against her hand. “I heard the Firstblade paired you with an unconventional Shield,” she says.
The rattle of her breathing is strong tonight. I’m lucky that the Federation’s poison gas that had destroyed my vocal cords did not permanently injure my lungs. My mother wasn’t so fortunate. Her lungs have never fully healed from that attack, and Mara’s cool, damp winters haven’t helped. Every year around this time, liquid rasps in her chest, and the shack will fill with the scent of lemongrass and mint.
“Less a Shield,” I answer, “and more a punishment for me. He was a prisoner. They said he surrendered willingly at the warfront.”
“What happened?”
I sigh. The smell of dust and sweat from the arena still lingers on me. “He was due to be executed, but I got in the way.”
“You mean you saved someone’s life,” my mother signs gently. “That’s not something to be ashamed of, Talin.”
Not something to be ashamed of. A sudden memory comes to me of the night when Federation soldiers first arrived in our Basean town of Sur Kama. I’d awoken to the sound of breaking glass, the din of voices outside. Then someone, a soldier, was dragging me out of my bed and across the floor of our home. His grip around the skin of my arm burned. I yelped, my heart startled out of slow slumber into a desperate beat, my voice shouting for my mother. And my father, where was my father? What had happened to him?
The soldier forced me to stand outside my home. When I looked up, sobbing, searching for any familiar face, I’d found myself staring up into the frightened eyes of another soldier. He’d been so young, perhaps no older than twelve or thirteen—but he was pointing a gun at me, the insignia on his red sleeves shining. My memory has blurred away the details—in my mind, the emblem is now nothing but a smear of silver.
The first soldier had snapped at the second, at the boy, in Karenese. Probably telling him to hurry up and shoot me. But the boy just stared at me, his hand trembling under the weight of the gun.
Then he said something in protest, voice small and trembling. The first soldier cursed at him, and when the boy stayed frozen, he shoved me again so that I lost my balance on my hands and knees and fell to the ground, my cheek scraping the dirt.
My eyes tilted up enough to see the cut of branches over me, the sinews of the ancient tree that twisted in front of our house. And there, I saw my mother, moving along the branch like a cat, soundless. Her dark gaze met mine, and she shook her head once. I stayed silent. The boy continued to hesitate.
The first soldier lost his patience with the boy and yanked out his own gun. Then my mother moved. She leaped down from the tree, directly onto the first soldier, and snapped his neck with such a clean break that I heard the crack ring through the air. In almost the same movement, she seized the gun from him and pointed it straight at the boy.
The boy stared at her in terror. My mother kept her gun steady, daring him to hurt her daughter. When he hesitated a moment longer, my mother pulled me to my feet. Already, flames were devouring the roof of our house, lit by the embers from a neighbor’s. I didn’t look back at the boy before we ran. Even now, I don’t know whether or not he would have pulled the trigger, if given enough time. He hadn’t fired, but his hand hadn’t dropped either.
Was that saving someone’s life? Or hesitating because you lost your nerve?
Did my mother ever have nightmares about the soldier she’d killed? Or did she thank the skies every day, knowing I could have died instead?
I leave the memory behind and shake my head, irritated at how much it can still shake me. “It was a fool’s act,” I tell my mother now, and I know it. “I shouldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“He’s a prisoner of war from the Federation, Ma.”
“And?”
I look up at her. I’d half-expected my mother to flinch at the thought that I’d endanger my position because of an enemy soldier. To my surprise, though, she just looks intently at me. “Why did you choose to save him, then?” she asks.
“He’s someone important to the Federation.” I offer her the reasons I’ve been listing in my head. “There’s more