He could fight, though. He could fight-oh! He once killed a sin-lion while he had a broken foot. Another time, he popped out a shoulder while battling a sin-bear. And he once left a fight with a large sin-snake while holding his ribs together in barely disguised pain. Always, though, in a few moments, he was upright and laughing and in charge again. And he’d have no trouble haggling with the foodsellers for our dinner meal’s ingredients later that day. Sometimes, I would see him wake up in the mornings if I rose early enough. I can only guess at what aches and pains took him over when he struggled to dress himself. His body probably screams at him every morning. But he’s always grinning. Like it’s only a matter of time before you’re in on the joke too. Hopefully, I will see him again.
I want to ask Aliya how much Zainab knew. If Zainab worked with Aliya to paint directions on the Wall, maybe she was part of the rebellion. I mean, with Arzu on our side, I have no idea who stands where. What I do know is that the sin-snake and the sin-lion that circle Princess Karima in my night terrors have something to do with all of this.
Ever since waking up this morning, the princess’s face has appeared in front of me, like an inyo. And I get scared that I’ve already missed my chance. I feel like that’s what I’m running after. And whenever I close my eyes to shake away the vision, I see King Kolade and the princeling Haris and the menace in the way they walk. Then the vision goes away, leaving silver spots. Then those clear, and I hear the boot-steps of Palace guards splashing through puddles behind us.
Voices up ahead.
Aliya glides to our right, and I follow her into a small enclosure. Arzu disappears into the shadows, her knife clasped close to her chest.
Soft footsteps and the swishing of cloaks announce a small group of Mages. They amble past. Mumbles and murmurs in a language I can’t understand, then one of them chuckles. When the light catches the space beneath their hoods, their eyes glint silver. Then they’re gone.
Aliya peeks around the corner. Arzu steps out and looks both ways, then beckons the both of us, and we turn down another pathway.
A broken gate blocks our path.
We crouch for a moment and look around before Arzu’s and Aliya’s gazes settle on me.
“Taj,” Aliya says. “I’m going to need you to do what you did with the sin-dragon.”
“What?”
“I’m going to call forth a sin from Arzu. I’m going to need you to command it through this gate.”
I try to act calm, but I can’t keep the shake out of my voice. “Won’t that weaken her?” I whisper.
“We can’t go back and use a different path, Taj.” This time from Arzu. “This is the only way through.” She sheathes her knife and kneels before Aliya. “I’m ready.”
There’s nothing I can do as Aliya puts her hands to Arzu’s face and begins the prayer. The way Aliya does it I’ve never seen before. She presses her forehead against Arzu’s. And there’s almost a pleading sound in her voice. As though she’s not so much calling forth a sin as asking the Unnamed for a blessing.
Arzu retches.
Aliya continues the incantation.
Spasms rock Arzu, and she falls forward. Her knife clatters in a puddle.
Aliya speaks in more fervent whispers now. There’s pain in her voice. Syllables cascade like a waterfall out from her lips.
I crouch into a fighting pose. I might not be able to control the inisisa when it appears, and I’ll need to be able to beat it quickly.
Arzu bucks. Her back arches. Just as she’s about to scream, ink chokes the sound in her throat. Her mouth fills with it, and it spills in one vicious torrent from her.
Aliya continues her prayer as if in a trance.
The sin bubbles up from Arzu’s throat like a fountain. As soon as it hits the tunnel floor, it arcs in all directions until legs come down all around us. They dig into the stone of the enclosure, the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Arzu falls to the ground, and I find myself looking up into the eyes of a sin-spider. Its face and body are one single sphere with shadowy wisps peeling off and dissolving into the air. Aliya has grown completely still, frozen at the sight of the inisisa. It turns its eye to consider her. I remember the knife in my hands.
Something, maybe courage, pushes me to my feet. A familiar feeling seeps into me. It warms me and beats away the chill of the cavern we stand in. I no longer hear the sewer water running over our feet or the steady drip from the ceiling. I stand to my full height so that my face is only inches from the sin-spider’s.
Before I can think of what to tell it, it turns to study the broken gate, then squeezes its body through it. Once its torso pokes through the other end, its legs wrap around the gate and pull it away. It screeches. Our hands go to our ears at the sound. The sin-spider scrabbles onward with its free legs to where the corridor dips.
Water slides beneath our feet right over the lip of our passageway to form a small waterfall landing right in the midst of three Palace guards. One of them sneezes. Another complains about the cold and how it cuts straight through their armor. Aliya and I take Arzu in our arms and carry her forward, then gently lower her onto the chilly ground. My feet are numb from the sewer water. I lean forward and see the guards, several meters below us, strolling in tiny circles, their hands on the hilts of their swords. The first one sneezes into his gauntlet again, then lifts his face to the arched ceiling. I scurry back at a crouch and look to Aliya as if to say, What now?
Her eyes cast about for a plan, when all of a sudden swords slide out of their sheaths. The air fills with shouts. The clanging of steel against steel, a swirl of bodies being flung about the small enclosure. Aliya and I lie down in the water to hide. The chaos goes on for almost a minute before silence cuts off all noise. Part of me hopes, when I look over the ledge of the opening, that there won’t be anything there. I hope the soldiers will have gotten away. No comatose bodies. No innocent men devoured by Arzu’s renegade sin. Then I catch myself. Are they really innocent? Suddenly, I realize where the guilt is coming from. It’s not mine. It belongs to the sins I’ve Eaten. The sins I’ve been forced to Eat. I will never be rid of the guilt of others. Thinking of this, it becomes easier to hate Haris the princeling, easier to despise King Kolade.
There’s only empty space below. Relief. I look around just to make sure, then swing over the edge and try to find purchase with my feet. But I slip on the slick stones and fall with a crack in the shallow water. I come up with my daga at the ready in case anything, sin-beast or otherwise, comes back for me.
“We’re clear,” I whisper.
“Help me get her down,” Aliya says from above.
After a moment, I sheathe my daga and turn back to the opening to try to figure out a way to get Arzu’s body down. Her boots poke out over the ledge, then slowly, her legs come down. I put my hands up to her and try to keep her close to the wall so that if she falls, she falls on me.
“She’s slipping.”
Aliya loses her grip, and I have my arms out, ready to catch Arzu, but she hits me hard, and we’re both in the water. My back aches. Arzu stirs against me, then climbs off, but she still can’t get to her feet. She coughs, then spits droplets of sin into the sewer water.
Meanwhile, as Aliya clings to the wall, her robe is a tangled mess, with her legs spread awkwardly trying to find two poorly placed footholds. She looks like a spider herself.
“Some help please!”
Her arms shake with the effort it takes to keep from tumbling.
Pain throbs in my lower back, but I’m up and with my arms out again. Aliya won’t let up on her grip until I assure her for the third time that I’m ready. She lets herself go, as gracefully as her robe allows, right into my arms. Holding her, I do my best to school my face into an expressionless calm, but I know she sees through it. She fights her way out of my arms, and I nearly drop her.
By now, Arzu is up again and movin
g just fine. Her shoulders slump a little bit, but she’s able to stand and, I guess, able to run.
When Aliya stands upright again, she makes a show of brushing the dust from her robes, then strides past me and Arzu to stare down two tunnels running perpendicular to each other. “This way,” she says, with purpose.
By the time we surface from the catacombs, dusk cuts purple and golden arrows across the sky. I come out of the passageway last, after Aliya and Arzu. Grunting, I grip the stone slab Arzu had moved and slide it back over the hole out of which we crawled. With my foot, I move brush and twigs till it looks like any other patch of shrubbery. Right now, we’re toward the portion of the Forum that abuts the hill. It’s quiet, and when I venture out into the main thoroughfare, I can see the tallest gilded dome of the Palace, an eye looking in all directions at once. The smaller estates are aglow with light. Princes and princesses ready themselves for what I realize is going to be King Kolade’s grand announcement. It’s only now that I notice the Kosian script splashed in paint across all the walls. Every storefront, every home. Even in crude markings on the daises criers and poets and preachers stand on.
“We have to make it to King Kolade’s private chambers.” Aliya stands between me and Arzu in the empty street. “The gardens will be almost empty. People are likely gathering for the announcement.”
“How much time do we have?” I ask.
Arzu casts her eye at the darkening sky. “Not much.”
“We have to get to him before the announcement,” Aliya says.
We hurry through Kos’s side streets, and I realize only once we arrive at the side gate what route we’re taking. It feels weird and appropriate to retrace this path, to do it in reverse. The last time I crossed this boundary between the Forum and the Palace estates, I’d been running from the guards, afraid that I’d be thrown in jail and worried that they had already chained Bo in a dark cell.
Even though my clothing resembles Arzu’s outfit, my presence would raise too many questions. So, instead of just walking through like a Mage and her charges, we have to sneak. But eventually, we make it to the burbling stream; then, crouching, we hurry up the rolling green pasture until we get to a wall that I recognize. Draped in banners, that wall with a tower on top offers a view of Kos that I begin to remember. A view I remember I hate.
Arzu takes Aliya on her back, and we all scale the wall, using the banners for purchase. My former sicario makes it up first and, with a few swift motions of her knife, pops the window open.
When I climb through, the room is shrouded in darkness. It looks almost exactly how I left it. But when I wander to the closet, none of my clothes hang from the wires. It’s completely empty.
“Come on,” Aliya hisses. “Taj, let’s go.”
She and Arzu are already ahead, and I hurry after them. Arzu leads the way. I rush down corridors and around corners where I used to saunter. I hurry past portraits I used to stare at, of the Prophets, of the royal family. I hide where, before, I could walk freely.
The murmur of the crowd grows louder, muffled by the walls separating us.
We’re almost there.
So close to King Kolade, to getting him and forcing him to denounce Izu in front of the whole Forum. So close to saving Karima and changing Kos.
Arzu tests the door.
It’s not until she closes it behind us that I realize what’s wrong. No Palace guards. Why wouldn’t there be Palace guards protecting the king?
Something massive rolls its wheels against stone outside. The cannon to signal the beginning of al-Jabr.
King Kolade is nowhere to be found.
Moonlight has replaced sunlight and casts glowing squares and stripes across the room. The chairs are empty. He’s not here.
Soft footsteps click against the tiles. A face passes into the moonlight. Even with his hood up, I know it’s Izu. And he’s smiling.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it in time,” Izu murmurs.
Aliya steps forward, past the rest of us. “Where’s the king?”
“He’s safe.” Izu inclines his head, as though listening for something. “Before long, Palace guards will arrive. You three will be brought into custody, and it will be the king’s decision as to whether you will be quietly executed or publicly tried and hanged for plotting to overthrow His Majesty and do unspeakable harm to the royal family.” The sound of prayer beads clicking fills the room. “Whether or not you three are hanged outside the gates, the Mages who have chosen rebellion will most assuredly be tried publicly. And they will be disgraced. Their families will suffer, and every trace that they had ever existed will be wiped from this city.”
Arzu and Aliya glance at each other, then look around the room, trying to figure out what to do. I smell it first before I see it. Like fire and metal charring my nostrils. The shadows bend along the floor, and that’s when I realize they’re legs.
Spider legs.
Out of the darkness, the sin-spider’s torso emerges, hovering just over Izu’s head.
He freezes. I know he feels it too. Without even having to see it. Maybe he can smell it as well. Or maybe the inky tendrils that swirl out of the sin-spider’s head brush against his hood. It raises two legs, hooks them into Izu’s hood and pulls it back, so that his head, his face, all of it is in full view.
“Now, Taj!”
I snap out of it and see Aliya pointing.
“Now! Command it to consume him.”
“It’ll kill him.” It’s like she hit me in my chest. “I can’t.”
“Taj! Do it!”
Izu chuckles. “You won’t kill me. You won’t do it, because if you do kill me, you will kill everyone else in this city.”
The Mage sees the question in my eyes. A grin twists his lips. “Before my body is cold, the sins of everyone within the Wall will be called forth. And this army of sins will swim through the streets until no home, no shelter, no corner is untouched.” His smile disappears. “Aliya.” He says nothing more, just shakes his head. It’s as though the sin-spider isn’t even there.
He’s lying, I know it. There’s no way he could do what he’s claiming. Even still, I can’t do it. This is different. This isn’t letting a sin-beast go. This is commanding it to kill someone. What would that do to me? I want to. I want to so badly. Images flash in my mind of dahia in the aftermath of Baptisms, of Mages sweeping through and snatching children from their families, pulling them out from under the wreckages of their old homes. I see Costa and the sacks full of money he refuses to give us. Palace guards with their short canes in hand, ready to beat us bloody. Then I remember Izu’s threat. If I had refused him, if I had chosen not to go out into the camps, he would have an entire dahia destroyed. If he’s gone, he can’t issue that edict. It’ll be safe. But Kos.
Suddenly, I realize I’ve been staring at my hands. I look up just in time to see a blur of white, then a stream of red. Someone’s cry is cut short. Princess Karima. I run to her. She turns her face to me, then turns back. Absolute serenity. If Izu hurts her, I don’t care what the consequences are; I will cut him. The Mage trembles before the princess and coughs. Red splashes onto Karima’s white dress. Izu crumples at her feet.
“Karima,” I gasp. I reach to turn her around to see if she’s hurt, and that’s when I see the knife in her hands, glinting in the moonlight. “What have you done?”
CHAPTER 31
SHE’S SHAKING. Even as I hold her, she’s shaking. “I couldn’t do it, Taj. You were going to Eat that sin to save him, and I couldn’t bear to watch you consume another sin. I won’t allow it.” She raises her head from my shoulder and looks at me, eyes as clear as fresh river water. The air around the princess curls with sin. “I want to bear this. I want to know what it feels like. To carry this inside of me. Sin, Taj, it must be borne. It cannot be wished away. Its taking cannot be purchased. It is our own lot to bear.” She looks past me
, and I see that she’s staring straight at Arzu. She must know what this means, that Arzu has betrayed her.
“It is our lot to bear,” Karima repeats. “I won’t become a monster like my brother. Utterly and completely ignorant of the burden of sin.”
A single step back, and she stands before me, a small trail of blood running down the front of her gown. Then she turns her face toward that of the sin-spider. She doesn’t tremble. She doesn’t gape. “So this is a sin,” she says in a voice caught between wonder and curiosity. She reaches up to touch it.
“Princess, no!” The words burst out of my mouth, and just as Karima’s fingers brush the sin-spider, the beast dissolves into a puddle that splashes against the ground, then rushes into my mouth.
My body seizes, and I can feel Arzu’s guilt coursing through me. I can feel her relationship with Princess Karima, its entire history, all the different sides and edges and facets of it pass through me. The affection Arzu felt for Karima, the gratefulness in having had a companion as a child, the resentfulness as they grew up into separate castes, the bitterness with which Arzu watched the royal family treat her mother, the sweltering rage that filled her upon hearing her mother’s punishment, the stoic determination Arzu felt as she continued her service to the princess.
Then it’s all gone. Feelings of guilt climb up my spine and into my brain. Their tendrils latch on to my heart, but I push them away. Arzu’s guilt. Not mine.
Palace guards are coming.
Aliya grabs my arm and pulls me to the window. “Taj, we have to go. Now!”
But I can’t. I won’t. “No.”
Her eyes widen in shock. “Taj. What are you doing?”
My head is swimming. Sins float through it, over and under one another, forming into different beasts battling between my ears and behind my eyes. Everywhere I look, I see sin-beasts forming, bears bending out from the drapes, rodents emerging from the tiles. Everyone’s sins. Everywhere. I see nothing but sin. But Princess Karima is the clearest thing in my mind. She glows. Everything is darkness, but she glows.
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