The room he had been assigned to was even smaller than the one at the inn; he had been taken the servant’s wing and locked in here immediately after his stunt in the throne room. It was cramped, barely big enough to lay down in, with a long thin window near the ceiling on the opposite wall from the door. The room contained a single bed (it was generous to call it that, considering that it was a blanket on a tiny pallet of straw), and nothing else. It was a far cry from the opulence he had seen earlier, but he took a small comfort in the fact that it wasn’t a cell in the dungeon. Is there a dungeon here? Seems like there would be. She seems like the kind of queen to have a secret dungeon full of torture.
He had strained to pry the hinges open, which of course didn’t work. Kicking the door and yelling didn’t do anything either. In his anger he had tried ramming the wood with his shoulder, but the door won that contest, and he didn’t try again. In the end, Jay had slumped against the wall, resigned to spending the night here, trying to look on the bright side. The problem, of course, was that the only light came from the outside, and as the day faded into night, the room got darker and darker until Jay couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
He had spent most of the day going over how to get a message to the Rooted Dryad without the queen finding out; he had to warn Diyan and Ndubuisi about the danger they were in, considering that he had been the one to put them in danger. Hindsight being 20/20, he realized that the Queen hadn’t told her guards to kill him when she had dismissed him the first time; she had said take her from my sight, which was completely different. Had he overreacted? Yeah, probably, but even after all these years, being called a girl still got under his skin.
Jay gritted his teeth at the memory of her dismissive tone. Even after replaying it a hundred times in his head, the anger still burned hot in his chest. He had been mocked and misgendered for years in school before he had escaped to college, and even there he had to put up with people who told him he was confused and evil for being trans. In high school, he had gotten into a fight and almost been expelled over a situation just like this one, although the girl he had fought wasn’t a queen by any stretch of the imagination.
Even his parents had expressed their concern and their doubt, though they had come a long way in the last few years. He didn’t think of himself as the kind of guy to get mad and fly off the handle, but old wounds carried a sting that made it easy to slip into the furious teenager he had been all those years ago. He hit the back of his head against the stone wall softly, berating himself for blowing up in front of a woman who commanded an army of knights. I’m lucky that she didn’t vaporize me herself. God damn it, Jay, you really backed yourself into a corner this time.
He tensed when he heard footsteps outside; had the queen changed her mind? Or maybe he was being thrown out ahead of schedule? He rose to his feet as a key slid into the lock, sliding into the corner of the room and wishing that he had a weapon; even a stick would do. He was surprised when the door opened just enough to let in a woman in green, holding a lantern that burned just brightly enough to see by. She had thick, straight black hair that was braided tightly down her back, and when she shut the door and turned to face him, Jay’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Diyan? Is that you?”
The woman grimaced, putting a finger to her lips, and Jay nodded, confused but cooperative. After a moment of fiddling with the light, the flame inside rose, and Jay got a better look at her face. Apart from the color of her eyes, which were hazel where Diyan’s were dark brown, she was the spitting image of the woman, and his confusion lasted only a moment before he remembered Jenn’s words: If you meet my Auntie, I think you two will get along.
This must be Diyan’s sister. What was her name again? It started with a K, I think. Kiyan? That sounds right. The woman gestured for Jay to come forward, and he crept closer, trying to make as little noise as possible. When he was close enough to touch, the woman whispered, “I am Kiran, Diyan’s sister. Keep your voice down; if anyone discovers that I am here, I will be in just as much trouble as you. I was there this morning, when you spoke to the queen; you claimed to have stolen those clothes, but I know my sister, and if you had tried you would never have made it to the castle. You lied to protect her and her family from harm. I am here to say thank you, and to tell you that they are safe; as soon as you left the room, I went to the inn and explained the situation to my sister and her husband. They were angry, but swore that they would deny meeting you and report the clothes stolen. No one will harm them, as they did not help you directly, and as long as no one speaks of it, it will remain that way. That being said, I have something to give you.” She reached forward and smacked Jay on the side of the head lightly; not enough to really hurt, but enough to make him yelp softly in surprise.
She withdrew her hand, giving him the same look that Diyan had given to her children that morning, of impatience and disappointment. “That is for speaking so outrageously to the queen. What were you thinking?”
Jay rubbed his head, but didn’t protest, hunching his shoulders in shame. “I know, I… I know. I didn’t expect to, but something in me just snapped when she called me a girl. I can take a lot of disrespect, but that’s the one thing that really gets me. If it’s any consolation, I know I messed up, and I’m just glad that your family is okay. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, but they don’t deserve any blowback from this.”
With each statement, Kiran’s expression softened, until she was staring at him with something like sympathy. She sighed gently, shaking her head, and her voice was soft when she spoke next. “You are beyond lucky that Queen Marcella is fair in all matters regarding promises and contracts, or you would have earned yourself jail time for speaking that way.” Her face darkened, mouth twisting in concern. “Although, given what I have heard, that might be kinder than where you are going now.”
Jay swallowed, the relief at hearing no one had been hurt battling with the dread gnawing at his stomach. “What have you heard? Where am I going? She had said something about me being a Mayor, but I don’t know what that means—am I going to be running a city?” Public service is a pretty bad punishment, but it’s better than torture or being beheaded. She told me that she hoped that I would starve, though; is she sending me to the desert or something?
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Kiran sighed, shaking her head. “No. Well, yes, but not really. The place that you’re going is called the Badlands. It used to be a farming city, but now… nothing grows there anymore. The river that fed the fields dried up, and the land went sour. The previous Mayor died a few years ago defending the place from a monster attack, and the city has been neglected by the Throne ever since. There were a few efforts to try and repopulate the area, but everyone who was sent there… they either left or died. It’s a death sentence wrapped in the guise of a gift.”
Oh my god, I should have taken the jail time. God damn it, why does my mouth always have to get me in trouble? At the look on Jay’s face, she nodded. “You should be scared. It will not be an easy place to make a living. But you are an Outsider; what is impossible for others, you accomplish with ease. All you need to do is grow strong enough to survive, and the rest will come with time. Speaking of survival, I have a gift for you from my sister, although I am unsure that giving it to you is even worth it.” Jay tensed as she reached for her waist, arms coming up to ward off another blow. She raised an eyebrow at him in amusement. “My sister is kinder than I, Outsider. Her gift is a gift indeed, not another scolding, although you deserve one.”
She pulled a blue crystal from the folds of her dress, and Jay’s breath caught in his throat. That’s the same crystal that hung over the bathtub at the inn! He reached forward, taking it gently from Kiran’s offered hand, and turned it over in his hands. A mixture of gratitude and sadness filled his chest, and he blinked hard to hold back tears, telling himself that this wasn’t the time. He looked up to see Kiran staring at him with consideration. “So you do know what it is, although I doubt you understand the gravity of that gift. A focus like that does not come cheaply, no matter how flawed it may be, and it will take a long time to find the money for a new one. My sister said to tell you this: her last words to you still apply, and she hopes to see you again in this lifetime.”
Jay couldn’t stop the tears that ran from the corners of his eyes; he wiped his face on his shirt, holding the crystal to his chest like it would break at the slightest touch. “I don’t understand. Why are they being so kind to me? I almost got them in trouble, and they barely know me. I didn’t even have any money to pay them for my stay.”
Kiran sighed. “When we were young, our family was very poor. My youngest sister, Hava, died from a disease that could have been cured if we had only been able to pay a doctor. My sister and I were also sick, and would have suffered the same fate if a traveling healer hadn’t spent the time and materials to heal us. At the time, this treatment was not cheap; the price to save both of us was more than my parents would make in a year. Even so, they swore that they would do anything to repay him, but he refused. Instead, he told them a story.
“He explained that he was part of a wandering merchant group that travelled from place to place, and they had been in the village just months before. The healer had just lost a child of his own to the difficulties of birth, and his wife had joined the child not long after. Even though he was skilled in the art of healing, there had been nothing he could do to save either one. Afterwards, he had sunk into a depression that left him unable to do things like eat or sleep; he had often considered whether it would be best to end his suffering and join them before his time.”
She paused, her expression pained, and Jay swallowed at the thought of losing not one but two people in such a short time. He thought about his parents, and how he had worried about them as they aged; his mother had turned 70 last year, and Jay had made a resolution to spend more time with her and his dad, before… But parents are one thing; it’s the way of the world that a child has to bury his parents. To lose your kid, and your wife right after… He shuddered, and Kiran nodded in agreement.
“It happened that the group had to make a detour to the village because of an outbreak in the next town over. Our family was not rich, but my sisters and I begged my mother to let us go and see the wares from far away. She finally agreed, and I am always grateful that she did; my memory of my sisters and I dancing to the travelling band and staring at the trinkets on the merchant’s cart is one of the only memories that I have left of Hava.
“It so happened that the healer was also there, though at the time we had no reason to know each other. He saw us, three sisters crowded around their patient mother, laughing and singing and tugging at each other’s hair, and said that for an instant, he saw the face of his child in each one of us, and smelled the ghost of his love’s perfume. In that moment, the fog lifted from his soul, and he swore that he would not yield to his despair; this pain was hard, but he would keep living, and in his heart his family would be alive, too.
“His arrival in our village all those months later was another accident: the group had been attacked by monsters and came to the closest place to recover. The illness had been in the village for weeks by then; it was all that anyone would talk about. Hearing it, the healer realized that he had to find us, those children who so long ago gave him the strength to carry on, if only to make sure that we were alright. He told my parents this story, and when he had finished, he said that making us well again was the only reward that he wanted. His only regret was that he hadn’t arrived in time to save Hava as well.”
She fell silent, and they stood there, watching the lantern’s flame flicker. When she spoke again, her voice was steady, but Jay could see that her eyes were shiny in the low light. “Hava was sweet and kind; she was the baby, the youngest of us all. Diyan did not speak for months after we lost her. Hava’s death still haunts her, all these years later. She would have lived if someone had shown her mercy, and I think that is why Diyan has given this crystal to you. She must have seen the ghost of our sister in your face, the same way that the healer saw his child in hers all those years ago. So, take that crystal, Outsider Jacob Holtz, and make sure that you live long enough to give it back.”
With that, she was gone, the smell of soot and the crystal in his hands the only sign that she had ever been there. Jay banished it into his inventory, fumbling around in the dark until he could sit on the makeshift bed, and put his head into his hands, tears running down his chin to wet the legs of his pants. When he had run out of tears, he put his head back against the wall, staring up and out of the tiny window to the hint of sky above, and whispered, “I promise, Diyan, Kiren. I promise that I’ll live long enough to make it up to the both of you.”
