Freed by Flame and Storm

by Becky Allen

  “No!” Andra said. “No, it’s not a lie. It’s never been…it isn’t like that. Here, sit. Please.”

  Elan let her steer him onto a cushion. Lenni and Andra sat, too, and Elan waited for someone to explain, because it was impossible.

  Andra wasn’t dressed for the day yet, her hair a curly mass around her face, wearing only the light clothes she slept in and no makeup. She was usually clad in robes so expensive that most Avowed even envied them—she always presented herself in a way that made it very clear why even one of the Highest desired her. Seeing her like this was somehow almost stranger than seeing her naked would have been.

  Finally she said, “I don’t know how to explain it. I love Erra. That came first. But then I…I needed help, and Lenni was the only one who could help me. I owed her. So I agreed to…to keep an eye on Erra. But not to hurt her—nothing that will hurt her!”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” Lenni rolled her eyes a little. “Just information about her comings and goings. Nothing intimate. Barely anything useful.”

  Anything Lenni found useful would definitely hurt Erra. “I don’t understand. Lenni helped you how? What could you possibly need that Erra couldn’t help you with?”

  “It’s private,” Lenni said, firm.

  “But…” Elan couldn’t imagine anything Andra could possibly need from Lenni—unless it hadn’t been help at all. If it had been blackmail, that was another story entirely.

  “And it doesn’t matter,” Lenni continued. “Because you haven’t exactly been loyal to her, have you? We’re all on the same side here. Andra, he wants to send a message to Erra.”

  “But you didn’t want…” Andra swallowed. “All right.”

  “You didn’t want what?” Elan said, pivoting to look at Lenni. “You didn’t want…”

  “She didn’t want you and Erra in touch,” Andra said, when Lenni only stared back at Elan. “Erra asked me to find you days ago, but Lenni said it was too dangerous to—”

  “Because it was, and it is!” Lenni interrupted. “Because this is foolishness, madness—”

  “No,” Elan said, realizing it, anger growing in his chest. “That’s not it, is it? You knew Erra and I wanted to talk to each other—you were afraid it would work out, that she’d listen to me and help me. Help us.”

  “What possible reason would I have not to want that?”

  “Because you want a war.” Elan stared her down, realizing it was true as his heart thudded in his chest. “If Erra joined us and was able to stop my father from posting that notice, able to bring him or, or any of the Highest to their senses, we could settle things peacefully. You aren’t on Jae’s side—you don’t care about the Closest at all. You just want a war.”

  By the time the sun was above the workshop in the sky, sunlight pouring in the small window, Jae had worked herself nearly back to exhaustion. She was drenched with sweat, starved, and longed to shut her eyes and rest. The magical energies were blurry around her again, hard to differentiate from one another. It was as if her mind trembled the way her body did, her mental hands too clumsy to grab and manipulate the energies she saw.

  The door crashed open. Jae almost fell off her cushion, startled out of other-vision, too tired to keep upright. She caught herself on one hand as Elan thundered into the room and said, “We should go. Lenni’s been lying to us. She—”

  “I have not!” Lenni was right behind him, and she slammed the door shut. “Elan won’t listen to me, but we want the same thing.”

  “No,” Elan said, and rounded on her. Jae made herself stand, her legs tingling after sitting in the same position for too long. “No, we don’t. We want to free the Closest. You want war—it’s what you’ve wanted all along.”

  “Something happened,” Jae said, before Lenni could yell back at him.

  “Yes,” Elan said, his whole body tense. He was almost spitting as he explained, “Erra has wanted to contact me all along. Lenni had her spy make sure that wouldn’t happen—even though it could have changed everything! We could have talked to Erra days ago—”

  “And what good would that have done?” Lenni demanded.

  “If we’d convinced her soon enough, we might not have had to fight at the vow ceremony—she might have just delivered the knife to us. Your own people would have been safer,” Elan said. “And—and she might have been able to stop my father from posting those notices, from trying to blackmail Jae. But you’re a blackmailer yourself, aren’t you?”

  “I am not blackmailing Andra,” Lenni said.

  Elan made a noise like a snort and said, “She somehow turned my sister’s lover against her—the lover who has been my sister’s closest friend for five years. And Andra didn’t exactly sound thrilled about it.”

  “Elan,” Jae said, but fell silent. She didn’t know what else to say, how to pacify him. Though if he was right—about Erra and Lenni both—then yes, Lenni’s interference had cost them plenty. But it wasn’t as if Lenni had stopped Jae from getting the knife once she said she needed it. In fact, she’d helped. If Lenni had really believed Erra wouldn’t see reason, then she’d probably believed it was the only way to help.

  That didn’t make her right, but it didn’t exactly make her wrong, either.

  “I don’t want war,” Lenni said after a moment. “And I never would have put my own people in danger, risked exposing them to the Highest, if I didn’t have to. But it doesn’t matter what I want, because this was never going to end peacefully. Freeing the Closest is no simple matter, and it will bring about violence. You’re naïve if you think otherwise.”

  Elan frowned, but he had no comeback to that. Because Lenni was right. Jae knew it, and she was sure Elan did, somewhere in his heart. He just didn’t want to admit it—didn’t want to admit that not everyone would be able to see reason like he could. The truth wouldn’t matter to people who were scared enough or angry enough.

  “We did send her a message, for all the good it’ll do,” Lenni said, which was obviously a concession. “Maybe something will come of it, after all.”

  “Maybe,” Elan said. “If I can talk Erra around, and she can talk to the other Highest…”

  “If she can talk them into surrender, then it’ll be worth it,” Jae said. “I don’t want to fight them. I promised Tal I’d have mercy. But if I have to…”

  “It won’t come to that,” Elan said. “You’ll break the Curse before tomorrow’s deadline.”

  Jae nodded, but Lenni said, “We need to talk about what happens if she can’t. And if we don’t hear back from Erra, of course. We need a plan.”

  Jae didn’t want to stop to talk and plan or anything else that would take her away from the knife for very long, but she needed to rest before she regrouped and tried again. She didn’t have any new thoughts on how to break the Curse—she just had to keep at it, throw all her energy at it until, hopefully, it cracked.

  The best method she’d come up with was to try to wrest the air out of the binding—she couldn’t handle the fire, but fire needed air to exist. If she could get the air’s energy out of the binding, then the fire might fade, too. But the fire and air were bound together just as tightly as they were bound to the knife, and so far, she hadn’t been able to pry enough energy away to make a difference.

  “You can’t turn yourself in,” Lenni said, and Jae tried to focus back on her and not on the knife for a minute.

  “I agree,” Elan said, and gave a sideways glare at Lenni. “Much as I hate to. It’s horrible, but it’s a hundred lives to save thousands.”

  “I know,” Jae said. But it just didn’t feel right.

  “There is another option,” Lenni said. “Elthis can’t give the execution order if he’s dead.”

  Jae stared at her sharply. That was a possibility.

  “But any of the other Highest could,” Elan said. “And so could any Avowed. Even if you assassinate him, it won’t save their lives.”

  “Do you really care? Or are you just concerned that your family will b
e among the fallen?” Lenni said. “Erra will be there. She’d carry out the order in his stead.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Elan said, but he didn’t sound as sure as he had.

  “Jae, listen.” Lenni’s voice was calm, clear, like the open sky Jae missed so much. “If we can’t save those hundred, we can at least weaken the Highest. Get rid of Elthis, and any of the others we can. You can’t turn yourself in—not for anything. But if we can make the world think you will, they’ll all show up. If we can’t save the Closest, we can make the Highest pay for each and every life they take.”

  Jae looked at Elan, waiting for him to object. Because Erra probably would be there with their father, and no matter which side she was on, she mattered to Elan. Jae had promised she’d have mercy, if she could—though not even Tal would ask her to have mercy on Elthis, if he slaughtered their people just to hurt her. Tal was forgiving, but not that forgiving, and before she’d promised mercy, she’d promised to free the Closest. That was more important than anything else. Anything at all.

  But Elan didn’t say anything. He looked miserable, but he didn’t disagree.

  Jae shut her eyes and breathed, trying to think it through. A hundred Closest lives in exchange for at least one of the Highest. A hundred Closest lives to buy every other Closest’s freedom. A hundred Closest lives so she could live on. It was that last one that was the hardest to accept. But the truth was that she had no choice, and she wouldn’t exactly weep if Elthis fell to Lenni’s blade.

  Finally she found her voice. “If they hurt my people, I want to cost them everything we can.”

  Erra made her way down the hall quickly, long legs carrying her on equally long strides toward her study. She threw open the door, and—

  Her father was seated inside. He looked up at her, amused, and said, “I sent Andra away for the night.”

  “Oh.” Erra tried to pretend it didn’t matter, that she had only been waiting for an evening assignation and not desperately hoping that Andra’s return to the estate house meant she had word of Elan. She hadn’t seen Andra since telling Andra he was alive—the whole world knew that now, though. Maybe that had driven him further into hiding, but she’d still held out hope. If Andra could find him and somehow get him away from the mage, Erra could protect him. Yes, he’d been at the vow ceremony among their enemies. She should have given up on him for that. But he’d also saved her life, warned her in time to avoid a killing blow. He wasn’t a lost cause yet.

  “You have more important things to focus on tonight,” Elthis said, and gestured at one of the cushions across the table from him. “Sit. We should talk.”

  His voice was soft, almost pleasant. That, more than anything, made her suspicious. He’d been snapping at everyone, constantly tense, since returning from Aredann, and outright angry since the disaster at the vow ceremony. But he was her father, and more importantly, he was the Highest, so she did as he told her and sat.

  He let the silence wrap around them for a long moment, then said, “Tomorrow is going to be difficult.”

  “I know,” Erra said. “But I’ve been working with the brand. I can hold it for much longer now without letting go. I won’t lose my concentration again.”

  “Not even when Elan shows up?”

  If her father knew she’d been looking for him…She caught herself before she could give anything away, making sure her face was perfectly neutral—the mask she’d learned from him. But something must have given her away, because he spread his hands on the table in front of him, shaking his head a little.

  “As I thought. And it’s natural that you don’t want to see this happen—I don’t, either.”

  That got her attention. She stared, but he looked completely sincere.

  “You need to know, I didn’t disavow him lightly,” Elthis continued. “I had no choice in the matter. None.”

  “You never wanted him in the line of succession,” Erra said, though it walked a line that came close to arguing with him. But her whole life of the last few years had been shaped around making sure that Elan would never become Highest—her frustrating marriage to Halann, and how much her father had pressured her to have not just one, but two children. To be certain that nothing short of a disaster would give Elan that position.

  “True,” Elthis conceded. “Because Elan could never be Highest—he isn’t suited to it, the way you and I are. He’s far too concerned about kindness, for one thing.”

  “Being kind is admirable,” Erra said, but even as she spoke, she knew her father was right. Yes, it was admirable—in people who didn’t have to rule. The Highest couldn’t afford kindness if it conflicted with keeping the peace, and there were times that it did. When they’d had to abandon estates, or deny water to Twill during the drought. There had been places that had needed it more, and it didn’t matter that shifting the water allocation was unkind. It had to be done.

  Her father didn’t bother to point out what she already knew. “He’s also far too easy to manipulate. He was easy prey for that—that filthy Closest girl. And I will make her pay for taking him from us. But she did. And he’s gone.”

  “But…” Erra swallowed her objection.

  “No,” Elthis said, firm. “Because it isn’t the Curse that keeps the world in order. And it’s not the Well, either. It’s us—the Highest. We are what stands between the world and chaos.”

  “I know that. But—”

  “If the Twill were to start to question us, if they ever rose up—if our own followers broke their vows…” He shook his head. “We are what protects the peace. We protect our people, all of them. Even the Closest—we could have killed them after the War, after all, but we had mercy.”

  Erra nodded, though it didn’t feel quite right. She remembered the Closest woman who’d gone under the water and hadn’t surfaced, how the others had kept working…

  “The mage girl is challenging us. The longer she keeps it up, the more people will follow her. The more Twill will make demands it’s unwise for us to meet, and question our decisions. They’ll believe what the cursed mage says, if not now, then soon. We have to make an example of her, and we can’t have mercy. We can’t afford to let anyone believe they can question us. Not even one of our own may do that.”

  That was why he’d sent Elan to Aredann in the first place. At the time, Erra had thought he was much angrier than Elan’s transgression had deserved. He’d even considered disavowing Elan back then—just for asking questions. Now she understood. Elthis couldn’t afford to let anyone think he would change his judgments, just because someone he cared about asked him to. He had to be harsher on his own son than anyone else, to make it clear to everyone else what would happen if they followed suit.

  And now…now the whole world had seen Elan not just question him but fight against him. Elan had sided with the Highest’s enemies, which meant that when the Highest put those enemies down, he had to be among them. The world had to know it. That was what would restore order and remind everyone, of all castes, that the Highest were to be obeyed, for the good of everyone.

  “There’s no other way?” Erra asked, her voice small.

  “I wish there were,” Elthis said. “I truly do. I know the task we’ve given you is hard to begin with—and made all the harder because of Elan. But we have no choice. So I need you to promise me that you’ll do your part. That girl will show up tomorrow morning, and we need this to end swiftly. Promise me you’ll do everything in your power to make that happen.”

  Erra needed a moment to just breathe, to fight against the lump in her throat and the tears that wanted to fall. Because Highest didn’t cry, and they didn’t have mercy. Their vows to protect the world left no room for forgiveness or kindness. As her father had made clear, not even for their own loved ones. No matter what.

  So she hated herself, but her voice didn’t shake when she said, “I will. I promise, Father. I will.”

  It was fully dark when Jae woke. She was still tired, but hours of striving to break the
Curse had gone nowhere, and finally Elan had persuaded her to stop and sleep. Her efforts were getting weaker, not stronger, and dawn loomed ever closer. If she couldn’t break the Curse—which it was obvious she couldn’t, much as she hated to admit it—then they’d need her rested and ready with magic when they clashed with the Highest.

  Breakfast was a silent, quick, worried affair. Elan cleared his throat as they walked out, heading to Danardae’s gardens, as Elthis’s notice had demanded. “I hope getting some sleep refreshed you.”

  She glanced at him, appreciating that he hadn’t asked a question. “I can do magic, if nothing else.”

  “Good. We’ll need it.” He drew closer, murmuring in a tone so hushed it was almost Closest quiet, “Stay close, if you can. Things are going to get violent.”

  Jae nodded. After their decision the previous day, Lenni had gone scurrying out with messages for the Order, getting in touch with as many people as she could so they could strike today. The Highest would have as large a force of guards as they could muster at the ready today, and the Order hadn’t recovered from their losses at the vow ceremony. It was Jae’s magic that they hoped would make the difference. The Order would still strike as hard as they could, but no one knew how the day would turn out.

  The air was thick and moist, and it was impossible to see the creeping rays of dawn—too many clouds had gathered overhead. It would storm soon, again. It felt as if all the rain that hadn’t fallen during the drought was trying to get out at once, and Jae wondered if the weather would ever even out again.

  The streets weren’t as busy as they had been the day of the vow ceremony but teemed with people nonetheless. Jae couldn’t think of a reason why so many people were out so early, all heading in the same direction, until Lenni said, “They’re coming to watch the execution.”

  “They’re calling it a spectacle,” Elan said, sounding disgusted.

  Jae made herself keep moving forward. People wanted to see an execution—she wondered if they cared if it was hers or the Closest’s. If Elthis dared touch any of her people, then this would be his execution, too. Whatever happened today, it was going to end with deaths, and there would be Highest heads among that count. She just couldn’t see any other way.