Aaden reached for the card right as her eyes fell on the crescent moon. He tapped the stamp before pulling the card back into his hand. “The emperor gave me that stamp as a reward for spying on Kessoku. He gave it to me last time I went to the palace.”
She gave a hurried nod as he stuffed the ID card back into his pocket. She tucked another strand of hair behind her ear. “Oh yes, I actually knew… Tempest told us about how you were supposed to earn a crescent moon for being a spy.”
With her eyes toward the ground, Talise rubbed a hand over her arm. “I didn’t know you’d earned it already. Great… work.” Her voice trailed off at the end. What was the appropriate way to congratulate someone for earning back the life that had been stolen away from him? Did one exist?
Apparently, Aaden felt even less clear about how the conversation should go. Rather than responding, he just continued walking forward once again.
For some reason, the silence made Talise’s heart go tight all over again. Her thoughts returned to those blank spaces on the ID card. She shook her head. “You have the worst grandfather in the empire. You might not have the worst father in the empire, but he’s at least tied with my father.” She let out a sigh. “And apparently, you have the worst mother too.”
Aaden’s face screwed up in puzzlement. “My grandfather is not the worst.”
Neither of Talise’s other statements seemed to bother him, so why would he be against that statement in particular? Especially since she knew it to be true. Piercing him with a stare, she said, “He beat you.”
“What?” The confusion on Aaden’s face had only grown.
Now anger stretched through her, anger against his grandfather. If he had such horrible parents, did he even know how to be treated well? Would he justify his grandfather’s actions because he didn’t know any better?
Her stare hardened. They continued to walk, but her feet stomped a little harder on the frozen soil. “Back at the palace, the emperor kept being hard on me during our Master Shaper training, and you stood up to him. You told him to stop. You told him that you didn’t care if he was the emperor.”
A memory sparked in Aaden’s eye. A puff escaped his mouth that almost sounded like a chuckle. He gave a single nod after that.
She raised an eyebrow before continuing. “The next day, you had bruises all over your face. You even had one over your scar, which was still fresh at the time. I thought my father did it to you, but you told me later that your grandfather did it.”
Aaden shrugged. “That’s not…” He shook his head. “My grandfather heard about how I stood up to the emperor, and he feared for my life. He just wanted to teach me that sometimes you have to listen to authority figures.”
Her fingers tensed as she curled them into fists. “Are you trying to justify what he did to you?”
“No.” Aaden brushed a hand through the air before he rubbed two fingers across his now-healed scar. “What he did was wrong. He admitted that himself. He apologized. He told me he wished he hadn’t done it. If he had hit me again after that, his apology would have been meaningless. But he didn’t. He realized he could have taught me the same lesson in a better way. He worked hard to help me learn from his mistake.”
Talise grumbled as she folded her arms over her chest. “He still made a mistake.”
Aaden stopped and turned to face her completely. “Mistakes aren’t what make people good or bad. Everyone makes mistakes. What matters is what someone does after the mistake. Look at my father. He helped kill most of the imperial family. Instead of admitting how wrong it was, he tried to justify it and then left me, his only son, to go fight with an organization of people who want revenge. My grandfather definitely did something wrong, but it didn’t end there. He tried to make it right.”
Her heart fluttered inside her chest. Why did Aaden have to have such intensity? Such wisdom? She stomped forward once again. “You might be right.” Admitting it immediately took the fight out of her. She let out a sigh. “You were right about the other thing too. People from the Storm do deserve a chance to fight against the system that hurt them.”
The slightest smile broke through Aaden’s even expression. He was proud of her; she could feel it. It only sent her heart fluttering even harder.
Pursing her lips, she took a deep breath. “Tomorrow morning, let’s gather the citizens together, and I’ll talk to them.”
SEVEN
SOMETIMES LIFE MADE A MOCKERY OF PLANS.
The Storm had been aptly named. Living amongst desperation and anger felt like a constant storm inside. But the name hadn’t come from that.
It came from the literal storms that plagued the outer ring of the Kamdaria. Some years, only one storm would hit. Some years, dozens of smaller storms would hit. In every case, they left the citizens even more hopeless than before.
Battering air slammed against homes, wriggled into cracks. It brought mud, heavy branches, and even disease through every city. The air storms had no respect for need or desperation. Whenever one hit, the citizens could do nothing but hide in their houses until it had passed. But the storm was just the beginning. Cleaning up afterward took even more work.
Days passed by with survival as the singular goal.
Talise had fully intended to speak to the citizens about fighting for her. The air storm had other plans. A few of her glass houses in cities throughout the Storm were shattered by errant, wind-blown branches. Repairing the glass houses took days.
Following the storm, a horrid sickness swept through the cities. Many citizens were bound to their beds. Even if they gathered the well ones, the crowd would have been miniscule.
Talise trudged down the frozen path between rows of houses. The cotton sheets they used as doors whipped fiercely in the unforgiving wind. Moans and grunts filled the air. Some of them were the last sounds those people would ever utter.
Each noise brought strains through her limbs.
Cyrus had taken ill. Her group had been safe from the illness at first. Likely, their frequent nourishment and strong bodies helped with that. But Cyrus had wasted away in Kessoku’s dungeon for months during the summer and fall. Even with Aaden sneaking him food at every available opportunity back then, his weakness was clear now.
So, the call to fight had been forgotten. Talise couldn’t imagine asking for help from people who could barely survive the winter. Many of them wouldn’t even survive this sickness.
Pushing open a wooden door on crooked hinges, Talise stepped into a little clay home. The square house consisted of a large room with a fire pit in the middle. One corner had a simple screen that blocked off the area for cleansing and dressing.
A tattered mat sat low on the ground. Cyrus lay atop it, coughing into a crusty rag. Wendy was perched at the edge of the mat. Her hand shook as she dabbed her brother’s forehead with a cloth.
Aaden stood across from the mat with his arms held stiffly at his side. Nothing about him seemed relaxed in the slightest.
Willow sat in the corner scratching at a piece of parchment. She probably didn’t enjoy having her home taken over by Cyrus and all of Talise’s friends, but the girl never once complained.
Reaching into her pocket, Talise pulled out a toasted bun infused with herbs that would supposedly speed Cyrus’s healing. She held it up for the others to see. “I got the bun, but it took twice as much money as we expected.”