Chapter 19 #2
As subtly as he could, Fieran nudged Pretty Face with an elbow. This wasn’t a discussion Pretty Face was going to win. He would be better off just quietly stuffing a bag of food into the truck set aside for Fieran and Dacha rather than arguing about it.
Perhaps Pretty Face realized that because he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And take these with you as well.” Dacha gathered up the notebooks and handed them to Pretty Face. “Along with any other records we can find. Place them directly in the hands of either King Averett or Princess Jalissa. They will know what to do with them.”
“Yes, sir.” Pretty Face took the notebooks, gripping them to his chest.
One of the other officers rolled up the map, tucking it under an arm.
“I would like all of us to leave in less than an hour.” Dacha’s tone held a finality, indicating that the meeting was over.
Within a few moments, everyone began to disperse. The young ogre woman moved off, speaking in low tones with her brother. Dacha mumbled something about searching for more records and maps, and some of the other officers shouted over to Pretty Face how they were going to start loading the trucks.
Fieran fell into step with Pretty Face, clapping him on the shoulder as they left the room. “I hate sending you off like this. Again. Make it to the Escarlish border this time, okay?”
“You got it.” Pretty Face grinned, though it faded only a moment later. “I only made it about an hour down the road last time. Ran straight into one of the patrols coming to investigate the crash. The next thing I knew, I was shipped here.”
Fieran had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment as that sank in.
All that time when he and the others were hoping and waiting for Pretty Face to return, he’d already been caught.
He’d already been here, suffering these horrible conditions.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner.
I only found out about this place about a week and a half ago. ”
“I know. I suspected the Alliance didn’t know about it.
Or knew about it and didn’t dare bomb it.
” As they stepped outside, Pretty Face gave a harsh laugh, turning his face toward the sky.
“We kept hoping you’d bomb it. Every day we’d search the skies, hoping we’d see an Alliance squadron overhead. ”
Fieran swallowed at the tightness in his throat, hearing what Pretty Face wasn’t telling him. A bombing like that would have killed many of the prisoners, and yet those very prisoners hoped for such a death if it meant this facility would be shut down and their suffering would be at an end.
Instead of probing that further, Fieran waved a hand at the factory building, the smokestacks no longer belching smoke. “What did they have you making?”
“The power cells to hold the magic they stole. We tried to sabotage them as best we could, although the Mongavarians would retaliate by beating or shooting some of us if they caught us doing it.” Pretty Face’s jaw worked, his eyes getting that hollow, haunted look again.
“We were trying to save as many ogres as we could. The Mongavarian magicians could wield the deflecting magic once it was ripped from an ogre so one ogre’s magic could be used many times before exhausted.
But the magic that interacts with the heart of magic could only be used in one machine. One ogre had to die for every machine.”
Fieran swallowed, thinking of all the machines that had taken down the Wall. An ogre had died to create each of those machines.
Pretty Face had seen things while held captive. Things Fieran couldn’t fully comprehend since he hadn’t experienced anything like that.
His dacha likely understood far more than he did. Dacha had, after all, been captured twice by the trolls. Tortured twice by them as well.
Pretty Face’s voice roughened still further. “After the Wall came down, we knew we had to do whatever it took to prevent more of those machines from reaching the front lines, even if that meant dying ourselves.”
“Thank you. You likely saved Alliance lives, not to mention the lives of the ogres here.” Fieran held Pretty Face’s gaze as best he could.
Pretty Face nodded, though he looked away to stare at Ludin. “I hope so.”
There was nothing else Fieran could say to that. Pretty Face saw all the lives he hadn’t been able to save rather than the ones he had.
Time to lighten the conversation. Fieran elbowed Pretty Face lightly as they set out again. “The squadron had one thing right in all our guesses on what you were up to. Was I imagining something between you and a certain ogre lady?”
The look in Pretty Face’s eyes warmed, even though he shook his head.
“It’s hard to explain, if you weren’t here.
We were just trying to survive. It bonds people.
But we both know it isn’t something that’s going to last. Once this is over, I’ll return to the squadron, and Inirth will return to her homeland. ”
Fieran clapped Pretty Face on the back again, not sure what to say to that.
Even if this wasn’t something that would last, he found himself strangely proud of Pretty Face.
He’d come a long way from the flighty lord’s son who flirted with anything in a skirt to a leader here who had fallen for a young woman who didn’t fit the conventional Escarlish standards of beauty.
Pretty Face shook himself and started walking again. “Anyway, your turn. What’s been happening with the squadron? And Merrik? Have you heard from him?”
“He’s getting around well on his prosthetic leg and already back with the squadron.
He’s leading the squadron at the moment.
” Fieran had to look away, his throat going a little tight at the thought of Merrik flying into battle without him.
“Rothilion is off on a mission so secret even I don’t know the details of it. ”
Fieran gave Pretty Face a few more random tidbits on the squadron, and each one seemed to relax Pretty Face more. As if just hearing about them was bringing him back to who he had been rather than who he’d become to survive this place.
Several of the Alliance officers hurried toward them, one of them calling out for “Jim.”
Fieran shook his head. “Still getting used to that.”
Pretty Face grinned. “I’d better see to my duties. It’s going to take a lot to get all of us out of here in less than an hour.”
Fieran slapped his back. “I knew you’d become quite the leader if given the chance. You did well here.”
Pretty Face swallowed and nodded before he turned away, heading toward the others.
Since Fieran had slept the entire hour he’d been given to rest, he’d better find the bathhouse and take a quick shower. This would likely be his last chance for one for the next week. Then he would track down his dacha and see what he wanted him to do before their departure.
A line of ogres waited outside the larger bathhouse for the enlisted men, so Fieran stepped back inside the long quarters for the officers, winding through it until he found the bathhouse attached to the end of the building.
He pushed the door open, then froze.
Dacha stood before one of the sinks, facing the mirror. He gripped a knife in one hand, strands of his silver-blond hair in the other.
Fieran eased forward a step, his tone hesitant. He almost felt like he should take the knife from his dacha’s hands before he did something drastic. “Dacha? What are you doing?”
Dacha’s shoulders rose and fell in a deep, bracing breath, but his gaze never wavered from his own reflection in the mirror.
“You cannot use your magic. Thus we will need to avoid attention and blend in as we travel across Mongavaria. I cannot risk that my elven hair will give us away and force you to use your magic to help defend us.”
With that, Dacha sliced the knife through his hair. No hesitation. Not a blink or a flinch.
Fieran lunged forward a step, an inarticulate, horrified noise rising in his throat. But he halted with his hands stretched into the air between him and Dacha, rooted in place.
Dacha dropped the shorn ends of his hair into the sink, grabbed another section of hair, and just as ruthlessly sliced it off.
Fieran lowered his hands to his sides, blinking rapidly at the sight of his dacha cutting off his elven hair, the symbol of his warrior honor, in order to keep Fieran safe.
He’d thought he’d understood the depth of his dacha’s love when he’d seen his dacha striding through the fog, having taken on an army for Fieran.
But this…this was the depth of his dacha’s love for him. He’d give up this very integral part of himself for Fieran.
Fieran couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but blink at the wetness gathering at the corners of his eyes.
Once the hair had been shortened, Dacha set the knife down and picked up a small set of shears, the kind used for sewing, and trimmed the ends. “How does it look in the back?”
Fieran swallowed and cleared his throat. “There is…the middle needs a trim.”
He probably should offer to help with the final trim, since it would be easier for him than for his dacha to do on himself.
But Fieran couldn’t bring himself to offer to cut his dacha’s hair.
It felt too wrong, too sacrilegious, despite the fact that Fieran had no problem keeping his own hair short.
Finally, Dacha dropped the last of the trimmed ends in the sink, called on his magic, and incinerated his shorn hair, as if he wasn’t going to leave it there for anyone to desecrate. He turned around and faced Fieran, the look in his eyes almost too steady for what he’d just done.
His dacha…looked like him. Or, rather, Fieran looked like his dacha.
With their hair cut short in nearly the same style, the similar shape to their jaws, their identical pointed ears, the set of their eyes, grew all the more pronounced.
They looked like they could be brothers, given how young his dacha appeared.