by Devin Madson
One turned, beckoning the Levanti to hurry. Arron looked at the other two. The woman shrugged as best she could with her hands gripping my upper arms and her muscles straining.
“Idiots,” Arron muttered, hooking the lantern he’d been carrying to the side of a distinctly non-Levanti saddle. “The sooner they learn basic orders the—”
An angry roar erupted from the trees and barrelled into him. Together they collided with the horse, sending the lantern swinging as the animal backed and snorted. Someone screamed. The other two Levanti let me go as the scream became a gurgle, and I looked up in time to see blood splatter the horse’s knees. It reared, legs kicking. The others scurried out of range as it landed with a crunch of flesh and bone. The lantern smashed, leaving a bright flare choking my sight. Hoofbeats thudded off into the distance, while above me the two Levanti let go shuddering breaths. “Arron?”
Only the distant thud of hooves sounded in reply.
“Who’s there?”
“Show yourself, cowa—” The words ended in a gurgle and thud. Fabric flurried nearby, before hurried steps sped off into the darkness.
But I was not alone. “Who’s there?” I said, sure I could make out a vague outline in the dark.
“It’s me, Captain.”
A pair of hands took me beneath the shoulders, helping me up. “Amun?” I said. “By the gods, Amun, am I glad to see you.”
“As I’m glad to see you still alive. No, you and I have a lot to say to each other I think, but this is not a good place. Let’s do the talking thing later, yeah?”
“Yes,” I said. “Less talk, more running, or… limping. Please help me get the fuck out of here.”
9. DISHIVA
I couldn’t sleep, could only lie and stare at the pattern of light and shadow on the ceiling and see the glassy eyes of dead horses. In the panic after I had made it back to my room, I had told myself I would not do anything else to incur Leo’s wrath, the pain of seeing others mourn their animals too heavy to bear. But slowly anger had returned. That’s what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to give up. He wanted me not to fight. I had to find a way to get rid of him, whatever the cost.
It was both easier and much much harder knowing I was gambling the lives of others and their horses, the only way to continue to stop thinking of them as Levanti, stop thinking of them as family, stop thinking about them as people at all. But how long could I spend lives like coin and not become a monster?
The room darkened and the door slid open a crack, sending my heart into my throat. “Dishiva?” hissed a voice. “Are you in there?”
I knew that voice. It sounded worried and unsure, but the very sound of my name on those lips lessened the weight pressing me into the floor.
“Jass.”
He stepped inside, a shuttered lantern giving vague shape to the room as he closed the door behind him. It lit the shadowy form of his face too, his thick brows drawn low. And there just inside the door he stood with his muscular arms crossed over his chest as though attempting to keep out the cold.
“I saw Swordherds leave,” he said at last. “Heading south. What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t tell anyone anything!” I sat up, stung by the accusation in his tone.
Jass dropped to a knee, setting the lantern down. And there beside my mat lay my mask and sash. He picked up the mask, the weak light seeming to further contort his disgusted features. “What is this? Are you one of them now? Are you Leo’s puppet too?” He dropped it and sat back, running a hand over his scalp. “I trusted you, Dishiva. I told you where they were because I believed you meant them no harm. That your loyalty to Gideon would stop short of slaughtering your own people.”
“How dare you. How dare you walk in here and berate me with no idea what I have been through. Of what happened. You have no idea what it’s like. What he’s capable of.”
Jass held his ground, breathing hard in anger as he said, “I told you not to come back here. I told you—”
“And I told you I could not abandon my Swords!”
He stared at me as I stared at him, his eyes shadowed pools in the low light, his breath a gust of emotion that brushed my cheek. The world seemed to shrink, closing in until it was nothing but him and me in the darkness, the roar of our anger having left something hot in its wake. With every deep drawing of my breath tension mounted, until with a small quirk of his boyish smile, Jass said, “Damn you, Dishiva.” And kissed me. A fierce kiss tasting of anger and frustration and need and the desire to feel alive in each other’s arms whatever tomorrow might bring.
But as he gripped my wrists and pushed me back onto the mat, his weight on me in the shadows, I was back on that cold ground in Chiltae. Chained. Beaten. Exhausted. The commander yanking down my breeches while all around me Levanti howled their rage.
I cried out, recoiling. Tearing my hands loose, I shoved him away and wriggled free, scurrying for the corner where I curled my knees up, every breath ragged and quick.
“What happened?” he said, just a voice disembodied by eyes squeezed shut. “Dishiva? Are you all right?”
But in the darkness behind my eyes was the memory I could never escape, no matter how often Lashak and I had talked of it, had tried to stop it from having any hold over us. The weight of them. The force. The helplessness of being chained to the earth. The shame. While my people had sung for me, I had cried for myself.
Those same bitter tears spilled now as I tried to control my rapid breathing, tried to calm myself with reminders I was safe, lie that it was.
I flinched at Jass’s gentle touch. “Dishiva?”
He didn’t press me, just maintained the gentle pressure on my arm, a reminder he was there when I was ready. I wished I could tell him I appreciated it, but panic suspended my voice and for a time all I could do was remember to breathe.
“May I hold you?” he said when I had steadied myself.
I shook my head, hating the idea that I needed a man’s comfort to soothe a man’s wrongs, but when he said, “You don’t have to do everything on your own,” I reminded myself that he was also a Levanti, not just a man. “Needing help is not weak.”
Levanti rarely did anything alone, yet somehow the idea that I alone was responsible for carrying this weight had rooted deeply, and it was with an effort that I nodded and allowed him to wrap his arms around me. There against his body—a seemingly immovable force in that moment—I let flow the tears I had been holding until there were none left to cry, until the world was quiet but for the steady thump of his heart.
“The Chiltaens hurt you, didn’t they?”
It was hardly a question at all. The words vibrated deep in his chest, full of understanding, needing no answer. Yet I nodded. He deserved more, but it was all I had.
“I heard it happened to others,” he said. “And you’ve always been so intent on being in control that I wondered. I’m sorry.”
“For guessing, or because it happened?”
“Both. And for reminding you of it just now. And… for coming in here shouting at you. I feel…”
Still melted against his chest, I said, “Helpless and frustrated. I know the feeling.”
For a time he said nothing, the pair of us sitting there caught to each other in the darkness, just breathing and existing, until at last I spoke the words he needed to hear. “I didn’t tell them anything. Leo heard the directions you gave me when we carried him out to the cave. And he was here, Jass. We left his body in the cave, and by the time I got back he was sitting with Gideon like he had been here for hours. How can that be?”
Jass shook his head, the stubble of his chin scratching against the stubble of my regrowing hair. “I don’t know. I didn’t leave straight away either. I’d forgotten my knife and went back. It took me ages to find the cave, but I eventually did and he was still there. Faintly smiling and starting to stink.”
“How does he do it? How does his god know where he is?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his breat
h warm against the side of my head. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“No, you’re right to doubt everyone who has been near him.” I pulled out of his embrace enough to look him in the eye. “He changes people. Controls people. He… put this blanket of peace over me to make me compliant at his ceremony and it was like I was dreaming, half of me sane and screaming at the other half, but I could not stop myself being led, being controlled, and it was…” I couldn’t find words for the fear, not just for myself but for everyone caught in his influence. How many had he worked that sorcery on? How many was he still controlling? “I keep wondering if this was how our herd masters felt, if somewhere deep inside they were still utterly themselves and hating every word coming out of their mouths. Then we abandoned them.”
“They exiled us.”
“But did they exile us? Or did someone else exile us with their voices?”
“That,” he said after staring at me for a time, “is a horrible thought.” Jass looked at the mask and sash still lying on the floor. “So he made you a… priest?”
“I don’t know what it is really. A prestigious position within the church, but he gave it to me just to be cruel. Because I didn’t kill the deserters. Or more likely didn’t kill Whisperer Ezma. I think… I think he wants to get rid of anyone who could be a threat to his power, and Levanti who don’t answer to Gideon are dangerous. Whisperer Ezma doubly so. I… I told Lashak about her. I hope she was able to warn them in time.”
He had no answers, and again we sat in silence with our thoughts, my imaginings too dark to share though his were surely as grim. “It’s dangerous for you here,” I said after a while. “I’m not your captain anymore so I can’t order you to go, but you should.”
“You’ll always be my captain, whatever title Leo saddles you with. You should come with me.”
I shook my head. “Oh, how I wish… you know I would if I could. But if I don’t fight him, who will?”
He straightened, taking my face in his hands. “I know,” he said, a wry smile on his lips. “You wouldn’t be my Dishiva if you walked away when you could help people. Your Swords and your people and… what is right, what you see as duty, are more important to you than your life. But by all the many gods that look down on our folly, I worry.” He tightened his hold on my cheeks and looked into my eyes, his own made all the darker by the shadows. “Promise me you will take care. Promise me you will consider that… sometimes there is nothing even you can do to mitigate the damage. Sometimes you have to accept the world is just a shitty place and some people are monsters and we are powerless to change that. Promise me.”
Promises were just words, words that could make him feel better about my choice, but I could not utter them when they would be hard to keep. I was already walking a dangerous line with Leo. “I… cannot stand by and let him, let anyone, harm us without challenge, Jass.”
He sighed, dropping his hands. “I ought to have known you would say that.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “I wish I could help. Wish I could be here for you rather than—” He turned, seeming to struggle with some feeling he could not express. “He knows, doesn’t he? I was there when he died; he knows me. My reappearance would immediately put us both in danger and achieve nothing.”
“You help by staying out of sight. If you take some supplies you could hold out in the caves, get out anyone who wants to leave.”
Jass nodded. “That will be enough for now. Just don’t get yourself in trouble or I’ll have to come running to the rescue, danger or not.”
I touched his cheek. “How lucky I am to have such a guardian.”
“What sort of man would I be if I left you—left anyone, to face this on their own?”
“A smart one.”
“Yes, as you would be smart if you just let it all go and came away with me now. Somewhere. Anywhere. But… neither of us are going to do that, are we?”
“No. No, we’re not.”
“What fools we are.” His words had grown thick with emotion, and he pressed his lips closed upon a grief he dared not voice, a fear that surely filled him as it filled me. That things were only going to get worse from here. That perhaps this was the last time we would see each other.
The following morning, I awaited my punishment for talking to Jass. I watched Leo walk here and there, nodding to me as he went, but nothing happened. Had my transgression not been enough to incur his wrath? No. If I knew anything for sure it was that Leo wouldn’t pass up a chance to hurt me, which only left one option. He didn’t know. The great Leo Villius was capable of reading my mind, but he was not omniscient. Could not be everywhere at once. Was still fallibly human.
It gave me more hope than I’d carried for a long time.
Despite my new-found knowledge, I dared not go see Sichi again without good cause, leaving me caught alone with my thoughts. I needed a plan. Leo wanted power. Wanted control. Gideon was the wedge splitting Kisia. Splitting Chiltae. The seed of chaos Grace Bahain himself had planted to take the throne. Talking to Gideon seemed the only option, and yet having seen him at the ceremony it was no option at all.
I went to see Itaghai, knowing he at least would treat me no differently. I took off my mask as I approached his stall and received his snort of greeting, a playful nudge of his nose all too like a cheeky ‘Who are you, stranger?’ that tears pricked my eyes. “Yes, I know I haven’t been to see you much. Things have been a bit… strange. You can’t tell me the horse masters aren’t taking good care of you though.”
There were other Levanti around and I told myself they had no reason to stare at me, but it did nothing to alleviate the feeling they were watching to see if I was still Levanti beneath the mask.
“What do you think of these horse houses?” I said, my cheek against him. “Do you think you’ll be so unused to the rain falling upon you that you’ll want one forever? I’m not sure how we’d move around the plains dragging a stable.”
They were silly words, but the thought of being back on the plains, of travelling again, of being everything we had been, struck me with a mixture of homesickness and ill-ease I was unprepared for. I had not thought myself so changed. Had we all changed? The breakdown of our Swordherds, the lack of trust. We weren’t the same people who had been exiled anymore.
I stood breathing in the comfort of Itaghai’s scent for a long time, might have remained all day had not a commotion grown outside—the sort of troubled voices that boded ill. It was no longer my job to ensure Gideon’s safety, but I could not let go the belief he was our only way through this, so I drew up my mask and stepped out into the yard.
Grace Bahain’s soldiers had their own camp, but an inordinate number of highly ranked Kisians stood in the courtyard. Lord Edo’s presence at the head of the group eased my fears, though I could not ask him what was happening, could only wait and watch.
As I crossed the yard, Keka emerged from the main doors closely followed by Oshar, the youngest of the Chiltaen-trained translators. Keka looked grand sweeping down the steps in his surcoat but flinched at sight of me. I stared through my mask’s narrow slits, the effect sure to be unnerving.
“Lord Edo,” Oshar said as they halted before the Kisians.
“Oshar. Captain,” Lord Edo returned, before launching into their reason for coming. Keka stood stiff while he waited, and I took the opportunity of edging a little closer. Glances shied my way, but who was going to tell me to leave?
“Grave news has come from the Tzitzi Knot,” Oshar translated. “I must see my father at once. He was meeting with the emperor. If you would inform him I’m here, I need not tramp my muddy boots through the manor.”
His boots were muddy, but I wondered if he had another reason for keeping the conversation outside, perhaps to avoid Leo’s presence. Whatever the reason, Oshar carried the message inside, leaving Keka to stand watching the Kisians with an air of mistrust Lord Edo ignored.
While we waited, I caught sight of Nuru edging her way through the crowd. Some Levanti had got
ten bored and were wandering back to their tasks, but a few seemed determined to stay, and Nuru ranged herself among these as unobtrusively as she could. No doubt Empress Sichi was watching from her window.
When Grace Bahain emerged he waved the crowd away with an imperious hand. The Kisian onlookers obeyed, but most of the Levanti folded their arms and stood their ground. The man chose to ignore them and demanded an answer of his son with awful dignity.
No longer needing to translate, Oshar ought to have whispered to Keka as Matsimelar had always done to me, but with a glance Nuru’s way, he translated loud enough to be heard by the closest Levanti. “Riders have just arrived from the Tzitzi Knot, Father,” he said. “Our ships were attacked and many of our sailors killed. Most of the ships sank. The men could not be entirely sure, but they believe it was Empress Miko with the southern army.”
I needed no translation of the curse words that hissed through Grace Bahain’s lips. The man had been so calm and sure and in control the day he arrived, but he had failed to get his hands on Empress Miko. Was losing control of Gideon. The Chiltaens had not retreated from the north. And now his ships had been attacked while he was here trying to keep hold of what power he had claimed.
“Did she take any of the ships?” Oshar said when Grace Bahain spoke, the translation of his question causing the duke to glare at him.
“Two. The rest sank.”
This seemed to satisfy, but it was a troubled Grace Bahain who walked out through the compound gates with his son and his soldiers in tow, taking their conversation where no Levanti translator could hear them.
That Empress Miko had struck against us, or at least against Grace Bahain, was worrying. Anything that diminished his power ought to be celebrated, except that without him, Leo would hold complete sway in Kogahaera.
I needed to see Gideon, alone, but to do so would require careful planning. Careful planning soon overset by the day’s second unexpected arrival.
We had grown used to Chiltaen pilgrims walking through the gates, but the sight of four Chiltaen soldiers striding in sent every hand to a sword hilt. They did not reach for theirs, as confident of their welcome as the man leading them—a man whose only uniform seemed to be the satchel slung over one shoulder.
