by Dora Machado
“Blood,” Mia said. “You're bleeding from your bracelet.”
“Oh.” Sariah stopped twirling the bracelet and blotted the bloody scrapes. “It's nothing.”
“Does the bracelet hurt?”
Only in her heart. “Not really.”
Malord finished resetting the game. “Your move.”
Sariah threw the dice and considered her options. “This is giving me a headache.”
“My mommy gives me persimmon water with honey when my head hurts.”
“Sounds delicious. We have no persimmon but I happen to have very good honey.”
“Not again.” Mia giggled. “You're going to go wide at the hips, that's what my mommy would say. And you're going to lose to Malord if you don't pay attention to your game.”
Malord winked. “She's going to lose to old Malord even if she pays attention.”
“Are you that good?” Mia asked.
“I'm unbeatable.”
“I bet you Thaddeus could beat you.”
“You mean that scoundrel brother of yours? Never.”
“Oh, yes, he could. With his lucky dice. A double three, a three and five, a four and three, a double five, and a double two. Ten plays and he can't lose.”
“Surely good Thaddeus doesn't cheat?” Sariah said. “Your mother would never allow him to have a pair of loaded dice.”
“Mamma doesn't know. I'm the only one who knows. He always beats me. I told him I'd tell Mamma. That's how I got his secret winning numbers.”
Something fluttered in the back of Sariah's mind. Beware of the one who always wins, the old crone had said in Alabara.
“The secret winning numbers? Do you know about this, Malord?”
“Never heard of it, but then I'm not a seventeen-year-old apprentice trying to force my luck for the sake of coin.”
“You won't tell Mamma, will you?”
“Of course not,” Sariah said. “Tell me again. If you throw those numbers, do you always win?”
“If you follow the right order, you'll win no matter what.”
Beware of the one who always wins. And every game triumphs well before the end is played. The fluttering feeling coalesced into a concrete thought. Could it be?
“Put it back.” Sariah repositioned her scorpions quickly. “Put it all back.”
“What?” Malord asked. “Why?”
“Humor me.” She played a double three. “Does it matter what the other person plays, Mia?”
“For you to win, Malord's got to play the reverse.”
“That would be a double two, right?” Malord moved his snakes.
“Now me,” Sariah said. “Three and five.”
“This can't possibly work.” Malord played the double five. “It doesn't make any sense. How can a person ensure the dice will throw the right numbers?”
Mia leaned over to Malord and whispered. “That's the cheating part.”
“You must use loaded dice,” Sariah said. Maybe even wised dice?
It all began to make sense. Wised dice would assure the required throws. Did Leandro know this? Sariah doubted it. He would have been a much richer man if he had owned wised dice. And he would have needed a prohibitive amount of coin to procure something as rare and forbidden. Just to make sure, Sariah pressed the dice against her palm. They weren't wised. They weren't even a loaded set.
“Four and three for both of us,” Sariah said. “Is it possible, Malord? Do you see a trend? Something?”
Dark brows clashed above Malord's sharp nose. “It's very strange. Since we started playing these numbers, the board has become blocked, eliminating any choices to the moves. To play the numbers, the pieces can only move into certain spaces. Remarkable.”
“Auntie's gonna win!”
“Five and five.” Sariah moved. “Three and five, you. Can any kid figure this out?”
“This is the scam of a brilliant mind,” Malord said, “a mathematician perhaps, one who I've never met in the Domain.”
It struck Sariah like a hammer to the knee. “Someone from the Hall of Numbers spent a lot of time figuring this out.”
Malord gaped.
“Who else?” Only the Guild, and only a wiser trained in the Hall of Numbers could manage a feat of this kind. “The secret numbers may be out in the back alleys among betting players, but the original maker of this scam belonged to the Guild.”
But something else was bothering Sariah. “Even if Leandro had wised dice—which I doubt—how did he, or any other cheating player who knew the winning numbers for that matter, manage to win the game without triggering whatever trick was wised into these snakes and scorpions?”
“A fair question,” Malord said. “Whoever went through the intricate process of creating this game would have safeguarded the trick from the casual player.”
“And that safeguard must be something else, something not available to the typical player, something that only a stonewiser would have and readily recognize as rare and valuable.”
Malord frowned. “Are you thinking about the missing wised dice?”
“I'm thinking about what the missing wised dice represent once the winning numbers are known.”
They both said it at the same time. “Wised stone.”
Sariah fumbled through her pockets and took out a handful of stones. “Any wised stone?”
“Not a memory stone,” Malord said. “Those would have been all too common, at least among Domainers.”
“What then?” She thumbed through the stones. “A bursting stone? Too risky. A festival tale stone? Too diluted.”
“An ancient tale,” Malord said. “The oldest tale you have in your collection.”
“Maybe even a forbidden tale?” She held out the stone where she had imprinted the tale of her wising of the seven stones.
Malord grinned. “Ideal.”
Sariah placed her stone on the middle of the checkered cloth board, on a square which had always puzzled her because it was the only one painted black among the red and white ones. Hers wasn't an original stone, but it was worth a try.
She played a double two. “Your turn.”
A tremor betrayed Malord's hand as he played a double three and moved the last of his snakes into place.
Nothing happened.
“You win!” Mia jumped up and down, hugging Sariah. “Auntie, you finally beat Malord.”
Sariah wasn't thrilled. Beating Malord had become decidedly unimportant in the great scheme of things. “Maybe we need the wised dice after all. Maybe we didn't do it right.”
Malord was no less disappointed than she was. “Do you want to try it again?”
“Wait. Do you hear that?”
Pop. Pop. Blast. She knew those sounds. Somewhere out in the night, Kael was using his bursting stones, small and large. Sariah ran out to the deck. The night was dark and the wind was ferocious, but if she had doubts, a burst of fire in the distance revealed the dire extent of their trouble.
A deck went up in flames not half a league away. The flames shed light on the surrounding cluster. The wind carried the sounds of the fray—grunts, cries, the clang of weapons—a terrifying racket.
Sariah twisted the bracelet around her wrist. “Do you think they need our help?”
“Kael and Delis didn't take on those decks without good reason,” Malord said. “They're not mad.”
Sariah wondered.
“Is that a shooting star?” Mia asked.
Sariah turned just in time to watch a blinding streak slash the sky with unfathomable speed. It was like a shooting star, only bigger, and lower, and brighter, and… It was coming directly toward their deck. A muted rumbled stirred the flats’ dead waters into a quivering tide. The deck rattled and sloshed under Sariah's feet. A strange hum grew in intensity. It strummed her eardrums into unbearable vibration.
Mia covered her ears. “What's happening?”
The impact shook the deck and sent Sariah and the others crashing to the floor. The scent of smoke and burnt thatch fi
lled the air. Ashes and cinders flew everywhere. Green smoke poured through the deck's open door and out of the busted windows. Sariah ran to the door.
“The rot take me.”
The beam had burned through the scorched thatch roof and landed squarely on Leandro's game, igniting each piece into glowing embers. A pulse of energy brightened the glow every few moments, accompanied by the throbbing hum.
She tracked the strange beam. “North by northwest.”
Malord stammered. “Is it—?”
“Pointing the way? I think so.”
“It looks like Ars's bridges,” Mia said. “Only bigger.”
“I guess it's sort of a bridge, leading us.” But where?
The hum was so loud that they didn't hear Kael and Delis until they thundered onto the deck, panting like racing mastiffs.
“What's that?” Kael's face wrap was torn. Sweat streamed down his face. His weaved hands were dripping blood. Delis didn't look any better.
“It's not a map,” Sariah said. “It's like a guide, a pointer.”
“Whatever it is, turn it off.” Kael clipped his harness to the ropes.
“We just got it to work. I can't just turn it off!”
“Turn it off, cut it out, smother it down, whatever it takes.”
“And hurry.” Delis was already pulling the other deck.
Shouts rang in the night. Voices cried out in the dark coming from where the decks were burning and nearing fast.
“We just got it to work. We don't know if we can—”
“I got the stars,” Malord said.
“Me too,” Kael said. “Turn it off or we die.”
Sariah ran into the shelter and halted before the beam. The deck was already going at a good clip but the light didn't waver, fixed stubbornly on the game set. How on earth could she stop the beam from shining on the snakes and scorpions?
She exposed her fingertips to the throbbing beam and found out quickly that it was hot. She wrapped her hand in a spare weave and groped at the cloth that served as game board. After a few scorching tries, she managed to grab the corner and pull. The little pieces toppled and scattered. The hum boomed inauspiciously. The beam retreated through the smoking hole and drew back to wherever it came from, the very place Sariah needed to find.
Twenty
WITH A RENEWED sense of urgency, they pulled for a fortnight straight and without pause. Sariah didn't dare set up the game again, afraid the beam would reveal their location to their pursuers. To keep the risk to a minimum, they had decided to call the beam only after they arrived at a safe location in the Goodlands. At least they had a clear sense of direction. They had hitched their two decks together and took turns to pull the augmented load day and night, trekking steadily towards the nearest breach in the wall. Two of them were always pulling while the third rested. Malord and Mia served as lookouts. The prime pulling team was Kael and Delis, but Sariah strained herself to match their punishing pace.
It was during one of those interminable pulling sessions, and only after Sariah had asked a hundred times, that Kael reluctantly explained some of what had happened the night the beam struck the deck.
“We were quiet,” he said. “You know how we do that.”
She knew. She had never met creatures as lethally quiet as Ars's runners.
“Given the lights and the sounds, the decks were easy to find. We settled to watch.”
“What did you find out?”
“As we suspected, it was Josfan and the mob. Alfred and some of Orgos's men travel with them. Still, it's a smaller mob than before. Either they broke up into smaller groups to cover the ways out of the flats, or part of it gave up. The executioners were there too, two decks of them. Delis thought she recognized a couple of her fellow assassins.”
“What happened then?”
“Delis walked onto the executioners’ deck as if she was taking a leisurely stroll through the Crags. She asked them to leave.”
“Crazy.”
“One of the executioners asked Delis why she hadn't killed you yet.”
“What did she say?”
“Delis said you were her donnis and she would protect you with her life.”
Unbelievable. Sariah craned her neck to find Delis. She was on the deck, talking to Mia, hunched over a steaming pot. Delis, who wanted her as a pet, had declared herself against her people for her sake? She didn't understand the woman or the notion. Perhaps she never would.
“Delis was swift with the executioners, impressive really.”
Was Kael praising Delis? This was a rare day indeed.
“The others heard the commotion and joined the fray. I thought the odds were poor for Delis, so I lent a hand. Then that damn comet or light beam, or whatever you want to call it, shot overhead and stunned us all. The rest you know.”
“I don't understand. If I'm supposed to be her donnis, why does she mind me instead?”
Kael gave her an odd look. “Do wisers have pets?”
“Some do. Cats. Dogs. Mice. Lizards. The occasional goat. Ashmid had a pet fish once.”
“In my experience, people who have pets are of two minds: those who love to master their pets and those who love to pamper them instead.”
“And you think that Delis is of the latter inclination? I guess it's the better choice. If I was someone's donnis, which I'm not.”
Kael's pressed lips quivered slightly.
“Does that mean you like Delis better now?”
“Like her?” He looked perplexed. “No. Do you?”
“It almost sounds like you would.”
“She pulls well, and she minds your safety, I like that. But look at her. How could I like her?”
Sariah stole another glance at the woman. Delis waved from her place by the cauldron.
“She looks harmless to me.”
“Do you know what's in that pot of hers?”
“Boiled turnips?” she hoped fervently.
“Friends turned foes,” Kael said. “Her executioner friends’ ears and noses, her little war trophies.”
Sariah and Kael climbed atop a tall boulder, one of many gigantic slabs which had been ejected during the wall's destruction. The grueling ascent, notably stingy of hand and foot holds, took the better part of two hours. Once on top, they settled on their bellies against the rock, further hidden by the dark weaves they flung over their backs to blend with the granite. They waited through most of the afternoon.
The heat of the stone was Meliahs’ gift on Sariah's sore thighs. She pressed her cheek against the hard surface, inhaling its bland metallic scent, the distant whiff of ardent volcanoes, the pure promise of the earth's raw core. She could have stayed there forever, hugging the coarse-grained beauty, riding the compacted links, listening for creation's primeval wising with her eager palms. But she had already wised these stones the day of the wall's breaking, and she had climbed this boulder today for a different purpose.
The climb had been worth it. The boulder offered the best view of the area and it allowed them to see both sides of the ruined wall while remaining concealed. She saw the ruins of a guard tower scattered at the base of the crack, and noticed how quickly the green and brown vines had overtaken it on the other side. The shock of seeing the broken wall again squeezed both her throat and her heart.
“You didn't want to do it,” Kael said. “Remember? It was Zeminaya who overtook your power and tried to destroy the wall for her own purposes. If anything, you saved what remains intact. She almost killed you that day.”
It was little consolation when faced with such destruction. Zeminaya, who had built the wall at the time of the execration, believed that the wall's destruction was the only way to bring the Bloods together. For this purpose, she had wised Zemi, a powerful intrusion of herself into the twin stones tales. Through Sariah, she had achieved her goal and broken the wall, but her dreams of unity had not been realized. The irony wasn't lost to Sariah. Zemi had bequeathed the legacy, but it was the executioners who had forced S
ariah to carry it out by imposing a deadline on her life.
Was there a person in the Domain or the Goodlands who had not heard of the day Sariah broke the wall? Many different versions circulated about that day, many ill-disposed toward Sariah. The Guild's version in particular was one to mind. But there was no time to dwell on the past now. The future. That's what they had come to fetch.
“Do you see them?” she asked.
Kael scanned the woods with one of his most prized possessions, a looking glass he had purchased during his last roaming. “Huddled by the wall.”
The large group of men, women and children were massing by one of the wall's huge cracks. The Domainers had been hiding all day, waiting for the darkness's protection. Now they were stirring like bats wakening at dusk.
“Is the Shield gone?”
“They're in the woods. Waiting.”
With her eyes accustomed to the twilight's blue darkness, Sariah saw the Domainers crawling through the wall's crack, following each other like docile sheep.
“They're too many and too slow,” Kael whispered. “I told them it wasn't safe.”
“You risked your own life and went to talk to them. You warned them not to cross here. Nothing you can do if they chose to disregard your warning.”
“Crossing here is madness,” Kael said. “The place is crawling with Shield. The Shield has this break well covered, just like the other two spots we scouted yesterday.”
Sariah glanced at her bracelet. Already three of the nine red crystals had grown opaque with the silver haze. Worse, a trace of it was beginning to trickle into a fourth crystal with the inevitability of sand pouring into an hourglass. “Can we go a different way?”
“Aye, but we have Malord and Mia to consider, and you're not going to like it.”
“You don't think they'll be able to handle it?”
“I'm not sure. I don't particularly want to go that way, let alone bring all of you along, but I gather from my conversations with other Domainer travelers that the mob and Alfred are no more than a day or two behind us. And the Shield, as you can see, is still very much minding the wall. I don't think we ought to get ourselves stuck between enemies—”