The Healing Wars: Book III: Darkfall

J
ANICE
H
ARDY

For my family.

Those I was born to, and those I chose.

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

MAP

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PRAISE

OTHER WORKS

CREDITS

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

T
he missing are harder to accept than the lost. My parents had been dead five years, but my sister? She’d been missing only three months. I’d grieved those who’d died, but I didn’t know how to feel about Tali. Guilt, fear, anger, hope—they came and left as fast as water birds taking flight.

She was out there, somewhere. A prisoner of the Duke’s, stolen from me just as he’d stolen the city of Geveg, the pynvium from our mines, the food from our tables. His greed had turned to war, and he’d crushed all of us under his boot, racing to get even more power. No one was safe, certainly not Tali.

Late at night, safe at Jeatar’s farm, I wondered if it was time to stop looking for her. I hated myself for thinking it, but it wasn’t just my life I was risking by trying to find her. My friends put themselves in danger every time we left the farm, and some had even gotten hurt because of me.

But then my guilt would haunt me. How could I stop looking? I’d made so many promises. Others had sacrificed so much to help me. It wasn’t just about one lost sister anymore, but thousands of families ruined by the Duke of Baseer and his desire to control everyone in the Three Territories.

If I gave up on Tali, was I also giving up on them? On any chance we had to be free of him? To just be
free
?

Someone knocked on the door to the room I shared with Aylin. I didn’t want to answer. I’d tossed and turned all night, worrying and planning, and was really hoping to grab a few hours of sleep this morning now that Aylin wasn’t hogging the bed.

“Nya?” Danello said through the door. “Are you awake?”

Yes, but I didn’t want to be. We’d argued again last night. One of those dumb fights that started over nothing and ended with both of us storming off. If I opened the door he’d smile at me, and then I’d want to forgive him, and I wasn’t
ready
to forgive him.

Trouble was, I couldn’t remember exactly
why
we’d argued. But it had been his fault. I was almost sure of that.

“Nya, come on.” Danello knocked again. “You can’t still be mad at me.”

It had been over scouting reports, hadn’t it? Troop movements outside Baseer. I’d said that gave us an opening to sneak into the city, but Danello said it could be the army moving around again to make way for more soldiers. I said I wanted to leave by the end of the week—he thought we should wait until we had more information. I said something stupid and he said something stupid back.

“I have food,” he sang.

My mutinous stomach grumbled and I sighed. That was cheating, plain and simple.

“I have
good
food.” His sweet voice was light and playful. Hard to stay mad at him when he sounded like that. I pictured him out there, leaning on the door, his hair a mess from the breeze coming off the fields.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t
completely
his fault. Aylin said I’d been grumpy lately—probably from lack of sleep. It wasn’t like he was telling me I couldn’t go, just that I should be extra careful, think things through first. Without knowing why the Duke was moving those troops around, caution wasn’t a bad idea.

And Danello
had
brought food.

I slipped out of bed, walked across carpet thick as my thumb, and opened the door. Danello carried no plate in his hands, but he did have a picnic basket.

I sensed a trap.

“I packed this full.” He held up the basket. Handmade from the looks of it, blue-reed weaves, too. Those didn’t come cheap. “All you have to do is come with me to get it.”

I hesitated. He wasn’t out of the weeds yet, but if he had sweetcakes in that basket, I could manage a
little
forgiveness.

“Where?”

“Just to the gardens. Sunshine, fresh air.” He grinned, wide and silly. “It’ll be fun, and we could use a little fun.”

Aylin had been telling me the same thing. I grinned back. It had been a dumb fight anyway. “Let me get dressed.”

I shut the door and threw on some clothes, then ran a comb through my still-black curls. The dye Aylin had used to color our hair and disguise us was starting to grow out, but unless I cut it as short as Danello’s, it would be months before I looked normal again.

Have you ever been normal?

I pushed the thought away as I opened the door. Danello beamed, his short blond hair ruffled just like I pictured, his smile just as sweet. He offered me his arm and I took it.

“Did you pack sweetcakes?” I asked.

“You’ll have to come with me to find out.”

I followed, actually looking forward to something for a change.

Voices drifted up the stairs, folks laughing, talking, even arguing. So different from the first week we were at the farm, when half the people had huddled in corners and the other half run around setting up defenses. We were safe for now, but how long would that last? Faces turned when we walked past the reception room, and the laughing ceased.

Those in the back leaned their heads together, awed gazes darting to me. Some I recognized—those who’d been in the underground resistance Jeatar had been secretly running in Baseer, soldiers on the farm, friends and friends of friends who’d escaped before the Duke sealed the city and began recalling his troops. The others I didn’t know, but new folks arrived every day.

“Any news yet, Nya?” someone called.

“Not yet.” Seemed like everyone knew about Tali. I guess that was a good thing, since the more people who knew I was looking for her, the better the chance that someone would hear something that could help me find her. Still, it bothered me that everyone knew my problems. And knew that she was my sister. As much danger as she had to be in right now, she’d be in a lot more if the Duke knew who she was. He’d sure as spit use her to get to me.

“When’s the next trip out?”

Danello’s hand tensed in mine, but he stayed quiet.

“Hopefully the end of the week,” I said. No commitment there.

“You’ll find her, don’t worry.”

“Thanks.”

Danello hurried me out the side door and we headed across the sun-baked courtyard. I drank in the humid air, the heat chasing the tenseness from my limbs. Fields spread out past the farmhouse grounds: tall, bright-green cornstalks with yellow tops waving in the wind, smaller, darker-green sweet potato vines in bushy rows. One pasture held grazing cattle with long, twisting horns.

Not at all like the islands and canals of Geveg. Even though we were miles from the river, and a two-day sail from Baseer, I still felt exposed with so much open space around me. There were no corners to hide behind, no side streets, no bridges. Just miles of fields. Geveg’s mountains were hazy in the distance, looking more like storm clouds on the horizon than rock.

To the north of the farmhouse was a grid of dirt roads and buildings, the houses of those who worked Jeatar’s farm. He had thousands of acres and hundreds of farmhands, and some merchants and traders had established shops there like a small village. I didn’t know if it had a name, but Aylin called it Jeatown.

The fields closest to Jeatown were dotted with dozens of tents, makeshift homes for those who’d also fled Baseer. Horses grazed in roped-off corrals, with wagons nearby. I even spotted a few carriages mixed in, proof that wealth didn’t protect you from the Duke’s soldiers.

“It’s getting crowded out there,” I said. “We might have to start making food runs twice a day.” We’d been helping Jeatar’s people hand out food and supplies to the refugees, and the bags were going faster every day.

“I heard the guards say there are even folks from Verlatta now.”

“Verlatta? What are
they
running from?” Verlatta had been under siege by the Duke’s army the last six months, but when I’d shattered his palace and started a city-wide riot, he’d recalled the army to subdue his people. Verlattians should have been rejoicing.

Danello shrugged. “I don’t know, but rumors say there’s fighting in all the cities.”

Even Geveg?

I tried not to picture my city in flames, people I knew fighting in the streets, their bodies in the canals, but I’d seen far too much for those memories to stay silent. War was coming.

Saints, war was
here
, and I’d probably started it.

I still had nightmares about being trapped in the Duke’s weapon, locked to the misshapen pynvium by cuffs of silvery metal that made you do what you didn’t want to do. The pain cycling through me and the other five Takers chained to it with me. Being forced to trigger it, to flash its pain and kill.

Of losing control of it and turning it into something that drained life.

I prayed the weapon had been destroyed when the Duke’s palace was, shattered by its own pain when the walls came down around it, but I knew better. It was still there, and the Duke was still trying to make it work.

If he figured it out, none of us would ever be safe again.

A soldier by the perimeter fence waved at Danello and called hello. He elbowed another soldier and pointed at me, but they were done gossiping by the time we reached them.