Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run
When Last We Met: The search for a legendary guardian, the witch Glinneth, has led the group of five weary travellers to a ruin on the cliffs of the sandsea, the southernmost point of the Outer Zone. However, the empty halls hold nothing to give DG hope of helping her mother, and their time is running short.
Chapter Twenty Seven: The Difference of Staying
"Cain, come see this."
It was mid-afternoon, and the day had gotten hot. For the moment, better or worse, they'd dug their heels in. Wyatt had sent DG and Raw out to tend the animals. He'd needed something to distract her before she worked herself into a tizzy. If Raw could manage to help her calm herself, things could only be that much easier. With her busy elsewhere, Cain searched the palace over once more, finding nothing but tile and timber and dust. Disappointed and angry, he'd found an accommodating stretch of wall to lean against and reset his own disturbed calm while Glitch took his turn exploring.
"Cain, you really should see this."
He barely stirred. He'd long since abandoned his hat and duster, he'd rolled up his shirtsleeves but still he could feel the sweat trickling down his back and brow. The day before, bereft of sleep, and the long night in the saddle had caught up with him. The dry, skin-searing heat had only furthered it along.
Glitch, like himself, was still keyed up and agitated. "Cain, you're going to want to –"
"See this," Cain finished for him, parched throat giving him an unpleasant croak. He pushed himself away from the wall, his boots a mite heavier than they'd been before, he was almost certain. "We've been over this place top to bottom, there isn't a damn thing you can –"
Shooting Cain a disapproving glare, Glitch refused to enter the petty argument; his clothes were in a similar state of disarray, and the heat had done nothing to improve his disposition. "Look," his friend said pointedly, and swept a hand out over the balcony.
Rolling his eyes, Cain glanced down into the hall below. He saw nothing that he hadn't seen thrice already. "Don't waste my time, Glitch," he said. "I was down there earlier, I don't –"
"Exactly! Look!"
So he did – and then he blinked his eyes hard as he could and looked again. His initial assessment had been right, there was nothing amiss. In fact, nothing had been displaced; the floor was covered by a smooth layer of pale sand just as it had been the moment DG had opened the front doors. There was no indication whatsoever that the group had been treading over the floor for the past hours, not a single footprint – or pawprint.
He really needed to get a few hours of sleep. "Now, tell me how that's right," he said, narrowing his gaze as if it'd make a difference.
"It's not."
"We kicked up a mess on that floor."
"We did."
Cain sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He squeezed his eyes shut. "You got an explanation for me, zipperhead, or did you just point it out for the hell of it."
"I would have thought it was obvious," Glitch said, and when Cain opened his eyes again, he was met with a very smug grin.
"You're saying magic."
"Magic. But you said it." The grin widened. It was infuriating, and perhaps Cain would have had some scathing remark ready for his friend if the gears in his own brain weren't already turning in another direction.
"DG's gonna need to see this. The mutt, too."
"He has a name, you know. It's Will," Glitch said as he picked up his vest from where he'd slung it over the balustrade. "How would you like it if we kept referring to you as Tin Man or that grouchy bastard?"
Cain grimaced. "Try it and find out." He retrieved his duster and his hat, but did not don either. He went down the marble stairs, taking a quick glimpse out the tall lancet windows that overlooked the sandsea. It unnerved him how the drifts undulated gently, like a lake on a breezy day.
It was automatic reaction to hesitate on the last step, just enough of a jolt in momentum for him to chastise himself before putting his foot down on the floor. Ridiculous. Next, he was going to be jumping at shadows – rather, at the kind of shadows that didn't suddenly materialise into headstrong princesses. Behind him, he could hear the sand crunching beneath Glitch's boots as he shifted as much as he possibly could without falling behind. Truth be told, Cain couldn't blame him. He didn't exactly fancy the idea of being left alone within the desiccated palace. As for kicking up a new mess, Cain didn't see the reason; whatever force had settled the floor, it would do it again before their return. He just had that feeling.
Outside, the heat was stifling; the world beyond the courtyard danced in shimmering waves. The relentless suns near blinded him as he left the dimness of the hall. The sky was dotted with clouds now but none seemed brave enough to venture cross the suns. The shade beneath the shelter of the walls offered a little reprieve, and it was here that they found Tutor, big hands dabbing at his shining forehead with a pocket handkerchief.
"Finally decided to grace us with your wisdom?" Cain asked, and despite his best reservations, he couldn't keep the edge out of his voice. He'd long since grown weary of the old teacher's timely arrivals. None ever seemed to bode well.
"I'm only here to see how things turn out," said Tutor. Despite the burdens that marked his dark face, there was a spark in his eye that outshone it all. "DG's doing fine. It's you two who need to sit back and see what happens."
"I could do with a little sitting," Glitch said, folding himself quite neatly to sit at the base of the wall with Tutor. Cain watched the two of them for a moment, but with the suns beating down on his face, he was in no position to argue. He set his back against the cool stone on Glitch's opposite side. He closed his eyes against the afternoon, and allowed himself to breathe.
"Did you notice the floor, by any chance?" Glitch said to, Cain assumed, Tutor. It was always a possibility that his friend could be having a repeat conversation with him. Though Glitch's mental inconsistencies had tapered to a minimum since they'd met, there was still the occasional misfire in his thought processes that continued to inspire his namesake.
"I did," the old teacher replied with no special significance, "while you were all eyeing up the wallpaper. What of it?"
"No insight to offer? It is your area of expertise," Glitch said with no uncertain amount of condescension. If his eyes hadn't been closed, Cain would've rolled them; to think he'd come all this way to listen to academician bickering.
"I wouldn't pay those tricks any more attention than is deserved," Tutor said dismissively. "All is illusory, and we are in the middle of it. We see what we're meant to see. What we're wanted to see."
Glitch heaved a much put upon sigh. "Why, when I ask you a question, do you leave me with three more?"
Cain couldn't care less about questions. His mind was on the road behind him, the miles they'd travelled. The days – and the nights. He missed the trees, the crisp air of the mountains, the scent of jack pine. Every breath here was a labour, drawing his lungs full of heat. He looked forward to every step north they'd take when their purpose was done. He'd gone above and beyond for DG, for all of them, but he wanted to go home.
He was thinking of the refuge of Finaqua, of the promise of hot water and a proper bed, when Raw and the girl returned from tending the horses. While far from the personification of serenity as her mother was, DG seemed calm and quite under her own control once more. She'd pulled her dark hair up into a bun, and the back of her neck was damp with sweat. Her slacks were rolled up to the knee, showing off pale, skinny legs that ended with those clumsy trainers she always insisted on wearing. Raw was barefoot, leather sandals abandoned; he seemed otherwise unaffected by the heat, but he sat down heavily next to Tutor in the shade and immediately closed his eyes.
DG had not come to hide in the shade. She stood in the middle of the courtyard, staring up at the greag house. Her hands were on her hips, and the more he watched her watching the house, the more he was convinced that there was something forming inside that head of hers. The skeptical little twist to her lips betrayed that calm he'd noticed just moments before.
It crossed his mind to go to her, take his usual stance behind her, glancing over her shoulder so that he might see her profile, get an inkling as to what she was thinking, but his feet were anchored; he was a part of the cool stone at his back, grown over it like ivy.
Just let her be, he told himself, and it was easy to believe it was the right thing to do. There was nothing out here to hurt her that he could defend her from. What might wish her ill was beyond his ability to protect her from it. Small as she was, naïve as she was, young as she was, there was more power within her, more instinct and raw talent, than he'd ever know or possess.
Still, he couldn't deny that pulling inside him, whatever piece of himself that wanted to help her. There were times in his life when he'd wrested against his self-control – dark times, thoughts and places he'd rather not return to – but now was not one of them. His heart might have gone out to her, but his feet stayed put.
She didn't notice his absence, but it seemed to him there was little that broke through the focus that had consumed her. After a few more moments of willing something to happen, she gave up and wandered inside.
Not a one of them moved, though there was more than one nervous glance exchanged, Tutor the only one with an ounce of faith. It was quiet in the courtyard then, but for the distant roar as the waves of the sandsea tossed and scraped against the rocks below.
Let her be.
With a low groan, Cain pushed himself away from the wall. "You three can argue over who takes first watch," he said, jerking his chin toward the gate. "I need some sleep. Wake me up in a few hours if nothing's changed." He left the others to watch after him uneasily as he walked the length of the wall and settled himself in a shaded corner. He knew he needn't worry about the others, DG especially. A few hours without him looming over their shoulders would give them all a rest. Now, there was nothing he could do but sleep.
The long shadows of early evening had cast over the courtyard by the time Cain came awake, though for no reason he could rightly discern. The sky was streaked with the golds and reds of sunsdown, the glow in the west bursting upwards over the high walls. He could hear the movement of the others, the low murmur of their voices, but he couldn't see them.
He stood, stretched; there was an ache in his shoulder that was becoming more and more stubborn as these days on the road wore on. There was just no getting used to sleeping on the ground.
Just beyond the gate, he found the others – minus the princess – in convergence. He scanned the horizon, and he saw their animals, one, two, three, four, grazing out on the plain. Their gear was piled neatly to the inside of the archway, though it seemed that one or more pairs of hands had been rummaging through it. DG's absence could barely be considered conspicuous. One look at any of his companions was enough to tell him that only the suns had moved along; their own situation remained ever the same.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"Inside," Raw answered. "DG very restless."
"We could hear her rummaging around in there for a while, but it's gotten pretty quiet," Glitch added. He glanced toward the wide-open doors. "I poked my head in, but she was just sitting at the top of the stairs looking out the big windows."
Cain looked toward the house himself; the walls had fallen mostly into shadow, the windows looking down into the courtyard – the windows that framed the ruined painting – were dark and empty. Beyond the gate of the great house, out on the plain, he was afforded a view of eternity; to the west, the suns sank lower in the orange sky, long fingers of truer red reaching out in a high arc toward the hazy, blue night rising in the east. Here he was, caught in between.
The wind had picked up, a quiet rush and a whistle through the grass. It cooled his sweat-dampened neck, breathed a bit of life back into him. The others didn't seem to share in his sentiment; having been out of the shelter of the courtyard for much longer, they were starting to look positively chilled. The heat of the afternoon had given way to a pleasant, warm evening, but within the hour, within two, that warmth would sink to nothing with the suns.
Much to his dismay, they looked to be spending the night. It didn't feel right to him, but their best option was to set a watch and sleep in the relative safety of the courtyard. Leastwise, they would be out of the wind. Without DG beside him to direct his planning with the lean of her whims, however, he wasn't about to settle into any course of action. This was her there-and-back tale, as she'd plaintively told him their last evening in the mountains. Had that only been than a day and a half before? Damn, felt much longer than that.
Cain looked hard at the old teacher, who at least had the decency to look slightly intimidated. "Any idea if she's gonna have to sit in there alone all night, or are you still pretending you haven't got a clue?"
Tutor gave a tired half-smile. "It might be that you just need to go and ask her, Mr. Cain."
He bit back an annoyed growl and just barely managed a polite reply. "Might be." He walked away before he started barking orders at them; his mood was no fault of theirs, and even the veil of his frustration did not blind him. He could see their troubles were no different than his own.
He entered through the faded red doors, feeling all the while that he was walking over more than just a threshold, through more than just a weathered old frame. There was an uneasiness inside him that was hard to quiet with mere assurances, though that wasn't to say he didn't try. He remembered that chill he'd felt so many months ago entering the northern palace, the shiver he'd attributed to the cold; the dead fear he'd known in the dark forest beyond the maze at Finaqua. Walking into the empty, ruinous palace now affected him the same way, a deep-seated unknowing that spoke to his body and mind in tongues long forgotten by his consciousness. Perhaps his people had never known it.
But DG did.
He didn't find her on the stairs where she'd last been seen. As he crossed the hall, he watched the upper balcony that surrounded the hall, but the balustrade hid most everything from this vantage. He began to make a bit more noise, letting his feet fall a little harder on the gritty tile. Again, a fresh, untouched layer of dust for him to mark with bootprints. He stopped, and went to one knee, running his fingertips over the floor; a few grains of sand clung to his skin, and he rubbed his fingers together, rolling the rough texture against his thumb before brushing his hand off on his trousers. Illusory, indeed.
"Hey, Tin Man, whatcha doing?"
He stood, and turned. She was at the far end of the hall, on the balcony above the entrance. She seemed to have put a little more faith in the structural integrity of the carved stone balustrade, because she was leaning on it to look down at him. He didn't answer her, instead making the long walk up the west staircase and down the length of the balcony. By the time he'd reached her, she'd gone back to doing what he supposed she'd been doing when she'd heard him: staring up at the mouldering painting as if waiting for it to come to life just for her. What he hadn't expected was the addition of a few choice curses flowing out of that sweet mouth of hers; he couldn't help smiling at the fact she was giving the wall an earful.
"A better question might be, what are you doing, darlin'?"
She glanced over her shoulder at him, and willingly returned his smile. "I'm trying to make sense of this mess."
He came to a stop a few feet behind her. "You could be at that quite a while. The suns are going down."
"I have to hurry."
He started at that, and resolved to watch her a little more closely. "Why," was all he wanted to know.
She turned, slowly. "Do you see that sunset?"
"'Course I did," he said, not needing to turn to know the sky outside was open and deep with dusk, bleeding in the east with a red sunset. Instead, he kept his eye on her, though she looked past him, to that same sky beyond the windows he'd seen when walking across the lower hall. "What's so –"
"I have to hurry," she repeated. With her dark hair pulled back, he could see so clearly the angles of her face, the set of her jaw against his and anyone else's interference. Her eyes were wide and fiercely blue. The notion crossed his mind to pull the tie from her hair to see it fall, to soften and hide the determination written so boldly on every inch of her, but his hands stayed where he'd anchored them on his belt.
"DG," he said carefully, but she turned away, put her back to him and the windows and that red, red sky. He said her name again.
She shushed him, a truly short and impatient sound. He raised an eyebrow, bit his tongue.
"There was supposed to be something here," she muttered. "I did everything I could. We've come so far."
Cain struggled with how to help her; he'd never known a more sure-fire way to ease her than to hold her, but he kept his distance, stood still to watch her as he'd warned himself was right. There was no point in minding his tongue, either, when words had absolutely failed him. He hated to be proven right, a painful burn in the back of his throat that wouldn't swallow away. Might be he was about to choke on his own cynicism, and it was rightly deserved. He'd rather have been wrong a thousand times over if it took away this moment, the hard-bearing inevitability they'd never been able to avoid.
"There is something here," she said, utter conviction turning her voice to gravel. "Missing something – I'm missing something."
"And what if you're not?" he asked, a vain attempt to break her out of the spiral her mind seemed caught in. "What if this is it, kiddo?"
"It's not." She shook her head. "It's not, just – just trust me. There's – damn it, I want to see this painting!"
Cain sighed, unable to help it. She paid him no mind; in fact, within a few moments, she was back to outright ignoring him. He said her name, said it again, but without so much as a dismissive wave in his direction, she took a few cautious steps toward the greyed wall until she could have reached out and touched it. He thought, for the briefest moment only, that she might do just that, despite the fact that she'd warned them of the damage their hands could do to the plaster.
She didn't touch the painting, instead keeping her palms pressed flat to the tops of her thighs as she leaned over and blew at the dust on the wall, one long breath to chase away the layers of age and decay that had grown over what had once been a thing of beauty. He almost rolled his eyes at the childish gesture – but as one second passed, and then another, his eyes widened as the pale shimmer of her light swept over the surface of the wall, blossoming outward until the wall was clean from corner to corner.
DG laughed, and backed away from the wall. She threw a grin over her shoulder, obviously pleased with herself.
"Well, isn't that something," he said, and whistled. Impressive to his mind, but a mere trick for all the untapped power that dwelt somewhere within her. The girl had the power to give life, to take it, with her breath, with that little mouth of hers that could swear or smile at him as easy as lying. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth against the darkness of his thoughts.
Then, she was beside him, close enough to press her arm down the length of his. Her eyes were back on the wall – no, on the painting, and he supposed that his should be, too. He looked up, unsure of what he expected. The whole of the piece, taking up the entirety of the wall, was painted to mirror the windows at the opposite end of the hall. Five panels, tall lancet shapes, each depicting a different scene. The colours had faded over time, pockmarked with age, and the surface of the wall was webbed with hairline cracks. The last of the suns-light filtered in from the north- and-south-facing windows to touch on the painting and it's five near life-size figures, backed by landscapes and versicoloured skies.
The first, an old woman clothed in white, behind her a great misty forest and a lavender sky; the second, a pale woman with an axe at her feet, before rolling patchwork hills, an azure sky. The central panel was different, sided by two more figures in their windows, a beautiful woman, shadowed mountains, a ruby sun, and finally a sallow, sad woman with a hand over one eye, standing on an empty prairie under golden clouds.
But that central panel, twice as wide as those on either side – his eyes returned to it again and again. The background was filled with darkness, no tinted sky to add to the myriad but instead crowded with cruel, spiny towers, cast a haunting, emerald green. The foreground was dominated not by a standing woman, but by a young girl seated on a throne much too big for her. Her feet dangled above a pair of silver slippers set on the floor. Her long dark hair and wide, frightened eyes unnerved him more than he cared admit.
He tore his eyes away from the painting, and settled them on the girl still pressed against his arm. The child in the picture could have been her, just as – he imagined, all too vividly – could her mother, and each of them in line, generations of chestnut crowned Gales.
"Four sisters," DG said, leaning into him a little more, "and her."
There'd been a time in his life when he'd known the history of his country as well as any other school-aged child. There'd been a time when he could have recited names, dates, provincial conflicts, and the great alliances of ages past. At one moment or another in his life, most of it had slipped away as he'd learned new things, trading one knowledge for another. He could remember with stark clarity the names of undercity contacts, all long dead in the war, every smuggling route in and out of Central; his hands remembered his wife's skin beneath his touch, those same hands that now knew the soft hesitance of DG's reach. But he did not remember these women – save the girl in their midst.
The painting before him was true history, he sensed. He wondered which woman represented the dark crone who'd taken Azkadellia bodily so many annuals before. Which had been slain by the first Gale, DG's namesake, upon her untimely arrival in the O.Z.? Wasn't that how the stories went?
"Red," came her soft voice beside him. "That's Glinneth." Needlessly, she pointed; against his better judgement, he looked. Even the fading and weathering of the painting did little to hide the fact that the woman in the fourth panel was more beautiful than any he'd ever seen, surreal in her grace and serenity. Again he glanced away, looked at the floor, at the windows, at DG herself, anywhere but at the ruby goddess formed of pigment and plaster.
"DG –"
She shushed him again, but there was little force behind the rush of her breath. So, in silence he stood beside her, and he waited only because she waited. He could hear nothing but the wind whistling through the windows in the rooms off the balcony, and the faint sounds of the others moving around down in the courtyard outside.
Soon, the glory of the red sunset faded into the deep purple of twilight; the long shadows crept the length of the hall, leeching out what colour remained in the old painting until all that remained to the women and their skies was grey. Cain closed his eyes as the last rays of the sun vanished and left them standing together in the empty hall, as the gloom set forth to wrap them in night's secure embrace.
The red suns had set. The day was gone.
A long sigh escaped DG, one that took the strength out of her legs, and she might have sank to her knees, to the dust and grit that coated the balcony floor, but he turned and put his hands on her arms, held her up as the tremor ran through her and out of her, and she found her own two feet again.
"What do I do now?" she whispered under her breath, and he held no delusion that her words were directed at him. He only waited, squeezing her arms gently, as she regained what little composure she could. In the dimness of the shadow-filled hall, it wasn't hard to see her face, pale and sad. What thoughts moved through her mind, he could only guess at, but he knew with one look into her eyes that she was seeing him, more perhaps than she had since they'd left Finaqua, maybe even Central City. No, longer – since the night he'd left her alone in her room, tears shining on her cheeks. The night she'd asked him to stay with her.
"Cain," she said, "I think I want to go home." Her voice lacked the conviction he'd heard from her not an hour before.
It took him a long moment before he was able to reply, forcing the words out even then. "If you're sure, darlin'."
She looked up at him with those sky eyes of hers, and she nodded, a weak gesture at best but still wilful and true. "I was sure. I was. I don't know –" Her voice cracked and she stopped herself short. She took a deep, shivering breath, and he thought that her knees might go again; his grip tightened instinctively, but she kept steady, giving him a reassuring half-smile. "Thank you," she said, and cleared her throat, nodding again. Nervous. "I –"
"You don't have to." He meant it. They'd done this once already, she'd scolded him for pretending, but he'd never felt more strongly against something. After all that had happened, he didn't deserve her gratitude.
"I know I don't have to."
She pressed up on her toes then, placing the soft touch of a kiss near the corner of his mouth as she'd done perhaps a dozen times since he'd come to know her. The memory lingered on his skin longer than her lips. It was quick, then done, changing nothing, not the dark hall around them or the whisper of the wind through the forgotten rooms, nor the watching gazes of the five panels. All remained the same, yet she left him undeniably shaken; his hands flexed on her arms again, and her eyes focused on his chest, over his shoulder, anywhere but at his face after she'd pulled away.
"DG," he said, and she swallowed hard, but her eyes stayed on his vest buttons. He reached up to put her jaw in his hand, his thumb under her chin. "DG, look at me."
She did so reluctantly, her lips pressed together. Her face was heavy with the guilt of imagined transgressions. She was as close as she was ever going to get without backing off, without running away, and it was closer than he'd ever permitted her. Not just the sweet, simple kiss she'd placed on his cheek, but with words and eyes and her disarming faith she'd crept in until she was inside of him, a part of his heart, just as the blood that coursed through him then and every moment of his life. Her blue eyes saw through him, bore into him, seeing and knowing more than she had a right to, more than the annuals of her life should allow.
She'd asked him to stay while knowing he would leave, stayed while he'd run. She'd known, and she'd waited.
It was with that sobering thought that he finally did what he should have done that last night in Central City, before he'd left, before the long, lonely winter had put more than time and distance between them. The swift duck of his shoulders surprised her, and it was a gasp that escaped into him as he kissed her, tipping her head back to capture her lips under his. Her hands reached up to clutch at his arms, her fingernails pressing into his shirtsleeves. It was a light kiss, chaste, and over too soon. He lifted himself away, feeling her uneven breath on his lips, and he ignored the base desire to kiss her again, draw her into him and keep her there.
"Wyatt," she said softly, and he could see the struggle for sense in her eyes. He had no explanation for her, no reason. He could only let his hand slide away from her jaw, resting it on the curve of her neck; his fingers played absently with the wispy curls there that had escaped the hair-tie.
"What can I do, DG?" he asked, carefully watching her face in the thickening shade of evening.
She closed her eyes, and pressed herself tighter into his arms. "Home," she whispered, voice so small and meek he barely heard, "please, Wyatt, take me home."
