“Don’t say another word,” he said. “You’re a manipulative man, Colonel. You always have been. Every word from your mouth is hewn to be a monument to the great Hero of Maritinia. You care about nothing but your own glory. That’s what makes me better than you. I see the people around me. I care about them.”
Having gained control of my breathing, I asked him if he really believed that.
He backhanded me, hard, across the face. I figured that was answer enough, but a megalomaniac like Mnai wouldn’t be content without hearing his own voice. “How dare you ask me that? Of course I do. All great leaders care about their people. And I care about my daughter, too. Only Falal knows why she’s become so fond of you, but because she is, I won’t be the one to kill you. I won’t let Sali remember me as the man who took you away from her. The Empire will do that for me. They’ll execute you just as surely as they will me. Until then, I grant you a reprieve.”
“So it’s like none of this ever happened?”
“No, Colonel. Not like that at all. You’ll be under guard at all times, and as of now, you are banned from entering the Ministry. Come close, and my soldiers will cut you down.”
CHAPTER 25
“Finding happinss is like grapsing at water. Your hands might gett wet but it will evaprate soon enout.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
The sun had just fallen, the sky painted with graduated shades of blue darkening to navy, then to black. I stepped off the boat, my feet dropping to the stone quay. I held out a hand for Sali, but she didn’t take it. As always, she didn’t need any help. After all, she was the one who had just rescued me.
My two new guards disembarked next. One was the short Kwuba man who had been following me for the last two weeks, except now he’d turned in his aquamarine robes for a full uniform. The other guard was taller and thinner, with pocked cheeks and a stiff demeanor.
Heading down the quay, we slowly passed a cargo vessel. A group of black sashes passed crates from person to person bucket-brigade style, hastily unloading the ship. Yesterday, I would’ve wanted to see what was in those crates. Today, I didn’t care. I was a free man. Not in the literal sense. With Mmirehl’s guards attached to my wings, it was impossible to say that. No, my newfound freedom was of a kind much more liberating.
I was free from responsibility.
My mission was finished. No more sneaking around the Ministry. No secret messages or devious plans. No more of the delusional admiral or his spiteful captain.
I’d survived. I’d done my duty and survived.
I was free. Nothing left to do but wait for the Empire to arrive. If only the admiral knew the gift he’d handed me by banning me from the Ministry.
Walking on light feet, I tuned in to the sound of penned mammoths munching on dried kelp, the noise akin to that of tearing fabric. I breathed deep and savored the smell of roasting eel drifting on a smoky breeze. A storyteller caught my ear with talk of cuda with teeth so sharp they could cut you if you looked too close. Standing on a stool, she spun what sounded like an adventure tale for a small gathering of entranced listeners. She soon fell out of earshot, and we approached a pair of hawkers using a bellowslike device to suck fireflies from a hatchery draped with gauzy silk. I stopped to watch one of the hawkers insert the sea-bamboo nozzle into a collapsed paper globe and squeeze the handles, the paper ballooning and filling with dancing lights.
Sali said, “Come on, Drake, let’s get home.”
I let myself be led. But something had been puzzling me. “How did you get into Mmirehl’s secret room?” I asked her.
“I told the guards to let me in or I’d hurt myself and tell my father that they’d done it.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
This time, she let me take her hand. We headed into the city, water drizzling from sluices that crisscrossed overhead. We strode past restaurants and shops, one with a woman spinning silk outside the door. We walked silently, hand in hand, the darkness affording me enough anonymity that no one recognized me.
Approaching our house, we found a young girl waiting outside with a Maritinian torch—a stick with a glowgrub impaled on the end. “Hello, Colonel.”
“Hello, Dory.”
“My brother told me to wait here for you. He said that if you came, I should ask you to come for dinner.”
“Sali, this is Dugu’s sister, Dory. What do you think about dinner?”
“It sounds wonderful.”
I looked at the lead guard and raised questioning eyebrows.
“You can do whatever you want,” he said, “as long as it doesn’t involve plotting against the admiral or going to the Ministry.”
“Nothing could be further from my mind,” I said before turning to Dory. “Will you show us the way?”
She stuck the stick down the back of her silk pants so the glowgrub hovered over her head. With freed hands, she pried my hand out of Sali’s grasp so she could insert herself in our chain. “Swing me.”
I was happy to oblige.
In fact, I was plain happy.
I stepped through the curtain and immediately received a hug from Dugu. “I knew they’d let you go,” he said. “Keeping you lock-ed up in addition to the Falali Mother would’ve brought too much pressure.”
I returned his bearlike grasp. “You can thank Sali. She’s the reason the admiral set me free.”
Releasing his hold on me, Dugu bowed to Sali, fingers on his heart. “You’ve done us all a great service.”
“No thanks necessary,” she said. “My father would’ve let him go of his own accord.”
I studied her face, looking for signs she’d lied to cover for the admiral. But I saw no tightness in her smile or tension in her eyes. She appeared to truly believe what she’d said. After seeing the horrors of the lamprey pool, I didn’t know how that was possible, but I knew the bonds of family were hard to break. I wouldn’t fault her for it. Instead, I’d try my best to enjoy our last weeks together.
Of course, it didn’t stop Pol from noting she was as delusional as her father. I ignored that, too.
Dugu stood straight and noticed the guards standing in the doorway.
“My new detail,” I said. “The admiral wants to keep an eye on me.”
“I understand. I’ll let my mother know we’ll need food for two more.”
“No,” said the lead guard. “We’re on duty.”
“Not in our home you’re not. What are your names?”
“I’m Mnoba. He’s Mmuro.”
Dugu touched his heart. “Come, let me take you all out back.”
A mere four paces took us out the back exit to an irregularly shaped courtyard with lanterns hanging from overhead balconies. Near the center, a large fire burned inside a shallow well that was positioned under a stone shelf crammed with steaming earthenware pots.
Dugu led us across the courtyard. Entire families crammed the window frames, heads leaning far out to get an up-close view of the Blessed Hero of Maritinia. To our left, a sweaty Jebyl workman who hadn’t noticed us kept scraping air barnacles from a wall. Ahead, Dory had already joined a pack of children kicking and chasing a ball made of an intricate weave of bamboo strips.
We stepped up to a woman seated on a flat rock next to a hole in the stone floor. Her hair was gathered up into a swirl and held in place by a pair of urchin spines. With quick hands, she worked a fish with a bone blade and dropped the innards through the hole to the ocean below.
“Mother,” Dugu said, “I’d like you to meet Colonel Kell and Sali Mnai.”
The dim light couldn’t hide the brightness of her smile. She touched the fish head to the silk robe over her heart and left her seat to drop to one knee. “I am most honor-ed.”
“Please,” I said, “the honor is ours.”
“How can we help?” asked Sali.
“You
mustn’t do any work. You are our guests. Krioux? Where’s Krioux?”
“I’m here,” said a man descending a dogleg-shaped staircase of uneven steps. He wore a Jebyl waistwrap and carried a bottle of imported wine. “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion.”
“You must be Dugu’s father,” I said. “You’ve raised a fine son.”
“You are most kind, Colonel.”
Pulling a knotted cord from behind his ear, he pressed the knot between the cork and the glass. Borrowing his wife’s knife, he used the blade—stained with fish blood—to jam the knot past the cork’s bottom before pulling the cord and uncorking the bottle. I had to shake my head at the complete disregard for proper sanitation, but I told myself not to worry. By now, my stomach had fully adjusted to Maritinian conditions. Its rumbling and cramping protests had stopped two days before I took Kell’s life.
Chairs arrived for Sali and me. Dugu reached high overhead to pull bamboo skewers from where they’d been soaking in a water sluice and ran them through the gutted fish. Soon, the wine was flowing, along with a salty kelp stew. The courtyard grew crowded, men and women bringing their own fish and eel and propping so many skewers around the fire it seemed to be a pond surrounded by fish-topped cattails.
Full-bodied wine splashed across my tongue, fingers of alcohol beginning to tickle my brain. A bowl of quartered crabs came my way, and I burned my fingers peeling sweet flesh from the shell. The fire sizzled with dripping juices, while laughter tumbled from the overhead balconies.
Dugu carried an old man in his arms and set him down on a mat near the fire. With bony knees poking from his waistwrap, the old man sat cross-legged. Dugu brought a piece of fish, broke off a small bite, and set it in the man’s palm. Picking up the fish in his fingers, he lifted it to a toothless mouth and popped it inside.
“This is my great-uncle,” said Dugu. “He can’t see anymore.”
I reached over and patted the man’s knotted knuckles. “Good to meet you, sir.”
“He doesn’t hear so well anymore either.”
“He wears a waistwrap. I didn’t realize you were descended from Jebyl.”
“My entire family is Jebyl, except for my mother. She sent me to school, so I could have a better future. She’s doing the same for Dory.”
“How does your father feel about that?”
He handed another bite of fish to the old man. “My father is proud of us. He loves to read. He’s a very smart man. He would’ve excell-ed if he’d ever gotten the chance to go to school.”
“Is he angry he never got that chance?”
“I wouldn’t say angry. He’s a gentle soul. He knows Kwuba and Jebyl flow together like the tides and currents. He long ago accept-ed the place Falal chose for him.”
“Falal has nothing to do with it. You know the classes are arbitrary, don’t you? Kwuba and Jebyl were an invention of the Empire’s first governor. He wanted to create a stable class structure, so he chose up sides.”
“I’ve heard that history before, but it was so long ago, nobody can say that was the way it really happen-ed. The Sire fancies himself a god. He likes to take credit for everything we are. He denies Falal’s role in creating this world and its people. But we see through the ruse. He is no god. He is only a man.”
Pol’s voice slipped into my mind.
Dory appeared behind the old man and slipped her hands over his eyes. With a mirthful grin, he reached for her wrist, but she pulled away and giggled. She waited for him to lower his hand, then covered his eyes again. This time he was quick enough to snatch her wrist. With more strength and dexterity than I would’ve thought him capable of, he pulled her around to his front and tickled her ribs. Dory’s giggles quickly escalated to breathless belly laughs.
“Your uncle is full of humor,” I said to Dugu.
“He finds a way. These last years have been hard on him, but he finds a way.”
Dugu’s mother handed out fruit the size of a berry. I bit it in half and chewed mealy flesh that tasted like a concentrated version of the ocean. Sali lifted the wine bottle, and I eagerly held out my glass.
I felt something brush my hair, felt it on both sides of my head, sliding along my temples toward my eyes.
My eyes. Lamprey.
I jumped from my chair, and the wineglass fell from my fingers to shatter on the stone. I whirled around, hands lashing out to bat away the lamprey.
But there was no lamprey. Just a scared little girl cradling slapped hands.
A hush came over the people nearby. Every eye was on me, one particular young pair already glassing up. I looked at Sali, whose stunned brows had lifted high enough to crease her forehead. I turned back to Dory, swallowed the misguided panic lodged in my throat, and pressed my lips wide. I forced the last bits of my newly formed smile with a curl at the corners and a baring of teeth.
Dory’s eyes filled with water, twin tears breaking free with a blink. Desperate to make her stop crying, I snatched her up in my arms. “I caught you,” I said with deliberate jocularity. She hung limp in my grasp while I tickled her ribs in the same spot her uncle had. She responded first with unamused grunts, but after a few seconds she wriggled in my arms, and I kept tickling until her infectious laughter put the party back in swing.
Setting her down, I watched her run off to be with her friends.
Sali tugged my sleeve. “Are you okay, Drake?”
I nodded, but I wasn’t okay. My survivor’s high had evaporated, and I felt myself drowning under the crush of images battering my mind like crashing waves—Mmirehl’s wicked smile; the lamprey reaching for my eye; the unbreakable clamp of teeth; eyes ripped from my sockets; tears of blood running down my cheeks.
Blind.
The pool; lampreys latching onto my arms and legs; the spaces between my fingers and toes; the slow, excruciating drain of life leeching away.
Dizzy, I reached for the chair. Sali was up, one hand on my elbow, the other around my biceps, both guiding me down to a seat. Dugu’s mother arrived to clean up the spilled wine. With a bowl of water pinned against her chest, she scrubbed the stone with a worn-down brush made from tufts of coarse mammoth wool.
When she looked at me, I tried to smile an apology but couldn’t find an ounce of humor to prop it on. She seemed to see the distress on my face, and said, “Worry not, good Colonel. It is only wine.”
Before I could respond, a loud voice tumbled into the courtyard and echoed off the walls like the rumbles of distant thunder. Conversations quickly faded to silence as the admiral’s words boomed from the skyscreens. The time is upon us, good peoples of Maritinia. The Empire’s fleet has enter-ed orbit. Study these pictures of their ships closely.
Closed inside the courtyard, I couldn’t see any of the skyscreens. Some people started filing up staircases to watch from the rooftops. Others stayed where they were, faces gazing vaguely upward with intent stares.
You see these ships. They are fill-ed with soldiers who think they will meet no resistance. They think we are weak.
I once beat the Empire all by myself. I risk-ed my life and the lives of my family to defeat them. Me. I show-ed them exactly what one righteous man could do in the face of unthinkable power.
One man? Clearly, the erasure of Kell’s role in history was already under way. I looked to see Sali’s reaction, but she didn’t meet my eyes. Her gaze was aimed upward, as if she were trying to spot the ships in orbit.
One man cannot stop them. Not this time. But one world can. One world unite-ed in a common cause. One world embolden-ed by the
taste of freedom. This is Free Maritinia. And it will remain free.
If you love freedom, you will fight. If you love your people, you will fight. Look to your sister and your brother. Look to your son or daughter. And if you find love in your heart, you must fight.
Fight, and you commit an act of love. Sit idle, and you watch your babies drown.
The voice went silent for long seconds. Then another voice took its place, the timbre fluid as silk sliding across skin. Mmirehl said, Fighters report to the closest water-purification plant. Fighters report to the closest water-purification plant. Fighters report. . .
A holler sounded from somewhere far off. Then another, this one close by, a lonesome-sounding howl followed by shattering glass. Soon the air was thrumming with war cries. The primal forces struck a chord up my spine, and the resulting reverberations gradually harmonized with the war cries until my nerves sang the same eerie tune.
Swept up like a leaf in gusting wind, I was ready to fight the Empire myself. But the Empire wasn’t in orbit.
Nobody was.
CHAPTER 26
“I shhould’ve knownn.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
I rolled onto my side, and with one eye pressed into my pillow, I lifted the other eyelid to take a peek at the window before quickly closing it like a reverse wink. Dawn was almost here, the charred black of the night sky finally giving way to an ashy gray.
After the party, I’d easily fallen asleep, but it hadn’t lasted. The sound of a crab scrabbling across the floor had woken me, and unable to shake the fear of its pincers plucking out my eyes, I’d lain awake the rest of the night, passing the hours by secretly writing in my journal.
Finished for now, I silently tucked the comm unit into the pocket of the pants heaped next to the sleeping mat. Then, for Pol’s benefit, I feigned my usual wakeup routine by scattering a few slow blinks before rubbing my eyes.
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