I wasn’t trying to false-face, so she must have seen the worry in my eyes when she looked up. Faoii-Ming just smiled and laid a rough hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Lyn-Faoii. We’ll all be there to see her dance.” She glanced through the wooden slats in the floor before finishing the preparations on the trap. “None of the invaders seem to have made it out of the eastern wing yet. We’ve done a pretty good job holding them off. You go find the urchins. We’ll keep these Croeli bastards back.” With a nod, Jade and I wove our way through the crooked paths toward the western wing.
“Did Faoii-Ming say Croeli?” Jade whispered to me as we crawled. I only shook my head, unsure of how to answer.
*~*
We tried to ignore the screams behind us. Goddess, how we tried. The fact that most were masculine was not as comforting as I wish it was. Every pained Faoii cry was like a sliver in my heart, but I knew I couldn’t stop. My little sister was still ahead, and I had to find her.
But the west wing was abandoned.
Jade and I dropped silently into the training room. All those years of learning subterfuge rather than brute force were finally being put to use, and I didn’t even notice enough to care. Instead, all I saw was the empty room where my sister should be. Two of the wooden practice swords that the girls were offered to train with before their sword ceremony lay in the middle of the floor while two pairs of shoes lay at the edge of the mat. My heart climbed into my throat at the stillness of the air.
There was no sign of passing. No footprints, no sounds. The trapdoors to the ceiling were untouched, and neither of us had seen any hint of the children while in the rafters. As quietly as possible but with quickening footsteps, we searched the hidden crevices and hidey-holes that dotted the wing, trying not to let the pounding of our heartbeats give us away. But every step was like a new stone in my gut. There was no sign that any of the hidden passageways or doors had been disturbed. The alcoves were empty, the whisper-holes silent. My legs moved woodenly, but I tried to remain hopeful with each failed search. The urchins were intelligent. Surely they were still okay. Finally, on hands and knees, I pressed the heel of my palm into a smooth section of masonry at the base of one wall that I vaguely remembered from years before. A tiny section of stone clicked open, and I nudged it aside. There was just a hint of a gasp in the silence from within. The faintest scent of soap.
“Mei? Kim? It’s Lyn. Are you there?” Nothing. With a sigh, I turned to Jade. She shrugged easily, and I’m almost positive I saw a smile on her face.
“You always taught them that silence was the key to survival.” I tried to ignore that maddening glint in my shield sister’s eyes.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” I rolled my shoulders and ducked my head into the hole. There was only blackness. Muttering, I squirmed my way into the tight passage that stretched forward through the dark.
I had often made my way through this particular crevice as a child, now that I thought about it, but that didn’t make it easier. My too-wide hips and shoulders caught against the stone. Smart girls. No man would be able to make it through here.
Finally, I pulled myself through to the other side. The darkness of the hidden alcove was almost absolute, so I felt more than saw the practice sword above the opening. I ducked away just as it fell.
“Goddess’s grace, girls! It’s me!” I wriggled in the darkness until a small, moonlike face with doe eyes peered down to look me in the face. I did my best not to sound angry. “Kim-Faoii, it’s me!” Kim’s face disappeared for a moment before reappearing with an embarrassed smile.
“Come through, Lyn-Faoii.” She paused. “Sorry. Mimi said she saw a Faoii fighting with the Croeli. We needed to make sure it was you.” I squirmed my way out of the burrow and crouched in a room full of small children, surprised at what I found once my eyes adjusted.
The urchins’ professionalism in the face of danger was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. There was no fear in that dingy, cluttered space. Only a grim determination. A sense of duty. As soon as the young Faoii were sure that I was not a threat, they turned away. Kim rekindled a fire that had apparently been kicked out rapidly not long before, while Mimi and Kiki stirred a putrid liquid in the frying pan that sat above it. The other girls pulled at planks in the floorboards and walls, using their small, quickly-purpling fists at close range to break the boards into serviceable, if jagged, weapons.
“We can’t get a cauldron in here, Lyn,” Mei whispered as I pulled Jade through the hole and blocked it up again with one of the loose boards. “So we’re doing what we can with what we could rab.” She shrugged and turned back to Mimi and Kiki at their task. Jade and I followed, curious.
“You’re boiling oil!” I’d almost clapped my hands in glee at the girls’ resourcefulness. They were Faoii, even then, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud.
“We were able to get to the pantry twice before we heard boots in the corridor. We only have enough oil for one more run, and then we’ll have to try to get to the pantry again.”
Mei jabbed at empty air with her improvised spear, and my eyes brimmed with tears. I just kept thinking over and over, Illindria bless them. They aren’t even afraid. They are true Faoii. And they were. There was no doubt that those girls were warriors.
“We need to meet up with the others for orders,” Mei whispered as she thrust her spear up into the ceiling, then prepared to leap after it. I leaned down to give her a boost up, but Mei pulled herself into the hole without assistance. She peeked back over the lip of the frame. “Will you come with us?”
Jade and I didn’t even hesitate. “We’re right behind you.”
*~*
The children knew the passageways that wormed through the monastery better than anyone alive. They were smaller and lighter than the rest of us, and were able to use ancient tunnels that Jade and I had walked by a million times and never noticed. The urchins practically danced above the Croeli’s heads with complete autonomy. Even I, who was known in the monastery to be more cat than human, was impressed. The little brats were like shades in the night.
Days passed in an ever-more terrifying war against the Croeli invaders. I don’t know why we didn’t send anyone out for help. The urchins probably could have snuck out unnoticed in those first days before we truly utilized them. But I guess we all thought that if we couldn’t do it, no one could. Faoii arrogance at its finest, right?
It was Faoii-Ming that first used the little ones to their full advantage. I often thought to myself that maybe we shouldn’t use such young girls as scouts or trap setters, but damn it if Faoii-Ming’s tactics didn’t work. Between the urchins scampering through the hidden tunnels like mice through sewers and us older Faoii using guerilla tactics in the shadows of the darkened halls, we were more than capable of holding our own. Everything was perpetually slick with blood and gore.
Two full weeks passed in this manner with surprising success. Under Faoii-Ming’s careful planning, the Faoii thrived. Attacks were varied and scattered, catching the Croeli by surprise again and again. Sometimes Faoii-Ming would have us wait hours or even days between attacks, leaving the Croeli to worry or wear themselves out while the Faoii forces sought refuge and rest in the hidden alcoves and rooms behind stone walls.
We protected each other by spreading out, clumping in small groups throughout the grounds. Faoii-Ming and Cleroii-Sung always remained in a centralized point near the dining hall, sending messengers to give orders to the scattered girls. Their constant need for scouts forced the urchins to relocate to a smaller alcove behind the fireplace on the dining hall’s eastern wall. It was not as secure as the other alcove had been, but it made travel quicker and orders more efficient. For a while we held the advantage again, and we were so sure that we would be able to finish it. We were going to take our home back.
Despite our best attempts, however, sometimes the attacks did not go as planned. There always seemed to be Croeli in the dining hall, leaving only one exit from the fireplace a
lcove. And as the Croeli began to discover the hidden passageways, fewer routes remained safe. But we still didn’t give up. We never tried to flee. I don’t think we even considered that an option. What kind of Faoii army sacrifices its own monastery? But, looking back, maybe that would have been best.
The situation kept getting worse. Guerilla fighters would drop down onto a Croeli and not make it up again. Young girls would go to scout for Croeli placements and never return. Messengers would disappear on their way to give orders, causing chaos when assignments weren’t received.
Those that did make it back from skirmishes moaned in the fevered states, and even Cleroii-Sung could not dull the pain of that new poison they’ve started using, criukli. These girls were offered a silent death, not only for their own comfort but for the safety of those of us that still had to live in silence behind the walls. The dead began to fill the alcoves that were no longer serviceable for safe passage.
The girls who made it back in order to beg for death were the lucky ones. Sometimes, we would hear our missing sisters’ muffled screams and the Croeli’s vulgar laughter through the floorboards where we hid. But we could do nothing except close our eyes and pray while our sisters were brutally ravished by armored swine. Any rescue attempts only delivered more Faoii into the Croeli’s clutches. The bastards had been well-trained, and our only advantage came from our ability to hide. But the undiscovered avenues and rooms began to dwindle. More and more women were forced into close combat against the devastating criukli. More and more women fell before their blades.
The rest of us stuck to our guerilla tactics as best we could and prayed to the Goddess that those who were caught died quickly.
Things became significantly more difficult during the third week, and by that time we didn’t know any more safe routes out of the monastery. Most of the trapdoors had been recognized by the Croeli and were constantly monitored or trapped. Their magic was darker than what the Cleroii were used to, and many girls died in lingering agony while the rest of us tried in vain to heal their wounds. Trips to the pantry became first more dangerous, then virtually impossible as the Croeli set out guards and increasingly dark spells. Our rations began to dwindle.
Faoii-Ming and Cleroii-Sung did what they could to provide more rations for those that remained. Several times they were able to make their way to the pantry and kill those that guarded the ice boxes and preserved goods. But they were never able to get enough. Our stomachs remained hollow and our hearts heavy.
And in the end, the Croeli proved too much for even our strongest warriors.
15
It was cold the night Jade and I waited on the eaves below the dining hall’s square window. Scaling the wall that led to this section of roof had been nerve-wracking; we’d all expected an arrow in the back the entire climb. The interior routes to the pantry had been sealed off, and this dangerous entrance was our last chance to gather enough food to continue the siege. So I crouched next to Jade, the rope in my hands loose and giving. Somewhere below, Faoii-Ming and Cleroii-Sung were scavenging what they could, but it had already taken them longer than expected, and a tight knot had formed in my gut.
As though reading my mind, the rope suddenly grew taught. That was the signal that Sung and Ming were ready to be pulled back up with what they had gathered. Hand over hand, Jade and I pulled our superiors back to the window, desperate to return to the safety of the alcoves.
Faoii-Ming and Cleroii-Sung never appeared.
Instead, my stomach lurched as two Faoii maidens, tied in a bundle to the rope’s end, their bodies broken and torn, appeared above the sill. Four dark eyes stared lifelessly in terrified, silent agony. Their bruised, blue skin was transparent in the moonlight, while thin wisps of tattered, unbraided black hair clung to their sallow cheeks and bare breasts like cobwebs. I tried to choke my stomach back down. “Eternal Blade . . .”
“Lyn, get down!” I wasn’t even sure what was happening when Jade shoved me roughly out of the way just as a crossbow bolt sprouted from the window frame above my head. The corpses dropped back into the darkness of the dining room as we dove away from the open window, terrified. In moments the air was filled with bolts and arrows as Croeli fired at us from both inside the dining room and from the grounds below. The moon darkened under the onslaught. Frantically, we dashed for the safety of the towering chimney that rose above the rest of the peaked roofs.
Together, Jade and I vaulted over and slammed our backs against the other side of the chimney, followed only moments later by the pattering of arrows in our wake. There we crouched, trembling in fear and sudden cold as the open, unseeing eyes of our dead sisters bore their image into our memories. Around us, arrows rattled the roof like a dark and bloody rainfall. Jade whispered a quiet prayer to a blackened sky.
My first instinct was to dive down the chimney in order to escape the onslaught of projectiles. I thought we could use the secret door at its base to find sanctuary from the Croeli archers. But there was no way that Jade and I could disappear into the
chimney without the Croeli searching it more thoroughly. They would find the urchins and kill us all.
With a frustrated cry, I finally shoved myself away from the safety of the brick, jerking Jade toward me as I moved. We tore across the roof together, trying to outrun the angry yells that rose behind us.
I practically flew across those rooftops. I felt Jade’s terrified heartbeat in my own chest, but I could not stop to reassure her. Instead, I only sent what encouragement I could through the sil- ver ties that circled us and pushed myself harder, knowing we would need all the momentum we could get in order to survive long enough to reach the urchins again.
The roof we were on ended in an overhanging eave that shadowed a section of the garden chapel beside the monastery. Though a ways off, with a strong enough leap, it was possible to make it from the main building to the pagoda roof. At least, it was in theory. Now we had only our terror and pumping hearts with which to carry out a maneuver that no one had ever truly tested.
Hearts in our throats, we dove for the chapel, barely reaching the green shingles of our destination with our outstretched hands. My shoulders shrieked in agony as I strained against the jarring force of impact, but I pushed away the pain. Without pausing, Jade and I swung through the huge, open windows and into the chapel proper.
Once inside the comfortingly familiar space, I finally allowed myself to fall to one knee and catch my breath. And Jade . . . Jade just knelt next to me, graceful as ever. Our racing heartbeats echoed in the empty hall for a moment before we forced ourselves to our feet.
The chapel was separated from the other buildings. Exposed. I knew we had to move on before the Croeli surrounded us. I opened my mouth to say as much, but Jade stopped me and gathered her voice. I shut up, excited for what Jade would bring forward. Even unascended, Jade was one of the most talented Cleroii I’d ever met, and I couldn’t wait to see the spell that would proceed from her golden tongue. So I watched as Jade, in the silence of the starlight, whispered the softest of songs to the chapel. Its velvet threads twirled in the still air.
I was shocked as I listened to the familiar tune that had drifted through the chapel a million times before. It was not a war song, but one of worship and praise. A song of glory and gratitude. And, as ashamed as I was to admit it, it made me angry. We needed something that would hinder the Croeli rather than bolster the Goddess. After all, what could we possibly have to thank Illindria for at a time like this?
I almost growled at Jade, but I bit my tongue, ashamed. Was I not alive to offer gratitude? Had we not made it this far? Chastised, I prepared myself to accompany Jade in singing, but her song was already drawing to a close, and it draped itself around the chapel like a cloak.
In that moment, peace reigned. The calming presence of the Goddess enveloped us and warmed our hearts for the few moments that it took us to regain our composure and our wits. I ached with gratitude and regret. Never had I desired anything more than to simpl
y lie at the Great One’s feet and pray for everything to go back to the way it was. Surely the comfort I found there could not be found again in a world where the Croeli had defeated us.
The calmness of the room was shattered by a crash somewhere nearby, and I was shaken from my reverie. The Croeli were coming. And no matter how hopeless it currently seemed, I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
But where could we go from there? The entrances back into the monastery were sure to be guarded and trapped. It would be suicide to risk the Croeli magics without an ascended Cleroii there to help. It still didn’t seem real that the Croeli had been able to take down Cleroii-Sung and Faoii-Ming. It just didn’t seem possible. But it was, and we had to deal with it. With a stern gaze and steady hand, I crept up to the windows that faced the main building, searching for the best route back. There had to be a way for us to get back to the urchins and regroup. The Goddess would not let us die alone.
The Last Faoii Page 12