An Army of Sword Lilies, YA Fantasy - First Pages

Chapter One

    I am still finishing up the hemming on Mari’s stack of tunics when Thea bursts through the door, her small frame quivering with sobs. I toss the fabric from my lap and crouch beside her, stroking her knotted blonde curls as she wipes her nose across her sleeve. 
    “What’s wrong?” 
    “The-the…” she tries to get the words out between gasps, but all that erupts from her mouth is another incomprehensible wail. My heart swells and pushes up into my throat. Tears come easily to my little sister, but her raw eyes and red-rubbed nose are beginning to frighten me. I know. 
    “The… soldiers… are here,” she squeals out between cries, confirming my fears “The raiding ones!”
    But they were just here four days ago. No wonder she’s terrified. The “raiding soldiers,” as we’ve called them, always mean trouble. They scavenge and abuse, looking for extra supplies and funds beyond the monthly taxation that already turns out our pockets and leaves every woman struggling to put a full meal on the table each night. 
    “They took Roe!” Thea’s face scrunches at my quizzical look, and she lets out another loud sob. “I saw them take him, Fayre! They took him and they’re looking for others!”
    Merek! I’m up, flurrying about the room as she sobs to stuff the unfinished tunics in my bag and rake a brush through my hair. I throw off my laundering smock and snap open the top button of my dress. Whatever works. My heart is pounding so fiercely in my chest, I fear I’ll faint before I make it out the door. 
    “What side did they come from?”
    “The west,” she whimpers, “I think.”
    I sip in a breath. So they didn’t find him. He’s safe. He has to be. I didn’t warn Merek about the soldier’s arrival, not this time. He wouldn’t have had time to find cover if they passed through the eastern woods, if they saw the ravine tucked between the layers of hunched trees. I pray Thea is right.
    “Fayre!” Thea snatches my hand as I stoop to lace up my boots. “Didn’t you hear me? They took Roe!”
    I pass a hand over her cheek before resuming my laces. “It’s his time,” I mutter. 
    Thea shakes her head violently and practically screams. “No! He’s not a sixth-year till the snow flies!” Her bottom lip puffs out as she trembles. 
    “You’re mistaken, dear.” But if anyone, Thea would know. Roe’s a friend of hers, a scrappy little boy who always wanders over to our cottage around midday looking for extra food from Mari. He’s got the biggest dimples you’ll ever see and Mari says she simply can’t resist the freckles that splatter his face like stars. Thea usually ends up roping him into her game of house; he’s the father, she’s the mother, and the little ones Mari watches for the village women during cotton-picking hours are the children. 
    “They took Silas too early,” Thea whines. Silas… another one of Thea’s friends, who left for enlistment last month. “His Ma said he still had four months left. Now he’s gone, and so is Roe!”
    Her wail shakes all four feet of her. I try to swallow, but the air lodges like dry cornmeal in my throat. She can’t be right. The women here won’t fight the soldiers over much, but they’ll spit tooth and nail to protect the precious months before their sons’ enlistment. Birth papers are safeguarded like silver in the Oustridian parts, only flashed when a soldier tries to lay his hands on a boy too early. They couldn't have taken either of the boys before their time. 
    But then again, Silas was another of Thea’s friends. He, too, was recruited to play “father” of her corn husk dolls and the little ones months before the soldiers took him. Thea would have known the exact date he became a sixth-year. It’s all the little boys ever talk about here, for fear or excitement or sorrow.                                                                                                             If they’re taking boys too young, what would they do with Merek if they found him? As soon as it comes, I push the thought away. Today is not that day. 
    And it won’t be for Roe either. 
    “C’mon.” I grab Thea’s clammy fingers in mine. “Let’s go get Roe back.”
    Thea’s sob of relief turns into a squeal as I tug on her arm and we hurry out of the small cottage. I shove open the door, squinting in the light that blankets the outdoors. 
    The noon-day sun glints off the freshly watered plants in Mari’s garden, sinking into the surrounding cobbled paths and patchy grass. Without the little ones scampering around the front yard, our home seems so peaceful. The solemn serenity of a widowed woman whose only son went to war. 
    Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Mari so willingly watches the village women’s children. No matter how misbehaved, how sick or snivelly, the chaos is always welcomed over the quiet. 
    But for me, leaving the quiet fills me head to toe in a sudden dread. Thea’s grip on my hand tenses as we rush past threadbare homes and pastures toward the markets. I should have made her stay in the cottage, I realize quickly. She’s the first to scamper into the darkest closet of the house when the soldiers come–the monthly taxers or the raiders alike–even though I’ve told her she’s much too young for them to pay her any mind.      
    We round the bend of the street corner, entering the chaos of the markets. Women push past us on all sides, carting sackcloths, grains, and measly coppers to appease the soldiers, who feign dissatisfaction at whatever they’re offered. Thea’s squeezing my palm so tight, the blood isn’t flowing to my fingertips anymore.
    “Relax, will you?” I chide. “Where’d they take him?”
    Her lower lip warbles. She doesn’t know. But just as I ask, a woman’s wail pierces the clearing. I jerk my head up and see the caravan ahead, the soldiers stamped in front of it, hands hovering over their sheathed weapons. 
    My heart palpitates to the drum of one name, even as the woman mournfully cries for another. Merek. Merek. Merek.
    It’s a familiar fear, the feeling of my chest shrinking, clamping tight over my pounding heart. But the terror never eases, no matter how many times I’ve seen the caravans, no more than the salt of my sweat never ceases to sting my eyes in the cotton fields. 
    He’s safe. He’s hidden. He knows the plan for when they come. It’s the same story, the same reassurance I tell myself, but the words wrap me with about as much comfort as a chilled morning shroud. It’s always been true. He’s always been safe. 
    So far. 
    Now it’s my fingers that tighten around Thea’s small hand. I loosen my grip at her yelp, apologizing. She stares up at me, her fierce blue eyes swimming and gleaming in the sunlight. “He’s not in there,” she whispers. “There’s only two boys they’ve taken and they already fined a different mother for being overdue.”
    A tear beads and drips down her cheek. The little smile she shows me as I feel the breath ease back into my lungs is wise beyond her years. Gone is the overtired girl screaming you only care about him! or the pleading cry to come with me on my daily ventures to visit him. Here and now, seventh-year Thea knows he is just as much a part of me as she, and that losing him would render my very soul split in two.
    The shriek of a blade leaving its sheath sings through the markets. The woman bustling about stop and stare at the scene in front of the caravan, where two soldiers have shoved the sobbing mother to the ground and threatened her with a sword lest she come closer. 
    I slip away from Thea and rush toward the woman, stopping and falling down beside her. I don’t know what I’m doing as I reach out to rub her shoulders, trying to offer any semblance of comfort, but even so I am appalled that she only yanks away from my gentle touch. 
    She jerks a crooked finger up at the soldier. “He’s a thief!” she howls. Beneath the shadow of his helm, I could swear the soldier grins. “He took my boy too early! He’s not due for months yet, and I got the papers to prove it!”
    The woman raises her other fist, clutching tightly to a folded worn document that must prove her helpless plea. I look past the soldiers into the caravan, where two boys are huddled inside. One sits in the back corner, his head up, silent tears dribbling down his chin. He’s terrified, but unwilling to make a scene. He’s overdue at the garrison as it is, and is smart enough to know that resisting will only make more trouble for him and his Ma. Roe, on the other hand, is shaking like a sheaf of wheat in the wind and crying audibly. His face is a mess of tears and snot, and he’s wet himself, a dark splotch spreading over his grain-sack pants. 
    The distance between Roe and his mother is only a few feet, but it might as well be miles away for the soldier that stands between them. I rise on shaky knees and glare up at the man who holds the sword. “Let him go.” There’s a trill in my voice and in my body, and not to my surprise, the soldier only laughs. 
    I say it again, more determination clipped in my tone. “He’s not due at the garrison yet. Let him go.” 
    The soldier beside the one holding the sword scoffs. “You want fines for insubordination, girl? Or just a good cuff to the face?”
    I want to squeeze my eyes shut and disappear. But all I can think about is Merek. If I can’t defend Roe, who they have no right in the world to rip from his mother’s outstretched arms just yet, how will I ever be able to defend my friend?
    “We’ll go to the courts,” I say, the lie hot on my face. Like the monarch would ever care to waste three of his precious minutes hearing the plea of an Oustridian mother, much less offer her son three spare months away from the training grounds. The soldier knows it too, and he steps forward with a humored snort, rolling his wrist like he’s prepared to strike. 
    But it’s another pair of hands that rests on my shoulders: the gentle, weathered palms of my Mari. I could sob for relief and anguish that she’s here to whisk me away from the soldiers. “That won’t be necessary,” she says in her cracked, sing-song voice. “Go get your sister, Fayre.” In her stormy gray eyes and the wrinkles that purse around her face, there’s a message beneath the gentle tone. Go get your sister and take her far away. Now. 
    As I slowly back up, Mari stoops to pick up Roe’s weeping mother. To her touch, the mother doesn’t shy away, although no one ever resists Mari’s comfort. I watch my adoptive mother help the woman up with as much tender care as she once held me, wipe her tears, and lead her away silently as the caravan doors shut the boys inside and the soldiers take their leave. 
    The silence that hung for the mournful scene dissipates as the caravan rumbles away from the village and the soldiers riding on the footboards turn their heads. Women resume the bustle of buying and selling, carting grain for a copper, and shoveling a mid-day meal of pottage and bread into their mouths before venturing off in groups to work in the fields. Even the birds call back and forth to one another as the chatter rises like the curling wafts of steam from the large pots of pottage cooking over the fire.
    Mari and the woman are gone by the time Thea comes to find me, and I have to shake myself back to reality when I feel her press up against my leg. “Fayre,” Thea says, and her little hand stretches toward my cheek. “You’re crying. You never cry.”
    It’s not true–I cry often enough–just not in front of her. Sure enough, my eyes have welled up and the tears I tried to suppress are finding their way to my nose. I offer Thea a sad smile and slip her under my arm. We walk, close together and quiet, back to the house.