by L. D. Lewis
“You’ve been around long enough, Djinni. Infer.”
“You versus the Boorhian Empire? You’re much too calm for how human history dictates this will go.” There was no hint of nervousness in their voice. They were silent awhile after, though, which Daynja found adorable on the edge of her well-deserved nap.
“It’s funny,” they said, finally. “If you were to do something like die on me, it’d be... well, I’d be disappointed.”
Daynja laughed, a rich, life-giving sound that carried beyond the monastery and hopefully shook a soul someplace.
“Who loves me like you do, Djinni?”
∴
The sky was in its late violet sunset stage when she woke again. Djinni was gone. She bolted upright, her heart pounding with the sensation that she was late for something. Glimmers of light in a not-too-distant section of the main road caught her peripheral vision and she checked the scene through Wadjet’s scope.
Leaves of trees rustled nearly as far as she could see. One had come bearing a squadron of souls for her.
Summoning what she could of her energy, Daynja tugged on her mask. She jumped from the wall where she’d been napping, but her knees weren’t quick enough to settle and her legs gave way beneath her.
“Unbelievable,” she groaned when, actually, it was perfectly believable. The wall would have been high even for someone half her age. There was a reason the men in the war council existed in an advisory capacity. But this was an inconvenient time to learn that lesson.
Alarm piqued her senses again but her armor was slow to generate. She could feel it bubbling in her blood, but it wouldn’t surface. Had she donned it too long? Was her body still waking? Of course, she thought. The rest of her was slow to recover at her age. Why wouldn’t magic blood armor take its own precious time?
She had to get to the monastery gates, but first came the wobbly stand and wary pressure testing of her mutinous legs. She determined the whole of Wadjet would be too much to carry now and she’d forgotten the vest that allowed her to carry it. Two barrels would be enough.
She managed to get to a weak jog, barrels in hand, and made her way to a flint line she’d arranged at the monastery gates. Her First Shadow was emerging at the top of the road with the front lines of the squadron he intended to use to persuade her to give up the mask.
Daynja snickered.
They came to a halt at the base of the ruined staircase. One looked impressed with himself. Columns of uniformed regulars stood at his back. The first line’s guns were trained on her; and the lower halves of their faces were covered by unnecessary black sheaths. As if she cared about any of their identities.
She wouldn’t manage to kill all of them. Just most of them.
One stood square and center, deadly battle chain wrapping his torso and piling around his thick neck like a heavy scarf. Busts of him would have looked good in this or that Hall of Great Whatevers the Empire would be erecting for as long as it existed. She wished she had the time or inclination to teach her Shadow that the smugness he tried to emulate was actually an earned thing. But that didn’t matter just now either.
For now, she’d settle for conjuring that armor. She could manage, but the reveal would be much less poignant without it.
“Is this it?” He sneered. “Poetic setting for a last stand, but is it really just you and bits of Wadjet?”
“‘Last stand?’ Presumptuous,” Daynja called back. The armor flickered in patches but didn’t stay. “It took you this long to assemble this little party?”
“This is me formally notifying you that you’ve been relieved of duty. And if this is about that Eros girl, the Chief Minister will pursue her with forces under my command. So I am also informing you that you have saved nothing.”
“Congratulations, Waahid. Though I’ll admit I’m disappointed murdering children is so high on your list of aspirations.”
“Whatever the Empire requires. I have always been Boorhia.” He smiled darkly. “The mask, Daynja Édo.”
It was an order. How sweet that she’d been there for his first.
Daynja shook her head, sad only for a moment that this was her legacy, and then resolved that this would also be the end of it.
She flung the mask at his feet and waited. He smirked as he picked it up, and she watched him brace for whatever he’d always imagined would happen when he put it on.
There was nothing.
Her smile spread with his confusion and the familiar slide of liquid stone stretched from her eyes over the rest of her body. She had never needed the mask.
“You’re a shadow, One. There has only ever been me.”
She brought Wadjet’s barrels down against the flint line before her. A train of sparks sped along the spiderwire net beneath the army’s feet. The tree line ignited. And then the bombs went off. The ground, the very air rumbled as waves of bodies careened against blasts of blue and white light. Daynja braced against the concussions, not wanting to lose sight of One as he coiled the chain around his fists.
“That’s it, filho,” Daynja muttered. “Get angry.”
Soldiers searched frantically for cover. Mask or no, their steps faltered when finding the only way away from the flames was toward her.
She had no interest in them.
One was unfocused, his mind somewhere between self-preservation and the horror that came from the gross underestimation of an enemy. He’d never had a real, flesh opponent before. At least not one that could fight back.
She chuckled as he glared at her, the flame reflecting in his eyes. Too many of his troops were distracted with being on fire to heed his hollering.
He charged Daynja alone. The chain circled his forearms and whipped about him like violent tentacles, clipping his men indiscriminately as he carved his path. Daynja remembered teaching him to use it the way she used spiderwire: as an extension of the body only meant to bludgeon instead of snare his targets.
Normally, he was adept, but his anger made him reckless. It was the tired cliché that made Daynja prize Two over him.
She dodged and countered everything he threw at her, and let him scream his frustrations. She was, after all, in the middle of robbing him of everything.
The occasional explosion forced his balance. His footwork was sloppy on the stone steps and his swings were undisciplined. He inevitably tangled himself and Daynja decided they'd both had enough when the opportunity for barrel shots to his knees presented itself. She took it and peered down at him when he fell.
Her First Shadow hadn't been the shorter of them since he'd hit puberty. Wasn't that a lifetime ago?
She knew when her armor faded because embers on the evening air singed the fine hairs on her arms. One got to see her this way, without the mask and still greater than he had ever been.
“Is this it?” She shouted at him, panting in a mad grin. She swung her last bit of Wadjet hard enough to nearly knock One’s head from his shoulders, and he spilled himself on the stone steps.
She looked out over the carnage as she’d done dozens of times before in Boorhia’s name. The image of her maskless self was seared into the memories of the fleeing. It was the only time she could remember feeling there was a rightness to her mayhem.
She blinked. Her eyes shut just long enough for a searing heat to punch through her. At first she was startled. Her breath caught as she looked down to find she’d been shot. The neat, singed hole in her shirt just below the outer bend of her ribs began to leak. She pressed her hand to it, only to feel shockwaves of pain and a corresponding stickiness on her back.
Somewhat involuntarily, she dropped to the steps beside Waahid’s body and looked out again for the soldier who meant to finish her. None seemed to notice. The shot was nowhere near center mast. A gun was more likely to have gone off in her general direction than having been aimed at her.
A mad sort of laugh escaped her as she tried to stand again but her legs would not allow it. All the years of violence and she’d never been shot before. Al
l things considered, she could have gone another day without it. And now she’d die by accident.
“Oh, Waahid,” she smiled wistfully. Tears of irony and excruciating pain escaped her eyes. “My absolute worst day and you still couldn’t defeat me.”
She was aware now of the pounding of her heart, the blood it was pumping inevitably out of her body. A breeze carried the scent of the jaboticaba with it to push out the thick scents of smoke and sweat. A few of the scattered soldiers noticed her sitting on the steps and she was sure something about her face indicated it wasn’t of her own volition. They pointed their weapons somewhat boldly as they crept closer. Daynja’s defense impulse was tempered by the loud grinding of her bones as they’d resigned themselves to rest.
The mission was accomplished. It might be nice to die here after all.
A shadow launched itself from over her head and Daynja cleared the blur in her eyes to find she was staring at the back of Djinni as the loc-haired kid. They spread their arms wide before crashing them together in a clap that emanated broad, whistling waves of wind. The nearest trees bent under the force and anguished screams rang out as the remaining soldiers fell to their knees cradling their heads for their destroyed eardrums.
“What are you doing?” Daynja groaned.
“What are you doing? Get up!” Djinni snapped.
Daynja roared as she fought herself to lean forward. “I’m shot.”
Djinni shoved her aside to gruffly inspect her. “It went in and out, you big baby! We can’t patch you up here so get up.”
“Why are you here? I didn’t ask for your help,” Daynja huffed, using one of Wadjet’s barrels to stand herself into some semblance of upright.
“You don’t thank me either,” Djinni said, then nodded at where Waahid lay on the steps. “I see you squared things with One.”
Daynja said nothing. Very little was square. She’d destroyed the monsters she created and was surviving them all. He had still been her first Shadow.
Djinni let her prop herself against their shoulder and reached around to press against the wound in her back. She cursed behind clenched teeth. Together, they limped back into the jungle.
“Where are we going?” Daynja asked.
“First day of the rest of your life? Anywhere,” Djinni said cheerily. “ You know, I spoil you.”
About the Author
L. D. Lewis is a coffee enthusiast and writer of SFF. She also serves as Art Director for FIYAH Literary Magazine for Black Speculative Fiction. She lives in Florida, on deadline, and under the judgmental gaze of her cat, Gustavo. Tweet her @ellethevillain
Read more at L.D. Lewis’s site.
About the Publisher
Dancing Star Press is an independent publisher based in Lansing, Michigan. Our mission is to publish speculative fiction that shows that not only can dragons be beaten, but so can oppressive governments and other forms of social control. We believe in finding hope in the apocalypse, joy in a dystopia, and people and peoples finding their power.