Season of Glory (3 page)

He stared back at me, and a furrow formed between his brows. “It's too late, Dri.
Our brother chose his path long ago. He murdered his parents.
Kapriel's
parents.”

“He was a child,” I said sorrowfully, avoiding looking at Mom and Dad—remembering
how horrible it was when I thought them dead—by watching the wind rattle drying leaves
that spoke of the end of Harvest. “Think about us at that age. We were innocents,
all of us. Keallach made a horrible decision.”

“A horrible decision,” Dad repeated, and I met his gaze then and thought about all
he and Mom had endured at the hands of the Pacificans—Keallach's people. But had
he even known they were there? Or was this all Sethos's doing? My head pounded with
the conflicting thoughts bouncing around within.

I took a deep breath and felt the group's collective skepticism like a noxious smoke,
threatening to choke me. “So you're saying it was all a ruse.” I turned to stare
at the water in the aqueduct, rushing past us, down, down, down toward Pacifica.
“You all think he was just using me,” I said dully. “Playing me.”

“Yes. He's far cleverer than you can imagine,” Cyrus said gently. “And even if Sethos
has been behind all that has happened, Keallach allowed it. If he's trapped, it's
a trap he helped build himself, one decision at a time. I was nearly trapped myself.
But am I not proof that one can escape Sethos's cage?”

“You were important to Sethos, Cyrus,” I said. “But I'd venture to say that his focus
was on Keallach, first and foremost.” I thought about Keallach in his finer moments
. . . and then in other moments. I'd felt him turn on me, try and control me, his
eyes cold and distant. “I do think there are spells that surround him, that compel
him, in certain measure. It's as if he has power, but it isn't entirely his own—and
yet it's not entirely Sethos's to use either. It wasn't an accident that he was absent
when Sethos was beating me. Nor was it an accident that he was absent when the Council
tried to force me to accept a betrothal. In both cases, I think—no, I
know
—he would've
put a stop to it.”

“Or is that what he wanted you to think?” Vidar asked, stepping up to my other side.

I sighed heavily, closed my eyes, and shook my head as I turned back to face the
group. “I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.”

Niero wrapped a bracing arm across my shoulders. “Then you must concentrate on what
you do know. Only Keallach can choose to free himself. None of us can reach him.
Even you.” He squeezed my shoulder. “From what I know of you, I'd wager you tried
every which way you could, right?”

I nodded and rubbed my temples. “Again and again I tried.”

His mouth tensed. “Only the Maker knows what will come of that.”

“Or maybe Chaz does,” Vidar quipped. “Or a certain somebody with wings . . .”

Niero ignored the baited hook, staring only at me. “Perhaps your words will echo
in his mind. Perhaps a miracle is on the wind. We've seen others . . .” He glanced
over to Ronan—still standing a distance off, head down—then meaningfully to Vidar,
and back to me. “Until then, we must treat Keallach as both our mortal and spiritual
enemy.”

“It's true, Dri,” Vidar said quietly, taking my hand.

I looked around at all of them and realized this would never be an argument I could
win. They hadn't been there with me. They hadn't witnessed what I had. Keallach's
draw to the Way had been real. True.

Or had it?

CHAPTER
3

ANDRIANA

W
e'd been walking for a few hours the next day when I realized we were no longer
heading
north
and east, but north and west. Was it possible that our way through the Wall was deeper
into Pacifica than I'd thought? I'd been walking and talking with my parents, telling
them all that had happened to us since we had parted, and finding out what had happened
to them. They'd nearly been killed that dreadful night when the Sheolites came to
torture them. It was true that our enemies had used their love for each other to
try and coerce information from one, then the other. “But we loved you too,” Mom
said with tears in her eyes as she took my hand and glanced at Dad. “We knew that
no matter what it cost us, we couldn't betray you.”

“You are worth everything to us, to the Community,” Dad said soberly, sliding his
arm around my shoulders. “I'm sorry we endangered both you and the cause we serve.
If only we'd
gotten away in time, Andriana . . . not allowed ourselves to be captured.
There were nights, once we realized what they intended—to use us to control you .
. .” His voice cracked, and he paused to wipe his eyes and then looked to the sky
and over at Mom. “There were times we wished we had died that night.”

“Hey,” I said, pulling him closer, then Mom from my other side. “Look. Here we are.
Together. It's okay. It all turned out all right.”

“Thank the Maker,” Dad said.

“And Ronan,” Mom said, looking toward him. He was ten paces ahead of us, yet glanced
back as if he'd sensed us talking about him. He'd been distant for the last two days.
Physically present, once again my constant guardian, but emotionally separated from
me. I didn't know if it was because my parents were around, or because the rest of
the Ailith might observe something more, or because of his trauma. Or worse, that
he was still jealous over Keallach. I thought I'd detected a similar distance in
the rest of the Ailith too, when we'd argued over my interactions with the emperor.
But while the others gradually warmed to me again, Ronan had not.

I frowned, looking at him as he talked with Niero, who tilted his face upward to
the sun and then pointed to a path to the right. I had to force myself to focus back
on what my parents were saying. Mom and Dad were clearly keeping a portion of their
story back to protect me, but it wasn't hard to tell that they had narrowly lived
through the Sheolites' torture. In hushed tones, they also told me that once they
reached Pacifica, they were given dramatically different treatment. Doctors. Food.
“We were still in our cells, but it was different,” Dad said thoughtfully.

“Do you think Keallach intervened?”

He shrugged. “Or it was simply Sethos, or the Council,” he said bitterly, “planning
to use us to get you to do what they wanted.”

Thoughts of Sethos and the Council and the palace took me back to Kapriel and Keallach
and how it all began. “Why were the twins left in the palace at all? Where they would
be such a target for manipulation?” I asked. “The rest of us were spirited away when
we were born. We moved to the Valley then, right? Why weren't Kapriel and Keallach
moved?”

Dad shrugged. “For the parents of most of the Ailith, like us, I'd wager it was far
simpler to move, to hide you away. For royals, it would've been far more difficult.
I imagine the birth of the princes would've been the cause of much excitement, what
with the low birthrate among the Pacificans and all. To spirit them away might've
caused rioting in the streets.”

“All who expected children around that seventh month of the seventy-seventh year
wondered if their children would be born with the Ailith strain,” Mom said. “It was
all the people of our village could talk about. Elders approached us, warned us of
what we would need to do, and we made preparations, but . . .” Her voice trailed
off, and her eyes were wide and watery, remembering. I felt the joy in her memories,
but also the grief, like shudders racking her body.

“But you had hoped you wouldn't need to go,” I finished for her, for the first time
truly understanding the impact of what they had chosen to do. I remembered the searing
pain of saying good-bye to them the night that Ronan came for me—the night of our
Call—how much it hurt to believe we might never see one another again. Whom had they
left behind? What family? Friends? “Where did you come from? Who did you lose the
night I was born?”

Mom gave me a rueful smile. “It is best if we still not speak of it, Dri. In case
. . .”

I swallowed hard.
In case our enemies choose to find that family too, and use them
against us.
I thought of how Mom and Dad would always dodge my questions about cousins
and aunts and uncles and grandparents, continually redirecting me toward those of
our own tiny village.
“They're our family now. The Maker has given us a new clan.”
And I'd accepted it. At least we'd had that option—to protect our greater family.
Kapriel and Keallach's parents chose to hide in plain sight. “Maybe the queen and
king of Pacifica thought it a divine promise. That the Maker would not make a mistake,
giving them twin sons, both marked with the crescent moon that night. Maybe they
thought they were in the perfect place to raise the future leaders of all those who
would seek the Way.”

“Or maybe they gave in to greed,” Dad said gently, “refusing to leave the bounty
to which they'd become accustomed.”

“We should not speak ill of them,” Mom said. “They paid a great price for their decision.”

“As you all did,” I said. I remained silent after that, my mind a whirl of conflicting
thoughts. Seeming to sense my attempt to sort it out, my parents allowed me to pace
ahead of them, walking on my own. In the distance, I saw Bellona and Vidar—who that
morning had moved out ahead of us, scouting—emerge from the hilly woods and go directly
to Ronan and Niero. Cyrus drew near, listening in and nodding. Vidar was pointing
and seemed to gesture about something beyond the woods that bordered our trail. We
all caught up to them, gathering in a group, but the five of them turned slightly
away, speaking in hushed tones. I frowned and tried to catch Ronan's eye, but he
was still ignoring me.

So were the others, I decided, looking around to each one. I moved back to my dad
and touched his arm. “Do you know what's going on?”

He shook his head, confused.

It was then that I detected the collective apprehension among the others. I turned
to face them as they all warily glanced my way. “There's something you need to see,”
Vidar said, pain etched in his voice.

Pain. And anger. Indignation. Those three emotions practically radiated from him
and Bellona.

“What?” I said, trepidation flooding through me.

“Come,” Niero said.

I swallowed my irritation, clearly understanding how they wanted this to play out—that
they wished for me to personally see whatever was there. And if so, it had to have
something to do with Keallach.

I steeled myself for what was to come, half desperate to know, half heartsick at
what was ahead.

We set off at a quick pace, easily reaching the crest of the hill. From there, we
slowed down, following a winding, narrow trail through thick brush on the other
side. Once we reached the valley, we headed north. We paused only when we reached
a well-maintained dirt and gravel road, to be certain no one approached before we
crossed it, and then began climbing again. Not long after, Bellona and Vidar crouched
down and led us around boulder after boulder until we could safely peer beyond them
down into the canyon.

What filled my eyes made me suck in my breath. In a quarry below us—with a high fence
all around—were countless children, some of them younger than their first decade,
some of them closer to our age. They were in rags and emaciated. Armed guards circled
constantly, barking orders. One
guard carried a whip, sneering at the children he
watched, taunting the older boys in particular.

The wave of collective misery that enveloped me made me want to turn and vomit. I
knew what this was. It was where the unchosen children went “for meaningful work,”
as Keallach had put it. I swallowed back the acrid bile in my mouth and eyed Cyrus,
beside me. “How many of these places are there?”

He shrugged, sharing in my misery, and then slowly nodded. “About twenty. Mines.
Lumberyards. Factories. And quarries like this.”

“Pacifica's hunger for labor such as this can only grow,” Niero muttered, looking
down upon the yard from Cyrus's other side.

Cyrus shook his head, and I could see the tears in his eyes. “This is not what the
king and queen wanted for Pacifica. It's not what the Maker wants. But you have to
know . . . neither Keallach nor the Council was fully informed on facilities such
as these.” He paused. “I mean, I knew they were out there, that it was where we sent
the unclaimed children. But we thought . . .” He swallowed hard and tried to gather
himself. “We thought they were more . . . humane. It was only recently that I investigated
it for myself.”

I swallowed hard, again, and stared at them all. Hundreds of miserable, young souls.
I thought of Palace Pacifica and how Keallach was so proud of his reconstructed buildings.
Had those stones been hewn by slaves such as these? How could he not have known?

Or had he?

It just wasn't possible. That he'd known. He couldn't have deceived me so.

He was imperfect, yes. But there
was
good in him, I thought.

I felt the heat of Ronan's stare and glanced his way. There was a measure of triumph
in him, gloating, as well as anger that made the muscles in his jaw twitch. It made
me angry in response. We had no time for petty jealousies!

I took a breath. Ronan would remember that I loved him, in time. For my own part,
I needed to get over my irritation at his childishness. I focused on the workers
below again.

“We need to free them,” I said to Niero.

“We do,” he said evenly. “But not now. If we free them now, Pacifica will know exactly
where we are and will capture us within the day.”