The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus

by Kameron Hurley

  As she came round again, a farmhouse came into view, or rather, she assumed it was a farmhouse; it looked more like a ship, strung with riggings on which plants twined their way up from sod gardens to insulate the roof. The house itself was half-buried in the ground and carved with totems, like those on the prows of Aaldian ships, but these totems were charred, and the grass on the sod roof, too, had burned, as well as a good chunk of grassland out behind the house.

  She caught sight of Anavha’s brown hair and slender form, and hurried over to him. He lay in the broken grass, staring at the charred house.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Oh no.”

  He got up and ran for the house. Lilia called after him, but he kept running. She would never catch him, so didn’t attempt it.

  Behind her, the gate was still open; smoke and heat poured from it, swirling up and up into the great lavender sky. The Tai Mora lines were advancing, swarming over their fallen comrades.

  “Taigan!” Lilia said. He sat up. His eyebrows were singed, and blisters formed on his hands. Beside him, Maralah was vomiting.

  “Where is he?” Taigan rasped. “He needs to shut this.”

  “He’s run to the house.”

  “Undisciplined children,” he muttered.

  Lilia glanced through the gate. “They’re coming,” she said. “If they know where we are–”

  “They won’t,” Maralah said. She released another wave of fire, less strong than the first, and pulled out her blade. She began to hum softly. Her blade glowed deep red, then violet.

  The attackers on the other side fell; one, then another, a fourth, a sixth…

  The gate winked shut.

  Maralah fell to her knees, letting her blade fall beside her.

  “What was that?” Lilia said.

  “Souls,” Maralah said. She shook her head. “Sometimes drawing on and releasing souls can upset the stability of the gates.”

  “You just… you made a guess about what might work?”

  Maralah snorted. “You didn’t? How did you think so quickly? Most people, even sanisi, panic and freeze. You moved. You knew where each of us were. Knew the strategy for jistas and fighters. Or you just guessed!”

  “I took the measure of the camp when I came in. I was already looking for allies and making plans. That’s… what I’ve been doing for a year now.”

  “What plan?”

  “There is nowhere you can run,” Lilia said carefully. “Have they showed you that yet?”

  Maralah curled a lip at her and turned on her heel. Lilia’s shoulders sagged. She took in the measure of who had made it to the other side.

  Meyna stood apart with her family, directing the Dhai, answering questions. The Dhai from her camp had moved a little apart. The Saiduan collected near Maralah.

  Lilia limped over to Meyna. “There’s a well,” Lilia said, pointing it out beyond the dog pens. “I think there are some sheep on the other side as well. The Saiduan will make neat work of that. But there may be something in the cellars.”

  Meyna did not look at her. “Thank you,” she said, “we are aware.”

  “There aren’t even two hundred people here, Meyna,” Lilia said. “You lost them all. Will you listen to me or not? We aren’t working at cross-purposes.”

  Meyna rounded on Lilia and moved away from the others, so they could not be overheard. “I won’t let my people be used in some–”

  “And how did that work for you?” Lilia said. “I am not here to be spiteful. I will tell you that being left for dead in a bone tree is not great fun. But you see it now, don’t you? They won’t stop until we’re dead.”

  Maralah interrupted them. “Come with me. Roh, Kadaan, you too. And Luna. Yes, I see you, little Luna. The house, there.”

  “I’m coming,” Zezili said, pushing her way through the crowd. “Don’t try to leave me with these Dhai.”

  Lilia followed after Maralah, Namia at her side and Luna trailing after them both. They arrived inside the house, which bore a great charred hole in the ceiling where the sod roof had been burned and collapsed. She did not see any bodies, though, and the place had clearly been ransacked.

  Anavha sat weeping in the back hall. Taigan sat at the great table in the center, eating a raw tuber from a bag. Soot covered everything.

  Lilia went to Anavha and said, “This was your home?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you… see them?”

  Anavha shook his head. “No one. No one’s here.”

  “That’s good,” Lilia said. “That means they probably got away.”

  Roh approached her, gesturing for her to go back to the table with Maralah and the others. He sat next to Anavha.

  “Why waste time with that boy?” Taigan grunted.

  “Without him all of us would have been killed,” Lilia said.

  Taigan shrugged. “I would have been fine.”

  “We need to discuss next steps,” Maralah said. “Where can he get us to next?”

  “Only places he’s seen,” Roh said. “Anavha can’t get us to Hrollief, or anywhere else. We could try Dorinah? But that’s all Tai Mora territory now. Where is there to run? They’ve conquered everything!”

  “No more running,” Lilia said. “You’ve seen what they can do. Let’s stop them now. Aren’t you tired of running? I am.”

  Maralah peered at her. Sooty, weary, certainly bone tired, after the energy she had exerted on the beachhead. “What’s your plan then?”

  “What’s yours?” Lilia countered.

  Maralah grimaced. She pressed her hands to the table. “If I do this, with you and… Taigan, fine, Taigan, then the rest of my people–”

  “They can stay here,” Lilia said quickly, “if nothing else. We can do that now. It’s as safe as we can make them for the duration. Clearly someone has been through here already. Let’s hope they won’t be back for a while.”

  She recreated the diagram of Tira’s Temple again, this time in the sooty layer of the kitchen table. “Here’s how we do it. We get our people into this fifth temple before Kirana, we control it, we hold it. Here’s what I’d be doing in precisely this moment, if I were Kirana. I’d be getting my jistas, five for every temple, into these other four temples. Immediately. And working to get into the fifth temple by any means necessary.”

  Taigan laughed and slapped his knee. “Fifth temple? It’s teeming with jistas. Likely the Empress herself has given them a visit and pissed all over it to mark it hers.”

  “Give me a minute,” Lilia said.

  Roh approached them, Anavha behind. Anavha was more composed now, but only just. Roh said, “We don’t need to go through there to get to the fifth temple, remember? Oma’s Temple can take us.”

  All gazes turned to him.

  “Because you are the Guide,” Lilia said. “All right, let’s consider that. We just need to get you to Oma’s Temple.”

  “As if that is easier!” Taigan said.

  “With the Worldbreaker and the Key,” Roh said. “Lilia, I know you said you could figure out the mechanism, you could play the role of worldbreaker, but… Li, I just think–”

  “What are you talking about?” Maralah said. “A Key?”

  Roh said, “The Key is… it’s what channels all the combined power from all of the temples, and… I assume the Key is the person who can filter all that, so a worldbreaker can use it. We just need someone very powerful who can withstand that.”

  Lilia glanced over at Zezili, who sat on the rail outside, licking a tuber and wincing. “I thought it might be Zezili, she has this… this symbol? A missing piece that a woman named Kalinda gave me. She said it would help us in the fifth temple. I don’t know. Maybe Zezili could endure all that power. We can find out?”

  Luna came forward tentatively, slipping hir slight form between Taigan and Maralah. “The symbol?” Luna asked. “Is it a trefoil with a tail?”

  “Yes,” Lilia said.

  Luna traced the symbol over the center of the diagram, where the W
orldbreaker would operate. “I would put her here. You may not want her to work the device, but that thing inside of her, you will want that here. Both of you need to be there, for it to work. There’s nothing in the book about a missing piece, but if there is one, it would sit there.”

  Lilia sketched out a drawing of the orrery she had seen in Tira’s Temple. “This is the device, I think,” she said. “Tira’s Temple… showed it to me. Have you seen anything like this in the book? Anything about an orrery?”

  Anavha leaned over the drawing. Frowned.

  “Nothing about an orrery,” Luna said, rubbing at hir forehead. “I didn’t see any device like this in any of the drawings, but… the instructions for closing the ways, they are mathematical equations that could easily be applied to the heavens. Oh, yes, I can see this now.”

  “That looks like the game of spheres,” Anavha said, in Dorinah, though he certainly hadn’t been able to follow any of their other conversation.

  “You’ve seen this before?” Lilia asked, in Dorinah.

  “Something like it, yes. All different colors of orbs, though. It’s a game, a tavern game here. You have to match all of the orbs so they are correct pairs. Knowing the correct pairs is difficult because it isn’t by size or shape, but distance. There’s math involved, a lot of strategy.”

  “I want to know more about this game,” Lilia said. “Can you set it up here?”

  “It’s better to go to one,” Anavha said. “Then maybe you can see if it’s really like what you saw.”

  Lilia translated for the others.

  Maralah dug into the bag of tubers. Taigan tried to pull it back. She snarled at him.

  “The Key is more difficult,” Luna continued. “For a long time, I assumed it was the Kai.”

  “Tira’s Temple said it wasn’t,” Lilia offered.

  “Right,” Luna said. “Instead, it’s someone who can channel all that power into operating the orrery. Yes, all the jistas at every temple are channeling power, but the one here, in the fifth, has to take in all that power and feed it back to the temple to power that… machine. That must be what it looks like, an orrery. It’s… a lot of power. Enough to destroy pretty much anyone. These are organic machines, with the people acting as parts. It makes sense that the Key is a person, an organic part.”

  “Maralah, do you think–” Lilia began, and stopped. Her gaze settled on Taigan instead, who was gnawing on a tuber while making faces at Maralah. He noticed her looking, and grimaced.

  “Oh no,” Taigan said. “Don’t even say it.”

  “There’s only one person here who wouldn’t have died back there,” Lilia said. “You admitted it yourself. Who else could get torn apart by the power of every satellite and not die?”

  “You need an omajista! I will be the useful omajista. Blow someone else up.”

  “Our omajista is Anavha,” she said. “You’re the Key, Taigan.”

  “I so look forward to more pain and discomfort,” he said.

  “You wanted to help,” Lilia said. “Isn’t that why you came back? This is how you can help.”

  “Killing, helping, as long as they’re the same,” he said.

  “I’ll talk to Anavha,” Lilia said; at his name, he perked up, but she didn’t want to share her theory with him, not yet, so she continued in Dhai. “I think others should learn too, though, in case something goes wrong. Luna? You seem to know more about what these can do than anyone.”

  “Me?” Luna said. “I… suppose I could, but… I don’t want to stand up there.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to,” Lilia said. “I just don’t like the idea of any of us being singular. We only have once chance at this.”

  “There’s still the matter of getting into Oma’s Temple,” Roh said. “We can’t just open a gate in there. The jistas will sense us and be on us immediately. Anavha and I barely got out when he opened a gate. It’s like they have some kind of alarm that senses when power is used.”

  Anavha, frustrated at being excluded, asked for a translation. Roh provided one.

  “I have several contacts there,” Lilia said. “One in particular is very high up. Is Caisa here?”

  “Who?” Roh asked.

  “Never mind,” Lilia said. “I still need to see who made it from Meyna’s camp.”

  “There’s also Saronia. Do you remember her?” Roh asked.

  Lilia grimaced. She did. “That bully?”

  “She does the laundry,” Roh said. “Carts it in and out of the temple, across the bridge, from the plateau. We could come in through the cart.”

  Maralah shook her head. “It’s too many people. A bare minimum of seven must go down, and you will want others, as you said, in case something happens to any single person. I would not attempt this with fewer than twenty. You can’t get them all in through the fucking laundry.”

  “We could have Anavha open a gate at the base of the plateau,” Lilia said, wiping away the diagram of Tira’s Temple and drawing a map of the plateau and the spur of rock that held Oma’s Temple. “Maralah, you could set the plateau on fire, at night to draw their attention. That’s a good distraction. The darkness will help confuse them.”

  Roh pointed at the temple. “We need to get to the Assembly Chamber,” he said. “That’s where the temple told me to bring the Key and the Worldbreaker. The ceiling of that chamber is glass.”

  “Right,” Lilia said.

  “Para is ascendant,” Roh said. “When you’ve drawn their attention to the plateau, a lot of other jistas will be pulling on their stars to put that fire out. Kadaan and I can get Anavha in on a wave of air, break in through the glass and make sure the area is secure. When it’s clear, Anavha can open a gate and get in the rest of you. That will be much faster.”

  “Why can’t Anavha just open a gate inside the Assembly Chamber?” Maralah said, rubbing her head. “This is overly complicated.”

  “We have no idea who will be in that chamber,” Lilia said. “Kirana might have dozens of jistas in there. If Anavha opens a gate directly in that chamber, they will immediately sense his power and send everyone running up there before Roh and Kadaan can secure it, and we’ll be through. Even with Roh and Kadaan coming in first, I still think we will need a bigger distraction than burning the plateau if we really want to make sure the Assembly Chamber is empty. If we can get those guards and jistas below, we can cut them off from their stars.”

  “I can cut them off,” Taigan said. “A Song of Unmaking. After that little lark on the beach, I can say for a fact that I can cut off fifty-nine jistas at a time, at least. I’m very good at distractions.”

  “And how do you propose to get in?” Lilia said. “We are all very… obvious.”

  “I propose that I walk right in and offer that Empress something she would like very much indeed. That will get her and her jistas and guards out of that Assembly Chamber, and anyone else.”

  “What could you possibly offer that they’d want badly enough to swarm you for?” Roh said.

  “I would give her Lilia Sona, the upstart kitchen girl leading the rebels.”

  “No,” Lilia said. “They would cut you off from Oma the moment you walked in. And murder me, certainly.”

  “They would try. I’ve discovered that your people and hers are bad at the Song of Unmaking, at least when it comes to unmaking me.”

  “It’s a very big risk,” Lilia said. She chewed her thumbnail. “Maybe we won’t do it at all. Maybe we should just risk–”

  “Oh, how touching,” Taigan said. “I would be fine. I’m always fine.”

  Roh said, “Taigan, do you really think you could get into the temple with Lilia, cut everyone off from their stars, and get yourself upstairs to the Assembly Chamber after?”

  “I’d tell her Lilia knows how to work the machine,” Taigan said, “that she is the Worldbreaker, and she needs to take us upstairs. You’d have the room secured by then, surely.”

  “What if I didn’t know how?” Lilia asked.

 
“Especially if you didn’t,” Taigan said. He leaned toward her. “You know what that angry murderer is doing right now, with the moments that Para is in the sky ticking away? She is throwing jistas into those machines, all four of them, and frantically trying to murder that fifth temple. Her moments are numbered. She knows it. If you and I come in the front of the temple, she will meet us, and I will get us to the Assembly Chamber. I relish the challenge.”

  “You’re very confident,” Lilia said.

  “I’m always confident,” Taigan said.

  Maralah said something to him in Saiduan. He snapped back at her. The air tensed for a moment, and Lilia waved her hands at them. “Let’s not!” Lilia said. “We need to mobilize very, very quickly. Are we all aligned with this plan? If we do this, it must happen tonight.”

  “It still needs some refining,” Kadaan said, from beside Roh. “Too much relies on… I’m sorry, Taigan, but we all know how you are. And we know very little about how many people are in this temple. She could have that chamber warded, and if so, there’s no way we could enter, by wink or anything else.”

  “I agree this is mad,” Maralah said, “but Lilia is right. We lose our window when Para winks out. But it’s a good reminder that we need two of everyone. There’s too much that could go wrong. You best go find out about this game of spheres, and make sure two of you know it! I’m going to get us a few more jistas. We still need a tirajista.”

  “I think I have one,” Lilia said. If Salifa had lived. If any of the jistas from her camp had lived.

  “And another in reserve,” Taigan said. “This isn’t your first turn with an impossible attack, bird. And we know how those turn out.”

  Heat rose in her face, but she said nothing, and Taigan did not continue.

  “All right,” Maralah said. “I need to go make sure these can eat. Kadaan, let’s see if we can get ourselves some of those sheep.”

  The room cleared. Taigan lingered, munching on his tuber. Lilia stared at her messy drawings in the soot. Her dirty fingers.

  “You have failed at how many assaults now, bird?” he said brightly.

  “Go soak your head, Taigan.”

  “Let’s count them,” he said, and held out a finger. “There was the harbor, of course. Where you lost the wall and burned yourself out, despite my admonitions.” He held out a second finger. “There was Kuallina. Ah, Kuallina! What a delightfully absurd mess that was, on all levels, when you lost your little Gian and–”