Ember

by Anna Holmes

  He looks at me blankly for a moment. "Freeing slaves, forming a parliament, and now you’re letting me sleep."

  "I’m tired of waiting for someone else to fix things. Am I supposed to be queen or not?"

  Alain eases himself back to his spot against the tree and watches the waves come in and out. I take a few practice swings with my sword to keep my mind occupied. Just in case, I run through an imagined encounter with a Gavroth-sized bear. A rogue thought comes to me. "One last thing," I venture.

  "Hmm?"

  "What did she mean by the hill? She said she'd see you there. And Rye."

  "I haven't the slightest," he replies, yawning.

  I nod, grimacing. One more question for the pile. "I lied," I tell him. "One more last thing."

  "Mm," he mumbles.

  "Think of something pleasant for me tonight before you sleep."

  He blinks slowly and smiles just before his head sags.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Alain

  I manage to sleep until sunrise, which I've not done in a long while. Caelin is bundled under her cloak, still asleep. I pull back her hood. She breathes softly, the little strand of hair that always falls in her eyes floating up and down. I push it aside and mask her face again, maybe for the last time. It’s not something I enjoy doing. I don’t change much about her features, just make them a little less remarkable—smooth the dramatic curve of her cheek, the bump of her lightly freckled nose, the barely tamed mess of her hair. I can hardly even tell I’m doing it until it’s done, and then I feel a little less bright myself.

  I stretch my leg out and try to shake a little of the morning stiffness out of it. There's still a fair bit of road ahead of us.

  So far, I haven't heard any shouts of outrage, so Gavroth likely hasn’t informed his comrades. I don't share Caelin's optimism where he is concerned. I know what it is to hate that completely, and it took me quite some time to be broken of it. I don't know what is in his mind now, but I can't imagine that we're safe yet.

  I shuffle around and let Caelin sleep a little longer, then shake her awake softly. She sits up and blinks at the world. "We’ll be there today," she realizes aloud.

  I nod. "I don't suppose I can convince you not to do this."

  "I'm only going to talk to them." She pulls on her head, stretching out her neck.

  "What about begging?"

  "That doesn't sound like you."

  "It's not," I tell her, following behind as she gathers her things. I don’t know how to tell her that these jailers won’t bother jailing her, or me, and that we won’t likely end up in the same place. She’s aware of the possibility. I can tell, when she whips her head around to look at me, and her mouth wavers the once before setting itself again. I manage, "I just—it doesn't feel right."

  "I know. But it needs to be done." She begins up the embankment toward the campsite.

  "Caelin," I start.

  She turns. "Yeah?"

  "This has been horrible," I say, crooking up my mouth. "But it's been fun."

  "It has." She smiles at me, and I try to hold onto the image. It’s the same smile she wears undisguised. I don't know how the rest of the day is going to go. I don't know about after today. I didn’t realize how much I needed that smile until just this moment.

  Nothing has changed at the camp. She's still Lieutenant Holder and I’m still Prince Northshore, but there are glances and whispers that say our night spent away from the camp hasn’t gone unnoticed. I wouldn’t be the first prince to make off with an underling. Probably not even their first. Without a word about it, I have us n the road quickly enough.

  Tressa joins me in the back. She doesn't say anything immediately. I know by the line of her mouth that she's thinking of someone. Likely her brother. "Tell me, prince," she says. "Are you a war criminal? I've never seen your name on any of my lists."

  "No, probably not."

  "So why did they keep you?"

  "Because I wore the wrong uniform, made the wrong orders, and if flogged enough, I worked for free." She lowers her head as she walks in step with Maribelle, trying to keep her face out of my view. I push out a breath. "Do you still have your lists?"

  She pats the bag hanging at her side and nods, pursing her lips. She seems to be debating speaking. "Do you—do you think we'll get far enough to use them?"

  "I hope so."

  Tressa reaches inside her bag and hands me a small leather bound notebook, taking up Maribelle’s reins so I can concentrate. In neat blue ink, she’s documented hundreds of names, the locations of bounty postings, whether they were official requests or not, the offenses of the marks, physical descriptions, potential weaknesses…I recognize a few names, but I knew none of them personally. She’s got thin lines through the names of people she’s captured. I lose count somewhere around thirty. "You take detailed notes."

  "Easiest part of the job," she sighs, rubbing at her neck.

  I just hope that they’ll be enough. We’re armed with Caelin’s title, sword, and face; a centaur’s well-curated notebook and bow; and whatever credibility I don’t immediately destroy. Optimism is elusive this morning.

  I can tell we're there before I see anything by sound of the sea wind hitting the high walls. The same sound filled the prison where I was held. That was always the most unnerving thing about the camp for me. Not the guards watching every move, not the prisoners waiting for a chance to ruin one another for some dangled comfort. The silence. Even in the dusty pits we were made to work, the sounds of our labor were taken by the wind. I thought maybe it would be different in the east, but it may as well be the same place.

  I hadn't had long to look at my camp from the outside. The medics who saw to my leg sent me quickly from the recovery ward to the prison. I remember well the windward wall, but the rest of the camp sloped toward the sea.

  At this prison, I wouldn’t be able to repeat my escape. The walls are taller, more complete, more resolute. It may have been a fortress in the war. The yellowish brown stone stands out against the gray blue of the ocean, high on a hill made green by the recent rain. The sky threatens more, and all the while, the wretched wind plays with us.

  Tressa stares too, grim. "I've come here a dozen times, but it's never looked this…"

  "Promising," Caelin finishes, adjusting her sword at her side and pulling Navigator toward the path. "Let's go."

  "Wait," I call after her. "You can't just ride straight up!"

  "Not alone," she shouts over the passing gusts. "Tressa, with me."

  "You're seriously going to let her go in there without any sort of—" She's already trotting after Caelin, and my stomach drops.

  Gavroth slaps my shoulder—not nearly as hard as he could, but still harder than necessary. "Well, mate, best of luck." He starts away.

  "You too," I say numbly. I turn. There's no time to say much else. "Thanks," I call after him, and carry on after Elyssia’s fearless leader.

  Caelin’s stopped to wait for me just outside the stone checkpoint. Maribelle balks as the wind whines past the empty guard post. I know the feeling. Navigator and his rider, however, look directly into the path of the moving air. Caelin’s face leaves me a moment without words or even solid thoughts.

  I know she can be calculating. I know she can fight. But this is the first of the warrior I’ve seen in her. She turns her eyes on me, and they don’t soften; her jaw still is set, hand still clenched around the hilt of her sword, every muscle coiled in preparation to spring. "I'm going to want my own face for this," she says, her voice calm.

  As I reach out to touch this steely Caelin's shoulder and melt the Plain facade away, Tressa whips my arm down to my side, and faster than I can blink, lashes my wrists together. I can only look at Caelin, who shakes her properly glowing head. "I'm sorry."

  My face burns, and she looks away, the fierceness cracking. So it was for me, at least in part. I don’t like the way my voice wavers when I demand, "What are you—"

  "We have to get past
the guards somehow. Tressa says they won't let anyone in without official business."

  "Turnabout, as they say," Tressa says.

  So this is her payback for the inhibitor. I glare at her. "Yours, at least, was false."

  "Unfortunately it’s a little harder to fake rope. But I know you could have these undone in a second."

  These are just rope. The steel manacles I'd worn at the Southern colony had enchantments to make them unbreakable, supposedly for even the strongest magician. Otherwise, we'd all have escaped.

  Caelin still won’t face me. "We'll undo them the second we're inside." Her apology, her guilt, sound in the pleading lilt of her voice, just for a moment.

  "You could have just asked me."

  "You overestimate my ability to do that," she answers, quiet.

  I lift my hands, trying to breathe right. The rope may as well be impassable metal for how the it seems to clamp on my skin, my lungs, my throat. I need it gone. No. I need to remember that this isn’t my prison colony, and that she means that they’re temporary. "What is it you're planning to do? March in there, announce yourself, demand they free everyone?"

  She doesn’t answer.

  I let out a breath. She doesn’t know. She can’t possibly know what we’re walking into, why I don’t want to stay bound a second longer. She must still believe that these are the same people she served with, still good people receiving bad orders. "Caelin. I don't think you understand. These people are… cruel. They're not likely to listen."

  "I know this can't be easy—"

  "You have no idea," I cut her off without meaning to. She closes her lips and sits back in her saddle. "When you're used to having better luck negotiating with the whip than the person who wields it, it feels like insanity to think about flouncing back in."

  "Then let me do the flouncing. Just look angry about being tied up."

  "Won't be difficult," I mutter.

  Tressa takes hold of Maribelle's reins, and Caelin pulls up her hood. They exchange a look. I'm led along the path to the gate, where Tressa greets a portly blue-uniformed man behind a massive iron portcullis by name. The guard answers cheerfully, peering out at me. It takes every ounce of self control I have not to scream, break these bonds, and throw magic into his tacky, happy, mustachioed face. "Who do we have today?" He asks.

  "Alain Northshore. Escapee from the Southern Colony."

  He shuffles through some papers—dispatches, no doubt. "Ah. Here he is. Sure you don't want to take him back there?"

  "We'd rather have him alive."

  He nods. "And who's your friend?"

  "She's with me."

  He folds his hands behind his back. "Ah, Tressa, come on. You know I can't just let anyone wander in."

  Caelin lowers her hood. "I'm not just anyone, Sergeant."

  The guard's jaw sags, and as soon as his brain catches up with his eyes, he sinks into a bow. "Your highness. An honor to see you. I thought—"

  "Let us through."

  He nearly falls over himself to go open the gate. I look up at the passing clouds as Tressa pulls Maribelle along the path which snakes up to the stone corridor leading to the inside. It’s all I can do to keep my breath about me. She won’t let them take me back. She won’t.

  We are met by more guards, two of whom each grasp one of my arms. A flamefolk woman approaches, those wretched manacles open before her, their oily-looking metal clawing for me. My head snaps up, unbidden, and I stare at the guard. She edges forward again. Caelin needs me to play along, but if those get any closer, I may end up loosing this rope myself whether I want to or not. Caelin holds up a hand. "Leave him. This prisoner is mine."

  An older man—high ranking by the number of gold cord knots stitched to the front of his uniform—looks at her dubiously. "All due respect, ma’am, but if not to drop him off, why did you come here?"

  "Maybe I will drop him off. I'd like to see your facilities first."

  The men share a glance. It's obvious they're not used to providing tours. "This…is highly unusual," the decorated man says, his face creasing along already distinct fold lines. "I'd need to speak with my captain."

  "Then get him and hurry up," Caelin snaps. A little frustration is a good mask for the fury I can feel emanating off her like waves of heat.

  The senior guard clicks away, his boots echoing in the stone corridor. The other two guards stay with us. Caelin jumps down from Navigator with ease, moving in a circle around him. "This is bloody ridiculous," she mutters. "Come on."

  "Ma'am, wait—" one of the other guards says, reaching out for her and jerking back as though he’s realized he’s about to touch open flame.

  There are few moments in which I've realized just what sort of person I've been traveling with. I may have been a prince by Legion designated, but even the relative infallibility the position offered me pales when placed next to the import her people have given Caelin. In this way—in choosing not to grab her arm, in choosing to respect even her crabbiest demands, I suppose they have chosen her.

  She stalks out of the corridor and into the light. Tressa follows much more hesitantly, tugging me along. She isn't sure if she wants to see, I think. We stand on a balcony which wraps all the way around the great walls in a massive square. Four or five stories below us is a courtyard, where men and women in chains sit at long benches, working at stills and burners. Alchemists. They mix and test under the eyes of guards who walk through the aisles between the tables, checking from side to side and switching aisles in a bizarre dance.

  Caelin's brow furrows, and she whirls on the guards who lagged after us. "What is this?"

  "It's a prison, Your Majesty," the flamefolk woman answers.

  "And what kind of prison provides the tools for alchemy to its inmates?"

  "One where we expect the prisoners to pay for their crimes with honest work," a reedy voice answers from behind us. I turn ever so slightly to look at the newcomer from out of the corner of my eye. She's an old woman, gaunt and tall. She looks like she could be carried away by the wind as effortlessly as it whips the thin strands of her gray hair from her braid. She bows her head so deeply her chin meets the gnarled hand touching her chest. The sincerest form of bow available to Elyssians. Done by her, it feels overdramatic, false. "Welcome, Your Highness. This visit is unexpected."

  "And you are?"

  "Forgive me. I'm Captain Sole. I served Lord Kelvin at the Battle of North Shore."

  Caelin's face hardens. "Yes, I've heard of you. Got a little carried away, did you?"

  She seems puzzled, but says nothing. Her pale gray—almost white—eyes find me. "We've been distressed by the absence of this young man from the Southern Colony. Our thanks for returning him."

  "I'm not returning him," Caelin says, her voice shaking. It's not fear. Her jaw barely opens to allow her to speak. It’s thinly veiled, barely controlled rage. "I won't be admitting any further prisoners into your care until further notice."

  "Whyever not?" She waves a hand at the bustling work area below. "This is a productive, peaceful outlet for their energies."

  Caelin's hands clench around the iron guardrail. "Tell me," she says, her voice edged like steel, "How many alchemists are war criminals?"

  "Of these? All of them."

  "I find that difficult to believe."

  "They fueled the object casters which plowed through our defenses at Haftwood Forest."

  I search my memory for that battle. I'd been entirely absorbed by the siege, and hadn't wanted to hear of our losses at the time. I can't recall hearing anything of that. Caelin seems to remember perfectly well. "Haftwood was six years ago."

  That's why I don't recall it. I was too young. Caelin was already involved then, just barely. The captain deigns to enlighten her. "Six years is but a blink for a nation rebuilding and hasty redemption for atrocities."

  She shakes her head. "This is not justice. You will show me your records. I want to see exactly who you've deemed a criminal and for what."

 
; "Records." She makes a tent out of her fingers. "We don't keep records past two years."

  "What?" I don't think I've ever been this afraid of Caelin—not even when she was threatening to halve me like a biscuit, not when she was staring at the prison as though she meant to level it with just her gaze. She doesn’t screech, doesn’t demand. She will be told, or it will hurt. "On whose orders?"

  "Mine."

  "There are new orders now. You will turn over what records you do have to Sergeant Nuthatch." She nods at Tressa, who looses my wrists. I rub at where the rope ate into the wounds of old bonds. It burns, but as the rope falls away, I find air more plentiful, my thoughts clearer.

  The captain's face does not change, still perfectly placid, perfectly unconcerned. "I would see an order from Lord Kelvin."

  This is the wrong thing to say to Caelin. She steps close to Sole, using the few inches she has on her to her advantage. "I beg your pardon?"

  "This can't come as a surprise, your majesty. Until your ascendance, Lord Kelvin remains in control of all rebuilding efforts."

  "I am taking that control away, effective immediately. This is a blatant abuse." To me, she says, "I apologize for the doubt I cast on you. Thank you for bringing this to my attention."

  Sole scoffs. "You're acting on his word? He's an enemy of Elyssia."

  She shakes her head. "It takes more bravery to ask for help for his countrymen than it takes to imprison them and use them. You will retire to your quarters, Captain, or I'll have you marched there."

  Sole’s mouth curls up unpleasantly, the eerie calm gone. "With what forces?"

  Caelin turns to the flamefolk woman. "If your princess gives you an order, do you follow?"

  Sole cuts her off before she can even reply. "You are out-numbered here, Princess. This sort of bluster may work in the capital, but here you've nothing to back it up. Run along home. You've a wedding to prepare, I hear?"

  I look at Caelin. "May I?"

  "Please."

  It doesn't take much to get Sole to fall down asleep. The flamefolk woman kneels to check on her, then she looks up. I jump down from Maribelle. Grimly, Caelin informs her, "Very well, he’ll be my backup. Anyone else?"