The Boon of Alon

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

I wake up sweatier than when I went to sleep, probably because I'm still snuggled tight against Suthi from head to toe. She stirs as I lean up to look over her; Tack is snoring lightly in the other bunk and the lamp has gone out, but someone has opened the door and let a thick beam of sunlight in.

"Anyone awake down there?" a voice calls.

"Erno?" I extricate myself from Suthi and the blanket and climb over her—she grumbles sleepily at me—and make a half-assed attempt to sort myself out before I stagger to the stairs and squint up. Erno, partially silhouetted in the doorway, snickers; next to him, Chama's mouth twists like she's trying not to smile.

"You look like you've been deep in hibernation," Erno says. "Sorry to wake you!"

I groan and try to straighten myself out a little more—my clothes are a wrinkled disaster and my hair feels like a rat's nest. "Judging by the sunlight, it's about time I woke up anyway," I mumble. "How's...everything?" Wait, Erno is here. "Should you be here? Wait, don't tell me—"

"Yeah," he says, grin falling. "Not a lot of other options for restoring order right now."

"I'm so sorry." I knew I'd made a mess of things, but I definitely didn't want to force Erno onto the throne.

"Good news is, it's temporary," says Chama. "He only has to oversee the transition to democracy."

So I guess we're getting a republic after all. I hope that works out better than this did.

"Only." Erno rolls his eyes.

Chama ignores it. "Morning, kid. You sure had a busy day, didn't you?"

And I'm sure today will be almost as bad. I sigh. "Yeah. Hang on, let me get my boots on."

I get myself ready for the day as best as I can in a poorly-equipped cellar—Suthi, now awake, sleepily tells me when I've achieved a state of presentability—and head up to join Chama and Erno. We go to the plaza outside the palace and find a few other riders and a lot of people. Some I guess are rebels, others are definitely Knights, and all look pretty disgruntled. Great.

While we stand at the edge of the plaza, Erno fills me in on what happened overnight. The riders were able to get both sides to stop fighting, but had trouble convincing them that all of them losing their leaders—Ven is now "locked up somewhere" and Nelcie and Yier are confirmed dead by his hand—means there's a stalemate now. This morning, the riders are mostly helping people get back to their houses and gather their dead, but some are still trying to talk down the more aggressive members of each side. A lot of that is happening here—trying to reconcile the foot soldiers of both groups.

Tack and Suthi catch up to us soon, both looking as rumpled as I am, though, to be fair, no one in the plaza looks much better right now. It was a long night.

"Della," Tack says after we've gotten greetings out of the way. "You said last night there was something you wanted to talk about?"

I let out a breath. "Yeah. It's...let me start with Corren. I, uh, ran into him on my way down here yesterday. He was..." I glance at Chama. "Upset about the recent conduct of the riders. Specifically that we were deceiving the rebels about my continued existence."

"It was necessary," says Chama, with an eyebrow raised, because obviously I've heard this before. "We needed to be able to talk to them."

"Except he already was," I say. "And so was Jeddin, apparently. But even if they weren't, Iamon says this is going to hurt us." I gesture around us. "I don't know how much of that we've mitigated by showing up like this, but, lying riders? It's a bad look. Like it was when rebels were trying to bribe people. Even if it's for a good reason."