UW02. Plains of Sand and Steel

by Alisha Klapheke

  But that was optimistic. More likely, the Invaders would catch and question him.

  Her stomach dropped.

  Their questioning involved fists, blades. He wouldn’t tell them a thing. Her heart knew that. At least there, if he survived, he had a chance at a life. If he’d stayed here, Varol would’ve had him put to death alongside her. It was only a matter of time.

  Cansu would look for her. She knew it. But Adem would know it, too. He’d assign Cansu to a position where he’d have no opportunity to attempt freeing her. Could Cansu break away and gather people loyal to her? What then? She didn’t want a war within a war.

  If she stayed here, kept quiet and accepted her punishment—part of which she surely deserved—her warriors would be led by a pompous, self-serving kyros. He was no good for them. Adem would advise him well, but Varol wouldn’t listen. He never had. Not when Meric and Varol’s father gave him direction during the first trade attempts with Silvania and the negotiations with Jakobden’s amir. It was why they’d had to send another group to Silvania. He’d insulted their reigning families so much that they’d refused to meet with representatives for three years. Why did Adem have such faith in him?

  Seren pressed her fingers against her temples. Her head pounded. She could reach through the bars, but even if she had something she could work into the locking mechanism, she’d never have the angle to dislodge the spring.

  Footsteps sounded. Seren leaned into the iron rods. Before whoever it was came around the corner, she straightened and smoothed her hair.

  One of the guards who’d brought her there held out a Fire bowl. “For you, Pearl of the Desert.”

  She bit her lip, hiding the hope she shouldn’t even have. It was good Lucca was gone, that he wasn’t here to try in vain to save her, that he was far, far away from Varol.

  The guard set the bowl of lahabshjara leaves and little flames on a collapsible pedestal beyond the door. He lit it, and with a nod, turned to leave. It was a poor setup for the Holy Fire, the bowl precariously perched on the wobbly pedestal.

  Working her arms through the bars, she stretched hands over the flame. “Holy Fire, I…”

  No prayer came to her. No visions or comforting ideas. It was over.

  Varol held her people in his cruel hands. The red tent would be gone by sundown and that meant no one would survive this siege. Tonight they would raise the black tent and all would be cut down when the Invaders won.

  She fisted her hands, the Fire licking her knuckles. Why wouldn’t Varol at least try her weapon? It would decrease their numbers. There were probably more ideas, too. From their fighters, from Lucca and Ona. She’d ruined everything. She pulled her hands back and accidentally knocked the Fire. The bowl tipped and slid to the ground. The Fire thinned, then went dark, its potential snuffed as surely as her own.

  30

  ONA

  The noise stirred and lifted the dust as Ona’s unit gathered behind the towering doors to Akhayma. The doors’ carved and molded flames reflected the moonlight and formed eyes that watched them assemble for a battle people were probably going to make wild tales about for eons. Ona was sick to her stomach. The tales were probably going to be true. And not good. Not good at all. Warriors of all sizes, ages, breathed the same desert air as her. They held their weapons ready, hers straight and familiar—theirs slightly curved, thin, more wicked. How did she end up here? It felt so very wrong to be away from Lucca and going into a fight. Like she was missing a leg or something.

  Archers fired from the walls far above. There was no way to tell if they were having an effect on the Invaders’ massive army beyond the layers of stone and wood. Her ears couldn’t pick out the sound of arrow tips hitting metal or flesh. It was only the noise like a storm of shouting, pleading, feet on the ground, hooves against the earth, steel, and her own heart’s fierce thrust to win, win, win.

  And then she had no room left in her to worry about Lucca, Seren, or herself.

  The men on the opposite side of these walls had shaped her into a creature who only saw beauty in shattered bones and ripe blood. She had no room for friendship. Certainly not for love. Seren was a fool for not focusing on her purpose. Lucca, a fool with her.

  Varol might’ve tricked Ona, but she’d win. She’d survive this and her revenge would shine bright all over his city, so bright he couldn’t ignore or blame her. She’d be the instrument of victory. Nothing could push her off course.

  Her body thrummed as Varol’s warriors began to pull the doors open. The archers let thousands of arrows fly into the dusty air. She dragged her flint across her blade, sparks flying around her unit as they began chanting and striking their own flints. Power sang through her muscle and bone, buzzing, howling, shrieking. Sound blasted through the open doors, so many voices and shields and swords, and Ona ran straight into her enemy.

  “Wake iron! Wake!

  Take my enemy’s breath

  Steal from him

  As he has stolen from me!”

  Her sword clanged against another. The man spit at her and shouted in his ugly language. She swung their linked weapons down and jerked back.

  “Wake iron!”

  She drove her sword under his plated chest. He fell forward. Spinning, the steel and horses a blur, she met another. Dragged her sword across his throat. Varol’s fighters cut and hit around her, a river of movement and death. Nuh flipped his yatagan and drove the tip into a shorter man’s eye. Ona ended three more Invaders, her hands so much faster than theirs, wrapping them in death like an invisible shroud.

  Stepping onto bodies, she drove toward a man wearing a finer surcoat over his armor. He shouldn’t have been here. This was a place for grunts. Ona’s rage shrieked from her mouth and she ran her blade straight through his neck before he could raise a hand. Beyond his shoulder, the Invaders were grains of sand. So many. So, so many. Gooseflesh rippled over her arms.

  A shape up on the city walls jerked her out of the moment.

  He still wore his hood, but she knew the set of those shoulders, the lift of that chin.

  “Lucca.”

  He waved for her to retreat, a quick movement, singular and loaded with panic.

  “No!” As if he could hear her.

  He gripped the parapet.

  A force knocked against Ona’s spine. Cold and heat both fizzed up her skin. She whispered a chant and kicked the attacker away before spinning to bring her sword down on the exposed flesh at the back of his neck.

  Her body sagged. Lucca was still there, but now he fired his bow along with the others, the dark arms of his sleeves moving in rhythm with the warriors around him.

  Ona brought her aunt’s face to mind as she leaped over a pair of Invaders. She pulled out her dagger, and in one move, drove steel into the base of their necks and through their worthless spines. Her aunt’s face flickered. Changed. Ona’s stomach lurched.

  She cut down another enemy, and three more, chanting as she painted the ground red.

  The familiar horror in her aunt’s face shifted to sadness. Her imagined eyes met Ona’s. Her lips turned down at the edges, a smear of blue paint marring her olive skin.

  Pushing the image away, Ona sheathed her dagger, drew her flint again. Atop an overturned cart, she tore the flint across the steel. Light flashed in the dark. This was her path.

  “Wake! Wake! Wake!”

  Something burned down her cheeks as she twisted and struck, severing an Invader’s arm. Her sword ate into an enemy’s leg. Blood’s metal scent swallowed everything except the image of her aunt, the haunting exactness of every pore and wrinkle and color.

  Ona blinked as Nuh tripped, crashed against a dead man, and was stabbed.

  Her aunt looked at her from her memory. Looked. At. Her.

  Shoving her thoughts back into the fray, she saw Varol’s men—her unit—surrounded by silver, red, and white. The enemy coiled around them and her, and opened its mouth to swallow. Beyond them, there were so many more, an endless nightmare made of swo
rd fangs, moon-washed faces, and shining carapaces of armor.

  In Ona’s head, her aunt stared. She mouthed one word. It rushed through Ona like a cold wind. Wake.

  “No!” she shouted at her memory, refusing her.

  Blind with the need to paint the world with blood, Ona ran directly into the tip of a sword.

  The world blurred, stilled.

  The Invader smiled.

  Ona looked up to find Lucca, but he was gone.

  Pain launched itself from the wound and screamed its way into her heart. Her aunt—the memory of her aunt—lowered her chin, looked at her clean hands, lifted them for Ona to see.

  “Your wishes are my wishes,” Ona whispered to Lucca, to wherever he was. “As long as yours don’t war with mine.”

  Enemies faded to gray, her revenge bled out of her, and she knew no more.

  31

  SEREN

  A noise from the tunnel, beyond the bars, had Seren on her feet.

  “Guard?” Her hands shook, so she clasped them behind her back.

  But it wasn’t the guard.

  A figure with dark brown curls and parted lips came around the corner, bow and arrow at the ready.

  “Lucca.” Her shoulders fell away from her ears where they’d been strung up tight. A warmth slid over her bones. Her trembling hands slid through the bars.

  Two vicious, foreign words broke from his mouth. He threw his weapon to the ground and rushed to her, banging one palm against the iron. “How do I get you out?” His hair stuck to his sweating face as he turned right and left.

  “I don’t know.” She hated how defeated she sounded, but she couldn’t pretend with Lucca. He’d see through it.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Erol. He saw them take you into the stables. Cansu guessed there was a place here. Some rumor the men heard.”

  Her soul swelled. “They’re loyal after all.” But dark circles had formed under Lucca’s eyes and an invisible weight pulled on him.

  He dropped to the ground, the bars a wall between them. “She’s gone, Seren.”

  She grabbed his hand. “What? Who?”

  He coughed and pulled away, covering his face with his fingers. “Ona…he killed her.”

  She gripped the bars to stay standing. “Varol?”

  “Yes.”

  She knew he’d turn on Ona. Seren should’ve warned her about his ability to manipulate and the black place where his soul should’ve been. “How?”

  “He put her at the front. Her whole unit. She was the distraction for the false retreat unit going out through the mines now.”

  “Did you…did you watch her fall?” The trade language didn’t translate this the way Seren wanted it to. She wanted to ask if he experienced her end—a respect for doomed loved ones—but she didn’t know the words.

  Finding her hand, Lucca’s fingers curled around hers. His words were ghosts. “I couldn’t. I walked away. I left her.”

  He kept glancing over his shoulder as if Ona would appear. Like a fighter who’d lost a limb, Seren could tell he felt her phantom presence.

  “She betrayed you,” Lucca said. “Us. I’m sorry. I should’ve known he’d be too tempting for her.”

  “What turned her?” Seren asked quietly.

  “It wasn’t anything you did. At least, I don’t think so. She saw Varol as more powerful. Capable of bringing down the Invaders. It’s all she cared about. Revenge. And his presence had to tempt her physically. She loved beauty. In her strange way, she still loved beauty.”

  His tears wet her fingertips as she pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Lucca. We will honor her.”

  “You have to hate her.”

  “I don’t. I think I understand why she did what she did. We will honor her. After all of this…”

  But she knew it was impossible. He had to flee. Seren had to die. Varol wouldn’t honor a Silvanian.

  “I should’ve warned her about him,” Seren said. “How he flips easy as a coin. How he hates anyone not of the desert race.” She squeezed Lucca’s fingers.

  He shrugged, but it was a stiff movement, a show, an act. “I suppose someone had to lead the unit. She dropped more than most before her end.” He breathed in through his nose. “She looked up at me before…she saw me on the walls in my hood.”

  “You shouldn’t have been there. What if Varol saw you?”

  It was as if he didn’t hear her. His mind was there, with Ona in the battle. Seren ran a finger over his thumb and a scar on the back of his hand.

  “There was no injustice in her being chosen,” he said. “Not really. I know Varol did it to get rid of her, but someone had to go. Nuh fell beside her. I should’ve been there.”

  Seren swallowed and tasted salt. No one should have to die. But this was war. “But it wasn’t her war,” she said.

  Lucca’s eyes flashed. “It was her war. Every battle with the Invaders would always have been her war. That’s why she’s dead. She wouldn’t let go of the blood. She clutched at her past like a talisman. A foul token. It didn’t protect her. It didn’t move her to greatness. It…it killed her.”

  He shuddered, and his words shone a flickering light into Seren’s mind, though she couldn’t see what they illuminated. She touched the green wool tucked into her sash as he straightened himself and stood.

  Such power in his face. Would it be enough to survive grief and a kyros who wanted him dead?

  “You need to escape the city, Lucca. Before Varol or Adem finds you. They won’t hesitate to kill you now. Please. I can’t lose someone else.” The shape of him had become such a comfort. So quickly, he’d soaked into her doomed heart.

  “I’m not leaving without you,” he said.

  She hit the bars with a palm, surprising him with the force of it. “There’s nothing I can do. I deceived everyone. I pushed myself into things I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t careful.”

  “You are the kyros.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “You are. I’ve seen you lead. This is your fate. This is your purpose. Why are you letting it fall between your fingers?”

  “I’m in a cell, Lucca. You don’t have the key. Varol and Adem have an army behind them. Another army lies beyond the walls. This is impossible. It’s over.”

  “Capturing the Invaders’ king seemed impossible, but you did it. Leading a city that’s never seen a woman at its helm seemed impossible. You did it.” He gripped the bars and stared into her face. His tears had left lines on his strong cheekbones, in the stubble on his jawline. “What is holding you back from at least trying to get out of here?”

  She touched his face, then stepped back, her fingers lighting on the scrap of her wool skirt.

  “I just don’t know what to do. It’s not like I’ve been here before! What do you expect from me? I’m only a girl from a little village with grief I can’t lay down and—”

  He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Her words echoed in her mind, spinning into an image of Ona’s rage and need for revenge. Heat reared up behind her eyes. She wasn’t letting the past go and moving forward. Ona hadn’t either, and she’d died because of it.

  For a second, Seren could almost see her sisters’ small fingers bunched in her green, woolen skirts. She remembered her father’s black boot, the sound of his heel against the wood floor as he stepped between them and the small band of Invaders who’d kicked their way into their home in the mountains.

  “Ona wouldn’t let go of what happened to her,” Seren said, mostly to herself. “She was a slave to revenge. And where has it thrown her? Varol didn’t repay her betrayal of us. Revenge isn’t a just master. She wouldn’t release her past, and now she is gone. Dead on the field.”

  Her throat closed on the words. They both fought tears, their breath mingling in the dank cell. Seren gripped Lucca’s fingers around the bars.

  “Our Ona died at the hands of the ones she hated,” she said.

  The ones she hated. Seren’s chest collapsed as she relive
d the sound of her family dying. Her heart stuttered. The feel of foreign fingers on her arm as she was dragged into the sun. The shout of Meric and his father as they fought off the Invaders.

  Her soul quaked with the sensations of the past.

  She remembered riding in a cart, jostling away from the Green Mountains.

  The first sight of Akhayma.

  Her new life.

  Then it was as if the Holy Fire itself burned inside Seren. She could see everything inside her soul. And she hid from what she saw.

  “No.” She pushed away from the bars and crossed her arms over herself, the muscles in her throat strangling her. “But what if I fail and die? My sisters, they didn’t even have the chance to live. They should be here. My sisters. My sweet sisters. Their soft cheeks. Their sharp, little minds. They could’ve been so much, lived so much.”

  She wasn’t making sense. The room spun around her, and she ripped the wool from her sash and pressed it into her skin, remembering every laugh, touch of a hand, joke by the fire, their little wishes and hopes and wild dreams.

  “It isn’t fair. It isn’t right that I’m here. I’m nothing to them. They were so colorful, Lucca. You should’ve seen them. If you could only see them.”

  She ended up slumped against the bars with Lucca’s body warming one arm, one leg, both hands. She pressed her wet face into his sleeve, into the bars, until she only saw black and the stars behind her eyes.

  Lucca’s finger lifted her chin—an awkward angle through the iron—and he took her green wool, tucked it back into her sash.

  “Keep the sour-sweet memories. I’ll do the same.” His gaze drifted over his belt where a shape had been scratched into the leather—a remnant from some memory with Ona, probably. He met Seren’s eyes. “But don’t let the tragedy hold you back. Let it move you forward.”

  Seren set her palm against her sash and the hidden spot of green inside.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to ignore Lucca’s words and the Holy Fire’s clarity, the light of them. But they wouldn’t let her shift them away.