Blade Archer ~ Thirty-Three

[annarti.livejournal.com]

He couldn’t even force himself to pay attention in his theory class the next morning. The old former-general was a droning blowfly at the front of the room, the letters he wrote on the board were a meaningless scribble compared to Ronanen’s careful print, and the words on the page weren’t much better. Kael had no intention of becoming an army leader; he didn’t care about ancient battles and long-dead generals.

He tried to concentrate, running his fingers over the lines of text and framing each individual word so he could mouth the letters quietly to himself and making out the words.

Ronanen’s words of the night before echoed through every letter on the page. She had all but begged him to mend the rift with his brother and for them to both take what they knew to the Talons. If Ynuk was as close as it seemed, the Talons would have the resources to find them, and they would do so far more safely than Ynuk had been.

‘They’ll have Talons in their coin pouches,’ he’d explained, as patiently as he could while Ronanen was sobbing into his chest. ‘They’ll throw the Talons off their scent and they’ll know exactly who put them onto it. Then they’ll come after me in the same way they went after Ynuk.’

The Talons wouldn’t protect him. They wouldn’t care about another southerner caught up in a southerner’s dispute. His status as an army trainee might add a little weight to his words and have them begin an investigation, but once they had his information they wouldn’t care what happened to him. He knew better than most how the Talons worked. They preached equality, that the death of a southern street rat was just as important to them as the death of the queen, but even Kael hadn’t heard a word about the girl Ynuk had killed. Dozens of families on the rooftops around the house must have seen, but the Talons wouldn’t have even bothered to visit.

He’d told Ronanen about her, too, and admitted how he’d spent the months following his mother’s death sleeping on the street. He’d even told her about his earlier past, just how he and his brother and sister had mugged people.

Ronanen had stayed. Despite all he had hidden from her, she still trusted him.

‘I knew you had darkness in you,’ Ronanen had admitted, once her sobs had softened. ‘You’re from the Seventeenth District; of course you had things to hide. But you’re a better person than you make yourself out to be.’

‘I’m really not.’

‘You are. That life is behind you now. It’s made you who you are—strong and independent and stubborn—but you’re making a better life for yourself now. Not many from your district would bother to try, to recognise that it was a life they could change.’

‘Most can’t,’ he’d almost snapped. ‘I was lucky, much as anything. The army’ll take anyone so long as they’ve got talent to offer. Remember when I tried to get meself a job? Nobody would take me.’ He’d held up his fist to display his scars to the darkness. ‘One ye’ve got them, ye’re branded. Yer life ain’t yer own choice no more.’

‘I’m talking about you.’ Her fingers rested over his four scars. ‘You changed your own life. You’re an honest, trustworthy man now. Honest men take such troubles as these to the Talons and leave them behind.’

He’d been staring at the same word on the page for so long now that he’d forgotten all the words that had preceded it. Old General Malkef continued to drone on at the front of the room, oblivious to Kael’s inattention. Most of the boys in the room seemed to have the same lack of focus, though, so he supposed he wasn’t drawing that much attention to himself. At least he was trying to read the notes.

Honest, she’d called him. Trustworthy. Even his own mother had never called him trustworthy before. She had never asked anything of him before, never demanded he get a job or forced him to change, though he had done all that largely for her, anyway. And now, for the first time in their relationship, she was begging him to do something.

‘Can’t do it,’ he muttered under his breath. The fears he had last night voiced to Ronanen weren’t excuses. He knew they would come after him. Ronanen would never be safe if he went to the Talons. He wouldn’t put her in danger like that.

As much as he knew it pained her, this request he would not agree to.



The turning of the Autumn Equinox saw the commencement of one of the most dreaded times in army training, second only to the final exams. General Malkef, with the five weapons masters standing behind him, announced that in less than a week, the boys would leave for their desert survival camp.

Kael’s eyes had widened at the news. He’d thought the camp was only a myth, something the older boys spread around to scare the younger. They would be spending a full week out in the desert, having packed their own bags and water. They would be split into five groups, each with one of the weapons masters as a guide, but they would be the ones to navigate, to find water once their supplies inevitably ran out, to hunt and to build shelter. The master would only be there to ensure they were never in any true danger.

‘Pack?’ Kael muttered as he climbed the stairs to the palace’s staff bar. ‘Pack what?’ He barely owned enough to survive in Ni-Yana, let alone in the middle of the Raykinian desert. He’d been listening in horror all week to how much he was expected not only to carry, but to buy for himself just for this one week. In his hand now he carried the list of all he would need, written in his own clumsy hand.

Kelon was already on a stool at the bar when he walked in. His greeting smile, always slightly timid in Kael’s presence, fell when he saw his friend’s face.

‘So much for me hard-earned,’ Kael lamented, slapping the list on the bar bench as he raised a finger to the barkeeper.

‘What’s this?’

‘That’s everything I have to take for the desert trip. Day after tomorrow.’

Kelon’s eyes widened. ‘All of that?’

Kael nodded and accepted his beer bottle from the barman. ‘Of that I own…’ He ran his finger slowly down the list, pausing at each word as he murmured over the sounds of the letters. ‘The mug, the fork… the plate and the dagger. Everything else I have to buy.’

‘Or steal,’ the barman muttered. Kael ignored him.

‘Won’t the army supply all that?’ Kelon asked. ‘They supply training weapons, why not survival training gear, too?’

Kael rolled his eyes. ‘We have to know what we’re packing. It’s stupid.’ He folded the parchment up and stuffed it in his pocket, then looked around when he realised what was missing. ‘Where’s Aen?’ The two training archers were rarely apart when they were at the palace.

Kelon shrugged awkwardly. ‘He’s been a bit weird. Ever since the… thing. At your ma’s.’

Kael frowned. Of the two of them, he had expected Kelon to be the more shaken up since the events on his mother’s rooftop. Aen was by far the more southern of the two, more open to Kael’s mugging techniques and more knowledgeable about the real world. ‘Weird how?’

Kelon shrugged his shoulders inward and looked down at his bottle. ‘Quiet. Snappy. He goes home straight after training most nights, sometimes doesn’t show up in the morning, either. I think it’s shaken him a lot more than he’s letting on. I don’t reckon he’s ever seen anything like that before.’

Kael held his tongue for a moment, but he knew he had to ask. ‘And ye has?’

The archer nodded and gave a half-shrug. ‘Years ago. I saw a fight in the pub down the road from where I used to live. People started falling out of the pub and fighting on the streets. I saw two men die in that fight. I never knew them, but still.’ He shrugged again and passed the bottle to his mouth.

Kael drummed his fingers against the neck of his own bottle. ‘Heavy,’ he said with a nod. ‘Never knew ye was so hard.’

Kelon smiled and shook his head. ‘I wasn’t part of it! I just heard the noise and went outside to look.’

‘Still,’ Kael answered, ‘Takes a hard nut to see that kind of thing.’ He took a swig of his beer. He was almost used to the burning alcohol in the palace brew now. ‘I’ll look him up tomorrow. See how he’s doing.’

Kelon smiled appreciatively. ‘It’ll probably sound better coming from you. I feel like everything I say is just setting him more on edge now.’

‘We can hope. If not, well, ye’re stuck with him ‘til I get back from the middle of nowhere.’