Resistance by Amy Rae Durreson

Author:Amy Rae Durreson [Durreson, Amy Rae]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2015-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

HAL KNEW as well, when he woke, grief blooming across his face, which didn’t surprise Iskandir. Of them all, Durul and his fellow surgeons in the hospital were the ones closest to joining Halsarr’s hoard. Hal was the one who told Raif and Nuray, while Iskandir took Akel out to walk through the snowy gardens. He broke the news and held Akel while he wept, raw and choking.

After that, they gave up all pretense of normality.

Although Iskandir, Hal, and Raif all had rooms in the same part of the palace toward the roof, they did not stay there. Without really discussing it, the surviving members of his council found a place where they could be together. Iskandir picked the lock to the suite of rooms behind the council room, which had once belonged to some long-fled elderly aunt of the last shah. Her dusty treasures still stood on beautifully carved tables whose jet inlay had gone dull, a corner of the old world that the Savattin had never bothered to destroy. There was enough space in here for all five of them and their food rations, even a little slate stove where the old lady had once heated her tisanes. They could create an encampment here in the middle of the palace, and only Hal would need to go wandering out to the suddenly distant wings of the building. It felt like another time, as if they were hiding from the Savattin in another ancient ruin somewhere out in the foothills where traitors and assassins lurked in every shadow.

“We should light a campfire,” Raif said wryly, looking around the cobwebby parlor.

“The plague getting too dull for you?” Nuray inquired. “Planning to liven things up by setting the palace on fire as well?”

“Don’t tempt me,” he murmured, but within moments they were both busy, tidying away the old lady’s treasures for her grandchildren to claim if they ever came home, and folding dust sheets into neat squares. Iskandir thought, watching them, that neither of them knew how to be still. They were so used to being in the eye of the storm that they did not know how to simply wait and face their own loss of power and control.

They all fell into a strange sort of routine. Hal still spent most of his time with his ever-growing wards of patients, only emerging to scrub the scent of death from his skin and briefly join Iskandir and the others to eat or sleep. He kept strange hours, and often Iskandir would be woken by the pad of his feet as he rushed away to witness an imminent death. At other times, he would be woken by the click of the door and the sinking of the thick mattress beneath Hal’s weight as he crawled under their blankets and wrapped his arms tightly around Iskandir.

Some nights, one or the other of them would reach out in need and they would tangle together, mouths brushing or bruising, hands tight and clumsy on each other’s backs or hips.

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