The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall (31 page)

Neither soldier listened. I kicked the first in the chest. He fell back with a gasp.

“Now!”

They rolled away and staggered to their feet. Danello rose a second later, bleeding, but alive and ready to fight. The soldiers turned as if about to come for me, then cried out, horrified. They raced off after the others.

“Nya?” Danello said softly, staring at me. “Are you … what did you…?”

“Please. I … I need a minute.”

“Okay.”

Nothing made sense. I stared down at the Duke. Hardly more than bones wrapped in skin. What had I done? What was that wall I’d tried so hard to tear down? His life? I’d drained him, drawn his life into me. The Duke had put me into his weapon all those months ago.

Had he
turned
me into it as well?

“Nya?”

“I didn’t mean to do it, but I’m not sorry I did. He’d have killed us all if I’d let him live.”

It was war. You killed in war—you had to. They
knew
that. They couldn’t hate me for doing what had to be done. I spun back around. “You believe me, don’t you?”

Danello took a step back and my heart nearly broke. “Of course I do.”

“Then why are you acting scared of me?”

“Your eyes.” He walked toward me, one hand out. He brushed the skin around my eyes. “They’re, I don’t know, blue.”

“They changed color?”

“No,” Danello said. “They’re
glowing
blue.”

I pressed my fingers against my face. I didn’t feel anything. At least on the outside. Inside I felt strong. I felt
new
. I felt terrified.

“What happened to me?”

“I have no idea.”

Soldiers were still unconscious all around us. Lanelle and Aylin too. I knelt and woke them both up, drawing away their pain.

They jerked away from me, then crept closer, the same horrible mix of fear and wonder on their faces.

“I know—they’re glowing and I don’t know why.”

Lanelle gasped again and pointed to the Duke’s body. “Is that the Duke?”

“Yes.”

She kicked him. Twice. Then spit. “He deserved even worse than whatever you did.”

I wasn’t sure anyone deserved what I’d done.

“We need to get those Takers out of the weapon,” I said. “And find where the League guards ran off to. The Duke might be dead, but his men are still alive. We have to deal with them.”

“What about the weapon itself?” Danello asked. “You can’t just leave it here.”

I didn’t want to touch it. It was hard enough looking at it. “Maybe we can get it inside the League.”

“Maybe we can use it and flash the rest of those blue-boys back to Baseer,” Lanelle said, heading for the Takers. “Do you have any idea how powerful that thing is?”

“I’m not using it on anyone. I don’t even know if I can.”

Aylin crossed her arms. “And let’s not forget it uses
Takers
to work.”

“Not anymore,” Lanelle said. “They’re dead. All of them.”

“What?” No, they couldn’t be. It wasn’t fair. I turned the weapon off—it should have saved them.
It didn’t save you. You had to drain the Duke to survive.

He’d killed them, just like the boat captains, just like so many others. Why did he bring this weapon here? Why did he have to make me trigger it, make me kill so many just to stop him?

“Listen, the Duke needed to use Takers,” Lanelle said after a bit. “Maybe she doesn’t. She made it work in Baseer without them.”

“Does it even matter?” They were dead because of me.

Lanelle huffed. “Of course it matters! Don’t let him win. You made it work before, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” It
had
pulsed before when no one was attached to it. I didn’t know why, but it didn’t need to be full of pain to drain life.

“Then make it work now. Make those blue-boys pay for what they’ve done.”

“Um, I’ll go get the guards,” Danello said. “I’ll make sure to warn them about your eyes.”

“Okay.” I stared at the weapon, the dead Takers. “We need to get them out of there.”

We gently uncuffed them, pulling them out of the weapon, and then carried them to the soft grass. They deserved heroes’ funerals, all of them. I took a deep breath and walked back to the weapon. Glared at it.

“Tell me you’re not really thinking about touching that thing,” Aylin said.

“Every inch of me itches just being this close to it.”

“Then why do you still have that
look
?”

I sighed. “If I can figure out how to make it work, maybe we
can
end the war.”

“By doing to others what you did to the Duke?”

I shivered. “No. But even elite soldiers are running from me right now, and if I have the weapon with me, maybe I can scare
all
of them and make them leave us alone for good.” And then no one else had to die.

I stepped up and put my hands on the disk. It hummed under my palms. My stomach felt like something was eating away at me.

“Well?” she asked.

I closed my eyes, sensed my way in, shoving past the quivering and the twisting and the humming.

Anything in here?

I hadn’t expected an answer, but a soft
click
filled my mind. I followed it. Felt it. Like a huge room lurking there under the pynvium and the silvery blue metal. I felt around in that empty room, looking for the door or the key or anything that would make it turn on.

Blue fire flickered at the edge of my vision if I didn’t look at it directly. I blew on the fire, gently, a soft breeze.

The glyphs in the weapon glowed.

“Nya, please get off that thing,” Aylin said, her voice shaking.

“Wait, I think I got it.”

I pictured a lamp with the blue flame inside and closed the flaps, shutting out the light.

The light in the glyphs dimmed.

I pictured opening the flaps.

The glyphs flared bright; the hum grew louder.

I had control. I could do this. I could
use
this.

You could kill with this.

But I could also save lives with it. Gevegian
and
Baseeri.

“Soon as Danello gets back, we’re getting this thing to the front lines.”

Geveg’s army filled the streets. We’d been fighting all night, holding on to one block at a time, losing some, gaining others. The Duke’s forces were still trying to seize a foothold in North Isle, but they had a solid hold on the Gov-Gen’s isle. The fighting in the Aristocrats’ Isles was fierce, and losses were high.

That was where Jeatar was.

So that was where we were going.

Fifty League guards surrounded me. We’d managed to wake the horse, and she pulled the cart with me and the weapon on it. I kept my hands pressed against the weapon and the glyphs glowed blue, same as my eyes. The light reflected off the armor of the dead, the shattered windows, the broken souls.

Aylin swore I would scare the Saints themselves.

“What—how—is that?” Jeatar gaped at me, blood caking his hairline just above his ear.

“It’s the Duke’s weapon. He’s dead. I’ll explain later.”

“She’s needs to get through to the blue-boys,” Aylin added. “While it’s still dark.”

Jeatar gaped for another heartbeat, but Vyand shook him, staring at me the same way. He stepped aside. It took him another minute to issue orders.

Our soldiers parted, letting me and my escort though.

Battle sounds grew louder as we grew closer. Grunts and shouts, the
shring
of metal, the clang of swords. Then gasps of shock.

“What
is
that?”

“It’s the Shifter!”

“It’s the Saints!”

I blew on the blue fire in my mind, and the weapon glowed brighter. More than just the Duke’s soldiers cried out and backed away.

“The Saints are protecting Geveg!” a woman yelled. I wasn’t sure who, but it sounded suspiciously like Ellis.

The cries turned to shouts, the shouts to screams. The Duke’s soldiers dropped their weapons and ran—a wall of retreating backs. Horns blew, quick bursts signaling retreat. The wall became a tide, sliding away from our shores, back into the lake.

I followed them through the streets, across the bridges, and onto the terraces. Past the villa I grew up in. Jeatar and our forces came with me, their blades reflecting blue in the light. Making the Baseeri run even faster.

They fled ahead of us to the Gov-Gen’s isle, racing for the ramps to the transport ship looming above the governor’s estate. Soldiers shoved each other, knocking people off the gangplanks and into the canals.

They were still running on board when the transport ship raised its sails. Wind caught canvas with a snap, and the ship pulled away, dragging the gangplanks along the lakewall.

We’d won. We’d actually won.

Cheers and chants floated above the screams and the running feet of those trying to make it onto the moving ship before it pulled free of Geveg. Our soldiers surged past me, after the last of the blue-boys, the Baseeri, the invaders.

“Nya, you hear that?” Aylin asked, jumping up and down beside me.

I listened and smiled. “They’re chanting to Saint Saea.”

Aylin laughed and slapped my leg. “No, they’re chanting
Nya.
”

They couldn’t be! The wind gusted, bringing the words right to my ears.

“Ny-a!”

“Ny-a!”

“Ny-a!”

E
ight days they’d been gone. For eight whole days we’d been free.

The first two days, the fires had burned. The last of the Duke’s soldiers had fled Geveg in terror, dropping lamps and torches, kicking over camp stoves, igniting homes and fences throughout the North and Aristocrats’ Isles. The fire crews put out what they could, and the Duke’s soldiers never regrouped, never returned. They’d left Geveg burning, just as they’d intended, but they’d
left.

The next six days
we
regrouped.

Families found each other, and friends mourned the dead. We grieved for those we’d lost and celebrated with those we’d saved.

Sunshine warmed my face while I stood in a room that used to be mine. It was charred now, blackened by the fires that had raged through the terraces and the rest of the aristocrat district.

“All gone,” Tali said, crunching her way into my old room. She was better now, talking some, but not fully healed. Ginkev wasn’t sure she ever would be, but I had hope.

“It was nice before. Soft colors, soft furniture. Always smelled like food.”

“Mama smelled like flowers.”

I nodded, eyes watering. “She did. She was beautiful too, and kind, and strong.” I held on to her strength. I needed that today.

I walked to the wardrobe and knocked aside the charred door. Found wet clothes in sooty piles. I pulled one out. Pants big enough for me
and
Tali together. I dropped them.

“This is foolish. There’s nothing here that’s mine.” I don’t know why I expected to find anything of ours in our old villa. Just that … we’d won. Everything should have gone back to the way it was.

What’s done is done, and I can’t change it none.

Mama was still dead. Papa, Grannyma, Wen and Lenna. Soek and Quenji. Even Ipstan. Hundreds more whose names I didn’t know, faces I’d never seen.

I’d never play in the fountain again. Never roll in the grass with Tali. Never curl up on the couch while Mama read to us.

My old life was nothing but ash, just like my old home.

“Come on,” I said. “There’s nothing here but a burned villa.”

I led Tali down the wrought-iron spiral staircase in the back—the only stairs left—and exited through the hole that used to be the rear kitchen door. Crossed what was once the garden, where Mama had weeded her violets while Tali chased butterflies. Lake gulls and buzzards circled above, looking for bits of charred things to fill their bellies.

Two guards waited by the front door, standing on the blackened stone path where Wen had died. They fell into step as I passed, one man in front and one behind. Just a precaution, Jeatar had said, until the curiosity about me died down.

I’d thought that would have ceased when my eyes stopped glowing, but they’d been normal three days now and there was no sign of it fading. I didn’t mind the praise so much—we’d worked hard for that—but the adoration? I could do without that.

It
was
getting better, though. People were clingy at first, wanting to touch me, to meet me; but once they did, they realized I wasn’t a saint. I was just a girl.

A
strange
girl, to be sure, but not that different from them.

We left the villa’s grounds and walked into the street. The cleanup crews stopped working and cheered, chanting my name like the soldiers had the last night of the war.

I prayed that would stop soon too. Aylin said being a hero would last longer than being a saint.

A carriage waited at the end of the walk, with more guards around it, but not mine. They all wore League green and gold, though folks were working on a different style for Geveg’s new uniforms.

“Wait, that’s not my carriage.” It was nicer and bigger.

“The Duke wanted to speak to you,” one of the guards said, opening the carriage door.

My first instinct was to run, but I couldn’t be afraid of that title anymore.