Graw looked like he might argue it but then he gestured to the men around him and the next thing she knew she was being shoved forwards until she came upon a door. Down, down, down into the depths of the darkness she went until she hit the stone beneath, following where she was pulled. Then she found herself thrust into a cell, the door slammed shut with a resounding clang that rattled through the room. The door next to her opened and Makku tumbled to the ground with a groan and a string of Myrish expletives. Rubbing at his head, he scrabbled to the bars and clung to them with a look of contempt.
“Locker drown every last one of you!”
Kilai huffed a laugh despite herself, leaning against the wall. At least it was dry and fairly clean, unlike the mouldy rat infested jail in Nirket where she had relegated a few criminals in her time covering for her ill father. Her hand wrapped around the turtle pin, the surprise of hearing him mentioned hitting her harder than she had expected.
How funny it was, that a part of her longed for the black cliffs that looked out to a placid sea, the salt breeze and the bright colours of the painted homes of her birth city. How she longed for the old clock tower where she would sit and listen to her father’s conversations, legs swinging because she couldn’t touch the ground, hearing his gentle voice over the hustle and bustle of the square outside. How the legacy of her family that had seemed so noble had turned into a noose around her neck, juggling the demands of the people, the constraints of the Empire’s forces, and her father’s increasing frailty at the mercy of his illness. The things that used to feel so confining to her had come full circle once more, shiny and warm when sanded of their sharpest corners and washed in the rosy glow of nostalgia.
What had the holy book always said; that everything would be reborn once again as something new? Even her thoughts had made that spiritual journey from death to rebirth, from that itching restlessness to leave and travel, to that saccharine longing for home. To feel that constant ache in her chest settle. To remember what it felt like to not always be so afraid.
Kilai could not remember the last time she had awoken without the fear tangling up her thoughts. That is what it means, to be an adult, she thought to herself. She had been forced to grow up quicker to support her father and to shed her childhood innocence behind. It wasn’t that she would go back to that state if given the choice, but more an intrinsic, primal urge within her to find a state of balance. Safety. Nirket, being the last place she remembered truly feeling safe, suddenly seemed a much rosier prospect than it had ever been when she had watched from the window the passing ships out in the sparkling bay and imagined herself chasing the horizon line.
Be careful what you wish for, Ki-ka, her father would chastise her, always eager to impart a lesson. She had been an investment for him as much as she had been a beloved daughter; a link in the chain that was her heritage, tracing back to the first Shaikuros who had watched over the island. She had never minded that, truly, the knowledge that she had always been more than just a girl like the other children splashing in the fountain, filling Shanku Square with their squeals. Surely it had been wiser to remain there, where she could have been comfortable and respected had she made some different decisions. Where her own legacy had already been written, only needing the flourish of her signature to be sealed into history.
Wiser, perhaps, but she would not have been content. Not the adventurer in her, nor the voice of the people of Sathkuro. She had watched the city – the heart of the island – bleed. She had made her decision to take a stand and if there was any lesson taught by her father that she had ingrained, it was to stick by her decisions. A leader riddled with self-doubt was no leader at all.
Her eyes squeezed closed. I came here for a reason. I just need to hold onto that. The sharp edges of the turtle’s fins bit into her skin.
She must have drifted off for a while for when she next heard a voice her neck cracked, stiff from leaning against the wall, and her thoughts lagged for a few moments before catching up with her. Blinking into darkness, her eyes caught on a lantern on the other side of her cell and had to force away a sudden memory. She on the other side of those bars and Rook hunched up as she was now. The fear that had clouded her mind at that word: beserker.
“I can’t tell if I’m surprised to see you here or not.”
The lantern light only threw Dakanan’s haggard appearance into stark relief, eyes sagging in flickering amber and black. He tilted his head, surveying her, before glancing further down, to Makku and Ivor. Makku remained hunched up in the corner, head rising with a suspicious furrow to his brow. Ivor had not moved since he had been thrown down there with them.
“And here’s to think my goal in life was to surprise you, Dakanan-all.”
His jaw flickered, eyes darting away for a moment. “Such titles are unnecessary now.”
She gestured with a bound hand. “How the mighty have fallen. Tell me, how did you go from respected general to little more than a security guard for transitional prisoners?”
“My failure in Nirket cost me.” He shook his head, the lantern creaking on its hook. The glass panels were cut in a mosaic around iron – a pretty design for a prison. “I could not possibly have predicted the mess that would go down. Spirits? Rifts? How was I supposed to know?”
She did not mention the inevitability of the resistance to his stringent rules. To the way the soldiers had come and imposed themselves upon a way of life that had once been as free as the tide. There had been more than just the riftspawn to contend with, but then again, Kilai knew that better than anyone. It had been the site of her failure too, after all.
“People make mistakes. Surely your record must speak for itself.”
Dakanan shook his head. “There are no mistakes. No room for error. A man in my position does not fail. How do you think I ever made it to where I did? By stumbling around clueless, unable to navigate a few political hotbeds? No. You do not understand how things work around here. There is success and promotion, or failure and… readjustment.”
To her side Makku rustled, turning around to lie down. She adjusted her own position, sore from sitting on the ground. “How exactly can you be expected to never make a mistake? What sort of paragons do you take yourselves for?”
Dakanan grimaced. “Morality has nothing to do with it. It is simply putting the best to the top. It is fair, you see. You must earn your position in society and maintain it with good, decisive action.”
“And your only criteria is what? How well you can shoot a gun? How well you can order your men to shoot their guns?”
“It is easy to judge from that side of the bars.”
Kilai rolled her neck, wincing at the clicking sounds. “It certainly is. Let me tell you, Dakanan-all, you all look quite pathetic. I’m sure you do not need me to tell you that you look like a man halfway to his grave.”
“So what? We should just decide our leaders by birth? Worship petulant monsters as our gods until they lead us all to our deaths for their own selfish desires? Do you know what they say about your beloved royals?” He leaned in, a satisfied grin on his lips and a maniacal gleam in his eyes. “They say they were cruel masters. They would slaughter anyone who so much as dared meet their gaze without permission. They turned lazy, on their decadent thrones with sycophants to wait them hand and foot. At least our leaders earned their respect. Our emperor was chosen.”
Kilai snorted. “Is that what helps you sleep at night?” She made a show of leaning back, unaffected, if only to hide how his argument struck a chord within. She was sure she had heard Rook make a similar argument, at some point. Couldn’t deny that men like Sandson had a vision beyond the world she had assumed to be truth for the simple fact that she had come to know it as such.
But Sandson wasn’t swallowing up nations, chewing them up and spitting them out with the same rigidity and glorified violence. Books burned, traditions dug up and tossed aside, languages dying out. Surely that was not the answer, either.
“Can the two of you
shut up, I’m trying to get my last kip, if you don’t mind.”
Kilai couldn’t see Ivor but she could hear him rustle around, sighs punctuating every movement. She turned back to Dakanan, a pensive look treading his face. “What’s to happen now?”
“Normally prisoners are moved to Del Regna to undergo trial. But with a case like this – so many corroborating that he was responsible for several deaths – it doesn’t look good. They’re calling for High Judge Rilkar to come and hear the testimonies of the witnesses, after which they will most likely reach a decision and execute him very quickly.”
Her stomach lurched.
“Political business, you know?” Dakanan continued, voice dropping into a whisper. “It doesn’t look good to sit around on our hands when the criminal is in custody. Do not worry, I do not think they will take such extreme measures for you and the other islander.”
“Will he get to defend himself?” she asked.
Dakanan seemed to consider. “Unlikely. If they are keen to be done with this business, it will be a case of his mental incapacity to testify.”
Kilai swore. She wanted to argue against the fairness of it all but she had seen it unfold before, so many times before. They had turned Shanku Square into a bloodbath, executing anyone who had been remotely involved in any activity construed as rebellion. Now Ivor would take the blame, even when it had not truly been his fault. How could there be any explanation for riftspawn, if one had never seen the effects of being possessed by one?
“It is a swift affair. They will not be cruel about it but the fact that he is one of their own will be a point of contention. An embarrassment.”
“This is ridiculous.”
Dakanan just waved his hand.
The atmosphere grew sombre, draping over them in a layer heavy enough to smother the faintest flicker of hope. Sensing the conversation had drawn to a close, Dakanan shuffled out, leaving them to the darkness and gloom. Kilai tried to chase sleep but no matter how the weariness pulled at her limbs, eyelids heavy and mind fuzzy, she just could not catch it. Frustrated, she stood to stretch out her stiff muscles, pacing her cell like a caged tiger.
“Should use the chance to rest while you can,” said Ivor. “Might not get another for a while.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
Laughter echoed through the cold cell. “That might end up being the case.”
She smiled despite the situation. “You’re awfully calm about this.”
A weighted pause. “I suppose so.”
“You really expect me to believe that you, Johan ‘I can make a wildfire from a damp twig’ Ivor, isn’t trying to fight this?”
“You’re selling me short, Shaikuro. I could definitely make a wildfire from less than that.” His laugh turned into a chesty cough. “Eh, maybe this is for the best. I don’t really fancy going around while knowing that thing can just take over me whenever. Not much of a life for anyone, is it? Puppet to a beastie from the worst depths of beyond.”
“Ivor,” she said. “Johan. I’ve seen others overcome this. There are ways to fight back. You don’t have to be a slave to it.”
“I don’t know. Think it might be a little late for all that, don’t you? Nah, there ain’t no fighting that thing. Not when it wants to consume.”
“You remember it?”
There was the sound of scuffling, a huffed breath and then, “Not completely. I get flashes. Blood and brine. Terrified faces. But mostly it’s that oily sensation over my mind. It wanted to punish them. It wanted them to hurt. That’s all I really got from it other than this bitch of a headache. Feels a bit like someone tried to yank my brain out through my ears, stomp a few times, and then stuff it back in in a different order.”
Kilai didn’t know. She had never been subject to the presence of another in her mind, beyond brief flashes with riftspawn in Nirket and Tsellyr. Those had been glimpses into the minds of alien creatures – bright colourful visions warped by the lens of a being not of this world – but they had hardly been the all consuming chains that were possession. A voice of doubt in her mind reminded her that perhaps she would not be as strong to resist as she thought. Perhaps she would have crumbled into nothing, had it been her. Perhaps her sense of self wouldn’t have been strong enough to hold up. The thought disturbed her more than she cared to admit.
“Get some rest,” said Ivor. “You need to be ready for tomorrow.”
“To watch you die?”
“If you’ve got a solution I can’t wait to hear it,” he mumbled.
Kilai took so long to respond that she was interrupted by soft snores from across the way. She nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. At how mundane a sound it was. That Ivor could sleep after everything that had happened bewildered her, and as she settled in for a night of shivering against the stone wall to her back, she envied him the ability to shut it out and rest. The more she thought about sleep, the more elusive it became, until she had worked her mind in circles upon circles to the first vestiges of dawn streaming through a thin window high above. She blinked up wearily, head heavy.
From there everything seemed to happen in a daze. The time she spent waiting didn’t feel real, like it could have easily been years and mere moments all at once. Footsteps startled her, drawing her attention to the door. Time skipped then. Hands around her, pulling her. Ivor and Makku. She had to make sure they were with her. They were there. She could see them. If only she had slept. If only she could keep her thoughts from rattling around her skull like coins in her childhood piggybank.
“Where are you taking them? I thought the Corporal was slated for execution.”
“That’s strictly confidential. There are details of the case that still have to be considered.” The woman flashed Dakanan some kind of identification papers as the others held onto them tight. “I’m working under the orders of Colonel Zarkar.”
Dakanan huffed, bristling beneath the call to rank. Eventually he mustered a salute and a nod, waving her off with the three of them. Kilai tried to call for him but he was unwilling to acknowledge her once surrounded by military personnel, watching with blank eyes as she was shoved into a cart, wrists still bound and rubbed raw. Makku was bundled in next to her, Ivor on the other side. In the grim light of a grey day, they both looked far more haggard, eyes stooped in shadow and skin leached of its natural hue.
The cart rattled beneath her once it began to move, her teeth jarring, and she didn’t even have the peace of mind to study the massive, laisok-shaped creature pulling them further up the hill. There she could see a pair of soldiers stood to attention, that turned and approached once they noticed the cart. Bile rose in her throat but she shoved it back down.
The cart trundled to a stop, the long necked, scaly creature placid as two men from the line approached to speak with the woman at the front of the cart, the other woman and two men of their party remaining to ensure none of them tried to break away. Kilai was left with the sight of a gun aimed at her face, leaving her cold. She looked away and met Ivor’s gaze, a hard look in his eyes as he stared amongst them. She had little idea of where they were being taken but if this Zarkar had jurisdiction over the control of prisoners, she could only imagine they had escaped the rain only to stumble into a tempest.
“Do you know what’s happening?” she murmured to Ivor in Myrish as the others were distracted with the argument between their captor and the other soldiers.
Ivor shook his head. His thick beard was growing wild and untamed as a bushfire, in contrast to the scruff dotting Makku’s cheeks. “I’ve heard the name somewhere. Don’t know why they want us. Maybe need more accounts of that night since the stories don’t seem believable.”
Kilai turned her focus on the woman in charge, a petite little thing with dark hair that spilled down to her waist, arms gesturing as she pointed to paper and argued with an officer nearly double her size. She did not wear uniform like the others, making her seem even more suspicious. For a fleeting second, a flicker of hope spar
ked in her heart that maybe Kallan’s rebels had wanted to break her out. Surely they would not be so bold as to risk this just for them? And for something she had not been able to bring with her, anyway. No. The vial had shattered, the evidence gone. She was left without any bargaining tool to save them, her fate left to whichever gods watched above. Perhaps one of them sat beside her now, about to be trundled to Locker knows where. Var Kunir himself. She nearly shuddered at the thought.
“You don’t seem convinced.”
Kilai met Ivor’s gaze again. “No, not really. Something isn’t quite right here.”
The feeling followed her as the woman swung back up onto the cart, gesturing for the driver to get them moving. The laisok cousin picked up its feet and began to plod along the dirt path that grew steeper and steeper until the last of the homes faded out, replaced with the foliage of giants. Trees as tall as mountains loomed over them, billowing with canopies that blocked out the weak sunlight that had managed to escape the cloud cover. As soon as they passed through onto the forest road, she felt like she had been plunged into night time.
“Where are you taking us?” she asked.
The woman ignored her. One of the men hit her with the end of his pistol, hard enough that blood trickled from a cut on her temple. Against the salt breeze it stung but the shock of it was worse than the pain. She pushed back to the edge of the cart, wedged between Ivor and Makku, glaring hard enough to cut. For perhaps the first time ever, she wished she possessed the kind of powers Rook and Viktor were granted by their bonds, just so she could teach him a lesson for messing with her. The reminder of how weak she was, how powerless, left her unsettled, her stomach churning.
“Don’t touch her,” growled Ivor, lunging forward. The second woman, taller and broader than their leader, yanked hard on his chain and he choked, the iron around his wrists clanking as he tried to grasp at his red throat, gasping for air. Stuttered curses fell from his mouth, eyes watering.
The Rising Tide Page 50
