xxiii.
It was agreed by all of them calling a healer would probably draw in all the audience they could surely do without, especially considering Cassandra had been the one who had had the idea of climbing through the outside wall. Thus, Will and the princess did most of the clearing while the two injured duelers did a few attempts at helping them. In the end, however, they had to ask them to sit and stay on the couch to keep them from leaving the bloody trail all over the carpets.
When they finally got at least enough order to be able to go around without tripping and spilling the warm water and find the bandages without digging through layers and layers of furniture—Will couldn't understand how the pair hadn't attracted the guards outside and how they had made so much destruction—they finally got down to cleaning up the wounds. They weren't deep, but the fact that they had been left for a long time and the place made them painfully messy.
Before they even settled, Will had known Cassandra would obviously tend to Horace, leaving him to remove the pale blond hair from the sticky back. Most of the blood was smeared and beginning to dry out making it hard to find the source and clean up even with the wet rag. She didn't say a word and for the second time, Will found himself feeling her soft skin as she tried her best to keep from flinching in pain. He knew it was hurting, it had been a painful slice from the bottom of her neck across her shoulder blade, and yet she made no sound or even acknowledge it.
"I think I can get it now." She said when he had cleared the top layer. She tried standing up and shrug him off but of course he had quick reflexes.
"Maiah, come on, you can't reach that." He said pushing her back down. He wondered if she was trying to get away because he was hurting her too much. "I'm sorry. Just…I'm almost done."
"I can do it, really." She said though he could tell she wasn't that sure of herself. "It's not that bad."
"It's really not. But just let me do it. I am almost done anyways."
After so much insistence, Will began figuring it was something besides hiding her pain that was causing the issue. He couldn't think of anything, but then again, he had to remind himself even if she sometimes didn't act like it she was still a girl. He looked down at her, searching her eyes and finding she was shrinking in fear though at the same time seemed to have given in. She lowered her head and pulled her hair over her other shoulder, offering the wound to him like if she was an injured animal.
"I'll try my best to not hurt you." He whispered softly. She gave a small nod in acknowledgement.
He resumed his job this time even more careful than before, and didn't take long for him to see why she had been so reluctant. They were barely visible, faint pinkish and shiny against her pale neck, but they were there. He tried to act as if he hadn't seen them, but she seemed to know he had noticed when he stopped briefly. Obviously, his curiosity was begging him on its knees to ask him about it; however, his reason was telling him he would have to wait until she shared it with him.
Had she been alone with Will and with the other two Rangers instead of Horace and Princess Cassandra, she would have probably told him about the scars he had seen. She had no doubt he was already forming an explanation for them though also knew he was dying to know the real reason behind them. But she wasn't ready to share just about everything with the two knuckleheads that had almost gotten her killed. Perhaps at a later time when she was with Will and Halt and Gilan she would explain to them more about herself.
Gilan.
How long had it been since they had said goodbye in the road? It had been probably about a week and a half now and as much as she had been wanting to ask Halt about him she couldn't possibly bring herself to do it. It wasn't that she didn't think Halt wouldn't tell her what he knew—unless he couldn't—but she still wasn't exactly sure about any of it. She knew she wasn't supposed to feel the funny feeling in her stomach, or stay up at night trying to solve the issue; but she did. She had never felt it, but after lying awake a few nights thinking it over, she slowly began feeling she knew what was throwing her off balance and she had started hating herself for it. She wasn't supposed to feel it, she couldn't. There was no end to the list of reasons why she had to stay away from it. Because she was not allowed to, because Seers were not meant to get it, because it interfered with her pledges, because she had come here with a mission, because it was a business trip, because it would hurt her, because she wasn't herself when it happened, because she was Maiah Moonshine. Because he couldn't do it.
And yet, she realized maybe, just maybe, she deserved it just a tiny bit. Maybe she could get it just before she was gone forever. Before Alia found her and humiliated her and tortured her. Before she died. She wasn't too sure about this side of the argument, but at least a small part of her begged her to look at herself from outside and pity herself if just a little bit. After all those years, couldn't she allow herself just a small treat before her candle was harshly snuffed out?
"Halt said he would be up here as soon as he was done in council." Will said finally sitting down on a smaller armchair opposite them. "I guess we can wait for him just a few more minutes?"
"Can I ask where you learned?" Horace said looking over at Maiah. He had been dying to ask the question from the moment he realized she wasn't his average opponent though had been waiting for the right moment. "I mean, I'm sure it was in your country but…"
"To understand my culture you only need to know one thing: everything they teach is by force and pain. When we began practicing with wooden sticks my teacher wouldn't stop from whacking everything out of me. Either I learned fast how to parry and deflect or I got pounded into a pulp. She did give me a chance since she would often have duels with other Seers and I would get to watch them, but she didn't go step by step showing the moves. When I got my first knife at fourteen I realized she was a clumsy wood fighter but way faster with the blade made just for her. I'm one of the only ones that is not missing a finger or a large part of the skin in my arm."
"That's horrible." Cassandra exclaimed, wide eyed and unable to believe there was such a thing in the universe she lived in. she knew apprenticeships were not easy, but that was just inhumane.
"That actually makes sense." Horace said at the same time, and was too slow in avoiding the slap on the arm from the girl sitting next to him. "What? Just think about it, will you learn faster if you are fighting for your life or if you know they can't really hurt you? I mean, it is cruel and I don't think I would ever teach that way, but I can see where they are coming from and it explains a lot about her technique. She backs away at first to see the pattern and then gets into offence with the best one of her own that she can find to fight it back. Every time I changed it was the same and she catches on too fast for me to use the change to my advantage."
Maiah couldn't help a small smile when she heard his words. He had described her own technique perfectly. That was exactly what she did when fighting with a new opponent; and since Prowessa was always changing her own patterns, it gave her enough practice to keep her skills sharp. She had never actually encountered anyone who had been able to see through it that fast though was proud of herself for making him struggle for the victory.
"Maybe we could get some practice?" He asked. "Real Araluean practice, that is. No finger chopping or blood."
"As soon as I can get out of here." She replied. "I doubt this room can stand another round."
"True." Horace said chuckling.
At that moment, there was a soft knock on the door before allowing Halt in. He wasn't surprised to find the four young people though seemed a little taken aback by the mess still in the room. He swept the floor with his eyes once, looked at the four guilty faces and the blood-stained clothes of Maiah and Horace.
"I hope you two learned your lesson." He said looking at the pair with a low frown.
"I wish you could have brought her earlier." Horace said brightly, after a few seconds of submitting to Halt's look. "Her skills are amazing."
"I see you've gotten yet another one, Maiah." Halt said with a sigh. "Scaring Will with your shooting, getting Gilan to struggle to find you, and now Horace?"
"I did not get scared of her shooting." Will replied, way too fast to hide the hurt tone. When Halt gave him one of his raised-eyebrow looks he added a little more quietly, "It just got me by surprise. But I think you forgot to mention how she handed you back the raised eyebrow and witty remarks in a silver platter."
Halt allowed Will and Horace to laugh for a moment before deciding it was enough poking at his reputation. "Well, do you want to tell me what you found in your travels, Mr. Smart?"
"Oh." Will gave a couple more weak chuckles before pulling a serious face and pushing on in a graver tone. "I don't know, Halt. I didn't find concrete evidence or anything that really said they had arrived to port. I mean, the locals didn't say much and there wasn't the bustle you get with new comers. All I really got was smuggling of fish we aren't allowed to trade and spices."
"But there's something else." Halt said knowing his former apprentice.
"Yes. I'm still trying to make it out, but there is something." He paused to organize his ideas and make sure he had everything before he went on. "Farmers are getting killed. As you go through the countryside you hear them screaming and when you get there they are dead; arrows are sticking out of their backs. I tried staying to find out more, but after five days there I decided it would be better to come back and report. I got most of the families from the farms to move to the nearest towns if they could or at least to the nearest farm. I had to assure them we would do something about the crops they lose by staying away, but there wasn't much else I could think of. At least there are more per farm."
"That doesn't sound like bandits." Horace said more to himself than to the rest as he knew they were already at the same conclusion and there was no need for him to state the obvious.
"They're in broad daylight too." Will said after some silence. For the last few minutes he had seen Maiah beginning to formulate something, but when the words left his mouth her head snapped up.
"They're hunting." She said quietly. "They're hunting down farmers."
"Hunting?" Cassandra said. She had been following quite well until right now. They were really barbarians, weren't they?
"That's basically what they do. They call it tracking, but a few of us know it's really just hunting people." Maiah said. "Sometimes they are just to scare people into submission, one never knows when someone from the spying force is close by and heard something you said that they took to be signs of treason. They are not usually guilty, but others don't know it so it works."
"It would make sense to get the farmers shivering in fear before doing either move; get them to think we are the ones allowing them to die and persuade them into joining their forces, or showing they have the power so that there is no opposition once they conquer it."
But Maiah wasn't really listening to what Halt was saying. Without noticing, she had started to pace the room, getting a tightening feeling in her stomach as she started forming an idea of what it could be. She had told them the more reasonable side of hunting; but something told her they weren't using that reasonable side this time around. There wasn't really any reason for them to do it. Halt could be right, but that was putting too much probability into play and Alia wasn't that farsighted; she wanted things done now, and acted rashly to get what she wanted.
"There was a pattern." She said looking at Will and stopping her trajectory. "There was something all of them had in common."
Halt was a little surprised she had interrupted him midsentence considering it was an important thought and not just playing. But when he saw the seriousness in her eyes, and perhaps even a little fear he decided it was best to hear what she had to say; after all, she was the one who knew what was going on.
Will stammered for a second as he got his mind to switch gears. "Er, well…I mean, they were all farmers…all in the west coast…"
"There has to be something more besides that." She said already knowing the answer and praying she was wrong.
He was sure he had it in his memory. He probably had even made the connections himself while he had been around the affected farms. But the pressure was making him doubt himself to the point of making him blurt out whatever he could recall from his trip even if it wasn't relevant. Halt's stare, added to Maiah's desperate questioning, could do that even to the most composed Ranger.
"I mean, they were all women…no, there was one man. Yes, one man and the rest of them were women. Some were young though not really a specific cohort. A few were probably fourteen or fifteen—one was twelve—and there was also one around forty."
"What about the man?" Cassandra said catching on to Maiah's interrogation faster than the rest. "Describe him."
"I…it's hard to recall all those corpses when I am trying to forget them you know." He snapped though still racked his brains. "He wasn't too tall, though obviously taller than me. Um, he had scary blue eyes…shabby clothes…small shoulders…"
"he looked like a girl." The princess summarized. "From behind, he would look like another farm girl, wouldn't he? He had long hair and—"
"He did." He said quietly surprised he hadn't seen the connection before. "He wasn't too large, I believe he was the youngest son of one of the families."
"So all the women from the farms affected are gone." Horace said looking away. He couldn't believe all of them had allowed such a massacre to happen right under their noses. And if Will hadn't been able to find the cause and stop it before it got to be too late…
"Not all of them." Maiah said at the same time Halt mumbled it.
"I couldn't have been all of them. Will, there was something they all shared."
Will closed his eyes in concentration. It wouldn't be so hard if he didn't have the pressure of the others crushing him down and hadn't been working so hard in deleting the small details that back then had seemed insignificant. There were just too many.
"They were mostly in the middle range of the ages. Around twenty to thirty but the extremes looked younger or older than usual." He said without opening his eyes. Slowly narrowing their search was proving more and more insightful every second. "They were lean. All of them looked pretty fit."
"Do you know anything about where Alyss might be?" Maiah said unable to wait another second. It was enough to tell her she had been right all along.