“Nor to me,” Nettle said as she kissed Cordelia’s brow. When they parted, Nettle lifted her chin. “You have but minutes, Sa. If you do not return to your body, I will run for the mountains to kill Naos myself.”
Cordelia started in surprise. “Even if I’m okay? You’d be throwing your life away.”
Nettle gave her a flat look. “Minutes, Sa. Fifteen of them. Then I leave you with Simon and start for Naos.”
When Pool gave Cordelia a serious look instead of a teasing one, Cordelia knew Nettle was telling the truth. “Right.” She sat on the ground, and Nettle knelt beside her, but the firm set of her lips said that if fifteen minutes went by, she wouldn’t be there when Cordelia woke up.
Best to get started, then. She slipped free of her body and felt Pool and Simon with her. The tree still stood nearby, waiting for Pool to command it to leave, but Cordelia liked having all the drushka behind her at the moment.
She floated north, noting the fire still blazing. They were lucky they’d swung as westerly as they had. The fire didn’t extend all the way to the swamp yet; they’d have to skirt the edge of that mass of trees and water in order to escape the heat.
Cordelia felt her tether tightening behind her, but she stretched it, trying to see farther. “A moment, Sa,” Pool said in her mind. The tether gave a little, flaring with light, and Cordelia imagined it as an extension of Pool’s limbs as she stretched to increase her reach.
She couldn’t venture as far as the foothills, not to mention the mountains, but she spotted movement here and there, both in the mountains and on the plains, but she couldn’t get close enough to tell what it was. Probably people or animals desperate to escape the flames.
“That’s a shame, isn’t it?” a voice asked. If it had been possible, Cordelia would have said it whispered in her ear.
Fear tingled like ice rubbing over Cordelia’s spirit. Pool yanked on her tether, and she raced for the tree. Simon’s power roared through her, but there was nothing to strike. She could faintly hear him yelling at Miriam to find him a signal.
“Oh, this is nothing!” Naos’s voice said, following along as if she drifted by Cordelia’s side. “Barely a wisp of power, nothing to find, only here to talk. Don’t be so bloody paranoid!”
“What do you want?” Cordelia asked, not stopping. Pool’s protective instincts flowed around her like a wall, pushing back her fear.
“Just saying hello, that I’m looking forward to your visit…that sounds like a message someone would leave on a vid, doesn’t it?”
Cordelia ignored her rambling and watched the countryside go by. She spotted something at the edge of her senses, something large moving north of the swamp. She tried to slow, but Pool was pulling too hard. It was too large to be a person or any animal except a geaver, and they didn’t range that far west. A tree? A queen’s tree?
But it was too small for that.
Unless it was Shiv.
“It’s all so exciting!” Naos said. “All the flittering about, all the goings-on. Can I tell you a secret?”
“No.” Cordelia hurried even faster, feeding images to Pool: Shiv, headed to the mountains like everyone else.
“I’ve been keeping a little lid on everyone’s power, just to even the playing field, and hardly anyone’s noticed!” She laughed like a delighted child. “And I may have given a few emotions the odd nudge, too, just to hurry everyone up a bit. Seriously, you’re all so slow.”
Cordelia knew she shouldn’t engage, but she couldn’t help it. “You’re lying. Simon would have known.”
“Oh yes, all hail the mighty Dr. Lazlo. He’s so powerful. It’s not as if you can take him out just by hitting him on the head or anything.” She cackled. “He bumped his noggin, and I just creeped on in. Of course,” she added with a sigh, “he got rid of me soon enough, even if he didn’t know what he was doing. His power is always fixing him, and I was like a virus. A fabulous virus, but still.”
Cordelia thought through everyone’s behavior the past few days, then dismissed the idea. If Naos couldn’t fuck with them with power, she’d spread paranoia. “You can take anyone out if you hit them hard enough. Even you.”
“Grr,” Naos said. “I love it when you talk tough!”
Cordelia felt another emotion fill her, Simon’s satisfaction. His power flared again, mixed with something else, Miriam’s telepathy. He swirled their abilities with Pool’s, and Cordelia felt their anticipation as if she was face-to-face with an enemy, and someone handed her a railgun.
She caught a flicker of power like a sparkle in her far periphery. She used herself as a targeting system, directing the power and heard a mental howl in response before Naos’s presence quickly withdrew.
Cordelia wanted to crow, but she was so close to her body that she dove inside and came awake with a happy cry.
Nettle leaned over her, blocking the light. “Just in time, Sa.”
Cordelia sat up and kissed her. “We drove her off!”
“Ahya, Sa, just,” Pool said as she helped Nettle and Cordelia to their feet. Behind her, Simon was beaming, and Miriam looked smug. Every non-drushka seemed mystified, but Cordelia was certain word would spread, and morale would greatly improve. They’d driven Naos away even if she had just been using a wisp of her power.
And that wasn’t the only important fact.
Cordelia shook off her fear and worry as Pool commanded the tree’s roots to dig long tunnels through the soil, as far as the tendrils could reach. Cordelia braced herself, taking deep breaths before the roots pulled her under and sent her careening through the soil as they had in the swamp, when she’d gone to confront the Shi. This time, though, when she popped back up to the surface, far from the tree, she had more than Pool, Nettle, and Reach. Surrounded by paladins, drushka, yafanai, and one former god, Cordelia led the way north of the swamp and west of the fire. Soon, they’d have Shiv in their party as well. And if one queen could help drive away Naos, she ached to find out what three could do.
Chapter Twenty-two
Lydia couldn’t breathe, and it had nothing to do with the smoke blowing over her. The last few moments had felt like a vision. Indeed, she’d seen some of it before: Fajir walking away, shoulders back, stride confident. She’d caught a fire-eaten blade of grass. She’d leapt some flames, though in her vision, Lydia thought they’d been some of the flames Fajir was helping to stop.
When Fajir’s sword sank into the Sun’s throat, time seemed to slow, and Lydia heard nothing but ringing in her ears. He’d died so quickly, one minute moving his arms in the air as if directing musicians, the next clutching his ruined throat and trying to hold his life inside. She’d expected a dramatic showdown, something out of an epic, with recriminations and speeches and tears. Killing a god should have taken longer than a fraction of a second.
But this was Fajir, wise enough to know that time could only be used against her. She’d wounded her fellow countrymen, then did what she came to do.
Lydia hadn’t even had time to weep for her before she was lost to the flames.
The Moon shrieked once the Sun was cut down, a noise of such pure anguish that it sliced through Lydia’s shock. Fajir flew into the smoke, her lean body lost to where the flames were licking the side of the hill. The Moon collapsed at the Sun’s side; her grief felt almost tangible, like a half-formed ghost rising off of her, and Lydia stumbled a few steps toward her to offer comfort before she remembered where she was.
Escape.
She turned, trying to see through tears and smoke. Fajir was dead, and Lydia had to escape, but her legs felt like lumps of clay. Run, she told them, but they couldn’t obey, ready to mourn Fajir even if she wasn’t. At least her vision was over, but even that didn’t cheer her. Losing something that had driven her for weeks was still a loss, and her body wanted to grieve for that, too.
“Go, go,” she told herself, hating the breathless sound of her voice. Fajir wouldn’t be weak right now. She’d slip out of this camp and find her friends and
do what had to be done.
Her friends? Nico had been Fajir’s friend, and she’d killed him for Lydia’s sake. This whole shitty quest had been for Lydia’s sake, or at least for the sake of her power. She squeezed her hands into fists until the pain brought her back to reality. Her stupid power and its stupid visions weren’t her fault. This future was always going to happen. The fire, the deaths, all of it! And if she didn’t get away now, she would be one of them.
Maybe that would be for the best.
“No,” she said with a growl. She wouldn’t be ruled by her stupid power or her stupid fucking feelings! She had to move.
She saw people ahead, heard cries and the thud of weapons. Some of the attackers had made it into camp. Lydia turned and stayed low, using the smoke to hide. She couldn’t go that way. Picking another direction, she tried again. Her bearings had deserted her. She could barely tell which way was up, and the smoke was beginning to thin.
Lydia’s right foot slipped out from under her, and she cried out as she fell back. She’d reached a ledge off the flat area the Sun-Moon had chosen for a camp. The wind gusted over her, stinging her eyes with smoke but clearing the way enough that she could see that the fire was dying, almost out. Whether the Sun had been feeding it or if in his death, he’d extinguished most of it, she couldn’t know.
Fajir had done it. She’d saved them all.
A crack of thunder made her jump, and she jerked to her feet as the sky opened. She gasped at the shock of cold water pouring on her head. It muted her grief even as it killed what was left of the fire.
Lydia turned, fighting the urge to search for shelter. The rain would help her get away. She squinted against the sting of the raindrops and put a hand up to shield her eyes as she stumbled through quickly forming mud. No one else wandered around this edge of the camp, so if she could find some trees—
Lydia pitched forward, the fall so sudden she couldn’t cry out before the air rushed from her lungs as she hit the ground. Her face stung as she curled around her breathless chest and sought to keep her face out of the mud. She hadn’t even had time to put up her hands as she fell. Not a fall. A push.
And no one had touched her.
Her breath came back slowly as she was lifted in the air, hovering amidst the raindrops. She rotated slowly and saw blood dripping onto her hands. She tried to touch the harsh sting on her forehead but couldn’t move, stuck in a fetal position, dripping with mud and blood.
The Moon’s shoulders heaved up and down as she breathed. The rain left steam drifting around her head—more ghosts—and those of the worshipers gathered behind her. The air felt heavier as she stalked closer, murder making her eyes shine in the gloom.
“I want to rip you apart,” she said, a whisper more frightening than a shout. Maybe rage had clogged her throat. “And I will, as soon as I get what I want. Until then…” She put her hands to Lydia’s head.
Lydia gasped as a buzzing sound filled her mind, louder than the rain, than her own breathing in her ears. Her vision filled with swirling motes that winked as they flew, almost beautiful.
“I have to use my power.”
She heard her own voice, but the words made no sense. She hated to use her power. That was why…
Something…had happened.
“I have to use my power now.”
It rose within her, and she embraced it, imagining time as a skein of yarn. She saw herself and the Moon, but she couldn’t focus on the absurdity of her body floating in midair. She had a future to follow.
The Moon’s time skein unwound, and Lydia watched, urging it to speed through the Sun-Moon camp collecting itself and moving on, mopping up the rest of their attackers on their way up the hill. They left their animals in a guarded camp, and the Moon herself led the way toward a mountain in the distance.
“That’s enough.”
Her own voice again and not to be denied. She let the skein rewind, then gasped as the Moon’s power released her, and she fell with another painful thud.
“I could scramble your brain,” the Moon said, still far quieter than she should be. “But I want you aware so you can anticipate your death.”
Lydia barely had time to process those words before the Moon walked away, and her worshipers rushed forward, binding Lydia’s arms tightly behind her back. The Moon was done taking chances, it seemed.
Lydia couldn’t even cry out as they hauled her upright and shoved her after the Moon. She never thought she’d lament her fate and stubbornly feel she deserved it at the same time.
* * *
Even without the tree around, Simon could feel Pool’s anxiety as she tried to contact Shiv. He knew their method of communication revolved around the trees—he meant to really study them one day—but Pool kept trying to reach her daughter with her mind alone. She let out a whoop of victory just as the heavens turned on the faucet.
“Since I do not have my tree, she has agreed to come for us,” Pool said, raising her voice above the rain.
Simon nodded. If they’d still had the tree, Pool would have been hesitant to contact Shiv at all, not with Lyshus and his power to sap other queens’ trees of energy. “Fantastic,” he yelled. “Because this ground is quickly turning to sludge.”
The plains had been getting soggier even before the rain. Runoff from the swamp transformed the whole area into a treeless mire.
“Keep slogging,” Cordelia said. “The more time we save, the better.” She squinted eastward, and Simon turned to look, too. Through the rain and the lingering smoke, they couldn’t see the glow of the fire any longer. Maybe the pouring rain had finally conquered it.
“Do you think this is him?” Victoria asked as she walked behind Simon, Miriam at her side. She’d been prepared to fight any fires that came near them, but Simon had doubted she could overcome the Sun’s power. “This rain?”
“The Storm Lord?” Miriam asked before Simon could respond. “If it is, he’s only doing it to save his own skin.”
Simon snorted a laugh. “Or it was a happy accident.”
They both smiled, and he fell back to walk beside them. It was always nice to talk shit about the asshole he’d once had feelings for with people who felt the same. When Victoria slid in the mud, Simon helped catch her while Miriam said, “Watch your feet, graceless.”
“Look who’s talking. You walk like a drunken hoshpi.”
As they fell into comfortable bickering, Simon recalled why he hadn’t been walking with them in the first place and moved toward the center of the group. Reach and Nettle walked on either side of Pool, who craned her neck trying to catch a glimpse of her daughter. Cordelia marched in front of them, the water spattering her armor with a succession of sharp pings. The sound reverberated off every suit of armor nearby, a paladin symphony.
Simon stepped up beside Cordelia, who threatened to outpace him even with her heavy armor. “When you attacked the Shi in the swamp,” Simon said. “Did you have a plan, or was it more like this?”
“We had a loose plan: run, don’t get killed, keep running, deliver Pool, run some more, don’t get killed.”
He chuckled. “I like the part where you made sure not to get killed.”
“It’s part of my everyday plan,” she said with a smile, dark eyes sparkling.
He couldn’t ask if she was enjoying herself. He wouldn’t be able to resist a few sarcastic comments if the answer was yes. “Do you think Horace is up there?” He nodded in the direction of the mountains that had all but disappeared in the driving rain.
“Probably. Everyone else is.”
Her voice held a note of false cheer, and he shook his head. “And with the way he’s been spoiling for a fight, he won’t miss the action if he’s able.”
Cordelia cleared her throat, and he felt her discomfort. Her normal advice to people with too many feelings was probably something along the lines of: get drunk, get laid, or get in a fight. Before she could say anything, though, he felt her mood shift to something brighter.
“You know, Naos said she’s been tinkering with people’s powers and emotions. I thought she was lying, of course, but maybe that’s part of his problem. She claimed that she’s so subtle no one would notice, even said she’d done it to you after you’d been hit on the head, but your body healed itself. Maybe Horace doesn’t quite have that instinct down yet.”
Simon frowned and tried to recall the fight with Naos. He hadn’t really been listening to what anyone said. He’d been too busy badgering Miriam to find a telepathic signal that was barely there so he could attack. He’d thought Miriam didn’t have the strength, but what if Naos had been using a subtler hand? That would explain so much.
And he wouldn’t have to face the idea that maybe Horace was dissatisfied with his entire life.
Neither thought mattered, really. He couldn’t consider either until he got Horace back.
Cordelia was spared more outpouring of feelings by the appearance of Shiv’s tree through the rain. Simon had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping. When he’d last seen it, it was barely taller than her, and she could still lift it from the ground. Now, it was at least thirty feet tall. Shiv rode near the top where the branches fitted together as tightly as a bench. She lifted a hand as if to wave, then quickly dropped it.
Simon stared again when another drushka dropped from the lower branches and eyed them curiously. With a gray cast to her skin and clothing and her silver hair, he hadn’t seen her amongst the limbs.
Pool strode forward, a happy yet cautious smile on her face as the limbs lowered Shiv to the ground. Lyshus wasn’t with her, but Simon had no doubt he rode aboard the tree.
“Daughter.” Pool held out her arms, and Shiv’s face shuddered. So much had passed between them. Lyshus had attacked Pool’s tree; Shiv had attacked her own mother, yet there were Pool’s arms, ready for an embrace. With a cry that was half moan, Shiv threw herself into her mother’s arms.
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