I trudged down the road like a half-dead drunk, every step feeling like it might be my last even as I struggled to keep Ferius on her feet. She was heavier than she looked, or maybe I was just weaker than I thought.
‘What’s wrong with ya, kid?’ she mumbled, her usual drawl now barely coherent. ‘This ain’t no dance I taught ya.’
I could feel the heat coming off her in waves, the fever burning her up, sweat soaking through her clothes. I had to stop to lean on every tree to catch my breath. Ancestors, but she looked so … wrong, somehow. Beneath her flushed skin I could see the black worm sliding and slithering around her right eye as one end burrowed its way deeper into her brain, taking hold there. Dexan told me that his ‘clients’ had given him a spell that could hide the markings, but he chose not to use it on Ferius. He wanted us to see it, wanted her to know it was there. Not content with infecting her, he’d made sure everyone would know what he’d done. Dexan had branded her.
The air was cold on my bare skin. I’d had to take off my shirt and turn it into a sling to carry Reichis. The poor little animal was still unconscious, lying in a heap inside the folds of my shirt, trickles of blood seeping from his wounds.
The sky in the distance was starting to change, the pure black becoming washed out by a trace of yellow-orange along the horizon. I was so tired it was all I could do not to just drop Ferius and Reichis and lie down on the ground next to them and hope something came along to put an end to us all. I’d failed them both, failed everybody, and the thought of carrying that with me was more than I could bear. I’m not sure what kept me stumbling down that long road towards Seneira’s house, other than maybe the feeling that they had a right to know just how badly I’d screwed up, to spit in my face and send me packing.
Even before we got to her door, she came running out, her father beside her.
‘Kellen!’ she cried, and rushed over to help take Ferius’s weight.
‘Let’s get you inside,’ her father said, reaching an arm around my shoulders. That brief offering of support somehow made my legs go out from under me. He held me up, one hand catching the note that was falling from my shirt pocket. ‘It’s all right, son, I’ve got you,’ he said, even though I could see the strain on his face from bearing my weight.
Seneira carefully picked up the improvised sling with Reichis in it. ‘His breathing doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll see to him. I’ll see to all of you.’
They were so concerned with looking after us that they didn’t even ask what had happened, didn’t ask whether we’d done what I promised or had just destroyed their family’s hopes for survival.
I think that’s what broke me.
Seneira and her father brought the three of us into a guest room and set Ferius down on the bed while they tended our wounds. They had to tie Ferius’s hands to the bedposts because she kept trying to claw at her eye and Beren was worried she might blind herself.
‘We’ve got to keep her from scratching at it,’ he said, peering down at the black markings. ‘The … worm you’ve told us about … seems to burrow deeper when she rubs her eye. I honestly fear the vile thing might kill her if she keeps at it.’
He left the room and returned a minute later with a small jar of clear liquid. ‘It’s a sedative from the hospital,’ he said, pouring a spoonful into a large glass of water. ‘It’ll help her sleep.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for everything.’
He brushed a hand against my cheeks, one after the other. It was an odd gesture, an almost absent-minded act of affection that Beren had probably done for Tyne a thousand times. Now his son was gone, and his own cheeks were red and wet from tears that would probably never stop coming.
I was searching for some words of comfort to offer him when he took his hand away and smiled wearily. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, then went over to Reichis, whom Seneira had laid down next to Ferius on the bed, and petted him gently. ‘He’s a brave fellow, isn’t he?’
The bravest you’ll ever meet, I would have said if it wasn’t for the fact that I didn’t want to start crying again.
‘Kellen?’ Beren said, rising to stand once again.
I looked up. ‘Yes, sir?’
He motioned for me to follow him. ‘Maybe you and I should talk now.’
We sat around the small table in their kitchen. Beren offered me something to drink but I declined. He nodded as if that meant something to him.
‘I found something in the pocket of your shirt,’ he said, holding up a folded piece of paper. I’d forgotten Dexan putting it there. Their final offer.
‘What does it say?’
‘Nothing.’
I looked up at him. ‘What do you mean?’
Beren’s face took on more lines than I’d seen before. ‘It was a message for me. They want the Academy to stay open, for me to keep my mouth shut and keep doing the work I’ve been doing.’
‘But why would that matter to them? What do they gain?’
‘I don’t know, and at this point I don’t care.’ Beren crumpled up the paper and tossed it on the table. ‘They also say you and your Argosi friend have to leave the territories right away.’
‘I’m surprised they care one way or another what we do. It’s not like I turned out to be a threat to them.’
Beren’s gaze became hard, and for a moment crushing grief gave way to stern determination. ‘Don’t sulk, son. That’s a boy’s way. I need something more from you right now. For whatever reason, they want you gone.’
I nodded. I guess we’d come to the point at last. ‘You’re right. I’ll leave tonight as soon as I can transport Ferius. Is it … Is it all right if I say goodbye to Seneira?’
He shook his head. ‘No, Kellen, I don’t think so.’
I suppose I should have seen that coming. But then he surprised me. ‘You have to take Seneira with you.’
‘With us? Why?’
‘Because I’m not going to keep the Academy open, Kellen. I’ve already begun preparations to shut it down. The students will start leaving as soon as I can arrange for their safe passage back to their home countries. A few of the masters might choose to stay, and, well, that’s up to them. But those kids are going home before this Dexan and his employers can hurt any more of them.’
‘But they’ll—’
Beren cut me off. ‘I will deal with the consequences when the time comes. But my daughter … she needs some kind of chance at life. Even if she can get far enough away from here that our enemies can’t get to her through that thing in her eye … well, wherever she goes, folks will think she has the shadowblack. Then she’ll need to run, to hide, to find some new place.’
Run, hide, find somewhere else to do both all over again. The way he talked it was clear to me he had no idea what that was going to be like for Seneira. Then he reached over and took my hand. ‘You can help her do that … No,’ he corrected himself, ‘the two of you will help each other. She cares about you, Kellen. One day she might even fall in love with you.’
‘She doesn’t—’
‘I know I’m asking a lot of you, son, asking you to set a course for your life without even a day to think about it, but, well, asking is just what I’m doing.’ He tried to hold himself together, but I could see his lower jaw start to tremble, and his next words came out as a whisper. ‘They took my son, Kellen, don’t let them have my daughter.’
It felt odd … wrong … to have this powerful and important man talk to me as if he were a beggar pleading for a few coins. Worse, I didn’t think what he proposed was even possible. ‘Seneira’s not going to leave you, sir. Not from what I’ve seen.’
He sniffed, then gave a soft chuckle. ‘She’s a wilful soul, that’s for sure.’ The bitter scrap of laughter faded as quickly as it had began. ‘I’ve already talked to her, Kellen. Go see her. She’s expecting you.’
I found Seneira in her room, a small travelling case open on her bed. She was examining a rough-spun shirt before placing it inside. ‘Is this too much?’ she asked. Her voice was flat, neither angry nor sad nor any other emotion I could discern, as if she’d lost the capacity to feel anything any more.
‘Too much what?’
She pointed to the case. ‘I’ve seen people travel with a lot more, but I know it’ll be different for us.’
‘Seneira … your father needs to make a deal with Dexan, with his clients, find some arrangement that—’
‘He won’t beg, not if it means putting those other kids at risk. My father’s going to do what he thinks is right, what will keep people safe.’ She closed the lid on the travelling case. ‘You and I have to do the same.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She turned to face me, determination set in her jaw. ‘You said it yourself: Dexan is just a lackey working for someone else. And I don’t think they would risk killing my father even if he does close the Academy, not when they can look for some other way to use him. My father is smart, and strong; he built the greatest centre of learning in a town everyone else had long forgotten, in a country no one cared about.’ Something changed in her expression. ‘But he won’t have a chance with me here. Not when someone could use me the way they used poor Revian … the way they used Tyne. That’s why I need to go, get away from this place, go so far their spells won’t reach me.’
I found myself just staring at her, suddenly missing the bravery and belligerance I’d got used to seeing in her eyes, the cleverness that always seemed to appear in the smallest twitch of her lips, the compassion with which she treated everyone around her. But for all those absences, it was the paleness of her skin that drew my gaze. She’d never had to spend long days under the hot sun. Her fingers were smooth from a life of study, not labour. Seneira was like me in a way – the me from months ago who hadn’t yet lost everything and learned to live with almost nothing.
‘It’s not what you might think,’ I said. ‘The life of an exile, of an outlaw, it’s not glamorous or exotic – it’s awful. Most days it’s dull and tiring, except when you’re running, terrified that this time you’re going to end up dead. People don’t like wanderers and drifters – not even here in the borderlands – and from what I’ve heard from Ferius, it’s even worse in other places. It’s not a life anyone would want, Seneira. You spent … what? A few days, and with Rosie watching your back? Imagine day after day, year after year of it.’
She listened patiently to my litany of complaints about the horrors of the road, then said, ‘I’m sure that’s all true, Kellen, but you know what I think?’
‘What?’
She took my hands in hers, and then, as if she were fighting desperately to swim up from the bottom of a deep, dark lake, she kissed me for a long time. ‘I think no life can be so bad so long as you have someone to share it with.’