Trial of Intentions (2 page)

She was giving him a look.
The
look. “You seem to think you're smarter than us now.”

“What do you mean
now
?” And he started laughing.

She broke down laughing, too. “You really liked it there, didn't you? In Aubade Grove.”

“I'd go back tomorrow if it didn't mean leaving you behind.” It came out sounding more honest than he'd intended, but he wasn't embarrassed. He stared off at Katia. “It's amazing, Alemdra. No patrols. No fight sessions. Just books. Study. Skyglassing to discover what's up there.” He gestured grandly at the eastern sky.

She smiled, sharing his enthusiasm for the few years he'd been away before being called back here. “Do you think you'll ever leave the Scar for good?” There was a small, fatal note in her voice.

He turned to see her expression—the same one she always wore when they talked about Grant. While all the wards were like Grant's adoptive children, Tahn was the man's actual son. He supposed someday he might leave this place, especially if he ever learned who his mother was. If she was still alive.

“Eventually. After my father goes to his earth. I don't think I could leave him here alone.” Tahn threw a rock and listened for it to hit far below. In his head he began doing some math to determine the height of the ridge.
Initial velocity, count of six to the rock's impact, acceleration due to gravity—

“He'll never be alone, Tahn,” she said, interrupting his calculations. “Not as long as the
cradle
is here.”

Tahn nodded grimly. The Forgotten Cradle. It served as a big damn reminder of abandonment to all the wards of the Scar. And it was how most of them came to this place. Every cycle of the first moon a babe was placed in the hollow of a dead bristlecone pine. Orphans. Foundlings. And sometimes children whose parents just didn't want them anymore. Grant retrieved each child, tried to find it a proper home outside the Scar. Those for whom no arrangements could be made came to live with them
inside
the Scar. Not knowing their actual day of birth, wards celebrated their “cradleday”—the day they were rescued from the tree. Like he and Alembra were doing for her today.

“I don't know why you feel any loyalty to stay, either.” She looked away to where the sun would crest the mountains to the east. “Not after what he's done to you.”

His father put more pressure on him. Tahn's lessons were less predictable. Harder. One might wonder if, being his son, he bore the brunt of his father's exile here. A sentence he'd earned for defying the regent. And his father could never leave; otherwise who would fetch the babes from the cradle?

Their special morning had struck a somber note. But he couldn't let her comment lie, even though in his heart he agreed. “He just has a different way of teaching.”

Alemdra seemed to realize she'd touched too close to private insecurities. “If you go, will you take me with you?”

Tahn smiled, grateful for a change in the direction of their morning chat. “You think you can keep up? I mean, I
have
been off to college and all.”

This time she hit him in the shoulder, soft enough to let him know she wasn't offended, hard enough to let him know she was no rube. Then they fell into another companionable silence. The sun was near to rising. They wouldn't speak again until its rays glimmered in their eyes. This was Tahn's favorite time in the Scar. Morning had a kind of wonder in it. As if the day might end differently than the one before it. That moment of sun first lighting the sky was something he made time every day to witness. And he liked these sunrise moments best when Alemdra was with him.

He wanted to kiss her when the sun began to break. Sentimental, maybe, but it felt right anyway. As the time drew closer, his left leg began to shimmy all on its own.

What if he'd misread their growing friendship? What if she rejected his kiss? He'd be ruining future chances to run with her on morning patrol.

When the sun's first rays broke over the horizon, he turned to her, his mind racing to find some words, debating if he should just grasp her by the shoulders and do it.

He neither spoke nor grasped. In the second he turned, Alemdra inclined with a swift grace and put her mouth on his. Her eyes were open, and she left her lips there for a long time before closing them and uttering a sigh of innocent delight.

The sound brought Tahn's heart to a pounding thump, and he knew he loved her. The other wards would tease him; maybe try to convince him he was just a boy and couldn't know such feelings. Let them. Because even if he and Alemdra never knew a more intimate moment than this, he would always remember her kiss, her sigh.

Sometime later, she pulled away, her eyes opening again. She smiled—not with embarrassment, but happily. And together they watched the sun finish its rise into the sky.

Then an urgent rhythm interrupted the morning stillness. Distant footfalls. Someone running. Together they turned toward the sound. A hundred strides to the east, from behind a copse of dead trees, a figure emerged at a dead run toward the cliff. They watched in horror as their friend Devin leapt from the edge. Her arms and legs pinwheeled briefly before she gave in to the fall, her body pulled earthward toward the jag of rocks far below.

Alemdra screamed. The shrill sound echoed across the deep, rocky ravine as their friend fell down. And down. Tahn stood up on impulse, but could only watch as Devin stared skyward, letting the force of attraction do its awful work.
Initial velocity, acceleration due to gravity …

A few moments later, Devin struck the hardpan below with a sharp cry. And lay instantly still.

“Devin!” Tahn wailed, wanting his friend to take it back. Angry, frustrated tears filled his eyes.

Alemdra turned to him. They shared a long, painful look. They'd failed their third purpose. They'd been so caught up in Alemdra's cradleday, in the peace of sunrise, in their first kiss, that they'd missed any signs of Devin. One of their closest friends.

Alemdra sank to her knees, sobs wracking her body. Tahn put his arms around her and together they wept for Devin. At Gutter Ridge, in the first rays of day, with Katia Shonay still rising in the east, they wept for another ward who'd lost her battle with the Scar.

The third purpose.
Tahn understood the feeling that got into those who made this choice. Every ward had some kind of defense against it. Or tried. His defense was the sky, morning and sunrise. Those moments gave him something to look forward to, to find hope in.

Sometime later, they started down to gather the body, keeping a griever's silence as they went. The sun had grown hot by the time they got to Devin. They stood a while before Alemdra broke the silence. “She turned fifteen last week.”

Wards who found their way out of the Scar often did so soon after their cradleday.

Alemdra sniffed, wiping away tears. There was a familiar worry in her voice when she whispered, “She was strong. Stronger than most.”

Tahn knew she meant in spirit. He nodded. “That's what scares me.”

They fell silent again, knowing soon enough they'd need to build a litter to drag the body home. There'd be a note in Devin's pocket. There was always a note. It would speak of apology. Of regret. Of the inability to suffer the Scar another day. There'd be no blame laid on Grant. Actually, he'd be thanked for caring for them, for trying to teach them to survive in the world. But mostly, the note would be about what
wasn't
written on the paper. It would be about how the Scar somehow amplified the abandonment that had brought a ward to the Forgotten Cradle in the first place.

The notes were all the same, and were always addressed to Grant, anyway. Patrols usually didn't bother looking for them.

Alemdra went slowly to Devin's side and knelt. Hunched over the body, she brushed tenderly at Devin's hair, speaking in a soothing tone—the kind one uses with a child, or the very sick. Her shoulders began to rise and fall again with sobs she could no longer hold back.

Tahn stepped forward and put an arm around her, trying this time to be strong.

“It gets inside.” Alemdra tapped her chest. “You can't ever really get out of the Scar, can you? Even if you leave.” She looked up at Tahn. Her expression said she wanted to be argued with, convinced otherwise.

Tahn could only stare back. He'd gotten out of the Scar—a little bit, anyway—during his time in Aubade Grove. Maybe.

This time, Alemdra
did
look for the note. It wasn't hard to find. But when she unfolded the square of parchment, it
was
different. No words at all. A drawing of a woman, maybe forty or so, beautifully rendered with deep laugh lines around her eyes and mouth, and a biggish nose. Devin had talent that way. Drawing without making everything dreamlike.

The likeness brought fresh sobs from Alemdra. “It's how she imagined her mother.”

That tore at Tahn's fragile bravery. He could see in the drawing hints of Devin as an older woman. Simple thing to want to know a parent's face.
Dead gods, Devin, I'm sorry.

 

CHAPTER ONE

The Right Draw

Mercy has many faces. One of them looks like cruelty.

—Reconciliationist defense of the gods' placement of the Quiet inside the Bourne

T
ahn Junell raced north across the Soliel plain, and his past raced with him. He ran in the dark and cold of predawn. A canopy of bright stars shone in clear skies above. And underfoot, his boots pounded an urgent rhythm against the shale. In his left hand, he clenched his bow. In his mind, growing dread pushed away the crush of his recently returned memory. Ahead, still out of sight, marching on the city of Naltus Far … came the Quiet.

Abandoning gods. The Quiet.
Just a few moon cycles ago, these storied races had been to Tahn just that. Stories. Stories he'd believed, but only in that distant way that death concerned the living.
Their
story told of being herded and sealed deep in the far west and north—distant lands known as the Bourne, a place created by the gods before they'd abandoned the world as lost.

One of his Far companions tapped his shoulder and pointed. “Over there.” Ahead on the left stood a dolmen risen from great slabs of shale.

Tahn concentrated, taking care where he put his feet, trying to move without drawing any attention. The three Far from the city guard ran close, their flight over the stones quiet as a whisper on the plain. They'd insisted on bearing him company. There'd been no time to argue.

Through light winds that carried the scent of shale and sage, they ran. A hundred strides on, they ducked into a shallow depression beside the dolmen. In the lee side of the tomb, Tahn drew quick breaths, the Far hardly winded.

“I'm Daen,” the Far captain said softly. He showed Tahn a wry smile—acquaintances coming here, now—and put out his hand.

“Tahn.” He clasped the Far's hand in the grip of friendship.

“I know. This is Jarron and Aelos.” Daen gestured toward the two behind him. Each nodded a greeting. “Now, do you want to tell us why we've rushed headlong toward several colloughs of Bar'dyn?” Daen's smile turned inquiring.

Tahn looked in the direction of the advancing army. It was still a long way off. But he pictured it in his head. Just one collough was a thousand strong. So, several of them …
deafened gods!
And the Bar'dyn: a Quiet race two heads taller than most men and twice as broad; their hide like elm bark, but tougher, more pliable.

He listened. Only the sound of heavy feet on shale. Distant. The Bar'dyn beat no drum, blew no horn. The absence of sound got inside him like the still of a late-autumn morning before the slaughter of winter stock.

Tahn looked back at Daen. They had a little while to wait, and the Far captain deserved an answer. “Seems reckless, doesn't it.” He showed them each a humorless smile. “The truth? I couldn't help myself.”

None of the Far replied. It wasn't condescension. More like disarming patience. Which struck Tahn odd, since the Far possessed an almost unnatural speed and grace. A godsgift. And their lives were spent in rehearsal for war. Endless training and vigilance to protect an old language.

“I wouldn't even be in Naltus if it weren't for the Quiet.” Tahn looked down at the bow in his lap, suddenly not sure what he meant to do. His bow—any bow—was a very dear, very old friend. He'd been firing one since he could hold a deep draw. But his bow against an army?
I might finally have waded too far into the cesspit.

“We guessed that much,” said Daen.

Tahn locked eyes with the Far captain, who returned a searching stare. “Two cycles ago, I was living a happy, unremarkable life. Small town called the Hollows. Only interesting thing about me was a nagging lack of memory. Had no recollection of anything before my twelfth year. Then, not long before I turned eighteen … a Sheason shows up.”

The Far Jarron took a quick breath.

Tahn nodded at the response. “First day I met Vendanj, I realized stories about the Sheason are true. I saw him render the Will. Move things … kill. With little more than a thought.”

“Vendanj is a friend of the king's,” Daen said. “Not everyone distrusts him.”

Tahn gave a weak smile to that. “Well, he arrived just before the Quiet got to
my
town, too.”

He then looked away to the southwest, at Naltus, a magnificent city risen mostly of the black shale that dominated the long plains. In the predawn light, it was still an imposing thing to look at. It never gleamed. It didn't light up with thousands of lights as Recityv or any other large city. It didn't bustle with industry and trade. It didn't build reputation with art and culture. But the city itself was a striking place, drawn with inflexible lines. It had a permanence and stoicism about it. The kind of place you wanted to be when a storm hit, where you wouldn't fear wind and hard light. And where rain lifted the fresh scent of washed rock. Altogether different than the Hollows, with its hardwood forests and loam.