The Moonburner Cycle

by Claire Luana

  “I do not care if she has a third head. She was not born here. She does not know us, she does not know our people. She does not care for them as we do.”

  “She is learning. She is trying. It was not her fault where she was born this incarnation. Without her, we are doomed. Or did you forget? We are completely defenseless against the leeches.”

  “We will find a way.” Bahti crossed his huge arms over his chest, looking away.

  “There is no way. Not without Rika. We tried, remember? We were arrogant and foolish and Sarya died for it.”

  “Now you see fit to bring up my sister? When it suits you? When you can use her to make your point? Funny, you have been walking around here pretending like she never existed. I thought you had forgotten.”

  Vikal shoved Bahti, his anger flaring. “I think of Sarya every day. Every hour. I see her when I turn my head. When I close my eyes. How dare you?”

  “It does not seem like it when you walk about with your new girlfriend, batting your eyes at each other and dancing the Prashia!”

  “It is not like that, Bahti,” Vikal said, though the voice in the back of his head flared to life. Lies, it said. Vikal shoved it down. “We need Rika. To save Nua. I would do anything to secure her aid.”

  “So you swoon at the new girl while pretending Sarya does not exist. In one move, you betray two women. Very kingly,” Bahti said mockingly. “Does Rika even know that you have a wife?”

  A gasp sounded in the tunnel behind him. Vikal whirled to meet the sound and caught a flash of white disappearing around the corner.

  “Damn it, Bahti, now you have done it!” He barreled down the tunnel after Rika.

  Rika’s breath stuck in her throat—she couldn’t get it free. She felt like she was drowning, air coming in quick gasps.

  “Rika, wait,” Vikal cried, grabbing her arm and spinning her around against the tunnel wall. She could hardly process the rough treatment. Their words kept ringing in her mind. “I would do anything to secure her aid.” “Does Rika even know you have a wife?”

  “You’re…married?” she finally managed, shoving Vikal away from her, needing space between them. “Married?”

  His face was twisted in pain. “Rika, I am so sorry. I should have told you. I was married. She…She died. She is dead,” he amended, closing his eyes.

  Rika took a shuddering breath, pressing her hand against her chest to still her heart. “Dead.”

  “The leeches killed her. When they first came. Like…Like your father.” He slumped against the wall opposite her, closing his eyes. “She was so damn naive. She embraced the thing. Hugged it! In welcome. And it sucked her into ash.”

  Rika’s thoughts were returning to semi-coherence. Okay, he wasn’t married. That was good. He wasn’t a lying scoundrel. Only a liar. “It’s not like that, Bahti. I would do anything to secure her aid.” Including make a foolish girl think he was in love with her, that he was destined to be with her, just so he could use her. Even though her third eye was closed, she finally saw Vikal clearly. He was a sad, lonely king still in love with his dead wife. Desperate to save his people. Even at the expense of her heart. Strangely enough, Bahti had been trying to protect her!

  “I am sorry I did not speak of her. I should have. I did not know how, or when, or what was the right time.”

  Rika shook her head, feeling the stone walls creep up around her heart. Her voice was flat when she replied. “You didn’t owe me an explanation. There’s nothing between us.”

  “Rika…” he said, pushing off the wall, approaching her. She held up her hands to him, and he stilled. She could hardly be angry at him. If their positions were reversed, she would have done the same thing to secure his aid. She really only had herself to blame for being naive enough to walk into his trap. “We need each other. That’s how it started, and that’s how it will end. You need me to free Nua from the leeches, and I need you to take me back to Kitina so I can protect my people.”

  “That might be what this started as—” Vikal began, but she cut him off with a shake of her head.

  “It’s all it is. All I want it to be. I need to get back to my people.”

  “These are your people,” Vikal said softly.

  She shook her head again. “No. They are yours to care for. I will do my part and go. Now excuse me.” She turned and hurried down the corridor, slowing her feet, clenching her fists against the tears that wanted to flow. She walked back into the cavern full of revelers and music and dancing, keeping her head down. The scene that had been exciting and joyous only moments ago had turned alien. A desperate homesickness washed over her. She wanted Yoshai and burners and seishen and all the people who made sense to her. How had she thought for one minute that she belonged here? That these could be her people? That Vikal cared for her, or she cared for him?

  Then she was through the Gathering Hall and in the tunnel headed towards her cave. The tears broke through her makeshift dam, and she began to run, her sandals slapping on the hard ground. She wanted to see the stars, breathe the fresh air. Instead all she felt was this mountain pushing down, down upon her. Crushing her beneath its weight.

  INTERLUDE

  THE SOUL-EATERS kept coming. Day and night, hour by hour, their assault on Yoshai’s walls was relentless. The pattern and intensity of their assaults was becoming predictable. Blast the gates and foundations of the wall with sickly green magic. When Yoshai’s forces responded with fireballs shot from the back of koumori and lightning drawn from the sky, the soul-eaters would withdraw, leaving the smoking corpses of their soldiers. Their slaves. Who seemed endless in number. The soul-eaters would attack at another location along the wall, and when Kai would divert her forces to deal with that attack, another unit would attack again at the original spot. Or elsewhere. She didn’t have enough soldiers and burners to defend the entire stretch of Yoshai’s walls around the clock, whereas the soul-eaters seemed to have no end to their resources or numbers. Kai couldn’t help but feel that her city was being slowly eaten alive by locusts—a slow, painful death of a thousand, million bites.

  Kai stood with General Daarco on the balcony of a temple that had been requisitioned as the headquarters of the war effort. She let the telescope drop, handing it without a word to Daarco. He let out a hiss of breath as he surveyed the scene beyond the walls.

  “We were wondering what they’re building. Now we know.”

  “Siege towers,” Kai said. “It’s hard to imagine they traveled all this way just to destroy. But the proof is before us.”

  “We could send another emissary…” Daarco trailed off.

  Kai shook her head. “I will not doom any more men to their deaths. These creatures have been clear in their intentions.” Despite Koji’s insistence that she not send anyone to treat with the soul-eaters, Kai had needed to try one last attempt at diplomacy. She couldn’t help but hope that her son had been wrong, that he had misunderstood what he had seen. Her emissary had never returned. It was as clear an answer as she would get.

  “Send a squadron of burners to torch the siege towers. Incapacitating those towers is our top priority.”

  “Consider it done,” he said. “I hope it’s enough.”

  “It has to be,” Kai said. “If not…we need to consider evacuation.”

  “I think that’s premature. There’s nothing to stop the soul-eaters from pursuing any refugees from the city and overtaking them on the roads.”

  “Better a fighting death than being penned up like cattle for slaughter,” Kai said. “If we aren’t able to destroy the siege engines, we’ll have to fall back to the inner city. Only a third of the population of Yoshai can fit within those walls. I can’t just leave the rest. I’d rather evacuate them. Let people make their own choices. We’ll try to cover their retreat as long as we can.”

  “With what burners? They’ve all been run ragged. The koumori are sluggish from exhaustion.”

  “All we can do is what we can do,” she snapped. “It will have to be eno
ugh.”

  “I can fight,” a new voice said, and Kai turned to see her son summiting the ladder up to the balcony. “Me and my classmates.” He was wearing the golden armor of the sunburner regiment, gray smudges under his eyes bearing testament to his lack of sleep. But still he stood tall, his shoulders squared. Had he grown in the last few days? In that armor, he looked so much like his father.

  Kai rubbed her face wearily, as if she could wipe away the heavy sorrow that fogged her mind and clouded her thoughts.

  “I won’t put you at risk,” Kai said. “You or your classmates. You’re children.”

  “I’m not a child,” Koji countered. “If I’m old enough to watch my father die, I’m old enough to kill the bastards who did it.”

  “We need you where you are. Running messages. Letting the people see you and Enzo. It raises morale.”

  “Anyone can run messages. You need burners. General, tell her,” Koji pleaded with Daarco. “You need us.”

  Kai looked at Daarco, whose face was written with apology. “They’re a dozen burners who can fly and fight. They’ve been training for years for this. They’re raw, but they’re fresh.”

  Kai narrowed her eyes. Traitor. Part of her knew he was right, that they needed every hand, that her sentimentality couldn’t get in the way. But she couldn’t risk her son. Wouldn’t. Her heart twisted at the thought so hard that it took her breath. He was all she had left. “My decision is final. Koji is the heir to the throne. We need him safe.”

  “Heir to the throne? What about Rika? Have you forgotten your daughter so quickly?” Koji said, his voice strangled.

  Kai’s hand flashed out like lightning, striking Koji across the face. The sound of her slap resounded in the silence as Koji looked at her, his hand to his cheek, his eyes wide with betrayal.

  “I will never give up on your sister,” Kai whispered, horrified at herself. She was not a woman who struck her children. But she wasn’t a queen who failed her people, either, and what hope could she truly give her city? She could feel herself coming unmoored. Without Hiro to ground her, without her daughter’s rapt gaze on the heavens…she did not recognize this world she was living in.

  “Koji,” she said, reaching out a hand.

  “With your permission, my queen,” he said formally, tears rimming his eyes, her handprint bright across his cheek, “I’ll take my leave.”

  She gave a sharp nod, and he backed down the ladder quickly.

  “I’ve seen enough for today,” Kai said. “You have your orders, General.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Daarco said softly. Whatever he wanted to say, he swallowed it, and she was grateful.

  She descended the ladder next, coming into the wood-paneled library of the temple. Three people filled the room, startling her as she found her feet. “Colum?” she asked. “I thought you left after the festival.”

  Colum shook his head. “We saw an armada of black ships and turned around in a jiffy. Didn’t Koji tell you we were here?”

  Kai shook her head. “He was…distracted.”

  Colum huffed. “Youth. We came across something on the road I thought you’d want to see.”

  She found herself glad to see the old adventurer. She could use a little of his unfailing optimism right about now. She was less grateful to see the woman with him. “Mesilla.” Kai nodded to the moonburner, whose silver hair was pulled back in a simple plait. The woman nodded back warily. There was much history between her and this moonburner—who had once been called Geisa. The past two decades may have changed the woman, but Kai would never truly trust her.

  Daarco clearly had the same thought as he dropped from the ladder and blanched at the sight of their new visitors.

  “What have you brought me?” Kai asked, looking at the third figure in the room. A person. A person whose hands and feet were tightly tied, whose head was covered with a burlap rice sack.

  Colum stepped to the prisoner and pulled his hood off with a flourish. “We found a scout.”

  Kai’s eyes narrowed as she took in the man dressed in all black. One of the soul-eater’s soldiers. His hair was jet-black, his skin tanned—a darker complexion than most inhabitants of Kitina. He wasn’t unattractive, though his features were foreign. But his eyes. His eyes glowed that evil green. The color of the soul-eater’s magic.

  “I don’t know how these soldiers follow those monsters.” Daarco spit on the wooden planks of the floor at the man’s feet. “What could possibly be in it for them?” There had been a time when Daarco’s anger and menace had frightened Kai, but now she was glad to have it on her side.

  “Life,” Kai said softly. “It’s easy to justify atrocities when the alternative is death. Where did you find this one?”

  “Like I said, he appeared to be scouting. Ever since we captured him, he’s been raving about how they’re going to kill us, destroy us, eat our bones, etc.”

  “That’s hardly worth dragging him all this way,” Kai said.

  “He raves and yells,” Geisa said. No—Mesilla, Kai corrected herself. “Until he doesn’t. And then it’s as if there’s something else inside him. We think the creatures speak through him. That one or more of the things can see through him.”

  The thought chilled her. That dark magic could be looking through this man’s eyes right now, watching her. She straightened, setting her jaw. “I am Queen Kailani Shigetsu of the consolidated lands of Kita-Miina. Who am I speaking to?”

  The man blinked at her, his eyes burning like green coals. “Twenty-six,” the man hissed.

  Kai looked at the others. A number? “You have unlawfully invaded my country. Killed my husband, the king. But despite these offenses, I can be persuaded to see reason. Can there be a peace between us?”

  The man laughed a hissing, hacking laugh that stood the hairs on the back of Kai’s neck on end. “No peace.”

  Kai pursed her lips. “Surely, there is something you want. Something we can give you in exchange for you leaving this place.”

  “Your lives,” he said. “Your land. Your souls.”

  “Those items are non-negotiable.” She wasn’t going to waste her time with this man. Kai motioned to Colum. “Will you make sure he is delivered to the dungeon? I want to see what else we can learn from him. Perhaps we can find out how he is under the creature’s power. Find out a way to free him.”

  The man chuckled, and again, the sound didn’t fit the vessel. “Your husband had a warrior’s soul. It fought until the end. It was delicious,” the man said. “Your daughter, on the other hand, yielded to us like a willing whore.”

  In a blink of an eye, Kai had pulled Daarco’s sword from its scabbard and sliced the man’s head off. The others stood with wide, shocked eyes as Kai’s breast heaved and crimson blood dripped from the sword’s point onto the ground. She handed the sword back to Daarco, who took it mutely.

  Kai brushed her hair back from her face. “Colum, I’ve changed my mind. Please see that this man’s head is displayed on a pike above the Sea Gate and his body is disposed of.”

  “Aye, Queenie,” Colum managed.

  And with a calmness she did not feel, Kai walked from the room, down the stairs, and out into the open air.

  CHAPTER 22

  VIKAL HOVERED IN the dark outside Rika’s room, too cowardly to enter. He had followed her through the crowds of the Gathering Hall and the empty hallways, yet now that he was here, he didn’t know what to say. Were there words of comfort he could offer her—should he even try? Rika had made it clear where her heart was—with her home and people in Kitina. It made sense. It was logical. So why did part of him feel an aching disappointment? He leaned against the cold stone wall, letting his head fall back. Gods above. He had wanted her to fall in love with Nua. With their people. And…with him. His decision not to tell her about Sarya had been entirely selfish. He had told himself that he’d spared her the pain of his confusion, but part of him had known that mentioning Sarya might make Rika pull back. And he hadn’t wanted that.
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  A swirl of white materialized in his vision before swooping away down the hallway. He squeezed his eyes closed, rubbing them with the heels of his hands as if he could scrub away the image. Whatever strangeness he was seeing…it couldn’t truly be Sarya. Could it? But it felt like her. There were even moments he swore he could smell her jasmine scent perfuming the musty stillness of Goa Awan. He looked down at the offerings lining the hallway outside Rika’s door and bent to pick up a single jasmine bloom, wilted and dry. Perhaps this was what he’d smelled.

  A light came into view at the end of the hallway, and Vikal unglued himself from where he stood. It wasn’t the wisp of white this time.

  “There are things to discuss,” Sarnak said, unblinking in the glow of his floating totem. The light shadowed the craggy lines in Sarnak’s face, lending him a ghostly look. So many ghosts in this place. Vikal nodded and fell in behind him, recognizing a Sarnak summons. It wasn’t the type of thing you turned down.

  A pang of loss vibrated through Vikal as he watched Sarnak’s orb bob in the air. He shoved his hands in his pockets, keeping them from fluttering uselessly for a smooth wood staff that wasn’t there. That would never be there again. When he and Rika had fled the soul-eater camp, there had been no way to get it back and escape alive. He should know; he had considered and discarded about every plan he could conceive of. In the end, Rika was more precious. But it didn’t stop him from missing it, from feeling naked without it. It was one of the great relics of his ancestors, and he had lost it. Just another in his long line of failures.

  They rounded the door into Sarnak’s chamber and the old man gestured at a little chair. Vikal eyed it warily, but sat, the chair groaning under his weight. Sarnak himself perched on the bed, his crossed legs disappearing under his orange robe. Somehow, despite everything that had passed in the last few weeks, Sarnak still wore his mischievous smile.

  “There were days I was not sure I would see you again,” Sarnak said. “You walk an interesting path this cycle.”