Lance’s face flushed.
He had kissed Sara once, putting his tongue in her mouth and calling her sweetheart. It had been during one of the times on the journey back to Kandrith when his skin had been hot to the touch and he couldn’t travel. Sara had let him kiss her. The brush of his mustache and the softness of his lips had felt interesting, but after a few minutes he’d stopped. Water had overflowed from his eyes, and he hadn’t talked to her for a whole day.
“I beg of you, Lance. It’s cruel to keep her alive in such a state. Do you think Lady Sarathena Remillus would want to live like this?” She pointed to Sara sitting on the wooden bench. “Let Bors cut her throat. It will be quick and painless, I promise.”
“No.” Lance’s jaw clenched. “Don’t ask me again.”
Three days passed before the short-haired woman visited them again. She stood in the doorway of Lance’s room. “Wenda’s just been spotted leaving the Labyrinth. Would you like to wait for her in the throne room?”
“I’ll go out to meet her,” Lance said. He eased his knee off the bed and limped to the door.
The short-haired woman frowned. “Are you sure you should walk that far?”
“I’ll be fine,” Lance said. “Sara, I need to talk to Wenda alone. Please don’t follow me. I’ll be back in a little while.”
The two of them left together, but barely three hundred heartbeats later the woman returned, alone. “Come with me.”
Silently, Sara trailed after her.
The woman walked briskly, glancing back once, then climbing two flights of stone steps.
The steps led to a flat roof. Lance was not there, nor was anyone else. Sara followed the woman to the roof’s edge. The woman’s red vest stood out against the overcast sky.
“See that wall?” the short-haired woman asked. “Climb up on it.”
The wall bordering the roof was only two feet high. Sara stepped up and stood on the six-inch-wide ledge. The wind whipped at her skirts. She could see the courtyard thirty feet below and the foggy woods beyond. She searched out Lance. He looked tiny from this angle.
“Walk up and down.”
Obediently, Sara walked along the top of the wall to the corner, then swiveled on her toes until she faced the other direction and walked back. A gust of wind made her wobble, but she regained her balance and returned to stand in front of the woman.
The woman formed fists with her hands. “Very good. Now do one more thing for me, Sara. Jump.”
* * *
Lance’s knee throbbed from his haste, but by the time he reached the courtyard someone else had beaten him to his sister.
The fat merchant who had petitioned Lance’s mother ignored Wenda and jabbered at Marcus, “...as a gesture of goodwill.”
From the look on Wenda’s face, she found his inability to accept a woman as leader vastly irritating, but she responded politely. “Your request is timely. I’ve been thinking about Kandrith’s need for allies. Your rebellion fits in with my own plans.”
“Excellent.” The merchant rubbed his hands together. “Let’s talk numbers, shall we?”
Lance stopped a few paces back. Wenda’s red hair was neatly braided into a coronet instead of escaping in its usual wisps. She looked well, healthy, her colour good, but her milky eyes slayed Lance, for they didn’t see him and never would again.
“Lance is here,” Marcus announced, acting as her eyes. His sister’s new husband was a tall man. Despite his recent change of allegiance, he still bore himself like a legionnaire: brown hair cropped so short it showed his mutilated ear, jaw clean-shaven, gray eyes alert for danger.
Relief flashed over Wenda’s face. “Oh, good.” She directed her voice at the merchant’s left shoulder. “Pray, excuse me. I need to speak to my...envoy.”
“Envoy? Him? Is he a general?” the merchant asked.
Marcus moved between Wenda and the petitioner. His expression was so polite, the merchant didn’t seem to realize he’d been dismissed.
Wenda opened her arms. “Lance?” she asked uncertainly when he didn’t immediately hug her.
“I’m coming,” Lance panted. “Sprained my knee.”
A few more hops, and he folded her into a heartfelt embrace. Her wrist stump touched his shoulder. “Praise Loma,” she murmured, stepping back. “What took you so long on the road? Illness, I suppose.”
“In part,” Lance said. He should mention Sara, but he didn’t want to spoil the reunion just yet. “It’s good to see you.” He studied her, anxious to know how she was bearing up as Kandrith’s new leader and adjusting to her two sacrifices, but unable to ask. The merchant was leaving, but slowly, with many backward glances.
“What’s this about naming me an envoy?”
She grimaced. “You won’t like it. I don’t like it. You just got home! But,” she took a deep breath, “I need you to go as my emissary to Gotia.”
Lance’s heart sank. “You’re right, I don’t like it. I’ll go,” he added quickly, “but I don’t see why you’d want me to represent you. I’d make a terrible diplomat,” he said bluntly. He’d met ambassadors aplenty in his years in Temborium serving as the Child of Peace. The thought of trying to emulate their oily tongues gave him hives.
“I don’t need a diplomat,” Wenda said firmly. “What I need is an example, and you’ll be perfect for that.”
“An example of what?” Lance asked warily.
“General Pallax promised Kandrith a year of peace in return for his worthless son, but as soon as that passes he’ll invade again. We captured the legionnaire who scaled the Red Saints, but in an empire the size of the Republic of Temboria there are bound to be others who can.”
Lance couldn’t deny it. “Yes. Pallax is probably already searching.”
Wenda leaned forward. “So you understand why Gotia and this rebellion are so important?”
“Because while the Republic’s off quelling their rebellious province they don’t have time to think of us.”
“Yes. Politically, I’d be happy if they were mired there for fifty years.” Her lips twisted. “Personally...do you remember living there?”
Lance and Wenda had both been born in a village in western Gotia. Lance had been only eleven when the Republic’s Legions finished conquering their country, made it a province and enslaved the inhabitants. Wenda had been even younger. “Yes and no. I remember our village, a tree I used to climb, a stream I swam in, a dog I owned, but I have no strong feelings for Gotia itself.”
“I don’t remember much either, but it’s a connection, one you can use when you go there.”
“What do you want me to accomplish?”
“As I said, politically all Kandrith needs is turmoil, but they, too, are slaves. We are all Loma’s children. I want you to teach them sacrifice magic. If even a small part of Gotia follows our example and gains independence from the Republic, I hope it will start a string of rebellions.”
Lance’s eyebrows shot up. “Ambitious.” It would never have occurred to him to think so long-term, but she was right. Once again he felt grateful that Cadwallader had picked her as Kandrith and not him. Or his mother.
“I was planning to send you anyway, but this rebellion is a godsend. Finding a group of people willing to fight for their freedom will save us months.”
And Kandrith only had ten months left.
“So I’m to be your living example of how magic works,” Lance said. “I think yon merchant is expecting gold and warriors.”
/> “As if Kandrith had any to spare!” Wenda rolled her eyes. “We can barely spare you. A fight against the Republic’s Legions is doomed in any case. I’m hoping you’ll open their eyes to other possibilities.”
Lance wasn’t sure how that would work, but he was willing to try. “When do you want me to leave?”
“Within the week.”
Lance took a deep breath. “First, there’s something I need you to do for me. With your soulsight. I—”
Marcus interrupted, head tipped back. “Why is someone walking on top of the castle wall?”
Lance automatically followed his gaze up. Pure terror burst over him like a deluge of icy water as he recognized Sara’s slender figure far above.
* * *
Sara flexed her knees and hopped up and down on the narrow ledge.
“Again.”
Sara jumped slightly higher. One of her feet landed off-center, her heel hanging over empty air. She teetered, then regained her balance.
The woman hit her own thighs with her fists. “Jump over the edge, down to the ground.”
Sara pondered. The courtyard lay thirty feet below. If she jumped, she would break numerous bones in her body. If her neck snapped, she would die.
“What are you waiting for? I told you to jump.”
“I’m trying to decide if I should listen to you.” She didn’t have to. Lance had told her that.
“It will be over in an instant,” the woman said. “You won’t feel anything.”
“Yes, I will,” Sara disagreed. “It will hurt.” If she jumped there would be pain. More intense than the boiling water. Agony.
“Only for a moment,” the woman said, “and then you’ll be at peace.”
Peace meant calm. “I am already at peace.”
“If you won’t do it for me, do it for my son,” the woman said. “He deserves to live again, to smile again, not be chained to you.”
She’d forgotten this woman was Lance’s mother. Did that give her words more importance? Sara wasn’t sure.
“Lance is not chained to me.” Obviously. “If he wished to leave me he could.”
“He’s too kind-hearted to order your death. So I’m going to take on the guilt for him. He may hate me for a time, but at least then he’ll be able to mourn you and begin to heal. He’d never admit it, but your death would relieve him of a burden.”
Sara leaned a little farther out over the edge and saw Lance staring up at her. He and another man shouted at her, but the wind snatched their words away.
Was Lance’s mother right? Would Sara’s death help him? She didn’t know, but there was an easy way to find out.
She stepped off the edge.
Chapter Five
Sara hit feet first. Her leg bones took the brunt of the impact, splintering under her, as first her knees, then chest then face hit. Crunched. White pain crashed into her, blotting out thought.
Sara blinked slowly. She lay facedown on the hard ground and tried to catalogue the various nerve reports. Pain, of course, pain from so many places it would be shorter to list what didn’t hurt. Blood slicking her legs and running from her broken nose, shrieking wrongness in her twisted limbs—knees, elbows, hips—spreading numbness below her ankles, coppery taste of blood in her mouth from where she’d bitten through her tongue.
Something grated in her chest when she propped herself up on one elbow to look for Lance—a rib piercing her lung, perhaps? Breathing took effort as if water filled her lungs.
Her vision doubled; she saw two Lances, moving closer but still thirty feet away. She wondered distantly if she would die before he reached her side.
* * *
Lance hobbled a dozen steps behind Marcus, his terror drowning out the jabs of pain from his sprained knee. Sara. Goddess, let me be on time, let me save her.
Marcus reached her first. He stood over her, blocking Lance’s view. “God of Death.” He shut his eyes and turned his head away as if revolted. “Don’t look,” he said to Lance. “Let me fetch a blanket. She—”
Lance shoved him aside and fell to his knees on the flagstones—another bolt of pain, but he didn’t feel it because Sara’s eyes were open, watching. Death hovered only moments away, but her blue eyes were pools of perfect calm in a mask of blood. She lived, and that was all that mattered.
“Goddess, have mercy.” He laid his hands on her torso first—it felt soft and pulpy, wrong.
He tasted spring on his tongue—green grass sending out shoots, leaves budding—and heard songbirds trill as Loma, the Goddess of Mercy, filled him and poured her red healing light into Sara’s bloody shell.
He was vaguely aware of Wenda somewhere in the background demanding to know what had happened. “I can’t see.”
Internal injuries first, knitting together all those places that bled in secret, mending organs, reinflating lungs, draining them—
“She just stepped off the wall.” Marcus sounded stunned. “It’s—it’s Lady Sarathena.”
“What? But—” Wenda’s voice turned grim. “I should have expected this. He’s like Mother—single-minded to the point of insanity.”
“I am not like Mother.” Lance moved on to Sara’s legs. Blood pumped out of her thigh. Heal the artery, push the bones jutting through the skin back under...
“Yes, you are,” Wenday said. “You see one possible solution to a problem, no matter how snail-brained, and you jump on it without taking time to think if it will work or if there might be a better way.”
“The last snail-brained idea I had was going to Temborium to rescue you,” Lance pointed out. As gently as he could he straightened Sara’s legs so they would heal correctly. Anyone else would have screamed or passed out. She watched him with blue eyes, as if absorbed. Her muscles were relaxed, not tensed from the pain.
“I’m not ungrateful,” Wenda said, “but it was still snail-brained and so is bringing Sara here. Sara gave up her soul to save you. It was her decision. It’s over and done. You can’t turn back time.”
“I’m not trying to turn back time.” Feet next. Toes, ankles...so many small bones.
Wenda threw up her hands. “Yes, you are! Sara died weeks ago. Listen to me—I sacrificed my vision for soulsight. Sara doesn’t have a soul.”
The words struck like a death knell. Lance flinched from them, and the terrible truth he’d been avoiding even as his hands moved automatically to Sara’s collarbone. “No,” he said hoarsely. “She just needs more time. There’ve been signs...”
One sign in two months, the voice in the back of his mind whispered. If it meant anything, shouldn’t she have shown more progress?
Marcus cleared his throat. “Ah, Wenda?”
Wenda spoke over him. “She just tried to kill herself. Grant her peace!”
“No.” Lance felt on firmer footing now. “Sara’s not suicidal.” He cradled her head, realigning nose cartilage, healing bruises on her brain.
“I saw her step off,” Marcus said apologetically.
Lance flinched, but stubbornly insisted, “We don’t know what happened up there.”
“It seems clear to me,” Wenda said pointedly.
Lance ignored her, concentrating on Sara. A moment later, the Goddess faded back, the healing complete.
Sara immediately sat up, her face as composed as if she’d just woken from a nap.
Lance sagged onto his heels, his hands trembling in reaction. He’d almost lost her. He needed to understand why. A deep breath, then, “Sara, why did you go up to the roof?”
“A woman told me to come with her. I followed her.”
“What woman?” Lance asked, but his stomach clenched.
Sara po
inted over his shoulder. “Her.”
Shaking, Lance stood. His knee hurt, but he needed to be on his feet to face his mother or she would have the advantage. “What in the Goddess’s name did you think you were doing?” he asked her harshly.
His mother’s chin lifted. “In the Goddess’s name, I was trying to provide mercy. Something you haven’t been able to bring yourself to do.”
“You had no right—” Lance began, so furious his words tangled up inside him.
“Wenda,” Marcus started to say.
“I didn’t push her,” his mother said. “I merely told her to jump. No one who had a speck of self-preservation would have done it. She doesn’t belong among the living. She has no soul.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Wenda chimed in.
The blood pounded in his temples so hard he thought he might burst a blood vessel. Despair and anger churned inside him like bile. He made his voice cold and clear so there would be no possibility of understanding. “If either of you ever harms Sara or tells her to harm herself, I will never speak to you again.”
Resounding silence. Both his mother and sister had the gall to look hurt.
He continued painfully, every word a stone in his gut, “It’s my decision whether or not to grant Sara mercy. Mine and mine alone.” Just admitting the possibility of giving up, of losing her, destroyed him.
“Of course,” Wenda said soothingly. “But when the time comes, promise me you’ll let us help.”
He nodded. Remembered she couldn’t see it and cleared his throat. “I will.”
“Let’s go inside then. The wind is chilly.”
“Just a moment,” Marcus interrupted.
“What is it?” Wenda snapped, her head turning towards his voice.
Marcus stood his ground. “As Protector, it’s my job to be your eyes. You say Lady Sarathena has no soul, but she was lying down when you looked in her direction. You may have overlooked something.”
She looked impatient. “I doubt—”
“This is the woman your brother loves,” Marcus said firmly. “You owe him more than a glance. To put his mind at ease.”
Soul of Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) Page 6
