Adin kept moving. “I’m sure that’s it.”
When they came closer, holding up their hands to show they were no threat, still no one called out to them and no one came to meet them. There was no gate at the tulou’s base. They saw the spot where the hinges once stood, but the metal was torn from the stone. Ren knew what had happened here. The torn hinges and broken gate told the story plainly enough, but he kept his mouth shut.
They passed through the gate, down a dark passageway, and out into the center of the drum. “Hello!” Adin called out, but heard only an echo. “I think I see something,” he said. There seemed to be people moving inside the fortress, shadows that flickered and shifted. Adin dashed along the ringed wall. “Is anyone here?”
As a cloud drifted out of the sun’s path, Ren realized that the movement Adin had mistaken for inhabitants was merely bits of cloth blowing in the wind or tattered flags stuck to spears. The tulou’s walls were crumbled at the top, the bricks shattered in places. The cooking fires were cold, the animals killed or carried off. Here and there dead limbs poked out of the soft dust, human and animal. In places, the flesh was still raw, the damage recent. Everything was as Ren had feared, but Adin would not relent. He rushed to the inner gates, to the burnt wood doors hanging half-open on failed hinges. He was desperate, eager for any sign of lost relatives. There was none. The ringed interior was destroyed—everything was burnt. Adin fell to his knees. No family, no soldiers, no glory was here.
Ren pulled his friend from the wreckage. “I’m sorry.” He had tried to warn Adin.
“Where are they? I don’t understand—where did they go?”
All dead, Ren thought. He had seen the tracks left by Dagrun’s army. So much hope lost.
They scoured the inner chambers, looking for parchments, hoping they might find a message from his family, a name, a scroll. They found nothing. The inner chambers were burned, their contents turned to ash. What was not consumed by flame—the shields and swords and copper vessels—was broken or mangled. The Feren Army had not simply murdered his family, they had destroyed every trace of their occupation, every weapon and provision, every person and animal. Adin’s family might as well have not existed.
When they were too tired to search further, and the sun had faded from the old stones, they found a chamber that was free of soot and ash. They slept on the stones, not a word passing between them. The other boy’s sadness and frustration was nearly a palpable thing, a ghost moving from room to room asking where everyone had gone.
Ren woke when the sun rose, his belly grumbling again. He caught sight of Adin sitting atop the outer wall, smoke rising from a fire.
“What’re you doing?” he called out, but Adin gave no notice. He’ll make me climb. So up he went, climbing the steep wooden steps, then scaling the crumbling face of the wall. He reached the wall walk, where he saw Adin balancing a pot above the flames of a small fire.
“What’s this?” Ren asked.
“Morning meal,” said Adin as he took the old pot from the fire. “I found a little amber, some meat, and a pot. It’s been a while since either of us had a decent meal, so I thought I’d make us one.” He placed a burnt piece of meat on a clay dish and offered it to Ren.
Ren’s stomach groaned at the sight of it. He ate greedily as the sun rose across the desert. They nibbled at the food, sipped their drinks, and laughed, Ren cherishing the moment, Adin’s eyes growing somber as he talked about his family and all that he had lost.
He told Ren how he had dreamed of the great Chathair in Caer Rifka, of a bride, and of a kingdom to rule. “I wanted to stand beneath the Kiteperch, to spend my night in the Cragwood, to roam the ancient Chathair and study the monuments that pack the throne room. I remember so little of my home. Do I have a birth tree? How would I even find it?”
Ren did not interrupt; he let him ramble. Adin needed to talk and it was good to have his friend back. Ren had suffered plenty, but his spirits were high. If only Tye were here.
As the sun rose higher in the sky and the boys finished their meal, Adin poured the last of the amber. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, his voice low, his gaze distant. “I don’t even know where to go for help. Perhaps it’s time we went to Harkana. We’ll be safe there.”
Ren choked at Adin’s words. He had not yet told Adin about his sister, the queen regent. He doubted they would be safer in Harkana. He wondered if they would be safe anywhere. The two boys stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the distant horizon where what looked like a crowd had gathered at the Dromus gate.
“I don’t want to go home, Adin—not yet.”
“Then where?”
“Tolemy’s house.”
Adin watched the horizon turn from soft purple to amber. “Why? Who else is left?”
“Tye. I heard stories in the Gray Wood. The lords of the Wyrre are dead. If it’s true, she’ll be set free on the Thieves’ Moon.”
“How long?” Adin asked.
“Four or five days—maybe less. If we leave now, there is enough time for us to reach Solus before the arrival of the Thieves’ Moon.”
Adin’s face flattened into a frown. “Fuck, Ren—the Priory? It’s the one place I don’t want to go, the one place I never want to see again.”
“We’re not going back—at least not all the way back. We can wait at the gate—”
“And if she does not appear?”
“She will.” Ren nodded. “I’m no more eager than you to return to the Priory, but—”
“I know.” Though they had never spoken of it, he guessed his friend knew how Ren felt about Tye, the affection he harbored for the girl.
“But I still don’t want to go there.” Adin massaged his forehead, looking as if the very thought of the Priory made his head hurt and his thoughts spin.
“It’s not a matter of wanting. I have to go back there for her,” Ren continued; he would not be dissuaded from his task. “When I left the Priory, I thought I was returning to my family, to a crown and kingdom. You thought you would find your father’s soldiers. We were both wrong. Nothing is as we imagined it would be, but I’m not ready to give up, not yet. If we don’t have families or kingdoms, at least we have each other.
“Do you remember the way Tye made us all laugh? Even the priors would crack a smile when she told a good one. She almost made it all right that we were locked up in that hole in the earth.”
“Ren, do you really think we’ll find her? After what happened here, I just don’t want you to be—”
“Disappointed? Fuck. I’m past all that, Adin. I just need to know that I tried.”
“And if that gets us killed?”
Ren bit his lip. “I don’t think it will come to that. Besides, I wouldn’t have made it in the Priory without Tye.”
“It’s a risk,” Adin said.
“I found you. Saved your ass.”
“I was in bloody chains, shackled to a bunch of slaves.”
“And about to be executed.”