Page 115

A CHOICE AND A CHANCE

AXTON

S he’s sitting across from me in the dancing light of the fire, pale and mute, circles dark as bruises beneath her snow-stained eyes, and I’m furious at how guilty I feel at the look on her face.

It’s a trick, Axton. She’s a SoulBinder.

Give her a chance and she’ll steal you before the next breath.

Pressing my lips together in annoyance, I stoke the flames, then walk her over a plate of food, ignoring the fact that I’ve loaded it with the best of what we have.

I should just dump it, give her nothing but crusts and water, and want to scream to the heavens at the quiet, “thank you,” she murmurs gratefully in her surprisingly low voice, so I don’t respond.

For a long time we sit in the comforting noise of snapping, burning wood and the restless music of night creatures.

It’s a peace I cherish, that I long for when I’m away from the summer months, kept inside the Crimson City with all the luxuries it holds.

A peace that is being disturbed by a scuttling little mouseling resting silently in flickering shadows.

Casting my eyes back to her, I watch her for too many heartbeats; at least she can’t tell how closely I’m studying her, but she confuses me.

Which infuriates me all the more. Not a SoulBinder she claims, even believes .

A BoneSpeaker. No. Bone Keeper . Her hands tremble as she lifts a bit of cheese to her mouth, and she winces .

“A branch ?” The words burst from me without permission, and her head jerks around to face me.

“We’ve been over this, BloodLetter. I don’t know what else I can say to you.”

And we have. Many, many times since I found her sprawled in a heap on the forest floor, tunic pulled one way, legs another, both hands bleeding profusely from her palms. I immediately examined her hands, then pulled off her hood to see if there had been any other damage done.

Her eyelids were wet and red-rimmed, matching her strange birthmarks, standing out like blood against her skin and colorless eyes.

“A branch,” she’d explained, voice shaking.

She’d stumbled, fallen, went to save herself by putting her hands down and had sliced them open on sharp wood.

Everything made sense; she’s ungainly at the best of times, is in a foreign place, can’t see, and was likely rushing.

But some tiny fish darts in my thoughts rippling the quiet waters.

It wasn’t a branch; of all the things she’s told the truth of, what a useless thing to lie about. Why?

She sat so placidly when I’d straightened her clothes in quick, unforgiving movements, when I’d cleansed and wrapped her hands, never complaining, never flinching.

Just wan and numb, and frustratingly accepting.

Infuriatingly accepting, as though doing it on purpose.

Doing what on purpose, I argue with myself.

What you ask her to do? And yes. That seems to be the problem.

When she does what I ask her to do, when I ask her to do it, I find it…

incredibly aggravating. So when we got back to the horse and she’d turned her pale face up to mine, waiting for me to put the hood back on, I found myself unable to do it.

Her obedience seemed a trick, and I just lifted her up on the horse instead, ignoring her wary look.

And if anyone in the caravan questioned it, they were at least wise enough to keep their thoughts to themselves.

We’ve stayed back from the main camp anyways; at least for the time being it seems to be wise to keep her as separate as possible.

Though it has meant long days for me — when she falls to sleep at night and one of my Riders can guard the area, I travel to the main camp and meet with the rest of my band, reviewing the day, planning the next.

We can’t co ntinue like this, but I need to be sure of my footing before I step forward.

From the woods there is a familiar rustling noise, a quick sharp chirp.

A curious look flashes across the Binder’s face — it’s like she almost recognizes the sound, and I narrow my eyes.

“Binder…” I ask slowly, “if you had to guess, who would you say made that sound?” I’ve thrown her with the question, can see the options racing through her mind as she tries to figure out the answer.

“The truth, Binder. I’ll know if you’re lying to me. ”

Sighing, she shrugs. “Your sister, I’d say.”

Surprise flares in my chest. “My..sister?”

“I assume so. The one who calls you brother. Axton.”

The way she says my name is delicious.

“How in the world can you tell?” Forcing everything but suspicion from my words, I pull anger around me like a cloak. SoulBinder.

“She speaks to you most often. Her sound has become familiar.”

Snorting, I shake my head. Her softness and sorrow are tricks.

All Binder tricks, but she slips in moments like these, showing who she is.

Knowing Kyla’s whistle from others when she doesn’t speak our language?

You are growing weak because of a moonlight face.

Her throat should have been slit the moment she emerged from the womb.

“Come, Kylabet.” The command is barked out. She’s not here as my sister at the moment, only my subordinate. Though the highest ranking one, which she never lets me forget.

“Alone?”

“No. Bring your companions.”

“I’ll send Teo for them. They’re back a ways.

We have kept them comfortable and fed, but I wasn’t sure…

” As she’s speaking, my sister enters the clearing, her feet as silent as owl wings.

You would only ever know she was there because she let you; Kylabet is a born hunter.

When the Gods split us in the womb, they were more generous with her gifts than my own.

I would never admit it to her face, but things I struggle with are easy as breath to her; it is difficult not to be jealous.

Not that you’d ever know we shared a mother; twins aren’t a welcome oddity in the Crimson Walls.

Nothing is a welcome oddity in our lands.

So it’s not well known that we’re real siblings rather than cousins.

My mother’s sister was pregnant at the same time and both she and her babe died in a dangerous birth — fortune under a bad star for my mother.

To lose a sister and a niece in one moment and gain a son and daughter in the next; the balance of the scales is never even, no matter what some might say.

Our father was away when my mother gave birth to us.

She and her sister were to each midwife the other; instead my mother was left alone, brought us to this world alone, presented us to the Elders as cousins and asked for permission to raise us as siblings.

I’m not even sure our father knows we share more than half-blood; he certainly doesn’t treat Kyla like a true daughter.

Not that he’s cold, but there is more duty and less love with her, and I know she feels it.

Chance favored us at least in looks, close enough to be family but different enough to keep the story.

Kyla is tall for a woman but still shorter than me, lithe and muscular from years in the saddle.

Her hair is darker than mine by a good bit, hints of red in burnished bronze, her nose straighter, mouth and cheekbones sharper.

Cousins is an easy story, though everyone acknowledges her as my adopted sister and treats her as such.

There is no real difference now in what would have been anyways, had our people taken twins as a blessing rather than a curse.

Kyla is standing silently, waiting for me to acknowledge her, playing the part of my second-in-command with surprising patience. “Speak,” I command tightly, and her lips twist in a wry smile.

“The rest are bedded down for the night. You’re going to have to figure out what to do with this one soon though.

Not that there’s any poison yet, precisely, but there is murmuring, especially given the current pace.

Enough faith in you that there are no questions, but curious cats show claws if left without answers for too long, hmm? ”

Nodding, I inhale deeply. She’s not wrong. There are decisions to be made; I’m just unsure of the correct path.

“We don’t have an end-choice, brother. Only the middle. The story finishes the same no matter how it’s written. The last page is inked by the Elders. The rest is written by your pen. ”

“She is a SoulBinder , Kyla.”

An infuriated huff of sound fills our small camp. “ She is not a SoulBinder,” the demon almost growls in exasperation, and Kyla’s lips twitch in response.

“Is she not, BloodLetter?” Kyla asks me, as though she already knows what answer I’m going to give, but still wants to hear it.

“Do you doubt me?”

Straightening immediately, she walks over to me and lays a quick hand on my shoulder.

“Never, brother. Never.” Switching to our tongue now, she stares at the creature ebbing in and out of focus in the shadows of the flickering fire.

“But I do doubt that she knows what she is. She seems very convinced that she’s something else.

I wonder if it would be useful to us in some way to have a Binder who is not a Binder.

If there is some sort of play to be made that we aren’t seeing at the moment.

The Gods left her there for you to find, blind and indebted to you, no?

Is there a way to, I don’t know, tame her for our people?

I worry that if we continue this treatment of her, by the time we get to the city to ask those who may have answers, she may have turned against us.

That we will have lost some advantage we were gifted. ”

“What do you suggest?” I ask, feeling completely irritated that she’s seeing something I missed, but still needing her counsel.

“Treat her as an honored guest of our people?” Snorting derisively, I shake my head.

“They would ride off a cliff after me, Kyla, but that would be…” Letting my voice drift, we sit in silence for a moment, staring into the fire.

It takes too long for the wheels to start turning in my brain, but she sits without speaking, waiting for me.

“Perhaps…” I begin slowly, thinking it through.

“Perhaps there is a halfway point. A guard, a mount, no hood. She will be a horse on a picket line. Enough freedom to show herself, to earn us some favor. But on a choke chain, you understand? And a blade through her heart the minute anything goes sideways. I’d rather explain a dead Binder to the Elders than one we let steal souls. ”

“It’s your taste we’re going off, Axton. Is she lying when she says she doesn’t bind souls? ”

“She isn’t, not exactly, but it’s a muddy flavor, Kyla.” I know I sound troubled, but I feel troubled. Nothing is clear about the Binder; blood tells no lies, but hers tells no truths either. “She believes she isn’t a Binder , that much is certain.”

Kyla makes a low, humming sound at the back of her throat, a thoughtful, cautioning vibration of noise, and we cease talking immediately. Moments later, from the woods, I hear a rustling, then Teo emerges leading two strange men behind him.

The instant their faces show in the firelight, the pale woman, who up until now has been silent, surges to her feet, hands clasped at her throat, eyes wide and wild.

“Oh!” she says, and there is so much in that one, tiny word, it feels like a book of meaning.

“Oh!” she says again, her throat closing on the sound, entire body trembling, shaking as though the earth beneath her is unsteady, and she collapses back onto the small stump where she had been sitting.

Heartbreak and hope flash across her face, emotion crashing into her in a lightning strike.

They are across the clearing before Kyla, or Teo, or I can move. Across the clearing, around the fire, and kneeling in the dirt in front of her.

“BoneKeeper,” one says, and if she can’t hear the sunrise of sound in the way he says her name, then she is deaf as well as blind.

“Flame,” the other murmurs at the same time, and it’s as though he had the executioner's blade on his neck, only to be spared in the final second.

Whoever they are, she is a compass point in their world.

Whoever she is, they are a light in the darkness to her.

Kylabet and I exchange long looks; Teo glances at me for guidance, and I wave him off in abrupt dismissal.

Whatever happens here, the less eyes the better.

He obeys immediately, fading back into the shadows soundlessly.

I trust him with my life, but secrets spill when they fill more than one mouth.

Nothing more has been said by the peculiar trio, the silence thick and heavy, at odds with the looks on their faces, at the furious restraint of their bodies. So it is a shattering sound when Kylabet speaks, voice tight and carefully considering .

“SoulBinder, how did you see them when they entered the clearing?”

Three heads whip around to face her, three faces completely blanked of emotion.

“Yes indeed, my little blind demon,” I whisper, teeth and talons clear in my words. “The truth. Or I will know it.”

SoulBinder.