The Endless Skies

by Shannon Price

  “Leonoden,” he says, using our word for countryman. “Can I help you?”

  The deserter is somewhere around my mother’s age, maybe forty-five years old. He’s in what I suppose are human clothes—and I don’t know why I expected anything different. Given that he is wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt and vest and plain pants and boots, I may not have known who he was at just a glance. But the gold of his eyes is unmistakably Leonodai.

  “Hello,” I reply. I pick a name at random. “I’m … Prena. I live here in the palace. My father is a general here. Can I come in?”

  He indicates I can sit, and I take the chair across from him. The room still bears traces of Sentinel Faera’s stay. A bookcase holding dusty volumes sits in the corner, and I spot a white uniform hanging in the wardrobe. Other clues tell me Noam has made this room his own. The bed is pushed to the far corner, presumably so the table fits next to the window. The room faces southwest toward open sea, a shallow outcropping with a handful of potted plants just below the pane.

  “So, Prena,” he says. “I will presume that you didn’t pay a visit to a deserter because you want to share this view. If you have questions, please ask.”

  I sit back. “You’re very … forthcoming. You don’t even know who I am.”

  “I have nothing to hide,” he says.

  I wait for him to swallow a mouthful of his lunch while my own turns in my stomach. I exhale determinedly—facing Noam is a new kind of battle. Strange and without weapons, but a battle nonetheless. I had to leave here with what I came for.

  “The sentinels aren’t telling the citizens about you,” I say. “I found out through listening around. They’re telling everyone they are getting their knowledge from the scholars. Why?”

  Noam wipes his mouth on a napkin. “They don’t want anyone looking for me.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because they can’t let the truth get out,” he replies. “The sentinels are losing a battle they brought on themselves.” He pauses, his dark brown eyes reading my expression. “I doubt that the sentinels ever shared that the humans offered peace a long time ago.”

  I grip the chair beneath me. If I had my knives, I’d go over them with my hands to steady myself, but for now, the chair will have to do. “I don’t understand. The humans have never wanted peace.”

  “Oh yes, they have,” Noam replies. He sets down his fork and leans back, folding his arms. “Balmora has been suffering a famine for years now. Around the time I left, humans offered peace in hopes we’d help feed them. But we refused.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there, of course,” he replies. “I implored the king to accept the offer. Think of all the warriors that this city has lost to battles with the humans. We had the chance to end it, but the king and the other kingdoms chose not to.”

  I look out at the sea, not sure how to process all that I am hearing. “You say that like you know everything.” I ask. “How can you be sure?”

  Noam smiles, but not kindly. “I was a sentinel myself. I know how they think. The sentinels like things the way they are,” he goes on, confidence ringing in his tone like a Tower bell. “They always have. They will always choose stability over change. I wanted to give change a chance, so I left to live with the humans in one of their villages in the mountains. There, they welcomed me. Gave me shelter and let me stay. I proved my point that some humans would work with us if we tried. But it’s too late now.”

  “You left to live with our enemy. What about Garradin?” Noam flinches at the name. “What about your people, your family? What about loyalty?”

  The last of these comes out as a shout, leaving a louder silence in its wake. I bite back the apology that rises in my throat. I’m not sorry. I’m furious, and confused.

  “I get that you’re helping the sentinels now. And that’s good,” I add on half-heartedly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you deserted.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He sighs. “You are young, Prena. But with luck, you may have a chance to follow your own path like I did.”

  I straighten up in defiance. I would never abandon the Heliana. “When the sentinels came for you, were you afraid?”

  His expression changes to one of bemusement. “No.”

  “Well, weren’t you scared of punishment?”

  He laughs. “The sentinels have always known where I was.

  I shake my head. “No, I remember the announcement a few days after you left. They said they didn’t know where you were. If they were ever going to punish me, they already would have. They especially can’t do so now that it was I who told them about the cure to begin with.”

  “The sentinels should have told us the truth,” I mutter. My leg bounces idly, but I try to refocus on what’s really at stake. “Is it real, the cure?”

  Noam nods without hesitation. “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you have any of it?”

  “It’s not a common disease, and the cure has never grown in the mountains,” he replies. “All the village leaders knew of it, though, from when they lived in the larger cities, like Ramsgate.”

  “Ramsgate?” I repeat.

  “The humans’ capital city,” he says. “It lies due east from the Heliana. That is where the cure is said to still grow.”

  There is something unsettling about how Noam talks—it draws me in, and he seems so sure, but a huge part of me still wants to doubt him.

  “How can you trust the humans so much?” I ask. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll lie?”

  “I have no reason to,” he replies. “My friends in the village are not monsters, just people like you or me. They would give the prince a whole field of the cure if they had any. The human leader, General Marchess, is the one who refused to help. And from the little I know of him, he will not yield.”

  Prince? With one small word, Noam stops my world from turning. I don’t say anything at first, hoping I heard wrong.

  “Prince Tabrol has the disease,” I say quietly, half a question and half praying that he’ll jump in and correct me. “I … I didn’t know.”

  At last, Noam seems to break. He looks out to sea, a true sadness lingering in his expression. “I didn’t expect you to. But you seem like a smart warrior. I think you can handle it.”

  “I’m not a warrior,” I stammer, but Noam looks at me flatly, like, Come on. “How did you know?”

  “No palace girl would just barge in here and sit down with a deserter. You came in with fire in your eyes. You have a sharpness to you. That’s training, and spars won.”

  I open my mouth to retort, but he waves me off.

  “Prena, the king cannot let his son die. He’ll need to ask for the Four Kingdoms’ permission to offer peace again, maybe make the deal even more enticing to General Marchess. But skies know how long that will take to get a message sent and returned.”

  “That will take forever,” I say, my heart racing with a sudden, new realization. “The warriors who were sent don’t know about the prince.”

  “No. But for a child, they wouldn’t need much,” Noam says. “The humans I spoke to have a saying: ‘A petal a year, a stem a season.’ Tabrol would need less than one flower to live.”

  Less than one flower for the lifeblood of our city, for our entire future. Every Leonodai from child to elder knows the royal line has to remain strong; otherwise, the Heliana will fall. The scholars—and my mother, since she taught me herself—drilled that into my skull since I was a girl.

  Everything I’ve worried about is true and yet is also worse than I feared. I’ve never thought about how they must pick and chose information like choosing fruit at the market. They only tell the city what they want us to hear.

  I have to get to Shirene. I have to apologize for yesterday, then tell her that I know everything. I can try to convince her that the other warriors and warriors-elect—skies, even the citizens—need to know the truth.

  Loud voices sound from the hallway like an old bickering couple.
But I recognize the stern tone of Sentinel Renna.

  “I have to go,” I say, then immediately realize that the only exits are the hallway and the window.

  Launching ungracefully out of the chair, I push myself over the windowsill and out onto the outcropping below. I duck to the side just in time. The hinges of the door let out a blaring squeak as it’s pushed open, and I’m about to fly away when Renna’s angry shout hits my ears.

  “How dare you lie to us!” the Fourth Sentinel snaps. “You said the disease takes ten days. Ten. The healers have just told us another child who only became sick five days ago has died.”

  The wind buffers me, pushing me against the palace walls. I look skyward, heart drumming, hoping that no patrol is circling above me. My dress flies up in a flurry around my knees, and I grab at it, bunching it in my hand to keep it from giving me away.

  I should go. I should absolutely go. And yet … I don’t. Closing my eyes, I listen hard toward the room behind me. Noam has given me part of the truth. Something in my gut says I am about to get the rest.

  “I didn’t lie,” Noam protests earnestly.

  “Then your human friends were not honest,” Renna replies. Her voice is heavy with rage.

  “You are sure of the number?” says a new voice, but one that I’ve known my whole life. Shirene is far from calm, but at least she’s not shouting.

  “Yes,” Noam says. “It must be because the disease is new to Leonodai. I was assured it took ten days.”

  “The warriors have been sent already,” says Shirene. “They think they have more time.”

  A final voice, a deeper one that I guess is Sentinel Hammond’s, speaks next. “We must go to the king at once.”

  “You, too,” is Renna’s reply. The scrape of a chair against the floor tells me she’s been talking to Noam.

  My hand cramps from how tightly I’ve gripped my dress, but I don’t move. The sun presses into my skin as I keep totally still. The minutes tick by. Whether I am being careful to not get caught or paralyzed by the revelations of the last few minutes, it’s hard to tell.

  Prince Tabrol has the disease, and now the children are dying too fast. The warriors who were sent were told to take every precaution—and precautions can come in the form of longer rests to avoid detection, or sleeping a full night to make sure their weary selves can make the full journey. They’ll want to make it home as quickly as possible, of course, but not every commander will take great risks. Someone like Seth surely won’t, unless he knows what is truly at stake.

  I have to help get the news to them. But how? I have orders to stay at the Warriors’ Hall. To go find a team … that means I will have to go without anyone’s permission.

  My body sways with the thought. Skies keep me. Have I really just considered leaving the Heliana, like Noam? Only it isn’t like Noam. He left to prove a point. I’ll be leaving to save my city.

  No. This is crazy. I am just a crazy girl standing on a rooftop, not thinking straight. But my breath is skimming in my chest for another reason, too. How can the sentinels believe they always know best? It isn’t fair that they are keeping things from the citizens. Doesn’t “loyalty above all” include honesty with the people who look to you for guidance?

  I groan aloud. Unsure what to do, I take my lioness form and fly low around the palace and back to Storm’s End. My mother will have something for me to do, some new way of helping her and the other schools. If I keep my hands busy, then maybe I’ll be able to forget what I’ve just found out long enough for the teams to return with the cure, and everything will be fine.

  I go to my mother’s balcony rather than the side door, knowing she’ll probably be in her office. I land and am about to call out her name when I hear a small, soft sound that cuts me worse than a new blade.

  I hold my breath as I carefully lean forward, enough to see but not enough to be noticed. My mother sits hunched at her desk. The shine of her tears reflects in the nearby candlelight. She cradles something in her hand, and I move forward ever so slightly, trying to get a better look as my eyes adjust. The blackened shapes are familiar, but I don’t realize what they are until I notice the soot clinging to her fingertips.

  It’s one of the dolls that I had burned—or thought I had. She must have taken it from the pile at the last second. She holds it as if it is an injured bird. Something fragile and precious. A black dress and shawl hang on a wall hook behind her. Just as the yellow dress I am in hasn’t seen much use, neither has that one. But I recognize it on sight. It is the one she wore the day that we sent my father to the Endless Skies, his body burned on the pyre with the other fallen warriors.

  I pull myself out of sight again, biting back my own tears as I press into the wall. Mother. She is the kind of lioness to rouse a person’s spirits with a song, or offer her help before it is asked—a formidable woman but of a softer, kinder strength. The loss of my father nearly broke her, and it took years before she came back. Losing two of the Storm’s End girls has stirred that despair, and now it is rushing forth like a river.

  Once news of Prince Tabrol’s illness breaks, she will drown.

  I don’t know how long I stand there. Bells ring to mark the hour, and I let the sounds crash into me as I think of what to do. I can’t go inside, put on a brave face, and lie that the children still have a good chance when I know they don’t.

  They will have to send more warriors, but a decision like that can take time, as Noam said. What’s more, I can still see them deciding against sending more teams. If Tabrol dies, we’ll need people here to defend the city from the humans if they attack by sea. No, not if they attack. When.

  I refuse to stay idle.

  If I am going to do something on my own, it has to be now. There isn’t enough time for me to wait and see what the sentinels and king decide. The small prince can’t afford for me to.

  Closing my eyes, I go through everyone I know, trying to find some clarity. Seth would never entertain the thought of leaving. Callen would take time to think it out, considering every angle. Ox would rally someone else, or at least have someone agreeing with him before deciding. But I’m not any of them. I’m not even a warrior.

  I am Rowan An’Talla, and I have to decide on my own.

  I go over the facts in my mind. I am the only one who knows of the children’s worsening illness and of Prince Tabrol’s. If I leave now, I will still be serving my city in a way. To find the teams and renew the urgency of the mission is, in a way, doing my part. But selfishly, I know if I leave, it also means I get what I want. Can I live with that? Will my intention be enough to absolve me of a charge of desertion when I return? I don’t know.

  What I do know is that the sound of my mother’s crying will haunt me until the end of my days. If I can spare her any amount of pain, I will.

  Mind spinning, I take to the skies. Warm sunlight makes the gold of my wings shine, and I stretch them out, farther and farther until I’m straining to hold the position. I need the sunlight to give me courage. A lot of courage.

  I have to make a choice, but in the pit of my stomach, I know that I already have.

  “Skies keep me,” I say to no one. Maybe to the first king and queen, or to my father watching over me. Maybe to the Endless Skies themselves.

  I am going to help my city, and I am going to do it on my own terms. Even if it means disobeying the king. Even if it means risking my dream. It is the right thing to do, and it is what I want to do.

  Now I just have to hope the risk will be worth it in the end.

  16

  ROWAN

  It takes me until sixth bell to gather my armor and my wits. Along with my knives, I choose a lightweight shortsword and set it on my left side. I run by the dining hall and pack as many dry foods as I can, ignoring any curious looks. I sling my now-heavy pack over my shoulder and head for one of the exits, but a tug in my gut makes me pause.

  Looking over my shoulder, I take in the glow of the Warriors’ Hall one last time. From the refle
ction pool and earthy foliage of the Underbelly to the glass rooftop and every proud archway in between, I love the Hall. I’ve worked so hard to get here, to earn a place for myself. Skies willing, I’ll be back in just a matter of days. But it still feels like I am leaving so much behind.

  “Thank you,” I say, touching a hand reverently to the wall. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Then I turn to the east.

  I don’t know the flight paths the warriors had been assigned, but Noam said Ramsgate is due east, so that’s where I’ll fly. I cradle my determination like a candle flame—I have to protect it, or I’d lose my nerve. Just get to Balmora, I tell myself. Once I’m there, I’ll feel better.

  The sun lingers above the west, but the first diamonds of stars are beginning to appear overhead.

  The entire sky is mine. Taking my lioness form, I rise to meet her.

  * * *

  On the first day of training, one of the older warriors instructed us to fly into the frigid sea. Then he called us back up to the Heliana to dry in the sunlight. Then he sent us back to the water.

  It went on for an hour: sun and sea, warmth and icy cold, until our spirits broke and our skin forgot how to mend. I remember vomiting onto the grass, hating every bone in my body and swearing I would never feel so low again.

  Deserting feels a lot like that.

  I fly straight down from the city, until I’m skimming the sea’s surface. A quiet thrill thrums through me like a harp string finally played. It has been years since I rebelled in any way, let alone in an enormous way like this. My first weeks of training were spent doing extra drills and cleaning dishes as part of numerous reprimands. I had a smart mouth, as my mother was quick to remind me. Years of training had helped instill a deep sense of respect for the warrior ways, but even now I have to actively hold back when an instructor’s tone rubs me the wrong way. It feels good to have this little piece of myself back, especially now that I know what the sentinels did and are still doing.