The Fire Eye Refugee Read online

  Kay leaned in close to the toady. “Tell Vascal to fuck off,” she said, and followed Amos out of the tent.

  They walked together in silence for a minute. Kay noticed Amos didn’t bother checking whether they were being followed. It all spoke to an uneasy bargain. One Quaid had tested, maybe even on Vascal’s orders. And Amos had made it clear his brief absence wasn’t a softening of the lines he enforced.

  “Sorry,” he said eventually. “I shouldn’t have brought you along.”

  Kay shrugged. “But then I would never have met your friends.”

  Amos gave a slight laugh. He started walking again. “This camp isn’t big enough for me and the likes of Vascal. If things don’t change soon, one of us will be found in a ditch.”

  “Well, he didn’t seem all bad. Good fashion sense.”

  Amos stopped. Though they had gone far beyond and the tent was no longer visible, he looked back in that direction. “The nosering was new. His people losing a war and their homeland has been profitable for him. So many easy pickings all packed together. Men like him are thriving in the chaos. I wish we could say the same about the rest of us.”

  “Why the interest in me?”

  Amos snorted, then looked down. Kay could detect a blush rising. “You know…” When she didn’t respond, he spoke haltingly. “He likes…well, you’re beautiful. He’d have you as a trophy.”

  Kay felt a surprisingly warm sensation in her chest. When was the last time someone had called her beautiful? Had anyone ever said that to her? Certainly not when she was within a mile of Abi. She gave a start as she realized Amos was walking again, leaving her behind.

  She caught up with him. After a few more steps, she gave him a sly glance out of the corner of her eye. “I know what you want to ask me. And it’s okay, I’ll tell you. Yes, I think you’d look good with a nosering.”

  He laughed and they walked through the tents together, talking quietly. What threats were around them had the decency to stay hidden for a time.

  Chapter 17. Lines on a Map

  Amos’ tent was roomy, a little off to the side, part of a cluster where most of the tents were unlit. “There’s not much privacy, but I’ve claimed what I can. Most of the Pathfinders roam around a fair bit so it can be quiet. And people know not to mess with our stuff and we don’t get bothered.”

  Kay thought about what a privilege that must be in the camps. Her mind went back to the drunk man who had attacked her earlier. Back to Amos beating on Quaid for hustling protection money. Even with the oversight of people like Amos and the Pathfinders in place, the vulnerable on this side of the walls probably slept in shifts with knives nearby.

  She stepped inside the tent. It was dark. There was an orderly bedroll to one side and a rug across the floor. A writing desk covered in maps with various colors inked on them. They spilled out onto the floor. Amos closed the flap behind her. Kay looked around, ending with her gaze on the canvas ceiling.

  “Do you have a sky flap?”

  “I do. I don’t use it often.” He found a cord and began pulling it. The top of the tent folded back, creating a square opening facing the night sky. The Fire Eye was visible, dead center of the square.

  “It’s perfect,” Kay said.

  “You really like that thing, don’t you?” He was rummaging around, looking for his lantern. “Abi said you usually take the week off just to stare at it.”

  “Abi talks too much.” Kay fought a flush of jealousy at the thought of Amos with Abi. Of course, she had pushed them together.

  “Yeah. Maybe so.” He lit the lantern and hung it from the ceiling, filling the tent with a warm light. He rummaged around some more and came up with a bottle. “I don’t know if I can go quite as hard as last night.”

  Kay laughed, trying to push back the quick flood of memories of her own last night, a pile of dead in a room with a noose. “Sounds like a smart plan.” She took the small glass he handed her and let him pour a measure of liquor into it. She took a sip and looked up at the sky.

  As the tent fell silent, Amos moved over to a small washbowl in the corner. He poured water in the bowl from a canteen and began washing his hands. The water quickly turned red from the blood creased in his knuckles. His face was unguarded for a moment as he looked down, and Kay saw the deep tiredness under his placid expression. He hid the hopelessness that infested the camp better than the others. Kay knew the exhaustion of trying to build a new life when the old one had burned down around your ears. For the first time, she considered that maybe she was lucky she had been alone in her exile. She had no help, but she also had no one else to worry over. Nothing else to lose. Amos had no such luck. He had countless others to protect. And his one night out of the camp had tested the rules, the boundaries he’d tried to establish and defend. So he was left washing the blood of one of his own people off his hands.

  He saw her watching and gave a weary smile. “No place like home, eh?” He looked up at the Fire Eye without rising from his knees. “So, what exactly is that thing?”

  Kay fought a smile. “No one knows. Everyone pretends to, there are whole wings of the Dynasty’s libraries dedicated to it, but they don’t know. Just every year it opens, sits over Celest for six days, watching us, then closes. And it is beautiful.”

  “So what do you think it is, then?”

  “Honest answer, I don’t care. I just know the first time I saw it, I fell in love. It felt like it was there just for me, not for anybody else. It was mine. And I didn’t have much else. And over time, I learned to love its dependability. No one can stop it, prevent it. Close it before it is good and ready to close.”

  “Sounds like a religious thing? I thought the Gol weren’t so into that.”

  “That’s mostly true. The Dynasty doesn’t love religion. They don’t love anything that muddies the vision of them as our benevolent overlords. A god or gods would just be competition. Which isn’t to say that you can’t find plenty of self-appointed priests wandering around the city, offering explanations as to why the Fire Eye is unique to their religion and how if we just listen to them and do what they say, we’ll somehow get more out of it. I don’t have time for that. The best thing about it is that we’re all equal under the Fire Eye. They can’t change that. They’ve tried and they’re not the only ones. One of the previous Dynasties tried. They ordered everyone to keep their eyes on the ground during the Fire Eye. That didn’t work out so well for them. It belongs to Celest.”

  “But not the Farrow.”

  “It belongs to the city. Whoever dwells there, wherever they’re from. And if the city burns to the ground it will belong to the rats that wander the ruins.”

  “You know,” Amos said quietly, now sitting beside her and looking up, “we’re afraid of it.”

  “Why? It’s not hurting anyone.”

  “How can we not be? We’re in a strange land. I’d never been more than ten miles inside Gol territory. And most of the people in the camps had never been ten miles from their hometowns. Now we’re all uprooted in this strange land with this quiet people who seem to ignore us, beyond telling us where we can’t go, and not being pushovers about it too. So we’re left here in our holding pen, waiting on you all.” He took a long drink. “And we’d heard about the Fire Eye. We put word out throughout the camps. Some people were excited and brought out blankets to watch the Opening, sat with their children. But when it opened, I think everyone was afraid. It’s, like, some sort of sign, in a year where all the signs have been bad ones. And when we think of fire, we think of losing our homes. We think of the Winden. And now it perches in the sky above us, even in the daylight. I don’t think you’ll find too many tents with their sky flaps open tonight. We’ll be happy when it closes. Assuming that’s not the day we’re driven off these lands.”

  “I don’t know,” Kay said. “I’ll bet somewhere in these camps, there’s a little girl who found peace when she saw it. Or a little boy. Or an old man. Someone is looking up there and knowing they don’t have
to be afraid.”

  She took another drink. They were silent for a few long moments. Kay stood and began looking around the tent. Her eyes were drawn by the piles of maps and she walked over to them. “Are these all the same?” Each was a map of Farrow, colored lines all over them.

  “The basemap is the same,” Amos replied. “I bought a bunch of those. I added the colored lines. When I get new reports I have to start all over.”

  “Show me.”

  “Well, here’s the latest.” He pulled a map off the writing desk. Kay sat on the rug, Amos next to her, rolling the map out. “Each color is a month. The line shows the fronts. It’s basically an account of the Winden advance, because it doesn’t do much aside from move east. The only spot we reclaimed any territory was here,” he pointed to a small northwestern part of Farrow, “and you can see we lost it again the next month. So this blue line shows how far the Winden had advanced by summer. I was on the northern front, so these up here are all pretty refined, but I change up the western lines every time more fighters arrive at the camp and I learn something new.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “A couple reasons. Mainly it passes the time. But they’re still out there. If we can learn something from this…well, we might need to learn something from it. We need to learn something. If the Gol turn us away, they’ll probably force us to march straight west. Put us on the other side of the Melor river. The Winden will gather their troops here and here.” His thick knuckles brushed the map carefully. “Once the Gol have set their border, the Winden will crush us against the river, the Gol preventing us from crossing and pretending they’re not part of the slaughter happening in front of them. Pretend it has nothing to do with them.”

  Kay looked up at his face, raw with emotion. She looked back at the map. There was a red line down the middle of the map. It swelled out to encompass Ferris, the capital city of Farrow. A place she’d once called home. She touched it gently.

  “Second month of last year,” he said. “That’s when they took Ferris. That’s when we knew we’d lost.”

  “Where were you?”

  “When Ferris fell? I was riding west across the plains as fast as I could.” He pointed a few inches east of Ferris. “But I was too late. We came upon the fleeing population, then the retreating forces. Our commanders told us to turn and start scouting for safe paths east. Told us to get them to the border. Get everyone across fast so the Gol didn’t have time to close it.”

  “I don’t know much about the Winden.”

  “You are blessed in that. Not many of us did before the war started. The Winden look so much like the Gol we would lump them together as one race. We were the pale ones, you all were golden devils, sungods. But we learned about the Winden quickly.”

  He looked down at the map, tracing the steadily marching lines across his homeland. “They always attack where you aren’t expecting. They live to beguile. It means if you see one, you’re under attack by two. We would do our absolute best scouting. I would be certain there were a hundred Winden in a valley. Then we would assume two hundred. They would appear behind us, above us, sometime even under us in tunnels. They were never where we expected them.

  “Up in the Fellocks, there was always some pressing issue, some pressing attack that you had to pay attention to. While you were distracted from what you were certain was the real threat, they had somehow gotten around your lines and were attacking you exactly where you were most vulnerable. And they took prisoners. So many prisoners. It felt like they were after prisoners so much more than victory. Like they wanted us at their mercy. Not to win the war. Just to have us. In a war you have strategic objectives. Take a fort, hold a bridge. They never seemed to care about things like that. They would do enough to press, but it always seemed to be about killing as many of us as they could.

  “The prisoners they took never lasted the night. Usually they’d kill them at nightfall. There would be huge ceremonies, lit by massive fires. Sometimes we could hear the screams. They’d let us come in close, like they wanted us to see. Big, unnatural fires, strange lights. The next day we’d find bodies. Sometimes hung, sometimes burned. Sometimes row after row of prisoners drowned in a bucket. The stuff of nightmares.” He looked up at Kay. “You know how the Gol do whatever the Dynasty tells them?”

  Kay shrugged. “It’s not quite that simple.”

  “Well,” Amos said, “to us that’s the way it looks. Everyone moves diligently in the same direction and listens to the same guidance. Well, the Winden are kind of like that. Except the Dynasty is at least human. The Winden worship a god they call Lazurli. And they think he thrives off sacrifice.” His eyes had returned to the map, finger lingering on top of Ferris.

  “How did you learn this?”

  “Oh, they’ll tell you. If you capture a Winden, and that’s not easy, they’ll tell you all about Lazurli. You can’t really trust a word about anything else, it’s always some feint or misinformation. But they are consistent about Lazurli. That’s why I’m confident they’ll be waiting for us at the border if we’re forced off Gol lands. It was never about winning the war. It was about feeding as many bodies as possible to their god.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “No doubt. And the hardest thing is most people don’t get it. They refuse to believe the Winden are any different than other men. They think those of us who got close to them are just traumatized or were fooled by some showmanship. They don’t see the threat. They treat the Winden like an ordinary army. Do you have any idea how many people we sent to them in the name of negotiations? They must have laughed each time. I can guarantee no one ever got as far as sitting down at a table. They were butchered, another body for their god. At least the Pathfinders have some voice here in the camp. We’ve earned some credibility and we make sure no one forgets that the Winden are not the kind to discuss treaty or surrender terms.” Amos fell silent.

  After staring at him a few moments, Kay looked up. It was full dark now. “Put out the light,” she said gently. She watched his large shoulders roll under his shirt as he turned to the lamp and doused it, thinking about the looks of gratitude he’d gotten as he walked around the camp filling his role as a protector of those weaker than him. She normally liked to be alone when she watched the Fire Eye, but for once she didn’t mind the company. There were many things he wouldn’t understand about her, but he had a quiet confidence that was slowly drawing her in.

  They sat together in the dark, both staring up at the Fire Eye. Amos fetched the bottle and they began quietly passing it back and forth. Each time they passed the bottle their hands touched. After a time, Kay realized Amos wasn’t taking the bottle, just touching her hand. She looked up, a little surprised, and saw he was staring at her. The light of the Fire Eye was framing his face, hard lines softened in its glow. She reached out and touched his face with her other hand. Caressed his cheek where his bruises from the fight had faded to yellow. She carefully set the bottle on the ground to the side and pulled him in to kiss him.

  Then they were kissing and soon after that they were pulling at each other’s clothes. Kay couldn’t help a noise of approval as she got his shirt off and saw his hard muscles and rough scars. He did the same as he revealed the soft, golden skin along her belly and hips. Once they were naked and had fumbled their way onto the bedroll, Kay climbed on top of him. She moaned as he entered her and began gently grinding into him. It had been a long time and there was pain, but the pleasure soon took over and she began moving faster.

  She pulled at his shoulders and managed to communicate that she wanted him on top. He wrapped a strong arm around her and lifted her up into the air, settling her down on the blankets. His heavy weight followed and he drove deep inside her. They settled into a new rhythm, and she pulled his head close into her shoulder. She discretely lifted her eyes and there it was, the Fire Eye above him, above her, above all of them. Fire had never been sexual for her and she had never made love under the Fire Eye, but tonight it felt ri
ght. Powerfully, overwhelmingly right. The farthest thing from a bug in the dark, a scared little girl playing with matches or digging into the dirt until she lost her fingernails. She was a hero, she was a finder of lost things. A woman. A lover. She was Keara the Spark, in her own way a beautiful and special reflection of the majesty that gazed down on Celest. The bug crawled off somewhere, hopefully to die in the dark, and she grinded harder and faster, both of them getting louder, and then stretched out a single hand, reaching towards the skies as she climaxed, every inch of her fighting to get closer to the Fire Eye, to her saving grace.

  Chapter 18. Ban Terrel’s Gardens

  Kay left the camps early, Amos a few steps behind her. The morning had been comfortable. They hadn’t acknowledged what had happened, but at the same time neither seemed embarrassed or distant. They’d woken on separate bedrolls and slid right back into the working relationship. It was smooth. Kay felt good about that. She had enough on her mind.

  The Fire Eye had recharged her, reached deep inside her and quelled the spark that had been growing. It had forced her fire lust into retreat. The morning sun seemed bright as she negotiated their way back through the gates, checking for watchers. A bank of clouds to the east hinted of rain later, but for now the weather was fair.

  She led Amos back to the office, where they found the front door still locked. Neither Abi nor Joah had arrived yet. There was a note wedged in the door which read Back at nightfall – Yamar.

  Kay decided to go see Ban Terrel herself. She wanted to see his reaction, not filter their communication through Yamar. Amos wanted to come, but Kay knew she would already attract enough attention as a mixed-blood in the upscale neighborhood of Ban Terrel’s estate. She sent him upstairs with instruction to review the refugee council roster and schedule and to see what else he could find in the books in her office.