Whisper (33 page)

And, one way or another, the Private returned with those things. It was probably a rule of thumb, I imagined, that he was not allowed to return without them.

I crushed up the Eucalyptus, mixing some of it with a soothing liniment and slathering it over Crescendo's chest. The rest, I steeped in hot water, and took to him to breathe as a steam. “Here you go,” I urged him, holding the pot steadily beneath is muzzle. “This ought to clear your lungs.”
At least somewhat
. Initially he was uncertain about all these foreign treatments, but once the soothing qualities started to take effect, he found them increasingly addictive to his aggrieved body.

Next, I took him some willow-bark. This, I was less sure what to do with. The wives' tales spoke of 'chewing on willow-bark to reduce fever and inflammation', but I didn't suppose he would be much inclined to humor my insistence to chew on the stuff. So I took a detour to the cooking fires and soaked a big hunk of the stuff in meat juices, until it was nice and saturated, and then I left it to absorb. When it was more or less dry, I went back and offered it to him, and held it while he more than willingly gnawed on its candy-coated flesh.

We repeated these treatments throughout the day, and the days that followed. Crescendo's temperament took on an obvious improvement, and I could only assume the agents were doing something to appease his symptoms. I could not say the extent to which they were working, but I was encouraged that they were finding some level of success.

Others were still unwelcome in his pen, but he no longer took out his chronic frustrations on the walls that housed him day and night. He still charged those that came to observe him, sometimes, but much more just for show, now, and he would lose interest after making that initial, habitual statement. He could still tear any one of the asunder if the fancy took him, of course, and so most steered clear just because there was no sense tempting fate, but he became a willing, steadfast pet of mine. Or I became a pet of his. It was difficult to say which was more the case. But I had the privilege of coming and going as I pleased.

Finally, it was time to march again. We had been preparing for this, the soldiers working our best angles for getting back out there, and at last we had the go-ahead to make our stand. I did not know where we currently stood, in the matter; I did not know where Gabriel stood, where the status of his expanding empire stood, where his armies stood, or where God stood in the middle of all this. I knew none of it, and yet I was prepared right along with the rest of them. Perhaps more prepared than I had been on prior occasions.

I was purposefully following none of it, anymore.

My focus was on my personal task, the responsibility and handling of the creature appointed to my personal care and direction, and nothing more than that. I no longer felt the need to aspire to fit in with the rest of this movement. Because Jay was right – it wasn't for me. The horses themselves were my element. Sometimes, it was inevitable that the two things would overlap, coincide – my involvement with the horses, and the war that they fought in – but I didn't have to aspire to anything more than going along for the ride. That's what the soldiers were for. To strategize and direct the movements and focus the manpower. To send us in and pull us out. All I had to do was do my thing, make my isolated contribution, and it helped to fill out the bigger picture without me having to know how every piece was strung together, how it all hung in the balance. I didn't have to think about that.

And that was a relief. It left me much more able to focus on my own specialty, give it my full, undivided attention. That was where I belonged, where I fit best and had the most effect, did the most damage – thoroughly immersed in my own little world of horses, and whispers, and a very personal kind of magic restricted to that cozy, intimate circle.

Thirty –

M
y beauticians gathered themselves for one more Operation Transformation, packing what they needed to put me through my most important metamorphoses of the lot. This one had to be spectacular – had to drip with magnificent conviction, for Gabriel's benefit. Or whoever would take word back to him. I had to marvel that we still hadn't seen
him
, and I wondered where he hid himself, or what other battalion he attached himself to. Would we ever come face to face with the man himself, the army that
he
personally led to battle?

The Lieutenant had seen him – I knew as much from conversations we had shared. But he had yet to grace any of the battles I had fought in with his presence. Surely he had to show up one of these times, I thought.

He had to be a busy man, though, managing an entire babe of an empire, and I knew there were other battalions on our side pushing back from their own headquarters across the eastern states. Who knew where the man himself chose to most often manifest. He was a phantom, to me, but I took comfort in knowing that I had become a similar figure of intrigue to him. Across the distance, we faced off, on some level equal opponents.

It was a more tedious journey, riding Crescendo to our chosen battleground. I could ride him, yes, but it didn't mean he was not flighty, and temperamental, and harder to handle than a regular horse under my spell. His spur-wounds were healing nicely, thanks to treatments he allowed me and only me to apply, but I had to labor to keep from so much as touching my heels to his sides – to spare him both the physical and mental trauma that accompanied the contact.

He could navigate the Shardscape better than the others, though – that was something.

One way or another, when we finally reached our destination, I had never been so ready to relieve myself of a discomfort associated with riding. While the treatments I had lavished upon Crescendo had succeeded in tempering the intensity of the heat at his core, he was still uncomfortably radiant. After days atop his steamy back, my legs were caked with sweat and a warm, itchy coating of horse hair. It had been an experience both humid and wooly – two things that should never be allowed to mix for any relevant amount of time. I would have to do something about that, I thought. I may just have to revert to the sworn-off pastime of using a saddle.

*

We were setting up camp when a lone rider caught up to us. I didn't pay him any mind at first, thinking he was just another scout. They came and went often, in these times. But when I spared a glance for the rider, I found instead the face of a good friend.

Jay
.

I approached him in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? Making sure your head doesn't get blown off.”

I didn't know whether to smile or cry, and so I looked up at him with a grimace that was surely an ironic combination of both.

“Don't look at me like that, Willow.” He dismounted from his chestnut's back, not looking at me.

“You didn't need to...” I tried to begin, but it was really the most useless thing to ever say. He didn't need to what? I didn't even know what I meant to impart.

“I would never just sit there when there's nothing better to do than be here.”

And that was fair enough, wasn't it? I let a smile touch my lips, and hugged him abruptly. He suffered the embrace just as long as he had to, and then pushed on to stow his belongings in one of the tents.

I turned my eyes to the fresh pane of battleground that stretched out around us, feeling like everything and everyone had come together for this round.

I just couldn't tell if it had the air of a finale, or only the illusion of climactic elation that came with trailblazing a new, painstaking sort of beginning.

*

The only thing that did threaten my focus was how Jay's presence so disgustingly benefited Cambrie. As if he had come for
her
.

“Jay, you
came
,” I heard her say to him when she ran into him exiting his newly-designated tent, and I caught sight of her throwing her own arms around his neck.

Of course he came,
I thought. A world couldn't exist where Cambrie would go to war and Jay wouldn't. Of the two of them, he was grossly more made for this.

I tore my eyes away as she began to patter on about things – the taxing journey here and the lack of comforts in the camp, and the shortage of good company and the sight that he was for sore eyes...
Please,
I thought.
He would be a sight for your eyes any day – sore, un-plagued, or otherwise.

But I let it go. At least, I thought I let it go. I could not help but find myself glaring dully behind her back when she came to help ready me for my appearance, thinking,
I know what you've been up to, so don't bother with the innocent front.
She could pretend to be the innocent professional, here with me and Lady Alejandra where she had secured a niche, but we all knew what she was the rest of her time. An insecure fake who batted her eyelashes all the way to the top, seducing all the boys with nothing more than her sheer, innocent frailness, because they
had
to put their hands on her, to support her. She had her talents refined so that even the gentlemen – especially the gentlemen – would fall for her, and it disgusted me.

One day, I just might tell her as much. I just might open my battle-cry hardened mouth and dethrone her from her perfect little sham-life. I might...

But she was retrieving the tray of paints from the edge of the tent, and as she crouched the flesh of her lower back peeked out from between her slacks and her top, and my eyes landed on the tramp-stamp style tattoo that she sported there. I could have easily continued, finding fault with the tramp-stamp style itself that she had opted for with her honorary script, but something halted the train of thought as I noticed it.

Elena
, it read, and I remembered the story of her sister. My grievances toward her stopped cold, suddenly petty and weightless and...cruel. She was just like the rest of us. Had lived, loved, lost things in the quakes... Was living now, honoring them, displaying a tribute to those things on her human flesh. A tribute that had been painful to have administered, was painful to have on display as a reminder every day. She was broken, a patchwork creation of survival, just like the rest of us. She needed things – needed whatever she could get her hands on. Just like the rest of us. Suddenly I could sympathize: you didn't pass up whatever you could get your hands on, these days. And when you were lucky enough for that 'whatever' to be Jay...

I had no grounds to blame her at all, did I?

The jealousy did not abruptly abate in some noble epiphany of selflessness, but the bitterness of my grudge lost its heart. When Cambrie straightened and came back to me, I felt a sudden, disorienting wave of kinship with her – of sisterhood that I hadn't felt before.

“Your sister would be proud of you,” I found myself saying, hardly believing it. “For how you've directed your talents – put them to use.” Unable to manage more than that, lest I spontaneously combust, I swallowed and averted my eyes. There. Surely that would suffice to free me of my sudden, ridiculous feelings of guilt.

The brush in her fingers paused, hovered over my cheek, and I could tell that she looked at me – startled. But I would not grant her further purchase on my good graces. I turned so Lady Alejandra could better arrange my new gown of war, and that was the end of it.

They dressed me in white, this time – “the angel that mastered the demon”, as Lady Alejandra dubbed me. Cambrie painted my eyebrows like feathers, and both women covered my arms in lacy patterns with some sort of
white
henna. My hair, they did up in a graceful bun reminiscent somehow of swan-like proportions, inserting two wing clips they had fashioned into the finished product. My lips were the only thing that stood out from the angelic theme, brilliant red.

They had outdone themselves yet again. I would have been worthy of riding my very dream stallion into battle, like this – the image of the angelic duo we would make was undeniably spectacular flitting through my mind's eye – but instead, the contrast Crescendo and I would create would have equal effect in the opposite extreme.

When they were finished, they left me in my tent to mentally prepare myself.

Jay came to me, there. At first I didn't hear him, standing in the frame of the opening, but then he shifted, and I turned – found his eyes upon me.