Feel His Wrath

In Orin’s absence, Braph had to work nearly twice as hard. That wasn’t so bad. Once he found his rhythm, it became much like a dance; holes, buckets, & keeping the sap flowing. As important as that last step was it, thankfully, didn’t seem to require much power, as the same crystal he’d been using for several days retained its luster. All he had to do was prevent the sap from crystallizing, and it flowed at its usual drip by drip.

By lunch time, his large pot simmered over a medium flame, nearly full.

Lunch time. Orin would be pestering him soon. He stopped drilling holes and poured the final contents of the collection buckets into the pot. Hours of simmering ahead. Now would be a good time to take a break and eat.

Where were Orin and Orinia?

They’d all returned to the garden after breakfast, but it hadn’t been long before Orinia had chafed for a change in scenery and Orin had declared himself bored. For once, he’d been more keen to join Orinia on a walk than continue helping his father, the novelty evidently wearing thin.

That was a couple of hours past now. Walking itself would bore the child, surely.

Realization dawned. He’d let slip to that officer last night that Orinia’s blood was a cure. A cold anxiety gripped him. A cure, for someone she loved. Not the cure. Damned his own hubris. He’d told them. But he hadn’t told them not to kill her. Imbeciles!

He picked up an empty bucket and hurled it across the garden. Pointless. But he felt fractionally better.

He checked the crystal on his wrist again. Too risky. He clicked it out and replaced it with one from his pocket. Glancing at the simmering sap, he surmised he would be back before it burned, and stalked from the garden. Let Quaver feel his wrath and never cross him again.

***

Jonas had shifted to the single cushioned chair in the shadowed back corner of the dining room and dozed while Llew chatted with Elka and Lyneth, calculating supplies, and garden and livestock yields versus people, all while continuing to prepare vegetables for lunch and dinner. They had two mouths to feed Gaemil hadn’t known to account for, but now Alvaro had left they were up by just one. There was a good chance they could get by for a month, and hoped to have more options before then. The house was beginning to fill with the mouthwatering aroma of crusts forming over bread loaves.

“Ready test subject number one?” Rowan entered the kitchen, beaming and holding a mostly empty syringe in a pinch grip. But what the syringe did contain caught every eye in the room, for it cast its own light, if pale. “Pure Syaenuk magic.” Rowan waved his free hand beneath the syringe, flourishing it. Karlani entered the kitchen behind him and closed the door. With less light to compete with, the magic glowed brighter, with a pink, glittery quality. “We can even do this in here. You’re freed from the Ajnai trees.” Rowan shuffled around those sitting at the table, sparing Llew a cursory apologetic glance. She wasn’t freed. Her gaze followed the syringe.

“There’s not much. How long do you think it will last?” Llew asked.

“No idea,” Rowan said in an oddly gleeful tone, reaching Jonas and gesturing for him to roll up a sleeve. “Just one way to find out, though, eh?” He crouched by Jonas. “Only, the light’s not so good here.”

Karlani opened the door again, and a cloud-hazed light flooded across the table, the dregs falling on Jonas.

Llew came around by Jonas. Careful not to block Rowan’s light, she placed herself behind Jonas’s shoulder.

All in the room focused on the glowing contents of the syringe and Jonas’s exposed arm, one prominent vein sweeping down his forearm.

“Perfect.” Rowan lined up the needle. “Now, we have no idea if this will work, or how it will work. My hope is it works like normal, but without the downsides of the full blood transfusion. In theory, you should be able to make use of everything in this syringe. So, just do what you normally do.”

Jonas nodded. He had few expectations.

Rowan pushed the needle tip through Jonas’s skin and into the vein beneath, then depressed the plunger.

And Jonas experienced a whole-body orgasm; a rush of pleasure, top-to-toe, for a fraction of a second. He gasped. He swore. And he came down with Rowan, Karlani, Elka, and Lyneth all watching him.

Llew crouched before him. “Are you alright? Was that—? Did it hurt?”

Jonas composed himself. “No. It felt— That was—.” He cleared his throat, sat up straighter. “It was somethin’. I don’t know. It went through so fast.” And he would gladly feel it again. In private.

“Did you manage to use any of it?” Rowan asked.

Jonas focused internally. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can feel better than I do. Maybe this is all there is.”

Llew’s shoulders slumped. Jonas hated to disappoint her, but all he could offer was a shrug. The stuff had gone through him so fast he couldn’t grasp it to control it.

“Ack. I was too eager.” Rowan stood and stepped back, his own frustration making him gruff. “We should’ve waited until tonight and done this when you’re at least a little run down, keeping the direct blood transfer as a back-up.”

“None of us know what we’re working with here.” Llew stood as well. “We’re continuing Braph’s research, and he hasn’t given us any notes. I wanted that lot to be the miracle cure, too. Apparently, that’s not how science works.”

Rowan huffed a soft laugh through his nose. “No. It isn’t. And it’s a lot easier when you have firm measurements to work with. This soft, biological stuff is hard to predict. And yet, you need us to if you’re going to get Jonas safely to that tree in Quaver.”

Jonas heard an echo of Llew’s ‘Hey, I’m right here. And I’m a person’ in his mind and knew exactly how she’d felt when Aris had explained Quaver’s and Turhmos’s interest in her to Jonas. It also threw him right back to his childhood, when adults – usually Aris and his father – would discuss him and what he would grow up to be without ever asking him his opinion. Not that he’d had his own, back then. He didn’t have much choice on what to think now, either. They either figured out the magic needed to get him to the Taither tree or he faded away here on this farm. He had nothing to add to the conversation. Didn’t make him feel much better. Just a project for others to figure out.

Voices approached outside as the rest of the ex-Turhmos soldiers returned to the homestead for lunch, and soon the space filled with moving bodies as food was arranged for people to grab and eat. The overcast day remained cool, yet the homestead kitchen also remained too small to admit everyone at once, and so most ate outdoors again, only Lyneth, Elka, Jonas, and Llew eating indoors.

Once the extra sleeping quarters were completed, there was a plan to build a separate eating hall. Merrid and Ard wouldn’t recognize the place in a few months. Jonas thought they would be pleased to see what was being achieved here, nonetheless.

After lunch, Llew returned to the Ajnais and bloodletting, while others tidied up, or returned to building, leaving Jonas to feel even more excess. Yes. He was the reason Llew was bleeding, but that thought did little to soothe his guilt over sitting doing nothing. And, yes, they’d already discussed his need to preserve his energy. Still, the boredom, combined with the ache of knowing what Llew was going through on his behalf riled.

Listening to Elka and Lyneth sing together soothed somewhat. Lyneth had a lovely voice, and what Elka lacked in tunefulness, she made up for in conviction and evident joy. As dishes were cleaned and put away, she sometimes explored the sounds they might make as accompaniment to their singing. Most resulted in sour notes, sending the two young women into momentary fits of laughter. Eventually, though, a wooden spoon tapped against the edge of a particular pot lid struck a complementary note, and she continued tapping in time with Lyneth’s song.

“We should build a bonfire and do as much entertaining outside as we can,” Elka announced, still tapping. “Lift Llew’s mood. Bring her music.”

Lyneth paused her singing. “That’s a great idea. We can still prepare the vegetables out there. Much better than her sitting out there all alone. Lets.”

As much as the sensible part of Jonas knew she hadn’t meant it to, the pronouncement was a kick to his guts. He might be free from sitting beneath the Ajnais. Didn’t mean he should leave Llew out there just because his wallowing left him with little drive. He pushed himself to his foot and prosthetic, gathered his crutch and balance.

Lyneth leaned through the front door and beckoned Karlani. Jonas reached the door just as Karlani arrived.

“Yeah?” she asked, looking Jonas up and down like she expected to be asked to carry him somewhere. Certainly not, if he could help it.

“Gather wood off-cuts from the builders and pile them near Llew,” Lyneth said. “We’re throwing her a party.”

“A party.”

“Yes.”

Karlani shrugged. “Okay, then.”

Jonas followed her to the porch where she headed where the new sleeping hut was being built between the road and the homestead, and he carried on to stand by Llew, who looked surprisingly calm, if bored.

***

The slider at the barracks entrance slid open, revealing feminine eyes. Braph didn’t usually enter through the front, so he didn’t know if the haunted, fearful look was normal for a guard at that gate, neither did he much care.

“Open the gate, or I will do it for you.”

The slider began to shut as the guard yelled, “It’s him!”

Braph planted his feet firmly and shoved the gate with both his hands, infusing his muscles with Immortal blood-magic at the same time. The wall shook. Braph strained, briefly, but he had a fresh crystal and he was prepared to use it. With his strength dialed to about three times that of a Syakaran, the gate and triple-layer brick wall shuddered and groaned. Grout cracked. Bricks tumbled. And the thick iron gate fell, flattening the guard.

Braph strode across the gate, avoiding clambering as much as possible. While he was on a mission, appearances still mattered. He wanted them to fear him. He wanted them to know he was in control.

The guard wailed in pain. Braph imagined her heart popping, and she fell silent.

Braph strode on.

Other soldiers ran toward him. He didn’t recognize any of them. Their hearts popped, too, and they collapsed mid-stride, knives half-drawn. Karan or mundane, it mattered not at all.

Braph strode on.

Where would they have her? In the hospital wing where Llewella had convalesced? In the basement dungeon in which they had held him? Orin would fight them. He would be held in the dungeon. So Braph headed there first. Either Orinia would be there too, or he would have his Immortal son at his side when he found her.

Soldiers came for him and soldiers fell. More soldiers came. They hesitated at the sight of their comrades. They still fell. Braph located the dungeon entrance and started down the stone stairway.

Two guards watched the section of dungeon in which Orin sobbed alone in his cell. They fell like the rest. Braph likely could pull the bars from the wall, but it was just as quick and easy to take the keys from the dead guards.

“Pa!” Orin flung himself into Braph’s arms.

“I am here.” Braph patted the boy’s back with his leather-encased flesh hand. “Do you know where they took your mother?”

Orin shook his head. “No.”

“Then we must look for her.” Braph gently pried the boy from himself. “We mustn’t dally.”

Orin nodded, despite the fear etched in every aspect of his body language; his stiffness, his evident battle with holding himself back from Braph.

Braph delved deeper into the dungeons, just to be sure. Orin ran to keep close to him, keeping his sobs muffled. The rest of the cells were empty, as he had suspected.

Braph led the way back out of the dungeons, Orin sticking so close his shoe toe clipped Braph’s heel several times. He apologized, but failed to broaden the distance. Until, that was, they emerged surface side and the child saw the bodies littering the courtyard.

“This way.” Braph led them inside the main building. Now people ran and hid when they saw him coming. Good. He would gladly conserve his power for more important things. The greatest, of course, being finding Orinia. He stopped one man, younger than Braph, wearing casual attire that didn’t identify his rank or role – not that Braph cared – by simply freezing the man’s legs mid-stride.

“Where is she?”

The man flailed, struggling to keep his balance, his feet stuck in place as if glued. He managed to point one finger up, and gulped like a fish, though he failed to shape any words. As Braph had suspected. Where they had held Llewella. He found the stairwell and took the steps two at a time, Orin racing to keep up with him. Braph went straight to the room in which he’d found Llewella months earlier and his heart nearly shattered to see Orinia strapped to the same bed, abandoned, needles in both arms, and tubes dripping blood into metal bowls.

In a chair at the foot of the bed, a figure slumped, still breathing shallowly. Braph suspected they wouldn’t be for much longer. Regardless, they were no threat.

He crouched by Orinia and pulled the needles from her as gently as he could. Then he pulled the glove off his flesh hand and gripped her bare forearm. His fingers and palm burned, and he felt the jin gathering from all through his body, flowing down his arm. Orinia’s fingers flexed, but her hand was nowhere near him. He wasn’t that stupid. Still … He broke contact and directed power from his crystal to heal his burned palm and fingers, and encased them once more in leather. Then he bent and scooped Orinia into his arms, and he and his little, broken family headed back to the garden.