“… it will be our victory and ours alone. Not by luck or by chance but because our skill, our strength, and our honour said it would be so. It must be so. And so it is, and so it will always be with the great men of this world, favoured by God. So it will be with the Safire…”
“Do you know why I can get away with what I do?” Arrin presses. “It’s not because I play a fool. It’s not because I do what I want. It’s because when I’m on the frontlines, I’m everything he expects me to be. I’m brilliant. And he needs me. That’s the only thing he’ll negotiate with. The only card that wins.”
I tear at my sweaty collar, unbuttoning it. Arrin’s making too much sense. This isn’t right.
“Look at you both,” Mother interrupts from down the path. There’s a smile in her voice. “You pretend not to care, but I know the two of you are tied together until the very end.”
“Lucky for Athan,” Arrin says, stepping away.
She has an orange and yellow hibiscus flower in her hand, and she walks to him, bringing it to her nose, breathing in the scent. “Not like you and Kalt, though. You two were my twin terrors, weren’t you? Together every moment of the day, searching for mischief. You talked him into all of it, didn’t you? Always a leader. He’d have been a good boy if not for you.”
Arrin appears wary. “Let’s not take a trip down memory lane, Mother.”
She fingers the delicate petals. “But you remember the sea, don’t you? You were so small then. Only to my knee. We were in the land of my parents and you’d run up and down the cold sand, catching shellfish.”
“I can barely remember last week, Mother.”
“You’d cling to my neck while I took you to the deeper water. You were scared, but you trusted me. I wouldn’t let you fall, and your toes touched the crests. Now do you remember? Before he took you from me?”
Arrin tries to keep space between them, but Mother grasps his hand, like she might just throw herself into his arms if he’d only turn around and invite her. Arrin looks frustrated, vaguely undone. Fighting some invisible battle, and Mother’s in tears now.
“I love you, Arrin,” she says desperately. “I do.”
He shakes his head and pulls from her. He walks down the path alone, stopping beneath the shade of a tree, shoulders hunched.
Mother covers a sob with her hand and stumbles in the opposite direction.
I look back and forth between them.
Stuck.
I pick up the hibiscus she dropped and put it in my pocket, trying not to crush the paper-thin petals. She’ll want it later. Then I shut my eyes. In the darkness, the world’s vague and warm, my skin prickling with heat. Another cheer rises on the wind. What sort of man can conquer an entire land but let his family come to this? Someone needs to ask that question. Someone needs to save us from ourselves.
A loud crack resounds off the compound walls, and I open my eyes again.
I wince at the bright light.
Another crack follows.
Echoing.
Before I can think, something heavy hurls me down behind the nearby fountain, both of us collapsing against the dirt. “What the hell are you doing?” Arrin growls. “Get some cover!”
I look at him, scrambling to catch up. “Gunshots,” I manage. I’m not sure if it’s a fact or a question.
“You don’t goddamn say!” He hits me on the head, hard, then pulls out his sidearm, scanning the garden, the sky, the apartments. He grunts. “Damn it, I can’t see anything.”
“Where’s Mother?”
He doesn’t answer, just glances around again, then hauls me to my feet.
Our boots pound down the path in her direction. She’s frozen by a small lemon tree, staring above the walls. We come to a wild halt at her side, and there’s another violent snap in the air, close enough my eardrums burn.
Arrin waves us to move again, but Mother begins to faint. I reach out and grab her, sinking with her as she falls. I kneel there, wondering what to do next. Everything’s cold with fear. Icy in the noon heat.
Then why are my hands warm?
I hold one up, running with red.
Arrin stares.
I turn back to Mother. An ugly wetness grows on her dress, beneath my fingers, her eyes wide and unfocused. My lifted hand shakes. Something hot trails to my elbow, soaking the fabric.
Arrin drops to his knees beside Mother. He throws off his impressive uniform, pushing it to her wound. “Pressure here,” he orders, forcing my hand on it.
Red bleeds through.
I clutch the makeshift bandage while Arrin moves her jaw to open the airway. Fragments of medic training flit through my horror and I want to grab them, but they’re too slippery, disappearing in panic.
More boots pound through the garden, soldiers surrounding us, setting a perimeter with weapons raised. I hardly notice. My eyes are on her face. Each breath from her is like a gasp, a sucking from deep within. A horrible sound.
“Get a medic!” Arrin shouts. “Her lung’s collapsed!” Then he holds her gaze with his own, his gloved hand steady around hers. “You’ll be fine. Father’s coming, I know he’s coming.”
She tries to say something, but it gurgles from her chest, that awful sucking noise. Blood mixes with the dirt beneath us, her skin like snow even beneath the speckled shadow of the tree.
The air smells like blood and citrus.
Sweet and sharp. Sickening.
Arrin slams the ground with a fist. “Where the hell’s the goddamn medic?” Then he leans near her, taking off his gloves so his hands are bare around hers. “Please, Mama, please hold on.” My right hand is still pressed to the wound, my left arm supporting her head. I stare into her face, and she reaches a bloodied hand for my cheek, unable to close the distance. I bend closer and she touches me. She tries to speak again. I taste salt.
People shout—soldiers and orderlies—but Arrin’s the only one I hear. He talks to her, promising her things I can’t make out. The doctor finally appears. At last. Father and Evertal and Kalt and— “Let go, Athan.”
I don’t know who says it. I’m gripping Mother with both arms and they’re trying to put her on a stretcher. I stand up. My knees throb. The group rushes for the base and I trail behind in a bloodstained uniform, hands sticky. I touch my cheek and it comes away red.
Father pales at the sight of me.
I’ve never seen him pale.
“Take my son,” he orders Evertal. “Clean that off.”
Evertal nods, gripping my arm, and I try to protest. I need to stay with Mother. She was trying to reach for me. She couldn’t. But there’s no strength left in me. We step through the doors and Evertal steers me to a sink. She washes my hands, murmuring bits of comfort that don’t mean anything. Everything inside me shakes. Blood everywhere, all over me. Mother’s blood. It’s washing down the drain in ribbons. It’s splattered on my face like paint.
The room sways at a strange angle and my stomach lurches.
Evertal grabs me, forcing me to look at her. “Eyes up here. On the horizon.” She squeezes my shoulders. “Don’t look anywhere else.”
I nod in a knee-jerk kind of way.
What the hell’s she saying?
This can’t be real.
* * *
Afternoon turns to evening, the world a strange dream around me. Blurry and unending. Muted words about fear, about horror, about the attackers who haven’t even been found. I pray and pray, but God doesn’t answer. Father’s used up all his divine favour and now there’s nothing left for her. Hours have passed when Arrin finally sits down in the hospital chair next to me. He swallows, leg trembling slightly. “We did everything we could, Athan. We did everything right. It didn’t work.”
His words sound faint. I’ve been waiting long enough for this and it washes over me vaguely, like someone else’s death, someone I don’t even know.
Arrin rests a hesitant hand on my shoulder.
I’m too far away.
The hot night sinks down, and I drop into bed, crawling into a long, fitful sleep. It drags me to a strange place where past and present meet and nothing makes sense. She’s still alive and begging me to wake her. “Don’t let him take you,” she weeps. “Don’t let him do this to me.” She reaches like she did in my arms, reaching and not finding. “Wake me,” she whispers.
Wake up, wake up.
Wake up!
Kalt shakes me with both arms. He’s leaning over my bed, alarmed.