Alexandria (13 page)

“Careful, Lia.”

“Sorry.”

They use their little beaks to peck around by the mantle, by the door, around the bunks, squawking and cawing and chirping insanely, turning the whole lodge upside down. The door glides open and an armed sentry stands at the entrance, his hand resting casually on the machete at his hip.

“We’re fine,” Sena spouts off quickly, “We’re fine, we’re just playing a game. We got a little loud.”

He nods, a bemused look on his face, then backs out and bars the door behind him.

The girls remain stock still in their places, glancing around at one another in hushed silence. Haylen is the first one to break. She shakes slightly then falls on the nearest mattress, laughing convulsively, and the other girls join in, grinning and chuckling like little imps.

“You girls are crazy,” says Sena, shaking her head. “Completely crazy. I think that means it’s time for bed.”

“But we didn’t find the ball!”

“We’ll find it tomorrow. Come on, get in your bunks and I’ll blow out the candles.”

They grudgingly obey, a few of them giving Sena a quick hug before climbing onto their bunks and snuggling in. Sena walks a circuit around the lodge, blowing out the sconces as she goes. Each little puff of air she blows turns the lodge a bit dimmer.

“Goodnight, girls,” she says, and blinks out the last flickering candle.

Lia rolls facing the wall and pulls her covers up over her head, still panting from playtime. She lies awake while Sena moves the bassinet close to her cot and settles in. The other girls are rustling around in their bed linens, trying to get comfortable. When the lodge quiets down and the gusts of night breeze and a few gentle snores are the only noises, Lia lets her facade fall away. Here in the safe haven of night she allows herself to remember how much she hates this place, how much she misses her parents. And Jack. She worries about Jack. Scary rumors have spread and it feels like her first months here again, when she didn’t know if he was alive or dead. She curls into a ball and spends the last scraps of her energy pining for his company before drifting off to sleep.

In the passing months, Arana’s clandestine visit has continued to haunt Jack in these pitch-black confines, wedging into his thought pattern and embedding itself—more vivid even than the incident with Halis, which he has relived countless times in his head, and worse still because he feels himself horribly enticed. He has spent sleepless eternities turning the offer over in his mind, nauseated that he would even give it consideration. To join their ranks is to become a murderer.
But
, Jack thinks,
I already am a murderer
.

He thought about starving himself. They bring so little food and water as it is, starvation would be the simplest form of suicide. Eat no food and drink no water and perhaps he would just fade away, everyday less and less of him until finally he would vanish. But some aspect of his mind will not allow this to happen, and even in his most delirious states he reaches out and drinks the water and eats his gruel.

The trapdoor rises and thuds on the stone floor, and when Jack sees the phalanx of warriors looking down he thinks they have come to perform his execution.

“You’re finished, Jack. Your time is done.”

They reach down and pull him out and he stands on spent legs, blinking around, the faint torchlight contracting his pupils. He was slight to begin with and now he looks all joints and ribs, his body melted away from malnourishment.

“You’ll spend the night in the Temple and return to the quarry tomorrow morning, on orders of King Arana Nezra the Second.” The lead warrior stops and regards Jack curiously for a moment. “They say you’re the boy who killed Vallen.”

Oh no
, Jack thinks,
not again
. “Yes. I am.”

He waits for the blows to come, for the three warriors alone with him in the secluded keep to exact their revenge. The man simply takes him by the arm and leads him upstairs.

They stop at the baths and wait for him to clean himself, then to the dining hall for a cold dinner. This whole process calls back eerily his very first day at the Temple. The dining hall is empty, everyone else has eaten earlier, and Jack picks at the plate they’ve set aside for him. Months with such a minuscule amount of broth and water have shriveled his stomach down to nothing and he manages only a few bites.

When he is finished they walk atop the vaulted arch toward the dormitory. The guards stationed at the familiar entrance lift the bar and open the door for him.

“It’s Jack!”

William, Creston and the boys crowd around and squeeze him tightly and Jack falls into their arms.

“We didn’t think we’d see you ever again.”

“I thought so too.”

“Where were you?”

“They… took me away for a while.”

“You look pretty beat, Jack, why don’t you sit down,” says William, and guides him over to a bunk. “This is yours, we saved it for you.”

“Thanks. It’s good to see you. Everyone okay?”

“We’re fine here. What about Aiden and Braylon?”

“At the quarry still, I think. I don’t know. I haven’t seen them for so long.”

“Welcome back,” says Quinlan. “Everyone here missed you quite a bit.”

“I missed everybody too.”

“Jack, look at this,” says Creston, nearly bursting. He reaches into the neckline of his shirt and draws out a round metal pendant with a swirled sun and moon engraved on its front. “I made it myself.”

“That’s really good work, Creston.”

“Thanks.
Here.”
He lifts the leather strap over his head and hands it over. “I want you to have it. For coming back.”

“Creston,” says Jack, his throat catching, “thank you.”

“I’ll make another. William made one too. His is better.”

William looks at Jack and shrugs.

“Put it on.”

He slips the cord around his neck and straightens out the pendant. “Thanks, Creston, it’s really nice.”

Bashful Lathan is standing at the back of the group and Jack waves him forward and hugs him.

“Hi.”

“You’re getting big, Lathan, I almost didn’t know you.”

There are two boys not joining the celebration. They sit off to the side, trembling on their bunks, waist length hair hanging down into their faces, casting dolorous looks at the excited boys.

“Who are they?”

“That’s Alok and Bojin. At least, we think that’s what they’re called.”

Jack catches their eye and nods in their direction. “Hi. I’m Jack.”

“Tah… mon tondessa.”

“They don’t know how to talk,” laughs William.

“They’re new. They came from a group of wanderers.”

“Oh.” The tragic reality of their circumstance dawns on Jack. “I’m sorry…”

“Saarek tah?”

“I… I’m sorry.”

They look wide-eyed and pleading at Jack, as if they expect something more from him.

“I think we should turn in,” Quinlan says, interrupting the moment. “Jack has a long day ahead of him, we have to let him get some sleep.”

“Why?”

“I have to go back to the quarry.”

“You’re
leaving
again?” says Lathan. “You just got here.”

They procrastinate around for as long as Quinlan will tolerate, then reluctantly climb into their bunks. A real, soft mattress feels like bliss after six months of lying on wet stone, but his mind still wanders and reels when the candlelight is extinguished. That feeling of dreadful claustrophobia hasn’t left his senses yet and he lies awake most of the night.

In the morning he says a tearful goodbye to his friends, then the warriors lead him away to begin his trek back to the quarry.

The morning sky throws a pinkish veil over the Temple as the first workers of the day emerge from their cottages and shamble across the grounds. They walk him to the outskirts near the stables to meet Karus and the others who will make the journey north.

“Jack!”
yells a voice from a brigade of young warriors waiting to go to the training fields. Braylon emerges from their ranks, waving, and jogs over to meet him. “We were worried about you. I heard what happened with Halis.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t think he was too well liked here.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Braylon looks at him intensely and clasps his shoulder. “I know what you went through down there. I can’t imagine six months of it, though.”

Jack only nods.

“Back to the quarry?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell Karus to jump off a cliff for me.”

Jack smiles. “What are you doing, Braylon?”

“Training. I just started. Better than the sledge crew at least.”

“You’re a soldier?”

“Well… I will be,” Braylon says with reticence. “It’s not as bad as you think. It’s just—”

“It’s okay, Braylon.”

“We get to go out and hunt, and we’re learning how to shoot arrows and fight and they’re going to teach us how to ride horses and—”

“Braylon, it’s okay. I understand.”

“You do?”

“I think so.”

“Thank you,” Braylon says, and gives him a quick embrace. “It’s just nice to feel like I belong somewhere again.”

“I know, Braylon. I know.” Jack misses all those things too.

“Braylon, get in line—”

“I’ve got to go. Take care of yourself, Jack. Try to stay out of the pit.”

“You too, Braylon. I’ll see you.” Jack watches him go until the warrior at his side nudges him to keep moving.

At the stables, Karus finishes tying up several bundles and stacks them on the old mare’s back. A team of warriors, off duty from their training, mill around with packs hoisted over their shoulders, waiting for Karus and the boy.

“Ah, here he is,” Karus belts. “Look at you, Jack, wasted away!” He feels Jack’s scrawny arms and back. “You don’t have a fistful of meat left on your whole body.”

“Hi, Karus.”

“Did you miss me?”

“Yes.”

“The boy’s a good liar,” says Karus to the men. “All right, you don’t look fit enough to carry one of these bundles all day, but I seem to remember you had a way with this old sack here.” He pats the side of the stolid mare. “Take her lead there, Jack, you know what to do.”

He says
hello
to the bedraggled horse and takes the leather straps in his hand.

Karus hefts his bundle and hobbles off to the north. “Head out, everybody, head out. Don’t get left behind or we’ll let the lions eat you.”

Jack leads the old girl, surrounded by his brethren rock breakers, and they follow the dusty, worn road as it winds between the hills and away from the Temple’s provinces, past the broken down rubble and on through the wild country.

Chapter Six

Two years pass without brutality.

The crew takes to Jack and he takes to them, with no hint of retribution or scorn. He finds comfortable solace in the work, the meditative drudgery of it keeps his mind from wandering into darker territory. He has been appointed lead of the upper crew on the south face, and he treads along the slanted tier with a stout length of timber balanced on his shoulder. Corded tendons stand out on his neck and arms, and hundreds of days of working in the sun have turned his skin a deep umber.

On the lower tier, men tip the wooden sledge at an angle and work a tangle of ropes around the joists, slipping them under the carriage and tying them off. Jack calls the rest of the crew back to help dislodge the stone and tip it onto the platform. Twenty of them gather round, each carrying long poles, which they slide down into the groove. Jack takes his place in the line.

“All ready down there?” he calls.

“Ready.”

“Pull
.”

They pull back on the timber poles, straining and grunting, and the stone tilts forward ever so slightly. As the back end rises off the ground, several more crewmen shove logs underneath to shimmy it up and the stone settles at an angle. They rest and collect themselves then heave back again, timber creaking against the hard stone as it cants forward a bit more. A second set of crewmen takes up ropes. Their feet slide forward on the dusty rock as they lean back on their haunches, grimacing and belting out deep growls as they struggle to keep it from falling all at once and splintering the sledge to pieces. The carriage groans as the stone settles onto the platform and the exhausted crew drops their ropes.

“That’s it,” says Jack.

He wipes sweat and dust off his face and trudges off to the shelter for some water and food, horsing around with the rest of the crew on the way back. He has not seen his old friends since his release. Only Aiden is still here, and Braylon when he’s out of his rotation. Soldierhood has served him well, Braylon says, though he has yet to be sent out. Scouting and hunting only. His day will come.

He thinks about Lia every once in a while. He wonders if she would even remember him.

They eat around the campfire, and as the first stars of the night peek through the twilight they see Karus limping down the road with a shift of new workers. He unpacks the provisions and ties up the mare, then settles in next to Jack.

“You’ve been called.”

“Called?”

“By the King. You’ll go back with the sledge crew in the morning.”