Redemption

by Anne Osterlund

  His gaze raked the new landscape. Men and wagons belled out from the gate, their anxious mass swelling this side of the hard-packed earthen courtyard. But beyond that rush was emptiness, a few servants scattered amidst open space. Along its edge loomed the high walls, pointed arches, and flying buttresses of Midbury’s manor. Gargoyles spied from above.

  He drifted into the shadows, edging his way around the courtyard. Then followed Drew’s advance directions down a hard-packed road. Robert had been here only once. At night.

  Yet he would have to be blind not to recognize the Midbury Stables. The building stretched beyond vision, its main entrance defined by high beams of dark wood carved with the images of a dozen horses. A lone guard stood beneath those beams, his stance denying entry. Servants drifted before him: some standing, others sitting in the dirt, but most turning and walking away.

  Robert skirted the entrance and continued around the stables’ perimeter. There were other doorways. He avoided the gaze of a second guard at a second entry. And another guard.

  Then no one.

  A narrow, dark door—its edge lodged shut within a metal grip—stood unguarded on the backside of an outcropping. Not a soul stood within view. Robert made no attempt to plan. He just moved, grabbed the edge of that door with his hands. And pushed. It squealed open. He slipped through the gap, then buried himself in a crevice between two stalls. And listened.

  Nothing. The inside was eerily still. He slid from the crevice and moved down the corridor. Light filtered through skylights and high windows. It illuminated abandoned stalls filled with fresh hay and water, but no horses. Or people.

  He reached an intersection. And wavered.

  Robert had a rough idea of how far he had detoured from the main entrance, but no clear sense of where he had seen the dungeon. He knew only that it was deep within the stables.

  Following his gut, he proceeded ahead, noting the unlit lanterns that hung from beams at constant intervals. He passed another intersection, turning when he had no choice. And plunged deeper and deeper into the silent labyrinth.

  Until all natural light came to an end. Darkness consumed the aisles ahead.

  He told himself that, of course, a dungeon would not be well lit. He could not allow his own mind to defeat him. But he dared not light a lantern. Either the smell or the glow could betray him. Instead he crept forward without light, allowing his fingers to see. He reached a barrier, squeezed past, then rounded a corner. The path was severed.

  He tried a second route. A third. Numerous others. Then reached a skylight.

  His gaze scanned the ground. No fresh signs of life. Fear warred with frustration. He was in the wrong place. She had not been here. Nor had any of her captors.

  Then he heard a noise. A cry? His head spun. Any sound could be distorted within these labyrinthine corridors, but that cry had been nowhere close.

  He turned back, his steps moving fast. Faster. A sealed end blocked his flight.

  Curse it!

  His fingers traced walls and sought an intersection. He would go left. No, straight. No, left. He needed—

  Bars. His stomach leaped into his chest. Curved iron slid beneath his hands.

  Dim light pulled him around another corner. A lit lantern hung beside an open door. A cell. His gaze read the earth along the threshold. Someone had been here. Several someones. And dragging someone else.

  Then came a distant scream. This time he was certain it was her!

  He had finally found the dungeon, and she wasn’t here. She was somewhere on the opposite side of a hundred walls.

  In Tyralt’s name!

  Robert grabbed the lantern, not caring if he was caught. He knew only that he had to find her. To follow those tracks. He rushed along them. She was screaming again. This time the screams went on and on. He wanted to rip down the walls. Or scream himself. But if he shouted for her, he might speed her death.

  The tracks turned.

  Now there was light. Real light. He blew out the lantern and abandoned it. More empty stalls. She had ceased to scream. The only thing worse than her cries was silence.

  Wait! He had missed a turn. Or maybe the tracks had been smudged or—

  They had turned. He followed them, then stumbled at the sight of horses, still in their stalls. Was he backtracking toward the main entrance?

  The tracks curved again. He had almost missed them. Keep your eyes on the ground.

  But there was something … something familiar about this corridor.

  The corral! He knew where he was.

  A man’s body, vaguely familiar, slumped against the rails. Not moving.

  Robert ran forward. What had happened?

  Blood. A woman’s body. No, two. He rushed into the corral. It seemed to close around him. The gate swung shut, and the space between the planks narrowed. Shadows tightened, stretching from the endless corridors that had hindered his ability to reach her.

  He pried away the first female body—the blond corpse with the severed artery in her throat. Some portion of his brain caught the significance of that death, but his heart cared only for the second young woman crumpled against the boards, one of her wrists bound to the rails.

  His chest splintered as he touched her. So much blood. Covering her whip-gauged back. Her free hand. The knife clenched in her fist. Clenched.

  His fingers scrambled for her pulse. And found it.

  “Aurelia,” he said, not because he expected an answer, but because he needed to say her name. He pried the knife from her frozen fingers, sliced the binding on her wrist, and hurled the blade away. Then gathered her to him. His mind warned that he might hurt her, but his gut told him she was beyond hurt.

  She needed a healer or physician.

  But no help awaited in this stronghold. Drew’s warning came back to him: her sister has fired anyone with a sense of ethics.

  Robert lifted Aurelia. He knew he was not strong enough to carry her far, but he had only one goal. The tunnel—the one he had yet to find. It had to be close.

  He retraced his steps. There were stalls here, but also doors. To passages. Doors that could fly open at any moment, releasing servants or soldiers loyal to Melony’s insanity. He could not afford to make the wrong decision. To find himself in a passage that led straight into danger rather than away from it.

  Then came the sound of voices. From beyond the next intersection.

  Not now.

  He spun to look around him. Had he passed the tunnel without noticing? How far had he—

  There! He recognized the door. In a row of three. The farthest to the right.

  He reached for the latch, and it lifted. Thank Tyralt!

  Tightening his grip on Aurelia, he rushed into the darkness. His free hand closed the door, and his fingers scrambled along the closed rim. They found a ledge. And a torch. Though he knew he could not light it here.

  The voices rose on the other side of the doorway.

  Robert backed away. Slow and silent.

  As the voices faded, he turned and fled down the sloping tunnel as rapidly as he could while carrying Aurelia. Stale air, darkness, and the scent of earth tightened around him. Wooden beams obstructed his path. Along with the knowledge that the ground itself loomed overhead and that those beams were all that kept him from being crushed.

  Far too soon, his legs collapsed. He struggled to rise, failed, and lowered Aurelia’s body on her stomach onto the cold earth. Then he sank down beside her, tugged his jacket from his pack, and eased the garment under her torso, creating a layer between her chest and the hard surface. His instincts longed to light the torch, but his conscience warned that if he lit it now, the straw would be wasted. He stripped off his shirt and lay the cloth over Aurelia’s back. He wished he could tend her wounds, but he had no salve and little water.

  Instead he reached for her hand. She was cold. How much of her life had drained away?

  His fingers stretched again for her pulse. Common sense argued that he needed assistance: medic
ine, expertise, men strong enough to carry her out of here. But Robert made no move to rise. His conscience discarded any actions to seek help. Because they all required the unthinkable. He could not leave her. His heart, his mind, his entire being insisted that he remain at her side.

  He spoke to her unconscious figure. Told her how much he loved her, how long he had loved her, how certain he was that he would never love anyone else. He told her all the traits he loved about her—those he had admitted before and others he had never confessed. He told her that he envied her stubbornness, her ability to face a challenge, her determination to set a goal and follow it despite all obstacles.

  “You aren’t finished,” he said. “You promised to free Tyralt. You promised the country—everyone you told about your mission and everyone who heard about it. You promised them all.” His hand moved to the side of her face.

  “I killed her.” The answer was so soft it was barely a whisper.

  His insides crumbled at the agony in her voice. And the knowledge that she could suffer guilt even when she could hardly breathe. “I know,” he whispered back. Because he did know. He knew the torment that came with slaying a loved one. But he was not about to let her slip into the forgiveness of death. “Listen to me, Aurelia. You cannot die now.”

  • • •

  She knew Robert was not really there. Death had claimed her. She had felt it gather her in its arms, pulling her body from the blood. The blood that had gushed from her sister’s throat and swallowed them both in its crimson pool. No wonder I have conjured Robert. He is the only person who can understand what it means to kill part of one’s own heart.

  Aurelia had imagined death would be free of suffering, but the white-hot fire that pulsed through her every limb proved otherwise. An adequate price for what she had done.

  She drifted again into the crimson pool.

  It blocked out the voice. And time. And pain.

  She preferred pain to nothingness.

  Death pulled her out again. The metal rim of a canteen pressed to her mouth. She opened her lips to water and swallowed it. The scent of earth filled her nostrils. A layer of wrinkled leather lay between her chest and the hard ground. “I didn’t mean to kill her,” she tried to explain. I meant to die alone. “But … she killed Filbert.”

  The canteen lowered. Robert’s voice returned: “Daria’s brother?”

  “And she killed Daria’s father. And my father.”

  “She killed too many.”

  She was sick. Perhaps not a physical illness, but the mental ferity in Melony’s eyes had never left after Chris’s death. “I should have found another way … but I couldn’t … figure out … how to stop her.”

  “You stopped her,” the voice said. A hand gripped Aurelia’s.

  Again she drifted. When she woke, the hand produced a dried biscuit. She ate with care, uncertain if her stomach could digest the contents. Was food something one needed in death?

  The voice was still with her. “Can you walk?”

  No.

  “Please, Aurelia. Tyralt needs you.”

  Now that was exaggeration. After all, she had died ending the war. Surely her people could survive now whether or not she ever took another breath.

  The voice did not seem to agree. It flowed over her with too many details for her mind to take in. Or to invent.

  Then death pulled away from her.

  She heard the familiar sound of flint against iron. Within moments, light flared. She smelled burning straw. And saw Robert.

  Alive.

  A wild theory formed within her. “I’m not dead?” she whispered.

  “No, you’re not dead. And you’re not going to die! I need you to walk.”

  Her thoughts whirled.

  Again his voice flowed with details. This time she grasped that Robert had come for her, against all reasoning. That he had found her and carried her into a tunnel—a tunnel that led toward the capital. “Please, Aurelia, I need you to try.”

  He is scared, she realized.

  Then his earlier statement came back to her: Tyralt needs you.

  And she began to understand that there was more at stake than her safety. Slowly, she pushed her chest above her elbows, her body screaming. Her head spun, blurred, then cleared. “Why, Robert?” she whispered. “If I can’t walk, what happens?”

  She could see his eyes now. Blue, even by torchlight. And looking straight into hers.

  “I sent the men ahead to the capital. Your sister won’t have waited to give her own orders to the royal army. If we can’t reach those armies before they fight, then neither of us may have a country tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  STALEMATE

  To Robert, the trek out of the tunnel was like clawing his way from an earthen tomb: the darkness, close walls, lack of air. Pressure gripped his throat. Yet he could not halt—could not allow Aurelia to halt. Instead he answered her questions, propelling her forward with every detail of his final instructions to her forces.

  Above all, he feared an accident. That one soldier among thousands would fire his weapon or had already fired it.

  If battle erupted at the base of the capital, no one knew where it would end. Whether the people of Tyralt City would stand idly by and watch their chance at freedom be destroyed. Or if vengeance and blood would swarm the streets. Would the regions of the frontier, the Asyan, the mountains, and even Darzai ever forgive the royal army? Or would Tyralt tear apart until the country fell victim to the next invading force?

  He wished he could believe that Melony’s death resolved everything. But there was no guarantee that word had reached the capital. Not through the ranks of his own men.

  When at last he broke from the tunnel’s darkness into the shadowed daylight of the trees, the silence of the thinning forest was terrifying. Had the royal army defied the Code of Truce? Had Robert condemned his men to a death so sudden and awful its sound had not even penetrated the walls of the tomb?

  He stumbled at the thought.

  Aurelia, wearing his shirt over her shredded blouse, staggered with him. He could not allow fear to impede their progress. Instead he adjusted his stance, better supporting her weight at his side. She risked infection, blood loss, utter collapse. He should tell her to rest, but there was no time. She was the key to the capital. That had not changed.

  He helped her forward into subsiding foliage. His gaze dropped to the shrinking shadows upon the forest floor. Patterns of light expanded around those shadows. He could not be certain whether a single night or more had passed within the tunnel. He knew only that thousands of people depended on her arrival. If they lived.

  Fear threatened again to take over his mind. The image of thousands of men, sprawled across the fields at the edge of the forest. Dead. Arms severed. Necks bent. Blood soaking the land. A nightmare from which their country might never heal.

  The shadows ceased before him.

  Aurelia’s grip tightened.

  He clung to the strength of her grasp, then forced himself to look up.

  And saw men. A sea of royal soldiers surrounded the base of the Tyralian wall. Guns and muskets, horses and wagons blurred. His eyes focused only on the men. Unmoving. Silent. And tense. As though time had frozen, stretched taught.

  And closer in front of those soldiers, across the gap of a single field, stood his own men.

  Robert began to shake. His legs buckled beneath him, and his knees hit the ground. His eyes closed, then reopened to take in that unbelievable tableau. Of life. Emotion so deep he could not identify it welled within his chest. Whatever happened, from this moment forward, it would not be because he had been too late.

  • • •

  Aurelia felt Robert fall at her side as tears streamed down her face. They blurred her view of the Tyralian wall, but not the imprint in her heart. Her city lived within that wall. Peddlars. Painters. Beggars. Bakers. Street thieves. Merchants. Puppeteers. Sailors. Ship builders. Students. Each street of Tyralt City with it
s own sense of moral high ground, its own version of truth and trial and triumph.

  A cold breeze blew over her, dragging her back to reality. She had not reached the city. Not yet. Two armies stood before her, their ranks serving the same country but locked in opposition. How long did they have, all of them, before the tension of this moment caused accidental fire?

  A shift jogged through the revolutionary ranks, and Aurelia’s heart wrenched. Her grip tightened on Robert’s shoulder. Had she stood still too long, lost in the rush of recognition? At her side, still supporting her, Robert jolted to his feet.

  Then a bay stallion, followed by a bronze mare, broke free of the revolutionary soldiers. The horses. Of course Drew would not have been able to hold them, not once Robert’s scent had reached Horizon.

  No one fired at the disruption. Somehow the orders that kept those men in check still held.

  The stallion was now pounding his hooves before Robert.

  Then Falcon reached her. The mare’s urgent muzzle butted her owner’s chin, her nose, her forehead. Aurelia twined her hands around the reaching neck. But her lapsed strength failed to pull her body up.

  Then Robert’s hands clasped tight around her waist and lifted her.

  Eyes watched her now from a distance. She hated that they could see her weakness, but her people must know whom they followed. Slowly Aurelia peeled off the borrowed shirt and returned it to the hands that had lifted her. She could not disguise her blouse—covered in dried blood—or her shredded back. The stockwhip had stripped all bravado from her body.

  If Robert spoke, she did not hear him. Instead, she urged Falcon ahead with an uttered command.

  Within moments, a second set of hooves trailed.

  Then a path opened before her as she reached the revolutionary ranks. She saw no horror—no shock in the men’s schooled faces. Instead stances tightened. Muskets lifted. Jaws set. If she ordered these men into battle now, they might well destroy half the royal army.

  Tyralt could not afford that loss. Or theirs.

  Aurelia sent a silent message of gratitude to Lord Lester, Valerian, and the Oracle for holding their posts, keeping the stalemate in check. And to the young man behind her who had given all of them their orders. What he had done, in ordering these men here, displayed a level of bravery she was not certain she could ever live up to. But she was going to try.