Page 50 of Red Demon
We’d check the temple regularly for news about the Bend. The soldiers were doing well, escorting settlers willing to take the risk of further Asri rebel attacks. The volunteers came from the crowded cities and academies from all over the empire. Red-robed priests came to town sometimes to recruit for certain trades, and by the end of summer, the town began to thin.
Ash wrote a couple times, but he was not allowed to share where he was, or anything about the classified work he was doing. He ignored my questions and said he was fine. I came to resent those letters more than look forward to them.
I turned twenty-one on a rainy day in early fall. Galen made me an ugly mess of a chocolate cake that still tasted divine. That was the day I missed Ash the most. I wondered what had changed so drastically for him to not write for a month. He wasn’t a casualty. I checked.
Six weeks later, I woke to Galen telling me to arm myself, Istaran strapped across his back. There was a stranger at the gate; signs of Attiq-ka magic. The night guard had called the elders and the governor, and Galen assembled the militia.
Dawn bled across the horizon by the time we got to the front gate. There she was, a little girl of eight or nine, standing hunched in the road with tangled black hair that brushed her shoulders. I squinted and could not make out the face she wouldn’t lift to meet us.
Governor Solonstrong arrived. He greeted Galen with a smile, then grumbled about being woken up for something like this, whatever it was.
“She just looks like she needs help.” I too couldn’t see a reason to be afraid of a child.
The black-haired night guard, Austin, just shook his head. “Watch.” He turned, cupping his hands to her. “Hello!”
She didn’t move.
“Syo na,” Galen called out between muscled hands. “I’m Elder Galen Eirini. Who are you, child?”
She cocked her head at him, her lips forming the shape of his name in silence. Her eyes, wide and hollow, stared straight ahead. I had to make sure I wasn’t imagining this: her skin glowed, only for a moment. She fucking glowed like the faint blue of Oria.
“I have a message for you, Elder,” she said in Asri, her accent strange to me. It was difficult to untangle her voice from the sounds of the wind.
“I’m Governor Solonstrong, girl. State your business.”
She paused, disgust on her face. At the Governor’s strong Chaeten accent or his tone, I’m not sure. She dropped her head again, silent when we called again.
“Taam, who is she? What is she?” I asked. The governor whipped toward us both, the same question evident on his face.
Galen didn’t look away from her, jaw clenched, but he spoke so only I or the Governor could hear. “Attiq-ka, probably, with that glow. But she’s not well.”
“Or just another illegally trained rebel,” the Governor said. “There’s more every year, the magic sickens them, and—”
“Don’t disrespect her, governor,” Galen’s voice rumbled low. “We need to know who and what we’re dealing with. A trained rebel could still do a lot of damage. And if she’s not born with that power...” Galen shook his head at the thought.
The girl came closer, swaying like a wisp of smoke and veering away as she stepped closer to the gate. “I have a message for you, Elders.”
“And we will listen.” Galen offered her a deep Asri salute. He looked to the governor, who stood straight, offering no salute or sign of respect.
The girl raised an eyebrow.
“You look unwell, Elder. Have you eaten?” Galen said. All Attiq-ka are elders, if not more.
“Don’t offer her anything,” the Governor hissed under his breath.
The girl looked at the governor, then let her head roam, eyes dull and skin pulsing blue. “I need no food. And you won’t listen, will you? This warning is for my people. Not this demon governor.”
She lowered her head again, refusing to speak for the next fifteen minutes no matter what Galen or the Governor yelled down.
“That magic is illegal. She’s a rebel,” Solonstrong said. “This smells like a trap.”
“We agree on that last bit,” Galen said. “But I’d wager that’s a ghost. There’s a war in that child’s mind. Look at her little hands shaking. She does not seem to be fully in control of her own body.”
Part of me wondered if this was just one crazy child bringing a town to its knees by just standing there. I’d never before seen those blue veins pulsing under golden brown skin, but I knew that was a sign of illegal Attiq-ka magic. The priests didn’t tell us much, but no Attiq-ka in my history books or wanted posters looked disheveled and slumped like that. The queen certainly didn’t, although her Attiq-ka mind was born into a Chaeten body. Maybe Galen was right, or maybe this was magic gone wrong, like the governor said.
A crowd gathered behind us. Meragc’s house was just inside the wall by the gate, and I saw him on the roof of his house trying to see over, his four-year-old son Nestor fussing at his heels. Atalia, recently appointed Elder, came to join us atop the wall.
Finally, in a voice devoid of emotion, the little Asri girl spoke again. “I bring a warning from the Pathfinder.”
