You are warrior and whisperer, you are the perfect instrument of Mugunta, formed to wield a great blow.
Ben stopped and they halted and waited for him. Herrith stood beside him, looking down at Isika’s brother, worry clear in his eyes and his rigid shoulders. It was also strange to find people who knew her, people she didn’t remember, who had dreamed of her all these years. If she had known these people were here when she was back in the Worker village, toiling away . . . well, she couldn’t have known it. But what did they want from her and could she give it to them? For a moment her throat tightened and she gasped for air, but Hera bumped her leg with her head and Isika’s breathing eased.
Thank you, she told the cat.
You think too much, Hera said.
Some of the alleys were very narrow, and Isika and Jabari had to squeeze into single file, he in front, she following. A few times they had to climb a set of slippery steps or through a hole in the wall and Jabari turned to offer Isika a hand. There were no sparks when she grasped it.
You’re getting good at that, she told him in her mind.
I’ve been practicing masking my own magic a bit.
Without the sparks, Isika could concentrate on the feeling of Jabari’s hand gripping her own carefully. Her face felt hot. She let go quickly, though part of her wanted to hold on. It’s comforting in a strange place, that’s all, she told herself. Calm down.
There were lights in the houses around them. Isika saw faces peering out a few times, but no one stopped them. Ben halted and listened hard.
“I can’t tell anymore,” he said, panting. “They are somewhere near here, but it’s overwhelming and it feels like a storm coming. Like the pressure of air and water in a huge cloud.”
From the sky above, Keethior let out a long, haunting cry. Isika looked up.
I see a large space, he told her. Something that looks like an old stadium. Come with me.
Instantly, she was seeing through his eyes. She saw herself and the others beneath the bird, small bits of color in the dark. Then they flew low and she saw a large, ancient structure, a stadium out of old stories, where games or races would be held, a big oval with a covered area and a large open space in the middle. It looked abandoned. They flew lower, under the covered roof, and Isika saw a set of stairs that led underground. From there she could hear noises, crying children and moans. Keethior landed on the stairs.
Go farther? he asked.
She didn’t want to. She wanted to fly far away, back to Maween, back to Auntie and spiced tea in the mornings. But she couldn’t leave.
Yes, she told the Othra.
They flew down the stairwell, and at the bottom, through his eyes she saw long narrow corridors lit by a few magical red lamps, with bars on either side. Through the bars were . . . but no, she couldn’t believe it, and guards ran toward them now, and she gasped and found herself thrown out of Keethior’s head.
She opened her eyes to find herself lying on the ground with her head on Jabari’s knee. He was stroking her hair and looking down at her with an extremely worried face. When she tried to sit up, she found she couldn’t, so she stayed where she was and closed her eyes. Jabari’s hands on her hair felt nice.
“Can you warn us when you’re going to do that?” Jabari asked. His voice was light but Isika could tell he was worried. “You fall hard when you go off with Keethior. This time, thankfully, I caught you, but what if I had been walking up ahead, too far to catch you? And you go into some kind of trance, and it's a little alarming.”
“Sorry,” she murmured. She lay there breathing through the disgust and fear in her heart. When she felt ready, she sat up slowly.
“What was it?” Jabari asked, his voice soft. Ben was there too, and Herrith and Mara, but Isika couldn’t focus on their faces. Her bird senses were pinging.
Are you out? She asked Keethior.
Nearly, he answered, out of breath. I’m just trying to see how far this thing goes.
She faced her friends.
“It’s under the stadium,” she told Herrith, and he gave a start and then nodded. “There are rooms, so many I couldn’t see them all. Room after room, closed in with bars, and when I looked in, I saw more people than I could count huddled on the ground, sleeping so close to one another that they could barely move. There were guards, and they chased us . . .” She swallowed. “Some of the people looked like they had been hurt, and some of them were crying.”
Keethior came then and flew to Isika, opening his wings to send comforting air over her. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“There were corridors like the one we saw in every part of the stadium,” he said. “There are thousands of people.”
They looked at each other, stunned. Isika became suddenly aware that they were in a dark alley, sitting on the ground, windows cracked around them and listening ears, and also that she was still leaning on Jabari.
Herrith stood. “We can do no more tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow morning we will find a way to speak with the prisoners. Perhaps Isika, through the eyes of the bird. But you two need rest before you collapse.”
He nodded at Isika and Ben, and Isika wanted to protest but she found that she had no words and what was more, tears still streamed down her cheeks. Jabari handed her his ser, and she used it to wipe her face. It smelled like him, and that made her cry harder.
She hardly remembered getting back to Mara’s house. She dreamed of the circle on the door, and the captives, and in her dream she wept. When she woke up, her face was wet. At breakfast they talked about what to do.
“It’s Keethior,” Jabari said. “It has to be. We can’t get in, not with so many guards, and you can follow Keethior from here, right Isika? So we don’t have to be out in the open, making people curious.”
“I don’t know,” Isika said. In the daytime, the old woman’s house was gentle and full of light. Isika took a sip of her coffee. Mara had given it to her in a thick clay mug that made Isika long for the pottery workshop. She cupped the mug in her hands and held her face over the steam. The coffee was hot and strong, and light from the house’s window streamed across the clean earthen floor. Daylight made Isika feel better.
“I’ve never tried. But let’s see. Keethior, do you think you can find someone who looks like they know what they are talking about and ask them questions?”
Keethior ruffled his feathers, making himself twice as fat as he normally was, displeased.
Friend, I don’t know how to ask these questions. Isika told him. Don’t be offended by my puny human mind.
He laid his feathers down and told them he would try. “I noticed that the guards walk in circles,” he said. “If they do the same today, I can wait for one of them to pass before asking questions. I will find the right person before I bring you in, Isika, so that you don’t have to fly with me very long. I know you humans are too weak for much of this.”
Isika exchanged a glance with Ben, trying to hide a smile. Jabari opened the door and Keethior flew out, giving a low cry as he went.
“You had better get comfortable,” Mara said to Isika. “Yesterday you fell like a tree, and it was just a good thing that this boy was there to catch you.”
Isika smiled up at “this boy,” who towered over the diminutive old woman. Mara bustled around, arranging pillows, and Isika obligingly went to lie on them. Two of the cats came and stretched out on either side of her while she waited.
We will help, the mother cat said. We will lend you power so you can see from afar. I believe this is out of your range.
Isika didn’t have time to ask how they knew before she was pulled away from herself and into Keethior’s eyes. He had found someone quickly. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.
A woman crouched by the bars, looking eagerly into Keethior’s face. With a shock, Isika realized the woman knew what Keethior was, because she was Maweel! She had large eyes and her beautiful dark face was too thin. She held a sleeping baby. Had people from Maween di
sappeared and Isika didn’t even know it?
“What are they planning to do with you?” Keethior was asking.
“We only hear whispers,” the woman said quietly. Behind her, several people were watching the exchange with wide eyes, but they were silent. Isika recognized the Karee, as well as people with the faces and long hair of Deto. She saw a few Workers, their faces pale in the gloom. The woman went on. “But we hear that we are waiting for ships, and that we will be sent across the sea to be the emperor’s slaves.”
Isika felt the shock of the woman’s words as though they were echoing through her entire body.
She had no idea that this was so big, that the Desert King was involved in such horrible evil from the Great Waste. All these people, slaves? Sent across the sea to the shadowy fear of the emperor? She couldn’t bear it. Keethior thanked the woman and assured her that there were people who would try to help. A small flame of hope shone in her eyes, and Isika felt sick. How could they do anything against poison as deep as this? This evil was too big.
Keethior flew through the corridors so that Isika could see the thousands of people pressed into the stone rooms, damp and sick-smelling. It was too much, and she threw herself away from it, landing back in her own body in Mara’s house. There were tears on her cheeks. The others watched her with concern. Jabari and Ben came to sit near her, and as she sat up, Mara handed her a cup of spice tea. She held her face over the steam and cried.
This was so much bigger than she had ever known. All she wanted was to get her sister and go, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t leave those people as they were.
She told them all she had seen and what the woman had told her.
Jabari looked thoughtful rather than overwhelmed.
“There has to be a way to do both at once,” he said. “How can we get Aria out of here and help the captives get out of the stadium?”
In the sweet-smelling room they began to make plans. There was love and beauty in the little room. The rightness of what they were doing poured strength back into Isika, and the sad hopelessness left her bones. She remembered the strength and hope in the Maweel woman, and she set her mind to this plan, determined to help every one of the prisoners reach freedom.
Chapter 28
A plan was forming. Ben sat in the meetings with the others but he was barely there. It was hard to focus in this city full of sad and terrifying music. More and more he felt that he was in a different world than his friends and companions. While they could laugh and joke, get some respite after a difficult day, he always lived in the sorrow, bombarded by the emotions of people he passed on the street. An old man with a lonely song. A woman full of fear. He shrunk from it but could not stop listening.
When he could get away from the little house, he walked to the stadium where the prisoners were and slowly circled it, listening to the haunting music of the people inside. Sometimes he heard a strain of music that was full of despair, and he asked Keethior to fly in and soothe that person, to help their distress. Surprisingly, Keethior listened to him. It was a rare good thing to hear the change the Othra brought to people.
Isika told him she was worried about him.
“Why don’t you block it out?”
“I don’t want to,” he said.
“Why under Nenyi’s skies not?”
“Because it keeps me here.”
Isika couldn’t understand, because she had no memories of Dhahara. Ben was two steps from bolting with every heartbeat that passed. He heard his father’s music in everything, insidious and terrible. To make himself stay, he needed to remind himself of Aria, and he needed to remind himself of these captives and the plan to set them free. Nothing else was enough to counteract the terror. So he didn’t block out the music. But it meant he lived in the world of others, and at times he wondered if there was anything to him at all, or if he was only made of the shapes of other people. They lived in him with their fears and pain, and true, the little bits of joy.
One day, after a night of little sleep, he went out to listen for the captives. He walked around the stadium slowly, listening. Keethior flew alongside him.
“There,” he told Keethior, “just beyond this wall, is a young mother with her small child. Please help them.”
Keethior made a soft clicking noise and flew off. Ben was still surprised that Keethior helped with this. It occurred to him that Isika might have given Keethior instructions. He nodded. That made sense, in her worry. Ben didn’t care. He only wanted to help.
He kept walking, listening hard for the music of the young mother and her terrified child. He smiled as he heard it soften and grow calm from the soothing effect of the Othra and the hopeful things he was telling the woman. He wandered, without thinking, down an alleyway. He was listening so hard that he didn’t see them. He first knew they were there by the heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Got you, boy,” the guard said, and Ben’s heart plummeted into his stomach.
He struggled, but there were three of them and he had no chance. They led him up through winding streets and Benayeem’s heart beat with terror as they approached the place of his nightmares. The palace.
* * *
He was going to face his father. His wrists were bound behind him. He stood and watched the empty throne of the king’s chambers. Vaguely, he saw that there were two thrones instead of one. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his feet. The room spun and he took a deep breath, looking around.
The familiar sight of the shiny black floor, the dozens of slaves. He was back in his nightmare and he heard everything. The drum beats of doom and the discordant screeching of strings. He thought he would pass out as the music came flooding into him. He stood unseeing until he heard the soft murmur of his name, and then he looked up.
The Desert King had entered. He sat now in the throne, staring down at Ben. But the sound had not come from him. His younger sister sat in the chair beside the king, gazing at him with worry in her eyes. One of Ben’s eyes was swollen shut from a blow from the guards, so he had to tilt his head to look at her properly. She was gaunt and dazed. Aria. Sister. He shook his head.
“Aria,” he said, but the guard beside him raised a fist in a threat. He stopped talking.
“Father, why is Ben here? Why is he chained and hurt?” Aria asked slowly, as though through a great fog.
“Oh, dearest,” the Desert King said, and Ben cringed and reached up to cover his ears at the horrible sound of his father’s voice. “This one has ever been a disappointment. He has tricked and hurt us. Even now he wants to betray us.”
Aria stared at Ben, her mouth open, her eyes confused. She started to say something again, but the king gestured for her to sit back. Ben could see his father’s anger rippling in the lights of the floor beneath his feet. He could feel and hear the horrible, screeching music coming from his father. He didn’t want to set the king off. He didn’t want his terrible anger to turn toward Aria, so he stayed silent. But he tried to tell her with his eyes that he loved her. She stared back at him, distressed, lovely, waif-like.
“Disgusting Maweel brat,” the king said, and Ben jolted with the ugly sounds behind the words, “you need to tell us where everyone else . . . is.”
He stood up and walked down to Ben’s level. Ben shook. He tried to breathe. His vision darkened and he saw flecks of color in the corners of his eyes. What had Asafar taught them? Make a room. Be in the room with only his own music. But it was hard to focus. When the king stepped, rays of light shot from his feet. His angry music shrieked. The anger hurt Ben’s stomach and made it hard for him to breathe.
“I imagine you will resist. But you will talk. You will regret your disobedience. You always were a disobedient brat.” He paced, then came very close to Ben and looked into his face. Ben’s eyes darted everywhere, terrified of seeing Mugunta deep in his own father’s eyes. His eyes lit on Herrith, standing against the wall. Ben gasped, thinking the resistance leader might help him, but Herrith gave a quick shake
of the head and Ben realized he couldn’t. He looked back into his father’s face and met his eyes.
Music like nothing he had ever heard rolled over him. He fell to his knees and his father yanked him back up. Where the king’s hands touched Ben, they burned him. He had no bones, he was straw, he would burn away. His father lifted a hand to strike him. Ben prepared for the blow, but then he heard a voice.
“Father.” At the sound of Aria’s voice, strength returned to Ben’s limbs, and he stood on his own power, his father’s hands still burning him. He looked toward the dais and saw that she had stood and walked to the edge. He shuddered to see how thin she was, how sickly. “Why are you hurting my brother?”
At the words, “my brother,” Ben felt even more strength returning to him. He realized that though Aria had come to the Desert City, she had not quite betrayed them. There were strands of love-soaked music woven into the mat of demon’s evil the Desert King had laid over her.
The king pulled his hand back. He stood motionless. Ben dared a glance at his face. It was a mask, but behind it, Ben could hear a tumult of conflicting music, and it confused him. He couldn’t figure it out. He was sure the king felt no love for Aria. What was his game?
Whatever it was, it won out, and the king barked an order while he strode back to the dais.
“Herrith, take the boy to his quarters. Boy, I will give you time to consider. At the end of one day, we will bring the persuader.”
Herrith came to Ben and roughly turned him toward the door.
“You heard the king,” he said. “Walk. I’m not sure you’re going to like these quarters. They’re not quite as fancy as your . . . hovels in Maween.”
Ben walked, listening hard to the contradictory music in Herrith. Herrith was trying to help him, despite the harsh tone of his words.
Once they were in the corridor, and gaining distance from the king’s chambers, Herrith spoke in a barely audible voice.
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