“Don’t tell me you’re becoming as paranoid as Nasaka.”
“I’m just worried,” Liaro said. He bunched up his bedsheets in his fists.
“Because you care for her?”
“We’d have been a merry union in another life,” Liaro said, “me and you, Meyna and Caisa.”
“You never liked Meyna.”
“I didn’t dislike her.”
“Let me worry about Caisa,” Ahkio said. “I’m good at it.”
Liaro waved a hand. “Fine, fine. Read. It’s been one person after another jabbering away in here, asking when I’ll be ready for cards and bendar.”
Ahkio turned to the last story in Kirana’s book, titled Faythe. It was the story he heard at every Festival of Oma. He should have known it by heart. But as he read the story to Liaro, he found it was not at all the story he remembered. In this version, Faith was a slave from Aaldia. The child she carried was not Hahko’s but an enslaved Dhai condemned for thievery in a dajian camp. Faith was not strong and brave and passionate. She was petty and weak and self-serving. The book made Faith into a figure of pity, not worship. Ahkio did not know if he liked it, and could not say if Liaro did, for he had fallen asleep.
Faith lay in childbed to give birth to the first Kai of Dhai. But when Hahko burst in, it was not to claim her child and free her, but to steal the child and proclaim it Kai. Ahkio decided that no, he really didn’t like this story.
At the end of the last page of the book, Faith Ahya was still alive.
And though Ahkio had read the story, he was not certain how it would end. He would remain forever uncertain, because the last page of the book, the page following the broken sentence at the end of the final, intact page, recorder of the last days of Faith Ahya, had been torn out.
He had used it as kindling to light the fire that drove back the shadows.
After Liaro was asleep, Ahkio made his way back to the clan square, where the last of the Oras and militia Ghrasia had sent out to net the assassins had returned. They had sent out over a hundred Oras and militia, but he counted scarcely twenty in the square.
Ghrasia stood talking with the group’s leader, a grizzled militia man named Farosi Sana Nako.
“Is this all?” Ahkio asked.
“Afraid so,” Ghrasia said.
“And the assassins?”
“Here,” Farosi said, and pulled back the cover on a cart. Ahkio counted five bodies.
“The full dozen, then,” Ahkio said.
“At a great cost,” Farosi said.
“Walk with me, Kai,” Ghrasia said. She led him across the courtyard and onto a winding lane leading out to the rice fields. He kept his hands in his pockets.
As they walked, he noticed the sightless, feral little girl trailing after them along the weed-tangled road. He hadn’t asked Ghrasia if the girl followed her all the time, but he suspected that unless she was inside a building, the girl was always within shouting distance.
“You were right,” Ghrasia said.
“About what?”
“Me lording over the militia,” she said. “Those assassins did what they did out of blind obedience to their Kai. They made things like that.” She nodded to the feral girl. “And if they’re what we’ll fight… I’d rather we lost than become as they are.”
Ahkio stopped walking. She came up beside him. “What is it?” she said.
“You know this was the easiest part,” he said.
“May I touch you, Kai?”
“Always,” he said.
She put her arms around him. Her head rested just above his heart.
“I know it will get more difficult,” she said. “Just swear to me you’ll keep us the people we are.”
“I swear it,” he said. But even as he spoke the words, he remembered standing over the dying man in the blazing council house basement, ready to impale him with his own blade.
“Then it will be all right,” she said, and pulled away.
50
Lilia swept into Emlee’s house, her bleeding hands wrapped in strips of her tattered red tunic. Gian jumped up from the floor and embraced her. Lilia had missed the smell of her hair.
“You’re alive!” Gian said.
Taigan pushed in behind Lilia. He was much too tall for the low ceiling and had to duck.
“What happened out there?” Emlee said.
“I need to see Larn’s priest, the one she gets all those nice things from,” Lilia said. “The ones who are new to camp. The ones you keep on the side of camp you won’t take me.”
Emlee and Cora exchanged a look.
“I’m going to find them with or without you,” Lilia said.
Cora handed her baby over to Emlee. He fussed.
“I’ll take you,” Cora said, “but I don’t know what you’d want with him. Him and his priestesses are a secretive bunch. Larn has to–”
“I know what Larn does,” Lilia said. “Take me to them.”
Cora looked up at Taigan. “Him, too?”
“Yes… him, too.”
Lilia asked one of the orphan packs to guard Taigan’s bear. They would make enough of a stir without the bear.
Cora led them through deep mud, around dark hovels stained in smoke, to the far edge of the camp. She pointed to a large round hovel thatched in everpine and mud. “That’s the place,” she said.
Lilia strode toward the door. Taigan stayed silent.
She entered unbidden. It was dim inside, but she could see the women’s seamed faces, their broad frames and hands. An adenoak staff with a jeweled knob at the end rested near the door.
All talk ceased as Lilia entered. Someone pulled back a curtain at the other side of the room. Larn was lit in profile, sitting up thin and disheveled in the bed.
The man who had pulled back the curtain stared at her with dark eyes in a very Dorinah face.
“Who are you?” the man said.
“They’re gifted,” Taigan said.
“Dorinah’s gifted,” Lilia said. “Soon to be my gifted.”
The faces of the Empress of Dorinah’s Seekers stared out at her. “What are your names?” Lilia asked. They told her: Voralyn, Amelia, Laralyn. Their leader – they called her a Ryyi – was Tulana. Tulana sat on a raised bench on the other side of the room, combing out her hair. Their clothes were tatters, their faces smeared in grime.
“And you?” Lilia asked the man.
“Sokai,” he said.
“Zezili says hello,” Lilia said. “And you’re all going to help me. You’re going to bind yourself to me, and you’re going to come back to Dhai with me.”
There was nervous laughter.
But Tulana did not smile. Lilia saw a soft red mist begin to suffuse the woman’s body.
Lilia pushed out her hands, throwing her own web of red mist. She bound a skein of Oma’s breath around the woman, cutting her off from the satellite.
Tulana’s face paled.
Taigan nodded. “That was very good,” he said.
“So, you have omajistas too,” Lilia said. She kept the woven breath that held Tulana taut. In the back of her mind, she recited the Saiduan Song of Binding.
“I am many things,” Tulana said. “Dangerous enough for my own Empress to try to kill me, in fact.”
“I can promise I won’t kill you,” Lilia said. “But if you don’t go with me, you’ll die here. They have omajistas outside, much more powerful than you or me. They’re going to burn us out. They’ll come looking for you. But I can get you into Dhai. I can get you over the wall.”
“No one gets over the wall,” Tulana said. “You could force it, but–”
“No,” Lilia said. “Listen.”
And she told them her plan.
They stared at her in stunned silence. Only Gian laughed.
“You have grown bold,” Taigan said.
“No bolder than a sanisi who pushed me off a cliff,” Lilia said sharply.
“They will pound us against the wall,” Tulana said. “They will
slaughter us like boars.”
“They’ll do that anyway,” Lilia said. “Yes or no?”
“You get us through that wall… then yes.”
“Taigan, can you bind them to their word? Can you bind them in blood?”
“What?” Tulana said.
“You can’t–” Voralyn spat.
“This is not–” Sokai said.
Lilia’s voice rose. “You will bind yourselves in blood, or we’re done.”
“No,” Tulana said.
So Lilia left them.
Taigan followed after her, said, “What are you trying to do, raise some kind of army?”
“They’ll come,” Lilia said with conviction. No one opened the gates of Liona, she knew. To get home, she needed to do something extraordinary.
Lilia went to the meeting house at the center of the camp. She took the stage. The whole camp was already abuzz with what had happened at the gates. They had begun to collect in the meeting house.
“I’m leaving for the pass,” Lilia said loudly.
“You’re mad!” someone yelled back.
“Maybe so,” Lilia shouted at him. “Maybe so! Listen, I’m going. If you stay here, you’re dead. I cannot protect you like I did yesterday. You understand? We’re going home, or not at all.”
“It’s not our home!” someone else said.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Lilia said. “It’s the home of every Dhai. They will open those gates to you as your kin. I swear my life on it. Will you join me or burn here?”
She tried to jump off the stage, but her bad leg made it difficult. Taigan offered his hand. Lilia took it. They walked back to Emlee’s house. Lilia announced she was leaving.
“I have known no other home but this,” Emlee said. “I will not smash myself against your wall.”
“It’s different this time,” Lilia said.
“Why?”
“Because you have me.”
“You are powerful, girl, but you aren’t a god.”
“We’ll see about that,” Lilia said.
Lilia held out her hand to Gian. Gian took it.
“Are you with me?” Lilia asked.
“Yes,” Gian said.
People collected behind them as they made their way to the western gate. Hungry people. Big women and thin old men, and the orphans, some of them almost adults, but most of them young and small and scared.
Lilia waited until the dusk came and she was certain no one else was coming.
And as Taigan approached the gate to open it, Lilia saw Tulana stepping from the crowd of houses. Amelia, Voralyn, and Laralyn walked behind her. Sokai took up the rear of their procession.
Lilia glanced over at Taigan. Taigan popped the lock with a simple burst of air.
Lilia and Gian went through. The others followed.
The western gate was unguarded. Most of the legionnaires had withdrawn.
They walked all night, hungry and cold, stopping to collect hasaen tubers as they went. Lilia had not eaten a full meal in some time, and she was light-headed. The stronghold was a two-day walk. She was glad then of the small group. They would have moved more slowly with the others.
Taigan trotted back up behind Lilia and Gian. They led the column of ragged Dhais and dajians and Seekers.
“There are more following,” he said.
“Who?” Lilia asked.
“There’s smoke to the east,” he said. “They’ve burned the camps. There are surviving Dhais following.”
“And legionnaires?” Lilia asked.
“Not yet,” he said, “but they will come.”
They pushed on.
Night found them inside the mouth of the pass. At its widest point, the pass was nearly a mile across. Lilia knew it tapered to its narrowest point at Liona, two hundred yards across.
The trees became shorter, the path steeper. Finding a comfortable place to sleep that night was impossible. Lilia slept from sheer exhaustion and woke cramped and aching, her body pressed to Gian’s. She was so cold, she didn’t think her body could move, let alone stand, but she got up. Her body sometimes amazed her. She could keep going long after she couldn’t.
At midmorning, the first of the later refugees caught up with them. Lilia recognized Pherl, the man with yaws whose nose was still a gaping hole, though some of the flesh had grown back over his missing upper jaw. His sisters were with him, Sazhina and Tal, Tal trailing behind, carrying her child. Someone else’s child clung to her apron strings. Their faces were smeared with soot.
“What happened?” Lilia asked Sazhina.
“The legionnaires came,” Sazhina said. “Sent fire first. They came in under the smoke.”
Lilia saw the lights of Liona long after dark. She didn’t know what time it was. The night was clear and cold. The moons were brilliant. They lit the rugged pass in a garish light. The lights of the stronghold glinted from behind the massive wall, a crown of square turrets topped in toothy parapets. The wall itself, even from so far away, was imposing.
As they neared, Lilia realized how big the wall was. Just one stone was as tall as she was. The beaten dirt road they traveled upon broke itself against a small gateway just tall enough for someone Lilia’s height to enter. It was not a wall meant to be breached. It was not a wall for idle travelers.
The steps of the refugees slowed as they approached the wall. Lilia stilled a dozen yards from it and gazed up. The height was staggering. Three hundred feet tall, easily. She could just make out dark figures patrolling the top.
Her resolve trembled.
“Tears of the goddess,” Gian said. “You don’t mean to get us through that?”
“At dawn,” Taigan said.
Lilia looked behind them. More ragged figures trailed after them in the moons’ light, far more than had begun the journey. And there would be legionnaires behind them. Soon.
“Where are the Seekers?” Lilia said. “We have to do this now.”
Tal sent the child at her apron to look for the Seekers.
The girl brought back Tulana and Sokai and the others.
“Are you ready, dajian?” Tulana asked.
“Take off your coats,” Taigan said.
Lilia watched the Seekers line up with their naked backs to Lilia and Taigan. Voralyn was cursing. Tulana’s face was unreadable. Amelia cried. For a moment, just a moment, Lilia felt sorry for them.
Taigan saw Lilia watching them, said softly, “Would you like to cut?”
“Yes,” Lilia said. “What’s the mark I put in?”
“Your name,” Taigan said.
“My name,” Lilia said. “Of course. Like the boy with the stone. Names have the most power.”
Lilia cut three neat Dhai characters into each of them, between their shoulder blades.
Taigan said to Tulana, “Do you swear to remain loyal to Lilia Sona of Dhai, to aid her in every way, to keep all oaths and promises, to not deal falsely with her or her kin or play her false at pain of a death at your own hand?”
“I swear,” Tulana hissed.
The others swore and were cut. The air around them was heavy, electric. Lilia could not tell if any of them were working against Taigan, trying to unbind the flesh and blood Taigan manipulated to bind their bodies to their words. If they did, Taigan said nothing of it, and Lilia saw no red mist massing around Tulana. Lilia watched the way Taigan braided the red mist so she could replicate the ward in the future. It was an intricate thing, like a piece of prose poetry set to music.
When Taigan finished, Gian cleaned their wounds.
Lilia sat awake with Taigan on a mass of rough-cut stones. They gazed up the height of the wall. Taigan passed her a pipe of sen leaves. She took a few puffs, choked on the smoke, handed it back.
They sat in silence for a long time. Finally, Lilia asked, “Why did you come back for me? You left me to die, Taigan.”
“I wanted your opinion on the battle at Roasandara, the one fought two thousand years ago,” he said.
Laug
hter bubbled up. Lilia choked on it. She laughed so hard, she doubled over. Tears streamed down her face.
Taigan said, “Should I pound your back? Are you dying?”
His serious tone made Lilia laugh harder. She remembered being broken at the bottom of the ravine, the karoi pecking her apart, piece by piece. She thought of the dead child severed by the gate, the burning legionnaires, the burst mirror, and how she had killed her own mother.
“If you wanted my opinion on a battle,” she said, “you should have turned around sooner.”
“No,” Taigan said. “I came back for you at just the right time.”
51
Zezili was getting happily drunk when the world exploded.
She supposed she should have expected who it would be shaking her awake the next morning while she slept off the drink and violence of the night before in the cold, crooked roots of a tree stump.
She rubbed her gummy eyes and saw Monshara standing above her. “You’re predictable, at least,” Monshara said. “You want to go in chains back to your Empress, or take a dog and walk in on your own two feet?”
Zezili gazed up at the rotten sky of Monshara’s world. “It was worth it,” she said.
“We’ll see,” Monshara said.
By the time Zezili was delivered back to her own world, put back into her proper clothes, and escorted back to Daorian by Monshara and two of her omajistas, Daorian was already wreathed in red, the color of mourning. Great red banners flanked the tower gates, the spires of the distant keep. The city people had put out red kerchiefs in their windows, hung them from the snow-heavy awnings of their shops. Zezili wondered who died. Then wondered if it was supposed to be her.
People knew her by her armor, the plaited skirt knotted with the hair of dajians, the image of Rhea holding a sword over a dead bear etched into the breastplate, outlined in flaking silver. Her helm had no plume, ending instead in a curve of metal like a snake’s tail. The people came out to see her, muttered about her on their doorsteps, pointed. Some saw her and hid. Two old women made a ward against evil as she passed. It told Zezili something of the Empress’s silent ambiguity regarding her station that they did not spit at Zezili or curse her. It helped that Monshara hadn’t bound her.
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 47