The Forever Knight

3

How can I describe Cricket? She’s like a mirror image, the opposite of what you think you see. She’s pretty but doesn’t care at all about looks. She hordes trinkets till they’re spilling out of her pockets. She complains about her chores but does them to perfection, and she loves to be alone but clings to me like bark. Near as we can tell she’s fourteen years old. Sometimes she acts half that age, sometimes twice it. She’ll talk for an hour then shut up tight for days, and no one-not even Minikin when she was alive-can ever figure out what’s going on inside her impish head.

The day we left Grimhold, Cricket was in the mood to talk. She wore the cape we’d made together out of the rass skin, proudly primping it over her little shoulders as her pony sauntered through the canyon. I’d gone to Grimhold myself so we could work on the cape together. When she saw me arrive, Cricket circled me like a child searching for sweets, wondering what I’d brought her. The sun was hot on the black cape as we rode, but Cricket didn’t care. She was full of questions and eager to get back to Jador. I was happy just to see her smiling.

A decent road winds from Grimhold to Jador, through a canyon of sheer, red rock. Inhumans and Jadori have used the road for decades, keeping their alliance secret. Before Gilwyn took over, Minikin was Grimhold’s mistress. She’d spent her vast lifetime searching for the kind of kids Gilwyn had been once. Blind kids or crippled, she brought them all to Jador for an Akari, for the chance to live a normal life. I’m an Inhuman now, too, in a way, because Malator keeps me alive. Without him, my old wounds would quickly kill me.

Cricket isn’t one of us. She has no Akari, and no use for one. She’s not blind or lame or deaf. She’s normal in every way-except for her broken memory-and it’s only because Minikin loved and pitied her that she has such access to our world. Seekers from the Bitter Kingdoms had found her in Akyre. She’d been wandering, they said, starved and alone. No family and no memory of one either. All she knew for sure was her name. Cricket.

I rode beside her on my horse, listening to her explanations. Ahead of us, the two Jadori warriors Gilwyn assigned as escorts bobbed on the backs of their green-scaled kreels.

“It was like a dream,” Cricket exclaimed. “Like it was talking to me. It was screaming, and no one else could hear it.” She turned, imploring me. “That must have happened to you once, right Lukien?”

“No, Cricket. I’ve never had a chicken talk to me.”

“With its eyes,” she stressed. “It knew I would help. I had to!”

“Uh huh.” I nodded, bored with her horseshit. “What about all the chickens you actually eat? Can’t they talk to you? And what about the cistern?”

“He told you that?” Cricket frowned. “Gilwyn’s an ass.”

“Hey!” I reined in my horse.

She kept riding for a while, then stopped. “Sorry.”

The warriors turned around to look at us. “Go,” I told them, waving them on. “It’s all right.”

I rode up close to Cricket. “You want to go live with the other Seekers in the shanties?”

“I’m not a Seeker.”

“Anyone who comes across the desert to Jador is a Seeker, Cricket. And any one of them would trade places with you. You live in the palace because Gilwyn lets you. So show him some respect.”

“I said I was sorry.” She sighed as she got her pony going. “You ain’t been in such a great mood either, you know. Like you got an itch or something.”

“Yes, I’ve got an itch. And I don’t need you making it worse. I come back from the desert and all I hear about is how worried everyone is about you. I’m not your mother, Cricket.”

“What’s itchin’ you, Lukien?”

I still hadn’t told her about Gilwyn’s idea. I’d meant to, but the days just sort of slipped away. “Nothing,” I said, “forget it,” and reached up to scratch beneath my eye patch. Cricket stared, trying to see under it.

“You got an eyeball under there?”

“Of course I do. It’s gone white, that’s all. Sometimes I get a grain of sand in there. Makes me crazy.”

“How’d that happen to you? You’re a handsome man, Lukien. Bet you were pretty to look at when you were younger.”

I smiled, because she was so good at changing subjects. “You’re dodging, Cricket. We’re not done talking about the cistern.”

“I’ll paint it back to normal,” she groaned. “So what happened?”

“A Norvan scimitar.”

“From when you were a mercenary?”

“That’s right.”

“Must make it hard to fight, having one eye.”

“Two would be better,” I admitted. “Doesn’t hurt any more, though. Malator sees to that. Nothing hurts me anymore. Not for long, anyway.”

We both got quiet, the horse hooves echoing around the canyon. The claws of the kreels clicked on the sandy road as their tongues flicked in and out. Cricket looked at me. She wanted a story.

“Norvor’s a lot like Akyre, I guess. Just a bunch of barons fighting for territory now. No real king or queen any more. There’s been fighting in that part of the world since I can remember.”

“Yup,” nodded Cricket. That much she already knew. Everyone figured it was the fighting that took her family away, but Cricket couldn’t remember.

“I had to be a freelance,” I continued. “Didn’t want to be, but I was exiled from Liiria then. Not much else to do but hire out my sword. The Diamond Queen was rich enough to pay, so I took it. Got a lot of cuts and scrapes working for her, but this was the worst of ’em.” I gestured to my blind eye.

“Norvor,” she echoed. “The people who brought me here talked about Norvor, thought I might have come from there. I told them I was sure Akyre was my home. Don’t know why, though.”

“You’ll remember one day,” I told her. “If you want to.”

“Of course I want to! It’s all in my head, waiting for me to discover it. Maybe it’ll come to me in a dream someday.”

“Or maybe a chicken will tell you where you came from.”

We laughed, which was good because neither of us liked the way the conversation had gone. The sun was warm and the sky was crystal clear, and all of a sudden I just started talking.

“Gilwyn thinks I should go away,” I told her. “He says Jador doesn’t really need me right now. Says it’s time for me to find out about myself, just like you.”

Cricket’s round face tightened. “Huh?”

“I’m thinking he’s right. I’ve been restless here. That’s the itch. I need to see what’s out there for me, maybe do some good in the world. Like a knight-errant. Try to find my mission.”

“You’ve got a mission, Lukien. You’re Shalafein!”

“Yeah, well, I’ll still be Shalafein. I’ll just be doing it somewhere else. Don’t you know how a knight-errant works? He rides around helping people. I’d be doing that in the name of Jador.”

Cricket looked puzzled. “Sounds like being a mercenary to me. You’re the Bronze Knight, Lukien. Why do you need to go around proving yourself all the time? Why can’t you just stay here?”

“Because I’m going mad here, Cricket.” I slowed down, letting the Jadori get further ahead. “You remember when you told me how you like to keep doing things, how sometimes you can’t control yourself because the stuff in your head drives you crazy, because you’re trying to remember so hard that you can’t stop your mind from buzzing? That’s what it’s like for me. You need to remember things. . but I need to forget.”

Cricket lifted her chin. “You mean Cassandra.”

“Yeah. Cassandra.” I touched my sword, thinking its power would make me feel better. “Maybe we’re the same, you and me. Always looking for trouble. Sometimes I have to fight just to feel something besides sorry for myself.” I looked at her. “You understand. I know you do.”

Cricket nodded. “I do. Just thinking about myself, I guess. With Minikin gone, and now you. . What’ll happen to me, Lukien?”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” I said. It was all I could think to say, the kind of thing no one ever wants to hear. “If it wasn’t safe here I wouldn’t be going.”

“But what’ll I do? I don’t even know who I am. And Gilwyn’s always too busy for me. He’ll just shovel me under with chores.”

She looked genuinely scared. Not about the chores, which was nonsense, but about being alone. And that’s when I had my idea. At first I just smiled as it came over me, then I chuckled. Cricket grimaced.

“It’s not funny.” Her face got gloomy. “I don’t want to stay here without you.”

“Well,” I said, taking a deep breath, “a knight should have a squire. What about that?”

“A squire?”

“Someone to look after my armor, my horse. You think you could do those things?”

“Me?” She looked as startled as I was by my idea. “But what about your mission?”

“You could be my mission, Cricket. You want to find out about yourself? So do I. We can go to Akyre together, try to find something to knock loose your memories.”

“Akyre.” Cricket’s gloominess returned even darker. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Before I could answer, Malator screamed in my ear, Yes!

I patted my sword to show them both I wasn’t afraid. “There’s no safer place than at my side. I’ll have a squire, and you’ll have your own bodyguard-one that can’t get himself killed.”

That’s idiotic. You can be killed! You’re not immortal!

I said to Cricket, “Gilwyn’ll try to talk us out of it, but I’ll make him understand. It was his idea in the first place. Why should he begrudge me some friendly company?”

Because she’s just a kid!

Cricket thought about it, then gave me her little grin. “I want to do it,” she said. “It’s like I’m out there, wandering around somewhere. I want to go find myself.”

“It’s a long way,” I warned. “Hard travel.”

“I know it; I already did it once. I can make it,” she promised.

“Good,” I declared, pleased with her passion. For the first time in months I felt happy.

We rode on, Malator chattering at me the whole while. Out of spite I ignored him. Malator didn’t control me, I told myself. Let him rant and rave. I was a man, not a boy. I’d go wherever I damn well pleased.

When I get an itch, I scratch till it’s bloody.