The Traitor's Heir

Chapter Six

 At the end of his lecture Deacon Elderberry reached for the small silver bell that sat on his podium and rang it one time before setting it carefully back into its place. Quara jumped slightly and then gave a small sigh of relief that she had not been asked a question all day long, for while she was usually one of the most conscientious students in the class, today she hadn't heard a single word that he had said. She had spent hour after hour going round and round, wrestling with her own thoughts.

It was best not to go with her sister to whatever secret hiding spot that she'd set up. She would do just as her mother expected and go up to the meadow to help tend the animals. It was late spring and she hadn't been up to the meadow since many of this year's kids and lambs had been born. She smiled at the thought, and her shoulders, which had been tense all day as she debated and questioned every decision that she considered, relaxed ever so slightly.

Without looking over at her sister, who was sitting close beside her, she got up and picked up her bag and moved towards the door. She stepped out into the training area, but she hadn't managed to take more than a step when she felt Lina's strong, small hands grasp her elbow and pull her in the direction of the stairs that they took almost every day to get home.

"You need to come with me. I know you don't want to, but you have to. This once. In all my life I've never asked you for anything. I need you to come with me now. Don't worry. It's as close to home as you can possibly be. You'll even be able to hear Mother's voice singing down in the kitchen while she bakes. You'll be completely and utterly safe. But I need you to see something. Please."

Quara nearly began to protest that Lina let go of her, but before the first word left her mouth she realized that her sister's claim was true. In over a decade as sisters, the small, cherub faced girl had never once asked her to do anything for her. She'd never asked to so much as hold her doll or share a snack when they were small. She had often gone out of her way to help Quara, as she had yesterday when she'd carried the water all the way home, and while Quara had also helped her sister many times, even saving her life on a regular basis when she was small and constantly in more trouble than she could get out of, she couldn't help but be struck by the fact that Lina was, for the first time in her entire life, asking for something that was important to her.

And it's not as if she's asking me to go up to the surface, she reminded herself. We'll be just above the Heart, close to home. From the sound of it we'll be able to smell the bread baking.

She gave up resisting her sister's insistently tugging hands and allowed herself to be pulled across the training field, for the first time curious about what it was that her sister so desperately wanted to share with her. They moved faster now that she wasn't resisting, and because the drills in the center of the field were in full swing they skirted the outside edge, listening to the sound of clashing swords and the yelling of commands as they moved swiftly past the practice battle.

They'd left the classroom quickly, without speaking with any of their classmates, and so they were well ahead of the crowd of students who usually walked together, chatting and pausing to watch their older brothers and sometimes even fathers and uncles, practicing for a war that they all fervently hoped would never come. For if war did come, if they were ever discovered and rooted out, then even if every man, from the boys still in the school room on up to the oldest grey beard sitting by the cook stove took up swords, they would still be out numbered at least a hundred to one. And those would be the best possible odds, the odds that they would have if the wicked King only sent the fraction of his colossal force that happened to be stationed at Naracal Fort, an old castle set deep in the side of the first of the sheer granite walls on the far west side of the mountains.