Song of Blood & Stone (Earthsinger Chronicles #1)(7)
Her raw palms burned from gripping the metal of the gun, and her heart stuttered in her chest. The Elsiran looked on, an apology written on his face. She was sorry, as well.
“Well, come in then.”
CHAPTER TWO
It was not in Jack’s nature to despair. He’d been through his share of hardships in his twenty-two years—well, less than most but more than some, he suspected. The Seventh Breach in particular came to mind. Ninety-nine days of misery that had felt like a thousand. But even then, he’d been full of righteous rage, which had kept him from sinking into the depression so many of his men had succumbed to.
There was a desolation that sank into the hearts of people who’d lived through war. He saw it in the old-timers who fought in the tail end of the Fifth Breach, a war that lasted seventy years. But he’d also seen it in the faces of Lagrimari children in the villages the squad had passed through on his spy mission. Before his bloody disguise had worn off.
Now, a kind of melancholy he was not used to threatened to overtake him. He was back where he’d started—captured—and worse, the girl he’d tried to protect had been hauled into this mess. But he couldn’t allow himself to sink too far. Giving up was also not in his nature, not while there was breath in his body.
He wasn’t sure how many breaths he had left, though. Each one was more difficult than the last. He’d been trained to work through pain, to put it in a box in his mind, then put that box into another box until he had as many boxes as he needed to keep moving, keep fighting. He had lost count of his boxes, and they’d long stopped helping. Pain was all he knew, but even that meant he was still alive and still had a chance to escape.
The brute to his left, a lout called Ginko, squeezed a brawny hand over Jack’s arm and pulled him forward, toward the girl’s quaint cabin, which sat under the shade of several tall trees. A barn stood off to the side with a chicken coop beyond it. Rows and rows of carefully tended plants stretched out on either side of the house, interrupted every so often by thickets of trees.
Jack had never been inside a Lagrimari home before and found himself surprised at its warmth and coziness. He had imagined they would all look like the dilapidated shacks of the POW settlements, but this was a proper home for a family. Quilts covered overstuffed couches and chairs. Colorful rugs hugged the floor, though they were currently being sullied by the mud tracked in on the soldiers’ boots. The mantelpiece featured children’s drawings, woodcarvings, a cuckoo clock, and a photograph of several people that he couldn’t make out from this distance.
The girl, Jasminda, pointed out two bedrooms and a washroom on the main floor for the men to use. Just beyond the living room was the entrance to the kitchen, through which a squat woodstove was visible. A staircase in the living room led to a closed door that she indicated belonged to her. When he looked back to the mantle, the photo had been turned facedown.
“And what of communications, Miss Jasminda?” Sergeant Tensyn asked. “Our radio equipment is badly damaged, and we’ve had no contact with our regiment.”
She held herself erect with a fearsome expression as she turned to answer. “No electricity. No radio or cables.”
“And telegrams?”
She shrugged. “In town. On the other side of the mountain.” She waved a hand vaguely in a circle then closed her eyes as if pained. Tensyn looked ready to continue his questioning when she broke in. “Sergeant, you hope to bring the spy in alive, yes?” She had not looked at Jack since that moment of recognition outside, and she did not glance at him now, yet he felt her attention on him all the same.
His whole body began to grow warmer, lighter. The odd sensation of Earthsong pulsated through him. He had only experienced it once before, when Darvyn had cast the spell to change Jack’s appearance before leading him through the crack in the Mantle into Lagrimar. The touch of magic stroked him intimately, like a brush of fingers across his skin. The soft vibration cascaded over his entire body, leaving him feeling weightless. Finally, the pain could fit in a box. He gasped, pulling in a deep breath, and fought the desire to fall to his knees with relief.
“There is a reward for the return of this man,” Tensyn said. “Alive.”
Jasminda wrinkled her nose. “He stinks of infection. Why has he not been healed?”
Fear speared Jack at her words. He’d seen many a man die of untreated infection from more minor wounds than his.
“All of my men have already given tribute to the True Father.”
“And their Songs have not returned?”
Tensyn’s expression sharpened, and Jack’s own brow furrowed at her question. “Tributes are irreversible, as I’m sure you know, Miss Jasminda. Once your Song is gone, it cannot be returned.”
All of the men were looking at her now, but her expression did not change. Her eyes flashed for a moment—perhaps with fear or anger—but it was gone so quickly Jack could not be sure.
“I had heard sometimes they did, that is all. This man will die in days if the infection continues.” She turned abruptly and stalked into the kitchen.
It was she who used Earthsong on him. Was it possible she was more than just a sympathetic Lagrimari? Her ignorance of the True Father’s tributes could mean she was a Keeper of the Promise like Darvyn. They often stayed in isolated places like this, free from the dictator’s edicts.