He let out a short, angry exhale. “What do we bargain with now, Worthiness?”
I knew. I had figured out some of this when sleep wouldn’t come the night before. I gestured again, slower this time, more carefully. I had to get this right. No blurting or blathering or fumbling for words. I wasn’t in a classroom; here, the Temple was powerless, except for their weapons, and that wouldn’t gain them what they wanted. Only Mami and I had that authority, and only I had the chance, likely the only chance. My mind and body trained on the crested Gek-man, honing in on him like an archer finds his mark.
I had a singular thought, sharp as a glass shard. They wanted a two-way trade, right? Well, while we trade for their medicines, they trade for our metals. They don’t know how to work the stuff. Cups, hammers, nails, pins. And, of course, knives, axes, spades, saws.
Daggers. Spears tips. Arrowheads. Perhaps swords and battle axes if the Feroxi could be persuaded to part with a few. The Feroxi’s mighty weapons were worth their weight in witch’s wort and shadowroot—and, maybe, fallen stars. So I asked. What do you want for the star? You’ve seen what the big drabskins carry. Tools. Weapons. Pick what you want. Name your price.
I had no idea if the Feroxi would part with anything, but then it didn’t seem like S’ami would walk away empty-handed if a few daggers and pikes would get him what he wanted.
The Gek leader edged closer to me, his long, forked tongue flicking a finger’s width from my face. They smell that way. Fear has a smell, I remembered. So does desperation. Valeo edged his sword between the Gek and me and nudged him back. The leader began gesturing:
Lizards will get useful things from the big drabskin corpses. Big drabskins will learn lizards can trade one way also.
Only then did I realize I heard no sounds from the forest floor. Nothing stirred below us. No leaves or branches crackled. I couldn’t see the ground from where I stood, but Valeo could. He could look down, through the leaves, over a branch, at . . . I didn’t want to think at what.
I closed my eyes. Oh, by all three moons, what trouble was I in? S’ami was too far away for us to seek protection under his magic shield, and a score of Gek lay between us anyway.
“The soldiers.” My mouth felt dry. “Where are the other soldiers? The ones on the ground.”
“They took up positions,” Valeo said. “Why?”
“There’s no sound from them.”
“They’re there. From where I stand, I can see two dozen shields at least.”
“Out of two hundred?”
“There’s been no fighting on the ground. We’d know. What do they want?”
Mami and S’ami wanted to know that, too. Mami had been calling my name this whole time. And S’ami had been craning his neck for a glimpse through the rippling leaves. They would have to wait. I tried one more time. With that many soldiers unharmed, the Gek hadn’t been eager for a fight. Maybe I could smell, too—a bluff. I threw up my arms and spoke, my hands pounding in what I hoped seemed like fury.
Bring the star now. No more trade. Bring it.
For one brief moment, my anger hung in the air. Then they scattered. Every direction. Gone. Only a handful remained, flicking tongues and bobbing their heads, looking shrunken and wary, very much like humans do when we’re nervous.
I spotted the Gek girl, smaller than the others, her mouth ringed with Valeo’s blood. She crouched behind one of the adults and hissed at me. Our eyes locked. I hissed back, hoping I appeared tougher and less remorseful than I felt. She shrank back behind the others. I pressed my lips together and toughened my stance, my shoulders arching back, my spine stiffening. Maybe I didn’t smell like raw, heart-thumping panic.
“Ha-da-ra.” Mami again. “By Nihil, girl! What’s going on?”
“They’re bringing it.”
The blue sphere flickered around her and the others. S’ami was edging forward. “What did they say?”
“Nothing.” I could explain later. “They’re bringing it.” I hoped. Oh, by Nihil’s many wives and many lives, how I hoped.
Then it struck me. They were bringing me the star-demon. To me. Not to S’ami or a soldier or anyone else. I was going to get what S’ami wanted, what he’d sensed even from the deck of his ship. I didn’t know if I could move.
I was no one’s dunce any longer. I was everything those other girls—including my sister—could ever have hoped for. I felt again their eyes on me, waiting for my inevitable misstep, waiting for the chance to pounce and earn their smug expressions. Me. Hadara. The natural girl, the wild one. It was all up to me, and all the honor and glory I could want were being hand-delivered to my outstretched palm.
But I’m no student of theology. The Azwan of Uncertainty, keeper of all the doctrine that kept worshippers guessing, was under my spell. And the one thing I could think was this:
I had the biggest barter chit in all Kuldor coming my way.
Or a demon who would possess me and destroy me from within.
Ragged breaths ripped deep, achy pangs in my chest. I wasn’t going to have very long to make up my mind if I wanted to keep this thing, whatever it was. A moment. A fraction of a moment. And still my lungs hurt, my knees wobbled, and I’d begun sweating. What to do?
I could seize it and hold it and demand S’ami and the Temple guards and the rest of them agree to leave at once. No, that wouldn’t work. S’ami would shoot that blue arc into me. I’d be dead, and he’d have the star. I could graciously offer it to him and ask a favor later. I’m delighted you love our cuisine, now could you please leave? That notion, of course, had “stupid idea” tattooed across its face.
No, I knew what I wanted from the Temple: to survive with some degree of honor, and their respect, however begrudging. They were going to leave Mami and me alone, leave our island alone, let us go back to our own way of doing things, and be fine with it. No more ransacked houses, no curfew, no fear.
The Gek finally returned, or at least a few of them did, but my plan was only half-formed, maybe a quarter-formed, in my brain. But I wanted it, that much I realized. It was coming to me, and I wanted it. The leader was carrying a clunky metal box I recognized from a trade last winter. It had been a cheap, tin thing we’d picked up from a market kiosk, but the Gek had fawned over it like it was worth a hundred coppers. It was hinged, at least, and it locked. The crested Gek fumbled with the key. Gek fingers are dexterous, but sticky, and the tiny key became glued in half a dozen ways. I reached for it, not quite touching it, when I realized S’ami was screaming at me.
“Don’t open that. I’ll melt you myself on the Soul’s Forge, you lay hands on it. Guard! Have them set it down.”
Valeo extended his bloodied arm across my body and motioned to the Gek. He pointed downward. The leader snatched the box back, hugging it to his chest. I could see that chest heaving, even with the skin camouflaged. Maybe I can’t smell fear, but I can see it. I let Valeo edge forward, more insistent, demanding the box through silent force of will. All the Gek backed away, every last one. A corridor opened between us and them, their eyes on Valeo. He didn’t turn to me as he spoke, and his voice was low.
“Why have they lowered their weapons?”
Indeed, they had. It couldn’t possibly be because they suddenly liked us. What had changed? The Gek pointed to me. To the box. To me. It’s as if they knew my intent. We were in perfect agreement, the Gek and I. I wanted it; they wanted me to want it.
The leader-Gek sidled over and gestured directly to me. This time, I shouted a hasty translation to S’ami. The star seeks one who knows to undo what must be undone. The star comes to you as you come to it.
That made no sense but I didn’t care. S’ami couldn’t deny, to himself or Nihil or twice ten thousand guards, that the Gek meant for me to have it. The box was barely a hand-width from my outstretched palm. It was mine, almost.
“Don’t touch that Nihil-blasted box!” The blue sphere flickered as S’ami shouted. “Have them lay it at their feet.”
I did somethin
g I almost never do then. I’m a good girl, a kind-hearted soul—anyone will say so, except maybe my teacher. I have a little trouble with authority sometimes, particularly religious authority. But I did something that, even for me, was completely outside the ordinary.
I lied.
I told the Gek-leader the magic user wanted me to have the box. I hoped I was hidden enough that Mami couldn’t see my gesturing and figure it out, but maybe by the time she did, it would be in my sweaty paws. I could try dodging S’ami’s blue fire and white-hot anger later.
I paused for a beat and then added, without translating: Is there a danger to me?
The Gek throng hesitated. Traded glances. Shook their heads. But I saw a few nod. I signaled again. Tell me what to do with it.
Whatever they thought I was supposed to know, I became determined to use. With another furtive exchange of looks all around, the Gek holding the box reached forward, slowly, hesitating. If what Amaniel had shown me in Scriptures was true, a whole world, the end of civilizations, a conflagration to end all time, buffered in the air above the lid of that box.
Then, out of nowhere, a brownish streak. The box was snatched up, gone. The Gek girl, fully camouflaged, leaped on her leafy roof, box in hand, and leaped again toward a higher branch. A cyan flame shot from S’ami’s sphere, arcing up in an instant, reforming around the Gek girl and sending her tumbling off the roof. The blue orb sliced through branches, setting leaves afire, throwing smoke in its trail. The Gek girl plunged downward with a throaty scream and slammed into the unyielding ground.
Be judicious in bringing war upon yourselves. To consider your petty quarrels to be worth spilling blood over is a conceit I find hard to abide.
—from Oblations 15, The Book of Unease
Every tree limb burst into motion. Every part of the tree writhed or slithered. Branches snapped. The movement around us exploded as many more Gek shifted and started, in this tree and surrounding ones. I’d never had any idea of their true numbers. More clicking noises, and then chirps and croaks as branches and clusters of leaves called out to one another. Green eyes peered here, tongues flicked there.
Valeo’s voice boomed above the commotion.
“Jump!”
He pressed backward, forcing me to creep toward the narrow tip of our branch. I jumped, my knees buckling beneath me. I sprang up and staggered off toward our punt, which seemed a million lengths away. Valeo jumped after me and pushed me toward the punt, his injured left hand pressed between my shoulders, hastening my pace.
Javelins landed all around us. Arrows whizzed past. One struck him between the shoulder blades with a thump and dangled there. He barely noticed.
“You left your shield,” I said. “Is it in the tree?”
“No time for it.”
I glanced back. The blue sphere, the Gek girl limp inside it, floated above S’ami’s head. He, too, was hustling toward the punt as guards scurried around him, their shields raised to ward off a hail of missiles. They shouted directions and ordered retreats. Javelins pinged against their shields and fell away, but the arrows stuck by the score, and I could see the men laboring under the extra weight, crouching as they jogged away. None broke formation, and the shields moved above their left shoulders in bobbing waves like giant scales on a great, coiling beast.
I couldn’t see Mami.
“Mami!”
“Hadara!”
She was further back, lost amid the soldiers. I tried to push my way to her, only to feel a hand grab my dress and drag me back. I fought to pry Valeo’s fingers from my clothes, but he pulled, pushed, and hauled me, half-turned and struggling.
“She’ll be okay?” I asked him.
“She’s not my concern.”
“But I am?”
“Keep moving.”
We were almost running. Everyone else was, too, and I was so busy turning my head this way and that, anxious for a glimpse of Mami, that I missed the first body underfoot.
We’d reached the jagged shoreline where the tree island ended. The underbrush grew so thick, I stumbled over what I thought was a root. It was a leg. A guard lay beneath us, facedown, scores of tiny darts jutting from his exposed limbs. I recognized pins we’d traded to the Gek even as Valeo yanked me to my feet. Pins! With tiny, feathered flights glued on. And here I’d always thought we’d gotten the best of them. We’d traded pins when they never wore clothes or sewed a stitch, not even a blanket, and I couldn’t figure why by all three moons and seven planets they’d ever needed a single one. They could barely manage to hold them with their sticky fingers. I swore never to underestimate them again.
The dead soldier had been left to guard the punt. They must’ve killed him early, or they’d used a poison more potent than anything they’d ever given us. Valeo had these pins all over his armor, and, worse, poking from the skin on his arms and the back of his legs. Blood trickled from them. I had none on myself, since he’d pushed me before him.
Our punt was tethered to a low-hanging branch surrounded by Gek. Guards cut them down, this way and that, clearing a path to the small boat, but not before being showered with more of the pin-darts.
“Get in,” Valeo said. Was his voice thicker? His motions slower? I began prying the darts from him. “Leave it. Get in.”
Before I could move, S’ami rushed past us. I tugged and yanked and finally shoved Valeo away before the magic orb seared off his head. It had left a blackened, smoking trail through the canopy’s lowest branches as it streaked through them. Valeo teetered around me and clumsily regained his footing. Was that the poison, or just my worrying?
Two guards helped S’ami in the punt, and he lowered the sphere with the Gek into the boat, where the flames didn’t seem to harm the wooden craft. Magic didn’t ever work the way I expected, which is probably why it’s called magic in the first place. The tin box was tight in the Gek’s wiry hands, but she was writhing and moaning. Two guards clambered into the boat to pole S’ami along. They pushed off without Mami and me. S’ami’s gaze was locked on his prey, and he didn’t notice or care that the female guides he’d so amiably befriended only a half-day earlier had been left behind.
“Move.” Valeo put his hand between my shoulder blades and nudged me into the water with him. I had acquired an unexpected ally. I didn’t question it, or him. I might be on familiar ground, but battles were his business, not mine. He ordered; I obeyed.
The rest of the guards huddled under their shields, edging sideways, jabbing and stabbing at Gek on low-hanging branches. Darts and javelins sprayed in waves toward us. Still no sign of Mami. I hurled myself into the crowd to find her, only to be pressed back as the men swept toward the black water under repeated hails of missiles. Any soldier who fell was jerked to his feet and pushed forward by a comrade.
A brass horn sounded in the distance. We waded toward it, the water quickly reaching my upper thigh. Around me, metal and leather flashed through the foliage. All the men fought, but their pace was unrelenting. They’d gotten what they came for and made no secret of their rush to leave. I felt no different. It was time to go, and quick.
We staggered on, my feet working against the soft, sticky ooze at the swamp’s bottom. The missiles followed us, but no more darts. Perhaps we were already out of range. After barely a hundred paces, though, Valeo stumbled beside me. He shook his head as if trying to startle himself awake and blinked his eyes. His movements slowed again, his whole body sticking in the muck. He stopped. Blinked. And lurched forward again. A foot caught in the muck, and he stumbled again.
It was entirely my fault. Mine. Trading those pins. I think all we’d gotten for them was a basket of itchvine pods, which we’d lost anyway during the raid. Poor Valeo, all sick and maybe dying because I’d thought, “What a laugh! Pins for the Gek!” I shook his shoulder. Another guard pulled him to his feet and shoved him along.
I pulled a dart from his leather armor and squinted at the slender point. It had been dipped in a bright magenta liquid that had dried in plac
e. I never made poisons and was out of my depth with it, but I stuck it through my skirt in a way that wouldn’t prick me. For later, when I had time.
Someone splashed behind us. A guard floated facedown in the black water. Another man tossed his shield away, hoisted his dead comrade onto his back, and kept plodding on, the waters parting reluctantly before him.
Valeo’s knees buckled. Black water burbled around his chest. Blood dripped into the muck and slid away in crimson streaks. I had switched over to his right side some time back and found myself reaching for his elbow. He tried to brush me off and came within a hand-width of clipping me with the broad side of his sword. I reached more firmly for his bicep with both hands and propped him up. He felt solid and heavy.
A fallen tree stump provided just what I needed to make Valeo stop, if even for a moment. It was my turn to give the orders.
“Sit.”
“No.” His voice was thick and sounded groggy, but he did what he was told to, and wedged his bottom into the ragged stump. “Must. Keep . . . moving.”
He was panting.
“Can you hear me?” I held up three fingers. “How many?”
“Moving.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Two. Four. Please.” He shut his eyes.
I didn’t like the way his body was hunching. “We need to find someone to carry you.”
“I can walk.”
“And you can die. Which I’m not going to let happen.”
He opened his eyes. “Why? Why do you care?”
“Because I do.”
“I frighten you.” He made eye contact, and I could see at least a glint piercing through the fog there.
Good. He had something to concentrate on besides his muddled state.
“Yes, so don’t die. Someone needs to scare me.”
“Nihil doesn’t scare you?” His breathing grew ragged again. “He should.”
The Temple of Doubt Page 11
