UW02. Plains of Sand and Steel

by Alisha Klapheke

  Lucca was right. The Fire was right.

  Ona died holding on to her pain. If Seren clutched at her own horror and held it and acted with it always judging her every word, not only would she die too, but her people would bleed under Invaders’ swords. That couldn’t be the path the Holy Fire wanted for her. Not after thrusting her to the highest position in the Empire.

  She breathed once, slow and shaking, and let the light wash over her. They sat there for long time. Breathing. Grieving.

  Then Seren opened her blurry eyes.

  Blinking, she settled her past into her heart to keep it, to use it.

  Ona’s mistake may’ve betrayed Seren, but it had also saved Seren. Seren would not make Ona’s mistake.

  When Seren’s vision cleared, she was someone different.

  Lucca’s lips made a line and he nodded once. “Time to move forward?”

  She wiped her face and rose. “Too bad there is a wall of iron in my way.”

  He did a little half laugh, half smile, and her heart tripped even though she was stuck in a cell with only a handful of hours left to her on this earth and death all around them both.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “They didn’t think a chanter would find you,” he said.

  Stepping back, he pulled out his sword and flint. He slashed the flint across the steel and a spark danced into the air. He chanted in Silvanian, then grinned again and switched to the trade tongue.

  “Don’t change it so I can understand,” she said. “Just do what you need to do.”

  “I think it’ll help if your will is behind it too.”

  “I wish I had a Fire bowl.”

  The lines around his intense eyes smoothed. “Can you use the spark I create?”

  Seren stepped back, thrown by the idea. “Maybe. The improbable sometimes happens. After all, I never would’ve predicted I’d fall for a Silvanian mercenary.”

  His eyes burned. “Seren.”

  Her insides melted, and she wanted out of this cell for yet another reason altogether.

  He began to chant, his trade tongue strong and direct.

  “Wake iron!

  Be stronger than your kin here,

  Force your will through your lessers!

  Part what has been joined!

  Join what has been parted!”

  The fire leaped from his sword. Seren opened her hands to aim her palms at the tumultuous light.

  “Holy Fire,” she whispered under his chanting. “Tell me what to do. Lead us. Help us.”

  He struck the flint. Two arms of orange unfurled into the near dark. She kept praying.

  “Shout it, Seren!”

  “I can’t…I don’t know if this is right. I don’t want to say something wrong…”

  “Feel it, Seren. You are the kyros. This is your Holy Fire. I give it to you. I submit to you. Own your place, Seren. Shout! Shout! Shout!”

  The sparks dove out his sword and flint, jumping, twisting, striving, as he chanted his power into the room. Her bones, warmed by his presence, now burned like she was the spark, the flame, the power he was calling forward. She was shaking. Gasping. Her words grew and grew and grew.

  “Holy Fire.” Her voice reverberated off the ceiling, the walls. “Please give me the spark of ideas. I am the sultana and I will aid my people.” The words echoed in her ears.

  Lucca slashed at the bars. His sword caught against the iron. He’d bent the bars, not broken them. “Don’t hold anything back!” he shouted above his flint-striking.

  She splayed her fingers and Lucca’s sparks danced toward her flesh. “Holy Fire, I am Kyros Seren and I ask for your guidance, your help. Free me to protect the innocents from the errors of a wayward man.”

  Her palms lit up like bright candles, and the Fire appeared between her eyebrows, falling to a jagged spot on the door. A flaw in the iron, an opportunity.

  A smile like a blade sliced over Lucca’s face. “Wake iron, wake!”

  He drew his sword back and slammed its edge into the Fire’s chosen place.

  32

  SEREN

  Outside the cell, Seren crashed into Lucca. His hands drove up her neck and into her hair. Her mouth found his and she could never get enough. The taste of him, the scent of Silvanian pines in his skin, the feel of his jaw under her fingertips, the beat of his heart against hers.

  She pulled away. “We need cloaks.”

  Lucca was panting. “Wh-what?”

  “Ore master cloaks. They wear better hoods than this.” As he picked up his sword and sheathed it, she held up the end of the hooded clothing he’d found.

  She grabbed his hand and started to run.

  The tunnel gave way to the moonlit night and the distant sound of battle. The stables had been emptied and the archery field was an ocean of stillness.

  “Oh, I’ve seen the cloaks,” he said. “Those long, black ones.”

  “Yes. I need Meekra. She’ll know where to find some. The royal household has a few for guests Meric didn’t want others to know about. I sent Meekra to help with some things near the western side of the city. But do you know if Meekra was imprisoned or…”

  Seren clutched at her stomach. She hadn’t thought of her until now, thinking Meekra was safe because she hadn’t been around during the arrest. Seren and Lucca scanned the cells at the far end of the training field but only saw prisoners in homespun, filthy wools, darker clothing too, but none of Meekra’s finer clothing. The moon was a blank-eyed skull, a reflection of the death suffocating her city.

  “I don’t think so,” Lucca said of Meekra. “I haven’t seen her. Not since you ordered me away.”

  “You know why I did.” Seren pulled him through the inner gates and toward Barir’s home. Surely she’d go there when she learned Seren had been arrested. “If you die too, if I lose you too…”

  Lucca’s mouth found Seren’s disheveled hair and he breathed, “Shhh. We’ll come through this. Somehow. Now, where are you taking me?”

  “To the physician’s. He is Meekra’s father.”

  Thankfully, people were either hiding with their children in their tents or the adults were out there, in the fighting. No faces appeared at windows. No curious families manned the tables in the market. All the merchandise had been locked away and only a bat swooped over the oasis pool. Something small rummaged through a dropped sack of grain.

  Meekra herself opened the door when we arrived. “Come in, Kyros. Thank the Holy Fire you’re alive.”

  Seren crushed Meekra in a hug. “I’m so glad you’re all right,” Seren said, looking at Barir’s whole family. “I’m so glad all of you are all right.”

  Meekra smiled gravely as Seren moved to the Holy Fire bowl. Seren passed hands over the bowl, and her eyes shuttered closed as she murmured a prayer from childhood, a blend of old beliefs and new. She wasn’t going to ignore any parts of herself anymore. She was from the Green Mountains. But she was in love with the desert. She was a woman and a leader. She was kind, but she was fierce. She needed new ways to pray, and the combination suited her soul.

  Lucca’s large fingers uncurled over the Holy Fire after hers. He spoke in his language, his lips puckering and his tongue dancing.

  She gave him a sad smile. He’d have to learn new ways to live too. Ona had been his family and she was gone. His smile answered mine, he nodded once to leave that conversation until later. She agreed. It wouldn’t be a good thing for both of them to end up on the floor crying. They had to hold the rest of their grief until they either won this or lost it.

  Barir and the rest of his family stared at Seren’s torn kaftan sleeve, her smudged cosmetics, and swollen eyes. Coming close, Meekra’s little brother lifted a woven blanket worn to threadbare spots along one side. We didn’t have time for this, but I had to make time for this.

  Seren kneeled and reached out a hand to touch the blanket. It was soft as a spring lamb and obviously well-loved. It was probably his mother’s coming-of-age ceremonial blanket,
given to her youngest and last child to mark the end of her childbearing years.

  “I can’t take this from you, good man,” she said to him.

  His big eyes shone. “Oh no, Kyros.” His S slipped through the place where two front teeth should’ve been. “I only mean you can borrow it. ‘Til you’re happy again.”

  Meekra gasped and took his shoulders, but Seren smiled, tears threatening her, and brushed a hand over the faded fabric.

  “Of course.” Seren pressed the blanket once against her heart, then handed it back. “I feel happier already.”

  The boy grinned and hid his head in his mother’s kaftan. She patted his jet hair, and Seren’s chest ached for a mother and father she’d lost too soon.

  Standing, she spread her hands. “I hope I don’t endanger you further with my visit,” she said, then explained what she needed with as few details as possible.

  With a solemn nod, Barir left to find the ore master cloaks while his wife served mint tea, her younger children heading to the sleeping mat to shut their tired eyes.

  “What happens next?” Meekra asked quietly.

  “I have to see what’s happening beyond the walls,” Seren said. “I can’t make any decisions until I know how many warriors both sides have left. Have you been to look? Have you heard anything?”

  “No. The front gate unit assembled, then I left.” Her face told me she knew no one in that force would live past tonight.

  Lucca’s eyes fluttered shut and his fist pressed into his stomach.

  “Though I have, I see, um, Onaratta Paints with Blood in…error,” she said to him in broken trade tongue, “I honor her courage.”

  He must’ve understood enough of it. His sad eyes flicked to her face and he bowed his head.

  “I need to speak plainly, Kyros,” Meekra said.

  “Of course.” Did she worry they weren’t friends? “We’ve been through enough to shed this formality.”

  A small smile tried to bend Meekra’s mouth. “But we need you to keep some of it. We need you to be a leader, not merely another person. Will you finally stand up to General Adem and High General Varol?” Seren loved that she refused to call Varol anything but his original rank. “We need you,” Meekra said. “We need you to be strong. Not only smart or kind. Akhayma must have your power.”

  Lucca’s hand warmed Seren’s back, not touching, but hovering just above. She could feel the Holy Fire inside her too, driving her to embrace her calling. “I swear by the Fire I’ll do everything in my power to save this city.”

  “If you don’t,” Meekra said, “we won’t be the only ones to fall under the Invaders’ yatagans. The entire Empire will be open to attack.” Moisture gathered on her thick lashes and she made a noise like a sob.

  Seren squeezed her hands. “I’ll do my best. That’s all I can promise.”

  Meekra nodded and wiped her eyes.

  “Will you find Cansu, another fighter named Haris, and maybe Hossam and Erol?” Seren asked. “Be careful, but will you see if they’ll help us? It’s very risky. But…”

  “But we’re all going to die if we don’t all take some risks.”

  “Well said.”

  Barir came to the door, arms were heavy with black cloth. “I have three ore master cloaks. Here.” He handed them out.

  “Where should we meet you?” Meekra asked as she pulled one over her head.

  Seren slipped hers on. Lucca did the same. They’d be nearly invisible in the night and beyond question in the day. Hopefully. At least until Varol realized Seren wasn’t waiting for her death in that awful hole in the ground anymore.

  “Meet us at the archery range,” Seren whispered to Meekra, watching the younger siblings huddle together in bed. “If the men know where any of the clay pot explosives are, tell them to bring them.”

  “What if they’re afraid to join you?” Barir asked.

  Meekra raised her chin and tilted her head. Seren knew she was waiting for her to rise up like she’d promised she would.

  Lucca pursed his lips and gave Seren an encouraging nod.

  “Tell them their kyros asks them only to do as much as they would for their own families. That is to say, I am their mother. Their sister. Daughter. Aunt. They have to join me now or die in shame tomorrow.”

  Meekra smiled and everyone raised a palm and bent at the waist.

  “May the Holy Fire bless our kyros,” everyone said in unison.

  And with one last prayer over the Fire, Seren, Lucca, and Meekra bid the family farewell and launched into the deep night.

  WARRIORS RUSHED past Seren and Lucca to mount a group of stomping horses held by low-castes. Fig’s soft nose moved in Seren’s memory and she shook it away to focus. The group gathered at the ring road that led to the old mine exit. Most never knew the dusty path had been smoothed and kept free of tents originally for that purpose. Now, it was only a way to move more quickly to the part of the city where people gambled at all hours and if you didn’t watch yourself, skilled fingers would pluck you clean of every coin, ring, and bit of treasure.

  Behind a group of archers—newly stocked quivers boasting arrows with fletching in the Empire’s blue and black—Lucca and Seren climbed the stairs to the top of the walls.

  “We’ll need more tips soon, master,” one fighter said, seeing Seren’s ore master cloak. He nocked an arrow and let it fly into the teeming mass below.

  The moon exposed the Invaders’ glinting armor and brushed lightly over our warriors’ peaked helmets. The clash of steel on steel punctuated the rough, lower sounds of human effort.

  The white tent was gone. In its place, a red tent commanded the plains and the army swarming in its dust and around our walls.

  “No mercy for any man. Isn’t that what it means?” Seren asked Lucca quietly.

  His hands clutched the parapet as he scanned the horizon. He held on like he was afraid he might lose his mind and jump off. Seren shivered. This was probably where he watched Ona die.

  “The red tent.” Pain tied his voice in knots. “Yes, if they take us, they’ll kill every man in the city.”

  A shiver quaked through Seren’s chest. She pulled her cloak more tightly around herself. “You should’ve tried to escape.”

  “I made my choice.”

  Seren thrilled to hear it, but his decision also gutted her. Gutted her as well as any yatagan’s edge.

  At the front, near the gates, the Invaders set ladders against the city walls. When one fell from our warriors’ arrows, another took his place. Seren’s eyes couldn’t help but search for Ona’s body. But it was so dark. Even in that green brigantine, so different from all the other soldiers’ blood red jerkins and the Invaders’s white, silver, and red, Seren still couldn’t spot her. She didn’t want to ask Lucca. He wore his grief on his shoulders, the weight unhinging his usual grace.

  “Look. Here they come,” Lucca whispered at her ear. He pointed to the old mine, on a hill a half hour’s ride away when the plains were clear.

  A dark river of shapes—horses and their riders—poured from the spot where the flat land gave way to a ridge surrounded by the thick-leaved lahabshjara trees.

  “I can hardly see them. Are they firing now?” She tugged Lucca close. “Wait. They must be. The Invaders there are turning to face them. Do you see?”

  The enemies moved like the sand stirred by a wind, swirling back, then around. The Invaders had no archers that far back, so the Empire warriors shot arrows into them and advanced quickly. But the Invaders were no cowards. They rushed to close the distance, their numbers far exceeding the mounted unit. Two went down under the western swords, then a handful more. A shape at the back waved a hand three times and the movement was echoed through the unit, and they turned their horses back the way they’d come. A swathe of fifty or so Invaders pursued them on foot. Seren was sure Adem had wanted more to chase them, so the unit could circle a good hundred or two and take them out with the false retreat.

  “It’s not enough,” she said
.

  An enemy’s arrow sliced the air beside Lucca. Both of them dropped to a crouch, the archers nearby firing shot after shot.

  Lucca’s face was shadowed by his hood. “You’re right. That’s not going to win us this battle. What do we do?”

  The wind tugged at Seren’s hood and she grabbed the edge to keep hidden. She looked past the parapet, the night air tangy with the scent of blood. The mounted unit fell one by one to the dark, to the wide swords of the Invaders.

  They were all going to die.

  “We have to get the clay weapons released,” Seren said. “Now.”

  THEY RACED to the prison cells.

  The first row of cells held Invaders captured during the battle. Most were bandaged from being forcefully questioned. All wore a unique blend of fear and defiance in their light eyes. The engineer was nowhere.

  “He has to be here. If not, he’s gone and we’re finished.”

  “There!” Lucca pointed at a small cell, too short to hold a man really, at the end of the row.

  Cold bars held her engineer with the unpronounceable name. Fists curled into his lap, he sat at the very back. Sweat rolled down his pale face.

  “Broken,” he said in terrible trade tongue. He held up a shaking mess of what used to be his hands.

  Seren’s stomach lurched, and Lucca butted his head against the framing with a shout of disgust.

  “We’re going to free you. I’ll get medicine for you. For the pain. We need to make more weapons and release them now. Lucca, should we try our magic on these bars, too?” She had to smile and laugh and cry at the same time. Life was full, bursting, pushing the real Seren out of the fertile soil of horror and joy.

  Lucca dipped his chin respectfully and drew flint and sword. As quickly as they could, they chanted together, the Holy Fire from his spark leaping at her palms. Heat twinged at her forehead, and in her hands, and a column of orange and blue twisted from the air in front of her eyes before trailing onto a bar near the base of the cell door.