The Broken Heavens

by Kameron Hurley

  “I can’t guarantee she won’t stab you in the back. She’s done it to all of us often enough. That’s me speaking frankly after a lot of fucking beer.”

  “It’s all right,” Natanial said, “I’m used to working with intemperate tyrants.” He asked for another beer to wash away the guilt roiling away in his gut.

  He was already a little sorry. But not sorry enough.

  7

  Anavha laid out the metal letters of type, carefully following the simple styling set out on the proof pages of the pamphlets he was printing. He found Aaldian to be an intuitive language, but even so he was not fluent in it after a year in the country. Some of that may have been that he lived so far from the cities. He didn’t get a lot of practice with language; he knew how to write it and read it better than he could speak it. The pamphlets were purely educational, covering local Aaldian politics. He enjoyed reading them as much as making them.

  The slanting light of the double helix of the suns poured through the afternoon clouds and illuminated his work area beneath the great open windows. Aaldia was further south than Dorinah, and a little warmer this time of year. He enjoyed cool weather; the summer here had been too hot for him.

  “Finished, love?” said Nusi as they ducked through the pale wooden doorway.

  Anavha paused in his work to watch them; they were tall and lean, with a great hooked nose and long sloping forehead. Nusi had wrapped their hair up in a brilliant purple scarf. They flashed a smile at him, more a showing of teeth, a grimace, than a smile, really, but he had come to understand that it had the same meaning, among Aaldians.

  Nusi ran their hand over his shoulder as they passed and kissed the top of his head. Their touch still made him shiver pleasantly with the memory of how they spent their nights. He tried to focus on the letters, but his mind was off again, warm and yearning in the dark.

  Anavha had come here expecting fear. Dorinah was not fond of outsiders, and he assumed Aaldians wouldn’t be either. But he knew the language, more or less, and more importantly, he knew how to play the game of spheres.

  His last game still hung in the air in the sitting room, a tangle of threaded spheres he had generated himself using Oma, after much practice. He had lost his last game by putting one sphere into another in the incorrect order. The math involved still sometimes puzzled him. But he was good enough to earn respect during the local tournaments.

  Distracted by thoughts of the game, Anavha dropped two of the heavy metal character symbols – one for air, the other for smile – and bent to retrieve them. As he did, a motion in the window caught his attention. He straightened.

  There was a man outside, watching him.

  He caught his breath. The man was tall and angular, with a prominent nose, strong square jaw and powerful forearms. He was bronze-skinned, and had shaved his thick auburn-brown hair; Anavha missed that hair.

  Anavha knew him immediately, but blinked several times in shock, because the man was not supposed to be here.

  “Was hoping to buy a pamphlet,” Natanial said, walking to the open window and leaning on the frame. He had an easy confidence about him, the confidence of a man who understood his body’s strengths and knew exactly how to deploy them. “Heard you’re out here preaching about the ills of Dorinah in these rags.”

  “How did you find me?” Anavha said.

  “I admit, I thought you’d stay in the cities,” Natanial said, “but I didn’t count on you meeting someone like Nusi. I should have. I know their taste.”

  “You know Nusi?”

  “You forget that I was trained as an assassin,” Natanial said. “Finding people is something I excel at. Aaldia is also a fairly small country. There aren’t many Aaldians who can speak Dorinah. Finding a moon-faced Dorinah boy out here was comparatively easy.”

  “I thought you agreed to leave me alone.”

  “I agreed to no such thing,” Natanial said, but his eyelid twitched. “Anavha, I wanted to let it lie. I have for all this time. But we have… a cause that needs you.”

  “I can’t imagine anything in Tordin–”

  “I’m in Dorinah now,” Natanial said, “working with the Tai Mora. They have nearly overcome the Empress of Dorinah in all but one city. Daorian is the last holdout.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “We need an omajista to get us inside the walls. The Tai Mora can’t spare one. There’s some scheme in the temples that requires a good many of them. When they asked if I knew an omajista, well. There’s only you, Anavha.”

  “I know people in Daorian,” Anavha said. “Good people. Daolyn, and Zezili’s sisters, her mother–”

  “Fine upstanding people who cull and bind and abuse half their people,” Natanial said, “and turn Dhai into slaves.”

  “The Tai Mora have slaves,” Anavha said. “They aren’t any better.”

  “They are stronger,” Natanial said. “They are going to win this. And we can be on the side of the winners.”

  “I guess I’m not surprised that you’re so… mercenary,” Anavha said.

  “I’m practical,” Natanial said. “It’s how people like us survive.”

  “Us? We’re not alike.”

  “We’re more alike than you know,” Natanial said. “The Empress of Dorinah is a creature, not fit for this world. If you had seen what I did… She has monsters inside those walls, monsters from some other world–”

  “The Tai Mora are–”

  “Not like this,” Natanial said.

  Anavha firmed his mouth. He wasn’t seeing the difference, but Natanial had encountered the Empress of Dorinah’s people, and he hadn’t. Still, he didn’t like it when people treated him like a child.

  “I’m staying out of the war,” Anavha said.

  “You can come right back,” Natanial said. “Oma is risen. You can pop back here any time you want by opening a gate – a wink, the Tai Mora call it. I am asking you for a single favor.”

  “Why do I owe you a favor?”

  Natanial raised his brows.

  “You were the one who told me that Zezili used me,” Anavha said, “that she cut me off from other people so she’d be all I knew. So I would depend on her. But you did the same thing. You kept me prisoner, too. You aren’t better.”

  “I…” Natanial began, and then seemed to think better of it. “We need an omajista. It’s the only power they can’t counter. They have no defense against you.”

  “You should go,” Anavha said. “I don’t want you here.”

  “Anavha?” Nusi came in from the kitchen, wiping their hands on their apron. “Who are you – oh.”

  Nusi’s gaze met Natanial’s, and Anavha saw a look pass between them that he knew only too well. Everyone loved Natanial, foolish though that may be. Had they been lovers?

  “Natanial Thorne,” Nusi said, and the breathless tone made Anavha’s heart ache.

  “It’s lovely to see you, Nusi,” Natanial said. “I admit, though, that I’m here for Anavha. If he will indulge me.”

  “He enjoys indulging others far too much.”

  “I know that,” Natanial said.

  “I’m right here!” Anavha said. “I can speak for myself.”

  “Can you now?” Natanial smirked. “That is indeed a new development.”

  “Come inside,” Nusi urged. “I have never been known to turn away a weary traveler.”

  Anavha said, “He should go.”

  “Nonsense,” Nusi insisted. “It’s polite. I’ll have one of the siblings make up a meal.”

  They went around to the door and opened it for Natanial. Anavha stood just behind Nusi, as if to shield himself from Natanial’s presence. But it was a futile effort. As the door opened, Anavha had the same reaction to Natanial as he always had. Anavha wanted to curl up in his arms and ask for comfort and safety. It made him hate himself because it was a part of him he knew he could never release. He had a sudden, terrible urge to cut himself, an urge he had not had in months. Natan
ial was an uncontrollable force, and Anavha needed something he could control.

  Nusi invited Natanial into the kitchen. Most of Nusi’s siblings – the others living with them on the sprawling farm – were out working, but they called in their sibling Giska to help with a meal, and sent Anavha out to the cellar for some yams. He came back to the kitchen to find Nusi sitting at the big battered wood table, laughing uproariously with Natanial. Anavha stopped in the doorway, torn. Was it jealousy he felt? Or something worse?

  He stepped beside Giska to help with the meal. Natanial suggested a card game with Nusi, but they demurred and asked instead to get an update on the Tai Mora assault in Dorinah.

  “They will come here next, certainly,” Nusi said. “Is that what they tell you?”

  “They insist Aaldia is inconsequential,” Natanial said. “If they want to expand, they will expand north into Saiduan. If they do work with Aaldia, it will be in making them a vassal state, but that’s far down the line. They are suffering with their crops this year. They continue to need Aaldia’s help to feed themselves. Aaldia has extensive rice and wheat fields. They need that. It’s all very well and good to fight a war, but they are losing the peace, and they know it.”

  Anavha listened closely, but their conversation soon turned to old business. They talked of Nusi’s childhood here, and one long glorious summer where Nusi sailed around the world after having their first child. Which brought the conversation back to why the Tai Mora hadn’t chosen some other continent besides this one.

  “They couldn’t have settled in Hrollief?” Nusi said. “Or some eastern country? There are enough wild things there that they could have had the run of the place.”

  “There’s something here they wanted,” Natanial said, “something in those Dhai and Saiduan temples. I don’t pretend to know what it is. But I know when to hedge my bets. For now, our paths align. I want the Dorinah gone. I want the Tai Mora to see my value. That’s the only way to continue on.”

  “You hate the Dorinah so much,” Nusi said, “that you would ask this of Anavha?”

  “I hate tyranny of all sorts,” Natanial insisted. “I honestly believed in what Saradyn was doing in Tordin, even if I did not approve of his methods. But the Dorinah… well.”

  Nusi put their long, strong fingers over his, but he pulled his hand away, and smiled thinly. “It was so long ago,” Nusi said.

  “They continue to do terrible things.” He looked at Anavha. Anavha felt heat move up his face, and quickly turned his attention back to cutting up the yams. Had the Dorinah once done something terrible to Natanial?

  When the food was finished, they sat at the table together: Nusi and Giska; Natanial and Anavha; and six of the eight siblings, all called in for supper. Natanial laughed and flirted with all of them, and Anavha found himself envious of Natanial’s great confidence.

  When the meal was done, Natanial helped clean up, and they all moved outside to enjoy the cool evening. Most of the siblings retired to their quarters, and Anavha went to bed as well, before Natanial could ask him more questions, leaving Natanial to argue his case with Nusi and Giska.

  Anavha could just hear the murmur of their voices through the open window.

  “He belongs to neither of us,” Nusi said, voice rising. “When he came here, he was broken. In many ways, he still is. Dorinah twists all their people into one type of broken child or another.”

  Natanial answered; Anavha knew the tone of his voice, but he spoke too softly, and the tenor of the conversation dimmed.

  Nusi came to bed several hours later. Anavha was still awake, staring at the ceiling. As Nusi undressed, they said, “I understand why he frightens you.”

  “He doesn’t frighten you?”

  “On the contrary,” Nusi said, lifting the covers and pressing their warm, naked body to his. “I always have suspicions about Natanial’s motives. You did not seem keen to join him. He talks of murdering your own people.”

  “I’m not, and yet…”

  “Yes, Natanial has that effect on people,” Nusi said, stroking his hair, and their voice was as warm as their body. He pressed closer to them. “If you leave us here, you forget all this peace.”

  “Just because Aaldia is at peace doesn’t mean I am,” he said. “Maybe I can learn things from them, and bring what I’ve learned back here.”

  “If they let you leave, after Daorian is fallen.”

  “I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Stay here, love,” Nusi said, and they brushed his hair with their long fingers. The high window was open, though it was cool, and he caught the scent of the fields, the loamy scent of manure and straw; he heard the lone cry of some plains cat, celebrating a meal. “You want me to stay?” he asked.

  “What I want is unimportant. As is what Natanial wants. You came here to discover what you want. You have power, he is right. But that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to use it. You have no responsibility to anyone but yourself, and your community. And we are your community, now.”

  “It seems a shame not to use it,” he said. “Oma won’t be in the sky forever, will it? They say it will be ten, maybe twenty years. Then I won’t be anyone at all anymore. I liked that, when I wasn’t anyone special. Just someone… loved.”

  “Owned,” Nusi said softly.

  “Owned,” he murmured. “I know it’s wrong, I know you and Natanial don’t like it, but I miss it. I miss other people telling me what to do. I hate having choices, Nusi. Just tell me to stay.”

  “You know I cannot.”

  “Then tell me to go.”

  Nusi laughed. “You miss the point of this exercise.”

  “I can’t decide.”

  “Then sleep, love. Answers often come in sleep.”

  “I’m so afraid of the world,” he said. “It’s collapsing all around us. I want to hide.”

  “I know. We all do. But…” Nusi sighed. “The gods are not kind. They break the world when they do this dance. We’ve all known this day was coming. Now we must endure it.”

  “I don’t know if I can… Should I just keep sitting here?”

  “You keep trying to get me to make your decision.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m going to sleep now, Anavha. We’ll talk about this over breakfast.”

  Nusi closed their eyes. Anavha lay watching the shadows move across their face, dimly illuminated by the outside perimeter lights. All this peace, all this quiet.

  He lay next to Nusi for a long time, until Nusi’s breath came regularly and they shifted away from him in the dark. Then he got up, quietly, and crept outside into the cool air.

  Anavha sat on a large chair on the porch, watching the night flies sparkling across the fields. He pinched the inside of his arm, bringing pain, and with it, a sharper sense of the world, an awareness of being alive. Again, he had the urge to take a blade in his hand and cut away his worry and uncertainty, but instead he breathed deeply and closed his eyes. He had longed for control over his life. It was what led him to the cutting in the first place. And he did have control over his life now. Nusi did not bind him. He had his own small income from working on the journal. Natanial had made no show of force, and given no indication that he would haul Anavha away if he did not go freely. He did not think Natanial would kidnap him again, not now that he was free of Saradyn and the dream of Tordin.

  Which left him here, in his own skin, alone, to make his own decisions. It was not as exhilarating as he’d always hoped. It was far more terrifying. If he chose wrong, he had only himself to blame for it.

  A sharp flash lit up the sky, breaking the stillness. He squinted, but the lightning or tear had already vanished. Out here, he could almost pretend the world was normal. Almost.

  He went back inside and slept, fitfully, until the first gray tendrils of dawn woke him. Oma, Tira and Sina winked in the sky, static though the suns were not, their soft light blending to turn the sky a deeper shade of lavender.

  Anavha got up before Nusi and made
tea. He pulled on a short coat and went outside to see how the sheep had spent the night. He enjoyed living on a farm, enjoyed walking outside to see a long expanse of gold fields in every direction. Their nearest neighbors lived over the next hill, a two hour walk distant.

  He went out to the sheep pen to let them loose to graze. The dogs outside the kennel raised their heads as he passed. He had feared them when he first came here, but they recognized each other as participants with the same goal: to protect the livestock.

  Anavha opened the paddock and counted the sheep as they came out onto the meadow to feed. He stood up on the rail to get a better look, and something in the distance, on the other side of the large run, caught his eye.

  He clambered down and made his way along the brush fence, running his hand along the exterior. He loved the feel of the fence. He had helped Giska and Nusi pull young saplings from the woods just south of here and wend them through the broken patch of fence to mend it.

  An object in the distance that appeared to be a pile of rags and brush began to resolve itself into the form of a human being. Anavha came up short just fifty paces distant, staring long at the figure to see if it moved.

  When it didn’t, he crept closer.

  The body was strangely serene. Only the absolute stillness and awkward twist to the torso and left leg made it seem unnatural. There were no footprints, no broken grasses leading to or from the body. Only the bent stems on which it rested.

  Anavha gazed upward. The sky rippled ominously. He took a step away from the body, fearful more might tumble from this sky. This was not the first one he had seen. Nusi had discovered three in their fields over the last few months. The Tai Mora weren’t the only people fleeing to this world anymore. To his mind, there was enough room for everyone, but was that really true?

  He stood among the grass as flies circled the body. The clothing was foreign, the hairstyle strange. This was an alien person, a worldly invader. But he found he could summon up no hatred for them. If his world was dying, he would throw himself into the tears between his world and another, too.