Ember

by Anna Holmes

  Damn her. This—this I believe.

  I claw my way up into my horse’s saddle. She seems to very nearly glide into hers and leans over to lash our reins together. Maribelle gives an alarmed lurch as the princess spurs Navigator to action, dragging us both along just in time to hear the first shouts from behind us. "Catch," she tells me, throwing both sets of reins into my hands.

  Gods, what does she think I’m going to be able to do with these? My leg sears in the stirrup and trying to keep Maribelle going straight was difficult enough yesterday afternoon, let alone now, with actual experienced riders bearing down on us? In a moment, however, the slack tightens, and I see her lean forward in the saddle, feel Maribelle follow dutifully alongside Navigator. The princess’ hands are clasped in front of her as though bound together. That means she’s steering with her knees. And I thought I was the mad one. She throws her head back and yells, "Guards, help!"

  This bit of theater brings them running faster, and she glances at me expectantly. The stifling dread threatening to shut off my lungs from my throat alerts me to just what a good thing it is that I didn't actually manage that kidnapping. What a difference uninterrupted sleep makes. Yesterday, this seemed like such a good idea. Now I can practically feel the points of the guards' extended swords in my back.

  The princess frowns slightly, and I take her meaning all too vividly. Do something. I throw out a hand behind me and reach out for those swords, sending my will from my core, out of my grasping fingertips, and into each of those blades. My hand clenches into a fist, and with four identical groans, the steel curls back away from us.

  Their bafflement doesn't slow them for too long. One tosses his now L-shaped blade away in disgust, and the remaining three reposition their swords to keep from stabbing themselves, one another, or the horses. I grit my teeth and try a new tactic.

  Their horses are not so stoic. With a snap of my fingers, I open a small, steep rift in the stone floor. The crumbling of the rock startles their horses. They stamp and huff and jostle one another to be the first to back away. I rub at my tingling hand and curse internally. I’ve been hiding my magic for months now. I don’t know why I thought it would make itself readily available now, but I rather need it to be slightly more cooperative.

  The electric buzzing in my muscles aside, the little stunt with the ground buys us enough time to come to a place where the tunnel branches into three. I coax the energy roiling and mingling uncomfortably with the biscuits in my stomach to surge back through my arm. A murky bluish mist obscures the cavern mouths just before we dart into one. The princess glances back and grabs the reins again, leaning into the stirrups to push both horses farther, faster. My bad leg wrenches, the good flailing for my own stirrup. "Good work," she tells me.

  Devils take her, she’s beaming. Figuratively and literally. "Is this a game to you?" I hiss.

  "No, but it’s damned fun anyway," she answers.

  And then she pulls up short. My queasy gut seems to slam into my chest, and it’s all I can do to think heavy thoughts so that I stay rooted to the saddle instead of flying over Maribelle’s neck. "What the hells—” I swipe my hair out of my eyes. Oh, wonderful. The tunnel’s partially collapsed inches ahead.

  And behind, hoofbeats. We both turn and catch sight of one guard. The princess draws her sword, and I frown. What are you doing? I ask, pushing the words from my mind to hers.

  She jumps a little bit. Common enough. Most people don’t expect to hear other people’s voices in their heads. The guard pushes through the last of my fog and opens his mouth. She starts to move forward, but I stop all three of us with a hand in front of me.

  That hand shakes furiously, and I feel weariness dragging at all of my limbs. My leg feels like it might well split in half. I am really going to regret this later. Mind reshapes are exhausting under the best circumstances, and this is not one of those. I force my breath in and out, trying to feed the energy at my center and tie it back in to the weft of the threads of magic that cross through the air. I find the guard’s thread and pull—gently, but enough to warp the fabric. His eyes go distant for a moment, and I tug a little harder. Dead end, I think for us both.

  Slowly, he guides his horse back around. I feel his suspicion drawing the crystalline thread taut again, and I bare down harder on my end, pushing . There, I announce with all the urgency of a real discovery. Down the tunnel. It was a trick.

  At once, he takes off at a full gallop. "They’re headed back to the town!" He shouts as he passes through the fog. "It was a trick!"

  "What—?" The princess starts.

  I jerk my head toward her and put my finger to my lips, and she closes her mouth. Three more sets of horse hooves come thundering down the other tunnels. "What? Are you sure?" A voice asks.

  This is the crucial moment—when I find out whether I’ve eased that thread back into place carefully enough that he’s sure that it was his own idea. Slowly, I let go of that line between us and wait, my breath stuck tight in my chest.

  "Yes, I saw them!" The guard insists. "Come on!"

  All four sets rumble away, and soon I can’t hear them at all. I still hold my breath until I might well faint, between all I’ve just done and the lack of air. The gills at the sides of my neck flare, and at last I heave out a breath. The princess just stares at me. "Well, I was going to ask how you managed to escape from a slave colony and climb up my tower," she says slowly. "Never mind."

  Again, I probe the edges of her mind, looking for threadbare spots in the web. If I could just reach her in the same way…it should be possible. I can find her connections just fine. It’s just that when I try to pull, yank, anything, I find my will caught as though on a thorn, then slammed into a wall. I breathe hard a moment, staring back. "I’m persuasive," I say. Usually.

  "You didn’t kill them," she says, subdued.

  "Is that what you were going to do?" I ask, gesturing to the sword.

  "No. But if you’re run through with swords, you make a poor guide."

  "Well, you’d have blown your cover completely," I tell her, frowning.

  "I told you. I’m a terrible liar." She brings our horses back to the mouth of the tunnel, peering ahead. I dismiss the fog, and she brings us back to the fork. "Which of these?"

  "The leftmost."

  "And you know this how?"

  "I study hard."

  She looks at me, clearly turning over other words in her head. At length, she speaks again, though it looks like what words come out must bear barbs, the way she winces. "Very well. Keep your secrets."

  I’ve known her all of a day and I know that this isn’t like her at all. So far she’s harried me for every scrap of information she can wring out of me. She dismounts and gestures for me to get down. It’s only now I realize that Maribelle has been panting, poor beast. I awkwardly disentangle myself, staring at the princess as she listens once more for guards, then starts down the tunnel. I follow. "You are a horrible liar."

  "And you’re a very good one," she says. "But that wasn’t a lie. I’ll let it go."

  "I find that hard to believe."

  "You’ve given me your trust," she says with a shrug. "The least I can do is return the favor."

  My face twists, anger winding my muscles taut. "I do not trust you, demon."

  The silence settles over us like a shroud. She looks at me skeptically. "You must trust me somewhat," she gambles at last. "You’ve taken me this far."

  Chapter Six

  Alain

  Damn her. Damn her again and again, and once that's done, damn her once more. My leg throbs, I'm even more tired than when I started, and damn it all, she's right.

  There is absolutely no reason for me to do so, but I believe her. She does not relish slavery, though she's perfectly fine with an inherited monarchy. Before my actual enslavement, I might have argued that those were one and the same. I know better now, but still. I hold that I will be dead once she's achieved what she wants. She looks at me now, her face deathly seri
ous. "I will not kill you," she says. "Not unless you give me a reason to do so."

  "My loyalties would have been enough on the field of battle."

  "This is not a battlefield, is it?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "And that is where we disagree."

  "Then why is your sword drawn?"

  The princess sighs. "You remember how I thrashed you? How your magic is absolutely useless against me?"

  "I could still cave the ceiling in and crush you," I point out.

  "Let me make it easy on you." She swings the sword around and catches it by the blade, offering me the hilt. "If you don't believe that I am good for my word, that I won't help you get what you want, that I'll kill you, then go ahead, kill me now. Here." She loosens her armor and exposes her delicate, faintly shining neck. "Kill me, Alain."

  I should. All those whose lives she ended knowingly and by her bid for power…I grasp the sword by its hilt. It's weightier than I expected, and it seems to wobble in my hand as though it's a living thing in of itself. Nevertheless, I get it under control and put the point to her neck. She swallows. So she fears death. My breath quickens, and I grasp the hilt tighter. Her eyes hold mine, though, and my grip wavers. They are not the eyes of the spoiled brat I presumed her, nor of the devil that my comrades supposed she was. They’re a little frightened, but they’re confident, calm. A person’s. It’s much harder like this.

  I hate her. I hate her despotism. I hate her ignorance, and I hate her war.

  But I can't kill her.

  The sword drops to the ground, and she collects it and puts it away smoothly. "There's been enough killing," she says. "That offer won't come again."

  I draw my forearm across my eyes, seething. I am weak, and she has the measure of me. "Now," she says again. "Are you going to take me?"

  My lip curls and my fists ball up, but at last I can do nothing but nod.

  To her credit, she is not smug about my relenting. She simply leads her behemoth of a mount and my exhausted little mare on, giving them a chance to rest while we keep moving. After a few hundred steps, the silence begins to press on me as though I am bearing a load other than empty pouches and frustration. It's hard to confess even to myself, but the lack of chatter from her unnerves me. It becomes obvious after nothing but the echoes of our steps and the creaking of the leather at our belts and on the horses that I will have to break the quiet. "Must I take you to my camp, or will any do?"

  Her head swivels around. "There's more than one?"

  "Three that I know of. I'm not sure of its precise location, but there's one closer by." There's also a much smaller chance that I'll be recognized and recaptured, but I need not mention that.

  She turns it over in her head, biting at the corner of her lip. "You're unsure of its precise location. How unsure?"

  "I know how to find it and I know where to look. I've just never been incarcerated there."

  "And how much farther away is yours?"

  "We'd need to take an airship if you hope to reach it within the week."

  I can see I'm making progress with her. She doesn't like the idea of taking an airship. She notices my noticing and explains, "I don't carry money."

  "I have a way around that."

  "No," she says emphatically. "I will not trick innocent people out of a livelihood."

  I scoff. "You really think there are innocent people?"

  "We both were once." She peers ahead. "How much farther?"

  "Not too much."

  "Take me to the closest one," she says. "But so help me, if you're playing with me…"

  "Wouldn't dream of it," I say under my breath and miss the silence.

  Chapter Seven

  Caelin

  We stop for rest one more time in a similar cavern to last night’s. This one only has a small trickle for a water source, and the horses gulp greedily. Alain waits until I'm not looking and sneaks a handful. Like I'd deny him. I sigh inadvertently. I'm used to being dismissed and perhaps even disliked, but this being hated thing will take some getting used to.

  I can't make him happy. I gave him his space and some silence, I tried talking, and still he seems to think I'll throw him away. Maybe I had that in mind once, but I keep seeing something flit across his face that makes me pause. Definitely misery, possibly anguish, and very likely the tiniest flare of hope chasing each other around his features and back again.

  I settle to the ground with a thump and watch him pull one of those sealed jars from Maribelle's saddle pack. He holds out a biscuit and some cheese to me, and I accept with a murmured thank you.

  He sits a good ways away from me, stretching his left leg well away from his body. "What happened?" I ask with a nod toward his misbehaved limb. "If you don't mind my asking."

  "War," he answers, his voice a steel wall.

  I try to make up for his lack of patience with a little extra of my own. I make no mention of his abrupt reply and instead push up my sleeve to the one spot where my skin glows red instead of vaguely gold. He tries not to look, but I can see the curiosity burning in him. "During the Siege when the Upper Town was set ablaze, I had to enter a building. Embers hit me and seem to have stuck there."

  "I'd rather not compare wounds," he answers. I know what he means. Mine does not even compare. But I'm not done.

  "I always wondered," I continue, "whether your side set that fire or mine."

  "You don't know?"

  "Do you?"

  At last, he admits, "I don't."

  "Does it seem like something the Legion would do?"

  He wobbles back and forth as though he's on the scale by which he's weighing his thoughts. "It would not be out of the realm of possibility. It does seem like a slightly more insurgent tactic."

  More indicative of the Resurgence. "I thought so as well. But it's unlike my Resurgence to set fire to civilian targets."

  He knows this is true. "I doubt we'll ever know," he says.

  "I don't think it matters who set it," I muse. "Resurgent fire and Legion fire burns the same, doesn't it?"

  "I suppose so." He tries to stretch his leg again and flinches. "I'll take first watch," he says.

  "Why, so you can run off?" I tease him with his own words.

  This elicits the slightest bit of a laugh. "That would not be in my best interests," he says quietly.

  So this is Alain's voice free of bitterness. It's much gentler, and tonight, I have no reservations about falling asleep right away under his eye.

  I am jarred awake by a hand pulling me upward, almost to my feet. The toes of my boots scrape the ground as I come face to face with the single biggest man I have ever seen. His rust colored beard shines in the flicker of the torch he carries in the other hand. "Well," he says. "Look at what I found."

  I am thrust into wakefulness with the sharp focus of adrenaline. He is not alone. There are three other men and two women in thick, ragged clothes with hungry eyes. Bandits.

  A bow and arrow, a knife in the hand of one of the women, two daggers for one of the men, a sword for the other, and the big man holds nothing. The swordsman seems uncertain, and the bow won’t do much good in the confines of a tunnel. The unarmed man is huge, but still nothing against a sword and a magician. We’ll be fine.

  At least, I hope. Alain stands behind them. I frown at him as the bearded man yanks off my hood. I expect something—some flash of recognition, but when none comes I realize what's happened. My hands are dull, and I see Alain frown too in concentration. He is making me Plain.

  "How did you little rats get in our tunnel?"

  Our tunnel. I glance at our captors. Likely they assumed ownership after the Legion were routed. The Legion keep no beards. "Just seeking shelter," I say.

  "In Rebel armor?"

  No, I was wrong. This is what's left of the Legion. Under his worn out cloak I catch the gleam of gold—a Legion medal still worn close to his chest. He doesn't know who I am, but he knows what I stand for, and as Alain said, that's reason enough on a bat
tlefield.

  To my surprise, Alain speaks up. "We traded for it in the war."

  "And what would wanderers like you need with some fancy armor like that?"

  One of the women, a thin slip of a person with white blonde hair pulled into a severe knot, grabs Navigator's reins in one bony fist and looks at me appraisingly. "I could do with some armor like that."

  No one touches my horse. Navigator rears, throwing her back. I take the opportunity and size up the huge man. He carries his weight in his enormous chest, so I strike him as hard as I can in the knees and watch him topple. Alain holds out a hand and stares directly at one of the other men, a greasy hawk-like fellow who seizes the remaining man and woman by their cloaks and begins hollering, "I caught them, Gavroth! I have them!"

  I see Alain's mouth twitch in satisfaction. Nice. I retake Navigator's reins and calm him enough to mount. Alain jumps and with an unnatural glide finds his way into Maribelle's saddle. Once he has her reins, I urge Navigator forward, and we're off and running. I bless my luck at having forgotten to untack the horses before lying down to rest. Something went right today. Alain pulls ahead to lead, and throws open a pair of doors like our grain hold entrance in the city. In the space of a leap, we are in the moonlight.

  When I can no longer hear the huffs and clatter and shouts of pursuit and it's safe to slow down, I ask, "What the hells was that?"

  "Pockets of Legion fighters spread out after the war," he answers, out of breath. "They choose to live like this rather than in slave camps."

  "And you know that how?"

  "People talk. Especially new slaves."

  "Doesn't seem much better. It’s still squalor."

  He hesitates. "Maybe for now, until they get a rebellion of their own underway."

  A rebellion? Why is this the first I am hearing of it? I knew that in the first days, our reach was limited. The Resurgence was not the Legion; we don’t have hundreds of men to spare to send into every cranny and root out dissent. But this…Hot anger boils in me, and I vow once and for all to give Kelvin the sack after I get everything put to rights. Something else grabs me, though. I still don't glow in the moonlight. "You changed me," I say, unnerved. He’s not supposed to be able to do that.