“That’s your opinion.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “You’re not avoiding her, are you?”
“Nope.” Samira bent to comb through the grass. As someone who read people very well, she still projected her own feelings bright and clear.
Lydia knelt next to her. “Weren’t you always pushing Simon to talk about his feelings?”
“No, not really.”
“Samira.”
Samira gave her a look and sighed. “When you said engagement wreath, well… I think Mamet is leaning that way, and I’m not ready.”
Lydia’s heart went out to her. She’d been lucky that she and Freddie were always on the same level, relationship-wise, but she knew the opposite happened more often. “Maybe you should tell her how you feel before she asks, give her a chance to save face, and take a weight off your mind.”
Samira leaned against her, always so easy with touching people. It delighted Lydia, but she tried not to show it. When she’d been a prophet, most people had gone out of their way to avoid her, as if her power made her different from other yafanai, as if she made the future instead of just seeing it. In a way, it was true. What she saw couldn’t be changed. She’d heard some yafanai theorizing that it was the act of looking into the future that fixed it. As long as no one looked, anything could happen. Lydia didn’t know about that, but just like seeing the future, speculating didn’t change anything.
“I don’t want to break her heart,” Samira said.
“If she’s not in love with you already, she’s nearly there. Make it clear you’re not breaking up with her, and explain you’re not ready for bonding. It may dampen some of her romantic dreams, but she’ll get over that.”
“You’re right. I know you are. It’s just…” She straightened and stared into the grass. “Did you see that?”
Lydia turned, but in the fading light, she saw nothing. The grass waved, and the sunset was turning the sky purple. As the wind gusted, a chill traveled down Lydia’s spine, and her skin crawled. Maybe someone was watching them.
She shook off the foreboding and grinned. It could only be one person. “I think your dashing lover is spying on us.” She strode a few feet into the grass. “Come out, Mamet.” She watched again, but nothing moved. Her smile faded, and she felt someone’s gaze slide like oil over her skin. The wind gusted, and she smelled something sharp and musky, someone who hadn’t bathed in a while.
A dark-haired woman rushed from the grass, pale sword held high and murder in her gray eyes.
“Samira!” Lydia cried.
Without thinking, Lydia fell into her power just as she had during the boggin attack. She looked seconds into the future and saw how the woman would stab from the right. She snapped to the present and dodged out of reach. The woman’s eyes widened above tattooed cheeks. She darted to her left. Lydia kept her hold on the future and dropped as the tattooed woman came on again. Tall and lean, she was far more skilled than a sick boggin. Even with her power, Lydia didn’t know how long she could stay ahead of the strikes.
The tattooed woman flew backward, rolling through the grass, a victim of Samira’s power. She leapt again, then launched backward to smack against a large boulder. She struggled as if pinned, cursing and wriggling against invisible bonds.
Samira marched to Lydia’s side, glaring at the tattooed woman. A sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead, a sign of the incredible control it took to hold the tattooed woman in place. Macros were often called hurlers in Gale; they lacked fine control, but maybe all they needed was rage.
The tattooed woman yelped and cried out as she writhed.
“We haven’t actually been introduced,” Samira called, serious and deadly. “My name is Samira Zaidi. You might remember me from the time you stabbed me in the back and left me to die. Right before you kidnapped my friend and long before you tortured the woman I’m falling in love with.” She frowned, and the tattooed woman cried out again.
“Samira,” Lydia whispered. “Who is she?”
“Mamet called her Fajir, some leader among the Sun-Moons.” A bead of blood seeped from her left nostril, a sign of yafanai strain.
Fajir coughed a laugh, and Samira frowned again. Fajir began to bend backward over the boulder, stretching, arms and legs straightening past the point of comfort. She howled in pain.
“Samira, that’s enough,” Lydia said.
“She tortured Mamet!”
Lydia could almost hear the grinding of Fajir’s joints as she stretched. “Bring her to Chafa Yuve and the elders.” Lydia stepped in front of her. “I know you hate her, but you can’t become like her.”
Samira took a deep breath, and Fajir dropped to the ground, gasping. Samira rubbed the sweat from her forehead and the blood from her nose.
Lydia put an arm around her shoulders. “Breathe.”
Samira glared at Fajir again. “As long as they make her pay.”
Fajir began to laugh, a rusty sound. She continued even as it seemed to pain her, as she curled into a ball.
Samira barked at her to get up, to precede them as they marched into camp. Lydia kept her eyes pinned on the long line of Fajir’s back, even when people began to call out to them, asking what was happening.
“Stay back. Don’t touch her,” Samira said.
“Get the chafa,” Lydia added. “This woman tried to kill us.”
Expressions turned confused before that news sank in, then brows darkened, and frowns started. Lydia and Samira hadn’t been with the Engali long, but they’d made more than a few friends. And since everyone seemed to like Mamet, they liked the woman she’d chosen as a lover, too.
Speaking of Mamet… Lydia glanced around and saw her walking toward them from the edge of camp, a purple starflower in one hand. She raised a hand to wave, but when her eyes fell on Fajir, she froze. Her lips moved, and it seemed as if she was saying, “No,” over and over. The flower fell from her hands.
Mamet stumbled as she came closer, her eyes going wide. Samira had told Lydia a little about Mamet’s torture, and Lydia bet she was seeing that dark basement under the Sun-Moon’s palace, feeling the whips, the kicks, and punches. Fajir and her widows had cursed Mamet and spat on her, told her that her entire family had been killed. All lies, but while Mamet was alone in the dark, it had no doubt added to her pain.
If not for Horace’s healing power, Samira had said, she’d be covered in scars.
Chafa Yuve strode toward Fajir. Lydia met him and gave him Fajir’s bone sword. “She attacked us.”
“Don’t let her in here!” Mamet said as she reached them.
Fajir turned pitiless gray eyes on Mamet, an almost inhuman gaze. Yuve watched them both.
Samira went to Mamet, arms out. “It’s all right, all right. We caught her.”
Mamet seemed to struggle not to fall into her arms. She looked as if she might cry, then stared at Fajir and drew herself up. “Get rid of her!”
“She’s our prisoner,” Samira said. “Not our guest. But if you want…” She stared deeply into Mamet’s eyes, her gaze one of utter conviction. “I’ll kill her.”
Lydia gasped. Killing could never be so easy.
Mamet cupped Samira’s face. “I’d never ask you to.”
Fajir was watching with a smirk. Lydia wanted to kick her.
“That’s one of the reasons I’d do it,” Samira said. “Because you’d never ask.”
Yuve took Fajir, bound her hands, and led her away. Several others fell in with them.
“They’ll find out why she’s come,” Lydia said. “What she wants.”
Mamet turned her head and spat. “She came to kill Engali. It’s what she lives for. Was she alone?”
Lydia nodded, and Mamet frowned. “Sun-Moons are never alone, even the widows. In the Sun-Moon palace, Cordelia pledged to hunt down Fajir’s dead partner, but maybe she refused in the end, and Fajir has come herself.”
“But no one here has killed a Sun-Moon, have they?” Samira asked.
Mamet shoo
k her head. “She probably wants to kill every Engali she can. Who knows how many she’s killed already?”
Lydia shook her head. “She’s gaunt and dirty. She seems half dead already.”
Samira put an arm around Mamet’s waist. “Not dead enough.”
The words made Lydia frown, and she tried to see the killer Mamet and Samira saw, but Fajir didn’t seem anything but defeated. Maybe she’d come looking for death.
Chapter Eight
Cordelia awoke at dawn with the drushka. She thought she might have to bellow for her fellow humans to get out of bed, but the paladins didn’t need a lot of prompting to muster. They were nervous, many of them casting glances toward where the sixth queen’s tree waited in the swamp. No humans had been killed the day before, but the paladins had been knocked around enough to get a good mad on.
When Cordelia ascended to the cupola, Pool sucked her teeth and stared into the swamp. “I feel the second and third queens nearby.”
Cordelia craned her neck but saw nothing in the distance. “Any thoughts from them?”
“These queens were born after my departure, and so they are far younger than Sky or myself. Their minds have crumbled before the will of the Shi. I do not even sense separate personalities.”
Cordelia sighed. “Sounds like another fight.”
Pool spread her hands. “Ahya. And I doubt the captured humans are with the second or third queens. No doubt the Shi holds them close.” She slapped her hands against her thighs. “The Shi is frustrated by how we freed Sky. She knows she cannot defeat human weapons and armor, so she uses the second and third queens as sacrifices to slow us.”
“In order to do what? You told me she’s too big to move, so she’s not going anywhere.”
Pool didn’t answer, and Cordelia resisted speculating wildly. According to what Pool had learned from Sky, the Shi had pulled many drushka in close. The Shi might be buying time in order to shore up her defenses. As long as they weren’t building a wall made of humans. “With two trees, we might have to use the railguns. If you threaten the second and third queens with heavy firepower, will they surrender?”
“I would need to be close in order to reach them as I did Sky. And telling the Shi would do nothing. She does not care for drushkan lives.” Pool frowned hard, and her eyes focused on Cordelia, on the railgun. “These queens may not have enough minds left to reach.”
She sounded so forlorn, Cordelia couldn’t help patting her shoulder as the drushka did when they wanted to comfort someone. Pool smiled, but her eyes didn’t lose their sadness.
“If you free them one at a time,” Cordelia said, “we’ll keep the other one off you. And we won’t kill anyone we don’t have to.” She sincerely hoped she could keep that promise, but she wouldn’t let her people die if she could help it.
Pool’s tree didn’t have to venture far before they saw the two queens in the distance. Their trees stood only slightly larger than Pool’s, and as before, Cordelia ordered her paladins to wound where they could. As soon as the enemy drushka closed, Cordelia went hand-to-hand again. She kept on the move, trying not to get buried under drushkan bodies, and she shouted for her soldiers to do the same. Pool’s tree darted through the swamp, using the swamp trees to maneuver around. The other queens couldn’t seem to catch her. They tangled easily with water roots, hanging vines, or each other.
Pool’s tree dodged sharply to the left, branches swaying crazily. Cordelia’s stabilizers kept her upright, and she tossed another wounded drushka into the water below. Fights raged all around her, but so far, she hadn’t seen a clear path to either queen. Maybe if they could push one back, Pool could close with the other without wrestling with them both.
“Lea,” Cordelia said through her comm. “Give the smaller tree a few bursts with the railgun.”
“Roger that.”
Cordelia swung her own gun around. “I’m sorry, Pool.” She aimed, using her targeting sensors, but as she curled one finger over the trigger, the display in her visor flickered and died.
The weight of unpowered armor and the heavy railgun brought her to her knees. She grunted, trying to get upright again, but it was clear that her fucking battery had died. The tree moved, and Cordelia dropped to her belly, grasping the branch so she wouldn’t be flung over the side. Her comm had gone down with everything else, and she sent a desperate thought to Pool. If anyone else’s battery had decided it was time to sputter out, paladins could be dropping from the branches in droves.
The enemy drushka were still coming, used to navigating in a moving tree. Cordelia tossed the railgun toward one of Pool’s cubbies, and it slid to safety. As she reached to jettison the heavy battery, a drushka crashed into her, knocking her flat.
His wooden blade screeched along her armor as he looked for gaps. She flailed, hitting him in the stomach. Even with no power behind the swing, the drushka arched upward, crying out. Cordelia kicked and drove him back while fumbling for her battery.
She hit the release as the drushka lunged again. Much lighter than before, she sat up to meet him. It’d been a long time since she’d fought in unpowered armor, but her body remembered. Without the battery, it was almost easy.
She brought her blade around to catch the drushka’s swing. He reared back to strike again, and she stabbed him in the gut before throwing him from the tree. If everyone’s batteries were as drained as hers, the time for wounding was over. She kept her visor down. She could see through the ultra-thin material, and it lessened the risk of being stabbed in the face.
All around her, paladins could be buried under piles of drushka. Some still leapt and whirled, their batteries live. Others struggled just to rise. Cordelia ran for the nearest, hauling him up and jettisoning his battery. Some of these paladins had never worn unpowered armor. She barked at them to get deeper into Pool’s branches and stay there. She drew her sidearm and fired into the drushka as she stayed low and struggled from one paladin to another, helping them ditch their heavy batteries and sending them to gather with the others.
When she’d helped everyone nearby, Cordelia searched for a way to climb to the others. Pool’s tree whipped to the right, and Cordelia teetered, waving her arms for balance, but without the stabilizers, it wasn’t enough. She fell hard and hit the branch below in a rattle of armor plates. Gasping for breath, fighting her fear, she scrambled for purchase, but the branch slid out from under her as if she was covered in grease.
“Shit!” Airborne, she flipped, trying to see where she was headed just as she smashed into the ropy branch of a swamp tree. The wind rushed from her lungs, but the armor absorbed some of the shock.
Coughing, she stood, resisting the urge to go slow, to check herself for injuries. Pool’s tree was getting away. Before it got far, its branches hooked with another queen. Finally, some luck! Cordelia picked up speed, not wanting to miss her chance to catch up. Before she’d gone far, she spotted an armored form fall from Pool’s branches and splash into the water.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Cordelia changed direction, heading for where the paladin had already disappeared. She blocked out thoughts of her own time underwater, when a prog had tried to eat her. She jumped in after the sunken paladin, not knowing if they’d be able to get themselves out without power but unable to stop herself.
Her helmet’s seal held. She had a little air, and she tried to breathe shallowly as she plummeted through the brown mire. A cloud of silt marked where the other paladin had hit bottom. When she landed, Cordelia trudged into the cloud as fast as she could. Even with the water helping to hold her, it was as hard to walk as she remembered. The armor wanted to pull her down. Speaking of, she spotted the other paladin on his back, writhing. She bent and went for his battery. He flailed at her, no doubt thinking she was a prog come to devour him.
“Hold fucking still!” Cordelia cried. Her comm was dead, but it felt good to yell. She fumbled for the battery again and finally found the release.
She could see into his visor, see his wide, pani
cked eyes, his open mouth. At least now he could see who she was. She grabbed his hands and pulled him toward a mass of brown: the trunk of a swamp tree. A tinny taste filled her mouth, and her body felt heavier with every step. Pain built in her head; she was running out of air, but she had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
When she grasped the trunk, the paladin finally seemed to get in the groove. He climbed beside her, and when her sluggish limbs tried to fail her, he helped pull her up. Her vision was growing dark around the edges when her head finally broke the water’s surface. She reached for her helmet, and took huge gulps of air when she’d finally pried the visor open.
The scent of brackish water and floating algae almost made her gag. Her fellow paladin was coughing alongside her. Water trickled in through the open visor, and Cordelia hauled herself up again, trying to get clear. She didn’t recognize the man beside her—one of the new recruits—but she wanted to promote him on the spot.
They clambered onto a branch together and went for Pool. Cordelia drew her sidearm and fired at every long-haired drushka in range. They fled from the gun, and she yelled for any other paladins who’d fallen.
They found one along the branches near the water, unmoving. His shoulder plate had been peeled away, and a drushka had scratched him. Cordelia grabbed his top half, while her fellow grabbed his bottom, and they hustled toward where Pool waited, more paladins joining them from the surrounding trees.
At the base of Pool’s tree, Cordelia pushed for her tie to the drushka, asking to come back aboard. The tree lifted them and put them near the trunk where they could fire from cover.
Cordelia really wanted to stay somewhere she could hang on, but she ventured forth again, looking for others who might need help. She bent low, nearly crawling as she sought to stay on board. She heard the thump of a railgun firing into one of the queen’s trees and made her way toward the sound.
Jon Lea stood tall, proving that his battery still worked, at least. He fired into the mass of drushka, some of his shots hitting the tree, but most scattering drushka to the wind, freeing groups of paladins to struggle toward Cordelia. She sent them back to the others who hung on near the trunk or had taken shelter in the cubbies.
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