The Compass Rose

“Achz preserve us,” the farmer whispered, and took off at a run toward the battlefront. Though what he thought he could do, Aisse didn’t know. He was Farmer caste, not Warrior. But he’d left her blessedly alone.

Aisse dragged the bag close and clutched it to her chest as she crawled the few feet to her cup. It took her several minutes to fumble it into the bag, then she worked her way to the discarded beef. She didn’t try to clean it. She didn’t know whether she still had teeth strong enough to chew it. But she pushed as much of it as she could gather into the bag. Once that was done, she began to crawl the long, endless distance toward the cover of the trees outside camp.

The sun climbed higher in the sky while she crawled. At first, she flinched at every noise, tried to hide from the sound of running footsteps. But she couldn’t move fast enough to hide, and the footsteps always ran past, toward the city. Voices shouted one to the other about witches and evil and death magic. She didn’t care. As long as no one tried to stop her, they could blather about anything they liked. She was getting away.

Finally, she felt the cool shade fall across her head. Then her shoulders, her back, her legs. She kept going. She needed to find a place to hide. With so many dead—she’d understood that much, that thousands had died—they surely wouldn’t try to find her. They had more important things to do. But she didn’t want anyone stumbling across her accidentally and finishing the job the farmer had started.

Aisse crept off the path already formed by people walking to the nearby branch of the river. The trees were short compared to the high forests of her home, and most of the fallen wood had been collected and burned in fires over the last week. But down near the rivulet, she found a tree whose roots had been undermined by seasonal floods. The brown tangle had left a gap big enough to hide her.

She filled her bent cup with water and drank. Then she crawled into the tangle of roots. Her passage left marks in the sandy grit of the bank, but if she tried to erase them, she’d only leave more. Aisse curled into a ball and prayed that no one would find her. And if they did, she prayed for a quick death. She wouldn’t go back.

“Are you hurt?” Kallista whispered, searching Torchay for signs of injury.

He shook his head. After a moment, he stood. They huddled together on the city wall, staring out at what Kallista had wrought.

Nothing moved on the walls of Ukiny. After a time, a crow fluttered up and landed with caution. No arm waved it away. It cawed and pecked at the body where it stood.

Nothing moved on the plain west of the city, as far as the beginning of the white tents in the Tibran camp. The misty wave seemed to have lost power just there, for Kallista thought she could see wounded attempting to crawl back to safety.

On the waters of Ukiny Bay, Tibran ships sat at crazy angles, their masts snapped and splintered. They’d all been anchored closer to the city than the camp had been. Some ships had already sunk, the rest sinking or so damaged they’d never sail before next spring.

Within the city, Kallista could hear shouting, some of it joyous, some frightened. The mist hadn’t harmed Torchay. Could it have been so selective as to kill only Tibrans, leaving Adarans untouched?

“My gloves, Torchay. I need my gloves.”

“Yes, Captain.” He pulled them from his belt and helped her put them on, both of them fumbling at the task with shaking hands.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Torchay.” She fought to keep the quaver from her voice. “Please don’t be afraid of me now.”

“I am afraid for you. That’s a different sort of thing. Blessed One, Kallista, what happened?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—You heard what I said. And then there was power. So much—” She shivered and Torchay wrapped his arms around her, sharing his warmth as he had before. Her shivers weren’t due to cold this time, but still his presence stopped them.

“It sounds almost as if…” His voice came hesitant, fearful. “Could you have been…marked?”

Terrified, Kallista stared at him. “That’s just legend. Children’s stories. It isn’t real.”

“Isn’t it?” Torchay looked over her head at the devastation on the plains below.

Kallista shivered again. Or perhaps it was more of a shudder. “Isn’t it supposed to leave an actual mark? Something you can see? Or feel?”

Torchay’s hand that had been absently stroking the nape of her neck came down to claim her hand. He carried it back up to where he’d been touching her. “What do you feel?”

There, beneath her untidy queue, she felt a faint raised ridge on her skin. Her fingertips followed it down to a sort of knot, where another ridge intersected the first. Cold gripped her heart.

“Can you see it?” She held her hair up, out of the way, while Torchay bent to look.

“Yes,” he said. Nothing more.

“Well? What does it look like?”

“A scar. A red, raised scar.” He paused and his fingers touched. He traced along her spine, then perpendicular to it. “North. South. East. West.” He touched the point where the lines crossed, where Kallista had felt the knot. “And a rose in the center. It’s a perfect Compass Rose.”

She dropped her hair, pressed it down over the mark, over Torchay’s hand. “Maybe it was there already.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Kallista, I’ve braided your hair almost every day for nine years. It wasn’t there.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“Oh, sweet heaven, Torchay.” Kallista had reached the end of her strength. She’d poured it all out and had nothing left for her precious control. A tear trickled down her cheek. “I’m a soldier. Nothing more. I don’t want this.”

All she’d ever wanted was an ordinary life. An ilian of her own. Family. Friends. But from the day her magic first woke when she was thirteen, and she killed one of the family’s supper chickens with an out-of-control lightning bolt, she’d been destined for the military.

Her dreams had shrunk from love and family to duty and comrades. And now, even that threatened to be taken from her. Punishment for finding a friend.

On his feet again, Torchay carefully wiped the tear away with his thumb. “Nevertheless.”

“I’d rather have a friend.”

“Is that what you’re fretting about?” His northern mountains accent came out as he teased. “You’ve still got that. You’ll not get rid of me so easily.”

“Naitan. Are you injured?” One of the regular Adaran troops put his head above the walkway, standing on a Tibran ladder. “General Uskenda has ordered every able-bodied soldier to assemble in the West Gate Square as soon as possible.”

Kallista nodded stiffly. “Tell the general I’ll be there. I am unharmed. My troop—” She took a deep breath. “I believe the rest of my troop is dead.”

The soldier nodded back, trying to stare at all the bodies surrounding her without appearing to do so. “Thank you, Captain.”

She hoped to put in an appearance at the assembly point and be dismissed to go check on her naitani in the tower. There was a chance, albeit a very faint one, that they yet lived. But the general spotted her quickly and gestured her to approach.

It had been a vain hope anyway, Kallista thought as she worked her way through the forming ranks. The blue and black she and Torchay wore made them stand out in the sea of dun-brown infantry tunics like flowers in a field of dead grass.

General Huyis Uskenda was in the midst of taking reports and giving orders when Kallista reached her side, and she didn’t stop. Kallista edged closer, hoping to hear something of the battle as a whole.

“They’re all dead,” the captain of the lone troop of cavalry was saying, her white rank ribbons lying limp and blood-spattered against the shoulders of her gray uniform. “Every Tibran in the city. They hadn’t penetrated as far as the Mother Temple, so I didn’t have to ride the whole city.

“They’re all dead on the plain too, at least what my troopers and I could see on a quick patrol. There may be survivors near the camp. We didn’t ride that close because I know for certain there are survivors in the camp. They took potshots at us from the tents with those hand cannon of theirs.”

“Good, good.” Uskenda nodded, the layered red ribbons of rank on her brown tunic so thick they looked like fringe.

Uskenda was better than the usual run of general, her mind sharp enough to adapt to freakish enemy tactics without panicking and still young enough to walk farther than from her bed to the dinner table. Promotion in the Adaran army was based on seniority. Those who lived long enough to achieve a general’s rank tended to cling to it until they died at their posts, whether they could still do the job or not.

This explained why Kallista was merely a captain at her age of thirty-four years, though promotion did tend to be a bit quicker among the naitani. She shuddered to think of some of the generals she’d served under who might have been assigned to defend this city. Uskenda was indeed a godsend in comparison.

“What about Adarans?” The general turned to an aide, a young man attached to her staff. “Did that…whatever it was…slaughter our people as well as the Tibrans?”