Partisan - Book II

Persistent Heart

The front line is a sea of grass; long, rolling plains that stretch out toward distant, murky mountains. Somewhere out there, beyond that unseen line between kingdoms, are the Jarles.

This wandering group settles in at the Keesark base camp, receiving an update from the commanding officer. It would have been Keesark's Commander Sinfui, but it's just Allayria's luck that he is gone—at a meeting with Sofo in Dangok, the kingdom capital.

"We'll wait for him," Ruben had said to the commander's leading general, a stout, formidable-looking woman he calls "Jin." "He'll know where would be best to start."

Awaiting orders, Allayria thinks in her tent now, finger tapping on the wooden bracelet.

"You're a little dog on a leash to them," the memory of him hisses, all venom and spite. "Something to flaunt and control—"

She pushes the thought away.

Play for time, she tells herself. Play for time inside this polite cage.

Fae has sent word to Leo, tucking in there a little bundled package, a note and a book, with instructions to be left in a little nook on a nearby street, where a long-fingered thief or associate might collect it. Perhaps write a reply. It's not the safest of methods, but she thinks it is vague enough, referential enough to be unclear to anyone but him. It will do, until she can think of something better.

Lei walks in through the connecting flap of their tents. In honor of her station the general had given her a regent tent, a bedroom and receiving antechamber with an accompanying ancillary tent for a personal guard. Allayria thought the whole thing insulting, but Lei did not complain.

Before Quersido she might have ungraciously thought it was because the attached chambers made it easier for him to keep track of her. Now...

He's got a bundle of maps in his arms and he drops them on the table, perching on the rickety sofa next to it. She knows Beinsho gave him information before they left—orders, probably, for Halften-related pursuits. Intel, troop checkup, and the like. She wonders how long Lei will stay with them, how long before he splits off to do whatever it is Beinsho sent him to do. His part in the team is done: he has fulfilled Beinsho's direct imperative.

"They're only going to use you until they don't need you anymore—"

His brown eyes flicker up curiously as she stands and stalks around the room.

How do I break out? she presses, pushing harder at the increasingly obvious gaps of her knowledge, hoping that force of will might somehow cause them to break. Make friends? Alliances? The commanding officer—

"He has his orders," Lei had said another time, about another general.

Loyal, steadfast, she decides. They will not turn—

"What are you doing?"

Allayria halts.

"Thinking about my next move."

His eyes immediately narrow at this, an old suspicion at the way her mind moves.

"We are awaiting orders. We'll move out when we know more information—"

A part of her viscerally snarls at this, but she tamps it down, holding it in deep where she hopes he cannot see.

"Yes, but we'll need to go immediately when those orders are given—it's best to prepare now," she says, holding tight to the even tone of her voice as she quickly begins to ramble off a long list of harmless tasks she might be thinking about: "Look over the supplies, weaponry, potential backup. And our training plan needs to be revised, when you go we'll be down to two Nature-callers and—"

"I'm not going," he blurts out and she halts.

A dull flush has risen in his cheeks but he doesn't look away.

"I'm not going back to Beinsho," he repeats, and then he clears his throat. "That is, if you'll let me stay."

"Life became predictable, safe, and he naturally became devoted to the contained, disciplined men who gave it to him," an old echo of Ruben says in her head, always reminding her of how she should be better, think better. "Beinsho and many of the other officers here have protected Lei from a lot of unpleasant things over the years..."

"You don't have to—" she averts her eyes. "If you don't want—"

"I wouldn't say it if I wasn't certain," he snaps, rising up and chucking his boots in a bin.

Loyal, steadfast. He will not turn.

Some part of her, not wholly ruined, wants to touch his face.

It has been at least a fortnight since he had set his mouth against hers, and he has not repeated the gesture, nor any of the gestures that had followed that. In the silence of dark nights she ponders it, this thing they have done, their kind coldness.

"We'll have to go in," she says because he has to understand what he's agreeing to, and he looks up. "To Vatra. To your—"

The color in his cheeks blanches but he holds his expression in place.

"I know."

You don't have to, she wants to say. We can spare you this at least.

But he has that look, that lock-jawed, hard look, the one he had in that first twilight fight when he waited for the glint of steel. He won't let himself be spared.

So she doesn't say it. She just steps forward, her wary hand on his reluctant one, holding carefully, placing his above the persistent thunder of her heart.

"You are alive as much as I am alive," she says, an old echo of words he once spoke, "And as long as I am alive, you'll stay alive."

A/N: JUST MAKE OUT (again) ALREADY.

Just kidding, that would take a level of forthrightness and self awareness that neither of them currently possesses.

*suffering intensifies*