Roh fumbled at the arrows in his guts. Snapped off the ends of them, and took Lilia by the collar.
“What did I do?” Lilia cried. “What did–”
Roh dragged Lilia back into the circle where they had arrived while the temple heaved around them. The stones groaned. Water continued to rise all around them. It was as deep as his shins now, rushing up faster and faster.
Roh took Lilia by the shoulders and shook her. “Listen to me! Would you listen? I told you.”
“I didn’t… I did the right–”
“You did the selfish thing,” he said. “Don’t you understand yet, Li? There’s always another monster, another and another, behind them. You kill them, you become them, you lose everything you ever cared for.” He was crying too, remembering what he had done to the Patron of Saiduan, and the path that had brought him here. All the selfish, terrible choices. “We made poor choices, Li. We are terrible, selfish people. We aren’t Dhai at all.”
Another surge of water rolled over them. Lilia gasped and spit water. Roh’s knees weakened. He sank to the floor, arms wrapped around Lilia.
He closed his eyes. “I need to go back,” he said. “Please, back to Oma’s Temple. Not the Assembly Chamber… somewhere we can hide… please, can you do that, keeper? Can you hear me at all?”
Nothing. No voice. No help. After all this time, all this work getting them here, and they were going to let them die?”
“Temple keeper!” Roh said. “You made me your Guide. We’re dying! We’re going to–”
The floor swallowed them.
Darkness.
An absence of pain. Relief. Oma, he was so relieved, he was nothing but a wave of warm emotions.
My Guide.
“We failed,” Roh said, or thought he said, because all was blackness and he could not feel his body.
Everyone does, my Guide. Perhaps we always choose wrong.
“You don’t,” Roh said. “We do.”
Always the same choices.
“Give us another chance.”
I can’t do that. I’m just a beast.
“We can make better choices.”
It’s not your choice, the temple said. It’s hers.
“Then give her another chance.”
You believe in her?
“I always have.”
A glimmer in the darkness. Brilliant white light.
44
Lilia gasped and rolled over onto a cold floor, right next to a gaping hole that dropped into a chamber beneath her. Light flickered from below, illuminating the tangled roots that stuffed the chamber. The basements? The temple of Tira? Or Oma? Were they the same?
She felt a weight around her, a heavy… Roh?
Lilia shook him. “Roh, are we –” He did not move. His body was cool. Blood continued to ooze from his wounds.
“No, no, no,” Lilia. “No, no.”
She panicked. Her wound throbbed. She crawled across the floor, working her way toward the tangled roots. They would be looking for her, and for Roh, that other Kirana and her strange soldiers. Lilia needed to hide, needed to get away, needed to tend her wound. How long could she hide here?
She took hold of one of the tree roots and heaved herself up. Blood gushed through her fingers. She felt light-headed, light enough to fly.
Lilia stumbled through the darkness. She got painfully to her feet and hobbled across the floor, winding her way through twining roots. Blood continued to escape her fingers. I’m going to die down here, she thought, I’m going to die here with Roh and Gian and all the rest of them.
A cry came from behind her. The sound of boots on stones. They were looking for her. How had they known where she was? They must have felt the surge of power when they came through from the fifth temple.
This had to be Oma’s Temple, didn’t it? Why had the temple deposited them here instead of back in the Assembly Chamber where they had come through?
She leaned against a massive root, spitting blood. She tried to ball up her tunic and stem the flow of blood, and her hand wrapped around something, what was… The blood. The little vial of muddy blood from the child, the one Ahkio had raised to Li Kai.
Some old memory tugged at her as she pulled herself under and around root after root. Ahkio had… lost time here. Here, he had said, roots… A stone. Placing his hands against it to call the temple keeper, only to find himself pushed forward in time… while another version of him… went back.
Her breathing came loud and fast in her ears. Ahkio had… lost weeks of time, one Ahkio. But another Ahkio had lost only a day. He had gone back a full day.
He had made different choices.
It was at the very bottom of the temple, Ahkio had told them, the obelisk, tangling among heavy roots. Would it work the same way if she placed her hands on it? Push some version of her forward and another, please, Oma, perhaps another version… back? To start again?
To make better choices.
Lilia choked on a desperate sob. How foolish to even consider some future, when she was very likely to die in a few minutes.
All she had now, as her life dripped along the floor, was this. Ahkio could have been lying about everything. He was probably an impostor. But as she bled out, the story he had told kept her moving, kept her breathing, kept her searching for the broken stone of time.
It is hope that keeps us going, she thought, sliding around in the darkness in her own blood. Everything looked the same. So many shadows.
The shouting grew closer. She saw the light of a flame-fly lantern. They must have found the trail of blood. Black spots danced before her vision. She caught herself on one of the roots, leaned over it with all her weight, trying to stem the flow of blood. One foot. Another foot.
We are all stories, she thought dimly, moved by stories, pushed forward. We have to believe we can live. We have to believe there are choices. May your… what was the old Dhai proverb? May your choices be shaped by your hopes, not your fears. She felt the rage and despair bubble up in her again. She had been ruled by fear. She had murdered everyone she ever loved. Roh was right. She had not fought monsters. She had become one.
The lights behind her gave her enough light to see just ahead.
A large broken stone lay on its side; it had settled there in the twisting mass of rocks. If nothing else, she thought it looked like a nice grave marker. A good place to rest. She was sweating heavily. Her palms were slick.
She pushed herself through the tangle of roots. Lilia crawled the rest of the distance to the stone, watching the blood leave her body. Nausea overcame her. She dry heaved.
I put my hands on the stone, Ahkio had said. I went back a day. What a stupid story. What a mad thing.
But he was Kai, had been Kai.
Lilia pressed her hands to the cold stone. It stayed firm. She laughed, and coughed up a little blood. She set her cheek against the stone. Blood.
More shouting, nearer now. Again. Someone was hacking at the tree roots. She lay on her back as the blood pumped from her body.
Lilia dug into her pocket. Fumbled at the little vial of blood. She twisted at the cap. Her hands were so weak. So very weak. The cap popped off. Rolled next to her.
Lilia pressed two fingers into the gooey blood.
A lantern swung overhead.
“Here she is!” someone cried, in Dhai.
Lilia pressed her fingers to the stone.
A chill went through her bones.
The floor rumbled.
I need to go back, Lilia thought, please, Oma, give me one more chance, like you gave Ahkio.
And then the world was filled with light.
45
“We’ve stemmed the assault,” Suari said. “We’re pursuing the last two, a boy and that girl who was working the orrery.”
Kirana Javia Garika, Empress of Dorinah, Queen of the Tai Mora, Captain of the Seven Realms and ruler – finally! – of the known worlds, pressed her hands to the wood of the great Assembly Chamber. She could not keep t
he smile from her lips. She had achieved her decade-long campaign to defeat her Tai Mora double and usurp her from power over Raisa, and she felt fucking fantastic about it.
She admired how similar this table was to the one she had planned and plotted out this assault from on her own world, so very, very near to this one. Her soldiers worked busily through the temple, assuaging fears and rumor. She didn’t know who had burned so much of the temple’s interior here, but her allies assured her it was well contained, and the temple secure. She had murdered all of the other Kirana’s soldiers inside the fifth temple, keeping her own identity safe, for a time.
“That girl and boy are a problem,” Kirana said. “I know them from our side, or one very like her. Lilia, the girl – I want her killed as quickly as possible.”
“Could I ask–”
“She always ruins my fucking plans,” Kirana said. “I want her body. What about Luna? You got Luna fixed up? Closed the ways? If that’s done, we can start handling the next phase of this assault.”
“It’s already done,” Suari said. “I got Luna mended and back on the pedestal. The seams between every world but ours have been closed. We no longer need to worry about assaults from other worlds, but we can still bring our people through. There are instructions on… many other things that can be achieved with that power, though. We are interrogating Luna now. We may find a way to keep Para in the sky for far longer. Unlimited power for decades! All yours.”
“Good,” Kirana said. “Let’s bring up that whole fifth temple again, though. All that quaking very nearly sent it to the bottom of the sea again. Put it out there on the plateau. It will be more stable..”
“Very well,” Suari said.
“You did well, Suari,” Kirana said.
“Being bound to you,” he said, “meant I was also bound to her. That deception worked in our favor. Remarkably well.”
“Told you, didn’t I? Keep the faith, Suari! Get the rest of those Rhea-worshipping allies of ours into the other temples,” she said. “I want to move quickly.”
Despite her stated urgency, Kirana did not go immediately to find her own Yisaoh when Suari closed the wink. She still needed to ascertain where the former Kirana’s Yisaoh and children were being sheltered, without giving herself away as… well, a different sort of Empress.
She traversed the temple, nodding to those who pressed thumb to forehead, and a little Dhai ran up to remind her that she had agreed to meet her mother for tea in the garden. Her real mother, of course, who had been here all this time, keeping her abreast of her counterpart’s plans.
Spies, indeed. This world’s Kirana had had no idea of the extent of it.
She met her mother in the garden as the double helix of the suns rose. Her mother peered at her.
Kirana laughed, and used the pass phrase they had agreed upon. “The ways between the worlds are ours.”
Her mother clapped her hands and stood. Embraced her. Used her appropriate response: “Happy day! This is so joyful.”
What an incredible thing, Kirana thought, to save herself and her own world from… well, herself.
“Mother, it’s going to be so grand,” Kirana said. “The power, the world. You’ve done so well. Thank you.”
Her mother leaned over and pressed her forehead to Kirana’s.
“I am so proud of you,” her mother said. “No one else could have done this. No one else could have saved us.”
“I did what had to be done,” Kirana said. She finished her tea and rose. “I suspect I should announce it to our people here. And I’ll need to find where they’ve hidden their version of Yisaoh and the children.”
“I’m sure you’ll make short order of it.”
As Kirana stepped down from the little raised tea table, the air suddenly became cold, so cold it hurt her bones. She paused. Stared at the sky.
“What is it?” her mother asked.
Kirana grimaced. Her bones knew, knew because she had felt this before, in some other life. Knew because something that she thought had come together was now pulling apart.
“I don’t know,” Kirana said.
The ground trembled.
And there was light.
46
Lilia gasped. She woke with the light of the swirling satellites in her eyes, peeping in through the window of the bed she slept in: the Aaldian farmhouse. She knew the pane of the window only too well.
She grabbed at her stomach where her wound was, but found her tunic untouched, her skin whole. No blood. No torn clothing. Silence, outside. Then the bark of a dog. A breath of wind. The creaking of the old house.
Namia barrelled into the doorway, signing at her: “Going?”
Lilia’s heart pounded hard. Sweat soaked her back. “Namia!” she said, and hugged her close. Namia wriggled from her grasp.
“Going?” Namia signed again.
Lilla stared at the window. Still dark, very dark, the same time she had woken the morning before.
She heard Maralah, Roh and Kadaan already awake and conferring in the kitchen, in Saiduan. Zezili lay beside her, not asleep but staring at the ceiling.
“Are you ready?” Zezili asked. “I never feel tired. It was nice to just sit here for a minute, I guess.”
Lilia just lay there, trying to still her racing heart. Namia shook her again.
“Not yet,” Lilia said. “Just… sit here with me awhile.”
“I’m so bored,” Zezili said.
“Go kill something,” Lilia said, slipping her shoes on. The floor was cold. “Just… Not a person. And not too far away, obviously.”
Zezili sighed.
Lilia went out into the kitchen where Maralah, Roh, and Kadaan stood. Maralah and Roh held cups of hot tea.
“Awake already?” Maralah said.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Lilia said. “Maralah was right. We need the sleep.”
“But everyone will be awake, then,” Roh said.
“It’s all right,” Lilia said. “I’ve learned… I know that there aren’t any omajistas in the temple, not in the Assembly Chamber. They’ve been called away. And if we wait, well… if we wait, there will be even fewer people in the temple, come morning. We can all go in together. We don’t need a second distraction.”
“When did you learn that?” Maralah asked sharply.
“Trust it,” Lilia said. “Taigan and I won’t go in by ourselves. We’ll come through the gate with the others. I know for certain no one will be there.”
Maralah and Kadaan exchanged a look. “This is all very unexpected. Did you have some kind of vision? Or have you lost your nerve?” Maralah asked.
“It could be called a vision, maybe. I just… I have new information. You were right. Anavha needs to sleep. You, the men, all of us. Tired people make mistakes.”
“When do we move then?” Maralah said. “You said yourself we’re very much out of time.”
“Just before noon,” Lilia said. “Most people will be going down to the banquet hall for the noon meal.”
“That’s… a lot of missing hours, Li,” Roh said. “You were so urgent before.”
“Please, just… could you trust that I know better? Maralah agreed.”
“I agreed that we needed more sleep,” Maralah said, “especially Anavha. But another ten hours or more?”
“What do you suggest?” Lilia asked.
“Dawn,” Maralah said. “That’s another three hours.”
“Roh?” Lilia asked. “Kadaan? Do you agree?”
“I’m good with dawn,” Kadaan said. “I’m heading back to sleep, then. Roh?”
“In a minute,” Roh said.
Maralah shook her head. “You can’t go shifting this plan around,” she said. “Any more changes–”
“It’s going to need to be flexible,” Lilia said. “There’s so much we don’t know.”
“To bed again with me, then,” Maralah said, eyeing them both one more time before she left.
Roh said, “What happened?”
“Try.”
“You won’t believe it.”
“There’s a good many things I wouldn’t have believed two years ago,” he said. “I’d believe them now.”
She sat next to him at the table, so they almost touched. Reached for Maralah’s abandoned cup of tea. Sipped it. Bitter.
“We lost,” she said.
“We seem to do that.”
“No, I mean… It was like I’d done it, the whole plan. And it went terribly.”
“A dream?”
She rubbed her hand against her stomach, where the wound had been. “I don’t think so.”
“So, you have a better idea of how to do it this time?”
“I know how to do it differently.”
“Did we live? Any of us?”
“No.”
“Well,” he said, standing. “Whatever we do this time will certainly be better than that.”
“What if there’s no way out, Roh?” she blurted.
He paused. “What do you mean?”
“What if this is all one big loop, one long cycle, that can’t ever be broken? What if we are fools to try?”
“We’d be fools not to,” he said.
Lilia fell asleep at the table. It was Zezili who woke her, just before dawn.
“Hey,” Zezili said. “Everybody said you delayed the plan?”
Lilia yawned, trying to snatch at her dreams, but she had slept soundly, no echoes or memories.
“That’s right,” she said. “Be flexible.”
Lilia woke Taigan up. He stretched and yawned and stilled as she told him the new plan.
Taigan frowned. “You and I won’t go in the front?” he said. “That’s so disappointing.”
“I’m sure,” Lilia said, giving him a long look that only made him shrug. She shivered at the memory of him burning the temple down around them, nearly murdering her on the stair. Taigan, ever the same in his unpredictability.
The others gathered around the table, making tea and pulling yams and turnips from the coals where they had been roasting since the evening before.
Lilia erased what they had mapped out a few hours earlier and said, “I’ve had some time to think. I still agree that the fire on the plateau will draw them out and create a distraction. But I don’t believe it’s necessary for Taigan and I to pull Kirana out. If we wait long enough, she will have left her chamber for the day.”
The Broken Heavens Page 39
