House of Rage and Sorrow

by Sangu Mandanna

  “Kirrin wants Max to be rescued! That’s part of this game. He wouldn’t make it impossible.”

  “You said yourself that he wants you to have to call on Amba for help, which we all know would be catastrophic. That makes it impossible.”

  “The Hundred and One can go,” Sybilla snaps. “We’d gladly take that risk for Max.”

  “No,” Esmae says. Inadvertently, Sybilla has hit her weakness. It was easy for Esmae to talk about sending seasoned warriors from Kali’s legions to the Empty Moon, but the moment she started to picture the Hundred and One there, those children she has been training for months, her resolve broke. There’s a tremor in her voice. “She’s right. It’s not fair to send anyone.”

  A little while later, I feel her clamber across my wing. I open my hatch and she drops into the control room. Pale and bruised, she looks very small and young all of a sudden.

  “I hate them,” she says, fists clenched at her sides. “I hate them all.” I don’t know if she means Alexi and Kirrin, or the war council, or her entire family, or all of the above. I don’t ask. “Everything’s slipping away. Rama’s gone, Rickard is a ruin, I’ve lost my father. I don’t even have Amba. Even at her worst, she was still there.”

  “And now Max,” I say.

  “Lost to us,” she repeats bitterly.

  “You can do this on your own. We can fly there and see how far we can get. You can refuse to call on Amba, no matter what. If there’s no way to do it without her, turn back. At least you’ll know.”

  She laughs a little and wipes a hand across her nose. “He’s been there for days. Who knows what’s happened to him?”

  “Then we’d better hurry.”

  “Titania, I can’t. What if I have no choice but to call for her? Sorsha will be free. And the first thing they’ll do is send her after you.”

  I don’t know how to process that. I am a machine, a weapon to be wielded. I am not supposed to be protected. Loved.

  I cannot cry, but I think I understand why mortals do.

  “I want to show you something,” I tell her.

  She turns in surprise as I project a recording into the middle of the room. A second version of Esmae appears in slightly translucent holographic form, silent and still inside a glass pod while small, delicate robotic tools work on her wounds. Max stands beside the pod, one hand on the outside of the glass.

  “What is this?” Esmae asks, taken aback.

  “Shhh. Listen.”

  There’s a crackle as I adjust the volume, and then we hear Max’s voice. “What can you see?” he asks the silent, wounded Esmae in the pod. “The journey to the celestial heavens is a cold walk across a bridge of stars. At the end, all the way across, you can probably see someone waiting for you. Maybe it’s your father. Maybe it’s Rama. I don’t know. I just know how easy it is to keep walking. This is the secret no one tells,” he adds, his voice raw. “It’s easy to go. It’s harder to stay. The hardest thing is to live, but it’s worth every minute of the battle. You know that. I know you know that. That’s why you fight, that’s why you’re fighting right now. And if anyone can win this fight, it’s you. So don’t go. Stay. Come back to me.”

  He keeps talking to her, for hours. I remember he didn’t leave her side that entire journey back to Kali. He tells her about a jealous, lonely child who made his own family out of a hundred other jealous, lonely children. He talks to her about his first battle, against a group of mercenaries who had been sent by King Cassel’s greedy cousin to kidnap his two children, and how they had to take Max too because he wouldn’t let go of them. He tells her the first thought he had when he saw her picking up the bow and arrow on the day of the competition: She’s so alone.

  In the end, he says, “I’ve loved you since the day you first looked at the bitter, broken things I’d made in my tower. You looked. No one had ever bothered to before.” He presses his hand harder against the glass. “Come back. Please come back.”

  Then it’s over. He’s gone. Esmae reaches out a hand as if she wants to bring him back, and then her hand drops. “Why did you show me that?” she asks.

  “Because I know you want him back,” I tell her, “so I’m giving you a push.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I don’t take much. A long, hooded jacket to put on over my war gear if it gets cold, basic supplies in a rucksack, the Black Bow. Titania has arrows, other weapons, and more supplies on board already, so I don’t waste time getting anything else. The quicker I can get out of the palace, the less likely anyone will realize what I’m doing and try to stop me.

  But when I open my suite door to leave, I find Elvar outside.

  I freeze. It’s a little after midnight; he’s the last person I expected to run into at such a time. My uncle looks older and grayer than he did yesterday, but he has a rueful smile on his face. I know he can hear the clink of metal in my rucksack.

  “You’re going to get him,” he says. It’s not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Here.” He hands me a thin, sheathed object.

  I take it. The sheath is supple and smooth, but underneath I can feel the deft, liquid lightness of truly spectacular steel. “What is it?”

  “Cassel’s sword.” A brief, wistful look crosses Elvar’s face. “Lullaby, he called it. I wanted him to give it a more traditional, powerful name, but he refused. It was so sharp, he said, that it would always be a quick, merciful end for whoever he had to use it against. He said it was a kind way to sing people to sleep.”

  “Lullaby,” I repeat it, little more than a whisper. My father’s sword. I didn’t even know it existed.

  “When we thought Cassel was dead all those years ago, I took the sword. It should really have been given to one of his children, but I was selfish. I wanted to keep any part of him I could. It’s yours now. My brave, kind girl.” Elvar puts a hand briefly on my cheek, then turns away. “Good luck.”

  I watch him go, then slip away in the opposite direction. I take a stairway into one of the spiky towers of the palace, up to a balcony. Titania hovers in the air on the other side of the balcony.

  And standing at the balustrade, her arms crossed over her chest, is Sybilla.

  “Don’t make this a fight,” I say.

  “That depends,” she replies. She tosses her braid over her shoulder and climbs nimbly over the balustrade onto Titania’s wing. “On whether or not you’re going to try to keep me from coming with you.”

  “You know you could die on the Empty Moon, right?”

  “So?” she says. “I don’t want to hear it. Max is my family. So are you. Let’s go.”

  “What about Radha? Who’s going to keep her safe if we’re both gone?”

  “No need to worry about that,” Radha says from behind me. I swivel around and see she’s dressed for travel, her beautiful dresses swapped for thick leggings, a tunic, a jacket and sturdy boots. She smiles at me.

  Sybilla is appalled. “You can’t come!”

  “I can and I will,” Radha replies calmly. “We all go, or none of us go.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Sybilla snaps. Her tone is even more aggressive than usual. “What good are you going to be? You may have been trained to stab a man with a sewing needle, but that won’t be much use on the Empty Moon. You should stay.”

  Hurt flashes across Radha’s face, but her voice is steel when she replies. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says, “I didn’t realize I had to be useful to be your friend.” With deliberate movements, she climbs over the balustrade and steps hard onto the wing on the other side. She wobbles a little, her balance off, but she keeps going. “No, I can’t fight like the two of you can. I’m not fast or strong or whatever’s important to you. In spite of all that, I’m coming and I dare you to try and stop me.”

  Sybilla’s mouth opens and closes several times. Then she snaps it shut for a final time, turns on her heel, and storms off to the open hatch.

  Radha looks at me. “She really doesn’t like me, does she?
”

  “You’ll have to talk to Sybilla if you want to know how she feels about you,” I say and go over the balustrade myself. “Come on. We need to get out of here before my great-grandmother realizes what I’m up to and orders the shields sealed to stop me.”

  Radha follows me to the hatch and drops down after me. Titania seals it shut, waits until we’re strapped into our seats, and takes off at once. “This is fun!” she chirps at us. “We can play travel games!”

  “I love travel games,” Radha says happily.

  “Of course you do,” Sybilla mutters.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” Sybilla waits until we’ve crossed Kali’s shields and Titania has leveled out in open space. “I need a drink. I’ll be in the galley if anyone needs me.”

  She marches away, bootstrikes hard and angry. Titania huffs. “That girl is terrible for my floors,” she complains.

  I get out of my seat, too. “I have some repairs to do.”

  When I climb down into Titania’s engine room, I pick up the tools and tighten nuts that aren’t even loose, hammer in bolts that are already secure, and oil the mechanics. It’s noisy in the engine room and the smell of fuel stings my nose, but I like it. As a child, the smell of spaceship fuel reminded me of wing war lessons with Rickard and the dream of home.

  I needed to not be up there. These tasks aren’t necessary, but they’re keeping me busy. There’s a procedure for maintaining Titania’s mechanics, a specific order that has to be followed so that I don’t end up burning myself or getting caught in a whirring blade, and focusing on that checklist means there’s not much room to think about other things. Like my dead friend or my dead father. Like why Alex was upset when he found out General Saka tried to kill me. Like how I’m supposed to cross the Empty Moon and get Max back without losing Sybilla or Radha along the way. Like the growing tally of people I’ve killed. Like the whisper at the back of my mind that thinks of that look on Lord Selwyn’s face before he died and wonders if maybe he didn’t imprison and murder my father after all.

  Those are all things I can’t stop to think too much about. Stop too long, and you’ll never go on. Amba used to say that.

  My mind is full of thorns.

  Miles and miles of impossibly beautiful stars, moons, and wormholes later, I feel a lurch beneath my feet. I return to the upper deck and meet Sybilla in the corridor, a mostly empty bottle of plum wine in her hand.

  “Are we there?” I ask Titania when we’re back in the control room.

  “Almost,” she says. “I’d buckle up if I were you.”

  I’ve only just buckled myself into my seat when a jagged, icy blue rock appears in the distance.

  Radha takes a deep, awed breath. “The Empty Moon.”

  The pale, almost translucent moon grows larger as we get closer, viciously sharp and mercilessly blue. I think about how Max and I saw it a few months ago, from right about where we are now, and it’s all I can do not to turn my head to look for him beside me.

  “Here we go,” Titania says.

  As we dip toward the Empty Moon, I notice something.

  “The song,” I say. “I can’t hear it.”

  “What song?” Sybilla asks, confused.

  “When Max and I were here last time, we could hear the wolves of the Empty Moon,” I tell them. “They were singing. We could hear them from all the way up here. I don’t know how, but we could.” It was as eerie as it was beautiful. “And now I can’t hear anything.”

  “The hounds of the Empty Moon have been singing for a hundred years,” Titania says. “The song is their lament. It’s how they mourn Valin, their fallen god.”

  Radha gives me a worried look. “Maybe they’re not singing because they’re not here anymore. Didn’t you say Kirrin might use them against us in battle? What if he’s taken them to join Alexi?”

  I nod. “It’s possible. General Khay has been expecting it for some time.”

  “Well,” says Sybilla, “Wolves or no wolves, we have a prince to rescue. Let’s get down there.”

  “Titania, see if you can find Kirrin’s palace.”

  Titania swoops lower until she crosses the moon’s shields with a judder. Once she’s about a hundred feet or so above the surface of the Empty Moon’s dark, cold blue seas, she scans our surroundings. We watch on the monitor as a map slowly takes shape, mainly sea broken by white stony beaches and islands with ice forests, and then, eventually, the outline of a palace in the distance.

  “There,” I say, but I know it’s not going to be as simple as that. “I don’t think you’ll be able to fly there, but it’s worth a try.”

  Titania heads for the palace, but then she’s pulled in the opposite direction. Like gravity, the invisible force is irresistible and the ship judders dangerously as she tries to fight it. She probably could have beaten it anywhere else, but here, on a god’s realm, it’s too powerful for her.

  “Hold tight!” she shrieks.

  We do, but it doesn’t do much good. Like an elastic band pulled too far, we snap back toward the moon’s surface. I catch a glimpse of the white pebbled shore below us before we crash unceremoniously into it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I stagger out of the open hatch and onto the hard beach. Radha follows me out and is immediately sick on the stones. Sybilla holds her hair out of the way. I take deep, gulping breaths of ice and sea salt, squinting against cold white sunlight.

  “Titania, are you okay?” I ask.

  “My pride is somewhat bruised,” she grumbles. “The rest of me is not.”

  “I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark,” Sybilla says sarcastically, “And assume Titania isn’t allowed to take us any further?”

  “That is correct,” says an unfamiliar voice.

  I freeze. Sybilla and Radha look over my shoulder, eyes impossibly round. I turn cautiously to face the new arrival.

  “Oh,” I breathe. “You’re a garuda.”

  The stranger towers above us, taller than any mortal I’ve ever seen. They have a human head, with brown skin, close shaved black hair, a hard jaw and sharp, delicate cheekbones. Below their brown neck is a torso covered in white feathers. Enormous, powerful white wings stretch out behind them. They have human legs, bare feet and a pair of ripped trousers hanging low on feathered hips.

  “Yes,” they say, “I am a garuda. My name is Vahana, and I am the guardian of the Empty Moon.”

  Sybilla snaps her astonished mouth closed. Radha’s eyes stay wide, but she tentatively says, “We’ve been told Max Rey is in Kirrin’s palace. We’ve come to take him home.”

  “You may do so,” says Vahana, “if you can reach him. Your ship may not take you any further. She must wait here. To get to the palace, you must cross this sea and make your way through the ice forest. The palace is on the other side of the forest.”

  “Do we have to swim there?” Sybilla asks.

  A flicker of a smile passes over Vahana’s face. “You may use a boat,” they say, and point behind us. I turn to see a boat waiting at the edge of the sea that I’m positive wasn’t there before.

  “And the tests?” I ask warily. “My brother told me there would be tests.”

  “There used to be three, but that was a different time. Now there is only one. You must survive the sea, the forest, and the test to gain entry to the palace. Very few mortals have ever been able to do so.”

  “What kind of test is it?”

  “Truth,” says Vahana. “There are truths in each of us that we do not dare look at, lest they break us. To pass the test, you will have to confront your truth.”

  Cold settles in my heart. Sybilla, Radha, and I look at each other. Sybilla looks more terrified than I’ve ever seen her.

  “There is no shame in turning back,” Vahana says.

  I glare out at the unfriendly, churning sea. I can do this. I won’t let them win. “I didn’t come all this way to turn back now.”

  We collect our weapons and supplies, then
we each put an earpiece in so that we can stay in contact with Titania and with one another if we get separated. I clamber into the boat first. Sybilla joins me and reaches for the oars, her jaw set. Radha wrings her hands in front of her, her face nakedly afraid, but she follows us without a word.

  As we push off the shore, Vahana leaps into the air. Each of their wingbeats sends a gust of sharp, cold, salty air at us. “I will stay close to bear witness,” they say. “Good luck.”

  They fly into the sky, vanishing into the bright white light. We watch them go, then Sybilla rows us further into the sea. She does this for half an hour and then I take my turn. By the time Radha takes hers, Titania has vanished with the shore. Her voice in my earpiece is crackly and keeps breaking up, like the moon itself doesn’t want us to be able to speak to her.

  “The sun is starting to go down,” Sybilla says over the sound of Radha’s ragged breathing. “I don’t see the other shore. We might have to row right through the night.”

  I look warily into the water around us. It’s cruel and eerie, viciously crashing against the sides of the boat, spraying salt and water so cold it burns. It’s full of shadows and light, making it impossible to tell what’s really under the surface. “Whoever isn’t rowing can sleep,” I say, “but we can’t stop. The sooner we’re back on land, the better.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Sybilla says darkly. “What if it’s worse there?”

  As the sun goes down, we continue to row in turns, eating small bites of dried meat and bread from our packs between each turn. The realities of being stuck on a boat start to sink in, too; there’s no upside to having to empty your bladder into a water bottle, a feat that is easier said than done when you haven’t got the ability to aim, but on top of that, Sybilla’s monthly bleeding turns up a couple of hours into the evening and she spends ages searching for her menstrual cup by the light of only a sliver of a moon and a thousand stars before eventually finding it at the very bottom of her pack.