The Broken Heavens

by Kameron Hurley

  “She isn’t here,” Otolyn said when he came over to her tent the evening of the second day. He collapsed next to her. Huffed out a long sigh.

  “You stink,” she said.

  “So do you.”

  “Why don’t we just fuck off?” Otolyn said.

  “Can’t,” he said. “It’s a long story. You’re not bound, though. I know this isn’t what you hoped for.”

  “Life isn’t want I hoped for,” Otolyn said. She brushed back an oily hank of hair from his face. “Poor bored thing, aren’t you?”

  “Just disappointed.”

  “Want to have sex?”

  “Not really.”

  “Wine?”

  “Yes.”

  She handed him her jug. He drank deeply. On the other side of the camp, near where Monshara’s larger tent was staked, a wink shimmered into existence.

  “Mother’s calling,” Otolyn said.

  “Let her come to me,” Natanial said. He drank more of the wine and set the mug between him and Otolyn. “What you think the sky will look like, when this is over?”

  “About what it looks like now,” she said, “just one more star.”

  “You’re so very Tordinian.”

  “You’re so very properly Aaldian. You don’t even realize it.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “You were in love with that kid, weren’t you? That omajista you found.”

  “Could we not?”

  “Just saying, that’s bad. Bring some dumb kid into this.”

  “Thank you. Very insightful. I see the error of my ways.”

  “Can’t change them though, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Natanial!” Monshara’s voice. She waved at him from her tent.

  “What if I pretend not to see her?” Natanial asked.

  “Too late,” Otolyn said.

  Natanial struggled to his feet and wended his way through the camp to Monshara’s side.

  “We have another offensive,” Monshara said. “I put a ranger on the tail of the survivors from this one, to see where they went.”

  “And?”

  “Found another camp north of this one. They’re using hazing wards of some kind. Not even a hundred people there, but some are Saiduan. That’s concerning. Could have jistas. Sanisi. They aren’t fun.”

  “No, they are not,” Natanial said. “When do we go?”

  “Dawn. Come in and let’s sketch out the plan here with my line commanders.”

  Natanial wanted to groan, but it came out a grunt. He went into the stuffy tent and stood with Monshara and her line commanders as they plotted out the terrain of the camp. It lay perched on a great cliff overlooking the sea, and had an easy escape route at the center: a winding tunnel that cut through the cliff and led down to the sea.

  “We circle them with winks, here, here, and these, here,” Monshara said, marking out the areas with little brass circles. “Pour through here, overwhelm them. Sinajistas below, to catch any of the ones trying to escape through that sea cave. Be like sending dogs after rats. Easy enough.”

  “You said sanisi,” Natanial said. “What about them?”

  “The jistas will worry about them,” Monshara said. “We aren’t there for the sanisi. We’re there for Yisaoh.”

  When she dismissed them all an hour later, Natanial went back to his tent, alone, and slept fitfully. Otolyn woke him, already grinning, the blistering ball of Tira’s green glow just over her shoulder.

  “Let’s have some more fun,” Otolyn said.

  Natanial splashed his face with water and helped his fighters break camp, then rode up to join Monshara and the other line commanders to the wink where Madah, one of Kirana’s generals, waited to give their final instructions.

  “We’re ready for you,” Madah said, from the other side of the wink. She glanced behind her, to a rolling bank of greenery.

  Natanial considered telling her his people weren’t ready for her, but supposed his choices were limited at this point. What if he told her no? He would be burned alive like that unfortunate man under the temple dome.

  “I’m thinking this isn’t worth the money,” Otolyn said, riding up behind him, voice loud enough for Madah to hear. With her she carried saddlebags stuffed with goods rooted out from the charred remains of the warren below. Food had been the most valuable loot in the aftermath of the slaughter.

  Madah glanced back at them, glared at Otolyn.

  “Better food over there?” Otolyn called.

  “Less talking, more moving!” Madah said. “I’ve got winks opening on the next field. Clear your area there immediately.”

  Natanial called his forces together. “Circular assembly! Backs to the bonsa line!”

  The great heaps of bodies they had collected and sorted through from the Dhai camp lay smoldering. The smell had been oddly appetizing, which he found grotesque, but hunger and lack of proper protein affected all of them. He had lost six soldiers in the two days they had spent at the camp, each one a blow to his esteem as a leader. In truth, he wanted to join them. Perhaps they were the smartest of all of them.

  Natanial kicked awake a few of his hungover soldiers, and found two more were missing.

  “Smarter than the rest of us,” Natanial muttered as Otolyn paced him up on her bear.

  “Maybe if we wait long enough it’ll be over by the time we get there,” Otolyn said.

  Natanial got back onto his mount. “Go run your line.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, and turned her bear around to go inspect her portion of the troops. Such as they were.

  “We ready?” Monshara called from the front, fist raised.

  Natanial nodded to Otolyn. She raised their flag.

  Three winks opened ahead of them.

  30

  Lilia had not been prepared for Roh’s story of Saiduan, of the murder of Ora Dasai and the scholars, of his flight from the Tai Mora with his friend Luna and the Worldbreaker book, of his enslavement.

  She found her stomach knotting as she sat over a bowl of cooling porridge with Roh and Kadaan at the center of camp. Kadaan was a tall Saiduan man ten years their senior who looked at Roh as if he were a precious star fallen from the sky.

  “I can’t… I’m so sorry, Roh,” Lilia said.

  “It’s in the past,” Roh said, but when he gazed past her she could not help but wonder who or what he saw there.

  She leaned forward. “I’d like to talk about Caisau, though. It spoke to you, the way Tira’s Temple spoke to me?”

  He nodded. “It said I’m the… Guide. That I could get into the temples, that I could bring the Key and the Worldbreaker, and… I don’t know, Li. I worked so hard to get here, thinking maybe we could do what the temples want, but… there’s a real chance for us to have a life outside of Dhai. We could travel with the Saiduan, we could–”

  “It’s all right, puppy,” Kadaan said, and took Roh’s hand.

  Lilia found Kadaan’s nickname for Roh very annoying. “It matches what Tira’s Temple told me,” she said. “Don’t you see? It’s all coming together! You and I, together again. And so close to the fifth temple. These people with you? You said one is an omajista? And you’re a parajista. All we need is a tirajista and a sinajista. I could operate the mechanism, I’m sure of it. I could figure it out. You’d be the Guide, we’d only need a Key, only–”

  “That is still many missing pieces,” Kadaan said. “It’s a very desperate idea.”

  “These are desperate times!” Lilia said.

  “The Saiduan are not part of this,” Kadaan said.

  “You already are part of it,” Lilia said. “You don’t get to decide. All you have to decide now is what you’re going to do.”

  “I’m going to create a home,” Kadaan said.

  “Well, you’re a coward,” Lilia said.

  Kadaan raised his brows. A dark expression moved over his face, one that chilled Lilia to the bone. She had forgotten he was a sanisi.

  He rose from the be
nch and said, “I’m going to help Maralah.”

  “I’m sorry,” Roh said. “We’ll speak later?”

  Kadaan nodded.

  “You didn’t have to be rude, Li.” Roh poked at his porridge.

  “Come on, Roh! We are two of the three; I know we are! And surely… I don’t know, we could do something with all these other allies we have here. What about Maralah? What kind of a jista is she?”

  “Sinajista,” he said.

  “Look, then! We have a lot of what we need.” Lilia dumped out her porridge on the table.

  “What are you–”

  Lilia drew a rough circle and mapped out the chamber in Tira’s Temple from memory. “A parajista here. Kadaan. A sinajista. Maralah. Your omajista friend here. We’d just need a tirajista. Sola could do that, or Salifa! Oh, Salifa. I wonder… I bet I could get her to join us. She wanted to come, but Meyna and Yisaoh, and the Kai… The Kai is a terror. We could do this, Roh.”

  Roh frowned at her gooey attempt at a plan. “You don’t have enough,” he said. “You need a plan to get into one of the temples. Step into my circle…”

  “What was that?”

  “It’s what the creature told me… step into my circle. There are two ways to get to the fifth temple, I think. Go directly there, and just… walk in, I think, or get back to the Assembly Chamber at the top of Oma’s Temple, and step through there.”

  “It would be difficult to get a gate opened at the fifth temple,” Lilia said. “No one’s been inside it.”

  “Oma’s Temple? Li, I just nearly died trying to get out of Oma’s Temple.”

  “I don’t think we’re all here because of luck, or coincidence. I think Oma has drawn us here. I think we have everyone we need.”

  “Oma is a brute.”

  “It is. But if it’s asking us to come together here, maybe we’re here to–”

  “Get revenge?” he said.

  “No, I–”

  “Because this whole time, what you sound like is someone who is really mad because she doesn’t have any other life after the Tai Mora are dead.”

  “You don’t need to be mean.”

  She saw Zezili approach from behind Roh. Her face was drawn. She scratched at something on her upper belly, just beneath her breasts.

  “What is it?” Lilia asked.

  Roh turned. “Oh no,” he said. “You know Zezili?”

  “She… It’s a long story.”

  “Fuck,” Zezili said, “the mouthy boy. Where did you pick him up?”

  “We were in the temple together,” Lilia said.

  “He’s trying to keep my husband from me. This whole camp is full of crazy fucking pacifists.” Zezili dropped onto the bench beside Lilia. Grimaced at the mess of porridge. “You Dhai have shitty table manners. What the fuck is this?”

  “Who is your husband?” Lilia asked.

  “Anavha,” Roh said. “The omajista.” He pointed across the camp. Lilia turned. A big Tordinian man sat at a fire, taking instruction from someone showing him how to bind fireweed cord. Huddling beside him was a slight Dorinah man with a soft brown beard and sharp cheekbones who held a steaming cup of tea in his quaking hands.

  “That Dorinah boy?” Lilia said. “Your husband is an omajista?”

  Zezili looked genuinely shocked. “He’s a what? That… no.” She laughed. “No, that’s not possible.”

  “He got us out of the temple,” Roh said. “Opened a gate right there.”

  Zezili gaped. “What the fuck is happening?”

  “Who’s that man with him?” Lilia asked.

  “Saradyn,” Roh said.

  “Fucker chopped off my hand,” Zezili said, waving both hands at Lilia. “Called himself a king. Docile as a fucking lamb now, though. What the fuck did you do to him, kid?”

  “Nothing,” Roh said.

  “He follows you?” Lilia asked.

  “He listens to me,” Roh said, but he would not look at her. “I don’t know why. I asked him to look after Anavha.”

  Zezili snorted. “Fine irony, there.” She scratched at her chest again. “Fucking shit,” she said, and pulled up the tunic.

  A raised red welt the size of Lilia’s palm was pressed into Zezili’s skin. The shape was instantly familiar: the trefoil with the tail, the one Lilia’s mother had warded into her skin, the mark of the fifth temple, the one Kalinda had put into the box with Zezili’s bones. The skin was rubbed raw and irritated.

  “Itches like Rhea’s cunt,” Zezili said.

  “Don’t touch it!” Lilia said.

  “What is that?” Roh said.

  Lilia peered at the welt. Pressed her finger against it. The skin did not give. It was as if the silver trefoil Kalinda had put in the box had fused with Zezili’s chest.

  “A key?” Lilia said. “Kalinda put this piece in the box with you. She said we’d need it if we entered the fifth temple.”

  “Who is Kalinda?” Roh said.

  Zezili waved a hand at him. “I’ve been asking her the same thing. Don’t bother. Do you have any blood on you? Any you’d part with?”

  Roh said, “There is something deeply wrong with you.”

  “No shit,” Zezili said. “What the fuck are you two talking about?”

  “Saving the world,” Lilia said, tapping the symbol again.

  “Fuck, enough!” Zezili said, jerking her tunic back down. “Why are we still talking about that? All this people are running the fuck away, which frankly, is a better fucking idea than any of the ones I’ve heard.” Zezili grimaced at the porridge smeared all over the table. “That looks awful.”

  “Roh, if you’ve read that book, you know how to not just close the worlds, but… you know how to send the Tai Mora back, don’t you? How to… kill them?”

  Roh shook his head. “I… Li, if we’re going to do this, it shouldn’t be for revenge. If we leave it alone, the Tai Mora will close the ways between the worlds, and that’s that.”

  “But, it can do so much more–”

  “It can, but I don’t think they’ll figure that out. At least, I hope not.”

  “Hope is in short supply,” Zezili said.

  “I’m sorry, Li,” Roh said. “I just… I really don’t know. Let me think about this a little more, all right? Seeing everyone here has… I just need to think.”

  “Roh–”

  “I’m going to help Kadaan.”

  “How? You’re going to watch?” It came out crueler than she meant.

  His face flushed. “Don’t blame me,” Roh said, “because you have nothing left to live for.” He took his empty bowl with him and returned it to the kitchen tent. Then he stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned to the beach, the wind whipping his hair.

  Zezili hooted. Slapped the table. “He must know you very well, to dig like that.”

  “We were friends once.”

  “I’ve never had friends.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Nah,” Zezili said. “We are just alike.”

  Lilia recoiled. “We are nothing alike.”

  “We get what we want. I do it with violence. You do it with deception. Weak little liar.”

  “I’ve never gotten anything I wanted!”

  “I keep thinking I’ll be like you, sacrificing myself for some bad cause–”

  “Why, when there are so many good ones?” Lilia sneered.

  “Don’t cat-talk me, kid.”

  “I should have left you in your stupid box,” Lilia said.

  “I would have liked that. I wouldn’t be so fucking itchy!”

  “I’m not like you,” Lilia repeated.

  “Yeah, well, keep telling yourself that.”

  Lilia got up. “I’m going to go find someone in charge.”

  “Sure,” Zezili said. She leaned closer to her. “Mind bleeding out a little here, into my cup, before you go? It’s so good.”

  “Go murder something,” Lilia said. She left Zezili staring morosely into her empty cup and made
her way around the camp. She noted that the smell of smoke had gotten stronger. A few of the others commented on it; a runner had been sent out.

  Lilia tried to figure out which of the Woodland Dhai elders to speak to, but everyone insisted there were no leaders. They were a collective. Lilia wanted to cry with frustration.

  Maybe if she went back to Meyna… Meyna…! and Yisaoh with Zezili by her side, it would be more difficult to throw her out again. Zezili could protect her from the bone tree again. Lilia shivered at the memory. There was still time. She could make it right. She had come too far, given up too much, to stop now.

  She walked along the edge of the camp, brooding. Lilia felt a prickling along her spine and turned, expecting to see Zezili creeping around, but Zezili still sat at the table, talking to another Dhai, probably attempting to weasel him out of his blood, or take it outright. Lilia swept her gaze across the camp as a cool sea wind tickled her hair across her face. What was that feeling?

  And then Lilia saw him emerge from the woods, stepping on the heads of early blooming poppies. Behind him was a little figure, Dhai certainly, with tangled hair twisted back into braided knots. The Dhai person, she did not know, but his face she would never, could never forget.

  Lilia stared.

  He did not see her at first. Two of the camp’s scouts accompanied him, and his gaze swept the camp, presumably looking for someone in charge.

  He saw her.

  Taigan touched his thumb to his forehead in Lilia’s direction. That was a particularly cruel touch, she thought.

  He crossed the camp and came right up to her, as if no time had passed, as if he had not abandoned her at the harbor wall, broken and burned out. As if they were good friends separated by circumstances.

  “I suspected you outlasted them, little bird,” Taigan said.

  “We are both difficult to kill, it seems,” she said slowly. It came out more confident than it felt.

  “Life is full of little ironies,” Taigan said, and his mouth turned up at the corners. The figure behind him wore long tattered trousers and a short coat, both of Tai Mora make. The features, the slender figure, the dark hair and eyes, could be either Dhai or Tai Mora. Had Taigan brought around another spy? “I believe we can be of help to one another.”