Emberly
when the brothers left the camp that morning. The convicts had inherited many axes and hammers used by the fallen prison’s work details. The ringing of blades being sharpened and the cracks of rocks being split followed Cyril and Rayan into the twisting trees.
Rayan walked in front with Emberly’s gun at his back. “How far will we go?”
“I don’t know yet,” Emberly said.
Rayan sighed. “Damn it, Cyril, it’s not a hard question.”
“Quiet,” warned the captain. He needed time to think.
“If I escape, no one has to know,” said Rayan. His tone remained maddeningly conversational. “Just decide where.”
“Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll decide to shoot you.”
“I won’t. Why should I? It will end the same for me regardless.”
Emberly did not answer.
“Do you have something else on your mind? A question, maybe?”
“No.”
“I could ask why you bothered saving me from the mob if you meant to kill me.”
The captain could answer that at least. “You’re a part of my family. I couldn’t let you die like that.”
“So—you meant what you told those animals back there? You would have fought them?”
“Is that hard to believe?”
Rayan was momentarily quiet. When he spoke, his voice had recovered its jauntiness. “I’ve thought of a question. You could ask me why I didn’t tell them your biggest secret. I could have shouted it after the crowd calmed down.”
Emberly scoffed at that. “You tried. No one listened.”
“I didn’t, Cyril. Truly. But I betrayed you in another way. When the crowd took me, I panicked. I thought I was ready to face them, but I wasn’t. So I told them what you offered the wraiths in the jungle in exchange for letting us go.”
Emberly took a deep, heavy breath.
“Your man, Robir, figured out the first symbol you drew in the dirt but not the other ones. The skull-shaped one especially intrigued him. I think I know what it said.”
“You’ve made your point,” Emberly rumbled.
Rayan could not resist sadism even when admitting wrongdoing. “Those symbols were invented by desperate soldiers, surrounded by dead comrades, ready to offer the wraiths anything…”
“Say it, then!” Emberly shouted.
“Can you bear to hear it?”
“I wrote it, didn’t I?”
Rayan stopped and turned. “Then say it yourself.”
“I offered the wraiths bodies! Is that what you want to hear? I told them if they let us leave to attack the prison, we would give them our dead from then on. Fuel for their ceremonies. I was lying, and I never would have done it.”
“And the night you left the waytower. You planned to buy safe passage from the wraiths.” Rayan nodded as the pieces fell together. “You were planning to offer your dead from the swamp.”
“There was no other way!” Emberly yelled. “I would have arranged for the wraiths to steal the bodies somehow. My men would never have known. No living person would have been harmed!”
He stopped to breathe.
“What does that make you?” asked Rayan. “Are you any better than me?”
“I don’t… Yes. Yes, I’m still better than you. Also, I’m holding the gun.”
Rayan glowered.
“Are you satisfied?” asked Emberly.
Rayan looked down. “No,” he admitted. “I still regret what I did. I’ve faced death before, but when that mob grabbed me… I wanted to escape more than anything. I wanted them to take you instead of me. You must admit, the convicts wouldn’t have been happy to hear what you’d offered the wraiths. Neither would your men, and some of them are turning on you already.”
Emberly was silent for a moment. “I never would have done it.”
Rayan sighed. “Fortunately, we’ll never know. No one heard me. I didn’t come to my senses until you fired the gun.”
The captain sighed. “What do you expect me to say?”
“Nothing. But I’m sorry.”
Emberly bit his lip. “Why haven’t you said that before? You never apologize for anything or even admit you’re wrong. Not sincerely, anyway.”
“Don’t I?” Rayan thought aloud. They’d had this conversation before, and it always amused him. “I suppose, early in life, I became accustomed to being right.”
“Why not admit to being wrong when it happens? It’s all anyone wants.”
Rayan stepped forward so the pistol pressed into his chest. “You know very well that isn’t true. If honesty was all it took, this would be a different world.”
“You’ve tried lying. And look where you are.”
“Do you listen to yourself?” Rayan gasped. “My lies pale next to yours.”
“My biggest lie started with you! You squawked to the Ronians about how brave I was, and I’ve had to hide the truth ever since.”
Rayan shot back, “I did you a favor, brother. One you took full advantage of.”
“I wouldn’t have begun it by myself. And now it’s too late. I’m acting in a play all the time. I can’t talk to anyone, even my wife.”
Rayan spread his arms. “You chose it all! You could’ve told the truth—that the great convicts’ revolt was your doing—and taken your punishment like a man. You still could. Why don’t you?”
The captain’s lip trembled. Mortified, he said, “I should have stopped it. I know I should’ve. Now I’m alone.”
“That’s what I thought. You are everything I am. The difference is, you’re still a child.”
Emberly bit his lip again, hard. Soon, it would swell. “Keep walking.”
His brother’s chest puffed. “No.”
“Turn and walk. Now.”
“What if I don’t? You’ll kill me either way, or so you claim.”
“I haven’t said that. But if you don’t move, I’ll have no choice.”
Rayan shook his head. “You’re pitiful. By the way, I have a parting gift for you. It’s in my vest pocket. If you kill me before I give it to you, be sure to take a look.”
Emberly’s knees shook. Next to his lip trembling, it was the worst thing that could have happened. He answered, forming the words carefully. “If I release you, where will you go?”
Rayan’s face fell. “Don’t be cruel, brother. If you’re going to kill me, do it.”
“I’m serious.” Emberly’s voice was a little firmer. “Where will you go?”
Rayan considered it, perhaps for the first time. “I would make for the gateway towards Ronia.”
“Even if you reached it, you would be arrested and shot.”
“Probably. But miracles happen. Your secret would die with me.”
Emberly was aware of everything: the coppery taste in his mouth, the sighing of the air in the trees. “Turn and walk a hundred paces. Do it slowly, and don’t look back.”
Rayan tilted his head. He was searching for the trick.
“After that,” Emberly said, “you’re on your own. Don’t return to the camp. If you do, I’ll kill you—if your old friends don’t kill you first.”
Nodding, Rayan reached into his pocket and fished out the note he had written in the hut. He dropped it into Emberly’s hand.
The sun shone brighter through the trees, and Rayan squinted. “Suddenly, I don’t know what to say next.”
Seeing genuine feeling in his brother’s face might once have given Emberly joy but no longer. “There’s nothing left. We’ve each heard all the other has to say. You’re wrong about us. We’re nothing alike.”
Rayan turned away. “Alike or not, brother,” he began, but instead of finishing the sentence, he started walking. “Whatever you owe me, I owe more to you. You set me free.” Finally, he called, “I’ll give your love to—”
He fell. As he dropped, he grabbed a tree trunk, which crumbled in his hand, bringing the tree down. He lay still.
The gun had almost leapt out of Emberly’s hand when he pulled the trigger. He had not held it properly. Perhaps he had hoped it would malfunction and the choice would not be his after all.
The sound was so vast that people in the camp must have heard it. Everyone would know, and when he returned, they would all stare at him, knowing.
He walked to the body, pausing halfway to steel himself. Standing over the thing, he tore off his cloak. He rolled up his sleeves but kept sweating. He tried to cry but could not.
A short time later, he found himself sitting next to it, hoping it would tell him what to think or how to feel. He put his hands on it, his brother, his family’s ruin, and turned it over. He was looking at a marvelous facsimile of Rayan, accurate in every detail but still a failure, still wrong.
He closed his eyes and said a few words he could not remember later. It was time to go back.