Storm from the East

by Joanna Hathaway

  Walking softly across the carpet, I’m unsure where to begin.

  Tirza stays put by the window. “If anyone asks, I had nothing to do with this,” she declares firmly.

  “It’s all on me,” I assure her, tiptoeing for the shelves. Countless books line them, with names like Anatomy of the Body and Principles of Medicine, and it makes sense. Lark’s mother was a nurse, and she tried to save all—Resyan, Nahir, Landorian—before she was killed herself. These volumes of life and healing feel like a vestige of a time long gone, back when the world might still have been healed. Before all of this.

  My heart throbs as I pick up a framed photograph of what must be Lark and his mother. He’s tiny and knobby-kneed, and she’s in a white nursing coat, her unglamorous face decidedly gentle and resolute at once. I long to speak to her. I long to apologize for what I did.

  I can’t.

  My fingers keep trailing the textbooks, the embossed spines, until I find a more hopeful one. It has no lettering on it. No words. It’s a faded blue, crumbling at the edges, like it’s been through rain and cold, rotted with age. But I know what it is at once.

  A photo album.

  For a moment, I don’t want to open it. I don’t want to know the memories it holds. Whatever’s there will be far more painful than the framed photograph I just touched. I’ll have to look at Lark’s life and know what’s to come, all of the smiles and love leading to one moment in time, one single night of fire and fear. My trigger.

  But I ease the cover open, the aged book vulnerable between my hands. The first page holds the portrait of a young girl. It’s old—even older than the one of Lark, with faded spots and water marks. She’s not smiling, a sad-eyed girl, and the bottom simply says, “Lia Lehzar, remembered forever.”

  She has my uncle Tanek’s face—a bit narrow and birdlike, faintly nervous—and I feel a smile grow on my lips. This is my family. My aunt, a sister my mother left behind long ago. I study her solemn expression, recognizing a part of myself there at once, the tug of familiar hearts.

  Mine.

  Gently, I turn the frail page and find a large photograph glued haphazardly. Three people sit on a leather couch, two young men and a young woman.

  My skin goes cold.

  “Ali?” Tirza asks behind me.

  I ignore her, the delight of discovery displaced entirely by disbelief. The woman in the middle is my mother. It’s her—younger, beautiful, raven haired.

  And yet … she’s a stranger.

  I search the photograph madly, trying to find the part of her that I love, the part that I’ve known for seventeen years, but it isn’t there. There’s only bitterness in her familiar gaze. A somber, hollow bitterness that pierces me even across the expanse of years. Uncle Tanek sits on her right, skinny and bespectacled, a bit awkward with the gun on his lap. And on her other side lounges a rugged man with long dark hair pulled back, a handsome beard on his face, a cigar between his grinning lips. A rifle in his easy hands.

  They all have weapons, I realize.

  Even Mother.

  I turn the page, heart pounding, but I don’t face Tirza. I can’t let her see the truth. The truth of my family, rifles slung over their shoulders, standing near the crumpled forms of dead Landorian soldiers. I flip desperately, finding on each page a stranger who wears my mother’s face—smiling in a way that feels false. It’s her, but it’s also not her. She laughs in one, and even in that soundless sepia capture, it’s not the laugh I know, warm as sun on skin. It’s rough. Mocking.

  Empty.

  “Ali?” Tirza asks again, sounding worried now.

  I realize I’m flipping too fast, not wanting to see these people—my mother, my uncles—whom I should love entirely. These are versions of them I never wanted to know. My mother is a queen. She’s not … this.

  She can’t be!

  “Ali, we should leave,” Tirza begs. “Please. There’s nothing here.”

  I don’t understand her fear. She has no reason to be scared. But I do. Everything is here. Every kind of danger—evidence that would condemn my mother completely. I don’t have to know the specifics. That Southern rifle in her hands says enough. It will say enough to the Royal League and anyone else in the North who sees dead soldiers in the same photograph as her.

  Fear claws at me as I scour my memory, trying to make sense of this, trying to imagine what Lark would tell me if he were here, what he was trying to say all along.

  I sink to my knees.

  “Why did that woman say my cousin’s name wasn’t Resyan?” I ask Tirza numbly.

  I don’t know how to explain it, but at once, this seems like something I should have seen long ago. The reason I’ve felt so removed from this kingdom.

  Tirza doesn’t speak, and I wonder if she’ll simply drag me out of here, compelled by her irrational fear. But then I hear her step towards me. Feel her warmth as she kneels down behind me. “Because your cousin’s name is Rummayan,” she says softly. “That’s the Resyan word for their kind, but in his language, they’re Rummhazi, and they have no home left. It was once southeast of here, but it’s been erased from the map. I have a pamphlet on it, actually, and…” She stops, seeming to realize that her black-and-white reports are not what I need right now. Not by any fraction of the imagination. “What happened is this,” she begins again. “Their home was annexed by the Landorians long ago, offered to Myar in a land agreement, and many fled over the border into Resya. They wanted their land back, of course, and thought the whole thing was temporary, but no one would help them. No one wanted to stand up to Landore, or Myar. As the Rummhazi grew discontent, many forced into camps, their frustration was met with rejection and violence. And that only made things worse. Eventually, they were forced from Resya entirely, and they’ve been scattered to cities across the South.” Her hand touches my shoulder. “It’s Resya’s greatest shame, one no one talks about. But people were afraid, and when people are afraid, they don’t think about others. Perhaps they’ll protect their own families—but no one else’s.”

  Raw bitterness tugs at me. I don’t know where it’s directed, where my anger and sorrow should fall, but it burns inside viciously, searching for foundation. Resya has always been my other home. A faraway one, a bit faded and foreign, but still mine. I’ve been speaking Resyan since I was a child, listening to the music with Mother, eating the food on sunny afternoons in Hathene Palace. Yet has our extended family ever once visited us? And have we ever visited them? Never. Resya was always kept at a distance, Mother and Uncle Tanek rarely discussing the specifics of their life here. Lark was the first to show up. A boy fighting for freedom. I never understood his obsession with the Nahir cause, because I thought he was Resyan, like me.

  But he never was.

  Nor am I.

  I shut my eyes. I’ve lost my own history. I have to start over, but I’m frightened of what’s there. Smothered secrets and stories from a world that came before—a world that will never be again. A world that clearly wants to be known.

  “The people of Beraya…” I turn to face Tirza finally. “Are many of them Rummhazi, left there with nowhere else to go?”

  The second part of my question remains unspoken—“Are you?”—since how else could she know this history so intimately? But her grief is my answer, honest on her heart-shaped face, and I close my eyes to the immense pain rising up. A shared sorrow. A shared history. This is it, then. Lark picked the one crime committed against a people who don’t even have a home. The most innocent, the most vulnerable, who were already at everyone else’s mercy. A people uprooted and abandoned by the North.

  Our people.

  Tirza’s.

  Mine.

  I want to cry. I want to shout it from the rooftop. I want everyone to know. But I can’t even tell my friend what’s inside this album, my own mother fighting like a Nahir revolutionary—dangerous, duplicitous.

  Overwhelmed, I let Tirza lead me back across the empty living room, clutching the photo album close to m
y chest, this evidence which would condemn my mother to a Northern noose a thousand times over. It’s going with me. It’s going to be hidden away, and no one will ever see it again.

  No one.

  And for the first time, I realize the irony of this moment. This desperate compulsion which too many others have known before me.

  I want a truth buried—and I want it buried forever.

  24

  ATHAN

  The Cauldron

  It turns out we’re not the only ones stuck in hell.

  The road near our encampment streams with local people, farmers and women and children from nearby towns, all pushing for some unknown destination—perhaps anywhere but here—like they sense something terrible gathering, about to unleash.

  Our soldiers struggle to keep everyone moving quickly. We watch warily from the roadside, scouring for the flash of hatred in passing faces, someone who might like to add another Safire casualty to their list.

  But nothing happens.

  They just walk, staring at us like we’re a mirage that will simply disappear in time, adrift in their own tragedy, and Trigg’s busy eating some fruit he’s rustled up when the first act of violence occurs. Someone launches something at his head. It bounces off harmlessly and he looks annoyed a moment, then bends down to open whatever it is.

  He gives a low whistle.

  Cyar and I walk over. The crumpled paper is a pamphlet, a grainy image of a Resyan pilot tied to a tree and mutilated nearly beyond recognition. No eyes left, face blood-soaked. We can’t read the words. It’s all in Resyan.

  “Don’t suppose they’re cheering us on?” Cyar asks uncomfortably.

  Another crumpled paper is thrown, bouncing off Trigg’s arm this time.

  He scowls. “Hey, come on. Why are you all aiming at me? He’s the General’s son.”

  Cyar slaps his pointed finger—at me—down, and I open the second pamphlet. It’s another photo, this time a pile of dead soldiers. But that’s not what gets me.

  What gets me is that I can read it.

  “It’s in Savien,” I announce, stunned.

  Trigg comes to my shoulder eagerly. “What’s it say?”

  “Stop and look at your crimes,” I read aloud. “Is this truly what you stand for, honourable soldiers of Savient?”

  “Ouch,” Cyar says. “Straight for the heart.”

  He’s right, and I snatch the first paper from Trigg’s hands. As I head back for the makeshift headquarters with both pamphlets, my weary anger rallies to pounce now that I have a target. Arrin never shares anything. Not about if the lines are shrinking or growing, and certainly not about mutilated prisoners of war. Karruth was ordered to silence, following Arrin around as dutifully as I’m sure he did in Karkev—right up until a stray piece of shell sliced his jugular and he bled out in six minutes.

  The new adjutant—Karruth’s unlucky successor—lets me wait in Arrin’s little office. His nose wrinkles at me, since I’ve been cleaning out of a bucket for far too long. But I ignore it and wait. Arrin’s desk boasts just a map and a gun.

  When he finally shows up, he’s half-naked with wet hair.

  “Is there a shower here no one told me about?” I enquire.

  “There’s a pump. Ranking army officers only. But I suppose I could make an exception for you—you need it.”

  “No thanks. I have a bucket.”

  He ignores my pointed glare and throws his own vexed scowl at the New Karruth—for whatever reason, he doesn’t like this kid nearly as much—then shuts the door. He hangs out his shirt to dry, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen his back in broad daylight. I stare. It’s not the tattoo covering his right shoulder, the flourished name of some long-ago girl—Rozmarin. It’s the sinewy burnt flesh that begins halfway down his back, disappearing over a hip, ugly as hell.

  I don’t ask.

  “What do you think?” I demand instead, dropping the pamphlets on his desk. The tortured Resyan pilot with his eyes brutally gouged out. The massacred prisoners. “Is this truly what you stand for, honourable Commander?”

  “I really don’t have time for your noble speeches right now,” he replies sourly, then deigns to look closer at the images. “And I thought there was a ‘no dead body’ rule here?”

  “Apparently not always.”

  “We’re supposed to be the damn liberators. Who the hell is publishing this?”

  “At this point it doesn’t matter. Because it looks rather real.”

  “What can I do?” he retaliates, exasperated. “Our soldiers are angry. Strafed day in and out by enemy planes. They hate these pilots. And where are we going to put prisoners? We can barely take care of ourselves.” He sweeps a hand at the pamphlets. “Besides, we don’t even know where these actually came from. It says we did the torturing, but what if it’s the Nahir? Those traitors sure aren’t doing us any favours here.”

  I sink into a chair, massaging my head.

  He’s making sense. If ours are doing it, then who can blame them? They’re exhausted. Out for blood. And if it’s the Nahir? Well, they’re the ones who trapped thirty thousand human lives in a cauldron and left it to boil. They’re not exactly beacons of nobility. Mutilating soldiers and pinning it on us would suit their new narrative just fine.

  But I point at the tortured pilot. “I get it, Arrin. I do. But if I’m ever shot down, I’d rather not be captured by his friends … I doubt they’ll be feeling very charitable. This affects me,” I press. “This affects us all.”

  My brother slaps the image of the shot prisoners, our soldiers lingering with guns nearby. “That’s not even one of my divisions, Athan. Look at the uniforms. It’s Group East. Evertal’s tough as hell when it comes to—”

  “It might not be yours,” I interrupt, “but you have to at least say something. Anything’s better than silence and you know it.”

  He huffs.

  Me telling him what to do is a first, and he’s well aware I’m right this time.

  “Fine,” he finally says. “Then will you stop thinking about it? Because I need you ready to fly. We have a chance to put your fighters to use, after I get some reconnaissance tomorrow.”

  I perk up. This sounds like progress.

  “I’ll go scout.”

  “No. Not you. Garrick and Ollie have done this before, and there can’t be mistakes. I’m losing my best here every day.” He frowns at the door, where New Karruth sits. “Left with idiots.”

  Swatted down from action yet again, I go back to massaging my head furiously and Arrin fiddles with his watch, muttering that the one I goddamn stole from him probably works better. I snatch it from his hands eventually, clicking it open for him, then shove it back.

  “Why did you separate Kalt and Folco? That was a bastard move and you know it.”

  He raises a brow. “Damn, you’re testy after a month of war. Just think how you’ll be after a year.”

  I’d be doing a hell of a lot better right now if I could actually sleep.

  He fiddles inside the watch now, winding it. “Don’t bother worrying yourself over our dear brother. I was trying to do Kalt a favour, since I think it’s dangerous to serve on the same ship as your lover, but I have it on good authority that Folco Carr has been miraculously promoted to the Warspite as well. A comfortable officer’s position, one deck below Kalt.” He shakes his head. “Can’t underestimate anyone in this damn family. You’re all snakes. And you thought it was revenge.”

  Annoyed that he’s right, I ask, “Vent’s assignment was all about revenge, wasn’t it?”

  “No, that was a long time coming.”

  “Father shot him. Right in the head.”

  Arrin looks up.

  “In under five seconds. Said ‘I know what you did to my son’ and bang.”

  For a moment, I don’t think Arrin’s going to enlighten me any further. But then he says, “You remember that lovely time Father broke my nose? Apparently, I was a lot of trouble when I was younger.” He makes a face, like
it’s all a fabricated conspiracy against him. “But after that night, it seems he realized he’d never hit me again. Didn’t have it in him. So, he sent me to the army school and had someone else do it for him.”

  I shift uncomfortably. “Vent?”

  “He’s always been a bastard. Had too much fun using his fists on me.”

  We sit in silence, and I don’t know what to make of that. I remember how Arrin used to come home from the school with fading bruises. Always assumed that was why I never wanted to be in the army. Too much physicality. But this doesn’t sound like Father at all. He believes in doing things himself. He doesn’t send others to do his dirty work … or does he?

  “Whatever happened,” I say, “I think Father only learned the full extent of it now. Because Vent just got his final sentence with a bullet.”

  That observation works, and Arrin appears a fraction hopeful—the realization that Father might actually be making up for this past oversight—but before he can respond, a knock on the door interrupts us.

  Arrin grunts, “Come in,” and it creaks open, slightly lopsided from when the house took a direct shell hit. A young woman stands there—braided dark hair, pretty face, a wrinkled dress.

  I look back at Arrin, freshly clean, and then I know.

  He shrugs at me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, her Landori words accented. “You said two o’clock, Commander?”

  “It’s fine,” he replies. “The Lieutenant is leaving.”

  I’m still staring at him. Either furious or horrified, I can’t decide.

  “It’s not what you think,” he says to me in Savien, so she won’t understand.

  “Really?” I ask. “What is it then?”

  It’s wrong in too many ways. He has no right to be with a Resyan girl, not when he’s sending airplanes over her cities and armies through her mountains. Not when we’re doing whatever terrible things have shown up in these pamphlets. It’s dangerous for him, too. Just about as bad as parading himself along the perimeter.

  Who knows who the hell she is?