CHAPTER 13 -REBELS

  This was no ambush.

  No one ran from the soldiers, though many cried out in fear.

  It was like the people had almost expected it.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, approaching a group of people nearby.

  “Checkpoint…,” a man with a beard of black and white said, eyeing Levan up and down with a hard, weathered expression. “Acolyte,” he added, his eyes darting to the mess of twigs in Levan’s clenched fist, then back to up to his face.

  Levan nodded, maybe a bit too emphatically.

  “They’re looking for rebels,” a woman in a thick apron adorned with old burns said. “Looking for the last bits of trouble. Known entities, you know.”

  The woman’s gaze was locked on Levan’s robes, specifically the broken, red-stained fabric over Levan’s heart.

  “Then the rest of us become Diocletians,” a third person, this one younger than the other two said.

  “Diocletian?” Levan said, frowning before he could help himself.

  The man with the beard and the woman with the apron shared a glance, but the younger man only nodded.

  “I can’t imagine it either. A citizen of Diocsar,” the young man said, shaking his head.

  “I know what you mean,” Levan lied.

  “Do you?” the older man with the beard asked.

  This time it was the young man and aproned woman’s turn to look at each other.

  Fall back.

  Fall back to the outskirts.

  They know you’re pretending.

  “I just find a lot of things incomprehnsible right now,” Levan said.

  The truth in that statement was actually quite extreme, and at least some of that truth seemed to shine through, and the trio relaxed.

  “Look at me,” Levan said, with a smile, nodding at the pickaxe. “Grabbed the first thing I could find, still holding onto it. I don’t think I could relax my fingers if I tried.”

  The younger man laughed with what sounded like relief, and even the older man and the woman with the apron cracked a smile.

  “We cling to what we can,” the man with the beard said, but Levan felt his eyes searching Levan’s expression once again.

  “I haven’t seen many Acolytes on our road,” the woman in the apron said. She tugged at Levan’s robe ever so slightly as they walked, slowing all four of them down.

  “I heard they were all killed,” the younger man said.

  “They were,” Levan managed, voice thick.

  “ My condolences,” the man with the beard said.

  “Do you know why that might have been?” the woman with the apron said delicately.

  “I don’t know,” Levan said truthfully, though he had a small feeling he and the other six called along the Emberlaines had to do with it.

  “I didn’t see a single robe, not even when we all marched from the city together,” the bearded man said, scratching his jaw.

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  At the end of the column, the soldiers were starting to meet with small groups of refugee leaders, giving them apparent instructions, and those leaders were starting to help organize their friends and family.

  “Almost like the whole army was given an order,” the woman with the apron said.

  And then it clicked.

  Then Levan got it.

  His gaze snapped to the soldiers at the end of the column, and he froze.

  “Now, now,” the man with the beard said, pulling him lightly along. “Don’t want to cause a stir, do we?”

  Panic.

  It rushed in, yelling, sweating, screaming, banging pots and pans in Levan’s mind and hammering against the thick red walls of his heart.

  Are they going to turn me in?

  Regret followed the panic.

  Gather sticks?

  Really?

  That’s what he’d wasted his time on, only to march directly into soldiers?

  “I’m not an acolyte Weaver, or whatever,” Levan said quickly. “I just—”

  But all three showed immediate signs of rejection. They shook their heads, and the woman in the apron whispered a quiet, “No, no.”

  “No, really, I—”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you are or you aren’t,” the bearded man said. “The people here have already seen you. If you wanted to blend in…well—everyone’s talking about you.”

  The words formed a pit in his stomach.

  Everyone?

  “Are you going to turn me in?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

  “Not if we can help it,” the bearded man said.

  “Your best bet is to stay low against this hill here,” he continued.

  “If you can make it a handful of miles to the south-and-west, you can take your risks in the forest and hope the soldiers won’t follow you in.”

  Levan nodded, squinting out into the distance, looking for the forest.

  “That’s north-and-east, darling,” the woman in the apron said. “The forest is south-and-west.”

  There was a deep, deep sympathy in her voice.

  There had always been stories of human kindness in situations like these. But if the—what had the younger one called them? Diocletians? If these people covered for his escape, and the Diocletions caught him anyway, would they hold these three accountable?

  I can’t let other people suffer because of me.

  If he left now, right this second, before he was seen talking to them, maybe he could try his luck without these three being associated with him.

  “Thank you,” he said, slowing down.

  The trio kept walking, pretending they’d never seen him in the first place.

  “Good luck,” the woman in the apron muttered as they left.

  The younger guy almost looked back at him, but the bearded man tugged his shirt, and he never quite turned all the way.

  Levan slowed until he sank like a river stone to the back of the column. The soldiers following from the city were still just red-armored dots on the horizon. He picked his moment until disappearing behind a hill was a matter of just a few feet. With any luck, no one would notice.

  Go.

  Now.

  Levan pivoted, hunching low, staying to where his back and the top of his head wouldn’t be seen from the base of the hill. He cut across the hill, steep enough and walking low enough that his cheek nearly grazed the grass.

  Sure enough, four or five miles in the distance, green trees and denser foliage began to populate the landscape.

  He could make it that far, right?

  It was just a choice of smart hills.

  He had to pick smart hills, and stay low.

  If he did that, he could do it.

  Levan crawled, moving with an almost agonizing slowness.

  First between marble columns, now this, he thought, leaning out for a half-second to get a good look at the soldiers in the distance, and, when the way was clear, he made his way to the next hill.

  Two or three times he did this, gaining more and more distance from the soldiers and fleeing citizens, all while remaining parallel to them.

  Once processed, the citizens were gathering on the other side of the soldier’s line, waiting for the rest of the group before continuing.

  Levan watched, squinting, as the trio who had pointed his way to the forest were processed through the checkpoint.

  The bearded man and the woman in the apron passed through the soldiers without issue.

  C’mon, Levan urged silently. C’mon, play it cool.

  The younger guy was acting strange, though. He could see it in his body language, even from here. It was…

  Levan’s stomach grew cold.

  Aloof, apart from the others, were a group of Diocletian soldiers with steel and silver plates decorating their red armor. Their faces glittered in the sun—or rather, the masks they wore did.

  The young man was terrified of them, and one of the Soliptics approached the checkpoint guards. He dismissed the guard processing the young man with a nod of his masked head, and maybe a word Levan couldn’t hear from this distance.

  The hands of the normal soldiers flew to their scabbards in a synchronized movement, although Levan couldn’t hear what had prompted it. The Soliptic in the mask hadn’t moved at all, even when the soldiers around him went for their swords.

  The young man took an uneasy pair of steps backward, and the soldiers moved to follow him.

  Then the bearded man moved to get their attention, and Levan realized what was about to happen.

  It’s okay, he thought.

  Good, even. Save him. Don’t let it be because of me.

  The bearded man squinted into the distance, to the south-and-west, until his eyes landed on Levan, and their gaze met.

  The soldiers backed off the young man, who was allowed to join his parents.

  It’s okay.

  I get it.

  A trio of masked Soliptics moved easily away from the rest of their group, following an unheard order.

  By the time the bearded man’s index finger rose to point the way directly to Levan, he was already sprinting away.

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