Clanless (Nameless #2)(48)
“Barnabas wants you, Troy. He’ll do anything to have you.” He accepted her icy hand, her skin translucent and frail.
Gryphon didn’t bother correcting her misuse of his name. Troy was his father. “I can’t believe Barnabas banished you. Did he discover your work with the Nameless?”
The Historian nodded. “Told me I saw too much.” She lifted a bent and bony finger to her gnarled eye socket.
How could he do such a thing to his own grandmother?
“He knows about the Allies. He knows Troy. The Ram will march … ” The Historian coughed. “Preparations … for the Great Move are … ”
Gryphon lifted the back of her head and poured water onto her dry tongue. “Try not to speak.”
“Help me die, Troy. Please. I’m in … so much pain,” she wheezed as Gryphon wiped water from her chin.
“I … I’m not brave enough.” If only Zo were here. She’d know just what to do to keep this woman comfortable until she passed away peacefully.
Raca knelt down on the other side of the Historian. “I will help you pass, old one.” She looked up at Gryphon, searching his face for permission.
“I … no. You can’t—”
The Historian used what remained of her energy to reach up and press her palm to Gryphon’s cheek. “You’re like him. I’ve always thought so.” She coughed again. “When you see him. Tell him … how proud … ” her hand fell and her one eye shut.
Gryphon felt for a pulse at her neck. It came, then seconds passed before it beat again.
For the last time.
Gryphon rested his forehead against the Historian’s shoulder and whispered, “Great men are mighty in life and in death.” A common Ram prayer spoken over the dead as they pass from this life. Strange that it triggered a buried sense pride for a clan he had betrayed. For a people who no longer claimed him as their son. “Rest in peace, old friend. Thank you for everything.”
Raca and Talon retreated a good distance from the Historian’s lifeless body. He assumed they didn’t want to have the old woman’s spirit haunting them for the rest of their lives, or something ridiculous like that. Shaking his head, Gryphon searched the ground until he found a good-sized rock with a point strong enough to cut into the dirt. He knelt next to his unlikely mentor and dug into the ground, thinking about the Historian’s final words.
The Great Move was something whispered about among the ranks of Ram mess units. It would be his people’s most extreme effort to secure a bountiful future for the Ram and their posterity. Gryphon couldn’t imagine his people leaving behind their mighty city and the towering Gate that defined them. But then he also couldn’t imagine Barnabas exiling his aged grandmother—a woman upon whom he’d doted.
Muscles burning and mind reeling, Gryphon set his rock aside. Only then did he notice the cuts and calluses from using only a rock and his bare hands to dig the shallow grave. His minor injuries were nothing compared to the fate of so many people around him—people he hadn’t been able to protect.
Afraid he’d break her, Gryphon tenderly lifted the Historian into his arms and then laid her in the earth to rest forever.
At first, Zo thought the fire catapulting across the sky was another nightmare. Only when one of the balls of woven brambles and flame crashed near them—shattering on the ground around the sleeping families—did she realize it was real. The Nameless cried out as they fought the flames. Bedrolls, packs, and the clothes upon their backs caught fire. The men stationed along the outer edge of the camp couldn’t attack the demons in the woods and help their families douse the flames at the same time.
Beyond the perimeter, Zo saw Clanless clutch balls of woven wood, light it ablaze, and launch it into the camp before Stone’s men could get to them.
Zo turned to find Joshua shielding Tess like a mother bird protecting her chick in the fold of her wings. Beside them, a little girl screamed as her mother rolled around on the ground, desperate to suffocate the flames eating her shirt.
Zo grabbed her blanket and jumped on the woman. When the fire was completely out, Zo pulled the woman and her child under a lone cedar tree in the center of camp. Joshua and Tess followed.
The light of the flames surrounding them was bright enough to see the exposed, melted skin on the woman’s back. Her cry was barely audible over the commotion of the camp—a deep, throaty sound that bespoke a lifetime of hopeless suffering.
The fires around the camp diminished. The skies cleared, and the stars became visible to witness the suffering of those burned and the loved ones who had to stand by and watch their pain.
Zo hooked her arm around the lowest branch of the tree and pulled herself up to get a better vantage. “Bring us your injured,” she called out. Jumping down, she unrolled her charred blanket on the ground. “Joshua, my kit. Tess, I’m going to need your help with—”
“The blessings,” Tess interrupted. “I know.” They locked eyes for a moment and a hundred small messages passed between them. Zo’s apology for not telling her sister about her broken ability. Tess’s forgiveness and confidence that Zo would recover.
The burned and wounded formed a line before Zo and Tess and, one by one, their wounds were tended and blessings given. By the time they finished, the first light of day crested the eastern horizon. All the color left Tess’s face as she crumpled into Joshua’s lap like a kitten. “Will you stay with her for a while?” Zo asked Joshua. The boy nodded—the freckles of his nose hidden under a layer of ash—and leaned his head back against the cedar tree, halfway lost to sleep already.