39. CHAPTER 39
Miya
The Territories
The True Follower's Villa, Caspador
Miya emerged from the basement of the cathedral, following the smell of food.
She’d spent hours searching for records of her mother in Hakym’s stories, reading about the treaty and how Mom faithfully returned home each month to help her people.
Nothing new, but it made her mother feel alive again, and it'd been a long time since Miya felt so close to her.
She walked along the fire pits at the town center, looking for Lance. He sat beside a steaming pot resting atop the fire, with Hakym and a blonde woman beside him.
“That tractor didn’t have to be fixed until you came back,” the woman said. “Why are you acting weird?”
“Fine.” Lance tossed a stick into the fire beneath the pot. “It's true. I avoided you all. Bale’s pissed. It’s better for me to keep my distance.”
Hakym looked between the two. “Might I—?”
“No,” Lance and the woman said at once.
The Takja huffed. “Bicker then.”
“Nothing to bicker about,” Lance said. “Amelia should stop worrying so much.”
“You need to grow up and stop picking fights with Bale,” she said. “Then there’ll be nothing to bicker about.”
She groaned and stood up with her hand pressed into the small of her back.
Dark blonde hair had broken free from a bun and fell down her neck.
The flames of the fire highlighted her swollen midsection as she turned to walk by Lance.
Miya approached, watching Amelia walk a few fires down to where Charlotte and Gabe played with other children.
“You’ve joined us,” Hakym said, sitting up. “I hope you’re hungry, my dear.”
“Starving.” Miya glanced down at Lance’s dirtied clothes covered in grease stains and to the black beneath his nails. “Been busy?”
“Had to fix things so they can break again when I get back.”
Amelia rejoined them, holding the hands of the children Miya had met earlier. Both kids craned their necks, reaching back for the group they'd been playing with. Miya eyed her pregnant belly and then nudged Lance’s leg. “You dog.”
Lance grimaced and shook his head. “Not mine.”
“Could be if you learned how to talk to women.”
He started to say something but closed his mouth when the kids squeezed between him and Hakym. Miya sat on the far side of them.
The group quieted. Hakym took a loaf of bread from a basket on the blanket and snapped it in half with a crack, holding the halves out to the children.
“Smells good.” Charlotte breathed in the aroma as she broke off some for her mom. Gabe passed a chunk to Lance and then to Miya, watching her after she took it from him.
“Do you like it?” Gabe asked. “We help make it every day.”
It did smell incredible. Miya bit through the crispy outside to the sweet, doughy center. Still warm. She nodded, not needing to fake her reaction.
Lance filled bowls of soup for everyone and brought one to Miya. Voice low, he said, “I’m not with Amelia.”
“I don’t care.”
“She’s my best friend. I’m not inter—”
Pushing him away with her elbow, she spoke with a mouthful of bread. “Whatever.”
Shoulders slumped, Lance sat down. Miya felt a little bad, but she didn't want to encourage him to stick around her.
Gabe leaned his elbow against Lance’s leg, licking his fingers. Knees brushing, the children wiggling and knocking into each other, the group didn’t seem to notice where one person ended and the other began.
Did they eat like this every night? Lance's place wouldn't look right empty.
“Everyone was excited to see a friend with Lance,” Amelia said. “After dinner, we'll have music and dancing.”
Miya studied her, searching for resentment beneath her kind smile, but she appeared sincere. “Thanks.”
Most mothers didn't want their children around marked women. Her look shifted to Amelia’s stomach, and she remembered Lance's accusing tone when he said Bale should be the one worried about Charlotte and Gabe.
Light emanated from his window in the cathedral. Miya wasn’t the best at guessing ages, but Amelia looked young for the two she had.
She put her food on the ground, feeling queasy. Why didn't she consider it before with a pig like that ruling over these villages? How many children did Bale father and abandon? She scanned the little ones eating with their families.
A bell rang from the cathedral, and people began to pass baskets from one fire pit to the next.
Charlotte hopped up with a yelp. “It’s coming!”
“Mind your manners,” Amelia said to Charlotte. “This is a serious time.”
“What is it?” Miya asked Lance.
“Just a sacred, very serious ritual.”
“Lance,” Amelia said. “I told the kids—”
“All right. I heard. I’m sorry.” He looked at Charlotte, his smile disappearing. “This is very, very serious, Charlotte. Don’t you dare smile.”
A grin split her expression. She was all giggles and squealing laughter.
“Thanks a lot,” Amelia chided. Lance bit down an ornery smirk.
They seemed like siblings. Lance's family owed money when they moved here from Antor, and it sounded like they'd been separated. He pieced together his own people here, didn't he? There was so much to protect in this village.
After everyone had their own basket, the bell rang again, and stillness fell over the group.
Hakym rose, all eyes turning to him. “I knew a young girl once.” His deep voice carried a soothing tone.
A teenager stood up from the fire pit next to him. “What's her story, Takja?”
“She lived in a world where everyone walked in lines.”
A boy around the same age spoke from across the gravel road. “Why did they walk in lines, Takja?”
“If they stepped out of line, they'd be punished,” Hakym said. “This girl wanted to leave the line. So she took the first step.”
A younger child rose. “Did they follow her, Takja?”
“They did, child. One at a time, until eventually, they were free, and their line was no more.”
“What happened then, Takja?” Gabe asked beside Lance.
Hakym tucked his hands inside his robe, meeting Miya’s eyes. “They all stepped into a new line.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Why do you think they did that, children?”
Everything was silent until the first girl rose once more. “Maybe she saw the whole world walking in lines and didn’t know she didn't have to.”
Hakym returned to the ground, leaving his story unfinished.
“Be careful,” Amelia whispered. “We don’t need trouble while we have a guest.”
“I learned my lesson about waiting and doing nothing,” Hakym said. “There’s no time to spare.”
Amelia shook her head and gathered her children close.
But Hakym stared at the fire, face tense. He looked at Lance. “Remember that, my boy.”
Lance nodded.
“There comes a time when we're no longer fighting to save our home, but to rebuild what we already lost. In the old days, when I was unwilling to sacrifice our comfort, I was asking our grandchildren to sacrifice their lives.” He bent. “The young always pay the price of our apathy.”
“Enough,” Amelia whispered. “I mean it. The kids can hear you.”
“Good.” Hakym held the mother's eyes. “May they follow the thread of justice better than we have.”
Around them, the people at the other fires dug into their baskets and their pots, the cracks of quietly brewing dissent showing. No wonder Bale relied on threats to keep Lance in line. Hakym had the power to turn even the children against him.
“I’ll remember,” Lance said to himself.
“You have to protect yourself too.” Miya cut a look to him. “Otherwise, you won't last.”
“She's right,” Hakym said. “Rest and wisdom are as important as courage.”
Charlotte passed a thin wafer with saucy diced apples oozing over the edges to each person, and then hopped to her mother, lifting it to the woman’s mouth. Giving her the kind of smile a daughter reserves for her parent alone. “Mahzi, Mama.”
“Mahzi.”
Lance faced Miya now, holding his own wafer. She almost said no until he slid closer, holding the gift between them. Against her better judgment, she opened her mouth, letting him slide the wafer onto her tongue. The sauce smeared, and he drew his thumb along her bottom lip, catching it.
In a quiet voice only for her to hear, he said, “Mahzi, my friend.”
“Mahzi,” Miya said.
Lance smiled, still close.
“What does it mean?” Miya asked, resisting the voice in her head warning her to sit back.
“Life is bitter and sweet, bitter and sweet at the same time.”
The tartness of the apples hung on her tongue, but the warmth and the sweetness washed over it. “That one word means all that?”
“I don’t know a word to capture it fully.”
Charlotte tapped her shoulder. Miya stared, forgetting that she still held a dessert too. The girl's dark eyes sparkled as she clasped her hands together, opening her mouth wide. Miya gave her the dessert, trying to calm her storming heart. When Charlotte ate it, she jumped up and down. “Yummy!”
“Charlotte,” her mother said.
She covered her mouth and then spoke while still chewing her food. “Mahzi.”
“Silly girl. Swallow first.”
The girl giggled, swallowed her food, and said it properly this time. Now she beamed. “It was so good! Do Mahzi with me again.” Without having the decency to offer Miya some warning, Charlotte jumped onto her lap, clutched her neck so tight it hurt, and squealed. “Do Mahzi with me every day!”
Miya patted her back, jerking toward Lance, hoping he would pull the child off her.
Charlotte caressed Miya’s hair. “Can I have your hair when I get big?”
“I don’t usually give people my hair,” Miya said.
Charlotte covered her mouth and laughed so hard that she fell onto the ground. A knot lodged in her throat as the girl met her eyes with all the innocence that must have been left in the world.
“You’re funny,” she said.
Miya swallowed down the knot, practically able to feel the captain reaching around her for the child. The sounds around her amplified, all the happy children eating their dessert and playing, unaware of the war creeping their way.
It would shatter their world, whether Ciondo drew them into fighting or she and Zayne stopped them first.
Before her, the two siblings bounced away from the fire for wherever their feet might take them, because for now, they were truly free. Amelia and Hakym went their separate ways, and Lance alone remained at the fire with her.
A breeze shifted the direction of the smoke their way. “Did you cut this wood?” Miya asked.
He nodded.
She looked at him, still able to taste the sweet, tart apples. When they’d stood on Krowe’s steps after the captain attacked her, she’d come so close to saying it. What would happen to him when this was over? Would he be a suspect even though he was innocent? “Lance…”
He reclined back against his hands. “Yes?”
Run.
She looked off to the woods on the outskirts of the village. Pink swirled with the clouds and dusted the bare trees in the reddish light of the setting sun. Miya didn’t have room for mistakes. “I hope you got enough done for your family.”
If only she could get the entire village to run, with Charlotte and Gabe at the forefront, sprinting for some place where the war would never find them.