Chapter Twenty-Seven Elician
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Elician
Before they left Altas, Marina had pulled Elician aside.
‘It’s a test,’ she told him. She had glanced over her shoulder, looking at the city they were abandoning for a country that hated them, and nodded once.
‘All of this, from start to finish, is a test constructed by our god, and we are all being tested. It will go faster in some cities, slower in others, because all that matters is finding the answer to the test. You’re going to find it, Elician, but for the sake of the people… try to be quick about it.’
Endura was a test. Healing the army and listening to Leferge’s and Partho’s accounting of events was a test. Cat, through it all, was a test. A test on his resolve, on his ability to finally, at last, see if he could open his heart and trust that including one more person in his life would be worth it.
And if, in the end, he would be willing to sacrifice that life despite the pain it would cause him.
He hoped, wanted, believed – however momentarily – that maybe they could have a life together.
And though Cat is adamant they still will, Elician has never been good about letting go of the people he loves.
It is what caused this plague to begin with.
He is, most probably, failing this god’s test.
As they approach the next town, he holds his breath.
He half expects it to be the same test as the one that came before.
A slaughtered people, with no chance of resurrection.
Punishment in the form of despair. One more horror on a long road that ends with a challenge before the gods that always results in death.
Believe in me, Cat whispers to him at night, when they curl against each other.
Their bodies intertwined, their hands clasped.
Believe in me, he whispers straight to Elician’s soul.
And he tries.
He tries.
They approach the small village of Ines, and Elician smells smoke. He hears movement. He senses life.
He is not the only one relieved. Even as he lets out a long breath of air, tension bleeding from his shoulders, he hears Partho doing the same.
Cat – Cat smiles. His lips part in that lovely lopsided grin; he turns to Elician, hopeful and sweet – wanting only to share his joy.
And Elician nods to him. Yes. Yes, the people here – at least a good portion of them – are still alive.
As with the army, this town’s physicians have risen to the cause and managed to hold the symptoms of the ill at bay.
As Cieli said before they left Altas: it isn’t the plague that directly causes death in the end but a lack of sustenance and assistance.
So long as that is mitigated…the ill survive.
Enfeebled, unable to move, talk or drink on their own – but alive.
The army draws close to the village’s edge.
‘I will not help you speak with them,’ Leferge says as Cat climbs from his horse. ‘Convince them of your merit on your own.’
‘Thank you,’ he replies, utterly sincere. Elician goes to join him, but Leferge clears her throat.
‘Do you truly think a Soleben king is going to endear himself to them?’ she asks.
‘I can’t heal them without him,’ Cat replies. ‘So, they will endear what they will.’ She shrugs one shoulder, and intercedes no more as Partho gathers a few men for a light escort.
‘Cat?’ Elician murmurs. His husband is looking straight ahead, directly towards the whitewashed buildings and the people that are milling about, the fences holding livestock and the banners flapping in the wind.
‘Thank you,’ he says again, so quietly that Elician almost misses it.
‘Thank you for being here, even though you’re scared.
’ He tries to smile. Fails. ‘I am too.’ Elician wraps one arm around Cat’s shoulders.
He kisses his hair, then steps away, ignoring the horrified look Leferge is giving him or how Partho is studiously looking in the opposite direction.
They make their final approach to Ines on foot.
Elician reaches out with his senses, trying to understand, to feel.
He knows immediately that the plague has reached Ines.
He can feel the irregularities, can sense the way that some are filled with such unnatural excess that it makes Elician’s heart burn.
Those that are on the street are only those who have so far been unaffected or those who have not yet reached the critical turning point that keeps the ill from even moving. They are lucky. This is still a test Death hopes some will survive long enough to pass.
They enter Ines.
A man who has been watching them approach holds up his hand as they draw near. He eyes them, and the army behind them. ‘There’s an illness here,’ he announces apologetically.
‘I know there is,’ Cat says gently. He steps forward, back straight, chin up. Other members of the public are milling about farther into the village, looking their way, curious and uncertain. ‘We are here to help; we know how to heal it.’
‘Our physicians have tried their best already,’ the man says, shaking his head.
‘This…this is different. My name is Stello Alest and—’
‘That’s a wicked lie,’ somebody shouts: another man, one who has been sitting on a barrel not far away. He throws himself from the barrel and marches towards them. ‘Stello Alest is dead!’ His yell draws attention. More faces are turning, eyes and ears shifting their way.
Cat raises his voice. ‘I am a Reaper.’ His chest expands and contracts in huge bursts as he forces himself to breathe.
‘You blasphemer!’ The same man lunges forward, but Partho steps between them, sheathed sword held up in warning. The Blue Guard step into line.
‘Stop,’ Cat snaps, an echo of the night before.
‘All of you stop. Partho, we are not going to attack them. Stop.’ He steps around Partho, then holds his gloved hands to his sides.
He repeats his plea. ‘My name is Stello Alest of Alelune. First son of Queen Alenée, may her change be a blessing.’ His voice projects loud enough to echo between buildings, and yet it does not sound like a shout.
He casts it into the wind, and he draws himself up as tall as he can be.
More faces are at the windows, more people are in the street.
‘This…this is King Elician of Soleb. He has come here to help me. We saw this plague in Altas, and we know how to fix it. If you will let us.’
Elician’s eyes flick from face to face. Some of them are ill, their faces splotchy, their postures crooked, their gaits wobbly.
Others cover their mouths and noses with cloth and hold their children and loved ones nervously.
But the longer they all stay standing still, the more the sick approach, their bodies bloated and swollen and black with blood.
A woman is coming towards them. She is mature in her bearing, her body wide and her steps carefully measured. She has bruises on her skin and red striations tearing along her limbs. She leans hard on a stick to keep her moving. The growing crowd parts for her.
She stands only an arm’s reach away from them, and Alest bows his head to her. ‘You say you’re a stello and yet you bow?’ she scoffs.
‘Are you not deserving of the respect, madame?’ he asks her when he rises. Her eyes crinkle at the corners. She coughs loudly. ‘They respect you,’ he goes on. ‘Should not I?’
‘You do not know me,’ she tells him.
‘I would like to,’ he says in turn.
The woman looks at him, truly looks at him.
She inspects him like one might a prized stallion.
She examines his face, his limbs, his features, the way he holds and composes himself, perhaps even the way he breathes deeply in an effort to remain calm and in control.
‘I saw you once,’ the woman says at long last. ‘On parade. With this one’ – she pokes her stick towards Partho, quickly lowering it back to the ground as her balance falters – ‘at the front of the line.’
Cat frowns, lips parting as he glances off to the right as if he could summon the memory by sheer force of will.
But then he huffs. ‘I held a flag,’ he murmurs, as if sharing a secret not often told.
‘I asked my mother to let me walk, she agreed, and I…I must have made that parade last so much longer, making them all walk at my pace.’
‘I’d never seen a more perfect stello,’ the woman tells him.
Someone in the crowd steps closer, starts to speak. ‘Madame Le—’
‘He is the stello,’ she cuts them off. ‘Just as that girl said.’ Cieli. Her rumours. Elician’s heart pounds. He waits. He hopes. ‘No Blue Guard would form for anyone less. Are you…really a Reaper?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ Cat agrees. ‘But this is why we can help you, if you will let us.’
‘All things must die,’ the woman reminds him. ‘Perhaps it is our time.’
‘But…’ Cat smiles, glances at Elician. He reaches out and takes Elician’s hand there for all to see. ‘All life is sacred too,’ he says. ‘And if the gods did not want us to be here, now, before you, then wouldn’t they have prevented us from coming?’
‘You come with our enemy,’ she says. Her tone is sharp, bitter.
‘Soleb is not our enemy. Not anymore,’ he replies.
Voices clatter into dissent. Coughs and gags mix in with shouts and yells.
Elician waits, forces himself to wait. He wants to talk, wants to argue, wants to bitterly make his plea.
But that is not his place, not his purpose.
He is meant to be here for Cat. He cannot do that if he is undermining the first opportunity Cat has to be his people’s king.
‘I married King Elician of Soleb to end this war,’ Cat says. ‘This pointless war that has led to so much death and bloodshed on both sides of a border no one agrees on. I’m going to challenge Gillage for the throne of Alelune, and when I win, Soleb and Alelune will be at peace. The war is over.’
‘We have fought that war for thousands of years!’ someone yells.
Another, closer, missing an arm and bloated from plague, croaks out, ‘Why should they be allowed to win it?’
‘They’re not winning. No side is winning,’ Cat says.
‘Instead, the people win. Your children, your grandchildren, none of them deserve to fight a war without end. They deserve to live their lives and hold their loved ones and follow their dreams and their pursuits without being sent to fight for land they may never get the chance to live on.’
The woman from before raises her hand, forestalling another volley of shouts and screams. ‘You’re a Reaper. What do you know of war?’
‘I know that to win, my brother stole a Giver’s power and sparked a plague that is killing his people.
’ Murmurs break out across the growing crowd.
‘I know he sent Reapers marching with his army to Soleb on the promise that they could live there in peace, if only they commit genocide.’ The voices get louder; people want to know more.
They ask about the plague, if it is true.
There are coughs and cries and wails, screams of fury.
‘I know,’ Cat continues unbothered, ‘that you hate and fear me because I am a Reaper, but the war has reaped more than I could ever manage in a lifetime. And you deserve better than death as a reward for service to your country.’
No stumbling. No hesitation. He speaks with his head up and his back straight and his hand locked firmly around Elician’s.
‘Please,’ he beseeches his people. They are not active soldiers sworn to obey orders who are all prepared to die, not zealots who marched to slaughter, but people.
Sons and daughters, children and their parents, the old and the young, the rich and the poor.
Veterans who managed to survive the bloodshed only to face an illness that could not be stopped.
‘Let me help you live long enough to enjoy that peace.’
Nervous eyes flick from face to face. ‘It’s taboo to be healed by a Giver or…any other way than our own ability,’ the woman tells him, even as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other.
‘Yes,’ Cat agrees. ‘But you deserve to live anyway.’
Slowly, the woman raises a trembling arm. ‘My name is Madame Myrte Leonde,’ she says. Cat glances at Elician and he nods.
He doesn’t need to touch her. He doesn’t need to touch any of them – neither of them does.
Elician feels the moment Cat starts reaching out, the moment he starts ending the processes that are working valiantly to end Madame Leonde’s life.
Elician has learned, and learned well, from his time amplifying Fen’s power.
And now, it is nothing to smooth out sharp edges, to adjust and to aid and to reinvigorate, to heal death in tandem with a child of Death who loves with his whole soul.
Leonde gasps. The black marks slip from her skin and the swelling decreases. She sways on her feet and Alest catches her with his gloved hands. He steadies her and murmurs soft words. ‘Careful. Easy…’
The crowd watches as their honoured elder is healed, and when she is well, a child is brought before them, and they start again.
Elician glances at Partho only once as they continue their weary work.
He, and all the Blue Guard brought with him, beam with pride.
And when Leferge approaches the village, when she allows the army to come and give what aid and support they can before relocating the main force outside, so as to not put a strain on Ines’ already strained resources, Elician almost catches her grin.