Given to the Earth

by Mindy McGinnis

  This blade has known blood. And it likes me.

  “Come on, then.” I open both arms to Nylos, those around me fading in my vision until I see only him, this man who would open my throat over dinner.

  He clears the table and lands lightly, drawing as he does. The blade swings in a wide arc meant for show, and I bounce it off my own with a smirk.

  “Whom do you playact for?” I ask. “There are none here but you and I. Unless you think your mother watches from her boat?”

  His attack is swift and unforgiving, thrusts and jabs that would skewer me if I allowed them to. But the Elder’s blade is a solid one, and small shifts send the tip of his sword just to my lee and stoneward, one such tearing away what’s left of my sleeve to show the rip in my skin from the Lusca, bleeding again.

  I parry him easily, refusing to attack, letting his anger lead the fight while I keep my injured arm close to my side. Three times I could have ended it if I had my double blades, his shoulder dipping low and showing me his spine. My fingers itch to drive iron there; I feel them twitch each time a killing blow could be delivered, and an Indiri curse slips from me on the last.

  “Getting tired?” Nylos asks.

  “Only bored,” I say, when I feel my heels hit the wall. I’ve allowed him to force me into a corner, a bad place for any fighter.

  But not an Indiri.

  An opponent who thinks he has won will make lazy mistakes, and Nylos is no different. He draws back to put force behind his final blow, watching my blade for a thrust.

  So I ram my injured arm upward, ignoring the pain in my side, the snap of my cloak. All the world is the flat of my palm and the fine bone between his nostrils, which breaks easily. The impact jars me to my elbow, leaving behind a deep ache that I’ll feel long into tomorrow. But I will have a tomorrow in which to feel pain.

  Nylos has only a few moments left, and those are spent in confusion as I slide underneath his sword arm. He spins to follow me, unsteady on his heel, and those seated at the table gasp at the sight. His nose is gone, smashed upward into his skull, eyes on either side bulging with the pressure.

  Nylos takes one step, then two. He drops his sword, and his hands go to his face as if they might undo the damage, pull the bone from his brain and make it right again. A single drop of blood drips from the crevice where his nose had been, and then he falls before me. Dead.

  I make my way to the table, bare feet loud against the stones, for the room is suddenly silent, full of openmouthed fools who thought they played a game with me. I spot the Elder whose sword I hold, and face him across the table.

  “Thank you,” I say, handing it to him pommel first. “It is a fine sword, though I had no use for it, in the end.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Witt

  No words will keep her from being torn to pieces by my men. I’m up and over the table in a breath, the wine I’ve taken pounding through my veins along with my blood. I grab her by the shoulders, but she shifts away at the sound of my approach, the Elder’s blade left behind in his hands. She’s gone from under my touch, the faint suggestion of flesh and bone fading to thin air as she circles me.

  “Careful, my Lithos,” Hadduk calls from the table. “She did in Nylos with her bare hands, and hardly a drop of blood spilt.”

  I show her my palms, my own lack of weapons, and the girl smiles. “You can kill with those, same as I,” she says. “Neither one of us is ever unarmed.”

  I nod my agreement, not trusting my tongue. Or my feet, for that matter. The Indiri can see my inebriation and keeps moving in circles around me, forcing me to spin to keep our gazes locked. Her eyes are bright, vibrantly blue against her skin, flickering with a look I know well: unabated joy in the heat of battle, the odd burn of respect one feels for a worthy opponent.

  But there is pain there too, and as we circle each other, my heel slips in blood that didn’t come from Nylos. The Indiri’s wound has reopened, the careful stitching of the Keeper torn loose during her fight. I take a step toward her, breaking the circle she forces me to move in. She crouches, ready for me to lunge.

  “You’re hurt, Indiri,” I say.

  “You’re not . . . yet,” she tosses back at me.

  I don’t dare look away from her face, but I can sense subtle shifts in the room around me. No Pietra will attack the girl from behind, not after I chided Hadduk for not treating her as a warrior. Filj the Feneen has shown respect for her as well, but I cannot speak for the others of his tribe. And none will allow the Lithos to be harmed. Rules of single combat will go to the depths before they see me done to death by an Indiri at my own table.

  So I’m left staring, half drunk, at this girl, wondering how to keep her from harm and save my own skin as well.

  “Indiri,” Nilana calls from her seat, “come away from the Lithos.”

  “I will not,” the girl says, not breaking her eyes from mine.

  “Even for your own blades?”

  Indecision flickers, something that doesn’t sit well on her face. The Indiri backsteps, putting some space between us before she glances at Nilana.

  The Feneen woman’s servant holds the Indiri’s double blades, which catch all the light in the room, reflecting back onto the girl’s face. They have heft and gracefulness, well honed and much cared for. I see the Indiri’s fingers twitch at the sight of them, and I silently bless Nilana as the servant sets them on the table before her.

  “These carry a fine edge,” Nilana says. “But a Hadudun leaf can gouge stone. I’ll send my man to the forest with your swords, have him go at a tree with your warrior’s weapons as if they were nothing more than a crude ax.”

  “Those were my grandmother’s,” the Indiri seethes. “They belong in my hands and only mine.”

  “Oh, I’ll give them back to you,” Nilana says. “But they’ll be pitted and broken, and only as deadly as a child’s toy.”

  “Clearly you’ve never met an Indiri child,” the girl says.

  “How could she, when I killed them all?” Hadduk says, opening his mouth at the wrong time to say the wrong thing.

  Nilana’s eyes close against his stupidity as the Indiri breathes with fresh rage. But her attention is scattered, and it gives me the chance to move behind her and thread my arms through hers, jerking them upward.

  Her breath leaves in a rush and an exclamation of pain so quiet I know I’m the only one to hear it, a small, high noise like a Tangata kitten’s last mewl. The force of the pain sends her back against me, and I can smell the death that moved through her so recently, the funk of rot in her hair and the tang of fresh blood that drips from her arm.

  “You’re hurt,” I say, quietly enough for only the two of us to hear. “And you’ve killed a man most here called friend. This only ends well for you if you do as I say.”

  “Nothing in Pietra ends well for an Indiri,” she says, but her voice is fading, the pain rising in her to take wakefulness away.

  “Guards,” I call, and the two soldiers near the hall doors come to my side. “Take the Indiri back to her cell. And mind what you saw here,” I say, nodding toward where Nylos lies cooling on the stones.

  They take her from me, none too gently, and I watch her go, holding on to consciousness by sheer will, hurling a stream of what are undoubtedly Indiri curses at me until she is out of sight.

  * * *

  I knock on Nilana’s door, ignoring the Pietran guard, who is struggling to keep a straight face. Her Feneen servant opens it, nods to me with a face much more inscrutable than my own man’s, then turns for instructions to his mistress. Nilana is already abed, hair loose around her shoulders, but she does not look surprised to see me in her chambers.

  “Come in, Lithos,” she says, then has her servant leave us.

  “Will you sit?” Nilana asks, voice quivering with amusement, as the only place to do so would be on the bed with her.

>   “I’ll stand,” I say.

  “I thought as much.” She nods, leaning back into her pillows. “So why do you come to my rooms, young Lithos, if not in search of what most men desire from a woman in her sleepshirt?”

  In truth, I do not believe she is wearing even that. As her hair shifts away from her bare shoulders, I focus my eyes on her own.

  “I wished to thank you for interfering with the Indiri tonight at dinner. It was well done.”

  She inclines her head. “And necessary,” she adds. “The girl killed one of your Elders in full sight of the others. Pietran pride would not let her stand long, and you were wise to shield her with your body instead of words.”

  “I did not shield her,” I say too quickly.

  “My mistake.” Nilana shrugs.

  “I need her healthy and whole in order to draw the king and his Stillean army from their shores. Otherwise we are outnumbered and they ensconced in a fortified city with a queen who can call the sea to fight alongside them.”

  “So you threw yourself drunkenly to the side of a girl who had just killed your advisor, though you held no weapon?”

  “I did what was necessary,” I say.

  “You did,” Nilana agrees. “But, Lithos, you did it with a certain . . . passion.”

  I flush, remembering. How must it have looked as I jumped to the Indiri’s aid? And it was to aid her, I know. The root of all Pietran pride lies in the strength of our bodies, the fierceness in our blood that fades with age. Once that fire is banked, we build our boats and leave the heat of battle for our youth.

  Yet tonight I saw that same strength and ferocity bound in freckled skin and burning in bright eyes that denied pain, injury, and the odds so that she might do as she wished—kill me.

  And I cannot say that I desire the same.

  Nilana is waiting for an answer, and I straighten, searching for words that will capture how I felt when I knew the room would come crashing down on that burning flame, extinguish it with stone and leave only a tendril of smoke behind.

  “I respect her,” I say.

  “Ah, Lithos.” Nilana smiles. “That’s the most romantic thing a man can say about a woman.” She leans forward, the sheet around her chest gaping.

  “Careful you’re not distracted.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Dara

  Forest animals will seek out a dark place to die. Donil always said it was so that they can defend themselves, spine against stone, ready to fight until the last moment. I would see my brother again if only to tell him that here in my cell I have found the reason why they seek darkness when mortally injured: so that they may die with dignity, no eyes upon them as their bodies bend in a rictus of pain, as their mouths cry silently, each breath an agony.

  I was rash, no surprise. But I could not stand before enemies and be mocked. Once already I had lain helpless in that room. I had vowed it wouldn’t happen again, and it had not, though the price is somewhat high.

  The stitches that held my skin together now trail from my arm, drying stiff with blood from the newly torn wound. My side feels as if someone has made a fire in it, and my wrist is swollen because of the killing blow I dealt Nylos. I’m a fine mess, and not likely to improve any time soon. Any help the Keeper may give would come to me as the Lithos wished it.

  I’m slipping somewhere between sleep and exhaustion when I hear steps outside my door. Gaul’s torch passes nearby, then the key in the lock. I manage to crouch, ready to take him out at the knees, but aware I can do little else. The jailer has whispered things to me when we are alone, pleasures both small and large that he’d like to visit upon my Indiri skin. Up to now, he would not dare touch me without the Lithos’s permission. That may have been granted now that I’ve killed an Elder.

  It is not Gaul but the Lithos himself who enters my cell, perching his torch in a sconce and closing the door behind him. The jailer lingers, eyes peering through the slits of my window to see whatever fate awaits his only prisoner. The Lithos follows my gaze and clears his throat. There’s a grunt of dissatisfaction, and then Gaul is gone.

  We watch each other carefully, both of us fighters with our backs to walls.

  “You fought well tonight,” he says.

  “You drank well,” I answer, and he is the first to drop his gaze.

  “You have yet to see me at my best,” he says coolly. “Only at the head of an army about to be enveloped by a wave, and now as a drunken fool presiding over a meal where you were pulled from comfort to be displayed for others’ amusement.”

  I settle back onto my haunches, resting my head against the stones. “This is hardly comfort, and I don’t believe many were amused, in the end.”

  “No,” he agrees, crouching so that we are on the same level. “You are a surprise, Indiri.”

  “And you are exactly as I remember, Lithos,” I say. “For I have seen you at your best, or rather my mother did. You sat, unmoved, and watched Indiri being slaughtered. Your face was the last thing my mother saw before her head was taken from her shoulders.”

  While the second part of what I say is true, I cannot say the Lithos is unchanged from what my mother’s memories have shown me. Then he was a child, small, unquestioning, eyes bright at the glory of battle for which he had been raised. The man before me seems whole, but I know the dark gaps that fill a person who has killed, and the Lithos of Pietra has more than his share.

  I’ve seen men fill that void with women and drink, even try to feed it with more killing, only to learn that it makes the space wider, the depths darker. I was made for death and learned early the only way to deal with it was reason, the pure logic that it was them or me, a wider purpose that opened their throats and left mine closed each day. Whatever the Pietra have taught the Lithos to close the gap has not taken root.

  “I remember that day,” he says, settling onto the floor across from me. “Your women and children fought as fiercely as any man.”

  I nod and let the silence stretch between us.

  “Would you let me see to your arm?” he asks.

  The offer of help is more alarming than any threat, and I am unable to mask my reaction. He raises his hands, showing me his palms for the second time this night.

  “I am unarmed,” he says. “And as for any other harm . . .” He trails off, suddenly an awkward boy.

  “Yes, I know,” I tell him. “The Lithos is not to be distracted.”

  “You’ll let me see to it, then?”

  My sleeve has grown wet against my side, and I would be foolish to refuse him. I pull away my cloak to have a look at the wound myself, now that the light of his torch is in the room. He mistakes it for permission and moves close, peeling away what’s left of my sleeve with a deft touch.

  “Not quite to the bone,” he says, turning my arm in the light. “Do you have movement in all your fingers?”

  I make a gesture that’s known across all languages, and he smiles. “You’ll live to wield a sword, then,” he says.

  “Will I?” I challenge.

  He doesn’t answer, but produces a pouch that holds a needle and thread, which he bites off with his teeth.

  “Does the Lithos also knit?”

  “I do not,” he answers evenly, turning my wrist so that the light is better. “But I know how to mend skin and set a bone, knowledge any warrior needs should they find themselves without a healer.”

  He glances up at me. “This may hurt.”

  I laugh. I cannot help it. From outside my cell I hear Gaul snort in surprise, and the Lithos gives me his own small smile, one I think very few have seen.

  “Lithos, since I left my own land, I’ve been slashed by your leaves, done battle with a sea creature on dry land, and had my veins filled with the blood of your own dead. Tell me, is there nothing here in Pietra that does not hurt?”

  He thinks for a moment, then caref
ully sets the needle and thread on a crevice in the wall before extending his hand to me.

  “My name is Witt,” he says.

  “Dara,” I answer reflexively, and take his hand in my own. We shake, skin to skin, and I feel the thread of life that is within me tremble.

  “Hopefully that was not too painful,” he says, retrieving the needle and thread.

  “We’ll see,” I say.

  And he mends me.

  CHAPTER 42

  Ank

  I have passed days with my mother. The nilflower smoke will linger on me long after I leave her, and as always, I will search the folds of my clothes for the last remnants until they are gone. I have learned much in my time with her, but little that would be of interest to the Lithos. The things we have spoken of are nearer to the heart than the mind, as we find threads of conversations ended long ago, pick them up again, and bind ourselves together with them.

  Here in her tower it is as if we are the only people in the world, and I have found solace in her room many times in my life. My caul was of no consequence to her, and once it was gone, my face a found treasure. In this round room I am once again a Stillean and a son. No longer am I Ank of the Feneen, who must weigh words and share only that which needs to be seen for my own purposes. But time does pass, and I must speak to her of things unpleasant before my leavetaking.

  “Did the earth move as the sea here as well?” I ask, eyeing a fissure in the wall that is new to me.

  “It did.” Madda yawns, and I spot a cracked tooth in the back of her mouth. My mother ages, and not well here in this room with only smoke and the occasional housecat for company.