Warlords Rising (9 page)

Trev’nor saw the second building get struck by lightning and
grinned even as he ran. Becca was in full form. She could hit the head of a pin
with lightning if she were of the mind to, which today, she apparently was. The
whole city could hear Nolan screeching and buildings being stomped flat, so
they were gathering up children and whatever belongings could fit in their arms
before racing out of the city. Trev’nor had ended up on the rooftops because of
that, as it was the only clear space to maneuver without fear of being
trampled. It delayed him and he hit the government square just as Becca lost
all patience and aimed not one, but
two
lightning bolts right at his
target.

Miffed, he turned and shook a fist at her. “THAT’S SELFISH,
BECCA!”

She couldn’t hear him, but she could see him, and she waved
cheerfully. Not apologetic, eh? That figured. Her lightning strikes had set the
buildings ablaze so he focused on them. He should probably stop the fire from
spreading. None of them really wanted to level this whole city—after all that
would impact innocent people—they just wanted the government to be taken down.
He focused on the building nearest to him, taking out its foundation, watching
it sink into the ground a foot at a time. Magic still working on that one, he
flung out his right hand and hit the other building with a magical burst, doing
the same to it.

It took them ten minutes to destroy the governmental center
of Rurick. Trev’nor didn’t find that his anger had really dissipated yet, but
he didn’t feel like he was on a homicidal rage anymore either.

He found a higher point, another roof ledge behind him, and
climbed up in order to get a broader view of the city. From what he could tell,
there wasn’t anyone left inside the walls. No one living, anyway.

Nolan swept up into the sky, angling around and gliding past
low enough to catch Becca in his talons. Then he flew directly to Trev’nor and
carefully dropped Becca to the rooftop before flying up and around in a tight
arc, easing back into his human shape as he landed.

“Feel better?” Trev’nor asked the pair of them although he
didn’t need to—the flushed exhilaration was bright on their faces.

“Much.” Nolan stretched his arms out high above his head.
“Feels good to have the kinks out. Now what do we do next? Let everyone out of
the slave pens?”

“I can do that,” Trev’nor offered. “But what do we do then?
I mean, the citizens here are used to thinking that magicians are slaves. We
can’t just turn them loose and leave, not without knowing how they’ll be
treated later.”

“I think we scared everyone off, though.” Becca frowned and
peered toward the south, where most people had fled. “Should we wait for them
to come back and try to talk to them?”

“Or we go out to meet them halfway and try to talk.” Nolan
didn’t sound sold on this possibility. “I’m not sure if they’d let us come
anywhere close, though. Not after seeing all of this.”

“Better to deal with the slave pens and wait,” Trev’nor
agreed. “Bec, Nol, you deal with the people. Once they’re all out, I’m going to
bury the place.”

The aftermath of the battle was not a pretty one.

Becca let the former slaves out of their pens but most
refused to move, not believing that they could after a lifetime of being kept
in chains. She didn’t argue with them, figuring that hunger would drive them
out eventually. Nolan went in and healed those that needed it, speaking to the
whole group as he worked, explaining who they were and what had happened.

Because Trev’nor couldn’t really help with that, building
detail fell to him. In Nolan’s rage, he had smashed quite a few buildings that
they actually needed. Trev’nor wandered up one street and down the next,
repairing buildings. While doing that, he came across multiple bodies that
obviously didn’t have a breath of life left in them. Shad had said once that no
one could mistake a dead body. Trev’nor now understood exactly what he’d meant.
It wasn’t just the stillness, it was the lack of all animation in them, the
absence of a soul itself. They were like macabre wooden puppets, badly damaged
and strewn about by a giant’s hand. Or, in this case, a dragon’s claws.

Ignoring it only lasted about two streets before he fetched
up hard against the side of a building, dry heaves wracking his stomach.
Trev’nor put his head against the cool, pitted surface and breathed deeply. He
could not imagine a feeling more terrible than this—to walk through a
battlefield and know that it was partially his hand that had robbed these men
of their lives. It tore at his own soul and robbed him of breath.

Trev’nor spent a small eternity hunched over, shaking and
sick. Eventually he forced himself upright, using the back of his hand to swipe
at wet cheeks. If he was like this now, then odds were it was going to hit the
other two soon. It would be worse for them. Nolan’s magic and gentle nature
would tear at him for this. Becca had lived through a situation similar enough
that it would shake her up again, dark memories bombarding her as much as the
reality. He couldn’t let either one of them be alone until they got a handle on
this.

He went to Nolan first, as he knew where the young prince
was, and Becca was currently on a rooftop somewhere keeping an eye on the city
as a whole. The slave pens were empty save about two dozen people who
stubbornly refused to leave. Most of the slaves milled about the city, pointing
things out to each other and exclaiming over the damage done, but there was no
fair head of hair to be spotted. Eventually Trev’nor had to use his magical
sense to help find him.

In a very narrow alleyway, Nolan was hunched over in a dark
corner, retching. Trev’nor winced even as he lengthened his stride, heading for
him. He hadn’t made it in time. “Nolan.”

Nolan staggered back a few steps, wiping at his mouth with a
dirty shirt sleeve, eyes a little wild. His magic arced around him in short
bursts, his control finicky. Trev’nor grabbed him up in a strong hug and just
held on.

His friend gasped and shuddered, clawing at Trev’nor’s back
with a weak grip. There might have been more than a few tears soaking into his
shoulder, too. Trev’nor didn’t think him any the weaker for it. To Nolan, it
wasn’t just a dead body. It was the very absence of life where there should be
an abundance. It would be completely repulsive to his magical sense.

It took close to an hour before his breathing changed,
becoming less ragged and more even. Nolan gently pushed back, regaining his
center, and looked at Trev’nor with red-rimmed eyes. “Becca?”

“I’m worried about her too,” Trev’nor admitted. “Are you
alright?”

“No.” Nolan tried for a crooked smile and failed. “But I
will be. Just…give me some more time to come to grips with this.”

“I can bury the bodies real quick if you need me to?”
Trev’nor mentally kicked himself for not thinking of that earlier.

“I think that will help, yes, but go find Becca first. Of
the two of us, you’re handling this better.”

It took strength for Nolan to admit that, and Trev’nor gave
his friend a supportive nod. “You’re doing fine. Your magic must be going
ballistic about this.”

“It’s certainly not helping.”

Nolan really did look as if he were pulling himself back
together. Trev’nor trusted that he would be fine, at least for a little while,
and took himself out of the alley. Well now. Where would Becca be?

It took him more than a few minutes to find her. Becca had
always had this knack for hiding in the most obscure places. She’d always won
in ‘hide and seek’ as a child because of that. Trev’nor now realized that it
was likely a carryover from when she had been hunted by the Star Order Priests.
Her mind subconsciously found the best places to go just in case she needed to
hide.

She was tucked up against the side of a chimney, facing the
setting suns against the far horizon, her knees up against her chest. From the
back, he was terribly afraid she was crying. Slowly, he came in from an angle,
not wanting to startle her (bad things normally followed that), and trying to
get her attention without being pushy about it. But when he came around far
enough to see her face, he found that she was completely dry-eyed. Her
expression wasn’t just blank, it was actively not-there in a way that suggested
she was trying to escape from reality as much as possible. At least for a few
minutes.

Should he leave her be, come back later? Or sit down next to
her? Trev’nor couldn’t read people like Nolan could, so he wasn’t sure which
was the best way to go.

“Trev.” It was barely audible although distinctly said.

That sounded like an invitation to him. He came around to
sit at her side, close but not touching, and pointed his face toward the
sunset. “Hey. Next time, try to hide somewhere that an emotionally upset woman
would hide? It was really hard to find you.”

Not so much as a twitch. Busted buckets. Had it all finally
caught up to her?

“Trev,” she repeated, tone hollow. “We killed people today,
didn’t we.”

That was clearly not a question. He puffed out his cheeks
and blew out a breath before admitting, “We did.”

“Aletha was right. It’s a really terrible feeling. It feels
like someone has a stranglehold on my gut but I can’t seem to throw up.”

Nolan had, earlier. Trev’nor almost had. He was surprised
Becca hadn’t, but then she had always been more world-tough in some ways than
they were. Trev’nor tried to find some words of comfort but what came out
instead was, “Do you regret it?”

Finally, she looked at him, still with those hollow eyes, as
if he were speaking in words she couldn’t understand. “Regret it? I do. But I
don’t.”

As contradictory as that sounded, Trev’nor understood
exactly what she meant. “Garth talked to me about this once. I didn’t
understand what he meant then but I do now. He said that before you go into a
fight, you have all of these reasons—some of them important, some of them not.
You go in thinking about your country, and justice, and all sorts of justification
for fighting. But while you’re fighting, you realize that none of that really
matters. What’s most important is keeping yourself alive, and the people that
are important to you, and that’s it.”

“Keeping myself alive,” she whispered and finally some
animation returned to her face. “If we hadn’t killed them, they would have
killed us.”

“To them, we were loose cannons,” Trev’nor confirmed
bleakly. “They wouldn’t put up with anything else other than complete
obedience. And we wouldn’t have been able to keep our heads down like that
forever—eventually we’d snap and do something that would get us killed. We had
to fight today, Becca. We had to wipe them out of existence. Remember, though,
they were the ones that brought the fight to us. We didn’t ask for it.”

Her mouth curved up in a wan smile, a barely-there
expression. “I know. I wish Shad had talked to me more about this. He never
really did. I think he always believed that I wouldn’t have to fight because
Chahir had finally found peace within itself.”

While that was true, it didn’t sound like Shad to believe in
peace so strongly that he wouldn’t arm his foster sister just in case that
peace ever broke. “He really never said anything?”

“He told me war stories from time to time. I learned
something from them. But really, the only advice I got from him was about three
years ago. I asked him if he believed in killing or if was just something he
had to do as a soldier.”

Now that was an interesting question. Trev’nor scooted
around a little so he could face her easier. “What did he say?”

“He said he did believe that sometimes it was just
necessary. It wasn’t like some people should never have been born, or they
didn’t have the right to live, it was just that because of what they had done
they lost the privilege of
continuing
to live.” Her rigid posture
relaxed and she leaned her chin against her knees, still staring out at the
sunset. “Because of what they had done, they lost the right to live on this
world anymore. He said the problem comes when it takes someone with power to
make that judgment call and it takes someone else to give them that power. I
guess, what I’m really struggling with here, is whether I have the right to
take on that power.”

They rather had played judge, jury, and executioner in this
city without a second thought. “They were trying to enslave us. I think that
gives us more of a right than anyone else, don’t you?”

“Really, I can’t argue.” Becca tilted sideways so that she
fetched up against him, head on his shoulder. “And it fits Xiaolang’s
definition of evil to a tee: the purposeful destruction of innocence.”

“I don’t think we were wrong, Bec. I think it’s just hard.
This whole situation is just hard. We’re going to lose sleep over it, we’re
going to have nightmares about it, and we’re always going to wonder if there
wasn’t a better way to deal with it. But we were fighting for our very freedom
and survival. I don’t think anyone will judge us harshly for what we did here.”

“What we did here, no. But Trev, even Nolan said we can’t
let this slavery continue. Even he said we should continue going on through
Khobunter and end this situation. Do we have the right to do that?”

“Look at this way. If we had gone into some other city
instead of Rurick, do you think the slavers there would do anything
differently?”

Her mouth opened, paused, then closed. “No.”

“There’s your answer. There’s nothing to like about
fighting. It’s just necessary sometimes because the only thing an evil man
responds to is brute force.” Right now, facing this situation again felt
repugnant in the extreme but he couldn’t deny the dire need for it. Maybe, a
week or two from now, he would be able to face the future more head on.
Tonight, though, he didn’t think it was something that any of them needed to
focus on. “Come on, come down. This hit Nolan hard and I think he’d feel better
seeing you.”

She leaned into him a second more before pushing her way up
to her feet. “What about you?”

“I have bodies to bury.”