In All Places (Stripling Warrior) (10 page)

“I thought you were at the government building today.”

“Noontime. You hungry?”

I nodded and smiled down at the ground.
Since the day at the Sidon, I had become unsure of how to act around Gideon. I thought our friendship might be over, but he deliberately sought me out each day, showing clearly that he meant to keep our friendship intact. I looked up when he greeted Melia.

“Melia, this is Gid. My captain.”

Melia was very curious about the soldiers of my army, and I had told her much about them—especially Zeke and Gideon—and how I managed to live among them. She was astute enough to understand that Gideon meant something different to me than the others did.

Melia widened her eyes, looked Gideon over from head to toe, and then turned to me and mouthed, “Oh my.”

She was astute. But she was not subtle.

Gideon and I were both blushing when we left the street and turned toward the city.

“You like her?” he asked.

“A lot. I miss having a girl to talk to. I didn’t know I was missing Cana so much.”

“Zeke’s sister.”

“Mm-hmm. My best friend.” It seemed so long ago. Would things be the same when I returned?

“Is she as ugly as he is?”

“Eavesdropper!”

He held up his hands. “I learned from the best.”

He bought me food in the market and we went to the steps of the government building to eat it.

“Helaman’s thinking of disbanding the army. Sending the striplings home,” he said as we ate.

We had been gone over three years. I wasn’t surprised.
And I wasn’t surprised that Helaman had talked to Gideon about it, either.

“When?”

He shrugged. “Not terribly soon. There is still work to be done. They need a governor here. We have to reestablish Nephite rule.” He gestured to the square. “Even that market was under Lamanite rule. And the Church of God needs to be rebuilt.”

Many of the leaders and teachers of the church had been killed
during the war. The people were scattered, and though belief in God had increased because of the people’s need for Him, the Church needed its structure restored.

“Are you still planning on going home?”

His words sounded casual, but I knew they were not.

“Yes. I am even more
determined now.”

“I think you should.”

Gideon did not very often tell me what he thought I should or should not do. He just helped me do what I wanted to do. I was pleased that he had thought about it but disappointed that he wanted me to leave.

“Have you requested it?”

I shook my head and swallowed. “Of whom should I request it?”

He was done eating and leaned back on the steps. “I can tell Seth if you want.”

I thought on it for a moment. I was close enough friends with Seth that it would be insulting if he heard it from Gideon. “No.” I shook my head again. “I should tell him.”

Gideon
waited for me to finish my food and then held a hand out to help me to my feet. Our eyes caught for a moment, but then he looked away.

“Thanks for the meal,” I said
.

He watched me
dust myself off, but looked away again, jerkily, as if he had to remind himself to do it.

“You’
ve fed me plenty of times,” he said quietly.

I wasn’t sure what he meant. He had taken his turn at fixing the meals for our unit as often as I or any of the others had.

“You should smile more,” I said as I started to walk away. “It makes your ugly face more bearable to look at.”

Gideon
grabbed my arm and spun me into him, even as he threw back his head and actually laughed.

I pushed away from him and s
campered down the stairs again. I turned to see Gideon taking the stairs two at a time after me, but as I turned, I saw Micah on the main portico above us. He was leaning against a pillar, his arms were folded, and there was no question he had been watching us for a while.

Had
Gideon known Micah was there today? He had to have known. The government building was not large, and they worked together frequently as two of Helaman’s advisors. They had probably been strategizing together with Helaman that morning.

I looked at the ground before me as we walked back to camp.

What kind of stratagem was Gideon enacting? Had Seth been right about his motives?

I glanced back over my shoulder.

Or were he and Micah enacting some stratagem together?

When at last Mother arrived in Manti, I took her to meet my new friend and her ailing grandfather. Melia told us of other families she knew that needed assistance from the healers, and together Mother and I made many visits to these families over the weeks.

One day, Zeram
was feeling especially weak, and Melia was feeling especially weary of caring for him. So Mother stayed with Zeram while I walked with Melia to the market.

W
e walked through the square, stopping at the tables and shops, and Melia haggled with the merchants for the things she needed. I had determined that her Nephite was quite good, and she was very skilled at talking the prices down.

The Standard of Liberty
hung from the highest tower of the government building. Melia asked me about it, and I told her what it said and explained its meaning.

“You hold these things dear,” she said.
“Your family. Your freedom.”

“Yes.”

“I admire that you have joined yourself with the army to protect them. I could never do that.”

“You can do it in other ways,” I replied.

She rolled her pretty eyes. “Like what?”

I thought for a moment, thinking of the best way to word what was running through my mind.

“When my brothers and I were little, my Mother explained to us that faith in God is like a seed,” I began.

Melia did not know God.
She had only a vague idea of some unknown Great Spirit. We had talked of plants and healing, weaving, cooking, laundering, travel, our far away homes, and of course, the boys in my army, but we had not talked much of religion.

She looked at me dubiously.
“And this is how I shall protect my family’s freedom? With a seed?”

“Mother said that
if the thing we had faith in was good, our faith would grow just as if we had planted a seed in the earth. Only this seed was in our hearts.”

She nodded, but I wasn’t sure she understood.

“You see,” I told her, “Mother taught us that if we did not doubt God’s power, if we had faith in it, He would protect us. This is how we developed our faith in God.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“Mother taught us,” I said simply at last.

“You are saying I can protect my family by teaching them to protect themselves?”

“Yes,” I said. “You don’t have to be on the front lines of a battle with a sword in hand to defend freedom.”

“But you do
, defend it with the sword.”

I laughed. “I fear I am not as nurturing as my mother.
All my skill seems to be with the blade.”

Melia picked out a blue sarong from the table we browsed at and held it up against me, admiring it.
“Have you no faith that your God can yet give you the qualities of this protector of the home?”

I smiled
gently at my friend. “He is your God too,” I told her softly.

She looked away from me, but she wasn’t angry.
I had made her uncomfortable with my talk about God, but I wasn’t ashamed to tell her about Him. I didn’t blame her for being uncomfortable. I would let her mull over these ideas for now, and I would do the same.

Something across the square caught her attention.

“There is a handsome warrior,” Melia murmured, and I followed her gaze to see Zeke approaching us.

“Yes,”
I said, my eyes locked on Zeke’s.

When Melia saw that he approached, she
clutched my arm. When he stopped in front of us and stared at me, she looked between us.

“This must be your Ezekiel,” she said with a sly smile
, understanding dawning in her bright, laughing eyes.

I felt myself flush, but I nodded and said, “Zeke, this is my friend, Melia.
Melia, this is Zeke.”

His eyes left mine for a moment as he turned them to her.
Laying a brief hand on her shoulder, he said a polite, “Hello.”

“Hello,” she replied.
Then she turned to me. “I have been away from home for too long.” Her tone was conspiratorial. “Your mother must be weary of my grandfather by now. I will go and check on them. See you tomorrow,” she said, and she left quickly.

We both looked after her
, and I had to smile. She was a very good friend indeed.

I turned to Zeke.

“Walk with me?” he asked.

We began walking toward the
edge of the city. I let Zeke lead the way, though I knew where he intended to go. The trail Melia had shown me where the hyptis grew led into an area of forest that had been left untouched by the building up of the city. Paths ran through it and plants and flowers grew up over small mounds and rocks. It was a perfect place to find herbs, and I thought it had perhaps been preserved for that purpose. It was a place of healing. It was the perfect place to walk with Zeke.

“Melia seems nice,” he said after a while.

“She is. It’s nice to have another girl to talk to.”

“And just what have you girls been talking about?” he said with a teasing grin, and he
pinched me lightly in my side.

I swatted his hand away.

“
Your
Ezekiel?”

It didn’t matter that I had known Zeke for my whole life and had shared many embarrassing moments with him.
For some reason, just then, I couldn’t look at him and I didn’t know how to respond to his teasing—not about this.

I swept my hair over one shoulder.
“Don’t tease me,” I said.

“What?”

“It embarrasses me.
”

“It embarrasses you that Melia repeated your words about me?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You mean to say you actually used the words, ‘Oh look, Melia, there is my Ezekiel?’”

Amusement replaced most of my embarrassment, and I laughed despite myself at his imitation of my voice and the batting of his eyes.

“Do you think she’s pretty?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I smacked him in the chest.

“You asked.”

That was true, and I wasn’t sure why
I had asked. I didn’t want to think of him noticing other girls. But that was an unfair thought, and I knew it.

“She is Lamanite,” he observed after a moment.

“Yes,” I said.
“But she searches for her father who is in the Nephite army.”

“She won’t find him here.”

“I told her that already, but her grandfather is too ill to travel anymore. She plans to stay here until, well, I guess until he dies.” It was very sad to say it that way, to think of it that way.

Our walks weren’t as silent as they had been in Cumeni when we were healing from our wounds, but we
fell silent as we walked through what I had come to regard as a wild garden. I touched the plants as I walked, giving them some of my energy and feeling theirs in return. I needed strength to do what I was about to do.

“Ket,” Zeke said quietly
, but he didn’t follow it with anything.

“Will you hold my hand?” I asked
him.

He hesitated for a moment—because he was afraid, because he didn’t want to, or because he had promised himself he wouldn’t, I didn’t know
why—but after a moment, he took my hand in his and held it firmly.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked him.

“You know you can tell me anything,” he said, but I could almost feel him retreat.

I told him anyway.
“I want to go home.”

He stopped walking and pulled me to a stop as well.

“To Melek?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He frowned.
“I like having you here.”

“I like it too.”

“And yet you go?”

“The Spirit whispers it into my heart.”

Frowning more deeply, he let go of my hand and backed away from me, but I could see it was only to pace and think.

“Don’t say you told me so,” he said after a few agonizing minutes.

“Never,” I said.

Before
leaving Melek, before joining the army, Zeke had insisted I stay home where it was relatively safe instead of marching out to the battlefield where it most assuredly was not.

“How would I have gone these years without seeing you?” he asked.

We had been at odds with each other for much of that time—about the danger, about my choices, my living arrangements, and about Gideon.

He turned back to me and smiled ruefully
, maybe a little sheepishly.

“
It hasn’t always been easy, has it?” He took both of my hands in his and stared down at them while we both considered his words.

“And it has all been my fault.”
I could not get those words out above a whisper.

Zeke shook his head.
“No. Never think that. Half the blame is mine. There have been so many times I was not the friend you needed me to be, the friend I thought I was.”

It was kind of him to offer to shoulder the blame, some of the burden, but I couldn’t let him.

“You are not responsible for my actions,” I insisted.

“
Then I am at least responsible for my own. If I had foregone jealousy for understanding, you would have had no need to seek love and friendship elsewhere.”

I
had never thought of it that way, but I had not been looking for love or friendship when I had met Gideon. Still, it did not absolve me of blame.

I looked up into Zeke’s face and smiled.
“Let us not fight over who gets to shoulder the blame.”

“Let us share it equally,” he said.

I started to shake my head, but he took my chin in his large, firm hand to stop it.

“Let us share it equally,” he repeated.

I looked away and nodded.

“Now,” he said,
waiting until I looked back into his eyes. “There is something I want to tell you, too.”

My heart started to pound in the
moment he took to form in his mind what he wanted to say.

“I know that Gid has accepted an a
ssignment in Zarahemla,” he began.

I didn’t respond—I hoped I didn’t in any way
, hoped I didn’t flinch at the sound of his name, hoped my eyes did not betray the pain I felt about that. I didn’t know whether to stop Zeke, to correct him and ease his misgivings, or wait and let him say it all. I braced myself and waited for him to finish.

“Until
just now, when you said you wanted to go home, I thought the two of you might be making plans to go together, or meet there after some time. See, Ket—Keturah, I—” He ran a hand over his hair and gripped the back of his neck. He looked up at the sky, then down at his feet as he started to speak and stopped himself several times.

“Zeke,” I finally
broke in, causing him to look back at me. “Until this moment, I thought you could not love me again.”

He swallowed hard and
slowly shook his head.

I stepped close
r to him. “Gid has not asked me to betroth myself to him.” I made sure I had Zeke’s eye firmly before I went on, because this was the most important part. “And I would not do so if he did ask it.”

Please understand
, I thought,
that you are not my second choice
.

He nodded as if he
had heard my silent thought, but he gave no other indication that he heard what I said, no sign that it pleased him.

“There is one more thing you must know,” I told him
, fighting down my disappointment in his reaction. “I want to keep your brother’s confidence, but I fear keeping this a secret from you will only cause heartache. Then again, telling you will likely cause just as much.”

“Jarom?
” His eyes narrowed. “What has he got to do with us?”

I couldn’t say the words, not to Zeke, though I had said them to Melia.
She had advised me to tell Zeke of his brother’s feelings. If I had no romantic feelings for Jarom, she had said, then the problem was between the brothers. In order to deal with the problem, Zeke had to know about it. And since Jarom was unlikely to tell Zeke of his feelings, which went much beyond his professed interest in me, until they had become volatile, it fell to me to see that Zeke had the information he needed to handle the situation.

“It is Zeke’s situation to handle,” Melia had said.
“You take too much on yourself. You honor Zeke in trusting him with this burden. Give it to him and let him bear it, for he will if he is as kind and good as you say he is.”

“Ket?
What are you talking about?”

“Jarom does not think of me as a sister.”

“What
do you mean?”