Thorns of Decision (Dusk Gate Chronicles) Page 21

  Neither one of them spoke until they’d passed the guard at the gatehouse.

  “Are you going to go back out to the village today?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I am ... with the party the day after tomorrow, I’m sure I won’t be able to go again until after. Do you want to come?”

  “I promised Linnea and Thomas I’d help with some things for the party. Everybody’s rushing around since there were so many other things going on.”

  He shrugged. “Taking care of the Hardridges was more important than a silly party.”

  She wasn’t sure why his words rubbed her the wrong way, but whatever it was, she stopped and looked up at him. “Nobody is saying it isn’t, Will, but you are a prince, and your eighteenth birthday is important to people, too.”

  He closed his eyes for a minute before he looked back at her. “I know. It’s just that a party seems so ... inappropriate with everything else going on around us.”

  “Except that it’s a tradition, and if you decide something else is more important than one tradition, where do you stop? It’s only by tradition that Simon is heir to the throne – and that Tolliver shouldn’t be.”

  William’s eyes widened, and she realized that her voice had taken on an edge that she hadn’t meant to put there. It was just a topic that had been on her mind lately as she’d questioned her own place in the grand scheme of these “traditions.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I just ... it’ll be nice for me to celebrate with you too, you know.”

  His expression softened. “I am looking forward to that part.” He leaned into her then, kissing her softly on the lips. She felt herself relax against him.

  “Are you doing okay with all of this?” he asked. “We haven’t really had much of a chance to talk.”

  She shrugged, torn between wanting to tell him everything, right now, and being afraid to tell him anything. How would he react if she did? And what would happen later, when everyone knew? Was it even safe for anyone to know? “So what’s this surprise you have for me?” she finally asked, deciding on evasion, again.

  His eyes lit up. “We’re almost there,” he said.

  When the path reached a thick part of the woods, William suddenly led her several yards off of it, into a hidden stand of trees. She had no idea how he knew where he was.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer; he just kept walking. About a hundred yards later, he put his finger to his lips and pointed.

  At first, Quinn couldn’t tell what he was pointing at, but as her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light in the thick trees, the shapes became sharper, and a few feet ahead of them, nestled in a tree branch just above William’s head, she could see an enormous nest. She looked at him in surprise, and he smiled.

  He made a low chirruping sound, and a second later, a familiar gray-feathered head popped out of the nest, shiny black eyes blinking at the two of them in interest. It was Aelwyn, William’s seeker bird. He made a different low noise, and she rose from her spot, hopped neatly over the edge of the nest, and glided down toward him, landing only about a foot away.

  Now it was Aelwyn’s turn to talk, and she made a strange noise, halfway between a squawk and a whistle. William laughed, and reached into his pocket, retrieving a package of beef jerky, which he opened and tore off a piece, holding it out to the bird.

  Quinn had to smile at the intricate dance between William and the bird, as Aelwyn first turned her head away from the offering, and then reached to snatch it once he knelt down low to her. As soon as she’d swallowed it, she walked right up to him, butting her head against his pocket where the rest of the treat was hidden.

  At that moment, there was a loud call from overhead, and then Thomas’ bird, Sirian swooped down and landed gracefully near his mate. William withdrew the meat from his pocket, and tore it unevenly. Aelwyn eyed him warily until he tossed the larger piece in her direction. Sirian waited until she had hers, and then accepted the smaller piece.

  After a few minutes, the birds had warmed up, and were strutting comfortably around the tiny clearing, and both of them even allowed Quinn to stroke their smooth heads. Up close, she was always startled by how gentle they were around people, though they were quite large hunting birds.

  Once he was certain that they’d both let their guards down, William stood again and motioned for Quinn to follow as he walked toward the tree that held the nest. They’d almost reached it when Aelwyn and Sirian suddenly simultaneously flew up into the nest. Quinn shrank back, startled, but William shook his head.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  Inside the nest, the two birds chattered in voices that seemed somehow amiable, and then a moment later, four smaller heads peeked over the edge, their black eyes shining curiously as they turned to examine the newcomers.

  Quinn sucked in a breath. “They’re beautiful,” she said softly.

  William nodded. “They’ve all just learned to fly.”

  Sure enough, after a moment, Aelwyn and Sirian took turns nudging gently at each of the babies until they’d climbed onto the edge of the nest. Then, one-by-one, almost as if they’d been trained, each baby took off, circling through the trees a couple of times before landing neatly in the center of the clearing.

  “Amazing!” Quinn was delighted.

  “You can pick one,” he said.

  “What?” she turned to him, completely stunned. “Me? Why?”

  “You don’t have one, and these fledglings are just the right age now. Aelwyn and Sirian will help you train one of them as a Seeker.”

  “But I ... doesn’t it have to be someone who lives here? What will the bird do when I’m at home?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not a normal situation, true. But Aidel and Aelwyn cope okay when Nathaniel and I are gone. They’re wild birds at heart.”

  “But what if I...” she didn’t finish her sentence, but they both heard the words that hung in the air, the question that neither of them was ready to think about or deal with. The biggest what-if of all.

  William looked down at the ground. “You don’t have to,” he said softly.

  Her heart sank. Now she’d ruined it.

  She swallowed hard. “That’s not what I meant, Will. I’m sorry, I ... of course I would love to have one. It’s so far beyond anything I would ever have expected or even thought … that would be an incredible privilege.”

  He was silent for a long moment before he looked back up at her. “Don’t be sorry, Quinn. I should have realized how you might take it...”

  “Will ... Really, I was just surprised, that’s all. Is it really okay for someone like me to have one?”

  “Yeah, Quinn. It’s really okay.” His eyes were still filled with disappointment, and a lump settled in her throat. Was she ever going to know how to do this, or were her own issues going to hurt every relationship she had?

  19. Bystanders

  As soon as he hit the open trail, William nudged Skittles, encouraging her to run as hard as she could. He needed the motion, the pounding hooves under him, the wind rushing past his face, to help him clear his head and collect his thoughts.

  What had he been thinking, pushing Quinn like that? He’d promised her that he wouldn’t – that she could have the time and the space she needed to get her own life sorted out first. He couldn’t even imagine how difficult this must all be for her, and so many things had already changed for her lately.

  She had apologized several times for her first reaction to his offer of a bird, and he’d done what he could to convince her that he wasn’t mad at her – he was the one who had taken things too far too fast.

  He’d just gotten excited – yesterday on his ride back from Mistle Village he’d been startled by the familiar sound of Aelwyn’s call overhead. He’d followed her all the way back into the nest, excited at how proud she’d been to show off her tiny flock to him. It had been clear that it was her way of telling him that it was time to choose one of the babies to be trained as
a companion seeker. The rest of the fledglings would soon go off on their own into the wild.

  Last night, he’d told Thomas about it, and the two of them had gone to their parents with the idea of allowing Quinn to choose. He’d barely slept all night, as his mind raced further ahead than he should have allowed it to.

  By the time he’d gotten up this morning, he had convinced himself that not only was he going to take her to the clearing, but to take it a step further. He’d been going to ask her if he could formally announce their courtship at his birthday celebration.

  He was going to have some serious words with Thomas when he got back tonight for suggesting that.

  If he kept pushing Quinn this hard, he was going to end up forcing her right out of his life, and the idea of losing her made his insides twist in ways he’d never known they could. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow that girl had taken over the top spot on his list of priorities.

  He didn’t know what he would do if he lost her now – and if he wasn’t careful, that was exactly what was going to happen. And it would be his fault.

  He was surprised when the low outlines of the houses in Mistle Village appeared suddenly on the horizon. He’d been riding harder than he’d realized. The trip had taken him half as long as it usually did.

  As he eased up on the reins, Skittles slowed to a trot, and he was glad he hadn’t loaded her up with the saddle bags as he’d originally intended to. She had broken a sweat, but seemed to have enjoyed the workout as much as he had. They stopped at the river so she could have a rest and a long drink before going the rest of the way to the tent clinic on the outskirts of the village.

  William paused before he entered the tent, looking off in the distance toward the burned-out site of the clinic building. From where he stood he could see several people digging through the rubble, trying to salvage what items they could, and hauling the ruined wood and debris away. They hoped to get a new building erected before the end of carperos – autumn, and at least finish the half that served as Jacob and Essie’s home before days began to grow chilly.

  Inside the tent, he was surprised to find Nathaniel alone with several patients. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking around at what appeared to be a mother and her three young children, two boys and a girl, all of whom looked close to the same age, somewhere between six and eight cycles, though one of the boys was definitely the oldest of the three. The boys sat together on one of the two portable cots they’d set up; the younger one had a fresh bandage wrapped around his lower leg.

  “Oh, hey Will,” Nathaniel said, looking up from where he stood over the little girl’s cot, listening to her chest with his stethoscope. “Glad you’re here. This is Mara Halpern,” he nodded toward the mother who stood by her daughter, “and her little girl, Clara. The boys are Wesley and Darren.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Halpern,” William said, looking at the woman. When she turned her face to him, he was surprised at how frightened she looked, and at how dirty she was. The three children were filthy as well. “I’m William.”

  “Yes, hello Prince William. Please, call me Mara.”

  He nodded. “What’s going on?” he asked again.

  Mara’s lower lip trembled as she glanced around at her three children.

  “They just got here about ten minutes ago,” Nathaniel said. “She brought them here because Darren over there fell near the fire pit and got a pretty good gash on his leg. But Clara has had a bad stomachache since yesterday, and she’s been getting worse.”

  William looked down at the little girl for the first time. Her face was pale and sweaty; she looked like she was nauseous and hurting. He watched Nathaniel gently prod at her abdomen, and when he touched the lower right quadrant, Clara cried out. He looked up at his uncle in alarm.

  Nathaniel looked at Mara, his gray eyes shining with the kindness and empathy that William strove to emulate. “We are going to take care of you and your children, Mara. Everything is okay; you’re safe here. But William and I are going to step outside and talk for a minute, okay?”

  The woman didn’t look convinced – if anything she looked more frightened, but she nodded.

  “Appendicitis?” William asked, once they were outside.

  “That’s what it looks like. I want to get some blood and look more closely to be sure. We just don’t have half of what we need here without the clinic.”

  William closed his eyes, turning his head toward the sky, trying to breathe, and silently berating himself for not loading Skittles down with more supplies for the trip here. “The castle is the closest real clinic. Do you think we have time to get her there?”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “I have no idea, and I don’t even know what the bigger risk would be – that it’ll rupture and she’ll become septic on the way, or the risk of doing it out here over a dirt floor without half the supplies we need...”

  “Who knows what kind of infection she could get from that,” William said. “And out here we wouldn’t be able to treat her as well if she did.”

  “So we try moving her,” Nathaniel sighed. “We’re going to worry that poor woman half to death. She’s from Philotheum.”

  William’s eyes popped wide. “Another one? How did she get here?”

  “I guess there’s another small group camping out somewhere not far from here. There are two more children, one older and one younger back at the camp with her husband. They thought we’d be less likely to harm a woman, so she brought the kids here by herself. That little boy in there has a cut that needs at least five stitches, but thank the Maker that he got hurt this morning, or she would have never brought Clara before it was too late.”

  William thought he might be sick. “She thinks we would hurt her husband. She’s not going to trust us taking her and her kids back to the castle.”

  “I had just gotten her to trust me a little,” Nathaniel said, putting his hand over the left side of his chest, where William now knew there was a tattoo that marked him as a member of the Friends of Philip. “But she looked pretty afraid again when you walked in.”

  “Where are Jacob and Essie?” William asked.

  “Jacob is over helping at the clinic site – there was no need of him here when he left. But Essie went out to a farm about half an hour from here to help the midwife with a twin birth.”

  “All right, well, I’ll go get Jacob while you talk to Mara. See if you can convince her to let us treat Clara at the castle.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, William found himself alone at the clinic with Jacob and the three Halpern children. His muscles were tight with anxiety as he looked at the little girl’s gray-tinged face. He understood their mother’s concern. She didn’t want them to take her and her children anywhere without getting her husband first.

  Although she’d decided to trust Nathaniel, she’d been wary of Jacob and William. He had seen the difficulty of the decision ravage her features just leaving the three children here while Nathaniel took her to find her husband. She’d almost taken Wesley with her, but the boys had put up a huge fuss about being separated. William, worried enough about helping Darren with his cut, had just barely convinced her to leave the brothers together.

  After she left, they went to work over the little girl. Jacob tried to keep her calm while William got an IV started. Among the many other things the clinic was short on, they were out of valoris seed powder – a mild remedy that William usually used to alleviate minor pain and help keep patients calm.

  Fortunately, they did have enough pain medication on hand that once the IV was in, Clara was able to fall asleep. Once she had, William helped Jacob carry some supplies outside so that he could get one of the wagons ready to serve as a temporary ambulance.

  They were certain now that it was appendicitis, and though they very much wanted to get Clara to the castle clinic to perform the surgery, they talked and made plans for an emergency appendectomy here if it became necessary.

  As he loaded some blankets and
pillows up onto the bed of the wagon, William looked up at Jacob. “Do you think they’re going to trust us long enough to get Clara back to the castle?”

  Dark, heavy circles hung under Jacob’s eyes. He suddenly looked so much older that it was hard for William to believe that his cousin was only five cycles his elder. “I think it’s hard for anybody to trust anyone they don’t know right now, Will.”

  William frowned. “Do you trust them?”

  “I do,” his cousin sighed, “but only because I saw the woman’s tattoo. Half a cycle ago, the Friends of Philip was something I’d just barely heard a few stories about, and now, I’m starting to distrust anyone who doesn’t wear the symbol.”

  William’s eyes widened. “Have you joined, Jacob?”

  “No. I’ve thought about it. I do support their mission – I want the kingdoms reunited more than anything.”

  “So what’s stopped you?” William felt strange himself about the issue – he wasn’t sure what he thought.

  “I know it’s bad, but when I first heard about all of it, I thought of it as a Philothean issue – they’re the ones with the wrong people in the castle – why should it be our problem?”

  He heard the ‘but’ in Jacob’s voice. “What changed?”

  “This!” said Jacob, throwing up his hands in the direction of the tent that now served as his clinic. “The people I’ve met who are Friends of Philip, who want what I want – who believe in the right thing enough that they’re risking their lives for it. The first time I thought of joining, Essie and I both thought it was too dangerous. Why risk it? Why become a target if people found out?”

  “You’re already a target,” William pointed out, glancing toward the horizon at the old clinic.

  “Yeah, I am. And even if we weren’t already being attacked, just for helping people, just for doing the right thing, Essie and I are both starting to realize that we can’t just stay out of it and go about our own business, and still be the people we want to be.”

  William frowned. “What do you mean?”