The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus

by Kameron Hurley

  “Are you leaving me money to eat, at least?”

  “The proprietor has been paid in advance for your meals and your room. But only until morning.” She hesitated at the door. Glanced back at her, mouth partly open, as if she wanted to give one last order, one final piercing comment. But she did not. She stepped through the door and left Taigan alone.

  Taigan went back onto the roof. She spent her day watching the sky, and the approach of the Tai Mora army. They were another day, perhaps two, out, but the city was broiling. Some were shoring up their houses, but many more had left. Only the very stupid or the very desperate stayed – the elderly, the infirm, the stubborn. Watching a city preparing for an army was like watching them prepare for a natural disaster, an imminent storm far too big for them to understand.

  She spent the evening in the main tea house playing a game of screes with a very old man whose beard was stark white. She had played screes with Lilia a few times, but it was the first she had seen it in Saiduan. She supposed Anjoliaa, being a port city, was most likely to have picked up the game. The pieces were arranged on a square, checkered board. Twelve white pieces in the middle, twenty-four black pieces arranged around the edges. It was easy to see the lesson in it – the white pieces had to win by outmaneuvering a much larger force that surrounded them on all sides, as if in an ambush. Taigan had had enough of being ambushed, so she played the black pieces, and the old man played the white. She admitted to herself early on that she was not good at the game as the white pieces began to trump hers, one after another. The game was not one of attrition, which she thought was interesting. Instead, the goal for white was to move the tall white Leader piece to one of the corner squares on the board without being overtaken by a black piece. Taigan’s goal was simply to eliminate the Leader piece by boxing it in on all sides with her superior number of black pieces.

  Taigan lost the first game, and the second. As dusk fell and the proprietor came around with some watery soup and weak tea, they began a third game. They were the last two people in the tea house. The old man was another boarder.

  As Taigan sipped her tea and surveyed the board she understood why this was Lilia’s favorite game. It was not about superior numbers, but isolating one piece. If you isolated just one piece, even if it meant sacrificing all of your own pieces, you would win the game. It was all about the Leader piece.

  Taigan nearly dropped her cup. The game. Lilia’s game.

  The realization came over her so suddenly that it made her a little giddy. Without her power, Lilia was just a strategist. A smart strategist would play the game that would best topple the board. She could play white – outnumbered, but sacrificing all to save the Leader piece. That was a good strategy for the Saiduan, it was the game Maralah had tried to play, but it wasn’t very Dhai. If Lilia was playing to win, she would play to put herself next to Kirana. She would box her in. She would play to capture the Leader piece, and watch the rest fall.

  That was the moment Taigan felt the ward that had bound her for over a decade break.

  She let out a huff of air. Spilled her tea. The old man started. The wound on her back went ice cold, then – nothing. She felt no pull, no push, no heavy gauze around her thinking or her gift and the use of it. It was as if she were lighter. Freer.

  Taigan set down her tea. Placed both hands on the table.

  “You will lose the third,” the old man said. His Leader piece was just two places from the corner square.

  Either Maralah was dead, or she had released Taigan voluntarily. Taigan bet on dead, knowing what waited for them outside the gates. But she was not going to waste her newfound freedom finding out.

  She stood. “I concede,” she said.

  The old man grunted. “Poor loser.”

  “I don’t believe in losing,” Taigan said, and went upstairs to find her weapon.

  Maralah gazed out over Anjoliaa from the height of the eastern foothills. Dusk cloaked the valley. Sina was still ascendant, bathing the world in a purple glow as the moons began to rise and dominate the sky. The great satellite was larger than the largest moon, but only just, and it glowed with its own intensity, not the reflection of some other star. She held its power easily beneath her skin, with hardly a thought; the concentration required now that her star was ascendant, with her at the full capacity of her power, was negligible. From this distance she could also see the Tai Mora army on the other side of the city.

  She meant to hold Taigan until morning, giving her a good head start in avoiding her, should she be eager for revenge. In her position, Maralah would have sought vengeance immediately. But as she gazed at the Tai Mora army, her resolve, for the first time in her life, faltered. It was the army they both fought. The army that had come to destroy them.

  Maralah had fought it with everything she had, sacrificing everyone she cared for, even Rajavaa, to its bloody extinction. Now she stood on a hilltop with just thirty families, Kovaas beside her, leading them to some rotten, remote fishing village where she thought they could weather out the rest of the war. She wondered if the Tai Mora would hunt them down and kill them, the way her people had with the Dhai, or forget about them. Once the Tai Mora crossed over, what use was there in murdering her people? None. None at all. But she had some experience with armies used to killing. When the killing ended, one needed to have plenty of other work to keep them occupied, or they’d turn on the civilians. She had seen it a hundred times. She knew what she would do.

  Maralah glanced back at the families on the ridge. They sat in the broad clearing, resting for a few minutes before the next push. They were quiet as ghosts. She and Kovaas had spent the last week putting together this sorry little band of refugees and encouraging them to flee the city. She and Kovaas had found other sanisi in the city, and given them the location of their final destination – a remote fishing village far to the northeast, one of the early settlements routed by the Tai Mora. Why would the Tai Mora return to a place they had already burned out?

  It was a place Maralah knew well, the city her daughter was born in, so many years ago, when she still thought about the future, perhaps too much. She could have ended the pregnancy, but Alaar was… himself on learning of it, and simply assigned her to a remote part of the Empire for a year, at her request. Some days she wondered why she bothered.

  Maralah had not raised her, just left her with some fisher family. She had become a skull dancer in a local city temple to Oma, and died soon after it was overrun by Tai Mora. Maralah had not seen her since she was six months old. She did not miss her, not in the visceral way women often said they missed their children, but some days she missed the idea of her.

  She wondered if that’s all regret was, missing the idea of a thing.

  “Maralah?” Kovaas took her hand.

  She did not pull away.

  54

  Anjoliaa burned black as pitch, as if the Lord of Unmaking had rained fire from the sky.

  Luna smelled it long before ze saw it, but the revelation was still shocking. When ze crested the northern hills, following the broad muddy track of the road past a massive, clawed tree, the smoke seemed to rise up forever.

  Shoratau to Anjoliaa had taken hir five weeks. If high summer had come later, ze would have frozen out there. Shoratau to Harajan nearly ended hir. At one point ze hadn’t eaten for nine days. But the Tai Mora had cut a broad swath of destruction from Harajan to Anjoliaa, and ze was able to pick through what they left behind. Though the armies were hungry, Luna had the advantage of knowing where many people hid their foodstuffs. Homes burned, but the simple root cellars surrounding the remains generally stayed hidden under melting snow and mud. Hir feet were bruised, and ze knew ze’d lost at least a couple of toes. Ze hoped it wasn’t more.

  From this distance Luna saw the tangled ruin of the city stretching on and on, all the way to the harbor. Two tall ships lay smoking there, and ze could see three more sturdy ships in the distance, whether Tai Mora ships or foreign ones assessing the damage, ze was u
ncertain. Anjoliaa was supposed to be the last intact harbor in the south, Luna’s only way off the continent for hundreds of miles. Back in Harajan ze thought ze’d beat the army there by at least a week. But hunger and illness had gotten the best of hir, and that left hir standing here in the muddy tracks of an army that had burned the city below and was now nowhere in sight. Ze saw no camp outside the city, and no movement inside it.

  Luna stopped at the edge of the road. Ze carried a stout walking stick to help steady hir. The frostbitten foot no longer hurt, but made it difficult to walk. The road ze had followed since passing by Kuonrada – also burned out and empty now – went another forty paces ahead, then met a massive sea of muddy tracks at least half a mile wide. The muddy churn flowed from the top of the rise all the way into the city, as if some massive beast or force had plummeted from the sky and onto the hill, then run screaming into the city.

  A warm wind buffeted hir, pushing up from the sea. Ze picked hir way forward. Ze had come too far to stop.

  As ze descended toward the city, ze saw a party of three figures coming from a copse of trees about three quarters of a mile distant. Ze paused to assess them. They looked tall and tattered from here. They didn’t have mounts. Refugees. Ze shifted hir route so ze angled further away from them, heading toward another part of the city. When they shifted their course, too, ze walked a little faster.

  They began to run.

  Fear knotted hir belly. Ze had no cover out here, and only the stick to ward them off. Luna glanced behind hir at the broad, scaly tree ze had passed.

  Luna scrabbled across the muddy ground, making for the tree. Hir pursuers gained. Ze hurried faster.

  They neared. Luna heard the slap of mud. Hir breath sounded loud, so loud. Ze could not feel hir feet. They felt like two wooden blocks at the ends of hir legs, propelling hir forward. If Luna fell ze would break.

  Ze slipped once and found hir balance. Fingers tangled into hir coat. Ze slid out of it. The cool air struck hir. Ze stumbled. Clawed for the tree.

  There were no branches within hir reach. So ze launched hirself at the trunk of the tree and jumped, stretching hir arms and fingers like a bird about to take flight.

  Hir hands found the branch. Ze crawled up. Hir first pursuer grabbed Luna’s shoe. Ze kicked out of it and climbed higher. Luna was smaller, lighter. Ze climbed. Higher and higher, until the slippery yellow branches bent dangerously under hir weight.

  Below hir, hir pursuer had slowed. The two men on the ground yelled encouragement.

  The branch beneath the man bent. He reached for Luna’s bare foot. “Maggot!” the man said.

  Luna kicked the hand away. Crushed his fingers.

  The man lost his balance.

  The branch snapped. He pinwheeled his arms and fell.

  He fell with a bloody thump to the ground below. His companions went to him, calling, “Rasaa, Rasaa!”

  His leg was bent unnaturally beneath him. Luna saw the broken white bone poking up through his knee.

  The two men gazed up at Luna. One yelled, “We’re coming back and burning you out, maggot!”

  One of the men went off, back toward the burning city. That worried Luna more than anything, because it meant there were more than three men. They most likely meant to sell hir, after they did whatever it was with hir that amused them. Now that one of them was injured, they would be angrier, and Luna knew all about what angry people did to those they had power over.

  Luna listened to the man wailing below. He wailed for a long time. The sun moved across the sky, low. The days lasted much longer now; if ze was further north, it wouldn’t truly get dark, just fade to dusk for a few hours each day. Winter in Saiduan. Ze wondered if ze would ever see one again.

  Hir thoughts drifted. Roh yelling, face perfect and beautiful, even pinched in hunger, hair greasy after weeks without washing. Brave, confident, yes, but confidence that made him so very stupid. He had never been owned. He didn’t know what he was giving up. Pressing the book into Luna’s hands. Wide eyes, and fear, yes, but the confidence was still there, the belief that death was for other people, not for him.

  Luna’s heart hurt.

  The tree shook.

  Luna jerked hir head up, realizing with a surge of icy fear that ze had started to nod off. Hir arms and shoulders hurt; hir legs ached. The two men were still there. The uninjured one had settled against the trunk. He no longer looked up at Luna, but out toward the city where his friend had gone.

  Luna huffed out a little breath. Ze gazed down the length of the trunk, and found a clear path through the bare branches to the man’s head, thirty feet below. Luna took one stiff arm away from the tree trunk and grabbed the utility knife at hir belt. Hesitated. If ze waited until dark, the man might bed down under the tree, giving hir a greater chance of stabbing him somewhere vital instead of just angering him. But his friend might return by then.

  Ze pulled the knife. Got a line of sight on the man’s head. Ze began to uncurl from the tree, shifting as quietly as ze could.

  Falling was going to hurt.

  Luna dropped the knife.

  In the next breath, ze released hirself from the tree trunk and fell after it.

  Ze banged into branch after branch, slipped and slid, hanging just long enough at each level to break hir fall. The man below shouted.

  Luna landed on him. Luna grabbed the man around the neck with both arms and squeezed. Ze put hir legs around the man’s torso. Hung tight.

  The man roared. Blood gushed from a wound on his head. The knife had grazed his skull. Luna saw the knife in the grass and squeezed harder. The man was bigger, stronger, but like Luna, he was hungrier and leaner than he should be, tired, and Luna had the advantage of surprise.

  Ze held on. Whenever the man breathed out, Luna gripped tighter. The man clawed at Luna’s arms. Smacked hir into the tree. Luna leaned forward, over the man’s shoulder, so he couldn’t hit Luna’s head against the tree.

  The man stumbled. Fell to his knees.

  Squeeze. Hold on.

  Do you want to be someone’s flesh again, bound to another?

  Squeeze.

  The man’s fingers found the knife.

  Luna felt hot, sharp pain in hir left shoulder. Ze turned his face away, to the right.

  Squeeze.

  Luna saw a vein on his shorn head throbbing, throbbing. Heard the wheezing. Pulled tighter.

  The man collapsed.

  Still, Luna hung on.

  Ze held the man tight while he twitched, held him close until the fight left his body, the muscles relaxed, until the man became meat.

  Luna released him. Hir arms were stiff. Ze rolled off the body. Grabbed and sheathed the knife. Ze crawled a good distance from the body and caught hir breath. The injured man lay another few paces away. He had shouted himself hoarse, and now lay silent. If he dared move, the ruined leg beneath him would shift.

  Leave him or kill him?

  Luna pulled the coat from the body and replaced hir own with it, though it was much too big. Ze used the man’s belt to knot it securely around hir. Took the man’s pack. Found some food, fire-making tools, more than ze had owned in weeks.

  As ze threw the pack over hir shoulder, ze heard a muffled thumping behind hir, and turned just in time to see the dark form of a bear rider cresting up over the rise.

  Luna ran the other direction, away from Anjoliaa and up the coast. Ze might lose him in the trees there, ze might–

  Luna tripped. Fell headfirst on the muddy ground. Mud filled hir nose and mouth.

  The rider caught hir by the collar of the massive coat and pulled hir up.

  Luna yanked out the knife, and waved it at him.

  “Luna?”

  The rider was tall and lean, hair butchered to shoulder length, knotted against his scalp in braids. He wore a long black tunic and leather trousers under a dog hair coat. Luna hardly recognized him, even swinging from his grip.

  “…Kadaan?” Luna whispered.

  “Where
is Roh?”

  Kadaan lowered Luna to the ground. Luna panicked. Would he leave Luna here, if Roh wasn’t with hir?

  “The Tai Mora have him,” Luna said. “He told me to bring the book to Dhai.”

  “The book? You lost Roh, but not the book?”

  Luna started to pull off the too-big coat.

  “Don’t,” Kadaan said. He glanced back at the dead and injured men near the tree. “Their friend is just behind me, with three more. Pushed into a tavern saying he had a Dhai up a tree, maybe a Tai Mora. They will eat you if you stay.”

  “How did–”

  “Come with me.”

  Luna bent at the knee, and made an awkward attempt at the two-fingered salute of subservience.

  Kadaan caught hir up again, and pulled hir up on the bear behind him. “No time for that,” he said.

  Kadaan circled the bear around the other side of the tree and took off toward the coast. They rode all the way to the beach, where the sea had carved out great caves. Luna saw people down on the beach. When the walkers caught sight of them, they scurried back into the caves.

  “Who are they?” Luna asked.

  “Refugees from the city. A few were able to flee ahead of the army.”

  “Were you here?”

  “No, I was staying in the city. What is left of it.”

  “How did you know–”

  “I put out word I was looking for two Dhai traveling from the north. One of my runners said a man burst into a tavern saying he had a Tai Mora up a tree. I believed that highly unlikely.”

  “Are there no Tai Mora in the city? Where did they go?”

  “They used gates,” Kadaan said.

  “This far south?”

  “Oma is rising. I suspect they can do what they want, now. Who knows where the army is, now?”

  “Why did you wait, Kadaan?”

  He did not answer.

  “There’s no use going into the city,” Kadaan said. “I heard Aaldian and Tordin ships have come by this beach the last two nights.”

  “Payment?”

  “Expensive, but not set. They’ll take whatever we have of value.”