Etienne nodded, pulling away from where he'd trapped her against the wall.
"It's probably best to investigate."
They slid through the shadows toward where the scream had come from. This part of the Spice District made Marielle nervous. The shops were pushed closely together with large signs hanging over the street. There seemed to be a thousand places someone might spring out from and in the spooky silence, the nearly empty city felt haunted by the ghosts of those who had once lived there.
"What do you think the Harbingers will do if they find any other people living in the city?" she whispered as they stalked through the shadows side by side. She'd drawn her blade, but it felt like little protection against the night. The wind was at her back, blowing the lingering scents of spices past her - cardamom and cinnamon, ginger and turmeric. But with the wind at her back and the spice in her nose, she couldn't smell what was ahead and it made her feel doubly blind.
"The Legends, you mean?" Etienne asked. "They'll do what Legends always do. Use them, somehow."
"How could they use them?" Marielle asked as she turned a corner, but then she froze as they looked out across an open square, flooded by silver moonlight. In the very center, there had once been a fountain where water spurted out of a carved tree. Now, something else hung from the tree. Something that was dripping in a city without water.
“Dragon’s spit!” she breathed as Etienne sank into an immediate ready-position – his blade out and his feet spread wide.
She ran to the center of the square, dropping her sack outside the fountain as Etienne cursed at her to stop. But she could smell it now – blood, so much blood and fear in the air. The fear was fresh and she didn’t smell death yet. The man hanging from the tree by one foot wasn’t fighting. He was neither old nor young, though he was gaunt, and his lips chapped and dry. His clothing smelled lived-in. Perhaps he had been a beggar before the fires tore through H’yi. Perhaps he hadn’t left. Perhaps he had been as startled as they were when the city rose up on the wings of the dragon and flew.
But he was probably more surprised when one of the Legends caught him. And she could smell the stunned horror sweeping through him even now. Elderberry hung in the air like a mist, but whether that was from the insanity of the Legends or because the man had been mad before their arrival – she didn’t know.
What she did know was that they took his eye.
The other one was glazed over and bloodshot. From his neck, blood still dripped from a ragged tear and as she tugged at his bindings, he breathed a last bubbling breath and then the stink of death overwhelmed the smells of madness and fear. She was too late.
“You can’t save him,” Etienne said breathlessly. He’d caught up with her. “Why did you try? You only made yourself a target.”
She nodded, agreeing with his assessment even as she knew she could never not try.
“What did they write on the fountain wall?” she asked, pointing to where he stood on words written in blood.
He leapt down from the wall and read aloud. “’The one-eyed king sends warning. Surrender or die.’ Well, that’s promising.”
“Tamerlan,” she breathed, her heart suddenly seizing inside her. What if they attacked him like this? What if that traitor Rajit turned on him and they strung him up, too? What if –
Her feet were already moving. She had enough control to stop and scoop up the sack she’d found, but then she was sprinting down the empty streets, no longer looking at the shadows or wondering about hauntings as she dashed toward the square where Jhinn was waiting.
What if she found him dead, too? What if –
She could hear Etienne cursing again as he followed. He was likely sorry that she was his only ally. Sorry that she led with her heart sometimes, even though her mind often thought like his did.
But she couldn’t help it. She kept seeing mental images of Tamerlan, hanging by a foot, his neck a ragged line of bubbling blood. Of Tamerlan dead, burned in a fire. Of Tamerlan with a knife in his back and Rajit standing over his body. She shouldn’t have left him with that traitor – even if it seemed practical, even if he asked her to. She should have done what he asked and stayed with him even if it was for his safety and not for hers.
She’d worked herself into a near panic by the time she turned the last corner and stumbled out, gasping and heaving, into the square where Jhinn sat in a gondola in the center of the still water.
He came to his feet the moment she arrived, face drawn with lines of anxiety and smoked paprika tinged his usual strawberry scent.
“Marielle?” his voice was carefully controlled but she could smell the near-terror behind his words. “Where is Tamerlan? I heard screaming.”
“Not Tamerlan,” she gasped between breaths, but her eyes were scanning the three other streets leading to the square. Where was he? He should be here by now – they’d told him an hour and it had been at least two. Maybe the Legends had found him. Or, more likely maybe he’d refused to give up his project making that barrel-cart thing when it became clear that he couldn’t possibly make it in just one hour.
“Does he live?” Jhinn asked, his breath hanging in the air like a wispy white flag.
“We had to separate. We were gathering supplies to leave the city now that the dragon has landed,” Etienne said, coming up from behind her once again.
Jhinn’s eyes went hard. A look Marielle had seen too many times. The ache in her belly wasn’t new, either. Would it ever get easier to watch the hope drain out of someone’s eyes?
“In the mountains,” Jhinn stated. “In a place with no water.”
“Not that we know of,” Etienne agreed. At least he wasn’t a liar. He never really had been. The nice thing about being someone who always faced reality head-on was that they never tried to pretend hope to you where there was none.
And yet Marielle couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t help trying to make the blow land a little lighter.
“Tamerlan had a plan for you. He was trying to make it work.”
In the distance, she heard a faint sound. She was trying to concentrate on it, trying to figure out where it was coming from as she gripped her sword tighter. What were the Legends doing now? But it was hard to hear over Etienne.
He made an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “You don’t help him with false hope, Marielle. And Tamerlan’s hairbrained scheme is even worse. A stupid, stupid idea meant to propagate a lie. Jhinn, listen to me. Your people had traditions and beliefs. That’s fine. But at some point, you have to decide whether you can die for those beliefs or whether you need to abandon them. You’ve chosen to die. There’s honor in that. But don’t let’s pretend it can be anything else. There aren’t going to be any miracles here. I respect your people and your choice. I won’t lie to you.”
The sound was louder, a rumbling now, and growing closer and then suddenly a dark shape emerged from the street opposite to them.
Marielle leapt up onto Jhinn’s carefully dammed wall, straining her eyes in the darkness as the moonlight picked out three shapes. It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing.
He’d done it! Tamerlan and Rajit were bent over as they threw themselves against the harnesses that should have held oxen or thick draft horses, pulling with all their might against a wine cart. And in the cart, the silhouettes of hacked and modified barrels protruded.
“Tamerlan,” she breathed. She hadn’t realized how much tension she was holding in until he came into sight – alive and whole, still. And under his own rule. If the Legends had him, she doubted they’d be letting him modify wine carts.
“Rajit?” Jhinn’s voice sounded haunted. He fell to the floor of his gondola, the scent of shock permeating the air all around him. “Rajit, do you still roam the lands of the dead?”
Rajit froze and the cart nearly plowed into him as Tamerlan cried a warning and then shoved him out of the harness and out of the way of the cart’s momentum just in time. He slowed it to a halt and then ran back for
the boy, helping him back to his feet.
Beside Marielle, in the gondola on the small pond, Jhinn shook like a leaf, his lower lip trembling like he might cry and his arms wrapping around his body as if to hold himself together.
“Brother?” he asked, and his tone was so plaintive that Marielle felt herself holding her breath, waiting for the response. “Is it really you?”
Tamerlan brought a stumbling Rajit to the edge of the make-shift pond. He wasn’t hurt. Just sweaty and tired. Marielle noted where a new streak of dirt spanned his forehead and how he heaved and gasped as he tried to catch his breath from the exertion of pulling the cart. He was steadying the little traitor with one hand, helping him toward Jhinn.
Rajit, on the other hand, looked like he was struck with guilt, his face pale as the moon above. His Adam’s apple bobbed again and again as he swallowed and it was long moments before he was able to speak.
“It’s me. I thought ... I wondered if it was you, they were talking about. I didn’t know anyone else stupid enough to sit in a boat in a ruined city and refuse to leave it.” The bitterness in his voice as thick as the smell of it in Marielle’s nostrils.
“It’s like a dream come true to see you again,” Jhinns tone was breathy. “I’d hoped – I’d longed for you to be – ”
“For me to be what? Not dead?” Rajit’s tone was poisonous, and Marielle flinched from it. She glanced to Tamerlan’s face and swallowed as she saw a dark expression spreading over it like a cloud. “Not penniless and abandoned by my family?”
“You were the one who was a heretic,” Jhinn said quietly. “I didn’t ask for that. I did everything I could to get you to safety – to give you what life I could – even if it was a shadow life in the lands of the dead.”
Rajit snorted. “I’m as alive as you and those other precious idiots who won’t leave their beloved water. Not even when it means their sure death.”
His mouth twisted and he reached for one of the logs in Jhinn’s makeshift dam, grabbing it and pulling before anyone could react. Marielle heard the gush of water at the same time that Jhinn yelled, falling off the boat and into the water in his haste to fix his dam, his heavy fur cloak pulling at him as he tried to swim.
Tamerlan leapt at Rajit with a roar, physically lifting Rajit and hurling him away from the pond. He shoved the broken piece back into the dam, frantically pushing the mud and debris back into place at the same time that Jhinn worked from the other side.
“The cart, Marielle!” he called.
What did he mean? She felt her brow furrowing, but Etienne, with an irritated sound huffing from his lips, was already on it. He sprinted around the top of the dam to the cart. Marielle chased after him, careful not to fall in the water as she balanced along the top of the dam. She joined him at the harness of the cart, shoving all her weight and strength into it as Etienne grunted beside her. It took rocking it three times to get it in motion, but then it was rolling slowly forward as Tamerlan called to them.
“Buckets! There are buckets hanging from the side!”
There were buckets just as he said.
Marielle grabbed one, tossing it to Tamerlan and he dipped put it under the crack in the dam, catching the water as it sloshed out of the pool.
“Another!”
Etienne already had the other one, trading it for Tamerlan’s as Tamerlan switched buckets, handing Etienne the full one. With a filthy curse, Etienne poured the water into the barrels and traded buckets with Tamerlan.
The barrels held the water. Tamerlan had made them into something that most resembled a tank for water, though it was clearly made from pieces of barrel nailed into a framework of wooden shafts and boards and cross-members and then tarred all over with pitch.
“Will it hold?” she asked in wonder.
“It has to,” Tamerlan said.
In the water, Jhinn was pulling himself back into the gondola, shivering as he took off the fur cloak and stripped out of his soaking clothing.
“We have dry blankets. Wool ones,” Marielle said hurriedly, running to where she’d dropped her sack and pulling one out to give to Jhinn. “You need to put this on immediately. The cold can kill you.”
“Thank you, Marielle,” he said through chattering teeth.
“A waste,” Rajit said like a curse. “They make a tank to transport you like you’re some kind of fish. And why? To play into your delusions? To feed your madness. You’re a fool, Jhinn. Just like all of them. Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
Jhinn’s hand brushed Marielle’s as he reached from the gondola to take the blanket. In the background, the woosh woosh of Tamerlan and Etienne filling the barrels with the escaping water continued. And she wouldn’t have noticed the extra shake in Jhinn’s hand or the bitter turn to his mouth or the hot tears streaking his cheeks if she hadn’t been close enough to him to distinguish between the water of the pool and the water of his sorrow.
“Waverunners,” Rajit spat. “The whole lot of you are a disgrace. An embarrassment. A living tragedy. There’s nothing magical about water. There’s no special life to it. It’s just an anchor around your neck and now you’re using it to sink all your allies with you.”
“We’ll have it full soon,” Etienne said quietly to Tamerlan. “And then we leave. Immediately. While we still can.”
“Of course,” Tamerlan said, a little numbly.
Marielle felt numb, too. Rajit’s accusations stung. Jhinn had given everything he had to help them. Hearing him insulted like that by someone he clearly loved – seeing emotion in him when he so rarely showed it – it hurt as bad as a wound to herself.
“I’m done with you all!” Rajit yelled.
“Good,” Marielle said quietly and around her they all froze, their gazes going to her face. She ignored the rest of them and looked directly at Rajit. “Because we are done with you, too. You betrayed us to our enemies and nearly lost us our lives. And now you are insulting our ally. Go. And hope the Retribution doesn’t find you.”
Guilt seared through her at her harsh pronouncement, but also a kind of thrill – the kind you get when you know you did a good thing in a bold way. The kind of thrill of finally doing something just in a world full of compromises, of standing on a principle in a world full of cowards. She’d do it again if she had to. And by the silence surrounding her, she thought that maybe the rest of them agreed.
Rajit scrambled to his feet and fled into the night.
12: Too Late
Tamerlan
He was proud of her.
Of course, Marielle had stood up for Jhinn and put Rajit in his place. Her thirst to treat people with justice just made her dearer to him – more precious for her rareness. He kept scooping water, but a small smile was spreading on his face while he worked. They were close to being done filling the makeshift tank. He was going to have succeeded.
“Thank you,” Jhinn said quietly. “Thank you all.”
“For the record,” Etienne said quietly as he worked. “I agree with your brother. But he’s also a liability. He turned on us once and he can turn on us again.”
Jhinn nodded. And Tamerlan felt his smile fading at the pain in the boy’s face.
A ragged scream in the darkness made them all freeze for a moment. A moment later Etienne was working twice as hard as if trying to make up for his momentary freeze.
“They’ve found someone else. This can’t go on,” Marielle breathed. “It’s impossible to stay here while they are out murdering innocents.”
“Murdering?” Tamerlan asked.
“Liandari has been leaving trophies around the city for us to find – people that Abelmeyer has found still alive in the city – or at least alive until he catches them.”
“We can’t hunt them down, Marielle. We have to go,” Etienne said. “Now. While the dragon is on the ground and there is time. If I had my way, we’d already be gone.”
She was nodding, but her eyes were fixed on the direction where she’d heard the screams. Tamerlan fel
t a cold stab of ice go through him. She would always be a watch officer inside – dedicated to saving other people, to doing what was just, to saving the world. How could he keep someone like that safe when their first instinct was to run toward screams rather than away from them?
She’s right. The Legends must be stopped – not killed, no. But stopped. Trapped. Imprisoned.
Don’t listen to Ram. This time it was Lila again. You don’t need to stop them. But you can save your friends. Smoke and let me help you. I know a way out of the mountains. A way by water. We can bring your friend on his little boat.
Tamerlan gasped. Was that true?
She’s lying, Ram said. She’s never been to these mountains. I have.
I can read a map, Nameless One. I know where the rivers lie – and how close we are to one.
She only wants her freedom and she sees you as a way to gain it forever.
I won’t use the boy – not the way you used me. Not the way you used all of us.
“Shut up! All of you shut up!” Tamerlan growled. He missed Byron Bronzebow. At least he’d been reasonable.
Reasonable? A starry-eyed idealist with no understanding of reality. Yes, I can see why you miss him. You’re one and the same.
Marielle and Etienne were staring at him with concern in their eyes. Had he yelled out loud? He laughed nervously.
“Is something funny?” Etienne asked cynically. “Would you like to share the joke?”
Tamerlan swallowed. “I think we need to get out of the city as fast as we can.”
The ground rumbled beneath him.
“Agreed,” Etienne said.
Tamerlan reached for the gondola. “Now, Jhinn, we’ll try to float your gondola directly from the pond to –”
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 68
