49. Annalise
Chapter forty-nine
Annalise
For the last two weeks, Matt and I have practically lived over maps of Thandroan and Clowess.
Not one map, nine.
Every night after training, we'd spread them across the table and mark everything Major Halden's people had learned since the last briefing. The newest attacks. The villages no one could reach, divisions that never returned. Every confirmed sighting of the new illusions.
We've traced routes until the ink blurred beneath our fingers, compared old maps from the library with Halden's daily intelligence briefs, and argued over which paths were safest for Tyr and me to fly until Matt nearly demanded he come with me.
The route I'm about to fly now is the result of all of it.
"You stick to this route."
"I know."
"You don't deviate."
"I know."
"If you see something that doesn't make sense—"
"I assume it's an illusion."
“Right,” he says, his voice softening. “And if things go bad at any point in time?”
"Tyr and I get the hell out and fly straight back here."
"Good,” he says, studying me for another second before folding the map and handing it over. "Come back to me, or else I’ll find you."
“Always,” I say, smiling as tears well up in my eyes.
"Always," he says, kissing my cheek before patting Tyr’s leg. “Take good care of our girl.”
Two days.
That's how long the journey to Clowess is supposed to take if we only stop when necessary...so naturally, I've packed enough supplies for three weeks.
Matt insisted…not only with the normal MRE’s, but with snacks that are easy enough to open and eat with only one hand and more than enough meat for Tyr to enjoy too.
So now, Tyr has enough food strapped to his saddle to feed half the infantry, and he’s annoyed that I’m calling it smelly and excessive.
“Did you think I couldn’t carry it, Little Faren? Need I remind you—”
“Yes, yes. You’re a big, scary Alpha dragon who is so strong and can carry all the things. I know.”
“And can eat several sheep in a single meal.”
“Uh-huh. I’m going to pretend you didn’t use that as a bragging point.”
“Fine. Now, let’s with,” he says as his wings beat hard beneath me, carrying us higher and higher.
Far too quickly, the academy is disappearing behind us.
Then the familiar forests.
For hours, there is nothing but sky.
Clouds roll beneath us in great white masses, occasionally breaking apart to reveal rivers and roads far below. From up here, Thandroan looks beautiful, making it easy to forget there's a war raging with no end in sight.
Then, after a few hours, we pass over a town that isn't there anymore, I know it from the books, Rickshaw, or what little remains of it.
The town used to produce enough wheat and barley to supply half the kingdom, but looking down at what it’s become, I see roofless buildings, blackened foundations, and fields that have gone completely rotten.
For a few years now, Thandroan has had to import grain from kingdoms on other continents because Clowess destroyed so much of our agricultural land along the border.
The terms were kept secret so Clowess couldn’t target whatever goods were put into the deal, and King Lucien was praised for his ingenuity in a time of crisis and for strengthening our relationship with kingdoms far and wide.
I think back to the long nights of reading about those deals in the library. At the time, they seemed like inconsequential numbers distracting me from what I was searching for, but now, as I take in all that once was, I feel sick to my stomach.
I never thought about the people standing in those fields. The farmers and families who spent their entire lives tending to the land. The children running between rows of wheat, playing hide-and-seek until the porch lights came on.
Now the land isn’t healthy enough to grow anything on, and the people who had spent generations passing down the fertile land have become one with it.
By late afternoon, the landscape changes.
The farther south we travel, the emptier everything becomes.
Whole stretches of land have been swallowed by weeds and brush, abandoned farms where the barns have collapsed inward, and the red paint has faded away.
Stone walls run through fields where there are no longer any houses, and a few times I have to close my eyes and imagine what Sasha, Mattey, and the rest of our friends are doing to keep myself from crying at all we have lost as a kingdom in the last twenty years.
I stop Tyr near dusk beside a rocky outcropping.
"Bathroom break."
“Again?”
"Yes. I can’t help it; my bladder is so much smaller than yours."
“You’re right. Your human failures aren’t your fault,” he teases as I slide down, stretching as I disappear behind a cluster of long-dead trees.
When I come back, Tyr is staring at me. “You’re phone won’t stop vibrating against my shoulder.”
Positioning myself back on Tyr, I’m disappointed to find I wasn’t even off long enough for where I’ve been sitting to go cold.
Pulling out my phone, I smile when I see it’s Hunter.
Hunter: You alive?
Hunter: I miss you already.
I smile despite myself.
Me: Unfortunately.
Three dots appear.
Hunter: Good. Ghost Walking mock mission going well?
My thumb hesitates.
Me: Very.
It's not technically a lie…well, not exactly.
This is a Ghost Walking mission, it's just not mock like I let him believe…also the person I have to kill is very much NOT an illusion…though that would make my life much less difficult.
Hunter: Where are you now?
I glance at Tyr.
Me: On Tyr’s back.
Hunter: Smartass.
Hunter: Don’t text and fly! Message me when you stop for the night. I love you
Me: I love you more!
That night, we camp beneath the open sky. Tyr had found us a shallow cave, but my anxiety spiked the second I tried to step into it, and that was that. Tyr was demanding I get on and we flew until he found a spot hidden away enough we wouldn’t immediately draw the attention of anyone flying over.
After we’ve both eaten our dinner for the night when Tyr curls around me after I've settled into my blanket, his enormous body blocking the wind completely.
“Better?”
"Much."
“Good.”
For a while, neither of us speaks as I try and fail to fall asleep, recounting everything I’ve packed and everything I need to do.
Then I hear it.
A voice.
So faint I almost miss it.
"Help..."
My head snaps up and Tyr lifts his head.
Another voice.
"Please..."
"Tyr."
"I heard it."
Every hair on my body rises as I reach for Hunter’s dagger.
It sounds like it's coming from somewhere below us...
I stand and Tyr immediately rises with me.
“No.”
"I'm just looking."
“No.”
My heart pounds as I remember the abandoned towns and all the red markers on Halden’s map.
"You're right, they’re either the voices of ghosts or the illusions Clowess has used for far less briefed fighters than me.”
I pull my knees against my chest, and despite everything I’ve just told Tyr, I lay awake the rest of the night, each and every cry burning its way into my mind.
The second day is worse….Not because of the flying, but because we're inside Clowess now, and the difference between our two kingdoms the further we get into theirs is heart-wrenching.
The destruction isn't as widespread here. There are roads and people, livestock and bustling markets.
I stare down at one town as Tyr passes overhead.
"They look normal."
“That surprises you?”
"Yes."
“Why? Not everywhere in Thandroan looks like the areas we just flew over. Plenty of places live as if nothing has happened at all.”
He’s right. I know he is. But still, I feel like everything I've read about Clowess makes it feel like it's full of monsters.
But here they have bakeries and children chasing each other through streets.
And suddenly I understand why war is so complicated: You can hate a kingdom. You can hate the people who ordered the attacks. But looking down at a little girl running across a courtyard makes it much harder to convince yourself that every person below deserves the same fate.
“You are thinking loudly again.”
"Sorry."
“Not sorry, do you want to practice morphing to distract yourself?”
"What? You want me to morph while we're flying?"
“You need to be able to do it anywhere.”
Recognizing that he’s not wrong, I close my eyes and focus as I run through my warm-ups.
My hair shifts first. Then height. Nose. Jaw. Eyes. Voice.
I practice until my mind is as numb as my ass, and then we make our final stop.