by R. J. Price
“There are only a couple of options when a queen goes into a rage. The object of her rage, this one being Av, is obliterated; the victim, Mie, arriving well and good; or someone stepping in and causing you pain. Now, I could have let Av have a go at you, but there wouldn't have been much left of you when he was done.”
Av shuddered and turned away from the children as an image burned in his mind. He wanted to gag, even as he fought the instinct to act on his sudden desire to draw blood. Being away from Aren yet knowing where she was had its good days and its bad days.
Today was a bad day.
“Why did you hit me, then?” Anue asked.
Av forced himself to turn back, to focus on the ground by Anue's feet.
“Because a trainer, much like a healer, can cause pain to any of the ranks. If Av, there, takes to the fields, which is like a queen's rage, there are really only two people who can cause him pain: his master, or a trainer. The same is true for queens. Except queens don't typically have masters.”
“You said Av could do it,” Anue said quietly.
“Av could do it but with great difficulty,” Ervam said gently. “When you reach eighteen, come back to me and I will explain exactly what he would have to do to bring you back from the brink, and Anue, you were not yet on the brink. One strike versus what he'd have to do, just trust me for now, it was the better option.”
“You didn't have to hit me,” Anue said.
“Can you feel that arm yet?” Ervam asked.
Anue frowned and looked at her arm, then back up at the trainer. “What's wrong with my arm?”
“It's broken,” Ervam said through gritted teeth.
“Shouldn't I feel it if it's broken?” Anue asked, confusion playing over her face.
“That's my point, little queen.”
Anue went a funny sort of colour and sank to the snow. Ervam turned to Av and gave him a pointed look, which Av responded to with a questioning look and his hands in the air. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.
Ervam pressed his lips into a thin line and jabbed his head towards the children, as if that made any sense whatsoever to Av. This was all new to him as well, because Av had never heard of a queen not feeling pain.
Wait, he had. Aren hadn't felt pain; she had fought through it. She had bled later on, but still hadn't felt pain.
Av approached his father and lowered his voice as he asked, “What do I do if I think a queen is riding that edge and incapable of feeling pain?”
“I'll give her a smack the next time I see her, just to be sure,” Ervam said steadily in response.
Av had to fight his emotions because someone was threatening his woman. Fight it he did, and almost won against the emotion.
“I'm serious,” Av said.
“A queen like that can't feel anything,” Ervam said. “Though some say they can feel the strongest of emotions, can still feel bodily pleasure.”
“Ow,” Anue groaned.
“Broken arm,” Ervam said to Av.
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Av growled.
“Be a warrior,” Ervam said, challenging Av with a toothy grin.
Av frowned at his father, but moved past to kneel by Anue. The girl was in tears, cradling her arm.
Beneath his knees, the snow was cold. The air around Anue was crackling with a dangerous sort of magic, the girl's instincts coming to life in order to protect herself. Av doubted even the best healer could reach through that crackle to get her magic to work on Anue's body.
“Healer's on her way,” Av said to Anue. “Do you remember her? From the village? She's quite good. Not great, can't fix the bone, but she can speed the recovery and bring something to numb the pain.”
“Can't give a queen that sort of thing,” Ervam said.
“What do you mean can't?” Av asked, turning to his father.
“Magic takes control,” Anue said with a sniff. “If I take anything and my control slips...”
“You're not that special,” Av growled at Anue. “Special, granted, but not enough to melt the entire world into a puddle. Plenty of queens drink.”
“There's a reason why they don't drink often,” Ervam said.
“Then now's a good time for Anue to learn,” Av said sternly to his father. “She's a girl.”
“She's a queen, Av, a strong one who's already awoken to her magic.”
“What are you afraid of? There's not a bad bone in her body,” Av snapped.
“When one queen dies, her magic remains in the land until it's replaced with another one's magic,” Ervam growled.
Av was off the ground and standing toe-to-toe with his father in an instant. “She is an eleven-year-old girl who is in pain. You don't get to put your grief and your desire to keep your dead mate close before her comfort. She matters. Mother is dead, has been for over a decade. So you don't get to stand there and tell me that she's more important than a living, breathing girl.”
“It's all I have left of her, Av.”
“Your grief be damned,” Av snarled.
Behind him, Av was dimly aware of Mie speaking to Anue. He saw, out the corner of his eye, the two children headed for the house, leaving the adults to bicker in the yard.
Which was fine by Av. He hadn't had a good fight in a while and his father wasn't backing down. This was something to stand for, something he had a right to fight for and no one would question that right.
“This is my land, I decide what magic stays,” Ervam said.
“No, you decide which queen lives on it, but when you took her in, you knew what might happen. When you started training her, you knew this might happen.”
“It's all I have left.”
“Maybe if you let it go, you can let her go,” Av said.
“I don't ever want to let her go, Av, she was my mate. She was your mother. How could you say that she should just vanish as if nothing she did ever mattered?”
“How can you want to make a little girl suffer pain for weeks on end, just so that you can put off your grief a little while longer?” Av asked.
“It's my land.”
“But it's not your decision.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Jer returned with the healer, only to find the yard a mess. A fight had obviously happened, one that left trickles of red on the white snow. No sign of Av or Ervam, though, which was a good sign. Walking in on a fight would have been a bad thing, especially with a healer right behind him. She might have felt obligated to step in and she knew how to tussle with Av when he was rational.
The two of them walked into the house to find Mie and Anue sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for them. Both children looked afraid.
Jer motioned from the healer, to Anue, and went deeper into the house, looking for his father and brother.
Av was in his room, lying on the floor. No outward sign of damage done, Av trembled when Jer set a hand on him, but gave no other indication that he knew someone was there. Exhausted, but not hurt.
Which meant that Av had won the fight.
He almost left his brother like that, curled on his side, on the floor, but Jer thought better of it. Pulling the blanket from the bed, he draped that over Av's still form and gave his brother a light kiss to the temple. Best to reassert family connections while Av was feeling vulnerable.
Jer left his brother's room and approached Ervam's room. No longer his father, but still the man who raised him, Jer hadn't questioned for a moment whether or not Ervam had loved him as the man did his own son.
Which only made it more difficult when he found Ervam curled in his bed, a battered mess.
Trainers weren't meant to fight warriors like that. They could be sacrificed if a warrior wasn't around to step in and calm down a riled warrior, but they weren't built like a warrior. The only edge they had was the fact that, for whatever reason, their blows were felt more keenly by ranks.
Jer had read the tales of what such a beating could do to a warrior. He also understood why Av was exhau
sted but otherwise unharmed. Ervam didn't need to cause bodily damage to harm either of them.
The trainer was old, though, past his prime and not training as much as he used to. His body certainly was not used to fighting in such a manner.
Setting a hand on Ervam's side, Jer felt a rib shift under the weight of his hand. Grimacing, he pulled the hand off Ervam's side and set himself gently on the edge of the bed. The healer would have to set the bones and set them on the path of recovery, but Av would have to give permission for anything else. As the winning warrior, it was his right. Jer could have challenged Av for that right, but he didn't think their relationship would survive the fight.
He had never seen Av do to another what he had done to their father.
Jer winced and corrected himself silently again as he stood. He left Ervam's bedroom and closed the door only to find the healer standing right there. She met Jer's eyes and then looked pointedly at the door. Obviously, she could feel Ervam's pain. He stepped to the side and the healer slipped into the room.
With a sigh, Jer went back to the kitchen and set a hand on Anue's unharmed arm, a silent question. She blinked up at him with watery eyes, but she wasn't afraid, just fighting off pain. Mie was already in the kitchen, the kettle in his hands, with a towel wrapped around the handle to prevent a burn. The boy was apparently making tea for Anue, likely as the healer directed.
The healer was the only one who knew how to make that special tea that could put the girl out of her pain. Healers carefully guarded the recipe, refusing to share with anyone. Jer suspected there was actual magic in the tea.
Mie met Jer's eyes as the boy moved towards the cupboard. He was too short to reach the glasses. Jer knew that and moved to help him. The little warrior placed his hands on the counter and leveraged himself up, standing on the clean counter to pull down two cups. One for him, one for Anue. Jer arrived just in time to pluck Mie off the counter and set the boy back on the floor.
If Ervam had seen that, no one would ever hear the end of it.
The boy ignored Jer and walked around him, back to the table. He set a mug near Anue and one closer to another seat at the table, then he went back to the counter where a small glass jar sat. Mie, very carefully, measured out an amount and dropped the tea into Anue's cup. Then Mie retrieved a bag of regular tea from the cupboard and placed it in his own cup.
Jer glanced up when he caught movement out the corner of his eye. The healer motioned to the door with her head. Gritting his teeth, Jer followed her out of the house and some distance away.
“I told the boy how to make tea for her. She'll be out today. I also told him I'd give you more instructions. Tomorrow cut the dose by half. Queens tend to drink tea more willingly if someone else drinks with them, but I didn't tell him that part.”
“He's a warrior,” Jer said.
“I don't feel that,” the healer said with a frown. “Av didn't mention that when he came to see me.”
“Trust me, Mie is a warrior,” Jer said with a sigh. “His instincts are starting to awaken and he's taken claim to Anue as a sister.”
“I need to know what happened,” the healer said.
“They were sparring, Mie's stick slipped,” Jer said with a frown. “I don't understand how he could put that much force into a swing, though. A full-grown man would have to give her a smack to break her arm, wouldn't he?”
The healer nodded slowly. “Unless there's something she's not telling you.”
“If this is a healer to queen, privacy thing, I'm going to need you to drop the act, because I don't have the time to dance around a bush,” Jer said.
“I'm not trying to dance round a point,” the healer said, shifting away from Jer to put distance between her and the irritated warrior. “When I use too much magic over the course of time, say to help someone who is ill in ways that cannot be seen with the eyes, my body becomes fatigued. I've broken a bone for that reason and a small fall.”
Jer swore. “And without another queen around, it's impossible to keep her from using her magic, let alone know if she is using it.”
“Or she's connected to Aren and the throne is doing it,” the healer offered.
“Anue isn't old enough for that,” Jer said.
“She's old enough to access her magic, which means she's old enough to sit the throne, which also means she's old enough to be tapped into,” the healer said.
A cold trickle went up Jer's spine, then clawed its way into his stomach. The healer watched Jer for a moment, then sighed loudly.
“Without the originating queen, there's nothing that can be done about the link. Aren doesn't know it's there, which means she can't cut off the flow of magic.”
“Anue can stop it,” Jer said.
“Are you an idiot?” the healer demanded. “If Anue stops the flow of magic, it stops the flow of magic. Permanently. Queens can be used as wells by the crafty. Don't you think if they could just close off the person who was tapping into them, they would? That they wouldn't just shut down the throne when it started dragging at them? The link can't be broken by the well. Only by the source. Or...”
“Or?” Jer demanded when the healer trailed off.
“Or you could kill Aren. That would shut it off as well.”
“How do you know about wells?” Jer demanded, not liking the all-too-knowing tone the healer used.
“Ask Av about my mother,” she said in response. “Anyone with magic can link together. Healers do it to help someone specific, with the originator as the healer who touches the patient. What one healer can do, all the healers can do except with all the magic of all the healers in the link. Queens can lend magic, but from my understanding not the instinctive knowledge of how to use that magic.”
Healers could link together the way queens did. That was news to Jer. The kind of news he might have appreciated knowing before. His mind filled with questions, with theoretical applications of this knowledge.
He forced himself to focus on the present.
“It's still three months until spring,” he said to the healer.
“She will need three weeks to heal that arm, then close to six to bring strength back to it. Stop having them spar one another. Make them run laps or something else. Test his strength as well, because it's still frightening, warrior or not, that he has that much strength at that age.”
“He also has magic,” Jer grumbled.
He knew Av's stance on warriors using magic. A warrior could have magic, but he wasn't to use it during a fight unless a queen was about to take down innocent people.
“Given his instincts?” the healer asked. “I'd say there's no way Mie could use his magic to cause that sort of damage on Anue. On one of you, certainly, but not that girl in there.”
“What about Ervam?” Jer asked.
“Your father's a bit old to be taking beatings like that,” she said. “I set the bones, but that wasn't just a challenge. Av beat him to within an inch of permanent damage. That was punishment for something, but he was out cold. All I could do was set the bones.”
Punishment for what? Jer bit his bottom lip and looked around the yard, wondering what could have brought father and son to such blows. Av had stayed on edge, that much was obvious, but he hadn't exploded about anything, keeping fairly good control.
“I'll be back in a few days, to replenish her tea and check on her,” the woman said with a sigh. “If he says so, I can provide something for the pain then, but speeding recovery has to be done within a day.”
“How long?” Jer asked.
“Six to eight weeks for the rib to heal,” the healer said, then hesitated. “I think the bone was a mistake. But still, without Av's word, I can do nothing more than make certain death isn't going to be a side effect.”
Jer nodded slowly. “He's out cold. Wouldn't be a good idea to wake him.”
“Or talk about this inside the house before he wakes,” the healer said, jabbing a finger at Jer.
“Oh, I know that,” Jer said.
<
br /> The unspoken threat permeated the house. It wasn't the first time Jer had walked into a silent command, though it was the first time that he had walked in on others following the order. Ranks instinctively knew when they had to keep quiet, keep still. They knew when a predator bigger than themselves was on the prowl for prey.
“Put her to bed, if possible, put the boy to bed as well,” the healer said. “He doesn't understand what's going on, or he does but is afraid to do anything about it. Fear can put a bad sort of edge on young warriors.”
Jer didn't need to be told that. He also didn't need to be given an excuse for Mie to stay in bed. He would simply tell the boy that Anue was more likely to rest if Mie set the example. Mie would rest, which meant that Anue would stay in bed longer.
Av and Ervam would most likely sleep until the next day. Leaving only Jer awake, and alone with his thoughts.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Av stumbled to the dining table and dropped into an empty seat. His head felt stuffed but in a pleasant sort of fashion. He couldn't quite focus on any one thing, hardly even noticing when Jer set a plate of food in front of him. A hand on his shoulder was the indication to Av that there were people present and he was truly upright.
He moved sluggishly to pick up his fork and feed himself. As he ate, his father shuffled from the bathing room to the table. Ervam eased into the seat across from Av very carefully. The trainer was obviously in pain.
Av glanced down the table and found Mie wavering back and forth in his seat. The boy was dancing to a music only he could hear. When Mie saw Av watching him, he stilled, focused on his food and dropped his head.
Jer drew Av's attention, walking around the table to set a plate of food before Ervam.
Everyone seemed to be moving so carefully, no words were spoken, no one made eye contact with him. They were afraid of what he might do. After a moment, Av realized it wasn't fear. While it was very much like prey caught in the sight of a predator, the mood was more borderline caution rather than fear. No one wanted to be the first to break the silence.
