I couldn't.
And that was when the first tear came. It wasn't sadness, though. This was frustration, or maybe even anger. Staring at the darkened sky outside the window, I felt so useless! How long had it taken me to learn Vestrian? If I'd been faster, could they have stopped this?
Zasen said they didn't know when the Moles were coming. I did. Every woman had to memorize the holiday calendar. Those dates were important. We'd be expected to decorate our homes and serve exceptional meals to our husbands. Marriages were often held on holidays, usually more than one through the course of the evening.
I knew them all. Ms. Lawton had made sure we girls could recite which decorations and colors to use for each one. The only problem would be matching the day on my calendar to the proper day on Zasen's, yet once we knew that...
Maybe then we could stop them?
But how? Dragons had bows. The Righteous had guns. There was no way for Dragons to protect themselves against the killing power of a Mole rifle. The things could shoot almost continuously - or at least until they ran out of bullets.
So knowing the days wasn't going to be enough. The Moles would still come. Somehow, I had to figure out what it was Zasen needed to know to stop them. The problem was Zasen didn't understand what it meant to be a Mole.
He kept expecting Moles to think and act like Dragons would. He assumed they would care about each other, stop to give aid, or so many of the other wonderful things I'd already noticed about this place. People had friends. They had partners they cared about. Dragons stopped to help, just like they had in the streets tonight.
Moles had a purpose. They had a goal. The Elders gave them a mission, and they were sent out to complete it. The men proved themselves by providing more meat than another, producing more children than another, or even stopping more sins than anyone else. Usually, those sins were committed by women.
Maybe the compound had electricity, but besides that? Life was much better up here. The women I'd met at Rymar's cookout had been amazing. Jeera was so bold. Brielle was very intelligent. Saveah was kind and a wonderful mother. The three of them would've been punished severely if they'd lived in the compound.
But Dragons were different. Dragons were better. Dragons gave everyone the chance to not just be alive, but to actually live. I'd only gotten the smallest taste of that, but I liked it so much.
For weeks now, I'd been living in a house with three men. None of them had tried to accost me. They hadn't punished me, even when I'd done things wrong. They'd even protected me when the man on the street had tried!
And they called themselves my friends. Not my suitors, not my husbands, but my friends. They gave me books to read. They'd trusted me enough to give me a weapon! Me. A woman!
This had been what Callah had meant when she'd said that maybe the Devil's people had it better. Although I didn't think these were the Devil's people. I thought the Moles were lying about that too, but Callah wouldn't have known.
She'd still seen through the stories enough to encourage me. Now, I needed to find a way to get her out of that place. Somehow, she and Meri needed to escape. Maybe I could ask Zasen, Rymar, and Kanik to help them?
Maybe if we each married one of them, then they'd be persuaded to help? Men liked the idea of marriage. They enjoyed the benefits of it. There were three men in this house, and if Meri and Callah were here, we'd be three women. Even numbers. Almost like it was meant to be.
If only it could be that easy. Not that I wanted to get married, but my mind drifted back to Kanik. He was a handsome man, and unlike Gideon, his kindness seemed to be real. Then again, so had Gideon's, until the vows were said and Meri gave herself to him. So would he change if I had to marry him? Would Zasen? Rymar?
I didn't know, but I had to do something!
Outside, movement caught my eye. In the darkness of the night, a group of Dragons were pushing a cart towards the city entrance. It was filled with bodies in black clothing: Moles. Right in front of our house, they stopped.
Two men - one tailed and one tailless - moved to pick up one of the bodies the guys had carried out of the house. Without care or concern, they tossed the dead man's corpse onto the cart, then returned for the second.
Once those were loaded, the cart continued forward, leaving the city of Lorsa and headed for the forest. Back in the compound, no one would miss those men. Their names would be listed as killed by the minions of the Devil. Their wives would be relieved to know they were finally free. Their children would barely recognize their faces.
Down there was nothing like up here.
But no one else could understand that but me. I was still a Mole to most people, even if my friends insisted I was a refugee now. Dragons hated me because I looked like the hunters. I was orin. That made me evil, and no one listened to evil people.
But this had to end. Someone had to stop this, and the only person who could do it was me, a weak and useless woman. Me, a girl who'd fought rather than suffer a life of misery. Me, a person who needed to become strong enough to actually make a difference, because I could learn.
It didn't matter what I had to learn. If that was how to fight, or how to speak yet another language, or even how to be a real Dragon, I would do it. After all, I wanted to stay here. I wanted to become someone who could matter - even if just a little. I wanted to save my friends, both above and below the ground. I just wanted to make all of this stop, because I was tired of the Moles messing everything up.
They'd taken so much from me already. My mother, my friends, my future. They'd stolen away my happiness over and over, always to remind me of my place, but I was ready to make another. This was my place. Lorsa was. It was the Heaven I'd always dreamed of and never dared to think was possible.
For hours, my mind refused to settle and my thoughts spun. My eyes stayed locked on the window, looking at the people moving in the darkness. How many had lost loved ones tonight? How many times had this happened before? And worse than all of that, how I had not known about any of it?
I was still staring at the darkness, debating lying down to rest my aching body when the front door opened and two men walked out. I saw their silhouettes in the darkness and recognized both Zasen and Rymar. I wasn't sure where Kanik was, but it didn't matter.
If they were starting their day, then I would too. My mind didn't want to stop and rest. My body wasn't going to feel better if I let my muscles get stiff from sleeping. If I wanted to be a Dragon - which was the only way I could stop the Moles - then I needed to start acting like one.
So, slipping off the bed and onto my tender soles, I once again found the torn and bloodstained dress I'd been wearing and put it back on. I wasn't sure how to make people realize I wasn't a Mole, but I knew one thing.
I would not let the Moles take anything else from me. I refused to allow them to destroy my happiness. For me, the first step in becoming a Dragon had to be erasing the sinners who'd defiled this house. It might be a small thing, but it was what I could do.
And tomorrow, I'd learn how to do a little more.
Forty-SixKanik
It took me forever to get to sleep. The sound of people in the streets made me jerk back awake every time I got close. Some were looking for loved ones. Others had been picked to remove the dead. And while they weren't loud, they were still there, persistent, and my instincts were waiting for the next threat to hit.
I was always like this after a battle, though. Zasen was a natural born killer. I wasn't. I hated that we had to fight. I despised how the Moles had found our town and we couldn't get ahead of them. Oh, and we'd tried. Over and over again, we'd set up a program for early warnings, faster protection, or something else, and every time it did nothing.
Tonight was no different. There wasn't an official body count yet, but I had a feeling it was high. In the morning, the town would meet to discuss what had happened. Rymar and Zasen would go, but I'd agreed to stay here with the girl. I just needed to get some sleep first. I had to stop my mind from spinning and close my eyes long enough to pass out.
When it finally happened, I slept fitfully. My dreams were filled with the sound of my bowstring twanging with yet another arrow released, but they all kept heading to Ayla. I heard the cries of the people who'd been cut down. I'd seen the drag marks left by bodies and followed them to find Zasen and Rymar being hauled away.
So when the light finally broke through my window, I decided to call it good enough. Crawling out of bed, I found a clean pair of pants and pulled those on. My body ached. I'd loosed almost two quivers of arrows last night, and I was feeling it today, but that was my only complaint. Unlike so many, I hadn't been injured.
Deciding I'd get a head start on the morning, I made my way downstairs, only to hear a rhythmic sound I couldn't identify. Over and over, it repeated. The pattern changed slightly, but not enough to count as a real break.
Halfway down the stairs, I looked back to find the source of it. There, kneeling on the hard floor and wearing the same dress she'd had on the night before, was Ayla. The hem was pink with watered-down blood. Her hands were pale and wrinkled from the cleaning water, but they gripped a brush hard. And that was the source of the sound. As she ran the thing back and forth across the bloodstain before the storage area, the bristles rustled rhythmically.
