by Devin Madson
There was nothing else left to do. Nothing else to say. Another moment stretched in which it was just the three of us, safe, but it could not last. With one of her flat, wry smiles, Sichi nodded to me and headed for the door.
“Good luck, Captain,” Nuru said, turning back as she followed Sichi through it.
“And to you.”
The door closed on my words, and I was alone with the empty bath and the shadows and the damp. “Damn it,” I hissed, and began to pace. The cellar was small enough that a handful of steps got me from one side to the other and back, doing nothing to alleviate my nervous energy. It was the simplest of plans, but when the man at the centre of it could read your mind, nothing was simple anymore.
I paced until I lost track of time, might have paced forever had not the creak of the door surprised me. A blade was in my hand before I had fully turned, its point levelled. The newcomer flinched, but weak lantern light fell upon Lord Edo Bahain, made sickly green by the cellar walls. His jaw was clenched and his face lined with lack of sleep.
He gave a sharp nod. It was time to go.
I nicked the tip of my thumb and thrust my dagger back into its sheath. My swords hung from my belt too, and though I wouldn’t need them if all went well, they were a comforting weight all the same.
Lord Edo held the door open for me to pass into the shadowy passage, and leaving him behind, I started up the stairs two at a time, the sounds of the busy manor growing louder around me. Up and up through the tangle of stairs and passages until I stood in the long upper hall, Gideon’s door at the end. I had deliberately gone the long way so I wouldn’t have to pass Sichi’s door, and not daring to even look at it, I spun toward the two guards outside Gideon’s room. Dendek and Anouke eyed me with worried clefts between their brows, Dendek shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Captain,” he said.
“I am here to see Gideon.”
They shared another glance. It had been a risk trusting anyone else with part of the plan, but Keka owed me. Nothing would ever fix the seam of trust he had ripped, but as Dendek nodded, a little stitch was remade. The door slid open.
Gideon was alone. He showed no sign of life at my entrance, not turning from the window out which he stared at gardens half turned to mud. “Herd Master?”
He flinched.
“Gideon?”
“You’re going to betray me, aren’t you, Dishiva?”
“No,” I said, with a degree of confidence I could only achieve because it wasn’t him I was talking to. “I am here to serve you.” Oh, how I hoped this would work. That there was still a way to get through to him despite all the damage Leo had done.
He turned a little, enough for me to see his face in profile. He looked the same, all the shapes and lines of his face coming together to create the same man, but even from the side the strain was evident.
“Herd Master,” I said when he made no reply. “It is time. Your task is waiting.”
“Task?” His brows nested close.
“Yes, Herd Master. You cannot have forgotten. Come. I will walk with you.”
He hesitated, confusion giving me a younger, troubled Gideon for a moment. A moment in which I wondered if he had ever looked like that. Hard to believe we had been a part of each other’s lives for so short a time, no matter how long it felt.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Let us walk. I… feel I could do with the fresh air.”
Despite his confusion, he looked every bit the ruthless emperor he had become as he crossed the floor, crimson surcoat swirling. I couldn’t tell if he wore it perfectly or if it wore him, but I had to thrust away all the memories it brought with it.
Anouke and Dendek watched us leave but said nothing. Did not even move to bow or salute or nod, like they’d been turned to stone. The second of the things I had asked of Keka. Now as long as he had done the third, we could do this.
I had memorised the quickest path to the private garden from Gideon’s rooms, but as I took the first turn into a narrow servant’s passage, I feared I would forget it all. Walking from one place to another with our herd master would once have been something I didn’t need to think about, but now my heart felt like it was made of shattered shards of hot steel.
I didn’t forget the way, each passage leading to the next with the echo of Gideon’s footsteps trailing behind me. I didn’t dare turn in case looking at him broke whatever spell had him following, complaisant like a lamb. We were getting farther and farther from Leo, but it wasn’t bringing Gideon back. Was there any of him left to bring back? If I turned to look, how empty would his gaze be?
We met no one in the maze of narrow passages and no one in the gallery that opened onto the garden. It was a tucked-away thing around which much of the manor contorted itself, but no one used it. The servants had a different yard for hanging clothes, and the cooks used a different patch for their herbs and chickens and woodpiles. Even the horses had their own space, leaving this an empty, useless patch of prettiness.
Gideon walked at my side as I made my way toward the little house. Not a house with walls and doors, but with open sides and a roof and vines growing up the outside. It had benches within covered in old cushions, its use as a place to sit. I’d had no time to sit when I spent the last hours of darkness here building the shrine. I had cried the whole time, the instinctive use of such meaningful muscle memory taking me back to the plains, to a time when such things had mattered more than politics and the appearance of power. Sichi had given me ink to paint the stones and I’d had to use short sticks for the reaching hand, but I had murmured all the prayers and sung all the songs, and the effort had left me too hollow for pain to touch me.
My handiwork sat in the filtered light of morning at one end of the garden house. Yitti’s body lay before it, waiting, and I let out a breath. Keka had done all I had asked of him.
Gideon halted in the doorway, a flash of confusion there and gone. He leaned back as though he might bolt, so I drew my knife and held the hilt out to him. “Your job as First Sword of the Torin,” I said. “No one else ought to have the honour.”
If Yitti’s spirit was present and watching, I hoped he would forgive me. He deserved better than being Farewelled by the man who had ordered his death.
His expression blank, Gideon took the knife and strode forward. Knelt. Crimson silk spread across the wooden floor like spilling blood, but it was a Sword of the Torin who gripped Yitti beneath the shoulders and pulled his stiffened body onto his knees.
In the same way my hands had worked without thinking to build the shrine, so his hands made the first incision. His gaze was fixed on Yitti but in a way that saw nothing at all.
Blood poured onto the wooden boards, missing Gideon’s spread knees. It smelt metallic and slightly sweet and turned my stomach. It was always better to Farewell a body when it was still warm, but we’d needed time to prepare.
I watched him work, the ease with which he achieved even the trickiest cuts dragging reluctant admiration from me. But it seemed to be doing nothing. He was just working, slicing skin and cords of muscle and shifting his position to avoid the blood like a man who had done this a thousand times. The frightened Gideon I’d spoken to before travelling to Kima wasn’t there.
“I can’t help but think that if Rah had joined us when we took Mei’lian, it could have been him lying here,” I said, watching for a reaction. Did he hesitate? It was hard to be sure what was a flinch and what was a natural movement of the blade. “I couldn’t have forgiven you for that, I think. I’m not even sure I can forgive you for this, whoever it really was who gave the order.”
The slightest of pauses as he shifted the position of his blade. But he went on working, eyes glazed. I had no bigger provocation I could use than Rah, but mention of him had done nothing.
Gideon had been angry that night. We had taken Mei’lian. We had overthrown our captors and positioned ourselves to build a new home within the power structures of the empire, but he had not celebrated. Rah had called f
or him from the cells. He had shouted Gideon’s name over and over, and the more he had shouted the more Gideon had paced, hurt and fury in his every step like the wild licking of flames in a storm.
Rah had sung too. His lament had reminded me of my own sufferings, hardening my lingering doubts into assurance, but Gideon had refused to return to the celebration. Refused to eat and drink and instead had sunk onto the stone floor at the top of the stairs and dropped his head in his hands, remaining there alone in his grief. He had eventually returned with his chin set, determined, and not looked back.
Stepping out of Gideon’s reach, I began to sing the lament Rah had chosen. I had not his voice, but I pitched it as low as I could and hoped it would do. Gideon had just started on Yitti’s spine, a difficult, messy job at the best of times. Harder still if your hands are shaking. His had been so still, so sure, but as I sang on, they began to tremble, fumbling the knife as he went to jam it between vertebrae. The tip of the blade slid into flesh, making a mess of his fine work.
I sang on and Gideon’s shoulders began to shake, the whole of him trembling now as he worked the last tricky bits. His fingers slipped and blood sprayed up onto his face, but though he shook and rocked back and forth, hunched as he worked, he remained silent. Until Yitti’s head came free. His body slipped from Gideon’s knees, but he kept hold of the head and the knife as he sucked a rattling breath wet with suppressed grief, and despite everything, pity struck its discordant note into my heart.
With a strangled cry, Gideon curled in upon himself, upon Yitti’s head, blade dropping to the floor as his cry became a guttural roar tearing up his throat until there was no air left to sustain it and he had to draw another wet, rattling breath choked with sobs.
Letting the song fade, I risked a step closer and crouched in front of him. “Gideon?”
He let out another cry, his fingers digging into Yitti’s sagging cheeks.
“Gideon. Can you hear me?” I edged closer, reaching out. “It’s Dishiva, Gideon. I…”
His fingertips broke the soft skin on one of Yitti’s cheeks, and I reached out instinctively to take the head. “Gideon.”
For a moment he held on, before letting go and falling back, shaking. “What my people need. What my people need,” he chanted. “They just don’t see the whole picture. They just don’t understand. But you do. You have to lead. You have to do what they need you to do. You have to be strong.” The words were barely more than hisses upon each indrawn breath. I set Yitti’s head gently on the shrine and crouched beside Gideon. “Is that what he said? Leo?”
At the name he flinched back, hands and feet working fast to push him across the floor, his head shaking furiously. “No no no,” he repeated, hands over his head, whole body shaking as he curled ever tighter in on himself. “No, please. No!”
“He isn’t here, but…” I wanted to apologise for having left him to bear the brunt of Leo’s manipulation, for having walked away the day he named me ambassador, but despite all I knew I couldn’t find the strength to forgive him for what had happened since. I reached out, but the moment my fingers brushed his sleeve he lashed out with the bloodied blade. I fell back, ready to disarm him, but the blade clattered onto the wooden floor and his bloodstained hands curled back over his head.
“Gideon…” I closed my lips on further words. What could I say? I had feared to find him empty, but even that fate might have been preferable to finding his mind so utterly broken.
“Dishiva, watch out!”
A rush of footsteps thundered toward us, and there in the aperture stood Leo. Furious, triumphant Leo, his hands balled to fists and his chest swelling. “Well,” he said. “How very like you, Dishiva. Always finding a way to mess everything up.”
Sichi and Nuru appeared behind him, hovering unsure just out of reach. Lord Edo too, his chest heaving like he had been running. None of them moved as Leo took a step in.
“It was cute of you to think you could keep secrets from me.” He shot a pitying look at Gideon, trying to push himself back through the wall, the sound of Leo’s voice torture. “But really, Dishiva, you have done me a favour. He was getting to be a liability as fewer and fewer people trusted him, but you, you will make a very nice puppet.”
I glared at him. “I will never—” The words choked off as a piercing cacophony of screams ripped through my head, discordant and wrong. I could see the sounds, corporeal like twisting vines, and I swatted at them only to press my hands back over my ears. It didn’t help. The screams went on and on, stealing all sense. Beneath their teeth I could no longer feel myself. I was disembodied, floating, yet I could see everything. There Leo, smiling. Always smiling. There the distant, blurred faces of Sichi and Nuru, of Lord Edo, none of them moving. None of them helping.
That’s right, the voices stopped screaming to say. You are alone. You have always been alone. But don’t worry, I’m here now. I’m here to help you.
I stumbled away, or tried to with a body that owned no limbs and no bones and no mind. The voice followed. You are the saviour of your people, Dishiva. You are the one who knows what is good and right, and the only one with the courage to see it done.
I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I owned no mouth as I owned no body, yet somehow I was still standing, still staring at Leo.
I know it’s hard to be the one chosen to lead your people, Dishiva, to save your people from themselves, but I will be here for you. I will help you. Just say yes so I know we understand one another.
“Yes.” I had not thought the word, yet I heard it emerge from my tongue, shaped by my lips, a single syllable I could not retake.
No! I shouted the word to myself, but no sooner had I thought it than it confused me. Why would I refuse what I knew to be right? It had been my life’s purpose to serve and protect my people. I was a Sword of the Jaroven and would not back away now, no matter how hard it got.
Good, yes, you are wise, Dishiva. You are the leader your people need right now. What they need more than anything is to be free of their false leader. See how he gibbers and raves upon the ground, guilty of so many transgressions against the soul. Kill him.
I owned no hand, yet the weight of a knife hung from it like it was all I was. A mind and a blade. My purpose clear. Gideon was rocking back and forth in little jerks of terror, his arms over his head bent fully now between his knees, the back of his neck exposed. It would be easy and clean and it would be right. He was the wrong leader for my people. Had led them only into trouble and dishonour. He deserved death.
But it was not my place to give it to him. He had not been tried. I was no horse whisperer, and with such tenets burned into me, every shred of my being screamed its own revolt.
“No.”
This time the word was mine. Leo stopped smiling. The screaming renewed and I pressed my hands over my ears and screamed too, unable to hear my voice, only feel the expulsion of air from my lungs.
You must do it, Dishiva. The hardest things to do are the most important. That this is hard only shows how import—
The screaming twisted into a pained shriek. An oomph of breath leaving a body sounded loud nearby, and fresh blood oozed its reek into the air.
As suddenly, the voices and the haze were gone and I knelt on the wooden boards, hunched over, breathing fast. A heavy thud shook the floor and I looked up, eyes wet. Leo. He lay face down only a step away, his neck at an odd angle and his eyes wide and glassy. Blood covered his back, pouring through dozens of wounds to stain his pale robe. Sichi stood over him, a dripping blade in her hands. She breathed as fast as I did, but her hand was as steady as her gaze, heavy and assessing.
“Are you all right?” Nuru asked, wary.
“I…” Hoarse as it sounded, it was my voice, and I had thought the word myself.
“What happened?”
Nuru hovered with the others, even Sichi not drawing closer despite the protection of the knife in her hand. Between us, Leo Villius went on spilling blood onto the floor.
> She spoke first, finally lowering the blade. “Did he… do to you what he has been doing to Gideon?” Nuru asked, the translation more hesitant than the empress’s question had been.
“I don’t know. I… I don’t know.” I clenched my hands to fists, hating how much I was trembling. “There were voices in my head, screaming and talking to me and encouraging me to do what was right for my people. They wanted me to kill Gideon and…” Would I have done it? Would they have worn down my hesitancy to the core of anger within? Because beneath it all I couldn’t doubt I owned enough rage for anything.
None of them had an answer. They just stared. Gideon hadn’t moved. We were like a stunned tableau of fear and blood upon this beautiful background.
“We have to move.” It was Lord Edo who broke the moment. Nuru translated, but I was already nodding, sure what he had said.
“Yes, we have to move before we’re found like this. Keka can’t keep people away long without rousing suspicion. Especially if they heard…”
We’d had a plan for everything up to this, but the plan hadn’t included dealing with a dead Leo Villius. I stared at the body. Was he still in there? Or was he even now being reincarnated by his god into another body, the same but whole? I looked away with a shudder.
“We have to hide him,” I said. “We can’t let his followers find the body.”
“But how will we explain where he is?”
“We say he’s dead. He killed Gideon, Gideon’s guards killed him. The body vanished. Everyone knows he does the coming back from the dead thing, so enough people will believe that if we hide him well enough.”
Sichi looked at Gideon as Nuru translated my words. This the man she had married, the Levanti she had staked her future on, and thanks to Leo all her plans lay in ruins. “But Gideon isn’t dead,” she said, the words cold.
“No. But no one needs to know that,” Nuru said. “No one will follow him now. Half the Levanti want him dead anyway. We can hide him in the caves until we figure out what to do with him.”
