Looks Dead To Me

The last time they’d had to pretend Jonas was dead, the answer had been simple: kill him.

But this time there was no Ajnai tree nearby to bring him back without killing a swathe of flora, fauna and, more than likely in the heart of Turhmos, people. Even if there had been, Llew wasn’t carrying his child; she could no longer bring him back with a mere touch. If she could, he would have been up walking beside her, not dragging along the road with her fingertips dug in his armpits. He would have been fighting beside her. They would have had to fight their way out of Duffirk.

Instead of being a one-man army, Jonas was topless in the tail-end of winter so his foes could easily recognize the huge, sweeping gryphon tattoo that dominated his flesh; he carried injuries from the exhibit fight in which he’d just been used; and a micro-organism – some sort of tiny bug – was ravaging his body, destroying whatever it was that had made him so powerful.

Despite the cold and pain he must have been in, he was playing dead. And all Llew could do was play along. And hope.

Thankfully, most of the lingering people were more interested in comparing notes on the magic and technology on display than paying Jonas any mind. Enough still did to be a nuisance, though.

“Stay dead this time!” A gob of spit landed on Jonas’ rib. It oozed across the black lines of the tattoo, leaving a shiny trail of filth.

Jonas didn’t flinch.

“Looks dead to me.” Another voice from the gathered crowd.

“He’s dead,” Llew muttered through teeth gritted at the strain firing through her arms, shoulders and back.

“Yeah, but he was meant to be dead months ago.” The spitter.

“Just a rumor, though, wasn’t it? I mean, we saw the fight and here’s his body. It’s gotta be real this time, eh?” A booted toe jabbed Jonas’ side.

Llew clamped her lips. Unlike Jonas, she looked local. All she had to do was act like it.

“Good riddance to him, I say. Filthy Quaven.”

“Where you taking him?” Spitty, again.

Illusions held best when you let people decide for themselves what it was they saw. Llew had lived most of her life across the seas in Aghacia. To her, these people had an accent. To them, so would she.

Llew kept her mouth shut.

“Oi!” Spitty shoved her.

Llew lost her grip with one hand and Jonas lolled, convincing in his performance of death yet to rigor. Llew lurched, reaching for his shoulder before he hit the ground, but her other arm trembled in her efforts, threatening to fail, and she settled for easing his descent only. Liberated of his weight, she straightened and glared at the gathering crowd while she caught her breath.

“Where you—?”

Llew turned her fury on the man.

“… taking him?” Spitty’s voice trailed off.

Llew blinked and swept her gaze across every member of her audience. Some took a self-conscious step back. Some looked vexed. Most looked confused.

She stretched one arm behind her, then the other, loosening her muscles some. She rolled her shoulders, shook them out. Then she bent, slipped her fingers under Jonas’ shoulders, curled them into his armpits, took a deep breath to prepare her already fatigued muscles and hoisted him. His head fell back. It had to hurt. She couldn’t imagine how it couldn’t, but still his body hung limp. He didn’t tense, uttered no sound. He didn’t even open his eyes, even though she would likely be the only one who would see. Don’t be dead .

Surrounded as they were, she couldn’t afford to lift his head or make any attempt at improving his comfort. And so, she simply took one back step at a time, his hair dragging on the ground, his head swinging. Don’t you dare abandon me now, you bastard .

Not a bastard. Unless you’re dead. So don’t be .

The small crowd lingered, watching her go. Spitty looked from one of his supporters to another before stepping forward, following Llew. At first he paced himself so he was always a few steps behind, but after a while he lengthened his gait, closing the gap.

“I asked where you were taking him. ’S’fair question.”

As much as she didn’t want to, Llew had to agree with him. Jonas’ death had been rumored once before. And these people had either just seen or just heard about a fight involving Jonas, the Immortal Aris and Braph with his magical device. Llew counted herself lucky enough not to have witnessed it, but she had seen Jonas and Braph fight before, and Jonas and Aris had faced each other at her tree. And Llew had heard Braph’s thundersticks just before she’d entered the arena herself. It must have looked so mystical and magical to these folk who had probably never seen the like. If she wanted them off her back, she would have to tell them something. And so she spoke, concentrating on the slight lilt they had. They would hate to hear it, but to Llew they sounded little different to Quavens, only having a greater tendency to pronounce their G’s. She also forced her voice down in pitch. She’d passed as a boy for years and always found it simpler.

“Kadesh— Ah, I mean, the president—” Thank you, Braph. First-name basis with the elite never hurt anyone. “—wants you all to have plenty of time to celebrate the Syakaran’s death. But he’ll stink up the place in a couple of days if he’s not embalmed first.” She could thank the late Cassidy for teaching her about that one. “So I’m taking him to the embalmer. And he doesn’t want to have to work with a body covered in your filth.”

Several of the rabble had the decency to look sheepish.

Spitty held his ground a few more strides, but sensing the others no longer backing him up, he relented.

Llew looked like them. That helped her lie hold.

Well, she shared their pale skin tone, anyway.

She was lankier, longer in the leg and, thanks to her lack of discernible breasts or hips, looked like a young lad of about fifteen. Just the kind of person that would find themselves with the task of dragging a body to its final resting place. Her shirt and trousers enforced the illusion. They were prisoner’s garb, but few would have seen a prisoner from Turhmos’ Aenuk camps.

Llew was counting on it.

“Now, my arms and back are already killing me, and I’ve got miles more to go.”

She stepped back, stepped back, stepped back. No one followed.

One obstacle down. Onto the next.

If she could find some clothes, then hopefully she and Jonas would be able to move through Turhmos anonymously. Her gaze lingered on his huge tattoo. Such a comfort to her at times, right now it was likely to get them both killed. Everyone knew Jonas had it. Everyone knew only Jonas had it.

Of course it would matter none if he was already dead.

She wished she could ask some sign of him, but it was too great a risk while he was so clearly him and they were still in the heart of Duffirk. Their only saving grace for now was that most of the city’s population seemed far more interested in Braph, which left Llew and Jonas largely unmolested once they cleared most of the crowd.

Despite her own opinion of the man, Llew found herself thanking Braph again. Never again.

Back and back and back she trudged, Jonas’ boots scraping across the ground, her body aching. The farther they left the fight behind, the fewer people there were in the streets.

A shudder jolted through Jonas. After all this, had he just died? But the muscles beneath her grip tensed and released, and he grimaced. Not dead, then. Just cold.

A few stray Duffirk locals forced the pair to continue their charade well into the outer suburbs, where strings of damp laundry offered promise of disguise. Outside an isolated house on the outskirts of the city, Llew dragged Jonas up to a low fence.

“Sit,” she commanded as she eased him back. Now somewhat safe, his eyes opened and he took the weight of his own head. He also shivered.

She checked the narrow lane in both directions, looked across the field over the road. All clear. She stepped over the fence, keeping the hanging clothes between her and the house. Peering around a sheet, she made sure the yard was empty and she wouldn’t be seen from the house. All clear. Small mercies.

Llew commandeered a damp, loose green and white striped shirt and a long black coat and returned to Jonas.

“Are you still with me?”

He nodded, although he looked like he was about to pass out. She pulled him forward and slid the shirt across his shoulders.

“You’re going to have to walk. Can you walk?” She pulled one arm and then the other into the sleeves, fighting all the way, the damp material clinging to Jonas’s skin at every opportunity.

He nodded again, tried to speak, cleared his throat. “Don’t know if I can run, though.”

“Hopefully we won’t have to.” She passed the coat behind him. “But we’ve got to put some distance between us and Duffirk before Kadesh realizes I’m gone. All this with Braph and Aris will give us a start, but I’d hate to have to count on it.”

Gripping his arm, she hauled him to his feet.

Jonas took a tentative step and it was clear his right leg could barely take his weight. Llew slipped her arm behind him, hefting his across her shoulders. She still ached all over, but she would be using a new posture and set of muscles now. Let the mercies continue.

Few people were about this far from Duffirk’s center, so while Jonas’ darker skin drew the occasional dubious look they were few and far between and soon non-existent.

If they just kept going, everything would be all right.

***

That first night they reached cover beneath a forest and foraged some lingering insect-nibbled rosehips and waxy evergreen leaves that fired the mouth with their peppery heat to stave off the worst hunger pangs. They moved as fast and as far as they could the second day, well aware someone would figure out they’d got away some time. Jonas’s leg ached the whole time, but he did his best to push through it. On the second full day out of Turhmos, they were lucky enough to find a secluded stretch of river giving them a moment to seek normality in cleanliness.

“Will we ever feel warm, or clean again?” Llew asked, splashing water over her face as she crouched on the stones, water lapping at the toes of her boots.

Jonas answered with a smile that was meant to show her he saw the funny side, the irony, as he sat beside her, in too much pain to hold a crouch, scraping filth from his skin, and water seeping through the seat of his trousers. Truth was, he was wondering the same. Turhmos’s winter was slowly tailing off, and if they didn’t pick up the pace soon, their chance of seeing a real spring day again was slim. If Turhmos’s troops caught up to them, Llew would be caged again, and … well. Jonas didn’t fancy his chances of being held captive now he was no longer a curiosity.

Llew’s teeth chattered so badly Jonas could hear them over the river. He barely felt the cold anymore. It was just one of many insults. Near freezing it may have been, but he could no longer bear the sensation of the shirt sticking to his skin where he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to wash his enemies’ saliva off.

While his whole body ached – he was cut and bruised, and sported a collection of new burns, some hand-shaped, some smears – his thigh throbbed worst of all from striking the wooden post when Aris had hurled him across the arena. The pain was dulling now, his legs desensitized to all but the sharpest pangs. And his foot … His foot, after almost constant throbbing, now felt like it belonged to someone else. It was there, but it barely felt a part of him anymore.

At least Jonas wasn’t dead. Not in the ceased-to-breathe-or-pound-heart kind of way. Not yet.

His Syakaran power was dead, though, and whether that would be enough to satisfy his enemies, it was enough to dissatisfy himself.

His super-human strength and speed had gone, along with his higher body temperature.

On a brighter note, so had his need for extra rations.

But also, his confidence.

If Llew hadn’t come for him … He watched her scoop more water with her hands, most of it running through her fingers, or down her wrists before making it to her face. She rubbed her cheeks, forehead, chin, and finally her hair, semi-drying her hands in its strands. She tugged at her collar, lowered her nose, screwed up her face, sighed, shook out her hands as best she could and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her upper arms. She couldn’t bring herself to strip off further in the cold. At least the grime covering her was all her own.

He didn’t want to think what would have become of him, but he couldn’t help it. More than likely, he would be truly dead now.

And Llew could have been a good ways across Turhmos already. She could’ve got away. That she might not because she insisted on trying to save him only built on top of the drool already covering him. He seethed at his uselessness.

Snatching up a handful of river silt, he scrubbed at his skin, as if he could clean away the self-loathing along with the filthy hatred covering him.

“Hey.” Llew gripped his wrist. “You’ll rub yourself raw.” When he didn’t release the silt, she shook it out. “Talk to me.”

He gave her a wry look. “Like you said. Feels like I’ll never be clean again.”

She eased her grip on his arm and watched him, her expression flat, expecting more. He couldn’t hide his self-disgust from her.

“I ain’t a hero no more, Llew.” It stunk to admit it, but in the heart of Turhmos, he needed to be real with her.

She looked confused for a moment, like she’d forgotten his weakness. Then she turned her whole body to face him, kneeling in the silt, water creeping up her trouser leg.

“You are to me,” she said. She rested a hand on his shoulder, her index finger playing over a thick scab that promised to scar. Years as a soldier had left Jonas plenty scarred, until that first time Llew had brought him back to life with the help of her Ajnai tree. Knife cuts and Aenuk burns from the spectacle fight his own brother had arranged promised to scar him up plenty again. “It seems to me there’s more than one way to save a person, and you’ve been saving me from the day we met,” Llew continued. “For the past few months, I have lived . Good or bad I have lived. If we died tomorrow …” She floundered, mouth opening and closing on incomplete thoughts for a few moments. “I don’t want to die.” She gripped both his shoulders. “I still have dreams. I still want to live free of cages, whether Braph’s, Quaver’s, or Turhmos’s. But that’s no longer all about me. I’m connected to this world now. I’m connected to you, Anya, Quaver. I’m connected to those Aenuks still caged. Your son, my ma. Our children.” She whispered the last, pressed her lips together and closed her eyes as they shared a moment of silence. Jonas scowled at the ground before his eyes could burn too bad. He was still angry. He couldn’t do heartbroken too. Not just now.

Eventually, Llew continued, “I don’t want to die. There’s still so much left to do. But if I died tomorrow, I could go in the knowledge that I tried , and it wasn’t all about me. A few months ago, I might not have cared, but I do now. You did that.”

Jonas was still stuck on their lost family, still trying to swallow that lump that had no business rising in the midst of his internal raging at his own losses. But he didn’t need to be a hero to be a father – a thought that took some heat out of him – and he’d been so close to sharing that with Llew. But he still was a father. His son. Joelin.

His son who lived with his half-brother, Braph. Braph, who had no use for the child now Jonas was no longer worth baiting. What would he do with the boy now?

A man didn’t need to be a hero to be a father, but Jonas couldn’t help thinking Joelin needed a hero now. But how could he get his son back if he wasn’t Syakaran anymore?

And Braph’s son was Immortal. No doubt Braph had a plan to use that power. Just as Braph had had a plan for his son to absorb Aris’s Immortal powers. An Immortal imbued with the power of another. They couldn’t fight that. They couldn’t have fought it when Jonas was Syakaran. They sure as two hells couldn’t fight it now.

“Say something.” Llew rocked back, settling her ass on her heels. “Please say something. You of all people know I don’t make speeches like that.”

She was right. He owed her a response.

“I think I might be dyin’, Llew.”

Her open mouth curved up on one side, like she was holding back a laugh, then dropped.

She shook her head. “No. You don’t get to say something like that after what I just said.”

She waited for him to say something else. But he had nothing.

“What do you mean you think you’re dying? We’re in far too much trouble for thinking maybe you might be dying. And you don’t just get to die after I dragged your arse from that arena. What do you mean you think you’re dying?”

Using the toe of his left boot, he hooked the heal off his right. Pain burned through his foot, but he continued to slide the boot free. Fighting the cool stiffness throughout his body and biting down on the pain that shot from his bruised thigh, he brought his foot within arm’s reach. He peeled back his sock, hoping his skin wouldn’t go with it. Numbness was spreading, from his toes to his ankle, and he hadn’t taken his boots off in days. He didn’t know what he was about to reveal, but he’d seen enough soldiers succumb to gangrene to know his chances. It wasn’t just his foot, either. A line up his calf muscle could go from numb to excruciating pain in moments. He could walk, if stiff and unstable, so he was almost certain he hadn’t broken a bone. But there was more than one way to break a body.

Bringing his sock rim to just above his ankle bone, his suspicions were confirmed. He pulled his sock lower.

“Gods. That’s whiter than I am,” Llew said. “What is it?”

Jonas huffed out a single laugh, felt a sneer curl his lip. Of course. The Aenuk who could heal magically simply by touching another living thing had never dealt with gangrene. The Aenuk, who could heal herself, or anyone that wasn’t Karan … who couldn’t heal Jonas.

He looked at her flatly as he tried to turn off that thinking. Wasn’t her fault she could heal anyone but him. Wasn’t her fault he was in this mess. It was what it was.

“I’m a walkin’ dead man, Llew.” He laughed again, hollow, his gaze flat. Then he looked away, rested his elbow on his knee, chin in his palm, and chuckled to himself. “Should’ve left me back there.”

Llew gave him a flat look right back.

“It’s dyin’, Llew. And it’ll spread until it kills me if I don’t cut it off. And for the first time in my life, I ain’t got a fuckin’ knife.”

“You’d do it yourself?”

“I’d do what I had to to live.” Free of his boot and sock, the urge to flex his foot was powerful. But so was the flash of pain that went through it, for little more than a toe tremor. “Or what I had to for you to live. And not in cages, Llew. You gotta get out of Turhmos.”

Llew did what she would always do: reached for his leg. She touched his healthy flesh, just above where the white started. Of course, nothing happened, but Jonas just watched her, waiting for her to go through whatever thought processes were necessary to accept reality.

“We need one of those things. Braph’s syringes.” She sounded breathless, holding back panic. “Then you can use my blood to heal yourself …”

“Who’s goin’ to give us one? We don’t have time to get to Brurun, Llew.”

“Merrid and Ard live in Turhmos. There must be others like them. The people of Turhmos can’t all be bad.” Her hand trailed a little lower, daring to touch the dying flesh. Even if she could heal Jonas, they were running out of time for her to heal that. But, if she could heal Jonas, it wouldn’t have gone this far. Every time they had touched in the last few days, she would have healed his damage. She rocked back, letting her hand slide from him, her eyes fixed on his dying foot. But she didn’t look on it with pity. Her face was set, calculating, thinking.

“But they all think we are. Or I am,” Jonas said.

“Well, we have to do something. We can’t just let you die.”

“You can , Llew.” Her face went hard, but there was no way out of Turhmos for him now. It was simply too far. “There are more pleasant ways to go than others. If you drained me gently—”

“No.” Her resolve was solid; he already knew he couldn’t break it. “Weren’t you listening? There are good and kind people here. Some of them might be doctors.”

“Surgeon. They would have to be a surgeon. I gotta lose my foot.”

“Not if we can pump my blood into you.”

“You’d have to hurt someone pretty bad or leave a sign-post to wherever we were hiding out.” Yes, he had been thinking about these things as he’d hobbled by her side. “I gotta lose my foot. And even then, I might still die, depending on the skill of the surgeon. And whether or not they want to take the chance to off me.”

Llew nibbled her lip briefly then jumped to her feet. “Then we find someone we can trust. Or threaten. You can lose your foot. I am not losing you.” She held a hand out for Jonas to grasp. “Buck up, soldier. You ain’t dyin’ today.” She quirked a smile and her eyes sparkled with a fierce determination to ignore the chances things might not work out as she had planned.