...You Don't Forget, Ch. 15/18
Title: ...You Don't Forget, Ch. 15/18 (+epilogue)
Author: blindswandive
Characters/Pairing: Ambrose/Cain; feat. DG, Az, OC, +surprise
Rating: PG13 - PG16
Summary: This is a very long story that has been going on for a very long time. There are broken people and awkward relationships. There are unhappy pasts, a complicated present, and an uncertain future. There are intrigues and secrets and implications and uncertainties. There is alien hand syndrome, post traumatic stress disorder, sexual hangups, and more petty injuries than are probably fair. There is, above all, love. And it all started with brain surgery, one time or another. I recommend starting from the beginning, or from the other beginning, depending on your tastes in beginnings (or in brain surgery).
This chapter contains near misses, and misses that aren't, the revelation of previously obscured identities, visions, smoke, and fire.
Warnings: Beheaded flowers, spiteful princesses, a smug inspector, and an unpromising ending.
Disclaimer: Characters and Oz and O.Z. belong to Baum, SciFi, etc. Storyline/writing are mine, and I'm not turning a profit from it.
Word Count: 2869
Cross posted to glitch_wyatt.
Feedback is always, always love. Story is finally finished and will be posted approx. 1 chapter per day (+ epilogue) until it's all up. ...Can't believe it's a year and a half since I last posted.
Previous chapters/series:
Fourteen • Thirteen • Twelve • Eleven • Ten • Nine • Eight • Seven • Six • Five • Four • Three • Two • One • Evil Like That (1-5)
Chapter 15
"Cain..." Ambrose pleaded, dusting Cain's jacket compulsively with his palms. "Please, this is important... The stories--"
"--I know, I know, they have to match. I got surly and went out chopping wood on my bum knee like an idiot. I came back home. Sunshine, grumpy old bastard is the best they're going to get out of me; they'll have to take it and like it."
It wasn't a hard act to pull. The painkillers had left Cain with a hell of a hangover, and when the adrenaline that had carried him through the day before had worn off, he'd seen just how much damage he'd done his knee--and shoulder--and arm--by hauling the little cart through the woods, laden with bodies. He was groggy and hateful of the sunlight, and anything that involved him getting off of the sofa. That covered Bernhaben handily. And Ambrose's constant quizzing and drilling of what he was supposed to say wasn't helping matters any.
After a moment of visible oscillating, lilting foot to foot, Ambrose finally thinned his mouth and nodded. "Well, it'll certainly be believable," he said crossly. "Just remember not to mention--well, anyone, or anything. He'll take any excuse to harass people, the mean old thing."
Cain arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.
In the light of a new day, Ambrose's flusteredness with Acting Investigator Bernhaben had morphed into a strange kind of irritated loathing that Cain hadn't been able to quite fix in place. Cain wondered if there was some history there Ambrose wasn't mentioning, or wasn't remembering--it wouldn't be the first time he'd omitted useful details like that, on purpose or not.
But he suspected the man was just a convenient target. Ambrose might really be wanting to retaliate against the Princess (who had worn his nerves thin with cryptic sniping, that morning), or against Cain (for his petty vengeance on the tree), but they were both frail and beaten, and Bernhaben was, as far as Cain knew, healthy, and anyway absent. Ambrose could direct as much spite and ire in his direction as he had contained in his tightly wound body without risking lashing out at anyone more fragile. Bernhaben was an acceptable target, if Cain wasn't.
And Ambrose wasn't looking at Cain much. That was a poor sign.
Cain ground his teeth curiously for a moment, and watched while Ambrose remembered he'd been headed to the stove, before he'd decided Cain needed another round of quizzing. Giving in, he asked simply, "You mad at me?"
"Mad?" Ambrose asked, vaguely, only half attentive. His left hand was attempting to add the berries to the oatmeal before it was cooked, rather than after.
"...About the tree," Cain expanded.
"Ah. Yes. No--I'm--I'm traumatized," Ambrose began, finally setting the berries back down in their bowl. "Traumatized and shocked and scattered, and awfully sore, but not actually mad at you for cutting it down," he explained, surprisingly clearly.
Cain blinked, and felt his mangled spirits lift slightly.
"It's probably for the best that the damn thing is gone," Ambrose sighed. "Then I can't..."
Cain looked up sharply.
When Ambrose didn't continue, Cain prompted, "Then you can't what?"
"Can't..." Ambrose tried again, frowned, and then lost the thread completely. "Cain, do you smell smoke?"
After that, things seemed to go downhill very quickly.
***************
"Bernie, you have to listen to me," DG insisted, stamping her foot. "I swear, I felt something from Az last night, and it was coming from that town on the other side of the grounds. I couldn't--I couldn't get much from her, just... just pain, and it was a tiny, cramped room, and there were men there, and there was smoke, and--"
"How many men?" Acting Investigator Bernhaben interrupted, even though she was a Princess.
"I don't know," DG responded, barely derailed. "I think two or three. Or maybe two men and a woman... It was hard to see, but they had her in that tiny little room and she was hurt and it was," (and here she pointed fiercely like a child) "over there. And you need to take some people out there and find her, 'cause she might still be there."
Bernhaben paused to consult a page of notes.
"Princess Dorothy Gale," he said calmly, "I cannot presently, given your information, pursue your wishes. We have already searched the town thoroughly, and the Princess Azkadellia was not present. Furthermore, I have appointments coming up presently, including interviewing Mister Cain to verify--"
"Damn it, Bernard, forget about Mister Cain and get back out to that town! So what if she wasn't there when you checked? She could have gone there afterwards! What if she was kidnapped? What if they're moving her as we speak?" DG railed, her voice raising uncharacteristically into something frantic and demanding.
Bernhaben once again, very slowly, consulted the page.
"Are you certain of the validity of your vision, Princess Dorothy Gale?"
DG nodded fiercely. "I know I was feeling Azkadellia, and Raw was--was with me, and he said he was sure it was from her, and from right then at that moment. And," she added suddenly, "from that direction."
Another protracted pause.
"And is it your direct order that, on this information, I proceed to the town to repeat my search?"
DG's eyes glinted and hardened. "Yes. Inspector," she said, drawing herself up straight, "I command you to lead a search of the town."
"As you command, Princess," Bernhaben said automatically, stepping to attention.
"And I'm coming," DG added, turning to stalk out first.
"As you command," Bernhaben repeated, and, after gathering his things, followed her, if in rather his own time, towards the grounds.
As he followed, he paused to send two runners: one to gather a guard contingent for a search, and one to inform Wyatt Cain that their interview would be postponed until after a more pressing avenue of inquiry was pursued thoroughly.
The second runner passed DG as she stamped across the grounds toward the thin road that cut around the wood. He broached the treeline about the same time that the first runner had gathered a sufficient company, and they, just behind Bernhaben, were starting at a steady clip toward the road.
***
Everything seemed to have happened so fast...
Cain had limped to the back room, to try to swat out the bedspread that Azkadellia had somehow conspired to light, with herself on top of it.
And then there was a pounding on the door, and Ambrose was running to put out that fire, before it could spark. And he even managed to bluff the suspicious runner away with sheer aplomb, claiming a kitchen fire, and Cain was proud of him.
There were a few more frantic moments, but Cain got the little smoldering fire to stop, in the end, by unceremoniously dumping a pail of water over the bed, Azkadellia included, and her indignant spluttering was so perfectly absurd that Cain and Ambrose both collapsed at their little table, giddy with the relief from their panic, choking on terrified laughter.
And so, it was a few minutes more of relative relief and peace before Ambrose wondered aloud at why Bernhaben's men would be going back to the village.
***
Cain sobered. Panic swept back over him with the vengeance of the deferred.
"The village?" he repeated, throat suddenly dry, "Are you sure?"
"Well, I'm not positive, but the messenger was making straight for the road," Ambrose argued, a little displeased at being doubted. "I watched him a little while, since he seemed to be in a hurry," he added, folding his arms in only a little defiance. "Anyway, why? Is that a problem?"
"In a hurry," Cain repeated vaguely, as the icy tightening in his chest made him wonder if his heart were about to wind down or break a spring. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and hoped it was just the concussion. He closed his eyes and tried to gather his wits.
What had Ambrose said about DG, yesterday? Something about her getting a 'bad vibe' from somewhere...? They'd been in the village, Azkadellia had been on death's door... DG was getting so good at finding the things she wanted to find, she'd said...
Azkadellia's voice floated in on the tense silence from the next room. "Two little princesses, dancing in a row..." she lilted, high and wan. And then she giggled, on some bent impulse of her own.
A phantom pain shot through Cain's chest, and his good hand lurched up to clutch at it.
He felt the little horse in his pocket, there. It had taken some painful, creaking bending to get down to the floor, that morning, but he had rescued it from the shadows and a lone dustbunny by the edge of the sofa, and now it was right over his heart, just where it had been when it had saved him from Zero's gun. When Jeb had saved his life.
And no longer really thinking, Cain hauled himself up and onto the make-shift crutch Ambrose had given him and out, starting a sharp angle through the woods, towards the village.
"Please, please, please," he prayed to no one in particular, "not again. Please, not again..."
*******
"Cain!" Ambrose stammered, following him out the door. "Where are you going?"
But Cain was already yards ahead, and showed no signs of slowing.
"Come back!" Ambrose tried again, shouting after him, "You're going to hurt yourself even worse!" And then, "What if they come back?"
But it was to no avail; Cain was gone.
Ambrose knew he could catch him, if he tried. He was surely faster, especially now that Cain was the walking wounded. But what if they did come back? No one would be here except for Azkadellia and her singed sheets, and what a pretty picture that would be!
Ambrose humphed, and threw himself down dejectedly by the garden, laid his arms on his knees and his chin on his arms. He stared hard and moodily after the last tree he'd glimpsed Cain beside, before losing sight of him.
Soon enough, though, he grew bored of the vigil, and anyway it was clear Cain was not going to suddenly reappear from the trees, seeing the error of his ways, or at least ready to explain what in the world was going on in his head, and why he so badly had to get to the village. So Ambrose began picking pods off of the sugar peas with spiteful snaps, and deadheading flowers, and muttering unkindly to himself. And when he ran out of dead flowers to snip, he went onto the live ones, catching himself only after he'd beheaded a half dozen.
"Damn," he scolded himself, sighed, and finally gave it up as a bad job. "'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' Ambrose," he murmured. And scooping up the buds and open faces into his palms, he rolled back up to his feet and shook the little debris from his legs.
Pleased (and a little surprised) by his own grace, and distracted by the flowers, he began to lose his tentative grip on his concern, and the last of it had eluded him by the time he had wandered back inside to set the flowers to floating in a bowl of water. He went back for the sugar peas, but returned afterwards to the bowl, to rearrange the flowers in the cool water, to bob them up and down and catch them in tiny swirls and eddies. And this soothed him, and occupied him in a building, mindless calm for a little while. For long enough.
Consequently, he forgot for the moment to worry about how Azkadellia had caught fire in the first place, and whether she might be able to do it again. He forgot to worry about the runners, blissfully even forgot the blasted Bernhaben for a sweet few minutes. He dipped his face close to the fragrant petals to blot out the lingering twinges of soot and burnt fabric that lingered on the air, wrapped himself up in the smell of the flowers. And consequently, when Azkadellia quietly scraped her fingernails down the wallpaper beside the bed, leaving tiny, silent curls of blue flame behind in the grooves, it took him rather longer than it might have to notice.
******
Cain cursed himself for not having a plan. He knew he had to get there before the search party did, but not what he could do when he got there. Warn him? Tell him to run? And what about the others--bribe them for silence? Threaten them? Kill them?
There would be no irrefutable signs of Azkadellia to lead Bernhaben's men to the chop docs, he hoped. But if DG had routed them there... If DG could tell by sheer magic that her sister had been there, it wouldn't matter. If Bernhaben got to them before Cain did, someone might cow under the numbers, might say what they'd seen. They might say just who it was who had brought in the broken princess, in hopes of buying their way out of their complicity in her hiding, buying mercy, buying a blind eye.
...No. Not Jeb. Cain was certain of that much. But if his boy was even there when Bernhaben arrived, it would be too much of a risk--they'd immediately look to Cain. And the others... he knew nothing of them, other than what small assurances Jeb muttered in the dark. Jeb seemed to trust them, and Cain wanted that to be enough, but...
Gods, it had been such a shock to find him there. To see him there at all, to see him by chance, and in the village after so long out of touch... But to find him there in a hovel with a secret mark on the door, in the company of refugees?
There hadn't been much time for small talk, but Cain had wheedled out enough. Jeb had picked up a lot of the basics of medics by necessity, when his healers started going down in the fighting. Anyone who could spare an hour put in duty with the one remaining healer as she dealt with the wounded, and Jeb, as one of the captains, had taken the responsibility to heart, dug down and grappled until he had as much knowledge in his fine, clever hands as they could hold. He could work metal, he could carve... how different were the pieces of a body, after that? he'd asked.
Cain had shaken his head, too stunned to fathom.
Jeb had never advanced enough to where he'd call himself a healer, he'd explained, but with the woman behind him (Cain somehow missed her name), he was confident enough to help save a life when it was salvageable, or at least slow down the demise long enough for her to get there. And Jeb had known the moment that all the fighting was over that that was what he wanted to do with himself. The healer would go on healing just as she always had--and Jeb had decided that he wanted to go on doing it, too.
But they were doing it underground. They were doing it quietly, for people who needed that kind of thing done quietly.
That part, Cain still didn't understand. Why they were lying low, what they feared from the new order, or if it was still the old order they were dodging from, whether it was Jeb or her--or both--who were hiding... They had an alliance between them, but Cain didn't know where that left him and couldn't trust it. Jeb might love him, Jeb might go stony and silent to prison before admitting he'd so much as seen his father with the Princess, but what about the other shadows there? Were there others who worked with them? Did anyone else live there?
There were too many loose ends, too many variables to account for. And even if they kept their mouths shut about Cain, what if Bernhaben had a viewer? Or just swept them up and into cells to hold them for their silence?
Cain couldn't allow that, either. He couldn't let his boy get locked up, not for him. He had to do... had to do something.
But in the end, it turned out that all he had to do was be there.
********
The search party was only a narrow road away from the blue door when its two leaders stopped, both at once, both suddenly.
DG, for her part, cried out, frozen in her tracks, and clutched her hair, screaming about fire.
And Bernhaben turned toward the sound of foot-and-crutch-steps in the narrow road perpendicular to them, just in time to catch a glimpse of Wyatt Cain, bolting in the same direction he and his party had been headed. Then, he'd smelled the thin whisp of smoke on the breeze.
Then, he'd sighed, and allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.
********
Everything fell apart.
**********
(Onto Sixteen)
Author: blindswandive
Characters/Pairing: Ambrose/Cain; feat. DG, Az, OC, +surprise
Rating: PG13 - PG16
Summary: This is a very long story that has been going on for a very long time. There are broken people and awkward relationships. There are unhappy pasts, a complicated present, and an uncertain future. There are intrigues and secrets and implications and uncertainties. There is alien hand syndrome, post traumatic stress disorder, sexual hangups, and more petty injuries than are probably fair. There is, above all, love. And it all started with brain surgery, one time or another. I recommend starting from the beginning, or from the other beginning, depending on your tastes in beginnings (or in brain surgery).
This chapter contains near misses, and misses that aren't, the revelation of previously obscured identities, visions, smoke, and fire.
Warnings: Beheaded flowers, spiteful princesses, a smug inspector, and an unpromising ending.
Disclaimer: Characters and Oz and O.Z. belong to Baum, SciFi, etc. Storyline/writing are mine, and I'm not turning a profit from it.
Word Count: 2869
Cross posted to glitch_wyatt.
Feedback is always, always love. Story is finally finished and will be posted approx. 1 chapter per day (+ epilogue) until it's all up. ...Can't believe it's a year and a half since I last posted.
Previous chapters/series:
Fourteen • Thirteen • Twelve • Eleven • Ten • Nine • Eight • Seven • Six • Five • Four • Three • Two • One • Evil Like That (1-5)
Chapter 15
"Cain..." Ambrose pleaded, dusting Cain's jacket compulsively with his palms. "Please, this is important... The stories--"
"--I know, I know, they have to match. I got surly and went out chopping wood on my bum knee like an idiot. I came back home. Sunshine, grumpy old bastard is the best they're going to get out of me; they'll have to take it and like it."
It wasn't a hard act to pull. The painkillers had left Cain with a hell of a hangover, and when the adrenaline that had carried him through the day before had worn off, he'd seen just how much damage he'd done his knee--and shoulder--and arm--by hauling the little cart through the woods, laden with bodies. He was groggy and hateful of the sunlight, and anything that involved him getting off of the sofa. That covered Bernhaben handily. And Ambrose's constant quizzing and drilling of what he was supposed to say wasn't helping matters any.
After a moment of visible oscillating, lilting foot to foot, Ambrose finally thinned his mouth and nodded. "Well, it'll certainly be believable," he said crossly. "Just remember not to mention--well, anyone, or anything. He'll take any excuse to harass people, the mean old thing."
Cain arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.
In the light of a new day, Ambrose's flusteredness with Acting Investigator Bernhaben had morphed into a strange kind of irritated loathing that Cain hadn't been able to quite fix in place. Cain wondered if there was some history there Ambrose wasn't mentioning, or wasn't remembering--it wouldn't be the first time he'd omitted useful details like that, on purpose or not.
But he suspected the man was just a convenient target. Ambrose might really be wanting to retaliate against the Princess (who had worn his nerves thin with cryptic sniping, that morning), or against Cain (for his petty vengeance on the tree), but they were both frail and beaten, and Bernhaben was, as far as Cain knew, healthy, and anyway absent. Ambrose could direct as much spite and ire in his direction as he had contained in his tightly wound body without risking lashing out at anyone more fragile. Bernhaben was an acceptable target, if Cain wasn't.
And Ambrose wasn't looking at Cain much. That was a poor sign.
Cain ground his teeth curiously for a moment, and watched while Ambrose remembered he'd been headed to the stove, before he'd decided Cain needed another round of quizzing. Giving in, he asked simply, "You mad at me?"
"Mad?" Ambrose asked, vaguely, only half attentive. His left hand was attempting to add the berries to the oatmeal before it was cooked, rather than after.
"...About the tree," Cain expanded.
"Ah. Yes. No--I'm--I'm traumatized," Ambrose began, finally setting the berries back down in their bowl. "Traumatized and shocked and scattered, and awfully sore, but not actually mad at you for cutting it down," he explained, surprisingly clearly.
Cain blinked, and felt his mangled spirits lift slightly.
"It's probably for the best that the damn thing is gone," Ambrose sighed. "Then I can't..."
Cain looked up sharply.
When Ambrose didn't continue, Cain prompted, "Then you can't what?"
"Can't..." Ambrose tried again, frowned, and then lost the thread completely. "Cain, do you smell smoke?"
After that, things seemed to go downhill very quickly.
***************
"Bernie, you have to listen to me," DG insisted, stamping her foot. "I swear, I felt something from Az last night, and it was coming from that town on the other side of the grounds. I couldn't--I couldn't get much from her, just... just pain, and it was a tiny, cramped room, and there were men there, and there was smoke, and--"
"How many men?" Acting Investigator Bernhaben interrupted, even though she was a Princess.
"I don't know," DG responded, barely derailed. "I think two or three. Or maybe two men and a woman... It was hard to see, but they had her in that tiny little room and she was hurt and it was," (and here she pointed fiercely like a child) "over there. And you need to take some people out there and find her, 'cause she might still be there."
Bernhaben paused to consult a page of notes.
"Princess Dorothy Gale," he said calmly, "I cannot presently, given your information, pursue your wishes. We have already searched the town thoroughly, and the Princess Azkadellia was not present. Furthermore, I have appointments coming up presently, including interviewing Mister Cain to verify--"
"Damn it, Bernard, forget about Mister Cain and get back out to that town! So what if she wasn't there when you checked? She could have gone there afterwards! What if she was kidnapped? What if they're moving her as we speak?" DG railed, her voice raising uncharacteristically into something frantic and demanding.
Bernhaben once again, very slowly, consulted the page.
"Are you certain of the validity of your vision, Princess Dorothy Gale?"
DG nodded fiercely. "I know I was feeling Azkadellia, and Raw was--was with me, and he said he was sure it was from her, and from right then at that moment. And," she added suddenly, "from that direction."
Another protracted pause.
"And is it your direct order that, on this information, I proceed to the town to repeat my search?"
DG's eyes glinted and hardened. "Yes. Inspector," she said, drawing herself up straight, "I command you to lead a search of the town."
"As you command, Princess," Bernhaben said automatically, stepping to attention.
"And I'm coming," DG added, turning to stalk out first.
"As you command," Bernhaben repeated, and, after gathering his things, followed her, if in rather his own time, towards the grounds.
As he followed, he paused to send two runners: one to gather a guard contingent for a search, and one to inform Wyatt Cain that their interview would be postponed until after a more pressing avenue of inquiry was pursued thoroughly.
The second runner passed DG as she stamped across the grounds toward the thin road that cut around the wood. He broached the treeline about the same time that the first runner had gathered a sufficient company, and they, just behind Bernhaben, were starting at a steady clip toward the road.
***
Everything seemed to have happened so fast...
Cain had limped to the back room, to try to swat out the bedspread that Azkadellia had somehow conspired to light, with herself on top of it.
And then there was a pounding on the door, and Ambrose was running to put out that fire, before it could spark. And he even managed to bluff the suspicious runner away with sheer aplomb, claiming a kitchen fire, and Cain was proud of him.
There were a few more frantic moments, but Cain got the little smoldering fire to stop, in the end, by unceremoniously dumping a pail of water over the bed, Azkadellia included, and her indignant spluttering was so perfectly absurd that Cain and Ambrose both collapsed at their little table, giddy with the relief from their panic, choking on terrified laughter.
And so, it was a few minutes more of relative relief and peace before Ambrose wondered aloud at why Bernhaben's men would be going back to the village.
***
Cain sobered. Panic swept back over him with the vengeance of the deferred.
"The village?" he repeated, throat suddenly dry, "Are you sure?"
"Well, I'm not positive, but the messenger was making straight for the road," Ambrose argued, a little displeased at being doubted. "I watched him a little while, since he seemed to be in a hurry," he added, folding his arms in only a little defiance. "Anyway, why? Is that a problem?"
"In a hurry," Cain repeated vaguely, as the icy tightening in his chest made him wonder if his heart were about to wind down or break a spring. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and hoped it was just the concussion. He closed his eyes and tried to gather his wits.
What had Ambrose said about DG, yesterday? Something about her getting a 'bad vibe' from somewhere...? They'd been in the village, Azkadellia had been on death's door... DG was getting so good at finding the things she wanted to find, she'd said...
Azkadellia's voice floated in on the tense silence from the next room. "Two little princesses, dancing in a row..." she lilted, high and wan. And then she giggled, on some bent impulse of her own.
A phantom pain shot through Cain's chest, and his good hand lurched up to clutch at it.
He felt the little horse in his pocket, there. It had taken some painful, creaking bending to get down to the floor, that morning, but he had rescued it from the shadows and a lone dustbunny by the edge of the sofa, and now it was right over his heart, just where it had been when it had saved him from Zero's gun. When Jeb had saved his life.
And no longer really thinking, Cain hauled himself up and onto the make-shift crutch Ambrose had given him and out, starting a sharp angle through the woods, towards the village.
"Please, please, please," he prayed to no one in particular, "not again. Please, not again..."
*******
"Cain!" Ambrose stammered, following him out the door. "Where are you going?"
But Cain was already yards ahead, and showed no signs of slowing.
"Come back!" Ambrose tried again, shouting after him, "You're going to hurt yourself even worse!" And then, "What if they come back?"
But it was to no avail; Cain was gone.
Ambrose knew he could catch him, if he tried. He was surely faster, especially now that Cain was the walking wounded. But what if they did come back? No one would be here except for Azkadellia and her singed sheets, and what a pretty picture that would be!
Ambrose humphed, and threw himself down dejectedly by the garden, laid his arms on his knees and his chin on his arms. He stared hard and moodily after the last tree he'd glimpsed Cain beside, before losing sight of him.
Soon enough, though, he grew bored of the vigil, and anyway it was clear Cain was not going to suddenly reappear from the trees, seeing the error of his ways, or at least ready to explain what in the world was going on in his head, and why he so badly had to get to the village. So Ambrose began picking pods off of the sugar peas with spiteful snaps, and deadheading flowers, and muttering unkindly to himself. And when he ran out of dead flowers to snip, he went onto the live ones, catching himself only after he'd beheaded a half dozen.
"Damn," he scolded himself, sighed, and finally gave it up as a bad job. "'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' Ambrose," he murmured. And scooping up the buds and open faces into his palms, he rolled back up to his feet and shook the little debris from his legs.
Pleased (and a little surprised) by his own grace, and distracted by the flowers, he began to lose his tentative grip on his concern, and the last of it had eluded him by the time he had wandered back inside to set the flowers to floating in a bowl of water. He went back for the sugar peas, but returned afterwards to the bowl, to rearrange the flowers in the cool water, to bob them up and down and catch them in tiny swirls and eddies. And this soothed him, and occupied him in a building, mindless calm for a little while. For long enough.
Consequently, he forgot for the moment to worry about how Azkadellia had caught fire in the first place, and whether she might be able to do it again. He forgot to worry about the runners, blissfully even forgot the blasted Bernhaben for a sweet few minutes. He dipped his face close to the fragrant petals to blot out the lingering twinges of soot and burnt fabric that lingered on the air, wrapped himself up in the smell of the flowers. And consequently, when Azkadellia quietly scraped her fingernails down the wallpaper beside the bed, leaving tiny, silent curls of blue flame behind in the grooves, it took him rather longer than it might have to notice.
******
Cain cursed himself for not having a plan. He knew he had to get there before the search party did, but not what he could do when he got there. Warn him? Tell him to run? And what about the others--bribe them for silence? Threaten them? Kill them?
There would be no irrefutable signs of Azkadellia to lead Bernhaben's men to the chop docs, he hoped. But if DG had routed them there... If DG could tell by sheer magic that her sister had been there, it wouldn't matter. If Bernhaben got to them before Cain did, someone might cow under the numbers, might say what they'd seen. They might say just who it was who had brought in the broken princess, in hopes of buying their way out of their complicity in her hiding, buying mercy, buying a blind eye.
...No. Not Jeb. Cain was certain of that much. But if his boy was even there when Bernhaben arrived, it would be too much of a risk--they'd immediately look to Cain. And the others... he knew nothing of them, other than what small assurances Jeb muttered in the dark. Jeb seemed to trust them, and Cain wanted that to be enough, but...
Gods, it had been such a shock to find him there. To see him there at all, to see him by chance, and in the village after so long out of touch... But to find him there in a hovel with a secret mark on the door, in the company of refugees?
There hadn't been much time for small talk, but Cain had wheedled out enough. Jeb had picked up a lot of the basics of medics by necessity, when his healers started going down in the fighting. Anyone who could spare an hour put in duty with the one remaining healer as she dealt with the wounded, and Jeb, as one of the captains, had taken the responsibility to heart, dug down and grappled until he had as much knowledge in his fine, clever hands as they could hold. He could work metal, he could carve... how different were the pieces of a body, after that? he'd asked.
Cain had shaken his head, too stunned to fathom.
Jeb had never advanced enough to where he'd call himself a healer, he'd explained, but with the woman behind him (Cain somehow missed her name), he was confident enough to help save a life when it was salvageable, or at least slow down the demise long enough for her to get there. And Jeb had known the moment that all the fighting was over that that was what he wanted to do with himself. The healer would go on healing just as she always had--and Jeb had decided that he wanted to go on doing it, too.
But they were doing it underground. They were doing it quietly, for people who needed that kind of thing done quietly.
That part, Cain still didn't understand. Why they were lying low, what they feared from the new order, or if it was still the old order they were dodging from, whether it was Jeb or her--or both--who were hiding... They had an alliance between them, but Cain didn't know where that left him and couldn't trust it. Jeb might love him, Jeb might go stony and silent to prison before admitting he'd so much as seen his father with the Princess, but what about the other shadows there? Were there others who worked with them? Did anyone else live there?
There were too many loose ends, too many variables to account for. And even if they kept their mouths shut about Cain, what if Bernhaben had a viewer? Or just swept them up and into cells to hold them for their silence?
Cain couldn't allow that, either. He couldn't let his boy get locked up, not for him. He had to do... had to do something.
But in the end, it turned out that all he had to do was be there.
********
The search party was only a narrow road away from the blue door when its two leaders stopped, both at once, both suddenly.
DG, for her part, cried out, frozen in her tracks, and clutched her hair, screaming about fire.
And Bernhaben turned toward the sound of foot-and-crutch-steps in the narrow road perpendicular to them, just in time to catch a glimpse of Wyatt Cain, bolting in the same direction he and his party had been headed. Then, he'd smelled the thin whisp of smoke on the breeze.
Then, he'd sighed, and allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.
********
Everything fell apart.
**********
(Onto Sixteen)