by Sam Sykes
“It will not soothe you to know this,” Mundas said, “but truth does not soothe, it merely solidifies. The objective was never to give mortals a master. Their fickleness and violence precludes that. Rather, we sought to provide a bulwark on which their greeds and fears and furies could break, something that could burden itself with their sins and allow them to fulfill other requirements.”
“Khoth-Kapira wouldn’t do that,” Denaos said. “He was a monster.”
“There are no such things as monsters. There are merely different purposes and different things to fulfill them.”
Mundas closed his eyes. Far away, he could feel ships on the sea. Hours from now, he could hear prayers whispered in the dark. Years from now, he could feel flames licking his face as the world burned.
But that was far away.
He felt a fleeting urge to disappear, to vanish from this world, this moment, and find somewhere and sometime new. But that would accomplish nothing. He had much to contemplate and the night was, for this moment, cool.
He turned and began to walk down the hill, deeper into the Green Belt.
Denaos watched him go from beneath his hood. “What now, then? War?”
“That was Qulon’s aim, yes,” Mundas replied as he walked farther down the hill. “War. Strife. Suffering. And from these, truth.”
“She said we would find an answer there. But she didn’t say which,” Denaos said, “except that it would be without gods.”
“Then she is mistaken.”
“No, she isn’t. Because of her, Khoth-Kapira is dead.”
“Indeed. She thought to kill one god.” Mundas sighed as he trekked into the night and disappeared into the dark. “And instead, she created two.”
FIFTY-THREE
TEN THOUSAND HEARTBEATS AWAY
Can you hear them, daughter?”
Sai-Thuwan lay still—his breathing had calmed and his limbs no longer twitched in agony. His hand was pressed firmly to the bandage at his side, holding it close to him. His eyes were cast skyward and he did not blink.
But his ears were twitching, trembling, shifting every which way as he listened.
“There are not many still in the city,” he said, his voice weak. “But they are so loud.” His ears went erect, trembling and leaning toward the left. “Shaab Sahaar is dead, they say. The tulwar have been driven from their city. Cier’Djaal is dead, they say. Their people have fled and the richest lie dead from poison.” His ears twitched, then drooped. “Shekune is here. She calls this a great victory.”
He settled on the mat of straw, a funerary shroud of skin and bone draped over a spirit that had died.
“And I have helped her.”
It was not that Kwar did not care. The sorrow that hung heavy in his voice settled on her heart like iron. But his were not the only ears that were aloft and listening.
In truth, she could not hear what he heard. She knew the khoshicts were still out there—Shekune would want them to monitor the tulwar’s movements, watch for weaknesses. Their new leader, the red thing with the claws and horns, would be of great interest to her.
Him, she could hear.
Far away, beside the burning columns of the Silken Spire, she could hear his growl, his roar, his anger. She could see him, a bloodred stain beside the inferno, the stray spark that would burn the city down.
The tulwar, she could hear, too. They roamed the streets in packs, checking from house to house. Many were growling, snarling as they tore apart the homes for anything useful. A few let out quiet sobs at the memory of what had happened to their city as they fought for this one. But most of them simply let out long, weary breaths—after all that had happened, this was all they remembered how to do.
But of the khoshicts? She heard nothing.
She knew they wouldn’t find her. Even with her father’s unguarded voice, their position high up in the attic of an empty sweetshop was too far removed from the searches of anyone. The tulwar were looking for food and steel. The khoshicts were looking for tulwar. No one was looking for melted chocolates or stale pastries or a dying shict and his daughter.
No one, except for one.
And that was what Kwar heard.
Through the alleys and streets crawling with the tulwar. Over a sky lit up by laughing flame. Across the stones painted black with demon blood. Upon miles of a dark and sparkling sea.
A single word. In a language made just for her. A long and lonely word stretched out over many miles and reached her ears through the Howling.
And Kwar’s heart sank.
She didn’t wait for me.
A pang of guilt struck her. Of course, she couldn’t have waited. The tulwar had come quickly. The khoshicts prowled the city, still. The evacuation out of Cier’Djaal had been swift. To have waited for her would have been to die, and Kwar would never have forgiven herself for it.
She had to leave. It was the only way.
And yet, as logic and reason so often failed to prevent, her heart did not hurt any less.
“You should have left me.”
She looked over her shoulder to the mat on which her father lay. Sai-Thuwan’s eyes were shut tight, his body still. His ears were flat against his head and a deep frown was carved across his face.
“You should have gone with her,” her father said. “I was so foolish, daughter. Since your mother died, I listened to everyone but you. And it has cost our family everything.” He let out a groan. “The pale shict was right. Shekune will lead us to a war we cannot win. You should have gone with her. Left me.”
And it hurt Kwar to admit to herself that, in some dark and angry part of herself, she wanted that to be true.
Her mother had died and he had done nothing. Thua was gone because he had believed in him. War had come to her people and he had helped it. All her sorrows, she wanted to be his fault. She wanted it to be that easy, that she could have simply left him and all her pain behind to bleed out in that dark alley, while she disappeared with someone who loved her.
But it was not that easy. And it had never been.
Her thoughts drifted back to the human and his blue eyes that should have been empty and his words that should have been foul. She remembered the way he had reached out to her with a hand instead of a sword. She remembered his last words to her.
“Find us.”
After everything, he hadn’t wanted her dead. And whatever pains she had given him, he did not give back. She wanted to return with him to Kataria.
Because, she knew, Kataria loved her.
As he loved Kataria.
And if Kwar had gone back with him, that love would have still been there, a blade wedge between them. And every time they looked at each other, it would cut a little deeper. And it would linger there, in cold doubt, for a long time.
And, one way or another, she would be alone again.
A groan came from behind her.
She turned and saw her father lying there, wounded and still, but alive. She hadn’t realized how strong he was until now, to take a wound such as he had and still draw breath. And though he made noises of such pain, it wasn’t that which she heard.
It was a soft noise she hadn’t heard for a long time. It was a long, slow word in a language spoken only between her family. It was a voice without sound, a whisper without breath.
A Howling she had not heard for a long time.
And she did not feel so alone right now.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
“I cannot,” he replied.
Her ears twitched. She heard his Howling. She knew he was lying.
“We will move soon,” she said. “I will help you up and we will make for the desert. There are yijis that will take us to a camp where you can recover. We must go before the tulwar settle in here.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I know.”
“You must go on, save yourself.”
“That would be wise.”
“Leave me.”
She looked at him. She smil
ed.
“No. Never again.”
And her ears twitched. She spoke a short, terse word without a voice. His ears trembled in response as he heard it. And, realizing he could not argue with her, he settled back down on the mat.
“Give me an hour,” he said. “And some water. And I will be all right to move.”
“I can manage an hour.”
She looked out the window, across the dead city of Cier’Djaal, across the long sea and the black ships fading on the horizon. Her ears rose and listened to that sound made just for her. And she held it as long as she could.
“You will see her again,” Sai-Thuwan said. “One day.”
She pressed a hand to the glass. “Maybe.”
“A girl like that makes trouble. You love trouble.”
She smiled. His Howling reached out to her and told her a truth she could not deny.
“After all,” he muttered, “you are terribly clever like that.”
FIFTY-FOUR
A PROPHECY OF WAR
Perhaps a poet would have been able to put Asper’s thoughts into words.
As she stared out over the burning Spire, its flames lighting up the night sky, she felt many things. Despair, of course, and its companion, guilt. Anger and rage she wore like scars these days. Emotions swirled inside her, endlessly churning as she watched the funeral pyre for civilization burn itself out.
A poet could have done something great with that image, she thought.
But most of the poets were dead now—slain in wars or in Silktown. And aboard the couthi ships, no one had a profession. Or a home. Or a name. They were all simply refugees.
And as the ships pulled farther away from the dead city, and as the burning Spire grew fainter and fainter on the horizon, Asper had no words for the emotions inside her.
Instead, her head was full of numbers.
Seven thousand.
Aturach had done the count as best as he was able, kept track of everyone he could. The evacuation had gone as smoothly as it could, but there had been problems. Many had fled on foot. Some had stayed behind. Some had sobbed and begged and fought to get on. Some had been trampled over in the mad rush to get on. Some had fought when the meager belongings they had held were discarded to make room for another life, another soul.
And in the end, they had managed to save seven thousand.
The conditions on the ships were cramped. Intolerable, really. But it needed to last only another two days. Man-Shii Kree had told her that their fleet would meet with more farther up the coast, which would relieve some of the burden on the way to Muraska, where she would meet with the eight Gray Lords.
Eight. Four men. Four women. Each one to convince to take seven thousand people with no coin and many problems into their city.
The couthi would help, of course. The Bloodwise Brotherhood had pull in the city. But their aid was reliant on Asper fulfilling her end of the bargain. In addition to convincing Muraska to take the refugees, she would have to persuade them to go to war with the shicts.
All the shicts.
Twelve tribes of shicts. Each tribe containing several thousand over the span of thousands of miles. The Silesrian tribes alone number in the millions. Four men. Four women. One of me. Three couthi. Somehow, an army to attack millions of shicts has to come out of that while they also take in seven thousand people.
If they did.
If it came down to it, she might only be able to convince them of one of those. And if it came down to throwing their weight behind waging war on the shicts or pushing to resettle the refugees, she knew what the couthi would choose.
But it wasn’t like she had to have the answer now.
After all, she thought as she leaned on the railing, you’re the Prophet now. You’re going to be doing this shit until you die.
The ship was silent behind her. The refugees had been crowded so tightly that they sprawled out on the deck, trying their best to sleep through the chill wind and the rocking waves and the children crying for their pets left behind and the soft moaning of mothers who had only made it with one of their daughters and the …
She let out a long sigh. She leaned so hard on the ship’s railing that she thought she might break it and go plunging into the oceans below.
And, as she stared at her twisted reflection in the rippling salt water below, she thought that might not be so bad.
“Excuse me … Prophet?”
She wasn’t sure how long she had been staring when she heard the voice behind her. Nor was she sure who the woman was that had appeared there.
A Djaalic woman, and very beautiful. The grime did nothing to obscure her grace. Her dark hair was no less gorgeous when it was plastered to her face by dried sweat. And the drab, workmanlike garb she wore only barely hid her curves.
Yet these were things Asper noticed only because of how little beauty there had been lately. And it was the woman’s eyes—the first eyes Asper had seen in a long time that were not overwhelmed by fear—that held her attention.
“I am sorry to disturb your meditations,” the woman said, inclining her head in a properly rehearsed manner. “Shall I come back?”
Asper blinked, unsure as to what she had just said. But it slowly came to her.
Right, she told herself. You weren’t sitting here about to shit yourself out of sheer terror. You were “meditating.” Prophets have meditations.
“It’s fine,” Asper said. “What can I do for you?”
“There are three children.” The woman pointed to the end of the deck. “They’re cold, Prophet. I was hoping there might be more blankets for them? Two of them are small, they could share one.”
Asper stared at her.
Two blankets.
Millions of shicts to kill. Eight Gray Lords to persuade. Three couthi to appease. Seven thousand refugees to settle. And it was the thought of a few blankets that sent her mind blank.
Where was she going to get blankets? Supplies were stretched so thin they would snap like a thread in another day.
Where was she going to get the influence to tell the Gray Lords to take in seven thousand people?
Where was she going to find the men to staff an army to kill millions of shicts? And millions upon millions of tulwar? And one dragonman? Where would she get the armor? Where would she get the weapons? Where would she get the money?
How the fuck was she going to do any of this?
“Prophet, I hope you won’t …”
The woman’s voice snapped her back to attention. She was looking at her feet, her hands curled into fists.
“I don’t know how to say it,” she said. “I didn’t think I was going to escape that city. We turned our bathhouse into a bunker to survive the tulwar. Then that … that thing came. But even before that, I was …”
She looked up at Asper. The smile on her face was a meek and trembling thing, but she couldn’t keep it hidden. And the tears at the corners of her eyes glistened like stars.
“I was never ashamed of what I did, Prophet. But it wasn’t my choice to do it, to be in that bathhouse. And there were times when I thought I would die there.” She shook her head. “Thank you, Prophet. Thank you for this.”
Asper did not know what to say. Her mind empty, her lips numb, the words simply came tumbling out.
“For this?” She gestured out to the deck. “For open skies and uncertain fates? For cold winds and too few blankets? For sobbing mothers and hungry children?” She shook her head, mouth hanging open. “I don’t deserve your thanks. I couldn’t protect the city. I lost you your home.”
“Cier’Djaal was just a city,” the woman said. “It was never my home.” She looked over the refugees. “Maybe it was never any of ours.” Her smile grew firmer as she turned back to Asper. “If Cier’Djaal is gone, we are still Djaalics. We build. We create. We work.”
“What did you do?” Asper asked. “Before this?”
“I worked in a bathhouse, Prophet,” she said. “I was a courtesan.”
Asper stared at her. “What is your name?”
The woman brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “Before I came to the city, my name was Rishia. But in the bathhouse, some called me Liaja.”
Asper stared at her again. And, after a moment, she nodded stiffly.
“Go back to the children, Rishia,” she said. “I’ll bring you some blankets.”
“Thank you, Prophet.”
The woman turned and left, bowing profusely. And it was only after she turned away that Asper allowed herself to lean on the railing, suddenly weak in the knees.
Three children.
Two blankets.
One woman.
She had saved that many. And six thousand, nine hundred ninety-seven others.
She drew herself up and held her breath. She picked her way across the deck, toward the gangway leading down to the ship’s hold.
She would find Haethen down there. Together, they would put together a plan to make an army to fight a million shicts.
She would find Dransun and Aturach down there. With them, she would make a plan to persuade Muraska to take seven thousand people.
She would find the couthi down there. And with them, she would save many more.
Tomorrow, there would be war. Tomorrow, there would be suffering. Tomorrow, she would build this world anew.
But right now, she had to find blankets.
FIFTY-FIVE
SOMEWHERE WARM
Somewhere, far away, a fire was burning brightly. And with every breath, its brightness grew dimmer until it was just one more star in the sky, burning itself out quietly.
And, her eyes closed and her heart silent, Kataria’s ears were full of the night.
There. Miles away. Across ocean and stone and sand. There was the sound she had searched for, shouting out into the Howling for so long.
A heartbeat, faint and warm. A weary sigh cast into the night to disappear among the stars. A single word spoken in a single language that spanned a thousand breaths.
And it sounded like good-bye.
A numbness set into Kataria’s bones. And, in its wake, a sick and sour feeling in her belly.
Kataria tried to reach out, to hold on to that word, to strangle it until it would stay so she could explain and apologize and plead. But with each moment she held it, with every breath it echoed in her head, she could feel the pain in her stomach crawl up into her chest and twist her heart.
