Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
The Western Lands
The road to the Western Lands was dark and isolated.
Few people were foolish enough to tread this earth without a very good, or very dire, reason.
The Halcin themselves had played no small part in crafting the legends around the Western Lands, telling horror fiction after horror fiction until the fables had become real in the minds of the Kingdom.
As if to add to the sincerity of the tales, the Shadows were thicker here, despite having fewer people to menace.
This was their home, too.
Shadach’s body ached as he led Aoife step after step down the cold, dusty path.
The aches had little to do with the travel.
The dread had been eating away at him since they’d left the inn.
Now that they were nearly in reach of his homeland, Shadach felt properly ill.
Aoife had been asking questions about the Halcin on the journey, full of pure interest and wonder.
Shadach didn’t know how to tell her it wasn’t going to be an exciting, cross-cultural exchange.
Despite who Aoife really was, the Halcin would see her as nothing more than a dirty Selat.
And despite who Shadach really was, they would see him as nothing more than a filthy traitor.
After going his own way only to be betrayed by the outside world, he was running back to his people with his tail between his legs.
He was showing up at their door with no gold, no connections, no nothing and expecting them to shoulder his failures. That’s how they would see it.
They weren’t wrong.
“Is there anything I shouldn’t do?” Aoife slipped her hand into his, squeezing tightly. The feel of her against him was a calming reassurance. “Something that’s offensive, I mean. When my family was moving a lot, there were always cultural rules to learn.”
Shadach’s mind flipped back to the rules and lessons of his childhood. “Don’t wear shoes in anyone’s house, always take them off at the entrance … and if someone asks you if you want to ‘try something new’ tell them to piss off. It’s a trap.”
“No shoes or trying new things. Got it.” Aoife gave a hard nod, punctuating the end of the sentence.
Shadach knew he was meant to laugh or at least smile.
He desperately wanted to, but his face, his voice …
they weren’t working. Just over this hill lay the Halcin compound.
Shadach’s feet slowed. Stopped. Holding Aoife’s hand tighter, he pulled her to face him.
She studied him, those penetrating eyes waiting for a kiss … or a confession.
Shadach himself didn’t know what he was going to do until he said, “Thank you.” A deep rush of air filled his lungs.
“You’ve come all this way with me. For me.
I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but thank you.
I promise I will see you made safe. I will see all of us made safe.
And please,” Shadach flicked his gaze to the hill, his mind picturing the compound and the painful history that came with it, “if I get lost in there, remind me of our night in the inn. Of everything that came before.”
Shadach held his breath, feeling as raw and vulnerable as if he’d told Aoife he could read Shadows.
His heart beat hard and furious. Was it his imagination or was she not saying anything?
Was she hesitating? A nefarious little voice cackled in his head, whispering to Shadach that maybe, just maybe, she was hesitating because she was not as true as he was.
Aoife stepped closer. “I will remind you,” she said, “again,” she took his right hand in hers, “and again.” She took his left hand in hers. “I will remind you until my lips bleed and my voice is hoarse if that’s what it takes.”
She pulled him to her and kissed him, long and tender. He worked his hands through her hair, bringing her lips even harder against his. That little voice melted away, along with its ridiculous accusations.
~*~
The walls of the Halcin city were more despondent than Shadach had remembered.
The formidable wall encasing the whole of the city had once been used to keep the Halcin inside, back when this place had been a “quarantine” zone.
The quarantine had not been voluntary, and just beyond the compound were miles upon miles of Halcin graves.
A fact which the Kingdom still refused to address.
Now, however, the compound wasn’t used to keep the Halcin in.
It was used to keep everyone else out. As a child, Shadach had thought the great wall and the barbed wire lacing the top was menacing.
Ferocious even. It was meant to be a show of strength.
A declaration that no one could hurt the Halcin ever again.
But now, after having been away so long, it looked pitiful.
The wall was stained and dirty, crumbling in more than one place, and the sagging barbed wire had long since lost its bite.
The compound stretched across barren, desolate land.
The only living things daring to thrive here were the Halcin, a few local plant species, and a handful of crops the Halcin had acclimated to this environment over centuries.
Shadach fixed his gaze on the dilapidated metal gate several paces in front of him, the bustle of the city slithering out from between the gate’s rotted bars.
A lone guard stood outside the gate, leaning against the wall, reading a book with one hand while the other was shoved in his pocket.
There wasn’t much need for surveillance.
The legends surrounding the Halcin worked better than any security system.
“Are you ready?” Aoife said from beside him, taking his hand in hers.
“Absolutely not.” Shadach held her hand tighter and led her forward.
The guard was lazy to look up at the approaching footsteps, taking his time to finish his chapter before setting his eyes on Shadach. He slipped the book in his back pocket, his other hand fingering a knife at his waist.
“Who the hell are you?” The guard said in thick Halcin, his particular accent telling Shadach he’d lived most of his life in the compound.
Halcin who had lived in enclaves in other cities for an extended period had distinct Halcin dialects.
Shadach’s dialect was linked to the enclave in Everglade City.
“Shadach,” he said, “eldest son of DaFira. And this is Aoife of the Emperor’s City.
We come seeking safe shelter.” Shadach cringed to himself.
He hadn’t properly spoken Halcin in so long, his mother tongue was coming out stiff and awkward.
A fact which the guard did not fail to notice, judging from the smirk on his face.
The guard scratched the stubble on his chin, looking Shadach up and down as if that would help him discern the situation.
“Well, well, well,” he said. Finally. “The coward returns. Miss your mummy, did you?”
“Piss off,” Shadach growled.
The guard threw his head back laughing, the sound so wild he nearly sounded drunk. Maybe he was. “We heard you murdered some soulless.”
Shadach tried not to flinch at the derogatory term for Selats. “I was framed,” he said.
“Too bad.” The guard kicked the dirt with his boot. “A splashy criminal record was the only thing that might’ve convinced me to let you in.”
“Oh?” This time, it was Shadach’s turn to smirk. “And what are you going to tell my mother when she asks why you doled out my punishment on her behalf? Last I checked, she was the head of the council. Not you.”
The corner of the guard’s mouth twitched, the blood draining ever so slightly from his cheeks. After staring Shadach down with a hard look, he turned, begrudgingly kicking open the gate.
“You’re right,” the guard said through gritted teeth. “Watching Lady DaFira obliterate you will be much more fun. And good luck getting a place to sleep with that thing tying you down.” The guard nodded to Aoife.
Shadach’s jaw clenched and as he walked past, he feigned a lunge at the guard. The man panicked under the shadow of Shadach’s superior height and strength, falling backwards on his ass.
“I thought I was supposed to be the coward,” Shadach said, making pointed eye contact with the guard. He led Aoife into the city to the sound of the guard cursing to the skies and back.
“That went well, I take it?” Aoife said in Selatian, and it occurred to Shadach she had no idea what had happened.
“As well as could be expected. Don’t worry,” Shadach squeezed her hand, “they’ll talk tough but no one will touch you.”
“What happens now?”
“Now, I find my mother and pray she doesn’t kill me.”
“I thought I was the one with the scary mother,” Aoife said with a teasing bump of her shoulder against his.
“Wait until you meet mine.” Shadach’s voice was flat, but warm. “Then we can compare notes.”
Pausing inside the city, Shadach was taken aback by how much had changed …
and how little had. The streets were made of hard, uniform brick, the buildings stoic and functional in their stony grey exteriors.
Even the desert shrubs had an air of unnaturalness to them, with their overly taught branches and too perfectly rounded shapes.
At the far end of the city were two large storage facilities, one for water, one for food.
The water came from deep underground reservoirs and was stored in a large tank inside one of the buildings.
It was one of the more important infrastructures left from the quarantine period.
The Halcin had repaired, restored, and reinvented the storage tank time and again to keep it alive.
The building for food had been constructed about a hundred years ago.
Although the Halcin grew some hardy crops within the compound, there was nowhere near enough harvest to feed everyone.
So, grains and other produce too fragile to grow in the desert were imported every month.
The importing of food was a vulnerability the Halcin preferred not to acknowledge.