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It was days since Kay arrived at the burnt church, and Gad’s cheery smile when she gifted him the book had quickly disappeared. All other times she visited, they would spend hours talking about things he learned from Mari, or Kay would tell him of the weirdly dressed men she spotted in the city.
The last time she visited, Gaduun showed her how to play satranj. A game of the mind he called it. She quickly discovered she didn’t have the patience for it, but she liked it when Gad tried to explain how all the different pieces moved on the squares.
But it was different this time.
Since she arrived, he would disappear for most of the day and return without speaking a word to her. There was nothing to do but wait and wonder if he was even going to come back. The rest of the people at the church, Turo and his gang of self-righteous nannies, put up with her grudgingly. She knew she annoyed most people there. She was sarcastic and standoffish, unlike the orphans they looked after, unlike Gad.
It was while waiting for Gad to return when she overheard some of them whispering about the events of the city.
“Who will seat the Brilliant Chair?” they would ask.
She didn’t much care, but apparently, most everyone else did.
They all knew of the riot in Bajo by now, and they were afraid of what it meant. Kay felt the tension floating through the air like pollen in the breeze.
She didn’t like being there. The stress was getting to her too. That was why she found herself following Gad the next time he disappeared.
Gad didn’t notice how she followed him through the empty calles of the Scar, populated with nothing but the poorest and dirtiest Alderas had to offer. Eventually, as they approached the walls of the city he stopped and sat. The shadow of the inner wall, tall and intimidating, blanketed them.
“So, this is where you’ve been going?” she asked as she cleared a spot in the clearing and plopped down next to him.
He sat alone on a pile of stones that used to be part of a building. Three short walls still huddled together on one side in a pathetic attempt to keep up the charade of a room but that was all that stood. The old fire had burned hot here and melted most of the stones to misshapen hills.
It was quiet, almost comforting, between these ruins.
“You followed me?” he asked.
Kay felt a little guilty as she followed him when he left after the cook Xavier had handed out loaves of bread to everyone, but guilt had turned to annoyance.
“Yeah, well I had to. It’s not safe out here for us.” She crossed her arms defiantly.
He sighed and continued to stare at the book he brought with him. It was the one she had given him.
As he sat there, back hunched, legs dangling awkwardly, she noticed how much he had grown. Next to her sat a young man, not the boy she was so used to seeing. They still looked alike with their dark skin, green eyes, and thick curly hair, but his shoulders were broader, and a thin layer of facial hair had started sprouting from his chin. The thought of him eventually becoming taller than her was an odd feeling.
“I see you like my present,” she said, hoping to make conversation. She had never found it this difficult before.
“It must have been expensive. You shouldn’t have bought it.” He stared intensely at the page with unmoving eyes.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve been getting pretty good at earning coin.” She was hoping it sounded encouraging, but instead it came out harsh and accusatory. “There are lots of older folk who need help nowadays,” she finished lamely.
Gad didn’t seem to notice.
He continued to stare at the page and mouth something under this breath. It was the first time that Kay felt ignored by her akhi. Ever since their parents had died it had always been the two of them, and because of this, they were close.
Or maybe she was diluting herself into believing they had been.
She tried to occupy herself by staring at a mound of rubble, not wanting to press him with questions. The stones here used to be colorful like the rest of the city, but now they were scattered in black heaps. The section of the wall that towered behind them, once red and blue, stood charred in black so that only the top still held its natural color against the sun. She couldn’t imagine how hot a fire had to burn to do this sort of damage. She turned cold at the idea of getting trapped in those flames. She supposed it must have been a better death than being taken by the Red Sickness like their umi.
Kay could hardly remember her anymore.
“Do you want to play satranj?” she asked, not able to withstand her thoughts.
He shook his head without looking at her.
“I’m trying to figure out what this word says.”
She stared over her shoulders at the little lines. They were all odd squiggle shapes that made no sense. They were as foreign as magia. She never really thought about it, but being able to learn from all those shapes was in a way magia in itself.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.
“Anyways, you know we aren’t supposed to stay at the church too long.”
She did know this. Xavier, Mari, Turo, and the others constantly said they weren’t niñeras to be taking care of children. They watched over orphans out of some misplaced need, but their charity only went so far. Hundreds of children around them would call unwanted attention, so the orphans were sent out to beg for coin and earn their way.
Almost all the orphans, that was. Gad was never any good at begging, so he earned his keep in other ways.
“We don’t need to go to the church. We can do it here.” She began gathering stones from the soil. She grabbed at one that looked like a sword and one that looked like a very misshaped shield.
“No, I don’t...”
“It’s easy,” she continued.
“But...”
“And we can even draw out the squares.”
“I don’t want you here!” Gad slammed the book shut and stared quietly at her. His gaze fell as his face turned red.
Kay dropped the stones, startled and angry. He had never shouted at her before. He was usually the shy and quiet type to most people and the lighthearted boy with her.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, trying to control her temper.
“Nothing. All am saying is that you don’t have to be here with me. You can go off into the city, find one of your roofs somewhere.” He held her gaze this time.
That hurt her more than she would ever admit even to herself.
“I want to be here.” She furrowed her brows. “I like talking to you.”
“Do you? Sooner or later you always leave.” He turned away and stared off into the ruined city.
She felt a pang in her gut. It wasn’t because she was hurt, although she was, but because what he said was true. She did always leave, sometimes for weeks, because the reality of it was, she liked being alone. They had each other, but she always had to be the one to watch out for him and to make sure he was okay. Because of this she had always felt alone, and so she had learned not only to survive in loneliness but to thrive in it.
But that wasn’t completely fair either. She also brought in coin to feed and clothe him. What she did was for both of them. She saved whenever she could so that they could make a better life for themselves.
“You know I have to earn coin so we can leave. Remember? We can go off and—”
“I don’t want to leave. That’s what you want,” he interrupted. He stood and stalked towards the wall, his back to her, book in hand.
The shadow of the bluish-red wall had grown long enough to completely cover them now. The sun still shone bright, but there was already a chill in the air from the coming night.
“Since when?” she stood, hands on her waist. “It was always the plan.”
“It was always your plan!” He stomped his foot for emphasis. “You’ve always been the one to decide when to go and for how long. You’ve always been the one to talk about leaving Alderas and traveling the world. Do you even know what’s out there? There are dark things, Kay. Things you couldn’t imagine. Probably things even worse than the Red Sickness.”
He turned around to face her, defeated. It seemed like whatever fight he had in him had burned away to ash, but what worried her the most was the tears in his eyes. He must have noticed her stare because he wiped them quickly away with one hand.
“Gad, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Let’s just play some satranj,” he said, bending over to pick up some stones.
“To hells with satranj,” she grabbed the stones from his hand and tossed them aside. “Please, just tell me what’s wrong.”
He became as quiet as this abandoned corner of the city. There were plenty of places like this in the city, grey places that only rats visited. The city had become a sad place filled with sad people. That was why she wanted to leave. She was hoping that they would be able to do it before Gad became one of them.
“Turo spoke to me a few days ago,” he said, sitting down again on the pile of debris. He spoke haltingly at first, so she sat next to him and waited.
“He wanted to tell me about the riot at the bazaar, the one after the bells. A lot of people were hurt...and someone were killed.”
Kay tried to keep her face still, but she knew what was coming next. She closed her eyes and saw a pair of panicked eyes pleading for help, and she turned cold.
“My friend Baqi was there. He goes to the bazaar in the morning to try to beg some coin. He would have wanted to hear the progenero when he arrived. He liked that sort of thing. They killed him because he was lasiim like us. They...they tore him apart, Kay. Turo said they tried to find him after but...but they couldn’t find all of him.”
Tears ran down his cheeks. He leaned into the crook of her shoulder and sobbed. It was something he hadn’t done in a very long time.
She could do nothing but hold him tight and make soft hushing noises.
He shook in her arms, and she comforted him as best she could. He was no longer small enough to be wrapped completely by her arms, but that didn’t stop her from trying. They stayed like that for a moment. Two orphans, two siblings taking comfort in each other, until his sobs lessened, and the shadow of the wall stretched longer.
She thought about the boy's eyes, soft and pleading, as she walked away from them and wondered how she could be so oblivious. Of course, Gad would have friends. She should have known. It was her job to know. She wondered if it would have made a difference if she had. Would she have put herself in danger if she knew?
The answer to her question didn’t comfort her.
“I’m sorry about your friend. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked at last.
“I didn’t want you to worry. I knew you would be leaving again soon,” he said, pulling away. He rubbed at his red face and tugged at his shirt, smoothing it down.
“It’s my job to worry,” she said.
“Well, it’s my job to worry about you too.”
She considered this for a second and nodded. She saw the akhi she remembered, the intelligent, shy boy that wanted nothing more than to follow her around, but she saw something else in him too. It was something she was entirely unfamiliar with.
“Okay, deal. We look after each other,” she said.
They sat among the rubble, Kay still thinking about those eyes, and Gad absently running his fingers on the cover of his book.
Hawks squawked from above and there was a soft gust of wind that sent the stale smell of ash into her nose. She looked up at their small silhouettes far off in the sky. They had been bigger once too she was told, but had grown small throughout the years like the people of Alderas.
“Now I wish I could figure out the sentence in this book.” He sighed at the book in his hands.
“Let’s do it.” She stood, grateful for the distraction. “Let’s go ask Mari about it.”
“Right now?” Gad raised his thick eyebrows, questioningly.
“Why not? We’re citizens of this ‘Brilliant City” right?” She puffed out her chest exaggeratedly, “We’re allowed to go wherever we want.”
He gave a small, crooked smile.
It wasn’t much, but it was a step in the right direction, and that was all that mattered.