A Big thanks to Misled Nymph for betaing!
Temper filled with blindness
Leads this lost and lonely man
Dragged around your whipping tree
A scourge you can't command
So deafen me with silence
Drown me with your roar
Scowl me with your hollow eyes
Still burning to the core
No door will go unanswered
Like so many closed before
No vagabond to knock upon
This tired and beating war
When all return from exile
Free from all once bound
Decline and brawl old parasites
The truth will yet be found
- Flogging Molly, Another Bag of Bricks
The group decided to make camp at nightfall. After a full day of strenuous riding, they had reached the foothills of the mountainous terrain. Tomorrow's half of the journey would be treacherous, but, if they kept on schedule, they would reach their destination by the next night.
The first day was just as awkward as Alanna feared it would be. The majority of the ride was silent; the only sounds were the light attempts at conversation between Neal and herself – Keladry spoke when spoken to; usually with short, straightforward answers. Joren, on the other hand, didn't open his mouth the entire day, but then again, there really wasn't much effort to send the conversation his way. So when Joren approached Alanna as she attempted to kindle the fire, she was a bit surprised.
"You have the Gift, why don't you just use it?" he casually asked, taking a seat on the grass a few feet behind her.
"Don't know. Just trying to seem normal, I guess. You know, not give them any clue as to where we are," she mumbled sarcastically as she leaned back from the pile of branches and leaves. With a flick of her wrist, the pile erupted into purple flames and she crawled back and sat beside Joren.
He raised an eyebrow. "Can they track your Gift or something?"
"Who knows what they can do? I wouldn't put it past them."
The duo silently stared at the purple flames spluttering upward, hammering the stars.
"Back at the pris– I mean, back in Carthak, you said something about a weapon that the Scanran army had." Joren finally asked the question that had been nagging at his thoughts since that first day.
Although her face remained devoid of any expression, Joren noticed the strange glint in her jarring eyes as she began to grant him an explanation.
"Everything okay out here?" Joren had never hated the interrupting asshole more.
Alanna plastered on a smile. "We're fine, just admiring the stars. Care to join us?"
"Sure," Neal moved to sit by Alanna's other side, faltering slightly under the intense glare Joren shot in his direction. An uncomfortable silence followed as the group looked skyward, each person feigning amazement at the dark sight overhead.
Clearing his throat, Neal decided to break the silence. "So I killed a bird today."
The group was quiet for a few seconds, absorbing the utter randomness. Alanna was the first to break, her jovial laughter breaching the uneasy silence; Neal burst into hysterical laughter and even Joren cracked a smile.
Once the laughter had died down, and Alanna was hastily wiping the tears from her eyes, Neal pulled out his flask. "Now that I effectively killed the tension, what do you say we all share a drink?" Grinning, he turned to Joren, "You in?"
His grin really was infectious, and Joren felt the corners of his mouth twitch involuntarily. Plus, it wasn't as if he was going to turn down a free drink. "Alright."
Alanna pulled the deerskin flask from Neal's extended hand and took a swig. "Let's bury the hatchet, so to speak," she tentatively began, and passed the container to Joren, who gulped down what seemed like a fourth of its contents before passing it back to its owner.
"As I recall, you used to take every opportunity to speak, but I don't think I've heard you say a word yet. Did you finally piss off the wrong person and lose your tongue, Joren?" Neal's tone was light, but his eyes flashed menacingly. Obviously, the 'hatchet' wasn't as easy to bury as Alanna hoped. He took a swallow large enough to match Joren's, but cringed afterward, expressing his novice.
Not one to be intimidated, Jofren met his dangerous gaze. "I guess things change."
"How is everyone back at the colony? Any new developments since I've been gone?" Noticing the dark subtext of the two male's attempt at light conversation, Alanna changed the subject.
"No, not really. Raoul and Merric made it back about two weeks ago. They couldn't find whoever they were sent to locate."
"We didn't really think they would, but we thought they should try nonetheless. Where's Kel?" Alanna knocked back another sip and handed the bottle off to the blonde, who took a smaller sip this time.
"She went for a walk."
"You let her go alone?" She shrieked as she turned to face Neal, horrified.
The man hastily grabbed the flask and shrugged. "She said she needed some time alone to think things through," Again, he fixed his glare on Joren. Alanna dropped the subject and the trio passed the bottle around silently for a good twenty minutes, before the eldest bowed out of the circle. She realized about halfway through the flask that Neal's 'hospitality' was really just some sort of ridiculous testosterone-driven competition between the two men.
However, once Neal began to feel the alcohol, he began verbally attacking Joren again. "So, if you weren't in Tortall, where have you been all this time?"
The younger man rolled his eyes sarcastically. "Training with the Bazhir, how about yourself?"
"Oh, only risking my life for my country. Nothing too exciting."
Joren's posture became rigid and anger seemed to radiate from his solid form. "Are you accusing me of something, Nealan?" He spat out his name venomously.
"Only of being a coward! You were living happily in Carthak while your country was dying!" Both men jumped to their feet and moved inches away from one another.
"You have no idea what happened to me after I was kicked out," he spat, using his towering height as a physical threat to the smaller man.
"Well, I'm pretty sure it didn't involve watching everyone you've ever cared about suffer."
He grinned sardonically. "You'd be surprised."
Neal's fists clenched dangerously by his sides and he looked as if he were seconds away from his breaking point. But the argument was cut short as Kel raced back to the group, breathless. Alanna was the first to notice her arrival.
"What's wrong?" the older woman's forehead creased with worry.
Kel's mask dissipated and unveiled an expression of fear. "I found a body in the woods." She began, panting. "It was them."
The loud boom of metal hitting metal echoed throughout the blacksmith shop and into surrounding area, audible as far as inside the small home. It was two weeks after his arrival at William's 'home' and Thomas was hard at work, using the ridiculously heavy hammer to shape the malleable metal into some sort of shield. He had to admit that the work was much more difficult than he'd originally thought it would be. But hell, he'd never had any experience with manual labor, so what did they expect him to do, miraculously teach himself how to bang two rocks together? Well, when he put it that way, the task didn't seem quite as strenuous as it actually was.
"You're holding it wrong." Thomas whirled around, hastily dropping the hammer as he spun to face the accented intruder.
"Who are you?" He snarled at the newcomer, a young woman who stared at him indignantly. She was fairly tall for an average woman, a few inches taller than Thomas himself, and thin, though not drastically so. Light freckles dusted her alabaster skin and long, vibrant red hair hung down past her waist. She looked much older than Thomas, but he knew she couldn't be more than a few years his senior or she would already have been married off for some measly dowry.
"Who am I? I'm the girl whose job you took," she smirked and gestured to the hammer. "Like I said, you're holding it wrong."
He dropped the hammer and hastily wiped his forehead to keep the streams of perspiration out of his eyes. The heat from the still-lit forge enveloped the duo like thick blanket. "I took your job?" Disbelief radiated from his condescending face.
"You'll dislocate your shoulder if you keep that up. Here," she walked over to him and picked the hammer up off the ground.
Within minutes she finished the shield, a task that would have taken him hours.
At first, I assumed that with her spindly arms she wouldn't even be able to lift the hammer. Or maybe I just assumed she was weak because she was female. That was the first time I underestimated Livia; after that day, you think I would've learned my lesson. But up until the day she died, she never ceased to amaze me.
"How old was it?" The group was now rushing through the woods, following Keladry to the body. Purple light illuminated the path as Alanna's Gift did what it could to aid in the search.
"A few weeks old, at least." Fury burned her features. It was an anomaly to see her express any emotion; Joren found it unnerving. "It was only a child. A little girl. She couldn't have been more than eight." Suddenly she stopped.
Joren didn't see anything at first, and thought the younger woman had stopped prematurely. But then he noticed the purple glow sparkle on an object a few feet in front of him – the torso of a little girl.
Her body had been ripped in half around the navel, and Joren felt his stomach turn as he realized that the shimmering object was her exposed backbone. One of her arms jutted upward in an unnatural position while the other was completely detached, laying a few feet away from the body. What was left of the torso was covered in thick scratches—nothing smaller than a bear could leave those marks. The bottom half was nowhere to be found. Joren quickly averted his eyes; if he looked at it any longer, he knew he would be sick.
Alanna met his worried stare. "Well, now you know what we're up against." Turning back to the less shocked members of the group, she continued. "She's been here for at least a month; it looks like she was attacked by only one of them, not a group, so I think there's no cause for alarm. Let's bury her and then head back to camp. We've got a long day tomorrow and we need to get some rest."
Joren stared at the older woman, wide-eyed. She seemed calm, albeit a bit unnerved, as if she dealt with this kind of thing everyday. All of a sudden, it dawned on him that it probably did. Suddenly, he wasn't so excited to be going to their hidden community. He snorted. He never thought he'd miss a Carthaki prison.
Early the next morning, Joren ignored his dull headache (whether it was a hangover, or just a side effect of the events of their late night discovery, he couldn't quite tell) and attempted to quash his uneasiness by strapping all the throwing knives he owned to his body. There was no way he'd take a chance at facing whatever the hell was out there unarmed; the knives would probably become a permanent addition to his wardrobe – one up each sleeve, one in each boot, and the largest one wrapped securely around his midsection – a small comfort that would probably do him no good when facing whatever was out there, ripping people to shreds.
Alanna and Keladry found him as he was securing the last and smallest knife in his boot. "That won't stop more than one of them, you know. The second would be on you before you even had a chance to retrieve you knife."
He grinned at the former redhead, a cocky glint in his eye. "That's why I've got more than one."
"You'd be much safer with a sword." The other two were shocked to hear Keladry speak up.
The two met eyes for a moment before Joren turned and starting walking back toward their campsite. "I'd rather have knives," he lied. He'd never admit to being unable to afford a sword.
"Still as stubborn as ever, huh?" Alanna joked.
"Yeah," Kel whispered, before continuing in an even quieter voice. "Do you think he regrets what he did to me?"
Alanna had never seen the younger woman look more vulnerable. Her strong exterior was down and Alanna knew it was killing her to open up like that. She was by nature an extremely private person and the fact that she was confiding in Alanna was an honor to the older woman. She wanted nothing more than to lie to her, but knew that if she did, she would be betraying that trust.
She sighed. "I don't think Joren is the type to regret much." Keladry just nodded and the two walked back to join the others.
As Keladry repacked the saddlebags on Hoshi, Neal rested on the ground, glaring in the direction of Alanna and Joren. "Look at them. Since when did Alanna decide to join the dark side?" Joren seemed to be telling Alanna some particularly amusing story because the Lioness' laughter rang throughout the campsite.
Kel snorted. "The dark side? Don't you think that's a bit of an exaggeration?"
"If anything, I think I'm underestimating his wickedness."
"You're just upset because he's up and feeling fine and you can't even stand without the earth spinning. What would possess you to enter a drinking competition with him anyway? Doesn't he just look like the heavy drinking type?"
Neal rolled his eyes. "I didn't plan to out drink him."
"Oh really?"
He propped himself up on his elbows and grinned. "My initial plan was to drink enough that I would have an excuse to start a fight with him. I figure that since he's injured, I would probably beat him. But, of course, you interrupted."
Kel laughed. "I think it would be a close fight, even with his broken arm."
"Yeah, but with a broken arm and his leg, I figure I have a shot."
"His leg?" she asked, puzzled.
"He favors his left leg. He tries to hide it, but if you watch him carefully, you'll see."
They both watched the blonde carefully as he walked to his tent. Sure enough, Neal was right; in fact, it was so obvious that she could not know how she missed it before. At that moment, Joren noticed their staring and, like magic, the limp vanished, his posture straightened, and he jutted his chin upward, a confident smirk plastered onto his face.
"I do wonder what happened to him, though."
"Neal, you know Joren just as well as I do. He probably just started a fight with the wrong person."
He let out a groan and fell back down onto the grass. "Out of every person she could have been going to find, it HAD to be him."
"It's not so bad. He has hardly said a word this entire trip."
"How can you be so nice to him?"
"I haven't even talked to him!"
He frustratingly ran his hand through his unruly hair. "That's the problem! You aren't doing anything about it! He hated you! How can you even stand to look at him after what he did?"
"I don't understand how you can get so upset over it. Everything worked out fine in the end." She put her emotionless mask back in place.
"How can you say that? He wasn't punished nearly enough for what he did! Don't tell me you've forgotten the four years of sheer torture! He kidnapped your friend for Mithros' sake!"
"Well, it made me a stronger person, didn't it? I don't know how I would have dealt with the past few years if I hadn't faced adversity in my past – I would've given up hope long ago. I suppose I owe him for that." She met his eyes pointedly.
"You don't mean that."
"Plus," she began, her eyes dancing, "one of us made it to knighthood while the other didn't. It seems like everything worked itself out accordingly."
"You really don't mean that."
"Yes, I do. Really, I'm fine with it"
"Well I'm not," though he was still furious, he knew their fight was over.
She smirked and sat down beside him. "Well then you really are a Meathead."
Her best friend comfortingly put his arm around her and the lady knight leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. She smiled sadly, letting out a long sigh. The nickname stirred up memories that neither wanted to confront, or ignore. "He was a good man."
"Yeah," he kissed the top of her forehead. "He was."
The days' riding went by without any interruption, and, as the sky began to darken and the group got closer to their intended destination, that uneasiness presented itself in Joren's stomach again. He ignored it, attributing it to nerves, when all of a sudden, it happened.
Alanna and Keladry were discussing the rations of the colony, their conversation growing more and more excited as they neared their destination. Neal, however, was uncharacteristically quiet, and spent the majority of the ride leaning onto the neck of his horse, letting the gelding lead him. Apparently, he was still suffering from the night before. He was paler than normal and inattentive as always. His illness gave Joren some sick feeling of superiority – the knight might have been able to outrun the injured peasant, but Joren would always be able to drink him under a table.
As the unnerved feeling hit the pit of his stomach, Joren felt a tingling sensation somewhere at the base of his neck. His gift was running haywire, icy cold pains coursed through his veins like shocks of electricity. He couldn't see or hear anything; a blinding white blue light blocked all of his senses. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had pulled out the knife from his right sleeve, and turned, throwing it to the right of him without aiming. Without thinking, he removed his second knife from the sling of his injured arm and threw it. In a rush of motion, the painful sensations and the bright light faded and Joren was back on his horse in the quiet forest, his eyes meeting the horrified ones of Alanna. Her sword was drawn but she sat, motionless, staring at something over Joren's shoulder. He turned, and faced the direction where she was staring so intently. Two men were sprawled out, one of his knives hitting each directly in the throat.
He turned back toward his group, with a look of utter surprise. It had happened again.
"Joren," Keladry's shocked voice called out. In a dazed voice, she pointed to his face. "He's bleeding."
He reached up his uninjured arm and wiped his nose, vaguely registering the blood on the tips of his fingers before he promptly passed out.
"…so I guess that's why you wanted me to find him so badly?" The first thing Joren heard, after being submerged in the depths of unconsciousness for Mithros knows how long, was a conversation about himself…he guessed that this did nothing but add fuel to the rumors of his excessive narcissism.
"I could sense that there was something different about his Gift when he was still training at the palace, but I never thought anything of it," a deep masculine voice answered Alanna's. The voice was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it.
"Just because I brought him here doesn't mean that he'll be willing to train with you. Joren's not the easiest person to deal with. He might want nothing to do with you."
"He might."
Alanna stared at him incredulously. "What? No argument?"
The male voice laughed humorously. "Honestly, if he's as bad as you say, then I don't know what the point of arguing is. Everything is up in the air. His Gift could be a fluke; it could be completely normal and I'm just imagining things. Regardless, it's all up to him."
"I can hear you, you know." Numair and Alanna both jumped, startled. Alanna was by his side instantly. Her motherly instincts took over and, before she could stop herself, she was smiling down at him and tenderly stroking his forehead. "How are you feeling?"
Joren shrugged out of her reach, and looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "I'm feeling like I just blacked out. Am I in a bed?"
Alanna laughed. "Yes. We made it to the colony."
Joren rolled away from her and hid his head under the covers. "You did this because you didn't trust me with its secret location, right?"
"Joren," her tone was all business as she ignored his joke. "What happened out there?"
He uncovered his head, turned to face her, and slowly sat up. "What do you mean?"
Which was apparently the wrong thing to say, because she looked pissed. "What do I mean? How about the fact that you heard two of the coming when they don't make a sound? Or that you hit both of them square in the chest without even having to aim? They were both dead in the time it took me to draw my sword!"
"I told you knives were more efficient," he mumbled.
A booming laugh sounded from the other side of the room.
"What Numair? You think this is amusing? I want to know what the hell happened out there! How was he able to use his Gift against them?" The infamous Lioness temper was finally showing itself and Joren was ecstatic that it was no longer directed at him.
However, he decided to help the older man out. "I don't know what happened. Every part of my body turns cold until I can't see or hear anything, like I'm frozen solid. I don't even know I'm moving—it's as if I'm acting purely on instinct. I didn't even know what was happening." His tone was tinged with something unidentifiable, but to Alanna it sounded something like embarrassment or shame.
"So this has happened to you before?" Numair asked, barely able to contain his excitement.
His response was so quiet that for a moment Alanna thought she'd imagined it. "Only once." She suddenly discovered that singular emotion which weighed down his voice and permeated throughout every aspect of his being: regret.
AN: Alright, well that's chapter four, hope you all enjoyed it enough to review!
Oh, and this Irish girl would like to wish you all a HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY! I included a drinking competition and Flogging Molly lyrics just for this day, haha.
On a more important note, I'm looking for a reader who knows practically all of the Tamora Pierce characters and books by heart to help me with the info for the next chapter. If I can't find anyone, I'll have to read all of the books again, and none of you want to wait for that, right? So, if you're interested in helping me out, just let me know!
This chapter is for The Red Night's Revenge, wildcat, SRC, Deadmen's Bells, SarahE7191, Eclipsa, and Misled Nymph for reviewing chapter three! Reviews really do make me update faster, and your support for this story is honestly what made me finish this chapter!
PLEASE REVIEW!!