Honored (Book 2 of the In Search of Honor series)

“We are going to see the woman Casia that you requested I drag out of the castle. She claims to be your sister and has been demanding to see you,” Dan responded to my question.

Casia. I had to see her again. I wished she would just leave the city as an exile and never talk to me again. Our last conversation hurt to remember, and I didn’t really want to step on those thorns again. “Do I have to see her again?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

He stopped and turned toward me, “Do you not want to see her? I reasoned that since you requested I save her that you must want to see her.”

I looked down at my feet, unwilling to meet his intense gaze. “She’s my sister.”

“I remember. I also remember the way she treated you previously was unacceptable. If you don’t want to see her, you can let her rot away in the Wall until you are ready to see her.” His voice was steady and held no judgement. He would allow me to duck out of this conversation.

But I really shouldn’t. I shouldn’t just leave her in the Wall. I had to see her because I had chosen to save her life.

I sighed and shook my head, “You are right. I need to see her.”

He started walking again, and my chair rolled along next to him.

The gray hallways slid along the monotony blending in with the even rhythm of Dan’s steps. Would they keep Casia close to where I was, or was she far away?

A part of the wall opened up to one of the mover rooms Dan strapped my chair into the wall of it. As soon as he had himself strapped in, the wall closed and the box took off on a path to somewhere.

“Do you know the full layout of the Wall now?” I asked Dan.

“Yes. Part of the knowledge base I have includes the layout of the Wall. I also have access to certain areas of the Wall that I have gotten approval to, such as the mover.”

“What do you mean that you have access to them?”

“I can connect to them with the chips in my brain. A good way to explain it is this mover. I knew where the entrance was, as we got close I called it. It opened as soon as we got close since I had called it. And then I told it the quadrant I wanted to go to where the cells are located.” As he spoke he was staring blankly at the Wall on the other side of the mover.

His words were hard to follow, “You say you told it where to go, but you didn’t say anything.”

“I don’t have to.” His flat nonchalant delivery sounded cocky. He glanced over at me, “You do not understand.” He paused, his eyes staring at me. “I don’t say it out loud. I think this is what is needed, and it happens.”

Did he mean to say that his brain was part of the wall? Was this another part of the whole cyborg thing I couldn’t wrap my head around.

The mover came to a stop, and Dan unbuckled me from it, and the entry wall slid open.

“We are in the cell area of the Wall now. These are mostly used when the elders want to discipline someone for going against their directive.”

“Why is Casia here then?” I asked as we walked down another bland Wall hallway.

He stopped and turned toward the right wall. “I knew you were dying, so I came straight to the Wall with you dragging her along with me the whole way. When I got here, no one really knew what to do with her, so they stuck her in a cell.”

The part of the wall Dan was staring at opened. Inside the room was a small space, and then bars. Behind the bars was one of the fancy Wall rooms. It looked just as comfortable as the rooms I had stayed in previously.

Lying on the mint green covers of the bed was Casia, still in her long purple dress. She rolled over to look at us, “Liv. I guess you’ve come to gloat now that our roles are reversed.”

“No,” she looked so dejected sprawled out on the bed. “I came to talk. I’m not here to berate you or anything. You are my sister, Casia. The sister who I looked up to, the sister who protected me for years.”

She gave a hollow dead sounding laugh that sounded forced and fake, “And you are the sister who betrayed her family. You got Father killed and the man I loved killed. You might as well kill me too now.”

I shook my head, “I don’t want you to die.”

“What if I want to die?” She rolled back to her back and stared up at the ceiling above her.

“There is more to life outside the Wall. Leave with the first group of exiles.” I wanted to save her more than anything else.

She rolled back over to look at me. “Why? Why would I want to live? Everything I cared about has been destroyed. My beloved James is dead. Everything is in ruins. All of my work to find and destroy the spies is gone. All ruined by you and your little rebellion.”

The pain in her voice reminded me of how I felt when I thought Dan was dead, but it also hurt that she blamed all her issues on me. “What was I supposed to do?” I asked her.

“You could have started with not trying to plan to kill James when you were a Dishonored no one. James was going to get our family out of being Dishonored.”

“How could I sit back and do nothing when our father was killed by the King’s order and we were wrongly Dishonored? How would this James of yours have had the power to get us out of being Dishonored?”

“James was the King, you idiot. He loved me, and he was working with me to fix the city. It was the spies that were the real enemy. You’ve ruined everything, but you are probably happy. Your friends, the spies, are now free to do whatever they want again.” Her voice was like spoiled milk.

I shrugged off her sourness, “I did what I had to. The city was suffering under the King. Mother died Dishonored. There was so much wrong with this city that something had to change. I offered leaving as that change, but it was refused. Your King would rather see people suffer and die than change the status quo.”

She shook her head, “He looked beyond single people to the welfare of the city as a society. A single person does not matter when you are trying to balance keeping a City alive and functioning.”

“Casia, the city is the people! Every person’s life matters. Just as the King told me, without the people there is no City. You have to care about the lives of each and every person, or else your city will fail.”

“The lives of each and every person don’t matter if everyone dies. James was trying to save the most lives possible. That is the way a ruler has to think. You will learn that individual lives mean nothing once you take power.” Casia twisted her lips in facsimile of a smile.

I shook my head, “I’m not taking power. I will set up a government where the people will choose their leaders.”

Her eyes widened, and her mouth opened slightly in an expression of shock, “You are doing what? Are you crazy? You think a King is bad, wait till you have people who have no idea what they are doing, take bribes from people, and will do anything to stay in power.”

“The people will vote them out then.”

“Will they? People can be fooled quite easily. How do you think James had me standing behind his throne? How do you think the spies crawl through the city without a care? How did you convince numerous people to die for your cause? It’s all about how you manipulate their minds and feelings.”

She was so negative toward humans. People were complex, unique, and interesting individuals who for the most part were good people at their core, “Why do you doubt the intentions of people so much?”

“Because underneath, humans are evil, greedy, bastards who will do whatever it takes to get ahead. They will trample on the will of anyone around them if it means they get just a touch more power. I’ve used that understanding to maneuver myself next to James where I was in power.” She ran her hand over the smooth fabric of her dress.

“You aren’t evil,” I told her. She was my sister who had done so much to protect me growing up.

“Am I not? I learned from Jordan how to win the guards’ favor. I used them for what I needed and worked my way up to where I wanted to be. I got myself assigned to the castle where I could see James, and he could quietly work with me to get me a new identity. I did all of this for myself. I did it so that I could see my friend and beloved again. By the time I made it to the castle, he was a King and not a prince. He was carefully trained his whole life in the careful balance required to run a city, but he chose to help me at the potential cost of the city because he loved me. We were selfish together. We chose ourselves over all the citizens in the city, and we paid for it,” She paused, her eyes resting on me, and a tear fell down her cheek onto the pillow under her head.

She wiped at the tear and continued, “James with his life, and me, I lost him. I lost the only person that mattered to me in this City. I lost my reason for existing.”

“You will find a new reason.” I remembered my own grief and feeling of emptiness. I started with finding my reason in attempting to die, but once I started down that path it had been so hard to keep going. Looking back, I realized that even as I had walked toward my death I wanted to live.

Her eyes looked past me, “No, I won’t have to. The person taking care of me informed me that I will be handed over to the people of the City. You can imagine what the mob will chose to do with the woman who sat next to the King.”

“No, they won’t! I won’t let them start out by executing you. You can stay here in the Wall, or you can leave with the first group of exiles. You don’t have to die.” I begged her.

“You claim you want a government the people chose, but you are too afraid of their choices to even let them decide what to do with your sister?” She asked, her eyes focused back on me.

“Casia, please. Go into exile. Go see the village I lived at and the girl I was taking care of. Her name is Jade. I left her to come back here. You can find your new reason and life out there.” I had saved her life. I didn’t want to see her lose it to her grief.

“You weren’t lying about going into Exile then? I guess your underlying selfishness is your desire to live. Don’t force your desires on me, and anyway, an execution is good for city morale. People love seeing an evil doer get their deserved end. It makes them feel justified in their existence. It’s a great way to get your new citizen run government’s feet bloody.”

Dan’s voice broke her spewing of words, “Yes. I was from outside this city. There is a whole world beyond these walls.”

Her eyes moved to Dan, and her gaze slowly moved down, looking at his metal arms, “You look and sound quite different from the last time I saw you. You look like a plaything of the Wall now.”

“One of the city soldiers almost killed me in the fighting. The Wall saved my life. This was the cost. A figure of speech for what was done to me might be that I am a plaything of the Wall now,” his voice maintained its even matter of fact tone that he had about everything.

Casia’s eyes came back to me, “That isn’t living. Whatever he is now is not the same. Just as I don’t want to go on living without James.”

I had no idea if her words would perturb him, but I reached out and gripped his metal hand anyway, “He chose to live on. He is still Dan, no matter what has changed.”

Casia looked at our linked hands, and then her eyes met mine again, “Tell you what, I’ll make a bet with you.” She stopped, her lips twisting into a smile again.

I waited for her to say more, but she said nothing, so I finally took the bait and asked, “ A bet? What kind of bet?”

“I’ll bet my life. Like the way you bet your life when you entered the castle. I will be turned over to your people’s government, and once it is set up, I will be the first trial. You will let the people’s government pick my fate. If they offer the age old offering of exile or execution, you win and I will walk out with the first group of exiles. If they don’t and they choose to execute me, I win. I will die up on the execution stage, and you will watch and say nothing. You cannot protest the choice of the people.”

How was her dying winning? I couldn’t… I looked into her eyes and saw the mad joy her solution brought her. It echoed my own fervor when I decided to die for the city. The only way I could convince her to live was through this bet, “You promise to take exile if they offer it at all?”

“Yes,” her words held her own conviction. She would live if I won her bet.

I held onto Dan’s cold hand tightly, steeling myself to say the words I hated myself for, “Then I will take you up on the bet.”

“Deal. See you at the trial Liv.” Her voice sounded upbeat and excited. The excitement at a solution to her grief.

“Good bye Casia. I will see you again at the trial.” I told her and then turned to look up at Dan who was staring at Casia.

I let go of his hand knowing he wouldn’t move if I continued to hold it, “I think we’re done here.”

He looked down at me, and nodded. Efficiently he turned and the wall behind us slid open. My chair turned, and quickly maneuvered itself back to his right side as we headed out down the hall to our next goal.

“Good bye!” I could hear Casia’s voice following me out.