The Spirit Walker (BOOK ONE): The Ripple

Chapter Thirty-Four: Promise?

Chattanooga melts into the distance, its lights setting the evening fog that blankets the Tanasi aglow. As pleasant as most of our stay was, I am happy to be gone from the place, glad to see it fade into the distance.

I can't help but to feel that Tamhas' blood is on my hands.

I shudder and wrap my arms around myself.

"Why do you always forget a jacket?" Calum says, and I turn to find him leaning against the rail of our connected balconies, staring at me. I go hot and cold all over.

"It's not that cold," I lie, and Calum's lips twist.

He shrugs off the tasseled suede coat he wears, and crosses the adjoining balconies of the unoccupied rooms to wrap it around my shoulders. It is lined with rabbit fur and filled with his warmth. I pull it closer under my chin, and my eyes slip closed as I am enveloped by his scent- smoke and pepper and pine- warmth and safety and home.

"Aren't you cold? I can get a blanket-" I protest, because I feel I have to, and he shakes his head.

"It is not that cold," he echoes, and I smile and shake my head and duck further into his coat's warmth.

We stand in silence for a time, watching the water as Chattanooga's lights bleed into the horizon and then disappear entirely around the river bend.

"You have never witnessed death," Calum finally breaks the silence, and I can't quite look at him.

"My nana died of cancer when I was a kid..."

"Death by illness is not the same," Calum returns, and I shrug, but say nothing. "You are upset with me."

I sigh, and wrap his coat more tightly around myself. "He didn't need to die."

"It was a good death," he says, and I scoff.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Calum's hands clench, and his face transforms into an expression I am beginning to know well- a forced calm, layered over frustration.

"Tell me. How does the law operate, in your Ripple? I wish to understand your perspective."

I hum under my breath. "No one can be sentenced without a public trial- and the verdict isn't decided by a Righ, or a King, or a judge, but a jury of that person's peers."

"Even with admission of guilt?"

"They can enter a guilty plea, and then the judge has to decide what their sentence is. Usually if they plead guilty, though, it means they cut a deal so they get a lesser sentence."

"And what is the sentence for treason in your Ripple?"

I pause, and then frown. "You know- I actually don't know. I can't really think of anyone who was tried for treason..."

Calum frowns. "Murder, then. What is the sentence for that?"

"I guess it depends on what type of murder."

Calum raises his brows. "You have different types of murder, in your ripple?"

"Well, you know- there's the accidental kind, like you're driving drunk and get into an accident and someone dies. And then there's a crime of passion, like when you walk in on your wife with another man, and then there's premeditated, where you stalk someone and plan it out..."

"The worst kind. What is the sentence for the worst kind?" Calum interrupts, and I shrug.

"Life in prison, usually."

"A drain of resources."

"Everyone deserves a second chance. They can be rehabilitated-"

"And what about the man who took you?" He interrupts me, and I suck in a breath and physically recoil. "Had you not died, had someone rescued you, or you escaped, what would his sentence have been?"