Savage Bounty

by Matt Wallace

  “I understand,” Evie says after a moment. “And if this is as far as the Sicclunans go with us, I understand that as well. You can still retreat.”

  Sirach’s eyes soften on hers. “We could all retreat.”

  “No,” Evie says. “I won’t abandon the people of the Shade.”

  “Crache is our home,” Lariat tells the Sicclunan warrior. “For better or worse. It’s where we belong. We’ll take ’er back or we’ll die here.”

  Evie stares across the room at the giant of a man, her heart going out to him. “You’re with me, then?” she asks.

  “You’re thinkin’ like a Savage,” he says. “Can’t ask more’n that.”

  Beside him, Bam nods in agreement beneath his hood. Diggs, however, hesitates.

  “I never really figured on seein’ a hundred battles, anyway,” Lariat tells him.

  “I did,” Diggs says, protesting.

  “Well, you’re a good-lookin’ idiot,” Lariat fires back.

  Diggs seems to think about that, and then he begins to laugh. “Savages, then,” he says.

  Emboldened by their support, Evie rises from her seat and leans over the edge of the marble slab.

  “This is where we are,” Evie states firmly. “And this is the only course of action I can see that has any chance of moving us forward. If we stay within these walls, we’ll last a little longer, but we will die here without question. And we will cause the deaths of countless people in this city who are not our enemy, who’ve done nothing and do nothing but try to live, as all of us are trying to live.”

  “And if you’re defeated?” Kellan asks. “We took this city, but we can’t possibly hold this city without you. They’ll come for us next.”

  “Thank you for saying ‘if,’ ” Sirach remarks brightly, drawing a chortle from her lieutenant.

  Evie casts her a reprimanding glance, and then looks to Kellan and Talma. “If we’re defeated, then you can at least surrender without further bloodshed. It’s the best alternative I can offer you.”

  “The Skrain might only execute the leaders,” Sirach says to the two, trying to sound helpful.

  “If any of you want to join with us in the field,” Evie adds, ignoring Sirach, “we would be proud to fight alongside you.”

  Kellan and Talma exchange wary looks.

  “None of us are soldiers, General,” Kellan says to her.

  “Neither were we,” Evie replies.

  Kellan nods, accepting that.

  Evie looks to Yacatek.

  “Will the B’ors take the field with us?” she asks the Storyteller, who has remained silent throughout the proceedings thus far.

  “It is the only way the B’ors know how to fight,” Yacatek says. “And we have nothing to go back to.”

  Satisfied, Evie turns her attention back to Sirach, the last holdout among her council. “Will the Sicclunans continue to stand with us?” She does her best to mask the desperation and longing lurking behind her voice.

  Sirach glances at Chimot, who stares back briefly before dropping her chin to her chest.

  “All or nothing, then,” Sirach declares, mustering her usual bravado while still managing to sound none too happy about the decision.

  Evie can’t help but sigh in relief, hanging her head for a moment before recovering.

  She looks up and moves her gaze from face to face around the room. “Thank you all,” she says.

  Brio smartly taps the bottom of his cane against the floor several times in rapid succession, as if applauding her. Evie looks back at him to find a sad smile forced upon his otherwise grim expression.

  She knows he agrees this is the best of the bad choices before them.

  Evie turns back. She addresses her war council one final time, hoping she sounds like the leader they’ve elevated her to be.

  “All right,” she says. “We attack at dawn.”

  THE MIND

  “I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY MADE you think you were being melted by lava!” Riko exclaims. “And wrist wrestling over poisonous spiders? What is that? I mean…”

  As absurd as it may seem considering the subject matter, Dyeawan finds her friend’s indignation amusing more than anything. She doesn’t quite laugh, but it does bring a smile to her lips.

  “Edger spoke often of the Planning Cadre being too stuck in the past,” Dyeawan says. “I think these contests might be one of the things he was talking about.”

  Her small room is filled with the blue light that reigns between the rule of darkness and the rise of dawn. They let the last of the candles burn out hours ago, sitting in the darkness and not much minding. Their conversation provided illumination enough.

  It is the same humble room Dyeawan has occupied since her first night in the Planning Cadre. She has never seen any reason to take a new one, though Edger offered her many far more spacious and lavish options in the keep.

  Even after replacing him as head of the planners, she chose to remain here. Her bed, not much more than a cot, is the softest surface upon which she’s ever slept. She has her single window with its narrow view of the island’s lush greenery, towering peak, and blue waters. The roof is intact and consistent and keeps out the rain. Her little chair in the corner, where she has read nearly every book in the keep’s library, many of them multiple times, is as much a friend to her as Riko.

  It is the best, the only home Dyeawan has ever had or known, and she can’t imagine anyone needing more.

  She could not sleep the night before the final contest of the challenge. Dyeawan intended to simply read through the small hours, but as the moon rose high and full in the night, Riko knocked at her door.

  She entered holding a bowl filled with plump red grapes, beautifully and freshly picked and seeded.

  “From Makai, in the kitchen,” Riko explained. “They are all rooting for you so hard down there. You’re their hero.”

  Dyeawan was warmed by that, if not also filled with a sense of guilt and doubt. But she was grateful to the cranky old cook, whose lack of vision has never impaired his ability to produce delicious fare, just as her lack of control over her legs has never impeded her.

  She and Riko sat up together the rest of the night eating grapes and talking about everything except the challenge and the politics of the Planning Cadre. That proved to be the best gift Riko could’ve given her.

  “You know what’s strange?” Riko asks her in the predawn.

  They are sitting on opposite ends of Dyeawan’s bed, their legs entwined like a skinny log raft.

  “Many things,” Dyeawan answers, quite definitively.

  “You are hilarious!” Riko proclaims with jovial sarcasm. “No, it’s just… sometimes I think about being someone else and maybe doing something else, yeah? Something more simple.”

  “What do you mean, exactly? And why would that be so strange?”

  “Because we’re here! I get to design things that… I can’t even believe it every day, what I get to help build. But at the same time, there are moments when I think about maybe like, having a tinker’s shop in a city somewhere. Fixing things for the people there. Little things. And maybe making toys for their kids. I have so many ideas for toys! But everyone here says they’re impractical and useless.”

  “When I lived in the streets,” Dyeawan tells her, “I used to collect little things. Nothing that mattered to anyone else. Broken pieces of clay and glass. Odd bits of string. Once I found a whole cork. That was my favorite. I didn’t understand why at the time. I didn’t really think about it. Since coming here, everything I’ve learned, all the reading I’ve done, I know now I did it because those little things were mine. No one would take them from me. They made me feel as though I had control over something when I had no control over anything, even my own life.”

  Riko has such a look of pain and sympathy on her face as she listens to her friend’s story.

  “That’s so sad,” she says, hugging Dyeawan’s right foot against her chest. “But also kind of hopeful, yeah? I gues
s?”

  “My point is, toys are important, Riko. No one feels more powerless than children, particularly poor children. Toys give them power and a sense of themselves.”

  Riko is clearly taken aback. “I never thought about it like that.”

  Dyeawan smiles. “I doubt most people do. In any case, I know you’d build amazing toys. And you should.”

  “I’ll show you my designs, yeah?” Riko says, delighted. “After all of this with Nia is over, and you’re leading the planners without her in your way, we can build some for the kids where you grew up, in the Burrows.”

  “The Bottoms,” Dyeawan says, gently correcting her.

  “Right! Them too!”

  Dyeawan giggles, something she doesn’t do much of anymore.

  A soft pale gold ray of light falls across her face then. Dyeawan looks to the window, seeing the first beams of sunlight cresting the horizon. Her good humor quickly fades.

  Riko watches her, turning equally somber.

  “Is it time?” she asks.

  Dyeawan nods.

  Riko sighs resolutely. “Okay then.”

  Gently moving her friend’s legs aside, Riko clambers from the mattress and steadies the tender awaiting Dyeawan beside it.

  “One last ride?” Riko asks, mustering her brightest smile.

  “Of course,” Dyeawan says, drawing strength from her.

  She pulls herself forward with her still aching arms and crawls onto her tender.

  Once she is settled, Riko hops up onto the platform behind her, resting on her knees and gently gripping Dyeawan’s shoulders.

  Moments later they are sailing through the corridors of the Planning Cadre as they have dozens of times before, laughing virtually the entire way, choosing to forget everything else and live in those few moments of joy and companionship and freedom from the weight of the world in which they exist.

  When they reach the planners’ meeting room, it is empty save for Tinker and Nia.

  “I wish I could stay,” Riko says as Dyeawan brakes the tender so that her friend can disembark.

  “I do too,” Dyeawan agrees.

  Riko reaches out and grips Dyeawan’s wrist lightly. “I’ll see you on the other side, yeah?”

  “Whatever happens,” Dyeawan confirms.

  Riko blows her a kiss while backing away, lingering as long as she can before turning and leaving the space in earnest.

  “I haven’t been in this room in ages,” Tinker remarks, glancing about with obvious nostalgia. “It shouldn’t exist, you know. Architecturally speaking.”

  “The fascination wears off,” Dyeawan replies.

  “This table is new, isn’t it?” Tinker asks, brushing a hand over its smooth surface. “What happened to that ridiculous, you know…” She trails off, swirling her fingertip in increasingly smaller circles.

  Dyeawan doesn’t answer, but shoots a pointed glance in Nia’s direction. Her opponent retains her usual stoicism, though Dyeawan thinks she catches a flash of irritation tweaking Nia’s features.

  “In any case,” Tinker says with a sigh, “this business between the two of you began here, and it will end here, one way or the other. And as this is the room in which the planners have solved so many problems with keen minds, it seems fitting this is where the contest of the mind will take place.”

  Dyeawan can’t tell whether or not the old woman means those words facetiously.

  “You will both be injected with a series of potions,” Tinker explains. “The effect will be similar to what you experienced at the volcano. However, these will induce an inside state rather than an outside state. You will retreat within your own mind, and that is where the contest will take place. It will be much like a dream in which you retain your awareness.

  “I will speak to you both while you are held in this state, introducing problems and scenarios. You won’t be aware of your physical surroundings, or me, and your bodies will remain locked in thrall, but your minds will create worlds within your own heads based on my words. That is where you will meet your challenges.”

  Dyeawan has had more than enough of the Planning Cadre poisoning her and altering her perceptions, and vows inwardly that this will be the last time.

  “How will you judge who wins?” she asks.

  “Think of it like navigating a maze within your own head,” Tinker says. “The first one to make it through, and back to consciousness, will be declared the winner.”

  “What if we get lost in the maze?” Dyeawan asks.

  “Don’t get lost,” Tinker advises her, quite unhelpfully.

  “Shouldn’t we lie down?” Nia inquires.

  “You may sit. Your bodies will stiffen under the influence of the potions and be held in place until your control over them returns.”

  “Sounds restful,” Nia says in a rare display of humor.

  “At least your physical exertion in these contests is at an end,” Tinker says, consoling them. “I will need a moment to prepare the injections. Please get comfortable.”

  She walks away, leaving them alone for a time.

  Dyeawan watches Nia take a seat at the head of the table. She does so without pomp, and Dyeawan isn’t certain whether or not it is meant to be a symbolic gesture. In either case, she rows her tender over to the opposite end of the table, settling herself in front of it.

  They stare at one another in silence, waiting for Tinker to return.

  “I want you to know something,” Nia says unexpectedly.

  Dyeawan blinks at her opponent, the surprise evident on her face.

  Nia draws a slow, deep breath, exhaling before she speaks again. “It’s not jealousy.”

  “What isn’t?” Dyeawan asks.

  “I am not challenging you for leadership of the planners because I’m jealous or bitter or resentful. I once thought I would be Edger’s choice to succeed him one day, that much is true. But his choices were his own, and it was his right to make them. You became his choice. I accept that. Truly.”

  It is the first time, not counting the end of their wrist-wrestling match, that Dyeawan is able to read the older woman. Nia is telling her the truth.

  “Then what is it?”

  “You aren’t ready,” Nia states flatly. “Edger never meant for you to succeed him so soon. You are brilliant, Dyeawan, there is no doubt about that. Your mind consumes and processes knowledge on a plateau few will ever reach. But that is not enough. Books are not enough. Edger’s lessons weren’t enough. You lack the experience necessary to guide the planners, and by proxy the whole of Crache.”

  Dyeawan can deny neither the truth nor wisdom in those words. She thrust this upon herself when she still had much to learn about leading and planning from Edger.

  She could not live with nor let him continue to pursue his atrocities, however. She will never regret her choice in that.

  “I was raised from a babe in this keep, as part of the Planning Cadre,” Nia continues. “I have served as a planner for almost ten years. I know what they need, and how to achieve it. I agree with much of your aims and philosophy, as I agreed with Edger’s notion that we must move on from the past. But I am the superior choice to do so.”

  “Why did you not say this to me before?”

  Nia’s shoulders rise in an almost imperceptible shrug. “Would you have abdicated your position to me?”

  Dyeawan considers that. “No,” she says.

  “Will you now?”

  Dyeawan thinks about Riko, and about the toys she wants to design and build. She thinks about the children like her she left behind in the Bottoms to collect their bits of string and broken glass.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Nia nods as if that is the answer she expected. “I merely wanted you to know,” she says.

  “I appreciate that,” Dyeawan replies, sincerely. “Thank you. I never wanted to be your enemy.”

  “You aren’t my enemy now.”

  Dyeawan doesn’t know why she is so grateful to hear that, but she i
s.

  Tinker finally returns, bearing a clay tray supporting two rows of small needles attached to bellows lined up across its surface.

  “Are we ready to begin?”

  “I am ready for this to end,” Dyeawan says.

  Tinker seems to take that as a “yes.”

  She places the tray down upon the tabletop in front of Dyeawan, beginning with her. “I’ve heated these needles just so,” she explains. “It should ease their passage, but this will sting a bit, I’m afraid.”

  “I am almost certain I’ve had worse.”

  “To be sure,” Tinker says noncommittally. “Tilt your chin forward just a bit for me.”

  Dyeawan does as instructed, though she tracks Tinker’s movements warily from the corners of her eyes.

  Tinker steps behind her with the first needle and bellows.

  “Is that going—” Dyeawan begins, but her next word gets caught in her throat as Tinker jabs the tip of the needle into the back of her neck.

  Dyeawan winces and tightly shuts her eyes. Her fists clench upon the tabletop.

  The pain is brief, and a moment later she’s able to open her eyes again, the rest of her body relaxing as well.

  She doesn’t feel any differently at first. The table still spreads out before her. Nia still sits at the other end, studying her curiously. Tinker continues to hover about Dyeawan’s shoulders.

  Dyeawan opens her mouth to ask when the first potion will begin to take effect. No words come out of her mouth, however. Instead, her tongue melts down her chin and onto her chest in a pink, milky torrent.

  There is no pain now. There is no feeling at all. There is only a detached curiosity as she stares down at her tongue, which looks like melted butter run down the front of her tunic.

  Dyeawan considers whether or not she should attempt to lap her melted tongue back into her. She then realizes she lacks the tool to perform that action.

  It’s absurdly funny to her, and she would laugh if she possessed the means.

  Unfortunately, the moment’s good humor is shattered as the world in front of her abruptly crashes into her eyes. Dyeawan cannot decide whether she is suddenly hurtling forward at a great speed or whether everything in her field of vision has been sucked through her eyeballs.