The Rist-walkers around him were up and moving, which made finding Jotin all the more difficult. Each time one of the walkers knelt down on the ground near a comrade’s form, Tatsu had to look away. He blocked out the sights of trembling fingers closing eyelids, but he couldn’t completely ignore the noises—soft sobs that were more shuddering breaths than anything else. As his search began to feel fruitless, Tatsu let his eyes drift down to the faces of the bodies on the ground, praying not to find Jotin’s features among them.
A sharp cry sounded overhead, and Tatsu whipped his head up to see Jotin’s hawk slowly circling the camp in wide loops.
“Tatsu!” came the second cry.
Tatsu’s nerves, still aching and alert, smoothed down almost painfully. “You’re alive.”
There was a streak of blood across Jotin’s face that didn’t seem to be his own, and he was either unaware or unworried about it. “When the men arrived, we were not sure where you were. I feared they found you first—”
“They did,” Tatsu said. “But I was with Yudai, and they trapped us to keep him from interfering.”
“How did they find us?” Jotin asked. His mouth pursed into frustrated puckers of skin. “We should have had days before the nearest scout could have reported back on our whereabouts, especially in the Joesarian dominions.”
“One of the Rist-walkers? Or our Oasa guide?”
A second too late, he realized the implications of what he had suggested, but the copper smell of blood around him was too pungent for the full weight of the regret to settle into his bones. He just shrugged when Jotin’s sharp gaze met his own.
“I’m just trying to figure out what went wrong,” Tatsu said, in the only apology he could manage with his heart still hammering in his chest.
“You are not wrong to question,” Jotin said and sighed. He leaned forward and picked up a discarded spear, clearly one of the Rist-walkers’ judging by the intricately carved wood and the swatch of blue-dyed fabric wrapped around the shaft. “I wish I could speak up for my kinsmen, but these are troubled times, and I fear that you may be correct in your misgivings.”
“Yudai isn’t one of them. Would you be surprised if loyalty to their lives won out over keeping him a secret?”
Jotin shook his head. “In the past, I would have said yes. But this…”
He gestured wide from side to side and didn’t continue. For a long while, they stood amongst the wreckage and the bodies, and the pause did nothing to help Tatsu’s still-singing blood.
“Will there be more?” Tatsu asked.
“If there are, we should no longer impose on the dominion walkers or else face the same scenario in the future.”
“We’re lucky that we all made it out alive.”
Jotin looked up to his hawk, still circling the carnage. “And that very well may be the only luck we find on our side.”
“So we go alone to the ruins?” Tatsu asked.
“As soon as Alesh is well enough to travel.” With force, Jotin stuck the spear into the ground, and the hilt sank down into the sand enough to keep the weapon upright. His expression was a tangled web that Tatsu could not find the end of to unravel. “We will find no further goodwill here.”
“How long?”
“She will recover with rest, shade, and water within a day more,” Jotin said. Then he looked to Tatsu again with that same knowing gaze, eyes burning with something that might have been fury. “Find your prince—we should leave at dawn tomorrow. Our departure is the only kindness we can offer the Rist-walkers now.”
Yudai was sitting on the edge of the Dar-Itusk Basin when Tatsu finally found him again, his legs dangling over the cliff ledge itself. Tatsu approached the sharp fall with care and stopped after Yudai glanced back over his shoulder.
“You don’t have to explain the look on your face,” Yudai said, voice soft and surprisingly neutral. “I know that look.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Tatsu replied.
“You were afraid of me.”
There seemed to be little point in denying it, so Tatsu didn’t bother. “Only for a second.”
“But I’m not wrong,” Yudai said, and his head craned behind him once more. There was something in his eyes that Tatsu couldn’t read—or didn’t dare to anyway. Tatsu let the quiet ride before he took a deep breath and crossed the remaining space to the basin and Yudai. He shifted down in the dirt, acutely aware of how close he was to tumbling down into the never-ending darkness.
“It’s all right,” Yudai said, staring off at the horizon where the other side of the basin had to be, lost amongst the slowly setting sun and the gold reflecting from the far-off sands. “I’m not mad. Sometimes, I’m afraid of me too.”
“This doesn’t have to change anything,” Tatsu said.
“Doesn’t it?”
Despite the lingering heat, Tatsu shivered above the shadows of the gorge. “It’s just… part of you, like everything else is.”
“A part that scares the only people who care about me.”
“Everyone has things that scare people,” Tatsu said.
There was a moment of strange, stilted silence between them before Yudai said, voice much lower, “I killed those people.”
“Yes,” Tatsu agreed, and the word stuck a bit on his tongue. “But they would have killed us, all of us.”
“I know,” Yudai whispered. He sounded very small, far away and untouchable. “Does that make it better?”
“It has to. It has to be the reason. Otherwise, it’s just…”
He was at a loss for how to finish until Yudai finished for him. “Murder.”
“You’re not a murderer,” Tatsu said.
“I’m not? These weren’t the first people I’ve killed. Look at what the siphon did to the Shyreld and the forests.”
“That wasn’t you, that was the siphon—and you were being controlled.”
“But not here,” Yudai said. “This was me, all me.”
“That—” Tatsu cut off, frustrated, and shook his head to try and clear his thoughts, which did nothing. “You’re twisting my words now. The point is—”
“The point is that I killed those people,” Yudai said. He held his hands up to stare at his palms. “Me, with my own power and control.”
“It was self-defense.”
Yudai let his hands drop back down, staring off at the basin once more. “When does that stop being an excuse? When am I simply a killer?”
“Never,” Tatsu said without pause. “You’re not a bad person.”
“Then you’re the only one of us who believes that,” Yudai replied.
Tatsu sucked in a deep breath, and the sound whistled between his teeth. “Then I’ll just have to believe enough for both of us.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Tatsu said again, and it came out very soft.
Yudai stared down at his palms again. Maybe he could see the blood there, invisible to Tatsu’s eyes. Maybe it burned in the middle of the night when he couldn’t wash it away, like a branding stain that he’d carry his whole life. It hurt when Tatsu remembered the blot was already there—Yudai’s howls at the Shyreld still haunted his darker thoughts. He couldn’t imagine how heavy the burden had to be on Yudai’s shoulders.
“The others?” Yudai finally asked.
“Alive,” Tatsu said. “A few bumps and bruises, but you saved their lives.”
Yudai’s fingers curled in on his palms. He breathed deep enough that Tatsu could see the ripple of the action through his torso. Finally, he tore his gaze away to look back up.
“You’re wrong, you know,” he said.
“About what?”
Yudai swallowed hard. “This has changed me. This has changed everything. I’m not the person I was before they… used me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the person you are now.”
“No,” Yudai replied, and it was lost somewhere between agreement and clarification. “I don’t think you would have liked th
e person I was before.”
Tatsu stared out over the black shadows stretching down into the gorge’s foreboding emptiness. “Would you have cared about that, before the siphon?”
“Yes,” Yudai said, and his eyes were sharp, taking in too much—he was always seeing much more than Tatsu wanted him to. “I think I would have cared very much.”
Tatsu should have asked him to explain. Later, when he was staring up at the hastily patched roof of the narrow hut and trying in vain to sleep, the question burned hot in his throat without any answer to satiate its curiosity.
Thirteen
Alesh’s symptoms were significantly reduced the next morning, and the group left the Rist-walker camp before dawn had completely risen over the horizon. The only send-off they received were three stony-faced members of the camp watching them depart in silence before returning to the duties of preparing the dead for the death rites.
Tatsu had expected nothing more.
Jotin led them along the side of the basin where the ground crumbled and cracked beneath the thudding of their boots, on a path far enough away that none of them could accidentally fall, but still far too close. Tatsu could peer over the edge if he craned his neck, and even that was too much. He stuck to the right side as much as he could manage as they made their way across the dirt and sand.
After the events at the camp, none of them seemed inclined to chatting, even Alesh, who had gotten most of the events secondhand once her fever had broken. But Leil stuck close to Tatsu as they walked, and after a few glances at her over his bad shoulder, Tatsu finally said, “I’m sorry about my bluntness yesterday. I was rude to you.”
“You were anxious,” Leil replied, and her mouth twisted to the side. “We all were.”
“Still, I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
“And I shouldn’t have questioned Yudai’s actions with such…” She trailed off and didn’t finish, but Tatsu thought he could probably fill in the blank: disgust, perhaps, or horror. He snuck a glance at Yudai, walking a few paces ahead, who didn’t appear to be listening to the conversation.
“Sometimes the right choices are also the worst ones,” Leil said, and at least she lowered her voice, as if she had followed Tatsu’s line of sight.
There was a lot of truth to that statement, and Tatsu thought back to his father’s cabin in the woods and the seclusion offered there, wondering if his father, too, would have thought his actions correct in the grand scheme of things.
“Maybe you’re right,” Tatsu said when the silence stretched too long and he felt he had to say something.
“Do you trust him?” Leil asked.
Tatsu stared at the back of Yudai’s head where his hair was long and unruly, the colorless ends brushing against his collar. “With my life.”
“I wish I had that kind of conviction.” Leil was twisting her hands again, and Tatsu tried not to stare at her fingers knotting together and apart. “I wish I could believe as you do that things will work themselves out.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Tatsu asked. “So you must believe in something.”
Leil’s expression darkened, but she said nothing further.
It was perhaps an hour before dusk that Ral broke out into a run towards the edge of the Dar-Itusk Basin, sending Tatsu’s heart plummeting down to his stomach. He shouted her name as a warning, though he needn’t have—she skidded to a stop at the side of the sheer brown cliffs and stared down at the gaping maw.
The others joined her at the edge and peered down into nothingness.
“What is it?” Alesh asked. “What do you see?”
“There’s nothing,” Yudai said.
It made Tatsu’s stomach flip to stare into the abyss where the shadows cut off the rock in sharp angles that eventually disappeared completely. They stood motionless until Ral bent over, her hands curved around the joints of her knees.
“Look,” she whispered, like they weren’t already doing so.
As if in response, a noise echoed up through the caverns, a low and feral sound that reverberated up through the rock. It was almost a moan, a mournful note from the land itself that enveloped them all and sent shivers down Tatsu’s spine.
“What’s down there?” he asked Ral quietly, because he was afraid to raise his voice too loudly for fear of inviting another reply from the deep.
Her eyes were wide and clear when she looked back at him. “The dead.”
Tatsu stepped back involuntarily to put distance between himself and the drop, and he felt vindicated that the others looked similarly ill at ease.
“These ruins,” Alesh said, voice thick, “they’re in the basin? Inside that place?”
“At the far edge, where the land meets the cliffs,” Jotin said. “The location is not within the basin as you are thinking, but rather on the corner of it.”
“But you’re leading us alongside it,” Alesh said.
Jotin put his hands up in surrender. “I did not choose the location of the mage quarters. I can only lead us there.”
“Who decides to live in a place like this?” Alesh wrapped her arms around her chest.
“There’s a power here,” Yudai said. He sounded almost reverent again as he bent forward to scrape his fingertips against a portion of the smooth rock. “It’s not exactly magic, but there’s something to it.”
It would certainly explain Ral’s fascination with the basin, but it did nothing to soothe Tatsu’s nerves. “We shouldn’t linger,” he said.
It took some time before the others heeded his warning, and in the stretch as they slowly peeled themselves away from the cavern, Tatsu swore he heard several more ominous sounds from within the blackness. Whatever was down there, whether it be just the winds howling through the crevices or something worse lurking in the depths, it was not something Tatsu was eager to familiarize himself with.
“We should keep going,” he said to prod them again. Finally, the others pulled back fully from the edge so they could start along Jotin’s path once more, though Tatsu couldn’t shake the chills that settled just beneath his skin.
Setting up camp along the basin was even worse, though Yudai seemed cheered by not having to worry about the siphon’s drain killing any plants around them. Nothing grew along the cliff’s edge save for a handful of scraggly weeds. Jotin suggested keeping watch in shifts, and though the idea was innocent enough, Tatsu wondered if Jotin was also worried about the things that waited in the darkness. Perhaps he was overreacting because of his own fear—perhaps Jotin was simply making sure that they were not surprised by any more mercenaries tracking them through the sands.
Or, perhaps Ral’s cryptic remarks about the basin had rattled all of them.
Tatsu drew first watch and waited by the small fire Jotin had started as the others crawled into the sleeping rolls with the air around them stilling in the moonlight. Only Yudai stayed awake with him, sitting to the left and staring at the flames.
“You should sleep too,” Tatsu said.
“I’m fine,” was the response as Yudai set his chin down on his knuckles. “It’s not a bad night.”
While they sat in companionable quiet, Tatsu’s nerves were on high alert for any further noises escaping the basin at their backs.
“Leil thinks I’m a monster,” Yudai said, breaking the silence.
“So you heard our earlier conversation.”
One of Yudai’s eyebrows quirked upward. The bruise swelling up along his cheek and eye, courtesy of Tatsu’s blow the day before, was very purple in the firelight. “No, but thank you for confirming that I’m right. I could just tell.”
When Tatsu looked at him for clarification, Yudai lifted his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. “It’s the way she holds herself around me now. She won’t look me in the eyes.”
“She’s just confused,” Tatsu said and didn’t add that the statement could apply to more than just Leil.
Yudai shook his head. “She was never with us because she believed in me, not like you
. I think she just feels guilty about the way the mages treated me in Dradela.”
Tatsu let the comment go without a response and instead let himself get swept up in the crackling of the fire. It was a familiar, soothing sound that, if focused on, could drown out the rest of his old memories. The ones he wasn’t proud of had a tendency to rise up often.
“Don’t,” Yudai said, jolting Tatsu from his reverie.
“Don’t what?”
Yudai gave him a knowing look. “Don’t start feeling guilty about delivering me to the queen again. You already apologized for that.”
“Get out of my head,” Tatsu said, but he smiled despite himself. “There’s enough rattling around in here already.”
“You’re remarkably easy to read.”
Tatsu had never had much practice at keeping his emotions to himself—there had seldom been enough people around for it to matter, and the only ones that were already knew him. He wondered if it should have bothered him to be deciphered with such ease, but his heart just hummed out a slow, light rhythm of acceptance.
“How much further do you think the ruins are?” Tatsu asked to change the subject.
“Jotin said two days, maybe, if we make good time.”
Tatsu sighed. “The sooner we can move away from the deep part of the basin, the better I’ll feel.”
Then he looked sideways at the man seated next to him, evaluating Yudai’s relaxed posture across the flames.
“Why are you avoiding sleep?” Tatsu asked. “You aren’t worried about what lies in the basin.”
“No, but you are,” Yudai replied, with a soft sort of smile.
Tatsu ducked his head, hoping that the shadows hid the majority of his embarrassment. “Are you going to stay up with me through my entire watch?”
“Yes.”
The warm feeling in Tatsu’s belly remained until the maw behind them groaned again, a deep, bone-shaking noise that seemed to start at his toes and echo up through his limbs. Tatsu’s throat tightened as he tried to ignore the implications that something was alive—and monitoring them—at the bottom.
The Mage Heir Page 16
