Page 56 of Chained Knight

“The prince will follow,” Hannixe insisted, stubbornly. “Or he will move along the Road to assail the Mirrored City, thinking our lady taken by the traitor. Either way he cannot fault us for seeking to save a companion in need. Nor could I do less.”

“All those mortal years you did not speak, and now you are commanding.” Darjeth’s laugh was nearly bitter as the chained man’s. “No, my dear Grey Lady. I would not ask it of you.”

“Indeed you did not,” she shot back. “’Tis our lady queen’s will we are to work, not mine or yours. So much has been taken from us, and she is to bear yet more loss?”

“Hannixe—” Keners tried again.

Come on, Ari.What were the options? She had to think, and it was difficult with them yammering away.

“And others of our number may well be suffering the same,” Hannixe continued. “Even our lord prince himself, since he is not fully proof against the contagion while he wears the last fetter. He said as much, do you not remember?”

She had a point, Ari admitted silently. Those things with their naked, bloated feet and swollen discolored hands, the weird buried metal bits in their rotting flesh, their chewing jaws…

Another galvanic shudder went through her. The zombies apparently only had to claw at someone or bite them to infect, but they used the wordcontagionas well. What if it was a virus, or bacteria?

Hannixe continued, her voice fading behind the rushing in Ari’s ears. Disassociating now wouldn’t do any good; the coping mechanism was only useful in certain situations. She struggled to push it away, tothinkthrough the noise, tempted to simply sink down onto long grass and curl into a little ball, covering her head and hoping for the best.

Therealreincarnation of their fairy queen probably wouldn’t be having any of this discussion bullshit. Or maybe she would, nobody said a lot about her particular preferences.

Even if Ari was simply a second-rate copy, she could still do some good. She quelled another shiver, trying once more to shove the rushing noise and trauma detachment aside—there had been so many zombies, an entire Thriller flashmob.

How many of their group were now wounded? Or that horrible word,bitten? The chained man had armor, sure, but he wasn’t immune. What if he got sick?

What if he gotworsethan infected?

No. The outside world spilled back in through her eyes, her ears. At first a trickle, but then a flood. Ari found she could push the disassociation away with a wringing internal effort.

“I do not doubt your courage, my love.” Keners’s tone was soft, reasonable, almost tender. “But the hazard is far too great.”

Darjeth wisely kept his mouth shut.

Ari was pretty sure this place would end up killing her—if it wasn’t the robots it was the zombies, if it wasn’t either it was the wildlife, and if all that didn’t manage the job this Bright King would probably get his hands on her.

If the resistance won somehow, the chained man would send her home once she wasn’t useful anymore. She couldn’t stay, so what did it matter?

But that was no way to live. She could have just let Mike finish strangling her instead of lashing out in self-defense, and the truth was she’d known what was going to happen well before she scrambled for the nightstand. The realization had arrived the moment she saw his face, heard that awful, uncharacteristic silence.

Ari had made up her mind to at leasttrysurviving. Which carried its own questions—and consequences.

Did she want to be like Mike and his parents, cruel and selfish, or did she want to be like Mom, like the Ari she’d been before marriage? Her ex-husband mocked her habit of giving change to beggars or trying to help strays and wounded animals;every man for himselfwas a Hardison family motto.

Her mother’s was closer toit takes a village, and Ari’s… well,help where you canwas preferable to just about anything else. Otherwise she might have left the chained man in the Keep, his sword stuck in that chunk of rock and the rest of him in an iron burrito.

How would things have turned out in that case? Probably much, much worse. Even if the chained man only cared about getting unleashed or the shadow of his dead queen, he had still rescued both Ari and Jazarl’s men, and was doing his best to protect them.

“It makes no difference.” The words came out in English, not their lovely lilting tongue. “So I might as well.”

A long pause, wind breathing softly through forest lungs. The wheat-colored grassland beyond rippled, individual blades bending under an invisible caress. Each one was weak, endlessly frail, but together…

“My lady?” Hannixe, tentatively.

Ari turned back to her companions. They watched her anxiously, even Darjeth, and a weight settled on her shoulders. The feeling was familiar, almost like coming home.

“Which way?” Her face felt strange, but at least the invisible translator was still functioning. “The Mirrored City, which way is it?”

It was Darjeth who answered. “By which route, my lady?”

“The short one.” Ari regarded him steadily, daring him to debate. “The one that takes a day.”Which should get us there in time for this Conjunction-eclipse thing. If she’d known time was so precious, she certainlywouldhave worried; maybe the chained man had indeed been trying to do her a solid.

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