by Kate L. Mary
“We will be sure our army is prepared.” Roan took a step back as if to make sure his people were ready and waiting.
I stopped the Head in his tracks when I reached out and grabbed his arm. “There is something else I need from you as well.”
Roan looked down to where my hand rested against his skin, and I dropped my arm to my side.
When he was once again looking me in the eye he said, “Anything you need, Indra of the Windhi.”
At my side, Asa stiffened.
While his jealousy was unnecessary, it was not uncalled for. Roan had made his admiration of me clear more than once, often to the point where I had felt uncomfortable. Still, Asa had to know Roan and I could never be, even if something was to happen to Zuri and he was suddenly free. Asa was my life now.
“I do not have time to visit the Huni village,” I said, my focus on Roan. “Not if I want to prepare my own people. Please send someone to let Ontari know what is happening.”
“It will be done,” Roan replied.
“Also, there is the matter of Bowie, the Trelite man who went into the city with Xandra. I would like you to send a couple men to their tribe to deliver the news of his death.”
I did not like Cruz, the Trelite Head, nor did I respect him, but he had a right to know his man was dead. But I knew I was not welcome in his village, and the last thing I wanted was another confrontation with the man. He had hit me once, and if he raised a hand to me again, I would have a difficult time not slitting his throat. Plus, we all knew the news would be better received if it were to come from a man.
“I will make sure it happens.” Roan took a step back, nodding a farewell first to me and then to Asa. Before he walked away, he focused on me once again. “I am glad you made it back okay.”
“Thank you,” I said, bowing my head.
Zuri watched her husband leave, smiling as usual, while at my side, Asa threw daggers at the Head’s back with his eyes. Unlike my husband, Roan’s wife seemed completely unconcerned by the exchange.
A wind whipped through the village once again, and I lifted my gaze to the sky. It was now darker than ever before. Gray and menacing. Nearly as black as the cliffs looming in the distance.
“The rain is coming,” I said, waving to the gray sky.
Zuri looked up, her smile frozen on her face. “It is a blessing.”
“It could make attacking the city difficult,” Asa said.
“No,” Zuri turned her gaze on him, “if it is still raining, it will make things easier. The Sovereign will take shelter in their houses.”
She was right. I had not thought of it that way, but Zuri was right.
A rumble of thunder rolled over the village, followed by a gust of wind that cooled my sticky skin. To my right, a woman ushered two young children toward a ladder, trying to get them inside before the clouds opened. They were unsuccessful. Before they had made it halfway up, the rain began.
It poured down on the village, and all around us, the Mountari people ran for cover, climbing ladders and disappearing into huts. Zuri, Asa, and I had not yet made a move when a crack of thunder boomed through the air, loud enough to shake the ground beneath my feet. Lightning followed only a blink later, cutting across the sky and lighting up the village. The sight of it brought back the memory of the electricity flashing through the sky when the Sovereign unleashed their weapon on us, and my heart beat faster the way it did when I was getting ready for a hunt.
“Come!” Zuri called over the pounding rain.
She waved once, pushing her gray hair out of her face with her other hand, and then took off through the rain. I grabbed Asa’s hand and hurried after her.
Zuri reached her hut and began to climb, calling for us to follow. I did, and before I had even made it halfway up, nearly everyone had disappeared into their own huts or taken shelter underneath them. Asa followed me, reaching the top just as I scrambled into the hut behind Zuri, and once we were inside I was able to take a deep breath without feeling like I was swallowing a mouthful of water.
“Hopefully, it will not last long,” Zuri said as she wrung out her gray hair. “But you are welcome to stay as long as you need to.”
Behind us, something scraped against the floor, and I turned just as Roan ducked inside. A teenage girl I had seen only one other time, shortly after we liberated the enslaved Outliers from the Fortis village, followed him in. This was Zuri’s daughter, I knew.
“My daughter, Iona,” Zuri said, motioning to the girl. “Meet Indra and her husband Asa.”
Iona’s head dipped once, but she said nothing. Her eyes were on Asa, and the expression in their gray depths told me everything she had been through while held prisoner in the Fortis village.
“You do not need to fear,” I said, gently. “Asa is not like the other Fortis. He helped me when I worked in the city. He saved me more than once.”
Iona remained silent.
Roan passed us, moving deeper into the hut, and settled on a pile of fur in the corner. Zuri moved as well then, crossing to a small table where she began pouring liquid from a lygan skin.
“Sit,” Roan called, waving to the piles of fur at his side.
I took Asa’s hand and did as I was asked. We were guests in their home, and I felt that not only should I do as I was told, but also that it might help ease some of Iona’s discomfort if my husband were sitting instead of towering over her.
Roan smiled when I settled down on the fur, his gaze on me, while at my side Asa shifted uncomfortably. I rested my hand on my husband’s knee, both so I could feel his presence, and so I could remind the Mountari Head that I was committed to another man.
The hut was bigger than the one I used to share with Anja and our mother, but not much. The floor was wood since it was built on stilts, as were the walls. Above us, lygan skins had been stretched out and sewn together to create a roof that was solid and waterproof, but served to intensify the thud of the rain as it pounded down on the village. We were sitting on a bundle of furs that most likely served as Iona’s bed, and beside it a partition was set up, also made of lygan skin, separating yet another bed from the rest of the room. Other than that, there was nothing but a few tables where supplies were neatly stacked, both on top and underneath. Bowls, cups, pots, more lygan skins filled with water, and even weapons.
Zuri joined us after a few moments, carrying four cups with her. She gave one to her husband before turning to us, smiling as she handed one first to Asa, and then to me.
I sniffed the contents, remembering the bitter liquid I had been given by both the Trelite and the Huni, and could not stop my nose from wrinkling when the same sharp scent invaded my nostrils.
“You do not like spirit water?” Roan asked, his grin as wide as his wife’s, who had settled at his side.
“I do not wish to offend you,” I said, lowering the cup, “but it is not something I care for.”
Zuri laughed. “I would wager that your husband does not feel the same.”
“No. The Fortis are very fond of their spirits,” Asa replied, his words booming through the room.
On the other side of the hut, Iona shifted at the sound of his voice. She had not moved from her position by the door, and it seemed to me that she wanted to stay close to it just in case she had to run from the hut.
She resembled her mother quite a bit. They had the same gray eyes and pale complexion, and I guessed that at one time Zuri had sported the same russet brown hair.
“She looks like you,” I said.
“That, she does.” Zuri straightened. “She has her father’s smile, although you would not know it at the moment. After he died, her smile made me feel as if he were still with me.”
Asa looked from Zuri to her daughter, and then to Roan. “You’re not her father?”
“My first husband was killed by a lygan many years ago,” Zuri told him, “when Iona was just a child.”
“I’m sorry,” Asa said, and as always, I marveled at how soft and comforting he cou
ld make his deep voice sound. “Did you have other children?”
Zuri smiled, but this time it was sad. “We had four children together. Three boys, and then Iona.”
“It must have been nice, having a real family,” my husband said. “It’s not something most of the Fortis have experience with.”
Asa pressed his lips together like he was thinking something through, and I noticed the way Roan was eyeing him. Thoughtfully, but there was something else there as well. A curiosity that almost made me squirm.
“What made you who you are, Asa?” the Head asked after only a beat of silence. “What made you different from the other people in your village?”
“You met my sister.” My husband shifted before setting his hand over mine, still resting on his leg.
Roan waved his hand in the air like Elora’s existence explained nothing. “You are not the only Fortis man who had a sister sent to the tower, yet I have never heard of another guard helping Outliers in the city. Have never seen an Outlier and a Fortis marry. There must be something else.”
Asa looked down to where our hands met, our fingers intertwined on his knee. My skin pale while his was dark, his hand nearly twice as big as mine, yet so natural-looking at the same time. Almost as if we had been made for each other.
“There were many things.” His voice was soft, his gaze still on our hands.
Roan’s tone was challenging and insistent when he said, “What things?”
I told myself it was just the Mountari way. They were competitive from a young age, the men killing lygan to prove they were the strongest and the women fighting to win a mate. Still, I saw the discomfort in my husband’s expression. He had also grown up among competitive people, yet he had persevered. Had chosen his own path.
It occurred to me that, like Roan, I did not know how he had come to be the man I knew. We had fallen in love slowly, defying the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in our path, but had managed to find so little time to be together. I had not told him about my father, a man who had been both kind and strong, or about my mother, who had raised me as her own even though I had not come from her womb. I had never told him about my origins, born Sovereign yet raised Winta. In return, I knew nothing about him or his childhood, and like Roan, I found myself wondering how Asa had become the man I loved so much.
So, instead of trying to discourage Roan, I gave my husband’s hand a gentle squeeze, and he began to talk.
“I grew up surrounded by hate,” Asa said, his eyes still on our hands and his voice so low that even sitting right next to him I had to strain to hear his words over the rain pounding against the roof. “It never made sense to me, the way the Fortis hated the Outliers. They weren’t a threat, and we had so much more. Fortis men are brutal by nature, but my father was something else entirely. He was bigger than most, and meaner, something that only got worse as I got older. He worked in the city, in Saffron’s house, and would tell stories about the way he tortured the Outliers working there. He would laugh like it was all a joke.” Asa shook his head. “I didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. They were people, just like we were.
“I was ten when Elora was born. I’d heard the whispers about the untouchables living in the tower, but had never seen one with my own eyes. Then my sister was born, and everything changed.” He looked down at the cup in his hand and frowned. “She was so small. So tiny and perfect except for one little thing. An extra arm. It had five fingers that flexed just like all the others, and to me it seemed like nothing at all. Nothing that should have marked her as different.
“My parents didn’t see it that way, though, and when she was less than a day old, they sent her away to live in the tower. I took her myself because I wanted to make sure she got there okay, and when I arrived, the people I saw living there shocked me. There were many like Elora who had only small defects, but there were others who were very deformed. Missing limbs or even the lower half of their bodies. To a child of ten who had been raised surrounded by superstitions, it was terrifying.
“But they were friendly.” Asa smiled to himself, remembering. “They welcomed my sister instead of casting her aside and promised to look after her, and despite their surroundings, the people seemed almost happy. Happier than I’d ever felt in my own home. There I had always lived in fear of my father, knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to beat me if I stepped out of line, or simply because he felt like it.“
Asa had never mentioned his father before, other than to tell me about the day Elora was born. Hearing this story and thinking of my husband as a small child being beaten by the very man who should have protected him made me burn with hate. The man was most likely dead since most of the Fortis had been wiped out when we attacked their village, but if he was not, if he was still alive and standing in front of me now, I would gladly slit his throat and watch him bleed.
“I went back to visit the tower,” Asa continued, “over and over again, and for the first time I understood what it meant to be surrounded by people who actually cared. Our parents had rejected Elora, but she grew up with love in her life. Not like me. I had nothing and no one.”
Something scraped against the floor on the other side of the room, and I looked that way to find Iona listening intently. Her gray eyes were wide, and for the first time she was no longer looking at my husband like she was afraid he might attack her. Instead, she stared at him with an expression of awe.
“I can’t point to one thing that changed me,” Asa told Roan, continuing his story. “Not the way you want me to. It was a lot of things, and it happened slowly. In the beginning I was simply determined not to turn out like my father, who was an angry and hateful man. Even after going to work in the city and seeing the Outliers every day, that was all I wanted. To be different than the other men and women in my village.” He lifted his eyes from our hands for the first time so he could look at me. “Then Indra came into my life, and everything changed again.”
“Me?” I whispered.
“You, Indra.” Asa paused so he could clear his throat. “You made me want to be more than just a better man. You made me want to change everything about who I was, and everything about the world we lived in. I think,” he hesitated, “I think I fell in love the very first time I laid eyes on you.”
I stared at him in silence, the rest of the room fading away. Roan said something, but I could not hear it, nor could I hear the rain pounding down on the roof. Asa and I had been through so much, but this moment felt like a new chapter for us. Like we were finally getting ready to start the life we deserved.
27
Asa
It was still raining when Indra and I left the Mountari village, but only a little. The storm had eased and the sky lightened to a soft gray, while in the direction of Sovereign City, the horizon was still dark. It was raining there now, the clouds opening up to drop buckets of water on the wastelands that would evaporate under the heat before the ground even had a chance to absorb it. It wasn’t like here in the wilds, where the trees dripped with moisture as we walked, and the earth beneath our feet stayed soft even after the storm had moved on. In the wastelands, the evidence of rain disappeared the second the sun broke through the clouds, instantly sucked up by its greedy heat.
Indra and I talked as we moved through the wet forest. Telling her about my childhood had opened a new door for us, and it seemed like we couldn’t stop sharing the events that had shaped us into the people we now were. She told me about her father, who died when she was young, and her mother who was sick and dying long before the Fortis finally killed her. My wife shared the story about being born in the city and smuggled out, and I marveled at this news. It made sense, comparing Indra’s small frame to the other Outliers, who were often lanky and thin, but much taller than the Sovereign.
She told me about Bodhi, too. How they grew up together, playing in the forest as children. How he taught her to hunt and introduced her to the caves we now called home, and I found an admiration for her first husband that I hadn�
��t expected. Like me, he’d risen above the traditions of his people, had taught Indra to fend for herself. Without him, things might not have played out the way they had. It was possible Indra might have stood up for Mira that day in the city, but would she have hunted the Fortis? Would she have found the strength to unite the Outliers and create an army? Not likely.
“He sounds like a very good man,” I said as we passed the pond, which signaled we were now halfway back to the caves.
“He was.” Indra smiled to herself. It was small and sad, but also tinged with happiness. “I did not think I would ever recover when he died. I felt half dead myself. But I have come to realize that fate is real. The roads I traveled over the last few years have been long and difficult, but they were necessary to bring me where I am today.”
“I feel the same way,” I told her. “My father was a bastard, but he helped mold me into this person.”
“What of your mother?” Indra asked, looking my way out of the corner of her eye. “You said nothing about her.”
“Fortis mothers aren’t like Outlier mothers,” I said. “She was around and she took care of me, but she was distant. I think she loved me. I remember her holding me when I was young, staying up with me at night when I had a fever. But she also looked the other way when my father beat me.”
“I do not understand how any mother could allow that to happen.”
“In the Fortis village, it was just a way of life. We were supposed to be tough. If I fell down and skinned my knee, I wasn’t supposed to cry. If I had a bad dream, I was supposed brush it off. Weakness wasn’t tolerated.”
“She is dead?” Indra asked, even as she shook her head in disbelief.
“She is,” I said, and a sudden sadness moved through me that I hadn’t expected. Not after all these years. Not talking about a woman who’d been so distant that I couldn’t even remember what she’d looked like.
“And your father?”