Chapter 215: Couldn’t Help Himself

Malik flew low over the cracked plains with his white hair streaming behind him.

He had no particular destination, going where the air took him, mostly north, because north was where his body leaned.

The pain he was only just drowning in had faded into a dull ache behind his Soul as his new strength sat in his chest like a coal in a banked fire, pushing out with every breath he took.

It wasn’t long before he saw people.

They were a line winding across the dry land below, hundreds of them.

None were children; they were mostly older in age, a few wearing the armor of soldiers.

They walked slowly, with their heads down, and every one of them was going the same way.

North, same as him.

Towards the Sultanate.

Towards the Holy Palace.

Malik had no doubt about it.

’But why?’

He hung in the air for a long moment and watched the line crawl north.

All of those in the line muttered words that only they themselves could hear.

Prayers, calls for forgiveness, oaths of vengeance.

Slowly, understanding settled over him.

These weren’t desperate refugees going to the palace because they thought it safe.

No, they were going there because they thought that it was his grave.

It was a grave now in the hands of the Order.

They would reach the gates and find banners with a white flame on them, and soldiers in pale armor.

The Holy Palace had been marked for a long time, targeted by IT since the first night he sat on the Golden Throne, and now his people were walking towards it with flowers in their hands.

He noticed something else.

It was around the time the Demon Waves usually came.

The Suns were in the right place, high in the sky yet not at the peak.

But none of the people in this line looked over their shoulders.

They walked with the loose steps of people who had stopped expecting anything to come for them.

At least anything that was far beyond human.

’Did IT stop attacking now that its target disappeared?’

Perhaps it was more accurate to say that its goal had been accomplished.

There was no need for waves when the war was already won.

The Sultanate had fallen.

Devil’s Maw’s people had lost their homes, their ruler, and their hope.

All that IT had wanted had come to pass.

All except one small thing.

Malik was still alive.

He descended.

His feet landed behind the tail of the line, behind a large rock where nobody could see him.

He spent a minute tearing a strip from his torn sleeve to wrap around the lower half of his face.

It was a poor disguise. But the wind had thinned his cheeks and bleached his hair to the color of old bone; not one of his own people would have known him.

He stepped out of the rock and joined the crowd.

Nobody looked at him.

A thin man in rags with an empty sleeve was nothing special on this road.

Malik fell into step beside a woman with a basket and a boy who limped.

Their Sultan walked and listened.

His earlier thought was right.

They were crying out.

All let out this broken murmur.

"O Sultan, return to us..."

"Where are you, my lord? Where have you gone?"

"Come back. Please come back."

A man ahead of him was sobbing so hard that he had to stop and hold his knees.

An old woman walked with her hands raised to the sky and her cheeks wet.

Malik kept his eyes on the ground, but he heard every one of them.

He had walked among his people on the road to the circles; he had carried a child across the land, lifted a wagon off a poor family’s mule, to which they had thanked him and wept.

They wept and thanked him, the ever-failing Sultan, who was now a stranger with a rag over his face, yet was still listening to the same sound, a people calling for a man who was walking right beside it.

He kept walking.

His feet did not stop.

It was one of the hardest things he had ever done.

The line slowed before noon.

At first, he thought somebody had fallen.

Then he heard the voices at the front rise, the crowd bunching up around him.

A group of figures stood across the road.

There were maybe thirty of them with dark cloaks and wrapped faces.

They had formed a wall from one edge of the road to the other, and they were not moving.

Faraja.

Malik knew them in an instant.

None of the faces were familiar. But he saw the way they stood, with their weight forward, hands relaxed, and he saw that they were not the kind of soldiers who retreated.

Then he saw the hair.

It was a ginger braid, tucked into the collar of a dark-green combat uniform.

She was standing at the center of the line with her hands loose at her sides.

Safira.

His chest tightened.

Almost immediately, he ducked his head and pulled the rag higher.

"Please stop!"

Safira’s voice carried clearly across the crowd.

It was gentle, as it always was, but there was a hardness underneath it that he had never heard before.

"We don’t blame you for sneaking out, but please let us send you back to Eden."

Nobody moved.

"You must understand. The Holy Palace has fallen, the Order holds it, and their patrols are on every road north of here. If you walk any farther, you will be seen. If you are seen, you will be killed."

She took a long breath.

"What you are doing is akin to suicide."

For a moment, nobody spoke.

It was a strange thing.

In all the years Malik had known her, he had never seen a crowd refuse Safira.

She was the backbone of the Sultanate, the gentle hands in every hospital who healed their children and told them to rest.

They had always listened to her.

They listened to her the way people listen to him, the Sun.

Now a man in the middle of the crowd pushed forward.

"Why should we?!"

His voice cracked in the middle.

"Why should we go back? You left! You all left! You ran into that hole in the ground and left him to die!"

A murmur went up behind him.

"You should have stayed!"

"You should have fought beside him!"

"You should have died before he did!"

One voice after another rolled across the road.

Malik watched Safira’s face... color left it in a single instant.

Her mouth opened, and for a second, nothing came out.

"You are his family..."

Someone else yelled.

"His own family! And you let him..."

"DO YOU THINK I LEFT HIM WILLINGLY?"

A scream tore out of her.

Every head turned, and even the Faraja flinched.

Judging by their reactions, Safira wasn’t one to ever scream.

She stood in the road with her fists shaking and her eyes full of tears, and she looked, for the first time since Malik had known her, like someone about to break.

"Do you think I would have let him die a second time?"

Her voice cracked harder than theirs ever could.

"Do you think I wanted to? I would have followed him into the grave and stood beside him! But... but I couldn’t do anything but follow his orders!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

The silence that followed was very deep.

Malik stood very still.

He could not feel anything but an aching pull in his chest, and he was glad for the rag, because it hid his face.

The man who had shouted lowered his head.

"I’m sorry... I’m... I’m sorry."

"Everyone’s sorry."

Safira wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.

"Now come with me. All of you. We have a camp nearby with food and walls. We will keep you safe."

They did.

The people slowly turned and fell in behind the cloaked ranks.

A few of them cried, a few of them thanked her, and Malik stood a moment longer than the rest, until he felt a pair of warm brown eyes on the side of his face.

Safira was looking at him.

She said nothing.

She only calmly held his gaze.

Malik felt something prickle at the back of his neck.

He should have gone the other way.

He knew it with the clear part of his mind, the part that planned and weighed.

But his feet moved on their own, and he followed.

Malik couldn’t help himself.

His heart couldn’t take it.

He needed to see them.