I snort. “Giving power to all is a recipe for disaster. Clearly.” I wave my hand at the generál.
“Is it? Or are you afraid of what that would mean for you? How it would feel to be as ordinary as the rest of us? There’s no denying the strength that comes from struggle. Tell me, Commander, who is the better warrior: One with natural abilities but a poor work ethic, since they’ve never had to try, or a naturally weaker warrior who throws everything they have into training, who finds ways to counteract their shortcomings, who has to fight, tooth and nail, for every little success? Who would you rather have at your side in battle?”
When I don’t answer, Kartok crouches in front of me. I can smell the dust and sweat of the road on his robes, the overpowering tang of garlic on his breath. I press myself against the wall and turn my head. But that only draws him closer. His face hovers a finger’s breadth from mine.
“All ‘power’ is created by someone or something initially,” he says. “What does it matter if it was born of the Lady and Father or one of Their children? In the end, they are one flesh. Zemya’s power is Their power. She shouldn’t have been condemned and banished.”
I look directly into his unsettling blue eyes. “Zemya got what She deserved. And I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”
He grabs a fistful of my hair, wrenches my head back, and forces the waterskin into my mouth. The liquid gushes down my throat, thick and warm and sulfuric. Like the sweltering rot that hangs over a battlefield. I cough and heave and spit, suddenly boiling inside my skin. Yet my body twitches and shivers. My tongue is drier than the stale jerky in the disgusting ration sacks reserved for lesser warriors.
Kartok chuckles as I claw at the neckline of my tunic. “Do you feel anything unusual?”
“If your hot-spring water is so precious and powerful,” I finally growl through the pain, “why give it to me? Why bestow me with more power?”
Kartok touches the heel of his palm to the bottom of his chin in a strange religious gesture I’ve seen many times at the war front. “Because I have perfect faith in my goddess. I know that Zemya would never allow Her magic to strengthen you. In fact, I predict it will do the opposite.”
“I thought She wants ‘all people to be equal,’ ” I retort.
Kartok slaps my cheek. “Summon your ice.”
“Now I don’t want to.”
“Summon. Your. Power.”
“I’d rather die.”
The truth is, I don’t know if I could summon the ice even if I wanted to. I was hot and depleted and exhausted before Kartok poisoned me with his goddess’s magic. But I’m not about to give him the satisfaction of thinking he won. And part of me is terrified to know if it worked—if his hot-spring water can actually strip me of my gift. So I focus on the blue vein bulging in the center of Kartok’s forehead, and smirk. I have an insatiable desire to pinch it between my fingers and pop it like a bloated leech.
“You do not want to anger me, Commander,” he warns.
“Oh, but I do.”
His hands fly toward me, and the same wrenching pain that incapacitated me in the prison wagon grips my tongue. Only now I don’t crumple. Because I know it isn’t real. If I don’t believe his lies, they won’t be able to hurt me. Kartok’s invisible grip tightens, but the pain doesn’t increase. It doesn’t lessen, either, but I am slowly gaining ground against the illusion. Learning to fight it.
“Very well.” Kartok whips a long double-edge blade from his robes and throws it at my face. It flies faster than I can react, even if I wasn’t injured and exhausted, and the razor tip sinks deep into my right eye. Pain detonates through my skull, shooting and stabbing. I scream and clutch the wound, certain it’s deep enough to kill me. But blood doesn’t wet my fingers. And there’s no hilt protruding from my skull.
Another illusion. This one ten times more painful than his trick with my tongue. It almost makes me feel a twinge of guilt for the thousands of icy daggers I’ve rammed into Zemyan skulls over the years. Except, of course, they deserved them.
“Next time the knife won’t be an illusion,” Kartok warns, drawing back the folds of his azure robe to reveal an identical weapon. Only, this one rings as the steel leaves the scabbard and the edge is cold and sharp as he jabs it beneath my chin.
I lick my chapped lips and stare into his unnaturally blue eyes. Demon eyes. “We both know you’re not going to kill me.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t make you wish you were dead.”
“I have an extremely high tolerance for pain.”
Kartok leans against the blade, and drops of blood trickle from my throat. “There’s more than one type of pain, Commander.” He returns the knife to his hip and fiddles with little knobs hidden in the wall until the glass passageway reappears behind him. “Get some rest.”
A dangerous smile steals across his lips, and as the throne room solidifies between us, the low rumble of laughter fills the room.
My stomach lurches into my chest.
Because the laughter isn’t Kartok’s.
It’s the Sky King’s.
I’d recognize his voice anywhere.
I know he isn’t here, but I whip around to check because it sounds so real. So close—wild, unhinged laughter that borders on crying. It seems to be coming from the gilded throne, and as I creep toward it, the Sky King slowly materializes, fading into existence as if through thick fog. Those eyes that miss nothing. The merciless slash of his brows. That thin, unforgiving mouth.
“You.” He stands and moves toward me, and that’s when I notice the bright strip of gore staining the side of his robe. How his fox fur crown sits askew on his head—the back half of his skull crushed. Blood bubbles from his lips, thick as tar, when he speaks. “You failed me. You failed Ashkar.”
I close my eyes and chant, “It isn’t real, it isn’t real, it isn’t real.” But it feels so real, my body refuses to believe the logic from my brain. I can smell the king’s expensive cologne. I can even hear the imperceptible hitch of his step from an old war wound that only I know about.
“How does it feel to be responsible for the fall of an empire?” he prods. “To be the biggest disappointment Ashkar has ever known? What will your parents think?”
I try to fight it off, but the woody scent of Papá’s pipe smoke and the citrusy punch of Mamá’s orange water perfume drift past my nose. And then they’re there, standing before me. Sobbing.
I cough so hard, I vomit.
“Their fall from society will be catastrophic,” the Sky King continues. “Not only did I perish under your watch, you were captured during the Zemyan siege—when commanders are never captured—because your own soldiers saw your weakness and ineptitude and turned against you. Your parents will be shunned. Humiliated. They’ll regret ever having a daughter—if they survive the siege, that is….”
His laughter resumes, boring into my brain like a spear tip. I feel my throat closing. My eyes stinging. I have to get away. I throw myself against the walls, pounding and poking, desperate to find the invisible knobs.
After what feels like days, I retreat to the farthest corner of the hall and huddle into a ball. Teeth clenched. Palms over my ears. But that only provides partial relief, because I’m surrounded by eyes. All of those damnable eyes, peering down at me from the dangling masks. Only now they’re no longer the eyes of Ashkar’s greatest warriors. They’re eyes I stared into every day for over a decade. The eyes of my Kalima warriors—stripped of their humanity and every shred of respect, leaving only a reflection of those final, terrible moments on the ice bridge. Varren’s regretful but rigid gaze. Weroneka not even bothering to look back. Eshwar’s sneer and Karwani’s disgust. Even little Reza, my page, who wasn’t trapped in Papá’s office and who has never looked on me with anything but adoration, blinks round, wet eyes. Bright with betrayal. As if I ran my saber through his gut.
I’ve never seen magic like this. Not in all my years on the battlefront. I knew the Zemyans could disguis
e their faces and manipulate their weapons, but I didn’t know they could create the illusion of entirely different worlds. And trap me within them.
The painted walls press closer; the king’s laughter peals louder. I rock in the corner. Spewing profanities. Praying Kartok’s magic will eventually fade. Power always has a limit. But the onslaught continues, and the images filling my head are more horrifying than any amount of bodily torture he could have inflicted.
My anguish is so heavy, it feels like I’m sinking through the floor. Like I couldn’t possibly descend any lower. Which is when the specter of Enebish arrives to haunt me. She drags herself toward me through red-stained snow, her right arm nearly severed and her leg flopping bonelessly. “Are you happy?” she croaks, blood burbling from her lips. “You destroyed me—and yourself—for nothing.”
“You are to blame!” I scream back at her. “You were trying to usurp me, humiliate me. No matter that I saved you and trained you and gave you everything. None of this would have happened if I’d left you to die in Verdenet.”
As my mother counseled me to do.
“I’m not certain this is the best idea,” she said when I returned with Enebish from the war front. She paced the halls and picked at her nails while our maids scrubbed the soot and dirt from Enebish’s skin and scrounged for clothes small enough to fit her emaciated frame. Finally Mamá pulled me into Papá’s study and lowered her voice. “We know nothing about this Southerner. Or her family. And we’ve already endured so many rumors by taking in your cousin. She’s not even from Ashkar….”
But I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Because I couldn’t forget the way Enebish looked at me when I lifted her from the ashes and onto Tabana. How her dark eyes memorized my face, full of wonder and admiration. How her small fingers traced the grooves in my armor. It was nearly as intoxicating as my parents’ praise. I wanted everyone in the empire to look at me like that. To need me like that.
But they were all fooling me. Using me. Taking, taking, taking until they bled me dry.
I stagger to my feet and run at the Sky King’s throne. I can’t bear to look at it any longer. I can’t stand any of this for another second. With a scream, I thrust my palms forward and a thin layer of frost varnishes the velvet cushion and goldwork of the throne. Not enough to shatter it, but enough to prove Zemya’s vile magic didn’t taint me. Not fully, anyway. I try again, but the sputter of cold vanishes the moment it leaves my hands. Growling with frustration, I pick up one of the small wooden chairs that line the wall and dash it against the throne. Fragments of wood spray into the air and scrape my face, harming me more than the throne, but it feels good to do something. So I grab chair after chair and continue smashing them.
Once they’re all obliterated, I take up a fragment of wood, step onto the seat of the throne—grinning savagely at the smudges my boots leave on the indigo cushion—and swing at the hanging masks.
The translucent strings may look flimsy, but they slice my hands like razor wire. Blood falls in bright crimson spots across the floor and the golden arms of the throne. It’s horrific. And glorious. I scream louder. Strike harder. Smashing face after face of warriors I once looked up to. Warriors I was certain I would eclipse in greatness.
It isn’t until the final mask falls, and the symphony of shattering plaster fades, that I hear a throat clear behind me.
I whip around, fully expecting to find Kartok smirking in the corner, but it’s a Zemyan girl with silvery hair bundled into a topknot, a filthy apron strapped around her waist. Her mouth hangs open and her pale eyes gape at me. As if I’m the barbarian.
I would be mortified if I had any dignity left. Since I don’t, I plunk down on the throne, kick my legs over one armrest, and tilt my head back against the other, face up to the muraled ceiling. Hoping she’ll go away if I don’t respond. Like the mangy opossums in Namaag that pretend to be dead as a method of self-preservation.
The girl shifts from foot to foot and holds up a steaming tin cup. “I’m Hadassah. I’ve brought you food.” Her Ashkarian is slow and her accent is thick, but she seems proud of her effort.
“You can’t possibly think I’d eat or drink anything else,” I snap back.
“I’ll just leave it here, then. In case you change your mind.” With trembling hands, she sets the mug down and steps back. But then she stops and says, “Let me know if you need anything else.” As if I’m a guest rather than a prisoner.
“Are you mocking me?” I swing my legs around and lean forward, perched on the edge of the throne like a coiled snake. “Because I definitely need several things. I need to get out of this prison. I need to prove my warriors made the biggest mistake of their lives when they betrayed me, and I need to conquer this repellant country to salvage my reputation, but you can’t help me with any of that, can you, Hadassah?”
She flinches and looks down at her feet. “No. But if you answer a few questions, I can unlock your manacles.”
I make a show of looking her up and down. “You have the key?”
She reaches into her apron pocket and procures an old brass key, which she swings back and forth.
My entire body tenses. My mind screams to attack and take it from her, but my battered limbs don’t rise to the call. “What questions could you possibly have?”
“What is the generál trying to accomplish?”
The laughter that explodes from my mouth is sharp and cynical. “He sent you in here to trick me into saying something he can use against me, didn’t he?”
Hadassah shakes her head furiously. “He’s hurt me, too.” She unfastens the tie of her colorless blouse and wiggles one shoulder free. She turns to show me the long, raised scars cutting down her back. As if I care. As if it will foster some sort of camaraderie between us. She could have gotten those scars anywhere. They’re probably an illusion! If Kartok did make them, she already knows everything she needs to about him.
“Is it your power he’s after?” she presses. “Rumor has it he’s been obsessed with capturing a Kalima warrior for years, but it’s next to impossible, since they never leave their comrades behind.”
“Enough!”
The blood drains from her already pale face. “Sorry if that’s a touchy subject, but—”
“Even if I knew his aim, do you think I’d tell you anything? I don’t see why any of this matters to a servant.”
Her lips pinch into a scowl. As if she honestly expected her sweet-faced simpering to soften me. It wouldn’t have worked before, and it certainly won’t work now. I’m heartless, soulless, friendless. Nothing but vengeance and fury wrapped in skin.
“Be gone!” I yell, raising my palms. There isn’t a breath of cold left within me, but the girl doesn’t know that. She cries and sprints for the glass tunnel while I laugh and wish her good riddance.
It’s only after she’s gone, when the walls of the fabricated throne room are hardening between us, sealing the only exit, that I realize my mistake.
The wasted opportunity.
I didn’t try to escape. I didn’t even get the key to my manacles.
The Sky King’s laughter refills the echoing hall, taunting me, mocking me, driving me closer, every second, toward the cliffs of insanity.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ENEBISH
MURTAUGH AND YATINDRA STORM OUT OF KING IHSAN’S study, thin lipped and tight jawed, dragging Ziva behind them. As if the Marsh King’s decision to consider our proposal personally offends them. Ziva, on the other hand, pumps her fist and throws a triumphant smile at us as they tug her through the door.
“I don’t understand why they’re so angry,” I murmur to Serik as we follow them out into the muggy morning. The sun is already stabbing through the canopy, and a horde of ravenous mosquitos flock to us like the hummingbirds buzzing around the flower boxes. Serik smashes one of the long-legged insects between his palms and proudly opens his hands to show me the mangled carcass. Then he blows it toward Murtaugh’s and Yatindra’s backs.
“They’re like children, throwing a tantrum because they didn’t get their way. That vice chancellor, Murtaugh, thinks quite highly of himself. I doubt he’s ever supported a plan he didn’t come up with. And I doubt the king disagrees with him often. I almost feel sorry for Ziva’s aunt, being shackled to such an ornery narcissist.”
“Why do you think she’s so upset? You’d think she’d be grateful that Ihsan is considering lending aid to Minoak and Verdenet. Her brother and her country.”
“She’s probably just worried and overwhelmed,” Serik says as we start down the nearest rope bridge. It sways beneath our feet, and I grip the woven railing, terrified the flimsy thing is going to collapse. “Her brother was nearly assassinated and lies motionless in the infirmary, she must care for her strong-willed niece, and she just learned her home country is in peril.”
I nod as we watch the three of them vanish into another mansion several trees over, slamming the door behind them.
“Murtaugh’s a lost cause, but I think Yatindra will come around with time—and perhaps a little encouragement.” Serik peers over at me.
I narrow my eyes. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing much. I just think now would be an excellent time to start training Ziva. Show the Namagaans the strength we have to offer as allies. And our willingness to share those advantages.”
I shove past Serik, purposely knocking him against the flimsy railing, and stomp to the next platform.
“Does that mean you’ll consider it?” He chases after me.
“It means your suggestion doesn’t merit a response. I’m not training Ziva. You saw how rash and unpredictable she is, throwing starfire when she doesn’t have the slightest idea how to control it. I won’t be responsible for that.”
Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology) Page 13
