Diamond Bonds (9 page)

Though discouraged, he salutes and says, “Yes, sir.”

“We both know you’re my best commander, Galen,” says the general.  “I expect you to complete this operation with dignity and success.”  Without awaiting a response, he retreats from the office with footsteps resounding down the hall.

Galen sinks into himself, his breath trembling with frustration.  The girl’s importance is nothing like he suspected, and the general’s information only served to confuse his search parameters.  He walks to the map and moves certain pins, realizing he needs to place greater emphasis on the route to the border.  Vowing to find the perpetrators and make them adequately suffer is the only thought that brings him solace.

*              *              *

Fading in and out of a lucid state, Era finally opens his eyes with enough awareness to make out Di’s tear-stained face.

“Era!?  Era, you’re awake!”  The small girl practically jumps onto his bed, hugging him and burying her face into his shoulder.

Jem comes running into the small room.  Relief washes over her upon seeing her partner conscious once again, though she contains herself and turns away briefly to wipe her face.

Era looks around the room in confusion.  A window on the adjacent wall tells him the sun has long set, and his personal effects are stacked on a small table in the corner.  He glances down and realizes he’s not wearing a shirt.  He silently hopes he’s wearing
something
under his covers.

Leaning against the wall, Jem folds her arms and says, “Hey, next time wake up sooner.  Sleeping all day is unacceptable!  I mean, I knew you were lazy, but this is-”

“Give it a rest, Jem!” Di blurts out, startling the patient.  “You were just as worried, so quit trying to hide it.”

Jem scratches her cheek. “O-Okay, fine, so the bum got me a little worked up.”

Summoning his strength, Era asks, “What… What happened to me?”  Noticing his partner’s swollen cheek, he adds, “And what happened to you?”

Jem cocks her head and smirks.  “Yeah, I took a good punch,” she says, rubbing her wound.  She pulls the barb from her pocket and says, “We were ambushed by a professional mercenary.  You took this straight in the neck.  It was laced with one heck of a poison.”

“Indeed it was,” an old man interjects as he enters the room behind Jem.  “My name is Doctor Lansen.  Pleased to meet you, young man.”

“D-Doctor?”  Era sits up, easing Di off as she continues to cling to him.  “But wait, how did I get here?  You two took out the… did you say mercenary?”

“No, I said
bandit
,” she says, eyeing the doctor.  “And of course I lugged your sorry hide to the nearest town.  You cost us a lot of money, I’ll have you know!  Pretty much everything we took from Andr- our savings!  This doctor is expensive.”

The physician eyes her, and Era notices a disgust in his expression he’s become all too familiar with in his travels with Jem.  “Young man, Era was it?  You were hit with a specialized and dangerous toxin, one which can easily end your life,” he explains.  “It’s a fairly common poison made from pollen of the iterial flower, but the user needs to utilize perfectly-dosed injections, otherwise the stick could be fatal.  I’ve seen enough travelers who get ambushed by bandits and receive too strong a dose, and they end up dying on the table.”

His patient swallows hard.  “Sounds like I’m lucky,” he says, wondering what must have transpired over the last several hours.  Though it sounds like he almost died, he’d never guess it based on how he feels. He stretches his arm and says, “Well, I feel fine now.”

“Strangely enough, the symptoms tend to end quickly,” the doctor says.  “Overall, it’s not a bad poison to experience, should you survive.”  Turning to leave, he adds, “I charged for the night, so you might as well sleep here.  You’re cleared to leave in the morning.  Just be warned: a second dose so close to the first
will
be fatal, even if small.  So steer clear of any more bandits.”  He glances again at Jem before closing the door behind him.

“Steer clear of bandits!?” Jem exclaims, throwing her hands in the air.  “What a useless doctor!  He looks you over, tell us he knows the poison, then charges us an arm and a leg to set you in a makeshift bed and ‘check’ on you every hour.  He did nothing!  Plus he clearly has a thing against Allerians.  I should demand-”

“Thanks Jem,” Era interrupts with sincere appreciation.  “You saved my life.”

His frankness takes her aback.  “W-What are you talking about?  You’re my apprentice, so it would look bad if you died on me.”  In a scolding tone, she adds, “Though you owe me
another
pressure pack.  Mine ran out of air just outside town.  And I thought you were heavy
before
it ran out… yeesh.”

He chuckles.  “You were strong enough to stand against a market mercenary.  Carrying me couldn’t have been a challenge.”

“Well, joking aside, we wouldn’t be standing here if not for Di,” she says.  “Girl saved the day.”

Di’s face turns crimson.  “I-It was nothing…”

Era is about to laugh it off when he realizes Jem is serious. “R-Really Di? I didn’t know you could hold your own in a fight.  How’d you do it?”

“Yes, Di, let’s talk about your little talent,” Jem says.  “You owe us a serious explanation.”

“I-It’s nothing!” Di stammers.  “I already told you I’m an air shaper, so it’s natural that I can mold air to-”

“Di, everyone knows air shaping is the most useless elemental ability,” Jem says.  “And the
reason
it’s so useless is because you can’t do anything substantial with it.”

“I’m confused.  What are we talking about?” Era asks.

“Show him,” Jem orders.

Di reluctantly stretches her arms over Era, her palms pointing toward the ceiling, and the air at her fingertips shimmers.  “There,” she grunts in exertion.

“There… what?  I don’t see anything.”

Jem slaps her forehead.  “It’s
air
, Era!  What do you expect to see?”  She grabs his bag from the ground and drops it over his face.  Era flinches, but the bag lands with a loud thump.  The small girl grunts from the strain on the glass-like shield, trying not to topple from the load.

“See what I’m talking about?” Jem asks Era, slapping the solid platform.  “Rock solid!”

Era runs his hand along the solid air.  “I’ve never seen anything like this!”

Proud of her demonstration, Jem drags the bag to the floor.  Di releases the shield and stoops to catch her breath.

“Takes a lot out of you, huh?” Era asks. She nods, wiping the sweat from her brow.  “That’s a cool talent, for sure!”

Jem puts her hands to her hips.  “Era, you’re completely missing the point.  This girl is an air shaping
genius!
  No, not just a genius… This is unheard of!  And she’s been hiding it from us!”

Era shrugs.  “We knew she was from the Three Pillars Academy, so she had to be talented.  I mean, I’m not an expert on air shapers.  I don’t know what’s typical and what’s not.”

“The girl is special, Era,” she insists.  “I guarantee it, and I also guarantee it’s why she was kidnapped from the Academy.”  She turns to Di and asks, “Or do you deny it, Little Miss Arcane?  You know the typical limits of an air shaper.”

Di slowly admits, “Yes, I have more control than most air shapers.”

“And why did you hide it from us?” Jem barks.  “We’re risking our lives for you here.  We need the whole story!”

“I-I told you what I know about the kidnappers!  I just… I didn’t know whether I could trust you at first.  I don’t want to be sold to a circus for being a freak.  I just want to go home!”

Era is quick to chime in. “Well, can you trust us now?”  Di nods fervently.  “And do you have anything else to tell us?”

“There’s nothing else,” she answers without hesitation.  “I don’t know why I have this level of control.  No one at the Academy had any clue, but they worked with me to develop my talent.  The faculty pulled all kinds of air shaping experts to come in and spend time with me.”

“Okay, okay, that’s a nifty skill,” Era interjects, “but how did that help you take out a mercenary?”

Jem throws her arms in the air and starts motioning. “That hunter girl had us beaten down at the gorge’s ridge when-”

“Wait, the merc was a girl?”

“Stay focused, Era!” Jem gripes.  “Di threw her wall up as a shield between us, and I… well…”

Di points at Jem.  “She used me as a
plow!
  She grabbed me and… and…”

Era smiles.  “What’d you do, push her off the ledge?”  To his surprise, Di nods emphatically, unable to find the words to express her disapproval.  Jem beams with pride at her heroic exploits, but Era’s brow furrows.  “Did she survive?”

“Don’t you dare get on your high horse,” Jem warns.  “You weren’t there, Era.  I had no choice.  It was kill or be killed.”  He averts his eyes, and she hurriedly adds, “What’s with you two!?  Geez, if it helps then maybe she survived.  The slope wasn’t a straight drop, and I didn’t stick around to check her body.”

Era slowly shifts his attitude.  “If you say it couldn’t be avoided, then it couldn’t be avoided,” he says, though he’s clearly still bothered.

“It couldn’t,” she insists.  “Regardless, the Smith’s Hammer guild apparently took our little raid seriously enough to send a hunter after us.  And where there’s one…”

Era sighs.  “We’ll need to lay low from here on out, huh?”

“To think we’ll be dealing with this level of talent,” Jem groans.  She tosses Era the needle she retrieved.  “She used these against me and Di.  Fortunately she missed, but that would have
hurt
.  It sunk into a
tree
.”

He observes the projectile, about twice the length of a finger and thick enough to offer good weight.  “So let me get this straight,” Era wonders aloud as he crosses his arms.  “The girl wanted us alive, right?  Poisoning me, not poisoning you two…”

“She was unraveling wire at one point, too,” Jem recalls.  “She was ready to tie us up and herd us along somewhere.”

“But why alive?” he asks.  “Why not kill us and take Di back if she’s so important?”

Jem shrugs.  “Who cares?  It could just be some kind of vendetta thing.  You know the routine: capture us alive, make us wish we were dead, and so on.”

Di shudders at the thought.  “How can you be so nonchalant about this?  Someone just attacked us!  With poison!!”

Jem pats her head.  “Silly Di, you have no idea what this means to us, do you?”

“It means you’re worth a lot of money, Di!”  Era explains with enthusiasm.  “We found a good haul after all.”  Though he expects a smile, she storms from the room and slams the door behind her.

“Was that too much?” Jem wonders aloud.

“Maybe,” he admits.  “She’ll get over it.”

Jem sits on the edge of Era’s bed.  With Di gone, the air in the room takes a dark turn as the two thieves ponder their predicament.

“Jem, do you think we’re in over our heads?” Era asks.  “We can put on a show for Di, but we’ve never had to deal with Merc Market professionals.  We came out alright this time, but… it sounds like it was entirely thanks to Di.”

“Neither of us have even had actual bounties on our heads,” Jem agrees.  “I mean, other than a few small towns offering fifty venni for us, or whatever.”

Era nods.  Their map has black X’s over certain towns, marking off where they had best not return, but nothing has ever followed them.  Sighing, he admits, “I guess if we want to play with the big dogs, we need to be willing to dance, or something like that?”  Getting only confusion from Jem, he says, “Well, my point is… we can’t stay unknowns forever.  If we continue this lifestyle, we’ll end up aggravating the wrong person eventually, or we’ll end up marking every town in Valvoren with an X, right?”

Era expects Jem to laugh, but she seems uncharacteristically deep in thought.  He frowns and asks, “You know my famous father?  Have I ever mentioned him?  He gave me a lot of good advice in life, but maybe none as important as this little gem: ‘When life gets rough, just go into hiding.  Eventually even debt-collectors give up and stop looking for you!’”

Contrary to usual, the advice seems to strike a chord.  She stands and offers Era her signature grin.  “This time, when the job is done, let’s
really
lay low for a while.  You know, like we were supposed to do after the last job.”

Era nods in agreement.  “Sounds like a good plan.”

Jem stretches and yawns.  “Well, good night.  For all the money we just donated to this farce of a clinic, you’re the only one who gets a bed.  You’d better enjoy it.”  She leaves and closes the door.

The patient stretches and swings his legs off the bed, happy to find he was wearing his undergarments.  He bounces a bit, finding he
does
feel back to full strength.  He finds his sack of sand and forms a dense sword from the soft earth, wishing he could have fought with the skilled opponent.

He looks out the window, wondering if Jem killed the bounty hunter.  If she survived the fall, and she knows he was poisoned enough to warrant medical care, it seems to him she’d know where to find them.  Absent-mindedly shifting his sword, he wonders if he and Jem should leave Di behind to scout the surrounding woods.  However, the moment he considers calling for Jem, he remembers her demeanor during their conversation.  The encounter shook her more than she’d care to admit.