“Gather the Alakeph,” Anna said. She pushed away from the wall with numbed legs. “Half should hold a line, and you should take the other half down one of the alleyways. Whichever path will get us to the gardens soonest.” Anna glanced outside, noting the ragged band of warriors and their ever-mounting barricade of flesh. “We can start sending the foundlings in your direction once it’s safe enough, and from there—”
“Mark him well, child,” Bora spoke out.
“Do you know what it will do?”
Shadows gathered beneath Bora’s brow. “Our outcomes are simple. They shouldn’t be feared.”
Anna watched the Alakeph loading, aiming, firing in their ranks. “What are they?”
“Finding refuge among the sands,” Bora said, “or bleeding to our ends.” A rare grin distorted her lips, tilting one corner up like a bent candle wick. “You’ve meditated upon the end before, child. If we lose our breaths beneath the stars, you’ll know if my ways held any truth at all. Perhaps they were all sweet untruths to busy you.”
Old ligaments shifted along Anna’s jaw. It began as an impulse rather than a reaction, and it wasn’t until she focused on the northerner’s words that she realized she’d heard something akin to a joke. She smiled.
They were still standing in silence, sharing feelings long thought abandoned and thoughts of the end, when Shem returned with a scalpel.
Chapter 30
“Just stay still,” Anna told Shem, the scalpel’s polished edge suspended a hair’s width from his rune and the pulsing veins beneath the skin. There was no way to block out the gathering press of hall sisters and Alakeph on the far side of the atrium; their collective intentness was far more unnerving than the fighting outside. “It might hurt.”
“I trust,” Shem said. The vibrant edge of his smile did little to ease Anna’s fears.
She glanced at the courtyard and its wash of fire-lit soil, unable to make out Bora’s cloak from those around her, before pressing the blade to Shem’s flesh. Guide me, she prayed to whatever force might help. To the hayat swirling somewhere in her veins, waiting for a taste of liberation before it surged forth.
The first cut was effortless, slipping into the skin and bypassing so many crisscrossed veins that it was nearly bloodless. Until she made the incision, it hadn’t occurred to her if the marks could even be applied. With each gentle curve of the blade’s path, she expected the skin to heal itself and reject the metal, molding back together as it did on marked ones.
But the hayat knew its own.
Deep in her bones, she felt its ways and fears and boundaries. Its sweet scent begged her hand to press the blade deeper, to leave traces so indelible that the hayat could burn indefinitely.
Little by little she branched away from his rune with the fresh cuts, trailing the hayat’s template and working in quick strokes. She’d garnered so much practice in meditation and actual cutting that the mystique had evaporated. Now she made her cuts like the woodmen of Bylka, each tree felled and corded and hauled away without ceremony.
Water.
She saw its unusual curves and impossible geometry coming together as her hand neared the end of its work. Panicked thoughts of the outcome rose in her mind, but the hayat twisted them away and lured her, pulling her fingers to arc the blade in faster, certain strokes. Blood coated her hands in a sticky film, but it felt as natural as the hayat’s beckoning. As natural as Shem’s heartbeat, hastening within his neck.
The lines curved together and joined in a pointed angle.
Hayat seeped through the folds in a wispy string.
With the horrid sound of ripping linen came the regeneration, pinching the split skin folds together and wicking the blood back into its crevices. Flesh crawled over the gaps and the hayat burned bright and beautiful behind the markings, swelling and filling.
Candlelight refracted through droplets along Shem’s hands.
Anna stared down at the boy’s palms before she moved the blade away, watching the dots bleed through his skin and pool together into rivulets along the creases of his hands and the joints of his fingers, dribbling down and pattering against the stone floor in a rhythm that was inexplicably deafening.
Gasps and mutterings of prayer broke out behind Shem. Trickling built to splashing, then rose to a constant stream.
Anna met Shem’s eyes and lost herself in their brightness, hoping that the boy could focus himself in the same fashion. She sensed mounting panic in his stare, which was warranted, given the rate of the water’s shedding. Her hands were gentle but firm upon the sides of his neck, reading every nervous twitch along his jaw.
“Look at me.” Anna ignored the water pooling around her feet, soaking through to the torn flesh of her heels. She ignored the boy’s eyes darting wildly beneath him, his arms shaking from the torrents, his hayat-infused droplets raining down in a puddle and spattering her ankles. Firelight danced into the atrium, painting the ceiling as water flooded toward the door and over the steps. “Shem, look only at me.”
Light grew and diminished within his stare as they locked eyes. His brow worked in sporadic folds.
It’s not fear, Anna realized. It’s pain.
His hands trembled and the water fell away from him in rapid bursts, ceasing when he managed to hold Anna’s gaze. Behind him the crowds were stricken by the spectacle, kneeling or chanting in forgotten tongues as the water dribbled onto the soil outside. Explosions tore through the night. Everything worked against his focus, against his caution and concentration.
It all faded when their eyes met.
“That’s it,” she said. The cascading water slowed and weakened around her ankles. “It’s only us, Shem. Just look at me. Listen to me.”
“I listen.” Beads of crystalline sweat working down his face. “I listen, Anna.”
“You can control it,” she said in a soothing tone. It was the hayat that assured her, of course. There was no guarantee of control for the boy and his fresh mark. “Keep looking at me.”
Little by little the light returned to his stare. Tremors worked their way through his arms and hands, but the flow of water soon fell away to dripping, then an occasional drop, and finally silence. Water pulsed with latent energy before burning with a steady glow.
“Good,” Anna whispered. “How do you feel?”
Shem looked down at his hands, turning them over and flexing his fingers to make sense of their power. He swept his feet through the pool of water around him, entirely bemused. “Wet.”
Anna smiled and cupped her hands along the curve of his jaw, just as her mother had done in warmer days. And just like her mother, Anna leaned forward and kissed the boy’s forehead. His skin was smooth and burning hot.
“Do I save us?” he asked.
Anna nodded. “You will.”
I hope.
Most of the hall sisters, wounded Alakeph, and even foundlings had wandered into the atrium by then. They formed a loose crescent around the scene, some with both knees to the floor and others touching the pool of water with hesitant fingers. Prayers were a low droning behind the clamor of violence.
Anna thought of the stories they’d been told about the hayajara, about the fated one to enter their hall and cure their sickness. Surely they’d never been able to prophesize a hayajara with her powers. With her marks, for that matter.
She wondered who they prayed to.
“Child.” Bora appeared in the doorway with a ruj in hand, her face and torso awash in blood. She looked down at the water descending the steps. “We should depart.”
“Is it clear?” Anna asked, nearly overpowered by another cluster of explosions.
“For an instant,” Bora said. She nodded toward something just behind Anna. “Take it with you, child.” As Anna turned and noticed the burlap sack leaning against the wall, she heard Bora calling out commands in flatspeak: “Form with me! Fo
rward striking!”
The Alakeph were the first to move, rising on broken and bleeding limbs without even a groan. They wandered toward the foundlings at the back of the hall and spoke to them in hushed tones, some picking up the sickest or frailest children and cradling them in their arms. Next came the hall sisters, demure and whispering assurances, who rushed to gather the foundlings.
“What I do?” Shem asked. He gazed at Anna as she unfolded the pack’s flap and rifled through its contents.
“I’ll tell you when we need your help, Shem.” She dug through the top layer of wrapped bread and fresh linen to find the heaviest, and most concealed, element of the pack. Moving aside a leather flask, she uncovered the shortened barrel and wrapped iron pouches of a ruj. “Stay close to me.” Anna jarred the ruj free and set the pack down by her ankles. She fished out the iron shavings, unscrewed the bulb at the rear of the weapon, filled it with a handful of the coarse powder, then threaded the bulb back onto the ruj as the hall sisters gathered their ranks of foundlings near the doors. At one time, she’d worried about wringing the necks of pigeons and quails. Staring down at the ruj, she realized she no longer considered the Dogwood living. It would be simple to take a life. “Are you ready?”
Shem examined the ruj warily. “I keep you safe, Anna.”
“Keep yourself safe,” Anna said. “Come on.”
Most of the fires were dying down on the far side of the courtyard, plunging the area around the foundling hall into near-blackness. Splotches of white along the ground indicated where Alakeph had fallen, and those maintaining the frontline worked with grim efficiency to stack their comrades into a wall two corpses wide and fifteen in length, its height overshadowing Anna’s shoulders.
Yet beyond the barricade she saw the extent of the Alakeph ferocity. Bodies of the Dogwood carpeted the courtyard, some of them scorched beyond recognition, and others pinned to the soil with spears and daggers, screaming into the night for mercy. Craters and gouges from their bombs were everywhere, leaving mangled limbs and flesh strewn about. Flames peeled back into their shrinking cores as they consumed the last of their fuel, turning the earth from shades of ochre to ashen black.
Both the looming kales and the stars were blotted out by a veil of smoke.
This is war, Anna told herself. She searched for glory among the devastation to no avail.
“This way,” Bora called from Anna’s far left, waiting at the entrance of an alley with six Alakeph. Even with her white cloak, she was nearly invisible due to the soot and crimson smears. “Shar’oz!” she yelled to the column of hall sisters and foundlings. Even her command wasn’t enough to distract the children from the carnage laid before them.
Anna proceeded into the alley behind Bora and the warriors, struggling to walk on legs that felt more fluid than flesh. Every so often her steps faltered, and Shem was quick to grasp her arm and keep her upright.
“Bora,” Anna said. Her throat burned from the pall of smog and scorched oil. “Are they gone now?”
“Who, child?”
Anna frowned. “The Dogwood.”
“They retreated to reform,” Bora said. “That was their scouting group. The Alakeph say that they used mirror signals to call for the main force.”
“How many is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s best not to think of such things, child. Whether they bring a hundred or a thousand, it is immutable.”
“I’d like to know our chances,” Anna said. “We can’t have more than fifty Alakeph.”
“Forty-one.”
Anna’s heart sank as she glanced over her shoulder, staring at the procession of foundlings and hall sisters in the shadows of the alleyway. She listened to their murmurs and quiet sobs. “We’ll never make it, Bora.”
“Do you see the enemy?”
Anna’s eyes snapped back to the black ahead, but there was only the distant glow of Malijad’s neighboring districts and the pastel light of a brazier. “No.”
“Then they do not exist,” Bora said. “It’s a fool’s habit to fear the unreal.”
Each shadow held the promise of a Dogwood soldier or a Nahoran agent with a curved blade, but Anna held her tongue. Real or unreal, Bora was right: Their fate was sealed.
It comforted her.
They exited the lane and crept through a series of smaller courtyards before reaching the garden complex, which seemed wild and dangerous in the shadows of night. Everything about the kales—indeed, about Hazan—was flat and plain and dead. Yet the saplings and rows of plants growing beneath the blackened skies were alive, swaying in the breeze and glistening with remnants of moisture from their dusk watering. The Alakeph moved gracefully through the rows, although they maintained formation and swiveled their ruji to detect the slightest omen of violence.
“This may be the time to share your vision, child,” Bora said as they walked behind the Alakeph, scanning the hedges and canvas coverings.
Anna tried to condense the idea mentally, only to find that she’d never truly considered it herself. More than anything, it was a spark from the hayat, no more realized or sensible than a lifelike dream. “The water flows downward to reach the kales,” Anna said. “We’ll follow the canals moving upward. Well, a bit upward.”
“If they follow us, they’ll be at a lower level.” Anna struggled to relay the plan as it came to her. “We’ll be higher than them.”
“Elevation is advantageous,” Bora said. “Is that all?”
Water. “We can drown them,” she said in a low voice.
Bora cast a dark look at Anna. “You assume Shem is ready.”
“Ready?” Shem asked.
“He is,” Anna said, hardly sparing a glance at the Huuri. “You said it yourself. When we’re cornered, he’ll fight.”
“Anything for Anna.” Shem grinned. “What you require?”
“Water, Shem,” Anna said. “If they follow, I need your hands to work. To make water.”
The Huuri turned his hands over for inspection, offering a satisfied smile as he did so. “Simple. Much water?”
“As much as you can,” Anna said. “I need you to drown them, or push them away.”
“Drown?” Shem was silent for a moment. “You want to kill.”
Anna nodded. “I want you to kill all of them.”
A deeper silence fell over the three of them, and as they wandered through the gardens with smoke above and blossoming plants to their sides, Anna felt a brief peace. It was a fragile peace that wouldn’t survive even the cracking of a branch in a forest clearing, but it was peace all the same.
Shem gazed skyward and smiled. “You ask, and I do.”
“Welcome to your new life, child,” Bora said. It was simple enough to pass over Shem as idle chatter, but it conjured up the life Anna had feared since childhood.
A set of vine-choked arches crowded the rear of the complex, and beyond it was an enclosed square framed with high stone walls. The advance unit of Alakeph stood ready in the space, huddled around a well’s circular stump and a metal grate over its top. A thick sheet of linen was draped over the square as shade, and only the light of a rusted lantern illuminated the space.
Anna watched the Alakeph work in tandem to free the metal grate from its hinges using hammers, timing each strike of metal against metal to the footsteps of the foundlings and hall sisters at their back. Their entire procession was crowding into the archways, murmuring and straining to peer at the odd noises ahead.
Hall sisters hushed the children, but it did little to dampen their voices.
The largest continent of Alakeph warriors guarded the column’s rear, trailing at a comfortable distance to ensure that they hadn’t been followed. Or, in the most cynical sense, to ensure that stray ruji blasts would take their lives rather than the foundlings’.
Metal squealed and cracked.
Anna edged clo
ser to the canal’s rounded entrance as the Alakeph lifted the metal grate and set it aside. The lantern light was meager at best, but it framed the haggard lines of the warriors’ faces and the bright red stains across their robes. She stared down into the covered portion of the canal, hoping that she’d be able to make their pain worthwhile. Or, at the very least, say she’d tried.
Aside from a shallow pool at the bottom of the canal, where water tended to accumulate between flooding cycles, the basin was empty. It was a short drop to the bottom, and walking only a few paces up the canal’s path led to the exposed section of the track, where the canvas covering allowed some of the city’s ambient lights to seep into the crevice. Utilizing shadows would be essential, Anna reasoned, which removed the possibility of bringing lanterns with them. And it required some degree of stealth.
She thought of the children and their sobbing, wondering how far they could go before the Dogwood realized their ploy.
“A few of them should take the foundlings and the sisters,” Anna said, leaning back from the opening and meeting Bora’s eyes. “Tell them not to make any noise, and to stay close to one another. They can move slowly, if it helps.”
Bora gave an obedient tilt of the head and approached the crowd of foundlings, delivering the commands in a soft whisper.
“When we go, Anna?” Shem asked.
“At the very end,” Anna said. “When everybody else has gone.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Anna watched Bora speaking to the group, wondering how Bora had looked or behaved when she was just a child. When she couldn’t control her terror, and expected others to provide answers and hush her tears. “If they follow us, you’ll need to be at the back so you can stop them. And I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I have mark,” Shem said. “Nothing harms me.”
“Even so,” Anna said, unwilling to imagine his torture and the depths of Dogwood hatred. “Just stay by me, Shem. We’ll go together.”
She pulled Shem aside as the first Alakeph clambered over the side of the stone ring and dropped into the basin with a solid clap. Without intending it, she imagined each of the Alakeph as children during their descent, wondering if they’d been so nimble and stoic before they’d learned to keep quiet during pain. She wondered what led them to this life, and if any of them would change anything now.
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