I almost responded with the truth that I had every intention of seeing the admiral’s army for myself. But I held the words back from traveling between our two minds. I didn’t want Pol to think I was his to boss around anymore. It was time to start establishing my independence.
I paused like I was mulling it over.
Satisfied to have won the assurance, I sat up and looked at Sali. She didn’t stir. Her eyes were closed below bunched brows, her upper lip twitching at a dream. Wherever she was, I wished I could join her.
She and I didn’t have much time left. I didn’t want to leave her behind when I went home. She just might love me. Me. Jakob.
She’d faced down her father to save me from the lamprey. That had to mean she cared for me, didn’t it?
I remembered the coldness when I first met her. The stern looks and knifelike tongue. Yes, we’d had sex the morning we met, but that was an act of hunger. An act absent tenderness and emotion.
At the time, she’d thought I was Kell. But she’d learned to see the real me underneath. She’d said as much when she told me it was like I’d become a different person. That was when her attitude started to soften. When her kisses became more about love than need.
I didn’t have to lose her three weeks from now. I could tell her the truth. I could tell her who I was and how much she meant to me. I could take her home with me.
I could.
I no longer saw any reason to hide my feelings. My mission was over.
Reluctant to let the argument drop, but curious myself, I gathered my uniform and walked downstairs to dress. After a short trip to the bathroom to wash my face and drain myself of last night’s wine, I stepped outside.
Mnoba and Mmuro were still on duty. Surprised, I asked why nobody had come to relieve them last night.
Mnoba shook a fatigued head. “The captain must’ve forgotten about us.”
“He must be too busy organizing the defense,” said Mmuro.
I strode past them. “Let’s take a walk.” I didn’t know exactly where the closest water-purification plant was, but it had to be south of here, near the waterwheels.
With my guards lagging a few paces behind, I ambled slowly down the streets, the buildings occasionally parting to afford us a view of the sun birthing on the horizon. I stopped to buy Mnoba and Mmuro dollops of fish eggs wrapped in kelp leaves. Even balls and chains needed to eat.
Speakers crackled, and we simultaneously turned our heads toward the skyscreens. Footage of last night’s short speech ran forward, the admiral’s words making a repeat call to arms. For the first time, I saw the picture of the ships in orbit, three of them, long and flat like floating warehouses.
Looking at the screen, Mmuro tut-tutted and shook his head, while Mnoba chewed his food with eyes locked in a persistent glare. I was about to ask their opinions, but my attention was drawn by a large group of Jebyl teenagers crossing in front of us. The boys marched with their chins held high and proud. Volunteers for the cause.
Realizing they were going the same place I was, I followed them through a tented glass market, early-bird hawkers setting bowls and bottles on display. Exiting from under the tarps, I looked up to see a series of capillary-like sluices converging into broad arteries. Following the largest channel for a way, I saw the first waterwheel, its topmost buckets reaching above the rooftops.
The air grew dense with the pungent smell of mammoth dung, and turning a corner, we found ourselves at the base of the wheel, one of several spread across an open square. Rings of yoked mammoths trod in circles, turning massive stone gears that cranked the waterwheels around.
I stopped for a moment to watch the woolly beasts work. With each determined step, powerful shoulders bulled unrelentingly forward. Feet shaped like the barrels of cannons tracked around furrows worn deep in the stone. Amazing what they could do. Even more amazing that the people on this world thought land-based animals such as these could be native to this world of water. Gifts of Falal according to the Falali Mother.
Buckets almost large enough to be called tubs hung from the wheel. At the bottom of the rotation, the leaky buckets sipped from a broad pool of freshwater, and at the top, the buckets poured onto raised sluices with hardly a splash. Some of the workmen recognized me and stopped to kneel, while those oblivious to my presence kept driving the animals along their circular paths.
I made for an opening in the city’s floor, a wide set of stairs leading down to the ocean below. My guards and I started down, the memory of the last time I’d been under the city platform fresh in my mind—on Beleaux’s boat, seeking Kell’s trash chute.
I stuck to the center of the staircase, shaded ocean undulating to my left and right. In every direction, support columns reached up like tree trunks in a uniformly spaced forest. Connected by a network of branching arches, the stanchions were topped by the city’s massive canopy of stone slabs.
The stairs bottomed out just a few feet above the water level, and I stepped onto a long strip of land. Except it wasn’t dirt crunching under my boots. It was crystallized salt. A sprawling salt island sat at the end of the white road. Sandwiched horizontally between the island and the city platform was a large, walled structure with a crowd gathered outside.
Mnoba steered in close enough to bump my shoulder. “Where are you going, sir?”
“Wherever I want.”
He put a hand on the firerod slung across his chest, a subtle reminder that he was in charge. “I’ll ask you again. Where exactly are you going?”
I stopped to face him. “I’m going inside the desalinization plant. I want to see what’s going on in there.”
“Don’t think of trying to lose us in that crowd, I’ll—”
I didn’t let him finish. “You want to hold my hand?”
An extended stare eventually terminated with a single word. “Proceed.”
We entered the crowd, the three of us plowing forward in a tight wedge. We forced through the group of teens I’d seen earlier and slowly made our way to the front, where a line of armed black sashes guarded the entrance.
A press of people pushed from behind, prompting one of the soldiers to stand on a stool and shout at the impatient crowd. “Wait your turn! There’s no more room inside.”
I marched straight through the line of black sashes. Nobody tried to stop me. Inside, I found a hot, thick, impassable mass of people squeezed elbow to elbow.
“This way,” said Mmuro, pointing at a guarded set of interior stairs to the right. “You can get a good view of the plant standing on the wall.”
I followed Mmuro up a spiraling staircase that emptied onto a walkway atop the wall. Uniformed soldiers and black sashes hustled about, many carrying crates, possibly the same crates I’d seen being unloaded onto the quay last night.
One of the admiral’s lieutenants stepped up to me. Doko was his name. “What in Falal’s name are you doing here?”
“I came to ob
serve.”
“Oh, you want to watch, do you?” His tone was downright accusatory, but I couldn’t fathom why.
“I do want to watch,” I said with halting uncertainty. “Why shouldn’t I?”
He angled his head forward, his eyes hooded in shadow. “You don’t know, do you?”
“What are your orders?”
“I can’t be seen talking to you.” He waved me away.
“What are your orders? What is the admiral planning?” With each word, my voice rose in volume.
The lieutenant turned his back on me, his gaze now aimed at the mass of people crammed into the cistern below. At least a thousand of them stood in hip-high water, staring upward, the sea of expectant faces lit by sunbeams angling through dozens of openings in the city platform overhead.
“What are your orders, damn you!”
Alarmed by my aggressive tone, black sashes rushed to protect the lieutenant. With puffed chests and harsh shouts, they ordered me to move along.
I stood on tiptoe to see over their heads. “What are your orders, dammit!”
Mnoba grabbed me by the elbow and pulled until I had to move my feet to maintain my balance. “Come, Colonel. You mustn’t be disruptive.”
“What is he going to do?”
“Please, come. You’re putting all three of us in danger.”
Letting Mnoba usher me away, the fear in his voice enough to get me moving, I struggled to figure out what the admiral had planned. I took frustrated footsteps, my cluttered mind trying to sort out his intentions.
Eyeing an uncrowded spot a ways down the wall, I jerked my elbow from Mnoba’s grasp and marched to the bamboo railing. The waterwheels on the far side of the cistern had stopped turning, and a train of mammoths were cutting a path through the crowd just wide enough to make it out of the pool before going out the back exit.
Looking straight down, I saw water pour from spouts protruding from the wall. The spouts ran all the way around the rectangular cistern, people taking turns sipping from the chest-high streams of freshly desalinized water.
Under my boots was a closed bamboo trapdoor. Peering through the slats, my eyes traced a dim beam of light to a patch of glistening skin the color of raw chicken.
A salt gland. Large as horses, the kidneylike organs were inventions of the Empire. Acting as filters, the glands provided Maritinians with a constant source of potable water. Lined up in dark chambers like the one under my feet, the glands ran all the way around the cistern’s perimeter.
A pair of eyes moved into the light. Startled, I jumped back. Then the man smiled and lifted a glowgrub so I could see him more clearly. Standing ankle deep in a pool of soupy excretions, the Jebyl man touched his heart. After I echoed the gesture, he went to work scooping salty slurry down a chute that emptied into the ocean.
Turning my attention back on the pool, I watched a line of soldiers slosh and jostle through the crowd. A pair of them passed directly below me, their mission evidently to pick out certain members of the crowd and herd them toward the exits. A recently selected Kwuba man protested but complied, his voice momentarily rising above the din to complain that he wanted to fight the Empire.
I scanned the exits and saw he was right. Only the Kwuba were being culled and herded out. I asked myself why, but was incapable of summoning the answer. So I continued to stand there like the fool I was, my face knotted in concentration like a child staring at a difficult math problem.
I couldn’t see the solution. Not until it had already happened.
CHAPTER 27
“I wasa killer myself. The ruthless murdrer of dozens. If anybdy could understnd the darkest chambers insde teh human heart, it hsould’ve been me.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
I watched the whole thing. I watched the confused conversations among the Jebyl once the Kwuba had been plucked from their ranks. I watched the most boisterous among them shout over the din. How long do we have to stay here? When can we start bleeding the Empire’s soldiers?
I watched a pair of black sashes open a crate just a few feet away from me. I saw them pull green-striped fish from the box. I’d seen the same fish once before. In the admiral’s torture chamber. My clothes had been piled under an aquarium teeming with them.
One at a time, the soldiers pulled fish from the box and drove bone blades through the fish heads. Why would they do that? The fish were already dead.
I watched them throw fish over the railing to the people standing in the pool below. One fish after another. Other groups of black sashes did the same all around the cistern. Dozens of crates worth of fish dumped down into the pool below like flocks of birds suddenly struck dead.
I thought the Jebyl would appreciate the meal. It was time for breakfast.
I couldn’t understand why they tried so hard to stop the fish from landing in the water. I couldn’t understand why they ran. Why they trampled the weak and unlucky in a surge for the exits. Couldn’t they see they were drowning their comrades?
I didn’t know the fish had sacs of poison inside their skulls.
I didn’t know.
Some of the soldiers and black sashes congratulated each other on a job well-done. A few laughed. But most silently stared.
Like me.
With an anguished cry, one jumped the railing, perhaps in a misguided attempt to rescue somebody he knew. He splashed into the water below and swam through the bodies, nudging them aside like logs until the toxins soaked through his pores and took control. He shook, arms and legs seizing in splashing spasms. And then he went still.
Like the others.
I backed away from the railing until I bumped the cistern wall. Mnoba knelt on the floor and bent his head so low his forehead pressed against the stone.
Mmuro stood stiff as the column behind him, his face wiped of all emotion. He lifted the firerod strap off his neck, dropped the weapon, and simply wandered away.
I leaned down and pulled on Mnoba’s uniform, telling him we had to go. He raised himself, and we headed for the spiral staircase that led down and out to the salt road. I heard shouts behind me but didn’t turn back. I had to leave. Nothing else mattered.
We passed the spot where I’d left the lieutenant, but he was gone, and I had no idea where he’d disappeared to. Following Mnoba down the stairs, I picked my steps carefully to avoid tripping over attempted escapees.
Mnoba reached the floor at the bottom of the stairs, the pool sitting to his right. Looking at the exit to his left, he threw his hands in frustration at the sight of all the Jebyl on the ground, blocking the way. “How are we supposed to get out?”
I didn’t let myself think about it. Brushing past him, I lifted my left leg and pressed the sole of my boot onto a prone hip. With my hands spread wide for balance, I placed my other foot on a bare shoulder blade.
Making slow progress, I stuck to stepping on those who had died facedown. Those who couldn’t witness their own desecration.
A thigh twisted under my weight, and I started to fall. Knowing the poison could soak through skin, I couldn’t let my bare hands touch wet clothes. I had no choice but to keep my hands raised as I let my tipping body crash. The back of my shoulder impacted with such force that I thought I heard the snap of a bone somewhere inside the pile.
They hadn’t tried to roll out of the way. Hadn’t groaned or winced. Not even a flinch.
I struggled upright and continued my slow, unsteady journey out the cistern doors, where the spread of bodies formed a fan shape like the flow of silt from a collapsed pipe.
Mnoba hightailed it past me, feet hopping like he was sprinting across hot coals, and skidded to a stop on the salt road. I reached the road myself shortly after and only managed a few steps before dropping to my hands and knees.
I had to labor for br
eath, as if the weight of the city above had come down on my back. I tried to understand. Tried to find reason in the unfathomable depths. But my unmoored thoughts couldn’t find anchor, as if the ocean bottom itself had been set adrift.
Mnoba’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Come, Colonel, let’s keep moving.”
I dug my fingers into the salt, pushing aside white crystals to reveal a layer of oily grit that gathered under my fingernails. To my right, bodies floated on the waves. To my left, crabs scrabbled from the water and marched with raised claws toward the pile of bodies, but stopped short and clicked their claws in frustration at smell of the poison-spoiled feast.
The road was almost deserted, just a few soldiers and black sashes holding guard. The others must have had the good sense to run, including the Kwuba who had been spared by being pulled from the cistern before the mass killing.
Mnoba grasped my arm and lifted me up. I walked alongside him, the return trek to the staircase seeming so much longer than I remembered.
We started up the stairs to the city platform. The rectangular opening at the top was surrounded by Kwuba onlookers. Unable to see the cistern from where they stood, they fussed and whispered and wrung their hands. Curiosity got the better of one woman, who started down the steps, her back hunched like she was ducking for cover. She crept slowly from stair to stair until she could see the spill of bodies outside the cistern. A hand went to her forehead, and she started back up the stairs, only to stop for another look to verify that the horror was real.
A uniformed man broke through the crowd and started down the stairs, his stomach round as his face. “Colonel,” said Dugu.
Meeting him close to the top, I snatched hold of his sleeve. “Don’t go down there.”
“I have to.” He waved his comm unit. “The admiral wants pictures for the skyscreens.”
“Go be with your family.”
Dugu tilted his head to see around me. He sucked in a breath and slumped to a seat on one of the steps.
I leaned down to block his view, my eyes in front of his. “Go be with your family.”
Tides of Maritinia Page 21