Chapter 9
Ashkade’s room was a complete disaster, but maybe that’s just how genius teenagers live. The workbench he brought aboard seemed to have had more use than his bed. It was covered in books, tools, and mechanical pieces of who knew what, just like the table in his temporary lab in the capital.
He hurried to throw the rumpled clothing strewn about on his cot into a pile on the floor while I ogled the open chest of platinum and gold jewelry beside his workbench.
That had to have been how he paid for everything.
Just one of those rings or necklaces probably cost a fortune.
Ashkade awkwardly picked up a well-kept pistol from where it had been hiding beneath some of his clothes and set it on his worktable.
Does he actually know how to use that?
A huge, clumsily folded piece of white canvas beside the worktable caught my eye—probably the sail we were supposed to repair.
I grabbed it while Ash fished a sewing kit out of his maelstrom of tools.
We sat together on his bed, and he patiently showed me the crisscross stitch necessary to ensure the ripped sail would hold together in the wind.
He started on one end of the tear, and I on the other.
“You know, Rei isn’t that bad when you get to know him,” Ash said, stabbing his needle into the thick fabric.
“He was a jerk to me too when we first met. One day he’s all, ‘Timebreaker, you better pay me good for having to put up with your harebrained ideas.’” I giggled as Ash tried to deepen his voice to imitate Reiven.
“And the next, he’d say, ‘You know, you’re a good kid, Ash.
’ At some point, he kinda stopped treatin’ me like his annoying teenage employer and more like a bro—uh…
” He cut himself off and froze mid-stitch.
I considered sneaking a peek at his face, but I focused on my next stitch, curious about what he would say.
“Uh…friend. Yeah, he’s kinda like my best friend.
‘Cept I have to pay him to be my friend.”
I wouldn’t have expected such loneliness in the empty tone of the Timebreaker’s words. A pang of sadness struck through my heart when I finally glanced at his face. Pink flushed his freckled cheeks, and he stared at the floor, chewing on his lip.
Big sister. That’s the mask you wear around him. Put it to work, Zephra.
“Reiven seems to really care about you. I’m sure he’d still be your friend, even if you didn’t pay him.” I left my needle impaled into the thick canvas and set my hand on Ash’s thin shoulder. “And if he wouldn’t…I would. Honestly, I think you might be my favorite Human ever.”
He threw me a grin, a real, kind smile that warmed right through the ice and stone around my heart. “Me and my pretty green eyes?”
I laughed. “Yep. So…I take it you don’t have many friends?” I tried to ask gently, but his face still fell.
“Just kept to myself on my folks’ farm after they took me in.
Spent more time with cows and chickens than people, y’know?
Ma taught me to read and write, and I taught myself lots of other things, like how to fix stuff around the farm.
Realized I was good with my hands and had the bright idea that I wanted to be a doctor. ”
A doctor? He seemed like he’d make a good one.
“Then I got drafted.”
I stopped sewing. It didn’t feel right to not give him my full attention.
The war between Humans and Druinns had raged for years, but it was just two summers ago that the Circle of Gold sent the decree for any boy twelve and older to be sent to the front lines.
Everyone knew what they were: cannon fodder.
Expendable lives that created a paper-thin wall between the real Human soldiers and the Druinn army.
I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go from being a bright-eyed child on his parents’ farm to a frightened, not-quite-man on a battlefield.
Ash began to sew again, avoiding my eyes, but he continued in a somber voice.
“Thought I’d be a goner in a day or two.
But my hands are real steady. It didn’t matter if I was stitchin’ a cut or firin’ a gun.
I still remember tryin’ to pretend like I wasn’t shaking at camp the day before we were ordered to march over the border, into enemy territory.
Don’t know why they thought it was a good idea…
But we marched as ordered, and everyone started to fall around me.
I gave up, caught a bullet in my calf, but I ran like Mourner Hell.
Didn’t realize I was runnin’ further into Terrakor until I stumbled across a Druinn civilian.
I went to fire at her like some crazed idiot, but luckily, I passed out from blood loss first. She was real nice.
She saved me…had to amputate my leg, though. ”
My throat tightened. I tried to imagine Ash, a few years younger, with dirt and blood caked on his fair skin and clothes and golden hair, running in a forest that echoed with gunshots and screams of the dying. I silently continued to sew and listened to every word he said.
“She made this crutch for me. And we worked together to make me a new leg.” He rolled up his pants and showed me where from the knee down, his left leg was made of metal, shaped almost like the skeletal bone he was missing. A complicated-looking cog and strap system kept it attached to his stump.
“Wow, it’s amazing you made that.” I tried to brighten a little. “So, how did fourteen-year-old Ash solve a kind of magic no one else in the world understands?”
He nodded eagerly and grabbed some excess string from the spool, leaving me to finish the last few stitches in the middle of the sail. Ash weaved the string around his fingers until he proudly showed me a complex web stretched between both his hands.
What is he, part spider?
“I heard a voice while I was driftin’ in darkness after losing my leg.
It explained how time magic works, sayin’ it was the key to returning the world to peace.
Sirens, Mourners, and Druinns are naturally gifted thanks to the Spirits.
Your abilities are just inside you. Now, time magic is real different.
Time’s everywhere, right? Can’t see it, but it’s always there, surrounding our world like a web. ”
Ashkade motioned for me to hold out my fist, and he wrapped the woven string around my hand to show what he meant.
“When I woke up, I could see the web the voice spoke of, high in the sky. Didn’t think much of it until I returned home and started to experiment with pulling on the threads of time.
I thought I had it down, so I returned to the front lines and begged the Circle of Gold and the Druinns to come together for peace talks, but…
nobody listened to me. Didn’t mean to, but I pulled down every thread in the sky over Terrakor and left them all frozen in time.
I couldn’t figure out how to undo it, so the Circle of Gold just razed Terrakor while they were helpless. ”
His voice took on a bitter undertone. It made sense that he felt guilty for being the reason for such destruction, but…
“You did it to end the war, didn’t you?” I asked quietly.
“We were fightin’ for such a stupid reason, over a ‘stolen’ god that no one could even see.
” His expression grew more serious, and to me, he appeared far older than his sixteen years.
“That’s part of what led me to start researchin’ the relics of the Spirits.
I thought maybe they could be used to keep the world in order, prevent us from fightin’ again.
But since you said that the Sirens’ relic was stolen… I figured it should be returned.”
That’s right…I thought he just said that to make me think he was a good person.
He continued, somber and determined. “Maybe with the Voidtome in the right hands, we can finally sit down and hammer out real, lasting peace. I reckon even the Mourners and the Sirens will come to the table to repair their relationships with each other, right? No more fightin’.
No more killin’. Just peace and unity. I guess you could call that my… dream.”
I blinked at him slowly, letting his words sink into my heart. Every vow I had ever made to myself to never trust another Human began to drift away as I stared into his eyes. Calinia’s warnings that Ashkade was just like every other power hungry Human silenced in the back of my mind.
Ash…wants to make the world a better place. He wants to return the Voidtome to my people, not keep it for himself. Not destroy things with it.
This boy just wanted harmony, while I had been plotting to use the Voidtome to eradicate an entire country. If I continued down that path, would I become some villain he’d have to defeat in order to complete his mission?
Of course I would. I hardened my heart into ice and stone, swallowing down the thought of this boy's blood on my hands as necessary.
I pursed my lips and considered him carefully. “Ashkade…you really want to return it to my people?”
“Sure thing. Ain’t that what you want too?
‘Side from removin’ the bond, of course.
” He shook himself, like he wanted to move past our topic of conversation.
“Anyhow, want to see what I’m workin’ on?
” He limped over to his worktable and showed me one of the platinum rings that lay amongst the tools and metal scraps.
Complicated symbols had been etched into the ring.
“Threads of time aren’t solid; they’re strings made up of millions of tiny symbols like these.
I’ve been tryin’ to seal up a piece of time magic in objects by carving the glyphs into them, to keep control of where it affects time, so I don’t accidentally break it again. Time’s awful tricky.”
“Ash…” I tried to imagine the symbols on the ring floating in the air around Ash’s room. Perfect strings of magic glittering in the sunlight that filtered through the porthole window. The mound of jewelry beside his worktable wouldn’t compare. “You’re incredible.”