Fortress Walls

Chapter VI, Part 3

Phineas found Cass in their dorm packing his things.

“Cass—?”

His friend looked up, and Phineas realized he’d been crying. Fear lanced through his gut. “What happened?”

“The…the…” Cass was struggling to find the words. “My brother. Hilary. He was working on the new railroad up north, you know? Th-there was an accident a few days ago…my father wrote…th-they don’t know if he’ll—if he’ll make it. I’m going home.”

“Oh no…”

Phineas gripped the doorpost, horrified. He liked Hilary, but it wasn’t just that. If Hilary died, that would make Cass the heir—why the king wanted him home. What was more, Phineas felt he should come with Cass, but to go home meant to see his father, and he’d only just escaped…

He swallowed his anxiety and went to get his own trunk.

“What’re you doing?” Cass asked, through a series of wet sniffles.

“I’m coming with you.”

Sutton came in later, ready for a nap, to find both of his roommates nearly packed and ready to leave, like it was the end of the semester. He stopped, just as Phineas had, in confusion and horror.

“What in thunder are you doing? You can’t leave!”

“I’m about to go speak with the headmaster,” Cass said grimly, then explained the whole situation to a wide-eyed Sutton.

Sutton immediately began packing his things too. Cass protested, but weakly, and not for long. He felt selfish for it, but he’d honestly wanted them to come.

~

Only three hours later, they were in a hired coach heading back to Toragon. Sutton, who’d only gone to the capital a few times before, kept his nose glued to the window of the carriage until he fell asleep, despite the constant jostling and bumping. Phineas stared at the window, too, starting to regret his decision. He had to keep telling himself Cass was more important than however much of a pain seeing his own father was. At last he, too, drifted off.

Cass didn’t sleep. They drove through the night, and he still didn’t fall asleep. The coachman stopped to take a rest, and Cass, wide awake and desperate to get home, offered to drive for him.

~

The assistant site manager groveled before the king.

“Your Majesty, I’m so sorry about this. The blame is mine. Please forgive me.”

Cillian was having a hard time thinking straight; it was nearly impossible to think straight, with his son right there in front of him, lying motionless and pale on a stretcher, covered by a bloodstained blanket.

“Why isn’t the head manager apologizing to me?” he demanded.

The assistant manager squirmed. “I’m sorry…he was the head manager.”

Cillian rubbed his head. Right, he’d known that. He felt like a fool.

“Tell me what happened.”

Forehead still pressed to the floor, the man explained, sweating. He was sure he’d be thrown in prison, if not executed.

“We were trying to repair the damage the storm did on the bridge, and we wanted to catch up to where we’d been before the storm as fast as possible. I think we were going too fast, and didn’t take the proper safety precautions, and I shouldn’t have let His Highness work with the men. Well, it was going alright at first, but we hadn’t put up enough scaffolding under the bridge to keep it up while we built, and part of the scaffolding we did have collapsed from the weight. So we started getting the men off the bridge and His Highness insisted on evacuating everybody else first, and…I let him. And we’d gotten everybody off and were climbing down, but the beam he was on collapsed. So that’s what happened—”

He stopped to take a jerky breath, smothered by fear, and then closed his eyes and shouted, “Please, have mercy, Your Majesty!”

Cillian stopped his racing thoughts and told himself that, in the end, it was Hilary’s own stubbornness and hastiness that had gotten him hurt, and the man in front of him had only submitted to the prince’s will, as he was supposed to. This man did not deserve punishment; he’d done the best he could in the circumstances.

He turned away and motioned to an attendant. “Give him a sum of money and let him return to the site.”

He couldn’t meet the man’s eyes, hatred still smoldering in him no matter how much he tried to push it down, but he told him, “It was my son’s fault, not yours. There’s nothing to forgive.”

The man’s relieved thanks followed Cillian as he stalked from the room and hurried to his office to sulk, followed by his worried attendants.

At least he’s not dead, he told himself. At least he’s not—not quite—dead.

~

The boys arrived in the middle of the day and went straight to the palace. A servant met them and allowed them upstairs to the room where Hilary was.

The room was silent as a morgue. Gossamer curtains on the windows deadened the light somewhat, and the same curtains hid the bed from view as the boys crept in. The queen and a doctor were there, the queen knitting, the doctor hunched over occupied with his own glum thoughts. The queen rose to meet them, and wrapped Cass in a tight hug before she greeted Phineas and Sutton.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said in a low voice.

“How is he?”

“Still unconscious.”

Cass was pale with worry, dark circles under his eyes. “Will he be alright, Mother?”

The queen hesitated, looking at the doctor, who rose and came over.

“He’ll live,” he said grimly, “but he’s not alright. I talked to the surgeon they had down at the site; he had to do an emergency operation, so he got here in bad shape. He won’t walk again.”

Sutton, curious and untactful, had tiptoed across the room while they were talking to peer through the curtains. The doctor had hardly finished speaking when he looked back at them, wide-eyed.

“Cass, his leg is gone,” he whispered.

~

The next day

Physically, Tariq was almost fully healed, but Jorgen had said he should stay in the infirmary at least another week. He was rather enjoying it. The flow of visits had lightened. He hardly had to see anyone nowadays, besides Jorgen, whom he didn’t mind, and Zarael, who annoyed him slightly but at least didn’t make him talk much. And besides that, all he had to do was lie in bed, sit by the window, eat, and nap.

Of course, the nights were hell, but they always ended eventually and the dawn came to rescue him from his fears. A few days ago, he’d prayed for death every single hour. Now, he only prayed for it at night.

He was having a rather pleasant nap when Hektor came again. The doctor tried to turn him away, insisting that Tariq must get his sleep, but Hektor said he’d wait quietly.

That was around ten in the morning. It was nearly noon when Tariq, curled up under the pleasant weight of his blankets, stirred and woke. He lay basking in the warm light from the window for a bit before he opened his eyes.

Hektor, pleased that his patience had finally paid off, smiled shyly at the boy.

Tariq shot up like he’d seen a ghost.

“What are you doing here?” he snarled. Hektor flinched, taken aback; Jorgen flew over and threatened to feed Tariq some very nasty-tasting medicine if he didn’t calm down.

Tariq dutifully calmed down, but he didn’t stop scowling.

Hektor said apologetically, “You seem to be doing better.”

“He is,” said the doctor, when Tariq refused to answer.

Hektor looked at the doctor. “Is he able to walk a short way?”

“I suppose so.”

“What do you want,” Tariq snapped.

“Um…” Hektor hesitated, dreading the boy’s reaction. What a pain, he thought regretfully. “My lord Clade would like to repeat his invitation. For…today. For you to come speak with him.”

“I think I’ll politely decline,” Tariq said, his tone not polite at all.

“I’m sorry…”

Jorgen was shooting him warning glares, and the aide gulped, wishing to be anywhere else. Army physicians were terrifying.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again, “but it…wasn’t really…a request. I mean…I was trying to be polite but…he was…insistent on you coming.”

Jorgen looked ready to murder someone, but he knew he couldn’t overrule an order from the prime minister.

Tariq sat there unmoving for a few seconds. Then he pressed his lips tightly together, threw off the blanket, and swung his leg over the side of the bed. He looked appealingly at the doctor.

“Your clothes and prosthetic, yes.”

Hektor was staring at the stump peeking out from under the boy’s nightshirt, but at a glare from Tariq, he looked away quickly and said, “I’ll wait outside.”

“Do,” Jorgen said coldly, and Hektor went out into the hall, regretful. He’d wanted to see Tariq put on the prosthetic. He was curious what it looked like, since it made no sense to him how such a pitiful stump could be made into a fully functional limb.

Jorgen brought Tariq his things, holding the metal leg with an almost awed care. He set them down on the bed.

“Do you need help?”

Tariq shook his head. Jorgen went to get his boots. Tariq sat disconsolate for a minute before he pulled off the nightshirt and began the complicated process of attaching his leg to his body.

Back when he’d first made the leg, he’d simply sewn one leg of a pair of shorts shut to protect his stump from rubbing. Now he had a pair he had custom-made to fit perfectly, like a sleeve. He slid the special shorts on, and he was beginning to buckle the many straps on the prosthetic when Jorgen returned with his boots. The doctor watched silently, hovering in case the boy lost his balance when he stood. Tariq only stumbled a little though, then stood still and steady, wincing as he tightened each strap as tight as possible.

He dressed then. Someone had washed his uniform, though he could still see the faint remains of bloodstains on his pants. The closer he came to being fully dressed, the more slowly he moved, until Jorgen said in a low voice, “I can try to tell him you’re not feeling well enough.”

Tariq shook his head. “Do you think he’ll listen?”

Angry now, he put on his belt and slammed a couple of knives into hidden sheaths.

“You won’t be allowed in armed,” Jorgen said, alarmed to see the knives even in the boy’s possession. If he’d known they were tucked into the folds of the clothing, he wouldn’t have brought them in.

“What they can’t see won’t hurt them.”

“But it can,” the doctor objected, puzzled by the boy’s flawed logic.

“I won’t use them.”

Jorgen frowned. A military man himself, he understood the psychological need to have weapons simply on hand, but he wasn’t ready to even risk the possibility of another incident. He shook his head, adamant. “Leave them here.”

“I won’t use them, dammit,” Tariq growled.

“I know you won’t. I’m afraid of whatever demon made you slit your wrists, not you.”

“It was me,” Tariq said, then sighed when he realized he’d only reinforced the doctor’s position. Reluctantly, he unsheathed the knives and handed them over.

“Your boots?”

“Fine.” The boy bent to remove the last knife and dropped it into the doctor’s hand.

“Thank you. Now be careful. Try not to worry, and don’t come back alone. If you try another stunt like what landed you here, I’ll kill you myself. And come back here when you’re done, not the barracks. I still want to keep you in bed another week.”

Tariq nodded to everything he said and went out into the hall where Hektor was waiting.

Hektor was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He smiled when he saw Tariq.

“You’re ready? Good. Come along.”

Tariq didn’t smile back, but he followed obediently. They went down a dingy, dark stairway and outside to where a small open carriage waited. Tariq shivered. It had gotten much colder than a week ago. The sunlight, which had felt so warm through the windowpanes, was chilly and uncomforting now.

They got into the carriage, and it rattled off. The driver skirted the slums and drove straight through the city to the first sector, where the king, nobles, and wealthy elite had their residence. It was an awkward ride. Tariq and Hektor avoided making eye contact, and the silence between them hung like blind fog.