Rhazek
Kessa’s fingers tighten around mine. Warm, solid, and full of choice.
Then the sky answers.
For one breath, every person on the ridge stops moving. The wounded forget to groan. The runners stop calling routes. Even the ground seems to hold still beneath us.
The sound comes again.
Thin. High. Far above. Pain flashes beneath the command anchor at my throat, but my body does nothing.
No command catches my arms. No need to reach for Kessa takes hold of my legs. The pain is only pain, a burned pathway remembering what used to travel through it.
Kessa turns on me so fast her braid strikes her shoulder.
“Command?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I test the answer before I give her more. My hands are mine. My breath is mine. Her name is only her name. “The anchor remembers. It does not control.”
Some of the terror leaves her face.
Rosalind is looking upward, one hand shielding her eyes from the red glare. Visidion stands beside her with his wings spread, his attention fixed on a sky that shows us nothing.
“That did not come from the ridge,” Renn says.
“No,” Rosalind answers.
Kessa looks at her. “Was it a reply?”
“I do not know.”
Kessa closes her eyes. “I hate that answer.”
“So do I,” Rosalind says.
The ground rolls beneath us and everyone remembers the zemlja at once.
Syin points toward the City. “Move. We can wonder under stone.”
That is the first sensible order anyone gives.
Penr sends runners ahead before Syin finishes speaking. Kessa watches all of it while Renn tries to wrap her arm.
“Hold still,” he says.
“I am holding still.”
“You are walking.”
“Slowly.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is if you’re talented.”
Renn looks at me as if I have some authority over this problem. I do not make that mistake.
“She will not listen,” I say.
Kessa points at me with her uninjured hand. “Good answer.”
Renn mutters something in Zmaj and keeps tying the bandage while she walks. I take one step after them and my left leg nearly fails.
Syin catches my upper arm before I hit the sand. I look at his hand. He looks at my face.
“If you say you can walk, I will let go and watch you prove yourself a liar,” Syin says.
“I can walk.”
Syin releases me. My knee folds. He catches me again. Kessa looks back. I decide silence is useful.
“Excellent,” she says. “We’re all learning.”
Syin puts my arm across his shoulders. I dislike the position. I dislike needing it more.
“You saved the City,” he says quietly.
“No.”
His tail cuts once through the sand. “Do not become modest now. It will confuse everyone.”
“I broke a machine. The City saved itself.”
Syin looks toward the mixed line moving west. “Both can be true.”
I have no answer for that, so I remain silent. We start toward home.
Home.
The word enters my thoughts without permission, but I do not drive it out.
Kessa walks several paces ahead with Renn, trying to do three jobs while bleeding through the first layer of his bandage.
She points out soft ground. Sends two runners around a fresh crack.
Stops Penr from sending the water carriers across a slope that has started to slump toward the buried chamber.
She does not look back at me every five breaths. She looks back every seven. I count because I am a fool. At the first rock shelf she stops completely.
Everyone continues around us until Syin and I reach her.
“You,” she says to Syin, “go check the west descent. Penr says the lower route cracked.”
Syin studies her, then me.
“I can hear you thinking,” Kessa says.
“That seems unlikely.”
“It’s very loud.”
He frowns, his tail twitching and wings rustling but finally he leaves.
I stand without his support because Kessa is watching and because pain is not the same as inability. The distinction matters, though perhaps less than I would prefer. She steps close enough to see the burn beneath my throat.
“You waited for me to take your hand back there.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I did not know whether you wanted me to touch you.”
Her expression changes. Not softer. Something I cannot name.
“Good.”
I look at her.
“Do you know why I’m not angry about that?”
“Because I did not decide for you.”
“Exactly.” She keeps walking for several steps before she speaks again. “You left the City alone because you decided making yourself bait was the safest choice.”
I say nothing.
“You left me a mark telling me not to follow because you decided I should stay behind.”
“And when they caught you, you let them take you alive because you decided getting answers was worth whatever they might do to you.”
I say nothing because she is right.
“Yes.”
“You keep making choices for both of us and calling it protection.”
There is no defense that does not prove her point.
“I know.”
“No.” She looks at me. “You’re starting to know.”
I accept the correction.
She looks at my damaged wing, the blood on my chest, the burned line beneath my throat. Then she looks back at my face.
“I’m still angry.”
“You should be.”
“That answer is annoying.”
“I can give you a worse one.”
“Don’t.” I look away before she can catch my amusement. She narrows her eyes. “And don’t do that thing where you back away because you think being respectful means disappearing.”
“I am trying to learn the difference.”
“Good. Ask.”
I look at her bandaged arm.
“May I help you walk?”
She considers me with exaggerated seriousness.
“No.” I nod. Then her good hand catches mine again. “But you can walk with me.”
I close my fingers around hers. Nothing wakes beneath my throat. Nothing answers from the sand. No machine measures the contact.
We move together. That is all. It is enough.
The return to the City takes longer than it should.
Aftershocks from the zemlja’s passage have broken two slopes and opened a crack across the old cistern path.
Kessa reroutes us around both without slowing the main group more than a few breaths.
When someone tries to carry her, she threatens violence.
When someone suggests carrying me, I consider violence and decide I do not have the energy to make it convincing.
By the time the outer ruins rise ahead, the second sun has dropped low enough to stain every wall dark red.
The City gate is open and guards wait inside it. I know several of their faces. They know mine.
The last time I passed through this gate I was under watch. Later I escaped their custody and led an enemy away from their walls. Now I return covered in Krixian burns with one wing dragging and Kessa’s hand in mine.
The guards notice all of it. I watch, waiting for their response. Their weapons do not rise.
One of them looks to Syin, who nods.
“Open the inner route,” Syin says.
The guard hesitates. “For everyone?”
Syin’s gaze goes flat. “Everyone.”
Kessa makes a small sound that might be a laugh as the guard steps aside.
I cross the threshold. No cage waits on the other side.
People fill the street beyond. Water carriers. Children being moved toward sleeping chambers. Humans with ash on their faces. Wary Zmaj. A woman I do not know shouting at a male twice her size because he tried to take two bandages when he only needs one.
Kessa’s steps shorten. I feel the change through her hand before I see it.
“May I?” I ask.
She gives me a tired glare. “You are barely upright.”
“That was not my question.”
For a moment she looks surprised. Then she moves closer and puts her good arm around my waist.
“Fine. Mutual bad decisions.”
“Agreed.”
We make it six more steps before Merra finds us. She stops in the middle of the street, glaring at the two of us.
Her gaze goes to Kessa’s arm first, then my wing, then the burn at my throat, then Syin’s face as if all of this is somehow his personal failure.
“No,” she says.
Kessa blinks. “No? No, what?”
“All of it.” Merra points at Renn. “Workroom two. Get that arm cleaned properly.” She points at Syin. “Sit before you fall and make me have to do paperwork.” Then she points at me. “You. Table.”
“I can stand.”
“I can sedate you.”
“You can.” Kessa nods. I look at her, suppressing the urge to smile. “You are enjoying this.”
“A little.”
Merra takes my uninjured arm and pulls me toward the workroom. Old instinct rises before I can stop it. A hand directing me. A room I did not choose. A table waiting under white cloth. My muscles lock.
Merra feels it and releases me immediately. She does not apologize. I respect that.
“Walk in yourself, then,” she says. “But walk in.”
The street noise moves around us. Kessa waits. She does not tell me to go. She does not tell me I am safe. She leaves the choice where it belongs, as she has asked of me.
I enter the workroom and Merra follows. Kessa starts after us and sways. Renn catches her.
“I’m fine,” she says, pulling away from him.
“No.” Three people answer at once.
Her glare could cut armor. Merra points through the doorway.
“Get your arm cleaned. Eat something. Then you can sit outside and terrify anyone who tries to move you.”
“I was coming in.”
“No, you’re not,” Merra says, one hand on her hip.
“You just said I could terrify people.”
“Outside.”
Kessa looks at me. I could ask her to stay. I want to. Instead I ask the thing she has taught me.
“Will you be here?”
She is still angry, but not in the same way.
“Yes.”
One word. No oath. No command. Enough.
Merra shuts the door between us.
The treatment table waits behind me. I stare at it too long.
Merra starts cutting away the ruined bindings on my wing.
“If you make me argue you onto that table, I will win and neither of us will enjoy how.”
“I believe you.”
“Good.”
I sit. The old anchor burns when she touches the skin above it. My shoulder jerks. Nothing else follows. Merra notices.
“Do you feel a command?”
“No.”
“Pain?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Pain I know what to do with.”
She reaches for a jar. I have survived enough jars to know that, no matter how innocuous they may appear, they can contain things to be afraid of. Very afraid. I clench my hands and focus on my breath. In and out. It is the best way to contain fear.
Outside the door, Kessa’s voice rises as Renn tells her she needs stitches. I hear her threatening to beat him with a spoon. Merra smiles without looking up.
“She will still be there when you wake.”
“I know.” The knowledge is new enough that I test it. It holds. Then I realize what Merra just said. “When I wake?”
“Yes,” she says, pausing in her preparations to look at me. “Your injuries are extensive and I want to see if I can remove those implants. I cannot do that while you’re awake.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head and standing up.
Merra does not argue or debate. She looks at me and slowly arches one eyebrow. Beyond the door Kessa is loudly and angrily handling Renn. Though she is not yelling at me, I find comfort in it. In her voice. In her strength and certainty.
And she trusts Merra.
“Fine,” I say, sitting back onto the table.
I lie back when Merra tells me to. No restraints close over my wrists. No command tells me to stay. I stay anyway.