“I can’t believe you would forgive what’s been done,” Kirana said. “I wouldn’t.”
“We are very different,” he said. “I see what continuing down this road will do to us. To you, and to me, and the people I still lead. We simply want you to release the people you have here, and let us all go. You never have to see any of us again.”
“We need the slaves here,” Kirana said, “for another season yet.”
“Then let us work as equals, not slaves.”
“And murder us all in our beds? No. I am not a fool, Ahkio. Not like you. Tell me, what were you all doing out there, trying to run away?”
“To build a new life, yes. Catori Meyna and I were working with the Saiduan to find peace. I wanted to ensure they would be safe on those boats before I came to you, but… then you arrived. What I want to know is how you got word we would be there.”
“Magic,” Kirana said. “I’m sure you can appreciate that.”
“I want to stop all of this,” he said. “It’s gone on too long and I can’t watch any more of my people die. I can be the person who holds out their hand to you. All you have to do is take it.”
Ahkio held out his hand. It trembled, just a bit, and he worked hard to still it.
Kirana stared at his proffered hand. “I don’t remember peace,” she said. “The world was dying from the time I was born. I knew what had to be done.”
“I understand,” Ahkio said.
“Do you?” she said. “No, you couldn’t. You don’t know what it is to have a world dying around you, and your family trapped on the other side. You don’t know what it is to have to become everything you despise to save your people. You don’t know–”
“On the contrary,” Ahkio said. “I know very well what it is to compromise one’s principles. I know about difficult choices. I am here, Kirana. I’ve betrayed my own people to give you want you want. I’ve sacrificed one of my own so you can save your wife, your Yisaoh. And in return, a family has lost a daughter, a sister, a lover, here. Take my hand, Kirana. Please. Let’s end this.”
35
Kirana saw his hand shaking, and she knew it was with fear. In that moment, she admired him: this simple, naive young man who was clearly much braver than her own brother had been. She stared at his burned hands, wondering what he had done to them on this world, in his time. She was caught, again, in that terrible limbo between this reality and the other, one world and the next.
“Let me tell you about my brother,” Kirana said, and he lowered his hand a fraction. “You know what I did to my brother? I used him as a pawn. I sacrificed him in front of your birth mother, Nasaka, so she could see how serious I was in my intentions. My own mother does not know that. Nor does our Nasaka, because of course, I had to kill her very early in the conflict. She was scheming and far too powerful, just like yours.”
Ahkio pulled his hand away. “I suspected you had something very awful over her.”
“Oh, she wanted power,” Kirana said. “Make no mistake. But she did try to protect you, and that’s more than I’ve done, on my world or this one. There was no path to peace, here, for your people and mine. Only the end of your people. Always.”
“There is time to change your mind,” he said. “While we are alive, there is always time, Kirana.”
Kirana felt a tug toward him. Ahkio had always been so naive, but his naivety was honestly touching. She took a step forward and gently took his hand.
His palms were soft, just like her Ahkio, but unlike her true brother, he bore terrible scars on the fingers, knuckles, his wrists – every part of his hands that had been exposed as he tried to drag his mother from a burning building. There would have been no way to save her brother, to bring him here and pretend he was another, because it was impossible to replicate those scars. She knew. She had tried, with several of her captives, to see if they could do it correctly.
Kirana drew him into an embrace, and she held her brother, this version of her brother, tightly against her. He was taller and thinner than her. She pressed her face to his shoulder and took in the scent of him; that, too, was the same. He was very beautiful, in this world and the next, in all of them.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He did not ask for what. There were legions of things she could be sorry about. But she was sorriest for what she was apologizing for now.
Kirana drew away from him. She kissed his forehead and pushed his hair back from his eyes. What he saw in her gaze, she did not know. She hoped he saw grief, remorse.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. She slipped the utility knife from the sheath at her side and jabbed it neatly into his neck, piercing the carotid artery.
His eyes bulged. She grabbed at the wound, reflexively trying to stopper the gout of blood. It usually took a few minutes to bleed out, but he was thin, weak, starving, and his knees buckled and he collapsed in her arms in less than a minute, eyes still wide, lips moving, but making no sound.
Kirana gently pulled him to the ground, staying with him until his gaping ceased and the hopeful flicker in his eyes went out.
She still stood there when Yivsa came back up the stairs and paused in the door. The others, too, had ceased their work to stare at her. One of the Dhai servants was crying softly. The others were very still, perhaps shocked. Many had known her brother.
“There is nothing I will not do,” she said, raising her voice for them all to hear, “to ensure our survival here. Don’t ever doubt that.”
She wiped her bloody palms on Ahkio’s body and stood. “Yivsa?”
Yivsa cleared her throat and came forward. “It’s done,” she said.
“I need to see the body.”
“I thought–”
“I have to see it.”
Yivsa led her to one of the small libraries on the floor below. Yisaoh’s body lay inert on the floor, throat still tangled with a garroting wire. Her eyes bulged, staring blankly. Her tongue lolled, just touching the stone floor.
Kirana got down on one knee beside her and checked her pulse, to be sure. She had no more times for mistakes. There were any number of people she could kill, whole worlds, but this killing she had known she could not do herself. Killing Tasia, even, a child not of her own womb, but of her heart, had been easier than Yisaoh, who was her heart.
“Where’s Oravan?”
“Below, working to power the engines. All the omajistas are engaged.”
“Well, I need to unengage him. Come with me.” She pointed at one of the soldiers preparing to move Yisaoh’s body. “There’s another upstairs,” Kirana said. “I want them both prepared properly.”
She and Yivsa hurried down the stairs, down and down. Kirana’s heart thumped loudly in her chest. She tried to keep her breathing even. She was so close. So very close. As she came down into the foyer, she realized she didn’t even care if they could power these blasted temples or not. With Yisaoh, her Yisaoh, by her side, she could keep fighting them for two more decades. She would find the strength.
They passed through the basements and into the great cavern with the fibrous tree roots. The moment she stepped down into the room, the air shifted. Became dense as milk. She took a deep breath and forged on. Muted sounds came from the engine chamber below: the voices of her jistas and stargazers.
Kirana went down the ladder, Yivsa just behind her, and had to shield her eyes from the light. The four pedestals around the central one each held a jista captured in a massive beam of light the same color as the satellite they channeled. The central pillar glowed green, and four of her stargazers and two more jistas conferred over it.
Oravan saw Kirana and rushed over to her.
“What happened?” Kirana asked.
“As soon as they stepped in, it…” Oravan gestured. “It won’t let them go.”
“Well, I hope they’re hydrated,” Kirana said. “Have Gian’s people seen this?”
“I’m afraid so,” Oravan said. “She sent observers to each temple.”
&nb
sp; Kirana waved a hand. “What have you tried to get them out?”
“Everything. It burns anyone who tries. Masis had the flesh burned off his whole right hand.”
“Well, he doesn’t need a hand to chart the stars,” Kirana said. “The central pillar?”
“I… Suari would have been the best–”
“Suari isn’t here.”
“Perhaps one of Gian’s–”
“You don’t want to do it?”
Oravan winced.
“It’s fine,” Kirana said. “I need a wink to Yisaoh and our people there. We’re bringing them all home. There are another half dozen jistas there you can throw into the machine.”
“What’s a good staging area?” Oravan asked. “I recommend the Sanctuary.”
They walked back up to the main floor together and gathered in the Sanctuary. Yivsa closed the doors and guarded them.
“Open the wink,” Kirana said.
The air between them parted.
On the other side, another omajista waited. Kirana confirmed the day’s password with her and stepped through. Yivsa accompanied her, and told the omajista they were conducting the final retreat. The toxic air smelled of sulfur, and made her cough.
Kirana found Yisaoh in the great hold kitchen, regaling two sinajistas and a fighter with a story of how she had once broken another soldier’s skull after a particularly gruesome battle in the early days, before she and Kirana were married, before Kirana deemed it far too dangerous for Yisaoh to continue soldiering, especially under Kirana’s command. Too many understood that Yisaoh was Kirana’s weakness; Yisaoh could be used against her.
“What’s the news?” Yisaoh asked as Kirana came in.
Kirana grinned. She could not help it. “You’re coming home with me today,” she said. “We’re all going home.”
Yisaoh clapped her hands and spread wide her arms. They embraced. “All of us?” Yisaoh said.
“All of us,” Kirana said. “Let’s go see the children.”
They walked hand in hand back to the open wink. Kirana gave orders for the others to follow. She gave one last look back at the old, dying world, and squeezed Yisaoh’s hand.
Yisaoh did not look back, and it was one reason Kirana loved her so.
Kirana held her breath and stepped through, holding tightly to her Yisaoh. She would not be separated again.
And then they were through the wink and standing on the other side back in the Sanctuary, both whole.
“I told you,” Kirana said. “I told you. I promised.”
“You did,” Yisaoh said. “You did.” She began to tremble, as if cold or frightened. Kirana rubbed her wife’s arms.
“Food, tea, and a bath,” Kirana said softly. “That will cure anything.”
Kirana wanted to leap and shout and show her around the temple, but she saw the shock and exhaustion on Yisaoh’s face. She needed rest. The other soldiers began to come through, all the jistas and fighters Kirana had left to guard Yisaoh. Even in her rush of pleasure at having Yisaoh at her side, she could not help but also be grateful to see her forces surge again. She needed those jistas for the work ahead.
After baths and food and being reunited with the children, Kirana took them all up to the big bedroom behind the Assembly Chamber and drew the curtains. They all piled into bed, the whole family reunited at last.
“I can’t believe we’re all here,” Yisaoh said. Tasia lay her head onto Yisaoh’s stomach, and was asleep almost immediately. Corina and Moira curled up with one another at the center of the bed. Corina’s fingers were tangled in Yisaoh’s hair.
Kirana lay next to Yisaoh and stared at her face, absently stroking her forehead. “I’m sorry it took so long,” she said.
Yisaoh knit her brows. “Did you… was it you who…?”
“No,” Kirana said. And that was why she had not done it, because she knew Yisaoh would ask, and she would not be able to lie to her. “But it’s done.”
Yisaoh’s eyes filled. Her eyelids fluttered, and the tears wet her face like dew.
“Hush,” Kirana said. “We’re safe now. All of us. Every one. They can never separate us again.”
Through the seam of the curtains, the light of the pulsing satellites danced across the floor.
36
Aaldia was a country of games. Anavha knew that well, but he had not expected this particular game to play such an important part in the end of the world. As the dusk settled, he walked out the back porch and had the other jistas form a circle. The night was cool, lit by the spinning satellites and triad of moons.
Anavha raised his arms and carefully spun up the twinkling illusion that was the game of sphere. Hundreds of orbs twinkled to life in front of them. A whirling collection of spinning spheres formed in a myriad of colors. The smallest was no larger than his thumbnail, the largest as big as his head.
“We move to the center,” Anavha said, gesturing for Lilia and Luna.
Both gaped at the game. Lilia recovered first and said. “You… They just have this map, the same one each time?”
“Not always the same,” Anavha said. “There are different end states.”
The three of them moved to the center of the spinning orbs, which moved lazily along their elliptical orbits.
“Did it look like this?” Anavha asked. “What you saw in the temple?”
“Something like this,” Lilia said. “What’s the purpose of the game?”
“Each projected sphere is called a door,” Anavha said. “Now you will see a second set of pieces come up.” He gestured, and a sparkling net of additional spheres joined the first. Two hundred different pieces then, total. “These are the board pieces,” he said. “The goal is to match the doors and the pieces.”
“But…” Luna said. “There’s… I’m not seeing a difference between the board pieces and the door pieces.”
“This is the math part,” Anavha said. “It has to do with geometry, and where they sit on the board.”
Lilia followed a series of spheres along their path. “A three-dimensional game board, then?”
“Exactly,” Anavha said.
“How many ways are there to play?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The doors and pieces… I have an idea of what the end game for that would be. Pairing like and like. Other worlds and their people, maybe. But what else? How else do you win?”
Anavha considered that. “Well, there are other ways to play it, but they aren’t very sporting.”
“Teach me those ways,” Lilia said.
Anavha said, “I’m not sure–”
“Teach me,” Lilia said. “Luna, are you taking notes?”
“I… yes? This is just very similar to something I know.”
“What?” Lilia asked.
Luna shook her head. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Then let’s begin.”
Anavha made a sweeping motion with his left arm, and all the board pieces furled toward him and collected in a great sphere above his head. He moved his right arm in the opposite direction, and the door pieces joined them, all whirling together in the massive sphere.
“What was that?” Lilia asked. “What you just did?”
“Oh, that was nothing,” Anavha said. “That just resets the game.”
The twinkling spheres blinked back into their orbits.
It was a beautiful little game. Anavha loved it.
Three hours later, her mind spinning with glowing orbs and violet light, Lilia announced that she was done, and they could delay no longer. She had lost the game sixteen out of eighteen times. Namia had fallen asleep on the porch behind her.
“We don’t have time to go again,” Lilia said, gazing at the moons as they began their descent.
Luna shivered. The winking orrery went out.
Saradyn and Roh still sat outside with them on the soft grass; Saradyn snoring like a great bear, Roh nodding in and out of sleep.
Lilia wished for sleep, but knew sh
e didn’t have time for it. Two days, Luna had said, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. How far had Kirana gotten already? Had she gotten into the fifth temple? Convinced the keepers to make one of her jistas a guide and worldbreaker? All she had to go on was this game and its various outcomes. Pull in the spheres, remake them, reshape them, put pieces back into the worlds they belonged. There had only been two hundred pieces here, though, and her memory of the orrery was that there were far more. And if they represented worlds, all these many versions of the worlds all colliding together… there could very well be millions. Trillions. She did not say that out loud, but it made her head ache: a pulsing pain behind her left eye.
Anavha yawned. She didn’t want to pause their plan for sleep, but realized it would be safer if he, at least, did so before opening a gate. Too much relied on the gates.
Meyna had bedded down all of the Dhai in the surrounding fields, and a few scouts with flame fly lanterns kept watch on the hills around the farm. The Saiduan had claimed the barn, since there were fewer of them.
But a few other Dhai were still up, and one came over to Lilia, catching her before she went inside.
“Li?” Salifa said.
“Ah!” Lilia said. “You’re alive! I’m sorry. It’s been–”
“I know,” Salifa said. “I wanted to say I was sorry I didn’t go with you.”
“It was my fault,” Lilia said. “I was embarrassed to tell you all that I burned out. And the rest, well… Meyna does not like me, does not like the white ribbons–”
“I heard you need a jista.”
“I do,” Lilia said.
Salifa touched the ribbon at her throat. “Avosta won’t speak to you. He says he hates you now. Harina never came back, and Mihina–”
“Salifa, I’m not asking you to go with us. Death is–”
“I know,” Salifa said. “What I’m telling you is, they all died to get us here. It’s foolish for me not to help now, here at the end.”
Tears wet Lilia’s cheeks. She wiped at them.
Namia yawned on the porch, rolled over, and came over to her, crooning to comfort her.
The Broken Heavens (The Worldbreaker Saga) Page 35