“Did you see those mists?” Jaime puffed. “Or hear that voice? On the other side of the ravine—”
“A what where?”
“Mist-monsters! They were chasing me, and then my cat—I found this cat—it tried to protect me, it was like the mist-monster was afraid of it! But then the cat transformed—”
Toran tilted his head.
Jaime stopped in mid-breath. “You didn’t see anything?”
The boy scrutinized his dirt-crusted body before fixing his gaze on the medallion resting over Jaime’s chest. He quickly shoved it under his himation. The boy cleared his throat casually.
“You leave your brains the forest or something?”
His fear vanished into a glare. “No. I know what I saw. Get off me.”
As the weight lifted, Jaime crossed his arms over his waist. The boy had a mass of curly brown hair, a bouncing pot-belly, a big flat nose jutting above his cake-round cheeks. But the wings at the edge of his eyes, big and amply lidded, gave him away.
“You’re Kaipponese,” Jaime exclaimed.
“‘Course I am, dope. What do I look like, Glaiddish?” The boy shrugged. “So anyway. Where you headed?”
He hesitated. I can’t tell him I’m the Prince. I can’t tell anyone.
“I don’t know. Somewhere away from the forests.”
“You’re better off in those forests, buddy. That City-State I was in—”
“City?” Jaime cut in. “There’s a city here?”
And then he heard it—barking dogs, laughter, deep shouts. It was faint. Townfold Village used to sound like that before the Archpriestess came and built the pyre.
Jaime dashed past the boy and skirted the pines until the foliage opened up. He skidded to a halt before a steep cliff.
A brick wall below him marked the edge of the Krete Forest. Beyond it, a valley of terracotta rooftops tucked itself inside mountains of cypress, palms, and olive trees. There had to be more people there than ten Mount Alairuses combined. The Estos River reappeared to the east, snaking around a tooth-shaped akropolis.
The Estos River!
Those same coursing waters that had saved him from the royal lochos—it even cut through the same lands as home. The familiarity of it stirred both comfort and unease into his belly. But the akropolis here—gods, it had to be a thousand feet long and at least a hundred feet tall. On top of it, sand-colored shrines and monuments wrestled with the sky.
A City-State.
His mouth fell open. The remnants of his terror faded into the background.
Hida Pappas once said a dozen City-States existed in Jaypes: strongholds of civilization where Jaypes’s greatest lords governed from. Some owned seaports that gave them access to all the Four Kingdoms. Others held open marketplaces as colorful as mosaics. Hektor, her husband, came from a City-State in the far south.
The vibrancy of this one was blinding. The boy bobbed to a stop behind him.
“I’m going there,” Jaime pointed. They’ll be able to tell me how to get back to Mount Alairus.
“There?” the boy cried. “You can’t go there—the people are crazier than cave bats! They thought I was a royal spy and chased me out.” He rubbed the side of his head. “Now that I think about it, one of them might’ve hit me with a pan.”
“Well, you might be a spy, but I’m not. Go away—”
The boy grabbed him by the scruff. “Look, kid,” his sour breath coated Jaime’s face, “you don’t get it. That place is dangerous. Seeing as you’re running around with nothing but that ugly stone, this entire Kingdom is probably dangerous for you—”
“Let me go,” he snapped.
The clouds above them raced faster. The winds snarled, razor-sharp against the blades of wild grass under his feet. Jaime barely noticed. But Toran peered at the gusts and quickly let go, backing away.
“Sorry, man. It’s just that we’re both lost in a giant turd of wilderness, and I ain’t stepping foot anyplace without me grog.” He paused. “A royal lochos separated me and my best friend, and until I find him, I’m on my own. I don’t know how to survive out here by myself. I don’t even know the way home.”
“Okay,” said Jaime. “We won’t go inside, but I still need directions.”
“From . . . them?” The boy pointed to the guards on the curtain wall.
Jaime followed his gaze. They weren’t wearing the crimson mantles of royal soldiers, which meant they were loyal to the local lord.
But the boy had a point. How much difference did that make if there was a bounty on Jaime’s head?
Suddenly, his gut clenched.
He’s right. You approach that wall, they’ll ask you questions. What’ll you say? I was helping Mamá transport cloths to . . . to the east coast. For trade. But bandits robbed me and stole my donkey. And, um, I’m lost. Can you point me to a trader who’s travelling to Mount Alairus?
It was believable, but risky.
Well, if you lumber through those forests any more, the mist-monsters will eat you alive. What choice do you have?
As Jaime took his first step, the boy stepped in line with him. His face split from a grin.
“Toran, by the way. Toran Binn.”
“You can just call me Jaime.”
They shook hands.
As soon as their dirty soles hit the ground, Toran’s fat fingers shook him.
“Juno, they see us.”
On the parapets, the sentries-on-duty roused the rest of the gate command. The double gateway of the eastern entrance groaned open. Two mounted city guards clopped out between the crack, shortspears in hand.
“Told you they ain’t friendly,” Toran whispered.
The guards blockaded Jaime.
The silver swifts on their pennants seemed to take to flight. Gray daylight cut through Jaime’s eyes as he looked up. High on their saddles, they looked like god-statues.
“Our streets have enough tramps,” the left one said. “What business have you inside Arcurea’s walls, beggar boy?”
“I’m not here to beg.”
“Then what are you here for?”
The other guard’s hard gray eyes fell on Toran, who casually looked up at the sky. Jaime told them the bandit story he’d come up with. He couldn’t feel his windpipe.
“Can you point me the way back to Mount Alairus?”
The stares of the guards were so intent that at any second, he was sure he would shatter like clay pottery. The guard to the left murmured something to his colleague, who nodded. The latter reined his courser around and cantered back into the gate.
“Wait here,” the first guard ordered.
He tried not to fidget beneath the guard’s stony stare. His eyes darted to the spear’s point, then to the guard’s shortsword hanging off his steel corselet. When the seconds seemed to drag out too long, Toran shuffled closer.
“So, uh, I think now would be a good time to run.”
“Run?”
“You’re the missing Prince, right?”
Jaime dropped his mouth.
“How do you know?” he hissed back.
“The city’s chockfull of notice boards with your face on it. The stuff I told you on the overhang? I assumed it’d be pretty smart to have a Fire Sage at my back. You can raise currents, right? Like the King?”
Panic surged through his blood.
“Um.”
Toran’s mouth dropped. “You can’t raise currents?”
Before Jaime could explain, a dozen mounted guards poured through the gates. One of them held a New Jaypes standard. Another one unfurled a throwing net.
Jaime swore in his head and raced back in the direction of the forests. Toran was already partway up the ravine, shouting curses. But it was a lost struggle. He took seven short strides before the coursers caught up and circled him. The net sl
ammed him onto his back.
“Let me go!” he screamed. “You don’t understand! I’m not your enemy!”
He thrashed against the net—it only tightened around his body. Jaime bared his teeth. The other soldiers dismounted and shoved him upright.
Jaime wrenched his arms from them. No use. The net came off. Rough twine chafed his wrists.
One more guard galloped back from the ravine to join them, a muffled Toran roped tightly to the saddle. The rest of the soldiers lowered their tough, ox-hide shields. Barricaded them in.
The lead guard pointed through the gates. “Bring them to the Lord Mayor. He is expecting them.”
A blindfold slipped over Jaime’s eyes. Someone lifted him up onto a saddle. The courser’s jolting gait hurt his thighs. Hooves pounded around him like drums.
I won’t let them keep me from finding Mamá. I raised fire on Mount Alairus, I’ll do it again.
The next time the blindfold lifted from his eyes, a great fire-lit theater surrounded him. Twenty-some legislators in official white togas sat on three sides of tiered steps. On top of the bowl-shaped ring, guards leaned against their spears, watching vigilantly. Something slapped against the high winds—the snarling white dragon of the New Jaypes Emblem. It ruled the night from atop the flagstaff.
Chapter Eight
“Councilors of Arcurea: The Prince has been captured!”
An elder man climbed onto the center plinth, pointing a halberd at Jaime. Unlike Jaypan spears, its curved blade was massive and single-edged. Kendao, they were called.
Although he was lean, his frame was shorter and smaller than most male warriors Jaime was used to. The edges of his black eyes were winged, unlike the full-shaped gray eyes of a Jaypan.
Kaipponese.
Jaime slowly turned around in full-circle.
Expressions of shock blazed against the other politicians’ faces. Some murmured it was impossible that the fabled Prince from the prophecy could’ve showed up outside their city. “It’s a blessed sign!” one man cried. But a younger one swore it was a curse. A curly haired politician wondered how Jaime got here. And still a gaggle of bearded elders wrongly assumed he had died after his escape.
Holy skies, how long was I in the forests for?
“Let us hand him over to the Archpriestess!” the Kaipponese man bellowed.
“I’ll not call that bloodstained witch to our city for anything,” a bald councilor muttered.
Several murmurs of assent.
“How do you know he is the Prince?” someone else shouted.
“That is simple. He wears the brand of the crippled—just as the royal reports described. And he came to us with the Temple Relic.” The Kaipponese man held the stone symbol up to the firelight.
Jaime jolted—the guards must have seized it from him while he struggled against the net.
“I would choose my son’s life—I would choose the wellbeing of the Lord Mayor and his family—over the life of that coward who calls himself our Prince. Would not you?”
The assembly remained in murmurs.
“Would not you?”
Coward?
When his mind flashed back to his last night on Mount Alairus, his fury broke through the clog in his throat.
“I’m not a coward!” he yelled at the Kaipponese. “You weren’t there when Hilaris burned! You don’t know what that was like. I tried to save him!”
A vein of lightning severed the sky behind Jaime.
The theater gasped. Some of them sharply backed away. Hands went up to their squinting eyes. Even when the mighty light receded, ethereal fire charged the air.
The black-eyed Kaipponese moved in to grab his wrist.
“No, Sojin—” the curly haired councilor cried. “Don’t touch him! Didn’t you see the lightning—”
Still, the Kaipponese man dragged him across stage, the kendao’s blade shrieking against the stone pit. Jaime dug his heels into the ground. It wasn’t until they were at the upper steps that he yanked himself free.
“This is why we will hand you over,” the foreign man hissed.
To the west, a sheet of limestone rock dropped off just beyond the city. Below it, thousands of balls of light glittered into the dark distance.
Fire.
Fire burned as far as Jaypes Kingdom spanned.
“A fortnight ago, these lights did not exist. Then, reports spread of a cripple boy who woke a banestorm that opened the sky itself. The King heard all about it. But so have the people—all of us felt that energy wave. The return of their Sage-Prince restored hope to thousands who have risen up to fight in your name.”
His head spun. “They’re fighting for me?”
“Look well, boy. Look at all of those good people fighting and dying because of you. They forget that you are the cause of the Royal Decree.”
Jaime blinked up at the dark maw of the skies. A war broke out while I was in those forests?
Disgust clouded the Kaipponese’s eyes. He turned back to face the stage.
“My councilors, let us not make the same error! After all, where has this Prince been for the last fourteen years as our sons were seized and killed? Where was he as Lairdos Ascaerii’s bondlords were massacred in the Storm of Flames? Where was he when all of Jaypes echoed with the tortured cries of our children? Where has he been as all corners of this Kingdom burned!”
Jaime’s eyes flashed.
It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know I was the Prince any more than you did.
“The moment we hand him to the King, it will be finished,” the black-eyed Kaipponese continued. “No more boys will be murdered, and the Kingdom of Air will have peace again!”
“And it will be the same tyrant that stole our sons and denied our friends burial rites that sit on the throne,” a female voice said.
The Kaipponese’s jaw tightened. The Jaypan woman who spoke had a voice like a kithara. She was the only woman seated at the wooden tables in front, and the only one he’d ever seen wear her tresses freely over her shoulders. Black charcoal emphasized her eyelids. White lead brightened her face. Her beauty made him swallow.
“Will all of you be able to live, to sleep, to look at your own sons and daughters knowing you betrayed a child to a fiend? And not just any child, but our own chosen Prince!”
A new wave of murmurs followed. The Kaipponese grit his teeth, but a firm voice cut him off as his mouth was opening.
“Enough!”
Someone crossed the stage, taking hold of a pennant with the city sigil of a silver swift. A strip of purple dye cascaded over his right shoulder—the same kind Lord Gaiyus wore on Mount Alairus. But he was hairless, the youngest of all the councilors present.
When he reached the plinth, he held up his free hand for peace. “Sojin.”
Though hot fury undulated out of the Kaipponese, he bowed his head.
“Councilors of Arcurea,” the young man said, planting the pennant’s stake into the ground. “The Lord Jaypes is our true god, not the Lord of Fire, and certainly not our King—”
“Aye!” the theater roared.
“I serve him, and him only. I follow the light of his Air, not evil. And never the spirit of fear. Nay, never fear! On the greatest plinth or bare beneath bathing waters, I belong to him—”
The angry cheers of his politicians grew louder.
“So I will do honor and glory unto the savior the Holy Lord has sent to us. For I believe truly, with my whole heart, the Prince is his chosen one. This was spoken by the airpriests of the High Temple.”
The young councilor’s piousness made Jaime’s insides roll. The former raised the sigil of the swift with one hand, and held out the other to him. He was a whole world away from where Jaime stood on the upper ring.
“My Prince, will you fight with us?”
“I can’t.” His breath c
ame out dry. “I don’t know how to raise currents. What happened on Mount Alairus with the fire current was a mistake. I can’t kill the King—I won’t last in a Duel.”
“You will find a way. Lord Jaypes will help you.”
Jaime shook his head in a frenzy. No! Lord Jaypes isn’t even real!
Instead, he whispered, “If I stay here, I’ll never find my mother. The Archpriestess has her. Hilaris already died because of me.”
“This is beyond your mother, or you, or any one of us. As long as the King lives, your mother will never be free. If you do find her and decide to stay in hiding, more Jaypans like her will die.”
“But . . . ”
“We cannot reverse this war. The only way through it is forward, into the storm.”
Jaime took a deep breath.
What if that councilor is right?
He knew it ever since he woke up in the river, but his fear and love for his mother kept him from accepting the plain truth: he had to kill his blood-father or the burnings would never end. No one—not that wretched Kaipponese man, not even the Archpriestess—deserved to endure what Jaime had with Hilaris.
“Okay.”
Adrenaline raced through his chest. The stormwinds seemed to rise with him. Several councilors glanced at the sky where lightning struck, wringing their wrists. The banestorm seemed to rumble with his next words.
“I swear to fight with you.”
Chapter Nine
That night, the councilors concealed him in the upper floor of the Stoa of Lord Jaypes.
Jaime shivered in his bed. Three layers of wool blankets weren’t enough. Every time the young Jaypan woman—the one who stood up for him in the theater—tried to light the hearth, he pleaded, “No!”
She came over to his bedside and felt his hands.
“You’re so cold,” she said. “At least allow me to light a candle by your pillow.”
“No,” he whispered. “No fire.”
After she left, and the world went dark, he saw Hilaris burning again.
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