As soon as the gates shuddered closed beneath her, Rhiannon rushed off of the ramparts. Julian called after her. She paid him no mind and shoved her way through the throng of soldiers. The crush of bodies and tang of blood and sweat in the air made her feel as though she were suffocating.
She was looking for dark braids, a tall, muscular body with its shoulders sternly pulled back. All she saw were strangers, reflecting her own fear and helplessness back at her as they looked for their own loved ones.
"Jaida!" she called, her voice cracking. "Where are they taking the wounded?" she asked, grabbing the shoulders of a soldier next to her. The girl pointed toward the prison, which had been emptied out before the battle, the prisoners taken to the next city over.
Rhiannon carved a path through the crowd. Those who saw her coming practically leapt out of the way. If people did not move, she moved them.
The first floor of the prison had been cleared out, replacing a mess area with woven mats evenly spaced across the floor. Cell doors were thrown open and used as surgery rooms. Nurses with masks and gloves rushed in, carrying soldiers to mats, or a cell if they needed immediate attention. The scene was an assault on her senses; blood and other parts of the human body she had never hoped to see blotched the grey stone of the building, and the burning sage and lavender oil mingled with the metallic smell of blood. Pained moans echoed horribly against the stone.
She averted her eyes from the gore, focusing on the faces below her. Some of the women still had their helmets on. She pulled them off, moving on when the face beneath wasn't who she was looking for.
She almost missed her. Half of her face was a bloody, shredded mess, the eye swollen closed. But something about the curve of her jaw, the curl of her hair, gave her pause.
"Jaida?" she whispered, kneeling next to the woman. Her good eye peeled open, and Rhiannon sobbed in relief. "Oh gods, Jaida!"
She ripped off her armor to find the tunic beneath stained with blood. "Gods, what happened to you?"
She peeled back her shirt, revealing a jagged gash in her side where her armor was clasped together. There were scratches, cuts, and bruises all over her arms, and another gouge on her leg.
"I'll get help," Rhiannon said. Jaida tried to say something, but it came out garbled and unintelligible.
She hurried to the nearest nurse, who was kneeling next to a mat further down the row. "Please, my friend, she needs help -- "
"Is she dying?" the nurse asked without looking up. Her hands were clasped together, pushing down rhythmically on the chest below her.
"I -- well, she's lucid, I think, but -- "
"Then we'll get to her as soon as we can," the nurse said. She remained focused on her task, like Rhiannon was just a fly buzzing about her head.
Rhiannon backed away, the horror of her surroundings closing in on her. Here, she was not a queen. She could not force people to do as she wished. It was up to her to save Jaida.
She looked around, identifying carts of supplies lining the back wall. She wove her way to them, grabbing bandages, a washcloth, a thread and needle, and a pail of water.
Jaida was awake when she returned to her, but her stare was vacant and her breathing was labored. Rhiannon swallowed the bile rising in her throat and set to work, stripping Jaida to her underthings and gently sopping up the blood, sweat, and dirt with the damp washcloth.
Once she was clean, it was much easier to identify her wounds. She started on the deepest gash, the one on her abdomen, threading the needle with the strange, greasy thread she had found on the cart. When the needle pierced her skin Jaida seemed to come to. She mumbled something, panic evident in her eye.
"Don't worry," Rhiannon said, her breathing shaky. "I've studied many medical treatises at the Library of Hiawatha. And I've been practicing stitching since I was a little girl. I can do this."
Jaida grunted, the unmarred side of her face scrunching with pain. Sweat beaded on her forehead as Rhiannon moved on to the next cut.
"I'm sorry," Rhiannon said. "I know this must hurt." She dabbed at the sweat on her brow with the washcloth. "Just hold on."
Stitching skin was much more difficult than the linen she had practiced on as a girl, but she managed to make her stitches even and neat. When she had finished, she bandaged the sewn gashes and any other shallow wounds she could find. She used the last of the bandages to wrap around the side of her face. She sat behind Jaida, cradling her head in her lap as she looped the bandages over the front and back of her head until her injuries were covered.
She gently lowered her head back down to the mat and sat by her side again. She took her hand.
Jaida had always been strong when she couldn't be, her temper even, her loyalty unwavering. With dread, she realized she needed her.
Her handmaidens became the only family she had ever known, and she hadn't known how much she had depended on them until they were gone. She didn't want to make the same mistake again.
"I'm so sorry," Rhiannon whispered, a tear rolling down her nose. "I thought I didn't need anyone, but Jaida, I -- I need you. I need you to stay with me. Please."
Jaida tried to speak, but winced before she could get any words out. She attempted a smile instead and squeezed Rhiannon's hand.
"Thank you," Rhiannon said, her tears falling faster. She clutched Jaida's hand as if she would float away if she let go.
She woke up hours later, still clutching Jaida's hand. Tabitha was gently shaking her shoulder and murmuring her name.
Rhiannon sat up, her back aching from sleeping on the stone floor. She let go of Jaida's hand, her cheeks flushing.
"What is it, Tabitha?" she said as dignified as she could, though she knew she must look a disaster.
"A council has been convened to discuss our next move. I thought you would like to be there." Her eyes wandered to her daughter. "How is she?"
Rhiannon looked back at her. She appeared to be sleeping. Blood had started to seep through some of her bandages. "I don't know. I tried to get a nurse to help, but she had other priorities."
"They're trained to treat the neediest patients first in a crisis like this," Tabitha said, noting her disdain. "They were quite overwhelmed. They'll help her soon."
Rhiannon looked around the room, focusing on her surroundings for the first time. The orange light of the sunset fell through the windows, bathing the room in a warm glow. There was a body on every mat, and more patients packed into the cells. Most lay still, the occasional moan and the swish of the nurses' skirts punctuating the silence.
Tabitha extended a hand. Rhiannon took it, looking back at Jaida even as she followed the councilwoman away from her.
The chamber echoed with tense murmurs, fear thick in the air. Rhiannon remembered observing her father's war councils during her sister's rebellion. She was just a girl then, but she still remembered the weight of his advisors' stares. She felt that weight again now as the whispers grew louder when she walked by the tiered benches.
Tabitha directed her to the edge of the floor where Cerridwen and Vess waited. Two muscular women with identical pins on their robes stood in the center of the floor, waiting patiently for the council to convene. They looked to be complete opposites, one delicate and blonde, the other hawkish and pale with dark braids.
"Rhiannon!" Cerridwen said. Her cheeks were streaked with kohl. "Where have you been?"
"With Jaida."
"Is she alright?" she asked, clutching the baubles hanging from her neck. She breathed a sigh of relief when Rhiannon nodded.
Vess stood silently, her eyes fixed on the floor. Her fingers twitched slightly at her sides.
"I'm sorry about Jubil," Rhiannon said.
"Thank you," Cerridwen said, sniffling. Vess said nothing, didn't even look up.
"Are you alright?" Rhiannon asked.
"No," Vess snapped, startling Cerridwen. "I failed. I failed and now Jubil is dead. All these humans, dead for nothing."
Rhiannon shushed her. She looked around, but everyone seemed too wrapped up in their own conversations to be paying attention to theirs. "You cannot let them know that."
"It is the truth," Vess said. "And the truth cannot be hidden for long."
Though her eyes had always been hard, Rhiannon saw something new in them now. A brokenness, an emptiness that hadn't been there before. Fear settled in her bones. She could feel defeat nipping at her heels, but she wasn't ready to give up yet.
"You didn't fail," Rhiannon said firmly, looking into Vess's unnerving eyes. "This is a setback, of course, but it isn't failure. You cannot use that word when you speak to the council."
"I said I would defeat Roltandre. I did not."
"Yet," Rhiannon said. "You have not failed until Roltandre kills you. Then she has truly won."
Cerridwen started to speak, but Vess cut her off with a look. Before Rhiannon could question the exchange, Orla called the council to order, forcing her attention elsewhere.
"Commander Cataleya, Commander Irmina," Orla said, nodding to the two women waiting in the center of the floor. "Report."
The shorter woman spoke first, her voice unexpectedly shrill. "Neither the gates nor the walls have been compromised. It appears the enemy's artillery is useless against our defenses, as expected, so we can successfully wait out a siege as long as food supplies last."
"Salma, will our gardens inside the city be able to keep up with our soldier's needs?" Orla asked.
A portly councilwoman in the benches stood to answer. "They will produce enough to get by, but the troops could weaken over time due to rationing."
"I don't see how that's relevant when we're facing an army that doesn't require food or sleep," another voice called out from the benches. Some echoed her concerns.
"Our enemy can carry on a siege indefinitely," Thalia said, standing to speak. "If we try to play a game of chicken, we will lose."
Tabitha grimaced. "Commander Irmina, can we fight them and win?"
"Though we avoided major casualties by falling back, they vastly outnumbered us before we lost any of our women," Irmina replied. "As Commander Cataleya said, their weapons are all but useless against us, but that does us no good against soldiers that can't die -- erm, at least in the traditional sense," she said, shifting uncomfortably. "The only way to. . .incapacitate them for good appears to be burning them, but it is difficult to do that without causing injury to our own forces."
"In summary," Cataleya said, "The odds are heavily against us, and the nature of our enemies prevents us from evening those odds."
Orla sighed. "So we must rely on the creature to even the odds for us."
"Based on it's performance today, I'm not sure we can rely on it to even our odds," Irmina said, wrinkling her nose.
All eyes fell on Vess. Rather than giving them her usual cool stare, she seemed to crumple under the weight of their expectations. For several unbearable moments, Rhiannon waited for her to speak, to move, to do anything.
Rhiannon stepped in front of Vess protectively. "This creature has a name," she said, pausing to underscore her point. "She is called Vessamachtia, and she is one of the most fearsome beings I have ever met. Perhaps she was too far away for the phalanx to see, but on the wall, we all watched as she tore through enemy soldiers, felling them as fast as her sister could raise them. She has left her home, sacrificed her family, her friends, to defend us from her sister. To defend us," she said, stepping towards the center of the floor. "A race that tried to eradicate her kind and forced them into hiding. And yet, here she is. On our side.
"You saw how powerful her sister is," she continued, her voice growing louder. "She is just as powerful, but that doesn't mean that her task is easy. Surely, she has the most difficult task of any of us, a task that only she can do. The least we can do is be appreciative," she finished, glaring at Irmina as she spoke the last few words. The woman had the decency to look a bit ashamed.
"So then what do you suggest we do, Princess," a councilwoman sneered from the benches.
Rhiannon smiled. "Thrael has the most impressive weapons of any nation, and genius generals to use those weapons effectively," she said, gesturing to Irmina and Cataleya. "Surely you can develop a battle plan utilizing your strengths and striking at their weaknesses. Or is the prowess of Thrael just a carefully constructed facade?"
Irmina snorted, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder. "This pompous young thing is right," she said. "Cataleya and I will meet with our seconds and develop a battle plan. We'll present it to the council in a week. That will give our wounded time to heal and time to replenish supplies. We will find a way to beat back our enemies."
"And I will defeat my sister," Vess said. "I swear it."
Irmina nodded to Vess, and Vess bowed her head in return. Rhiannon breathed a sigh of relief.
"Alright then, get to it," Orla said. "The council will work out the rest."
"I think we all need some rest," Tabitha said. "We will convene again at dawn tomorrow and delegate tasks, but for now, this council is adjourned."
Rhiannon went back to Vess as the councilwomen filed out. She took her hand.
"You can do this," she said.
Vess looked at their joined hands, then back up at Rhiannon's face. "Why did you defend me?"
Someone cleared their throat behind them. Rhiannon released Vess and turned to see Commander Irmina towering over her, her hands clasped behind her back.
"Ah, Vessamachtia," she said slowly, careful to pronounce each syllable. "We would greatly appreciate your insight, and your companion's as well, into your sister's weaknesses. It might help us to devise a plan that will give you a better opportunity to -- well, ah, fight her, I suppose."
Vess stared at the commander a few moments. Rhiannon struggled to read the emotions cast across her alien features. Irmina swallowed nervously, but she didn't back down.
Finally, Vess nodded slowly. "I will help you."
"I will as well," Cerridwen said, curtsying a bit as she bowed her head. Rhiannon stifled a laugh.
"Excellent," Irmina said. "Follow me."
Rhiannon watched them go, admiring her achievement . The chamber had mostly emptied and she was alone on the floor. The chamber looked so different in the dark without the council to fill it. She shivered and hurried out, turning her face into the cool breeze as she made her way back to the prison-turned-hospital.
She returned to Jaida's side, clutching her hand once more. She frowned in her sleep but she didn't wake. Rhiannon noticed that her bandages has been changed and were wrapped much more neatly than her hurried handiwork.
But something nagged at the back of her mind. Something she was missing. Suddenly his absence registered.
Where was Julian?