Eyes on the plains.But keeping my eyes ahead didn’t stop my mouth. “Careful, Theo. Don’t you remember the tale of the boy who stayed out in the acid rain?”
“You’re calling me Lyrion Quail?”
“That’s your assumption.” I paused with a smile. “But there are similarities.”
“Well spear me with your short sword, Eury, and put me out of my pain.”
I smiled into the darkness. For the first time in four hours, myshoulders lowered a half-inch. “Lyrion Quail lived through the acid, you know.”
“Yeah, and he shat green for the rest of his days.”
“You suppose he bled green, too?”
“I’ve no doubt it was all green, Eury. Even his piss. Still not worse than being named Lyrion Quail. Doomed him from the start.”
I let out a breath of a chuckle. This was the Theo I knew. As children, the tale fresh in our minds, we’d wondered why Lyrion Quail had ventured to the top of the wall during an acid storm. Did he lose his head? Was he born stupid? Perhaps he’d had a vision. But there was no good answer; the tale was only about a boy climbing the wall during a storm.
I’d been fascinated by him. At my constant questioning, my mother had said the story was just a warning to children not to venture into the rain. There was no ending to it. And it didn’t occur to me until here, now, that I hadn’t been fascinated with his reason or the ending at all.
It was Lyrion Quail’s bravery that struck me. His willingness to venture onto the wall in the midst of a storm. He was only a little boy, fragile, but something had brought him out of his home and into abject danger.
For the first time since my training had begun, I wondered if Lyrion Quail might not be a tale of stupidity at all.
A shrill cry pierced the night. My head swiveled right, drawn to the noise before I could comprehend my own movement. My gut clenched, one hand rising toward my right shoulder and the arrows I’d fletched myself. The other went to the bowstring slung crossbody, my head angling left to allow for the passage of both arrow and string at once.
I scanned the wall. Torchlight glimmered, scattered pinpricks curving toward the mountains, but nothing else.
Had they come? On my first night?
Fear lanced me, stuffed my mind with cotton, yet beneath it, a prick of pride; my first instinct had been to draw my weapon.
The noise sounded again, closer, like a cat’s trill. Whatever it was moved fast, like wind?—
Theo climbed to standing. He patted dust off his pants, then turned fully toward me, half of his face gleaming in the torchlight by his head. “Now listen close. You follow.”
I remained suspended, one hand at my bow’s string, the other touching the feathering of an arrow. I didn’t understand. The cotton in my head had been packed tight, and my knees shook.
Theo set both hands to his mouth and raised his face toward the sky. He let out that three-tone whistle, much louder than before. It was different than the others I’d just heard in pitch and execution, but also the same.
As soon as he’d finished, his gaze snagged on the position of my hands. “Stars and shadows, Eury, you really thoughttheywere coming? The creatures?”
I remained frozen, staring at him.
Theo’s expression, incredulous and amused, stung. “It’s the song, remember? The regiment commander’s patrol is coming back around.”
Right—the whistle. The noise the boys made ahead of the commander to get them all standing. The information entered my brain past the drumming of blood in my ears.Put your hands down. Whistle down the line. Don’t make them hate you.
I had never whistled in my life. My mother had never taught me; no one had. We were bread bakers—we had no use for whistling.
“Comeon,” Theo said, gesturing with his hands. “You’re fucked if you break the chain.”
My hands began slowly to lower, reluctant. My breath felt too shallow even to speak, let alone whistle. But I tried anyway, turning away from him, forcing my cupped hands to my mouth.
What came out was reedy, a thread taken like spider silk by the wind.
“Shit, Eury,” was all Theo said behind me. “That’s all you’ve got?”
I tried again. And again.
