The Reawakened

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  He stepped back, yanking his hand out of hers. “Our Lania?” He touched his chest as if to say, My Lania?

  Nilik turned away, lifting his face toward the tendrils of red and orange clouds stretching across the sky. He stood motionless for a long moment, hands on his hips, drawing deep, quaking breaths.

  Finally he turned back to Lycas, his face contorted. “Descendants?” he hissed.

  Lycas nodded, then told the story of Lania’s death, which pained Rhia even more upon the second hearing.

  As his uncle spoke, Nilik hunched over, running both hands over his scalp, squeezing his head tight between them as if he could press the pain away. His breath came faster, and he swallowed several times, each one harder than the last.

  When the story was finished, Nilik slowly pulled back his shoulders, lowered his hands, then turned his haunted blue-gray gaze upon Lycas. “When you leave, I’m going with you. I’m going to Velekos.”

  Rhia shivered at the sound of the village’s name slipping from her son’s mouth.

  Velekos. The place she could never let him go, not after the vision she’d received at his birth.

  Velekos was the place where Nilik would die.

  02

  Asermos

  “Wake up!”

  Sura felt a chill as blankets were whipped off her. A pack was shoved into her arms, jamming her middle finger.

  “Ow.”

  “Shh!” A cool, thin hand covered her mouth. “They’re coming,” Mali whispered. “You know what to do.”

  Sura sat up, eyes searching the dark and seeing only her mother’s pale face. “Soldiers?”

  “Down the road. Torynna just came to warn me. Five men, all armed.” Mali pulled aside the chair that sat between their beds, then yanked up the rug.

  Sura shuddered at the thought of going into the tunnel, but a decade of running this drill pushed her limbs into automatic action. She grabbed her boots and shoved her feet into them. “Come with me.”

  “We’ve discussed this a hundred times.” Mali started pulling up the floorboards. “If I run, I’ll be admitting my guilt. They’ll kill us both.”

  “Not if we escape.”

  “They’ll follow. If I let them take me, they won’t search for you. They don’t care about you.”

  They will, Sura thought as she put on her pack, jerking the straps tight against her shoulders. One day the Descendant scum would pay for everything. They would all burn.

  Mali lifted the last board. “Go. Now.”

  Sura lowered herself into the hole, stepping quickly down the ladder that had been nailed into the side of it. With her chest at floor level, she stopped.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Maybe I should go to the hills to find my father.”

  Her mother put down the board and grabbed Sura’s shoulders. “What did we say?” She shook her so hard, Sura thought her teeth would fall out. “What’s the plan?”

  “Kalindos.”

  “So where are you going?”

  “Kalindos,” Sura whispered.

  “But first?”

  “Get a horse from Bolan.”

  Mali pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” When her mother released her, Sura clutched her wrist. “Please come. They might kill you.”

  Mali shook her head. “They don’t want another martyr on their hands. They’ll imprison me, discredit me to our people.” She cupped Sura’s chin. “Tell the Kalindons the truth. That’s your job. Don’t try to be a hero.”

  “But my father could be—”

  “Your father could be under the ground or at the bottom of the river for all we know. If you want to survive, you stay far away from him. Understand?”

  Sura nodded.

  “Remember, if Lycas cared about us, he wouldn’t have left in the first place.”

  A knock came at the door. Sura’s heart slammed her chest, but Mali didn’t even blink.

  “Go.”

  Sura moved down the ladder and took one more look up. Shadows sharpened the angles of her mother’s rigid face.

  “You know what to do,” Mali whispered, then slid the boards back over the hole.

  Everything went dark. Sura swallowed hard and lowered herself to the floor of the tunnel. She began to crawl.

  Her pack scraped the ceiling, triggering a rain of moist dirt that tickled her skin where her shirt had ridden above her waist. Earthworms and beetles skittered off her, as well, and a distant part of her mind hoped none of them fell down her trousers.

  She listened for a struggle in the house above her, though she knew she was too deep to hear. The only sounds were her own pounding heartbeat and the scrambling of tiny claws. A mole or shrew, no doubt.

  She crawled faster. Pretend it’s another drill, she told herself. Pretend the walls aren’t closing in. She closed her eyes, since there was no light, anyway, and focused on keeping her breath steady.

  Soon her knee hit a wooden slab, signaling the end of the tunnel. She put a hand out to avoid banging her skull. Her fingers scraped another ladder.

  Though her lungs longed for fresh air, she forced herself to climb slowly and quietly. When the top of her head tapped the hole cover, she stopped and listened.

  Voices, distant, arguing. Her ears strained for a closer sound, one that would tell her a soldier was waiting outside her hiding place, like a fox watching a rabbit hole.

  No leaves rustled nearby except those shifted by the faint breeze. Descendants had no talent for covering their footfalls. Even their raspy breath seemed to fill the air for miles, belying their presence as well as a shout.

  Sura took a handful of mud from the tunnel wall and smeared it over her face. With her black hair and dark clothes, it would complete her night camouflage. She slowly lifted the wooden cover, far enough to peek.

  It was a cloudy, moonless night, but after the total darkness of the hole, the world seemed bright and clear. She had emerged in the woods across the lane from her mother’s house. The front door was open, but she couldn’t see Mali behind the group of soldiers, two of whom flanked the doorway, facing Sura. She stayed low and slitted her eyes to keep them from reflecting the torch.

  Another soldier came from around the back of the house, where he had no doubt been guarding against Mali and Sura’s retreat. The other two stood inside the front doorway. As the voices rose in argument, the leader grabbed the guard’s torch and waved the flame toward the walls, as if threatening to burn down the house.

  Sura’s fist clenched the edge of the hole, fingers sinking into the mud. She’d spent all eighteen years of her life there. They couldn’t settle for stealing her mother, they had to take her home, too?

  Mali just needed the element of surprise to overcome these soldiers. Her second-phase Wasp powers gave her the fighting skill and strength of three normal men. In the dark, she could probably overcome all five. Then she and Sura could flee together to Kalindos.

  Sura rested the hole cover on the crown of her head, then cupped her hands to her mouth, ready to strike.

  They led her mother out of the house. The torch-wielding soldier held his light near Mali so that two of the others could bind her. They pulled her arms behind her back and wrapped a thin rope around her wrists.

  Mali kept her chin up and her jaw set. She had always planned to surrender without fighting, to counter her reputation as the fierce leader of the Asermon resistance. The less trouble she caused them in custody, the sooner the authorities would let her go, and the sooner she could get back to planning their assassinations.

  Mali’s posture stiffened suddenly, just as the breeze died. In the silence, Sura heard one of the men say, “Now she won’t be able to hit us back.”

  Before the soldier could finish the knot, Sura focused on the torch, called upon her Spirit, then sucked in her breath, hard and swift.

  The torch snuffed out.

  The men shouted, and Mali broke free. She whirled on them
, fists and feet flying. Two collapsed, moaning and clutching their groins.

  Mali turned to run. A soldier grabbed her long dark braid and slammed her onto her back. The other two moved quickly to point the tips of their swords at her throat and stomach. She froze, panting.

  Sura gritted her teeth in frustration, and at the torch’s searing heat that careened within her now.

  The largest soldier—the one who had caught Mali—flipped her over, then planted a knee in the small of her back as he bound her wrists. He lifted her to stand and turned her to face him.

  “Are you going to be good?” he said.

  She spit at his feet.

  “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” He punched Mali in the mouth. She staggered back only a step, then spit again. He struck her once more. Mali didn’t even flinch this time, just smiled as she spit in his face.

  They repeated the process over and over, until Sura knew her mother’s saliva must have been dark with blood. Still Mali said nothing, and her legs did not give way.

  Sura shook her head. Surely the soldier had been told that Mali’s Wasp defenses allowed little injury and even less pain. She was a warrior in body and Spirit. He might as well be punching a tree.

  Grunting in frustration, he struck her in the gut, then the side. Mali laughed.

  His punches turned flailing, yet he refused the others’ offers of help. By now, Sura knew, his knuckles would be raw, maybe even broken from the impact against Mali’s tough exterior.

  Finally he tottered back and raised his arm, then lost his balance and tipped backward into the mud. The others laughed—at least, the two who weren’t still curled up on the ground in agony.

  The large soldier rolled over and lurched to his feet. He tugged down the end of his red-and-yellow jacket, as if a crooked uniform were the most embarrassing part of the situation.

  “Let’s take her in and be rid of her,” he said. “Let her plague the prison guards.”

  The two injured soldiers were roused, reluctantly. They all proceeded down the lane, and Sura noticed that even after the beating, her mother walked taller than the rest.

  03

  Tiros

  Rhia tugged her hood farther over her forehead against the rain sweeping the Tiron streets. The wind was harshest out here at the end of town where no buildings stood to block it.

  Lycas’s horse grunted and shook her head, jerking Rhia’s arm. Drops cascaded from her forelock onto the broad white stripe on her face.

  Tiros needed the rain—the cisterns were nearly empty—but no messenger pigeons from Kalindos would arrive in such weather. The birds would hunker down in a tree until the storm passed. Rhia wished she could attach a message to a crow, who would fly undaunted through a hurricane if it meant finding a sure source of food.

  “Speaking of undaunted…” she murmured as her brother appeared, striding down the street to the place where the horses waited. He wore no hood and didn’t even hunch his shoulders against the rain slashing his face.

  Four Tiron Wolverines flanked him, looking slightly more daunted by the storm, though they did a fair job of imitating Lycas’s effortless swagger. Behind them strode four Bear men with swords at their waists; two second-phase Cougars (a male and female) with bows strung over their shoulders; Sani the Eagle woman, who needed no weapon but her own eyes; an Otter with a healer’s pack strapped to her back; and lastly a young Horse man, lugging a pair of large covered cages, each containing two Tiron messenger pigeons.

  Looking past them into the town, Rhia saw most of the Tirons standing on their porches to bid the travelers farewell. She was glad she couldn’t see the pain in the parents’ eyes as they sent their children off to battle.

  When Lycas reached her, Rhia hugged him goodbye, taking care not to stab herself on one of the five daggers on his belt and sash. At least one more lurked inside each of his boots. For all she knew, he had one hidden in his long, thick black hair.

  “I hate the thought of you traveling in this weather,” she said.

  “Me, too, but only because I’d rather be fighting in it.” He let her go, more quickly than usual. “You sure you won’t let Nilik come to Velekos?”

  She looked away and tried to sound like a worried mother, instead of a death-glimpsing Crow. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s his calling,” he said, for what seemed like the thirty-seventh time in the last four days. “It’s his destiny.”

  If only you knew how true that was. “I realize he’s a warrior now,” she said through gritted teeth. “He can be a warrior right here, defending Tiros.”

  Lycas gave a harsh sigh. “I don’t mean just any kind of fighting. He cared about Lania. Wolverines live for vengeance.”

  “Not all Wolverines.” He started to turn away from her, and she grabbed his arm. “You treat every Descendant you meet as if they personally killed Nilo. Nineteen years’ worth of corpses, and it’ll never be enough.”

  “You’re right,” he snapped, “it won’t. Not until every last Descendant leaves our soil, or until I’m rotting under it.”

  Rhia closed her eyes and shook her head, wishing Lycas could find half the peace in this world as their brother had found on the Other Side.

  “Where is Nilik, anyway?” Lycas asked.

  “Probably off sulking. He’ll hear it from me for his rudeness.”

  “Don’t. It hurts his honor to watch other warriors leave without him.” Lycas gave her another accusatory glare.

  “He might follow you.”

  Her brother’s gaze wavered, and he moderated his tone. “If he does, I promise I’ll send him home, unless I know you’ve changed your mind.”

  “I won’t.”

  “But if you do, give him a password. Use the dog’s name.”

  She nodded, just to let the issue lie. “Send word when you arrive.”

  “If I can. You know how it is.” He ruffled her hair through her hood, causing water to cascade over her face.

  She smacked his hand away. “Ow!” she groaned at the impact. It was like whacking a boulder. Lycas let out a booming laugh, and she was filled with a mixture of sorrow and annoyance.

  Rhia turned away to adjust her hood and saw Marek and Jula standing with Galen the Hawk under the awning of the corner store. They hunched over a lengthy piece of parchment, on which Galen was making a few last-minute marks. In the four days since Lycas’s arrival, the three of them had slept little, finishing a coded language that was similar enough to the Descendants’ writing to fool them. A disinformation campaign could wreak as much havoc as a hundred dagger-bearing Wolverines.

  Marek rolled up the parchment and placed it in a long leather satchel. He and Galen hurried over to Rhia and Lycas, followed by a pair of Badger bodyguards.

  Third-phase Hawks like Galen could send instant thoughts to each other over long distances. Unfortunately, Galen was the only one of his kind, but as soon as another Hawk entered the third phase, he would be a powerful weapon against the Ilions—hence the need for the hulking Badger guards.

  Marek gave Lycas a long, hard hug goodbye, while Galen turned his gaze northeast toward the mountain pass.

  “No pigeons,” Rhia told him. “I get nervous when we don’t hear from my father for over a month.”

  Galen sighed and smoothed a long gray hair back under his hat. “One day Thera will enter the third phase, and we’ll be able to communicate instantly. Then we could finally coordinate our efforts to help Asermos.”

  “We’re ready to leave,” Lycas said. He gave Galen a quick bow, then stood up just in time to be slammed with a hug from Jula.

  “Take me with you,” she said.

  He laughed and peeled her arms from around his waist. “Funny girl. I promise I’ll personally escort you to Velekos the moment it’s liberated.”

  “And I can swim in the bay? And eat oysters?”

  “Until you vomit.”

  She kicked the toe of her boot into the muddy ground. “You better not die and break your promi
se.”

  Lycas laughed. Rhia didn’t. Biting back the words “Be careful,” she watched her only living brother strap his supplies to the back of the dark bay mare, then lead the horse to the head of the line.

  He looked back at the last moment and gave the crowd a mocking version of the Ilion salute—putting his fist to his groin instead of his heart.

  Rhia let out a sigh when the troupe headed for the scrub of the nearby hills. Trouble always followed Lycas, so maybe it would leave with him, too.

  A movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Nilik stood alone, away from the rest of the crowd. Like his uncle, he wore no hood to fend off the driving rain. Water streamed over his shoulders and long, pale brown hair. He watched Lycas and his troupe ride away, his own face frozen in a stoic sculpture that made Rhia uneasy.

  In the last two years, Nilik had looked like a younger, taller version of his father, with the same animated blue-gray eyes that showed every passing emotion. Now he looked like a stranger.

  “Don’t despair about Raven,” Marek murmured. “It could still be one of our children.”

  “How?”

  “She might claim one of them later. I have two Spirits, why couldn’t Nilik or Jula?”

  “True.” She looked at the bits of fox and wolf tails hanging from Marek’s neck. He was the only person she’d ever known with two Spirits. “But Fox helped you survive when Wolf couldn’t. I wouldn’t wish your ordeal on them.”

  “Me, neither.” Marek followed her gaze to their son. “He’ll feel better once he starts training here in Tiros.”

  “I don’t think either of our children will ever speak to me again.” She jutted her chin in the direction of Jula, who was still bouncing on her toes, waving to the departing troupe.

  “They can’t understand,” he said.

  “No, they—” His words struck her as odd. “Why can’t they?”

  Marek didn’t reply, just watched Lycas’s caravan move across the plain toward the Sangian Hills.