“You see how it loves us,” the Aaldian captain said, striding up next to Taigan, boots squelching on the membrane of the deck. There was but one pronoun in their language, though the captain used an honorific that indicated they had borne children. Taigan preferred just the one designation; the five genders in Dhai seemed entirely random in their application, and it confused him greatly.
Taigan said, in Aaldian, “It has been a… relatively smooth trip. I did not anticipate that. The Tai Mora have been ruthless with other races, but not Aaldia.”
“The Tai Mora are content to let Aaldians ferry goods,” the captain said. “For now. I suspect that will change when the Tai Mora are no longer starving and gobbling up our excess, moldering goods. We came from another place, of course, during the last cycle of the sky, bringing our ships and keeping closely to ourselves. There’s no race like ours on their world. We pose no hindrance to them coming over.”
“What will you… Will we do to turn them back?” Taigan asked.
The captain smirked. “I know you’re not one of us,” they said. “That glamor can mask your visage, but not your mannerisms, nor your accent. Are you Tai Mora?”
Taigan gave a little shrug.
The captain gazed past him at the crew, busily wetting down the decks with a mix of honey and seawater to feed the ship before letting passengers disembark; the skin absorbed the heady brew in a few moments, and the whole craft shuddered and sighed.
“I had a mind to ask you what’s next,” the captain said, “if you were Tai Mora. What your intentions are with our people. But if you are not Tai Mora, then… I suppose you know as much as anyone else.”
“I couldn’t say what the Tai Mora will do. But I can point to what they have done. Surely their past actions are a great predictor of what the ultimate fate of Aaldia will be.”
“Indeed. I have told many this, but they insist it could be different with us. The Tai Mora have sent emissaries to the Five Monarchs promising peace.”
“As they did with the Dhai, and the Saiduan before them. And here we are.” Taigan gestured to the bustling Tai Mora in the harbor.
“Yes,” the captain said. “But perhaps we should wait and see. Give them a chance.”
Taigan barked a laugh at that. He could not help it. The optimism of the doomed was the same in every country.
The crew put out the rolling tongue of the gangplank, which slopped into place on the pier, and two Tai Mora customs agents squelched aboard the quivering ship.
Taigan pulled on his hat. “Luck to you, then, captain.”
“And to you,” the captain murmured, and went to greet the customs agents.
Taigan waited his turn for interrogation by the agents, joining the little queue of other passengers. During his year of self-imposed exile, Taigan had found there were many more things he could accomplish with Oma in the sky – wonderful and terrible things. The Tai Mora probably had, too. That made this trip interesting.
And, above all else, he craved something interesting.
When he reached the head of the line, he gave the agents his passbook, which he had lifted from some poor Aaldian back in Anjoliaa.
“What is your purpose in Tai Mora?” the older agent asked.
Taigan said, in Tai Mora, “Visiting a man about a dog.”
The agent’s eyes narrowed. Taigan poked at her with a thread of Oma’s breath to ensure she was not some gifted omajista who could see through his illusion. Omajistas were still very rare, even among the Tai Mora, but caution cost him nothing.
He felt no resistance from the agent; she was ungifted. If she thought him suspicious, it had only to do with his attitude, not his glamor.
Taigan descended onto the battered pier, picking his way across algae-smeared bonsa wood planking quivering with small sea worms. It was high tide, the only time when ships as large as the Aaldian one could dock in the harbor. The three moons as well as the satellites – Oma, Tira, and Sina’s shining violet pearl – tugged hard at the oceans. The tides would be worse still when the final satellite, Para, rose. When that would be, Taigan had no answer, though the chatter among the Tai Mora back in Anjoliaa indicated that their stargazers felt its rise was imminent. All of the stories and legends and texts from the breaking of the world – even the mosaic at the top of the Dhai’s Temple of Oma – showed a brief period in which all the satellites would enter the sky. That was the time of the worldbreaking. And here he was, wandering about without a worldbreaker. He had expected far more dramatic things to happen during this momentous time, but without a proper worldbreaker to direct the satellites’ power through one of the great transference engines spoken of in the ancient texts, it was just more of the same: war, famine, disease, genocide, drinking, fucking.
Dull as old boots.
The bustling harbor had but one public tavern – a holdover from the days of the Dhai when the country was underpopulated. Taigan’s desire for a bath outweighed his desire to avoid the press of people. His new sex organs had only lately appeared, and he had changed the way he thought of himself, once again. He could not say he preferred one set of genitals over another, or a full beard over downy fuzz, or the various rages and flushes that came with the surge of new chemicals in his body. It was all set dressing, to him, just his body, ever in flux. But the new organs were tender, and could use a soak.
Taigan pushed into the common room and sized up its clientele in a glance. The Tai Mora were fanatical dealers in flesh; Taigan found that oddly comforting. He knew the rules of flesh. A mix of mostly Dorinah, but some Dhai, had been marked and put into service to their Tai Mora masters. Two such slaves served drinks at the battered length of the bar. They wore red collars, which bore misty tails of Oma’s breath; some warded piece of chattel management, likely. How odd, Taigan thought, that the Tai Mora Kai, the Empress, had chosen to keep some of the Dhai in service instead of murdering them. Perhaps murdering the last few Dhai didn’t matter anymore, as the Tai Mora’s world had already disintegrated behind them. What a kindness, then, if Taigan chose to burn down the tavern after he left it. Do them all a favor.
As he finished paying for a room and a bath, two raised voices caught his attention. A stooped Dhai boy exchanged a few words with an older, elegantly dressed man, who was likely Tai Mora. The boy was most certainly a slave, though he wore no collar, and should have known better than to raise his voice in mixed company. The older man hit him. The boy cringed, apologized, and limped out the door as the elder yelled about obedience. It reminded Taigan of his own youth. His frustrated mentor. Like that boy, Taigan had to adjust to a different fate than the one he had desired. At least, over the last few hundred years, that fate had kept him busy.
The young man’s gait reminded Taigan of someone. Taigan had lived so long that faces often blurred into one another; it didn’t help that all the Dhai looked alike to him. Even the old man was familiar.
Taigan settled into his room – he had requested a single, and paid exorbitantly for it – then enjoyed his bath in the bathing house at the rear of the tavern while the little Dhai slaves laundered his clothes.
As he was getting out of the bath, the boy with the stooped gait entered, carrying fresh towels. The boy averted his gaze as he drew the water in a nearby tub – most likely for his master.
Taigan scrutinized him. The boy was pretty, though he certainly would have been prettier if he put on some weight and had a few days’ rest. Dark circles pooled beneath his eyes, and his hair was lanky and unwashed. The boy noted Taigan staring, and peeked back at him. His eyes widened.
“I was right,” the boy said. “It is you. I knew it. I told Dasai I’d run his bath early, and see if you were still here. To make sure it was you.”
“I know your face,” Taigan said. “Why is that?”
“Are you serious?” the boy whispered, switching to Saiduan. “How could you not remember me? I begged you to take me to Saiduan, to teach me how to fight. You took Lilia instead. And… and you saved my life. You
don’t remember that?”
It came to Taigan, then, that face. “You’re Rohinmey,” Taigan said, “the novice from Oma’s Temple. The one who can see through hazing wards.” Taigan laughed at the memory of the boy scattering yams and rice all over the floor when they first met. “That was a strange year. I suppose I’ll run into more of you as I head south. You Dhai have a strange way of surviving.”
“You’re warded? But I can see–”
Taigan shrugged. “A simple glamor. I suppose it’s a type of hazing ward. I admit I was uncertain whether those with your gift could penetrate them. A good lesson. I will take precautions among very gifted parajistas like you. Or perhaps simply annoying ones.”
“How are you alive?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
“What happened to Lilia? Did you take her to Fasia’s Point? Or Saiduan? Did you leave her in Saiduan?”
“To… where?”
“She hoped to find her mother at Fasia’s Point. It was in the Woodlands, along the sea… The symbol? Oh, it doesn’t matter. It was… a long time ago. I was hoping maybe she got out, before… all this. But the Tai Mora are there now. They’ve unearthed a great temple near Fasia’s Point. Or, rather, pulled one up from the sea.”
“Ah, yes. I remember a trek through the woodlands, to some cocooned forest that stank of the ocean. I caught up with her properly soon after, but she became more trouble than she was worth.”
“Where is she now?”
“I have no idea.”
“What did you do with her?”
“That’s a very sordid tale. Don’t you belong to someone? Surely you have more pressing concerns. Like your own survival. Or your death? I could kill you if you wish. I’m here to murder a great many people.”
The boy’s face darkened. Poor little Dhai. “No,” Roh said. “I intend to live. I’m traveling to Oma’s Temple. I told them I can work the transference engines, the ones that help close the way between the worlds.”
Taigan started. “What’s this? You think you’re some worldbreaker? I can assure you that you aren’t.”
“I told you, we found out how to use the temples, in Saiduan.”
Taigan rolled his eyes. “There’s no worldbreaker. No guide to show us how to close the seams between things. We have only ourselves, now, and our choices.”
“I told you, I found–”
“Good for you. And where is that find of yours, now?”
Roh’s face flushed. He bent his head.
“That’s what I thought.” Taigan found the optimism of slaves wearying. “All lost or taken or destroyed. You know what I wanted to be when I aged? A conqueror. And you, what did you want to be? You wanted to change your fate, yes, I remember. You wanted to be a sanisi. We can’t all get what we’d like. We must act with what we’ve been given. I failed. You failed. Everyone failed. Might as well enjoy ourselves.”
“It’s not too late. You think once the Tai Mora have access to the power of the transference engines inside the temples that all they can do is close the ways between the worlds? The power they could unleash is far worse than that. They could… break the world. Sink continents.”
“Maybe the world needs breaking,” Taigan said.
The door opened, and the old Tai Mora man who’d been arguing with the boy entered. Roh turned his gaze to the floor, and Taigan reached for a towel. The old man gave them both a once-over, then barked at Roh to check the bath water, which was nearly overflowing.
“You should be better to the boy,” Taigan said, in Tai Mora. “These pretty little cannibals have no experience with servitude.”
The old man peered at Taigan, and for a moment he wondered if the man could see through the glamor, but no: he was a sinajista. Taigan could sense that.
“Best he get used to it, then,” the old man said. “As should you. Aaldia is next, you know, once we finish with the Dorinah.”
“What a relief,” Taigan said. “We’ve gotten so tired of self-rule.”
The old man’s shocked look made Taigan smile. Taigan reached forward, hand poised to snap the old man’s neck.
Roh threw himself between them. “No!” he cried.
Taigan laughed. “They have you cowed already,” he said, in Saiduan, and took up his coat. “If you think that old man’s status will protect you, you’re sorely wrong. All of you are going to die. By my hand or some other.”
The old man barked at Roh again, but Taigan was already in the hall. He went upstairs to wait for his laundry. What fools these Dhai were. What a fool he was, to be here to witness it.
He sat on the edge of his bed and gazed at the street below. Why was he here? To kill and maim, certainly, because it sounded like a fine way to spend the end of the world. But what if the boy was right? What if there was still a way forward that didn’t end in destruction? Taigan had been told his whole life that he was special, gifted or cursed; that his inability to die and Oma’s blessing were meant for some greater purpose. But that had come to nothing. He was just an assassin, a sanisi, like any other. If anything, he was simply an abomination, a random result of an infinite number of dice rolls thrown by the gods.
Without Maralah to tug him about as that old man pulled the boy, he had become shiftless. Indecisive. He could not die. Alcohol did not affect him. Poisons worked their way through his system cleanly and efficiently. He had no choice but to live. Maybe he hoped that if he killed enough Tai Mora, one of them would figure out how to kill him.
Encountering the boy had made him question too much. Killing was such an easy solution. He could have snapped that old man’s neck and the boy would have been free. But then what? Then what, indeed. It was what he asked himself, every day.
Taigan called for his laundry. He pulled on the still-wet small clothes and exited the tavern the way he had come. Lashing out at the old man had been foolish. That man could summon a patrol, or worse, and Taigan had spent enough of his years inside prisons – hacked and slashed and murdered over and over – that he did not relish the thought of going back quite yet, not when he had just arrived.
He moved through the press of people: sweat-slick stevedores, a few Aaldian merchants collecting absorbent sums for moldering sacks of grain, and above all, the watchful eye of self-styled Tai Mora “guardians”, an armed and usually gifted force that he had seen in Anjoliaa as well, all clad in long blue tunics, black armbands, and soft bearskin boots. These were different than the soldiers, something new the Tai Mora had created for policing civilian spaces. The guardians were concentrated at the harbor gates, hands folded over infused weapons, which glowed blue, green, and violet. No omajista-infused weapons, Taigan noted.
As he came into the shadow of the great harbor gates, its massive stones bound by living ropes of blue-green vines, a scream sounded behind him.
Taigan stepped back, reflexively. A body tumbled from the sky. It thunked against one of the bulging vines above and landed ten paces ahead of Taigan, nearly crushing one of the guardians. The body came to rest with an odious sound of burst melon, limbs splayed, limp as a discarded marionette.
The body drew the attention of nearby guardians and numerous gawkers, perhaps some hoping to steal a trifle thrown free of the corpse, others just morbidly curious.
Taigan took advantage of the distraction to pass unmolested through the massive bonsa wood gates. He tilted his head up as he did, and saw that bodies in various states of decay swung from great cages hung on either side of the archway. Tatters of flesh still clung to some of the oldest bones. Fresher bodies teemed with flies. The constant sea wind blew away the stench of them. One body lay pressed with its face to the bottom of a cage, eyeball bulging at him. Just skin over bone, most of the hair gone, mouth stretched wide and silent. As he watched, the eyelid fluttered, blinked.
Taigan trailed his hand over a bit of the twining infused tendrils etched into the face of the doors, which also bore charred scars from the Tai Mora assault. The arch of the gateway soared above him, three
hundred paces high, testament to some other civilization, certainly predating the Dhai. The infused tendrils glowed faintly green, and bore an inscription that read, in Dhai: All who receive entrance are welcome, which Taigan found absurdly funny as the bodies above rattled in the wind.
Coming through the other side of the thick walls, which were easily thirty paces or more thick, the babbling of the harbor-goers receding, he wondered if he should be offering his services to these industrious people instead of simply killing them. But did that make him any different than the boy, seeking a master to give him purpose?
He was so very tired of losing.
“If you live long enough,” his mentor had told him when he was a child, “all the worst this world has to offer will happen to you. But live long enough, and all the good things will happen, too.”
If only, Taigan thought. If only.
The sky seethed. Taigan pulled his hat low over his eyes, and entered the kingdom of Tai Mora, still uncertain of his destination, but anticipating a delightfully tumultuous journey.
2
Kirana Javia Garika, Kai of the Tai Mora, Empress of the Known Worlds, and Founder of Novoso Mora had won her decade-long campaign to overtake the mirrored land and bring all but a fraction of her people to safety. She was the most feared sentient being across dozens of worlds.
She had expected that rising to such prominence would make her more cheerful. Instead, it left her anxious and irritable, plagued by dreams of burning worlds that tore away from the blank black canvas of the universe like charred paper, revealing her wife’s face, a face whose flesh bubbled and sloughed away, ruined by the force of a searing volcanic wind billowing from an amber sky.
She shivered now under the double helix of the suns, which sat directly overhead. Kirana squinted and raised her hand to her eyes, peering at the great shivering mass her jistas had raised from the bottom of the ocean just off the northeastern coast of what had once been Dhai.
She stood on a narrow sandbar, five hundred paces from the proper shoreline, joined by one of her stargazing omajistas, Suari, and Madah, her intelligence officer. She had tried to keep the number of people who knew about this operation limited, but there were spies in her temples. Every month her intelligence forces found another traitor and made an example by hanging their bodies up on the harbor gates for all to see. But it had done no good. It wasn’t only captive Dhai and Dorinah who had turned on her, which made it worse. The hungrier her people became, the crueler the choices they had to make here, the more her own people sided with those they had conquered. It was the very worst betrayal, to have saved them all from annihilation only to lose their loyalty in the aftermath.
The Broken Heavens (The Worldbreaker Saga) Page 3