Chapter 14 Cero
Cero
All in all, the beating could have been worse. When Cero came to, he had a wretched headache and his entire body felt raw and bruised. He heard a voice echo in his head with words that rang with familiarity. Who are you, Cero bet-Dafra?
The words faded as he took in his good fortune: he was breathing, he’d only been passed out for a half hour or so, and he could walk. Noa and Olnas were back in the room. Both alive, thank the Spires, though their faces were creased with worry as they observed him.
But perhaps most importantly, his magic crackled in his blood again, hungry to be free.
“Get up.” A thick-necked, overly muscled man nudged Cero with his boot. He was mediocre-looking at best, but his sneer put him firmly in the ugly camp. “Karinna, you beat him up, so you’re in charge of him. Blindfold him and get him moving.”
“I did not beat him,” Karinna hissed from behind Cero, pale eyes flashing with wrath. “That’s rubbish and you know it, Khunnor!”
“You attacked him, and everyone in this room who matters saw it.” Khunnor shoved a blindfold at her, grinning. “Musa won’t be pleased. I imagine this will be your last job in the Resistance, sand-rat. Might as well do it properly.”
Karinna’s rage radiated off her, and Cero could have told her that he knew exactly who had laid hands on him, and planned to carry out his own revenge.
However, she hadn’t been very polite when they first met. So instead, he let her stew. He could have freed himself and the clerics. Flattened the fighters and the building with his wind.
But his curiosity about the rebels who had been such a thorn in Aiz’s side compelled him to stay. Before he got himself, Noa, and Olnas out, he wanted to know whom he had been sending information to.
They left the safe house for the night-drenched streets of Antium. As his captors prodded him along, Cero listened, learning that Karinna was Sufiyan Veturius’s sister, which was why she looked so familiar. That also explained how she knew of Cero—and why she hated him so much.
Must be irritating to have to save the life of someone your brother shot full of arrows.
Though, her history didn’t explain why the other Resistance fighters disliked her.
Their disdain manifested constantly: their mockery in the safe house; their silence when she addressed them; their suspicion as they double-checked the blindfolds and bonds.
And most obviously, their glee that she would be blamed for Cero’s injuries.
The rebels did not trust Karinna Veturia. Not because she was untrustworthy. But because they found her insufferable.
Over the next two days, the fighters marched Cero, Noa, and Olnas to the lands north of Antium.
The blindfold was tied such that Cero could only see the terrain beneath his feet.
But he knew the winds well enough to know they were headed to the mountains, and their path quickly transformed from cobbled streets to winding switchbacks.
The nights were cool and clear, and if he hadn’t been bound like a criminal and aching from the beating, Cero might have enjoyed the walk.
When they finally stopped on the second night, the air smelled of pine and snowbrush, and Cero estimated that they were a few thousand feet above where they’d started.
Soon enough, his steps began to echo. The smell of stone and damp permeated the air and voices bounced around him. They were in a cave.
“All right, Sisters?” Cero whispered, twisting the wind to carry his voice to them.
“Olnas fell,” Noa whispered, worry coloring her words. “A few miles back. She says her ankle is bleeding quite badly.”
“We need a healer, please.” Cero spoke up. “For my friend here.”
“Shut it, sky-dog,” Khunnor said, and shoved him.
Captivity bored Cero, and bullies angered him. He conjured up the wind, neatly removing his blindfold, as well as the clerics’, and tearing them free of their bonds, too.
As he suspected, they were in a mountain cavern lined with torches. The light flickered off the scims and bows pointed at Cero, Noa, and Olnas. One fighter loosed an arrow, aimed straight for Cero’s heart, but Cero used a tendril of wind to flick it to the ground.
“I said we need a healer.” Cero looked around until he found Karinna—standing apart from the other fighters, two scims drawn, eyes narrowed in assessment. “For my friend,” he went on. “Now.”
“Karinna, get that blindfold back on him.” Khunnor whirled on the girl. “Did you even tie him up properly?”
“He’s using magic, Khunnor,” Karinna shot back. “Which you’d have realized if you used that minuscule bean you call a brain.”
“You’re a useless infant, sand-rat. I don’t care who your father—”
Karinna lifted her scims. “Say one more word about my father—”
“Your father is a filthy, Scholar-loving—”
Karinna roared, charging at Khunnor. Her teeth were bared, her hair like a bird’s nest. Overall, the effect was terrifying. Three fighters grabbed her, struggling to hold her back.
“Let go of me—”
Khunnor sneered, crossing his arms. “You’re a rabid dog, like the rest of your stinking Gens—”
“Enough.”
A smooth voice cut through the melee, and everyone went silent. The fighters holding Karinna released her, and she shook herself off, small hands fisted.
A tall, dark-skinned man sauntered forward. His black hair was pulled into a short braid, catching the light as he tilted his head, observing Khunnor. The latter spat defiantly.
The man sighed. “Clean that up, Khunnor,” he said, “or I’ll put Nevennes tiger beetles in your undergarments. Their pincers are quite unpleasant.”
“Not that they’d find much to pinch off,” Karinna muttered. Cero exchanged a glance with Noa, who was desperately trying not to laugh.
As Khunnor skulked off, the lean man turned his attention to the new arrivals.
“Noa and Olnas.” He gave a bow to each. “A pleasure to finally meet you.” He took in Olnas’s limp and Cero’s bruises and his smile faded. “I believe I said unharmed.”
At his glare, the soldiers surrounding the Kegari wilted.
“It—it was her, sir.” One of the rebels, Bhadboo, pointed at Karinna. But without Khunnor nearby, she was decidedly less sure of herself. “She—she lost her temper and—”
Musa looked between Bhadboo and her co-conspirators with incredulity.
“Do you really dislike a fellow rebel so much that you’d sabotage her?
” He glanced over at Karinna. “She’s seventeen, for skies’ sake.
And we don’t have time for such antics. You lot are on latrine duty for the rest of the month. Get out of my sight.”
When they’d gone, the man finally turned his full attention to Cero. “Forgive me, Cero bet-Dafra,” he said. “This is not how I wished for you to meet those you have helped for so many months. I’m Musa, former ambassador and now—”
“Leader of the Resistance,” Cero said.
“One of many leaders,” Musa offered. “But bossy enough to run this region, yes. Clerics, Sana will tend to your wounds and get you some food.” He nodded to a gray-haired woman who approached with a medical bag. “I’d like to speak to Cero alone.”
“How do we know you aren’t going to throw him off the nearest cliff?” Olnas said.
“Because I’ll shred everyone here if they try,” Cero said.
Karinna stepped past Musa, hands on her daggers. “You’ll die first, sky-dog—”
“Pack a bag, Kari.” Musa gently turned her around, and at her alarm, he gave her a meaningful look. “Not because I’m kicking you out.”
The girl cast Cero one last dark glance before sloping off. Musa gestured for Cero to follow him, stopping near a makeshift kitchen to grab each of them a kebab roll.
Cero glanced at it with suspicion and Musa laughed, which irritated Cero. But he stilled his features. Perhaps the laughter wasn’t meant in mockery.
“If I wanted you dead, I would have left you to the Tel Ilessi,” Musa said, and there was no derision in his tone.
“You shouldn’t call her that,” Cero said. “Tel Ilessi. It’s theological tripe, made to give suffering people hope. She is Aiz.”
“Whatever you want to call her, Cero, she wants you dead. And she’ll keep trying to kill you. Since I wished to meet you, I thought it was time to extract you. Karinna was supposed to bring you in unharmed.”
“She’s not very popular,” Cero noted.
“No.” Musa sighed and turned down a long hallway, purposefully left dark so as not to alert anyone flying overhead of the rebels’ presence.
Dim moonlight filtered in from an opening ahead.
“She doesn’t play well with others. I really must find her something else to do.
” Musa’s mouth quirked in amusement. “Interesting that you noticed her unpopularity.”
Cero considered his response. Musa’s affect was casual. Almost friendly. But this man was a diplomat and power broker, a warrior, and now a rebel leader. His observations were not made lightly.
He was also, Cero remembered, friendly with Gens Veturia. He would be protective of any member of that clan. If Cero showed too much interest in Karinna, Musa might find it untoward.
“I didn’t expect to see such division in a rebel movement,” Cero said. “Especially not one united over a shared enemy.”
“Well, you know how humans are. The second our enemy isn’t stabbing us in the gut, we start stabbing each other.” Musa considered Cero. “Your own people are stratified, yes? As a highborn Hawk, Ghaz is forever trying to scheme around the Tel Ilessi. Likely because he loathes bowing to a Snipe.”
Cero hadn’t shared that information. “Do you have other Kegari allies?”
“No,” Musa said. “Your people have been damnably difficult to penetrate. But”—he shrugged—“I have my ways.” They reached the end of the hallway, and Musa led Cero out of the cave to a small outcropping of rock that offered a view of the Nevennes. It wasn’t yet midnight, and the galaxy blazed above.
“You’re taking a risk, letting me see where I am,” Cero said. He glanced down at the sheer rock below the outcropping. “You do realize you’re standing beside a windsmither at the edge of a cliff?”