The Empress’s people were clicking and muttering and sliding down the hall toward her. The shushing sound grew louder and louder.
Zezili thought she might lose her shit then, just dribble out there behind the throne. Her gut churned so bad she wanted to vomit.
But this was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Some glorious end, fighting impossible odds?
Zezili pushed her daggered hand forward, and stepped out from behind the throne.
43
Maralah had not confined many people to prison. Prison was where a coward put you when they didn’t know what to do with you. If she were in Morsaar’s place, she’d have had herself killed immediately, the way she’d killed Alaar’s heirs and wives and the heirs and wives of the Patron before him. The few she kept alive had to swear fealty to the new Patron within days of the ascension.
But no one asked her to pay fealty. No one came to her.
They locked Maralah in the south tower, with a narrow slit of a window that showed her the sky, three feet higher than she could jump. She spent most of her time sitting at the opposite wall, staring out that window, watching Para move across the sky. It was not a proper gaol – that would have been the lightless passages below. Nor was it some lushly appointed place one would put the loved one of a rival, waiting on a ransom. It appeared to have been a storage room of some sort, hurriedly emptied to accommodate her. She saw scuff marks on the floor, tattered onion skins, and shriveled hasaen tuber stalks scattered across the floor. Someone brought a heavy bear skin up for her the first night. Water and food came up once a day. She expected it would be another sanisi who would look after her, but they simply sent up a slave, a new one each day. They cut a hole in the bottom of the door so they could push it through. The entire affair felt odd, ill-prepared. She had not taken Morsaar for a usurper.
The season dragged on. When she realized they weren’t going to kill her immediately, she planned for a long wait. It was entirely possible, if they kept her alive a few weeks, that they’d keep her alive a few months. And that gave Taigan time to answer the fiery ward she’d used to recall him some time ago.
Maralah measured time by the chill in the air, and the extended amount of daylight in the sky. Low spring came and went, became high spring. She listened to the ice melt, the water drain from the roof. She watched Para circumnavigate the sky each day. She started up a routine. Food came in the early morning. After eating, she went through her defense forms, and then basic sword craft. She napped through the afternoon, then played strategy games with onion skins and shreds of bear fur until dark.
Prison left time for contemplation, which was the worst part of it. If she was not careful, her mind could wander to her fate, or Rajavaa’s, or the country’s. It would lead her to wonder what would happen if they just left her here, abandoned in a cell, while they retreated south to Anjoliaa after all. As the snow melted, she began to wonder if Morsaar meant to stay here and fight, if this was the last stand. But she didn’t think a man who couldn’t even muster up the courage to kill her had the determination to stand fast in front of the greatest and grimmest army the world had ever known. She spent too much time, perhaps, going over her mistakes. When all one had was time, it was inevitable. If she had come up the stairs just a little sooner, before Kadaan killed Alaar, things would be different. If she had sent out Taigan to find omajistas sooner, perhaps… or moved this legion here and that one there during the first assault… or if she had known the tears in the sky for what they were, maybe, she could have prepared better… but those thoughts did not change her situation. They did not free her from the present. They trapped her in the past.
She was not easily lost to ennui, even now. If she was lucky, they would take her out of here eventually instead of forgetting about her and letting her starve to death. Getting taken out and killed seemed like the best possible result. It also meant that the moment she was out, the moment something changed, she would need to move, and quickly, if she wanted a chance at something other than death. She could rely on no one but herself now, and perhaps the possibility of Taigan, unless he was dead already.
So instead of preparing for her eventual starvation, she prepared for the day the door opened. It was the same way she fought the war with the Tai Mora. You fought for the day it was over, but you got there by fighting one battle at a time. In this little cell, the battle she fought each day was against herself, and her own despair.
It was why she was ready the day the cell door finally opened.
“Hands out,” the sanisi said. He was young, not far past twenty. A sanisi did not complete their training until at least twenty-two, but he looked far younger. It wouldn’t surprise her if they were pushing them through training faster, here at the end. Two other sanisi stood behind him. Parajistas, all, if she had a guess. Morsaar wouldn’t risk moving her with anything less, would he?
“Where are we going?” Maralah asked.
“Hands out,” he repeated. The air grew heavy.
She complied. He bound her hands in copper-threaded rope; expensive stuff. Also more difficult to burn through even for a sensitive sinajista, let alone one like her who was in far decline.
The sanisi led her into the hall. She recognized Kovaas and a short, long-faced ataisa named Arakam who had come in with Rajavaa’s force.
That left her Kovaas. “I’m fine with dying, Kovaas,” she said. “But at least have the courage to tell me so.”
He did not look at her.
“Beheading, then?” she said.
He lowered his chin.
She continued marching forward. Beheading wasn’t so bad. There were worse ways to die. It surprised her that Morsaar wanted this to be so public. If she were in charge, she’d have killed someone like her with a squeeze of parajista-controlled air and burned whatever was left. A public killing meant he wanted to make a show of his strength. It was fitting, that after all this she’d be killed by her own army. She’d outlived most sanisi. Many died in battle, or during some power shift like this one. Living to forty-three, outlasting her brother, her child, every relative she’d ever known – that was something. Clutching a win from the jaws of disaster. She smiled grimly.
The younger sanisi led, and Kovaas took up the rear. They descended the long spiral of stairs to the massive courtyard below. It was as they entered the yard, the younger sanisi over the threshold, leaving Maralah and Kovaas, briefly, inside, that Kovaas leaned over and said, “Rajavaa is still alive.”
Maralah stumbled into the light. The days were brilliant now, still cold, but much longer. The double suns were high in the sky, piercing white. Para rode the western sky, a flaming blue brand. The slap of fresh air filled her lungs. She stared out at a great cutting stone in the yard, and a basket of fresh, bloody heads. A cart of bodies. She did not recognize the man at the stone. From the look of his clothes, he was an infantryman, probably one of Morsaar’s.
There were eight more sanisi in the courtyard, two at each door. Maralah thought it a poor use of sanisi, with a Tai Mora army marching for Harajan. At least twenty more regular soldiers lined the parapet overlooking the courtyard. It made her wonder just how many people – how many powerful people – Morsaar planned to kill today, or had already killed. But all she had was Kovaas’s whisper about her brother being alive. It was precious little to go on to understand what was happening, or whether or not Kovaas would back her if she bolted.
Maralah considered herself a fair tactician. Her odds, even with Kovaas, a parajista, were poor. Not unless he’d manufactured some grand escape for her, and she could see no reason for that. She glanced back at him. He avoided her look.
“You going to give me a reason?” she said. “Why now?”
“The Tai Mora are outside,” Kovaas said. “They asked for blood.”
Maralah’s skin prickled. “You all know they’re liars,” she said. “They’ll have us kill ourselves, and then come in to finish the rest. You know these Tai Mora. You know what they are.”
The young s
anisi jerked at her bonds. Maralah headbutted him. He reeled back.
The air grew heavy.
She called for Sina, Lord of the Underworld. Sina’s breath came immediately, too easily for a descendant star, then disappeared. She held it under her skin and set her bonds aflame. She twisted at the copper wire while the rope blazed.
Arrows buzzed past her. She ducked and ran back toward the tower. Tripped. Kovaas threw himself in front of her. Took two arrows to the chest. Then a third.
Maralah hunkered behind his body. Shouted, “You know me! You know what they are! They will turn on you.”
The words felt foolish, even to her desperate ears. More arrows thudded into Kovaas. She needed to move to cover. The air around her grew thick. She flattened herself against the ground, her only defense against a parajista attack.
As sanisi at the doors opposite advanced, she realized what a stupid way this was to die. Beheading was neat and elegant. Dignified. Now she was just a bear cub flushed into a kill hole. Maralah grabbed Kovaas by the back of his trousers and heaved him with her to the door back to her cell. A tangle of air ripped the coat from his body.
She lost her breath. Heaved again. She tumbled back into the tower with Kovaas, and kicked the door shut.
He was still breathing. Blood smeared his mouth. His eyes were wild. A whump of air thundered at the door.
“Poor thing to die for,” she said. “They’ll kill me either way.”
He gaped something at her. Pointed at the ceiling.
She glanced up, saw nothing. “What’s really happening, Kovaas?”
He gulped air, wheezed, “Stargazers. Sina.”
Outside the door, someone cried out.
The air became thick as soup. She gasped and grabbed at Kovaas’s infused blade. She crawled to the door, like swimming.
Outside, the sky was violet-crimson, as if the sea was on fire. Para still hung in the sky, but it had been joined by a second body, eclipsing it – the mangled, irregularly shaped violet body of Sina. Everyone in the courtyard gaped at it; a miraculous happening, even by the standards of their irregular sky. As Maralah watched, Para flickered in the sky, flashed like a coin, and then simply... disappeared, as if blinking out of existence. In its place, Sina blazed a powerful, eerie purple.
Maralah raised her infused blade to the sky and opened herself to Sina. Blue fire crawled around the Para-infused blade. It spat and hissed at her as she forced Sina’s power to subsume that of Para. The blue flames surged, and were overcome with violet mist. Purple heat emanated from the blade.
Maralah laughed, and sang the Song of Unmaking out loud.
44
Roh smelled sulfur. The scent was so odd, so unexpected on the rolling white tundra, that he reined in his bear and stopped. He and Luna had gone north for three days before turning south, trying to shake their pursuers. For a week they had moved across a featureless tundra, eating mostly rice. Roh tried to gag down the fish Luna caught, but his stomach rebelled, and he vomited it all up. They had been plodding so long on this featureless land that he knew his brain was bound to start making things up. Roh thought he might be going mad when he smelled the sulfur.
“Behind us,” Luna said, pointing.
Roh saw a cluster of dark figures coming around a low snow drift. They had not lost their pursuers after all.
“Why do they care about us?” Roh said. “It makes no sense to follow us.”
“The Tai Mora are thorough,” Luna said.
Roh turned his bear forward.
“We should be careful,” Luna said. “That smell–”
Roh’s bear trundled up to what looked like a cliff. Roh halted him, and gazed out over a massive crater so large he could not see its end. In the crater below, roiling pools of bubbling gray water steamed in the frigid air. Tangles of frozen steam glittered on the sides of the crater. Ice coated the branches of scraggly trees like spun sugar.
“Any other way across?” Roh asked, stupidly, because he could see there was not. It stretched on and on, this misty, bubbling crater, like a massive giant had taken a huge bite of the world and left spittle and bile behind.
“I’ve never been out here.” Luna looked over his shoulder again. “They’ll follow.”
Roh slapped his bear. It snorted at him, annoyed, and flicked its tongue, but obeyed, shuffling over the lip of the tundra and onto the pockmarked crater full of pools.
“Are these boiling?” Roh asked.
“Why don’t you test it out?” Luna said.
Roh frowned at him, but it was a fair response. Roh knew he was just making noise. The sound of his own voice was comforting.
Moss and spindly grass grew between the pools, leading Roh to believe the ground, at least, wasn’t as hot as the water.
Roh had never seen water boiling on its own before. “Will it kill us?” he asked
“Not before the Tai Mora,” Luna said.
Roh called Para and came up with nothing. It was like sucking at an empty spoon, expecting warm broth and getting a mouthful of air. He pulled again, mouthing the litany instead of just repeating it silently, and Para bled into him slowly, reluctantly. He held the breath beneath his skin and waited. He glanced behind them again, and counted the figures. Five. How many were parajistas? Surely not all of them. Why send powerful people after two... his mind wrestled with what he was, what Luna was, but he had to look at himself the way they would. He and Luna were just slaves, not sanisi, or diplomats, or anything else useful. He had taken on Ora Almeysia, a powerful tirajista, a woman with a star in decline, and since then he had fought the Tai Mora twice – at the banquet hall in Kuonrada and in Shoratau, and he was still alive. He could get them through this.
“I’d say we should hide,” Luna said, “but there isn’t anywhere to go.”
Roh stared across the bubbling pools. The Tai Mora were gaining, and they would not stop until they caught them. He looked at Luna. Luna knew how to survive here, and he’d been carrying Roh all week. What had Roh done for Luna?
The air pressure increased. Roh pulled on Para again. It came sluggishly. He pulled until he seethed with power, then murmured a litany to place a protective wall around the two of them. He saw a blue ball of brilliant light speed toward them from the Tai Mora. It burst against his defenses.
The dogs barked and circled. Roh struggled to keep control of his while maintaining the barricade.
The Tai Mora yelled, and their dogs came after them at a sprint.
Roh made his decision, though fear boiled in his gut. “Go, Luna.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“Ride! You have the book. Go.”
Luna twisted back and forth between the Tai Mora and Roh.
“If you don’t go I’ll kill you myself. It’s better than what the Tai Mora will do.”
Luna hollered at his dog to run. He slapped its heavy flank and they were off across the boiling crater, the bear loping through the spaces between the massive pools.
Roh turned on the Tai Mora and let loose a tangle of Para’s breath, a dangerous skein of needled air. It moved so fast it would skewer them alive in half a breath.
Something flashed in the sky at his left. He focused on binding his next attack. His first offense crashed into the Tai Mora defenses. They still barreled toward him, weapons snarling from their wrists. He could see their faces now – grim, determined.
He called Para. Nothing.
Roh concentrated harder. He opened himself to the star, and was rewarded with a thin trickle of breath.
The sky flashed again.
A thunderous boom rocked the air, so hard his dog bolted. Roh fell hard on the ground, and lost his breath.
He gazed into the brilliant lavender-blue sky, blinking rapidly. Was he seeing double? There were two stars in the sky, brilliant blue Para and another – a star not due for a year or more, one he had never seen before, but he knew it just the same.
Purple Sina blazed down at him like a bruise.
An
d Para winked out.
It happened so quickly Roh thought he dreamed it. But with Para’s absence in the sky, he also lost his grasp on Para. All he had of Para now was what he held beneath his skin. He held Para’s final breath tightly beneath his skin. He felt it burning him up from the inside. Sina stared balefully down at him, unblinking. One final litany. One left, and then… then he was theirs.
The Tai Mora reined in their dogs. He saw their leering faces, and the slobbering dogs. Roh launched himself up onto one shoulder, rolled over, and reached out to Luna’s fleeing form. He whispered the Litany of Protection, and released it just as a searing fire blazed across his skin. He screamed.
When Roh came back to his senses, he saw a woman stood over him waving her hand. The air tensed, though he saw no blue mist. She called a star he could not see.
She called Sina, the ascendant star.
“Wait!” Roh said. “Wait! I have–” What? What did he have to offer them, but his own death? Dance, he thought, dance the way you always do. “I can prove very useful,” he said. “I was a slave under the Saiduan. Anything is better than being under them. Anything.”
A lie – Kadaan had always been kind – but the idea of slavery, of having his hair cut, his clothing chosen for him, his body pushed and pulled at the will of another, was repulsive enough to add weight to his words. His Saiduan was accented. They must be able to hear it in his voice. But if the Saiduan took him a few years before, he would still have it. It fit his role. He pulled off his hood, showed them his shaved head, and then he pressed his forehead to the warm dirt at their feet, the way Dasai had pressed his head to the floor in front of the Patron.
The woman muttered in that not-Dhai language. Roh lifted his head and watched them talk. The taller woman was on his side. He could see it in her face. But the smallest was leery, and the man wanted him murdered. All it took to know was a look. They weren’t stoic Saiduan. They didn’t fear showing their true faces.
“I’m no threat,” Roh said. He didn’t dare try to draw on Para now. Its absence still hurt. He was trembling, feverish, though from fear or the shock of losing Para, he didn’t know. No one had told him what happened when one’s star descended so suddenly. He should have had months of warning from the stargazers. He felt naked, completely vulnerable, in a way he had not felt since he was a child. Two years of Para’s ascendance was a lifetime for him, the difference between ages thirteen and fifteen. At twelve he had gone from a gangly, spit-upon nobody to a boy with a chance at becoming something more, something extraordinary. Without Para, what was he?
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 89