11
I stay beside him for some time after he falls back into a fitful asleep. Everything about him seems enhanced now through our link, as if I’m seeing him clearly for the first time. He moves restlessly, his fingers twitching, his eyes shifting beneath their lids in an endless dream. He murmurs a feverish string of Karenese words.
“A hall with no end,” he whispers. The language still sounds foreign to my ears, but through our bond, I know what they mean. “A day to live. A million ways to bridge the rift.” He repeats this over and over again until it feels engraved into my memory.
The bond between us pulses steadily as he rests. I don’t see his dreams, but I can feel the unease that seems to churn forever in him, the kind borne from a lifetime of fear. Now and then, a glimmer of his unconscious thoughts even seems to trickle through. I stare at him, trying to understand this new bond between us, until his eyes finally stop moving underneath their lids and he has fallen into a steady sleep.
At last, I force myself to stand and leave his side, then step out of the building. Every part of my body aches from the fight. Our link fades slightly, settling into a steady presence at the back of my mind. I glance back at him one last time before I head out of the compound.
With the dawn, the bite of winter eases slightly against my cheeks and lips. I turn my face up to the compound’s fire-scorched ramparts, where tiny figures sitting along its ledge are outlined against the sky. The others must have headed up there. It’s become a common ritual after each one of the Federation’s sieges.
I sigh and run a hand through my hair, untangling strands knotted with dried blood, and head up toward the ramparts. The farther I go from Red, the fainter our link pulses, until the glimmer of his thoughts is replaced with the beat of his heart and a small, subtle current of his emotions, flickering deep and troubled as he endures his nightmares.
By the time I make my way up, the stars have winked out of existence. Jeran is already here, staring out at the dawning landscape with his arms around his knees, lost in thought. It seems like he’s alone, until I spot who I’m looking for: Adena’s tall figure perched some distance away on a stone ledge. She’s always somewhere nearby, quietly watching over her Shield.
She glances up at me as I walk over to her. Now I notice that she’s running the side of one of her daggers against a honing stone until the blade looks fine enough to carve a roast.
“It’s one of Jeran’s,” she tells me as I sit down beside her and nod at the weapon.
I’d expected her to ask me about Red and what the hell happened during the battle. But even though I can see the question in her eyes, she doesn’t say it. Maybe she’s letting me mention it in my own time.
I nod at her, wishing everyone in the world had her heart. “I saw Jeran at the entrance earlier,”I reply. “Saw him forced to cut someone down.”
Adena pauses in her motions long enough to stare at the figure of her Shield in the distance. “You know Pietra, the Striker from one of the southern border patrols? Some idiot left a hunting snare intact near theedge of the compound, and poor Pietra stepped in it during the battle. Got stuck and bitten hard by a Ghost.” Adena looks away from me and back down at the dagger. “She escaped the snare and got back to the compound by some sheer miracle. But we all could see the Ghost’s bite on her. Her Shield had already been killed, so Jeran had to cut her throat.”
So that was the Striker I’d seen begging for mercy.
Down below the ramparts, I glimpse the Firstblade surveying the field. He turns his eyes up toward us for a moment, and his gaze catches at the sight of Jeran sitting on his own. I’m too far away to make out Aramin’s face, but he stays standing there for a long beat, watching his Striker, until he finally turns away and continues his work.
“Aramin will never say a thing about it,” Adena says softly, and I turn my attention back to her. She nods down at the Firstblade. “But he always looks around for Jeran after a battle. To make sure he survived. Sometimes I think he would have been a better Shield for Jeran. He certainly cares enough for him.”
“You and Jeran are a perfect match,” I tell her.
She finishes working on the blade and switches to signing with me. “I let Jeran cut down Pietra because I couldn’t bear to.” Her furrowed brows cast a dark shadow over her eyes. “He knows I’m terrified of doing it. So he did it for me. What kind of Striker always makes her Shield carry that burden?”
I lean against my knees and take in the brightening horizon. “We all help each other in different ways.”
“I’m a coward,” she says, this time aloud.
“You’re not,” I insist.
“You were able to do what you had to do for Corian,” she signs. “I’m afraid that if the time comes, I won’t have the courage to do it for Jeran.”
“You will.” I pause, suddenly haunted by the memory of Corian’s final sigh. “But Jeran’s the best of us. Maybe you’ll never have to.”
“Maybe.” She glances at me. “Just another day in the life, eh?” She taps on her swords. “The new hilts I designed for my blades? I put them on Jeran’s too, and he said they worked like a dream. Let him cut down some of the Ghosts faster than he could have otherwise, and probably saved his life a few times.” She forces a smile at me. “I took some notes on a few things I could improve. Remind me to add it to your swords too, Talin, and to your Shield’s.”
This is Adena sinking into her meticulous habits after a battle. But I don’t mention it. I just nod wearily in return while she stares out at the landscape, silently contemplating.
“You know how Marans tend to use the ruins as places to meditate?” she signs after a while. “Like the Seven Sisters? The Morning Rose?”
“You always thought it was a waste of time,” I reply.
“I do.” Adena rubs her neck. “But sometimes you cope by wasting time, yes? I went anyway, right before we left for the warfront, to meditate in front of the Morning Rose. And the whole time, all I could think about was how meditation or prayer at these sites did absolutely nothing, because all that really matters is being able to steal as much of the Early Ones’ technology as possible. That the only way for us to keep pace with the wicked is to do what they do, but better.”
“We’re not fighting the Federation only to become them, Adena.”
“Said every nation before they fell to the Federation,” Adena answers bitterly. “I’m going to beat them, Talin. They think they can take what they’ve learned from the ruins to build their own monsters? I can do it too. I have to invent better weapons, faster. I have to learn how to create like them. I am going to beat them at what they do best. Mara has to, or our dawns like this are numbered.”
