Alexandria (27 page)

“It’s true. I’m sorry. You are a man, Arana. Nothing more.”

“No.”

“Then conjure magic. Possess me with your mind control.”

“It can’t be,” Arana says. “My father—”

“Your father has done you wrong, I fear.”

“He loved me…”

“I’m not saying he didn’t. He loved you deeply, more than anything. And he didn’t lie—he believed. Until the day he died he
believed
, and so does your family. I think you know I’m right on this. I’m surprised you’re only now questioning yourself.”

“It’s a curse.”

Keslin places his hands on him and whispers softly and with great sincerity. “It’s not a curse. You do not have powers. But it’s going to be all right. There are other ways,” he says, a broad smile spreading across his craggy face. “We do not need magic. I know far more effective methods.”

Balazir’s brisk gait carries them southward, his sturdy hooves kicking up clods of mud as he trots through the soggy woodlands. Lia wraps her arms around Jack’s waist and the two of them pulse with the rhythm of the horse’s stride, checking constantly over their shoulders for any sign of their pursuers.

“That was lucky,” Lia says flatly.

“What?”

“Finding those people like that. They would’ve gotten us if we hadn’t found them.”

“I know.”

“What if it’s gone?”

“Huh?”

“Our luck. What if it’s gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jack, they’re still out there. And what if they send more?”

“Just keep watching.”

“I am… but there’s more out here than just them.”

“I know. Don’t let it get to you.”

“Okay, it’s just… we’ve got so far to go. Are you sure the map’s right?”

“It hasn’t been wrong yet.”

Lia takes it out and unrolls it. She furrows her brow and looks at the map, and then at the terrain. She doesn’t even know where they are, it all looks the same, and she worries that Jack is only guessing when he shows her their progress.

“Jack…”

“Yes?”

“If we don’t make it…”

“We’re going to be
fine
, Lia.”

He speaks it so sincerely that she wants to believe him, but she knows his subtle ways and she can hear the hint of uncertainty in his voice.

“I knew you’d come for me,” she says. Her breath tickles the back of his neck when she speaks.

“We should have left when they first stole us.”

“They would have killed us for sure. We were so small then, Jack.”

“I don’t like it that you had to go through any of that. It never should have happened, anyway. We should have… I don’t know… but we should have done
something.”

“There was nothing you could have done. I thought they’d kill us the night we ran. I was almost sure we’d die, Jack, but I still wanted to go. We made it further than I ever thought we could, and if this is
it…”

“Lia, it’s okay.”

“If these are the last days we’ll spend together… I’m okay with that, and you shouldn’t blame yourself if anything happens. I know how you are sometimes. I want to be here, and I wouldn’t ever give this up for anything.”

Jack feels one of her hot tears drop on the back of his shirt and soak through.

“Me either,” he says.

He guides them to a languid creek and Balazir dips his head and drinks. They fill their waterskin and set out rations from the food Sajiress gifted them. Lia pulls her oversized boots off and sits on a rock and soaks her sore feet in the cool water, and Jack makes a visor of his hand and looks back over the ground they’ve just covered.

“Where are you, Halis?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Even with a good horse, the two of them in this enormous landscape leaves a small and helpless feeling in the back of his mind, and between the reassurances he gives Lia he has to fight off his own growing sense of doom. “Let’s go. We can eat while we ride.”

Lia pets Balazir’s long face and kisses his cheek, then hooks her foot in the stirrup and swings herself up behind Jack and they surge forward.

The narrow cut on Balazir’s hindquarters has been drawing flies all day and he swats constantly at them with his tail. Lia covers the wound up as best she can with a scrap of cloth that refuses to stay put. As she fusses with it again, Balazir swishes his tail around and lashes her across the face, and she yelps and gives him a playful slap on his hind and he bursts into a gallop that catches Jack off guard.

“What are you doing back there?”

“Nothing.” She stifles a laugh, then jerks her head around to make sure nothing is following them, recalling harshly the last time they let their guard down. “How’s your chest?”

“Itchy. Your shoulder?”

“It’s okay.”

The sun finally manages to poke through the simmering gray mantle that stretches to the furthest horizons, and the yellow light shines down in distinct angled rays that spotlight the far off hills with patches of glowing brilliance. They emerge into an open meadow and Jack gives Balazir a sharp, quick heel-spur. Lia braces her arms tighter around his waist and they rumble across the rolling country with the damp wind buffeting against their faces.

“He’s fast.”

“He’s one of the best.”

They barrel south along the coast for most of the afternoon, watching the scenery glide by and feeling more thankful than ever that they aren’t hiking the distance on foot. Balazir is quick to respond to the lightest of touch and he runs more powerful than Jack could have hoped. Lia keeps vigil, and out of the corner of her eye, blurry in the distance, she sees a glint of something shiny. It flashes just for a moment, in a random beam of sunshine, and is gone before she’s even sure it was there at all.

“Jack…”

“Yeah?”

“I think I saw something.”

He slows and trots to the side. “Where?”

“Over there, on top of that hill.”

He squints and peers off. All looks peaceful and still, save for the darkening skies, which stir with the threat of more thunderstorms. “What did you see?”

“Something shiny, I don’t know.”

He surveys the entire ridge with slack eyes, then pulls Balazir to the left and sets him running again. Nature gives way to more man-made rubble and they meander through the relics of old homesteads and residential streets. Most are piles of compost, but some of the larger manors were poured in stone and still stand against the onslaught of years, gothic looking in the midst of thorny vines and lazily sagging boughs. The stone looks old, yet unwizened by fire and heat, and Jack and Lia are absorbed by some of the most intact sites they’ve ever happened upon.

“It almost looks pretty,” she says in wonderment.

Jack keeps quiet and looks into the darkened recesses and collapsed living rooms, leery of the abundance of hiding places the neighborhood affords. They round a bend and saunter down a main street, structures leaning on either side of them.

“People have been here,” he says, “recently…” He points off to a row of buildings where the brush and vines have been pulled clear, leaving behind a tarnished and veiny silhouette. Footpaths are worn down through the undergrowth and a few stone pits bear the mark of recent fire. “Don’t seem to be here now, though.”

In the center of a jumbled, overgrown roundabout stands a thickset stone building, official looking, with columns and a stately entrance that spills down into the verdant, once-groomed circular park that surrounds it. One entire facade, running the length of the building’s side, has been cleared of all vegetation and words have been painted crazily, with curlicues and flourishes and letters that stand as tall as a man.
Time Gets Everything
, it says.

“What is this?” Jack says, and ambles closer to investigate.

Lia’s hands seize around his midsection. “What if they’re still in here? What if they’re not friendly?”

“I think… I think everyone is
gone.”

He rides a slow circuit around the quaint and decaying municipal building, and they see everywhere the evidence of recent human handiwork. Clutter is cleared away and arranged in neat piles, abandoned ruins are shored up and fortified with scrap metal and hewn lumber, and in a secluded arbor in back there are the makings of a small garden. The ground was cleared and the earth turned, but the effort looks to have been forsaken, for already the weeds and bracken have begun their steady reclamation of the land.

Lia gasps.
“Look.”

He sees it too and starts for his bow, then stops himself. Embedded before them in small mounds of stone are several upright poles, fastened with crosspieces that form makeshift arms, and the whole constructions are covered with tattered hides, with rotten bulbous heads fastened crooked on top.

“Do you think Sajiress did this?”

“I don’t think so,” says Jack. “It's in our words. Some group, though… wanderers, maybe.”

“I don’t like this,” she says, and moves closer.

They ride a wide path around the clan of cadaverous scarecrows and wind their way through the central district, past more hopelessly wasted residences and grassy side streets.

“Why would they all just
leave?”
he wonders aloud.

“Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they’re hiding… watching us.”

Jack looks at her apprehensively and quickens Balazir’s gait.

“I mean… a long time ago,” he says, “in the old days. This is all just falling apart, like everything else. It wasn’t burned, not recent, not ever, from the looks of it. It looks like all the people just left, went away, but why?”

“Olen said the sickness got everybody that didn’t burn. Maybe they all got sick and died.”

“Maybe.” It’s the likeliest explanation, but Jack still feels an odd pit in his stomach as they ride through the last of the ruins.

“It’s gone, though,” she says, “all the sickness.”

“Supposed to be.”

“If we’re alive today, that means it can’t kill us.”

“That’s what they say.”

“It must have been scary.”

Jack nods. He knows how scary sickness can be, they both do. He imagines whole families stricken down like his father, entire communities obliterated by some unseen predator, carting their diseased and dead away for shoddy funerals in mass graves. The neighborhood no longer feels empty, but possessed of forlorn revenants, lingering on through the centuries and seeping into the stone and earth like mold.

He tugs the reins and guides Balazir to a route that leads up a small hill, an old road by the looks. They clop over a slab of asphalt and pick their way carefully to the top, avoiding the sunken ditches that rainwater has dug. When they reach an open stretch, Lia hands Jack the waterskin and some dried berries.

“You know,” he says, chewing, “I think I met their children.”

“Who?”

“Sajiress. At the Temple… a while back, half year or more. I met two boys that talked like that.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

“I guess I was afraid he would—if he knew they were alive—I think he’d go straight there and try to get them. They’d all be killed if they even got close to the Temple.”

“Yeah, probably… but still, I’d want to know if my children were alive.”

They leave the topic unsettled and push ahead in silence. A drop of wetness lands on the back of Lia’s hand and she looks skyward.

“Oh no… it’s raining again.”

“How far are we going to follow them?” Cirune says, leering at Halis. Trickles of blood crawl down his left leg and pool in his boot.

Halis shimmies up the tilted piece of roadway on his hands and knees and trains the scope on the tiny horseback forms receding over the next hilltop. “Far as we have to,” he says finally.

“Cause we could get the lead on them. It’s a straight shot down the old road. I know a place up ahead where I think we could take them.”

“What if we miss?”

“What if they slip away? I’m cut up, so are the horses. We need to hurry up and get back.

Halis halts and squares himself off. “You can ride back if you want. I’m going to find out where they’re heading. You think it’s chance the two of them run the same night we caught those men looking in on us?
They’re together
. This boy could have been helping those two all along, for years they could have been planning this. If you want to walk away, then go. I won’t stop you. You can tell Keslin you’ve failed. I won’t fail.”