UW02. Plains of Sand and Steel

by Alisha Klapheke

  A dark hope bloomed inside Seren. She leaned in close enough to see the dirt in the pores on his nose. “Before I promise,” she whispered, the interpreter at her knee, “tell me why you’re willing to do this horrible thing to your people.”

  “It’s this or die, yes?”

  “Yes. But you could die…honorably, or so your people would say.”

  “You know what we do. You’ve heard the stories?”

  Seren fisted her sweating hands. Her sisters’ screams seared her memory, so perfectly recalled that her eardrums burned like coals. “I’ve lived the stories.”

  The engineer’s face tightened. “So you know there is no honor for me to claim. I don’t care to suffer for my people. I’m not like them.”

  The sadness in his voice tugged at Seren’s heart. But he could be lying. She swallowed her fear. “It is agreed then. I swear on the Holy Fire to protect you for as long as you care to live in Akhayma if you help me win this war.”

  “I swear on the only one I trust. Myself,” the engineer said.

  Seren nodded. It was sad, but it seemed an honest oath. “Hossam, bring this prisoner to the mercenaries’ tent.” She didn’t want this plan flashed in front of Adem or Varol. Not yet. Employing an enemy didn’t seem like the best way to garner support for her position as kyros. But if this worked…

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And call for a kaptans’ meeting right now. I’ll meet with them before Adem can realize I’ve called them together. I’m surprised he hasn’t called another of his own.” Too busy meeting secretly in his own tent or Varol’s. “Send out the messengers to let everyone know. Lucca too. And Ona.” Her cheeks heated, realizing how casually she’d mentioned them, with no titles, in front of her fighters. But she wasn’t going to take it back or correct herself. Formality wasn’t important in this case. These men knew her well.

  “Of course, my lady,” they all replied.

  Hossam helped the engineer up and started toward Lucca and Ona’s lodgings, the place it seemed Seren would always come back to.

  19

  ONA

  Grit clouded each of Ona’s steps and coated her scuffed boots and threadbare leggings as she paced from the agricultural section of the city and through another merchant area where a little whip of a boy flung himself at her.

  “Kaptans meeting now, Onaratta Paints with Blood!” He tugged at her sleeve and went on in heavily accented trade tongue she could hardly understand. “Kyros Seren has called you there. You must go now.”

  “Ergh.” Ona feared she wouldn’t be able to hold her tongue with Seren right now. She was too frustrated with the fact that the king was still alive.

  “Now.” The boy bounced on his toes, the twelve tin bells on his sash jangling. “You have to go now. Please.”

  “What are you, ten? Maybe nine-years-old? What happens if I don’t go because I’m kind of irritated, and they find out you told me and failed to get me there?”

  He cocked his head as he worked out what she’d said. “No food tonight. Maybe a beating.”

  “Skies. A beating?” Ona sighed heavily. “I’ll go.” She shooed him away and he left reluctantly.

  She stormed past tables folded against tent posts and half-walls. Families blabbered behind the thick fabric of their homes and shops, some cried over the dead, although not so many had been cut down. Others mourned their worthless, former kyros. Why? Ona couldn’t figure it out. Meric had been pretty pointless from what she’d heard.

  Honestly, she couldn’t figure anyone out.

  Where was Varol? He was all I’m here to take over! then he promptly disappeared. Ona wanted to see him again, to watch the people around him react to his naturally powerful presence. It was intriguing. The man didn’t need chants. Must’ve been that royal blood. She couldn’t help but be impressed. So why wasn’t he using this power to get this war over with?

  And Seren, why was she not murdering the king and dancing on his disgusting body? What reason could there ever be to hold on to a monster like that? The Invaders’ white tent said they would only stop their siege with full surrender. There was no turning back now.

  “Why doesn’t she understand? I thought she understood!” Ona shouted, shattering the night’s quiet sounds.

  “Kaptan Onaratta!”

  The moon did its level best to cut through the suffocating clouds. Light glinted across a smooth brow. A warrior Ona didn’t know waved, a helmet on her knee as she scooped a handful of water from the canal with a wooden cup and splashed her neck. “Did you hear the kyros is questioning prisoners? Someone said she is keeping one alive, maybe giving him freedom, to work on strategy. She is wise, isn’t she? Is your leader as wise?”

  Ona’s chest caved in. First, the king. Now this? That was it. She had to talk to Seren in private. She could explain everything in terms she’d understand.

  “Well, Kaptan, what do you think?” the fighter asked.

  “What do you think I think about it? And what business is it of yours?”

  “Our Kyros Seren certainly weaves a different pattern than Kyros Meric ever did. Fine work during the attack,” she said, droning on and on—utterly blind to Ona’s glare.

  Ona started down the main roadway to the market, her ribs strangling her heart. Seren was freeing the very people who took Ona’s and Seren’s own loved ones. The people who destroyed both of their childhoods. And she wasn’t just letting them go. That would be bad enough, but she was employing them!

  Her sword was drawn before she knew what she was doing. She dashed it across a cart’s wheel. That big, fancy sacred bowl at the oasis would be an even better thing to smash. Ona took a rough breath, then coughed with all the stupid sand in the air. She let out a swear. She needed a good cup of wine five minutes ago. Ten minutes ago. Yesterday. Her throat was a wasteland.

  “Ona,” a voice growled near the oasis’ pool of gurgling water. Nuh's belly hung over his belt as he bent to fill a skin, drank a mouthful, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s the goat farmer’s cart you damaged. He’s one of the middle-castes Kyros Seren asked to advise her. He’ll be one of her favorites. Better watch your actions, friend.”

  “Better watch yourself.”

  “So sorry, Kaptan Ona!” He grinned. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at a kaptans’ meeting? Might be over by now.”

  Ona seriously considered slicing the smile off his stupid face. It took a lot for her to turn away and keep on.

  In a narrow lane, a girl no bigger than a desert tree sapling offered Ona a green scarf—an imitation of the strip of wool Seren wore on her sash.

  “I will give you a good price,” she said in a cracked version of the trade tongue. “Maybe you can earn Holy Fire with the kyros's kind of clothings.” She pushed the fabric into Ona’s free hand, then saw the sword and drew back.

  Ona sheathed the weapon and gave her a quick smile. It wasn’t easy. “No. Thank you.”

  The little girl grinned back weakly, tears in her eyes. “Thank you for the fight. For helping us stay safe.”

  Throat even drier, Ona stared at the Invader blood under her own nails—crescent moons of black-red blood carried from the birthplace of those who stole the life from her birthplace.

  “I’ll always fight for you.” Her aunt’s nimble hands flashed through her memory. “I’ll never rest until all the Invaders are dead.”

  The girl made a circle on her forehead with her thumb and dipped her chin.

  “Learn to use this.” Ona pointed at her sheathed sword. “It’ll do a lot more for you than Holy Fire or those tears of yours.”

  The girl nodded and hurried into her family’s tent, jabbering about something, Ona maybe. Ona turned a corner, and the child’s finch-like voice faded beneath the night noise of the market, camels snorting, water rushing, the sounds of cooking, and the occasional groans of the injured assembled near the holy place.

  Ona had to convince Seren that every single one of these Invaders was capabl
e of making children like that little girl cry.

  Seren would make a great leader. She was decisive, her looks gave her an air of power, and she had great ideas. Surely, she’d come around and see sense. Releasing an enemy into her own city was only a slip. A mistake born out of her good heart. She’d wise up. And Ona was the one to help her do it before it was too late and they had a wolf loose in their own woods.

  Ona suddenly wished she wasn’t spending the day alone. She wasn’t going to grab another random soldier to talk to or kiss. Those moments never added up to satisfaction.

  For the thousandth time, she longed for a match. A true match.

  Lucca was the closest, but he was like a brother. She huffed. And other boys, well, they were too easy to figure out, and also, to intimidate. The only person who’d come close to really capturing Ona’s whole self was that duke’s son from the raid when she’d almost died and Lucca saved her. The lordling had been curt, cutthroat, and very close to perfect. A good challenge.

  Voices sneaked from the closed flap of the guest tent. All thoughts of boys spilled away as Ona pushed in and found a challenge she wasn’t expecting.

  20

  SEREN

  Seren blinked as Ona walked in and froze, looking like a very surprised and very angry statue. Where had she been all this time?

  “Kyros Seren,” the engineer said through the interpreter, “what is the idea trying to hatch in your thoughts?”

  Giving Ona a nod—if she wanted to watch this, maybe that was good as it might change her mind—Seren explained what she’d seen in her vision.

  “This sounds like a balloon,” the foreign man said, his angled eyes focused. “Maybe a square of fabric filled with air and set into the wind. Our people make them for Children’s Day.”

  The celebration’s name pinched Seren’s heart. The enemies had families. Of course they did. But it was so much easier to fight them without being reminded of the fact that every time an arrow landed, it was taking away someone’s mother or father, brother or sister. She tried hard to imagine Invader families participating in an event named for their children. All that light-colored hair waving in a breeze, smiles on their broad faces instead of grimaces, fingers wrapped around colorful crafts instead of gripping the hilt of a sword.

  “But the…balloons I saw rose on their own,” she said, trying to focus. “Steadily, not simply with the wind.”

  The engineer snapped his fingers, looking less and less like a prisoner of war as his passion overtook his fear. “I talked to a friend of mine about the possibility of this.” The interpreter scrambled to keep up. “I thought maybe if we used hot air, the balloons could do just that.”

  “How do we make hot air?” Seren asked.

  “With fire?” Cansu said, looking sheepish.

  “That fire.” The engineer pointed to the Holy Fire bowl near the door.

  Ona unfroze slowly and looked at the Flames, her lips parted.

  Seren rubbed her lip, thinking. “A bowl attached to the square of fabric, open only to catch the hot air?”

  “The fabric would need to be painted with rubber. Rubberized,” the engineer said.

  This actually made sense. “And it floats over the enemy…”

  The engineer looked at the ground. “Yes,” he said mournfully. “It is filled with black powder that…” He made the explosive movements with his ivory hands.

  “But how do we keep the powder from going off before it is where it needs to be?”

  Drawing an invisible line in the air, the engineer said, “Long fuse.”

  “Your king’s army will lay siege to the city if they gain reinforcements,” she said.

  “And they do.”

  Ona’s face flushed, her teeth gritted and showing. “Why. Are. You. Trusting. Him.”

  She drew her sword.

  Before Cansu, Erol, or Hossam could move, she had the blade at the engineer’s neck from behind. “Let me end him for you, my lady. I’ll help you with your idea and no information will be leaked to our enemies.”

  Hossam moved toward her, but Seren held up a hand. “Ona, I—”

  “Please.” Agony wrinkled Ona’s brow and pulled at the corners of her mouth.

  She’d been through so much. Seren knew how it felt, the need to do something about the hollowing, cutting, burning pain of not having your family any more, of someone taking them from you violently. Seren’s arms ached to grab Ona, to hold her close and grieve with her. Ona needed to cry, to release that dark pain. It wouldn’t stop the agony, but it’d do her so much good to allow tears to clean the vengeance from her blood.

  “Ona. Listen. What if this man,” she pointed at the engineer who to his credit stood erect and still, “is the key to finally defeating the rest of them?”

  “Will you…” Ona glared daggers at the interpreter so he wouldn’t translate, “…kill this one after we have the deed done?”

  The engineer’s gaze moved from Seren’s face to the hand and blade at his throat. He didn’t know the words, but he understood Ona’s meaning well enough.

  “Of course not.” Seren stepped forward and touched Ona’s dusty sleeve. “What if he isn’t like the ones who hurt us? What if he was simply born to this violence and knows nothing different?” Seren looked into the engineer’s eyes, willing him to say something that might help his case.

  Ona’s fingers shook against the hilt of her sword. Seren could’ve ordered her off the man, but Ona was lit up like a fuse, ready to spark a fight Seren didn’t want to win or lose. The lantern’s light touched the white streak in her red-brown hair. Seren had seen others with a streak like that. It sometimes resulted from a terrible shock. Ona had risked more pain pretending to be Meric. For Seren. For her people. After all Ona had been through, she deserved Kurakian chicken and laughs with friends, not…this. Seren’s heart strained against its own beating.

  “This man, he is different from the others,” she said.

  “No, he is not.” Ona’s voice was tight and low. “It’s in his blood. They’re all…pigs. Vermin. Filth.”

  A line of red leaked from the spot where her blade kissed the engineer’s skin. If she killed him, the idea could be lost. This was Akhayma and the Empire’s only chance against a siege. Seren felt it in her skin. This could mean Meekra’s life, and her younger sisters’ lives, the wise as an owl noble Najwa, her cousin Qadira, and the giggly low-caste Izzet. Lucca and his warm smile would be wiped from the earth alongside Ona, her fierce energy snuffed out like a northern candle’s flame. Seren clutched at her stomach. Everyone she knew and loved would die.

  “You’re my friend,” Seren whispered. “Don’t force me to use my rank against you or—”

  “Or what? Come now, Ser—Kyros Seren. I don’t understand where your head is. We’re on the same side. Why can’t you see they all have to be eliminated?”

  Seren closed her eyes against the raw pain in Ona’s face. “Enough.” Seren gestured to her guards. Cansu and Hossam grabbed Ona.

  Ona swore. “Get off me.” Jerking free, she raged out of the tent, not sparing one look for Seren.

  With a word, Seren held her men back from going after Ona. Meric would’ve had her killed for this disrespect. Seren said a prayer that her friendship with Ona would last through the fight.

  Erol tended the engineer’s bleeding neck with a cloth.

  “My apologies, prisoner,” Seren said to the engineer. “My friend has suffered a great deal at the hands of your countrymen and she…well, it won’t happen again.”

  The engineer gave Erol a nod of thanks and held a second cloth against his wound. “Am I still ‘prisoner’ then?”

  “I…I don’t want to…” It was such a difficult situation. Seren had never faced something like this. She thought of what her mother would’ve done. Honesty, that’s the only way through things, she’d always said.

  “Am I?” the engineer asked again.

  Seren looked the man in the eye. “You are if you know what is good for you
. A free man would be dead by sunrise. Onaratta would take you, or another of my own warriors would. Probably Erol right there. Don’t give me that look, Erol. I can see how you look at him. Either way, you,” she said to the foreigner, “wouldn’t walk on two legs for long. This venture of ours…won’t be popular.”

  The black lacquered tray Seren had ordered Cansu to bring sat propped against a stool. She took it, sat, and emptied a pouch of sand across its surface. “This is how I’m seeing this new weapon.”

  The sand curled around her finger and the emptied lines formed a rounded shape connected to a firepot instead of a bowl.

  “The fire would need more cover to stay lit in the open like that. Plus, we’ll need space for more ingredients below. A sealed spot underneath the flames.”

  The engineer leaned over to draw and Hossam moved closer, hand on his hilt. The engineer added a long fuse coming out of the side of the bowl, then a deeper well to the container. “The ingredients that explode will go here,” he said through the interpreter.

  “So the cloth is rubberized silk,” Seren said. “The fabric will hold the hot air, the contraption will lift off and float above the enemy as they sleep.”

  He swallowed. “So this will fly above your enemies, then blast apart, setting fire to tents and men. Throwing shards of pottery like arrowheads.”

  This had to be terrible for him, betraying his people.

  “It’s this or you die,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry you’re in this situation. But you are. And don’t think for a second that I’ll change my mind.” She spoke with far more confidence than she had. “Remember: it wasn’t us who began this war. If this works and we humble them further, perhaps we can negotiate a lasting peace. I have no desire for violence, but they have to be humbled. You all displayed the fact rather plainly, don’t you agree?”

  He nodded. “I did not choose this war.” He focused again on the sand drawing on the tray in Seren’s lap.