Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run
When Last We Met: South as south goes, DG followed the road with friends ever behind, searching for Glinneth, once the highest power in the Outer Zone, with little more than an old story and her hope to guide her. To find the sorceress, to ask her help in saving her mother's life had been her only goal - and after meeting with the witch, without a goodbye, the princess slips over to the Other Side. With no answers in the south, Cain, Glitch, and Raw follow Tutor northward once more, to see what changes DG's disappearance has wrought.
Chapter Thirty One: The Ballad of Sweet Jane St. Clair
Five days.
Five days of overcast skies and soft, pelting rain. No glimpse of the blues of heaven, no reminders of DG and those honest eyes she'd so often turned on him with quiet expectation. He didn't so much mind the rain, the endless grey days, for the more he pushed himself into physical misery, the less apt he was to fall into the mire that was his own turmoil, locked up somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind. His heart knew this song by rote and remained untouched, no taint of emotion to sully his head with futile musing.
There were times when the rain would stop, times when a break in the clouds would let the suns spill out onto the mountain roads, dappling their path with light. However short-lived, the reprieve did more to brighten the spirits of his companions than any reassuring word could. That was just as well, and Cain welcomed it, for he had no comfort to offer. Encouraging, that had been DG. Without her, the suns were a pale substitute.
Those moments, however, were few and far between. The suns were shy, and the clouds were selfish. Hour upon hour, mile upon mile. Rain and road, road and rain.
He pushed them as fast and far as he dared, rising with the suns every morning eager to put as much distance between himself and the ruin he'd left behind. There was little complaint from his companions. Raw kept himself distracted with a constant reach toward the girl, his heart searching the voids between for signs of her light, as furtive as the suns that played their games with the grey-belly clouds. There was a comfort to be found in the Viewer's soft words, rare as they were. "Safe," he reassured them each night, when they'd gather by the fire to share what remained of their meagre stores. "DG is safe."
Safer, Cain wondered, than she'd been all along, as they'd ridden and hidden under the guise and pretence of her well-being. Murmurs of disquiet, of resistance had chased them from the city. The threat of DG's own light under her duress had kept them away. Her grieving for a mother not yet dead, a woman who'd abandoned her twice, had grown to something with teeth to consume her. She'd attached herself to the faint promise of help, of a way to make things right, anything to run from the gnawing ache in her soul that was eating her alive.
It was hard to quell his thoughts, to quiet his questioning. Answers would not come from the wind through the trees, nor come falling down from the sky. All he knew of the world around him was the cold and the damp and the endless patter of rain. And this, he found, could most often be enough – enough to feel, enough to know, enough to stop from dogging himself, enough to stop from asking why.
As ever, he focused on the task at hand; after all, he knew no other way. Intent on reaching the tumultuous waters of Central City, wondering all the while what repercussions DG's stone drop would have on a world that hadn't seem to know she'd gone missing in the first place.
It was these thoughts, practical, logical, though worrisome as they were, that followed Cain to sleep every night, rain lulling him into the comforting arms of dreamless slumber. Black nights, empty nights, and in his waking hours, his focus would renew, knowing he was that much closer to the end of this road, and whatever answers lie there in wait.
The road through the mountains bore them as easily and effortlessly as it had their way south, twisting through wood and vale, among great boulders and gnarled trees as old as Glinneth herself, snaking along bare ridges and winding into wet, marshy thickets that never saw the suns. Too often, something familiar would catch his eye, small open fields bursting with summer colour or stretches of road that tunnelled beneath the reaching boughs and vast, rustling canopy. Less often, but still enough as to unsettle him, he'd see traces of their journey south, a felled tree or the lonely remains of a campfire, and he'd curse himself for carelessness.
Still, aside from the lingering of their presence, he saw no other disturbances. Proof, at least, that no one had attempted to follow their trail south. There was little comfort to be found in the fact.
There was little comfort to be found anywhere.
Without DG, the days dragged on silently. Five of them, long and wet and grey. Single file they rode, with the dog bounding ever ahead. It crossed Cain's mind to start calling him Scout, but the musing was short-lived, though the smirk it brought to his lips was rare and near surprised him as it tugged at the corners of his mouth. His features were stiff from scowling.
There'd been the passing occasion, twice or thrice, that Glitch had tried to bring him out of his brooding. An offer, once, to regale their group with the ballad of sweet Jane St. Claire. It had been on the tip of Cain's tongue to threaten him with bodily harm, but in the end, he'd just grit his teeth and listened to his friend warble away, knowing with absolute certainty that his heart was not the only one in need of lightening.
Poor, bitter Jane St. Clair.
The fifth night finally saw them coming through the forested foothills that made up the southern rim of the Qualdin Basin, familiar territory, a proper place with a proper name stencilled in on the ragged map still tucked away somewhere in Glitch's vest pockets.
In the late afternoon, they'd stopped to eat and rest, during those strange, shadowy hours that skirted the dusk. It was the only time Cain was willing to risk a fire. After, they'd ridden until dark, making a dry camp off the road among the creeping, twisted roots that wove across the floor of the old growth forest. Closer to Finaqua than he'd have liked, but a few hours after the dawn would put the palace behind them.
Central City, less than two days away.
Too tense to sleep, Cain took the first watch. He sat further up the incline from the others, his back against an ancient, bent-backed spruce tree. The fanning, crooked branches, beginning just beyond his reach, sheltered him from the spitting rain. The ground below him was dry, and cushioned with annuals of fallen needles. With one leg stretched out before him, the other crooked up to rest an arm upon his knee, the quiet, scattered song of the rain settling him, he could almost have said that he'd felt his own little bit of peace. It took him a little aback, that moment of ease, those deep, steady breaths, the taste of the loamy, damp night on his tongue. Somewhere in his memory, close and clinging, was the taste of old iron, and despite himself, he shivered.
For close to an hour after the others had gone quiet and still, he sat unmoving, listening to the rain, the ragged beat here at the heart of the forest. His eyes had just closed when his ears perked at a rustle in the undergrowth – but he settled back just as quickly as the movements in the darkness made themselves familiar, that distinct shuffle and snort of the mutt making his way back to camp.
Cain growled with annoyance, half expecting the dog to trot right past him as he had every other night on this return journey, and for so many before. But he found himself surprised, and quite unpleasantly, to hear the pad of paws come to a standstill a little too close, and even more unpleasantly, to next hear the uncomfortable and all together unwelcome sound of the old man making his appearance.
With a groan, he sat himself near Cain, cradled at the base of another sentinel pine. A great deal of noise followed as he situated himself comfortably, for which he gave an audible sigh of contentment when he was through. Then, as easily as if they'd been sitting down to supper, he said, "Good evening, Mr. Cain."
"Evening."
"The sky's clear."
The sky was overcast and dark, an absolute, inky black that knew no beginning and no end. "Sure is." A silence fell then, an emptiness between raindrops that stretched on too long.
Cain thought of, couldn't help but think of DG, the simplicity, the peace she brought to him when she'd fit herself against him. Blacker than the sky, that thought, but there was no banishing it from his mind. Once settled there, as surely as she herself had, the thought of her burrowed its way in deep, took over.
Damn it, he missed her.
If the old man had any clue how he'd set Cain's mind to squirming, he let it pass. "I thought you were heading for Finaqua."
"No need. Not without DG."
"I wouldn't have said no to a bed tonight," said Tutor, amusement clear in his voice.
Cain had already debated this with himself. It left him short-tempered to repeat it. "It's a two-day stop we don't need to be making. We can be in Central City day after tomorrow."
"The lights are bright in Finaqua this evening."
That gave Cain pause. "Went for a walk, did you."
"I had thought to hurry ahead to wait, but apparently there are those who prefer to sleep on the wet ground," the teacher said, and sighed. "The woods are full of such tonight."
"Resistance?"
"Royal army. A dozen or so, by my count."
Sighing, Cain closed his eyes once more, though in the depth of night's gloom, it mattered little. The emptiness behind his eyelids was no less in its entirety, and no more assuring.
A contingent of the Queen's army stationed, at least for the moment, in Finaqua. There were few reasons Cain could conjure up that would have Azkadellia sending soldiers to chase them down, none at all that could be considered by any means warm or fuzzy. With DG's sudden misplacement...
Thinking of the girl then, there in that dark, old wood, Cain's mind lingered on the range between plain bad and utterly catastrophic when it came to these women and their kingdom. He'd warned DG against rushing to Central City on their last night together, when he'd kissed her quiet under the watchful stars. Since she'd up and vanished, his previous argument – however much it'd been for her sake, and hers alone – had carried little weight in his mind. In fact, it may have been that he'd forgotten – or ignored – it from the out, his only thought reaching the city and the answers the old man was certain were there.
Hypocrite. She'd called him that once, straight to his face. Angry at him for questioning her the night the mutt had planted the seed of an idea in her head, growing like vines to thread through her mind, taking hold of all of them, tangling them in her fervour. He'd snapped right back, near made her cry, but it hadn't made him any less wrong. He was as she'd branded him, and nothing had changed, not in all the weeks he'd followed dutifully while she chased her last hope.
"What should we do?"
It was a long moment before Cain realised the words had been directed at him, that his opinion was being asked because he hadn't said anything yet. Royal army, dozen or so.
Right.
"We keep heading for Central," Cain said, as if he were sure this was the right course of action. What else was there to do but keep walking the road? "If they're looking for us, they'll catch up with us before we hit the junction."
"Oh, you can be sure they're looking for us," said Tutor, dry and grim.
Cain didn't say anything after that. Instead, he just took off his hat, and turned his face up toward the branches that sheltered him, and the night sky that covered them so completely. Well. Despite it all, it was nice to be sure about something.
Author's Note: Short chapter, but I wasn't kidding when I said I was done with the travelling. Thank you once again to my readers, and an extra helping of gratitude to those who take the time to review, which is ever the encouragement I need to pull me out of my slumps. Love to everyone who has stuck with me this long.
