“I’m awake,” Luke said, feeling the sunlight warm his face.

“Then, as we agreed, let’s have that talk,” Daniels said.

The captain rode beside him through the seemingly infinite pine forest with dark circles under his eyes and his hands on the wheel. He pulled over off the dirt path, as far out of sight as he could manage, and together they stepped outside.

Daniels hobbled over to a large pine, spear strapped to his back, and settled down against it. He exhaled softly and peered toward Luke expectantly. No sense making him wait.

He saved you, Luke thought. Twice. The man’s earned some trust.

Luke sat cross-legged in front of Captain Daniels and met his tired eyes. He glanced away and swallowed nervously. How should he start?

“I… can do things that other people can’t.”

“Yeah,” Daniels said. He grinned. “You’re the only kid I know that can win over my wife and Seras that fast.”

“I’m not a…” He trailed off and looked straight at the captain. “No, you’re right. I’m fifteen.”

“I can tell.”

“My birthday’s on the twenty-second.”

“And your plan was to share that after the fact?”

“Yeah.” He frowned when Daniels laughed. “What?”

“Wolf would have forced you into our educational system,” he said. “We’re not a factory that churns out reckless kids eager to get themselves killed or worse.”

Luke lowered his head.

“The ‘blue eyes’ you asked about in Filose,” Daniels said. “It’s about that, isn’t it?”

“I was born in Lumina. I lived there, until… until that man killed my entire family,” he whispered. “Or worse.”

“The Purge.” Daniels nodded. “That’s why you want to see your brother so badly. I’ve heard stories of able-bodied men ripped right out of their homes and pressed into Daevan service.”

Luke looked up at him. The captain looked so tired and worn, a scraggly beard marring his usual clean shaven face. He had driven all through the night to get them away from the assassins.

“I can use colors.”

“I take it you don’t mean crayons.”

“No, I… I don’t know where they come from, but I can use them. They change me. Make me stronger.”

“You’re like Duxille Sirius,” Daniels said.

“You can see the colors?” He drew Red from a distant somewhere into his chest, then to his hand and waved it around.

“If you’re doing something, I can’t tell. Let me put it this way. I don’t see people getting thrown… well, ever. So I put two and two together. You don’t use ampules, then?”

“Ampules?”

“Before Wolf showed up, I watched Sirius stick something into his arm. Some kind of…” He shrugged. “Weird red stuff.”

That was interesting. And confusing. Just what was all this?

“No,” Luke said. “I don’t have anything like that. Come to think of it… he only used Red.”

“There are other colors?” Daniels asked.

“Five. I don’t know where mine come from.” He made a grabbing motion. “Sometimes I can reach out and get it. Sometimes I can’t. Like it’s limited in some way. You don’t know anything?”

“Not a clue.” Daniels folded his arms in thought. “How long have you been able to do this?”

“A long time, I think,” Luke said. “I wasn’t sure until I woke up after Filose.” He laid a hand on his chest. “I’ve always gotten over colds and sprains really fast. That night with Dux made me realize something was different about me. I can see something other people can’t.”

“It sounds like these colors flock to you by instinct. They helped you even when you had no clue about them?”

“Yeah.”

“And what about now?”

“I’m trying to control it. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“That makes two of us,” Daniels said with a grin.

He shared the rest of what he knew— each color’s function, the two colors rule, and so on. As they talked through it all, Luke felt a weight lift from his shoulders. It was good to confide in someone, wasn’t it?

“How’d you like to learn the spear, Luke?”

“I’ve seen you fight.” He nodded. “My grandfather told me never to turn down a lesson from a learned man willing to teach his craft.”

“Your grandfather sounds like a wise man.”

“He is.”

And yet, Luke spent his last weeks in Aetas Origo arguing with the man. Snare hadn’t approved of the revenge aspect, but he did agree Luke needed to get out of the city and see the world for a change. In the end, Snare begrudgingly went along with it and set Luke up with the mayor of Castitas and a guide to take him through Mirastelle. He guessed that guide would have tried to keep him from enlisting.

Who knows. This whole trip would probably get him in as much trouble with the Guard as the captain. At least Snare would find the cause agreeable. He’d be all for saving a friend. Maybe not so recklessly.

Daniels rose. “Let me show you some of the basic forms.”

It was late morning when the captain’s incessant yawns forced him to retire. He instructed Luke to wake him up by midday so they could gain more distance between themselves and the assassins. Neither believed the chase was over, but in this part of the Pines there were plenty of clearings and the like. Plenty of places to seclude yourself in. It would slow their pursuit as Cathartes combed each possibility. Hopefully.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Luke stood a ways away, a silvery spear held using both hands, practicing grips with either hand leading the haft. Spearfighting was an ambidextrous art, the captain said. Matching the angle of your weapon with the opponent’s was key to abusing the long range.

He cycled through four simple motions. Guarding, striking, sweeping, and thrusting. He was slow and deliberate for fear of hitting himself in the knees as he’d done a number of times earlier in the morning. Speed would come with practice and time, Daniels told him. As is, he wouldn’t be able to use this in combat. The spear would be swiped out of his hands in the first exchange of blows. Or worse.

Once his ribs began to ache, he set himself down against a pine and breathed in the fresh forest air, feeling sweat stick his shirt and skin together. He shivered despite the workout— he’d left his jacket in the automobile and was starting to regret it. It was chilly every day now.

There were no more landmarks between them and Cherima. The road they were following led all the way to the Pruinan mountains. Not much further ahead, an old abandoned side road would take them to the equally abandoned town.

The colors came to him easily now, like a whistle to a trained messenger dove. Threads of Magenta spun around his ribs thanks to a little direction and two Yellow orbs settled inside his eyes like heavy stones that took great effort to budge.

Through his eyes, he saw the Green flickers of birds taking off and landing, chirping their usual morning greetings to one another. They would be leaving soon for the winter in wide formations. He wondered how majestic a sight that would be now, a large flock of migratory birds peppered with Green glitter.

He was violently snapped out of his reverie by the sound of an approaching automobile. No question who that was.

Clip me, they’re fast.

He laid the spear flat beside the tree in such a way that the trunk obscured it from the road. It would have to do. He just hoped the glint from the sun off the metal wouldn’t betray him.

Daniels!

He scurried to the next pine and pressed flat against it. Peering around the side, he could see the automobile and its hiding place just beyond the road’s edge past a few rows of trees. And he saw that it was large and obvious to a close inspection in broad daylight. The windows were too opaque from this distance to tell if the captain was stirring.

Green flooded his chest and splintered everywhere. What—

Behind you! The thought was frantic. The woman!

He turned, barely catching a glimmer of steel. He jerked away as a blade sheared the air where his neck was. He felt Niya’s breath on his face and saw the wicked look in her eyes and the dagger raised high.

She cycled from surprise to fear to concentration in a heartbeat, stepping back as he swung and missed with a Red-enhanced fist. He wouldn’t have dared move against that dagger had it not been for the Green’s grace to his movements, yet still she anticipated him. She was wary now, eyeing him like a wild cat eyed a desperate mouse with nowhere to go and nothing left to lose.

Seconds passed as she made her advance, slashing and swiping but meeting the wind each time. The world around them suddenly seemed so inconsequential. He had to break through and get to Daniels.

Holding back his fear with the unseen beauty coursing through him, Luke kicked. He was certain he’d wreathed his entire leg in Red, but she barely staggered as the kick connected with her shin bone.

A thought crossed his mind and he blinked Yellow to be sure, dismissing Red but holding tightly to Green. No colors on her as she righted herself and slashed in front to keep him at bay.

“Bane Below,” she cursed. “What are you?”

I’m not afraid of you. And he wasn’t. He was no mouse.

He smiled at her.

“Freak eyes,” she said, voice quivering.

She lunged at him. He knew he’d shaken her; it was a reckless attack. He dodged it easily and plowed his fist into her side, his entire arm cloaked in glowing Red strands. The assassin’s breath was torn from her in one great gasp as her knees buckled and she toppled forward.

He glanced around. A short distance away on the road was a fresh automobile painted dark green, of a slightly different design than the beige one the assassins used before. The passenger door was open.

He darted past her to see their automobile aflame. Fire licked the jagged edges of the shattered back window, smoke billowing out in dark clouds. He could see the captain’s silhouette in the driver’s seat, his head back in a deep sleep. The male Ahraran assassin— Zaba— had his back to Luke, arms folded, quietly observing the burning from a few feet away as if he were a patient stripeshark watching its wounded prey and waiting for the ideal moment to finish the hunt.

“Hey!” Luke called, running toward the automobile. “Wake up!”

Daniels didn’t move, but the assassin sure did. He spun on his heel and threw the dagger in his hand with precision.

Luke tracked it as best he could and— trusting it was aimed at his heart— placed his forearm in its path, ripping Blue from his chest into his forearm like a gauntlet. The dagger bounced off the skin uselessly as if it struck the glittering scales of an azure dragon.

The assassin watched impassively, seemingly unimpressed. He reached down to his belt and came up with a new dagger in each hand. He fell into a combat stance, prepared to intercept Luke. The flames crackled loudly at his back.

“You have to wake up!” Luke shouted, coming to a stop as far from Zaba as the assassin was to the automobile. Birds leapt from trees at the disturbance, launching themselves elsewhere. “Wake up!”

The assassin took a step.

Silvery metal erupted from his neck. His eyes bulged, and he tilted his head. There he saw, crouched low with spear in hand, the grim, tired face of Captain Deen Daniels. Whatever the man wanted to say came out as a gurgle of blood. He collapsed in a heap, sliding off the crimson-slick spear.

Daniels reached for Zaba’s belt and fished up a keyring. He glanced at Luke. “Where is she?” Luke gestured at the slumped body behind him. “Is she dead?”

“I don’t know.”

The captain nodded. “Let’s go, then. Quickly.”

They made their way to the Cathartes automobile, leaving their meager belongings behind in the burning wreck. A pillar of smoke towered above it.

As they were leaving, something strange occurred to Luke. Back there, he had absolutely no idea that Niya had crept right up behind him. He was utterly clueless in the moment.

So what made him think she was there?

———

Cyrus lifted a spoon of lentil stew to his mouth, stealing glances at the child-faced assassin sitting across from him on the unadorned floor of the dilapidated house. The room was cold and dimly lit. Only the flickering flames of the stove offered warmth and kept the night’s darkness at bay. The cooking of Luke’s brother tasted as if it were that of a high-class restaurant. It made him a little jealous, he admitted.

He hated him. For the gruesome killings he had been forced to watch, he knew he could never bring himself to forgive this boy.

And yet he thought he understood him, if only a little. A survivor of the Lumina Purge, stolen from his home like an egg from its nest and pressed into military service. He must have been only a child. What would that do to a person?

The boy said the same was the fate of the people of Castitas. Would Frank Duun’s apprentices one day use their butchering lessons on men? Would little Eila use her gentle smiles for deception over honesty? Could the young boys of the Erly family become like this expressionless killer in a patchwork cloak, not a shred of humanity in their eyes? The thought of any of it twisted his heart into knots.

It couldn’t be his fault, could it? They broke him.

He still did it. He killed Captain Fauke and Lieutenant Korsak. Did what can’t be undone. Took what can’t be returned. He could picture Fauke’s head tumbling to the forest floor in his mind…

“You look ill,” the assassin said. It was the first thing he’d said in hours. “Is something wrong with the stew?”

“It’s fine,” he whispered, trying to banish the memories. Doing so took no small effort.

Tomorrow, it would end. He would be executed at sunset, and then it would all be over. The thought of such a release gave him no pleasure knowing what awaited everyone he’d ever grown up with; everyone he’d ever laughed and cried and smiled and screamed with. His burden was fleeting, a few weeks lost and confused as a captive. Theirs would last a lifetime.

There was another possibility, of course. He couldn’t help but entertain it. He’d been thinking about it all day. If Luke arrived, Phaethon knows what could happen.

If Luke really did show up, it didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. It wouldn’t stop the war. It wouldn’t save the people of Castitas. But it would mean a second chance for Cyrus. A chance to keep on carrying this burden twisted up inside his heart.

That’s all he could ask for.