Partisan - Book II

The House in the Twinkling Light

"It is time."

The Paragon stands in his doorway, clad in red armor, watching him with dark eyes. His own gray armor feels tight, sticking in ways that jar against the smooth, fluid movement he's used to.

We'll need to practice, he thinks, standing.

He throws his pack over his good shoulder, nodding, and she turns, moving farther down the hall.

When Caj emerges from his room, the others are gathering. Finn is yanking on his collar, looking a little suffocated, while Hiran runs a lazy hand through his hair, relaxed. Caj steps forward, closer to the others, and Fae, standing next to Hiran, smiles. He quickly looks away.

Already feeling pin-pricks of unease, he shifts to the side, next to the perch of Tara's hawk, and he reaches up, offering a bit of his jerky to the tawny bird. It blinks at him, head shifting and turning in that ceaseless, predatory way, before it reaches down, plucking the meat out of his fingers. There's a twinge in his arm, a phantom pain from the haphazard setting in Bear's Spear and then the painful resetting here. But he has felt worse pain and, at the time of the first setting, it had been more important to get back to the others.

To get away from suspicious eyes.

Fae had noticed. Noticed how the doctor glanced at him. Noticed how the officers hesitated—

He looks up to find Hiran watching. The Solveig man gives him a smile but it looks forced, and Caj turns away.

There's a small pressure on his shoulder and he glances around to see the hawk there, kneading at his jacket and shifting, scanning around for its true partner. Finn is throwing envious looks but Caj has always been friendliest with Tara, compared to his relationships with the others. Or perhaps, the two wanderers are the most in sync—there's something he readily recognizes in her rough edges and she, in his bare bones. This pomp, this grandeur, are not homes for either of them and here they are outnumbered until they get back into the wilderness.

Soon, he tells the bird, though he knows it cannot hear him. Soon we'll be out of here.

The road is a dusty swirl of restlessness. The eight riders stop just beyond the city border, shedding armor for more comfortable travel clothes. Caj had worried, with the Paragon announcing her return, their travel would be more formal, but she seems to have wrangled this slice of peace for them at least.

For now, he amends, glancing back to where she rides, talking in low voices with the Skill master. They'll send an escort when we get closer to the front.

For now, their only addition is Ruben, who seems just as comfortable in rough, careworn clothes as he does silks. Still, the old man is tense on his mount, the air between him and the Paragon chilly.

Hiran said something about that, Caj remembers, sparing the Paragon's stony expression a glance before looking forward once more. The Skill master didn't want her to come out here.

He rides out a little further, silently volunteering to scout, and he hears the clatter of hooves follow as he scans the horizon.

But it's not as he feared: the slender, willowy figure has stayed behind and it is Finn who has rode ahead instead. The small boy glances at him, eyes wide, before looking up toward the hawk, flying out in front.

It takes only a few minutes before he cracks, as they all do when faced with silence.

"How'd you do it?" he asks plaintively and, when Caj only cocks an eyebrow, he adds: "Tara's bird. I've been trying to get him to sit on my shoulder for ages but he just tells me to go away and they've always let me pet them before but he's just so—"

He goes on for a while, aggrieved, and Caj lets him because he remembers the last time he saw this kid. He remembers what Finn did for him.

And Fae.

Something of it must show on his face because the kid goes quiet, his gaze sliding away.

"Did you tell Hiran and Tara?" he asks and Caj glances back.

"No," he answers because he had come back exhausted and starved, uninterested in anything that didn't involve sleep or food, but also because it wasn't his business.

He watches as the kid fiddles with the reins, staring down at his fingernails.

"I still dream about it," he says and his voice has dropped to a whisper. "I can feel their skin peeling off."

His eyes flit quickly to Caj's face before darting away.

"You felt it?"

He nods and he won't look at Caj now.

"All of it," he whispers.

He's still a kid, Caj thinks without any real heat, with something closer to wonder and maybe grief.

Kids, he thinks, his mind flitting back to sleepless nights in the howling dark, days spent digging for worms and huddled in tree hollows, alone, terrified, and starving. Kids shouldn't have to deal with this stuff.

"Imagine the best place you've ever been," he says and the boy turns back to him. "Imagine the way it smells, the way it looks, everything happy that happened there. Live in it for a while, and leave everything else at the door."

The boy chews on this, stewing in his own thoughts for a while.

"Where do you think of?" he asks eventually.

A small room, threadbare quilts, cackling fire, the warm spices scenting the air. She's alive here, healthy and laughing because he's hanging upside down on his chair, making faces for her. She always laughs when he crosses his eyes and it's an easy score but he takes it because he wants to keep hearing it, keep seeing her smile—

"Somewhere I can't go back to," he answers and he spurs his horse forward.

A/N: Ugh, I still love him so much. Who's your favorite of the seven?

Chapter notes: Finn saves Caj and Fae in Partisan's "That Was a Mistake" chapter.

In non-Partisan talk: I'm contemplating releasing a spooky little novella for October. Just a little excerpt (i.e. self-contained "bottle episode") from something I had toyed with before I started Partisan. Maybe a little interlude before the next book in this series. What do you think?