Ahkio sat in the guest chair opposite Yisaoh. Moving behind the big desk reminded him too much of Nasaka. Yisaoh was already formal and defensive. More hierarchy among Dhai rarely resulted in anything but increased defensiveness.
She resumed her seat.
He had forgotten to order tea. Had Nasaka thought to send someone for it? She would take it as an affront. He had lived in a proper house with Meyna and her family for so long that he had no idea how anything got done inside a temple.
“Pardon, Li Kai, I know I come at a troubling time,” Yisaoh said. She rubbed the stained ends of her fingers together. He forgot she smoked. Tordinian cigarettes, likely. His sister had loved them.
“I expect you aren't here to talk about taxes,” Ahkio said.
He fished around in his sister’s desk, looking for her smoking box. It would have been comforting indeed if Yisaoh came to him about taxes. He knew all about tax law.
“No,” Yisaoh said. “With your sister being prepared downstairs, I–”
He found the cigarette box, a black lacquered box as big as a ledger. “Can I offer you a cigarette?”
She hesitated. “No, thank you.”
“I don’t smoke, and my sister is dead.” He pushed the box toward her. “Is this enough, or is there something else of my sister’s you’d like?”
Yisaoh steepled her fingers. “A mouthy ethics teacher. That’s what Kirana called you.”
“And where is my sister’s husband?” Ahkio asked. “Your brother Lohin? I expected him.” Ahkio sat across from her. He adopted an open posture, arms on either side of the seat, legs uncrossed. It took a great deal of effort not to snap up like a morning glory at midday, but she was here to find weakness.
“He sends his regards,” Yisaoh said coolly.
“Thoughtful.”
“I see there’s no sense in dancing around,” Yisaoh said. “I never was a good dancer.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“I am here to ask you to renounce your claim to the seat.”
“I’m afraid I’ve chosen not to do that. It’s not what Kirana would have wanted.”
“So you’re doing this for Kirana?”
“Yes.”
“Not Ora Nasaka, of course?”
“It’s no secret Nasaka and I don’t get along.”
“There have been questions about your right to the seat,” Yisaoh said, “based on your true parentage.”
“My… what?” He folded his hands, realized what he was doing, and released them again. He tried to look at ease while pondering what she meant. He could think of no legitimate issue with his parentage except for lost, mad Etena. Had the Garikas found her after all? When his mother exiled Etena, Tir’s family all but declared an open campaign against his mother’s family. Kirana had fought them off with a great deal of diplomacy and, it was rumored, an inordinate amount of affection for Yisaoh.
“People talk, Ahkio. Kirana and the three dead babies before you were all obviously your mother’s children. But you look nothing like your mother.”
He laughed. “Is this all you have? Yisaoh, there are far more important things at issue here. First, who poisoned my sister with some gifted charm that no tirajista could cure? Who wanted this seat badly enough to commit murder for it?”
Yisaoh shrugged. She looked at his sister’s portrait on the wall. “An interesting question,” she said. “Perhaps this was done by someone who knew that times in Dhai are about to become very dire, and we needed someone of strength on the seat.”
“Someone like you?”
“I would offer you a seat as my Catori, my consort, but really, a boy not of the Kai’s womb has no right even as consort.”
“You’re less charming than I supposed, based on the amount of courtesy Kirana showed you.”
“Should I be charming? No. I hold the might of clans Garika and Badu in my fist. What do you have but the backing of some nattering old Oras?”
“Oras who can call on the power of the stars? I’d say I have a great deal.”
“You’d threaten me with the power of the gods? You’d use Oras against your own people? Are you truly so monstrous?”
“If this is about power for Garika, I’ll marry Rhin and Hadaoh and Meyna. But if this is about you, I cannot help.”
Yisaoh was rubbing her fingers again. “They are the weakest of my brothers. You think I’d stand for some honey-headed sheepherder in this seat?”
Ahkio heard a clatter from the waiting room. Elaiko entered carrying a tea tray. “I’ve brought cinnamon-orange tea,” she said. “My family’s most popular blend.”
“Ah, yes,” Yisaoh said. “Elaiko. My father buys your family’s tea. That’s my favorite blend.”
“Oh, is it?” Elaiko said.
“But of course you knew that.”
“Thank you,” Ahkio said. Elaiko placed the tray on the table.
Elaiko pressed thumb to forehead. “I’ll be just outside if you need anything,” she said, and left them.
“That is a coy little bird,” Yisaoh said.
“A gentle description,” Ahkio said.
“You misunderstand my intent with this meeting,” Yisaoh said.
“Do I?”
“My father seeks to give power back to all clans, not just Garika. Assuming–”
“Your father, if you’ll pardon, is a liar,” Ahkio said. “I know precisely what your father wants, and I’ll burn down the temple before I see your father pronounce you Kai of Garika and rename our country after one of his children. You’ve been trying to get this seat into your family’s hands for decades. I’m offering you a fair compromise.”
“My father said you would speak of tradition and history and say only, ‘It’s always been done this way.’ He said–”
Ahkio quoted from The Book of Oma, “Our country could see a thousand years of peace before the rising of Oma. That peace does not forfeit our strength but disciplines it. We must rely on that peace and our lines of kin to survive. When Oma calls us to defend–”
“And he said you would quote the Book at me,” Yisaoh said.
“I think that’s enough,” Ahkio said. He had been fair. He talked sense. Why wouldn’t she see it? “Tell your father I can’t grant his request. Tell him that any militia or sons or daughters or spouses or cousins of his he sends here will be treated with the utmost courtesy, but if another one threatens me, and in so doing threatens this country, I’ll exile his entire family. Spouses. Sons. Daughters and all. I’m not pleased to be in this seat, but I respect the words of the Book. And what you and your father are proposing is heresy.”
“Those are brave words from a shepherd.”
“I teach shepherds. I’m not one.” Ahkio stood. “It has been an occasion, Yisaoh Alais Garika.”
She moved reluctantly to her feet. “I am disappointed. I hoped you would show sense. Your sister understood what was coming, even if the Oras covered their eyes. She kept a house in Garika and listened to my father and our stargazers when no one else would. You could have learned much from her.”
“You’re talking of Oma?”
“Ah, so they’ve purported to figure that out themselves now, have they? My father told Kirana and Ora Nasaka about Oma’s rise years ago. We knew it was twenty years from rising, at best. Not a century.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” Yisaoh gestured at the desk. “I suspect you know very little about your sister and her alliance with us. Perhaps you should learn more for yourself and stop relying on lies from scheming Oras.”
“I’m not going to take that apple, Yisaoh. I know how divide-and-conquer politics work. The Oras are mine.”
“The Oras belong to themselves. Don’t you ever forget that. You’re just a means to an end.”
Ahkio called out to the militia posted at the doors. “Will you please escort Yisaoh Alais Garika from the Temple of Oma?”
Yisaoh’s eyes were black. He saw her father’s strength in her, a hardeni
ng of the jaw, blind purpose.
“We did not kill your sister, Li Kai,” she said, “however convenient that would be for you. But you are ill prepared for what’s coming. My family is ready. We’ll take this seat any way we must.”
“I invite you to try.”
“Go eat your sister,” she said.
The militia took her away.
12
Kalinda Lasa had fought many battles with many people, but this was the first she fought against her own people.
As she came up from the cellar, she saw the front door smashed in and three men standing in the remains of it. The men were indeed hers, not the local version. She knew them immediately, though many Dhai would not be able to spot the difference on sight. Those with lazy minds got themselves caught up in the cut of a coat, or the cast of a stranger’s skin, or the cant of one’s nose, but that told her very little. What she looked for was the way they held themselves and interacted with others, how they approached a problem. All Dhai here were proud, but passive. They exuded a calm politeness that tested Kalinda’s patience. But it was their open, friendly approach to each person they met – as if they were all intimate family members – that was the biggest tell. These men stood in her house with shoulders straight and chests puffed out. They watched her with the alert, wary gazes she saw on war veterans, not the open faces of a rural militia.
“I suspect you aren’t here for a room,” she said.
The dark wounds at the men’s wrists bloomed. Two of them sprouted glowing blue bonsa blades. The third, an everpine branch. They gripped the more pliable ends of the living weapons with their fists and marched forward.
Kalinda already held Para’s breath beneath her skin; the Litany of Breath played at the back of her mind. She shifted to the Litany of the Spectral Snake and wrapped the men in skeins of air, trying to force their blades back into their bodies. But they had anticipated her. Blue mist bloomed around them.
Para suddenly fled from her grasp. Fickle Para. She yanked it back and opened herself again to its breath. She rebuilt her spectral sword and lashed out.
Her twisted skeins of Para’s breath met a misty wall that engulfed the figures. The waves of blue emanated from the men on the left and the right – the parajistas. The middle one was likely a tirajista, based on the everpine weapon. Kalinda stepped away from the doorway and grabbed a sturdy club from the bin of canes and walking sticks she kept near the door. When Para’s breath was unstable, it was good to have a solid backup weapon in case of failure.
The men advanced, weapons out.
Kalinda held her ground. Giving more of it showed weakness.
The men surrounded her. She pulled on Para and condensed the air around her into a solid blue bubble, reciting the Litany of the Chrysalis. The men were young but well-trained. Yet they had not knifed through her defenses immediately, which meant she had a slim chance of outwitting them.
Kalinda wrapped spiky protrusions of hazy blue air around her club. She thrust it forward, testing the bounds of their barriers. Their blades sliced through her defenses. She batted them back. Sealed the tears. The Litany of Sounding was a burning brand in her mind, and her defenses were a manifestation of that – concentrated thought made real. The patterns they used to create their wall were intricate. It was difficult to find a way to untangle it.
But as with any task that required perfect concentration to maintain control of a notoriously inconsistent power, there would be errors. Kalinda switched to another litany. Focused slivers of air zipped outward from the contours of her body, hammering their barriers.
One got through. She saw the man rocket back, drop his weapon. It snarled back into his wrist.
Her reaction was instant.
Shaping the power of Para took concentration, and breaking it, even for a moment, left a certain softness, an incompleteness of form, a corrupt pattern of Para’s breath that was easy to cut if penetrated at the right moment. She focused her next blast at the weak point her sliver had penetrated. Their barriers burst. Para’s twisted breath broke into a thousand unbound particles.
Weapons buckled. Snapped.
She squeezed the air around their limbs. Bones cracked. Screams. The air pressure in the room eased. Their concentration, like their bones, was broken.
She cut into them again, thrusting forward with the spikes of air that lengthened the reach of her club, bashing open their heads. Blood spattered the room, clinging to the surface of the condensed air she wielded, giving further form to the instruments of death and protection they had battled with. A portion of one of their barriers still stood, protecting the torso of the man nearest her feet. She saw the blood and brain matter of the man’s companion stuck to it. She hammered the man’s knee twice, and the barrier crumbled. The blood and matter dropped to the floor with it.
She pummeled the man’s head until it was unrecognizable. Stepped back. She walked to the third man, the one injured by the initial spike of air. He clutched at his side. She heard him murmuring a litany, saw snaking tendrils of some poisonous creeper plant tunneling up through the boards of the floor. She sliced off the tails of the plant with a buzz of air. Then she crushed the man’s head.
Kalinda dropped her barrier. Para’s misty essence evaporated. She was wheezing hard. Cold sweat soaked her body. She slid to the floor. Sat against the door. The bodies bled out across the living boards. The floor had been shaped by some long-dead tirajista, created to soak up organic matter and allow heat from the thrumming heart of the tree beneath them to flow freely. She watched the boards darken.
And she remembered a time, very long ago, when killing people was as routine to her as birthing them.
Kalinda pushed herself up.
Gian pushed in from the kitchen, her blue bonsa weapon out. “Kalinda!”
“Hush,” Kalinda said. “They’re through. Hurry downstairs and wait for me. I have a few things to gather upstairs.”
“Who are they… were they?”
“The Kai’s,” Kalinda said. “My hope is they were trailing Lilia and didn’t come specifically for us. If the Kai knows we’re here… well. We have far greater concerns. I want Lilia taken to the other side as quickly as possible.”
“She doesn’t want to go.”
“I didn’t want to kill these men,” Kalinda said, “but my only other option was our deaths. She will come around when she realizes what her choices are. Go.”
Gian pounded down the stairs. A good girl, Gian. Kalinda had chosen that one well. It was difficult to keep a gifted girl out of the temple system, but Kalinda had done it and never regretted it. Gian’s loyalty was hers now, not the temples’.
Kalinda walked up the curl of the stair and into her room. Pulled a trunk from beneath her bed. The lock had no key. It had to be removed by force. She used a simple burst of air to break the lock. Inside was her blued weapon: a yellow bonsa branch as long as her arm, infused with the power of Para. An implanted weapon here, in this world, would have given her away. All that remained of the retractable weapon she once wielded was an old, twisted scar on her wrist. She pulled her knotted baldric over her vest and sheathed the weapon. She scratched at the little glass bead embedded on the inside of her arm, reassuring herself it remained intact. The night was cool but not cold, so she left her dog-hair coat. She shed her skirt and pulled on more robust traveling pants, dark as the leather of her baldric.
She had a number of people to speak to and plans that had to be set in motion. It was too early for this kind of fighting, far too early. Nava’s child, Lilia, should have had another decade to prepare. By then, her studies at the temple would have been finished. One more year, and Kalinda would have taken her aside and begun her formal training. She could have revealed everything more slowly – the coming-together of the worlds, and the bitter war on the horizon – but now… all was in ruin.
Kalinda tugged on the pack stored in the trunk and knotted the long ends of it around her torso. She started downstairs quickly. If they went
now, they might be able to make it to the Line station at the Kuallina Stronghold and arrive at the coast by dusk the next day.
She came into the main room.
A blast of air took her off her feet, threw her onto the stairs. She cried out. The pain and shock muddied her reflexes. She reached for the Litany of Breath too late.
Long whips of air pulled her back up. Threw her against the wall again. She saw a splash of blackness across her vision. For a moment, she thought she had lost all sense, because though she knew it was air that held her, she could not see the blue particles of Para’s breath. Whatever power this was, she was blind to it.
A tall, dark man approached her, dressed all in tattered black. He wore a long coat and an expression to match. It had been many years since she last saw a sanisi, but the look he gave her was familiar.
“Neat work you did here,” the sanisi said, walking across the bloodied floor.
Her head ached. She tried to focus. Still, she saw no breath of Para. Poor time for the star to elude her.
“Stop that,” he said. “I’m stronger and better trained, and Oma gives me access to the power of every satellite. You’ll exhaust yourself to no purpose. Where is the girl?”
Saiduan had omajistas, then. Things were progressing very fast indeed. She caught a hint of Para. Drew deep, battered at his barriers. Her concentration faltered. She dropped the litany once, twice, a third time.
“I told you to stop,” the sanisi said.
“This game is bigger than you,” Kalinda said, “played between many different worlds far more powerful than this one. You will lose.”
“She’s just one,” he said. “There are others.”
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 11