by Lori M. Lee
The servant placed a full cup in front of Yara. Yara all but attacked the water. She must have gone through whatever provisions she’d had, not knowing how long the journey through the Outlands would take.
“I think we should hold off on interrogating the poor girl until she’s cleaned up and gotten some rest,” Miraya said.
Kalla looked unconcerned. “Is that an order or a suggestion?”
The look Miraya gave her was worthy of any Kahl. “It’s an order.”
Kalla’s red lips curved into a smile. “Very well. We will reconvene this afternoon.”
I shifted on my feet, annoyed with having to wait for answers even if I agreed that Yara was in desperate need of a bath and probably sleep as well. Resigned, Mason and I excused ourselves as the others waited for Master Hathney.
“I’ll see you later?” I said as Mason and I parted ways near the throne room.
He nodded, and then hesitated. Before he could bring up the nightmare he’d woken me from, I mumbled something about finding breakfast and hurried away. I could feel his gaze on me until I rounded the corner and sagged against the wall.
I appreciated his concern, but my nightmares needed to remain solely in my head. Talking about them would make them more real.
I walked into the Hall of Memories and stopped short. Having spent hours in this stretch of stone and history, I knew that something was different. I scanned the rows of carved columns until I saw it: the shadow of one column was darker than the rest.
I inched forward. My feet whispered against the stone, and I thanked Mason for the lessons in how to move like him. I wasn’t as light on my feet as he was, but this would do.
The murmur of voices disturbed the space. There was someone hidden back there. Two someones. Their combined shadows had cast the column in darker relief.
Positioning myself behind the depiction of a three-story temple and a long line of warrior mahjo, I strained my ears. I couldn’t make out much. They were speaking too quietly. A beat of silence fell, and then the two figures stepped out from behind the column. My lips parted in surprise.
It was Reev. He was with a sentinel I didn’t recognize. Whatever they’d been discussing must have been serious, because Reev’s eyes had an unfamiliar chill. He looked like a sentinel.
What if Reev’s badgering yesterday about where I was going hadn’t been just brotherly concern? He had warned me to be careful because of trouble with the sentinels.
Had he known there would be an attack on Kalla’s tower?
Reev’s companion left in the opposite direction. I waited until he was gone before I stepped out from my hiding spot, not bothering to conceal the sound of my footsteps.
When Reev saw me, he froze. A guarded look flashed across his face before his expression settled into a neutral smile. My stomach clenched.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. He turned away, heading toward the corridor that led up to our rooms. I hurried to catch up.
“Who was that?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as I could with my heart drumming in my ears.
Reev took a second to answer. “An old friend.”
“Do you talk to all your old friends in dark corners?”
He didn’t respond. A muscle jumped in his cheek. I dug my nails into my palms, afraid to ask the question weighing on my mind but even more afraid of the answer.
“Reev,” I said. Although I tried to hide my fear, he must have heard it, because he stopped and looked down at me.
His expression softened, and his smile was genuine. I wanted desperately to touch him.
Instead, I said, “Promise you won’t keep any more secrets from me.”
Reev’s smile splintered for a moment, and something flickered behind his eyes.
He continued walking. “Of course,” he said. He didn’t look at me again.
CHAPTER 8
“SOMETIMES OUR BORDER patrols crossed paths with your sentinels. Most of them ignored us, but a few were friendly. That’s how we knew where Ninurta might be. Or, at least, that’s what I was told.” Yara’s smile was apologetic.
As Miraya had ordered, we were back in the waiting room. Except for Mason, who remained impatiently outside. The only reason I was allowed to be here was because Miraya still hoped I would consent to be her adviser.
Yara had bathed and changed into a faded white-and-red servant tunic. Master Hathney had a tailor bring in some nicer tunics for her, but as a servant herself, Yara had refused to dress “above my station.” I’d heard him grumbling about it during lunch.
Without the caking of dust, the other signs of her weariness were visible. There were bruises beneath her eyes that I didn’t think any amount of sleep would cure. Bright-red patches of dry, irritated skin covered her cheeks, and I’d caught sight of numerous blisters on her palms that had burst and scabbed over. Miraya had mentioned sending a medic to see her once we were finished here.
“And how did you know about Kalla?” I asked. Something about Yara’s explanation felt off to me.
Yara looked at me. She was perched rigidly in her chair, as if afraid to relax in front of Miraya and Kalla. There was a slight tremor in her legs, like she was trying not to collapse into the cushion. The few hours of rest hadn’t been nearly enough.
“From the goddess,” she said earnestly.
“Goddess?”
“I’ve never actually seen her,” Yara said. “I would never presume to be worthy of such an honor. She presents herself only to my Kahl and his Council.”
“And she told them about Kalla?” Miraya asked skeptically.
Yara nodded. “And she promised my Kahl that she would protect me in my journey. Her reassurance gave me the strength to leave home and ride alone into the Yellow Wastes.”
I drummed my fingers against the stuffed arm of the chair I was sitting in, and wondered if she could be telling the truth. She and her horse had, after all, somehow escaped being easy prey for the gargoyles.
“I’m ashamed to say that, after a week, I’d begun to lose hope,” Yara continued. “But here I am, safely delivered as she promised.”
I gaped. “You were alone in the Outlands for a week?”
Her face flushed. “I lost my compass after the first day, and I kept circling back on my own tracks. The sight of your great walls . . .” She released a shaky breath. “The sight of your walls brought me to tears. I had begun to fear the Yellow Wastes would see me dead, even though the goddess’s promise urged me on.”
“Why did your Kahl decide now was the time to make contact?” Miraya asked.
“We haven’t seen your border patrols in months. We knew something must have happened, and the goddess confirmed that now was the time to seek you out.”
Miraya regarded Yara for so long that the girl began to squirm. I opened my mouth to break the tension as Miraya finally said, “Why are you really here?”
Yara’s expression went from nervous to grim. Her weary face grew even more haggard. “Lanathrill needs urgent help. We’ve been invaded, and we don’t have the strength to stop them. We’ll be overrun if you don’t help us.”
“Invaded by whom?” Miraya asked.
Yara looked down. “Demons.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
She picked agitatedly at the dry skin around her nails. “The demons we’ve always watched from afar have grown bold enough to cross our borders. They’ve killed everyone they’ve come across, and our soldiers are no match.”
Did she mean the gargoyles? “What do they look like?” I asked.
“Monstrous,” she said, lowering her voice as if talking about them would summon one to the palace. “Twice the girth of my horse and twice as tall as well, with horns and scaly skin and—” She closed her eyes with a shudder. “You must know what I’m talking about. Your sentinels, the ones who patrolled your borders—they’ve seen them.”
I had no idea, but those didn’t sound like gargoyles. The creatures that had hunted me and Avan in the forest
had been overgrown lizards, sleek and long, not nearly the height of our Gray. Maybe these “demons” were some other creature that had been mutated by Rebirth.
“Please,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her. “You must believe me. I did not travel all this way only to deceive you.”
It was hard not to believe her when she had wandered through the Outlands for a week, on nothing but a promise from some nebulous goddess.
“What makes you think we can help?” Miraya asked.
It was a good question. Ninurta wasn’t exactly in a solid position at the moment. We had enough problems of our own without adding someone else’s.
“The demons never attacked your border patrols,” Yara said. “There must be something about your sentinels that they fear. With that kind of help, and with our combined numbers, we might have a chance at running them out of Lanathrill.”
Miraya scrutinized her. She still looked more sentinel than Kahl, but this unlikely visit had helped to adjust the mantle of leadership on her shoulders.
Kalla had listened to the entire exchange in silence, her face as still as marble. If Ninu had sentinels patrolling the border—it was a shock that we even had a border—then she must have known Lanathrill existed. What else might she be hiding?
“If this is all the information you can offer us, then we will need to discuss the matter privately,” Miraya said.
Yara bit her lip, looking despondent.
With the meeting over, I left to find Mason gone. He must have gotten bored waiting. I’d fill him in later.
I headed back to my room to change for a run. Running helped me think. Before Hina had left the city to return to Etu Gahl, she had forced me into daily runs with her, claiming the exercise would improve my stamina. After a while, I grew to enjoy it.
Ninu’s oasis—the only place in Ninurta where the trees weren’t bare and brittle—held a myriad of wandering paths that made for a peaceful run. On my way there, a noise I’d never heard before drew me away from the path, toward a border of hedges surrounding a small pond.
Drinking from the pond was what I could only assume to be Yara’s horse. Two sentinels stood nearby, looking rather mystified with how to handle the creature. I stared blatantly for a long while, watching as the animal’s regal head dipped for another drink of water. Its mane and tail were a darker brown than its coat, and I wanted very much to touch the coarse hairs.
Although many of our Grays shared its form, there was no equal to seeing a live horse. It was somehow more intimidating, especially because it was larger than a Gray. I watched the animal wander about the pond a moment longer, and I considered stepping past the row of hedges to actually approach the beast.
“Kai?”
I turned away from the horse to see Avan coming up the path. Smiling, I stepped away from the hedges and back toward the path where he’d stopped to wait for me. He looked nothing less than stunning in a fitted silver tunic with wide sleeves. His expression, however, was curiously somber.
“Hey,” I said, trying for a lighthearted tone. “What’s up?”
With a glance at my outfit, which he’d come to recognize as my running clothes, he tilted his head in the direction of the oasis. “I’ll walk you.”
Without a word, we made our way over the cobblestones that wended around the buildings. I looked up at him, watching his dark hair flutter around his ears. My cheeks grew warm when I realized I was thinking about how soft the strands had felt between my fingers.
“How was the meeting?” he asked.
“Informative.” I gave him a quick summary. Kalla had excluded Avan from government-related decisions right from the start, which was how I’d known she hadn’t been coaching him to become Kahl even before we learned about Miraya. I had initially worried that Avan was meant to replace Ninu not only as Conquest but also as Kahl. “We’ll have to wait and see what Kalla and Miraya decide.”
“I’ve learned I’m not very good at waiting. Have I always been impatient?”
“Not at all.”
His gaze was unfocused, and his thoughts turned inward. “Sometimes when I’m with you,” Avan said, “I get this feeling like I’ve been waiting a long time for you.”
I tucked my hands into my pockets to keep them still as I studied his profile. He had yet to look at me. We continued in silence for another few steps before I looked down at the cobblestones and gave up trying to find whatever it was I wanted to see in his face.
“We’re both waiting, aren’t we?” I asked. “We’re waiting for you to remember.”
“You’re waiting for me to remember,” he said gently. “I don’t know what it is I’m waiting for anymore.”
My hands curled into fists in my pockets. Despite the kiss, maybe the incident with his dad and then the fire in the tower had pushed him into a decision. Maybe he thought he’d be happier without his past.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked, a sudden gust of annoyance sharpening my words. “Not knowing?”
He’d asked me the same thing once. Why are you so content not knowing?
But I hadn’t been content. The not knowing had bothered me—it still bothered me—and while I had learned to live with the questions, to accept that I might never find the answers, I had never stopped asking them.
“How could it not?” he said. “What I’ve learned from you has helped, but we both know it’s not enough. What good are secondhand accounts of a life I might never remember?”
Avan and I weren’t so different. I had been Infinite once, until that life had been taken from me by Kronos. He had left me to a young, confused sentinel when I was eight, and I had no memory from before then. Hadn’t I decided that this new life, the only one I’d ever known, was the one I wanted to keep? Avan’s existence as an Infinite might have only just begun, but how could I argue with him for making the same decision?
I wasn’t ready to let him go, but it was selfish of me to hope that he would pick his old life for me, to think that I held that much weight. He barely knew me.
I hunched my shoulders, as if that might somehow protect my heart from the pain that squeezed it. “Maybe . . .” I tried to shrug. “Maybe you should take more time to think about it. Being around each other all the time probably isn’t helping. Maybe you need some space to figure things out.”
We stopped before the line of bushes that marked the entrance into the oasis. I awkwardly waited for him to respond.
He reached out, his warm fingers grazing my cheek. I had to resist leaning into his touch. “I think maybe that’s what we both need.”
I didn’t reply, because there was nothing else to say.
“We’ll talk again soon,” Avan said lightly. “Maybe we’ll both have figured things out then.”
The moment he turned away, I rushed into the oasis, my legs picking up speed until I was sprinting. Fronds and low branches slapped against my cheeks and snagged my hair, but I didn’t mind the stings. What I couldn’t bear would’ve been to watch him leave.
CHAPTER 9
I RETURNED A couple of hours later, sweaty and exhausted, to find a summons. Miraya wanted to see me again.
I groaned. Dinner would be served soon, and I was ravenous. I cleaned up quickly, made a short stop in the kitchens to steal a bread roll—the chef liked me because I was excessive in my compliments—and reported back to the waiting room. Miraya and Kalla must not have left since our last meeting.
Yara wasn’t present, and I wondered if that meant good news or bad.
“We will not be sending an army to Lanathrill’s aid,” Miraya said without preamble.
I stuffed my mouth with bread and nodded. There was wisdom in that considering the unrest among the sentinels.
“However, they’re the only contact we’ve had with other survivors since Rebirth, and if we’re to be neighbors, then we can’t turn them away.” Miraya looked unhappy about it.
“Did you know about Lanathrill?” I asked Kalla.
“Yes, but Ninu chose
to keep hidden the truth of the outside world,” Kalla said. “I know little about Lanathrill beyond the fact that it exists. My priority was to monitor Ninu, and since he’d wanted nothing to do with Lanathrill, I put them out of my concern. Only a handful of his top sentinels know.”
“The ones Yara said patrolled the border?” I waited until she nodded, and then said, “Who else knew?” Istar had been Ninu’s ally, for whatever reason, so she must have known as well. Had Irra known?
“I don’t see how it matters,” Kalla said.
“It matters because all of you knew that this entire other country was out there, and no one thought to tell the rest of us.”
Miraya coughed pointedly. “What matters now is the situation at hand. I want to know what exactly is happening in Lanathrill, and whether these creatures pose a threat to Ninurta. I’ll allow Yara to guide a group of sentinels back to assess the situation. If their need is as dire as Yara claims, then I’ll reconsider sending reinforcements.”
“And what does Ninurta get out of helping them?” I asked.
Miraya glanced at Kalla, whose lips held a hint of approval. Helping Lanathrill had to be about more than cultivating goodwill between neighbors. As Kahl, Miraya would have to put Ninurta’s best interests before anything else.
“If communication and travel are opened between the two countries,” Kalla said, “it would be the first concerted effort to begin rebuilding your world. A road would be constructed. The exchange of goods and information could be negotiated.”
I forgot my irritation in the sudden possibilities that her words unlocked. The prospect of something new, of expanding beyond the confines of Ninurta’s walls, filled me with a sense of exhilaration. This could be the beginning of restoring humankind to more than a race of people who cowered behind stone walls and scrounged what they could to get by.
“This would prove to the rebel sentinels and to any other dissenters that my loyalties lie with the people of Ninurta,” Miraya said. “They might finally see reason and support me as their Kahl.”
