Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run
When Last We Met: The long journey is almost over - though it is no triumphant return. Without DG, Cain and his companions make for Central City with too many questions and very few answers. More confusing, the small contingent of the Queen's royal army waiting in the woods. It seems they are expected.
Chapter Thirty Two: To Return Without
"I don't mean to alarm anyone, but I think we're being followed."
The declaration had come from Glitch, out of nowhere and in the calmest of voices.
Cain rolled his eyes, not bothering to turn in his saddle. The road ahead was clear, and there was nothing but empty forest behind. They'd left their camp just before dawn, when the world was still trapped in the deepest greys of night's last vestige. There'd been no white line on the horizon to follow, not in these near impenetrable woods, when there was little to see around the next bend in the road but more gnarled trees and moss-covered boulders.
Lots of bends, lots of trees. No sign of another soul.
Another fifty paces, and Glitch spoke up again.
"I really do think – yes, I'm almost positive. We're being followed."
No other response came. Cain glanced back at Raw, who merely shrugged his shoulders.
It was half of an hour – a very long half-hour in which Glitch muttered and hinted and twitched – before Cain finally doubled back to ride beside his friend. His eyes scanned the road behind them, but there was nothing and no one to be seen. The woods were as quiet as they'd been the entire journey back, eerie and ancient, watching, waiting. It wasn't the trees he had to worry about, however, only a very agitated friend.
"I haven't seen or heard nothing since –"
"The sentinel pine. First tier of branches, close to the trunk."
Gripping the reins tight in his hand, Cain closed his eyes and counted slowly to three before answering. "You think someone's up in that –"
"I don't think," Glitch said matter-of-factly, looking down his nose at Cain, "and I'm not imagining him. He's been following us since we started this morning. He was watching me when I woke up."
"It was pitch black when you woke up."
Glitch waved him off. "I heard him fluttering around. I got a good glimpse once the suns were up. Don't know who he thinks he's fooling, he's not even an indigenous species." He smirked, laughing breathily, almost soundlessly, as he shook his head.
It took a good long minute of disbelief and internal cursing before Cain decided to just let it be. He wasn't about to go around digging for explanations he didn't need. Not when the answers he truly wanted were still farther north in Central City, still a considerable distance away. If all was to be believed, there were royal army soldiers between himself and the gorge. He pushed the thought of the Papay fields between the gorge and Central City far from his mind. One damn problem at a time.
Quietly, and very much aware of the eyes Glitch said were watching, the group pressed on.
There'd been no break in the dismal weather by mid-morning, when they reached the Finaqua junction. There was nothing to mark the crossroad, no signs to point the way. Cain knew that half a span of following the crooked road south and west and the wooded hills would carry them to the maze, and beyond that the palace. The southeast road that had taken them to the edge of the world and back again finally met with the northbound Brick Route (though there was little enough physical evidence of anything remotely resembling a paved road here).
It was here at this lonely place that they found their pursuers – or their pursuers found them, as it rightly seemed. Four mounted men, uniformed in grey and green. Young men, for surely they were merely resistance fighters of the Emerald War. Whether it was true faith in Lavender's reconstruction that had bound them in service after their victory at the tower, or they were just too loyal or fresh or cowardly to join the New Resistance to keep fighting against Azkadellia, their turncoat queen, these young soldiers had been fighting for most of their lives.
And at their head was Jeb Cain, smirking at the sight of his father – but as the moments passed into minutes and the forest around them gave up no princess, the smirk disappeared and every carefully-constructed mask his son possessed could not hide his confoundment.
"Captain, sir," his son said uneasily, his eyes flicking from one face to another.
Cain grit his teeth. Damn it, this was going to get uncomfortable.
"We were sent to find the princess and return with her to Central City. My scout reported that the princess was not with you – we were told that you – all, that all of you – were escorting DG; the, um, princess." The word fell a bit anticlimactically. The only sounds that followed were the voices of the forest, the breath of breeze that rustled the leaves, the patter of rain as it drizzled down. If the Queen's soldiers expected their princess to materialise out of thin air, if they expected some Gale trickery, Cain had no way of satisfy them – well, he had the truth, but that was no appeasement.
Instead, he cleared his throat, and drew all pairs of wary eyes to himself. "We were escorting DG. Now I think it best you escort us to Azkadellia."
"Where is the princess, sir?" his son the soldier asked.
"Safe, far as we know, and that's all we know." The sharp edge of his voice left no reason to question.
In the end, there was only one road for all of them, one very old road that had known their plight as it had known all the suffering and sacrifice of the land since the first bricks had been laid, centuries older than the oldest living memory. The road that had once led to the four powers of the Outer Zone, stretching and winding across north and east, west and south. To the very last brick, Cain had followed her, and beyond – for if the stories were true, the Brick Route led the way through the mountains and across the plain, buried by annuals of wind and rain and neglect.
It was somewhere along this road Cain had been reunited with his son during the last weeks of the war. The realisation hit him out of nowhere, and it hit him hard. Jeb rode by his side, silent. Ahead, the others rode in loose formation, the damp chill keeping them hunched in their saddles.
A glance at his son offered him no insights, but as he struggled with the where and the how, his son broke the ice. "You look like hell, Father."
A smile came on, unbidden. "Imagine I do."
"Last word we had of you was in Ammenium. Have you seen a washbasin since then?"
"Not a proper one, no. When were you in Ammenium?" Cain thought back to the sleepy little township, hidden deep in the lake country. The beaten trail that had passed for a road. DG, shouting at him in the rain, pressing herself into his arms, wanting more from him than –
"Three days ago. Heard you might have headed southeast past the Black Forest to Colibri. We were waiting for orders from Central when our scout saw you coming from the south."
"What's happening in Central that has Azkadellia chasing her sister down?" Cain asked.
"Central City has been quiet; there have been a few instances with the New Resistance, but mostly low key and out of the city. Public rallies, recruitments, dealt with by local law from what I hear," his son replied. "It's not the Queen that sent us, sir."
Abruptly, Cain turned his head to look at his son. "Who, then."
"The Queen's father, officially," Jeb said evasively, and then lowered his voice. "Rumours around Central palace are saying Lavender's on the mend. Heard it from the guard when I got into Central."
"Keeping it quiet. Waiting for DG."
His son only nodded.
Cain couldn't sort out how he felt about these revelations, and that bothered him more than he would admit aloud. That Lavender hadn't passed, that she was coming back from the brink and calling her girl home to her, it came as no surprise. DG had succeeded, and he supposed he should feel – something, but it was difficult to sift through the suspicion and question that had plagued his mind since he'd last seen DG, impossible to separate himself from his worry and doubt to do so.
A mother's fear, a sister's errand, a daughter's sacrifice.
Darlin', what have you done?
"Is something wrong, Father?"
Cain sighed. "Don't know, exactly." His son's concern made him wholly uncomfortable, and he tried his best to shake it off with empty diversions. "So, how'd you manage to finagle yourself this post?"
"I received a summons while I was in Morrow," his son said. "Messenger found me in the barracks, and I left for Central City. Things are tense between the Queen and her father."
That his son pointedly refused to call Azkadellia by her name was not lost on Cain; it had never been openly discussed between them, that the father's loyalty was to queen while the son's was to country. If not for DG, he'd never have had lay eyes on Central for the rest of his days, and would never have had it otherwise. He'd chosen his existence, his exile. And now, it seemed DG had done the same.
"Ahamo thought DG was in Finaqua," Cain said, shaking his head. It was no question. "Had no idea what Az sent her to do."
"That's where I came in. 'Send a Cain to find a Cain,' he said. He's none too happy with you. Watch yourself." Jeb's words of caution were not misplaced, though he stated only the blankly obvious. Was his son taking some sort of grim pleasure in the trouble that was settling so easily onto Wyatt's shoulders? Jeb was being punished for his father's failed judgements, pulled off assignment to find him and the princess whose shadow he was undoubtedly standing in.
"Sorry to see you get caught up in all this," Wyatt said, and meant it.
"I think I'd be a little less angry if you'd explain what you were doing, why you're all the way out here."
It took Cain a long moment to respond, his tongue heavy with words that couldn't be said, not here, not yet. "I will, once we're in Central. Got a feeling this isn't the end of the road."
"All right," his son said begrudgingly, casting a sidelong glance that was so reminiscent of the child Cain remembered, and so uncharacteristic of this young, iron-toughened soldier who rode beside him in his place. "But I need to know, where is DG? Do you know that much at least?"
"Raw says she's slipped over to the Other Side, and there's no doubting his insight when he gives it," Cain said. She was undeniably safe – rather, safe from the troubles of this world, safe in the conflict free life she'd been raised to believe was her own, but not safe from herself. There were no guardians waiting for her in Kansas to play at being a family and to tell her the pretty lies that would help her sleep at night. No, there was only the truth to keep her awake in the darkness, whispering away soft and bitter, her head brimming with guilt and tenacious hope.
"Will you go after her?"
The question startled him. He reined up abruptly. His son followed suit.
"Jeb."
Sharp hazel eyes watched him expectantly, eyes that held only truth set in a face that harboured no resentment, an honest face. Gods, but the kid looked like his mother, even as rain-and-mud spattered as – no, especially as he was. Cain tore his eyes away.
"I don't know."
Three words, as simple as it got. He had no answer, and wasn't about to pretend, but he hadn't seemed to faze his son in the slightest, either, despite his indecisiveness. The expression upon his son's face had yet to change, that same discerning gaze waiting for a more impressive response, for the son knew his father to be anything but irresolute. For good or ill, the course had always been chosen long before the steps were taken.
But Wyatt hadn't allowed himself to think beyond Central City, and Azkadellia. With the news that Lavender's dire situation had miraculously turned around just as DG had – done whatever she'd done, begged, cried, bargained, paid. What this meant for the Outer Zone, what it could mean for the young woman who sat so precariously on her throne, hers in name and by deed, Cain could only speculate – not that he cared to. He was returning to the city without the princess he'd sworn to protect, without the heir the resistance would plot to put in power.
He could never have foreseen returning without DG. Their days spent on the road together, the closer they'd grown, the nights in the dark and quiet with her warmth tucked against him. Her dark hair tangled between his fingers, the softness of her small, eager mouth under his.
Oh, hell.
His son was still staring at him. The others had continued on, almost disappearing into the verdant foliage that crowded the roadside. Somewhere far ahead, the dog was barking up a storm. Here, on a secluded little stretch of road where the reaching boughs sheltered them from much of the rain, Cain sighed deep and settled his gaze on his son.
"I hadn't really thought on it yet," he said. "It may be that's what they want me to do. May not. May be that she doesn't want me to."
The corner of Jeb's mouth curled. "Is any of that going to stop you?"
Cain looked up the road. "Can't say."
Author's Note: Central City next chapter, my pretties. It seems my muse has been holding back a few surprises. This chapter was one of them. I hope it was a good surprise. Thank you to my readers and to my reviewers. A safe and happy holiday season to you and yours!
