The Road to Death

13

When Esprë awakened, the stabbing pain in her head still threatened to send her reeling back into unconsciousness. For a moment, she hoped the darkness would take her again, that she could fall back into the peace of oblivion. Perhaps her head had hurt as badly while she slept—she didn’t feel rested at all—but at least she hadn’t known the suffering so well.

The sun shone down warm and welcome on her face. She felt her skin pinking in its heat, and she wondered how long she’d been asleep, and what had woken her up. She peeled open her eyes and found herself lying on the airship’s bridge, unprotected from the sun.

Then she heard the screaming again and recognized it as the sound that had dragged her from her troubled dreams. She tried to get up to see who—or what—could make such a miserable sound, but she discovered her hands were bound to the ship’s railing, making it impossible for her to rise past her knees.

Still, as she got to her knees, she spied Te’oma slumped over the ship’s wheel. The changeling’s shoulders shook as she sobbed into the polished wood.

“What?” Esprë said. “Did you run out of homeless orphans to torture?”

The changeling’s head snapped up, and she glared at the young elf, her blank, white eyes tainted with veins of red. For an instant, Esprë thought the telepath would mentally hammer her back into unconsciousness. Although she’d hoped for such a fate just a moment ago, she gritted her teeth and steeled herself to fight the changeling’s invasions again. She might want peace, but she refused to let the changeling get the better of her once more.

Te’oma just looked at the young elf though, her eyes locking with Esprë’s sparkling blue orbs. Then she bowed her head to weep again, her screams fading to heartbreaking wails.

Esprë let the changeling wallow in her sorrow. Although the young elf’s first instinct was to reach out to help comfort anyone in such pain, she hardened her heart to the noise. She hated Te’oma for everything she’d done to her. She had no sympathy for her.

At least, that’s what she wanted to believe.

“What?” Esprë said after the changeling refused to stop weeping. “What, what, what?” She didn’t bother hiding the irritation in her voice.

Te’oma let loose one last, hideous scream, this one rooted more in frustration than despair, then snarled out at the young elf. “You couldn’t understand.”

Esprë winced at the noise, shook her head, then shrugged. “I don’t really want to. My head hurts—which is your fault too—and you’re hurting my ears. If you have to cry, just please be quiet about it.”

Te’oma pushed herself out of her slouch and wiped away her tears with the sleeves of her outfit, which Esprë noticed now was the same color as the clouds that coated the Mournland sky. The changeling spoke, her voice worn raw with emotion.

“I should just toss you overboard and be done with it,” she said, weary misery etched into every syllable. “It’s hopeless anyhow. Hopeless.”

Esprë wanted to roll her eyes, but she feared the gesture might set the changeling off. With Te’oma clearly staggering along the edge of sanity, the young elf kept her own anger in check.

“It’s not that bad,” Esprë said. As the words left her lips, she heard them ring hollow. She wanted to fill them with more feeling, empathy even, but she didn’t know how.

“You know nothing!” Te’oma said, her voice rising to a scream again. “It’s worse than you could possibly imagine.”

Esprë jerked her head at the bonds chafing her wrists. “You still have me.”

Te’oma goggled for a moment, then she started to laugh, hard. She laughed until tears flowed down her face again.

“Thanks,” the changeling said when she could breathe straight again. “I needed that. You don’t know how funny that is.”

“Glad I could help,” Esprë said. “Now, if you could return the favor by setting me free …”

Te’oma giggled. Esprë wished she could stuff the sound down the changeling’s throat. Instead, she kept her face like stone.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Te’oma said. “You have proven yourself too dangerous, child.”

Esprë tried a confident smile, hoping that the changeling couldn’t see through it. “What makes you think I need to touch you to kill you?”

Te’oma laughed again, but this time there was no humor in it. “Your bluffs grow more desperate.”

“Think about all those people who died in Mardakine,” Esprë said, letting her anger leak menace into her tone. “I wasn’t even in the same place with them when they—” Esprë found she had to swallow here before she could correct herself. “When I killed them.”

Te’oma wiped her face dry again. “If you could manage it,” she said, “I’d already be dead.”

The young elf noticed that the changeling had positioned herself well away from even Esprë’s feet, keeping a good amount of space between the two.

“Your dragonmark is still fresh on your skin,” Te’oma said. “The mark itself represents the control you have over the power that courses deep within you. Right now, it’s still small, no wider than a hand’s span. With time, it will grow, as will your control over your power.

“Right now, though,” Te’oma said with a bitter smile, “you’re no threat to me or anyone else.”

“Unless I happen to find you in my dreams.”

“I’m willing to chance that.”

Esprë shifted about on her knees, trying to get some blood flowing back into her arms, which had fallen numb as she slept. She suspected the changeling had tied her like this on purpose. Even if she managed to get free, her arms would be next to useless until her blood pumped through them again.

“So why all the tears?” Esprë said, hoping to change the subject.

“You don’t want to know.”

Esprë found that she did, despite her hate for the changeling. Perhaps the answer to her question would give her some sort of leverage over Te’oma. At the moment, no other path promised better.

“Tell me,” she said.

Te’oma’s lower lip quivered, and Esprë thought the changeling might burst into tears again. She’d never thought of Te’oma as weak before, but something had shaken her to her core.

“My—my employer,” Te’oma said. “She’s done something horrible.”

“You are the company you keep,” Esprë said before she could consider what she was saying. “That’s what my mother used to say,” she added, embarrassed at her lapse.

“She is not my ‘company,’ ” Te’oma snarled. “Had I a choice, I’d never have crossed paths with her. She is a merciless mistress, her cruelty matched only by her power.”

“So why do you work for her?”

Te’oma grimaced. “That, my little elf, is the question at the heart of the matter, isn’t it? I once prided myself on having no ties to bind me to anyone. The life of a changeling is change.” She narrowed her eyes at Esprë and spat cold words like darts. “At least, that’s what my mother used to say.”

Esprë ignored the crack. “What changed that?”

Te’oma used the long, pale fingers of one hand to brush the hair from Esprë’s eyes. As she did, the young elf tried to reach out with her powers to strike the changeling dead. She imagined Te’oma falling to her knees, screaming, then collapsing in a lifeless heap. She felt the dragonmark on her back, square between her shoulder blades, burn. It ached with hunger for the changeling’s life, but nothing happened.

“I got pregnant,” Te’oma said. “He left me, of course, when he found out. No changeling likes to be tied down for long. Fathers never stay. Mothers often leave their children on the doorstep of a church or a kindly stranger.”

“Did you?” Esprë noticed tears welling up in Te’oma’s red-blotched eyes.

The changeling nodded, mute for a moment until she regained what little control she had. She reached out to caress the young elf’s soft, round cheek, then drew her shaking hand back.

“She was about your age—or at least the age you seem—when I last saw her.”

“Was?” A fist of dread clenched in Esprë’s gut.

“My …” Te’oma struggled to put her anguish into words. “I just spoke with my employer telepathically.”

Esprë resisted the urge to prompt the changeling to continue. Instead, she watched Te’oma struggle for a moment against the tears filling in her eyes before they spilled hot and unimpeded down her cheeks again.

“My daughter is dead—and her body’s been destroyed.”

Esprë’s heart went out to the changeling despite her anger at her. The elf had lost many people in her young life, including Kandler just days ago. Her eyes blurred, and the tears she hadn’t let herself cry for so long came rushing out as if through a broken dam.

“How?” she said. “What happened?”

Te’oma looked as if she wanted nothing more than to throw her arms around Esprë’s neck and weep into the young elf’s bloodstained shirt. Instead, she collapsed atop the wheel again and wrapped her arms around its wooden span. Between sobs, she eked out an answer. “She—she did it.

“My employer.

“She destroyed her.”