The only clue to the passing of time was the passage of women and children into and out of Llew’s cell. After the last test, Llew would receive a simple meal before most of the candles would be dampened and the guard changed.

She would be woken for the opportunity to bathe from a bucket of cold water, and to eat a bowl of oatmeal, and the procession would begin again. She couldn’t decide if she preferred the solitude of the night-time hours, or the busyness of the day. She settled on disliking both. It was as bad as being held captive in Braph’s home. There, her body had been used against her will to create crystals for Braph’s magic device, or to sate his physical needs. Here, her body was used against her will to find out whether or not families got to keep their home. And there was no way out that she could see. If she refused them, they withheld food and it wasn’t long before the painful clutches of hunger gripped her.

The life she now lived was her nightmare, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to refuse to eat and end it. Whether it was because it was more than just her life on the line, or some bizarre need to live no matter how miserable, she didn’t know.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she held out hope that Jonas would find a way out for them. He knew these people. And if that no longer held sway, he was still Syakaran. Surely no cage could hold him for long.

And while she carried his baby, she, too, had Syakaran strength. She walked up to the bars of her cage, gripped two and pulled outwards. The whole metal wall rattled at the points it connected with the stone.

“Hey! Stop that.” One of the guards stepped forward.

Metal squealed, and Llew was almost sure her hands were farther apart. She renewed her efforts.

“Stop. Now.” The guard’s arm swung up, holding a small crossbow pointed at Llew’s head.

“Ah—” One of the other guards began and was waved silent by the first.

Llew didn’t stop. If she had the strength to get through this iron wall, she had both strength and speed to deal with the guards.

“I said stop.” The first guard lowered the crossbow and fired.

The bolt sunk into Llew’s left forearm, missing the bone; the point entering where her muscle bulged and exiting just below her elbow, like a sewing pin.

Pain, frustration, anger, and sorrow exploded from Llew in a bellow that reverberated around the room as she released the bars and fell back on the floor. Barely thinking, she ripped the bolt from her arm and hurled it back at the guard with a growl. The bolt clipped a bar and fell to the stone floor, landing across the line between inside and outside her cage. She lay back covering her eyes with the forearm of her right arm and cried.

Peering out from under her arm, she watched drops of blood add to a growing puddle, the time between each steadily growing. It didn’t bleed for long, mustn’t have clipped anything major.

They would send someone to heal her soon. They had to before she was expected to test any more children. And so, she lay, trying to ignore the pain and the cold stone beneath her, and waited.

And waited.

They left her; didn’t bring anyone to heal her.

She was teetering on the brink of sleep, attempting to use the power of her mind to transport herself from the dark, dank basement back to her little piece of paradise on the banks of Cheer’s Big River – long tussocks, soft clovers, the fresh scent of the river – when the main door opened and brought her crashing back to reality. Morning already?

While she couldn’t see them, the rustle of the guards’ clothing suggested uneasy movement as the footfalls grew nearer.

A figure blacked out the entrance to the small room.

“Go.” That voice. Aris.

Llew froze.

The three guards hesitated then headed up the steps, and Aris stepped forward with Karlani a half-step behind him.

Llew pushed herself up from the floor. Her arm ached, but it was ignorable.

Aris lifted something, handing it to Karlani. In the dull light, Llew could hardly see it, but the flash of orange candlelight off a metal blade left little to decipher. They were there to kill her.

Aris pulled out a set of keys.

Llew’s body prepared her to run. Muscles tensed, heart beat stronger. That part of her brain that had been holding out hope screamed at her to do something, but she didn’t know what. She was surrounded by stone and iron. The only way out was through Aris and Karlani.

She crouched, ready.

Aris stepped back from the gate, letting Karlani move in.

As soon as the Syakaran stepped through the gate, Llew ran at her. But, this time, Karlani knew what she faced, and she planted her feet, holding her ground. Llew crashed into her, pushing her back a step. Karlani spread her arms, catching herself against the bars. Then she swung wildly with the blade, catching Llew under a breast. Llew jumped back, Karlani moved with her. Aris took the chance to lock the gate between them and him.

Llew wasn’t ready to be a lost cause. She crabbed around the enclosure. Karlani turned to keep facing her, knife held ready.

“The girl’s got some fight left in her,” said Aris, leaning against the bars.

Figuring on the latch being the weakest part of the cage, Llew prepared herself for a lot of hurt. And if she failed, well, it was die easy or die hard, and she wasn’t going to die easy.

Coming around enough to have a straight line to the latch, Llew launched herself at the gate. Karlani rushed at her, knocking her aside and following her down, striking with the Syakaran blade.

The metal tore through Llew’s chest below her right shoulder, broke bone and sunk deeper. Pain. Hot, cold. It didn’t matter. All she knew was the pain. She lay on the cold floor, scared to take a proper breath.

Keys rattled, ringing around the small room, and the gate swung open.

“I’ll make sure the job’s done,” Aris said as he entered.

“Don’t you trust me?” Karlani laughed, like Aris could be joking.

“I’ll make the killing blow.”

All humor left Karlani’s face, and she returned to good soldier, stepping out of his way.

“Good. Good.” Aris knelt beside Llew. He pulled the knife free.

Llew gasped as the pain she’d been trying to avoid fired through her. Her right arm was useless, and every breath hurt. She waved her left arm at Aris, trying to brush him aside, but her attempt was feeble, and she failed to connect, let alone push. Blood seeped from the reopened crossbow bolt wound.

Aris held the knife over her, taking great care positioning the blade over her belly. Calling on all her strength, she batted the knife aside. Karlani positioned herself at Llew’s head, gripped her forearms in gloved hands, and pinned her to the floor.

“Don’t make this harder on yourself,” Aris said. “If you’re lucky, you might get to say goodbye to Jonas.”

The knife hovered.

Finding its target, the knife plunged into her belly.

Llew’s body arched, and she screamed. She pulled one arm free of Karlani’s grip, but it flailed weakly, striking nothing. Karlani pushed it down again. Aris frowned at his hand gripping the knife handle. He held it a few moments, watching, watching.

He pulled the knife. Llew heard a trembling whimper in her own voice as the blade slid free.

This wasn’t happening. It was some crazy dream. Heat spread across her shirt. Some part of her knew it was her blood, yet she felt detached, like it was happening to someone else.

Aris guided his knife a little over from his initial strike, his brow furrowed.

Llew tried to move again, but Karlani still held her, and even tiny movements were agony.

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Aris drove the knife down again. A fresh wave of pain rushed from Llew’s core, compounded by sorrow at the certain knowledge she had lost her child. She started to tremble, her ears ringing, her vision tunneled. She couldn’t breathe.

A blue spark shot up the blade and disappeared into Aris’s wrist. Gasping, Llew peered at him as his lips spread in a devilish grin. She looked back at where the blade disappeared – into her, but her brain still wouldn’t accept that fact – and a purple lightning bolt shot up, from her belly into him. His eyes grew bright with triumph while her vision darkened.

“What the hell is happening?” Karlani asked.

Aris didn’t answer, just kept grinning down at Llew as more power slipped beneath his skin.

----------------------------------------

“They’re killing her!”

The iron door swung into the wall, jolting Jonas awake. It took him a moment to register what Samsi had said. But once he did, he was on his feet.

She ran to his door, fumbling with the keys.

“Samsi!” One of the other guards, a younger one Jonas didn’t know, gripped Samsi’s wrist before she could get the key in the lock.

Samsi brought her other hand around, catching him under the jaw and throwing him back. She returned to her mission; jaw set in determination.

“I heard something. Wasn’t right,” Samsi was saying while she sorted through the keys again. “Aris. The Syakaran woman.” She shook her head. “Hisham said she’s alright. For an Aenuk. It ain’t right.”

The third guard didn’t seem to know what to do. He hovered over Samsi’s shoulder, apprehensive, but he wasn’t stopping her.

Samsi found the key and swung the door open.

Stepping from the cell, Jonas pulled two knives from Samsi’s vest and ran up the dark corridor. Not Syakaran blades but, against Aris and Karlani, just as effective.

He flung the door to Llew’s chamber wide, catching it on the ricochet and flinging it back again.

“Aris …?”

“Jonas,” Aris croaked out before sucking in his breath as purple lightning shot from Llew and into him.

None of it made sense. Aris straddled Llew, his hand gripping the handle of a knife in her belly. The scene before him was so bizarre, Jonas couldn’t grasp a single coherent thought. Aris. Llew. Knife. Llew’s belly. Their child …

Jonas lunged forward. He was still dazed by what he saw, but anger didn’t need to understand.

Karlani moved to block him. Jonas went to brush her aside, but she dug in her heels and shoved him back. Damn woman! And damn Aris! The old man had always said he loved Jonas as a son. But a father wouldn’t do this. He lashed out, flinging Karlani aside, rage providing him a strength starvation had sapped. She landed in a heap on the floor, but was up again in an instant, dragging on Jonas’s forearm, slowing but not stopping his advance. He twisted, trying to shake her off, but she held on, slowing him enough for Aris to keep harvesting the lightning.

Aris’s knuckles whitened around his knife handle. He growled through his teeth as more lightning shot into him, then chuckled as it fizzed up his blade and across his skin as if it tickled. Finally, he released the knife and sat back, hands resting on thighs like he was taking a break from a job well done.

Hisham arrived in the doorway, a small contingent of soldiers with him. Taking little time to assess the situation, he ran in, knocking Karlani aside, freeing Jonas to go after Aris.

Aris started to stand, but not before Jonas got to him, sinking both blades into him, one in his chest, one in his gut.

Aris coughed. “Ow.”

Jonas released the handles and stepped back, shaken by what he’d done. He looked from the knives to Aris’s paling face, struggling to believe the knives were really there, in Aris, and he’d been the one to put them there.

Karlani roared as she ran at him again, but Jonas was struggling to pull his eyes from his captain. Luckily Hisham was there, and Samsi rushed in to help. No one else seemed to know what to do. Probably for the best. In the moment, the right thing to do would be to arrest Jonas.

Jonas had seen the shock of realization as a life ended enough to know it when he saw it, and he wasn’t seeing it now. Aris frowned down at the knife handles, reached up and pulled one and then the other free. As the wounds began to heal, he looked at Jonas, then he looked back down at Llew. Jonas felt sick. Aris was healing and Jonas was disarmed.

“Looks just like how we found Kierra.” Aris studied Llew as if she were a curiosity, or perhaps a piece of art, seemingly ignorant of his wound. “Just like Kierra.”

Aris was healing like a Syaenuk, but he wasn’t draining anyone to do it. Jonas had never seen anything like it. So engrossed in the impossibility before him, he almost missed what Aris had said. But they hadn’t found Kierra. Jonas had returned home to a smoldering mess. There had been no Kierra left to find, or so Aris had told him. Aris had told Jonas not to look, that it would be too painful to see. You don’t want to remember her that way. Aris had told him, and Hisham’s silent nods had assured him it was best. And Aris had presented the knife, giving Jonas something to do with his anger.

Jonas felt the fool. Everything he knew was lies.

Whatever Aris was, he was still an old man. Jonas stepped forward again, but Aris dodged him and was standing in the outer chamber in an instant, the big blade dripping blood by his side. Karlani stood by him, her glare daring anyone to try anything, though her gaze kept flicking to the man beside her, as if she wasn’t sure he was real. In the midst of the confusion, Aris bent his fingers in a wave and dashed through the door at Syakaran speed, knocking surprised soldiers aside, Karlani at his heels.

Everyone remained frozen, dumbfounded for a moment. Jonas was still struggling to reconcile all he’d seen and heard.

“What just happened?” Someone finally voiced what they were all wondering.

“That looked like Captain Aris,” someone else said.

“It was Aris,” said Samsi.

“But—”

But Aris wasn’t Karan, nor Aenuk, and yet what he had done couldn’t otherwise be explained. He was also gone, and Jonas needed to focus on Llew. He let the bemusement fade into the background and turned to her. She was a mess, the entire front of her dark with blood, and a pool spreading on the bricks beneath her. She was bleeding out, fast.

“Llew!” He landed on his knees beside her, took her hand in his. Her skin burned his like hot coals. “Ah!” He flinched back. Of course! She was Aenuk and he could heal her.

“Don’t—” Her protest as ineffective as his touch seemed. “But it wasn’t your knife. It was supposed to be your knife!” She was talking nonsense.

“You’re not dyin’, Llew. Get a doctor!” Jonas called over his shoulder.

Hisham immediately turned to direct soldiers back up the stairs. Jonas was pleased to hear urgency in his voice. With Hisham there, Jonas could focus on Llew.

Hardly thinking, he pulled her shirt up, exposing her lower belly. “Sorry.” He placed his hand on her belly, fighting the urge to snatch his hand back from the pain, and watching the wound intently. But it didn’t matter where he touched her, the wound wouldn’t heal. Aris had used a Syakaran knife.

His eyes rested on her belly where their child grew, had been—

He cut off his thoughts there, the potential destination unbearable.

Llew cried out again and Jonas screwed up his face at his impotence.

He ripped his shirt, pulling it into two parts. One, he wrapped one hand in and clasped hers, willing her to hold on. The other, he pressed to her chest wound, trying to slow the blood.

Shuffled feet and murmuring voices continued behind him; the room filled with Quavens who wouldn’t understand. Hisham crouched beside him.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“Make sure the doc gets through. I don’t wanna hear nothin’ about Aenuks and Turhmos and won’ts and shouldn’ts until Llew’s stable.”

Hisham nodded and stood. The murmurs behind Jonas died down.

It seemed an age before a bedraggled-looking man with a bulky leather satchel stumbled into the room. The man’s loosely curled hair hung over one eye and he still wore pajamas, but as soon as he saw Llew any thoughts of himself and the sleep he was missing vanished, and he and his bag were at her side in an instant.

“What happened?”

“She was stabbed,” said Jonas. “She was … She’s pregnant.”

The doctor surveyed the scene before him. The glance he gave Jonas before turning to fish through his bag held a great deal of doubt.

He came up with a small bottle and passed it and an eyedropper to Jonas. “A few drops of this on her tongue. It’ll help,” he reassured him.

Jonas popped the bottle’s bung and gave it a sniff, his breath catching on the bitter scent. He looked at the doctor dubiously, who nodded. Having no reason to doubt the man and every need to ease Llew’s discomfort, Jonas slid the eyedropper into the bottle and, his hands trembling, put it to Llew’s lips. Everyone waited.

Llew’s eyelids flickered, and her eyes rolled back. Jonas’s breath caught, thinking she might be dying. Idiot. She was dying.

“You have to save her,” he muttered.

The doctor was smart enough not to respond. He reached forward to begin his work but snatched his hands back the instant he came in contact with her.

“She’s Aenuk,” Jonas said.

The doctor’s eyes widened before narrowing. He shook his head and snatched his bag. Jonas gripped the doctor’s arm before he got fully standing.

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere till you’ve fixed her.”

Hisham stepped in close behind the doctor. “You heard the man,” he said by the doctor’s ear.

Reluctantly, the doctor knelt beside Llew again.

“It was a Syakaran knife,” said Jonas, folding and unfolding the fingers on one hand, testing and displaying the result of having touched Llew himself. The skin was pink, raw, blistered in places.

The doctor said nothing, just gave Jonas a dark look. Jonas looked back.

The doctor puffed his thoughts out with a sigh, shaking his head and working his jaw as he reached into his bag and pulled on a pair of rubbery gloves.

“You do realize,” the doctor said, not even trying to disguise his anger, “that open abdominal wounds are almost invariably fatal. It could take minutes, it could take weeks, but I’m afraid it’s the way it is.”

“I hope you realize the day she dies is the day you die.”

Again, Jonas held the doctor’s glare. Jonas had no time for whether or not his terms were fair. What mattered was the doctor not taking shortcuts because Llew was Aenuk.

Jonas leaned close to Llew, murmuring reassurances. She looked like she was out cold, but maybe she might hear him.

He wasn’t disappointed when Hasiph crouched beside Llew, opposite the doctor. Jonas had been to the Turhmos border with the young medic several times over the years and knew him as a competent medical professional. Hasiph returned Jonas’s nod before settling to following every instruction the doctor gave.

They cut and tore her clothes, wiped away what blood they could. Hasiph focused on her chest wound, while the doctor worked at her belly. All Jonas saw was off-white cloth going in and coming out dripping with dark blood. They requested more swabs.

Jonas’s nerves wound tight. He felt sick. So much blood. A Syakaran blade. Was he about to lose Llew and their baby? He didn’t think he could stand it. His parents. Kierra and their child. It was almost enough to make him believe in gods. Could they hate him so much? He was a man who’d made mistakes, but they’d been made in ignorance. His enlightenment had begun the day Llew had lived in Stelt. Was he meant to have atoned for all he’d done already? He needed more time.

“Oh.” The doctor’s muted exclamation brought Jonas back to the cold, dark cell.

“What?”

The doctor murmured something, too quiet to hear. Jonas leaned closer. The doctor lifted the cloth in his hand. In it, lay a perfectly formed, tiny human being, still connected to Llew via a fleshy tube from its belly.