Marya watched the fight with the audio off. Watching their anger from a distance felt very similar to her own emotions. Behind a daze, she knew the fear and hate and guilt raged, but she wanted to drift far away from them. Being numb was far better than accepting what was happening…what had already happened, what she had done, and what she had become. It was far too late to even hope for change.
Zinnia Questel focused hard on bandaging the mild scrapes on Cay’s arms and legs. They didn’t need bandaging, but she really, really didn’t want to see the way Leera’s arms bent taught around her knees, or the single tear rolling down her cheek.
The angry words still hung in the air, their bitter residue clamoring in Zinn’s mind.
‘…when Solldero died, our deaths were written too…I wish I were dead now…’
Leera’s usual impassive mask stripped away in the face of his words.
‘…show some gratitude for the last gift Elle ever gave…for once show some care for those of us who still live…’
Joran’s emotions shriveling to dust, his mouth setting hard. Striding away.
Zinn had thought they would move, especially since crowds of people were coming to stare at the flooded passageways under the Skye and not all of them looked friendly, but Leera hunched unblinkingly on the street and Joran was barely in sight, pacing indecisively at the corner.
Zinn looked at Cay and found he was already looking at her.
“Talk to them,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Talk to them. Make them figure it all out.” He just stared at her, and after a moment she said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t either.”
He looked down at the bandages on his arms, then glanced briefly at the entrance to the passageways.
In an odd connection, Zinn knew he was thinking of Elle and Okner in their last moments. They had thought of Group Marya as a real group, not put together by the king for a fleeting few days, but as ‘companions, faithful and true’…’sticking together’. Cay got slowly to his feet.
“You talk to Joran,” he whispered.
Joran Arundasi wanted to do so many things, like kick the ground and punch a wall and crush Leera with a riposte, that he thought he might explode. He wished he could. Zinnia was walking toward him, her eyes averted in that awkward way when you recognize someone but he’s too far away to greet him smoothly. He waited, bitter, to see what she would say.
She said nothing.
Joran kicked at the cobbles. It hurt, but he did it again. He felt like he was back in his father’s study, wondering why his father had sent to him but not daring to speak until those sharp eyes finally lifted from the papers they interrogated. He felt trapped, he felt scared and angry, he felt…
“I killed her.”
Zinnia looked up slowly.
“She’s dead, because of me.”
He walked jerkily, without knowing which direction he went, burning off excess emotions.
“Okner, too. I knew, I knew about that orb, and I told Leera but not enough or she didn’t get it, I don’t know. I just – can’t!”
Zinnia followed him with her eyes but stayed motionless, listening gravely.
“I feel like this is all my fault, and I want someone to convince me it’s not, but even if it isn’t, it’s still all wrong! It’s all so bad that I hurt, all over. And I can’t think about anything else. I want to hurt someone else, I think, and make them take the pain, but I think everyone’s already feeling it, Zinnia! But they don’t know that it’s because I didn’t do enough…Zinnia, what are we going to do? How do we fix this? We have to fix it!”
He was crying, which was even more humiliating under her steady gaze, but somehow it eased the pain, just a little.
“Zinnia?” asked Jor. “What are we going to do?”
Cay Vojen sat down near Leera and fixed his eyes on the street.
“It’s not easy to lead,” he started, a little awkwardly. “I mean, I’ve never really led anybody except my uncle’s cows. But people like the king, and Solldero, and you…”
She stiffened, and Cay trailed off.
“What I mean is, every leader makes mistakes, because every person makes mistakes. What matters more is the things a leader does on purpose. Like, send a bunch of teens to their deaths. Or put everything into training those teens to keep them safe.”
She closed her eyes; Cay didn’t know if she was thinking about the king’s decision or Solldero’s, but he went on,
“Your decisions have been good ones, I think. And, um…Friya, Okner, Elle…it’s not your fault.”
Cay held his breath, and also bit his tongue so hard it hurt. He’d never given a speech like this before (at least, not without someone having to elbow him sharply or tread heavily on his foot), and he didn’t want to ruin it. Leera sat motionless, and after a few moments, Cay gave up hope of having been helpful.
Leera Stern scolded herself. Mistakes happened; Cay was right. But a leader didn’t sit around whining about them – not her own or anyone else’s. They’d lost two more team members, and it was a blow in many ways. But their next action step?
She took stock of the suspicious faces scattered in the street. They needed to move on and follow the next order. What had it been…?
She lifted her head sharply. Joran and Zinnia were gone.
Standing in a swift movement, she gestured for Cay to follow her and set off determinedly to the corner where she’d last seen Arundasi and Questel.
Cay scrambled after her, radiating bemusement.
Leera paused mid-stride.
“I appreciate your efforts, Vojen,” she acknowledged briefly but with the nod that meant so much, and turned the corner.
Arundasi looked like he’d been crying, but he and Questel fell in behind Leera without comment when she motioned to them.
“We don’t have much time until we’re killed.”
There was no point in trying to cushion her meaning; she was no good at it and they could all handle it after what they’d seen.
“We have two options: find the person behind our friends’ deaths and attempt to stop him, or finish all eight tasks. Whichever we choose, we must succeed before another of us dies.”
Leera let them walk in silence for a few minutes to consider.
Finally, Zinnia asked timidly,
“The clue…it was ‘wash the rain’. Does anyone know what that means?”
“There’s some kind of statue,” Cay suggested doubtfully. “In the city, by the palace, that my uncle told me about. Isn’t that a guy called Rain?”
“Reigner,” Leera corrected shortly. “His nickname.” Reigner, or Keern Doslayer, was one of her father’s heroes.
“Oh. Sorry.” Cay hung his head gloomily. “Okner would know.”
Joran brushed away the silence before it could become heavy.
“What about the person behind all of this? Who is it? And-”
Zinnia cut him off gently.
“Didn’t Okner say something about the king’s advisor Malcav?”
None of them could remember.
Leera listened to Vojen and Questel debating various theories for what ‘rain’ could mean, or ‘wash’ (Cay proposed that ‘rain’ was really ‘reign’ and they were meant to depose the king. Zinnia just stared at him until he changed his own mind); Arundasi kept muttering about the person controlling it all.
Leera let her voice slice effortlessly through the others’:
“We’ll go back to the capital. That’s where we’ll find our task, or that’s where we’ll find the person behind all of this.”
She could sense confidence flowing through her words and into her companions’ spines, giving them focus and purpose.
For the first time since Solldero’s death, she felt like a leader.