Page 29 of Cage of Starlight
“If I may.” Vantaras’ cool voice rises from Tory’s right. He strides onto the field like it’s nothing—dry and warm in his tailored uniform. The cannon angles away as he enters the field. He must be wearing something that stops it.
If Tory could see straight, he could steal the thing. Instead, he shivers, doubled over and gasping, when those perfect, polished boots stop in front of him. He glares up, soaked to his skin, and whips wet hair from his eyes. “W-what . . . do you want?”
“This is painful to watch.”
“Thenstop watching.”
“I’ve been ordered to observe.”
“And you’re s-such a good little soldier.”
Vantaras’ lips thin. Direct hit.
It feels good, being on more equal ground. “You listen to everything that guy tells you?Come, sit, stay?”
Something burns in Vantaras’ fire-bright eyes. He pulls a kerchief from the front pocket of his uniform. Rich blue-green, it catches the stormy gray light with a low shine, like it’s silk or something. Snob.
Carefully, he folds it—maybe two inches wide—over and over itself.
Tory’s stomach flips, brain registering too late what he plans to do. “What are you—?”
Vantaras’ lips twist up in a vengeful expression quite unlike a smile. He shifts behind Tory, and before Tory can make his cold-clumsy limbs move, Vantaras has pulled the cloth over his eyes and knotted it behind his head. A landscape of perfect darkness spreads out.
Vantaras says, “I think you should try it like this.”
Tory reaches up to tear off the kerchief.
“I’ll rephrase.” The voice comes now from Tory’s right side, low and cold. “Youwilldo it like this. I don’t believe you’ll like what happens if you remove the blindfold.”
Tory spits in his direction, but he can’t know if he hits his mark.
He does, however, know the moment Vantaras leaves. There’s a distant whine as the cannons recalibrate, and the barrage continues. Tory hears a whistlingwhooshan instant before all breath is wrenched from his chest and he falls back into the mud. He inhales water and chokes it up, shuddering as he forces himself onto his knees.
Tory will let this petty punishment slide. He’ll play at docility for now—and only for now—so Vantaras won’t see it when Tory comes for him.
After a while, it’s not so bad. If he listens for the whistle of their passage, he can dodge the balloons well enough. Most times, anyway. One nails his knee, and agony stabs through him, sharper than the dull gongs of cold. He staggers.
“Try harder!” Vantaras calls.
It’s like the deal he made in Hulven for healing. He can do nothing but agree, without even the freedom to negotiate the terms of his surrender. The ache all through him feels like the pain after a healing, too. He misses everything he used to have, and he hates that he misses it, because healing hurt and Hulven, too, was a prison—and he a fool for willingly remaining in it—but it was better than this. One or two fewer walls, wind charms, and prayers to dispel the choking fuel fog. Two mugs of steaming tea on the table: the fumbling care of a man who could not fix Tory but tried. Warm arms and the sting of pipe smoke in his nose.
His foot twists in a rut and he’s on the ground, splayed hands sinking into frigid water.
Healing. When he’shealing, he finds the energies just fine. The low electric rhythm of a body at work, the warm pool of possibility he can focus and direct toward closing wounds, urging the body to recall and return to a state pre-injury. He knows, intimately, the struggle to direct that last fizzling wisp to the work of restoration.
He doesn’t know this. He doesn’t belong here.
He finds his feet in time for a balloon to pummel him in the gut, wrenching a shameful noise from him and suffusing him with sick, visceral pain.
Menden’s voice: “Lieutenant, that’senough.”
“Not nearly, sir.”
“That wasn’t a request, boy, it was an order!”
“On what authority? You’re so fond of reminding me that you’re retired. He is my supervisee,Mr.Menden.”
Bent double, Tory coughs until his ears ring, until the roar of his pulse swallows sight and sound. Something explodes against his shoulder, knocking him onto his side in the mud.
