Chapter Ten

“D-dammit!” Kaleia sobbed. The crumpled woman lay exactly as her flighty niece had left her, splayed out on her back with her heels against the bottom rung of the corral. She wondered what a pitiful sight she must have seemed. Defeated and hopeless. The whole of her seemed to tremble in anguished fury. So desperate had Kaleia been in her pursuit that she never really stopped to consider what chance she had of catching Sula before she made it to the wall or worse before she was run down. Nor did she consider what she would even have done had she caught up.

Now that the dust the little cub had kicked up in her path had begun to settle, Kaleia thought herself quite foolish. Incompetent, actually. For all her conviction to protect the child and lead her to safety, the best she had managed was to cast one last hopeless look as the cub disappeared beyond the wall. As far as Kaleia was concerned, she had earned a moment to wallow on her back, twisted this way and that.

Though earning the moment of grief, it was not afforded her. Immediately, the sound of dry grass flattening under heavy steps shook her from her sulking. She leaned her head backward and found an upside-down Captain Timaos and his tall recruit trudging toward her. They had drawn their weapons when Sula had charged the Divine Captain and cut open his horse, but only made a half-hearted attempt to chase her down when she fled. Unlike Kaleia who had flown in her pursuit, flailing about like a many-throated bat in a frenzy, or the other guards who had been hot on Sula’s tail. But while the Wall Captain and his lackey had missed out on the girl, their slow progress had netted them a catch of a different sort.

“What should we do with this one, Sir?” the tall boy asked.

“Cut out her quick tongue then slit her throat. We would be remiss if we did not execute traitors to the Empire and anyone who would aid a defector is a traitor by association.”

The glint of the guards’ steel blades cut through whatever malaise had settled over Kaleia’s obstinate limbs. The reality of impending death dawned on her and shocked her body into motion. She scrambled as hard and as fast as she could from her back, but only managed to get to her knees before the guards reached her.

As though they had practiced the maneuver a thousand and one times, the two guards raised their blades together and held them above their shoulders, readying a delivering slash. The fresh, unblemished steel reflected the falling tears from Kaleia’s clouded eyes. But stare as long as she might at the blades, she would only see the smiling faces of her loving husbands and their many sons looking back at her. Perhaps, she considered, if she closed her eyes before the end this microcosm of everything she loved would be her last memory of the world. She was willing to try.

The sweeping wind cut through Kaleia, cleaving through her chest and into her heart. And then a second swipe knocked her backward off her knees. As her back crashed against the ground, her head smacked the bottom rung of the corral. The world around her went black. Kaleia’s heart stopped.

Then, she felt a thud in her chest as her heart restarted. It pounded desperately against its cell like a prisoner wrongfully confined. Her lungs too pulsed wildly. Her whole being seemed to surge with energy, as though Kaleia’s thundering eyes had jolted her to life with their long-stored lightning. She opened those thundering eyes and took in a long draught of life. Before the heaving woman lay the lifeless bodies of the wall guards. Both had been split from shoulder to midback. Their swords had fallen from their hands and now stuck at an angle in the ground beside her. Kaleia gaped at the carnage before her. The smell and taste of iron in the air left her feeling queasy.

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Above the corpses Divine Captain Zeteo wiped the crimson from his blade. Even after it was cleaned of the stains, Kaleia could not make out her reflection in its dull, worn steel. The Divine Captain Zeteo sheathed his sword with a nonchalance that confounded her. In fact, the whole of what had happened confounded her so much so that no matter how hard she tried, Kaleia could not hold back the question in her throat.

“Why?” she breathed, the first gasp after breaking free of terror’s chokehold. The Divine Captain looked up from his blade’s hilt with uninterested eyes. She wished she could pull back the question from the air, but when he did not respond, she understood she might as well had. So she tried a different approach. “Than—”

“Don’t. I don’t want your gratitude,” Divine Captain Zeteo stopped her. “I want nothing from you and even less I want no part of what you and your husband are plotting. If anyone, you should thank the Goddess that Philos is my commander and that I once owed him my life. Tell him when you see him again what I have done and that my debt has been repaid.”

Taken aback, Kaleia nodded and the Divine Captain offered her his hand. She pulled herself up by it and steadied herself against the corral’s fence. As she turned back to the spot Sula had disappeared behind the wall, she saw another gruesome sight. Strewn across the plains were the remains of the two other members of the Divine Guard that had rode after the girl and their horses.

During her pursuit, just as her foot had slipped from the fence and she began her tumble, Kaleia had caught sight of a white-haired beast. Its features were only a blur to her in that moment, but its carnage as clear as Lake Hydrakrios. It tore straight through the men and their mounts. The remains made her sick.

Kaleia spun back to the Zeteo trying to escape the gruesome sight but found the two wall guards. Everywhere she looked, she found red stains. Someone had to face consequences for them.

“But what will we do about the… those?” Kaleia could not bring herself to refer to the dead as people. She knew it would break her already fragile mind.

“I will handle it,” the Divine Captain said. “As far as I am concerned, my men fell to a wild beast. And that is the truth of things, regardless. Clearly a sign of the Goddess’ dissatisfaction with her temple’s desecration.” He bent over and lifted the heads of the two wall guards by the hair. “And these two? They attacked me, their superior.”

He let their heads fall and Kaleia matched with a nod. Her mind could not focus enough to offer anything more. Without another word, Zeteo rose and started back to the capital on foot. Kaleia took a step forward and began to thank him again and offer him her mare, but she instead bit her tongue. What he did was out of duty, not kindness she told herself. Had her husband not done him a great service, she would have joined the collection of corpses in the yard.

Further, if she were to follow after Sula in this moment, he would likely turn around and arrest her. Confirming her fear, when she made no attempt to move, he looked back toward her and brusquely jerked his chin toward the city.

So, with no other choice in the matter, Kaleia reluctantly climbed atop her horse and rode as fast as she could home. She wondered what a sight she must look, crazed and bloody, speeding down the road atop her mare as the Huntress Tria must have looked upon her tusked hind during the fervor of the Pallosian Dhole Hunt. Kaleia wondered after her children, imagining all the grief Tarvos had been put through in her absence. At the thought of them, she spurred her mare on even faster. Last, but most taxing of all, she worried for Sula and prayed to whatever gods that might hear her that the cub would be safe beyond the wall.