The Multitude, стр. 81

“Don’t worry about me, Brewster,” she rasped. “Free the other brides caged in the compound…beside the palace!”

Brewster? That odd salutation tickled his memory but failed to awaken it. Perhaps in her excitement, Maynya had spoken a lover’s name. The notion she had someone else in her life turned his stomach to the point he almost retched.

Quintus rebuked himself for letting his selfish needs slow him in the heat of battle. He took Maynya’s hand and headed for the opening of the tent, pausing just a moment to glance back at the few brides inside. “Follow me!” He had to shout above the insects to be heard.

The locusts parted to let them pass.

Outside the tent, pandemonium reigned. Swarming locusts blotted out the sun. People ran in circles, waving their arms in self-defense. Women screamed. Horse-drawn carts overturned.

A bright flash of lightning set a secondary tent ablaze. Thunder shook the ground.

Quintus tightened his grip on Maynya’s hand and turned to the forest.

“Not that way,” she said. Whatever magic she’d created left her pale and unsteady. She faltered against him, trembling.

The brides poured out of the tent and gathered around them.

Maynya rallied, straightening and pointing toward the trees in the distance. “Chrysanta, Jillian, Johanna…all of you others, run to Sanctimonia! We’ll free your sisters and send them on your heels.”

Each of the women hurried up to hug her. A moment later, these dozen prospective brides in their flashy makeup and colorful dresses with hair fixed just right in the hopes of finding kind husbands who wouldn’t beat them…these rescued maidens kicked off their shoes and scampered away in bare feet, like a group of traditional Mystic women chasing down a turkey to make a feast for their men.

Quintus stared after the women until they’d put a good distance between themselves and anyone who might have followed had the locusts not proven to be the greater distraction. Then he directed his gaze to the empty marching field he’d tramped across seemingly a hundred years earlier for a meeting with a tyrant of a brother now turned to salt. The thick cloud of buzzing insects obscured the palace from view.

Sadness for the lost soul of his brother thickened his tongue. They’d been friends once, in their early youth, before corruption began eating at Albus like a cancer. But he couldn’t slow himself with these thoughts. “How long will this last?”

Maynya must have sensed his grief. She gave him a moment before answering. “God willing, this will last until every slave is freed, my love.”

The endearment warmed his heart.

They walked into the chaos together, hand in hand. The locusts spilled apart like the red sea for the legendary Moses.

Maynya stroked Quintus’s hand with a thumb. She had love in her eyes.

Her obvious fondness lightened his step. Still he needed to raise a question that would otherwise gnaw away at him like a different form of cancer. “Whose name did you speak earlier?”

She stopped, stepped in front of him, settled gentle hands on his face. Her eyes welled. “You don’t know him, do you?”

“I’m not sure.”

She wiped a tear from her cheek. “A man died for me in another world. I want to thank him with all my heart.”

“Any good man would die for you in this one.”

Maynya’s face seemed to blur ever so slightly, fading the shadows of a hard life from beneath her eyes. The same woman, and yet different somehow, softer, more forward, kissed his cheek. “Quintus, darling, if you ever even think about dying for me again, I’ll kill you.”

For the briefest moment, the thick swarms of locusts transformed into windswept snow—something he’d rarely seen in Virtus. He knew this woman by another name. What name? His foggy brain could only summon his own.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You’ve gone pale.”

He closed his eyes and reopened them…to locusts…and Maynya. The moment had passed. His fellow soldiers had a saying for trauma-induced hallucinations. “The angels lost their grip on my soul.”

“Cast your lot with me, then.” Maynya grabbed his hand and led him toward the lusterless wooden palace of a dead ruler who’d lost his soul to demons. A barred-window building just to the east held brides in need of a champion.