Jeran grins from beside me. “This is the happiest you’ve been sincewe left for Cardinia,” he says. “And we’re all gravely injured and losing a war.”
I give him a bemused look. “I’ll take what I can get,” I say, nodding slightly at Aramin sitting beside him, sipping gingerly at a cup of hot tea. “Eh, Jeran?”
Jeran blushes, but he doesn’t look away. Instead, he seems to shift unconsciously in the Firstblade’s direction.
Nearby, Adena straightens from sharpening a dagger incessantly. “Save up your strength, boys,” she tells us, her eyes roaming over the white bandages looping around my torso. “We won’t get to stay up here for long. The mayor won’t be able to hide her involvement with these rebels forever, and soon Constantine will be on us. We don’t have infinite rebel guards at the gates, you know.”
As she speaks, Talin catches sight of us. Her eyes go straight to me, and the link between us pulls tight. She smiles faintly. My heart leaps.
She and her mother come to a stop near us.
I haven’t even finished nodding to them both in greeting before her mother unloops her arm from her daughter long enough to tilt my chin up with her good hand. She turns my face slightly, frowning.
“So many cuts,” she mutters to me in Maran.
“I’ll be okay, ma’am,” I reply, shrugging off my healing scrapes from the prison district battle.
She just studies me some more before shaking her head. “You need some poultices. Young soldiers like you never seek out enough help. I’ll ask the mayor if she grows any yarrow.”
Talin looks on, seemingly amused, as her mother then turns away from us to check on Adena’s bruises. Then she sits down on the step beside me and gives me a smile.
Hello, she says to me.
To be close enough to her again that I can communicate, to once more hear her voice through my bond, strong and steady.
It brings tears to my eyes. I laugh a little and look down, embarrassed, and blink rapidly as if to get rid of them.
Hello, I answer back through our link.
The sound of my voice in her mind must startle her too, because her smile widens and her eyes gleam in the fading light. She looks like she wants to tell me something more, hesitates, then smiles again, shyer this time.
Your mother’s doing well?I ask her.Her hand…?
Talin glances over her shoulder to where Adena is now complaining gently about her mother’s concern.She will be, she answers.She never tells me about her pains. But she’s happy to see us all here.
My lips twitch in a small smile.If the Federation let her, she could have this entire nation sorted out before sunset.
I believe it, Talin replies with a whisper of a laugh. Then she glances with concern at my bandages.Your back, she says.
I just turn so that my bandaged back is facing her.Why?I ask, glancing over my shoulder at her.Does it look bad?
She tilts her head playfully at me.Not your best look.
I’ll grow out of it.
She smiles, then looks over to where Adena moans halfheartedly as Talin’s mother rewraps a bandage around a cut on the Striker’s arm. On impulse, I reach out to take Talin’s hand gently in mine.
Touching her. The real her, here, in the flesh. It feels so good. My hand tightens around her fingers, and she squeezes back.
Thank you, Talin says after a pause. Her smile is gone now, replaced by a grave expression.I never thought I’d see her again. And then you got her out of there.
I hesitate, bashful now myself, unsure what to say.We needed you here, I say.With the rebellion, not at Constantine’s side.
Talin’s emotions waver through our bond, and I suddenly curse myself. Nicely done, Red. Tell her more about how the only reason you saved her mother was because you needed her to fight for the rebellion.
I clear my throat and prepare to tell her the real reason—but the mayor is taking a seat near us in the courtyard, and everyone around her hushes, turning in her direction to hear what she has to say. My moment passes. I force my answer down as Talin turns toward the mayor too. Our hands slide free.
Mayor Elland looks weary, tired in a way that seems unlike her. Still, when she speaks, her voice is strong and steady. “The Premier knows the edges of his Federation are crumbling,” she tells us. Beside me, Jeran translates in a soft voice to Aramin and Adena. “He knew the rebellion was stirring here in the capital, poisoning his authority. That’s what he meant the slaughter in the arena to be—a warning.”
