“Remember,” Lilia said, huffing behind him, “we need to be enough of a distraction to get that chamber clear. If Anavha’s wink draws all the jistas here up there, and if Kirana is still there–”
“Oh, fear not,” Taigan said. “My distraction will be much more… dramatic.”
The fire had also drawn away the guards at the stone bridge leading to the temple. They were halfway to the garrison already.
Taigan strode ahead of Lilia and Zezili, straight for the bridge, already spinning a powerful song to surprise the guards on the other side. He went across the bridge without pausing for them to catch up, though Zezili kept harping at him in Dorinah.
Lilia wanted to distract these people, to cut them off from their stars and hobble them, to buy Anavha and Roh and the others time in the rooms above. But Taigan had other ideas. Hobbling was not enough. Not nearly enough.
The guards inside the temple reached immediately for their respective stars, and six more guards came in behind him from the gardens, shocked at his passing. Taigan cut the jistas off neatly from their stars and immobilized the regular guards with an easy binding song.
“I have a gift for your Empress,” Taigan said as Zezili caught up to him.
“The fuck are you doing?” Zezili said in Dorinah.
He pretended not to understand her.
“She has gotten a good many gifts lately,” the older jista said. “What makes yours special?”
“Do you want to risk angering her now, so close to the end?”
“You can wait in the gaol.”
“We can wait where the guests wait,” Taigan said. “Where is that?”
Lilia finally came through the doorway, breathing hard. She narrowed her eyes at Taigan.
“Guests wait here,” the jista said.
Taigan flicked his wrist, and snapped every bone in her body. She fell to the floor like a broken puppet.
Lilia gasped. “Taigan!”
He set the rest of the guards on fire. They screamed.
Zezili grabbed his shoulder. “What–”
Taigan immobilized her in a neat net of Oma’s breath, spinning a little prison around her to keep her out of his way. She hung just above the floor, spitting and yelling.
“What are you doing? This isn’t the plan!” Lilia said.
Taigan shrugged. “These people murdered my entire country,” he said. “I didn’t think I was terribly upset about it until just this moment.”
“But… what did you tell me about revenge? This is–”
“I am very bad at taking my own advice,” he said, and burned up the next wave of soldiers and jistas coming down the stairs. He set everything on fire that would burn: the tables and chairs in the banquet hall. The doors. The drapes. The occasional wooden or otherwise organic panel. The carvings on the stairs. The portraits.
Lilia choked and gasped behind him, but he had come here to satisfy a very deep craving, and he was far from being sated.
He took the stairs two at a time, burning Tai Mora and Dhai without distinction. It simply did not matter to him. He paused on the third floor, far ahead of Lilia, and sent a tendril of Oma’s breath back down to pick her up. She yelled.
Taigan set her down beside him.
“Murder me too,” she gasped. “Just get it over with. Is that what you’re here for?”
“Not at all,” Taigan said, as the black smoke crept up the stairs. “But if we fail at this little venture, and bird, you have a divine history of failure, I want to ensure I murder as many of these people as I can before the end.”
He kept climbing, sending fire down every corridor, extinguishing the lives of every breathing inhabitant his star’s power could unearth. He marveled that there appeared to be no omajistas in the temple; without one, there were none who could counter him.
“Kirana was as rash as you!” Taigan called down to Lilia. She had paused halfway up the fourth flight of stairs, huffing for breath.
Ah. The smoke, of course. He considered leaving her. Certainly, she knew how to operate the device, but so did Luna. Taigan smirked at that. All this time, he had been searching for a worldbreaker, scouring one continent after another for the right person, for some chosen one, when it turned out all they’d had to do was train one. Oh, the irony. The years of wasted shit and toil.
“She must have all her omajistas engaged in the temple!” he yelled down again.
Could she hear him at all? Who knew? She was surely drowning, gasping for breath, her vision no doubt tunneling out. Oh well.
He turned away to go up the final stair to the Assembly Chamber. How long it had been since he stood there, trying to convince these foolish pacifists that this was all coming, that this was how it would all end.
“None of you listened!” he yelled at Lilia again, but he could not see her anymore. With everyone and everything burning around him, he had no audience to appreciate his work.
Taigan sent a purl of Oma’s breath back for her, tapping along to the rhythm of the crackling flames as he waited for her arrival.
The body he brought up was limp, barely breathing, but alive. He focused his power on her bruised and battered lungs. He eased the smothering inflammation and repaired the oxygen-starved tissue. It was all just so much easier with Oma risen. He felt like the most powerful person in the world.
Lilia gasped and sat up. She clutched at her chest. Stared at Taigan.
“Just this way,” he said brightly, holding out his hand.
“You’re monstrous,” she said.
“I never pretended to be anything else. We are a lovely group of monsters, Lilia, you and me and that construct you call Zezili. One has to be monstrous to do what we are about to do.”
He released the tangle of Oma’s breath that held Zezili immobile in the foyer, assuming that she had yet to die, or that his resurrection of Lilia had also affected her. A curious binding, that one.
Taigan was proven correct as he pushed open the door to the Assembly Chamber and Zezili came barreling up the stairs, yelling at him, hardly winded.
“Did you even look back?” Zezili shouted.
He waved at her. “Good of you to join us. So much confusion down there!”
“Fuck you, you fucking–”
He came up against the parajista barrier inside the door and called to Kadaan, “Would you let us pass? There’s a great deal of burning down here.” All of them appeared to be intact, inside: Anavha and Roh, Kadaan and Saradyn. A strange group of companions, no matter what the sky was doing.
“Thanks to you,” Zezili said.
“You’re welcome,” Taigan said.
“Saradyn,” Roh said. “Grab her and keep her quiet when we drop the barrier.”
Saradyn lumbered to the other side of the room where a woman was pressed against the wall by the barrier.
Taigan had not anticipated her being there. He sighed. “Oh dear.”
Lilia put a hand to her mouth, clearly recognizing Gian immediately.
The barrier dropped.
Lilia was exhausted, her chest still sore. She wanted to murder Taigan where he stood, but when she saw Gian on the other side of the room, she forgot it all for one brilliant moment.
She would know Gian’s face anywhere. The woman who had taken her out to Fasia’s Point on a vain quest to find Lilia’s mother. And again, a different Gian but always the same Gian, in her memory: the Gian whose leg she had mended, whose hair she had brushed and braided, the Gian who loved her when she was no one, nothing, just a filthy, stinking scullery girl. Gian, the lovely face in the dark.
Gian, the one she had lost because of her own terrible choices.
Even as she was overcome, Saradyn picked Gian up and wrapped a big hand around her throat.
“Don’t kill her!” Lilia cried. “Wait, just. Let me think.” Her breath came quickly. “Let her be, just a moment, I–”
“Anavha!” Kadaan said. “It’s time. Lilia! Get back here!”
Anavha raised his hands.
/>
Smoke still poured in from the stairwell and escaped through the shattered hole in the ceiling.
Roh said, “Lilia, come in. I need to block that smoke.”
Anavha’s gate winked into existence. The others jumped through the wink above the table: Maralah first, then Luna, Salifa and the rest.
Salifa immediately ran up to Lilia, white ribbons streaming from her hair. “Are you all right? What’s–”
“Go!” Lilia said, pointing back at the table. “Get in place. I can handle this.”
Salifa winced and retreated.
Taigan chuckled. “She isn’t even the right Gian, bird.”
“Shut your face!” Lilia said. Her hands trembled. The memories tore over her. Gian’s face as she gagged and fell over at the table they had shared while trying to parley with Kirana, so long ago, at Kuallina. The spray of black bile. Gian convulsing, another dead Gian. All dead.
“Not this one!” Lilia said firmly. “Not. One. More.”
Taigan was right. This was another of her overly complicated plans. This wasn’t going to work. She had put them all in danger. She was failing them, just like she had failed Gian. How many more would she sacrifice because she just wanted… to win? To be right?
Gian stared at her, wide-eyed. Lilia crept toward her, hesitant.
“You know me?” Lilia asked.
“I do,” Gian said softly.
“Don’t scream,” Lilia said, “or this big man will harm you. I won’t stop him.”
Gian nodded again.
Lilia said to Saradyn, in Dorinah, “Release her, all right? Just loosen your grip so she can talk.”
Roh called to the others, “Make a circle here around the table. Lilia! We need you and Saradyn! Let her be!”
“How do you know me?” Lilia asked.
“I know your face,” Gian rasped, “as it seems you know mine. Some other you, though. She died.”
“Most versions of me seem to,” Lilia said. She remembered gasping in the foyer and blacking out, left to die for the millionth time by Taigan.
“And me?” Gian asked.
“You’ve died a lot too,” Lilia said. “I’m very tired of watching you die.”
Lilia turned back to the others, who had made a circle around the table.
“Let her go, Saradyn,” Lilia said.
Saradyn grunted, said to Roh, “You say?”
“Lilia, she’ll tell them–” Roh sputtered.
“They can’t follow us,” Lilia said. “They don’t have a Guide or a Kai.”
“Fine,” Roh said. “Do as she says. Just… take that woman’s sword. Lilia, hurry!”
Saradyn took Gian’s sword and shoved her back against the wall, knocking the breath from her.
Lilia made her way to the circle, and stood between Salifa and Taigan.
“Hold hands!” Roh said.
Taigan smirked and took Lilia’s hand on one side, Luna’s on the other. “Are we going to sing religious songs now?”
“All right,” Roh said. “Everyone step onto the ring into the floor, on my mark. Now.” Roh stepped onto the circle of temple flesh in the floor. The others followed. Lilia felt the warmth of the temple’s beating heart beneath her feet.
Nothing happened.
For a long moment no one said anything.
“Well,” Taigan said, “I’m glad I murdered as many of them as possible. This was certainly an excit–”
They fell through the floor.
40
A banging on the door. Kirana shifted in her sleep, pushing away sticky dreams. Shouting. She roused herself and sat bolt upright. Threw off her coverlet. Why did she feel so woozy? Her head ached. Was that the smell of smoke?
Yisaoh wiped at her eyes. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
The door opened.
Kirana let loose her infused weapon. It snapped out of her wrist. She pushed herself up. The flame fly lanterns came alive at all the movement and noise.
Gian stood in the door, panting, one hand pressed against her chest as if she’d been knocked about. “A bunch of Dhai came up here,” she said. “They just came in through the ceiling in the Assembly Chamber and dropped through the floor.”
“And… you’re alive?”
“There’s… a girl with them. I… knew her, in some other life. She was weak. That’s our one advantage. She said only a… Guide, or a Kai could follow them? Does that make any sense to you?”
“Where’s Yivsa?”
“I have no idea. I was alone in the chamber.”
“What were you doing in there?” Kirana released her weapon and tugged on her trousers.
“The children–” Yisaoh said, getting out of bed.
“Stay with them,” Kirana said. The noise had woken Tasia. She was already calling to them from the adjoining room. Kirana rounded on Gian again. “What do you mean, you were the only one there?”
“There wasn’t any other guard. Someone called them away. There’s something happening downstairs.”
“Madness,” Kirana muttered.
When she was dressed, she rushed into the chamber. Broken glass littered the table; a gaping hole had opened in the ceiling. How had she not heard that?
“What…?”
“They used sound barriers,” Gian said. “They had at least one, maybe two parajistas with them. You wouldn’t have heard anything, but you might have a headache from all the air pressure. It blocked the smoke, too.”
“Where the fuck is everyone?” Kirana muttered. Smoke poured in from the stairwell. “What did they burn?”
“Everything, I think,” Gian said. “The fire has cut us off. They’ll need to clear it out before we can get reinforcements up here.”
“We need to leave immediately. Yisaoh! Bring the children!” Kirana darted back into her office.
The children were bleary-eyed and whining. Kirana took Tasia into her arms. Yisaoh took Corina and Moira by the hands.
“I need you to stay close,” Kirana said. “There’s a fire, you understand?”
“Don’t try the stairs,” Gian said. “I can get us out.”
“You?”
“I have some skill with Para,” Gian said. “We can go out the way the others came in.” She pointed at the ceiling.
Kirana exchanged a look with Yisaoh. Smoke continued to fill the chamber.
Gian said, “We are bound, Kirana. Murdering you risks me as well. You wanted to be allies. This is something allies do.”
Kirana took Yisaoh’s hand, and Gian bundled them all up into a puff of air and sent them flying through the tear in the ceiling. The children shrieked, and Kirana held onto them.
Gian brought the group back down on the plateau, just in front of the bridge leading to the temple. The plateau, too, was burning, though the blaze there had been contained to the garrison. Kirana noted a number of parajistas working along the edges of the blaze to contain it.
Gian alighted next to them.
Kirana found Yivsa organizing those fleeing the temple, and asked what had happened.
“A breach,” Yivsa said. “Some omajista.”
“Far more than that,” Yisaoh said. “The Assembly Chamber was breached. Parajistas.”
“Fuck,” Yivsa said. “The omajista was a fucking distraction.”
“The basement. Is Oravan still–”
“Yes, Empress, they’ve remained at their posts. The fire was contained to the upper floors.”
“I need my wife and children moved.”
“Of course. We’re re-housing key personnel at Para’s Temple.”
“Good, fine. Do we have an omajista?”
“Oravan has a wink waiting, here. We sent three people up for you.”
“None of them made it,” Kirana said. “I want to know what happened to my guards. The Assembly Chamber door was open, and six guards missing.”
“We’ll look into it immediately, but it’s highly likely they were drawn downstairs when the fires started, and
the omajista… Well, there are a lot of bodies.”
“I don’t care what other issues we had to deal with,” Kirana said. “The security of this temple was paramount.”
“Yes, Empress.”
Kirana seethed, but knew that yelling at Yivsa in the middle of the crisis wasn’t going to solve anything.
She got her family off to Para’s Temple, and made Yivsa personally escort them to safety. Kirana, for her part, lingered behind with Gian.
When her family was gone, Kirana said, “What were you doing up there?”
“I’d come to see you,” Gian said, “but all the guards were gone. I even knocked at that chamber door. It was already open. They must have had someone on the inside.”
Kirana narrowed her eyes. “What did you want to discuss?”
The double helix of the suns was just beginning to rise, washing the eastern mountains in a warm red glow.
“Progress on the People’s Temple.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“I thought you’d be up.”
Kirana peered at her, but could detect no deception.
“We’re close,” Kirana said, shifting her attention back to the rising suns. “If the Dhai infiltrated the temple, it will have something to do with that. How did they… ah, the boy. He sank himself through the floor here. I wonder…”
“I’ll need to gather my people,” Gian said. “I left them waiting in the gardens.”
“Better that than the banquet hall,” Kirana said, and grimaced again at the smoke rising from the shimmering temple.
She went to the ring on the floor, the raised bit of the temple’s flesh.
“Yivsa?” Kirana asked, toeing the smooth surface. “Where did that soldier put my brother’s body?”
41
Lilia fell heavily down and back, tweaking her left leg. She howled. Pain ran up her knee and through her hip like a dagger. The air was damp. She pushed against the spongy floor, trying to get her bearings. A thin film of water covered the ground, soaking into her clothes. She bumped into someone else in the darkness.
“Light?” Roh’s voice. “Maralah?”
A flicker of orange light brightened the immediate area. Lilia had a sense of a great deal of space, but all she could see in the ball of flame in Maralah’s palm was the outer edges of their group, all tumbled around inside a large greenish circle on the floor that mirrored the one in the Assembly Chamber. The reek of rot and damp permeated everything. Lilia wrinkled her nose.
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 139