The Hour of Dust and Ashes

He glanced up, his hands still around his thigh.

“For the …” I threw a hand toward the water.

A smile that he tried to suppress drew across his lips and he shook his head. “Anytime, Madigan.”

“So how good are you at directions?” I asked, easing into my shoulder harness.

“Compass.” He held up a dagger that I hadn’t seen him take from the station. It had a nice little sheath along with the firearm at his thigh. The end of it contained a dome.

“We’re not exactly home,” I pointed out.

“All three worlds have poles, different ones, sure, but this has a compass for each of them. See?” He turned a small lever and the dome rolled to reveal another one.

“Okay, survivor man, I’m impressed. You ready to go?”

He shoved the dagger into the sheath and grabbed his jacket. “We’ll just make sure we’re on an easterly track. The ruins hopefully won’t be hard to miss.”

Despite the dim light, I didn’t miss his look. It was iffy at best. We were out in the sand flats without our guide, neither one of us having been here before. Separated from my little sister … Another snapshot rose up in front of me.

Bryn as a kid, sitting on the living room floor in her nightgown watching Saturday morning cartoons, her stuffed turtle in her lap—Turdy.

What started out as “Turty” had quickly become “Turdy” … Connor and I always had a good laugh about that. My heart constricted with the memory of my brother.

And Bryn.

Seeing her as a cold-blooded murderer, blood on her hands. It was a sight I’d never forget.

“You know it wasn’t Bryn,” Hank said.

height='0em' width='1em'>“She doesn’t deserve this, Hank. On top of everything else … it’s too much.”

“You’d be surprised at what people can handle, Charlie. Look at you. All that’s happened … and yet you continue on. You’re one of the strongest people I have ever met here or in Elysia. And Bryn is cut from the same cloth. She’ll get through this, too.”

I nodded and wiped at the corner of one eye, watching Brim walk from the pool and then shake his big body. Water and slobber went flying in all directions. “You gonna tell me what those sirens were doing at the gate?”

For a second, I didn’t think he’d answer.

“Well, I’d guess they were there to take me home.”

“Back to Elysia? Why?”

He shrugged and picked up another pebble from the ledge, turning it over in his hands. He threw it into the water. “Because I am a traitor.”

17

“What?” I turned to face him. “What do you mean, traitor?”

No. Maybe I wasn’t conscious yet. Maybe I was still out cold and healing and this was just some weird-ass dream. I snorted a laugh and pinched the bridge of my nose, then rubbed a hand down my face, avoiding the tender spots.

“I don’t … understand,” I finally managed. How the hell could Hank be a traitor? There was no way in hell. I knew him. “Hank, you’re no traitor. Even I kn—”

“No, you don’t know, Charlie.” He whistled for Brim, turned, and strode off with parting words. “You don’t know anything about me.”

Alessandra’s words came back to haunt me then. You never truly know another, what they’re capable of.

Did I ever think Will was capable of leading a double life? No. I also didn’t think the same of Hank. But maybe he was right. I didn’t know a damn thing about his past or why he’d come to Atlanta.

I finished arming myself, then grabbed my jacket and limped off after him, ignoring the soreness and the pain, determined that my instincts were right this time. “I know enough,” I said, catching up to him. “You’re not a traitor, Hank.” I grabbed his arm. “And if someone thinks you are, then they don’t know you like I do.”

My touch drew him to a stop. He stared into the blackness ahead of us. I watched Brim for a few seconds and then asked, “Will we have another fight on our hands when we get back?”

That seemed to knock him out of his thoughts. “You’d fight?”

“Yes,” I answered, confounded that he’d think otherwise.

“Not knowing the circumstances? Even if I was a traitor, a fugitive?”

“You’ve fought for Emma, for me, and now for Bryn … Ofrse I’d fight. Look, whatever happened … I bet you had a damn good reason for what you did or whatever those sirens think you did.” I paused. “Why do they think you’re a traitor?”

Part of me was cringing inside and hoping to hell he didn’t say something I couldn’t overlook. I wanted at least one hero in my life, one guy who had some honor and dignity. One guy who could open up and tell me the truth. That would be nice, too, I thought darkly as I waited for an explanation that obviously was not coming.

I shoved my stiff arms into my torn jacket and pushed past him. “We should get moving.”

“Charlie.”

Exasperated, I stopped. “Look, just forget it, okay? If you don’t want to share, you don’t want to share.” I whistled to Brim and skirted the pool to follow the path of the running water down the ravine.

“You know what Malakim means?” he asked behind me, frustration hardening his tone, and not waiting for an answer. “It means guardian.”

I climbed over a rock. “Great. Good for you.”

“A long time ago it used to mean something. It was important. Now”—he paused as though searching for the right words—“it’s a tradition, a title, an honor. Like you humans use the term knight. That word used to mean something a long time ago, too. Now it’s just a title given by a king or queen.”

Hank spoke as though Malakim was a death sentence, a horrible thing. “So you were a Malakim,” I said over my shoulder when he didn’t continue.

Brim dodged in front of me, disappearing beyond the shaft of moonlight shining down from a break above us.

“I was. Our king chose the first Malakim from four families. My family was and still is one of those. We are known for our guardianship and our power. We are—or were—respected in Fiallan.”

Hank stopped talking to concentrate as we picked our way down a steep drop in the ravine. Water fell in a loud stream into a pool below and then disappeared beneath rock. Brim waited for us at the bottom. Above us the ceiling had opened up again, bathing a wide path of smooth gray rock in moonlight.

I waited for Hank. He eased down beside me, brushed off his hands, and then we continued side by side.

“So what? You decided you didn’t want the title?”

“I wish it were that simple. You have to understand what the word means. The first Malakim were chosen as young children because all the grown sirens were off fighting with the Adonai.”

I gave him a surprised look.

“Just because our world inspired humanity’s idea of heaven doesn’t mean we didn’t have our share of war and fighting. At some time or another every being in Elysia has warred with the other.

“Long before I was born, sirens went to war with the Adonai. It lasted several generations. And our territory was reduced to our oldest city, Fiallan. It was our last stronghold. In orto save the city and everyone in it, the king chose four children—sons of his strongest warriors—and placed them into towers made by the Circe—”

“A witch?” I said, immediately recognizing that famous name.

“No. A group of … well, I guess you could call them witches. They are our oldest, most powerful female sirens. Ancient. Heartless. Conniving. They created the towers.” Hank’s voice turned cold. “Prisons are what they