by Phil Tucker
Kanna exhaled mockingly but remained silent. After a moment, she looked down and aside.
Asho felt his anger ebb. "Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?" She ignored him, so he took a step into the room. "How do Mikho and his men know you?"
She smiled bitterly and shook her head, flicking her burning twist so that ashes fell across her lap. She didn't seem to care. "You wouldn't understand, lordling."
Asho inhaled slowly, looking up as he let the insult pass. She's fighting you. Trying to drive you away. Hold on. Be patient. "Did Mikho do you a favor once?"
"By the Black Gate, you don't know how to shut up, do you?" She suddenly leaped to her feet and began to prowl from one wall to the other. "Why do you care? Seriously? You're not one of us. You may look like a Bythian, but you're not. So, why are you down here? Guilt? You felt bad for us mud-grubbers, slaving away in the depths while you drank wine and ate clean bread? Is that it?"
It was Asho's turn to laugh bitterly. "Do you really think that? You really think I was some pampered lord's pet, nicely dressed and eating off silver plates?"
Kanna hesitated. "As good as. You surely weren't down in the mines."
Some measure of his sense of self began to return to him. "Do you want to compare stories of abuse, Kanna, and see which of us suffered more? Pull up our shirts and compare scars? Debate whether it was worse to dig ore for twelve hours or be beaten to near unconsciousness by Ennoian squires who were trying to break your will?"
Kanna froze.
"Because we can," said Asho, moving toward her. "I've got horror stories for you if you want them. My sister chose to return to slavery over continuing the life we led. Think about that. But I stuck it out. I was too stubborn. Perhaps too stupid. I thought I could actually get even for all the pain I had suffered. For a long time, I kept track, and then the list grew too long and I learned to simply hate everyone."
Kanna backed away from him, eyes wide.
Asho smiled. "Do you want to talk about not belonging? About always being self-aware in the midst of a crowd? Do you want to hear what it's like to be the only Bythian in a group of Ennoians? The scapegoat, the butt of every joke, the inferior? To never feel at home, never be able to relax with a friend, to have nobody to cry to, nobody who needs you, who wants to be close to you? To always be completely and utterly alone and know that it will never, ever get any better?"
Kanna hit the back wall and startled, glancing from side to side before locking eyes with him again. Asho stopped a few yards from her with his hands on his hips. "Let's do it. Come on: let's see whose life has been the worst and award that person a crown made of excrement. Is that what you want?"
Asho watched her wrestle with her emotions, with old pain, furious at having been cornered.
That strange bout of euphoria, almost a mania, left him. He sagged and walked back to the door. "I'm sorry. I have no right to bully you in turn. Thank you for your help. It was freely given, and I'll remember that. I won't bother you anymore."
But after he left the cube, he had to stop. Where to? Not his father's. Zekko would never countenance his stirring up violence. Back to Mythgraefen, to seek another ally who could help orient him? No; if he had to make this happen by himself, so be it.
He had reached the edge of the roof when he sensed movement in the doorway. "Wait," Kanna called out softly. "Come back."
He hesitated, one foot already on the highest rung. Kanna was little more than a black shadow, the cherry-red tip of her twist shockingly bright between her fingers.
"Are you sure?"
"Are you going to make me ask twice?" That said, she disappeared.
Asho returned to the doorway but didn't enter. Kanna was pulling down two cups from a shelf, along with a black iron bottle that she uncorked with her teeth. She poured a dram into each cup, then held one out to him.
Her hand shook.
Asho took the cup. It was simple, made from smooth clay and painted black. The liquid inside was pungent, harsh, some kind of hard liquor. Blackroot, he recalled. A memory came back to him, of how his father's breath used to smell of this back in the day.
"Mikho helped my mother when my father died in the mines." Kanna sat down again and stared into her cup. "I was twelve. This was fifteen years ago. My mother was a beautiful woman. She couldn't earn enough in the mines by herself to support us both, so she was Mikho's lover for two years." A band of muscle flared into view across the joint of her jaw, then she raised her cup. "To be honest, it wasn't so bad. Mikho treated her well. I think – toward the end – she even began to like him."
"But then?" Asho pulled out his chair and sat.
"On my fourteenth birthday, we found out that Mikho had arranged for me to be passed over for my Choosing. Everyone said I'd be taken for sure and sent to Sige or the like because of my looks. I'd thought of cutting myself up so I could stay home. When Mikho told us he'd bribed the right people so I could stay, we couldn't believe it. We'd never been happier."
Asho sipped the blackroot and nearly spat. It left a trail of fire down his gullet.
"We thought Mikho had done us that favor because he liked my mother." Kanna's grip on her cup tightened, and the dark liquid inside it sloshed over the lip.
A dull anger began to grow within him. "But you were only fourteen."
Kanna stayed quiet for a while. "I turned him down, time and again. He got angry and cast my mother out. We tried to lie low, to avoid his attention, but it was impossible. Anyone who helped us was punished. He paid guards to pick on me during my shifts. He always made it clear how we could alleviate our punishment. I just had to spend one night with him."
Kanna suddenly tossed the cup back, drinking the blackroot in one smooth pull. "He had my mother arrested on false charges. I slept with him that night, and she was freed the next morning." She set the cup down on the table with a sharp click. "The abuse stopped. We were left alone, for the most part."
"Kanna," said Asho. He was at a loss for words. "I'm so sorry."
Her gaze flicked up to him, and he was startled by the anger and venom in her glare. "I don't want your pity. I'm not a victim. I chose to sleep with that snake so that my mother would go free."
"Yes, but –"
"But, nothing. I'm not a victim. I used that anger to get ahead. I shamed others for not helping me. I formed coalitions, created a new system of alliances within my cohort for people to turn to instead of going to Mikho." She paused, breathing heavily, then rubbed her eyes. "We never expanded beyond my cohort, like I'd hoped, but I made it. My mother helped. We made a difference. It's because of that that I became cohort leader. I started with nothing and now I have respect, authority, and people's trust."
She dropped her hands and glared at him. "Understand? I don't want your apologies. I don't want you to start planning how to avenge me. I don't need you beating up Batou in my name. I can take care of myself. And if protecting my people means turning a deaf ear to Mikho's mockery to keep him from moving against us, then it's a small price to pay."
Asho leaned back, both hands held up in surrender. "All right. Understood. I'll no longer try to be a gentleman."
"You don't get it, do you? This is Bythos. There are no gentlemen here because there's no room for them. They get broken. Used. Taken advantage of. You look out for your own, and you turn a blind eye to everyone else's problems, because if you walk around looking for a fight, you're going to end up dead."
"You looked out for your whole cohort. What does that make you?"
"A fool, maybe. But it was my cohort. I didn't try to save everyone."
"Oh, no? Then why did you come back with me?"
Kanna wheeled away, snatched up her cup and strode up to the shelf where her blackroot bottle stood.
"Seriously," said Asho. "If you're so set against altruism, why did you come back with me? Why not stay with your cohort and help them get used to their new home?"
She poured herself a generous measure and slugged it down. Asho almost w
inced, imagining how that must taste.
"I don't know." Her voice had changed. The fire was gone, and she sounded morose now. Weary. Almost bleak. "Seeing the sky – it did something to me. It was like... like, for a moment, the chains that had bound me down had broken." She poured a third drink, this time slowly, carefully. Her hands were no longer shaking, he saw.
"Maybe your naive enthusiasm infected me. Or maybe I'm as foolish as you are."
"No," said Asho. "You might be many things, but I doubt foolish is one of them." He knocked his own drink back and almost gagged. "You saw the world outside and you saw – no, you felt – how wrong it was for our people to be down here. It finally hit home in a way that all of Mikho's talk never did. You knew it was evil. And maybe that overcame your survival instincts, your instincts to keep your head down."
Kanna laughed weakly and shook her head. "The Black Gate take me, I'd not have come if I thought you'd be lecturing me like this."
"Am I wrong?"
"Look, are you going to start figuring out how to get that Gate Stone or just keep badgering me till I scream?"
"Fine." He sighed. "Fine. Any ideas?"
"Well, with your sister showing up and talking about a kragh invasion, things have gotten really fucked. How long did she say we have till this Tharok shows up?"
Asho got up long enough to take possession of the bottle, then sat back down. The first dose had started to warm him up nicely from the pit of his stomach. "I think she said about a month."
"All right. So, in a month's time we're going to have Ogri the Destroyer breathing down our necks and forcing his way through Abythos. All that time, she and Mikho are going to be trying to prepare everyone to welcome him with open arms."
Asho poured himself a cup. The blackroot had left an unpleasant taste in his mouth like burnt tar, but he still felt like having more. "Do you think people will listen?"
Kanna sighed. "Mikho's been talking about this revolution forever. Destroy the Solar Portals, retreat to the land of the kragh, so on and so forth. It won't be a new idea."
"And now the kragh are actually coming," said Asho. "And Shaya's got a highland kragh with her to prove it." He paused. "Did you see that size of that thing?"
"Nok?" Kanna nodded and sipped her drink. "I've seen kragh traveling from the Abythos gate to the Solar Gates. That Nok monster was unlike any kragh I've ever seen. Almost twice as big. I can't imagine anybody stopping an army of kragh as big as him."
"Yes," Asho said despondently. "We're going to have to move fast."
Kanna cocked her head to one side. "That had to be a bitch, seeing your sister for the first time in ages and then learning she's the enemy."
"She's not the enemy," Asho said immediately. "She's – she's just got different allies."
"Your Lady Iskra's not going to welcome this Tharok with open arms, is she? If he breaks through into Bythos, she's going to have to fight him. If she defeats the Empire first, of course."
Asho pursed his lips and said nothing.
"Which means you're going to fight him. Which means you're going to have to fight Shaya." Kanna leaned forward to refill her cup. "Sorry, darling. Looks like she's your enemy."
Asho scowled and pushed back his chair. The cube was suddenly too small, too confining. He moved to the doorway and looked outside, at the shifting aurora. "Wait. If this is your home, where's your mother?"
"Dead," said Kanna, pouring herself yet another drink. "Two years ago. Wasting disease."
"Oh," said Asho, feeling stupid. Should he not apologize for that either? The blackroot was starting to hit him, he realized, and he'd only drunk two cups. How many had Kanna had? Five? Her eyes looked a little glassy, but otherwise she seemed fine. Asho didn't know whether to be impressed or dismayed.
"Welcome to Bythos," said Kanna, raising her cup as if to toast him. "Where life is cheap, life is short, and you're guaranteed a bad end. Which is why we Bythians always say, 'Enjoy yourself while you still can!'"
"You say that?"
"No, we don't." She drained half her cup and sat back, smiling at him. "Ha. To think."
"Ha," said Asho, at first without amusement, and then he snorted. "Do I stand out that much as a stranger?"
"Like a candle grub in a pile of cinders." She paused. "You don't even know what a candle grub is, do you?"
"Yes, I do." He didn't. "It's a white maggot-looking thing."
"Educated guess. You've never seen one in your life."
"Maybe when I was a child." He sat back down and poured a third cup. He tossed it back. It burned less this time around. "I need to tell Iskra. She needs to know about this Tharok."
Kanna shrugged. "Not like there's much she can do about it."
"No, but she still needs to know. In the meantime, where do we start? Who do we speak to?"
Kanna sighed. "I don't know. Maybe the others who turned you down to begin with. Shaykho, maybe, though he'd be a tough sell. None of them like Mikho. If we can work with them, then we have a chance of gathering some momentum. People follow each other. We just need to get a group to start the avalanche."
Asho nodded, went to pour from the iron bottle and found it empty.
Kanna winked at him. "See what happens if you spend too much time talking? Tragedy."
Asho shook the bottle over his cup. A few drops fell out. He didn't want this moment to stop, he thought. There was something in the air between them that had him feeling alive, on edge, provoked and tense, as if he was about to go into battle. It was in the lazy way Kanna was watching him, her amused, cynical smile, the way the muscles of her thigh flexed as she rocked back and forth an inch on the rear legs of her chair. Suddenly he was intensely aware of being alone with Kanna in her home.
"So." He coughed, clearing his throat. "Should we go now?"
"Now? No. Wrong timing. We need to wait till Shaykho's shift ends and then give him time to rest." She set her cup down. "So, tell me more about yourself, Asho. Surely your life couldn't have been all tragedy. Did you never manage to connect with someone?"
"Connect with someone?"
Her eyes glinted. "You're a man grown, Asho, son of Zekko. After all we've shared, am I prying too much?"
"Oh," said Asho. "No. I mean, you're not prying. There's just nothing to share."
Why was she staring at him like that?
"Nothing? Forget the bottle, then. That's the true tragedy." Her voice was wry. "But I suppose it explains why you're so adept at wielding your blade."
"All right," he said, annoyed and embarrassed and at a loss for words. He stood up abruptly. The room was so small, there was nowhere for him to walk.
She watched him, still amused, still flexing her leg back and forth, back and forth, a subtle rocking motion that made it hard for him not to stare.
"I'm going to get some fresh air."
Did that even make sense in Bythos? He stepped outside before she could make some sarcastic comment, then rested his back against the wall and slid down it till he was seated. He listened intently. After a moment, he heard the creak of Kanna's chair, then the soft tread of her feet. A few clinks, then the rustle of cloth. A sigh of relaxation, then silence.
Asho rubbed his face and thought of Kethe. Where was she? Was she still alive? Even if she was, would he ever see her again? If Shaya was his enemy, then if Kethe became a Virtue, would she become his enemy as well?
Asho gazed over the sprawl of cubes. Voices echoed up to him, along with the tread of feet, the sounds of life. A shift was returning home.
What if he went inside right now and lay beside Kanna?
The thought made him intensely uncomfortable and aroused. Had she been inviting him to join her? Of course not. But where was he supposed to sleep?
He suddenly missed Kethe terribly, not just in the abstract, but a physical longing for her that transcended the uneasy ache that Kanna had caused in him. He wanted Kethe here, not just for her fierce beauty, but because she understood not just him, but everything. He wanted
her to be there, sitting beside him, maybe holding his hand, their shoulders touching as they looked out over the cubes, companions in arms and so much more.
Just thinking of her by his side, working on this mission with him, gave Asho strength. He tried to imagine Batou being crude to her face and almost laughed. The doorman wouldn't have dared.
A powerful mixture of bitterness and pride and longing and sadness suffused him.
Oh, Kethe. Will I ever see you again?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Kethe didn't appreciate the sanctity and importance of her new station until she woke on the dawn of her presentation to the Ascendant of the Empire himself.
Music swelled and flowed into her chambers, rousing her from her dreamless slumber into a panic. Sitting up, fistfuls of her sheets in her hands, she stared as her doors were opened and a stream of people began to enter. Had they come to evict her, incarcerate her, indict her for her heresy?
The music grew louder, sublimely played, and, one by one, the thick curtains of her windows were swept aside as the crowd approached, allowing the diluted and delicate light of the rising sun to sweep into her hall. Kethe swallowed tightly, unsure what to do, all instructions vanishing from her mind, leaving her immobile as the servants, officiants and court nobles approached.
There had to be thirty of them, a column of silks and white cloth, gilt scarves that hung past the knees and faces immaculately painted in a style that seemed at once farcical and terrifying. A style, she recalled, that had been popular when this ritual was inscribed in stone.
The Sigean servants reached her bedside, all of them chanting, and without hesitating they drew her sheets away, sliding them smoothly to the floor. Kethe wanted to scoot back against the headboard, but some innate dignity forced her still.
They didn't see her, she realized. They didn't see Kethe Kyferin, but rather a figure, an eidolon, a testament to their faith. They saw Makaria, a Virtue, the Ascendant's blessing made flesh. When they eased her from the bed, took her by the hands and led her to where a great bath had been set up, she felt her resistance dissolve beneath the impersonality of the moment.
