The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall (22 page)

“Scars,” I said. “They’re scars.” Every sword tip, every cut, healed so fast there hadn’t been time to avoid them. They’d all left their mark. And it had been for nothing.

Kione entered the room. He shut the door and stood there, dripping.

“Ipstan’s dead.”

I closed my eyes. Saw Soek’s face. Opened them again.

“Most of his officers, too. We’ve pulled back, but it’s a mess out there. Can’t see in all this rain, which is lucky for us. They won’t attack tonight. Tomorrow? Who knows?” He sighed. “Nya, what happened? Why didn’t you—”

“It’s not her fault,” Danello said.

“I’m not saying it is, but she was supposed to flash the armor at the soldiers.”

“They were waiting for us,” I said, throat tight. “They knew we were coming—that
I
was coming—and they were ready.” Nothing else explained the lightly guarded bridge, the pynvium weapons, the sudden ambush of soldiers. It was a trap. And we’d fallen into it.

“How many did we lose?” Aylin asked quietly.

“A third, maybe a little more. Would have been twice that if the bridge hadn’t gotten clogged with bodies. Folks couldn’t get across to join the fight.”

I twitched. All those lives, gone.

“People are talking about running. No one knows what to do. I was hoping Nya had an idea.”

They all looked at me. I shook my head. Running sounded good to me.

“She might later,” Danello said. “She needs rest right now.”

“Yeah, sure, I understand.” Kione paused in the doorway, and a fresh gust of hot, wet air blew across my face. “Get some rest.”

How could I rest when I couldn’t even close my eyes?

P
ale light cut through the window, draining the color out of the already worn carpet. At some point I’d fallen asleep, but nightmares had woken me long before dawn. I’d been standing at the window for hours.

Bedraggled men and women walked past, shoulders tense, jaws set. I’d seen those same faces years ago when Tali and I hid under bushes, crying. People who’d been thrown out of their homes, same as we were. Scowls that swore silent revenge against the man who’d killed their loved ones and turned them into beggars.

I hadn’t sworn revenge. I was too young to know what it was back then. But I’d sworn a promise later with Aylin and Danello while we stood on a farm and said we would fight for our home.

“Okay, I’m in. The Duke can send only so many soldiers at once, right?”

“It’s a small island,” said Aylin. Danello chuckled.

“Yeah, but it’s our island.”

“No, it’s our home.”

Look at our home now. Everything was grim and gray, our hope draining into the canals with the mud. But bits of blue sky poked out around the remaining storm clouds smudged across the dawn. It wouldn’t be long before the sun followed.

And when it set, we’d meet Onderaan and…

What? Run?

Maybe we should. Eggs should never fight with stones. Hope and faith were nothing compared to steel. Soek was dead because of me, because I thought we could win—believed all those hopeful faces and thought that I could
do
something and
be
more than what I was.

A Shifter.

Shifted pain, shifted blame. I couldn’t help anyone. The soldiers would come just as they’d come five years ago, yank us from our homes and throw us into the streets like trash.

Ipstan would never have charged the bridge if I hadn’t been here. Soek wouldn’t have put on the Undying’s armor and run right into pain and death. All those people wouldn’t have stepped forward to fight because of their faith in me.

I killed them all.

Worse than that. Geveg wouldn’t even
be
in trouble if not for me.
I’d
killed the Luminary.
I’d
exposed the experiments that had caused the first riots. It was
my
fault the Duke demanded more and more pynvium, trying to replace the ore I’d destroyed in Baseer.
My
fault the Baseeri in Geveg rebelled and killed the Gov-Gen over it.

If I hadn’t gone after Tali, none of this would have happened.

“You’re up early,” Danello said softly.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

He nodded, gazing out the window. “The rain stopped.”

“A while ago.”

We watched people walk by, some with packs and travel baskets stuffed full. People were leaving, running.

“We never should have come back,” I said. “Why did I think I could change anything?”

“Because you have before.”

I shook my head. “I just made things worse. Got people killed.”

“You didn’t kill Soek,” Danello said.

“I
got
him killed.” Quenji, too.

“He volunteered to fight.”

Quenji hadn’t. “I flashed the armor too much. I didn’t keep track of how many times.”

“It was a battle. Even trained soldiers forget things in a battle.”

“I panicked.” I whispered, closing my eyes. Seeing Soek again, his fear, his pain. His death.

“That’s understandable.”

“No. When his armor disintegrated, I should have protected him, taken the attacks meant for him and shifted them, but I
panicked.
I wanted to get out of there and that got him killed.”

“Nya, you can’t blame yourself for that.”

“Then who can I blame?”

He didn’t answer. Not at first. Then he took a deep breath and turned back to me. “Blame the Duke.”

“I tried, but it doesn’t work anymore.” They were my choices, my mistakes. That made them my responsibility.

“So what do we do now?”

Staying was foolish. We could do nothing but die, and still Geveg would burn. Leaving meant that Quenji and Soek died for nothing.

Like Mama and Papa? Grannyma?

Would they have run if offered the chance?

“Wait until sunset,” I said. “Then we’ll decide.”

The noon sun shone bright, drying the puddles and the mud, steaming the air. More people were on the streets.

“Do you think the blue-boys are going to attack again?” Aylin asked. She hadn’t said much since she’d woken up, just stared out the window with the rest of us.

Danello shrugged. “Maybe. Depends if they know Ipstan’s dead.”

“Would that make them more or less likely to attack?”

“Maybe less. No leader, no resistance.”

And no reason to fight.

By midafternoon more people were passing our window, some in a hurry, and all going the same way. Hopefully an evacuation, boarding every boat on the isle and getting as far away as possible.

“Kione’s coming.” Aylin got up and went to the door.

He and three others stomped up the front steps of the boardinghouse. Aylin opened the door before he got there, and they walked in and looked around. His gaze stopped on me.

“We need you at the plaza. Everyone is gathering there, asking what we’re going to do.” He gestured at the three people behind him—one man and two women. “We were all aides to the officers, but we can’t lead the resistance.”

I gaped at him. “You think
I
can?”

“No,” the man said, “but people will listen to you, and that could hold everyone together until we
can
find someone to lead.”

“I’m not sure they’ll listen to me anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” muttered one of the women.

I frowned. “Then why ask?”

“Because we don’t know what else to do, okay?” she snapped. “General Ipstan thought you could save us. That you were this unstoppable force, but he was wrong and it got him killed.”

“His arrogance got him killed,” Danello said. “His plan was flawed, but he went ahead with it anyway. He never accounted for an ambush, never planned for pynvium weapons to be used, never even thought for a moment that someone saw or survived the tradesmen’s corner attack and reported back.”

“And he put too much faith in
her
.” The woman pointed at me.

“Yes, he did,” Danello said. “We
all
did, and that was wrong.”

My throat tightened. All true, but to hear Danello admit it?

“Because she’s just
one
person,” he continued. “An army isn’t about one person—it’s about a lot of people working together. What happened in the corner was lucky, and it was stupid for Ipstan to plan an entire offensive around it. Nya doesn’t even know how she did it, so how could she possibly do it again on command?”

“Then she shouldn’t have volunteered.”

Aylin scoffed. “She
didn’t
. You people forced her into it, with your flowers and songs and acting like she was Geveg’s patron saint. How was she supposed to say no to all that?”

No one answered.

Aylin folded her arms. “Right. Don’t put this all on her shoulders. You drag someone into the lake, don’t blame them when you get wet.”

“Will you come?” Kione asked. It felt odd, him asking me for help when I’d practically had to beg him to help me save Tali all those months ago.

“I don’t see what I can—”

“She’ll be there,” Aylin said. What was she up to? No one was going to listen to me, not after I got so many killed. “Soon as she gets cleaned up.”

“Thanks.” Kione and his friends left, joining the growing crowd headed toward, I guess, the plaza.

“You
want
me to speak?”

“I think you have to or the resistance is doomed.”

“It’s already doomed. I failed.”

She huffed. “So what? That doesn’t mean you give up. And you
never
give up.”

I gaped at her. “Aylin, you don’t even want to fight.”

“Not even a little, but I’m behind you all the same.”

“Why?”

She took a deep breath and pointed at Tali. “Because of her. I’ve spent a lot of time with her the last few days, and she’s been singing. I thought it was just lullabies and nursery songs, but they’re stories about you.”

“Me?”

“Some of it is recent, but a lot of it is old, from when you two were little. ‘Nya stole me breakfast, Nya stole us beds. Nya tricked the soldiers and now we won’t get dead.’ Things you did to protect her.”

“I failed there too.”

“No, don’t you see? You’ve been fighting your
whole
life. Tali’s songs made me realize just how much, and you’re not the only one who’s had to struggle. Everyone in Geveg has. If you leave, everyone gives up and everyone dies. You have to fight, because if
you
can fail and keep fighting, so can
they
.”

“… don’t know anything more than that,” Kione was saying as we worked our way through the crowd in the plaza. His friends stood behind him. Not a one inspired any confidence. No cheers today, nobody passing back information. Fewer people stood around the fountain, but they were more closely packed together, as if clinging to each other for comfort.

“Nya’s here,” someone said after I elbowed past them. “Do you know what we should do?”

I didn’t even know what
I
should do.

People pushed closer. I didn’t like the looks on some of their faces. The angry ones were easier to face than the hopeful.

“Give her some room,” Danello said, pushing back. He stayed close, keeping Tali between me and him. I’d wanted her to wait in the boardinghouse with Aylin, but Aylin refused to stay behind.

“Nya’s going to say a few words,” Kione said, looking relieved.

I stepped onto the edge of the fountain. Folks talked among themselves and waited for me to speak, though I had no idea what I was supposed to say. I stared out at the people looking back at me. They wanted to blame someone, too.

And still no words came.

People fidgeted. Anticipation turned to annoyance. Wonder to worry.

“You didn’t stop them!” a man shouted.

“What happened?”

“You’re supposed to protect us!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. There was no humor in it, just the same bitterness and anger they felt.

“I’m supposed to protect
you
? Where were all of you five years ago when
I
needed protection?” I didn’t know where the words came from, but they were there, just like the memories that had been floating in my mind since last night. “The Duke invaded three days before my tenth birthday. How many of you fought him
then
when you could have stopped him?”

Shocked looks, some ashamed. I knew people in this crowd, had worked for them, shared food with them, been chased off property by them.

“I was
ten
and the Duke took my family. He sent men to the governor’s estate and killed my grandfather. Papa fought with our army and died at the Healers’ League. Mama left after that, forced to take the last battlefield brick to the front lines to heal those she could. We never knew where or how she’d died. The Duke sent her body to Grannyma in a box.”

I held my hands a foot apart and took a shaky breath.

“A box
this
big.”

Cries of dismay and sympathetic mumblings ran through the crowd.

I wiped my eyes. “You can’t hide from the Duke or expect someone else to save you. If you want protection, you stand with your friends and your family, and you protect each other.

“My grannyma used to say you can do more with a friend and a stick than you can with just a stick. If you need me to remind you of that, then I will. And I’ll even stand with you when you fight. But I won’t swing that stick by myself. I can’t, and those who think I can stop an entire army on my own are just fools.”

“But you caused the Great Flash!”

“So what?” I was tired of hearing that. Tired of being blamed, or worse, credited for it. “What good is a flash when there’s no one standing in its way? You think the Duke’s soldiers are going to line up and wait for me to hurt them?”

“How do we stop the Duke then?”

“What do we do?”

“What’s going to happen?”

I sighed. They weren’t listening to me. “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen when the Duke gets here. I don’t have some great battle plan to save the day. Even if I did, I
still
couldn’t tell you how many will die, or if we can win.”

“Then what
do
you know?” The angry words were cast across the plaza.

“That giving up means death, sure as spit. That we need to stand together and keep fighting to survive. We need to defend Geveg and the people in it. We need to prepare for fire and smoke. We need a leader who can make all those things happen. But what we really need is—” A man stepped forward, his gray-blue eyes filled with sadness. “Jeatar?”