing silence.
“Remove him,” said the Sovereign.
The soldiers dragged their commander away and the doors closed.
the Sovereign returned to his desk, where he stared across the room at Raine. Once again, his face hid in darkness.
Raine fell to the ground, his legs unable to stand anymore.
“It’s alright,” came the deep voice. “You are not in any danger here. My assistants will feed you, though not the same things I eat, of course. I have a special diet.”
He rang a bell, and someone burst into the room.
“Bring my guest something to eat. Whatever you were planning to have.”
The assistant scurr
ied away.
“You will learn that this place is no harm to you.” the Sovereign stood and paced the room. “It’s quite a city I...we’ve built. Quite a city. You could live here, under my protection. No one harms my appointees. Live a life of comfort, a life of ease.”
The assistant returned with a tray. The Sovereign took it and placed it on the floor for Raine, like he was feeding a pet.
“It’s yours.”
He walked to his desk and reached into a drawer, retrieving something that crinkled like paper. The Sovereign returned to Raine and spread a large map of the frontier out on the floor.
“But first, show me where your Keepers live.”
Raine shoved the food away.
◆◆◆
A few days later, after forced feedings and more attempts to make him speak, soldiers dragged Raine to the Grey Quarter where he was promised he would be the subject of an experiment. He would be helping the Sovereign hurt the Lodi, one way or another.
Raine moved in a delirium, unable to tell what was around him or what was being said. Despite the confusion raging in his thoughts, his mind still rigidly refused to let his mouth speak, and snatches of information, details about his surroundings, would find their way into his memory.
They handed him to a woman in a laboratory, and she and Raine were both placed under guard. Raine nearly screamed, ending his long silence, when the scientist shot the guard with a makeshift weapon.
The guard fell and Raine stared at the strange scientist who was saving him. “You need to eat,” she said, and then she helped him into a box.
◆◆◆
When Raine reached the market, he found people who would buy anything. A few pieces he’d picked up from the lab earned him enough money for boat fare, and he kept himself hidden in the corner of the hold until the riverboat unloaded him at the trading post.
In the facility, he’d heard about trouble in Third Bend. Another settlement under attack. It was probably too late to help, but a Keeper’s place is with their people. Raine remembered the Sovereign’s map, could picture it perfectly in his mind, and he followed the Divide all the way to Third Bend.
◆◆◆
As the sandship turned to face him, Raine raised the Dae stone in one hand and clenched the alchemical items in the other. He knew he was right. He knew it.
The tingle in his fingers became a rumble in his chest. The sand in front of the rock stirred and then pushed away from him, like the way the desert floor moved under a sandship. The sand spiraled high, and shots fired from the sandship went long because the soldiers could not see well enough to aim.
That was all Raine had hoped for, but he suddenly knew there was more. Like sailor who realizes he’s navigated his ship into a powerful current, Raine knew the power he had awakened was stronger than even he had dared to believe.
The sand became an impenetrable wall and he heard the sandship groan as it was lifted. Men screamed into a storm that filled their mouths, silencing their cries. Metal shrieked as it ripped apart, bolts flying.
Raine heard something else. His tongue had loosed itself and his throat, wide open, let loose a howl he could feel in his bones.
◆◆◆
Raine climbed down, feeling his body thrum. His arms and legs still felt the rhythm of the Gift, still shook with the power that had flowed through them. He put his feet on the sand and marveled at the fading glow of the Dae stone.
The woman, the scientist, was screaming at him.
“How did you do that?”
22
I hope they don’t think I know what I’m doing.
Raine leaned against the boulder and shoved the Dae stone back into the deep pocket in his robe.
He had always wondered about the pockets. When Raine was training to be a Keeper, he’d hidden books, scrolls, food, and anything he didn’t want his teachers to find in those deep, hidden folds of his novitiate clothes. But the moment he dug that Dae stone from a wrecked sandship engine and stowed it into his robe was when Raine finally realized why Keepers’ robes had such strange pockets. Raine was thankful that the Keepers, ever attached to their traditions, had kept sewing robes in the traditional design long after forgetting its purpose.
He dusted off his hands and prepared to face Dawn and Marshal.
Marshal’s mouth hung open in a silent question he couldn’t figure out how to form. Fortunately for him, Dawn asked enough questions for them both.
“You remembered which chemicals were used in the fuel?” she shouted. “And then...where did the heat come from? The reaction doesn’t happen without heat!”
Ignoring her question, Raine turned toward the wreckage.
Nothing survived that.
The ships lay in ribbons. The soldiers were unrecognizable. Not even ugly bodies marred the landscape—only a scattered, bleeding mess as far as Raine could see.
“And it pushed back the sandship!” she continued. “Do you know how much force that takes? When it’s going as fast as that one, a sandship can knock down a stone wall! And you shoved it back! Did you have to plan the right mixture? Is it—”
“I don’t know!” he shouted.
His voice repeated across the empty sky.
She stepped back. “How can you not know?”
“Because I’ve never done it before!”
He looked at both of them, letting the desert air suspend his words.
Raine’s chest still felt warm, and his hand tingled where his fingers had gripped the stone. He had been screaming while the sandstorm raged and unknowingly made his throat raw. His legs wanted to buckle, but that had nothing to do with the Gift.
I did it.
No one had wanted to listen when Raine realized he was gifted. Children said that sort of thing, and sometimes grownups who hadn’t learned propriety. Raine made no secret of wanting to find the old magic, the Gift, the power Lodi had once used in the old wars to fight their enemies and, in the most famous stories, defeat the Outsiders. He’d been lectured time and time again from older Keepers to give up his foolish quest. No one had been Gifted in ages. No one. That time had passed, they said, and those days were long over.
But they were wrong. I always knew they were wrong.
Raine reached into his pocket and produced the stone. “At first, I just knew I needed one of these. Didn’t figure out the rest until I met you two.”
Marshal finally found his voice. “Is that why the Republic wants you so bad? They’re scared you’re going to fight them...with that?”
“I don’t think so,” said Dawn. “He was only a test subject.”
“She’s right,” said Raine. “The Republic found me by accident. They would have killed me right away if they knew...”
“If they knew you could fight off a sandship by yourself,” finished Marshal.
Raine was thankful for the following silence. Free from questions, he closed his eyes and let the desert wind calm his thoughts. It worked. It worked. I was right.
“Let’s gather our things,” said Marshal. “We ought to get somewhere else.”
The food and water they had dropped still lay on the far side of the wreckage. The three of them quietly walked past the strange debris, pausing occasionally at the sight of a metal beam that had been turned into shards or a human arm or leg that nearly survived intact. They made their way past the place where the sand had raged and eventually to their food supplies.
“We’ll need all of this,” said Raine.
“Where we goin’?” asked Marshal, picking up his things.
Raine opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came.
“Gone quiet again?” asked Dawn.
“No, no. It’s not that.” Raine looked in the direction he had been leading them. It wasn’t even in sight yet. “It’s just...there are things a Lodi shouldn’t speak of. And I’m already not a favorite among my people. Will you trust me?”
They both nodded, looking like they didn’t care where they ended up.
Marsha
l opened a book, the captain’s journal he had been reading, and picked up where he left off. “Your heading’s the only heading we’ve got.” He looked up at Raine. “We’ll do things your way for now.”
Marshal turned back to the book while Raine looked around for his supplies. He located the pair of water skins he had been carrying and strapped them over each shoulder, then found a wrapped package of food and shoved it into one of his pockets.
“I think that’s everything,” said Dawn, checking on her chemicals. “Do we have enough supplies to get there?”
Raine started walking. “I don’t know. I’ve never been.”
◆◆◆
Raine knew she would ask. Marshal, he suspected, could hold his curiosity for quite a while. The older man had plenty of them, Raine could see that, but Marshal seemed willing to wait and focus on the task at hand. Dawn, however, was bursting with questions only barely contained behind her closed lips.
They only made it a few steps past the wreckage when she began to blurt them out.
“Why haven’t you been talking?” she said.
“Forgot how.”
A quick silence told him his answer had not made her happy.
“I was captured by the Sovereign,” said Raine. “They had questions. And lots of ways to make me talk. I told myself...” Raine fixed his eyes on the horizon. “I told myself I couldn’t speak. Made myself believe it so that no matter what they did I couldn’t tell them anything.”
Marshal looked up. “You saw the Sovereign?”
“I was in his office. For many days.”
Marshal snapped the book shut. “No one’s seen him in years! Unless that’s changed since I left the Republic.”
“It hasn’t,” said Dawn. “But...I think I was in a room with him once. He kept himself hidden.”
“It was the same way when I was a kid,” said Marshal, returning to the journal. “Has there been an election? I wouldn’t know, since news traveled slow to Whitesand, but it can’t still be the same man. Patricians are supposed to elect a new one every now and then.”
“I never heard about any election,” said Dawn. “Everyone says the Patricians chose him years ago. Funny, I’ve never thought to ask how many years ago.”
