54. Katya
54
W e leave for Duje just as the sun begins to crest the horizon, the hazy glow swallowing the darkness and painting the winter-bare trees and frosted grass gold. Jael sees us off with a bit of food and water for our journey, and when she slips some contraceptive tonic to me while Aemon isn’t looking, I appreciate her discretion, at least I do once I get past my mortification over the whole thing. The ride to Duje is long and too quiet, but we make good time, reaching the border of Cairn a couple hours before sunset.
We ride through the center of town, passing the same red-brick homes and businesses I remember from when Leodin and I left. It’s hard to believe that was only a month ago. It feels like a lifetime. At first glance, everything appears to be as it should. Signs telling customers to “Come On In” hang in store windows. Fruit stands and food carts line the sidewalks ready to serve. Restaurant tables sit under awnings, teacups and plates and utensils set out as if whoever ordered it just stepped away for a moment. But the shops are empty, and the fruit is rotten. There are no diners to eat or waiters to serve or chefs to cook. There is only the silent, empty shell of a once bustling city.
At the end of the road, I see the fence that wraps around the perimeter of the dom. The lawn that greeted all our patients, though a little overgrown, remains very much alive with only a few patches of brown that portend of the winter to come. In the center of it all stands the charred husk of my home, like a black hole in an otherwise pristine canvas. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine the acrid scent is just a remnant of campfire smoke clinging to my clothes and hair, but when the icy wind whips my face, it brings with it the cloying sweet smell of decaying flesh.
I think I’m going to vomit.
A wave of dizziness sends me crashing to my knees in the grass.
“Katya.” Aemon drops to the ground next to me and begins rubbing small circles on my back. “Are you alright? Of course not. That’s a stupid question.” It is a stupid question, but I’m too focused on not losing my breakfast right now to care. “I can do it,” he says. “Let me go in. You shouldn’t have to see this.”
It’s a kind offer, but… I shake my head. “You don’t know what they look like.”
“Fuck.”
I give him a weak smile. “Just help me up, please.”
He does as I ask and helps me to my feet, then tugs his shirtsleeve over his hand and uses it to wipe the wetness from my cheeks. I’ve hardly stopped crying since I learned of this yesterday, but these tears feel strangely empty, compulsory rather than cathartic. Still, I can’t seem to make them stop .
Aemon takes my hand, and together we approach what’s left of Dom Duje. The front doors are gone, and the entrance caved in, so the second floor is now where the first floor used to be. There’s no way we’re getting in this way, so we walk around until we come to a section that isn’t as badly damaged as the rest. A window here is open, which I hope means whoever was down here got out.
“Give me a boost,” I ask Aemon.
He grabs me by the waist and lifts me over the windowsill like I weigh nothing. I crash down—not too delicately—on a settee, sending up a cloud of ash. The air is thick and fetid, the scent of smoke and death overwhelming. Bile rises in my throat, and I swallow hard to keep it down. I cover my mouth with my sleeve, but it does little to filter the stench. It’s too much. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t do this. How am I supposed to do this? Did I really expect myself to scour the remains of my home, searching for the decaying bodies of my family?
I’m so incredibly stupid.
Aemon crashes onto the settee behind me, raising more ash. “Holy fuck,” he shouts, covering his nose and mouth as he gets to his feet.
Holy fuck is right. There is nothing about this place that resembles my home. The walls, columns, furniture and floors are black and broken, their original colors nearly impossible to determine. In places where the ceiling has fallen in, beams of daylight illuminate the wreckage, while ashes dance in the air above, giving it the appearance of something otherworldly and surreal, almost beautiful. At least until I spot an arm poking out of a pile of debris.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Aemon asks me .
No. Absolutely not. I don’t want to be in here another second. “Yes,” I lie. “There’s something I need to see.” That’s the truth.
We pick our way through the rubble, and I do my best not to look too closely at anything resembling a body—especially the small ones. My head is spinning. I can’t stop shaking. Did Max die like this? Terrified, his little lungs fighting for air, flames melting the skin from his body? It must have hurt so much. He was just a little boy. Tears blur my vision, and I trip over something—I don’t want to know what. Aemon grabs me from behind, but my legs don’t want to cooperate, and I end up just sagging in his arms.
“I’m sorry, Katya,” he says, kissing my temple. “I’m so sorry.”
Somehow, I manage to get my legs to work again, and I continue, this time with Aemon’s hand cradling my elbow, just in case I need it. Finally, we make it to my mother’s bedroom. The door is somehow still standing and attached to its hinges. I twist the knob and push, and amazingly, the door swings open. The dresser still stands against the wall, just the way it was when I saw my mother last, except now it’s charred and covered in ash like everything else. A chunk of ceiling has fallen down on the bed, but it doesn’t appear that anyone was in it—thank the gods. I wave for Aemon to follow me inside.
“Help me push this,” I tell him, gesturing toward the dresser. He doesn’t wait for me, simply crosses to the dresser and pushes it all the way until it hits the adjoining wall.
“Like that.” He smiles.
I give him a much less convincing one in return. Then I crouch down and brush my hand along the floorboards, searching the ashes for the little hole my mother showed me. My heart is pounding out a rapid staccato. If the box is empty, that means she got out. If it isn’t… I just don’t know.
I lift the floorboard and reach my arm inside the opening, searching. My hand brushes metal, and I pull the box out of its hiding place.
“What’s that?” Aemon asks, crouching down beside me.
“My mother kept this for emergencies.” I open the lid, and my heart sinks when I see the wad of bills neatly folded on top.
“If she had to leave in a hurry, she may not have taken it with her,” Aemon says, reading my mind.
“I know,” I say, my voice trembling as badly as the rest of my body. “Can I have a minute?”
“Sure.” He steps outside to leave me alone with my mother’s things.
I finger the stack of bills. Leodin monitored every dime she made. She would have had to sneak little bits at a time to get it past him. It must have taken years for her to save so much. I wonder what she was saving for. Leaving Leodin? I didn’t think to ask before, and now I’ll probably never know. Just like I’ll never know if she’d been lying to me all these years about who my father was and if he really was Khalmos. I pull out the bills and hold them up to see better. Was the stack bigger before? Maybe. Then again, I could be fooling myself. I set the money on my lap and search the rest. There are a few loose gems and a couple of bracelets. I could have sworn there was a necklace. I’m certain I remember it—well, pretty sure. At least, I think I remember it.
I pocket the gems, bracelets and money and leave the box on the floor. There’s no point in putting it back. The only person who’d possibly come looking for it is Mama, if she’s even alive. Standing, I attempt to pat the ash from my skirt, but only succeed in smearing it more. I turn for the door and that’s when I take a good look at the bed. The top is mostly obscured by the debris that fell onto it from above, but from this angle, I can see the side of the bed where my mother’s singed blue duvet is neatly folded over and stuffed under the mattress.
Her bed is made. Alise said they came at night when everyone was sleeping, but Mama wasn’t asleep because her bed is still made. It could mean nothing. Mama could have been working late somewhere in the dom and still died in the fire, but for the first time since Jael told me what happened, I feel a flicker of hope.
Maybe, just maybe…
I rush for her nightstand and tear open the drawer to search for something to write with. There’s a pencil, but no paper anywhere that hasn’t been burned to ashes, except… I pull a bill from my pocket. It’ll have to do.
I lay the bill on the floor and write:
Mama,
Contact Jael in Verneth to find me.
—Katya
I stuff the bill into the metal box, drop it back into Mama’s hiding place, and replace the board. There. Even if she is alive, the chances of her finding the note are slim, but it’s worth a try.
I jump to my feet and race out the door to find Aemon.
And I freeze.
He’s on his knees, hunched over, rocking back and forth, back and forth. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry.” His voice cracks on the words. Is he crying?
I call his name softly, “Aemon?”
Aemon leaps to his feet and spins around to face me. His eyes are red and swollen, cheeks tear stained. He’s covered with soot and what appears to be blood, and I’m afraid to even imagine what else, smeared over his hands and arms as well as a long rusty-brown streak across one side of his face where he must have attempted to wipe the tears away.
It’s unnerving seeing him so undone. I’ve never seen Aemon so much as shed a tear, even after being nearly killed in the arena.
“Are you alright?”
Aemon averts his eyes. “Yeah,” he says with a long, wet sniff. It isn’t exactly convincing.
Is he embarrassed about crying? He shouldn’t be. I start toward him, neck craning to look at whatever had him so upset. It isn’t until we’re shoulder to shoulder that I see the child.
A little boy, to be exact, and for a moment, my belly does a nosedive as my mind confuses him with Maxim. Then relief floods through me when I realize it isn’t my brother I’m looking at, but another boy. One of Max’s friends, though I can’t remember his name. Gods, what is his name? How can he be left to die like this and no one even remember his name? I take a few steps closer, caught in my own internal war—one part of me wanting to run away from this place and never look back and the other needing to face the truth of what happened here.
The left side of the child’s face has been burned so badly, his eye has melted in its socket and bone peeks out from the blackened tissue. Even so, the pain and terror he felt as he died is clear in the curl of his little fingers, the bunch of his brow, the stretch of his mouth as he screamed .
I turn away, hand over my mouth to hold back the sob bubbling in my throat. I’m horrified and angry but also so damn grateful it isn’t Max, and I know how selfish that is. He was just a little boy with a family and friends that loved him, and he didn’t deserve to die. But the thought of this happening to Max… Of his sweet face twisted in pain and terror as he suffered. A sob escapes my lips. Gods, help me, I don’t know that I could ever recover from that. My throat hurts and my head is beginning to ache. It’s too much. My emotions are a maelstrom swirling in my head, making me crazy. I want to cry, to scream, to bang my fists against my skull and rage against the injustice of it all, and Aemon… He feels responsible for this, but it isn’t his fault. He wasn’t even at the palace when it happened. I turn back to him to tell him so but stop short.
He’s clean. Dirt and ashes still smear his clothes, but his hands and face are pristine, as though the gore all over him moments ago was just a figment of my imagination. But it wasn’t. It was real. He was covered in blood and ash and now… “How did you do that?” I ask, drawing back.
Gaze distant, as though he’s recounting something from another time and place, he says, “When I shift, I keep what I want and shed the rest.”
“Like blood and dirt.”
“Yes.”
Something pricks at the back of my mind—a needle and thread drawing all the pieces together. My chest tightens. I don’t really want to know. I want to remain in blissful ignorance with the man I love, but I ask the question, anyway. “Who was the woman you killed?”
His eyes widen, and he takes a step back. “What? ”
I step forward. “You told me you’d only ever killed one woman. Who was she?” I say, surprised at the strength in my voice.
“Does it matter?”
“Who was she, Aemon?”
He scrubs a hand through his hair. “What do you want me to say, Katya?”
“The truth.”
“It isn’t going to change anything.” He splays his arms wide. “Look at this. Do you think I wanted this to happen?”
I take another step closer; he takes another step back.
“Who was she?”
“Katya, listen to me.”
Louder. “Who was she?”
“You know who she was,” he shouts.
“I want to hear you say it. Tell me that you killed Queen Diane and framed Leodin and me…” My voice breaks. I try to take a breath, but my lungs feel as though they’re full of lead. “How could you?”
“He deserved it for what he did to you.”
“They tortured him.”
“And how often did he torture you? How many times did he beat you or humiliate you? I’m not sorry I framed him. I’m only sorry I wasn’t there to pull the fucking lever when they hung him.”
I draw back. “This was because of me?”
“This”—he jabs a finger at the floor—“is because Troi is a sadistic bastard. This is on him, not us.”
“Us? Us?” I say, heartache melting into a molten-hot fury searing my veins and burning me up from the inside. “There is no us. There is only Aemon and what Aemon wants, and if that means killing a few people and framing an innocent male for it, so be it.”
“That’s not true. I—”
“How dare you?” I suck in a shallow breath, my throat so swollen it’s like breathing through a straw. I grip my aching chest. “How dare you make me love you.”
“Katya, please—”
I continue as if he didn’t speak. “All this time, knowing—”
“Katya—”
“My family is probably dead because of you,” I shout at his perfect, lying face.
Eyes pleading, he says, “I swear. I never meant for this to happen. Please, Katya, I love you.”
“Don’t you say that,” I spat. My whole body is drawn taut like a bow about to snap. I jab an accusing finger at him. “You don’t get to say that to me after what you’ve done. I—”
Gunfire rings out, and Aemon grabs me and hauls me away just before a chunk of the ceiling comes crashing down where I was standing.
“Come on.” Hanging on to one arm, he pulls me into a nearby room.
We drop to the floor underneath a window. My heart crashes against my ribcage, but I’m still angry enough that I tear my arm from his grasp.
Aemon peeks over the windowsill and curses. Lying back down beside me, he pulls out his knife and says, “Bellatorae. There have to be at least thirty of them. Dammit.” He glances around the room, as if looking for a weapon, like that’s going to help against thirty trained officers.
Outside, a voice calls out, “This is the Bellatorae police. In the name of the king, lay down your weapons and come out with your hands in the air.”
“Let me try talking to them,” Aemon says. “I doubt Troi’s bothered putting out a warrant for my arrest. I can tell them you’re my prisoner—”
“No.”
He blinks and shakes his head, as though he can’t believe what he just heard. “Katya—”
“I’m finished being your prisoner, and I’m finished being afraid.” I crawl to the dresser and pull out a white acolyte’s robe. The entire bottom half is burnt to a crisp, but that’s fine. I only really need enough to cover my head. I tear away burnt material, leaving only the hood and a long swath of fabric dangling from the back. Then I pull Raiden’s ashari from my pocket and hold a hand out to Aemon. “Give me your wrist.”
“What are you going to do? You can’t possibly control them all at once.”
“I’m not arguing with you right now. You owe me. Now give me your fucking wrist.”
He hesitantly holds out his hand. I take it and jab the ashari into his vein. He lets out a hiss of pain, but I ignore it, and wrap my lips around the wound. Sweet, thick blood fills my mouth, and I gulp it down. The tension seeps from my muscles, my head clears and that familiar buzzing erupts under my skin.
“Katya,” Aemon says, jerking his arm away.
I sag back against the wall, lick my lips and smile. This is me as I was meant to be. No more timid academic hiding behind her mother’s skirts. I am powerful beyond anything those bastards have ever imagined. I take the scrap of fabric still attached to the hood and tear it up the middle. Then I throw the hood over my head and wrap the two pieces around the lower half of my face, tying them in the back.
No gloves. This will just have to do. I stand and try to push up the window. It’s stuck. I try again, throwing all my weight behind it, but still the stupid thing doesn’t budge.
So much for being powerful.
“Here,” Aemon says, shoving the window open way too easily. He pushes up as if about to climb through.
“Get back,” I tell him, smiling to myself when he drops back under my command.
“Let me help you,” he says.
I glare at him. “I think you’ve helped enough, don’t you?” I ask, my voice saccharin sweet. “Now shut up, or I’ll make you bite your tongue off.” His eyes widen, but he keeps his mouth closed, and I didn’t even have to waste my power. Excellent.
I flatten my hands against the windowsill, push myself up and swing over one leg, then the other, and drop to my feet on the other side. I don’t see any officers hovering around, but I keep my back plastered against the wall—well, what’s remaining of the wall—just in case.
I’m overfull, brimming with magic, like a million tiny fireworks continuously exploding beneath my skin. I’ve never felt this good, this alive, this… invincible. I stride around the building, stopping just as I step around the front corner.
Bellatorae soldiers in their black uniforms lined with gold, are positioned in three lines—the first crouched, the second bent over and the third standing—each with their rifle drawn over the head of the other. All have their sights pinned on the front door.
It only takes a second for one of the officers to spot me, though. “Hands up,” he shouts, turning his rifle on me. The rest follow suit.
And I laugh. They don’t recognize death, even when it’s staring them in the face. “Hands up,” I parrot, my voice mocking. The entire regiment throws their hands into the air. “Drop the guns.”
Thirty plus guns clatter to the ground, many knocking their owners in the head on the way down.
“Now, I’m going to ask you a question and I expect…” I pause, searching the officers’ faces. I land on a young officer—a kid, really—shaking in his shiny black boots. I point at the young male. “You to answer. Did you do this?”
“Yes,” he replies without hesitation.
My hands curl into fists so tight my nails dig into my palms. But that bit of pain is good. It keeps me focused, keeps me calm.
“Why?” This time, I ask no one in particular, but an officer with chevron patches decorating his shoulders steps through the crowd. It’s a comedic sight really, this big, burly male walking around with his hands in the air.
“It was orders,” he says, his calm voice betraying none of the fear I sense wafting off of him in waves.
“It was your orders to lock the people inside and burn Duje down?”
“Yes.”
“And who gave this order? ”
The officer gives me a look that says, “Who do you think, stupid?” And I do know who, of course, but I need to hear it. I need to be sure before I kill him. “The king.”
Troi.
“These were healers.” I point at the burnt husk of my home. “People who spent their lives helping others, all dead, generations gone. How many future lives have you taken because there won’t be healers to cure them?”
The males all stare at me, their pounding heartbeats merging into one discordant thrum. I scan their faces. Some seem contrite, a few actually have tears in their eyes, but most of them just look pissed. Well, they’re not the only ones. “So, what should I do with you all now? Burn you alive?” I pause. “Well, go ahead. Burn.” Blood-curdling screams break out as the soldiers drop to the ground, writhing in pain. They claw at their own faces and roll in the dirt, but there’s no putting out the flames in their minds. Their fear turns to terror. Hot and dark and pulsating with negative energy, it brushes my skin gently, almost lovingly, like an old friend.
My left ear pricks at the click-click of a rifle being cocked, and I spin around just in time to see Aemon tackle a stray officer to the ground. The gun goes off—the sound piercing my eardrums like an ice pick. My connection to the squad snaps, and the males immediately clamber for their guns. I throw out my magic, tiny hooks searching for minds to snag. Only a few find their mark, but I force those to spin around and turn their guns on their fellow officers. Shots whiz by, one grazing a fiery line across my shoulder, but this time, I don’t lose control. My puppets fire round after round and, realizing they’re under attack from their own, the untethered officers fire back.
It’s a bloodbath.
“Hold your fire,” a voice shouts over the din, but nobody heeds their command. The officers continue firing again and again until they run out of bullets or are shot themselves, and even then, my puppets keep firing.
Then, silence. I look out over the lawn. Bodies lie sprawled across the ground, their blood seeping into the dirt. A few muffled groans rise from the pile—not all of them are dead, yet—even more twitch, their limbs jerking as though they haven’t realized they’re gone.
What have I done?
My head is spinning, belly heaving. I fall to my knees and hurl up every last bit of food in my stomach, and when that’s gone, I throw up yellow bile and saliva, then nothing at all.
Aemon.
I glance back to where he was fighting the officer and see two bodies lying on the ground.
Nonononono.
Still too dizzy to stand, I crawl on hands and knees across the rocky terrain, gritting my teeth as the stones dig into my kneecaps. It isn’t until I’m practically on top of them that I notice the unnatural angle of the officer’s neck. Beside him, Aemon’s laid out like a starfish, his eyes blown wide, blood soaking the upper right side of his shirt and leaking out of the corner of his mouth. He coughs and sputters. The bullet must have hit a lung. I want to lift his shoulder to see if the bullet went straight through, but I’m afraid to move him .
“Hey, Aemon.” He turns his head to look at me, the terror on his face a mirror of my own. “You’ve got to heal yourself. Do you hear me?”
The sound of hoofs beating against the dirt draws my attention. One of the soldiers survived and is getting away. I let him go. My only concern right now is Aemon.
Another cough. Blood sprays out of Aemon’s mouth and down his chin. Dammit. “Listen to me. You need to shift. Heal yourself.” I speak louder this time, like that’s supposed to make a difference, but he’s not doing it. I don’t know if he’s too weak or too panicked or something else, but he’s not healing himself. If only I had…
Mama’s gems. I push up my sleeve, exposing the two bracelets I took from my mother’s room. One is entirely made up of clear, unspelled sythra, while the other is covered with every conceivable color of spelled gems, every one except for purple—healing.
Stupid. Stupid. Of course she wouldn’t need healing gems; she can just make them herself. What do I do?
Aemon watches me, his eyes pleading. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I can’t let him die. We didn’t go through all of that for him to just die, gods dammit. I glance around myself as though a healing gem will just jump out at me, but that’s just wishful thinking and not helping at all. He’s sputtering harder, his head shaking back and forth. He’s drowning in his own blood and I’m sitting here like a dunce.
“Fuck it,” I say, more to myself than to him. I straighten and open my mind to the spectrum. Immediately, the rainbow of light falls over my vision. I clutch a clear sythra and my palm.
Please work.
I mentally reach out, the same way I do when trying to hook others’ minds. Except this time, I’m reaching for the purple spectral magic. My power brushes against the thread, the sensation like a shiver across my skin. And for the first time, the color bends to my touch. I pluck a thread of magic from the purple light and draw it into myself while also pushing it into the stone. The healing magic fills the sythra like smoke until it’s a deep purple. I stare at the spelled gem, dumbfounded. I can’t believe it worked. No time to ponder the hows and whys right now. Later, I can sit down and figure it out.
Right now, I need to heal Aemon.
His eyes are drifting closed.
Time’s up.
I clutch the sythra in one hand, lay the other over his wound and push. Using magic had always felt like trying to push a river through a crack in a wall, but now it’s a torrent raging through my body, and I’m half exhilarated, half terrified as that magic hurls into Aemon’. In my mind’s eye, I see blood and tissue and a lung torn to shreds and filled with blood. I draw the blood out first. Aemon grips my wrist and squeezes as I draw out every drop of blood. With that cleared away, my mind’s eye sees the bullet wedged into his shoulder blade. Is that why he can’t shift? I focus on the bone, layer-by-layer, building it up and closing the cracks, which pushes the bullet free. Then I rebuild the muscle and tissue behind it slowly, pushing the bullet back through the wound until it’s poking out of the hole, and I grab it with my fingers. Then, I knit the tissue together bit by bit, and when it’s almost closed, I breathe air into it and the lung inflates.
Aemon draws in a wheezing breath and coughs some more, but this time, there’s no blood. Then his eyes flutter shut and his head slumps to the side. He’s passed out.
I guess I’m a healer, after all.