Chapter Five

Malcolm felt like his legs could barely carry him as he made his way back through the village and toward Icelyn’s house. Though Athan walked along beside him to make sure that he arrived safely in the darkness, neither of them spoke. They had trained hard throughout the day, pausing only for short times to eat. It left Malcolm exhausted and sore, and he knew that the next day would be just as hard if not harder. He had been through training with the Order to ensure that he could face the conflicts that they entered, but it had been nothing like this. The exercises that they had been put through in the training field were like those that trained up the Denynso warriors, intense and explosive, seemingly unrelenting as they pushed to teach every part of their bodies to respond, react, and fight.

The light that burned in the window of Icelyn’s home was reassuring and inviting, and Malcolm felt himself smile at the thought that the end of the night was finally closing in. He would soon be able to sleep, if only for a few hours. He bade Athan goodnight and walked into the house, closing the door behind him with as much energy as he could muster. Icelyn stepped out of her bedroom and walked into the living room when she heard it, her eyes widening when she saw him. Malcolm knew that he looked rough. He could feel the sweat and the dirt caked onto his skin, and the trickle of blood that moved down his arm from an injury sustained from a wayward blow dealt by another of the members of the new army. Athan had been almost happy when he saw Malcolm injured, telling the rest of the group that they should take the incident as a warning, demonstrating to them just how important it was that they follow through with the instructions that they were given just as they were given rather than trying to make assumptions for themselves and do what they thought was right based on their own understanding.

“Are you alright?” Icelyn asked.

Malcolm stepped forward into the room, resisting the urge to just drop down onto the couch as he was and fall asleep. He could only hope that this night was the worst that he would suffer and that his mind and body would adapt to the training quickly so that he could do his part. He still felt stung from their exchange that morning and he wasn’t sure how to respond to her.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Icelyn stepped closer to him, her expression regretful.

“I’m really sorry about what I said to you. I didn’t mean it the way that it came out. It’s just that all of this is just as new and sudden for me as it is for you. I don’t think that I responded to it the way that I should have.”

“I know,” Malcolm said, relieved that she had been the one to bring up the confrontation, but feeling strangely awkward now that she was trying to apologize. “I shouldn’t have been so sharp with you. I can’t expect you to be thrilled that you got me shoved on you all of a sudden. You don’t even know me and Athan volunteered you to become my keeper.”

“I’m not your keeper,” Icelyn said, her tone softening. “That’s not why he has you staying with me. He wants you protected and I can do that. It might have been a major change, but there was no reason for me to react to you that way. I just don’t want you to think that I was trying to make you feel bad for your decision…or that Athan had you come live with me.”

The statement made Icelyn sound vulnerable and Malcolm could sense that that was a state to which she was not accustomed. He didn’t want to make her feel any more uncomfortable, so he made the decision to push past it, starting again.

“I survived the first day of training. I think that’s really all I can feel good about right now.”

Icelyn gave a soft laugh and gestured down the hallway.

“Why don’t you go take a bath. I’m sure that it will make you feel better to get all of that dirt off of you, and your muscles will loosen up better with a soak. There’s plenty of hot water. Since it’s just me usually, the solar cells are able to maintain the heat well.”

The thought of a hot bath sounded glorious and Malcolm eagerly agreed. He made his way down the hall into the bathroom and turned on the water. Even though the air outside had still been oppressive when he got to the house, he turned the temperature up nearly as high as it would go. He knew that Icelyn had been right about the water easing his muscles and reducing the pain. Hopefully time spent in the bath would help to make him more limber for the next day and prevent injuries in his tight joints.

When the tub was full, Malcolm stepped down into the deep sunken tub and allowed the water to surround him. His eyes closed, and he let his head fall back to rest against the side. After allowing himself to spend several long, relaxing moments reclining there, he sat up slightly and reached for the cake of soap that sat on a small shelf on the wall. The smell that rose up to him was like Icelyn’s skin, surprising Malcolm with the realization that told him that he was paying far closer attention to her than he even recognized. He breathed in the smell as he bathed, losing track of time as he washed away the dust, dirt, sweat, and blood, and rejuvenated himself. It seemed the longer that he bathed, the deeper the effect went. Soon he wasn’t just washing away what his training and the time that he spent outside had left on him, but also the lingering feeling of the Order on his skin, the sound of their voices in his ears, and the look of their masks in his mind.

When he finally felt that he had spent enough time in the bath, he reluctantly pulled out the stopper and stepped out. He took a towel that smelled of the sun and breeze from a basket on the floor and began to dry himself. Malcolm was running the towel down one of his arms when he heard the door behind him open. He turned to see Icelyn step into the room and then stop abruptly, her face growing red and her mouth opening as her eyes fell onto his naked body.

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to stammer, looking down and away. “I didn’t realize…”

“It’s alright,” Malcolm said, wrapping the towel around his waist.

Icelyn looked up cautiously and, seeing that he was concealed, straightened. She held out a stack of clothes.

“I realized that you probably didn’t have any fresh clothes to change into, so I brought you some of the things I’ve been working on for the crew.”

Malcolm felt ridiculous for not having thought of his need for clothing when he got into the bath and reached for the clothes gratefully. Their hands brushed slightly, and he felt the contact tingle through him. The attraction that he was feeling was undeniable, but he didn’t want her to know. His sudden appearance in her life, and her home, was enough. Icelyn pulled her hand away from his quickly and hurried out of the room as quickly as she could, closing the door behind her. He dressed, noticing that the pants fit him perfectly, but the shirt was too tight, and hesitated in the bathroom for a few moments, unsure of how he was supposed to interact with her. The discomfort that she felt at coming into the room with him undressed was obvious, but he had also noticed the way that her eyes had lingered on him, if only for a few seconds.

Finally, he knew that he couldn’t remain there for any longer and he walked out into the living room. Icelyn turned away from where she was laying out a fresh sheet on the couch.

“The shirt is a little tight,” Malcolm said. “Thank you for this, though.”

“That’s alright,” Icelyn said. “I have others. I can find another one for you.”

She took a step toward him and reached for the shirt, but her eyes seemed to lock on his arm.

“What?” he asked.

“What happened?” she asked.

He glanced down at his arm and saw the injury from training.

“Oh,” he said, “that’s nothing. My training partner just got too enthusiastic during one of the exercises and didn’t follow through with a maneuver properly, so he hit me.”

“That looks like it hurts,” she said, coming up to him and resting her hand on his arm so that she could examine the cut more closely. “Let me put a bandage on it.”

“It’s really alright. I’m sure that I’m going to get plenty of other scrapes and cuts along the way before we make it to Penthos.”

“That’s probably true, but that doesn’t mean that you should just let yourself get an infection because it would be a good reminder of the experience. Just let me put a bandage on it for you. You don’t want to get any dirt in it tomorrow during training.”

Malcolm relented and Icelyn rushed off to the bathroom, returning a few moments later with a shallow box. She opened it and withdrew a glass jar of salve and a roll of bandages. The salve stung slightly as she rubbed it across the cut, but the feeling of her fingertips on his skin was worth the hint of pain. Icelyn massaged the thick medicine into his skin for a few more moments and then began to wrap the bandage around his muscle.

“Thank you,” he said. “For everything. I don’t know if I’ve said that yet.”

“You have,” she said without looking up from what she was doing.

“Well, thank you again. For everything that you’ve done and for everything that I’m sure that you’ll keep doing for me.”

Icelyn smiled and finished wrapping his arm.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “For everything.” She put her supplies away in the box and turned to him again. “If you go ahead and give me the clothes that you were wearing during training, if there’s anything left of them of course, I’ll wash them for you tomorrow.”

Malcolm shook his head.

“That’s not necessary,” he said. “I can do them.”

“I was going to be washing my own clothes tomorrow anyway, so it won’t be any trouble,” she said. “Besides, it would be far too dangerous for you to go down to the creek by yourself. It’s much safer if you just let me do it.” He agreed, and she gave a resolute nod. “Fine. Come on. I know that you’re hungry.”

“I am,” Malcolm said, suddenly aware of the gnawing hunger in his belly.

They settled into the chairs at the small table tucked to one side of the kitchen and Icelyn handed him a plate. Malcolm took it and filled it with the food from several dishes placed on the table. They fell into a silent pattern of eating and sipping from the cups in front of them for several minutes before he spoke.

“Tell me more about yourself,” he said.

“What do you want to know?” Icelyn asked, seeming slightly taken aback by the question.

“About your family,” he said. “Did you grow up in this house?”

Icelyn looked down at her plate and then back at him.

“No,” she said. “I came to live here when my parents died. That was all that was left of my family.”

Malcolm took another bite of the food as he thought about her answer. It was another layer to how unusual she was, and it only made him want to know more. As he pondered a woman living alone and without any family, however, he knew that he couldn’t delve as far as he would want to, to know more about her. Even though it seemed as though they were getting more familiar and comfortable with each other, he could still feel that she was closed off in a way. She hadn’t offered any information about herself or her situation, even after he asked about her family, so he knew that there were things about her that she wasn’t ready for him to know. He couldn’t pry and risk isolating himself completely away from her again.

“I like it,” he said, trying to smooth over the uncomfortable moment in the conversation and get them back on track. “It’s definitely quieter than where I lived.”

“How did the training go today?” she asked, moving past his question.

“Difficult,” Malcolm admitted. “Theia is a phenomenal trainer, but definitely expects nothing short of excellence. There isn’t much room for learning. She shows us something and then expects us to be able to do it.”

“Maybe that’s why you got hurt,” she said.

Malcolm shrugged.

“I was doing what I was supposed to do,” he said. “Good thing, because I think that if I was doing something wrong that he might have gotten me right across the head.”

Icelyn paused again, but he could sense that there was something that she wanted to ask him about. Finally, she spoke.

“What do you think about all of this?” she asked.

“All of what?” he asked.

“This situation. The Nyx 23 team. Ryan’s experiments. The hybrid army. It must be enough that you were willing to rebel against the Order.”

“It was,” he agreed, somewhat surprised that she would ask him that question. “I didn’t know about everything that the Order was doing. I hope that you know that.”

“What has the Order been doing?” Icelyn asked.

There was a slight hint in her tone that told him that she knew more than she was pretending to know and that she was just checking with him to gauge how much he really knew.

“There’s corruption in the Order,” he said, deciding that the defensiveness that was his initial reaction to her question wouldn’t help either of them and that he would tell her as much as he could without going beyond what he thought was safe. “Some of them have been going against the true mission and aiding the enemies. I’m not sure how, but I know that they are involved with Ryan and his hybrid army. They are or have assisted them in some way and I believe that they will continue to if they have the opportunity.”

Icelyn nodded slowly, looking at him as though she were still evaluating him.

“I meant what I said, you know.”

“About what?” he asked.

“When I said that you were so brave for what you’ve done. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to make the type of decision that you did, especially when you didn’t know if you truly had a friendly ally waiting on the outside for you. If Athan had turned his back on you, you would have had nowhere to run.”

“I know,” Malcolm said. He thought about something that she had said about the Order the night before. “You said something about the Order killing those who they didn’t feel that they could punish effectively. What did you mean by that?”

“There was a time when murder wasn’t the way of the Order. Of course, sometimes death is the only option when doing work as important as that of the Order, but the corruption that Aegeus taught about was just that…corruption. It’s not what the Order stands for or what they are meant to do.”

Malcolm was shocked to hear Icelyn talking about Aegeus. It had been so long since his death that he didn’t think that anyone not linked to the Order or in his family would think of him.

“You know of Aegeus?” he asked.

“I do,” Icelyn said. “What do you know about him?”

“He was my brother-in-law,” Malcolm said. “I had followed my father into the Order not long before Aegeus died. I was very young, so I made the choice to distance myself from my sister and her family. To distance myself from Aegeus. I remember them saying that he was dangerous. That he was doing things that weren’t approved by the Order and that he was threatening work that they had laid in place. I don’t think that I was meant to hear any of that. I asked my father about it and he seemed angry that I would ask, but he also knew that there was nothing that he could do. I had already been selected into the Order and was commanded to know everything that I could. He wasn’t permitted not to answer me if I had a question about something that I saw or heard.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He said that Aegeus had strange thoughts about the Order and the Panel. That he had lost sight of the true mission and was pulling away from the rest of the group. He left it at that and I didn’t think much of it again. When he died, I remember that my father didn’t mourn. Not at home anyway. He went to the funeral, of course, and he did everything in public that he should do to seem as though he was grieving for Aegeus, but when he was home, there wasn’t even the hint of sadness. I don’t remember him even visiting Ellora or her children after that. It was like they died too. I’ve been thinking a lot about that in the last few days.”

“Where is your father now?” Icelyn asked.

“Still in,” Malcolm said. “I don’t see him very often anymore. He’s on the Panel now.” He knew that that made his decision even more pressing and dangerous. His father knew him well and would be more likely to be able to find him than anyone else. “The official word in the Order is that his death marked the end of the war and restored the core strength and honor of the Order. Officially, there were no more questions about the Order or any form of corruption. I hadn’t thought any more about that until I saw my sister Ellora down in the tunnels.”

“Aegeus knew something that they were doing,” Icelyn said. “He knew what the rogue members had done and what they were planning.”

“How do you know all of this?” he asked. “You seem to know more than me. I’m not even fully informed on the workings of the Order yet. That comes with time.”

“There are plenty of men who are high in the Order who don’t know everything about it. That’s the way that it has always been. The Order is not just one thing. There are layers and levels within it that act both to make sure that the hierarchy accomplishes everything that it is supposed to, but also to ensure that the core of the Order is protected. These guards the most important ancient function of the Order, the reason that it was started to begin with and why it will persist, why it must persist.”

“What is that function?” Malcolm asked. “Do you know why the Order began?”

It was a question that he had asked himself countless times before. He had been brought in to serve when he was only a child and yet, he had never been told the full story of why the Order had begun. They were told only that the Order came from a need within the Universe to protect and preserve all that was valuable and precious. He had been told no more, but had always longed to know.

“I don’t,” Icelyn said. “No one knows how many people within the Order actually know that information, and who among them have all of the details. That is part of what makes the corruption so incredibly dangerous. Corruption is pervasive in many different ways. It challenges what is being done and threatens the function of those who don’t know everything. How are they to know what is real if they don’t know all of what they are doing or what the other people around them know?”

Malcolm drew in a breath, trying to force down the hard ball of emotion that had tightened in his throat. What Icelyn said had sunk deeply into him. He knew all too well what it meant to stand among the ranks without knowing what it was that he was truly serving. This thought and the new information and insights that Icelyn had given him created a new wash of emotion. He felt confused and overwhelmed, but he also felt both angry and sad thinking of all that he has been through and all that lay ahead.