Page 67 of The Moon Blessed King
‘But everyone…all of your kind, you can heal that quickly? Without even touching anyone or anything?’
‘No,’ Elician replies. ‘No, usually you need to touch someone. But…’ He can’t explain it. He remembers wanting to heal Lio, more than anything in the world. And he had been willing to do anything he could to reach across all the great distance between them and cling to Lio’s soul with both hands. ‘If you want something bad enough, then I suppose you don’t need to touch it.’ Cat huffs to his left. He leans more solidly against Elician’s shoulder, and Partho sputters, says they should get them to their tent to rest properly. It’s inappropriate, to be so familiar with someone. Here, where anyone can see.
‘Sometimes you do need to touch someone,’ Cat whispers in Soleben as Partho runs off to summon some assistance.
Leferge clears her throat. Elician winces. He’d forgotten she was still there. Still watching. ‘You said you were here to help,’ Leferge says in Lunae.
‘Yes,’ Cat agrees in his mother tongue.
‘You intend to heal your way across this country, all the way to Alerae?’
‘And save any I can.’
The general peers down her nose at him. ‘I will provide you an escort,’ she says. ‘And my men will follow any word I give them. Butyouwill need to convince the people to allow you to heal them. In that, I will not interfere.’
‘Thank you,’ Cat says.
She casts one look at the sick beds, where her soldiers no longer suffer in agony, curled on their sides in despair. ‘Let us hope that thiswas a risk worth taking. And that this too does not bring down the wrath of the gods.’
‘I hope so too.’ It is all they can hope for. But Leferge seems to accept it. And for now, tonight, their task is over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Cat
They rest most of the next day. They lie curled against each other, arms and bodies intertwined. Cat wakes in fits and starts. Elician sleeps on. Partho brings them food and the camp outside bustles with enough gossip that even the Blue Guard members stationed outside Cat and Elician’s tent can’t keep the words from carrying over. Everyone wants to know exactly how a Reaper healed someone, and what it means for a Reaper and a Giver to work together.It’s like the gods working as one, one particular voice shouts with a touch too much exuberance.
It’s all Cat needs to hear before he extricates himself from Elician’s side. He pulls Marina’s journal from his bag and tells the Guardsmen at the front of his tent that he wants to be alone. They hesitate, clearly unwilling to heed that request, but he walks and keeps on walking, and he is grateful when they do not follow. It takes him a long while, but he reaches the edge of the encampment and from there makes his way to the desolate city of Endura.
He walks through the remains of the door they destroyed. He finds Endura’s tallest building, a watchtower in the city centre, and he climbs to the top just so he can see the whole of the city in all directions at once. The sky is blanketed with the glow of countless stars. Untold wonders twinkle down above him, but off on thehorizon there is an occasional flicker of another light too – the light of some faraway town that has not yet faced ruin. Outside the city walls, life exists. It breathes in and out. It makes noise. It exists, and time moves on for it. Even if here, in this town where not even ghosts will tread, there is nothing but silence.
Cat opens Marina’s journal. He thumbs through the pages of her life. He reads through her scattered thoughts and recollections. Reads, as well, as she recites a story about the gods.
Life was born to a great barren nothingness. He emerged, shapeless and undefined, and he longed to fill all the empty spaces…
Cat knows this story. He knows how it continues too. How when the world became vast, and the canvas too great for only two to manage, Death breathed her talent into the worthy and Life graced the chosen with his strength. Reapers and Givers were both meant to carry out the duty of their gods. To give life or to give death and to think nothing except the understanding that it was their purpose to maintain a balance.
‘All of creation is in balance,’ Elena Morsen said once. ‘All that ensures that we remaininbalance is the knowledge that the end is not truly an end. That so long as we have purpose in our existence then we cannot be erased, only reformed. We will return to try again. And for that reason, all life is sacred, and so too is every death.’
Endura is quiet.
There is no life here. Not anymore. Not yet.
The balance that had been maintained, Cat knows, is over.But why did Death herself come to see it done?he wonders.Why here and not in Alerae?Why this town, a border town certainly, but small and meaningless in terms of significance? It lacked much of the value of Altas. Its people were hearty folk, but no different from anywhere else. So why them?
And the only answer he can come up with is:Why not Endura?
What does a god care about the values of commerce or trade? Of strategic outposts or military capabilities? Gods barter in life and death, and Endura had the lives she wanted to see dead. Perhaps that is the only thing that mattered in the end.
Footsteps echo up the staircase that leads to Cat’s perch. He recognizes them immediately, and he embraces the noise that reminds him of his own purpose. The trapdoor that seals off this part of the watchtower opens, and Elician pokes his head through. Cat leans back on his hands, twisting to watch as Elician scrambles up out of the hole and closes the trapdoor behind him. He shuffles forward, sitting at Cat’s side and letting his legs dangle off the highest part of the tower.
‘You found me,’ Cat murmurs.
‘I found you,’ his husband agrees. ‘Partho is worried about you.’
‘I just wanted to be alone.’
‘Do you want me to leave?’
