Trajan. We're compromised. The Broken Quill.
The six-word message delivered by the crow. A grave import. It had to be Khadija. He knew not the terrible circumstances which had so conspired to bring this incident about, but he was close, at the harbor warehouses in
Elbion. He excused himself from
Madame Valkery's company and set out from the docks and back into the city proper. Walking at a brisk pace but not so fast as to draw undue attention to himself.
If Kha had been compromised, then perhaps Trajan himself had been as well. The utmost vigilance would be required. All xenos were suspect, and to be watched closely and with suspicion veiled. For he did not know how deeply this peril ran. Perhaps it was only Kha, perhaps it was some significant portion of the
Luminari. Yes. It was a risk they all took, those noble brothers and sisters who so pledged themselves to the cause. The xenos all surely favored a disorganized and weak humanity, one which could hardly stave off their predations and their treacheries and their encroachments. And thus all who selflessly burdened themselves with the Luminari's sacred task were at risk.
He could only pray that Kha was alright.
But then he saw it. The glow peaking over the tops of the homes and buildings of the city. That baleful orange. The rising smoke illuminated by it. All in the direction of
The Broken Quill.
And he ran, dispensing with all pretense now. His warhammer he held in one hand and he ran with all the speed his legs could offer.
Trajan's jaw dropped as he came upon the sight. The inn in blackened shambles. Mages with command of water bringing the last of the raging flames under control. A throng of onlookers and guards and perhaps former patrons of the inn and those injured sitting down inside the immense circle of those gathered and their burns and their wounds being treated by healer and apothecary alike and the voices and murmurings of the onlookers as they shared what scant details they knew.
Trajan, taller than most gathered, glanced over them to see if Kha was among the injured. She was not. So he reached into his pocket and activated the bird stone there. Waited a painfully long wait. And a crow, likely the same that had brought him the earlier message, landed on his shoulder. He spoke her name to the bird,
Khadija. But he held the bird's thin legs in place so that it could not fly away and watched its head and eyes as it looked.
There. A side-street. Along the west side of the ruined inn. Trajan stepped away from the main crowd gathered before the inn's front and walked. Looked about. Noticed there on the cobblestones in the dark some small spots of blood. His face hardened, but the bird was looking elsewhere. Trajan stepped past the blood and over the splintered and burning scraps of wood and all else in the street that had once been part of the inn and continued on.
He followed the gaze of the bird. It led him away from the side-street and the inn, down yet more side-streets, some signs of damage and disturbance along the way but nothing as horrific as the burning inn behind him. A maze, a twisting path, winding through the smaller, clustered buildings of the city.
And there. The bird led him through other streets and side-streets and alleys and finally it looked directly at the door of a potter's shop that, presumably, was closed for the night. Trajan pushed against the door with his hand. And it opened, the jamb on the other side broken in just enough to allow it.
Inside. Khadija, the meager light from the window cast upon her. Sprawled out on the floor with a few broken pots and their shards scattered in a hazardous way. The left side of her face was scorched and blackened and missing hair, as was her left arm and the sleeve of her robe and her wristwraps mere burnt and tattered scraps. Holes punctured her stomach, her chest, her right thigh, her right hand, all wounds that were through and through. Her body quivered. Her gaze distant. Her breathing horrid and ragged.
Trajan dropped his warhammer and let go of the bird and hurried to kneel beside her, more closely examining her terrible wounds and assessing how best to carry her.
"Kha, can you hear me?"
Her eyes tracked nothing for a moment. Then found him. And she said weakly, "I tried to save her."
"What happened?"
"Claire...they took..." And she lost the strength to talk.
Trajan slipped his arms under her and lifted her and said, "Stay with me, Kha. You are my sister. And I shall not let this tragedy take you."
And he ran with her broken body in his arms.
* * * * *
Trajan sat by her side in the apothecary's home. He had battered open the first clearly evident shop of such yesterday, and by sheer fortune the resident apothecary, Norman, was not yet asleep and took with great concern Kha into his care. He had no magic, but he had potions and some enchanted implements and bindings which he used to stabilize her.
A man with a magnanimous heart, Norman. For he so allowed Kha to rest in his own bed. It would take a great deal of time for her grievous wounds to heal, even if she had the aid of magic.
But had Trajan not found her when he did...had the blood loss been too great...
He banished the thought from his mind. Watched the steady rise and fall of the sheets which covered all save her head. She had not woken since her last few words, and there was no indication that she would within the next minutes or within the next few days...or at all.
And Trajan sat in the chair beside the bed with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, the Emblazoned Sun by the chair on the floor. All he had was prayer and hope. Khadija Han. She who was one of the five original Founders of the Luminari. Her devotion to the cause absolute. Her spirit a shining example for many to aspire toward. And above all, she was a cherished friend.
It was torture to see her like this. Dangling on the precipice between life and death. He wished he could trade places with her. To sacrifice himself such that she would not suffer so.
And he waited. Waited for some stirring of life from her as the festival began in earnest outside the apothecary's shop/home. Those joyous and those merry out in the streets of Elbion. And here, in this house, in this small bedroom, a tragedy and a sorrow, insulated from the jubilation of the revelers.
Trajan waited. His dedication, to be the first person Kha would see upon waking or to witness her final breath taken upon
Arethil, unwavering.
He had Dio and a number of Luminari volunteers scouring the city in search of Claire, for she too had been beset by tragedy. But none had found her, no man or bird, for her bird stone had been located in a place that seemed wholly random. Just along a street of little apparent importance in the city, hardly standing out. Perhaps her captors had found it and discarded it, perhaps it fell from her possession. But it was of no use now.
Trajan did not know what Claire had been doing. Dio mentioned a few possible culprits, but he wasn't sure which it could have been, for he ran a great many observation missions with his birds simultaneously.
So that left Kha. She had been the one assigning Claire tasks as of late. And here she lay, clinging desperately to life behind closed eyes. She knew what happened, who was responsible. She held the information necessary to save her sister in sacred cause, to save her from whatever foul and unspeakable terror lay in store by those who had executed this brutal attack.
And if Trajan would be too late to save Claire, then he swore that he would avenge her. And here, now, he could merely pray that he would ultimately be avenging no one. That Khadija would be made well again and Claire would be found and returned safely.
And the festival continued outside.
