“I didn’t let them touch me. Just took the medicine.” He moved past her to his nesting chamber, where he paused in the doorway to drink the dregs of his mate’s scent. He would not wash the furs until he found her.
She nodded. “I hope it will ease your mind to realize that their treatments are designed to help.”
“Are you sure of that?” He turned to face her. “Every time they chip at my walls and patch me back up, I lose something. But when I’m alone, things come back.”
“What reason do they have to hold back your progress?” When he struggled to answer, she nodded sadly. “It may feel that way. Perhaps they do as much harm as good. Or perhaps it is the uneven nature of healing. Only time will tell.”
He couldn’t convince her, but at least Ghantal wasn’t dismissing his suspicions entirely. For the rest of the night he sat in his nest, breathing in the faint scent of his mate, and let his mind wander without forcing it. His thoughts skimmed the walls, feeling for cracks rather than trying to pull them down.
He was glad he’d taken the medicine. It made everything gentler and less painful, like having a lantern in the pitch dark.
A memory surfaced:
Driving a goblin horde away from a vulnerable village. The horde was on foot without any mounts, so the Sixth Watch pursued them easily from the air, forcing them back across a river. The goblins struggled against the rushing current in their heavy armor, and many of them were swept downstream before they made it to safety.
The whole Sixth Watch had cheered on the river. Even Tael-Nost seemed on their side.
One of the goblins carried a halberd and managed to snag it on a rock in the middle of the river, pulling himself to safety. Brandt dove, triumphant, to knock him off again. The last nail in the victory.
But when he dropped like a hawk, clawed feet extended, the goblin cringed, calling out, “Mama!” in a desperate sob as he tumbled into the merciless current.
It was the cry of a child, not a coward.
He told no one at first, but his suspicions ate at him. The victory had been too easy. He sent two of his stealthiest scouts, brothers called Kerec and Tomin, to follow the retreating horde.
When they returned, their expressions were somber as they pressed their fists to their foreheads.
“We found their camp, Commander.” Kerec’s voice, usually deep and steady, cracked. “We were able to observe them easily.”
A sharp warning flared inside him. “At a distance, I hope? Their war bats didn’t scent you? No one followed you back?”
Tomin shook his head. “Their guards have no mounts. And only half of them have weapons, at the outside,” Tomin added. “Their defenses are laughably weak. That’s probably why they’ve been setting so many fires, to avoid a real fight.”
Kerec nodded in grim agreement. “You were right, they’re all younglings. Starving ones, by the look of it. They raided the settlements for food. They took little else, and they fought over what they were able to bring back across the river.”
He sent the two of them immediately to Meravenna with this intelligence. Starving children required different tactics than warrior hordes. Feed them, negotiate, find another solution that didn’t involve their wholesale slaughter.
But they hadn’t returned. A messenger delivered a terse set of orders from his superiors: “Continue as planned. Drive back the hordes.”
He remembered looking at his watchmates, good gargoyles, honorable gargoyles, some hardly more than fledglings themselves, and telling them they would be hunting and killing children. Remembered their stoic faces as they accepted it as part of their guardian duties, because what choice did they have?
The rage that filled him at this recovered memory was different from the wild fury of frustration that had no target. This had focus: The Zenith. The Council. All of Towerleadership. The human king who had sent them to commit atrocities for political convenience.
Unlike his uncontrolled rages, he could think around this. He could plan through it. The medicine helped, but so did having a target for his fury that wasn’t everyone and everything. It was extraordinary to experience after only one missed mind-mason treatment.
And it left a single question burning in his mind:were these the memories the masons were trying to hide?
He had no one to ask. Everyone else who might share the same memories was dead, aside from Rikard, and he wasn’t well enough to talk.
More memories trickled through over the following nights. His mate’s laugh, bright and startled, like she hadn’t expected to find anything funny. The way she smelled of lemons and herbs, a mask over her natural scent. Her eyes, brown as earth, wide with fear and hope and even love.
Brown eyes. Not gray or black or even white.
She was human.
He sucked in a breath, the knowledge fitting into his mind like a key in a lock, opening a door to more memory. Of course, she was human. That’s why Ghantal had been so secretive about her. She couldn’t predict how he’d react to the news while he still didn’t remember his claiming. A human mate was scandal enough, but for a commander?
He kept the knowledge to himself, watching his mother’s guilty hovering with new understanding. She thought she was protecting him. Or protecting his mate. Maybe both.
