Remnants: Season of Fire (24 page)

He nodded once.

“How long?” I asked, lifting a hand to the windows. “How long until your men demand a wife of the Union too? From among these children?” I waved in the direction of the sewing hall, the image of all those little girls among the boys sending a shiver down my back. “And how are those girls, now Pacifican brides, to be treated among your people? As equals? Or something less than?” I paced, my thoughts coming together now. “And how long until the men of the Union realize that what you’re doing is basically importing breeders for you, stealing away the women, putting their children — even orphans — to work in your factories or mines? Will that produce unity? Peace?”

“It is not like that.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

“But you have to admit, it’s a likely outcome. You said it yourself, in so many words — without changing things, you will gradually die out. Women who can produce a babe will become a prize. You will become like the Zanzibians.”

“No. I won’t allow it. We will never become like that scum. We will not take to their ways! I intend to force
them
to civility.”

“Truly?”

“Truly!”

I stared at him a long moment. “Then tell me why Sethos was sent to capture me. Tell me —”

“Because I wanted you to know me,” Keallach said, lifting
a hand to his chest. He stared at me with earnest eyes. “Even after what happened on Catal . . . I still wanted you to know me. I want you to decide for yourself if I am the monster that others made me out to be or your missing brother.”

“Not to become your bride,” I said, not dropping my eyes.

“No,” he said with a grimace, but he looked away and I felt his flash of guilt.

“Not to bear you a child,” I pressed.

He dropped his head, turning it this way and that as if my words hurt him.

“Not to use my gifting for your own purposes and —”

“Enough! Enough questioning!” He strode to the window and stared out at the sea, arms crossed. I licked my lips, tried to gather myself, and then forced myself to follow him. I leaned against the windowsill, staring out at the clouds gathering on the horizon.

“I know you are not all bad,” I said.

He huffed a laugh. “There’s a start.”

I didn’t smile with him. “I think the Maker continues to urge you toward us because you know it’s where you belong. Your path diverged from ours, but there is a way back. There is
always
a way back.”

He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “I have to make my own way. But I don’t want to do it alone. I need you, Andriana. Here. By my side.”

I battled between objection and compassion, staring at our ghostly reflections in the window, not daring to look him full in the face. On one hand, he was still my Ailith kin. He was meant to be with us, one of us. But he’d all but killed his parents. Allowed his knight to die fighting Kapriel’s. I tried to imagine watching Ronan battle Killian or Bellona, and them
both dying. Thoughts of death led me to my parents. He was responsible too, in a way, for their deaths. Did the Sheolites not report to Sethos, and Sethos to Keallach?

And what was I attempting here? I remembered the alarm in Chaza’el, Vidar, Raniero, even the knights, whenever we spoke of Keallach’s potential redemption. They clearly all thought it impossible. I reached up and rubbed my throbbing temples. Was I going mad? Doing what the Sheolite wanted of me instead of the Maker? I needed my fellow Ailith. I needed their strength. Most of all, I needed Ronan.

“I’ve taxed you,” Keallach said, glancing over at me in a tender way. “We both have said much and have much to think about. Come, we’ll get you home to the palace where you can rest.”

I walked beside him out of the facility and out into the cool air of evening. I was eager to get to the car and back to that marvelous fur blanket. But once I was settled beneath it, the car door shut and the engine purring beneath our feet, the ocean sprawling outside my window, Keallach’s words came back to me.

Home to the palace.

I smiled, thinking of what Vidar would say about that.

“Is something amusing?”

I glanced over at him, embarrassed to be caught in my reverie, and shook my head.

“You are very beautiful, Andriana,” he said softly. “Especially when you smile.”

He wasn’t flattering me idly. He meant it.

I quickly looked out the window, feeling the blush burning up my cheek. “It is not our way to speak of outward beauty,” I said lowly.

“Bah,” he said dismissively. “It’s a foolish Valley tradition.”

“It’s the tradition of our elders. Presumably of yours too.”

He shook his head a little, irritated. “You are as beautiful inside as you are out,” he said. “I see no harm in recognizing that fact.”

We pulled up along the sweeping drive before the palace, then past armed guards and gates. He got out and offered his hand to help me, but I ignored it, leaving the fur behind and feeling guilty for accepting it at all.

“You will join me for supper,” he said, a few steps behind me.

“No,” I said. “I think I shall take it alone, in my room tonight. As you noted, I am suddenly weary.”

“Please, Andriana. Rest. Then join us in the dining hall.”

I thought of the Council of Six, and all I could visualize was that horrific dinner table at Castle Vega. “No thank you.”

He let out a sigh of exasperation as we strode down the long hall to my third-floor quarters. At least I hoped I was heading to my quarters. “You do realize that there is not another woman in the empire who has been allowed to refuse me outright.”

I rolled my eyes, and turned to face him. “Are you an emperor? Or a spoiled child?” I said the words without thinking, and instantly regretted them.

Fury, black and roiling, burst forth in him and the muscles in his jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought he might hit me. But then it was gone, and he resumed his composure. The flash of all we’d both just felt left me stunned. Reeling. He ran his hands slowly down his sleeves, as if they were out of order, and then looked down at me. “You . . . seem to bring out the best and worst in me.”

I considered him for a long moment. “As you might, with me,” I allowed.

“The Council,” he tried again, “will wonder why you are not at our table this night.”

“Let them wonder. I don’t care.” His anger had ignited my own.

His lips clamped together. Then he took a firm grip of my elbow, hustled me to my quarters, and let go of me inside. “You are not a prisoner in this palace,” he said curtly. “But you are not behaving like a proper guest. Keep in mind I do have limits, regardless of my fondness for you. I shall send a servant with a tray. You may explore this third floor or the second. But no further.”

I huffed a laugh and crossed my arms, feeling like a bundle of agitation and confusion. Why had my refusal so totally sent him into such a state? Were we now enemies? Doubt ripped away any fresh, light cords that had been woven between us in the last hours.

Whatever had transpired, I knew this: If he was ever to join the Ailith, he had to get over his pride. Pride was forbidden among my brothers and sisters and quickly weeded out — it inevitably led to other sicknesses.

Keallach stood just outside the threshold of my door, and I was only a few steps away inside my room. And while I was as angry with him as he was with me, I couldn’t help feeling sick over the fact that we were so close, and yet it was like miles now stretched between us.

“Good night, Keallach,” I said.

Then I reached forward and slowly, but firmly, shut the door in the emperor’s face.

RONAN

There was no long, horrible journey back across the Great Expanse. This time Asher and Azarel had secured rides with Drifters that had a camp to the northwest of the Hoodites. We rode in the backs of trucks and Jeeps, meeting every furtive glance of the Drifters who were our hosts, wary that we were entering tenuous territory. But our armbands remained warm, and while the Drifters seemed cautious and suspicious, they had taken significant risks in order to aid us. If Asher and Azarel — and most of all Vidar, with his gifting to discern light from dark — thought they were trustworthy enough, then I had to believe my friends were right.

But it did not escape me that every one of these Drifters was armed for war, many of them with guns I wished that Vidar could carry on this quest. Granted, the way the Drifters made a life demanded such armor. Yet if we ended up combatting them, it wouldn’t be long before we were disarmed, wounded, or dead, no matter how good we and the Aravanders were with our ancient weapons.

My eyes moved to Asher, who was grinning and shouting back and forth in conversation with one of the Drifters riding beside him. He still seemed at ease, confident. But then that was his way, wherever he was. My eyes went to Vidar again. If he wasn’t sensing darkness ahead . . . well, I’d rest in that.

We left the main road that cut through this part of the desert and rambled over a rocky plain, then entered the end of what appeared to be a dry arroyo. Trees and shade instantly cooled us the deeper down we went. It felt good to be away from the exposed plain of the desert, constantly fearful that a Pacifican drone or scouting party might spot us when we had nowhere to hide. And yet I kept reverting to fear,
remembering how Dri was treated the last time we encountered Drifters. How Niero had been shot . . . How they’d hated our friends among the Hoodites.

The Jeep that Killian, Tressa, Chaza’el, and I were riding in came to an abrupt stop, sending a big cloud of dust up and around us. The five other vehicles did the same. I coughed and squinted in the golden, dusty evening light, trying to see who all approached. There were more than fifty or sixty Drifters here in this camp. I could smell roasting meat on a spit and my mouth watered.

Chaza’el edged past me and stood in front of us as we gathered together. “We are grateful that you provided us passage across the Expanse and a place to rest for the night. But we must see your blind leader now. It is most urgent.”

Niero stepped up beside him, gave him a long look, and then folded his arms, waiting.

The Drifters frowned and looked alarmed. Eventually, a burly, scarred, bald man was led through the crowd, stopping ten feet from Chaza’el. “Who told you I was blind?” he asked, letting go of the shoulder of the boy who led him.

“The Maker told me,” Chaza’el said quietly.

The leader narrowed in on his voice and stepped toward him. Niero blocked him by placing a hand to his chest. “We mean you no harm, brother,” he said quietly.

The man shoved away his hand. “You are no brother to me,” he snarled. “And I will have the name of the one who identified me as blind to you. It is forbidden among us.”

I frowned. What sort of mad control was this? Who could not refer to this chief without mentioning his weakness? And yet, maybe that was it. He didn’t want to appear so at all among a people famous for preying upon the weak . . .

Chaza’el didn’t wince in the face of his brawn or fury.
Instead he stepped forward, and I saw Tressa move to stand behind him, and Killian behind her.

“I’ll tell you again, brother,” Chaza’el said. “We were sent here by the Maker, to a blind chief among the Drifters.”

“A leader who shall see again this day,” Tressa added in a clear, high voice.

Understanding flooded through me. This was why we’d been brought here. The work was beginning —

“What is this?” cried the blind man. “Who has brought these people into my camp only to poke fun at me?”

“We have not been brought,” Tressa said soothingly, reaching out to touch his arm. “We have been sent.” He started to shake off her fingers and then suddenly stopped, mouth dropping slightly open. It was as if he knew, then, just as surely as we all knew.

“You . . . You are a healer?” he asked her. His voice seemed small though he was twice her size.

“I am,” she said. “And I’ll say it again. Today, the Maker has sent us to heal you.”

“The Maker is dead,” said the man. His words held not venom, but doubt.

“The Maker is very much alive,” Niero said. He looked around at the others. “We are his people.”

Some gasped, some scowled.

“No one in their right mind admits to following the Maker,” the chief insisted. “If one of the warlords heard of it, they’d string you up!” He swore and spit, and then folded his arms. “That said, we might just do it ourselves and be done with you.” This brought a laugh from those around him.

“The time for denial is past,” Vidar said. “We are for him or against him. And this day, friend, I suggest you slide
toward the for-him side. You know, since he seems to want to heal you.”

“I am as healed as I need be,” the chief said with a scowl, patting his broad chest encased in an old leather tunic.

“You are fine leader,” Niero said. “A proud man. I understand that. What is your name?”

“Sesille,” said the man, grudgingly.

“Sesille,” Niero repeated. “The Maker forces no gifts upon his people. He only offers them freely. It is our choice whether we accept them or not. If someone came to you, freely offering a new truck to you, would you turn it down?”

The chief folded his arms again. “It depends on what that man wanted in exchange for the truck.”

“What if all that man giving you the truck wanted was understanding? Kinship? As well as thanks?”

“Then I’d say that man has too many silver coins in his coffers.”

The other Drifters laughed at this along with their chief.

Niero, Tressa, and Chaza’el stood their ground, waiting him out. Kapriel edged forward then, too, joining us.

Sesille’s broad smile faded and his opaque, unseeing eyes swept over us. I could almost feel him trying to sort out the way to go — whether to trust this impossible promise of sight or to send us away. Finally, he gave us a shrug. “Bah!” he cried, smiling around at his people. “What will it hurt to let them try healing this old man, other than my pride when they fail?”

Tressa let everyone laugh at this, then she reached out to touch him. “Sesille, I will say my healing prayer whether you believe in it or not. But the Maker shall not heal you unless you believe in his power.”