Chapter 16
“Explain it to me again,” Veneka said.
Zerai leaned his head back against the wall. He was sitting on a trunk in the corner of a small clerk’s office somewhere deep in the bright shining labyrinth of the palace, with Nadira sitting in his lap. Veneka stood between him and the closed door, her arms crossed, her face more serious and less kind than he could ever remember seeing it.
“I can explain it all day,” he said. “It’s not going to change anything.”
“Humor me.”
He sighed. “The Arrahim want Nadira. Because she’s different, because she’s special.”
“And it didn’t occur to you that a house of brilliant, insightful clerics with divine gifts might be worth listening to?” she asked. “They’re not stupid.”
“No, they’re not stupid. But they are human.” He gazed up at her, wondering what happened to the woman he used to know, the woman he used to love to hold, to breathe in, to caress with his lips. “They want things for themselves. They think they’re special. They think they’re entitled. They sent soldiers to attack me, to lock me up. I don’t care how many angels trust them with their divine gifts, they’re still just people and they showed how ugly they can be back there at the library. They don’t own me, and they sure as hell don’t own Nadira. So when Lamia offered to help me get out, I went with her.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“There wasn’t time for a nice long talk about it, Ven.” He looked down at the little girl and let her grip his thumb in her little fist. “I was running through the streets with stones and arrows flying all around my head.”
“All right. Fair enough. But that’s over. Now we have time for a nice long talk. So talk. What’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know. I…” Zerai shook his head. He knew perfectly well what was going on, in his heart and in his head, but he didn’t want to explain it. Not to her. Not to anyone. But especially not to her, because she knew him. “I want out.”
“Out of what?”
“Out of all of this,” he said quietly. “The clerics, the angels, the djinn, the wars. I know we’ve helped a lot of people over the years. We’ve saved lives. And I’m glad we did. I’m proud of that. But I’m tired of it. Tired of the fear. Tired of the nightmares. I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
Her eyes softened and she knelt down beside him. “When did the nightmares come back?”
“A few months ago.” He shrugged. “Old faces. Watching people die. Running from freaks and monsters. More of the same.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I wanted to, but… it never seemed to be the right time. We’re always so busy. And when people are suffering and dying, how am I supposed to say, hey, pay attention to me, I have trouble sleeping?” He swallowed. “It never seemed important enough.”
She put her hand on his knee. “It is important. And we will talk about it. But there is a war out there, and people are suffering and dying, and I have a job to do.”
“I know.”
“So I’ll talk to the queen about making sure you’re safe here while I’m out there, and when this is all over, we can figure out what’s best for Nadira, and for us, and take it from there. All right?”
He looked down at Nadira, and the little girl looked up at him and smiled. “No. No, that’s not good enough. I have to leave.”
She pulled her hand back. “Why?”
“Because the Arrahim could send their clerics for Nadira again, and there won’t be a damn thing I can do to stop them. And when the djinn come back to raze this city to the ground, thousands of people are going to die, and most of them will be people like me, people who can’t hold up walls or heal the wounded.” Zerai looked into Veneka’s eyes. “I’ve tried to figure a way out of this, but everywhere I turn I’m surrounded by people I don’t know, people I can’t trust, and people who can kill me with one little finger.”
She leaned back. “And which one am I?”
He closed his eyes and turned away from her. “You don’t need me. You don’t even want me here. Admit it, you brought me along out of habit. But I’m just in the way. And if the seers are as arrogant as I think they are, then every minute that Nadira is in the city, there is a very real danger of a civil war breaking out between the clerics. I know. I saw it. Lamia agrees with me.”
“Lamia. The Sophirim?”
Zerai rolled his eyes. “Don’t start. This is not about her. It’s about Nadira. She deserves a chance to live, to live a normal life. And frankly, so do I. So either you help us get out of here, or you… you get out of my way, because I am going whether you help me or not.”
“You’re going? Leaving the city, leaving…” Her mouth tightened. “So when you say you’re out, you mean…?”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” Veneka stood up slowly, towering over him. “This is not the time to argue among ourselves, or to give in to fear and rumors. We’re here to help these people and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. But if you don’t want to be a part of that, I can’t make you. You can leave. Go, if that’s what you really want. But you don’t have any more right than anyone else to decide what happens to Nadira. She’s not your child.”
“She’s no one’s child,” he snapped. “She’s an orphan!”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly why she needs a father!” He stood up eye to eye with her. “She doesn’t need to be locked up, or examined, or used by some self-righteous magi who care more about where she fits into their divine master plan than whether she’s happy and free!”
“Are you…? Is that really what you think about the clerics? About me?” Her face was stone, unreadable.
“I think you care more about the mission than the people.”
“The mission is the people!”
“Then why aren’t you getting the people out of the city?” he asked quietly. “All this time since the attack, why aren’t the clerics getting the rest of the people to safety? A single djinn destroyed a quarter of the city all alone in less than a day, and killed everyone who went to stop her, and yet everyone’s still here. That’s insane. Why are they rebuilding the walls and hunting for the djinn? Because they want to fight. They want to battle evil and sacrifice each other, and prove to themselves and the angels that they’re good and worthy people by saving the world.”
“Is that so wrong?”
“If it means a single innocent person dies along the way, then yes. Yes it is.”
Veneka took a deep breath and turned away. “I want you to wait here for a while. I need to talk to the queen about this. We’ll figure something out. Promise me you’ll stay here.”
He stared at her and said nothing.
“Fine.” She left and closed the door behind her.
He sat down again and leaned his head against the wall. “Now what? Hm?”
“Glau.” Nadira clapped her chubby hands. “Mo-mo.”
“My thoughts exactly.” He closed his eyes.
Veneka… You’ve got your mission, don’t you? Save the people. Save the city. Work, work, work. And you should. You’re good at it. It makes you happy. It really does. I can see it in your eyes when you’re out there, holding their hands, taking away their pain, giving them hope.
But I’ve got my own mission now. One person to save. Alone, if I have to.
He stood up and re-fashioned his jacket sling for Nadira to sit in, and he went to the door.
Locked.
“Damn.” He paced away angrily, running his hands through his hair. But before he could decide whether to try forcing the door open, he heard a soft tap on the window. Zerai turned and crept along the wall to the edge of the window, and peeked out.
An eye peeked in.
He leaned out a little more and saw Lamia peering in at him. He quickly opened the window and the Sophirim warrior climbed inside.
“I’
ve been waiting out there for a quarter hour,” she said. “I heard everything. You ready to go?”
“Go?” He leaned out the window and saw the straight drop down three stories to the gardens below. “Go where? How did you get up here? Did you jump?”
“Of course.” She glanced around the small office and apparently saw nothing of interest to her. “When you’re as light as a feather, you can jump for miles. So are we going or not?”
“Out the window?”
“For starters, yes.”
He looked out again. The height didn’t bother him, but the thought of trusting the cleric to carry him down made him more than a little uneasy. The sun had set over an hour ago, and while the sky still held a warm violet glow, the ground was black as night and he couldn’t quite gauge the distance. He clutched Nadira a little closer, grit his teeth, and said, “Fine. Let’s go.”
They stepped up to the window sill together, and then Lamia put her hands around his waist from behind and he felt his weight melting away until he was almost floating in his shoes. And then they stepped off the narrow ledge into the cool evening air.
They fell faster than he expected, and his heart lunged up into his throat, and he nearly shouted as the earth raced up to meet them, the darkness yawning deeper to swallow them. But when his feet hit the ground, the impact barely shook his ankles. They landed as gently as if he had stepped off a chair instead of a third-story window.
He was still marveling at this when Lamia let go of him and stepped away, and he felt the sudden surge of weight back into his body. The sensation passed quickly and he looked at her, wanting to ask about the fall and the landing, but she was already hurrying across the shadowy garden and all he could do was hurry after her.
They darted from tree to fountain to corner, crouching and waiting in the darkness for guards or ministers to pass by, and then darting to the next dark place to hide and wait again. Zerai felt his heart pounding in his chest the entire time, and he marveled that no one strolling through the gardens ever heard the roaring blood in his head, but they reached the outer wall of the palace grounds without being seen.
As they walked calmly and quietly down the city street, empty all but for a few young lovers and weary merchants, Zerai felt his blood cooling and he wiped the sweat from his face and palms.
Lamia glanced at him. “You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Try not to die on me. I’d hate to think I was wasting my time.”
He smiled a little. “I’ll try. But why did you come back for me?”
“It’s like you said. As long as the seers want that girl, and as long as you’re in the city, there’s a real chance of a civil war breaking out, and I’m not going to let that happen. So I’m getting you out.”
They’d gone two blocks and the palace was merely a dark shape above the rooftops when the falconer suddenly looked around and realized they were heading south. “We’re going the wrong way,” he whispered. “The canal’s back there.”
“We’re not going to the canal.”
“I know. I just said that. So where are we going?”
“Nigiste Makeda took the threat of a civil war even more seriously than I’d hoped,” Lamia said. “She’s calling for a meeting of the Ras Council tonight to put an end to it before it begins. But she also stationed half a legion of her personal guards around the palace, the inner temples, and the canal.”
“So we have to slip around them?”
“Can’t.”
Zerai frowned. “Then how am I supposed to get out of the city? That’s still the plan, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Then where are we going?”
“South. To the wall. To the desert.”
Zerai let that idea creep through his tired brain for a moment and then he slowed, and then stopped in the middle of a dark, empty street. “That’s insane. How am I supposed to survive with a baby in the desert?”
Lamia took his arm and forced him to keep moving as she said, “You don’t have to cross the desert. You can skirt the city once you’re outside the wall, circle back to the north side, and then you can follow the coast up to Kherar. The canal was a bad idea anyway, what with the storms. From what I hear, most of the ship captains are planning to wait here until the weather clears, however long that takes.”
He walked along, numbly trying to fathom whether that was possible, to circle the city alone, undetected, and then walk north, maybe for days, across the sand and stone of Imaya to find the green pastures of Kherar.
Maybe.
“I’ll need food. And water.”
“We’ll get it.”
He nodded. He tried to think of the questions he needed to ask about the desert, about the guards who might see him, about the native plants he might need to find to survive, about the people he might meet in the north, but he couldn’t bring his thoughts into focus. All he could keep thinking was that the world was strange and dangerous, and he was going out into it, alone, with a child in his arms.
Nadira.
He looked down at her, once again sleeping soundly against his chest.
I can do this.
“Fine. Good.”
Eventually they came to the quarter of the city that had been shattered and razed by the djinn, and while some streets had been cleared and some fallen buildings had been dragged away by the mighty Sophirim, and some of the damage had been repaired by the artful Tevadim, there was still rubble and ruin as far as the eye could see beneath the pale stars and the silvery moon. Here there were no candles burning in the windows, no voices in the houses, and no footsteps echoing in the streets.
He followed his guide over the loose stones and beams piled in the middle of the road, climbing and jumping as needed. And then Lamia waved at him to wait while she leapt up to a high window and disappeared into a partially collapsed house. She reappeared a moment later with a small bag over her shoulder and they continued on their southward trek.
“Water, bread, and melons,” she said softly. “All I could find.”
He frowned back at the house. “It’s been in there since the attack? That was weeks ago. The food’s still good?”
“A little.”
He grimaced.
She stopped in three more houses and her bag of supplies grew a little fuller each time.
“Do you know this area?” he asked.
“I lived here,” she said, never once looking back at him as she led the way over the mounds of debris. “My house was two streets over from here.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She walked on.
“What will you do after I’m gone?” he asked. “Veneka, and Kiya, and the seers… everyone’s going to be angry about this.”
“Probably.”
“What’ll happen to you?”
“That depends on them,” Lamia said. “In all the madness tonight, no one seemed to care too much about me. They were all focused on you. And since my superiors never told me I couldn’t help you leave, there’s nothing they can charge me with. Technically.”
“And you think that technicality will protect you?”
“Not really. But I don’t care. This is the right thing to do. We’re holy clerics, not politicians, and not jailers.” She glanced back at him. “If the Arrahim, or the Negus, or anyone else has a problem with that, then I want to know now, so I can do something about it. Me and a few hundred of my brothers and sisters.”
He nodded and they walked on. The dark line of the wall emerged from the gloom ahead of them and they angled west toward the V-shaped gap where the djinn had broken into the city.
“Can I ask you something?” the cleric said.
“Anything.”
“Do you love her? The healer?”
“Veneka?” He paused, giving himself a moment to summon up an honest answer, and then realized that what used to be an instinctual response now actually required a moment’s consideration. “I don’t think so, no. Not really. Not anymore.”<
br />
“So it’s easy to do this? To just walk away?”
“Easy?” He blinked. “Hell no. Not easy. Nothing easy about it.” He thought again of the long night on the beach, all those hours in the dark, alone with his thoughts and his pain, wrestling with the idea that his love had died, had drowned, had disappeared into a cold, black sea and would never return. “It’s not easy. But it is simple. Stay or go.”
“So you go.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “You know, it’s funny, after everything we’ve been through, all I can think about right now, right this second, is the last time we made love.”
“Oh? Was it good?”
“That’s the thing.” He frowned up at the moon. “I can’t remember it. I can’t remember it at all. Funny. I wonder what I would have felt if I had known then that it was the last time.”
“You think too much.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
When they reached the wall, they saw a dozen dark figures standing guard around the gap. Zerai braced himself for more waiting, or hiding, or running, but Lamia led him out into the open and greeted the guards, most of whom were her fellow Sophirim. And with a few words, they stood aside and let Zerai climb over the broken stones and step out onto the soft green grass growing in thin tufts along the edge of the desert. He stood there for a moment, gazing out at the vast, lifeless landscape before him.
“All right. Well, thank you.” He waved at the clerics and then he turned and started walking, following the wall east and north.
A moment later he heard a soft shuffle behind him and he paused to see Lamia following a few paces behind him. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure you actually get away this time.”
He waited but she didn’t say anymore, so he turned back and they walked on together.
Chapter 17
After an hour of walking through the soft, shifting sand outside the walls of Shivala, Zerai sat down on a cold stone to rest. Lamia sat on the ground beside him. His shoulders and back burned and ached, even though he had been adjusting the sling every few minutes. It felt as though Nadira had been growing heavier with every step, until he finally admitted that he needed to stop for a few minutes.
Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom Page 16