Secrets of Silverwind

by Sanders, Richard L.

  “So, you’re the one who ran away?” Kira said calmly. Caythis’ eyes darted up to see hers. Her face was perfectly calm and held a regal, almost intimidating confidence. But Caythis refused to be intimidated.

  “What?” he asked, choking down his food to get the word out clearly.

  “You left Citadel,” she said simply. Her eyes looked betrayed but her voice was steady and soft. “You left us when Rigil came. I always hoped someday I could ask you why.”

  “Oh that...” Caythis didn’t know what to say. He knew that it’d happened, and he felt bad about it after the fact, but it was the same choice that had allowed him to slay Antares. He regretted what’d happened to Citadel, he wanted to make things right, but he didn’t remember the city or the people in it enough to truly feel the loss.

  “Yes. That.” Her voice was even, perfectly steady, with just a subtle hint of powerful emotions buried deeply within.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but the words felt empty.

  Her eyes closed and she relaxed, a supreme calm spread over her face. “What’s done is done,” she said peacefully. "I'm not asking you to change the past. I just want to know why." She was so beautiful, like a soft but persistent light in a very dark world.

  He resumed eating but she did not. He wasn't sure what to tell her, so he stuffed his mouth with food.

  “Who’s Raven?” asked Kira, one eyebrow slightly raised.

  Caythis stopped eating and gingerly spat a mouthful of food into a napkin. “Raven?” He said with pause.

  “Yes. You said it when you first awoke. Is that someone’s name?”

  He searched his mind for the right words, it was like poking a slowly-healing wound with a needle. “Raven was my friend,” he said. “But she’s gone now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “What’s done is done,” Caythis said, borrowing her own words though unable to borrow her serenity. He kept his voice calm but inside he was still outraged. A brightness in Kira’s eyes seemed to respond to this. Like he was transparent to her, and she could tap into his true feelings.

  He continued eating, and before long his plate was empty. He drained the rest of the water bottle in one gulp and only then did he look up again. Kira was still there, her food long gone. She was staring at him, eyes narrow, and Caythis felt defenseless. Like her perception could glide right through his exterior and see truths inside him that even he couldn’t, it made him uncomfortable.

  “I always imagined you would look older,” she said.

  “What?” He looked at her, a little confused. She was younger than him, but he could see hardships had given her face character. The seasoning of experience beyond her years. She glowed with confidence and energy.

  “I always wondered what you looked like.”

  “Didn’t you know what I looked like? I was under the impression that, as the enforcer overseer of Citadel, I was sort of a public figure. I mean, shouldn’t I have at least been the guardian of the royal family? Your family.”

  “Guardian,” she said, showing a tiny but wonderful smile. “Oh Caythis, you were more than my guardian, you were my friend. But I never saw you without your armor and helmet, until today.”

  “That doesn’t make sense to me. The armor’s not exactly comfortable. I can’t imagine myself wearing it everywhere, helmet and all.”

  “That's always been the tradition in Citadel for the overseer,” said Kira. “You used to tell me it was to protect an enforcer's family. But it always seemed like more than that to you.”

  She looked like she wanted an answer but he had none to give. He couldn’t doubt her, she was so sincere. But that did not sound like him. Of course back then he’d been a different person and, perhaps, a much better one. Working alone, with and against the shadier elements in the city, and having to remember—now that he could—that he had betrayed this wonderful girl and her family by leaving them, resulting in the death of her parents and the loss of her inheritance… he could understand why he no longer felt like the honorable person he must have once been.

  “You were always very proper,” she said with a gleam of respect. “And you made no exceptions. Not for me, not for anyone,” she paused. “That was so long ago… Everyone had given up on you, Caythis. But I was right, somehow I knew you were alive. But now that you're here, it feels so surreal. So anticlimactic.”

  “Not living up to your expectations?”

  “No, it’s not that.” she said quickly. “I just… I don’t know what to think.”

  He didn’t know how to respond to that. He looked into her beautiful eyes, they were so sincere and disarming. It made him all the more curious to learn more about this young woman. How could she, with the miserable situation that had been thrust upon her, have such a positive glow? He saw no bitterness in her. Sadness, yes. But not bitterness.

  "About your question, why I left,” he said tenderly. “I don’t remember why. I’m sorry that I did it. And for what it cost you and countless others. But I must have seen Antares as my problem and, whatever the outcome, you must understand that I was trying to do the right thing. Even if it might have been the wrong thing in the end. I just don’t know.”

  She nodded. “Everyone else came to terms with it, I'm still trying.”

  Her eyes drifted away and Caythis stared at her again. Wondering what their relationship had been. Clearly not romantic, she’d never seen him without his armor, and though she was near his age she was probably too young then to pursue any relationship that wasn’t platonic. Despite that knowledge, he felt so connected to her, and everything about her drew him in more and more.

  “I need to know something,” he said.

  A loud crash filled the air, they both jumped at the sound of a dozen trays hitting the floor with a metal bang.

  “Oh man!” Jaden said, his face turned as red as his hair and he started picking things up. Apparently the assault rifle in his hands had caught the stack, knocking it over. Caythis was surprised he hadn’t seen Jaden enter. He and Kira both leaned down to help. “I’ve got it,” Jaden insisted, snatching things up in a hurry.

  “I thought you had sentry duty,” said Caythis.

  “I did, but I was called back.” His glance darted from Caythis to Kira then back. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and stepped over to Kira, offering a hand up. “Caythis, the District wants to meet with us right away.”

  Kira seemed to resist the gesture, frowning at Jaden’s offered hand, but she hid her disdain instantly and accepted his help.

  “Meet with us about what?” asked Caythis, his attention still on Kira.

  “Not sure, but it seems pretty important,” said Jaden. He put his arm around Kira and his eyes met Caythis’ gaze, they carried a sense of ownership. Kira snuck out of his arm and handed her tray to him. He took her tray for her and put in the stack awaiting cleaning.

  Only then did Caythis notice the small silver pinkie-rings they both wore on their left hands. A Citadel tradition, it meant they were engaged to be married. A feeling pricked Caythis, but he ignored it. Telling himself he didn't care.

  “Then we shouldn’t keep them waiting,” said Caythis, he marched toward the door.

  “Wait,” said Kira from behind.

  He turned around.

  “What were you going to ask me, Caythis?”

  He had wanted to ask her about their friendship, how close they’d been. But now he didn’t want to. Not with Jaden here. “I was going to ask what there is to do around here. But it looks like they’re already putting me back to work. I’ll see you later.”

  “It was really nice seeing you.”

  He nodded and left. Jaden at his heels.

  “See you in an hour, Love,” Jaden said to Kira before catching up with Caythis. Caythis tried to tune it out. He didn’t want to mess with what Jaden and Kira had but there was no escaping the fact that she had affected him emotionally, and to a deeper degree than made sense to him.

  ***

 
; Upon arrival at the conference room, Jaden was dismissed. He objected to this at first, feeling his position as Prefect and his long-standing relationship with the District entitled him to be present for an important meeting, but that didn’t matter to the District’s leadership. They made it clear they wanted to see Caythis alone, and Jaden left. Clearly irritated. His pride wounded.

  Like the other rooms in the complex, and most of the underground, the room wasn’t very elaborate. There was a long table and behind it sat three people. One was Dr. Erikson, he was in the center. On his sides were two women. They looked familiar and, after a second, Caythis recalled they had been the ones he’d met at the diner, when he’d been drugged and abducted. One of the women seemed middle-aged, she wore a white lab coat and had obviously dyed her hair dark. The other was about ten years younger, she wore the military fatigues of Citadel’s elite guard. No doubt she was the commander of the tiny military force that had escorted the District and the prince and princess from Citadel to Silverwind those five years ago.

  “Please, close the door and step to the center of the room,” said Dr. Erikson.

  Caythis complied. “What’s this about, Doctor?”

  “I wanted you to meet the rest of the District. This is Dr. Julia Ferguson. She is the most distinguished medical expert in the world. Her ‘disappearance’ has been a true loss to society. But a necessary one.”

  She blushed but seemed extremely pleased with the compliment.

  “And this,” Dr. Erikson gestured, “is Captain Lori Grayson. Commander, Citadel Guard.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Caythis.

  “Do you remember who you are?” Dr. Ferguson asked. Her eyes seemed to study Caythis and she seemed tense.

  “I am Caythis Ceteris.”

  She nodded but didn’t relax. Almost like she wasn’t convinced. “How do you know you are Caythis?”

  “I don’t remember everything but I remember enough. I am Caythis. I was there to confront Antares. I remember the view from Skyhaven. I just… know.”

  “I think she means, how does she know you are Caythis,” Dr. Erikson said. He shot her a glance of disapproval.

  “Didn’t you know me before I went missing? Didn’t you find me unconscious and wounded after I fought Antares? Do I look different now?”

  “No,” said Dr. Ferguson. “It’s just… it’s been a long time. I wasn’t sure if you were you.”

  “I’m definitely me. But how can I be sure that you’re you?” If anyone was at a disadvantage here, it was him.

  “I think it’s best we trust each other,” said Dr. Erikson. “We all worked together before. Being suspicious of one another is exactly what Lucida would want. Let’s not stoop to that level. Now, Caythis, I must apologize. I know you and I went over this before, but the other members of the District… they want to hear it from you.”

  “Hear what?”

  “Do you remember working for us?” asked Captain Grayson.

  “No. But Dr. Erikson explained to me—”

  “Do you remember how you were separated from us?”

  “I don’t remember but I understand there was a battle and—”

  This time it was Dr. Ferguson who interrupted. “This is very important, so think hard.” She stared at him intensely, searching and probing. He stared back. Asking himself, what was it she was after? What was it she really wanted to know?

  “I understand you are suffering from some memory loss. I want you to tell me everything you remember about the last few years.”

  The room was thick with repressed energy. They were so ostensibly calm yet so in suspense and tightly wound.

  “I remember working with the CTC.”

  “One of the vigilante cells,” Dr. Erikson explained before Dr. Ferguson could ask.

  Caythis continued, “I was trying to find something urgently. One of the members was helping me.”

  “What was it you were trying to find?”

  “I… think it was you. But, I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Please go on.”

  “Max, the one who was helping me, he died before he could tell me how to contact you.”

  “I remember Max,” said Captain Grayson. “I was the one who originally found him. Did he ever say why he stopped contacting us?”

  “No. I had no idea he was in regular contact with you. At the time I believed he was following a trail of clues and that, once he could contact you, he’d connect me to you. He was deceiving me, however, and that’s partially why I never found you.”

  “Until now,” said Dr. Ferguson.

  “Right. After one of our raids I was captured by the enforcers. That’s when I lost a majority of my memories. Some I still haven’t recovered. They claimed that, in subduing me, they used a drug that gave me an allergic reaction. That is what caused my memory loss, but it should be only temporary.”

  “Do you believe them?” asked Dr. Erikson.

  “I don’t know. You’re the one sitting next to the ‘best doctor in the world.’ Why don’t you ask her?” He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something slightly off in play. That they were most definitely sheltering him from some secret they were keeping. Perhaps because they didn’t trust him yet, or perhaps they were manipulating him for some ulterior purpose. Much like Lucida had tried. The difference was they had a much more noble cause than Lucida, and they seemed like good people. He thought of Kira but didn’t let his mind linger. He was tired of trusting no one and wanted something to belong to. To believe in.

  “That seems plausible to me,” she said. “When we found you, there were residual traces of Xenalane. Typically it’s no different than other general anesthetics, but a minority of people have a bad allergic reaction to it that results in memory loss. If the enforcers were familiar with your medical history, they might have intended to induce amnesia. Then again, it could have been an unwanted surprise. An unanticipated side-effect of the method they chose to subdue you. The real question is, did they have a reason to want their prisoner to lose all sense of who he is?”

  “Who knows?” Caythis had no idea. Perhaps Lucida had wanted him to forget his memories so she could convince him that they’d been past lovers and so on. That was a nauseating avenue of thought he didn’t want to converse about. “Any more questions in this interrogation?”

  “Only one,” said Dr. Ferguson. “Can we trust you? Are you committed to liberating Citadel, when the time is right, and restoring the Paribus family’s throne?”

  “Yes. Absolutely, I am. After all, I abandoned the city before. That’s partially why it fell. What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t do everything to make things right?”

  Dr. Ferguson smiled. “You have no idea how good it is to hear that.”

  9

  The basement entrance to the Hiding Place was not conspicuous. It seemed exactly like the other doors littering the underground, giving no indication that, rather than leading to another series of dark storage rooms, here was a gateway into the clandestine activities of an exiled government.

  Caythis stood there, about a hundred feet from the door, at an intersection in the long hallway. From here he could keep a vigilant eye out, enhanced by his enforcer helmet, for any sign that an intruder was straying too close. The chances of such an intrusion were slim, but the District preferred to have eyes on the ground just in case. Everyone with combat training took a turn playing sentry for a couple of hours. This was Caythis’ first.

  Nothing had happened so far. He’d seen a rat scurry by and there were quite a few more spiders than he’d expected, but truly there was nothing to keep his interest. It seemed like a waste of time and talent for an enforcer to be stuck in this place, in full armor, for so long, counting spiders.

  He paced as he waited. A bit of water dripped down the side of a wall. His boots splashed through a couple of small puddles as he organized his thoughts.

  He realized that, while he couldn’t prove the District’s story was true, he hoped i
t was. He wanted to think he belonged to a movement trying to fix the world. And because of that hope, he chose to believe it. Convinced himself it was true to satisfy his desperation for that to be so. What was the alternative? To believe in nothing? In a vacuum of knowledge what was truth anyway? Except what he decided it was.

  He did not trust Dr. Erikson, Jaden, or any of the others as much as he trusted Kira. There was no good reason for that. He still didn’t know her very well and was alarmed she had such a disarming effect on him. Something about her moved him, but he couldn’t quite decide what it was. It was no singular thing, yet it was everything. Everything she did, everything she said. Everything he saw in her eyes. How she carried herself. She was not the delicate princess everyone treated her as, she was a hardened, seasoned survivor who, despite everything, had hope.

  He tried not to think of her. Her smile. Her hair. The things she’d say. How they’d make him puzzle or make him laugh. Her insights. Her charm. And her simple yet profound beauty. Such an intoxicating combination…

  No.

  She was with Jaden. They weren’t yet married but they were declared. Besides, what kind of life could she have with him? With Caythis… the man who failed to save her parents. The man who allowed her city to fall. The man whose failure forced her into exile. No, he walked a different path. A dangerous enterprise. A solo journey. No place for someone so lovely as Kira.

  His experience with the District had been less than a week. Some people he felt he knew well, others he barely remembered their names or didn’t recognize. For the most part he found them agreeable, but he still felt uncomfortable. As if something were just slightly askew.

  The only person who didn’t warm to him was Dr. Ferguson. She was bitter and short tempered. She asked meaningless questions persistently, like she was always testing him, and carried with her an air of skepticism hidden under a thin veil of confidence. She pretended to trust him but clearly didn't. So he found it difficult to trust her and preferred not to interact with her. As if to grant him his wish, the District met rarely and almost never with him.