“We’re useless until they break the jista defenses!” Otolyn yelled.
Natanial growled. He hated foolish orders and confusion. She was right. Madah had gotten ahead of herself. His mercenaries were going to break and bolt at the next wave of fire; he knew his people weren’t high on the list of those Monshara’s jistas were going to protect.
“Retreat and regroup!” Natanial called.
Otolyn swapped flags and blew into the horn attached to her saddle.
His troops were not dignified or orderly. They simply turned and ran, breaking hard for the winks behind them.
A shrieking above the din of frantic soldiers, the huff of wind and fire. Natanial peered ahead as his soldiers streamed back through the wink all around him. The defensive barrier around the Dhai camp was shrinking, contracting. The ring of defensive fighters moved back with it.
How were they retreating? Where?
Natanial caught a glimpse through the shimmering defensive wall of air, and thought his eyes must be deceiving him.
There was Anavha, moving among the heads of the others – he could not mistake that willowy frame, that long face, and the silky brown hair, so out of place among the black-haired Dhai and Saiduan.
And standing next to Anavha – though it was impossible, as impossible as the blinking quad of satellites in the sky – was Zezili Hasaria.
When the winks appeared, Ahkio saw his moment. He sought out Caisa. There, near to him, as she had always been. He ran from Meyna’s side in all the chaos and reached for Caisa’s hand.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered, urgently.
“Kai, what–”
“Come with me,” he said. “Take my hand. I need you to help me draw out Yisaoh.”
“Catori Yisaoh? Why?”
“Please, Caisa. Trust me one last time.”
Winks were opening all around them. Ahkio scooped up Hasao, as Rhin and Hadaoh were now trapped by the press of fearful people, all pressing together toward the center of camp.
Ahkio looked for Yisaoh. Nodded at her. “Come! Yisaoh, this way!”
He charged through the gap between two winks, heading for the cover of the woodlands. Hasao screamed, the loud, piercing scream of a fearful child. The screaming child and the smoke made him think of the way his mother had screamed when he tried to save her.
The air assaulted him. A blast of it took him off his feet. Yisaoh yelled and tumbled beside him. Caisa reached for Yisaoh to help her up.
Ahkio let the child go; she tottered a few paces and then sat in the brush, still screaming, frozen. The child, at least, would live. Something would outlast him.
Ahkio rounded on Yisaoh before she had time to get up. He hit her on the nose stunning her.
Caisa gasped. “Ahkio!”
“Help me hold her!” Ahkio said.
“But, I–”
“Caisa!”
Caisa ran to him and twisted Yisaoh’s arms behind her back. Yisaoh was strong, and it took the two of them to hold her down.
“You fucking traitor!” Yisaoh screamed at them, and kicked him.
The Tai Mora swarmed forward from the winks, enveloping the camp, oblivious to them behind the main line of winks. Ahkio yanked Yisaoh up. “This is the only way!” he said.
A Tai Mora noticed them, then, blade drawn.
“We surrender!” Ahkio said, raising his hands, releasing Yisaoh. Yisaoh tried to twist away, but Caisa still held her, mouth an open moue, confusion still twisted on her face. “Kirana. I need to see Kirana. I’m her brother. Do you understand?”
The soldier hesitated.
Two more came over. “I’m her brother!” Ahkio insisted. “I have someone she wants!”
Ahkio spotted a woman on a bear, someone with far more authority than this group, and bolted past the soldiers.
“I have Yisaoh!” Ahkio yelled at her. “I have Yisaoh!”
The woman leaned over and took him by the collar. “Where?” the woman said.
Ahkio pointed.
Lilia gestured to Sola. “Go, now. Fast as you can.”
After Sola came the children and their parents, running over in groups of two, three, six.
When they were moving well, without panic, she turned her attention back to the jistas. They were all still rooted at the top of the path leading down to the beach. Kadaan and Roh had shifted only a few paces.
Taigan made his way over to her, but his look was more intense than she had ever seen it.
“There are more omajistas coming,” he said. “I’m holding thirty-seven Songs of Unmaking right now. Whoever they are bringing through is very powerful. I can feel them pushing already.”
“Anavha has a gate,” Lilia said. “I need to figure out… We’ll need to start compressing the circle, falling back to the gate.”
“We can’t let them see where we’re going,” Taigan said. “They will be able to follow.”
“I need every jista we have,” Lilia said. “I can’t leave any of them.”
“Not even me?”
Lilia turned away from him. “Not even you, you fool,” she said, and then, to Maralah, “We need to pull back to the gate! We have a gate!”
“Namia,” Lilia then said. “Go to Zezili. Tell her, fall back. Tighten the circle. You may need to… show her that one. Go, please.”
Namia raised her head, cocked it, sniffed a long moment, then ran in Zezili’s direction.
“Maralah!” Lilia called again. “Pull back to the gate.”
Maralah shook her head, the barest movement. “Move the gate.”
“I can’t, Maralah. He can barely keep it open as it is. It would take too long for him to open–”
“If we pull in these defenses,” Kadaan said, “it will let more of them in. We won’t be able to hold–”
“We won’t have to,” Lilia said. “Pull back quickly. Speed. Speed, all right? We only have speed and surprise. You understand.”
Kadaan looked to Maralah.
Maralah was clearly in pain. The amount of power she was pulling had to be much more than Lilia had ever tried, certainly more than she’d ever attempted without burning herself out. But she moved her chin, once.
“Stages,” Kadaan said to Roh. “Ten paces. Break for one. Ten paces.”
“Start moving to the gate as you pull it,” Lilia said.
Namia returned as Lilia went back to the shimmering gate. Lilia asked, “Is she coming?”
“Unknown,” Namia signed, which didn’t bode well. Zezili had been switching back and forth between speaking Dorinah and Dhai, and it was possible whatever response she’d given Namia had been full of Dorinah curse words that Namia wouldn’t understand.
“She’ll figure it out when the defensive walls move,” Lilia said.
Zezili had not had this much fun in some time. She delighted in the opportunity to boss around the Saiduan, though she was not oblivious to the fact that Maralah had given them leave to listen to her. Some fool had given her a sword, and she held it aloft in her strong right hand, gripping the hilt like the cock of a long-lost lover. She kissed the blade. How had she gone so long trying to murder people with her left hand? This was fucking excellent.
She yelled a lot in Dhai, which she hated, but she knew only three words in Saiduan, and they were all filthy curses. She deployed those liberally, too.
“Everyone with a shield, start a defensive line!” she called, and demonstrated with two Dhai defenders and their paltry shields. She slammed the bottoms of the shields into the dirt, just a pace away from the shimmering air of the defensive wall. “There will be breaches! Cracks! You will murder every fucking thing that breaches! Nothing will get past you! You are the final line!”
Zezili was relieved to see the Saiduan had better weapons. She found she needed to pull the ring of fighters back ten more paces, though, because she did not have enough to make a tight circle right up by the wall. She didn’t like that.
As she pulled them back, she saw a boiling mass of movement
at one of the gates to her left. A woman on a bear shouted something and was pushed into the defensive wall so hard her helmet came off, revealing a tangle of black hair knotted in white ribbons. Gray eyes, a rounded face with a broad nose and narrow jaw. Monshara?
Monshara barked at her troops. Zezili found herself rooted, captivated by the spectacle. Monshara, as if sensing her, raised her head. Their gazes met.
A beat, no more, and then Monshara turned again, yelling at her troops, forcing them to pour around the defensive wall instead of getting stuck back through the gate behind it. She took hold of someone near her bear’s head and bent over.
Zezili thought it was a Tai Mora, but no, she recognized his face, too: Ahkio. Monshara shook him.
How the fuck had Ahkio gotten himself stuck outside the defensive wall?
Namia darted to Zezili’s side and tugged at her sleeve. Zezili shrugged her off and yelled at two soldiers with a break in their shield line.
Namia signed at her again, huffed, and ran off.
Zezili spotted a break in the wall of air and darted over to help the collection of fighters. Six Tai Mora squeezed through, and the line broke up, trying to surround them.
“Hold that fucking line!” Zezili roared in Dorinah, and switched to Dhai as she plunged into the fray, yelling at her line to reform.
She slashed the throat of the nearest Tai Mora and heaved the body onto the one behind. The wall had sealed up again. Zezili hamstrung a heavy man and chopped at his head. Her sword wasn’t sharp enough to sever it, but blood gushed from his jugular, and he fell, tripping up the one behind.
Zezili stabbed the one who’d fallen and landed a palm strike to the woman coming up behind her. A knife glanced off Zezili’s elbow. She knocked the wielder in the chin with her other elbow and dipped forward, stabbing at the fourth attacker just as one of her fighters got a spear into the Tai Mora’s ribs.
When she came up, sword raised across her body, her fighters stood around the little mound of bodies, staring at her.
“What are you looking at?” she demanded. “Reform the line!”
The wall of air behind her knocked into her back. She swore and came forward. The defensive wall was moving.
“Back ten paces!” Zezili shouted. As the fighters moved, she knelt quickly next to the man she’d hacked in the neck and drank a handful of sweet, sweet blood. It felt magnificent going down her throat, like a restorative liquor. She grinned.
As she leapt over the bodies to retreat ahead of the wall with her fighters, she noted the pain in her elbow. Brought it up and regarded it. A long slash in her flesh, gooey. It oozed a pale greenish fluid, thick as old blood. Zezili shivered and looked away.
Whatever the fuck had happened to her, she was going to enjoy the time she had left.
33
Refugees from Lilia’s old camp were passing through the gate now, pouring through to the other side. Lilia knew many of their faces, and found herself still looking for Emlee and Tasia.
Meyna stood just to the other side of the gate, ushering her people through. Lilia caught her gaze; Meyna looked away first. A bruise was forming on her cheek from where Maralah had hit her.
“Where are Ahkio and Yisaoh?” Lilia called, trying to peer at Meyna through the crowd.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I lost them in the panic. Ahkio took up our child and ran. Yisaoh followed. My husband Rhin found Hasao, but said Ahkio and Yisaoh were being led the other way, by… the Tai Mora.”
“Hasao was the child he carried into the camp, as well?”
“My child,” Meyna said. “His and mine. She’s safe.”
The last of the soot-stained refugees made it past them. “You go,” Lilia told Meyna. “The fighters are next.”
Meyna glanced back at the ring of fighters. They had moved in ten paces, and so had the defensive wall. Even as they both watched, the ring of fighters moved in another five paces, and the jistas began making their way to the gate, rapidly.
Meyna nodded and went through. One of her husbands helped her on the other side.
Big Saradyn came up with some fighters. “Go through,” she told him, but he stood rigid, peering at her.
“Go!” she said.
“No ghosts,” he murmured, in Dorinah.
“Please,” Lilia said.
“Impostor,” he said, pointing a large finger at her.
“Who? I’m not… I don’t…” Oh no, Lilia thought, Roh had said the man could tell who was from this world, and who was not. He was far larger than her, muscled and menacing. She had no recourse against him.
“Roh is my friend,” Lilia said. “If he is your friend too, then we can be friends together.”
Saradyn’s eyes narrowed. “Patron-killer,” he said. “Wait.”
Lilia had no idea what he meant, but he turned to watch Roh advancing when he said it.
The fighters streamed past her. Zezili took up a position opposite her at the gate now, yelling at everyone in Dhai to hurry. “When are we going?” Zezili asked her, because of course they would have to go through together.
“After Roh,” she said, glad to see that Saradyn was still distracted. “The jistas. They’ll be able to hold the wall.”
Beside her, Anavha said, “We need to hurry.” The gate wavered, wrinkled and snapped back open, like a blinking eye. One of the fighters lost the end of her spear, which thunked at their feet.
“Go, go!” Lilia urged the last four fighters, and then they were down to the jistas. Maralah, Roh and Kadaan were just steps away. Taigan stood beside Zezili already, muttering something darkly as the surging mass of Tai Mora spilled from the other gates, so many and so fast that they were a living wall of flesh.
“You last,” Lilia said to Taigan. “As soon as you drop, they will cut you all off. Maralah, go.”
Maralah shook her head. Gestured to Roh and Kadaan.
Kadaan grimaced, but took Roh by the sleeve and dipped through the gate. They continued to hold the defensive wall from the other side. As long as they had line of sight–
A burst of air knocked Lilia back. She fell against Namia and grabbed the edge of the gate to right herself. The edges of it were a physical thing, like the frame of a window. Maralah burned up six Tai Mora who had broken through the air wall.
“That’s it!” Maralah said. “Taigan, a burst! Distract and retreat.”
Taigan smiled, one of his delighted and frightening smiles. “Bird,” he said, “go now.”
“Anavha,” Lilia said, “come through with me. Keep it open for them. Can you move and keep it open?”
He nodded.
Lilia took Namia’s hand and stepped through the gate, stumbled. Zezili came after her, and grabbed her arm to help her regain her balance. She went past Roh and Kadaan, still holding their defensive walls through the rent in the world. Lilia reached back for Anavha. Grabbed his hand and encouraged him to come through. The edges of the gate wavered again.
Anavha was through.
Maralah and Taigan blocked the other side of the gate, working a spell in tandem that Lilia could not see, but she could sense. The air on this side was as heavy as the other. The pressure in her ears was so intense it affected her hearing. It was like being underwater.
Of course Taigan despised Maralah, but then, he despised a good many people.
He had also fought beside her for over two decades. Not so long, by his reckoning of time, but long when he considered how many other people he had been forced to put up with for any length of time. When it was just the two of them remaining, facing down twelve open gateways pouring hundreds of Tai Mora at them, well, he had an idea of their choices in such a situation.
She no longer had a ward on him. He could do to her what he liked and walk away, burning through all of these foreign jistas and running off merrily into the woods or swimming endlessly across the sea, if he chose.
Taigan had a long, bitter memory. In this moment, facing the seething hordes of Tai Mora, he was reminded of Aaradua
n, and how the black, slithering plant flesh swarmed the blue walls of the hold, even as the living hold spat and hissed at them. Para, Lord of the Air, had not protected them then. The satellites had abandoned them. The Patron was dead. What were they in this moment, two cursed figures without a country, saving a bunch of pacifist cannibals? To what end?
Maralah tilted her head at him. The air was so heavy it felt like drinking soup.
He snorted at her. Raised his hands. Called for Oma, as much and as quickly as his body allowed.
“Five second delay?” Taigan asked.
“No,” Maralah said. “One hundred paces out, though.”
“That will hurt you.”
“I thought you’d like that.”
“I do.”
They called upon their stars, and wove a deadly burst of power in the air twenty paces out, right up against the wall of air.
Maralah made a sign, most likely to Kadaan, behind them. Taigan recognized it.
Drop the wall.
Taigan released his tangled spell, and braced for the blowback.
A massive blast of heat and air rushed through the wink, sending Taigan and Maralah with it. Lilia didn’t have time to move out of the way. The blast took the nearest of those at the gate off their feet, throwing them ten paces or more away.
Lilia landed in a tangle of others, ears ringing. She pushed her way back to the gate – it was still open. A great crater of fire consumed everything on the other side, but already figures were moving out of it.
“Anavha!” she called, but even to her own ears, her voice was muted, far away.
Anavha was key to everything. Without him they were stuck here, with no time to get back before Para left the sky. How would she manage that? Ships took days, days they did not have, not now.
Lilia stared out at a great rolling horizon; golden fields of grass as far as she could see. She pivoted, taking in the sheer breadth of it. She had never seen so much open space.
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