Chapter Nineteen #2
‘You see that young man two tables behind us, with cropped dark hair and a long scar across his neck?’ Sunsi asked.
Swallowing a particularly large mouthful, Gedeon peered over his shoulder, following her eyeline to the man in question, (he couldn’t have been past twenty; a boy in Gedeon’s eyes), sandwiched between two girls of around the same age.
‘His name is Jorah. He used to be a waiter for the Staunts. Was one of their best apparently. Good job, paid well. Until one of their many dinner parties went a bit sour.’
Gedeon turned back around.
Sunsi continued, ‘Some drunk fae noble forced himself on one of the maids in the gardens. Jorah heard her cry out and tried to stop it. He got right in between them, but the male slashed him across the neck with a knife and dumped him in an alleyway on his way out. He would have bled out if I hadn’t found him.
I brought him here and got him to our healer just in time.
He was our latest recruit. That is, until you and Amala came along. ’
She put her spoon down, though her food had barely been touched. ‘Every single person here has a story like Jorah’s and Laori’s. The world above is not meant for people like us. It continuously chews us up and spits us back out until we either submit or die. We are nothing to them but cattle.’
‘You are the sentry captain,’ Gedeon reminded her. ‘You are not so far from the elite as you think. You are above the… cattle.’
‘Gedeon, no one should be above anyone,’ she said, suddenly furious.
‘Do you not see that? Our hearts beat the same, yours and mine. We bleed the same, we fuck the same and eventually we will die the same. The shape of our ears nor the thickness of our skin does not change that. And I know you know this. It’s why you didn’t destroy the city, and why you refused to kill the fledgling girl. ’
‘So what, Sunsi?’ Gedeon demanded. ‘You want me to lead a rebellion? To start a revolution? I see a fight raging in your eyes, but it is not a fight you will win. The second these people step outside of this little haven they will die.’
Sunsi fell silent and glared at a spot on the table, as though she knew he was right. Despite his growling stomach, Gedeon pushed the bowl away from himself, appetite suddenly gone.
‘Do you know what happens to the human fledglings you train?’ Sunsi asked, still staring at that same spot after a few moments of tense quiet.
Of course he knew. ‘They become part of her army.’
‘Have you ever bothered to visit those you trained? To see them once they graduate from your teachings?’
Gedeon blinked at the bluntness of the questions, the resentment laced in the words. He was beginning to wonder how Sunsi had ever shared his bed; her dislike for him was becoming apparent. ‘I had no need to,’ he replied.
‘If you had bothered, you would have known the truth a long time ago.’
Irritated, he said, ‘What truth?’
She leaned forward, her eyes boring into his so absolutely, he could see every brown and golden fleck swimming amongst the green.
‘Every fledgling you have ever trained did become part of the army. Every magic wielding slave from the Agni camps, men and women as well as the children. But not their bodies. No, their bodies were tossed into the Emor without a second thought. But only once every ounce of their magic had been forcibly taken from them.’
Gedeon stilled.
Sunsi went on, ‘The Empress’ army is not made up of humans, Gedeon.
Do you really think your mother would have humans fight for her?
The soldiers are fae. Every last one of them.
Enhanced with the stolen magic of those same fledglings you have spent your entire life training. She calls them High Wielders.’
Gedeon earnestly searched for a hint of a lie upon her face. He found none. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘I would have known.’
‘I think,’ Sunsi said carefully, ‘that your mother sensed in you what I have. That your heart can never truly serve her. To protect her… deranged arrangements… she withheld the truth from you, knowing that you would never have approved.’
‘And my brother?’ said Gedeon, his voice surprisingly level against the blood pounding in his ears. ‘Did she withhold the truth from him too?’
Sunsi scowled with pure hatred. ‘Oh, Sekun knew. In fact it would not surprise me if it had been his fucked up idea.’
‘And how,’ Gedeon began as he leaned closer to her, never dropping his gaze from hers, ‘does the human sentry captain come to know of such classified information?’
Sunsi held his death stare, even levelled it with her own as her features significantly hardened at his question.
‘Because my mother’s magic runs through the veins of one of those High Wielders.
’ The anger fractionally ebbed on her face.
‘She was a warrior. Her magic was stronger than most and she jumped at the chance to join the ranks when the legion came knocking, to prove herself. My father did too, though he was a sentry, not a soldier. All they wanted to do was fight for Zarynth. For their home. For their four year old daughter. Your mother’s vision…
it's very alluring for those who have nothing. A promised world of everything. Of prosperity.’
‘My mother was revered for her talents once conscripted. The best in the legion,’ Sunsi proceeded, with a soft smile.
‘My father would tell me that to get me to sleep each night, so that when she was gone, she would still be with me in my dreams, as a strong, capable warrior.’ Her smile faded.
‘It wasn’t until I was eighteen, that he told me the truth.
‘The last time I saw her was on my sixth nameday, and she was… changed. Her smile was forced, her skin was sallow. As though she was carrying a burden she could not be rid of. Then, a week later, my father received the news. That disease had taken her from us. But my mother had been one step ahead of the lie they tried to spin. She had known, somehow she’d known what had happened to the others: her warrior friends that had been killed for their magic, and she knew that the same end was coming for her too.
The day after my father received news of her death, an unmarked letter appeared on our doorstep.
Inside, written in my mother’s own hand, was the truth of her murder.
She’d known the end was near for her, known she would never escape it.
We never saw her body after they’d proclaimed her dead.
They burned her to ash, claiming it was a necessary precaution to dispose of the body imminently, to stop the spread of disease. They lied.’
Sunsi blinked away unshed tears and looked around the tall room.
‘My father founded this place shortly after. Zarynth’s best kept secret, and a refuge for all those, like my mother, who needed a place to disappear when she knew there was no escape.
He couldn’t save her. But he could save others from the same fate.
When I was old enough to understand, he told me everything.
I followed in his footsteps and joined the sentries, and when he passed, this refuge became mine to take care of. ’
She leaned forward. ‘I have watched you from the moment I joined the guard, Gedeon. And I trust you for the same reason your mother does not.’
Gedeon was stupefied to silence, his mind reeling with this undesired information.
His mother had begged him to trust her, to have unwavering faith, to obey without question, knowing the whole time she would never fully trust him in return.
But why?
Was it the fire that coursed through him that warranted such distrust? Was it his connection to the Fire Mother, to Eraura, that had inevitably created a rift between them, between mother and son, queen and prince, an emotional blockage he had not even been aware of?
Gedeon roughly rubbed at his pounding forehead. ‘What do you want, Sunsi?’
‘I want justice,’ Sunsi hissed tenaciously.
‘For my mother. For Laori and her sister, for Jorah, for Amala. Even for you. For the life you have been conditioned to lead. For the lies she has spun. You are fire and darkness, Gedeon. I didn’t think it was possible, but I know what I saw.
Xados’ night belongs to you. You might be the answer, the hope that Zarynth has been desperately in need of. ’
‘You want me to commit treason.’
‘Haven’t you been listening?’ Sunsi’s cheeks furiously reddened.‘Fuck treason. Zarynth needs to be liberated and you already have a bounty on your head for your treachery. There’s no going back now.’
She was right. Gods damn her, she was right. ‘Even with my fire and darkness, I alone cannot take on her entire army.’
Sunsi pursed her lips. ‘Perhaps. But there are others like you.’
Gedeon had the feeling she’d been leading up to this. ‘You cannot mean…’
‘The other Wardens,’ she said quickly. ‘Find them. Convince them of your sincerity and unite with them to restore balance. It’s what the Empress has always feared, it's why she could never fully trust you. You have the power to destroy everything she has built. With the other Wardens behind you, she cannot continue.’
‘Yes, I’m sure Naal Westerra will forgive the decimation of her city with a few words of promised unity,’ Gedeon said with intended satire.
It did not land well. Sunsi snapped, ‘Well, you’ve got to try.
Right your wrongs. Fall at the Air Warden’s feet and kiss her boots, do whatever you have to do to earn her trust.’ Her gaze drifted over his shoulder and Gedeon followed it to a gaggle of children of varying ages who came spilling into the hall, loud and boisterous as they ought to be.
All but one, who stood at the threshold in new clothing that actually fit her small frame, and stared right at him. A grin, bright and full of pure mirth split her usually solemn face at the sight of him, but he could not bring himself to return the smile.
‘I saved you for a reason, Gedeon,’ Sunsi said coolly as he turned his head away from the fledgling girl. ‘Don’t waste it.’