by Rachel Dunne
Somehow, Keiro had known he would find Poret. There had been a certainty in him. She lay staring at the stars, a faint look of surprise painted forever on her still face. He knelt beside her, or perhaps he fell, and touched her cheek with shaking fingers. He remembered all the times she had sat with that cheek pressed against his shoulder. How her laugh had fluttered from her lips across his skin. How she had smiled so soft and sweet.
He laid her out gently, smoothing her legs, crossing her hands above her heart. Then his hands reached, and pulled grass from the earth—long strands of grass, tall as a man, strong grass good for weaving. Keiro began to weave the grass around her, wrapping and tucking and tying, a cocoon to take her to her rest. He would have buried her, given her to the earth as the preachers did, but she was of the Plains. She should rest as they rested.
He had told her, it felt like long ago, how wondrous her life would be under the Twins’ rule. That they would rise, and she would rise with them, a mighty hunter with a Starborn at her side. A certainty had whispered those words to him, another voice speaking with his own lips. He knew, now, the shape of the hand that had touched his mind.
Was any of it me? He worried that he had been entirely taken from himself, that he had been nothing more than a quiet dream these last months, that he had only just woken up to himself. I am not . . .
He worried more that he hadn’t been.
The sky was going to gray when he finished, and Keiro rose without sound. The weavers were near done, a long line of green shapes bisecting the tribehome. He didn’t know what they would do with the bodies next. He didn’t want to know. Instead he walked, the long walk back through the grass, over the hills where more lines of bodies stretched. Something caught his eye upon the grass, a knife that someone had dropped. Its weight felt strange in his hand. He walked until his feet found the ladder, and then he was kneeling again, in the dark again, gazing at the empty shells of the Twins. The knife was still in his hand, and there was in him a dark urge to use it.
“Why?” he asked aloud, and he gave them a very long time to give answer. Waited for the whispering certainty, the insidious voice in his mind, but it did not come. Keiro stood, and the knife felt so heavy he could hardly hold it, but he stepped forward, toward Fratarro’s body. His right foot had been stitched into place, long, sure stitches made of fine-woven grass. Grass was easy enough to break, easier with an edge. He wondered what would happen, if he cut away the thread.
He lifted the knife, and though it was heavy as death, his hand was his own. There was no whisper, no touch, nothing in his mind save himself.
As he raised the knife higher, its tip burned with sudden brightness.
The sun had found him, stretching its fingers over the lip of the hole. The Parents’ sun, that they had loved more than their children. The Twins were gone, freed or lost, and still the sun rose. Nothing had changed, and so much had been lost for it. He watched the sunlight reach across the floor of the cavern, watched it crawl up Fratarro’s restored limbs to the hole in his chest, the ichor-dripping eternal wound. They were gone, as good as dead, and they had no power here.
Keiro lifted the knife again, just before all the new light fell abruptly from the sky.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I’ll kill you.”
Rora’d lost count of how many times she’d said the words. She’d screamed them at first, screamed ’em until her throat went raw. Then she’d growled them, low and hard. Now she just said them flat and dead, like there wasn’t anything left to her except those words, and maybe there wasn’t.
“I’ll kill you.”
It’d been a few hours since they’d untied Aro, not too long after Joros had quit kicking the witch. They’d left Rora tied up. She couldn’t really blame ’em; she’d kill them if they let her go. Now her brother and the witch sat with their heads bent together, both of ’em with too-wide eyes as they whispered at each other. She couldn’t believe that Aro could be so stupid—no, that wasn’t true; she could believe it because he’d always been a damnfool idiot, and he would’ve died five dozen times over if she hadn’t been around to do his thinking for him.
And the witch . . . It hadn’t been too long ago that she’d had her hands wrapped around his neck, squeezing the life out of him. Now, she wished she hadn’t stopped. She hated the kid for making her stop.
“I’ll kill you,” she told Anddyr, even though he wouldn’t look at her anymore. He had his big sad eyes on, black with bruises, like she should feel sorry for him, feel sorry that he’d failed to do whatever his master’d ordered, which probably involved killing her. And she was supposed to feel bad about that.
“What are they doing?” Joros asked the witch. Joros’d been staring over at the hill for hours, as the moon trailed down the sky, as the dim screaming finally faded away. The sky was turning gray in front of him, and he still hadn’t done anything besides stare.
Anddyr crawled to his side, pathetic thing that he was.
“I’ll kill you,” she told him as he crawled by her, and she tried to kick at him even though she couldn’t move her legs at all, but he flinched away like she could. He huddled at Joros’s feet and did some magic thing. Rora was happy to see how his hands looked burned and blistered, like he’d grabbed a cook pot straight from the fire and not let go. It looked like it hurt him to do his spells, too, and that was good because it meant maybe he couldn’t corrupt her brother anymore.
“They’re tending to the dead,” the witch said quietly.
“How many?”
“Too many to count.”
“Try.”
The witch flinched again and was silent for a long time, fingers twitching and lips moving. “A third? Half? It’s hard to tell . . . some may be sleeping, or in shock . . .” Joros waved his words away and they both sank into silence.
A hand touched her arm, and Rora twisted around to see her brother crouched near her, his eyes wide and sad and scared. “Rora,” he whispered, and his voice broke like the world was falling to pieces around him, and even with how much she hated him, all she wanted to do was reach out to him. But her wrists were tied fast, and the best she could do was twist her fingers toward him.
He lay down next to her, curling up at her side like a baby, his head making her shoulder wet. He was always crying, was Aro. She leaned her head against his as best she could, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’ll kill you,” she whispered soft, because they were the only words she had in her.
“We should leave,” Joros said, but he didn’t do anything besides keep staring. “They’ll organize soon enough, and the gods only know what—” He stopped himself, seemed to think about the words he’d just said. “There’s no telling what they’ll do once they’ve recovered and organized, and I don’t want to be around to find out. We should be far away by then.” Finally he tore his eyes away from the hill, and when he came to stand over Rora, he looked like he’d aged two decades in the night. “Will you cooperate if we release you?”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Rora,” Aro said again, still blubbering on her shoulder, “you can’t.” He sat up so she could see his eyes, which was his best defense. “I need Anddyr. He . . . he’s the only one who can help me now.”
Over the hours lying there, Rora’s anger had burned down to a coal, dull and soft-edged. But Aro’s words set a spark to it and it flared up just as bright as it’d been when the witch had first knocked her over. It burned away the numb hate, and she spat out, “He’s the one who did this to you.”
“Yeah.” Aro didn’t argue; he was either smart enough to know it wouldn’t do any good or dumb enough to not even try. “But it’s been done. It’s over. There’s no changing what happened, so all we can do is make it right. Make me right.” He sniffled, and if she looked close enough, she could almost maybe see storms swirling behind his big eyes, the same storms that swarmed over the witch. “I know we can do it, Rora, but we need Anddyr, and Joros, too. We need them, Rora.”
It felt like it’d been someone else’s life, but there’d been a time not so long ago when she and Aro’d been cornered in a village, and she’d stared out at the angry faces knowing she was about to die, and Aro, too, and there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it. Aro’d fallen to the ground, clutched her leg, grabbed her shirt, and she hadn’t blamed him for crying, not then. “I’ll do it, Rora,” he’d said soft, but somehow she’d heard him clear over the villagers’ screaming. “Ask me. I’ll do it if you tell me to.” She’d looked down and seen the blood in his eyes, the terrible tearing thing they never talked about. She’d seen all the people he’d killed without meaning to do it—Kala, some bullies who’d attacked Rora, and once a group of Blackhands thugs. She’d seen how he’d do it again, for her. “You have to ask me.”
It’d near broken her, trying to decide—if it’d been her doing it, she could’ve killed that many people without much worry, without hating herself after, but Aro? He still had nightmares about Kala, who’d got to know them too well, figured out that they were twins, so Aro’d had to stop her. He couldn’t kill one woman without it haunting him his whole life, so how much would it haunt him to kill a whole village? How much would it haunt her, to put that much hurt in him?
She hadn’t had to decide, when it’d come down to it—Joros and his witch’d taken care of the problem for them—but she still remembered the look in Aro’s eyes when he’d said, “You have to ask me.”
Rora looked up at her brother now, and the words tasted like mud in her mouth. “Ask me. I’ll do it if you tell me to.” She saw how the words hit him like a punch, saw how he remembered that night as bright and sharp as she did. I didn’t make you kill all those people, she shouted at him with her eyes, so don’t tell me I can’t kill these ones. It’s the same thing. “You have to ask me.”
Aro’s head hung down and he got real small, like the words’d made him small. He didn’t say anything for a long time, and she could see Joros getting angry. Probably seemed like an easy thing to him, because he was a heartless bastard who only cared about himself. Finally Aro lifted his head, and his cheeks were more wet, and he said, “I need them. I need their help.”
“You have to ask me,” she said again, not caring how it was like twisting a knife in his gut. Not caring how she felt herself tipping, just a little bit.
“Please, Rora.” He grabbed her arm, and if she’d been able to, she would’ve twisted away from his touch. She just looked up at him with hard eyes and sharp edges until a wet sound burst out of him and he whispered, “You have to let them live. I’m telling you. You can’t kill them.”
She ground her teeth and looked away, looked up at the sky that was going from black to gray to yellow, the stars fading away like they were dying. “Then untie me,” she spat up at them, and it didn’t matter whose hands were at her wrists.
She spent a few minutes rubbing feeling back into her ankles and wrists, rubbing hard enough she wouldn’t’ve been surprised if she scraped some skin off. Soon as she could feel the blood flowing again, she stood up and she started walking north. They followed, all three of ’em, but she didn’t much care.
The sun was bright on her face as it rose, and it made her want to shout back at them how they’d been so stupid, how none of it mattered because if the damned Twins were free, then there wouldn’t be any sun, so it’d all been for nothing. They’d broke Aro all for nothing, twisted him into someone different, and if he wasn’t Aro anymore, then where’d that leave her? But she kept her teeth pressed together, and her eyes ahead, and the sun on her cheek, until it started to get dark.
It started slow, no different’n sunset, except the sun was still to the east and hadn’t been up for more’n an hour. When she stopped and turned to look, it was like something was stretching in front of the sun, pulling away pieces of it, like a washerwoman snapping a long sheet and letting it settle slow. Bit by bit the sun went away, and the sky went from blue to gray to black, and one by one the stars came back to life in the sky.
And then there wasn’t a sun anymore. Just like that.
The others were standing near her, but no one said anything. What could you say to something like that? It wasn’t cold, not any more cold than it’d been any night on the hills, but a shiver rolled through Rora.
A light streaked across the sky, big and white, glowing like a star . . . and growing. Streaking through the sky, and looking like it was heading straight at the hills.
A hand grabbed Rora’s arm and near yanked her off her feet, and then they were running, and there was only room for a fear that blocked up her ears with the thump of her heart. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder, didn’t want to know where the falling star was or how close. She wasn’t brave enough to stare death in the face.
The ground shook so hard it sent them all sprawling, Rora landing half on top of the witch with Aro tangled in her legs. The ground kept on shaking as she scrambled to her knees and tried to stand, shook like it was cracking in half and would shake itself to pieces. They started running again as best they could, stumbling and falling and always getting back up, until finally the world settled down under their feet and they could just run.
A sound rolled across the hills and the grass, the same way the shaking had rolled through the earth. Only the sound was laughter, two voices laughing, and it seemed like it followed them no matter how fast they ran.
Rora didn’t stop running until her side ached so bad she couldn’t breathe through the pain. She tried to stay on her feet at least, bent over and panting, but it still hurt like hells so she gave up on it and fell onto the ground. The dark grass surrounded her, swaying, hiding and showing the stars in the sky above.
Aro fell next to her, and the witch, too, though he stayed farther away. That was smart, because even exhausted and hurting, she still hated him. Joros stayed standing, breathing hard as any of ’em, but probably feeling like he was too good to fall over. That was good, too, because it let her keep hating him. Soon as he got his breath back, Joros started swearing. Rora could appreciate them for being good swears, but she didn’t care enough beyond that.
There was something that’d kept sneaking into her thoughts as she was running, sneaking in under the fear: something from a long, long time ago. Her father’s face was something she could remember, clear and shining, a sharp memory of green eyes and a big smile and a tickling beard. But that memory was like a stone—if you held it too often, you’d wear it down so it was dull and smooth, nothing more’n a smiling smear of green. That was one of the worst things she could think of, so she kept his face tucked away, safe and bright. But in all the running, his face’d come into her mind even though she hadn’t called it up, and she’d heard his voice, deep and sure, a rumble like stones settling into place. Whenever she and Aro’d got in trouble, the smile’d fallen off his face and he’d always asked, “Is this how you want to be remembered, after the world ends?”
All the time she’d been running, she’d heard him asking that, over and over, each word timed with the beating of her heart. Is this how you want to be remembered, after the world ends?
And it wasn’t.
Rora stood up, and she started walking. She was done with running—it didn’t do any good, when it came down to it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Joros shouted after her.
“Home,” she said over her shoulder, not stopping. She’d been running too long. If the world was ending, she didn’t want Whitedog Pack, the second-best family she had, to remember her as a traitor and a murderer. If the world was ending, it was better if it ended while she was surrounded by her pack, even if they still hated her. That had to be better’n running.
But she did look back, at fuming Joros and the witch staring back south. You could choose your pack, but you couldn’t choose who was in it. Much as she hated it, these bastards were part of her pack, too. And Aro . . . her sweet fool of a brother, tugging at Anddyr’s sleeve, loyal to the point of being stupid. Home sounded lik
e Sharra and Tare, but it sounded like Aro, too. “Come on,” she growled at them. “There’s nothing left here.”
Joros came after her, stomping and swearing and pulling at his hair, no better’n a kid. Aro followed after a second, after another few tugs at Anddyr’s sleeve. The witch didn’t move.
“Witch,” she snapped at him, and then spit his name like poison, “Anddyr.”
He finally turned, and his cow’s eyes had ghosts in them. He just said one thing: “Etarro.”
The name felt like a punch, but sometimes you had to turn with a hit, let it spin you around. Some punches would take you down if you let them. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”
“I made a choice,” the witch said, and the ghosts in his eyes were telling her that should mean something. Maybe it would, if she let the hit land, but she was already turning with it. “Etarro . . . I chose . . .”
“Then go,” she snarled. Anyone in a pack was only useful so long as they kept doing what they were needed for. When they stopped . . . “I don’t care. You’re useless anyway.” She started walking again, Joros behind her, Aro trailing. After a while, she heard the witch still muttering about his choice, and since the muttering wasn’t getting any quieter, she knew he was following, too. She didn’t care.
If the world was ending, she didn’t have time to make everything right—maybe didn’t have time to make anything right. Some things mattered more’n others, and those she’d do everything she could to fix. If she couldn’t fix ’em, there were worse things than dying next to old friends. There were worse things than old friends killing you, too, and that was a strange kind of comfort. Rora reached up as she walked, touched the wrinkle where she used to have an ear. She’d go back to her pack, her real pack, the pack that mattered, and she’d try to make things right before all the world ended.
