The Last Victory

19. Feel Torn

Xia rattled at the bars angrily. "Damn it!"
The cage where she was in with Sheng and Soothsayer was in a secluded room. Only her mother wasn't with them anymore. She kicked against the bars again, then she turned away indignantly.
"Stop it," Sheng said, who had sat down on the floor of the cage. "That doesn't help us anyway."
"You want out of here too, don't you?!" Her sister snapped at him.
Sheng raised his eyebrows and clenched in his cross-legged position.
"You heard it yourself," her brother warned her calmly. "If we try to break out, they'll do something to mother."
Sighing, Xia leaned her back against the bars. "What is he going to do with her?"
Sheng took a deep breath in and out. "Killing rather less. She's a too good hostage for him for that."
The girl sank to the floor. "So you also think that we are not good?"
Her brother looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean by that?"
Xia sat up and stared at the ceiling through the bars. "That he likes mother more than us."
"Why do you ask such a question?"
"Have you never asked yourself that?"
Sheng was silent and wanted to change the subject, so his gaze wandered to Soothsayer, who was sitting in a corner of the cage and waving something in the hoof back and forth.
"What's that?" He asked curiously.
The goat held the little object a little higher. It was a blue feather.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was blown towards me in the wind last night," she replied calmly, which made Xia snort.
"Now he's already got a loss of feathers? Just spare me that!"
Furiously, she grabbed the blue feather, threw it to the ground and stepped on it once.
The goat looked at her calmly. "You hate him, don't you?"
Xia pressed the feather even more with her foot. Then she just turned away, crossed her wings, and stared through the bars.
Thoughtfully, the soothsayer picked up the blue feather, which Xia had completely disheveled. Sheng watched the goat how she straightened the quills again. Then his gaze wandered back to his sister, who seemed to be tormented inside.
"I know what he's capable of," she blurted out. "Whenever he could, he bullied her. In the night, he locked her in her room. He locked his own door, too. He even closed our rooms. When he was in a bad mood, he took his anger out on her." She hugged herself. "I don't even want to think about what he's doing now in his anger."
Sheng rose from his seat, walked over to her, and patted her shoulders. "It will definitely not come to that."
She pushed his wings away. "You can't even know that."
Her brother sighed, but then turned her over so she was facing his face.
"That won't happen," he said urgently. "Because he won't allow it."
"You mean father?" She looked down. "What should he be able to do?"
Sheng grabbed her shoulders firmly. "He will come. Believe me, he will come."
Xia let out a sob. "I want to believe it, but I'm scared."
Quickly, he hugged her before she cried. He himself didn't know what to do with why he just stroked her back. Soothsayer watched them both with a sad look, then her gaze wandered back to the blue feather in her hoof.

Shen opened his eyes. It was as if something was calling for him. Or was he just imagining it? He rubbed his sore feet. He hadn't paused the whole way. Now he was standing on a hill. Gongmen City shone in the midday sun.
The white peacock sighed wistfully. This sight reminded him of when he first returned after his exile. It was a collection of mixed feelings. He came back as a warlord, with great plans and an anger that he could hardly control. Today it was the opposite. He hadn't succeeded, nor did he have a plan. He just knew he wanted to get them out of there. The only question was how. Xiang wasn't that stupid and would give them back to him willingly. He had to expect that he wanted more than to threaten his family only. It was no longer a game for him.
Shen scanned the city. The palace tower had been rebuilt to just under a third. Otherwise, nothing about the city had changed. Except for one thing that caught his attention. A few light columns of smoke soared into the air over part of the city, which was more than unusual.
In order not to take any chances, he got himself a long old coat, which even reached up to the feathers of his tail, and crept near where the smoke rose into the sky. A few townspeople ran over the place, who were either busy clearing up rubble or recovering the injured persons. Everyone was still so shocked that no one paid any attention to Shen or just asked what he was doing here as a stranger. The white peacock hid his face deep under the dark coat and stopped a sheep that ran past him.
"What happened here?" He asked.
"All the houses have collapsed," the sheep gasped in complete panic. "You'd better get out of here, stranger! There is a rumor, that the town might blow up all the time!"
With that, it ran away. But that was enough for Shen to understand the gravity of the situation and to guess what the blue peacock had hatched.
Shen stepped away from the scene of the accident, sat down on a wooden bench, and thought hard. Running into the trap blindly would be wrong. He had to plan one step ahead and he already knew what to do.