Disclaimer in first part.
Leave: Part Four
by Jaya Mitai
" . . . no . . ."
The tent breathed a collective sigh of relief at that word, exhaled, the releasing of the first breath he'd taken in four minutes. The elder Askani was still bent over him, not a good sign, and her fingers were pressed into his temples so hard her first knuckles were white.
Blood flowed from his nose, and a little from his right ear, and his breathing sounded labored. Tetherblood exchanged a worried look with Hope, who looked more irritated than anything, waiting impatiently for Sanctity or her sister to get out of the way so she could do something about it.
Her sister, Aliya, knelt to his other side, a hand on his chest, still keeping his heart pumping with telekinesis, as if afraid it might stop again. "He's fighting us . . ." A whisper, and mostly to herself.
"Because he is a fool," Sanctity snapped, and Stryfe's eyes flew open with a gasp. Both women leaned back on their haunches as if the movement was practiced, and while Sanctity was glaring down at him, Jenskot wore a look of deep sorrow.
"No!" His eyes were racing around the tent, but Tetherblood knew he didn't see a one of them.
"Yes, idiot." Sanctity still had a look of concentration, though apparently it wasn't so complicated as it required her physical touch. Tetherblood suspected she was the only one on the planet that could have done what she had done, saved him from Sunspear –
"NO!" Sanctity literally went flying across the tent, landing in a pile of herself with a deep grunt, and Stryfe was on his feet and moving before he realized that he couldn't walk, and he fell. His nose was still bleeding freely, and he seemed disoriented, as though he still didn't know where he was. "I . . . you had no right! I wasn't ready . . ."
He was on his hands and knees, chin against his chest, and Tetherblood started for him when Sanctity stopped him with a glare. She was picking herself up with a venomous expression, though whether it was for Tetherblood or the laboring Stryfe no one was sure. "Not ready to destroy a psilink to nothing? Stupid boy! She'd dead! And she nearly took you with her!"
Tetherblood digested that even as Stryfe fought for a reply, and Jenskot looked up at the dark man, nodding but once. So it wasn't an attack . . .
They had been too late.
Daphne was dead.
"No more time," he murmured under his breath, and Stryfe gave him a haunted look, tears streaming down his face.
"Bright Lady, I had her –"
"She had you, more like it. An Askani nearly killing the Askani'son! Bright Lady, she didn't deserve to be made a full sister -"
Sanctity was abruptly launched into the air to land on the right side of the tent, causing several Clan Chosen to have to duck out of her flight path.
Stryfe couldn't walk, but he stalked over to her just fine, using not telekinesis but his fist to pick the heavily-breathing Askani up by her throat.
"You . . . are going to die for that."
Everyone leapt forward as the eldest Askani alive turned purple, unable to concentrate enough to make him drop her. Or perhaps he was so enraged she couldn't channel his thoughts, perhaps he had none at all –
"NO!"
The wave of telekinesis, the warding shield he had tried to create failed, exploding outwards, throwing them all – and the tent – outward. Omana was the first to sit up, blinking, as scraps of the canvas tent flittered down around him.
The camp could very clearly see what was going on, and Stryfe didn't release Sanctity as he looked out on all those neat rows of tents and fires, all those tense soldiers with their weapons drawn, all the eyes on him. His Clan. He was mesmerized by them, by the quiet of so many men, that he could hear the bits of tent, still falling on their way to the ground.
"S. Put her down."
Very soft. He ignored it.
"Hey. She's not worth it." Even more gently. "Sounds to me like you have a funeral rite to attend to. She can die tomorrow."
Stryfe flinched, and turned to Tetherblood with a look of pain. "I . . ." he faltered. Tetherblood nodded.
"I know, Stryfe. I know."
For some reason, the words looked like they wounded Stryfe to the core. He dropped Sanctity as though she had burned him, withdrew into himself as he had the instant he had cried out. He was still standing, but he didn't seem to see any of them.
The generals exchanged looks to the music of Sanctity coughing, and 'Fain finally spoke. "Come on, Stryfe, let's get you inside –"
"Don't touch me!" Everyone, including Aliya, jumped at Stryfe's eruption. His eye was glowing as brightly as the sun, and his voice projected enough that the whole camp and more could have heard him. Even Sanctity, curled at his feet, flinched from the raw pain in his voice.
"You have what you wanted, dogs! You want the Askani'son, you go ahead and have him! He wants this Clan, he calls it his by blood, then you take his blood! He wants your hearts and your loyalty, and by the Bright Lady I don't care if he has to rip each one out of your chests to have it!"
There was silence, no one dared to even breathe. All the generals were aware that while Stryfe was almost gentle most of the time, almost too giving with his understanding and too lax with his discipline, that he was powerful enough to extinguish a star. And he was angry enough to use every last drop.
Stryfe took their silence as he might have taken voiced scorn. His eye flickered and died, and his face dropped, his eyes dropped to see the vicious satisfaction in Sanctity's.
"You win, witch," he choked out, his mouth working as though he were chewing something repulsive. "You'll get the Askani'son you always wanted." He stepped over her, like she were another rock in his path, another corpse on his battlefield. He didn't look back. He didn't even look up.
All he saw were feet. Feet that stepped out of his way. All he heard was their silence, even in their minds, until he shielded his own. He didn't want to hear their decisions. He could hear the silence just fine with his ears.
"Stryfe . . . wait."
He heard Tetherblood start after him, but then slow and stop. Certainly, why would he stand by his blood brother when so many others would not? He supposed he should be grateful they weren't stoning him, as in the days of old. Perhaps there weren't enough stones.
There were feet, before him. Feet that attracted his attention because they weren't moving, and they forced his rhythmic march to a halt, forced his eyes up a slender but scarred pair of knees, a worn, handsewn skirt, the wrinkled and arthritic claws that had so painstakingly sewn it. Sagging breasts that had once been firm and proud, a collarbone that had once been attractive. A throat that had once been delicate and firm, a face that had once been beautiful.
He was staring at someone's mother.
And she was staring at him. "Where do you think you're going, young man?"
In the weird silence around them, he forgot about all the eyes, all the men around him. She could have been Redd catching him sneaking out to go stargazing.
"I . . ."
"You don't know."
His eyes dropped, he meant it to be an answer. He was going to walk until he fell, and then he was going to sleep. And he didn't care whether he woke up.
"You look at me when I'm talking to you."
Almost without thinking, he snapped his eyes up, straightened his posture. There were a few guffaws around him, startling him, reminding him that this shame was one that was being witnessed by his entire Clan.
She looked into his eyes sympathetically. "You lost your wife, didn't you." Firmly, stating it as though she were referring to the destroyed tent. He looked up, towards the sky, trying to keep sudden tears in his eyes, where they wouldn't shame him, but they spilled out anyway.
He didn't see or hear her approach, but she felt her wiry arms come around, not even long enough to go completely around him. "You poor thing. You poor, poor thing."
He worked his jaw, embarrassed beyond belief that one of his soldier's mothers was, of all things, hugging him. It was so ridiculous! He felt something bubbling out, whether a laugh or a sob he couldn't tell, hoped those that heard it couldn't tell, and the hug grew tighter.
"I'm not surprised you tossed that old hag out on her ass. Flonqing Askani bitch doesn't even know how to take care of herself, let alone a Clanleader." More titters.
"Preach it, Mom."
"You watch yourself, pal. That's _my _ mom."
More laughter, even he laughed a little, and that just opened a floodgate. Maybe it had been the old woman's plan all along. She bent his head to her shoulder, and he clung to her. And he cried. It took a long time for the words around him to start making sense.
"He looks like pipe."
"You would too if you were the main general, flonqhead. Leave him alone."
Hands on his shoulders, strong hands, like Tetherblood. But so many voices, so many accents.
"I'm sorry. Daphne was a good woman."
"We'll mourn her with you."
"You need volunteers for a palace raid, I've got your back, General."
"And me."
"Don't forget me. My gun is bigger than theirs."
The rumbles sounded so friendly and supportive that it startled him, made him lift his heavy head from the kind-crinkled old woman and look at them, actually look at these people who he knew considered him second-hand stuff, who considered him inferior to the real thing.
Somehow, they didn't look like he knew they did. They looked . . . they looked like soldiers.
And they looked like they would follow him anywhere he chose to go. Some had already shouldered their packs, slung their weapons on their backs, and wrapped their helmetclothes about their skulls, patiently waiting for him to begin walking again.
He had been leaving, hadn't he?
"You're not thinking of going to the palace, are you?" The voice dragged his eyes back to her kind eyes, which had a sternness about them. "You look as if the other generals haven't let you sleep for a year."
"Not as if there's a brain among them without his," came a growl to his right.
"I . . ."
"You're going to find your brother and kill him. Is that the plan? Fine thing to do in her memory! Why not take the whole Clan with you? They've been ready for a month."
He wasn't sure he understood her meaning, and his confusion was plain for her to see. She threw up her hands. "This Clan needs more mothers!"
There was a loud uproar of laughter, which again petered out so they could hear the wisdom of this ancient woman. "I shall tell you a secret, Clanleader. Men are stupid. They think we want them to go get killed in our names, they think it would be heroic and wonderful. It wouldn't be. If you died, Askani'son, who would lead us? Sunspear?" She spit into the sand. "I'd prefer death."
Her words didn't seem to quite make sense, he heard them over and over again in his mind until the Clan Chosen war cry, loosened from thousands of throats, drowned out even his thoughts.
They were honoring him.
Stunned, he did nothing, he allowed himself to be propelled into a tent, he wasn't sure who's, and he let Tetherblood push him over onto a thick blanket.
"Sleep, Askani'son."
Tiny little fingers in his mind, he barely felt them, barely saw Aliya's gentle eyes, her tears, before he closed his own eyes, and he slept.
* * * * * * *
"She is dead."
Dayspring looked up. "I know."
The two soldiers shifted uncomfortably, looking ridiculous in full Canaanite uniform, bearing baskets of leaves. Might have been part of a wedding party, if they'd had flower petals.
"We've finished in the greenhouse. What do you want done with the rest of them?"
He waved a hand aimlessly. "Compost."
They nodded. "And the leaves, sir?"
Finally, he sharpened his attention. He wasn't quite sure how Sanctity had pulled Stryfe from the brink of death, he'd tried and failed to do it himself. He'd played that one badly, Stryfe had almost escaped him. He couldn't be so careless, next time, though it was unlikely he'd have to deal with a psilink.
"The leaves?" Curiously, he reached into the basket, pulling one out. It looked like a young ash leaf.
"Do you realize this would make the perfect ration bar? This is carbohydrates and concentrated protein in one," he informed the slightly green soldiers. "Do you have any idea the resources we would save by using them?" He popped the leaf into his mouth and chewed. "Even an appealing taste."
If possible, they turned more green. "Your o-orders, sir."
He dismissed them with a look. Soft. Weak. He preferred Brynt's quiet but strong disapproval to their cowardice. "Compost."
Then again . . .
"No," he called out, finally standing from the dirt pool, the dead woman. Her eyes were still open, though they were starting to wrinkle a bit in the drying action of the air. Very strange, the greens had faded with her death, as though they had been a reflection of something inside her that had flitted away.
"Take them to the kitchens. Tell the chefs to prepare a spicy honey sauce. I think the advisors would like to enjoy the fruits of my labors, don't you?"
"Y-yes, sir."
He waved them away, disgusted, and pondered the slightly nutty aftertaste of the leaf.
"One down, four to go. Little brother."