“They’ve seen what the Tai Mora do to towns that surrender.” Well, perhaps they hadn’t. But she had. It was no different than what they did to cities that fought. Perhaps the fighters died more quickly.
“And what will you do?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” she said. “You?”
“You should lead them,” he said. “It would be a fine change of profession.”
She wiped the bowl clean and stood. She poured water from a pitcher into the basin on her night stand and washed her fingers, considering. “They won’t follow a woman.”
“You’re not a woman. You’re the Minister of War.”
“I’ve been around and around this dozens of times.”
“Sometimes our stories erase women who lead,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it never happened, only that we refuse to remember. There are folk stories of–”
“There are folk stories about men who turn into bees,” she said. “There are stories of time-traveling dogs and shepherds with wings. They won’t follow a woman.” She sat back down next to him.
“I did,” he said. In the dim light, broad shadows played across his heavily bearded face. The beard made his expression hard to read. Big, bright eyes, broad, generous face. A face she had brought back from death – for loyalty, if nothing else.
“You followed Rajavaa,” she said. “Not me.”
“I followed you. Not Alaar, not Rajavaa, not Morsaar. You, Maralah.”
She pressed her hand to his cheek. He leaned into her touch. “I’m tired of fighting,” she said.
“Then let’s not fight,” he said.
She pressed her lips to his, and he responded in kind. Not urgent or demanding, but gentle. The kindness of the kiss was so unexpected that it lit her up like a torch. When was the last time she had been touched with kindness? They made love in the cool evening like much younger people. She had been past the age at which she concerned herself with pregnancy for some time, but had not been able to take advantage of it. The freedom it gave her was nothing short of miraculous. Kovaas drank her like a thirsty man, as if she was the last woman in the world, and perhaps, tonight, that was what they were – the last two sanisi in Anjoliaa, drunk on the inevitability of death. But not yet, not yet…
After, he lay sprawled beside her, breathing low and soft, and she traced the broad scars on his back and wished they had met under some better circumstance. But Maralah the Minister of War would not have taken another sanisi to bed. The politics of that were too great. She would have relied on celibacy or hungry young men from the villages. Never equals. Never potential rivals. She had not lived this long by acting like a foolish girl. Yet here she was.
She thought of Rajavaa’s body in the tub. And Taigan in the room below. She wondered if Taigan had heard them. Taigan, more broken than any of them.
Kovaas rolled over. Caught her hand in his, drew it to his breast. “Will we part tomorrow, then?”
“Or tonight, under cover of dark?”
“They will follow you, Maralah.”
“And you?”
“You know my answer.”
“Even if I am a woman without title who leads no army and holds no power? You find that interesting?”
“You will always have power. Over an empire, a village, an army, or perhaps just over a man.”
“Sentimental,” she said, but she wrapped him in her arms, and rested her face on his broad chest, and, for the first time in weeks, considered a future that did not end in death.
52
Ahkio was on the wall, cursing what felt like a terrible hangover, when Sina entered the sky. The double satellites hung there for one blazing, fearful moment, then Para winked out. The parajistas on the wall wailed. It was like a knife cut cleanly through the line of them. Tulana was screaming at one of her Seekers, a sinajista. The smoky walls that barred the view of their retreat dissipated, revealing the empty field below where the refugees had been.
“Oma’s breath,” Ahkio said, and ran down the line to see how far Yisaoh and their retreating forces had gotten. He could not see them from here, but their tracks would be easy to follow.
He had not called any sinajistas from the temple. They were completely defenseless.
Ahkio yelled at the parajistas. “Off the wall! Retreat!”
Tulana barreled toward him. “We hold this wall!”
“With what? We have one sinajista and three hundred militia. That’s the last of us.”
“Then we die here,” Tulana said.
“I said–”
She grabbed him by the collar, shook him. “I don’t answer to you. I answer to that little cripple, and I tell you now, I would rather be dead than a slave.” She released him, and yelled at her people.
“Voralyn! Fire wall!”
Ahkio bolted down into the hold, and found the leader of the militia, Farosi, coming up the steps. “Is it true?” Farosi said.
“Para’s down. We need to retreat.”
But Farosi climbed up past him. Ahkio went after him. They stood on the wall together, staring out over the low fire wall that now ringed Kuallina, held there by Tulana’s single sinajista.
Farosi placed his hands on the wall, and nodded grimly. “All right,” he said.
“We need to retreat,” Ahkio said. “They’ll bust through that ring in–”
“We’ll stay here,” Farosi said. “We need to cover you. Get to the Line room, quickly.”
“Farosi, you’ll die here–”
“Of course,” Farosi said. “That was the plan all along, was it not, Kai? We distract so the others may flee. It just so happens we distract a few moments less than we hoped. Come along.”
“I can’t–”
Farosi called two parajistas over. They were trembling badly, already exhausted and now shaken. “Take the Kai back to Oma's Temple,” he said. “There’s room in the Line for three.”
They did not have to be asked twice.
“Can I take your hand?” Ahkio asked.
Farosi nodded. They clasped wrists.
“I need you to burn it behind you,” Ahkio said. “Send a small force south to follow. Burn everything. Every village. Every field. Every orchard.”
“I have fifty on the ground. I’ll move them as soon as you’re out.”
Ahkio nodded. The parajistas came behind Ahkio and hurried him over to the Lift room. “Caisa!” Ahkio said. “I can’t leave without Caisa!”
But everything was happening very quickly. The tirajista in the Lift room poured the chrysalis components into the divot in the floor, and it bubbled up around them, and off they went, Ahkio and two powerless parajistas, swinging back over the trees, speeding away from Kuallina. “Get Caisa out!” he yelled, but the others were already turning back into the hold to fight.
Ahkio pressed his face to the northward side of the chrysalis, watching as the army came alive outside Kuallina. A wave of fire burst up from the foreign army, a plume twice the height of the wall. It engulfed the fortress. As the wave passed, the Tai Mora army swarmed, like a thousand insects devouring some corpse. For a moment he wondered if Lilia and Mohrai had survived it. He knew Yisaoh would, fool woman. Yisaoh would survive anything.
The Lift passed above the trees, higher and higher, giving him a clear view of the army’s assault on the gates of Kuallina while Sina’s baleful purple glow illuminated the field. It was the same journey he had taken the year before, tucked inside the Lift with Nasaka, after she had told him his sister lay dying. Now it was not his sister who lay dying. The whole country was burning as he watched on.
“Maybe… the temples…” one of the parajistas said. She met Ahkio’s look and stopped speaking. She was young, not much older than him. “Perhaps we can… the temple of Sina, at least…”
“We’re retreating,” Ahkio said. “Dhai is lost.”
She began to cry.
Ahkio could not bring himself to comfort her. He saw Sina’s light reflected in her eyes, and he gazed toward Oma's Temple
with a heavy sense of dread.
Sina had risen.
Nasaka was a sinajista. One of the most powerful. She would not be happy, and she would have burned her way out of those cells the moment her star entered the sky.
Whatever waited for him at Oma's Temple would not be much better than Kuallina.
Four hours later, Ahkio and the parajistas arrived in the Lift room at the Temple of Oma. Ahkio saw no flames above the temple, no burning plateau, nothing to give him any idea of what was happening inside.
There was no one to meet them, so they had to wait for the chrysalis to dissolve on its own, which was maddening. The three of them shouted for another hour before the chrysalis began to lose its integrity. They peeled it away with their fingers, and Ahkio bolted out the door.
“Come with me,” he told the younger parajista, Mihina. And to the elder, Sulana, he said, “Round up the sinajistas. They need to know we’re retreating and burning the temple behind us.”
“The temple?” Sulana said. “Kai–”
“You want to leave it to the Tai Mora?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Then go,” he said.
He and Mihina went down the scullery stair. He burst onto the sixth floor where the novices should have been training, but the rooms were oddly empty. Ahkio kept descending, checking halls as he went. His sense of unease intensified.
Ahkio plunged down the steps, finally coming out in the foyer. It was packed, clogged with novices and Oras. Some were crying.
He called at the first he saw, a boy with a pocked complexion. “Where’s Meyna?” he asked. “Meyna and the Li Kai?”
The boy burst into tears. “Kai! Kai!” he cried, and the cry went up, and the room seethed like a living thing.
“Where are they?” he yelled.
“She’s in the Sanctuary!” someone said, and Ahkio pushed his way through them, jostling the crowd rudely. The doors to the Sanctuary were open. He barreled inside.
There was Nasaka at the center of the room, holding a bowl full of blood.
“Nasaka!” he said.
She looked up. So did the woman who knelt in front of her. Ahkio came up short.
He knew the woman at Nasaka’s feet, though he had not seen her since he was a child.
“Etena?” he said.
His aunt rose, a narrow slip of a woman with his mother’s broad forehead and pert nose, pulling at the cloak around her shoulders. “Ahkio?” She glanced at Nasaka. “You said he was dead.”
“Where is Meyna?” Ahkio said.
Nasaka dumped the blood over Etena’s head. Etena gaped, sputtering.
Ahkio ran to the platform, wondering whose blood that was. His child’s? Meyna’s? “It won’t work!” he said. “You think you’ll just make a new Kai, you think–”
A blast of heat took Ahkio off his feet. He slammed against the far wall. The crowd screamed around him, and parted like a sea for Nasaka. Ahkio was suddenly sick, and vomited all over the floor. Fire. Why was it always fire?
Nasaka strode past the crowd, pulling her willowthorn sword from the sheath at her side.
“Stop! Nasaka!” Etena came down the steps, one hand held high. How had Nasaka found her after all this time? Even with Meyna’s direction, it should have been impossible. Etena had stayed hidden because she didn’t want the seat any more than he had.
Ahkio coughed. His eyebrows were singed. He scrambled to his feet and tried to keep his head about him. The memories were pouring back – his mother, the fire, Kirana’s arms pulling him to safety in the Dorinah camp…Nasaka’s expression now was fearful, not angry. But fear was worse.
Etena caught up to Nasaka and grabbed at her tunic.
Nasaka turned stiffly and ran her through, then set her on fire.
Etena burst into flame, like some horrible specter come to life.
Ahkio screamed, screamed like he had the day in the camps, and for the first time he questioned who had really started the fire that killed his mother. Was it really the Dorinah legionnaires? Or someone with a far more intimate knowledge of what fire could do? Oma’s breath, he thought, she made me a puppet from the day I was born.
He ran into the foyer. People screamed and scattered. He slid around the banister and went up the scullery stair, taking the steps two at a time. He had no idea where to go – just away, away, as far and as fast as he could.
He smelled smoke. He was sick again on the stairs.
Ahkio pushed into a door on the fourth floor, hoping he shut it fast enough that Nasaka didn’t know what floor he came out on. He looked for a place to hide, and then wondered at the absurdity of that. Hide from her until when? Until some other sinajista dared to face her? Until the Tai Mora came?
He ran down the hall. These were the rooms for the novices and they stretched out across this whole floor of the temple. In a fit of inspiration, Ahkio ducked through the door to the latrine and pressed himself against the wall just inside. There was a bank of four stone seats under which flowed a steady stream of water.
Ahkio ran to the latrine and looked down. He could probably fit. He’d lost weight like everyone else, but even so navigating those dark, filthy tunnels all the way down to the sewer dregs would be dangerous. He turned around and yanked the door open to run again– just as Nasaka strode down the hall. He slammed the door.
Too late. Too late by far.
Ahkio backed up against the wall. He was out of ideas.
He heard Nasaka’s footsteps outside.
She opened the door, and came in sword first.
“Why not wait for the Tai Mora to kill me for you?” he asked.
She pointed her sword at him. Her expression – he thought she would look mad, but no, it was the same expression she always wore – grim certainty. Absolute faith.
“Etena,” he said. “Why call Etena from the woodlands?”
Nasaka shook her head. “You aren’t real,” she said.
“What?”
Nasaka swung at him.
Ahkio ducked. He tried to get around her, but she was well trained, and he was unarmed. The sword caught him in the side, and ripped open a great gash.
He stumbled and grabbed at his side.
She raised her weapon.
Ahkio punched his head into her stomach, ramming her against the wall. She swung again. Caught his arm.
Ahkio hit the floor. Blood gushed from his right arm. Soaked his sleeve.
“Nasaka, please, this is… a mistake…”
“They killed you,” she said. “My real son. You’re some imposter. Liaro said you were different after you came back from the basements. I can see that now.”
“I’m not, Nasaka. I never was. Please.” He grabbed her wrist with his left hand, trying to take some control over her weapon. His wounds burned, but fear and adrenaline burned brighter.
She kicked him in the gut and swung.
He rolled away, but not fast enough. The weapon bit into his leg and cut deep. She swung again. He screamed and yanked himself forward. She took off his left leg at the thigh.
Ahkio shrieked. Blood gushed, so much blood he swooned and crumpled on the floor. His vision swam, and ran to black at the edges.
Nasaka appeared above him, holding his leg. She threw it down the latrine.
“Nasaka...” he said. “Mother, please–”
The last thing he saw was the blazing purple light of her weapon swinging for his head.
53
Taigan sat on the roof of the boarding house, staring out at the spinning spire of Sina in the dawn sky. The sky turned a blushing lavender as the double suns broke across the horizon. Unlike Para, Sina rose before the suns, and set just after them. It amused her to read the tomes of astronomers desperate to understand why the divine satellites did not adhere to a strict, regular path the way the heavenly bodies did. They were not fixed things, the astronomers said, but visitors from someplace else, the divine realm, thrust through the seams between things at uneven intervals. The powers
they brought with them were equally unpredictable.
She smoked a Tordinian cigarette, a rare luxury now, and wondered how the battle went in Dhai, or if she had already missed it. It had been weeks since she was pulled back here to Anjoliaa, weeks waiting for the Tai Mora army. She thought she could see the first sign of them now, in the very far distance. The smoke of cooking fires. Far more interesting, however, were the tears in the sky. Along the western horizon she saw broad ripples. As she watched, one tore open to reveal a bloody amber sky on the other side. She called Oma, and the breath that flowed beneath her skin came more easily and with more intensity than it ever had. Stargazers could predict little. She tracked Oma’s rise by how easy it came to her. Not long, now.
The window behind her opened. Maralah said, “We’re leaving.”
Taigan crawled back into the window, and dropped to the floor. Maralah and Kovaas were there, both looking very clean and overdressed.
“Twenty minutes,” Kovaas said, and gave Maralah a little bow. He picked up a pack and left them.
Taigan put out the cigarette on the window frame and preserved the butt of it in her coat pocket. The weather had warmed considerably, but even this far south, there was still a chill in the air at sunrise and sunset.
“What is my task?” Taigan asked.
“You’re to stay in this room until tomorrow morning.”
Taigan raised her brows. They’d begun to grow back, darker and thicker this time. They nearly met over her eyes now. “And then?”
“And then you’ll know what to do.”
“You could have told me that before I put out my cigarette.” More long distance messages, then, playing runner to whatever strange scheme she was up to now. Did she plan a final stand? Taigan hoped so. She had listened to her and Kovaas fucking the last few weeks, and knew something about her had changed. She no longer looked like a walking corpse, a dead person with no family, no hope. Taigan wondered what it felt like.
“Those are vile things,” Maralah said.
“It’s not as if it will kill me.”
“No,” Maralah said. She turned on her heel. “Until tomorrow morning.”
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 96
