The Shadow City. Ryan Wieser
lying on her side. She blinked and a heron flew off the surface of the smooth water. She took a deep breath, rolling to her back. Why was she here? She hadn’t planned on going to the reservoir. The sky was changing already—darkening. Clouds rolled into one. There was a dark cloud, or was it smoke? The distinct smell of burning filled her nostrils and she thought she might be ill. She rolled to her side and suddenly saw the boy. With just one look at his charcoal-smudged face, she remembered everything.
She didn’t feel fear towards him, though she knew she should. He was one of them. His master had killed her family. The thought of it, the smell of the crisp burned wood and flesh, the memory of red fire circling them, it was too much to contain. She rolled onto her side, turning her back to the boy, and heaved. She didn’t want him to come near her, to attempt to soothe her. She was thankful to find he didn’t.
She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, noticing how her fingers and arms had distinctly fewer black smoke stains than the boy’s. She watched him using his cloak to clean his skin and knew he must have done the same for her. It was odd to think he had cleaned her, tended to her, in her unconsciousness. She took a deep breath, surprised to learn she could. Her chest did not ache with fire damage.
“I healed you,” he answered her unspoken thoughts.
Of course he knew her mind; he was a telepath. That was what their kind could do. She shot him her most critical stare. “What do you mean?”
He turned back to the water, dampening his cloak once more before scrubbing his neck. “I healed your lungs. It is something only I can do,” he answered. His words were very matter-of-fact. He may have sounded arrogant, but Jessop thought he also somehow sounded lonely. As though being singular was the most isolating feeling in the world. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t—losing your family was.
She thought of her parents, and her chest fluttered with hope. “If you can heal, then why are we still here? My mother and father,” she began, jumping to her feet.
He was on his feet in an instant, standing before her, his hands out to stop her. “I can’t…I can’t heal the dead.”
She looked up into his gray eyes and wanted to tell him otherwise, wanted to somehow talk him into being able to do it, as if that were even possible. “But—”
“I couldn’t even heal your father before…His wounds were too grave. I tried. I tried so hard I was too drained to fight. I’m sorry.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. How could he be sorry? He had come here and helped ruin her life. “I wish you’d let me die with them.”
He nodded down at her slowly before turning back to the water. “I know you do.”
* * * *
His name was Falco Bane. As soon as he introduced himself to Dezane, she remembered the man—Hydo Jesuin—saying it before, in her home. Dezane had shown up, with his warriors in tow, ready to save them. He said he saw the smoke in the distance—an impressive feat in itself, Jessop knew—and readied his fighters as quickly as possible. They had simply been too late.
Two of the warriors who had known her parents well wept openly, comforted by their comrades. Dezane had silent tears as he stared at Jessop, unable to take his sad eyes off of her. She had hugged him for the longest time, wishing that if the boy couldn’t fix this, then perhaps Dezane—a true elder—could. But he couldn’t. No one could. They were gone and she was supposed to live without them.
They had made the slow walk back to the village, leaving her scorched home behind. Jessop wasn’t really with them though, even if she walked in the center of their group. Her heart was burned to ash with her parents, her mind was soaring above with the falcons, her body was nothing but a mobile corpse. The boy may have thought he saved her from that blaze, but she had died with her parents.
They had made their way to the council tent, where the elders convened on all their important matters. The Kuroi tents were grand structures; fixed out of hide and wood, they stood some forty feet high, many as high as the trees that surrounded her home. That used to surround her home.
As they had walked through the village, Kuroi tribesmen she knew stood outside their home tents and wept for her, welcoming back their loved ones who had been too late to save the family that lived in the green. They may have shown her sympathy, but she knew they were grateful it was her family who had died and not theirs. She couldn’t blame them. She would have felt the same.
She sat with Dezane DeHawn and the boy in the council tent, as it grew darker and darker around the world. She thought it might be raining, with the slow pattering against the tent walls, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She rocked slowly back and forth on her haunches, listening to the boy talk to Dezane.
“He has been like this for too long…he acts wholly different in the Blade, but when we come here, it is to torment your people, as you know all too well. It is time for the Assembly Council to learn his true nature.”
Jessop couldn’t help but notice how he didn’t speak like a boy, but like a man. It wasn’t just because his voice was deep—it was something else. He had authority, and power, and the confidence that came with true power. He spoke to Dezane like they were equals, though one was a great elder and the other just a gray-eyed telepath.
“You hide your scars well under your cloak and tunic, boy, but I know we are not the only ones that man has tortured,” Dezane answered. Jessop didn’t know what he was referring to, but Dezane often spoke of things she did not know.
“My scars matter not. There are many who know the truth of my nature, of my destiny. I do not fear Hydo.”
Dezane nodded thoughtfully. “It has been spoken about even here. My son, Trax, has told me much about you. The next true Lord and Protector.”
Jessop wasn’t following their conversation. She was hearing the words they were speaking, and she knew of Trax, Dezane’s son who had been raised with the telepaths, but she didn’t know what they were talking about—or why they were talking about it. Her parents had been killed; nothing they were talking about mattered.
The tent flap hit the back of the canvas wall with the muted clap of hide meeting hide. A young warrior with glowing blue eyes appeared in the dark entryway. He ducked into the tent, and Jessop saw in his hand a flaming torch. As the young man made his way towards the fire pit in the center of the tent, Jessop suddenly stopped breathing. The air in her body simply disappeared. It felt as though something were attacking her, and she scurried back on her palms, knowing she needed to put distance between herself and the warrior. As her back hit a wooden post in the tent wall she knew she was trapped. She grabbed her chest; she could feel her racing heart, panicking as her body fought for air. Her eyes wide though she saw only darkness and fire.
She heard the boy yell, “Get out!”
She saw nothing but the flames, felt nothing but the smoke filling her lungs once again. He had said he had healed her—had it been some trick? Had he been mistaken and she was now dying a delayed death from the smoke?
Her vision disappeared as she fell to the side, her face hitting the dusty ground with a heavy thud. There was a ringing sound, the source of which she did not know. As her chest fluttered with futile attempts to breathe, her fingers loosened their hold on her breastbone. She was going to be with her parents now. She closed her eyes, feeling her chest deflate further and further. Suddenly, strong hands pulled her up. She was being held in someone’s arms, her back forced against a chest much stronger than hers.
She could feel a heartbeat—but not her own. His. She felt it through his chest, through her back, near her own.
He held her tightly. “Breathe with me,” he ordered her. His chest expanded, pushing into her back. His breaths were deep and slow. She somehow opened her eyes; the tent wall appeared fuzzy before her. Dezane was crouched near, but his edges were blurred, and she could not make out the features of his face. She felt the rhythmic thumping of the boy’s heart, and it was all she could focus on.
“Breathe with