The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall (17 page)

W
e came here to warn you the Duke’s army is on the way.” I hesitated, my guts squirming. “But we’re not staying. No one should. Everyone should evacuate while they still can.”

“Evacuate?” Kione said. “Nya, we need you. You’ve been back one day and already you’ve beaten the Undying and given us hope that they could
be
defeated. Our lookouts at Dorpstaad even told us what you did over there. We can’t win without you.”

My guts said Ipstan wouldn’t be too pleased to hear his men talking about me like that. Even on his boats, he was a man who liked being in charge and giving orders. He was the “general,” after all.

“I … I need to protect Tali,” I said. “She’s been through too much already.”

“General Ipstan’s a good man,” Kione said. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s the one who convinced us all to fight and got rid of the soldiers in the districts. You can trust him.”

Aylin folded her arms. Kione wasn’t the best judge of character. He’d worked for Vinnot and the Luminary, for Saints’ sake.

“Easy, K.” Ipstan put a hand on Kione’s shoulder. “Family is important, and you can’t fault a girl for sticking by hers.” He turned to me. “We can start with you telling me what you know about the Duke.”

I told him what Jeatar’s scouts had seen and what the Undying had said about the blue-boys herding us, keeping us pinned so we’d be easy targets for the Duke’s fireboats.

“So we
didn’t
win?” Kione seemed crestfallen that they hadn’t been the tough fighting force they’d believed.

“Of course we did,” Ipstan scoffed. “We chased them out. They’re just doing their best to hold what little ground they have left. Don’t believe a word that blue-boy said.”

I gaped. “You think he’s lying?”

“We beat them. They’re too scared to try to retake the isles or they would have tried by now. All they’ve been doing is sending the few soldiers they have that we couldn’t beat. That’s changed now.”

“But the tactics make sense,” Danello said. “The Duke’s soldiers have the native population of Geveg penned in one area of the city. You need to take this information seriously.”

Ipstan’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t
need
to do anything. You’re forgetting who’s in charge around here.”

“You’re forgetting you have maybe a week before the Duke reaches Geveg.”

Kione frowned and stepped closer, like he was all set to jump in and defend his general’s honor. Danello tensed.

“Arguing about it isn’t going to help Geveg,” I said evenly, tugging Danello back. “We all want what’s best for the city.”

Kione backed down. Ipstan took a deep breath and nodded, but he scowled at Danello once more before looking back at me.

“People say you want to free Geveg, like we do,” he said. “They say the Duke is trying to kill you because he knows you can destroy him. You risked your life to save our Healers, you risked your life to save your sister—surely you can take one more risk and at least hear what I have to say.”

We hadn’t found Danello’s father yet, so I could hardly say no, especially when he made it sound so reasonable.

“I’ll listen, but my friend’s father is part of the resistance. They’ve been looking for each other for months. Could you send Kione to find him and bring him here? We can talk until they get back.”

Danello gave me a grateful smile. Ipstan didn’t look so pleased.

“Of course.”

Danello gave Kione the name and description of his father. Ipstan pulled Kione aside and spoke to him a moment before he hurried off.

“Now where were we?” Ipstan began, taking a seat at the table and gesturing for us to do the same. “Geveg is divided by more than just who controls what isle. Not everyone wants to fight. Many insisted that fighting was going to get us all killed and we didn’t stand a chance at winning. Until this morning, that is. You inspired them, Nya. They want to fight now. They believe we can win, and it’s all because of you.”

“They just needed to know the Undying could actually die.”

He smiled at me, but it was a calculating smile. “No, it was more than that. You’re a hero to many—all of you are—and it’s given them hope.”

All of us? Aylin was looking at her hands, her fingers laced tightly together. Soek seemed proud and happy to be considered a hero. Danello looked skeptical. I sensed Ipstan wanted more from me than to hear him out.

“I don’t know what you expect us to do,” I said.

“Talk to people. In fact”—he got up from the table—“why don’t you come with me and see what we’re doing. See how prepared we are, how we plan to defend ourselves. You’ll realize we don’t need to run. We can fight back. We just need more hands to hold the weapons.”

“I
am
curious,” Danello said. So was I. Even Soek nodded. We all looked at Aylin.

She sighed. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to just look. We’re safe here, right?”

“Safer than when the Baseeri were in control,” Ipstan said.

“Okay. I’d like to see what a Gevegian army looks like too.”

I held tight to Tali’s hand as we followed Ipstan from building to building, house to house. My guts said he wanted me to talk to as many folks as possible now in case he couldn’t convince us to stay.

The more I saw, the more I wanted to.

Ipstan and the resistance
had
been busy. Shops that had once made clothes made leather armor—chest pieces and pants, long heavy gloves, and skullcaps. Seamstresses worked on uniform tunics in dark violet. The blacksmith banged out weapons by the rackful—rapiers, swords, knives. Woodworkers sanded spears to sharp points.

“Wow, how long has this been going on?” Danello said, marveling at every house and shop.

“It started after Nya killed the Luminary and exposed what the Duke was doing to our Healers. To our
children
. We couldn’t let that happen again.” Ipstan turned to a group of people making boots. “Geveg for Gevegians!”

“Geveg for Gevegians!” they called back. The words were passed down the street, voice after voice picking up the cry.

“This is our city,” Ipstan said. “It’s time we determined our own destiny again.”

“Our home is worth fighting for,” I said.

Aylin looked away, biting her lip.

All three of us had said those words not long ago, sitting outside the farm of a family who’d risked everything for each other. So much had happened between that promise and now. So much lost.

How much found?

Renewed hope, like Ipstan said. Renewed purpose. The Gov-Gen was gone; a lot of Baseeri were gone. Things
had
changed. Enough to drift luck in our favor?

“What kinds of defenses are you setting up to keep the fireboats away?” If the Duke really was planning to burn us out, they would be the biggest problems. With their catapults, they could launch fire rocks without ever setting foot on land.

“We made our own fire rocks.”

Impressive. Fire rocks weren’t easy to make, requiring a white-hot forge and a mixture of pitch and who-knew-what-else to keep them burning. But fling one onto a boat or house, and they burst apart with a sticky flame that set everything it touched on fire. Well, everything that would burn.

“Took some doing to get enough catapults for the boats, but what we couldn’t buy, we stole, and what we couldn’t steal, we made.”

The Duke had bigger catapults and launched fire rocks heavy enough to splatter across multiple houses. A few solid hits could destroy an entire block.

Unless our boats sank theirs before they got in range.

“What about pynvium weapons?” Aylin asked in a quiet voice, as if reluctant to show any interest. “The Duke will have a lot of those.”

Ipstan grinned, but there was an edge to it. “We have something special to counter those. I think you’ll be very impressed.”

Ipstan took us to a warehouse where a dozen women and children sat at long tables, grinding seeds. Baskets of red-veined plants sat in the middle of the table, the pungent, earthy aroma making my nose itch.

“These are our poison makers,” he said proudly. “I recruited every herb grower I could find.”

Shiverfeet raced down my back. Poison. He was actually making
poison
.

“Are you insane?” Soek burst out. “Do you have any idea how deadly that is?”

“Why do you think we’re using it? We need to take out soldiers as fast as we can just to survive. Blades tipped with this mixture can kill in minutes, and a well-thrown spear can hit outside the range of a pynvium flash.”

Danello raised one finger. “Um, isn’t that a good thing?”

“Not if someone on our side accidentally cuts themselves,” Soek said, his cheeks an angry pink. “Or someone misses and one of those spears is picked up and used against
us
.”

“You can’t cure poison,” I added when Danello still looked confused. “It’s the only ailment that ever scared my mother.”

Water vipers killed their share of fishermen and leaf pullers every year. So did two kinds of spiders commonly found in crops. Both farmers and fishermen knew that a bite from any of them meant a long and painful night if they were lucky, death if they weren’t.

“I know it’s risky,” Ipstan said, “but we’ll need every advantage we can get.”

Just like they’d need every weapon they could get. If he was willing to do
this
, what else was he willing to do to win? Was he also after the girl who shattered the League, crumbled the palace, broke the Undying? Was that what he
really
wanted from me?

I didn’t want to be that girl.

Or that weapon.

“We’re being extremely careful with the poisoned weapons, don’t worry,” Ipstan said, steering us out of the warehouse. “Only those trained to use them will be allowed to carry them. We’ll be taking additional precautions as well, like marking them in red so it’s clear which weapons are coated.”

Maybe that was what the heavy leather gloves were for. A way to protect the arms and hands when you carried one of those spears.

It turned my stomach, but it would take only a few spears to make the Duke’s men terrified of getting close. Seasoned troops understood pain, had little fear of it, knowing a Healer stood close by if they got hurt. But poison would make even a commander run.

“Let me show you the other warehouse.” Ipstan headed for a row of buildings with multiple guards posted at all the entrances, and more on the street corners leading up to it.

“What’s in there?” Aylin said.

“You’ll see.”

He cleared us with the guards and escorted us in. Tall shelves marked with various colors lined the room, rows and rows of them. Boxes of dry goods, baskets of fruit, bags of grains and flour. Enough food to last months. Along the walls were weapon racks. Blue for swords, green for rapiers, red for knives. Barrels of spears stood next to them. At the far end of the room near the stairs were ten wardrobes, probably for uniforms or armor.

“Where did you get all this?” I’d never seen so much food in one spot in my life. I didn’t even know Geveg
had
this much food.

“We raided some Baseeri storehouses and bought or traded for the rest. Once we had control of the farms again, we started stockpiling it. I told you we were prepared.”

Even Aylin stared wide-eyed at the overwhelming amount of supplies. “Are you giving it away to whoever needs it?”

“It’s for the army, so if you fight, you’re taken care of.” Ipstan walked past the last weapon rack and led us upstairs. “We’re not letting anyone starve, even if they don’t want to fight. But food isn’t all we have.”

The second level of the warehouse held just as many shelves and racks.

“Those shelves there are full of seeds,” he said. “Those there are bulbs, and some seedlings there by the windows. We’re likely to lose a lot of crops on the farming isles during the fight, and we’ll need to replant.”

Danello whistled. “That’s thinking ahead.”

“My goal is to see Geveg self-sufficient again, so we need to be ready to replace what we lose in the war.” He walked between the shelves, waving a hand at objects as we passed. “Fishing nets, traps, spare sails. Yokes and plows, nails, tools. Even some pots and pans and basic bowls.”

Ipstan had done a lot to prepare Geveg for survival. Saama had been wrong. The resistance wasn’t a bunch of people playing soldier. They were prepared, not only to fight but to rebuild
after
the fight.

“The one thing we
are
short on is pynvium.” We headed back downstairs again. “We didn’t have much to begin with, and with the blue-boys in control of the League and the Baseeri in control of the Aristocrats’ Isles, all the places where we could have found more are closed off to us. That pynvium armor you got for us this morning was a blessing right from the Saints, but it still won’t be enough to last the whole war.”

I’d never said the armor was for the resistance, and it bothered me that he’d just assumed it was his. But what did I need it for? Jeatar had all the raw ore I’d stolen from the Duke, and eventually he’d find, or Onderaan would make, a pynvium forge to smelt it.

They could really use that ore here.

Not that we had time to go get it for them.

“What about Healers?” Soek asked. “Are there enough of those?” It surprised me he might be willing to stay and fight. Verlatta was his home, and he’d come here to escape the Duke when Verlatta was under siege. I always assumed he’d go back once he could.

“There’re never enough of those in war, but we have a few.” He looked up and chuckled. “And there are two of them now.”

Two boys around twenty stood by one of the wardrobes. The door was open, and armor pieces lined several of the shelves. One boy laughed when the other struck a pose, hands in front, fingers splayed, like he was about to pounce. It took me a moment to recognize the bracers and the chest piece.

The Undying’s armor.

Tali’s hand dropped from mine and she moved, fast as fright. She snatched a knife off the closest rack and lunged for the boy in the armor.

“Tali!”

Danello moved a breath later, closer to the Healers than we were. He met her before she reached them, going for the knife. She threw herself forward, right into Danello. The knife blade sank deep into his shoulder.