: Chapter 61

I’ve heard a lot of stories about war. After the strife with Emberfall, I remember soldiers coming through Briarlock with tales of what happened on the battlefields. I know about what happened to Callyn’s father, and there’s no shortage of travelers willing to talk about the Uprising.

I’ve never really thought about the aftermath.

The lane between the bakery and the forge is littered with bodies. Many more have fallen in the woods. Dozens are badly burned, and the sickly sweet smell fills the air. There are worse smells, too. I’ve heard that nothing about death is dignified, and I’m seeing the proof.

I’m glad that Callyn and the queen took the younger girls to the bakery, that they’ll be watching for travelers and stopping them before they can come down the lane and find … this. But it left me in the woods with Tycho and the king, and there’s clearly a tension between them that the battle didn’t erase.

After Tycho offered me his arm, he glanced back at the king and said, “I’ll be back in a minute to strip and drag.”

I didn’t want to be a burden when there are so many more important things to worry about, but I didn’t want to trip and fall face-first into a corpse either, so I took his arm, and now we’re making our way back down the hill.

I don’t want to search the bodies for my father, but I can’t help it. My eyes skip over armored men and women, but I don’t see him. My heart keeps beating at a rapid clip. Maybe he escaped. I can’t decide which option I should hope for.

“Are you all right?” Tycho says quietly.

I try taking a deep breath and regret it immediately. I focus on not breathing through my nose. “I don’t know yet.” I think of how closely he’s guarded royal secrets, and I wonder how much I can pry. “Are you?”

He gives me half a smile. “I don’t know yet.”

At the forge, Tycho finds my crutches, which are in pieces, and he sighs. “I’m sorry.”

As if this is the worst thing to happen today. I shake my head. “I have tools. Just leave them.”

Tycho nods. His demeanor is cool and detached, the only sign that everything that happened here affected him, too. “This will take us a while,” he says. “But I’ll be back when I can.”

“What does that mean?” I say to him. “ ‘Strip and drag’?”

“We’ll pull the weapons and armor,” he says. “Anything worth salvaging. And we’ll identify who we can.” He hesitates. “Then we’ll drag the bodies into the clearing at the end of the lane to burn them.”

I stare at him as if I don’t comprehend.

But I do.

The actual soldiering, not so much.

I want to pull him into the house and lock the door, as if I could somehow trap all this horror out here and that would erase the bleak look from his expression.

But he wouldn’t want that. Of all I’ve learned about Tycho, he’s not one to sidestep duty and obligation.

I’ve been quiet too long, and Tycho speaks as if I need a better explanation. “It’s late spring. Dead bodies get a lot worse before they get any better. Prince Rhen’s soldiers won’t be here for days.”

“No. Yeah.” I have to shake myself, because I don’t want to think about that too closely. “Go. I’m fine.”

He squeezes my hand, then moves away.

There’s a part of me that wants to go into the house and pretend none of this is happening—but a bigger part doesn’t want to feel like a coward. I need my crutches, so I set to repairing them while Tycho and the king go about their task.

It’s slow work, with what must be hundreds—thousands?—of buckles. Quiet work, too, because they say little aside from the occasional comment that they call to each other in Emberish. The king is favoring the leg that took an arrow, and when I look more closely, I notice that Tycho is favoring his injured shoulder. But they begin to make a pile of weapons and armor—keeping the Iishellasan steel separate, from what I can see—and they carry on.

I wonder what all the gossip-hungry travelers would make of this version of King Grey and Lord Tycho: injured men who should be taking respite in the palace, but are instead kneeling beside fallen soldiers to do what needs to be done.

Lord Alek might be a skilled fighter, and he might claim he’s loyal to the queen, but I could never, for one minute, imagine him doing this.

I swing my hammer to bolt my crutches back together, then slip them under my arms to support my weight.

Then, before I can think too closely about what I’m doing, I step out of the workshop to help.

I underestimated. There seem to be millions of buckles. I remember Tycho disarming in the lantern light, his fingers quick and deft. I’m slower, lacking practice. When I first began, I expected Tycho and the king to exchange a glance and send me back to the forge, to leave this work to the real warriors. Instead, they acknowledged my presence in the lane and switched to Syssalah for their sparse conversation, admitting me into their company. The sun beats down as the day goes on, and I see exactly what Tycho meant about dead bodies getting a lot worse before they get better.

When I struggle with unfamiliar equipment, they call instructions. Unbuckle those greaves from the bottom. It’ll loosen the other straps. Or, There’s a hidden hook under that pauldron so you don’t need to unbuckle it.

Sometime around midday, I’ve grown a bit numb to what we’re doing, and I drop to a knee beside a man’s facedown body, then absently grab hold of his shoulder to lay him out on his back.

He’s not dead. He growls with rage and swings a hand with a dagger. “Magic sympathizer!”

I cry out in surprise and fall back, but I’m not quick enough. His dagger slices a gash right across my ribs. I gasp and try to scramble backward, but he’s coming after me.

Before he gets far, a knife hilt appears in his neck. Then another. Pain and shock flare in his eyes, but then nothing else. He collapses back to the ground. Truly dead this time.

My heart is hammering against my rib cage. I can hear my breathing rattle in my chest.

Tycho is at my side almost instantly. I don’t know if he threw those blades or if the king did, but I press a hand to my waist and I’m stunned at how much blood I find on my fingers.

“Was it just a regular dagger?” Tycho is saying. “Jax. Jax, let me see.” He drops to a knee beside me. Before I’m ready, his fingers press into the wound, and I flinch—but then it’s healed.

“Are you all right?” he says.

I nod, then run a wrist across my damp forehead. My heart is still pounding. “He just took me by surprise.”

I expect him to tell me to stop, that helping might be too dangerous, but the king calls, “Fit him with a breastplate, Tycho. There may be others.”

Tycho finds me a breastplate—and a pair of steel-lined leather bracers, too. As he helps me lace and buckle the armor onto my body, I try not to think too hard about the fact that the last person to wear these died in them.

Tycho surprises me when he adds a dagger belt with a weapon strung along the length.

“I’d rather you have one if you need it.” He tugs at the strap, pulling it tight, then stands back to look at me. “You make a good soldier.”

That sparks a light in my heart, and I have to look away before my throat tightens. I shake off the emotion, hook my crutches under my arms, and move to the next body.

I have to do a double take, because it’s my father.

He’s clearly dead. He wore no armor, and there’s an arrow through his chest. I remember the moment I saw him lift that crossbow.

Tycho goes still beside me, then puts a hand on my shoulder. His voice is very soft. “Jax.”

I try to breathe past my shock. I wait for remorse to hit me just as hard, but it doesn’t.

Resolve does.

My father made his choice, and so did I.

What are you afraid of, Jax?

Not my father. Not anymore.

I reach down and jerk the arrow free, then plant my crutches in the ground to move on to the next.