by Jada Fisher
“Hold tight and hold your breath if you can.”
Thankfully, Asoka didn’t ask why, because then the next second they were off, and the whole world crashed on top of them like a tidal wave.
12
Dorrick
It had been more than a day since Ollo had been to see Dorrick. A day since anyone had come to see them at all. In fact, no one had even brought them food or water or a bucket to relieve themselves in, although with him and Shandi tied to a pole, doing that last part would be hard. He had to take a leak bad, but he wasn’t about to soil himself just yet.
Another half-day or so, however, and he was unsure if he’d have a choice in the matter.
His stomach roared for food, but it was mostly discomfort at that point. He wasn’t quite at the painful ache that he’d been in when he was first exiled and almost starved before Ash saved his life. He could last a while until then.
Water was another issue, though. His throat was raw and dry, and his lips were cracked. He’d kill for just a sip of water, let alone a gulp or even a glass.
But it seemed like the knights weren’t going to help them until his father was good and ready. Dorrick had spent time in the keep’s dungeons back in the city. Most criminals were taken to local gulags that dotted the districts. Rapists and murderers were taken to the Smiling Mountain Prison far outside, and political criminals rotted in Reshni’s dungeons. But the Keep of Red Flame held important criminals that had conspired to put the entire city in danger by letting in spirits and the like. Terrorists and anarchists, that lot, and even as someone who advocated for the wilds, he didn’t think all of Al-Sevara needed to pay.
Even so, those criminals were given three square meals a day, plenty of water, room to walk and piss. He and Shandi were being treated much worse than that. Two whole days without food or water. Was his father just going to let his traitor son slowly die?
Wouldn’t shock me.
He was unsure what time it was anymore, but something told him it was afternoon due to the brightness of the tent. Shandi hadn’t said anything since the night before, and he was growing concerned.
“Hey,” he whispered, though it sounded like a scream after the hours of silence. “Are you doing okay back there?”
“I was until you opened your mouth.”
Dorrick snorted. He was glad she still had some bite to her. “Thanks for that. But seriously, are you okay?"
She managed to shrug, though it was a sad attempt at one. “Hungry, thirsty, have to pee but don’t want to give them the satisfaction. Same as you, I’d reckon.”
“You’d reckon correctly.”
“Doesn’t seem very knightly of them, leaving us like this.” Her voice was as stoic as it usually was and didn’t betray any emotion, though for once, he wished she would. Hearing her worried or confident would have helped him gauge their chances.
He nodded to her observation. “Yeah, they aren’t supposed to treat us bad, though I suppose they don’t encounter people like us often. Knight-killers, I mean.”
She scoffed. “Don’t you rust buckets die all the time out in the wilds?”
“Sure, but almost always from a rampaging spirit. Or some predator. Forces of nature. They were something to fear but not hate. Now, humans killing our fellow knights, that was rare and always filled us with rage. Add on top of this that I’m a former knight and the son of the commander… I bet we don’t have a lot of sympathies right now.”
“Huh. Great to know.”
Dorrick leaned his head against the beam and took a deep breath, eyes closed. Released the breath. Didn’t help with the hunger or discomfort at all. He shimmied a bit to look at her in his peripheries.
“You don’t like our chances?”
“Well, they certainly aren’t good ones, Dorrick. I’d say have faith in Gayla to come get us, but she’s been gone so long even I’m growing concerned. Doesn’t inspire a lot of hope that she’ll get here in time before they hang us, behead us, or whatever it is they plan to do.”
Yeah, they didn’t have a lot of time, and Dorrick didn’t think that they’d get off with just spending their days in the dungeons, not after he and Shandi had both killed multiple knights. They wouldn’t forgive that.
But she brought up a good point. Where on earth were Gayla and Tuni? It had been weeks at this point. Almost a month maybe? He’d lost track of time honestly. Had they found the new Sage of the Seas? Had they fought the dark sage, B— What was her name? Baasta, Bissta? Bishta! Yeah, Bishta. Had they fought her? Had they been killed? Were he and Shandi sitting there hoping to be rescued by someone who couldn’t?
Those were very depressing thoughts that he didn’t want to entertain anymore.
He had to believe that Tuni and the sage were out there. He needed them to be alive. They were too good for this world, and just the thing the world needed. True joy and kindness personified. They were so good and had been good to him when he absolutely didn’t deserve it, and the thought of never seeing them again made his chest ache. Dorrick couldn’t imagine how that must have weighed on Shandi, who’d known the sage for years.
She hadn’t known Tuni much longer than him, but still more than him, though at this point he’d probably spent more time with the hardened assistant than Tuni had.
That didn’t bring him much solace.
He sighed and tried to be optimistic. “They’ll come. I just know it.”
“I hope you’re right. Gayla will be mad at me if a bunch of pampered city knights are what do me in.” She turned her head, and he could feel her eyes trying to look at him. “Offense meant.”
“Offense taken and accepted.” Dorrick had no sympathy for his former friends now. He knew that what they were doing was misguided. They didn’t know the truth. They’d been raised to believe the wilds were this horrible, dangerous place filled with monsters. It was a beautiful place populated with rich creatures of all backgrounds.
That didn’t make them bad people, they were just ignorant, but he wouldn’t defend them either. He gave Ollo a chance to see the error of his ways, but his former friend had spit at that revelation. If he couldn’t get to him, there wasn’t hope for the rest.
And with his father there…
He wondered why the indominable Vanter Vane, Commander of the Order of Red Flame, hadn’t yet been in to see his long-lost son. Probably ashamed. Or—more plausibly—he thought Dorrick so far beneath him that he didn’t even want to bother with him. Yeah, that’s much more likely.
Dorrick was relieved anyway. He didn’t want to see his father’s horrible face. That had been the one silver lining of his banishment: the man that was never proud of him despite all Dorrick had done for the order would never be able to look down on him again.
Of course, he had ended up seeing him again, and that had not been a fun look, however brief.
Evan hadn’t come to see him either, but that was probably for the best. Evan was the funny one, innocent in a way that his brother Ollo was not. A jokester, a fun guy to be around, and seeing him potentially hate him was something that Dorrick didn’t want to have to endure. He wanted to have that brief hope that maybe Evan still liked him. Unlikely, given that Dorrick had stabbed him, but Evan was often easy with forgiveness.
No, Dorrick was relieved in some ways that no one had come. Well, the no food or water aspects of it were certainly not good, but he was okay with not seeing someone that he knew. And he knew damn near everyone in the order, at least on a name-to-face basis.
And they all definitely knew him.
He and Shandi settled into uncomfortable silence for a while, both no doubt wondering how long they would be made to wait and suffer for the basic necessities. Dorrick was just beginning to nod off again to conserve his strength when finally, someone came for them.
The tent flap opened and in came two senior knights in their full battle armor and red cloaks. He recognized them, though he didn’t know them well. The left had a mop of oily orange hair with threads of gray. His beard was bl
azing like fire though, still lustrous. He had a large nose that had been broken too many times and puffy ears. Mormath. Dorrick didn’t remember his given name.
The other was slender and young, though still a decade or so older than Dorrick. He had a chiseled, handsome face with a strong jaw and cheekbones, though his face was marred from several large scars. His piercing green eyes dragged over Dorrick with open disdain. Alkan Ferri, who’d briefly been one of his weaponry instructors when they’d learned to wield axes. Of course, strapped to his back was a large double-bearded axe.
Seeing these two look at him with undisguised hostility would have been bad enough, but they were just the prelude, the prologue, the foreword, to the menace behind them. The tent flapped again, and in stepped the commander himself.
Vanter Vane. Father.
The elder Vane was a hard man in both physique and manner. He was all sharp edges and tightness, like he was a hand always balled into a fist. He strode in, arms folded behind his back, and his fine silken cloak trailed behind him. It wasn’t very practical, but he could afford such finery in the field. It may have been a vain display to some, but no one would question that he was the finest warrior in the order.
He didn’t look the mess that Dorrick probably did. His chiseled face was perfectly smooth from a recent shave. Hardly a wrinkle or laugh line, despite his age, and only a smattering of silver in his brown curls.
For a long, long moment, he stood before his son and regarded the younger Vane with disdain. It wasn’t open hatred, not quite. No, Vanter Vane wouldn’t betray that type of emotion. Even if he loved or hated something, those two things were extremes, and he didn’t deal in extremes.
Finally, he shook his head with cold disappointment. For most of his life, Dorrick had hated that look, hated it more than anything, as if it was the only worth that he was allowed, the approval of this colossus of a man.
Dorrick didn’t care for it anymore. He leaned his head back calmy and held his father’s gaze.
“Such a disappointment,” Vanter Vane said in cutting voice. It used to make Dorrick squirm, but he was not beholden to his father’s approval anymore.
“Must be such a black mark on your reputation, on your legacy, to have such a failure, such a traitor under your watch.” Dorrick sneered. “Your own son, no less.”
Mormath’s fat face bristled with anger. “You shut your mouth, vermin! You will speak to—”
But he was easily cut off with a single gesture from Vanter Vane. “That’s enough, Sir Mormath.” He turned to the two senior knights and jerked his head toward the exit. “You may leave us.”
They both looked like they wanted to object, but that cold look from the commander kept their mouths sealed. They both replied with a crisp “Yessir,” a bow, and then dipped through the tent flap and exited.
Dorrick smirked. “Didn’t want them to see how much of a disappointment I—”
The commander’s gauntleted hand whipped around in a vicious backhanded blur and smashed across Dorrick’s mouth. His words were torn from his breath, and his heart almost seized from the shock. Pain bloomed heavy from his mouth. A piece of tooth, or maybe even a whole tooth, went flying, and blood immediately began to fill his mouth. Shandi shouted his name, but the commander ignored her.
Vanter regarded him the level of concern he might give to a rabid dog. “You will not speak out of turn. You know better.”
To that, Dorrick’s only response was to spit a thick wad of blood at his father’s pristine boots. It landed right on the toe. If the elder Vane cared, he didn’t show it. No surprise. It was near impossible to get a rise out of the grizzled commander.
Not so hard to get one out of Dorrick, though. Blood still filled his mouth. Doing his best to ignore it, he inspected the damage with his tongue. He winced when it rubbed over his bottom row of teeth. One of the back teeth was chipped, and one in the front was gone altogether.
Well, there goes my painting-worthy smile. The thought almost made him laugh. Tuni’s sarcastic mode of thinking had infected him thoroughly.
He spit more blood from his mouth, though this time he didn’t seek to incur his father’s wrath and only spat it on the floor, just to clear his mouth. He had a split lip and a cut inside his cheek where he’d bitten down mid-word/mid-slap. It hurt like hell, but Dorrick had been through a lot worse.
The emotional strain of today would probably be close to the top of his worst days, though.
The commander kept his model posture as he stared down at him. “Where did I go so wrong with you, son?”
Dorrick was taken aback. He’d never expected to hear his father call him son again. Of course, he didn’t say it with any sort of affection, but the fact that he still viewed him as his child and not some faceless traitor that needed to be tortured and executed spoke volumes.
But the exiled knight wasn’t going to be baited into a shouting match, to air out all of his childhood grievances against this man. No, he laughed harshly and shook his head.
“You went wrong from the very beginning, Father.” Hell, you were never a father to begin with.
“It seems that I did. You were a mistake. I see that now. You were never fit to be the heir to my order.”
That was meant to be harsh, to get a rise out of Dorrick. He was easier to crack than the older Vane, but Dorrick wasn’t so fragile. He could take this insult from the man before him. He wasn’t so wounded. He was a mistake, but the mistake was that he had tried to live up to his father’s example in the first place. Dorrick should have made his own path. He was finally doing that, and he didn’t regret it.
He almost retorted that the order was not some kingdom, that command would not be passed down to the next in line. It went to the knight who was best fit to lead, to the one that the knight council voted on to succeed as Commander of the Order of Red Flame. His father wouldn’t have had a hand in it. Vanter Vane knew that, or maybe he had actually grown so used to his power that he thought he could handpick his successor.
Knowing that he made that decision a little harder gave Dorrick some small measure of satisfaction.
They glared at one another for a long time. Well, more Dorrick doing the glaring. Vanter Vane didn’t glare. He simmered. His anger was always ready to boil over under the surface, but he always managed to keep the heat in check.
When Dorrick couldn’t bear that hard gaze anymore, he smiled and acted casual as he leaned his head back on the beam. “So, what now, Father? Hm? Will we be…imprisoned? Executed? Sent to the mines?”
He could feel Shandi’s glare in his peripherals, telling him to shut up, but how many opportunities would he have to try to make the amazing Vanter Vane squirm? He’d never been able to do it before. He’d been too scared, or too awed, or too respectful. But now? He felt none of those things. He felt bold, and he wanted to see the man break. Even if it was just a small crack.
“Still the ignorant child, trying to grab where your hands can’t reach.” Vanter shook his head.
Yeah, sure, old man.
Vanter Vane took two purposeful steps forward so that his boots could just about kiss the soles of Dorrick’s, then he crouched, so his gaze was eye level with his son’s. This was the closest he’d been to the man since the night Dorrick had been proclaimed a Knight of the Order. Oh, how he thought he’d had it all that day. A girl he loved, an order full of brothers and sisters that he’d die for and would die for him. His father’s pride and love at last. His whole future ahead of him.
But even then, his father had been indifferent, had viewed the moment as a mistake.
Everything had changed so quickly after that. His world was turned upside-down, and now here he was. Knight-killer, traitor, fighting against the brothers and sisters he once thought he’d die for.
He almost headbutted his father. That would have been beyond satisfying, but it wouldn’t have accomplished much, so he fought the impulse. It would have only proved what a child he was. Not that he needed to prove anything to th
e man.
So they stared into each other’s eyes, and neither of the Vanes disguised their genuine disdain for the other. Dorrick laid his hate on thick, but he didn’t get the same courtesy from his father, though that was a given. He wondered what was going on behind the commander’s eyes, inside that head of his. Was he thinking about the times he could have been a better father, or was he thinking of all the times Dorrick had let him down?
Maybe he was thinking that he should have given Dorrick up as soon as he was born after killing his mother in birth. Was that the moment he had disappointed his father forever? When he took away the supposed love of his life? If that was the case, then the cards were stacked against Dorrick from the beginning. The game had been rigged, and he was never going to earn his father’s love and pride.
He didn’t want it anymore anyway, even if he suddenly had a change of heart and offered it.
Finally, the commander frowned, showing the most emotion he had this whole time. For a moment, a heartbeat, a flicker, he seemed genuinely sad, like he knew that he’d lost his one and only son, the heir to his legacy. It was only a passing image though, and in a blink, it was gone, replaced with the hard façade he always presented to the world.
“Why?” he asked. His voice was low, though it rumbled with something beneath the surface that Dorrick simply couldn’t place. And he’d be at a disadvantage until he could.
“Pardon?”
“Why?” his father repeated. But that didn’t help. ‘Why’ could apply to a lot of things, so the older man needed to elaborate, or they’d be there all day. Which maybe was the point.
“Why what? Be specific.”
Vanter Vane stood and again folded his arms behind his back. He turned, giving Dorrick his back.
“You’ve always been a disappointment,” his father declared. That hurt, but it was not unexpected. “You were never good enough. You didn’t have that same conviction as I did, that same drive. I had such hopes for you, but you let me down every step of the way.”
