“What are you so afraid of?” Lilia asked. “I don’t want to be Catori.”
“No, because then you’d have real responsibility,” Yisaoh said. “I worry every day about all these blighted people. You don’t. You see them as pieces on a board.”
“Don’t pretend you aren’t ambitious, Yisaoh. We’ve known each other too long. You’re just worried about Meyna’s child being the legitimate heir to the title of Kai, and not one of yours. Consider Meyna’s child yours anyway. You are married, and you are kin. It’s the same.”
“I hate Meyna. More every day.”
“If the Tai Mora are going to come here for any of us, it won’t be me. It will be you, or Meyna, or Meyna’s child, Hasao.”
“You certainly have a lot of little birds in those temples.”
“You helped choose them,” Lilia said. “I share all my reports with you. The Tai Mora need a Kai to access parts of the temple, the parts they believe will close the way between the worlds. That’s why they keep coming. They won’t stop until they take all three of you, trying to find out which is a legitimate heir the temples will acknowledge.”
“Legitimate heir,” Yisaoh said, grimacing. “Ahkio wasn’t even a legitimate heir. If he was Javia’s son, I’ll eat my own arm.”
“What matters is what the temples think,” Lilia said.
“Divinity is lovely,” Yisaoh said, “but so far I don’t see anything bigger than us, just people like you using divinity to get ahead.”
“There’s something much bigger than us,” Lilia said, pointing overhead. “The sky, and the satellites that inhabit it. If you have any doubt, the proof is there.”
“And in the gift the sky gives you?” Yisaoh said.
“Yes,” Lilia said, though she could not meet Yisaoh’s look. Her stomach ached at the mere mention of her gift. If Yisaoh knew she wasn’t gifted anymore, if any of them found out… Well, she could call on her beribboned supporters, she supposed. But how long would they support her if they knew she had burned herself out, that she was no Faith Ahya reborn, just a scullery drudge tangled up in events far larger than herself?
“Just don’t mess this up,” Yisaoh said. “I got Meyna calmed down, and you making declarations of divinity and power up there isn’t going to help relations.”
Yisaoh gestured to the Dhai assembling in the little gathering space above ground. It was a rare day that so many left the underground camp of old bladder traps connected by a maze of corridors.
“I don’t care that they believe in you,” Yisaoh said. “I’d like them to believe in something. But in turn, you need to believe in me, and Meyna, and you need to work with us, and go along with what we decide.”
“That’s fine,” Lilia said. “I don’t intend to come back from our retaliation.”
“Suicide, then? You really intend to die, trying to hurt the Tai Mora? To keep them rooted here with all the other worlds invading?”
“If I die, I die,” Lilia said. “If I end myself all this will go away, and I’ll take some Tai Mora with me.”
“Fool,” Yisaoh said. “It won’t go away. Only you will. It will all still be here, and you’ll just be some martyr, a story, until that story dies with the rest of us.”
“I’ve made my choice,” Lilia said.
“Doing any real damage to the Tai Mora would take a miracle.”
“It’s Faith Ahya’s ascendance day, Yisaoh,” Lilia said, stepping away from the bonsa tree and toward the funerary tables, careful of the frogs. “It’s a time for miracles.”
4
Daorian, capital of the former empire of Dorinah, was falling, and Natanial found himself inordinately pleased to be a part of it. He wanted to wrap his hands around the throat of the Empress and squeeze the life out of her the way he had squeezed the life out of her daughter. He entertained this fantasy again while sitting on a stinking bear in a cool, drizzling rain while the siege commander yelled at him.
“Head out of your ass, Natanial!” Monshara yelled, smacking the flank of Natanial’s bear with her sword as she worked her way down the line of mercenaries and regular soldiers. Monshara, sturdy as a bear herself, with a mane of hair to match, led the Tai Mora assault on Daorian. She rode up to the front where her six thousand soldiers stood in neat rows, armor a little worse for wear, hair knotted, all in desperate need of a wash.
Natanial scratched at his own scalp; he had shaved his head the week before after a breakout of lice among the squad he led. Most of the hundred or so mercenaries he commanded were from Tordin. Their numbers fluctuated depending on how violent their hangovers or how debilitating their gout. He had gathered them himself after King Saradyn’s disappearance left a power void in Tordin. Civil war broke out within weeks of the collapse of Saradyn’s army. Natanial did not care for any of the people making claims for the country, and left it in search of some nobler battle. The Tai Mora, it turned out, were recruiting fighters to topple Dorinah. Natanial had never liked Dorinah.
“She’s chipper this morning,” said his second, Otolyn, who sat on a scruffy bear at his right. She was a long, lean woman that most assumed was a man; she didn’t correct them. Natanial had only realized it himself when she got to talking about babies of hers back in Tordin, buried in the same grave, all dug by her own hand. She had a good head, a good sword arm, and most importantly, a dry sense of humor.
“Every day is a new day to take down the wall,” Natanial said. “Makes me all warm inside, too.”
“Those sinajistas in there burned half a battalion last time.”
“We’re not here to be heroes.”
“Here she goes,” Otolyn said, gazing after Monshara. “We’ll likely sit this one out.”
Dawn was breaking; the satellite Sina winked at them, a purple blot along the northern horizon, blinkering there next to Oma and Tira. The double helix of the suns skimmed the east, warming the gently rolling hills which still bore charred skin from their razing the autumn before.
Tordin didn’t have many jistas; Natanial didn’t have a single one with him. The mercenary groups like his, spread out all across the rear of the assault, were there as a show of force, and a clean-up crew if the Tai Mora jistas ever breached the wall of the city of Daorian, which hadn’t happened once in the two months Natanial had been making a living out here as a mercenary for the Tai Mora.
“There they go,” Otolyn said.
Monshara’s battalions marched toward the walls of Daorian. Two moved off to flank the left, and two more to flank the right. The main force came from the south. Natanial suspected they meant to hammer at the same stretch of the city wall that had occupied them in the previous foray. Hitting it every day meant the Dorinah had little time to shore it up between assaults.
He sat with Otolyn up on a small embankment, their bears snuffling side by side, enormous forked tongues sniffing the air as they chewed their cud. Behind them were his fighters, a bored lot composed mostly of snot-nosed young men, criminals of all sorts, and women fleeing bad marriages and boring farms back in Tordin.
A flicker of movement from the east drew Natanial’s eye. As he turned, a force broke into his view, raising the bloody eye of Dorinah on their flags. He was so startled he thought for a moment they had come out of thin air. That was entirely possible during these strange times.
Natanial cursed. Monshara’s forces were still engaged at the wall; they had not seen the stealth Dorinah line yet.
“That’s a good thousand,” Otolyn said, shifting in her saddle to crack her neck. The sound made Natanial’s spine tingle.
“Five hundred, maybe,” Natanial said. “It would be impossible to get more in by ship with the Tai Mora blocking the harbor.”
“Well, they did. Maybe they have an omajista opening a wink?”
“Shit.” He gazed up the hill at Monshara’s support camp. Flags there were being raised hastily. A horn sounded. But in the heat of the battle below, no one heard them.
Otolyn yawned. “I could use a skirmish to
stretch my legs,” she said.
“I suppose we should earn our keep now and then,” Natanial said. “Call for an arrow formation on my call.”
Otolyn signaled the flag bearers to give the order. She followed it up with some enthusiastic shouting, which was one of the reasons she was Natanial’s second. She loved a good show, just as he did. There was a collective hiss and mutter of leather and armor, a shifting of melee weapons and snort of bears.
Far across the field, the Dorinah soldiers – bearing long pikes and cudgels – pounded through the mud toward the Tai Mora. Among the tawny, dark-haired Dorinah faces he saw the darker cast and bare scalps of some outer islanders, and suspected these were a force that had been stationed offshore and delivered here very recently. As the force increased its pace, he knew his time for action was running out. He certainly hadn’t come this far to simply witness the outcome.
The Dorinah brought down their pikes, intent on skewering the Tai Mora at the walls.
Natanial gave the order to charge directly into their flank.
Dogs were generally faster than bears over distance, but the Dorinah dogs had been running at pace since they landed on the shore. The Tordinian bears had yet to make their paces today. When the call came, the bears leaped forward, roaring.
Natanial urged his bear to the front of the formation. He hefted his ax. His fighters flared out behind him, keeping loosely to the arrow formation. It had been some time since they’d run one of these, but his formation leaders were all intact, and eager. He saw the anticipation on their faces. Grist for the heavens that churned above, crunching them all into fragments.
The Dorinah saw them move, too late. Their soldiers were already locked into their charge. They could not pivot without chaos. One young woman broke formation and was promptly impaled by the soldier behind her.
Natanial raised his ax. His bear leapt. It swatted the legs out from under the nearest dog.
Natanial’s mercenaries tore into the flank of the Dorinah. All was a twisted mass of bodies and yelping dogs and bears and flailing women in silver-plated armor. Natanial swung the ax using quick, narrow strokes. The Dorinah weren’t ready for close-quarter fighting yet; most had only their pikes. At this range, he could dispatch them quickly.
He tore through gaps in armor, splitting open an arm at the elbow, a neck along the collarbone.
The Dorinah were tough fighters. He had no qualms about cutting their dogs out of from under them. The great animals bit and snapped and snarled. He hacked into the jaw of one and it collapsed, taking its rider with it.
In the confusion, the riders bunched up, so close that many who left their mounts were held aloft by the crush of the others.
Natanial almost lost his seat, but was saved by the same press. He knocked the woman behind him with the butt of his ax to propel himself upright.
A short blade caught him in the back. Nipped shallowly between his shoulder blades. He twisted, catching the woman’s arm. The blow rattled her. She lost her seat and the dagger, and plunged between his bear and her own mount, crushed in the mud and blood below.
The sea of riders began to thin as it broke.
Natanial rode toward the walls of Daorian, chopping at fleeing riders as he went. His mercenaries were already on the ground looting bodies.
He didn’t see what hit him. The blow came from behind, hard enough to knock him clean from his mount. Natanial dropped into the churned-up soil, dazed.
The breath left his body.
He gasped, struggling for purchase.
A rider bore down on him, pike out. He rolled; the pike slipped past his head, so near he felt the breath of it as it rushed by.
Natanial clawed his way up. The rider turned and bore down again. Natanial stumbled among the bodies, looking for a weapon or a distraction. He spied the tip of a pike and yanked it out of the tangled ruin of a dog and rider.
He pivoted, shoving the pike into the muck behind him just as the rider came at him. She tried to pull away, too late.
The dog yelped, impaling itself on the pike.
The rider shot free, thumping into the ground just ahead of Natanial.
Natanial brought up the pike just as another melee of riders came at him. These were a mix of dog and bear riders. He noted the shiny Tai Mora armor, chitinous like the armor of beetles. The Tai Mora were in pursuit, hounding two Dorinah ahead of them – and directly at Natanial.
He stumbled over the woman he’d unseated just as she came up with a knife. Instead of him, she lashed out at the nearest rider, one of her own, and cut the dog’s legs. The dog went down, taking the rest of the animals and riders down behind it.
The tangle of bodies and beasts roiled. One dog, riderless, took off in the direction of the woods. Two of the bears, one with a rider caught in a stirrup and hanging off its left side, ran after it.
The women who remained tussled on the ground. Tai Mora armor at such close quarters hindered movement, and one woman went down immediately under a Dorinah blade.
Natanial slogged toward the remaining Tai Mora, who were now fending off three less well-armed but still formidable Dorinah women. Behind him, his mercenaries were finishing their looting and already withdrawing. He should, too. What was one Tai Mora? There were enough of them.
But he had come here, after all, to murder Dorinah.
Best get to it.
He came up behind one of the Dorinah and swung hard, hacking into her neck. She jerked like a puppet. As she fell the Tai Mora woman met his look, and he realized it was Monshara, the Tai Mora general. Tai Mora did not wear any insignia marking their rank, but he knew her face; she yelled at him often enough.
One of the Dorinah rounded on him. He punched her. She reeled back into her colleague. Monshara dispatched both of them with her weapon.
Monshara stood with him in the bloody wreck of the bodies. They were both breathing hard. Sweat and blood caked her face. She had a bruise darkening one cheek.
“Call the retreat,” Monshara said.
He saw her forces moving away from the wall. He thought the line of Dorinah broken, but he was uncertain of her losses.
Natanial found a loose mount, a bear, and rode back to his company where they were still picking among the bodies and killing any who were slow to die. There was no exchange of prisoners in Tai Mora.
“We’re falling back,” Natanial said.
Otolyn straightened from a body, shaking a silver ring from a severed finger. “Already?”
“Back to camp.”
Otolyn grabbed at the head of a woman cloven almost in two. She carved at its skin even as the other fighters mounted up and headed back toward camp.
“Laine’s balls, Otolyn, let it be,” Natanial said.
Otolyn carved away more skin, making raw, bloody patches, revealing all the meat beneath. Then she stuffed the bloody head into her saddlebag and mounted up.
“War trophy,” she said, grinning. “Lot of power and glory to be found on the field.”
She rode away, leaving Natanial alone among the dead. He hesitated to go after her, as the grinning skull put him in mind of other trophies, like the ones he had collected for King Saradyn. All that death, for nothing. As all this would be, in the end: little of it mattered, in the great scheme of things. But he wanted so desperately for something to matter. Anything.
Perched deep among the dead, he gazed across the dirt and turf churned into mud, thick with blood.
The silence after battle wasn’t truly silence at all; the dying often went on screaming and wailing, clutching at their own split bellies and spilled organs.
A woman lying ten paces from him tried to stuff the glistening mass of her intestines back into the hole in her gut. The viscera, a gleaming reveal of the interior of the body, a secret only to be disclosed in the dark of night, was vaguely sexual, and his belly clenched, tightened by the arousal of battle, the twin powers of life and death.
Someone began to sing, a prayer for the dying, her own aria, an
d that moved him to action. He nudged the bear with his heel. It ceased snuffling at the mangled body underneath its paws and lumbered back toward the staging camp, pausing only to caress the dying with its forked tongue.
5
The funeral guests were a wet, ragged group; only a few hundred of the thousand or so in their camp came topside for the funeral. Too many above ground at once was dangerous. Though the Tai Mora had swept this area before, they often sent out patrols of birds and rangers, and too many people drew both.
The rain continued all through Mohrai’s funerary feast. Lilia sat with Namia, Salifa, Avosta, and a handful of other white-ribboned followers, pressed close to her mentor and fellow healer Emlee. Yisaoh and her family dined at the table opposite, and Lilia noticed that Yisaoh did seem to overly enjoy eating Mohrai’s finger bones.
“She was skinny, that one,” Emlee said, sucking the tiniest bit of marrow from a section of toe. Emlee hunched over the table, hands curled slightly with arthritis. Tirajistas treated the condition once a week, but could not stop the cause of the inflammation, just as they could not cure Lilia’s asthma. Chronic conditions resisted Tira’s embrace. The body rebelled.
“We’re all skinny,” Lilia said.
“Yisaoh going to speak?” Emlee asked, as Mohrai’s closest cousin mounted the platform at the center of the gathering and began to recite from the Book of Oma.
“I don’t think so,” Lilia said. “The less Meyna notices her, the better, I suspect.”
When he was finished, Mohrai’s cousin called on Lilia to speak.
Lilia rose carefully from her seat. Emlee assisted her, and Namia tagged along behind her. A few beribboned Dhai stood when she did, and there was a little hush as Lilia made her way to the dais.
Rain soaked into Lilia’s coat and seeped into her shoes. She took her time getting up onto the dais, and waited two long breaths before she spoke.
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