Marya found that the only way she could keep from tapping her foot ceaselessly against the leg of her chair or drumming her fingers up and down her arm was to bite her lip until it bled. She refused to allow herself to feel even pain. She had lost the privilege of emotions.
Joran Arundasi was tired. The exhaustion screaming from his legs overpowered everything else, even the careful walls he’d set up long ago in his mind.
He thought of his mother.
She had loved to laugh…she had given him silly nicknames…she’d stormed down to the school, once, when she found Jor crying…
And she had saved him from the copper orb. His father had bought the rights to the thing, and had studied it, trying to figure out why and how it had attacked the two of them, that last day he’d had his mother.
She’d lured it away from him and never come back; ever since, Jor had refused to think of her for more than an instant, because the instant he did he’d have to consider the two possibilities that he couldn’t live with: that she was dead, or that she was alive but had never come back for him. Had she died for him? Abandoned him? The questions pressed down on his mind, shutting off his eyesight, unstoppable as his whole body focused on moving his legs…and then he heard it.
A soft puff of air. And a gentle flicker of heat…
The scream had barely left his mouth when Leera spun around, sending Cay sprawling to the ground and – in the same move – jerking Jor forward and down onto his face. She threw herself partly over Zinnia, shielding both their heads with her arms.
Jor would have thought time had stopped, but he could feel a trickle of blood from a graze journeying towards his chin. There was no sound. There was no time to run; Jor forced himself to lie still. None of them had a chance of getting away before the device killed them all, if it chose. Or whomever it chose. Then an explosion sounded over his head, and Jor closed his eyes and curled up into a ball. It was over.
Zinnia Questel choked on the dark fabric muffling her face but could barely move her arm enough to push it away. Something dug painfully into her back, then the weight lifted. Cay’s anxious face swam into view.
“Joran! Come help me,” he called.
“I’m fine,” Zinn gasped out. She was unhurt, although her face and fingers tingled as though she might pass out.
“Joran!” Cay called again, and after a long moment Zinnia was free to sit up.
Joran and Cay set down Leera’s body gently, turning her onto her back and folding her hands on her chest.
Zinn moved to bury her face in her knees but a fleeting memory of Elle’s still body gave her pause. She reached up and tugged Joran’s sleeve, pulling him down beside her. His head drooped into his hands. Cay slumped beside him, and the three of them leaned together in silence.
Sparks dwindled to black among the sparse brush lining the road.
None of them cried.
Cay Vojen let his shoulder brush against Joran’s arm as they walked. Zinnia was just as close on Cay’s other side, her arm glued to his. They didn’t want to separate for a moment, their hands still empty from leaving Leera’s body behind in a shallow grave. Grimly, they followed the road to the capital.
Plans, politics, even selves were left behind. They felt purpose and fear, mingled like the scents of a feast-day dinner. They walked on.
Time passed strangely; they had no idea how long it was before a rumbling sound behind them made them all flinch and press closer together. A mail coach trundled its way up beside them, slowed, and stopped a few yards ahead. Several faces appeared at the window, and the driver climbed down.
“You kids all right?” he called.
They stared back in silence. What kind of answer could they make? They were alive, but he could see that. Their friends were beyond help. Sympathy would not make a dent in their stony armor.
The driver took a step toward them, frowning.
“Is that blood?” he asked, gesturing at Zinnia. “Are you kids in trouble?”
The pause stretched uneasily. Cay focused hard on the man’s stubbly beard, refusing to allow the bloody images to draw themselves in his mind’s eye.
A passenger pushed open the window on the coach and put her head through to call,
“They may be one of the King’s Groups!”
The driver opened his mouth as though about to ask, then paused and shook his head.
“No, the King’s Groups are always eight, aren’t they?” He turned to the passengers for confirmation.
“And these are…only…three…”
He turned slowly back, fixating the blood stains on Zinnia’s shirt.
“What happened to you all?” he gasped.
A sudden breeze gusted behind them, and all three immediately threw themselves flat in the dust. None of them tried to shield another. There was no point in more than one of them dying.