Lydia nodded slowly. “Right. We can’t solve it all at once, so let’s deal with what we can … Come on, I want to look around a bit more.”
Both twins had learned from a young age how to fade into crowds, to appear as if they belonged but not like they were particularly important. It might seem an odd skill set for a pair of pampered kids from the emperor’s blood, but neither of them had been particularly interested in wandering around with bodyguards surrounding them at all times, so they’d had to figure out a way to keep said guards from finding them after they’d ditched their escorts.
So the twins inconspicuously made their way through the refugee camp, watching everything with eyes glittering.
Men, women, and children were collapsed along the side of the makeshift roadway, most clearly injured or exhausted beyond reasonable measures. Neither of the twins had medical training, but they could recognize blaster burns and shrapnel injuries, the sort of thing you only saw in a real fight.
They’d both seen their fair share of those, which often struck people not close to the Imperial Court as surprising. Both of the twins had survived several assassination attempts in their young lives, and though most seemed to believe that the attempts were more likely warnings than real tries to see them in their pyres, it didn’t lesson the injuries to those who had been sworn to protect them.
Death was an old friend to any Scourwind, but normally it came quickly on the beam of a blaster, not from the slow descent into starvation.
A scuffle ahead of them caught their attention, and they made their way quietly toward it. A single young boy, about their age, was standing over a weak figure of a girl. Five others surrounded them, trying to steal the girl’s blanket and a small bag that the twins presumed contained what little she still owned. The boy they’d first noticed was fighting viciously, but it was clear he wasn’t going to last much longer.
Around them a few others looked on, some with concern and some with varying degrees of disinterest. No one had the energy or, apparently, the desire to intervene, much to Brennan’s disgust.
“Bren …” Lydia softly spoke up.
“I’ve got lead. Follow me in and watch for stragglers.”
Lydia nodded firmly. The two stepped up their pace and angled their approach to close in on the attackers’ uncovered flank.
Under other circumstances, Kayle would have been disappointed in them for getting into a fight, Lydia reflected as Brennan launched his attack. He snap kicked the knee of the closest attacker, then followed through with a palm thrust to the shoulder that sent the man hard to the ground. There was a cracking sound when his knee met dirt, probably a dislocation, thought Lydia as she stayed close to Brennan but let him take the offensive actions.
They’d been trained in the basics of fighting most of their lives, but Kayle had always told them to never call attention to themselves. Enough attention rained down on them as a matter of course; anything else was superfluous and could actually give their enemies information that could be used against them.
Before the others could react, Brennan swept the next man with enough force to take him off his feet, then dove at two others and got them in a headlock as he drove them to the ground with all his weight. Lydia casually snap kicked the second target as he struggled to get up, putting his lights out with the edge of her foot. She stayed focused on the last attacker, who was rushing in to help his two compatriots as they struggled on the ground with Brennan.
She met him with a heel kick, launched straight out from her core and braced directly to the ground via her other leg. The air rushed out of his lungs and he collapsed, curling up on the ground and only moving to gasp and moan.
Lydia looked around and then down to where Brennan was still struggling with his last pair. “You good?”
“Sure,” Brennan gasped as he winked at her. “The hard part is not snapping their necks when they struggle, Lyd, you know that.”
Lydia smirked very slightly as the duo went very still at those words, and she shook her head slightly. Brennan was always a better master of wordplay and psychological games in fights than she was. Normally he used it to drive his minders mad, of course.
She turned her attention to the two they’d stepped in to help, appraising them carefully. They were both clearly hungry, like everyone else, but their dehydration was obvious. Water wasn’t exactly hard to come by in the empire, but it wasn’t precisely easy to get either. Rains habitually swept most regions, even the deserts, but there were few natural sources available.
Water that fell from the skies just … vanished into the ground.
No one really knew where it went, and people had dug hundreds of feet down without finding any hint of moisture. In fact, past a couple hundred feet it was like there had never been any water.
Unfortunately that meant that there were few streams, lakes, and the like, and if you didn’t have a condenser or a good aquifer available, then you could easily go thirsty waiting for the rains. Imperial garrisons were all well equipped, of course, and every town had both emergency supplies and a reasonably outfitted aquifer for their needs. But the closest town to their current location was far too small for the number of people present, and the garrison had been locked down with only a token number of low-ranking guards remaining, who were unlikely to do anything without orders.
The legion should be here already, but if these people are running from battles, then they could die before things get under control and anyone has time to wonder what happened to them, thought Lydia.
“Thank you,” the boy croaked out, collapsing to the ground and just sitting there as he panted for breath.
Lydia nodded simply. “Are you OK?”
“I’ll live,” he said tiredly, “for a while anyway.”
His eyes darted to one side, to the girl, and he moved to her in a flash.
“I’m fine,” the girl mumbled, pushing him back.
Lydia could hear the dry rasp in her voice. She pulled a waterskin from under her cloak and tossed it to the duo. “Here.”
They held it between them, stunned and disbelieving, transfixed by the flexible synthetic pouch holding the liquid. Lydia let them take turns drinking, turning back to Brennan, who was just now getting up and dusting himself off.
“That took you long enough,” she said dryly.
He tried to look nonchalant. “I wasn’t kidding about it being harder to leave them alive than otherwise,” he said as he watched the attackers straggle off.
He looked around, noting the stares they were now getting, and grimaced slightly.
“We’d best be moving, Lyd,” he said. “Too many folks eyeing us up.”
Lydia looked around and saw that some of the refugees were also eyeing up the young duo they’d just saved. She knew instantly that if they left them here, the pair would be considered easy pickings.
“You two shouldn’t stay here,” she finally said. “Join us, if you like.”
Brennan shot her an incredulous look, hissing softly, “Lyd …”
She didn’t look at him. Lydia had seen what she needed to see in this mess. The good, the bad, and the apathetic. The bad she would see on their knees, the good at her back, and the apathetic would awake or they would end here. She didn’t much care which.
She turned to Brennan and nodded, and the two of them started to walk away as the pair on the ground glanced at each other and then scrambled to their feet to follow.
William was a tired soul as he made his way back toward the capital. Since the coup he’d been running doggedly around the empire, both searching for the twins and fleeing pursuit. The new emperor—for that was certainly what Corian was—was no fool. He knew just how dangerous the Cadre would be to his rule, and he put every loyal man he had to task hunting down people just like William.