Chapter 27

I forced myself to take a deep, calming breath before I left Grey’s room. I nodded shortly to the two guards still stationed outside my door. They still didn’t trust me yet. After all it has only been three short days since we had been captured.

Head high, I took my time treading my way to the Hall of the Arcane, the two guards trailing behind me. I was free walk around the city, as long as I had these two guards in tow. The Rider magicians had made it quite clear to me, to be seen without the guards was instant death. And being obviously Valharan—the illusion spell had been broken when Cyra had vanished—I would be easily spotted in the sea of barbarians.

It felt weird being myself again. Back to what I was: my skin slightly brown from being under the hotter sun of the south in contrast to the pale skin of the denizens of the North. My own hair was the color of coal, marking another huge difference between our two people. The people of the south tended to be more varied in hair color, auburn, blonde, brown, copper, black, and the sandy hue of the desert people. There was even the odd green of the Swimmers, who were rumored to be half mermaids as they lived by the sea and made a life collecting the precious metals of the Opal Straits, an underwater canyon lined with the purple-green jewels, turning the waters of the area into a startling color.

The Riders were a uniformed lot, all of roughly the same height and size, possessing brutish strength, rough features, and hair that same shade of blonde. But I guess that’s what you get when you don’t trade with other nations. Too much inbreeding is bad, they say.

I passed by the marketplace on the way to the hall. I walked right past the slave market as if I didn’t notice it and its occupants. Sapphire and Pasha were bound in chains, while Tomas was being auctioned at that moment, a leash attached to his neck.

The moment he spied me, he screamed “Traitor!” and jumped off the stage. The slave merchant, in a moment of surprise, let the leash slip though his fingers, and Tomas was on me, a small dirk he had snatched from the slave merchant’s belt aimed high.

I dived into a roll and came up behind him, leaving him to slash harmlessly into thin air. I kicked the back of both his knees and he fell to the ground, but his legs came up sideways, intending to knock me down with him. I did an overhead flip, and by the time I came down, he was back on his feet, lunging at me with that knife again. I knocked it out of his hand with a kick, but got a punch to the ribs for my efforts. I hit back with two consecutive strikes of my own at critical nerve spots, both at the shoulder joints.

His arms fell limply to his side, and I grabbed him by his hair cruelly and pulled him forwards till we were face to face. “Do not do that again,” I hissed, and punched him straight in the face. I let the force of the punch drive him to the floor, giving him one last kick as he lay gasping on the floor, one side of his face red from the recent punch. The slave merchant’s guards arrived then and hauled him off back to the auction block, the slave master fingering his whip as his charge was brought back to him, sorely bruised.

Sapphire was screaming, and Pasha directed a look at me filled with so much hate I nearly winced. I wanted desperately to help them, but I had my own part to play. Now was not the time. But I harbored no ill will towards them for treating me this way. After all, wasn’t what my own reaction when I first knew that Grey had gone over? I briefly wondered how it felt like when they had first found out that not one but two of their friends had gone over to the other side, but shook my head, dismissing those thoughts. I had more important matters to attend to.

I dusted off my hands as if the whole affair was nothing but an inconvenience and walked away. I didn’t look back.

“Are you ready to be tested?” the voice of one of the Rider magicians boomed into the silence of the Hall of the Arcane. There was complete silence in the hall as they awaited my answer. I looked up at the main speaker sitting on a row of seats above me in the circular room.

The hall was only partially occupied now, but a full hall would probably boost close to three hundred occupants, I noted, storing that piece of information away in a part of my brain. I nodded slowly, carefully blanking out my brain.

“Why have you come here?” a Rider magician I had come to know as Colline asked, her voice surprisingly soft, unlike the other coarse voices of the rest of the Rider population.

“To find out why the Rider magicians can use magic over long distances,” I said, making my voice as monotonous as possible, using the same tone Cyra did at night. They still hadn’t found her yet. I only vaguely wondered where she was hiding.

A globe of white light appeared, suspended over my head.

The first speaker and Colline exchanged glances and nodded.

Similar questions were asked of me. Did I know where Cyra disappeared to? How did I find and enter the Ruksyah? How long did we take to journey here? How was the Rider force in Valhara to be opposed? Did I know any battle plans? And the list went on and on.

It went on for hours, moving on to other topics. I had to tell them of myself, my story, what I was, my life with Iradhim. Did I love him? What did he mean to me? Why was he so important to me?

The globe of white light remained above me throughout the interrogation, emitting a steady white light. And then they asked the question I had been dreading.

Would I join the Rider cause for him? Betray my own people? Work for the people I had hated since I was eleven years old? Would I be loyal to them? Fight for them against my own country?

Good question.

Would I? I asked myself.

One memory drifted sharply to the surface of my thoughts. A memory of him comforting me throughout the long hours of the night whenever the nightmares came. He had always been there, unfailingly. Banishing the memories I had of home and the slaughter that took place there. Times when I wasn’t sure if I was human anymore when I was capable of so much killing. Moments of racking guilt, where I kept seeing the blank faces of all the people I had killed and the blood on my hands, asking myself if I was as bad as the Riders who massacred my village. Periods where I would just go off without a word, leaving the guild without notice, to spend some time in the woods a mile away from Elendié. I would camp there for few nights just wanting the quiet of the deep woods to bring a measure of peace into my soul.

Grey would always find me. He wouldn’t say anything, just slowly unpack his traveling gear, lay his bedroll next to mine and bear me silent company, understanding my need for silence. When it was time for bed, he would just hold me till I fell asleep. When I was with him like that, there would be no nightmares.

He had always been by my side. Now it was my time to side with him.

I looked up at Colline and answered truthfully, “Yes.”

The lie detector above me remained white.