Faith and Moonlight by Mark Gelineau, Joe King

Roan
    The smell of the fire still clung to the boy.
    It clung to all of his friends as well, filling the space
of the small wagon they slept in. In spite of the open top, in spite of the
cold breeze that blew throughout the day, even in spite of the two weeks that
had passed since the night the orphanage burned down, the children still
carried the smell with them. The scent of soot and ashes, of fear and death.
    The loss of the orphanage weighed on him more than he
thought it would. It had not been much, but in the two years he had been there,
it had been more of a home than he had ever known. It had been where he first
met the others, and where they welcomed him in as family.
    And now, they had all lost everything.
    Roan slammed his hand against the wagon’s side, the
coarse-grained wood biting into his knuckles. In the cold, quiet of the late
evening, the sound of it was like a crack of thunder, and immediately he
regretted it.
    “Can’t sleep?” Kay’s dark brown eyes shined in the low
light.
    “Did I wake you?” he whispered.
    “No,” she said, rubbing her eyes sleepily as she sat up.
Her long brown hair had fallen forward, obscuring her face. Her features were
soft and pale, accentuated by large, bright eyes that seemed to take in
everything at once. He had always thought she was beautiful.
    “I did. I’m sorry, Kay,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“Go back to sleep.”
    “What’s wrong?” she asked, shifting more upright, a slight
edge of tension in her voice.
    “Nothing. Just excitement, I guess. Cadell says we should
arrive at Resa the day after tomorrow.” He gestured toward the only adult in
the wagon, the old man handling the reins of the mule team that pulled the
wagon. The back of his bald head was wrinkled and marred with small scars and
dark, tattooed lines.
    Kay’s eyes narrowed. “Do you really think we can trust him?
That he’s telling the truth about starting new lives there?” she asked. “I
mean, after everything, how can we trust anything?”
    “He did save our lives,” he reminded her gently.
    “And you saved his.”
    “Well, that means we should be able to trust each other,
don’t you think?”
    Kay was quiet for a moment. “I guess so,” she said, but
there was no confidence in her words.
    In the half-light, she looked smaller. Diminished. The
suspicion and doubt in her voice hurt Roan in his heart. Kay had always seen
the best in people. She had always been the first to smile. The first to trust.
    But that was before the fire.
    Roan reached out and Kay moved to sit beside him. She
seemed so small as she settled in. He tousled her hair in an effort to try and
cheer her. “Come on. There are great things ahead for us. We’re going to become
Razors. Like the great heroes in Elinor’s stories.”
    The wagon rocked slowly and both looked to Elinor asleep on
the floor, Alys and Ferran beside her. Roan felt a twinge of sadness at the
thought of separating from his friends after they had been through so much.
    Almost as if she could read his thoughts, Kay sighed. “I
wish they could come with us,” she whispered.
    Roan slowly nodded. “Me too, but they won’t be too far
away. And they’ll be following their dreams. Making them come true, just like
we are.”
    “Are we, Roan?” Kay asked. “How? Other than kitchen chores,
I’ve never held a blade in my life. How am I going to become some great
warrior?”
    “That’s what the school is for,” he chided her gently.
“They’ll handle teaching us and Cadell said he will give us a letter of
introduction, so they will give us a chance. That chance is all we need.”
    Even as he spoke, he hated himself for lying. Kay was
right. She had no experience fighting, and she would be going up against the
best in the kingdom, students who trained their entire lives for that one sole
purpose. She had little chance of making it. And if she didn’t, if she failed,
then she would truly have nothing.
    But what choice did they