Uttering a curse, Julion begins to pace around, and the gathering sunlight that filters through the colored leaves glints and flashes on his golden armor. His mood becomes grim, his profile drawing into an aggression that shouldn’t be a surprise given that he is a fighter.
“The uneasy peace,” he says, “that has reigned over Anathos since the Dark King was banished during the Great Containment is hard enough to sustain in times of bounty. The four Kingdoms of the North, South, East, and West are not, and have never been, aligned, for we compete for resources to survive and there is no trust among us. If what I believe is happening is fact rather than myth, there are… decisions that must be made for the good of our people, for the good of Prosperitus.”
He stops and stares through the branches at the far-off wall of my little village. It’s then I notice the dull wafts of smoke that as yet rise up from inside of the barrier’s crumbling confines, a reminder that I must go, and the sooner the better in all this daylight.
“There is a very certain courage that I require at this time.” The knight looks over his shoulder at me. “One I find I have lost somewhere along the way and cannot access.”
“That sort of resurrection is up to you, not anybody else.”
“You’re wrong. I can find it as long as my love is by my side.” Though I am not meeting his dark eyes, I can feel his stare narrow on me. “And that’s why I need you. My betrothed is dying. She has… days left, if I am lucky. I need you to keep her alive, so that I can serve in the capacity I must for the citizens of Prosperitus—of which you, yourself, are among.”
Shaking my head, all I can see is Mare. This nobleman is physically stronger than her, and certainly has more station and resources, but you cannot trust a mob—or predict what they will destroy in their madcap rushes.
“You do not want what is coming after me,” I say roughly.
That he gets all regal is not a surprise. “I am afraid of no mortal thing upon Anathos.”
“Superstitions make men with weapons and flames very dangerous, particularly in a group.”
“And I have an army.”
Julion begins to pace again, and I catalogue the weapons on him, thinking also of what that warhorse of his might be carrying. Maybe he’s right to be so secure—in the usual course of things. But I fear that version of Anathos went by the wayside some time ago; it’s just taken us a while to catch up with the disintegration.
“I saw what you did with the dragon.” His voice grows strident, his footfalls turning into stomps that crush the ground cover. “You killed it first. Then you brought it back.”
“I did no such thing.” Again, the falsity leaves my lips easily. “And I fear your desperation is making you mad—”
“I shall pay you.” He stops again and looks across the lengths that separate us. “I am not without means.”
“I don’t need money, and even if I did, I have nothing but my sincerest sympathy to give you. At any price.”
Julion curses and approaches me. “Why are you withholding your gift? You could alter the course of my life and so many others—”
I open my mouth and quote from the Book of Time, or at least as I’ve overheard it: “‘In the right and proper order of things, there is nothing that shall escape the call of death.’”
“Spare me pabulum from the past.” He leans in to me, and the energy rolling off him shifts. No more a hero, he becomes an aggressor. “Besides, if you really believed that, you would not have brought the dragon back—”
“That beast spontaneously revived. It happens—”
“After you drove your knife into its throat, and then disappeared from sight right before my eyes. Or did you think I could not see what happened? I witnessed it all, and I need you to save my beloved so that I may do what I must to protect this Kingdom and its citizenry.”
Turning my head, I stare through the changed leaves, searching for Merc’s black-leathered figure. We should have had a signal for when it was time for him to return. A whistle or something like a birdcall.
“Fates, I do not understand you.” Julion wheels his arm about as if he’s trying to loosen a knotting in his shoulder. “You are an outcast, with no resources and no one to help you but an unscrupulous man who is out for himself. And I stand before you, prepared to provide you shelter, protection, and money, and you will not give me what you imparted to some dumb monster for free.”
I picture the dragon, lying there in the sand, the color gone out of its scales, those boys taunting its pain and beating at its head with sticks.
“People don’t tell you ‘no’ very often, do they,” I hear myself say.
This seems to pull him up short. “Indeed, they do not. But then I am not in the habit of asking things of senseless women very often.”
“So if I do not acquiesce to your request, I am to be relegated to stupidity?”
“I am offering yousomuch more than you have!” Now he walks around in a tight little circle, as if he’s on a lead that’s staked to the ground. “In return for a work of… compassion and grace in the midst of a cruel and unfair fate. Yet you fight against me—”
“Do you remember the crowd last night?” Anger sharpens my voice. “That mob is what I have been waiting for—and fearing—every moment since I can remember. If I actually possessed the power you say—and I deny having any such thing—and I were to use it to bring anyone in your court back from the grave that awaits them—however unfair that grave is—that violent crowd would absolutely come after you, too. They’d just be wearing your army’s uniforms, instead of the tattered clothes of villagers, and their weapons would be so much more than torches and rakes.”
He stops dead. “No, they would not.”
