“These invaders,” Ahkio said, “where are they coming from? Which direction?”
“Boats,” Taigan said, but Ahkio saw something in his expression that troubled him.
“From the east, then?” Ahkio said. “Or the south?”
“They come from…” Taigan muttered something in Saiduan. “They come from the sky, sometimes.”
Masura spoke for the first time, her tone incredulous. “The sky? Have you been drinking, sanisi?”
Ahkio heard someone running in the hall outside. The militia turned toward a blue-clad Ora who burst through the door. One of the militia members held up a hand. The Ora stopped, gasping for breath.
Gaiso stood. “What is it?” she asked.
“Murder,” the Ora said. Ahkio recognized her as Nasaka’s assistant, Elaiko. She wasn’t much older than Ahkio.
Ahkio saw Nasaka tense. He was keenly aware of the weapon at her hip. She had yet to bare it, but he was waiting. It felt like an inevitability now. He regretted running from this temple just when his sister had needed him most. Now he was left alone amid a sea of scheming Oras, murder, and rising stars. He was not ready. But he stood anyway. His sister once affectionately called him a coward, and it was true. He wanted a quiet, honest little life.
Oma, it seemed, had other plans.
“There’s blood all over the scullery stair,” Elaiko said, “like bad tea. He’s in a storage room.”
“Who?” Dasai asked. “Let’s not make a bear out of a fly.”
“Rohinmey,” Elaiko said. “I’m not making up some fish story, Ora Dasai. Roh is dead.”
Lilia choked on a cry. Adrenaline flooded her. She watched the infirmary as if from a great height.
Ohanni set Roh’s body onto Lilia’s bed. A blooming tear ran across his gut; she saw the wet glistening of his intestines beneath bloody clothing and torn skin. More rents in his clothing indicated numerous wounds. Blood pumped profusely from one of them.
“Ora Matias?” Ohanni called, but Matias was still standing, shocked, by the shelves.
Lilia tugged off Roh’s apron. “Help me get his tunic,” she told Ohanni. She was surprised at how calm she felt. His blood smeared across her own scarred wrists, and a terrible thought bubbled up from a long time ago – we are wasting so much blood.
Ohanni helped with the tunic, her breath rapid, fine beads of sweat bathing her face. Lilia wondered how long Ohanni had carried him. She was not a large woman.
“Press here,” Lilia said. She put Ohanni’s hands onto Roh’s thigh. “Press hard. To the bone.”
Ohanni did. The flow of blood eased from the worst of the wounds. Lilia wadded up Roh’s novice apron and pressed it against the major wound itself. Blood and death. A hungry thorn fence. She remembered bleeding out into a shallow dish to protect her village from harm.
Matias joined them at Roh’s side. He wiped at his eyebrows. “Oma,” he said. “This injury is too much. Tira is descendent. I can’t fix this.”
Lilia thought him a fool. She had seen worse, with her mother’s patients. She knew the major arteries in the body. She had learned basic anatomy with everyone else in the temple. But closing a wound as bad as Roh’s was beyond her.
“Please, Matias,” Ohanni said. “You must try. This violence… someone did this to him. It’s not as if he tumbled off the stage during some grand jeté.”
“I’m sorry, Ora Ohanni. He’s dying.”
Ohanni made as if to draw her hand away from Roh’s thigh.
“Don’t!” Lilia said. “He will bleed out.”
“There are no tirajistas with the skill to fix this,” Ohanni said. “Ora Almeysia is the most sensitive, but she doesn’t specialize in matters of the body. Can you ease his pain?” she asked Matias.
“He is nearly gone,” Matias said. He pressed his hands to Roh’s wrist. “There is nothing to ease.”
“Try!” Lilia said. “Won’t you try?”
“Child, I’m sorry,” Matias said.
Ohanni drew her hands away.
“No,” Lilia said. She pressed her hands there instead, hard. “Close the artery. Stop the bleeding.”
“He has lost more blood than I can replace,” Matias said. “Even if I could find every source of damage–”
“Is this him?”
Nasaka’s voice. She strode in ahead of a young man, handsome, with scars on his hands. Lilia had not seen him before.
“I’m sorry, Ora Nasaka,” Matias said. “He’s lost too much blood.”
“Sina’s breath,” Nasaka muttered. She came up next to Matias. She wore a willowthorn sword. Lilia had never seen an Ora with a sword. “This boy can’t die, Matias.”
“The blood–”
“I don’t care about the blood. He cannot die. Wash your hands. Are you a physician or a soap maker?”
Matias hurried to the stone sink at the center of the room.
Roh’s breathing was almost imperceptible. Matias was right. Lilia knew that, but she pressed hard anyway, though her hands ached and her chest still burned. She coughed and coughed.
Matias pulled the apron away from the wound. He carried sinew, a needle, and a delicate knife.
“I cannot see for all the blood. Mop this up,” he told Lilia.
She grabbed a cotton towel as he widened the wound to find the nicked artery. Blood dripped from the towel down her fingers, to her elbow, to the floor. Lilia didn’t notice the arrival of others in the room until some time later, when their voices became loud and angry.
“This is not his fate,” Dasai said, arguing with Nasaka. “Call another surgeon. He’s the one child in a hundred for whom the seers saw a peaceful fate. We cannot lose this boy.”
“There is not a tirajista in the world powerful enough to turn this,” Nasaka said.
“Not a tirajista,” said the tall, dark man in the doorway. It was the sanisi Lilia had seen in the foyer, Taigan.
“He’s gone, I’m sorry,” Matias said. His face was covered in sweat. He was spattered with blood.
Roh’s face was slack.
Lilia’s fear and terror finally bubbled up from the dark place she had hidden it. Her throat closed. She coughed harder; her head swam, and her vision was going dim. Blood covered her arms to the elbows. With enough blood, all things were possible.
She pointed to the sanisi. “Are you a blood witch?” she said. “A blood witch can save him. My mother could save him.”
The others, the Oras, looked confused. She suspected they thought her mad. But she knew the look on the sanisi’s face. Wonder. Recognition.
“Save him,” Lilia said.
“There’s a price,” Taigan said.
“He’s dead,” Matias said.
“No,” Lilia said.
“A beat or two of his heart remains,” Taigan said. “I can save him. But I have a price.”
“I will pay it,” Dasai said.
“Let’s not be irrational–” Nasaka said.
“We will pay your price,” Dasai said. “This boy has an important fate. Remake him.”
“I expect he does,” Taigan said. “You have seers. You know what’s coming, don’t you? Your little dance upstairs was less than convincing.”
Nasaka and Dasai exchanged a look. Nasaka said, “We know that our seers do not see peaceful futures for this generation of children. But this boy has a peaceful fate. He should not die this way.”
The sanisi pointed at Lilia. “You are the price. Give her to me and you can keep the boy.”
All gazes turned to Lilia. She pushed herself away from Roh’s body, gasping for air. She could hardly breathe, hardly think. He knew what a blood witch was. Now he knew what she was, too.
“Our people are not for sale,” Nasaka snapped. “We are not chattel. Save the boy because it is right. There need not be a price.”
“That is my price,” the sanisi said. “The boy for the girl.”
Lilia stared at her bloody hands. Then Roh. She remembered watching her mother’s body crumple.
Too small to stop it. Too powerless to do anything at all.
“We won’t,” Nasaka said. “Find another way.”
Lilia said, “Do it. I’ll go.”
The sanisi made a sweeping gesture with his hand. The pressure in the room increased, like being underwater. Roh’s body shuddered. His back arched. For one blazing moment, Roh’s body was suspended above the bed, screaming. The blood that smeared the room peeled away from the floor, their clothing, their skin, and burst into the air. It clung to Roh for one terrible moment like a second skin.
Lilia put her hands over her ears.
Taigan dropped his hand.
Roh fell back to the bed. Lilia smelled burnt meat. She broke into another fit of coughing.
Matias ran to the medicinal shelf and brought back a cup of foul-smelling water.
Lilia choked it down as the Oras gathered around the bed.
“Oma,” Dasai said.
“Yes,” the sanisi said. “One does not need to believe a thing is true for it to be fact. Oma is rising. I’ve channeled Oma since I was a child, and my power gets stronger each season. You are looking for an omajista? There is your proof, and your little ward-unmaker back to you. Fully formed.”
Roh’s skin was no longer broken; there was no sign of injury but his torn clothing. Lilia grabbed at his tunic. The blood that coated him was gone, eaten up as hungrily by the power in the room.
“How did you know he can see through wards?” Nasaka asked. “Not one Ora in twenty here knows that.”
Lilia lay still next to Roh as her breathing eased. They paid her no attention, as if she were only some dying fish.
“He saw through mine,” the sanisi said. Now he looked at Lilia. “And he saw through yours, too, didn’t he?”
Lilia felt cold. She remembered Kalinda’s words: “We’ll be ready for them next time, won’t we?” But she was not ready. Not at all.
“You asked what I’m really here for,” the sanisi said. “I’m here for the girl. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Lilia?”
7
Zezili Hasaria, Captain General of the Empress of Dorinah’s western legion, paced the damp hall outside the Empress’s audience chamber in wet boots and a set of clothing she could not remember ever being washed. She wore her chain mail and her metal skirt knotted in dajians’ hair. Her battered sword and dagger hung at her hip, both solid metal. She didn’t trust infused weapons. She cradled her helm under one arm.
Being summoned from the coast while her force lolled about getting drunk waiting to mount an offensive on the isle of Alorjan filled her with trepidation. The Empress did not pull her captain generals from the field so lightly. Zezili swore as she waited, muttering old Dhai curses, in case anyone of importance happened by. More people feared her when she spoke Dhai. It reminded them of her mixed face and manners, and her deviant propensity for slaughtering her own kind.
The big double doors to the audience chamber opened, and the Empress’s white-haired dajian secretary, Saofi, said, “The Empress regrets she cannot see you at this time, Syre Zezili Hasaria.”
“She’s left orders, then?” Zezili said, trying to conceal her annoyance. Saofi was a plump, matronly woman, easily fifty or sixty, and had survived a long service to the Empress. That made her nearly as valuable as Zezili. Zezili did not often measure her own worth compared to that of dajians – Dhai slaves – but Saofi was obviously of mixed parentage – Dhai and Dorinah, just like Zezili. And sometimes the similarities chilled her. The secretary’s mother had sold her. Zezili’s mother had claimed her. One woman’s choice made all the difference.
“She has something prepared, yes,” Saofi said. “She told me earlier she may be unable to make this audience. This way, please. I’ll give you her missive.”
Saofi led Zezili through the drafty hall. The Empresses of Dorinah had torched their organic holds and rebuilt them from stone and iron over eighteen hundred years before. It meant their holds were cooler, less permanent, and required much more maintenance than the tirajista-built holds that littered the lands of their neighbors. Zezili found the idea of maintaining this massive heap of stone exhausting.
They passed a pair of dajians refilling the lamps along the hall. A girl no more than ten hung from the ladder, leaning far over to the next sconce. When the girl saw Zezili, her eyes got big. She dropped the oil decanter.
Zezili snapped up the decanter before it could clatter to the stones. Oil sloshed onto her hand. She shoved the decanter back at the little dajian. “You’ll set the whole cursed place on fire,” she said.
The dajian babbled apologies. Zezili saw Saofi watching them. She should have just let it fall. She half thought to dump the oil on Saofi and set her aflame, just for effect, but knew she wouldn’t get her orders then.
So, Zezili settled for shoving the decanter at the older dajian holding the ladder, who hadn’t lost her senses in the face of a captain general. Then Zezili forged on ahead of Saofi.
“I don’t have all day, secretary,” Zezili said.
Saofi hurried to catch up. She had a shorter stride. As they came to Saofi’s office, Saofi selected the key from among the various useful secretarial items she had dangling from the chains of her chatelaine. She opened the door and retrieved a small purple letter from her desk.
Zezili took it and broke the royal seal: the Eye of Rhea stamped into a generous gob of gonsa sap.
My dearest Zezili,
Pull your legion back from the coast. You’re to partner with my new foreign friends for a domestic campaign. They will meet you at your estate in a few days’ time with your orders.
Do all they ask, and question them only as you would question me.
I remain,
Empress Casanlyn –
Zezili skimmed over the honorifics after the Empress’s name. Zezili did not question the Empress’s orders, ever. It was one reason she kept her place at the head of the legion. But she didn’t much like the idea of packing up back home and blindly following some foreigner, even at the Empress’s order. She hoped they weren’t Saiduan or Tordinian. Saiduans were arrogant, and Tordinians foul and uncouth, even by her standards.
“Is this a serious letter?” Zezili asked.
Saofi shrugged. “You would know better than I.”
“Why didn’t she see me personally? Why call me out here and then send me home again?”
“I don’t pretend to know the mind of the Empress,” Saofi said. “I take her orders, just as you do.”
“We’re nothing alike,” Zezili said.
“As you say.”
Zezili pushed her helm back on. Her ears were cold. She bunched up the letter. It had been a waste of time to come all the way to Daorian for this. She could be at home fucking her husband.
“Luck to you,” Saofi called as she stepped into the hall.
Zezili bit back a retort. Every word would get back to the Empress. She walked down to the kennels and had the kennel girls bring out her dog, a big black brute named Dakar whose shoulder was as high as Zezili’s chest. He had dark eyes and a scarred muzzle, reminder of a skirmish she had taken him into along the coast of the Saiduan island called Shorasau. She had always preferred dogs to bears. They were easier to train and stank less.
She rode through the great gates of the stronghold of Daorian and into the city that took its name from the hold. Daorian had been built on the ruins of the Saiduan city of Diamia before it. The city was a patchwork of government houses to the east, merchants’ quarters organized by profession, and poorer shacks and tents along the water, where the fishers and sea-trade people lived.
Big, somber-colored awnings stretched over the sidewalks where city-owned dajians tended to the lanterns set up on long poles lining the road; the dajians bore the look of their Dhai relatives but could hardly be called Dhai when they’d spent the entirety of their lives owned by the Empress. Women and girls filled the streets, dressed in bright tunics and long trousers and skirts, embroidered coats and wide hats. Little d
ajians followed after their owners, carrying shopping baskets; many had babies tied to their backs with lengths of colorful fabric. Most dajians were easily recognizable by their drab gray clothing, their smaller stature, their tawny complexions. Many were also branded with the mark of the family who owned them.
Zezili watched as the dajians streamed past, hurrying after tall women whose hair was curled or beribboned, pinned or sewn in place, and adorned in combs and jeweled pins. Zezili had learned how to tie hair up like that, a lifetime ago, before her mother had put a sword in her hand.
She rode past the booksellers and merchants’ stalls and into the religious quarter, where all of the lanterns were wound with red paper. The open awnings of the men’s mardanas lining the streets of the quarter were red, the sidewalks lined in brick. The Temple of Rhea stood at the end of the red-lantern road, its spires outlined by the gray sky. The Dorinah flag flew from the three topmost peaks of the stone towers: the Eye of Rhea on a background of purple.
“Syre Zezili!” someone called. “My favorite unwashed snapdragon. How are you?”
Zezili turned. A bear-drawn carriage pulled up next to her. The lacy curtains were swept back from the window, revealing a bright, rouged face with eyes heavily lined in kohl.
“Tulana Nikoel,” Zezili said. “Looking for a treat in the mardanas?”
“Nothing so amusing,” Tulana said. Her dark hair was arranged atop her head in a pile of forward-facing curls that had been sewn into place and knotted with yellow ribbons. It was not the most intricate style Zezili had ever seen, but nearly. The Empress’s gifted jistas, the Seekers, had little to do but sit around and braid each other’s hair between enemy-killing, road-building, and ditch-digging. Tulana’s little sloe-eyed shadow, Sokai, sat with her, gazing off in the opposite direction. Zezili had made a pass at him once during a campaign, and he hadn’t taken it well. Men had no sense of humor.
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