Coming Clean

Sensation bleeds back into my body before sight does. I gasp back water, my throat burning. Then, as my paws turn for what feels like the first time in aeons, I feel pain in my chest where someone has gored me. The water I'm stuck in smells like blood, and there are plants in it that are trying to drag me down with them. I turn my head to see Procyon overhead, staring down at me with disappointment. A dark shape looms over the water, black blood dripping from its broken antler. I'd forgotten how surprisingly effective the cracked antler is as a weapon, but then again, I've made it a habit not to be on the receiving end of it.

One of my paws finally hits ground instead of plant, and with a few more defiant presses of my pawpads, I draw myself up from the waters. The pain in my gut is half equal to the mounting fear wracking my body, growing with every twisting pulse of my heart.

"Hawk?" asks Altair.

Is it... me?

"I'm right here," I say, "How long was I out?"

Even this high in the mountains, the summer crickets are still more than happy to give you an earful. Their chirping cries thicken the summer air, which is unusually cold against my snout and the exposed part of my flanks.

"We've been looking for you all night," an unusually dim star holds my brother's side. The glyphs in the air around her are erratic, like she's clenching and unclenching her magical aura, but it also smacks of use. So I probably got hit by Altair and Illuet had to restrain me using magic. Great.

There's no way out of this one.

The herb bag floats in the mire besides me and I reach out to grip it between my teeth, dragging it upwards and onto shore. Altair steps back, though he still has his head tilted to charge me, and Illuet draws a little closer. I can see myself reflected in her eyes: a long, white blight against the crops.

"Well," Altair begins. "Well. Well..."

"You don't need to say anything," I say. "It's fine."

"You're not going to come clean of your own volition," he responds, and his voice burns with hurt.

I don't know if I should agree with him or not. Cas is at my tongue. Now is your time to lie. They don't know that those weren't your actions, do they? You can be back in their good graces with a simple explanation, and then you can make your merry way back home.

"What were my actions?" I ask Cassiver. He's silent, but the other two look appalled. I guess that's how we're starting this. I fix them dead in the eyes. "What did I do? Clearly you figured you had to knock me out, so--"

Altair grips the sopping herbal bag from around my side, clicking it the latch open with his teeth, and I feel a great weight rise from my shoulders, along with all my defenses. He spreads it across the ground, and in the moonlight, I can see the water seep from the sides, but little of the shape itself, making the damp bag look like a defiled, waterlogged body. "You went to get me, right? Except you didn't. You were halfway down the wrong side of the mountain when we found you, and when we confronted you, you told us that if we knew what was good for us, we'd get out of the way. You said something stupid about not going home, then you told Illuet to stay shiny, because she'd lose the light and the goodness with age. I think you said something about me, too, but I can't-- remember it." Altair's eyes narrow as they do, on occasion, when he is grazing. "We figured it wasn't you, so we handled him, but surprise, surprise, it wasn't a wycked changeling or some kind of mirage or spectre. It was just you, and you can be pretty bad sometimes."

"Except it wasn't me," I interject. "It was--"

The Sorrows are in the bag. I can feel it inching towards me. I could just use my paw, couldn't I? I don't want to. I want to draw it up with psychic might. I need to have something in my system besides guilt right now, and he's still here, already recovered for the next row...

Illuet puts a paw on the bag. "No," she says. She draws herself close to my face. "I don't know who you think you are, or even what you are, but I want you to know that I can hurt you, and that-- and that if you don't answer, right now, I will find out what's going on the hard way. Magical autopsy is not a pretty process, Hawk." Her voice is shaking the whole time. As a con, I know a bluff when I see one, and this is about the worst bluff I've ever seen. I almost wish she had the heart to go through with it, no matter what havoc it would wreck on my right mind, but I'm concerned less for my physical health and more more for the purity that forcing her to run through my magic would create.

It takes a lot of herbs and ritual anyways.

Herbs we have.

In case.

Sometimes I pocket dangerous things while no one is looking because I don't feel safe without them.

"His name is Cassiver," I tell them.

"--but it's over now," Altair says, and I recognize my own words from the night at Cinnabar's and flinch. "I should have known right then, shouldn't I? I could have confronted you earlier, but I was so determined to--"

"Trust me?"

"Let you work things out on your own. Let you trust me! For some reason, I was convinced that giving you agency would somehow incentivize you to make the right choices--"

"Like our parents?" I ask. "You know that I don't make the right choices just because someone is watching me. I don't make them when no one is watching me. I just make bad choices, Altair! You followed a dangerous, black-hearted con away from your family, who took you in and raised you like their own, and now you're here in the middle of a literal reckoning where Sentients are killing each other so they can throw their corpses against the wall, under the hopes that the cur will wake up the next morning and potentially not have to fight the same battle again. That's a really fun situation, isn't it? Who, when given asylum in the middle of this, wouldn't elect to stay home? Apparently you!"
"I couldn't let you die. You're my best friend!" Altair retaliates, and he drags the herb bag beneath his hoof. "Tell Cas that we're going to bring you home, incapacitated if necessary, as soon as we know exactly what his plan has to do with dragging the herb bag around."

I jolt the bag out from beneath them and begin opening it. Altair drags it back. "What do you want from in there?!"

Illuet's psychic grip takes hold of the bag. It's far too large of a target for me to keep up, especially against her might, so I settle for something smaller. The bag pulls clean, and the seeds glimmer beneath their kindred stars. You can see the lines on them, which form the elaborate patterns that give them the countenance of curled up Sentients. I am holding small bodies aloft.

"You took them?" Altair asks.

It's redundant. "I don't want them."

"You haven't set them in the soil to grow, either. You didn't turn around to give them back. Not once, in the last... how long has it been, whole cycles of the moon by now... did you think to do anything that might amend your 'mistake'." Illuet's voice is so cold that it makes the chill running through my damp fur feel like a warm blanket.

"No," I say, "because if something really bad did happen, I would give myself over in a heartbeat, and I'd eat them all, just to protect you."

We wait in the moonlight together. I think some part of me expects them to be proud.

"That's why they keep the bones up," Altair says, mournfully. "Fear. I thought we were immune from all that."

"Of course we weren't," I say.

"Drop them!" Illuet says. "We can keep going. Just drop the Sorrows, and, no wait-- we can put them back in the clearing, next to Day, and they'll grow there, and be well cared for. You don't have to use magic again, since I've got you, and we'll go talk to Aunna Engreaves-- that's her name? Oh. Yeah, I got that right. There are Sentients out there who can help you, Hawk. We can help you. Please just let us in."

"You don't want them," Altair agrees. "I can't forgive you for this, but I can at least--"

Illuet snatches for the Sorrows. I hold them aloft, Cassiver's fury blazing in my eyes. "Don't want your pity," I warn him. I feel my throat clench. I stalk forwards with a predator's grace, not sure how theatrical I want to be. Very? Let's go with very. I can do theatrical. I can do threatening. I can do whatever they want from me right now, and I won't, because I am the opposite. "If he asked me to do it now, I'd do it. I'd do it a thousand times over, from now until the end of time. You two don't understand what it's like to be empty. You don't make the plans half the time. You don't realize that our luck's always running out, do you? It will. It will and all three of us will die, and someday, our family will probably die, too, and the world will be overtaken by Sentients like Heaven's Jaw and Blasted Tooth, those who love suffering. It's going to be over. We're not a hold out. We are marginal error in a world that is systematically purging us from existence."

Illuet and Altair are stunned silent.

"I don't want to be prey anymore. Wide-eyed, running..." I keen.

"Are you sure that Cassiver isn't just you, Hawk?" Altair asks.

I pause. The air stiffens with me. Procyon, on high, beseeches me for an answer with her silver glow. I don't answer to anyone's mythology, so I keep my mouth shut.

"That's what he said to me, while you were out," Altair says. "I need time to think."
I lower my head. "How much time?"

"Maybe til nightfall. Maybe til the harvest season. I don't know, Hawk, but I can't stand to be around you any longer. You're just..."

"The harvest season isn't coming," I tell him. "Nothing ever changes. Not even the weather, now."

Altair grits his teeth. "Hawk, I love you. Come on, Illuet. He wins. I'm picking a side, and if I die with my family, then at least I die doing something worth doing."

Illuet drags the herb bag up and I jerk it back. Both of them turn, startled, and I stay there, ears fallen against my side. Illuet drops it, eyes mournful, and she says, at last, "Do you really want it that much?"
"You understand. If someone gave you a chance to take your magic away, you'd want it. That's how we snaged you. Illuet, you're just like me-- always running--"

"Im nothing like you!" Illuet cries. "I'm a... I'm good, Hawk, and you're horrible."

"Really? What you are is incredibly selfish, self-absorbed... you hid from your town, and you're hiding from Verhamera. You're probably part of the prophecy, and you know that, we know that, but I didn't want you to leave and Altair thinks that saying nothing magically compels others to make good decisions."

Illuet's eyes harden. "I'm going to go find Natrina."

"Alone?" Altair asks.

"I'll stick with you down the hill and go off my own way once I've met your family. If you have an Ex-Defender at your house, she should at least be able to give good advice," Illuet says. "Then, fair's fair. No more running. Whatever you think about me, Hawk..." Voice is still shaking. Bluffing, bluffing, bluffing. I want to admire her courage, but she's also a terrible actor, and I know she'd never make it as a con. "... you're wrong. Whatever you think about the world, you're wrong! If there's no light, then I'll be the light."

I want to tell her that she already is, but I don't know if that would be wishful thinking. She doesn't want to hear it from me. Altair, who thinks he's defenseless, could kick my jaw in, and I wouldn't have the weaponry to defend myself. I have a bag full of healing herbs and nothing I can fix right now. Instead, I watch them walk away... they move slowly. Deliberately slowly. Cassiver knows, and I know, by extension, that there are things I could say that would bring them running back. The universe has given me the luxury of the last move.

Give me one reason not to go.

Four.

The stars gleam a little brighter. I couldn't be making this up if I tried.

Cassiver continues, That's how many Sentients have died as a direct result of your conning. You were always like this, Hawk. You never needed my help.

I pop the Sorrows in their pocket and zip up the bag. I fasten it with telekinesis and watch my two best friends leave for a moment longer, drinking in the last of their scent, before receding into the night.

Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top