by EM Kaplan
“The meeting hall,” Ott shouted.
Mel smelled it before anything else—Ott was right. That familiar stench that was burned into her memory. Sulfurous, like the depths of the agamite mine in which she’d been imprisoned not long ago. Gamey. Bestial, reeking of hundreds of gray-skinned trogs. The stink of them brought back the sights and sounds of them. Chuffing like cloven beasts of burden. Wide nostrils, some of them pierced through with metal hoops. Trogs. In the settlement.
Another explosion sounded, and smoke poured out through the open door of the meeting hall. Any outside observer might have feared for the lives of those trapped inside the building—because no voices sounded. No screams or shouts, no cries of alarm filtered out through the thunderous booms that rocked the ground under Mel’s booted feet.
But Masks were never noisy people. Even in alarm they remained collected and calm. She didn’t want to assume that many were injured or worse. But still, her heart pounded at the possibility.
Moving the young ones aside, she and Ott ran to the door of the indoor amphitheater. Ott made a sound as if to speak, but it came out garbled and harsh, distorted by his battle rage. His two-sided axe already unsheathed and at the ready, he shouldered his way into the smoke-darkened hall.
Malga stumbled toward them first, up through the rising smoke over the steep carved steps. She must have been circulating through the tiers of benches, perhaps collecting notes or a silent vote. The end result of Mel’s earlier presentation to them. Had the Masks suffered an ironic tragedy after voting not to assist Mel in her quest to find the source that had awakened the elementals? Had they voted no, only to be besieged upon by trogs moments later?
Mel pushed water to her eyes to clear the particles of dust and smoke from them. Though tears streamed down her cheeks, she could see for the most part. Whatever fire had caused the smoke was out, smothered by several cloaks. Other than Malga, not a single other Mask had moved to leave the meeting hall. In a flurry of activity, they swirled around several smoldering focal points…places where it seemed there had been explosions. Some kind of…exploding mechanisms? No, it couldn’t be.
Ott had clomped down the dusty steps in his heavy boots, his long legs seeming even longer and thicker. Perhaps they had increased in size, thanks to his berserker rage. Standing in the center of the sunken theater, feet wide apart, bigs hands grasping the haft of his axe, he surveyed the area for new threats.
Above them, the domed ceiling shook, chunks of decorative tile and shards of glass from the sky windows crashed on tabletops and on the stone floor around them. Swirls of activity dotted the room where Masks swarmed either to heal others whose wounds were minor, to put out the remaining embers from the explosions, or to speculate in hushed voices as to the extent of the damage, whether the tremors were over, and what had caused them.
The depth of the room—sunken at least two stories into the ground—made its collapse an impossibility. A bowl could not collapse, only cave in. Ott had described how entire structures had fallen to the ground in Navio during the latest attack. Still, Mel stayed attuned to all subterranean noises and echoes. The silence of the Masks as they moved from place to place, their long, flowing pant legs and loose tunics the only excess motion.
Mel descended the steps, one by one, senses on alert. The Masks had no weapons. No bows and arrows. No staffs or sticks. No compressed agamite to ignite. Just strength, intelligence, healing, and cool-headedness. Though…the trogs weakened Mel’s emotional self-control even more than it normally was. What if all Masks were affected in the same manner? An attack could be devastating to their population. Maybe even fatal. She drew a shaky breath at the thought.
When she was just a few steps from Ott, the rumbling began.
A low growl came from the back of the room. Ott spun on his feet to face it. But then, the sound traveled, moving outward and around them. The sounds were deep in the earth, and Mel could not interpret them. She had no explanation, no guess as to what could cause them. They were not human. Not animal. They didn’t come from any throat alive. Or did they?
She sank to her knee and put her hand on the stone step. A handful of Masks around the room did the same. She met gazes with one man not far from her, who also attempted to seek out the cause of the noise through the ground itself. Mel shook her head. Chunks of granite within the soil stymied her attempts. The man near her seemed to have encountered the same obstacle to his seeking. Several other Masks shook their heads to signal their failure as well. Yet one woman across the hall stood, her bench scraping backward.
“Out,” she said, projecting her voice so that all could hear, whether Mask or not. “Get out now.” She pointed to the exit doors high above them, a fleeting thought to wonder if Treyna, still in the infirmary with Harro, could help them. “They come for us.”
But it was too late. In the time it would have taken to mount two steps at top speed, the rumbling turned into a grinding, which escalated into a roar. Mel clamped her hands over her sensitive ears. Above them, the ceiling began to cave in, great chunks crashing down in earnest now. The previous showering of tile chips and glass splinters had been nothing but a polite warning. Now, the greater pieces the size of wagons and larger, thundered down, causing men and women to flee for their safety, hands doing little to protect their heads.
The steps under Mel’s feel jolted downward. Her eyes widened and she grabbed a bench for balance.
Another inhuman, earth-shattering roar. Then, the entire amphitheater sank. The ground above collapsed into the room, heavy earth and stone spilling in, burying them all.
Part 5
Unbroken
Chapter 48
In her mind, Mel knew she was still alive. Pain made her certain of the fact, just as it made her wish otherwise. She dwelled in the darkness, retreating far within herself, as far from the pain as she could hide. She’d tried to heal some of her broken parts, but her injuries were so severe she ran out of strength before she could do any good.
Maybe it was the scent of trogs in the soil that made her unable to use her strength. Their proximity had affected her this way before at Cillary. She’d been unable to control her emotions in addition to her abilities. Perhaps that was why Malga had smiled at her, embraced her, and approached her with open affection. Not from any change in the settlement but because of trogs poisoning them—all Masks.
Mel lacked the strength to moan.
Legs crushed, head cracked, nose pressed in, she tongued the bloody dirt in her mouth.
She slowed her breath more.
How long she stayed in her grave, she wasn’t sure.
When she heard a distant noise, she thought, Ott.
He was coming to dig her out. Just as he’d retrieved her from the mines in the north when she’d been taken before. Without a doubt, she knew he came for her now. She concentrated on her breathing, which she had slowed almost to a stop. And she waited.
Around her in the dirt, she sensed the others waiting as well. In the amphitheater, she’d been surrounded by Masks just before the collapse. Some had not been injured as badly as she had been. They moved, undulating in their earthen cocoons, freeing themselves grain by grain, like the larvae offspring of the old god Insectoj, hatching, working their weakened bodies toward the surface. Toward the sunlight. They were stronger than she. Or perhaps less injured.
Still, Mel waited.
The rumble drew closer.
As the noise grew louder, she feared it could be trogs and not Ott. After all, he’d been the farthest down inside the amphitheater. Before the collapse, he’d been standing in the center of the room next to the speaker’s podium. Feet wide apart, axe in his hands, he’d been poised for fight. He’d been standing in the spot where the most dirt would accumulate. Where it would be the heaviest, pressing down on a body.
Mel sought to calm her mind.
How many years could she remain this way? Interred like a soulless creature from a terror tale. Feasting on nothing but thoughts and memo
ries. She would have to slow her heart to a near stop, beating only once or twice per year.
Rav would live, age, and cease to exist. Would she ever find her sister, Zunee? Had Mel failed yet again and broken another promise?
Still, she lay in her grave, retreating inward from the soil pressing on her chest.
After a day, an hour, a year—she didn’t know—the earth loosened around her. She tried to open her eyes to see who had come for her. Her lids wouldn’t rise, but she felt muddy tears as they leaked from her eyes.
Chapter 49
“Is she alive?”
“Yes, she lives yet.” Treyna had run from the infirmary toward the sounds of the earth quaking, knelt by Mel’s side and cleared the dirt and pebbles from her nose and mouth. Though Treyna had never cared much for the Mask woman, she felt compelled to see Mel rise from this horror—now that Harro was on the mend. His recovery thus far was all due to Mel. Treyna owed her this at least, and since being freed from her marriage to Jonas, Treyna vowed she would never again be in another person’s debt.
With Mel before her on the ground, lying inert and bloodied, caked in grit and smashed to a pulp, Treyna pondered their sudden reversal of circumstances. For most of her life, such that it was, Treyna had been the weaker party in any relationship. She had been the one to whom things had been done. Her mother had sold her to Jonas when she was little. Jonas had used her for profit. Her children had used her womb as their nest until she could free herself of them—she had no animosity toward them. They were happy and healthy now that they were away from her apathetic attention. She was never meant to be a mother.
But now Treyna felt the switch in power, the turn of events. It was she who held the pieces of the game now. It was she who determined the rules. Her hand crept to the hilt of her dagger.
Mel breathed. Just one breath. Not enough for a normal body, but Treyna knew Masks were different. They were the stuff of legends. Immortal by some accounts—though Treyna had yet to meet any creature who could not be killed, so she didn’t believe it herself. Masks could love and live and…yes, she thought, die.
Mel’s man Ott had not yet been recovered from the ruins of the meeting hall, though Treyna had told them where to find him. He was in a pocket of air, she assured the Masks who sought to excavate him, protected by a large beam from the collapsed ceiling. The Masks worked, digging to retrieve him though Treyna had no doubt, with the proper motivation, the man would be able to dig himself out by use of one of his red rages about which she’d heard him tell the others.
Harro wasn’t like that, thank the insect god, Insectoj. Treyna glanced in the stableman’s direction. He was calm and strong—and had never lifted a hand against her, only to soothe her. Though he’d never told her that he wanted her, that he valued her, or any of those foolish romantic sentiments, she knew he felt for her. He had, after all, sacrificed his limbs and life by going into the pit to save her from the trogs during the northern siege. For a person such as herself, actions spoke volumes more than fancy words. The physicians had pulled the patients out of the infirmary because that building had also been compromised. Now Harro sat in a wheeled chair in the sun, looking as hardy as she’d seen him since first setting eyes on him when he’d entered her trades tent in the shanty town over a year ago.
Other than the use of his legs. And what if he never regained their function? Or the function of any of his parts below the waist? She didn’t spend a moment thinking about it—because it didn’t matter to her. The measure of a man wasn’t between his legs. If there were one thing in the world of which she was certain, that was it. His worth was in his actions, and in that arena, he had shown her utter devotion.
The urge to rise almost drove her to him now, but looking down on Mel, she shook her head clear of the notion and regained her course of action.
“Are you sure she lives?” This time, the girl Jaine was asking. The first time, it had been Marget, the northern girl who still dressed in her warmest skirts. Very provincial. At first opportunity, Treyna had traded her skirts for the simple leggings and tunic that Masks wore, glad for the change because Jonas had always provided her only with skirting. Now she could do what she liked. But perhaps the northern girls preferred the skirts of her region. Both of the girls watched her now with suspicion in their faces, their similar features both tight with concern. Two sets of eyes narrowed at Treyna like those of protective lap dogs. The girls’ matching curly dark hair shined. Though Marget’s was long and braided while Jaine’s was cropped short, their twin expressions made the singular color of their locks even more pronounced.
Treyna was accustomed to the untrusting looks people gave her. She’d been met with that same expression whenever she came among so-called cultured folk. Proper women who sold neither their wares nor their services out of the back of a colored wagon, unmistakeable in its markings. Manipulator of sore and torn muscles—that was how Jonas hocked her skills. Treyna snorted to herself. In reality, more knowledge had come from a decade of studying menfolk. Her forced apprenticeship.
But now all that was over. She grasped her dagger as she leaned over the unconscious Mel.
“What are you doing?” It was Jaine again. Now the girl had reached out a hand and placed it over Treyna’s, covering the entire hilt of the dagger. She had seen Treyna’s movement, and now locked eyes with her.
“I’m saving us all,” Treyna said. “Let me go. Never touch me.” She jerked her hand away, but did not release her grip on the weapon. The stone in its hilt caught the light, just as it had when the blue-eyed trog had dropped it in front of her on the dirt floor deep in the northern pit.
Jaine released her hand, lifting it in an appeasing manner.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Marget shoved in, hands on her skirted hips.
“She says she’s saving us. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing to Mel though,” Jaine said. The look on her face had gone from matching Marget’s suspicion to something odd. Treyna didn’t know what. Interest? Amusement? She found it ghoulish and unsettling. Of all the things Treyna had seen and experienced, she was alarmed that this small girl could still get her hackles up. Jaine seemed to be lacking a certain sensitivity…a kind of ability to feel what others were feeling. In essence, the same sentiment that Treyna wished she had been born without. It made a person dangerous when she felt no kinship with the people around her. Or it made her safe, Treyna thought.
“Mel has dirt caught in her breathing passageways. I’m clearing it so that she can draw air again,” Treyna told them. She didn’t bother to explain it further, to mention that she’d done this same procedure before when she’d taken Harro into the clay. She had a wealth of secrets in her mind. Why would this one be any different?
“By using that dagger in your hand?” Marget said, even more skeptical than before. She positioned her body closer, as if to dart between Treyna and Mel should the dagger be used for harm.
Treyna suppressed a laugh. She was without a doubt amused, which she couldn’t recall being since…ever. Snorting, she shook her head, and held the dagger up for them to see. Marget didn’t take a step backward, of which Treyna approved. Stood her ground, that one. Bold and brave. In a rough situation, Treyna herself was more likely to take the path that would cause the least pain and chip away at her circumstances little by little until they improved. Minimal, unnoticeable effort over time won most battles. Like a trail of ants dismantling a rival nest, one grain of sand at a time.
Fine. If they required proof, she would tell them. She would show them. After all, in her experience, words had never solved any problem in her favor.
“Look at this dagger in my hand. What do you see?”
“A weapon with which you were about to take the life of our…of Mel,” Marget proclaimed. Her stumble over the word friend escaped no one. Or was the missing word meant to be leader? Treyna didn’t know, but it was impossible to miss the lapse. Not impossible to ignore it, however.
Jaine’s
eyes had caught upon the truth. The Tooranan girl had an eye for what shined. Luckily, Treyna had no other possessions of value that she needed to protect. No coin. No jewels.
“It has an agamite stone,” Jaine said. Looking at Treyna, she seemed to be speculating.
“I am not harming Mel,” Treyna repeated. “But you must let me do this. Otherwise, she will struggle and suffer.”
The two girls conveyed an uneasy consensus and stepped back. Whereupon Treyna used the dagger, not on Mel’s body, but to move the soil. She hummed under her breath, just as she always had when she’d made pots for her herbs. She’d had a feeling for the clay for as long as she could remember. She knew its current and could feel the way it moved even when it appeared solid and dry to any other eyes. When she touched it, she recognized the ways in which it could be pressed into new shapes—to be coaxed to flow and change so that it became stronger or weaker. Grain by grain, as if she were the handmaiden of the insect god himself.
When she held the dagger, her focus strengthened. She no longer needed to touch the grains nor even to see them. With blind eyes, she found them in her mind, even more easily than she had when she’d taken Harro with her.
Grasping the dagger now, she summoned the dirt within Mel and brought it up her throat. Most of the grains came. A few, Treyna left behind.
Chapter 50
Sputtering, Mel coughed up the dirt that was lodged in her throat. She attempted to sit up, but her injuries were too severe. Malga was by her side in an instant, the older Mask disheveled and dirt-covered herself.
