Of Love and Valor

70: Death Warrant

I honestly thought getting out of that tiny room, away from the Yrivvilon's gaze and the Yrivvior's questions, that I would feel better, that I would be better able to process what I learned there.

As the main doors of the palace swing open, releasing us back into the courtyard that still looks and smells strongly of a battlefield, I realize that I might have miscalculated. Come on, Azerai. Keep it together. One step at a time.... The world seems to be spinning around me. My stomach heaves, and then the ground rushing towards me—

"Azerai!" Alderon's voice, somewhere above me. Something firm and cold under my ribs, keeping the ground at bay as what little was in my stomach splatters the cobblestone path.

"As I said before, please take her to the healer's station," Kazmiohn Meskaiavin directs doggedly. "I will go see Ruokharismet and determine what interrogations might yet be necessary. If you want—"

"Alderon! Azerai!" Cezaiya calls. Two sets of footsteps approach. "You'll never believe— Azerai, are you all right?"

"Clearly not," Alderon points out. I'm draped over his metal arm, I think, staring at the ground to make sure that the world has stopped spinning.

"Never mind. See to your family," Kazmiohn Meskaiavin decides before his heavy footsteps move quickly away from us.

"What happened?" Jorabij inquires.

"Hard to say what, of everything that happened today, triggered this. Azerai, do you think you can stand on your own?" Alderon asks me.

"Sure," I mumble. My mouth tastes of bile. I just want to go home.

Fortunately, with Alderon's help, my legs agree to support me again.

"Let's get you to the healer's station, then."

"Are you injured?" Cezaiya questions.

"I just...wasn't ready...to see all this again," I tell her, gesturing wanly towards the center of the courtyard. That's not all, but I don't know how to tell her the rest. "Thank you, Alderon, and I'm sorry for the trouble...."

"No trouble at all," Alderon dismisses me, though I'm still holding his arm as we walk. "Certainly not compared to what will likely be, thanks to that woman we've called—"

"That's what we came to talk with you about," Cezaiya interrupts. From head to toe, she radiates rage, and Jorabij seems only slightly less angry. "I've had the honor and privilege of sitting in on her interrogation with Kazmiohn Ruokharismet, as an interpreter of sorts, and...it's bad. But we don't want to have to say it all more than once. Where is Zelphinon?"

"Working with the other healers, naturally."

"Ah, good. We can handle everything at once. Probably best if we can all be sitting down."

"I take it that things are worse than her attacking the Sozunkarit in the Yrivvior's palace?"

"That would have been enough, in itself, to brand her as a traitor, but of course there's more to it than that," Jorabij grumbles while Cezaiya struggles to find words. Either or both of them might have said more, but we've reached the edge of the healer's station, which seems to have grown since the last time I was here.

Is that Krethzirae? I remember her screaming, during the fight, right before I saw Thariyae—

"Azerai?" Krethzirae calls wanly, struggling to sit up.

"Don't do that," a nearby healer chides her as I dart to her bedside, then immediately regret it as my head starts spinning again. Fortunately, Alderon is only half a pace behind me and steadies me as I waver.