Burnt Read online

  “So don’t toss them in the lake then, but throw them at the soldiers and hope Kaie and the Lemme are enough to satisfy their bloodlust?”

  Toman made a disgusted noise and it sounded like he started pacing. “Of course not! What I’m suggesting is best for all of us. You took the light from the first chamber, left a mess behind. That’s bound to cause a search. Those two can’t go anywhere but this place is off the main path. If we let them catch sight of us – just enough to make them give chase – and this alcove stays dark and quiet, your friend and the Lemme might go unnoticed. It’s a good plan, son. If you’d stop being so willful you’d see it too.”

  “If it’s such a good plan Da, why don’t we leave Devin? She’ll be safer here than leading some soldiers on a merry chase, won’t she?”

  “I’m not leaving either of my children, dammit!” Toman drew in a deep breath, no doubt regretting the increase in volume. The next words were whispers again. “She wouldn’t help them Sojun. You know that. Maybe she’d be quiet when she was supposed to, but chances are she’d have a bad moment and bring the soldiers down on them.”

  “I’m not leaving them behind, Da. Right or wrong, I won’t do it.”

  “So that’s it then. You’ll risk death for all of us, for your sister, to stay by the Lemme’s side? She’s just an old woman, son. I know what we say. I know what she’s supposed to mean. But, in the end, she’s just an old woman.”

  Kaie nearly spoke out then, furious at the implication. Sojun beat him to it. “She’s the heart of our tribe! She’s the voice of our god! And I know she’s the reason we are allowed to trespass here!” His friend drew in a deep breath, volume dropping again. “And she’s not the reason. I’m not leaving Kaie. If I’m going to die, it’s going to be keeping him alive for one more minute.”

  “That cocky brat? What’s he ever done but gotten you into trouble? He’s not your family, boy! Alma made that clear enough! Don’t you throw your life away for her whelp!”

  “He is my family. He’s my heart’s brother. That means a lot more to me than the blood ties between us. If you make me chose, you’re going to lose.”

  “Gods forsake you and this stupidity! I will drag you out if I have to!”

  That was enough. Kaie didn’t know what Toman was talking about – his mother would never say Jun wasn’t family – but he knew exactly what would happen if the man tried to force the matter. Sojun was not one to be cuffed into obedience any more than he was. It was time to put an end to the confrontation.

  He wanted to confess to eavesdropping and demand answers, but Kaie knew that would hurt Sojun. There was enough of that going on lately. So he played dumb.

  He yawned loudly and stretched, noting with some satisfaction that the action didn’t make him nearly as dizzy as before his nap. With luck he might not be the dead weight Toman thought. “Gods. I was hoping it was all just a nightmare. Is there any more food?”

  “You ate half my supply already,” Toman growled from just outside the circle of light. It was twice as large, now that they were using the lamp the older man carried with him, but still didn’t encompass even half the cave.

  Kaie pointed to the Lemme, breathing heavily even in her sleep. “For her, not me. Jun shoved enough of those crackers down my throat to last the rest of my life.”

  Devin, curled up beside him to keep warm, giggled. “Crackers?”

  Sojun looked down at both of them and smiled. Kaie couldn’t help but notice how old his friend looked. Far too old for fifteen. “Yeah, Dev. Crackers. Rosy doesn’t seem to understand how lucky he is that you shared them. He doesn’t know you’re a cracker monster.”

  She giggled again. It was the light, careless laughter of a little girl oblivious to the dangers growing up in every corner of her world. “Grr! Cracker monster!”

  Kaie chuckled as she poked at him, because not playing along with Devin was akin to kicking a dog. She would be devastated, and would never understand why.

  Toman muttered something so low he couldn’t hear and went rummaging in his pack. Kaie pretended to fend off Devin’s pokes while crawling over to check on the Lemme.

  Before he got there, every one of them froze. A shout from a distant tunnel shattered the silence of the vault. Devin kept giggling. Reacting on instinct, he threw his hand over her mouth. Her face scrunched and tears sprang to her eyes. Kaie knew what was coming next.

  “No!”

  Kaie wasn’t sure which of them shouted but the word held no power. Devin ripped her face away from him and let out a shriek that could pierce the veil to the Abyss. The soldier appeared in their cavern like magic, as though the cry summoned her into being. She was tall and her armor gleamed in the lamplight. The white fur tuft on the top of her cat helm fluttered just a bit with the gust of air accompanying her arrival.

  She took the helmet off with practiced ease and looked around the cavern with an expression of pure disdain. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, the woman might be beautiful in another world. Here, in this place, she was terror given substance. The sword belted across her shoulder was not half as intimidating as her simple presence.

  “This is where you savages pile your dead? Disgusting.”

  Toman, closest to the entrance and the woman, shoved Jun backward. “Run! Sojun, run!”

  Everything in Kaie demanded he do as the older man instructed as well. But there was nowhere to go. The woman stood between them and the exit. If there was another one on the other side of the underground lake, they didn’t know of it. Jumping into the water to seek it out wouldn’t get them to safety in time. She was too close, too certain. They were caught and she was not letting them slip her knot.

  Of course, he would run anyway if such movement were possible. But Kaie’s legs were rooted. No matter how his mind screamed at him to move, he couldn’t even shift his weight. Sojun suffered under the same affliction, it seemed, for the boy was still as stone.

  “This is my family! You’re not to take my family! That’s not how this is to work!”

  There was no hint of begging in Toman’s voice. He was telling this woman, with her armor and her sword and all her power. The words niggled at Kaie; they seemed to hold deeper meaning than they were supposed to. But it was admirable.

  It was stupid. She let her lip curve a little, considering him for all of a second. Then, in a move too fast for eyes to follow, the sword swung into her hand and sliced through the air. And Toman’s head.

  Blood and a soft grey goo misted across Kaie’s face. He flinched and lifted a hand to wipe it away. The goo slid through his fingers like butter.

  The woman flicked her sword once as the body fell, the careless gesture ridding the blade of what little mark Toman’s head left on it.

  Devin, her screaming done now that he wasn’t touching her, tugged on Kaie’s arm. “She’s shiny like you,” the girl whispered.

  The woman’s eyes instantly narrowed, locking on to Kaie with an intensity that drained the blood from his face. She turned the same gaze on Sojun and then the Lemme. Then she snapped her fingers.

  Outsiders piled in from the tunnels. She waved her hand in their direction.

  “I want them.”

  Before he could react, hands were grasping Kaie from every angle. He struggled, kicking and squirming, but it was already too late to stop. There were too many of them and nowhere to go. It didn’t take long for him to be pinned to the ground next to Devin, Sojun joining them just a moment later.

  “Captain!” The woman was in the process of leaving the cavern, but upon the bark of one of her men, she glanced over her shoulder.

  “The old woman. She’s dead, ma’am.”

  The words ripped through Kaie. Color ran out of the world, leaving him seeing nothing but white hot hatred. His feet jerked with a force beyond him, kicking free of their captors. He was standing in the space between heartbeats, his fists flying out blindly. His whole body became nothing but a vessel for the violence singing in his heart. His hands connected wi
th flesh and bone, his shoulders slammed bodies against the stone walls. His teeth ripped into skin and muscle. All of it was perfect, thoughtless, blind.

  When the pain in his head came again, he rejoiced. His spirit clawed at freedom. The Lemme was dead. Dead like Toman, dead like Navin, dead like his parents and Amorette. Now he would join his family, as was right. So long as the Lemme lived, his tribe lived. If she was dead, so was it. So was he.

  Eleven

  He wasn’t dead.

  It took him an instant to realize that. It was significantly longer before Kaie gave up hoping he was wrong about it. He didn’t want to be alive. Alive sucked.

  Alive hurt. Not as sharp as other pains he’d lived through. Not as intense. But that was always in one area. It might radiate out, but it was confined to a single place. This was everywhere. The same hot, throbbing pain ran through every inch of his body. It was too much to go numb. He couldn’t even manage to pass out again, thanks to the pounding in his head. It beat in time with his heart and kept him all too aware of his agony.

  He couldn’t move. Kaie tried to fight back the panicked certainty that he was paralyzed. He couldn’t even lift his arms. Desperate for some other answer, he forced his eyes open. He wasn’t sure it was worth it.

  It took Kaie some time to make sense of what he was seeing. He didn’t expect the familiar walls of his parent’s home. He was an adult now, wasn’t he? It was supposed to be the newly cut boards of his own hut, still smelling of the tree they used to be. Weir wood. Or…that wasn’t right. Stone. He was supposed to see stone. And a lamp.

  Everything was jumbled. He didn’t know if he wanted to sort it out. It made the throbbing in his head sharpen. And it didn’t help him. The mysterious cloth roof hanging over his head gave no new answers.

  “Jun?” He meant it to be a shout. It came out as a croaked whisper.

  A dark form interjected itself between him and the cloth. There was muttering, but he couldn’t fit the words together properly. His clouded mind dropped that in favor of panic at the sight of pointed cat ears. He tried to get away, forgetting the paralysis, but even terror couldn’t get his limbs moving. The squeak that came out of him was a sound entirely new, not even strong enough to be a sob. His vision spun and he nearly passed out after all.

  “Kaie!”

  He took a shuddering, painful gasp of air. A blink transformed the cat ears into tufts of brown hair, dirty and matted and looking three shades too dark. No matter how many times he opened and closed his eyes, he couldn’t quite turn the filthy, bloody, misshapen face into someone he knew. Not until the world stopped spinning and he could focus on the eyes looking down at him. Despite the confusion and pain, Kaie sighed in relief. “Sojun.”

  He felt a light brush of fingers across his forehead. He winced as they caught on his hair and tugged it loose from a cut there. It was a strange gesture. Comforting, he supposed, but strange.

  “Thank you Mother Lemme,” Jun whispered.

  “I must be dying,” he muttered, surprised at how badly his words slurred. There was something wrong with his tongue.

  Sojun’s eyes widened and jerked his hand away. “What? No!”

  The other boy’s voice was husky. Pained. Kaie supposed it could be due to the beating his friend clearly took, to leave his face so lumpy and mutated, but he suspected there was more to it. “You’re looking at me like you’re trying to memorize my face. It’s creepy.”

  One corner of Sojun’s puffed up lips turned into a faint imitation of a smile. “You’re not dying, Rosy. I won’t let you.”

  “I’m not going to be your girl Jun.”

  “Well there goes that plan.”

  Kaie snorted, which filled his head with all kinds of sharp agony. He pressed his eyes closed. “I can’t smell it.”

  “Smell what?”

  “The lavender. My dad hung lavender on the walls for me. So it would smell like home. But I can’t…”

  He opened his eyes again. Jun was staring down at him with undisguised fear. That was probably important. But he didn’t want to sort out why.

  “We’re not in your home, Kaie.”

  No. That wasn’t right. Stone. There was supposed to be stone. And the lamp. And water? Yeah. Water.

  “I’m sorry Jun.” He tried to smile. It didn’t feel right. And it hurt. “I’m… It’s confusing.”

  Sojun shook his head and patted Kaie’s shoulder lightly. That hurt too. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll feel better when you get some sleep. I’ll let you be.”

  Kaie didn’t want to stare at the strange cloth ceiling. He didn’t want to look at the strange dark patch on the left, didn’t want to be stuck wondering if he was ever going to move again. “Don’t go.”

  It took him a minute to figure out the grimace Jun gave was meant to be a smile. “I’m not going anywhere. Not letting you out of my sight, remember?”

  That seemed important, too. Kaie didn’t want to remember why, but he didn’t want Sojun to leave. He couldn’t make that frightened look come back. “Where are we, Jun? Wasn’t there… there was stone, right?”

  The other boy nodded slowly. “The vault. Kaie, you were…” Jun was trying to smile again, but he thought he saw tears in his friend’s eyes. “Rosy, if I knew you could fight like that, I never would’ve wrestled with you.”

  “Don’t.”

  Sojun blinked. “Don’t what?”

  Kaie sighed. Don’t lie about him being strong. But that wasn’t important. He needed to focus. “Where are we?”

  Air hissed out from between Sojun’s teeth. “I don’t know.”

  His friend was lying. Kaie was absolutely certain of it. But that didn’t make sense. Why would Jun lie? Barbarians lied.

  Who caught them? That was important.

  Kaie squeezed his eyes closed. He didn’t want to think about this. But it was too late. He asked himself the question, now the answer was coming. A scream. The world erupting. Fire. Gods, so much fire. Sojun’s face, painted with blood and ash. A little girl. Devin? A cat. Kaie grit his teeth, trying to hold it back. And then…

  And then…

  The bellow burst out of him before Kaie really grasped the meaning of his memories. His head was overflowing. Images. Sounds. The smell of the Lemme’s burning flesh. The slippery feeling of Toman’s brain. Tears burned tracks down his battered face. He couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t stop the fires, couldn’t save the Lemme. He couldn’t even die.

  “Hey! Quiet!”

  He started at the harsh voice that came at them from somewhere out of his small window of sight. Sojun’s hand dropped across Kaie’s mouth.

  “A mistake sir,” his friend answered the shout. “We’ll be quiet.”

  Kaie watched in confusion as Sojun’s shoulders slumped as the hand went away. “What’s going on Jun?”

  The other boy’s eyes shifted in the direction the shout came from. “Let it be. Get some sleep. There’ll be time for the rest later. I know you want to figure this out, but… Rosy, you’re hurt. Bad.”

  He laughed, but it turned into a painful cough. “I noticed.”

  “I mean it. I didn’t think…You weren’t wrong. I was afraid…I did everything I could. But I’m no healer. And they wouldn’t give me anything to help. Not even the damned bloody shirt I wrapped around your head before.”

  “Sojun.”

  “Kaie, please!”

  He said nothing else. He just watched his heart’s brother, waiting. Jun’s head dropped into his hands. Defeated. Jun was so strong. But now the boy was broken. “We’re caught, Rosy. The Finders have us. We’re going to be sold. Slaves. We’re slaves.”

  Twelve

  “We’re at their camp, I guess. They threw bunch of us into a sort of corral. Like we’re animals.” Sojun’s face hardened with each word. “You didn’t wake up. I tried to fix you, but you were so messed up... When I asked for help, they took you away. I tried to make them stop, but they wouldn’t listen to me. No one would tell me what was g
oing on. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Kaie forced himself to focus on what his friend was talking about. After a while, he struck on the question he wanted to ask. “How many?”

  “What?”

  “How many people were there? My parents? Amorette?”

  Sojun’s eyes closed and the other boy hesitated for a minute. When he spoke next it was flat; emotionless. “No. We were the oldest ones there, I think, and it was just boys. Jayden thought he saw girls dragged off in another direction. She might be there. But no one’s seen any adults unless we count you.”

  He wasn’t going to cry out again. “How many? Soldiers?”

  Sojun shrugged. “I didn’t count. I didn’t…care. I know how horrible that sounds. I do. But I don’t care. You were dying. All I could think about was finding a way to keep you alive.”

  Kaie swallowed down his frustration. He couldn’t blame his heart’s brother for that. He would be the same if things were reversed. Sojun couldn’t know how much he wished his friend failed.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  Again, Sojun shrugged. “We can’t be too far from… just a couple hours from where we started. But they didn’t give me the tour, Rosy. They shoved us in with the others and then took you away.”

  Kaie frowned. There was something important there, flitting around just on the edges of his awareness. But he couldn’t focus on it. “How did you get here, then?”

  Sojun’s lips split into another gruesome smile. “I screamed for you. Over and over. Until my throat was raw.”

  Kaie blinked in surprise. “That worked?”

  “Probably not, if it was just me. But it upset the other kids. Got a lot of them screaming too. Kept the soldiers awake for two days straight. They tried to make me stop. Stopped giving me food, beat me, even threatened to cut out my tongue. This morning the woman with the cat helmet came. She said she would let me stay with you if I made the noise stop. If it doesn’t, I die. So if you could keep it down that would be nice.”