44. Tobias
Chapter forty-four
Tobias
T obias had celebrated his eighteenth birthday the day before he had graduated from the military academy, which meant he’d graduated hungover.
The pomp and circumstance blurred into a noisy, stuffy mess of memories, though he still remembered Lord Commander Lockwood’s commencement address.
You graduate into a rare time of great peace, soldiers.
It is your solemn duty to ensure that those after you are afforded that same privilege.
Those words lingered in Tobias’s mind long after their hats were thrown and their badges were pinned on. Peace. Everything his father had fought for. Everything so many had died for. He knew the body counts from the battles, long before Javen had dragged him to the memorials.
Even for a soldier, war was nothing to hope for, nothing glorious, nothing noble. War was brutal and merciless and cruel.
War had been a necessary evil to repel the fae threat. If they ever took up arms again, it would be for the noble cause of self-defense.
Or so he’d been told.
And so he wanted to believe. Javen’s story certainly highlighted the fae Queen’s cruelty. She’d destroyed Javen’s safehouse, had his wife and child killed… How many Rhydonian bombs had turned fae buildings into rubble? How many Rhydonian bullets had made orphans of fae children ?
Tobias groaned, rubbing his face with a hand.
He’d sat outside of town, his back against a tree, for hours now, debating all that he’d learned.
Javen and Lockwood were plotting something.
So were the fae, and Zari Ankmetta was part of them.
Zari, an Oathborn. He couldn’t quite believe it.
She’d seemed so normal, so ordinary. Then there was that golden-haired fae.
She’d wanted peace, and Javen had insisted she would die for her belief.
Tobias flipped through the handwritten fae dictionary again. His fingers found the word for peace. Ashali. A page later, a word for talk: Athalesh. Shyly, as if the trees might laugh at him, he said that second word out loud, as if all one needed to create magic was the right word.
Nothing happened.
The birds continued to chatter. The wind rustled the leaves of the trees. War loomed, ever closer. Still. The business card remained in his pocket. Did he contact whoever that man had been? Warn him about whatever was going on now?
Commander Lockwood strode into view, his rifle over a shoulder, a radio clipped to his belt. “Get up, kid. We’re headed into town for dinner.”
Great. Just what Tobias needed. Another meal with a terrifying officer.
Tobias never thought that he would be sitting at a restaurant with Commander Samuel Rew Lockwood himself.
Indeed, of all the strange recent occurrences, this felt the most surreal, perhaps because it was so ordinary.
There had been no fae attacks, no mentions of Blood Ember, and no magic.
Lockwood looked no different from any other middle-aged officer.
The cropped hair, the neatly trimmed beard, and the civilian clothes that were all just a little too starched.
“So, uh.” Tobias sipped his beer. It tasted faintly of pine needles, which made his nose wrinkle. “You and the captain are good friends?”
“I would argue that we are good friends indeed.” Lockwood cut another piece of chicken. “No doubt he’d disagree.”
“I know the feeling.”
Lockwood raised an eyebrow. “You’re the first direct report he’s chosen in the years he’s been part of the Cobalts.”
“Really?” When he’d heard that before, Tobias had assumed it to be nothing more than the usual rumor mill.
“And he was solitary when he was in my Crimsons, too. I had to tell him I’d get him court-martialed if he didn’t start eating with the other soldiers.”
That sounded like Javen. “He’s not really one for small talk.”
Lockwood’s wheezing laugh echoed with the ghost of decades of cigar smoking. “That’s for sure. I figured with you, it’s because of where you’re from.”
“Karsic?” Tobias’s home was a nearly forgotten province that barely supported itself on the fishing trade. “Why?”
“He’ll use the odd Karsici phrase. I figured he must have been quite close to someone from there.”
“Maybe his wife?” Tobias caught himself looking over his shoulder as he said it, as if Javen would appear, and put a blade to his throat for gossiping. “I mean, I know she’s dead and all, but—” And, was a fae, which made it highly doubtful she’d ever been to Karsic.
Lockwood tipped his glass, a small salute. “Then, you know more than me.”
If Tobias leaned any further in his stool, he was going to fall off. He carefully righted himself. “Oh?”
“When we met, there wasn’t time for pleasantries,” Lockwood explained before he ordered a second pot pie.
“He killed the fae that was about to end my life. One minute, I was staring up into those eerie Oathborn eyes, thinking I’d breathed my last and the next, Javen appeared, plunged a blade through the beast and saved me. ”
Tobias swirled the last of his beer. “Is that how Javen got in with the Crimsons?”
“No. I was far, far beyond enemy lines at this point. I was looking for my son. When his radio signal vanished, I… well. A father does foolish things. Ja ven was there when we found the wreckage, and when we found the bodies, or what was left of them, too. We tracked that monster Blood Ember north but never located it.”
So that revenge united the two men. “I’m sorry,” Tobias hesitated, not sure if he should offer the older man a supportive arm or a pat on the back. As his Ma would say, it was better to try to do the right thing wrongly than to do nothing at all, so he clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder.
The commanding officer smiled at the gesture. “Javen was half-dead then. You wouldn’t recognize him if you’d seen him then. Tattered clothes, wild hair, that tattoo on his neck bleeding through his shirt collar. I don’t know how I talked sense into him, but I’m damned glad I did.”
Lockwood was wrong. Tobias had both seen Javen disheveled, and with a bleeding mark on his neck.
There had to be a pattern, a reason for the occurrences.
Javen had blamed the Queen but offered no other details.
Tobias grasped at straws, desperate to understand the riddle.
“Sir,” Tobias began, “is Javen a… is he… he’s human, right? ”
“Mostly, as far as I can tell. One of those wildlings, I think. Part human mixed up with that damned fae blood, maybe. He’s never said much of his past. Never even gave me his first name, just a surname.”
Again, Tobias thought of how Javen said his own name, in that graceful, soft way. An accent Tobias had assumed was Northern Rhydonian until he’d come to Wesburg and met Northern Rhydonians. They didn’t talk much like Javen at all.
Lockwood took a long swig of his drink. “Though, speaking of that devil, he was supposed to be here an hour ago. I’ve got supplies to get south of here.”
“I can help.” Tobias leapt to his feet, seeing the volunteering as a way around admitting Javen had dismissed him earlier. If he found Javen and brought him back, then surely, there would still be use for him here.
“Good. Find Javen and get him aboard the train heading south. It leaves in five hours.”