An Ill-Fated Sky
Page 36
“Shkarag,” he said, and her pensive stare redoubled. “Tonight.”
• • • • •
Under the cover of darkness, with his arm slung over Shkarag’s shoulder, Tirdad limped through the bivouac.
“Need to heal,” she hissed quietly. “Not some šo-strapping legend.”
“After,” he assured her through gritted teeth. Tirdad knew all too well. Bitter as the cold was, he dripped with sweat. Though the roots were potent, they couldn’t dampen the pain of standing.
Shkarag guided him beyond the light of the camp and into the dead of night, between sentries too otiose to notice, and back into the bivouac. Masked by a new moon, their progress went undetected.
Until, out of nowhere, she stopped. “. . .”
Tirdad leaned into her, squinting against the darkness. With his head on hers, the ridges of her scales pressed into his hair, which caused him to wonder whether the starling-black coursed beneath them even now. “What is it?”
“Star-fucking sailor of the skies is there.”
It took a moment for Tirdad to pick out the shape of the pavilion in the pitch black. There were no torches or braziers in the vicinity, no guards posted by the entrance. It seemed he’d read Chobin correctly; that, or this was a trap.
“Let’s finish this,” he whispered.
Shkarag stood anchored in place. She shifted beside him, and her voice grew tremulous. “Sailor of the skies.”
“Shkarag?”
She passed him her spear. “Go.”
Tirdad deliberated her for a moment, and though he couldn’t make out more than her silhouette, he could tell something was amiss. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked.
“. . .”
Tirdad shrugged it off, deigning to use the spear as a crutch with which to hobble into the tent. Sweat made it difficult for him to get a good grip, but he managed to make it inside. There, illuminated by only a small oil lamp, lay a man in the robes of a star-reckoner, pale and infirm.
This was it then. Tirdad unsheathed his sword, the hilt pulsating as it never had before, runaway as his heartbeat. He swallowed, took a steadying breath, and drew up short of plunging it into the man’s chest.
He’d damned Ashtadukht for her rites. He’d known she was unwell—he’d fucking loved her!—but honour had nevertheless bade him to do what he believed to be the right thing. Tirdad imagined her now, pleading and alone, and knew honour had been wrong. The desperation of her memories hardened that conviction. She’d been wronged. By him, by—Tirdad followed the blade’s edge to the star-reckoner it ached for—by this man.
As a star-reckoner, he had no doubt done some good. Had furthered the well-being of the nation despite his selfish designs. By virtue of their profession, a star-reckoner need only exist for that to be true. Even Ashtadukht, worst of the star-reckoners and misguided besides, was no exception. But this star-reckoner had spearheaded the conspiracy that ruined her life—never mind the lives of so many others.
The honourable thing would be to turn away. Tirdad could not. He kept reliving her last ragged breaths, the dreadful finality that’d swept in where they ended. Honour had caused his part in her demise, and it no longer had a place in his life.
He plunged the blade into the man’s chest.
The starling-black fed ravenously. It rejoiced, and its ebullience drowned out his pain. The celestial theatre raged around him, stars decrying the planets’ premature advantage. The constellations were woefully outmanned in the realm of mortals, their chosen hunted and thinned. Someone or something had been freed.
Tirdad extracted his blade, and the starling-black fell content—as if its quest was finally over. He’d never expected to find peace in avenging Ashtadukht, but he had expected something. Presently, he only felt tired.
He’d turned to leave when reddish-brown light like spoiled yogurt oozed through the flaps and into the tent. Tirdad scowled, leaning heavily into the spear. “What in the seven climes?”
He waded through it, feeling as if he were walking through a stuffy ossuary, and was stopped by Shkarag pulling a flap aside to enter.
She seemed to him a specter then, drained of spirit and ready to end herself. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, sounding utterly despondent, as if she were holding back tears. “Father made me do it.”
Tirdad leaned heavily into the spear, doing his best to soothe his leg. “Made you do it? I don’t follow.”
Shkarag parted her lips several times, forming the shapes to words but never actually saying anything, while her stare darted around the tent.
He frowned at her apprehension, the fear she wore like shackles. “Whatever you’ve done, it won’t change how I feel about you. But it’s dangerous to linger here. Let’s discuss this—”
“Tried,” she said hurriedly. “Tried to tell you. The more I fought, the harder it became.”
“Tell me what?”
“You brought the . . . the šo-damned blade to me. Had escaped the, hid from Father’s—” She formed a claw by her head, and raked it over the scales. “His hisses, his—” She hissed. “His commands. Never wanted to, never wanted to betray you.”
Shkarag shook, and though he felt them, her rage and sorrow mixed so thoroughly and with such intensity that Tirdad couldn’t determine where one ended and the other began. He endeavoured to tread lightly, talking smoothly and calmly.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got your weather. We’ll sort it out and—”
“I betrayed you!” Shkarag screamed, fangs bared and dripping acid to the smell of ozone. “I . . .” Her fangs slowly retracted. “. . . betrayed you.” She turned untrammeled hatred on his sword. “Starling-black is his.”
“I don’t . . .” Tirdad stared glumly at the blade. “But Ashta?”
“His. They both wanted, their goals were . . . the star-reckoners only had to become dust.”
“That’s why you were killing them. Why not let me then?”
“Already explained,” she started, and the rage that took purchase on her delivery was quick to subside. “Wanted to save you from being haunted like some, like some—” She sucked in a breath that shivered as she exhaled, reaching back for an egg pouch that wasn’t there. “And thought, hoped you’d throw in the, give up. Couldn’t resist Father’s will. Could kill them first and hope.”
“That’s . . . clever of you.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tirdad sighed, glancing over at the figure of the dead star-reckoner. “Were you only manipulating me all this time?”
The words had hardly left his mouth when he realized how stupid and needlessly hurtful they were.
It became immediately obvious that this was the outcome she’d been dreading the most. She seized up, tense as a bowstring at full draw. Her fury sloughed away. Though she formed an unspoken “Maybe”, she managed to hold it back to say, “No. More than only, more than that.” Shkarag felt for her pouch, and when she couldn’t find it, made claws of her hands. “Sister always said blood is honest. Yours reeks of roving, of . . . exploring together. Reminds me of her.”
Tirdad would have accepted a simple no. He hobbled up to her, and when she didn’t flinch, embraced her. Shkarag bore his weight by returning the hug, which allowed his fatigue to catch up to him. He relied on her strength, took solace in it. “I wouldn’t have left you,” he breathed. “What matters is that you fought it, and more than most would’ve managed.”
“Trust you, too,” she said. “I think.”
Tirdad took a moment to rest in her care before asking, “If you’re telling me all this, does that mean it’s over?”
Shkarag took her spear, and with her help, they limped through the flap and out into a bivouac flooded with a sickly light. All around, confused onlookers emerged from their tents to turn their heads toward the sky. There, snowclouds billowed the same reddish-brown. They crawled with spoiled light.
Tirdad was about to ask for an explanation when a great bulge formed in the clouds. It wafted away like a water over a surfac
ing whale, and he understood the portent he’d witnessed in the celestial theatre. The world-ending dragon Gochihr descended.
Streamers of smoke ribboned from a thousand forked tongues, between jaws large enough to swallow a forty-armed div whole, and across its serpentine body, which was dominated by glaciers and snow, except where interrupted at times by rounded horns that glowed like magma beneath a thin layer of igneous rock. On its back sat a lone rider: Eshm.
Tirdad swallowed.
“Oh fuck.”
Table of Contents
An Ill-Fated Sky
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII