House of Rage and Sorrow

by Sangu Mandanna

  She holds her arm out to me, an invitation to look closer, so I examine it with interest. I already knew she had a prosthesis, of course, but I’ve never seen it up close before. “This is very fancy tech,” I say, impressed.

  “State of the art,” she replies. “My fine motor skills aren’t quite as precise as they used to be, but this is a far deadlier weapon than my arm ever was. I lost it when I was nineteen,” she adds, “in a duel against a garuda. I won, but not before he cut my arm right off. The armory fitted me with a mechanical prosthesis and they’ve updated it with the latest model ever since.”

  “I’m sorry, I know it’s totally not the point,” I say, “but you know that the words I won a duel against a garuda are amazing, don’t you?”

  She snorts a laugh. “Let’s try to focus, Princess. You’re very likely to come up against warriors who have mechanized prostheses like this one and they will rightly not hesitate to use whatever edge they have over you against you.”

  “Do a lot of people have tech like this?”

  General Khay glances at Laika, and then says, “Not exactly like this, but similar tech, yes. Your mother, for example.”

  That catches me off guard. “My mother? I didn’t know that. I mean, I knew she lost her right hand on the Empty Moon, so I suppose that makes sense.”

  “She has a mechanized right hand now.” She hesitates, and then says, “Princess, you should know that I knew your mother when she was still here. Kyra and Leila Saka were the best of friends, and Leila and I trained together, so I saw a great deal of them. They are formidable enemies to have.”

  “My mother’s not my enemy. Not really. She’s on my brother’s side, but she won’t hurt me.”

  “Leila will,” General Khay says. “Don’t doubt that for a moment. She’s a brilliant, ruthless general and she will use whatever she can against you.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” I say a little bitterly. “She already has.”

  “Ah, of course. Shloka.”

  “Yes.”

  “To go back to the matter at hand,” she goes on, “It’s a good idea to learn how to deal with unusual weapons. A mechanized prosthesis, for example. Or a wolf.”

  I scuff my boot against the artificial grass below our feet, angry that there’s no end to what Alexi can throw at me. “You mean the hounds of the Empty Moon.”

  “Yes. With Kirrin so firmly on your brother’s side, it’s only a matter of time before the wolves of the Empty Moon get involved. They used to answer only to Valin and Kirrin, the rulers of the Moon, but with Valin gone, only Kirrin can command them now. Have you ever seen one? No? They’re giant, celestial hounds, dangerous under any circumstances, and they will do whatever Kirrin bids them to.”

  “So how do we train for that? In a simulation?”

  “No,” says General Khay, “We will train with Laika.”

  “Sorry?”

  Laika, who hasn’t said anything since she greeted me, now gives me a quick, unexpected grin.

  And promptly transforms into an enormous lion.

  With an undignified yelp, I take a step back and gape at her. Her fierce golden head is almost level with mine and her teeth gleam. “You’re a raksha demon?”

  She transforms back, her shape blending from one to the other in seconds. Her clothes are now torn. “I am indeed,” she says, wiggling her human shoulders like she’s settling back into herself. “I wouldn’t say I’m as strong as a wolf from the Empty Moon, but I’m close, and it’s the best we can do for practice.” She frowns down at herself. “I’ll take my clothes off first next time. I’m very comfortable with my own nakedness, but I did think it wouldn’t be fair to you to strip down without warning.”

  “I would have been totally fine with that, I promise you,” I reply. “Whereas a warning would have been great before you transformed into a giant lion!”

  They find that hilarious. Still laughing, General Khay reaches for the sack at the foot of the tree and empties out a handful of ordinary weapons. Swords, knives, a bow, arrows, an axe, a crossbow, even a mace. Nestled in the middle of this archaic pile is a shiny modern medical laser, which doesn’t bode well.

  “Choose your weapons, Princess,” says the general.

  I strap the bow and a quiver of arrows to my back, then pick up two slender swords. “I’m ready.”

  General Khay chooses a sword for herself, which she holds in her right hand, and Laika transforms back into her lion form. Lion demons were the most powerful of the original raksha demons from thousands of years ago, the ones who fought wars with the first gods before they made peace. There aren’t many rakshas left today, but I assume lions are still the most powerful.

  We move away from the tree and into more open space. I look from General Khay to Laika and wonder just how badly I’m about to be defeated. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Hundred and One have stopped to watch, Max and Sybilla included, and I grit my teeth. Marvelous.

  “This is all your fault,” I say under my breath.

  Titania laughs in my earpiece.

  It starts well. I use the twin swords to deflect General Khay’s attacks while I dodge Laika literally snapping at my heels. I’m fast, which has always worked in my favor against bigger, stronger opponents, and it keeps Laika at bay for several minutes.

  Then, as if she’s decided I’m ready for more, Laika pounces. She knocks me to the ground and presses me down with both front paws.

  “Get yourself free quickly, Princess,” General Khay orders me, “Remember, a wolf won’t give you the courtesy of time to escape.”

  My swords flail uselessly at my sides, under the weight of lion paws. I force a leg free and kick, hard into the soft underbelly of the lion, and she jumps off me with a roar. I throw an arrow at her, which distracts her for a moment while I deal with General Khay, who jumps back into the fray now that I’m not pinned down.

  Flipping her sword over in just one hand, the general brings it down. I have to use both my swords to catch hers above my head, which leaves me completely vulnerable to an attack from Laika. I look over my shoulder to see where she is, to see if I have time to throw the general off and turn to face her.

  But it’s not Laika who gets me. A hand clamps itself around my throat, but it has no warmth or softness or pulse. It’s cold and hard. Metal.

  While her sword kept my arms out of the way, General Khay used her free prosthesis to put her hand around my throat. And then, with impossible strength, she lifts me off the ground by my throat. My legs kick frantically and I drop my swords to try and pry the hand off my skin.

  I can’t make it shift. The mechanics are too strong. General Khay’s hand tightens relentlessly and I stare at her with wide eyes, horrified by how utterly and totally helpless I am.

  “Ilara,” Laika says. She’s back in human form. She sounds worried. “Not so tight.”

  General Khay loosens her grip at once and lowers me gently back to the ground. “Take a few deep breaths,” she says gently. “You’ll have bruises, I’m afraid. My apologies.”

  As I suck air back in, my heart pounding, I croak out, “How do I fight that?”

  “You can’t,” she replies. “Once my hand is on you, you will never be able to get yourself free. If I activate the mechanics to tighten on your throat, they will tighten even if someone cuts the prosthesis right off me and they won’t stop until your pulse has stopped. That’s your lesson for today.”

  I put my hand to my throat, still sore. “That was a pretty bleak lesson to learn.”

  “But you did learn, didn’t you? Next time, you’ll know not to let my mechanics get anywhere near you.” She pats me on the shoulder. “You did well today, and you’ll do better next time. We’ll do this every other day.”

  She and Laika pack the weapons back up and walk briskly down the field towards the palace gates. I watch them go, my hand still on my throat. The pulse in the hollow under my palm flutters wildly and my skin feels cold and thin and bruised, like paper
that can be easily torn.

  And then, because my luck is just that fantastic, the back of my neck prickles. I turn slowly and look back at the palace. High up, there’s a figure on my balcony.

  Amba.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Why are you here?”

  She’s still at my balcony, the war goddess with a proud face and rich gown and armored breastplate. She turns to face me as I slam my suite door behind me.

  She sighs. “I’ve had warmer welcomes from Kiva.”

  “That makes no sense to me at all.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” she admits. “Kiva is a war god, you know. We have an ancient rivalry, he and I. I think he’s just jealous that I am the one who creates the celestial weapons.” She shrugs. “Does that make more sense now?”

  “Amba, why are you here?” My voice is quiet, but I hear the scream inside my head, louder than ever. I can’t be near her without that scream. I can’t look at her and not hear the way Rama said my name as he died. “What do you want from me?”

  “Are you really going to hold this grudge forever?” she asks me. “I understand how much you loved Rama, but you know full well that all I wanted was to save you.”

  I stomp past the balcony and tug my vambraces off. My vest follows. “You know what?” I kick off my boots with unwonted force, then turn back to her. “I’m really, really tired of you trying to justify this with I just wanted to save you, Esmae. You could have told me the truth instead of sneaking Rama away behind my back. You could have asked me before you threw my best friend into that duel. You could have done a lot of things. You could have taken my place. If you wanted to save me so badly, why didn’t you do it yourself?”

  “Myself?” Amba blinks, shocked. “How could I? You know what would have happened to me if I had done that. What good am I to you or anyone in this universe if I lose my godhood? What am I without my place in the celestial world?”

  “Then stop acting like what you did was so extraordinary. It wasn’t. Saving me cost you absolutely nothing, but Rama died. You let him die.” I laugh sharply. “But then that’s what gods do, isn’t it? You stand above the rest of us and let us bear the wounds you don’t dare risk yourselves.”

  Amba opens her mouth, then closes it again. Her face is paler than usual. After a moment, she says, “I came here to speak to you about my sister.”

  I didn’t expect that. “Your sister? You mean Thea?”

  “No, my other sister.”

  “I didn’t know you had another sister.”

  “She’s not a god like the rest of us,” Amba explains. “Do you remember what I told you about my birth? About my father, Ness?”

  “How could I ever forget your sweet, devoted father? The one who planned to swallow you as soon as you were born?” I cross my arms over my body, putting more distance between us. “I know a great beast hid you, devoured the star you were born from, and told him she’d devoured you, too. You told me that.”

  “Her name was Devaki,” says Amba, her tone softer than I’ve ever heard it, “and she was the only mother I’ve ever known. Gods don’t have mothers the way you mortals do, but I did. She was a huge, great beast with a horned head and wings and jeweled scales, but she loved me and she raised me.” She sighs and turns away to look out over the palace grounds and the city beyond, clenching her hands on the balcony railing. “I killed Ness years later, to save the brothers and sister he had swallowed before me. With his dying breath, he cursed not me but Devaki. You made sure my daughter would be the death of me, he said, so I curse you so that your daughter will be the death of you.”

  I watch her hands, the knuckles white on the rail, and for the first time in months I find it difficult to hate her. “What happened?”

  “Some years after that, my sister Sorsha was born. A great beast like our mother. But she was born with an insatiable hunger. You know the great beasts ate stars, yes? They devoured only what they needed and no more, but Sorsha couldn’t stop herself. No matter how many stars she swallowed, she still craved more. We all knew that eventually she would devour every star, every sun. That was my father’s curse, to end the world simply because I removed him from it. And to make sure Devaki suffered more than anyone.

  “Many of the other gods came to me. They said Sorsha needed to be stopped by any means necessary. They were right, of course, but I refused to kill my sister. I refused to break my mother’s heart. My brothers and Thea stood by me and promised to help me find another way. All except my brother Suya, the sun god. He went after Sorsha.”

  I object. “How? I always thought only one of the first seven celestial weapons were capable of killing a great beast. And the Seven have been locked away in the Temple of Ashma for thousands of years, haven’t they? Under Ash’s watchful eye?”

  “Ash gave Suya permission to borrow one of the Seven. For the good of the world. Suya took the golden sunspear and tried to kill Sorsha.” Amba’s clenched hands are completely white now, the bones standing out in stark relief. “Devaki put herself in the way. The sunspear killed her instead.”

  I can see it so vividly in my mind: the golden god and his gleaming golden spear, the great jeweled beast lifting her horned head to roar, and the cold silence when she fell.

  My own fists are clenched at my sides. I deliberately force them open. “And Sorsha?” I ask.

  “Devaki’s death made Suya agree to step back and give me a chance to find another way,” Amba replies, “but Sorsha was beside herself. Her wrath was incandescent. She would have devoured Suya and everything else in her path.” She stops, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “So, I imprisoned her.”

  “You did what?”

  “She had to be stopped, Esmae, and I could not kill her. So I trapped her on Anga, the celestial realm where Devaki raised us. I constructed shields around the planet so that she can’t get past them. I even forged a helmet for her to keep her hunger at bay, but the helmet draws its power from Anga and can only work if she’s there.”

  We stare silently at each other as her story finds its way into the cracks and spaces around us, settling like snow. Amba has always been able to captivate me with stories, but even this story can’t distract me from one thing.

  “Present tense,” I say.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You keep using the present tense when you talk about Sorsha. The helmet draws its power from Anga. That’s what you said.”

  Amba says nothing.

  “She’s still there, isn’t she? She’s alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the great beasts are extinct!”

  “She is the last.”

  Suddenly I’m ten years old again, tiny and insignificant beside the ancient fossil of a great beast. I used to dream of them, glorious winged giants with their bright jeweled scales and their horned heads, soaring across the galaxy. I used to feel so incredibly sad that I would never get to see one in real life, that these magnificent creatures were gone.

  “She’s alive,” I repeat. Wonder. That’s what this feeling is. It’s been so long since I’ve felt it that I almost didn’t recognize it.

  “There’s more, Esmae.”

  Mistrust and dread come crashing back. Of course there’s more. “What? What else are you hiding?”

  “Plenty,” she says tartly, back to her old self, “but what you need to know is that Kirrin and Alexi want to release Sorsha from my realm. They want to use her against Titania.”

  “Titania can’t be beaten.”

  “She can be equaled. Perhaps not by any other ship in existence or by any weapon of mortal invention, but Sorsha? Yes. And all Alexi needs is for Titania and Sorsha to cancel each other out. He knows the odds are in his favor if she’s out of the equation.”

  “They want to unleash the beast the gods have been terrified of for hundreds of years?” I ask incredulously.

  “Kirrin thinks he can use his power to keep her helmet active, and therefore that he can keep her hunger in check,”
says Amba. “And he may be right, but I think it extremely unlikely. I think her helmet’s power will fade if she’s freed from Anga.”

  “Why would they risk that?”

  Amba is silent. She doesn’t want to answer me, which is all the answer I need.

  “I see.” I make a sound that’s not quite a laugh. “They’re more afraid of me than they are of Sorsha.”

  “You vowed to destroy Alexi, Esmae. You are relentless fury with the most powerful starship in the galaxy at your back. How did you expect them to feel about you?”

  Somewhere in the mess that my heart has become, I feel a fierce, savage satisfaction. Good. Let them be afraid of me.

  “Can we stop them? From releasing her?”

  Amba nods. “I am going back to Anga now and I will remain there until this is over. Kirrin can’t get to Sorsha if I’m there.”

  “Fine. Good luck.”

  “Try to stay alive while I’m gone,” she adds. “And it would be best not to call for me unless you really, truly need me.”

  “You needn’t worry,” I say, turning away, “I won’t be calling for you at all.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I’ve gotten really good at avoiding people, so it’s a whole three days before Radha gets me to take her on the tour of Erys she requested. We decide to take one of the chariots instead of a starship, so that it’s easy to move around on foot when we need to. Sybilla comes with us, of course, and glowers at the back of Radha’s head the whole time.

  “Thank you for this, Esmae,” Radha says to me, as I plot a route in the chariot’s system. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk since I got here, have we? How are you?”

  “Achy,” I reply, determined to keep this light. I show them a set of spectacular bruises on my arm. “General Khay is going to be the death of me, I swear.”

  “I’ll be honest, it’s pretty hilarious,” Sybilla says gleefully, “After all those months of you tearing the Hundred and One down to build them back up again, it’s really, really fun to see someone else do it to you.”