“Not particularly,” he said after a moment. Another torque check. Another loud click. “And it was not my story to tell.”
“Will you tell me, though?” I asked quietly. “Your story, I mean. You don’t have to tell me anything about Xennet’s crime. I think it’s right that you want to protect his privacy. But I’d like to know a little bit more about it from your point of view. If you’re willing to share.”
Torque. Click. Torque. Click.
“There is not much more to tell beyond what you already know,” he said. “I both turned Xennet in and represented him in court. Despite advocating for him to the best of my abilities, it was not enough.”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. His eyes were steely on the slicer.
Torque. Click.
I thought he was finished speaking and was about to leave him to his thoughts when he abruptly said.
“He was very small. Xennet, I mean. He is a tall male now, but he was not then. The courtroom seat practically swallowed him. The only big things on him were his eyes. They were absolutely huge in his little face, and pure white for the entire length of the trial. When the Imperial Justice Committee read out his guilty verdict, and sentenced him to exile, I just got this terrible sense, that…That I’d be sending this tiny child to his death. Tiny,tremblingchild,” he amended. “He shook so badly that day.”
“Hallum…”
“Anyway,” he said gruffly. “I simply could not leave him. I felt as if my entire life – everything I’d strived to do, everything I’d accomplished for the empire, everything I’d sacrificed and bledfor – would be meaningless if I walked out of that courtroom without him. No.” His mouth twisted in a vicious grimace. “Not even just meaningless.Tainted. I could not stand the fact that I’d spent so long in service to the very empire that would send a child that small away for what he’d done. So I resigned. And I have been here with him and the others ever since.”
He stared at the tool in his hand for a long time. Then, he put it away with the others. When he finally looked my way again, he immediately tensed.
“You are crying!”
“No, I don’t think so!”
He closed the distance between us in one determined stride. His hands sliced up to my face. But his thumbs on my cheeks were so gentle. He dabbed at my skin, then showed me the moisture on his callouses.
“Oh! I guess I am.” I was so wrapped up in his words that I hadn’t even realized.
“I’ve upset you.”
“Not at all,” I said, sniffing and trying to compose myself. “It’s just…that must have been so hard. I guess I was a bit overcome imagining it all. Xennet is very special.”
“He is,” Warden Hallum agreed at once. “They all are, in their own ways. They have changed my mind about so many things. About everything, really. It is why I have worked so hard to prepare them for the bride program. Because they deserve more than this.”
I nodded, wiping at my cheeks.
“And what about you?” I asked croakily. “Do you want more than this?”
A guarded look came into his eyes then.
“In what way?”
“A wife of your own.” My voice cracked on the word wife. “Or maybe another job besides warden one day. Xennet is grownnow. And he might be married soon. You’ve guided him – and the others – into adulthood. But you don’t have to stay here like they do. You could travel. Or have another job one day.”
“I will die at this post.”
He said it like a vow.
His gaze went past me then, to the sunlit property beyond the open garage door. “I have been monitoring the weather data from the comms signal tower,” he said, a subject change so rapid that it sent my poor head spinning. “There is no more snow forecast to fall. The hospital construction will begin.”
19
LUALHATI
Warden Hallum was right. No more snow fell. It didn’t all melt right away. There was just too much of it, and temperatures remained just slightly too cold for that. But once he and his men shovelled the hospital site, it remained clear for their work to begin.
We settled into a new routine right away. In the morning, while I was waking up and getting ready, Warden Hallum would do his morning chores around the property. We’d eat breakfast together, then head out to the saloon and hospital site. We still took the sled. I really liked riding in it, and figured that I might as well enjoy the last of the snow while it was here.
