Beneath the Giants

Ral, grey shawls from head to toe, sweaty skin stuck to the fabric, took a swig of the waterskin. A sword bumped against his hip, and a bag bobbed with his walk. The desert stretched as smooth as a lake in all directions, except for the east, where great, monstrous weapons – swords, axes, hammers – poked out from the ground like echidna quills, as tall as palace towers. The weapons towered over him and reflected the sun across the metal, not a dent or mark defacing the peerless craftsmanship. Vultures dotted the tips.

 The forest of weapons, monoliths that would have scraped the clouds had the clouds dared traverse the desert, came as a relief for Ral. Each handle and blade cast long cool shadows across the desert. He chose one at random, an axe with half its head buried into the sand, and leaned into the shade.

 “A traveller?”

 A snivelling old man with wisp white hair, eyes that fogged and rolled about, and warts along his oily skin, stepped out from under a gap in the axe. The man laughed at the sight of Ral’s surprise. A woman, either too innocent or too dumb to appear anything besides curious, clutched to the man’s cape. She pinched her lips like a cat, and her dark hair fell to her shoulders like parched grass.

 “I did not expect to find another human here. Let alone two.” Ral’s focus fell to the woman, who shied away from his gaze. She was a pitiful thing, like a stray dog, and met the world with a wide-eyed stare that understood little.

 “Didn’t expect anyone, either. But a term exists for occasions like this, don’t it? Coincidence, was it? I’m Toph.”

 “Ral.”

 “The hero?”

 “A different Ral. Who’s she?”

 “Kana. She ain’t bright. Let me tell you that.” Kana tightened her hold on Toph’s cloak, and with some internal debate demonstrated by the movement of her tongue against her lips, opened her mouth:

 “Hell—”

 The sound of a slap broke the calm. Vultures perched on the weapons shot to flight, cawing and cackling. Kana cupped a hand to her cheek and stepped back from Toph’s raised hand.

 “I told you to keep quiet when we meet a stranger.” Toph grabbed Kana by the collar, yanked her close to him, and flashed Ral a grubby smile. “Sorry you had to see that. She’s an idiot. But she means nothing by it.”

 Ral kept his face passive and his anger in a stranglehold. His fingers curled around the hem of his vest but itched for his sword. “Spare it any thought. Are you heading to Eisengeld?”

 “Only one direction to be crossing this desert. Yes, I’m going to Eisengeld. Need somewhere luxurious to live. What are you heading there for?”

 Ral hesitated. “Purpose.”

 “Ain’t no need for purpose there.” Toph rubbed his thumb against his fingers. “They have everything. Delicious food and wine from the giants’ own cellar. What more could you want?”

“We’re very different men, Toph.” Ral fought to keep his expression blank. “How about a travelling companion?”

 Toph looked down at Kana’s tear-splotched face. “Wouldn’t mind some proper company for once.”

 Ral took a jab at a smile, threw down his bag between them, and opened the flap. “Eaten yet?”

 “I’m half-cracked to starving.” Toph sat cross-legged opposite of Ral, yanking Kana down with him by her neck. “Can’t find good food for the life of me here.”

 “Your mistake is looking for good food.” Ral unfurled a clothed bulge from within his bag and pulled out a chitin-covered millipede the length and width of his arm. A desert reaver. A pair of thick mandibles poked out from each side. Toph’s face greened as Ral drove his knife through the insect’s abdomen and cut along its length, separating the chitin from its body. As Ral worked, he couldn’t help but shoot discreet glances at Kana, who tried to follow the movement of his knife with her eyes. “Sometimes you have to suck it up and eat whatever you can get your hands on.”

 “Looks hideous.”

 “Ay. But it’s better than nothing.” He cut the millipede into three separate portions.

 “Three?”

 “One for each of us.”

 Toph looked at Kana and groaned. “You’re a very lucky girl. Not – ah! Don’t go speaking now. Go and eat it in the corner, why don’t you?”

 It took a great deal of effort for Ral to not let the frustration show. “Why do you treat her like that?” He handed a portion to Kana, who curled her fingers around it as gently as if it were a doll and crawled into the gap in the axe.

 “Huh?”

 “Pointless and cruel, don’t you think?”

 “It’s just discipline. Dealt with all sorts of people like that.”

 “There’s no need for discipline here. No need for discipline in Eisengeld, either. Nor Rhomdel. Not anymore.” Ral tore into the meat and forced it down his throat. “What’s the girl for?”

 “Dragging this ditz to her Madame.” Toph threw a thumb in Kana’s direction, who, after each tiny bite of the millipede, would shrivel up in disgust. “The Madame’s a real hoot. Rich, too. Promised me a pretty sum to return Kana to her before that wargame had started. I only hope that this desperation has grown manifold.” A grimy grin smeared his face.

 Ral recognised this grin. It sickened him. He stood up, kicked at the sand, and walked around in circles, clicking his tongue. The millipede was not the only disgusting thing he tasted. “I’m sorry, Toph. I can’t do it.”

 “Do what?”

 “Pretend to get along with gross people like you.” The sword slid from sheath to hand. Flashing with anger hotter than the desert sun, he pointed the blade’s tip to Toph’s wart-covered forehead. The meat fell from Toph’s hold and he shrank back, a hand held out defensively in front of him. His other hand searched the sand, found Kana’s wrist, and yanked her to his chest as a shield. Kana looked from Toph to Ral with unassuming full-moon eyes.

 Ral stepped closer. Each step sent a tremor of shock through Toph’s gnarled body.

 “P-please,” Toph stammered, “you can have a cut. You can have anything—”

 “Yes, I don’t think I would enjoy travelling with you at all.”

 Toph opened his mouth to speak but struggled to find the words. He opened and closed his flaps for lips. “B-but why? What does she matter? She’s an idiot. She means nothing to you. And you killing me … it won’t do anything. It’s futile!”

 “Fear begets fear. The giants use us as playthings, so why must you use her as your own?”

 “You … you’re a liar. You are Ral the—”

 But Ral never heard the end of his sentence. He cut Toph’s head clean off, where it rolled out behind him, and came to a stop by the base of the axe. Blood squirted out from his severed neck, splashing along Kana’s face, and staining her cloak as she watched the events with a mix of curiosity and confusion.

 Ral slipped the sword into its hilt and dropped to Kana’s side, a hand to each shoulder. Her shoulders tensed under his gentle grip, as knotted as a rope, and then loosened after a few seconds.

 “What happened?’ It was the first time that Ral had heard Kana’s voice without Toph interrupting. It reminded him of a mockingbird. So innocent and harmless.

 “He’s dead.”

 “Oh.” She paused. She ran a hand down her cheek and pulled back to see the blood. “I did not know that people can die like that.” She winced when he touched her temple. He dragged a finger to the back of her head, where the skin lumped and bruised.

 “Go clean yourself up.” He handed her a waterskin. As he made to return to his meal, he found a slip of parchment poking out from Toph’s pocket. He unfolded the parchment and read it. “It seems the matter of getting you to this Madame Bruscha is now my responsibility. Eat up and drink. We can make a bit of distance before it’s night.” What woman would ever leave the life of such an innocent girl in the hands of someone like Toph?

 Kana stared transfixed on Toph’s body and nodded.

#

Ral doubted whether Kana would follow him. After she had eaten and drank, she planted her feet in the sand and stared at Toph, mouth agape and refusing to blink. Ral insisted that she follow him for a quarter of an hour, and it was only when he had given up did she rush to join him.

 “Um, Ral?” Kana kept her voice low and cautious as they walked out from the shadows and into the scorching sun.

 “What?”

 “Is it alright for me to speak?” She spoke slow and with little more than a whisper.

 “You’re doing it right now, aren’t you?”

 Lana bowed her head and hushed out a “sorry.”

 “What’s there to apologise for?” But this only made Kana lower her shoulders even more. She kept silent. “Kana, it means you are allowed to speak.”

 “Oh.” She kept her head lowered. “S-sorry. For misunderstanding.”

 Kana flinched as Ral lifted a hand to the top of her head. She tightened her muscles and balled her fists, not daring to look at him, bracing for the worst. He ruffled her hair, and as he did, the edge of her fear dulled, and something of a smile crept to her face. The sight saddened Ral. His daughter loved it when he ruffled her hair.

 “I’m not going to hurt you. Talk as you please.”

 “Um. Yes. Sor—”

 “—Thank you.”

 She swallowed. “Thank you.” She searched around for her words. “Um. Who are you?”

 “I told you. I’m Ral.”

 “I mean. I have never seen you before. Madame is Madame and Toph is Madame’s friend. Who are you?”

 “There are more people out there than just them.”

 “I know. But the other girls are dead.”

 A chill ran down his spine. “More than them, too. Far more.”

 “Wow. So, um. Who are you? Ral who?”

 Ral threw a cautionary glance around him. He was certain that there was not a single other person a hundred miles of them, but he could not help but be sure in case a pair of malicious eyes glared out from the shadows of the giant weapons.

 “Ral the Hero. That’s what they used to call me, anyway.”

 “Used to?”

 “I’m Ral the Traitor now. But that is a name I made for myself. Ral is a common name. They won’t recognise my face in Eisengeld. I am a face not worth recognising.”

 Kana tilted her head, pursed her lips, and broke out into a grin. “Ah. Eisengeld is where Madame is. Are you going there, Ral the Traitor?”

 “Please. Just Ral is fine. Yes, I am.”

 “Why?”

 “Guilt. Cowardice.”

 “What do those words mean?”

 Ral met Kana’s innocent, unassuming, oblivious gaze. He could sense both a mix of pain and joy in her steps. She walked with a slight limp, and her emaciated hands jutted out like bones, yet she approached the world like a child, kicking at the sand, picking up loose pebbles, sometimes skipping.

 “You don’t need to know. I’ll make sure you won’t.”

 “Any other reason?”

 “I’m looking for a reason to keep living. A reason to keep going. A reason to walk beyond my crimes and lift my chin. I’m looking, hoping, begging,” he said, more to himself than to Kana.

 Kana tilted her head. “I do not understand.”

#

The sun dipped below the horizon; darkness rushed the land. The heat vacated, the cold swept in.

 Ral set his bag on the ground and pulled out a thick sleeping bag. “You got anything?” He hoisted up the sleeping back to show her. Kana pointed to her cloak and nodded. “Did Toph have you sleep in that?” She nodded again. Ral thrust the bag into her arms. “Sleep. I’ll keep watch. Just in case.”

 Kana treated the bag like a new treasure. Her eyes glowed as she felt at the fabric and crawled inside. The cold bit at Ral like a pack of wolves. But he had dealt with colder stuff before.

 “Mind chucking me your cloak? Maybe an extra layer wouldn’t be so bad.”

 “Um.” Kana, half inside the bag, tore at the cloak, and wriggled free of the knot around her neck. The moonlight enveloped her thin, scar-ridden body. Star-shaped dents lined her ribs. Ral’s blood chilled.

 “Kana, what’s that?”

 Kana threw the cloak at Ral, and realising that she had shown something she shouldn’t have, yanked the sleeping bag up to her shoulders.

 “Kana.”

 She buried her head into the bag so that only her eyes poked out. “They said not to say. Um. Sorry.”

 “Who told you not to say?”

 “Sorry. Sorry.” She buried the rest of her head under the covers and curled around into a foetal position. Ral watched her squirm inside the sleeping bag, took a few deep breaths, and thought against pursuing the matter for now.

 As Ral bent to pick up the cloak, a small trinket fell from his bag. It was a small butterfly hairpin. His daughter’s. His lips quivered, and before he knew it, the tears were falling. They curved around his cheeks, collected on his chin, and dripped wet and sloppy onto the hairpin.

 He tried to cover up the sound of his sobbing. Strong men should not cry. His daughter would be disappointed in him. He had already disappointed her enough. He had half a mind to pick up the hair pin, which felt as heavy as a brick, and lob it far away, but he could not bring himself to do it.

 “Are you sad?” Kana leaned out from the sleeping bag. Tufts of hair poked out like worn paintbrush bristles.

 Ral beat back his tears and regained his posture. “I’m fine.”

 “What is that?” She pointed to the butterfly hairpin.

 “It was my daughter’s.”

 “It looks very pretty. Um. Sorry. May I hold it?” She bit her lips and inched back, fearing that she may have overstepped.

 Ral wiped the last of the tears from his face and handed Kana the hairpin. She turned it around in her hands as if it were a baby bird. She traced a finger over the different shapes and handed it back to Ral. “Your daughter must have been very pretty.”

 “She was.”

 “And kind. Kind like you.”

 Ral barked with laughter. “I’m far from kind. Go to sleep. We’ve got more of the same tomorrow.” Ral drew his cloak tight around him, and in the moonlight, watched the shifting and squirming of Kana’s sleeping bag until it at last stilled. Stars spanned the sky. Their beauty distracted him from the weight of the hairpin. He pushed it far into his bag and clasped his hands into a prayer.

#

“Here’s lunch.” Ral held a desert reaver by the neck. Its knife mandibles trashed at the air. Kana watched as he drove a knife through its head. Biting at her lip, she bowed forward, grabbed the reaver, and looked it up and down. She grabbed at its legs and knocked at its hard chitin armour. Like a child who had had enough of a toy, she pressed it back into Ral’s hands, who pried out the knife, wrapped it in cloth, and slid it into his bag.

 “It feels funny. Um. Sorry.” She pointed to the massive columns of weapons along the horizon behind them. “I was wondering. Why were those here?”

 Ral explained as they continued east “They came from Mount Castria. The Giants. We all thought they were some old legend. No one really thought they were real. They crashed their way down the mountain, and their voice shook the land, all the way to Eisengeld and Rhomdel. They tore out the forests and roads that connected the cities, smothered it with sand, blew free the clouds, and called in the heat.”

 “And then?”

 “They played. Those weapons have dulled edges. They’re for playfighting. They told us that they’d play a game with fifty giants to a side, each representing a city. The winning city shall prosper, they said, and the opposing city shall fall to ruin. They played their pointless game, Eisengeld won, and that’s that. Overnight, Rhomdel fell to ruin. The giants stamped out our livestock and threw the buildings around like toys, destroying centuries of history and tearing hundreds of families apart.”

 “Sorry. I do not understand everything. Why would they do that?”

 Ral ruffled her hair, again noticing that electric of shock that smoothed into calm. “To the strong, the weak are to be toyed with. The weak exists as a demonstration of cruelty or goodness. Eisengeld revere the giants. Rhomsdel hate them. But it is not unlike us humans. People adore a dog, for example, but do not care for a wild rabbit beyond food. Those who are stronger than their adversity exercises the right to determine the weaker’s fate. I do not care about that millipede in the same way that Toph did not care about you.”

 “Um. Sorry. I do not understand. You say a lot of words that I do not know.” She brimmed with shame and tensed her frame.

 “Those who are big and strong need not care about those who are small and weak.”

 The day dragged on. An agonising drawl that wore at Ral’s strength. The heat scorched with intense ferocity. Kana withstood the heat better, but as the day progressed, her limp grew more evident. By midday, she winced with each step, and did her best to hide the evidence of her pain from Ral.

 Towards evening, they made their way up the side of a massive dune. They stepped over the tip and found the distant white stone of Eisengeld, which built upon itself and scraped the clouds that fluffed the edge of the desert. A green line ran a crescent along the horizon, meeting the entrance to Eisengeld. Beyond this line: a verdant paradise. Lush fields of green brimmed with life; fruits and seed coloured the valleys, canyons, and forests.

 Cloud-textured stone and pine formed the houses of Eisengeld, which swirled in spirals and circles around a flawless tower that touched the sky. A dramatic contrast against the rubble and clouds of dust that ravaged Rhomsdel. Kana illuminated with awe. She made to run down the hill, but Ral snatched her wrist before she could.

 “Look.” He pulled her close and pointed at the twin colossi that waited at each side of the city entrance. They shot taller than the white tower, their faces obscured by the haze of the atmosphere, large and foreboding, an existence that compressed Ral to the size of an ant. “Giants. If they see us, we’re as good as dead.” As he spoke, a spark of red glared at him for a fraction of a second. A giant’s eye. Had they seen him? No, they couldn’t have. Ral and Kana fell behind the peak of the dune and bathed in its cool shadow.

 “Um—”

 “We’ll wait until night. Once we’re in, we’re in. We’ll be as good as an Eisengeldian.” The moment of fright had his heart pounding in his chest. The fact that the earth was not rumbling under their footsteps assured him of his safety.

 Kana’s eyes stared at the empty desert that stretched out from her feet. “That was … a giant?” Her voice wobbled as she spoke. She shot another glance over the peak and shuddered.

 “Did you never see one with Toph?”

 “Mmm.” She shook her head. “He – uh. Never mind.”

 “Tell me.”

 “Ahh.” Her eyes rolled a large circle, searching for anything to say. “I – uh. Ow!” She kicked out her leg, and a thick desert reaver flicked about like a flag stuck to her ankle. Ral struck out as quick as lightning, tearing through the millipede with his sword and flinging it off Kana’s ankle. Kana, eyes swimming with tears, clamped at her wound, and howled in pain.

 “Let me look over it.” Ral stretched out her leg, but each time he tried to pry away her fingers, she would kick out and shout in protest. “Please, I’m trying to help you.”

 “Leave me be. Th-they said I could not.” Thick beads of blood gushed out from between her fingers. Her face shifted between pain and the horror of daring to speak out of line. Ral, one hand trying to pry off her grip, and the other sorting through his bag for medicinal supplies, continued to order her to let go. “No. I cannot.”

 “Please, Kana. I’m trying to help you.” At last, she relented, gingerly pulling back her blood-soaked hands, her face full of tears and masked with guilt. He pulled back her trousers and felt his stomach drop. Below the bleeding wound where the mandible had struck was a branding that had broken the skin. It read: Faulty Product – Return.

 “You need to tell me what happened. All that you can.” Ral fished out an ointment and squeezed some onto his hand. The wound hissed as he applied the ointment. The wound shrivelled, dried, and ceased bleeding.

 “I – uh—” she said through gasps and tears.

 “Please.”

 “He. Uh.” She swallowed. “He hurt me.” She burst into a rush of newfound tears. Not from the pain of the millipede, but from a more potent memory of pain. “Me and the other girls. V-very much. He had friends, and they were all mean. They said good girls serve the king and I thought that was good. But I was not good enough, so they carved this into me.” She pointed to her ankle.

 “And then, for a while, they stopped appearing. And the earth shook, and we did not know what to do. I ate rats and dirt but my friends got sick and went to sleep and died. And then Toph came back one night and had me wear a blindfold and forced me to come with him.”

 Ral tightened the bandages around her, struggling to keep his rage contained. How could the Rhomsdel king be complicit in such disgusting acts? He thought that he knew the king well. The king had invited him to many feasts when he had been a hero. But then why did Toph want to get to Eisengeld? To return a product? Such a thing seemed awfully benign for someone so cruel. The whole thing seemed fishy.

 Ral peeled back Kana’s trousers further. The cracked skin broke into whip marks and more of those star-shaped bruises.

 “Just lay there. I’ll get dinner sorted.” He dabbed more of the ointment onto the wound.

 “I do not like those.” She pointed at the desert reaver, wincing, and shaking with every movement. Ral snorted in laughter. He returned the ointment and bandages to his bag and dragged out a small wooden box. He gave it to Kana. “What is this?”

 “Open it.”

 She gritted her teeth as she clicked open the top. Pieces of beef jerky lined the interior. “What is it?”

 “Beef. Try it.”

 She took one in her hand, looked it over, and took a bite. She chewed, swallowed, and smiled, still breathing hard from the wound. “I did not know that food could taste this good. Wow.”

 “This? Taste good. Don’t make me laugh. It keeps well, and that’s all. If you want good, I’ll cook you up something good when we’re in Eisengeld.”

 “There is better stuff than this?”

 “Loads.”

 “Um.” She ran a hand down her bandaged ankle. “When you bring me to Eisengeld, will I ever see you again?”

 Ral shrugged and fell silent.

 “What will you do there?”

 “I don’t know.”

 “Can I stay with you?”

 “I’m not sure about that.”

 “Please?”

 “I need to bring you to Madame Bruscha.” At least to get to the bottom of this mess.

 “Please let me stay with you.”

 Ral smirked and ruffled her hair. She did not flinch this time.

 “Maybe.”

#

Ral, giving Kana a piggyback, entered Eisengeld at night. His nerves spiked in terror as he passed between the two mountainous giants. He held Kana close and feared the worst. Each giant’s snore billowed out a gale of air that whipped out Ral’s cloak and ruffled their avalanche beards. The two monoliths each held the handle of a great hammer as big as a mansion.

 As Ral carried Kana, the weight of his insignificance bore down on him. He could hardly breathe for the gravity of the giants’ existence. Their presence grasped his guilt and tore at it. He thought briefly of the life before he knew of the giants, when they were nothing but a myth. A myth that had marched into existence just to torture them, upend their lives, and separate them.

 But beyond that, the giants did not care for them.

 He let out a long, drawn-out sigh, and met the smouldering red eyes of the giants. He had fooled himself into thinking that they had never noticed him. To them, he was a curiosity, and beyond that, they did not care for him. Like an ant to a human, no one ever found value in going out of their way to stomp a single ant crawling along the forest floor. He thought of the others in Rhomsdel, who had boxed themselves inside its walls for fear of the giants. The two at Rhomsdel must have also noticed him leave.

 He adjusted his hold on Kana, who buried her chin into his shoulder, and entered Eisengeld, a city that glistened and twinkled in the night. The houses prospered on such airtight precision and craftsmanship, and impossible statues occupied the street corners. Eisengeld carried a picturesque, perfect beauty yet did not gloat its wealth. If there is a heaven, Ral thought, it must look like this.

The night city was tense yet calm. The rowdiness within the taverns seemed superficial, the happiness of the celebrants seemed hopeless, and everyone carried a vacant expression. The tavern-goers downed mead by the tankard so that their cheeks would buzz red with drunkenness and smother out their grey skin. Despite this, the intoxicating scents of crisping meat and cheese made Kana’s mouth water, and Eisengeld’s chill breeze calmed Ral’s spirit, a welcome relief from the desert heat.

 Kana stared at the commotion through the window, perplexed and intrigued, as Ral held out the slip of paper that he had taken from Toph. The two of them stuck out, yet no one seemed to care. Their mulchy brown cloaks cast against the white and blue cloth garments of the Eisengeldians. He and Kana made their way through the groups of citizens that stood and moped around, asked for a few directions, and found themselves in front of a mansion atop a hill.

 He stopped at the front door of the mansion, almost as refined as some of Rhomdel’s mansions were, and knocked. A maid opened the door, looked Ral up and down, and stopped at Kana. She grabbed the sides of her apron and curtseyed. The flick of the hem of her dress revealed a star-shaped bruise on her ankle.

 “I believe Madame Bruscha is expecting you,” she said to Kana, “are you here in place of Toph?”

 “I am.” Ral tightened his hold on Kana. He could feel the tension run down her muscles and her fingers curl around her clothes. He set her down onto her feet. She limped inside the mansion, leaning against him. The maid led the pair of them through a series of halls, along rows of paintings, and around massive centrepiece statues of powerful men lifting spheres of stone. Had Rhomdel won, this place would be nothing but dust. The maid stopped at the door to a study, opened it, bowed to the gaunt faced woman inside, and motioned for them to step inside before leaving.

 Madame Bruscha, in the middle of jotting down names and numbers into a logbook, raised her sullen eyes and pointed to the corner. A row of star-shaped rings glittered in the candlelight. Ral bit his cheek to keep himself from crying out.

 “Just leave her there and I’ll deal with it shortly. A Castsmir prince was looking for a defunct, brain-damaged woman like her. Best bargain you can get for damaged property.” She paused, sighed, and returned to her writing. She looked up at them again after a minute. “Are you new to this? From Rhomdel, yeah? One of Toph’s men?”

 Ral humoured the idea. “Yes.”

 “Is old Tophie dead, then?” Her stone-cold eyes analysed him.

 “Yes.”

 “I’ll send the money through to you, then. Rhomdel is as good as worthless, now. It’s all—” she paused and changed the direction of her speech. “I’ll have you working at Castsmir to the north. But—” she clicked her tongue, “—perhaps there shall be a market in Rhomdel again once they recover and get a little—”

 She stopped short. Ral’s sword drew a line against her neck. Her eyes turned from Ral, to Kana, and to the sword. “I said that I’d pay. Extra, if you need. More than extra.”

 “You’re the head of this, aren’t you? If I kill you, the whole thing crumbles, right?” Kana gripped tighter around Ral’s arm.

Bruscha laughed. “I’m just doing it for the hell of it now. Just habit. Keeps me busy. But no. A hydra never dies. It’s futile.”

 The word ‘futile’ made his neck twitch. He slashed her neck, stuffed her logbook into his pocket. He climbed out the window without looking back, lifting the smiling Kana onto his shoulder as he did. He shimmied his way down the walls, jumped onto a hedge to cushion his fall, and sprinted for the cover of distant houses.

 Eager to make as much distance from the mansion as possible, he worked his way deep into the maze of houses and side streets and towards the walls of Eisengeld. They would be sending people after him soon. Would they even bother?. Or perhaps that maid would cover up for them – no one else had been in the mansion at the time. Perhaps the maid thought it was sweet justice. He would be out of here by tomorrow.

“Oh, I recognise this place,” Kana said as they wandered down a street that curved a crescent along a river by Eisengeld’s walls.

 “From a very, very long time ago,” she continued, brightening, “before Madame. Before everything. Go over to that house, please.” She pointed to a shabby, vine-coloured house, with flowerpots lining the windowsills.

 Ral knocked and waited until the door slid open. A haggard looking woman, well into her fifties, poked out her head.

 “It’s midnight. I’m trying to—”

 “Mum!” Kana jumped off Ral’s shoulders, almost fell from the pain of her ankle, ran to the woman, and hugged her tight. The woman, taken aback, looked to Ral for answers. Kana cried into her chest. “Mum …”

 The woman pried herself free of Kana and pushed her trembling body back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I – I don’t have a daughter.” Kana tried to step closer, but the woman’s hand kept her at an arm’s distance.

“Is having a trafficked child really such a shame?” Ral said.

 The woman glared at him. “I’m not her mother.”

 Ral pressed a comforting hand to Kana’s shoulder, pulled her away from the woman and towards him. Kana nuzzled her forehead into his chest. Her tears soaked through the cloak and onto his skin. “Your eyes tell me otherwise. Perhaps you were complicit.”

 “I was not!” She stamped her foot. “She snuck off one day and – and it was futile. Everything I tried to get her back. All futile.”

 “She’s back now.”

 “No … she isn’t.”

 “You are not the first mother I know who is a stranger to love.”

 “I can’t love her. She’s been defiled.” She slammed the door shut in their faces. As Ral guided the crying Kana to the river, he heard the drag of a back sliding against wood and a torrent of desperate sobbing.

 Ral dropped by the edge of the river. Kana leaned against him. He unslung his bag and fumbled through it, pulling out the butterfly hairpin and clipping it to Kana’s hair.

 “Look.”

 Kana lifted her tear-stained face and looked to the still river water. She raised a careful hand to her hair and felt at the hairpin. A smile weathered through the sadness.

 “It … it is so pretty,” she said through sniffles.

 “My daughter would have wanted you to have it.”

 “Your daughter is kind.”

 “She was. I betrayed her. My wife … the one good thing she managed to achieve was to birth an amazing daughter. Yet I failed to notice the cruelty my daughter suffered by my wife’s hand. I should have been there for her … before it was too late … yet I spent the time fooling around as a hero. I betrayed her.”

 “What does a hero do?”

 “Save people.”

 Kana took a hold of his shaking hand. “I think your daughter is kind. And you are too. Um. You saved me!” She reached up, touched the top of his head, and ruffled the hair. “I do not think you are Ral the Traitor. I think you are Ral the Hero!”

 Ral ran a hand across the butterfly hairpin. A sudden urge struck him to rip off the pin, crush it, and throw it as far as he could, as if he would throw away his guilt with it. His daughter’s face flashed in his mind, followed by Kana’s face. He steeled his resolve.

“Come with me. First to Castsmir. And then to Relnspel.” He held up Bruscha’s notebook and read off the names of the different cities. “And when we’ve gone everywhere, and done what we can for the people that need it, we’ll find a place free of strife and rest.”

 From where Ral the Hero stood he could see the spiked helmets of the giants over the city walls. To them: insignificant, and their actions futile. To him: Nothing mattered more.

 

END