Forgotten (3 page)

Air rushed out of Kaie’s throat. His child, like the woman said.
His son.
“My son?”

Peren offered him a hand. Kaie half expected it to smack him in the eye as she reached toward him. “I have a son?”

As her fingers wrapped around his again Kaie blinked. She looked older.
She was still more sharp angles than not, and every bit as stunning, but she was beautiful now too. Her body was lean muscle and so tan there was no hint of the pale, blotchy skin he was just holding. Her hair was white hot fire, and her hips…Gods, they made him ache. She laughed at him. “Of course you have a son! Yours is the blood of the phoenix, and you must father the dragons!”

Kaie blinked again, tugging his hand away to rub at his eyes. “What did you say?”

Peren tilted her head, giving him a confused look. “I said yes. You have a son.” She let go of his hand. “He’s outside, with Vaughan. I needed to make sure… Sometimes, when you’ve come home, you aren’t ok. I had to be sure, before… Do you want to meet him?”

Finding it indescribably difficult to get the word out, Kaie just nodded.

A pale, thin man followed Peren in through the hide doorway. One glance was all it took to know it was her brother. The two wore the same angles, though they looked quite different on the boy. Better, maybe.
Less awkward.
But less interesting, too.
And while his eyes were nearly as big and nearly as blue, they lacked the sharpness that was so vital in hers. He was taller than her, taller than Kaie, but his shoulders were slumped. It made him look small. The boy was holding a small basket to his chest. Once inside, Peren took it from him and the boy, after a quick nod of greeting, darted back into the night. She held the basket out to Kaie.

“He’s so good.” Peren was beaming. “He almost never cries. Except in the middle of the night, when I’m so exhausted I can barely move. But he’s good enough that the Mistress lets me take him with me when I run deliveries over the estate. I haven’t had to leave him with a wet nurse. Not even once.”

The baby wrapped up in the basket stared out at Kaie with huge, dark blue eyes. Its skin was pale and perfect, and there was a light dusting of strawberry hair just starting to curl around its ears. A chubby fist shot up, waving in the air as tiny fingers worked open and closed. It smiled at him. She slid her hand into his again and squeezed. He needed the anchor.

“How old?”
Kaie was only vaguely aware that he was speaking. He was caught up in studying this strange creature, trying to decide if he felt any connection to it. Hours ago, he was locked in a cell fantasizing about an imaginary girl and bloody deaths for everyone who caged him. Now he was holding the girl’s hand and looking down at his son. It was surreal.

“Six months.
Almost.
He was born three days after they took you away last time. It was early. I was hoping he would wait until you came back.
If you did.
But Vaughan says the
stress of everything… And since they kept you away so much longer, I guess it’s all for the best.”

He wasn’t sure if he was relieved they didn’t steal the memory of the birth from him, or furious that they deprived him of it.
Both, maybe.
“His name?”

“He doesn’t have one. Unless you count ‘little guy’ or the string of curses I occasionally let slip when he wakes me up.” She smiled up at him. “I was waiting for you.”

Kaie tore his gaze away from the baby. Now he turned his attention to figuring out what was going on with this girl at his side. “Why? I don’t have anyone to name him after. Why not name him after your father, or whatever, and just be done with it?”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d like Boleslav.”

He snorted. “Good call there.”

Her hip swung into his. Bony as it was, he felt the hit. “That’s my father you’re laughing at.”

“No. You’re right. It’s a fine name. I’m sure no one would ever make fun of a kid with that mouthful.” It was harder to get his snickering under control, the way she glared at him. But he managed.
“Seriously, Peren.
I didn’t even know your name when I woke. I can’t see a version of this year they’ve stolen where I’m an asset in your life. Why?
Are we… Do you love me?
”

“Not yet,” she said slowly, her eyes locked on the boy in the basket.

“You must know ways.
A place like this, there have
to be ways to rid yourself of unwanted children. So, if you aren’t in love with me, why would you put yourself through this? Bring a child into this life? Take care of me? Tell me why.”

“You didn’t want me to.” Peren pulled away and sat back down slowly. This time, there was no flailing. She moved with a grace impossible for the same girl who stood up. He couldn’t help wondering which
was the real one
. “You told me to get rid of everything you gave me that I didn’t need.
Especially a child.”

His frown deepened. He could feel the lines in his face. “I’m still waiting for that reason, precious.”

“I was going to do what you said. I went to talk to a woman about… But when I was there I realized that I couldn’t. I need him, Kaie.” She wrapped her arms around her chest, the unshed tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes again. This time, they were his fault. “I need you too. But I won’t lose him. I’ll give you up first, I swear it.”

Kaie held up his free hand in surrender. “I’m not going to ask that. You’ve convinced me. He’s convinced me. I’m just trying to understand.”

She pursed her lips, considering him. Kaie flashed what he hoped was a comforting grin. She snorted. “One day, you’re going to learn that it takes more than a charming smile to get what you want.”

“Not today, I hope
..”
She laughed, and it was a terrifically loud sound to come out of such a little girl. He liked it. “So why do I get to name him? I can’t name him after my father.”

I’m just going to say that you earned it.”

“Earned it?”

“His name.
Now will you tell me what it is al
ready? I’ve spent the
months in suspense, and I’ve had my fill!”

Kaie laughed. She was insane. Somehow, it eased the heat of his fury, like aloe on
a sunburn
. It made complete sense now, how such an odd girl would find a way to worm her way into his head so deeply that the Namer couldn’t remove her.
“Keegan.”

Peren blinked.
“Keegan?
Like the man who worked the stables with you?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It just came to me. Is that bad?”

She smiled and shook her head, leaning forward to brush another light kiss onto his cheek. “No. It’s perfect.”

Peren freed her hand from his and scooped up the baby, planting a much larger kiss onto the top of the boy’s head. “I can officially welcome you to the world, little guy,” she cooed. “Keegan Boleslav.”

It was all so easy. Being with Keegan, with Peren, it all just fell into place as though it always was. Kaie didn’t need to try to make her laugh, and his son was as easy to look after as she promised. Except those nights he was especially tired, again just as she promised. All the emotional confrontations and angry demands were over with by the time she crawled under his blankets – managing to catch his ear with her elbow – the second night.

He could forget, while they sat with their backs against the wall. Her head would be on his shoulder, their son would sleep in her arms, and they would talk about nothing important. The cell faded away. He could even forget about Kissa and the Namer. Things were so simple, so perfect. Kaie’s anger slid further every night. He could almost be content with their life together.

The days were harder. There wasn’t enough to do. Keegan spent most of the time sleeping. Peren was out running food and messages all over the estate. There was too much time for him to think about the ugly white lines branded into her right shoulder. They were supposed to look like half of a leaf, but all Kaie saw was the way it ruined her soft skin. The Mistress did that, the same one who made her run deliveries. Everything in their small little room was tainted by the shadowy figure of that woman, and it made him half mad thinking about how she could take everything from him.

Vaughan’s visits helped. The boy was meek and irritating, but Kaie was grateful for the distraction. The kid offered to tell him about his past, which Kaie refused, and so they spent an hour or two nearly every day talking about the empire that enslaved them.

Months passed with Kaie hardly noticing. Even the hardest days faded from his mind when her hair draped around his head, hiding him away from everything except her eyes. She would look at him, see right through him, and she would smile. He lived for that smile.

The crisp, cool wind of fall grew heavy with the promise of snow. Kaie learned to cook and used a small knife to carve himself a flute. It took a lot of failed attempts and more advice than he wanted, but he liked making music. Keegan loved it too. On the rest days, after they finally crawled out from beneath their blankets, Kaie would make breakfast and Peren would tell a story.
Fai tales and myths, mostly.
She claimed he told them to her once. They were all new to his ears. Then he would go for a walk around the shanty neighborhood called West Field. The walks gave him time to come back to himself, free of distractions.

He still wasn’t sure what to do with this life he was thrust into. He prepared himself for hatred and violence, instead finding himself a piece of this unaccountably happy family. It was changing him. He wasn’t the man who wrote promises to invisible jailors in his own blood anymore. Almost, he could imagine growing old and content in this house.

That thought stuck in his teeth like a string of meat that refused to be dislodged. This was not his life. Not really. The girl who spent each night in his arms, the baby cooing softly
in her lap, they belonged to a boy erased a little less than two years ago. He was borrowing them, but it wouldn’t last. It wasn’t freedom. There was always a Hollow standing still as a statue, just outside the house to remind him every time he felt himself forgetting. Guarding him or against him. Not even Vaughan seemed to know which. They were more constant than sunrise, following him on his walks.

Walks that often turned to runs. Past the twelve shacks of West Field, with their happy children playing in the small drifts of snow and bright colors, around a barren stretch of land he figured was used to grow crops in warmer seasons, to the twelve shacks of East Field. There, things were not nearly so pleasant looking. There were some specks of color in the windows of the shacks, and a child or two could be spotted peering out from behind the hide doors, but the place was miserable. He thought about asking Vaughan about it almost every day, and decided against it each time. Something told him that he didn’t really want to know why the two were so different.

One of the Hollows was always behind him, never outside arm’s reach. No amount of shouting chased the thing away. Kaie even resorted to throwing stones once, but the creature didn’t even seem to notice when one connected with its head hard enough to draw blood. One was always near. It shouldn’t shake him. But it did. He saw the promise in the lines of the men’s stiff shoulders. Everything about his silent, empty guardians whispered of what was waiting. Kissa was out there and when the Namer returned she would come for him. He
knew,
the same way he knew he could trust the two blondes, that his luck wouldn’t hold a sixth time.

They would be better, Peren and Keegan, if he was dead. Better still if he was just gone. He couldn’t take them. Maybe if Keegan were older. But he couldn’t drag Peren and their infant across a land he didn’t remember in a dash for freedom. That was what drove him out their hide door every rest day, what pushed his feet faster every time. Out here in the chilly air, he was furious. Not at her, but at that stupid, weak version of himself.
The one who got her pregnant and left her to pick up his mess with no plan to end it.
And the lost, mewling versions who came between that first one and now were no better.

Neither was he. Because, for a minute or two each night
,
he seriously entertained the idea of waiting for the Namer to return and letting the problem be taken out of his hands. He didn’t want to leave them. He was happy here, or as close to happy as he could imagine.

The thought clung longer on the night the first flecks of snow caught in his eyelashes
. And the Hollow behind him, a big empty man he recognized from his last moments in the cell even after all this time, whispered louder than the others.

This will be you
.

His feet followed a path his eyes were too distracted to follow. They knew it well. He lost himself in the thrill of the run, with no baby
in his arms
and no cell walls to confine him. The wind cut at him, but he pushed forward mindlessly.

The sound of the Hollow’s feet hitting the snow
dusted
earth behind him pulled Kaie back to himself. Each thud was another whisper.
You
, they promised.
You, you, you, you
.
He
pushed harder, ran faster, but he couldn’t escape them. They were always just behind him, insisting and so much steadier than his heartbeat.

He kept going until his legs burned just as badly as his lungs. For a second, he thought he was right back where he started. One house looked the same as another. But it was East Field.

The Hollow stopped just outside of arms reach. The man wasn’t even breathing heavily. Kaie was tempted to hit him. It wouldn’t make a difference, the man wouldn’t try to stop it, but it might make him feel a little better. Instead, he shambled over to the well and drew up a bucket of water.

“Did you get tired of playing house at last?”

He dropped the bucket. It landed with a splash that sent up a thin layer of icy mist. A thick woman approached from the other side of the well. She wore a scowl like it was the natural set of her mouth.

“I see you run through here every week,” she growled. “After you set your brat down for a nap? Before you roll around with that wisp of yours, trying to make another one for our Mistress to drive herself to madness trying to protect? What happen? Did you decide you’re bored and come out here to make trouble again?”

“I’m sure I’m very intimidated. Who are you?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes as she came up beside
him
. She folded her arms across her chest, making obvious efforts to show off the short blade on her hip in the light of the full moon.
“Boss Josephine.
I was in charge of keeping you safe, back when that was an option, and apparently cleaning up your mess now that it’s not.”

“Sounds like a real chore. Must keep you terribly busy.”

Her scowl intensified, deep lines forming around her mouth and between her bus
h
y eyebrows. “Busier than I’d like. Are you here to start another riot, boy? A little warning before you start making bodies of my people would be a nice change of pace.”

Kaie sighed and leaned against the well. The cold of the stones seeped into his skin, raising gooseflesh all over his arms in the moments before his back went numb. “Know what would be nice?
If there was one person besides
me who didn’t know my whole life story.
Then I wouldn’t be the only one left out of all the jokes.”

She ey
ed him with distaste so obvious
Kaie almost looked down to see if he was wearing something offensive. “When you lived here, three people died in the span of two days on account of you.”

He shrugged, masking his surprise as best he was able. Peren said one man died. Who were the other two? “I like to stay busy.”

Her eyes rolled. “Last time you started visiting was worse. Almost a year ago, you started dropping in. Your pretty girl begged. Said you were harmless, just wanted to learn who you were before they scooped out all the soft bits of your brain. You’re the only one
to
move to West Field, so all your people still lived
here
.”

He didn’t miss the past tense. “And you just couldn’t refuse such a heart-wrenching appeal?”

Josephine snorted. “The Mistress felt sorry for you.
Spends too much time doing that, you ask me.
It’s going to cost us all more than we can afford soon. Anyway, she told me to let you talk to them. You and the other Zetowan got all chummy. Talked about
who
you were and your big family and your crazy religion. Gods, I heard
about
Lemme so many times I near puked over it.”

That name resonated through him like striking a hammer against metal.

“You got them all sorts of fired up,” she continued. “Got them remembering who they were and thinking you were important. When the Namer took you back for another go, they lost their damn minds. Started rioting, trying to get to your cell and break you out. Even found themselves a couple magic users we didn’t know about and convinced the fools to join the cause.”

“What?” Kaie couldn’t conceal his surprise this time.

“Oh yeah.
The Mistress is a forgiving woman, more than she should be, but she couldn’t talk them out of their little rebellion.
All of ‘
em
calling for the release of ‘Kaie the Unbroken’ and screaming for blood.
They got it.
Rivers of it.
We had to put the whole of East Field to the blade. We got stuck with twenty new slaves to train up and two Hollows to send to the front lines. Not to mention twenty-seven bodies to bury.
Some of ‘
em
no more than eight years old.
So thanks for that.”

“Why?” He demanded, angry at the older version of himself all over again. “Why would I do that? What did I hope to gain?”

Josephine sighed, her posture changing drastically with that one sound. Suddenly, she didn’t look like a brute about to pound his face in, but a tired woman. “To be honest, I don’t think you did it. I listened in, most days you were here. I never heard you speak a word of revolt. There were problems brewing, even before you started coming around again. Zetowan don’t seem to take well to the life.”

Her scowl returned and she poked a finger into his chest, threatening his balance for a second. “But that don’t make your hands clean of the blood. Whether you called for it or not, you were the one they were screaming for. You started that fire in ‘
em
, no matter what you intended. I won’t let it happen again. I won’t bury my territory another time, boy.”

He smiled grimly. “Well you’re in luck. I like running. Not talking. I don’t care who I was or who lives in these hovels. And I promise
,
if anyone tries calling me ‘Unbreakable’ I’ll beat them myself.”

“Right.
Because that worked so well last time.”

“You said you sent the Hollows to the front line.
As in a battle?
Is there a war?”

She snorted. “You’re in the Urazin Empire. There’s always a war.” Josephine rubbed at her forehead before crossing her arms over her chest again. “You stay out of East Field from now on, boy. There aren’t
none
of your people left, and Mistress says I don’t have any obligation to look out for you anymore. Stay where you belong.”

He chuckled bitterly. “That’s the plan, isn’t it?
Just trying to sort out where that is.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Gods, your kind are dramatic, aren’t they? Can you even take a piss without hyperventilating over it?” Josephine grabbed his arm roughly and jerked him away from the well, turning him toward West Field. “Start there.”

He took the hint. He walked back the way he came, cringing with each plodding step the Hollow took behind him.

“Kaie!”

He looked back, half expecting a fist for his trouble.

“Mistress told me two Namers are expected in a fortnight. Do what you can for your family before then.”