The boy nodded, eyes carefully following a beetle imbedded in the mud. From his onlookers' viewpoint, he appeared to be almost ashamed. "Yes."
"Then why are you running away from the Hunters?" Amalie asked. She had shimmied away from her position by his head, sitting instead beside her brother.
"Because -" he paused, waiting impatiently. He ached to sneeze as he'd done when he was alone, or at least rub away the prickly sensation in his nose, but those things were two of the many things they warned against in etiquette class. Besides, his own easily-embarrassed conscience couldn't begin to consider the other way. He felt the air in his mouth spiral into a tight coil, snapping back like a cut string. "Hehshnn!" His cheeks flaming, he pinched his nose shut as tightly as he could. "Nnghi! Hehshhnn! Hahhh..." He breathed out in sharp gasps, panting to recover from the stifles.
"What are you doing?" Amalie asked, baffled. She'd never seen anyone make those kinds of sounds before.
"What do you mean what am I doing?" he asked. He rubbed mercilessly at his gray eyes, which felt damp and warm due to his increased temperature.
"Just now."
"Sneezing," he replied with a hint of indignance, just as confused by her misunderstanding as she was by his methods.
"That's a sneeze?"
He nodded, frowning at her.
"But you held your nose," she went on, refusing to let it go. "Why do you sneeze like that?"
"I..." Not having any logical answer, he gave the most honest one. "I don't know." He sniffed then, hoping the palace's etiquette council would understand the exception to the rules, and felt much relieved as the liquid in his nose receded.
"It looks painful," she said.
"It's not," he replied at once, even though it could be. Especially when he was sick like this, and he couldn't do it properly.
Kerr folded his arms, cutting across them both. "Why are you running away from the Hunters?" he asked, repeating his sister's earlier question.
"Oh, well, you see... they - they may have kidnapped me."
"May have?"
"They - Hehnhgnh!" he stifled, right into his left palm. "They did," he corrected himself.
"Why?" Amalie asked, her eyes wide. She'd heard stories about kidnappings, when her parent's warned her not to wander too far from the village square.
"Because of my father," he went on. He gaped slightly at the sound of congestion in his voice, his inability to speak properly, and sniffed as hard as he could until it went away. "But I knew he wouldn't get me back with ransom," he said, his voice hard. "I have four brothers and two sisters, and if he planned to pay for each one of us, he'd never have enough money to govern well."
"You mean this has happened before?'
"Not with the Hunters, no, but with individuals. Ones who think they can pull it off. They rarely do, though," he added.
"Rarely?" Kerr asked, brow furrowed. They may not have received much news in their small outlet of a town, but kidnappings seemed as if they'd be a national affair.
"They killed my youngest brother," the boy replied, his voice going the color of his eyes.
Silence descended, neither Kerr nor Amalie sure about how to proceed. Until their parents had been murdered, their town ripped apart, they'd never faced much tragedy in their lives. They were unused to the motions of reacting to it.
Perhaps luckily, the boy's eyelids flickered once again. Up and down they danced, caught in the net of natural occurrance. His posture stiffened, head bowed and hands raised. In this trapped position, it was hard to imagine he'd ever been a prince at all. He looked so incredibly helpless, and yet... not so. Because he still wouldn't let himself sneeze completely; he still clutched the rope of control, only releasing it as much as he needed to. "Hehshnih! Hehnnght! Heh - heh ghnn!"
An overpowering shudder raced down through his lean body, furious at him for not letting go. Again, he shivered in the cold, every inch of him begging to continue. He wouldn't though, feeling too stubbornly embarrassed to act like a simple human. Instead, he panted, each false start taunting his tortured nose. "Heh - heh - heh'heh'heh' - heh ghnn!" he finally let out, using both hands to clamp his nostrils shut. Sweat dribbled from his temples, his fevered body exhausted from the effort. He shuddered again, each piece of him reeling from the suppression. It didn't matter whether he was wearing rags and lying soaked in a heap of mud: he was still a prince. He would not allow himself the necessary indulgences that other people got.
"Bless you," Amalie said, glaring at him.
"What?" he asked, impatient. Even so, he blushed again, his warm face igniting completely. He did not like being watched as he sneezed.
"You don't - " She shook her head, deciding to be tactful. "Never mind."
"What - hih -" But he pinched his nose, driving the sensation away completely. "What are your names?" Proud of getting through the sentence without any indication of illness, he snaked his arms around his middle. Worse than the sneezing and sniffling, perhaps, were the tedious mixtures of chill and fever. He shivered, miserably cold, and felt simultaneously ready to combust. It was confusing, not to mention painful.
Amalie deferred to her brother, deciding to make up for the fact that she'd insisted they take this detour.
"I'm Kerr," he answered, sighing. At this point, he trusted the boy. Besides, even if he wasn't trustworthy, he was obviously ill. He couldn't do any harm to them. "My sister's name is Amalie."
"I'm Martin," the boy replied. He shook both their hands, and they felt the clamminess of his skin.
"Martin? Aren't - aren't you the one in line to be King?" Kerr asked, caught off guard.
Martin tried his best to smile. "No, that's my brother Marcel. I know, it's confusing. We all have names that begin with the same letter."
"Well, also, we don't know much besides what we read in the paper," Kerr replied.
"Oh."
"Anyway," Kerr said, deciding to get to the point. "You want to get home, right?"
"Of course," Martin answered softly.
"How long have you been here?" Amalie asked. Kerr glared at her, annoyed at the interruption of his grand proposal.
"Three days or so."
"Three days?" Her mouth fell open, horrified. "No wonder you're so sick!"
He nodded, tousling his dark locks of hair so they scattered further from his face. "It was raining when I got out of there and then - sniff! hih'gnnh!" He aimed it right into his collarbone, continuing swiftly. "Then I hid here and it stopped for a while, and then it started again and I got soaked."
"What have you been eating?" she asked, leaning forward on her elbows. Kerr stopped trying to take back the conversation then, marveling with pride at his sister's compassion. They hadn't been eating much themselves, and yet Martin's food consumption worried her. She was not as selfish as he, then; in some ways, it thus became her right to make requests about their rest stops.
"I had an apple," he said weakly, gesturing to the juicy spheres above. "And I've drunk what rain I could."
Before Amalie could reply - a sugar-coated speech of sympathy, Kerr was sure - he gently interjected. "We'd be glad to help you," he said, encouraged by his sister's nod of agreement. "You - you don't seem like you'll make it too far on your own, no offense, and we're running from them as well," he reminded Martin.
"Oh..." Martin's pink skin had once again reverted to its mother color, red, this time surprised by their kindness. "I - I couldn't - " he paused, pinching his nose shut "hih... I couldn't let you... hihngnni! Couldn't let you do that."
"Why not?" Kerr asked. "It's not as if we're going anywhere in particular, anyway. We're just trying to get away from them."
"My dad would probably help you," Martin piped up, seeming glad to have a trade for their favor. Kerr's pulse raced; that's what he'd hoped. "We need vision-children around the palace anyway. And... and he wants the Hunters gone, too." At this, a wild grin appeared on Martin's face. This quiet boy, with the refined motions and endearing embarrassment, hated the Hunters. That much was clear. Owning just as much curiosity as his sister, and parents before him, Kerr wondered just what they'd done to him. They'd gotten him sick, anyway. Incredibly so. It made Kerr worry all the more, and he prayed they'd never get caught.
"We could live with you?" Amalie asked. She'd only known the boy for a few minutes, and already Kerr could see she was attached.
"Yes, you could," Martin replied, smiling. "That's the least I'd owe you... if you - if you - hih - hih -if y-y heh! - you - heh'hshnni!" He continued to pant desperately, fighting every bone in his body. "Shnni! Hgnnt! Hehhnt!" They hit his hands like bullets, still not enough to soothe his nasal passages. But they were all he would allow. He trembled, hating this more than he could handle. He was afraid to sniff, worrying it would prevent him from stifling. Curling into a ball, he shook and held his nose.
For the moment, Amalie seemed to have given up on asking about his strange sneezes, and instead attempted to take care of him. "You should go back to sleep," she said. "You'll feel a little better once your fever's gone."
Martin did as he was told, rolling onto his back, deciding not to tell her that he'd had the fever for over a week. Thorns seemed to be stuck in the skin of his nose, his nostrils flaring and retracting with his every breath. His chest now ached, his heart rate painful, and he worried his skull would be in ashes by the morning.
"Rest up," Kerr instructed. "We should try to get to the nearest village in a few days. That's the only way you'll get well."
"What about the Hunters?" Amalie asked, her voice returned to its small, frightened range.
"We don't have a choice," Kerr said, shrugging. She frowned, thrown off by his apparent indifference. "We can't leave until he can walk, and we can't head all the way to Ereshirk until he's completely better. That's a difficult journey to make."
"T-thank you," Martin muttered, understanding the sacrifices they planned to make. His skin still seemed to crawl with tremors, but he was no long completely awake. Once he fell asleep - his moist breathing relaxed, a single "Hukshhoo!" escaping as he slept - Kerr opened his arms to Amalie. She crawled into his lap, her unnaturally small body allowing her to fit perfectly. They sat in silence for a while, until Kerr asked the inevitable.
"What are you thinking?"
"Hmm... You're nicer than I thought you were," she said, grinning impishly. "And you're a lot like Daddy. You're good at making deals."
Chapter Four
