The other woman spoke up. “They might not have even noticed she was gone yet. They were asleep when we took her.”
Taz just stared at her for a minute. “You don’t think the things wake up?”
The second woman shrugged. “Look, I want the reward as much as anyone else, but I’m also exhausted.”
“And look.” The second woman turned to look around her. “There are plenty of caves on this mountainside that we can sleep in.”
Julian backed up farther into the cave. Sathryn followed but kept close enough to listen.
“Well,” Taz glanced around, “if you want to search every single one of those caves to make sure that”—his voice got softer, but they were close enough to Sathryn that she could still barely hear him—“no one is watching us, then be my guest.”
The girl stuck up her head. “I will.” She climbed off her horse. Then, she walked toward the nearest cave—Sathryn and Julian’s.
Julian pulled Sathryn back from the cave’s entrance and to the farthest corner of its gray rock walls. As they crouched down into the cave’s deep shadows, Julian pulled his bag and the bundle of clothing to the back with him, grabbing a knife next to the fire. The girl was getting closer. Her boots crunched just outside the entrance.
The girl stepped into the cave. Sathryn was sure she couldn’t see them—her eyes passed right over where they sat—but Sathryn could see her well. She had light-brown skin tinted bronze from the fire and curly, black hair blanketed her back. She glanced down at the low-burning flames and stared around, unsheathing a knife from her waist and stepping farther into the cave.
“I see a fire up here,” she shouted down to the rest of the Arrows on lower ground. She had her head turned for only a second, but it was enough for Julian to leap out from the comfort of the shadows and grab her from the back. His left hand flew around to close around her mouth while his right flicked the dagger up to her throat. As Sathryn watched in horror, the blade gleamed in the light of the fire before carving itself into her throat. The girl made a high-pitched squeal right before crumpling in Julian’s arms. He held onto her for a second, then dragged her body to the entrance.
“Hey!” he shouted down to the lower land. Then, he kicked the girl’s body over the ledge.
There was silence. Then, “Let’s go, let’s go!” It was Taz’s voice.
Then, “Wait, what about that boy?”
Taz: “We don’t know how many people he has! Let’s go!”
Sathryn sat in silence and listened to the fast gallop of their horse’s hooves until she could no longer hear it. Julian watched from the entrance for a long time, then he turned back to look at her. His hands were shaking. The dagger, once gripped in his right hand, now clattered to the ground. Sathryn didn’t even notice she’d been staring at him until Julian said, wide eyed, “Please don’t look at me like that.”
Was it the first time she’d seen someone die right in front of her? The Lynot woman in the hut didn’t count—Sathryn could hardly even see the Lynot in the pit of flames. The Beastman didn’t count—he wasn’t a person at all, so it didn’t matter. But this was different. Sathryn had never seen someone die, and from the looks of it, Julian had never killed anyone.
He walked toward her. “Sathryn—I—”
“It’s okay.” Though she wasn’t quite sure. “You did what you had to.”
He nodded but said nothing. Instead, he walked over to his bag and slung it over his back, wincing.
“I can help,” she offered.
Julian pulled off the bag and pulled out numerous items—sheathed short blades, a full canteen, gloves, and many small bags—and packed them into a large shirt of his. Then, he tied the ends of the shirt together to make a bundle. He handed it to her, avoiding her eyes, then again slung his own bag over his shoulders. He grabbed his bow and quiver as well, but as they left the cave, once again stepping into the harsh breath of cold morning air, he stepped right past his now red-soaked dagger.
Sutra
ya was sitting on Sutra’s bed when he woke up.
It didn’t surprise him. Even after the drug altered them, Nya and Sutra’s brotherhood had remained stable. The drug did change all of them, though. It gave Tyru vocal chords and an even quicker mind, gave Rowyn the courage to do what had been brewing behind the quiet for years, gave Iryse an obvious kick of ambition and irrationality, gave Nya confidence, but with a bite of viciousness, and hand-eye coordination. It gave Sutra a great memory, but took away his sociability.
“Yes?” Sutra asked.
“I heard about yesterday.” Nya stared at him.
Sutra yawned and sat up in his bed. It was colder in the house than usual—he glanced at the fire. It wasn’t lit. In the mornings, the maids came into the rooms and lit the fires so that mornings inside the castle were not as cold as mornings outside the castle. “Why aren’t the fires lit?”
Nya rolled his eyes and swatted his hand against Sutra’s blanketed foot. “I said I heard about you yesterday. Your fight with Iryse.” Sutra was still glaring at the fire—or, rather, the lack thereof. “Sutra!”
“What?”
“Your fight. With Iryse. Are you going to tell me what happened, or are you just going to stare at the fire like you don’t hear me?”
“Staring at the lack of fire.” Sutra corrected. It was fun to tease Nya sometimes. “It wasn’t a fight. I wasn’t feeling well and—”
Nya rolled his eyes and swatted his foot again, harder this time. “I heard that from Iryse and I don’t believe it. What did you do?”
Sutra sighed, resting his head against the headboard behind him. He didn’t want to lie to him. “I’m no longer taking the drug.”
Nya frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’m no longer taking the drug. I stopped about ten years ago.”
Nya was silent for a while, trying to think of what to say. “What—Why? And how come no one knew until now?”
Sutra climbed from his bed and drew on his robe. “I don’t know. None of you are very observant.” He slipped on his shoes.
Nya stood and followed Sutra from the room. “But . . .” His voice lowered, looking around in case of people listening in. “But why would you want to do that? And whenever I miss a dose, even by only a few days from the year, I feel terrible. Dizziness in my head and aching in my joints. I can’t eat or drink until I take that drug. How did you wean yourself off it?”
Sathryn
black horse stood alone by the crooked tree.
It must have belonged to the girl, Sathryn thought. Julian must have been thinking it too. They passed by the woman just then, her neck cracking open from her head like a hollow fruit. Sathryn tried not to look, but it was hard not to. It was a good thing the girl was facedown—otherwise, Sathryn was afraid she might cry. Julian, however, looked straight ahead, his eyes never wavering from the black horse.
When he reached the horse, who didn’t even seem to realize that he was a stranger, Julian pulled a large blanket from its back. It was black and thick, and the same Arrow emblem that the five—now four—Arrows wore was embroidered onto the wool.
Julian’s hands were still shaking. They were also still streaked with dark-red blood. “We—we should—”
Sathryn approached him like she would a rabid dog. “Julian . . . I didn’t think killing would bother you. You said you wanted to kill the kings.”
“The kings aren’t human. She was.”
Sathryn opened the bundle she held in her hands and pulled out the canteen. “Let me see your hands.”
He turned to face her, holding out his shaky, blood-streaked hands. She popped open the canteen and poured water over them until all the blood was washed away, now mixing in with the snow. Then, she handed him a dry rag from her bag and watched as he wiped the water from his hands.
He looked at her. His eyes were watery blue. “Thank you.”
She handed him the pair of gloves from her bundle, then grabbed two dry cloths to wrap arou
nd her own hands.
There was a moment of quiet where Julian just stared down at Sathryn, and Sathryn avoided his eyes until he turned away. “Come on.” His voice was much brighter without blood on his hands. He walked toward the horse.
Sathryn had never been on a horse. She’d ridden behind one in a buggy many times, her father or a servant, or even Etzimek sometimes on the horse’s back, but never Sathryn herself. But from the way Julian was climbing onto the horse’s back, looking at her as though he wanted her to do the same, Sathryn was going to ride a horse today.
She approached the horse hesitantly. The horse seemed unaware, but Julian watched her. “You’ve never ridden a horse before.” His smile blossomed again.
She placed her hand on the horse’s black hide. It was warm. “So what?”
“You didn’t ride one on your way to Deadland?”
“No,” she said. Pomek wasn’t far from Deadland. It had taken so long to get there more so because of the cold and the exhaustion, not so much distance. Besides, they couldn’t have ridden into a poor refugee camp on the back of the great white stallion—a horse that probably cost more than the houses in Deadland—they had owned in Pomek. Julian offered her his hand. She grabbed it, and he pulled her up onto the horse’s back.
It wasn’t as bad as she thought until the great black animal began at a trot. She tensed, her hands tightening around Julian’s waist where she’d placed them to steady herself. “Wait, wait. Julian, I want to get down.”
She could hear him rolling his eyes from the front of the horse. “Would you like to walk to Kingsland while I ride?”
She huffed and tried to look straight ahead over Julian’s shoulder. Her hands were still clenched, and her breathing hadn’t steadied.
Julian spoke up—perhaps to distract her from herself, or perhaps just because he was already sick of her quick breathing. “You never told me where you moved from.” As he spoke, he kicked the horse’s side with his foot, and the horse moved faster.
“Uh—Pomek.”
“Pomek’s nice. I have family over there somewhere, distant cousins and such.”
“Yeah,” Sathryn said. Thinking about Pomek, her home, the place she was so far from now, relaxed her. “I miss it.”
“I bet you do. Sometimes I miss Kingsland.” She couldn’t see the expression on his face, but judging from his voice, he was as nostalgic as she was now. “The parties, the shows, the music, the dancing, the feasts . . . I could go on forever.” Sathryn wished he would. Just listening to his voice, his stories, was entertainment enough for her.
“You went to parties?”
He laughed. “I snuck in on plenty of my parents’ before I myself was old enough to attend them.”
She thought about Tiberius’s party and the children. “Were they anything like your father’s now?”
“Of course not.” But he said nothing else. The horse moved a little faster each moment, and now that their conversation had died down, she was nervous again, and she clenched her hands.
He laughed again from the front. “This is slow, Sathryn. We’re starting slow to get you used to it, but after that, I’m going as fast as I want. And that’s fast. If we want to get anywhere within reasonable time, we have to move faster.”
By the time Julian had worked the horse up to a quick, steady gallop, Sathryn was used to it. In fact, she was almost enjoying it. Not enjoying it as much as Julian—every so often he whooped and laughed against Sathryn’s warning to keep quiet in case of Arrows—but enjoying it nonetheless. The farther they rode, hours and hours on end, the farther away the mountaintops got until they were no more than a misty-gray, jagged streak of paint against the sky. The land around them sprouted green grass and thickets of trees from the cold, hard, iced ground. There wasn’t much—or at least not as much as there would be once they reached Kingsland, according to Julian—but it was enough to excite her. She was already sick of the cold and snow.
When evening fell, the sun sinking into the sky like a heavy boulder, bruising the world around it to purple and pink, Julian pulled the horse to a stop in a cluster of trees and dismounted before helping Sathryn down with him. Her legs were numb from riding the horse for so long despite their multiple breaks throughout the day—to eat or rest or just walk around—and walking around freely was the most liberating feeling. Julian felt it too; he smiled as he tied the horse’s reins to a tree and looked around the dim lighting of sunset for a place to rest for the night.
“We should take shifts,” Julian said. It was, for some reason, the most words he’d said for a while. He was gathering dry leaves and chunks of wood and placing them in a pile. “To make sure the Arrows don’t come back. We aren’t in a cave anymore. It will be difficult to just make ourselves disappear.”
She nodded. The evening air was cooler than that of high noon, but the trees around her made her feel warmer than before. As soon as Julian had made a fire, using that same fire striker and flint piece as he had in the mountains, warm air bloomed from the fire’s center and clouded around them, forming a barrier against the cold. Julian sat and stared into the fire until Sathryn tossed a small bag of food at him. She opened her own, and to no surprise, the food inside consisted of a browning banana, more nuts, and more bread. But however monotonous the food looked when she saw it, after a long day of travel, she was willing to eat whatever. She finished eating within minutes and was still hungry, but said nothing about it to Julian, who ate slowly and quietly.
“You’re quiet,” she said instead.
He glanced up, eyebrows raising. “I am?”
“You have been for the last few hours.”
He bit into his apple, chewed slowly, then swallowed. “I’m thinking.”
“About . . .?”
He shrugged. “About whatever. About the kings. About Kingsland. About what I plan to do or where I plan to go after all of this is done. About—about if I’ll die or not.”
She nodded. Those sort of questions—the hard, distant ones—were ones she’d tried to avoid throughout this whole trip. Perhaps it was time to answer them.
“More so about what I will do after than if I will die. Which may be a little egotistical on my part, but I think it’s more optimistic than anything.” He finished his apple and tossed the core to the horse, who also stood near the fire, and watched as the horse finished it off. It was quiet for a second, then Julian sighed. “I don’t think my father is alive.” He lay down his bag again to sleep. “I don’t think Taz or Evera or Jesel are alive either.”
Sathryn, once resolved in saying little whenever he became emotional, nodded. “Are you sad?”
About your father? were the unspoken words between them, but Julian understood anyway.
“Yes.” There was no explanation—a simple yes told all it needed to.
“I’ll take the first shift,” Sathryn said. Julian looked so warm and comfortable that she hated the thought of disturbing him. He interjected, but Sathryn insisted. She would wake him up as soon as the sun peeked out over the horizon. He smiled, pulled his coat tighter about him, and within minutes, he was asleep.
The only alert body next to her now was the horse, but even he (or she) had lain down between her and Julian and seemed ready to rest. He’d been riding them around all day and was no doubt just as tired and cold as she was.
Sathryn reached over and ran her hand along the horse’s coat, marveling at the warmth from the great animal. So much of the horse reminded her of home. She hadn’t seen any horses in Deadland, and though she’d only been there for a day, perhaps even less, it felt like forever since she’d ambled through the streets of the marketing districts in Pomek, or shopped for a new dress, or eaten a nice, warm, filling dinner with all her family around her. She’d tried not to think about it before, but now, it all washed over her in the silence of the setting sun.
Etzimek had always been the ideal son. “A spitting image of your father in his prime,” her mother used to say. Sathryn herself used to alway
s say that wherever Sathryn walked, Etzimek strode. All that about him, which she’d despised, were things that Sathryn missed now.
It was too quiet to think. Besides the popping and crackling of the flames in front of her, the woods were silent. Winter meant most animals were gone, so nothing surrounded her, and nothing kept her company since both the horse and Julian were now asleep. It was too quiet to think, and so Sathryn felt she would fall asleep if she didn’t do something.
It was too cold to stray from the fire, so she resolved in grabbing sticks and pinecones and throwing them into the fire, watching the flames grow for a second before they settled down again.
She kept herself awake until the first rays of sunlight washed between the trees. She crept over to Julian, who was curled up on his side with his eyes closed. His breathing was so soft and even, his expression so peaceful, that she almost didn’t want to wake him up, but she was exhausted herself. She leaned over and shook him.
“Julian.”
His tired blue eyes cracked open, looking up at her. “My turn to watch?” She nodded. He stretched, then stood and jumped around a little bit. Despite her fatigue, she laughed. “I’m trying to wake myself up,” he explained, sitting back down. He slid his bag to where she now sat—beside him—and she lay down against it. “Are you warm enough?”
She was shivering. Her coat wasn’t as thick as his; it had more holes. She was close to the fire, but it couldn’t warm all of her unless she jumped in. She shrugged.
He stared down at her, looking like he wanted to say something, but didn’t, not for a long time. Then, “Maybe we should lie together—for warmth, I mean. I feel guilty dragging you along and not making sure you’re warm enough.”
Sathryn glanced up at him. One part of his face was illuminated by the fire, and the other part was obscured by the night around them. His eyes were the bluest she’d seen on someone of his darker complexion. She nodded. “I don’t want to freeze.”
Embers of Empire Page 9
