Phoenix’s Fire (The Ruins Of Men #2)

Chapter 35

Thirty-Five

Ayla

T he day after the cookout, I got to attend my first training session. I'd expected to work maneuvers like the hunters did, or maybe need to memorize orders. Instead, I was told to take my bow and shoot at a target until my arms felt like they were ready to fall off.

Then I showed up the next day only to be told to do it again. When I complained to Zasen that I could do this in the backyard, he pointed out how I could also do it here. And while he was right, there was one big problem with it.

"You said I'd be learning how to work with the militia," I reminded him.

"And you are," he assured me. "You also won't be on a team with the main militia this time, and Drozel thinks you need to focus on your aim."

"Zasen!" I whined.

Which made him wave over Drozel. "It seems she needs a lesson. I think you should give this one."

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Drozel had said as he headed over. "Take over with the teams?"

"Gladly," Zasen said as he backed away.

Which left me alone with this man I barely knew. Oddly, Drozel was the first Dragon I'd ever seen. He'd been the one to stand up in the grass when my hands had been chained to that tree. He and his partner - boyfriend? - Omden had been among the group that had guided me back to Lorsa before I'd been able to understand what was really going on.

I couldn't really call the man a friend, but he also wasn't a stranger. Yet when he started giving me directions on how to shoot my bow to bury the arrow deeper in the target, I began to think he might be my enemy. Over and over, he made me loose arrows, pressing me to be faster, aim better, and more - all at the same time.

At least yesterday, Zasen had given me breaks. When I asked Drozel if I could rest my arms, he said no. He told me there wouldn't be breaks to relax in the middle of a battle. This, he said, was the most important thing for me to learn, but there was still one thing I couldn't understand.

"Why can't we just make more bullets so I can use the guns?" I demanded when Drozel ordered me to shoot the target again. "My arms don't get tired when I'm shooting those."

"And we are not Moles!" Drozel snapped. "Again, Ayla."

So I pulled the bow and sighted down the arrow, feeling my arms trembling. Exhaling slowly, the way Kanik had shown me, I loosed. The arrow whistled through the air, slamming into the ring right beside the center of the target.

"Give her a break," Zasen yelled, making his way over.

"She's not ready!" Drozel shot back.

"She's ready," Zasen promised. "She also has language lessons she can't miss, and I don't want her arms aching when we need them."

Drozel tossed up his tan arms, then flicked a tail that really did look much too familiar. The pattern wasn't exactly the same as the one hanging in the dining hall, but they said regrown tails weren't quite identical.

"You have turned down men with more weapon skills than she has," Drozel told Zasen. "You talk people out of the militia with more strength. Every time someone tries to join us, you give them ten reasons why it would be a bad idea. Well, I've got more than that for her. Ayla is not ready, and she should stay here!"

"But -" I tried.

He cut me off. "I owe you my life, so I'm not going to throw away yours."

"I'm the only one who understands them!" I insisted.

"She's right," Zasen said. Then he looked at me. "So is he. You're not strong enough yet, Ayla."

"Which is why we need someone to make bullets," I told him.

Drozel gave Zasen a long look. "You didn't tell her, did you." It wasn't a question.

"I'm looking at other options," Zasen said.

Which made Drozel grumble in the back of his throat. "Ayla, we can't make them. Our machinists took apart the bullets and there's a powder inside. It burns. They know how it works, and we have a general idea of what's in it, but no one can find the proper mixture."

"What?" I asked, looking at Zasen to be sure that was true. "But it's gunpowder."

"And we don't have guns anymore," he reminded me.

"But you have ancient books!" I insisted.

"Some. Many were destroyed. We know there was once nuclear power, but that has been lost. We know how to make wire, but not how to keep electricity from setting fires or how to make enough of it to be useful for anything. There are a lot of things we know of , but the details were lost and now they are dangerous."

"And we don't need them," Drozel told me. "A bow kills a man just as dead as a bullet, Ayla. "

"But bullets shoot faster," I told him. "They go further. They punch through things to hit the target."

"Which are all good reasons not to make them again," Drozel said gently. "Sometimes, Ayla, easier is not the same as better."

"And you have a lesson with Kanik," Zasen told me, pointing at the massive building beside us. "Go. I'll unstring your bow."

"Thank you," I breathed before jogging towards the library.

Yesterday had been my first time in here, but when I stepped inside today, it wasn't any less impressive. The building was many stories tall - maybe four - with an opening in the middle that let me see rows upon rows of books.

I kept going until I was in the middle of it, then paused to look up and take a deep breath. Books had a smell that was hard to describe. It reminded me a bit of that time it had rained, and I liked it. The smell of the paper, the leather bindings, and everything else made me feel peaceful in a way I couldn't describe.

"Ayla?"

The sound of my name made my head snap down and then around. Walking toward me was Saveah. There was a smile on her face that made me think she knew what I'd been doing.

"Mom used to do that too," she said. "She'd come in here and look all the way up."

"Really?"

Saveah nodded. "Yep. And we came here once a week to pick out new stories. Every night, she'd read a chapter to me so I'd fall asleep. I'd try to stay awake to get more, but it never seemed to work."

"Her voice was too soothing," I agreed. "And she didn't read stories to me, but she made them up. They were always about a world where the sun shined and people were kind. I thought it sounded like Heaven."

"Because it was for the two of you."

Together, we headed into the study room Kanik had claimed for us. There, he was already hard at work with Lessa, Brielle, and Meri. Pointing at one woman, he made her say a word, then he'd point at the next, and she'd have to use the other language for it.

"Good!" Kanik said in English. "That's exactly right, Meri."

She grinned. "And Ayla os har," she tried in Vestrian.

"Is here," I corrected.

Meri huffed and flung up her hands. "Is. Here."

"Yes!" Kanik praised. "Lessa, try that in English?"

The tan Dragon groaned. "Ayla iss heeere."

"Use a little less emphasis," Kanik told her, switching to Vestrian. "All you have to do is speak the words, not drag them out."

So Lessa nodded and tried again. "Ayla is here?"

"Yes!" I gasped in Vestrian, hurrying over to claim my chair. "I mean, you have an accent, but everyone here does."

"I do?" Kanik asked .

I nodded and changed to English. "Yes, your accent makes the words bounce. Meri and I like it."

So Kanik turned his attention on Saveah. "Your turn," he said in English. "Pick a word, then tell me in both languages."

Her eyes jumped over to me, then back to Kanik. "Phoenix. Phoenix?"

"Cheating!" Brielle said. "Myths are the same in both languages."

"Because," Kanik told all of us using slow and enunciated English, "myths aren't in either language. Long ago, the world had many languages. Those languages made words for things that didn't exist outside their minds - "

"Imaginations," I offered, giving him a better word.

Kanik nodded. "That's the word I was looking for. But because the thing only existed in stories from that one culture, it was the only way to describe it. Phoenix, Wyvern, and even Dregin."

"Dragon," I corrected.

"Ha!" Lessa barked out. "See, some change!"

But Meri's head whipped over to her. "That was right."

Lessa's eyes got big. "What?" Then she switched to Vestrian. "What did I do?"

"You spoke English," Kanik told her. "And well."

Saveah groaned. "How?"

So Lessa leaned over the table towards my sister. "Okay, so what I've been trying to do is imagine how I'd talk with pebbles in my mouth. If I just mush up Vestrian a bit, then pretend I have a full mouth, they say it sounds better."

Meri's brow was creased as she tried to follow that exchange in Vestrian. "Are pebbles rocks?" she asked me in English.

I nodded. "Small ones. So how much of that did you get?"

Meri shrugged. "I think she said she put rocks in her mouth to speak English?"

"Pretends to," I explained. "And when I was learning Vestrian, I kinda pretended like I didn't open my mouth all the way. The guys said I was getting closer."

"Like how?" Meri asked.

So clenching my jaw, I said, "Like this. And if you make your tongue flat and hard, it sounds closer. Then swap a few letters..." I rocked my head, showing I was making a change, then switched to Vestrian with the same clenched style. "It comes out where they can understand."

Saveah stared at me with her mouth hanging open. "Oh-kay," she tried, overly mouthing her words. "So. This. Is. Better?"

"I understand that!" Meri gasped.

Kanik was grinning. "And look at that," he said in English. "All I needed was to put you ladies in a room and now we're making progress."

So Meri turned to Lessa. "Does this mean yi unner-stand me now?"

"Whoa," Brielle breathed from Meri's other side. "That's not bad."

"I do understand you," Lessa admitted. Then she shook her head quickly and tried that again in English. "I do unda-stond you."

Which made Meri giggle. "I got that!" she squealed .

"Shh..." Saveah told us. "This is a library. We can't make too much noise." Meri just shook her head, so Saveah tried again in English, but it was a bit of a mess.

"Why no noise in a library?" Meri struggled to ask in Vestrian.

"Because people are reading," Lessa said in English.

Which made all of us giggle again. They were now using each other's languages - well, if these were actually separate languages, and not just variations. I wasn't sure which was the right way to say it, but that didn't matter. The important thing was all of us were able to say words and be not only understood, but also to understand the things going on around us.

"But if they talk too fast," Meri said, looking at Kanik, "I can't keep up."

"I had to think about it," I assured her. "In my head, I'd change the Vs to Ws, and on and on. After a few days of using it all the time, it started to feel more like an accent than a new language, and then I could understand other people."

"And," Brielle told Meri in English, "Jeera and I will gladly speak in Vestrian around you so you can learn how to listen, okay?"

"Me too!" Lessa offered.

Saveah just tossed her head back and groaned. "Everyone just blew past me, didn't they?" she asked in Vestrian.

"Yes!" Meri said, sounding a little too excited about that. Then she realized what she'd answered to. "Oh, I mean..."

"Yes," I told Saveah. "But it's okay. I can speak English for you the way Brielle is going to for Meri."

"I just want Tamin and Taris to learn it," Saveah admitted.

"But you can learn too," I assured her. "Then, when we get Callah out, you can help us teach her."

"And she won't feel as lost," Meri said in Vestrian, but slowly, "because everyone is saying things that she doesn't understand."

"Because we'll all know how to speak English," I clarified.

"One more way to stop them," Kanik said, glancing over at me. "If we understand them, but they don't understand us? It'll save lives."

"I hope so," I agreed. "Dragon lives."