The Reckoners

by Doranna Durgin

  His eyes grew hard. The line of his jaw grew hard.

  That would be a no.

  He said, “Some of us they call mudbloods.”

  “But not you.” It was a guess, but something in his voice.

  His eyes flared silver, unabashedly cat-like. “Some of us they simply use.”

  She waited, because that didn’t seem to be the end of it.

  “Some of us,” he said, “they fear.”

  He stilled again, not quite looking at her. Waiting for her reaction.

  “Trevarr,” she said, but it didn’t feel right — sitting here with the space between them. She knee-walked over to him, not stopping until she reached the rug in front of the cot — and not until she’s moved between his knees, which opened slightly to accommodate her. She crowded him even more, framing his face with her hands and pushing back his hair — all loose from its tie, the shorter front strands falling briefly across cheek and brow and eyes, the hidden braids revealed to her touch. His features might have been cut from sharp ice, lines and angles with strength infused. His jaw twitched beneath her palm.

  He closed his eyes. Tipped his head, leaning into her touch. Held himself that way for the world’s longest heartbeat, his expression nothing less than pained. Garrie recognized the conflict now.

  He said, “The Krevata portal...”

  Garrie cursed under her breath. “I can’t believe I’m still sitting here — it’s just that there was so much —”

  “You were never intended to encounter the Krevata,” Trevarr said sharply. “I erred to blind you from the start. I would compound that error to take you back before them unknowing.” He looked away, and she knew he’d rather have said anything other than what came next. “I needed this time, atreya. I was too long in that place.”

  Garrie heard in his voice what she already knew — they had only moments more. “Tell me this, then. Why you?”

  That brief expression might have been a grimace. Hard to tell, the way he hid it away so fast. Hard to tell in this light, period. “This is what I do, finding runaways outside of Kehar.” So many words from this taciturn man, and his accent edged them all, driving home the very basic point. Not from her world. “But the Krevata...”

  She caught the anger simmering against her breezes. “This is personal, isn’t it?”

  “It is... complicated.” He lifted one shoulder, an apology for the evasion. “Thanks to the Krevata, my people are under threat of exile. If I close down their portal and bring them back, then my village will survive.”

  “Survive?” Garrie repeated, startled.

  He gave her a dry look. “Kehar is a harsh world, Garrie. Exiles do not endure.”

  I owe someone. That’s what he’d said. “You owe someone,” she repeated, out loud this time.

  “These people took me at great risk,” he said. “No child manages on this world without family, Garrie. Not even me.”

  She found herself baffled. “But surely —”

  “Strong mixed blood,” he said flatly, “seldom survives on Kehar.”

  Kehar. A place that would have let this mixed-blood child die. A place that would now let his family die. A place of deadly entities even now crossing over to her own world. A place of energies she’d never even imagined.

  “Then let’s go save your people,” she said. “And mine, too.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 32

  Kehar: Not Long Ago At All Now

  “Are you sure — ?” Ardac held a branch aside for Nevahn in the danger of the dimly glow-lit darkness — midnight and high tide, with the dark fog drifting up to their elbows and tickling their noses, a sharp and lingering scent.

  Nevahn forbore to answer. For one thing, he was watching his feet amongst the roots and vines, here in this area the forest had reclaimed since the Krevata had grown bold enough so even the youth kept within the primary boundaries.

  For another, Ardac already knew the answer. He just wanted to be told again. And Nevahn didn’t have the energy to do it.

  They climbed all the way to the secondary boundary — the warnings and protections that Nevahn had developed in recent years, spreading himself thin. By necessity, they were a thinner barrier of simpler glyphs. They didn’t stop all threats — the things driven their way by Krevata, either deliberately or inadvertently — but those things that got through triggered a warning.

  And then the elders faced hard decisions: run, hide, or risk their hunters.

  Not that it would likely be a problem for much longer.

  Nevahn paused, oriented himself, and shifted his grip on his small carry sack — and on the short, stout sweep of sword he carried in one hand. “Almost there,” he told Ardac, which was as much reassurance as he could offer the younger man.

  Ardac bore a similar sack. Between them, they carried the treasures of the village — everything but the bell and the prayer stone. They had the memory stone, the kirkhirrra that carried the village’s history in its knots, from the earliest, hopeful days to the most recent fears — a section with new threads and knots as of the day before, details that could only be read by a skilled historian.

  Maybe the final threads, when all was said and done.

  They had the sealed and stoppered blood token vial, a drop from each of them. Their own memorial to those who remained.

  In truth, it would have easily fit in a single sack. Splitting it had been a symbolic gesture — a burden to be carried by their elder glyphmaster and by the man who had made the moment necessary in the first place.

  “Here,” Nevahn said, pointing to the familiar border tree — one from which he’d trimmed all the lower branches to expose the bark to his glyph knife while making it easier to find.

  Making it easier for Trevarr to find, too.

  Ardac put his carry sack on the ground beside the tree, near the large stone tucked up against gnarly roots. “The irony of this situation is near to unbearable.”

  Nevahn huffed a mildly breathless agreement, tucking his carry sack beside Ardac’s to tackle the job of shifting the stone. The deep, leather-lined hollow beneath had served him well these years of barely communicating with his foster son.

  A son he wasn’t sure he’d ever see again. But if not, at least they’d stolen this many years from Ghehera.

  The voice from the darkness made Ardac startle to a comedic degree. “Leave it,” Trevarr said. “There is nothing within.”

  Nevahn found the moment too perfect. Too Trevarr. He laughed as he straightened. “And here you are,” he said, nonsensical enough to make him laugh again — a sound with a bitter edge.

  “Nevahn-hei,” Trevarr said by way of acknowledgment. The fog stirred as he moved within view of the deliberately faint glowlight. “What irony is that?”

  Ardac’s laughter was bitter without subtlety, and a little too loud. But he managed to keep his voice low, acknowledging Nevahn’s warning eye with a wave. “Trevarr. Of course. It was too much to think I’d be spared this.”

  Trevarr looked to Nevahn for explanation without attempting to pierce his former friend’s anger, and Nevahn gave it to him. “Ardac killed one of the Krevata.”

  All those years of blaming Trevarr for the initial escalation of the Krevata activity, and it had come to this.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Ardac said, defiance in that harsh whisper, and in the lift of his head — a man who had become quiet and nonconfrontational glaring at the youth who’d grown to hunter and warrior.

  Nevahn had no fears that Trevarr would react to that challenge. Not after hiding himself from the rest of the world for so long — still hiding, in many ways, from Ghehera. His intercession was borne of simple fact. “No, you didn’t. It was crazed and heading for the nursery. A sick, dangerous individual.”

  Ardac made a sound that might have been a swallowed sob. The encounter had been violent, messy, and had shaken them all.

  Especially since they all knew what would come next.

  “This explai
ns much.” Trevarr’s unusually grim expression only confirmed it.

  Ardac’s voice turned sharp in a different way. “What do you mean?”

  Nevahn held out a forestalling hand, closing the distance to Trevarr — holding out the glowstick to examine his son with swift efficiency and finding no signs of weakness, no lingering injuries. A sight unfamiliar to him these days when Trevarr only visited during times of healing, when he was of no use to Ghehera.

  “I am well,” Trevarr told him, confirming it — standing tall and easy with one hand against the tree, emoting the strengths that had torn him from Solchar in the first place.

  “Then this visit comes at great risk,” Nevahn said.

  “What does the Krevata’s death explain?” Ardac insisted.

  “Listen well,” Trevarr told him, the brief flare of his eyes telling Nevahn that he understood well enough that Ardac was more interested in demanding answers than listening to them. “The Krevata have made their own crude oskhila. They went offworld, and they construct a portal there to extract power from the space between us.”

  A chill seized Nevahn, turning the sweat of their climb clammy and sick. “That can’t be stable.”

  “It’s not.” Trevarr said shortly.

  Ardac wasn’t quelled yet. “But what does that have to do with —”

  Trevarr briefly showed his teeth, and Nevahn turned his impatience on the younger man. “Silence, Ardac. Let me hear!”

  “Ghehera keeps their own counsel.” Trevarr turned back to Nevahn, this time with unspoken words crowding his expression... a plea for understanding.

  No one would like what came next.

  Trevarr said, “The death of the Krevata — this is how Ghehera realized what the Krevata were up to.”

  “Portal construction is a tricky thing,” Nevahn said, full of understatement. “A forbidden thing. Not everyone can withstand the process. The Krevata that attacked us... ”

  Ardac’s voice became sharp in another way. “It was involved. It went insane, and they lost control of it! No wonder... I really did have to kill it... ”

  “The only one to doubt that has been you,” Nevahn told him. But he didn’t look away from Trevarr, because he understood all too well that not everything had been said.

  And he was right. Corrugated bark crumbled beneath Trevarr’s hand before he realized it and eased the clench of his fingers against the tree. “The death of the Krevata,” he said, “is the thing Ghehera has been waiting for.”

  “The village,” Nevahn said simply. “They’re using us against you.”

  Trevarr nodded shortly. “The hunt for the Krevata is mine. Solchar’s safety is... incentive.”

  “They’ve used us against you all along,” Ardac said, for even he knew this much. “What’s different about this time?”

  Trevarr laughed, a thing of such rarity that Nevahn inhaled, sharp and alarmed. And he understood, because he’d always known it would come to this.

  “This time,” Nevahn told Ardac, “they’re going to follow through. They’re tired of the unrest the Krevata are causing. And while anyone can mine platinum under the Krevata if we’re not here, the Krevata are unique in their ability to provide Ghehera with harvested energies.”

  “They’ll crush us?” Ardac whispered, denial in his widened eyes. “Just because we exist?” And then, quickly, “But if they harm us, they have nothing to hold over Trevarr —”

  Trevarr laughed again. “They’re tired of me, too.”

  More than that, Nevahn knew — they feared him. They hadn’t been able to tame him, or kill him, or even to understand exactly how his kyrokha heritage had manifested itself.

  Trevarr confirmed it. “If I survive this, they’ll find a way to come after me directly.”

  Ardac stuttered, “But — but —”

  Nevahn bent to scoop up the two small carry sacks, pressing them into Trevarr’s startled hands and the sword with it. His family’s sword over these past generations, glyphed for strength and edge. “You will survive,” he said. “They’ll find a way to deal with us, one way or the other. We’ve known it for a long time. But if you survive, then so do we.” He closed his hands around Trevarr’s, as near to an embrace as he’d ever been able to come. “Promise me, Trevarr. Take our relics. Be our legacy.”

  They stood that way a moment, unspoken words beneath unspoken promises, the sting of tears in Nevahn’s eyes, Ardac silent and flushed with emotion beside them. Then Trevarr pulled away, closing his hand around the carrysacks with a reverence for the relics within. Moving back into the darkness, his presence melting away as it ever did.

  But he hesitated, which he never did. Long enough to glance back at them — at Nevahn — silvered eyes flaring briefly in the darkness. Unspoken words, unspoken promises.

  And Nevahn knew he would pay the price of being himself, whatever came.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 33

  Sanctuary

  Retreat is a viable strategic option.

  — Rhonda Rose

  Running doesn’t mean not coming back.

  — Lisa McGarrity

  Garrie stood in the middle of Trevarr’s cave sanctuary, expectant. Waiting for him to pull out the rock or open a door or do whatever it took to get back to the Winchester House.

  But Trevarr moved to the sturdy cabinet, flipping open the doors to pull out a paper packet, open it, and tip a generous portion of the contents into a mug. Water followed.

  “You’re making tea?”

  He swallowed the entire portion, tipping his head back to catch the final drops and wiping his mouth with the back of his half-gloved hand. “Replenishment,” he said, pouring out an additional splash of water to swirl and drink down, getting the dregs. “It comes dearly. I would offer it, but —”

  “No, no,” she said hastily. “Let’s not experiment just now.”

  Trevarr dropped the packet in his satchel and pulled out a few select items, moving so swiftly in the low light that Garrie could barely follow his movement as he distributed things among his duster pockets. A high inside pocket, a low inside pocket, one close to hand on the outside, none of them truly visible as pockets once he removed his hand.

  He closed the satchel flap and placed the bag at the head of the bed. Something about the way he did it — a reverence — made her say, “Those things are important to you.”

  He gave her a sideways glance, a startling flash of silvered eyes. “They are my history and my future and my honor. My people’s honor. If I don’t bring back the Krevata...” He didn’t complete that thought. Instead he reached inside his coat, giving the inexplicable impression of a man reaching for a sword.

  And damned if he didn’t come up with one.

  Not a long one, not a great whopping two-handed blade... more like a machete with style and a knuckle guard. But an unmistakable sword.

  “You must be kidding,” Garrie blurted. “Where the hell were you keeping that?”

  “Lukkas,” Trevarr said. “An old blade, also of my people. It is fitting that I use it now.”

  “But where did it come —” She stopped, trying to take in all the significance of it at once. “Waitaminute. You’re going to the Krevata with a sword?”

  “I need to take them alive, but I must be alive to do it.” He gave her a grim look. “Your breezes will not affect them. And your world needs you for what you do, not for what I have come to do.”

  She skipped over the part where he seemed prepared to take them back into the middle of the Krevata and returned to the immediate heart of the matter. Where had that sword come from — ?

  She took liberties, patting down the coat — the coat that should have fallen lumpy and misshapen from his shoulders instead of sweeping gracefully to swirl at his calves. She patted the pockets, and she patted where there should be a scabbard, and she ran her hands along his sides — feeling only the warmth of his body and the lean form beneath, the frame of him a little too close to the surface.

&
nbsp; “Oh, come on,” she said. And “But I saw what you eat,” as if either of those two statements truly made sense without context.

  “Take care with this coat,” Trevarr said. “The pockets are... enhanced. And I was not prepared for your food. Something is missing there.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said. “All that food, and you’re... what, starving?”

  “Take this,” he said, skipping any true response as if she wasn’t going to notice, and removing the all-colors stone from one of the pockets that had patted flat an instant earlier. “It is called an oskhila. A travel eye, in your words. The moment we return to the portal room, you must run.”

  “But —”

  “No,” he said, his eyes as hard as she’d ever seen, his features matching. He was but rock. “This is for me to do.”

  “But —”

  His hand closed around her arm. “Tell me you will run. Find your people and control the spirits in that place, make it safe for all.”

  “Fine, I’ll run like hell,” Garrie snapped, finally getting a word in. “But — I don’t know what you expect me to do with this thing.”

  “The oskhila?” He looked startled, if only briefly. “Only hold it.” He reached into his coat with his free hand, came up with a shorter blade — one that might have done service as a military knife if it hadn’t had that strong sweep of the edge, the blade itself covered with shimmering watermarked glyphs. “My hands are full.”

  “So I see,” she said dryly. “But —”

  “Like this,” he said, and stood behind her as he had before, again crossing his arm across her upper chest to pull them together — except this time she held the Eye before her and felt stupid about it.

  At least, she felt stupid until he fed energy right through her, jarring her bolt upright and stiff, because even if the energy this time went through instead of into, it nonetheless flooded her with warmth and heady instant fullness of being — and then wonder, as the Eye instantly sucked it all up, Trevarr holding her close and warm and the knife in his hand, his knuckles resting against her collarbone.