Page 77 of The Eye of the Fifth
‘Indeed,’ Gedeon mused.
‘And your magic?’ she asked, fractionally lowering her voice.
‘Unchanged.’ Bitter resentment flooded through him at the thought. The impediment his dear brother had accursed him with could not be removed even by Darelle’s adept hands. She was a great healer forphysical injuries and maladies alike, but magical wounds were, unfortunately for Gedeon, far out of her depth.
Sunsi was quiet, seemingly lost in thought.
‘What is it?’ Gedeon prompted.
She looked up at him, and he noticed it then. The dark circles underneath her eyes. As though she hadn’t slept in days. ‘The bounty for your capture has increased,’ she murmured. ‘Ten thousand gold coins to the person who brings you in alive.’
Ten thousandgold coins. That amount was… extortionate. More than most of Dracyg’s citizens had put together. ‘Are you tempted?’
Her mouth twitched. ‘Would you be insulted if I was?’
‘Yes,’ he replied honestly. ‘But not surprised.’
‘You still don’t trust me, do you?’
‘Do you trust me?’ he countered.
‘Are you going to find the other Wardens?’
Gedeon leant back, resting his hands on the table. He had the feeling she had only come down to the Base to ask him that question. He said shortly, ‘I am.’
It was not a decision he had come to lightly these last two weeks. His mother’s betrayal cut deep, and yet he still found himself reluctant to oppose her. He had never been the insubordinate type. Never disloyal, never undutiful.
But Sunsi had shown him another world down here. That same world, the one seen and endured from his own people, was up there too. One he had been too blinded by duty, by honour, to see.
‘Truly?’ Sunsi asked, and for the first time, she sounded young. Much younger than her thirty and five years. A dash of hope began glittering in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ he promised her. Promised himself. Promised the downtrodden people of his lands. ‘I will do what I can.’
???
How the Base citizens had managed to get a pianoforte underground, Gedeon would never know. Since he had found the old, shabby instrument collecting dust in a deserted antechamber off of therotunda, it had been difficult to leave it alone. Amala had gotten into the habit of following him whenever he felt called to play, sitting quietly by his side as his fingers swept over the keys.
‘Play another, Master Gedeon,’ she begged him.
‘I am no longer your Master, Amala. Just Gedeon will do.’
‘Gedeon,’ the fledgling repeated, then made a face. ‘It does not sound right.’
‘Regardless, the title of master no longer belongs to me.’
‘What about prince?’ Amala offered. ‘My friends call you the Prince of Fire.’
‘I fear I no longer belong to that title either,’ Gedeon said.
With the attention span of a fish, Amala referred back to her previous interest. ‘Will you play another? I have not heard much music since I came to the capital.’
He obliged her, letting his fingers rest once more on the keys before him. It was in desperate need of a retune, but he found a sort of peace in the harmonious noise his hands could create. Even if his skill was about as rusty and worn as the instrument itself.
Amala could not have cared less. She listened intently as though tranced, still and captivated by the minor melody he played. He had chosen it carefully: an aria belonging to her people in the Agni lands that moved up and down the scale like the rise and fall of the dragons’ Peak.
When his fingers slowed and the song concluded, she was subdued at his side. Glistening tears sat in her brown eyes. ‘I will never see my family again.’
‘Nothing is for certain, Amala,’ Gedeon told her. ‘That is something I have learned in the last few weeks alone.’
