Pockets of survivors stagger along, trying to avoid falling debris. The wounded try to find shelter. Then I see it. A single figure, hobbling forward on her cane, struggling with each step. Aliya. A horse gallops down a pathway not far from her.
Without thinking, I leap onto the roof of a nearby home and roll, then vault over the edge of the next. I fly through the air. When I land, pain sears through my side. Arm over my stomach, I shuffle forward, and that’s when I see the face of the horse’s rider.
I forget the pain. I want to call out to Aliya, to warn her about the oncoming attacker, but she won’t be able to get out of the way in time. The horse is galloping toward her. I only have one chance at this, so my timing needs to be perfect.
I climb up to the edge of the roof with my dagas in hand and jump just as the horse passes beneath me.
I crash into the rider, and the two of us topple to the ground. The panicked horse runs off in the opposite direction.
I push myself to my feet and stagger forward. He gets up too, first on one knee, then standing tall on both feet.
He doesn’t grin, but the scar that cuts across his face has turned his mouth into a permanent smirk.
Bo.
Zephi leaps from the nearest roof and lands at Bo’s left. Then I see Arzu rounding a corner, stopping when she gets behind Bo.
He’s surrounded.
Bo doesn’t even bother looking around him to see who else is there. I’m the only one he sees. He’s almost unrecognizable. His torn shirt shows a body almost completely covered in sin-spots. Tattoos have even taken over half of his face.
Feelings swarm in my chest. I want to ask him so many questions, and at the same time, I want to throttle him. I want to hold him close, and I want to beat him senseless.
My brother.
“Come home, brother,” he tells me. His voice has changed. It sounds like stones scraping together. Like precious gems being crushed into powder. “I’m here for you and only you.”
I bring my dagas up, ready. “I’m not going back.”
“Bo!” Arzu calls out. “You’re trapped. Surrender.”
He doesn’t even turn his head to acknowledge her.
“Bo, give up!” Aliya calls out from behind me.
He frowns and glances at Zephi, who twirls her dagas in her hands, ready to battle.
For several long seconds, we all stand there, poised for a fight.
Zephi rushes forward.
“Zephi,” I cry. “Wait!”
Bo parries Zephi’s strike and slices at her stomach, then steps aside while Zephi falls over, eyes wide in shock.
“Don’t make me kill them too, Taj!” Bo shouts, his back to me.
Zephi takes a few stumbling steps, holding her side, and turns to charge again. Arzu rushes forward in the same instant. Bo’s expression doesn’t change as he fends them both off, dodging their blows, then kicking Zephi’s legs out from beneath her. Just as he’s about to drive his daga into Zephi’s chest, Arzu leaps and wraps her legs around Bo’s neck, twisting him to the ground. Bo rolls out of it and backflips toward me. He leaps into the air, and I jump away just as his daga comes down where my head had been.
“Bo, stop this,” I hiss, but it’s like he doesn’t even hear me.
Anger surges in me, and I dash forward. But Bo presses a hand to his chest and spits out an inisisa that, in mid-flight, turns into an eagle. I dodge it just in time. Mouth still open, he vomits a snake and another pool of ink that grows into a many-tailed dragon.
He can call forth inisisa too. And so many almost at once. When did he learn how to do that?
The snake slithers toward Arzu. She jumps out of the way, but it’s too fast. It springs from the ground and wraps around her arm, then slithers up to bite her shoulder. Crying out, she tosses it to the ground. Shadows spread like a bruise on her shoulder.
I roll under one of Bo’s strikes and stab the snake in the back of its neck. The eagle turns around and swoops down on me, and the dragon roars into the sky. I raise my hands to block the eagle’s charge, then see it heading straight for Aliya. I run to catch it. “Aliya!” I cry out, but one of the dragon’s tails smashes into me, hurling me into a burning hut.
Thatch falls onto me, and I furiously pat at my clothes to get rid of the flames. Bo’s knee crashes into my chin, sending me to the ground with him on top of me, grabbing at my neck. I hadn’t even seen him coming.
Something moves behind him, and he drops me just as Zephi thrusts a sword forward. She must have taken the weapon from a fallen villager. Bo gets out of the way, but the sword cuts his shirt. I fall to the ground with my hands at my throat, struggling for breath.
As I writhe on the ground, the clink and clash of metal against stone fill the air. The hut burns around us.
The roof of the hut crackles over us. A large piece of thatch falls to the ground by the far wall.
Bo tenses, then lunges for Zephi. Zephi blocks the blow with her sword, but the strength of it sends tremors up her arms. Bo strikes again and again and again, new fury powering each move. His body is practically bursting with it.
One more strike, and Zephi’s sword snaps in half. She dodges Bo’s next blow, just barely, then the one after that, but Bo catches her again on the stomach, then on the wrist as she raises her arm to block the strike.
“No!” I shout as Bo brings Zephi to her knees, then, back turned to me, arcs his daga in a downward slice.
Zephi falls to the ground.
Bo turns.
Fury turns my entire world red. My hands ball into fists. My body prepares itself to tackle Bo and pummel him into Infinity, but just then fire crackles overhead.
I scramble to the hut’s entrance just as more of the roof caves in. It collapses behind me, burying Bo with Zephi’s body.
Arzu and Aliya run over to me, out of breath, but I see no sign of the inisisa.
Two of the Larada try to stand but can only rise to one knee, drained. Their power . . . it takes a piece from them. It’s just like Eating, I realize with a start. You pay the tax with your body. Maybe they are not as marked on their skin as they are on their insides. One of the Larada coughs blood into the dirt, even though there is no wound on her body.
“Where is she?” Aliya asks me. “The one who fought Bo.”
I come to my knees and shake my head. I’m trembling when I get to my feet and limp forward. Arzu sees the look in my eyes and bows her head.
“Come on,” I murmur. “Let’s go find the oth—”
I turn and can’t believe what I’m seeing. Out of the burning wreckage emerge three sin-wolves. A bear rises to its full height. Underneath it kneels Bo. By the Unnamed . . . he called them forth and used them for shelter as the hut collapsed.
CHAPTER 25
THERE’S NO ENERGY left in me. Nothing. I try to feed off the anger I felt earlier, but my limbs won’t obey me. I grit my teeth and face my enemy and try to summon the strength to fight the last of these inisisa off. They stalk toward us with Bo at the center of the group.
How did he get this powerful?
“Any ideas, Aliya?” I say loudly.
“Come home, Taj!” Bo shouts so loudly that I’m sure the entire village can hear him. “End this!” He steps through the wreckage of the hut, then stops and says, more quietly, “End this,” and I hear the pleading in his voice, so soft and quick I almost miss it. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to be this thing—this monster—Karima has made him into . . .
A cry from somewhere above us draws our attention. From the sky comes a tastahlik with a longstaff.
Wale.
I’ve never been so grateful to see someone who’d once beaten me up.
He comes down hard on Bo’s head, then spins around to send him through the air and to the ground a dozen paces away. Without missing a beat, Wale swings his staff
around, slicing through Bo’s inisisa. All the beasts break down into boiling puddles, then shoot into the air and dive down into Wale’s open mouth.
He wipes the lingering ink from the side of his lips, then assumes a fighting stance, longstaff behind his back.
Bo stands to his full height, then stretches his back and cracks his neck. He charges toward Wale faster than I’ve ever seen him move, and Wale lowers himself and spins his staff. Bo leaps over him and lands on the other side. Wale has his back turned and, just as Bo rushes forward, thrusts his staff out, catching Bo in the stomach, then Wale spins, smacking Bo twice across the face before sweeping his legs out from beneath him, pinning him to the ground with the wooden end.
It’s done.
Wale saved us.
I fall to one knee, grateful and exhausted. I turn to say something to Aliya, but Bo grips Wale’s staff, slips out from beneath it, then knocks it away, slicing at Wale’s face with the daga in his hand.
Wale staggers away, bleeding, and raises his staff just as Bo strikes. He parries one blow, then the next, then spins his staff so that it whistles in the air before twirling away and swinging at Bo, who leans back, missing the blow. Bo straightens and launches himself forward. Wale leans back and twists in the air as Bo sails over him, straightens his staff, and catches it in his other hand, holding it close to his side. Bo skids to a stop, then they go at it again, Bo swinging and Wale on the defensive, spinning and twisting himself in the air, trying to put distance between him and Bo. But Bo remains close, practically on top of him, until Wale pops himself into the air just like he did before and comes down again, the bladed end of his staff slicing through the back of Bo’s shirt.
Bo screams in pain, but he turns, dagas gripped tight, and charges again like he’s never going to run out of energy. Blood runs freely from his wounds, leaving trails behind in the dirt.
He’s slowing down, and it’s easier for Wale to catch his strikes and knock them away, but they’re still more powerful than anything I’ve ever seen from an aki.
Bo lunges forward. Wale ducks, then spins his staff upward, the bladed end slicing through Bo’s right wrist. As Bo staggers forward, holding what’s left of his arm, Wale comes from behind and stabs his staff through Bo’s thigh, pinning him to the ground.
But with his free hand, Bo pulls a daga from his boot and flings it back at Wale, catching him right in the neck.
Stunned, Wale staggers backward, fingers reaching for the blade dug deep in his neck, but before he can touch it, he falls back.
Bo, mustering strength I can’t even imagine, pulls Wale’s staff from his leg. Blood gushes from the wound in his leg, then he twirls the staff with his good hand and turns to face me. How can he stand?
Before I can think, I’ve already rushed into him, and the impact throws us both off balance. I land on top of him. We both have our hands on the staff, and I push with all my might against his neck. I’m wordless with rage. Spittle spills from my mouth. I grit my teeth and push.
“Come. Back,” Bo hisses with gritted teeth.
Tears come to my eyes, then something gives, and he kicks me away. I land on my back, and Bo stalks toward me. “I don’t want to kill you.” This he says in a voice small enough for only me to hear. “Please.”
“Bo, what happened? What did she do to you?”
His eyes flicker. His face looks like his mind is battling against itself. Then it settles. “Karima has brought Balance to Kos. There is no more rich. No more poor. No more sickness.” He raises the staff and cracks me across the face with it. Pain explodes in my head. I try to crawl away. But Bo limps after me. “I am protecting Kos.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I can’t believe that Bo believes it either.
“Taj, if you keep running, I will burn down all of Odo to find you.”
Running. So much death and destruction because I’ve been running. That familiar guilt rises. Threatens to overwhelm me. When I turn, Bo stands over me, the bladed end of the staff pointed at my chest. Blood drips from it. His blood. Around us stands a pack of sin-lions. Snarling. He still has the strength to call them.
“How?” I ask, gesturing to them weakly. “How did you get these powers?”
“Karima has an army of algebraists and Mages.” He looks at the hand holding the staff, his other arm. There is almost no clear skin on his body. “They have made me stronger. Their magic has unlocked these things in me. My body is no longer a prison. It is a weapon.” He says these things like he’s describing a gift. Something I could have if only I’d join him. Join Karima. The sin-lions draw closer.
I abandoned Kos.
No longer.
I grip sand and hurl it at Bo’s eyes. He backs away, and I put my hands to my chest. My lungs tighten, my shoulders tense, and out of my mouth spills a river of ink that forms into a boar. The effort leaves me weak, but the boar charges Bo, who, caught off guard, can’t raise his staff in time. The sin-lions all charge at once. I can’t die. Not today.
As the boar rumbles toward Bo, I whirl around and see the first of his inisisa rushing toward me. Everything seems to slow down. My body moves on instinct. I put my hand out and feel the fur of the sin-lion’s foreheard against the palm of my hand. Then warmth. Warmth that blooms into heat, then a burst of light. I stumble forward. Where the lion had been, there is now only a shower of sparks.
I did it. Just like Juba. Just like the rest of the Larada—the Healers.
Tiny stars hang in the air around me as I turn to face the others. The boar stands a pace or two away from Bo, snarling. I can’t kill him. I can’t leave him eaten.
The sin-lions all look my way until I see movement at the other end of the street. It looks like a wall of light is heading toward us, blanketing everything in its path. Juba and the Larada. A robed figure walks in their midst. Zaki.
In that instant, a plan occurs to me. It’s absolutely cracked. But if I’m right, it could end it all. It could bring Bo back.
The inisisa turn to the Larada as one once Bo sees them, and the lions charge, only to explode into fountains of light that spring into the air. The night sky glows when the beasts come apart.
Now the Larada are close enough to hear me.
“Zaki,” I call out. “Call forth his sins! Quick, before he can move!”
Bo tries to rush me, but Zaki dashes forward and grips his head. No matter how much Bo struggles, he can’t get out of his grasp. Other Larada hold him down. Veins bulge in his neck and forehead and arms.
Bo spasms. Ink shoots into the air like a burst from a fountain. One continuous jet arcs through the air while more sin leaks down the sides of his mouth and begins pooling beneath him.
Sin pours from his throat. It seems to go on forever. Bo gags, choking. Suffocating. The first wave finishes, and he trembles. The pool at his feet turns into a wolf. The Larada have not moved. Bo seizes up again, and another beast spills from his mouth, then another and another, each blast of black bile like an arrow coming out of his body. He continues spilling sins, and the pool beneath his feet widens and widens and widens, and the crowd moves back in horror as the inky sin begins to darken Zaki’s robe, rising above his knees. There’s so much sin that I wonder how Bo managed to even stay alive for this long. How much sin does he have on his heart?
I can hear the cries choked in his throat by the sin he continues to let out.
The crowd pushes back even farther until they’re all behind me on one end and behind Aliya and Arzu on the other. All the while, the Larada murmur to themselves in their language of prayer, Juba at the front of the group.
Then it all stops.
Bo sags in their grip.
Out of the ink come inisisa. Bears and wolves and griffins with talons dug into the sandy ground and cobras and lynxes and hyenas and dragons. So many sins spread out around our little circle of Bo, me, Zaki, and the tastahlik ho
lding Bo down. I look up, then behind me, then back at Zaki, who meets my gaze, then turns around and sees for himself. The inisisa fill the streets. An entire horde of them.
When I see all of those beasts, my heart aches for Bo. All that darkness inside of him. How could he live with that?
When I rise, the other Larada rise with me. Juba sees the look on my face and knows what I want to do. Then, without a word, the Larada and I form a line facing one group of inisisa.
Arzu joins Zaki, and the two of them stand watch over Bo’s limp body.
I step forward with the rest of the Healers, and everyone else makes way for us. As we reach the first row of inisisa, we put our hands to their foreheads and watch as they begin to glow. Then, all at once, they are nothing but light that bursts, leaving behind sparks like fireflies that wink out of existence. The thrill of it all overwhelms the fatigue I know is creeping in, so I walk with Juba and the others as we turn the inisisa into beasts made of light.
We work until the sky goes pink with morning.
When we find ourselves at the edge of the village and there are no more inisisa, I collapse.
Something stirs along the rim above us. A frame silhouetted against the sunrise.
It moves, then I see it skidding down the side of the bowl, then it vanishes amid the half-burned huts and the destroyed homes. I’m too weak to move, and I see the same is true for Juba. None of the Larada has the strength to fight anymore.
Eventually, it draws nearer. I know even before seeing the figure’s face who he is. The way he moves, the way he sways, like something never content with straight lines or rest.
Abeo. I realize I haven’t seen him since before the arashi attack. In all the chaos since, I hadn’t even noticed.
Several tastahlik emerge from the village and stalk toward us. Has he been waiting for all of this? Was this his plan? To take over when we were weakened?
I still have the impulse to fight, and I struggle to my feet before Abeo’s fist crashes into my cheek, tossing me onto my back.
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