The wait I have to experience while I watch her decide what to do with me is agonizingly slow. I feel I’ve been stripped away from any name, title, honor, or image. Beneath her eyes, I’ve started over as a child, with an internal scream that begs to be exonerated and frightened eyes that doubt that will happen.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” I say. “You can hate me. But I want you to know that I will bring you back to the Capital. I will take you home.”

“And then what?” She mumbles.

“We will never meet again.”

She seizes my hand, her nails skimming my skin in a light scratch. “Why?”

“It’s my atonement.”

“No. You can’t get off that easily. I just found you Tao – Zee – whatever it is you are. I do not appreciate your lies.” Her eyes are dour and is firm. “I hate people who lie. Even though you were aware of your false pretenses, you still had the gall to ask me to trust you.”

I bow my head. “I know.”

“I’d be out of my mind to trust you, knowing all of this.”

I know. That’s why you have every right to leave me here, Nari.

“You’d be a coward to take me back there.”

I grow rigid. “I don’t understand how that’s cowardly.”

“You seem to think I’m dense, but I am not. I overheard the Nights.” She releases me and leans back. “There’s a prize for the one who returns me to the Capital. My savior will be awarded a year’s worth of earnings. You plan to take me there for that reason, don’t you? And you plan to run away.”

If I were part of the Nights, I’d be ashamed of their lack of confidentiality. “Yes.”

“You’re bring me back for a reward.”

No. I’m bringing you back for your safety.

“Yes.”

“You can’t simply take me there and then run away. I knew you before, Tao.” Her eyes pierce through my hesitancy. “You weren’t a coward then.”

I stand up and offer her my hand. She stands on her own without it. “I have to bring you home,” I say. My wound hurts, but I will treat it later. I doubt she’ll help me now. “The Nights are still after us.”

“You’re abandoning me again?”

I stop walking. I glance over my shoulder. Her face represents failure. “I’m not abandoning you. I’m saving you.” Because you’ll only ever be safe when you’re not with me.

She picks up the herbs and carries them in her arms as we begin our trek toward the Capital. We are noiseless save for an occasional remark of caution. We travel for four days like that. We forget the sound of our voices and the music of each other’s tone. When we reach a post that marks us to be two days away from the Capital, the words resurface, giving way to a new inconvenience. She’ll insist that I change my plans, and I will not listen to her.

“How long have you been with the Nights?”

“Since I was born,” I answer.

Her friendly talk is a bothersome itch I cannot scratch away. I want her to be silent like she was the first four nights, but I know that the closer we are to the Capital, the more tense she will become.

We travel faster. We are tired, and our resources have worn out. I steal a cloak from a nearby town so that I may use it to cover my face when I return her to the Capital. When those magnificent walls are finally within our view, we exit the forest and take off running towards our destination. With the hood over my face, I confidently reach for the Capital.

“This is your last chance,” Nari says. I grab her hand to keep her from fleeing in case she has any ideas. “You can still turn away.”

“We’re finally here, Nari.”

“And what about you? Where’s your home?”

I won’t let her get to me. “I’ll find one.”

“I don’t hate you, Tao,” she admits. The guards at the front of the gate straighten their backs when they see me. I hear another person shout. Guards from behind the parapet look over the top of the wall with weapons in their heads. From the left, other guards march toward the entrance. “I’m angry, and I have a lot of questions I want to ask you, but I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you.” Although I initially held her hand, she switches it so that her fingers are in command. “I don’t think I ever could.”

“Stop!” The guard in front of me shouts. We slow to halt. Defeatedly, I let go of her hand. “Walk no further,” the guard says.

“I’m here for a prize,” I call. Sensing that they won’t approach me until I disarm myself, I completely rid of the weapons on my body, including the knives hidden in my boots.

The guard motions for his ally to check me. With all eyes on me, the guard cautiously peruses my body, making sure that I haven’t any concealed weapons. When he knows that I am free, he nods at them. Immediately, the gates open, and two men walk out with a large bag between them.

“Running away,” Nari whispers as she gives me her herbs, which are now wilted, “will make you a coward.”

I don’t answer.

The two men stop. With guards accompanying them, the two men walk toward me. Simultaneously, the guard who had searched me leads Nari toward the Capital. She looks at me one more time, pleading with me to change my mind, but it is too late. The exchange is finished. I have the reward within my possession. Without remembering my regret for fear that my determination will waver, I walk away.

-----

For many days I wander in and out of the forest, carrying with me an oversized parcel of money that is empty of the one thing I know I can depend on – a knife. Using the money to purchase a cheap blade from a nearby town, I travel while eating the food I find beneath the arms of trees or within the ground. With every town I visit, I hear different news about Nari.

The Capital’s daughter has been returned.

The man walked away with the prize.

They didn’t contain him?

They let him go.

And what of the daughter?

She refuses to talk. She says she can’t recall anything about the matter. She’s traumatized.

I smile. That claim is entirely believable, considering the first trauma she went through – which, again, I caused. I must have a penchant for such things. What an unfortunate talent to possess.

In my wanderings, I reach Haw, a place where I had noted to be my origin upon registering as a bodyguard for the Capital. Because they are the farthest from the Capital, the news they hear is outdated. When I arrive there, the people are avidly discussing the bodyguard who disappeared with the Capital’s daughter. Their ignorance amuses me.

They don’t question strangers, though, which is a blessed thing. From what I’ve observed, strangers arrive in Haw every day. The environment is different here. The markets are quiet, the people quieter. They are reserved citizens with little interest in each other’s life. Those who are training under the regimen are the only people that stir noise within the neighborhood. Without them, it is the most peaceful, yet unfriendly town in which I have ever been.

So I decide to live here.

I live in a house with five other men. Some are crooks; others are simply seeking escape. We eat together every day. They do not badger me with questions, even though they tended to the wound in my back and have seen the questionable luggage I carry with me. We admire this private community. When a man returns to the house with news about the daughter having been returned, they celebrate, although without ceremony.

During one night, they ask me how I found myself in Haw. They have all shared their stories over the past week. One man came to flee the sentence of his crime. Another wanted to forget his life as a thief. They are all rejects, like me, yet they are happy. It's comforting.

“And what of you, Zee?” They ask me. For the purpose of starting my new life, I have returned to the first syllable of my full name. “Where do you come from?”

“I don’t have a very good story,” I say, but they don’t believe it, saying that I am too handsome not to have come across difficulties.

“The wound in your back,” one says. “How did you get it?”

I toss the food I have been eating into an empty pail and cross my legs. “I was injured during an escape with a girl.”

They all marvel at this. “Did her father do that to you?”

I laugh. “Something like that.”

“You were caught eloping?”

“No,” I say. “I wanted to help her go back to her normal life. I realized I had ruined her. But when that time came, she told me not to let her go. She told me … “

I knew you before. You weren’t a coward then.

“… that I was essentially a coward to leave her.”

“Where is she now?”

“Home, I suppose. Happy.”

“That isn’t it,” the other says. “No woman could be happy after that. She loved you?”

I shake my head. “She never said.”

“There are many ways to express love, my friend. It doesn’t have to be in words.”

His roommate asks, “And you’re an expert in this?”

“Of course! I’m a writer. That is, before I became a thief.”

They break into laughter at this. We clean our mess, and then we fall asleep.

I dwell on their words that night as I lie awake with my eyes open. The house creaks beside us as it battles the wind outside. The wind seems to coax movement within me, as if, like that man suggested, I have reason to go back to Nari.

I never thought that returning her to the Capital was cowardly. But maybe it was. Perhaps there was nothing brave about returning her. Perhaps my atonement did not lie in her salvation. Perhaps I was never meant to be a savior.

I was meant to be a guard. The difference is that I am not a man created to retract people from a situation they cannot handle, but that I am a man trained to be a person who can make sure that the people I love will never have to even touch the dangers of a crisis. Not a redeemer. A preventer. A guard. A knight.

In the morning, I say farewell to my roommates, and then I pack my bags and begin my journey to the Capital. They watch me go, calling after me that I am off to claim my woman, but I am doing nothing of the sort. I am off to assure her that I will be there this time. I will be there when the Nights attack, and I will protect her.

I leave behind the reward to the outcasts of Haw with a note that only says Thank you.

When I reach the Capital, the guards have decreased. Security is laughable. I arrived at a time when I was most needed. Although I am thirsty, hungry, and weary, I bow down at the front of the gates with my knee on the ground and offer them my body. With a loud proclamation, I declare my message.

“I am Huang Zitao, a member of the Nights who deceived you as a bodyguard in your division. I kidnapped the Capital’s daughter, and I returned her for my own interest. I was part of a ploy to destroy the Capital. I am not here to ask for mercy, but to plead one thing.” I place the knife that I bought straight into the ground. “I ask that you arrest me.”