by JY Yang
Adi grabbed her arm, the wrong one, and the force of her grip sent angry black up the reptile skin. Mokoya pulled it back with a hiss.
“Do something,” Adi said.
The naga’s mouth opened. It let out a long, peculiar screech, and fire erupted in a volcanic blossom. The plume scorched the top of Bataanar’s outer walls. Mokoya’s chest twisted. Akeha.
“Watch Phoenix,” she told Adi.
The naga sailed over the walls of the city.
Mokoya clenched her fists, held her breath, and folded the Slack.
She stumbled onto uneven rock on the edge of the city and went to her knees. Fifty yields ahead, a man lay burned and dying on the ruined floor, blood seeping through cracked skin. One of Akeha’s city guard.
Mokoya reached for water-nature, tensed, leapt forward. The movement carried her fifty yields, a distance no mortal could cover unaided. She landed, tensed, jumped again—from city wall, to roof, to city wall again. The Slack was alive around her, like the wind, singing to her as she sang to it.
She had to get to Wanbeng. She didn’t know why the girl was doing this—Some grudge? Punishing her father?—but she had to be stopped.
The naga was circling, coming back for another attack—
Boom.
Reds lit the sky. Mokoya fell as the walls shook. Fifty yields away, a cloud of sulfur and carbon billowed into the air. The Machinists had a cannon, a crude solution to the problem of the naga. Crude, but effective: when the creature sailed by overhead, its side was wet with blood.
Boom. The Machinists fired again. Smoke and fire cut an arc through the sky from a point on the city wall.
But the naga learned fast. It swerved, terrifyingly quickly for something so massive, raised one wing, and then—
Water-nature pulsed, and the fireball rocketed backward toward its point of origin.
“Cheebye—” Mokoya gasped as she fell forward. The explosion tore into the city wall, the force of it ripping through the stones all along its length.
Akeha.
A smoking black crater was gouged into Bataanar where the fireball had landed. She had a searing image of Akeha lying in the rubble, flesh burned raw, bones shattered to pieces, breath failing in scorched and punctured lungs while she scrabbled for something—anything—to tie the threads of him to—
The naga screeched. It was turning toward the center of the city—toward the raja’s palace, toward its highest point—
The library tower. The princess.
Mokoya got to her feet. The naga landed on the domed tower in a crouch, its massive wings obscuring half the palace. It dug its hind feet in, tearing into masonry like a child tears through a paper box. Stone rained down in chunks.
Three hundred yields between Mokoya and the library tower. She saw the map of peaked roofs and shingles between them, charted a path, and—
She was off, soaring lighter than air, each leap covering twenty yields, footfalls barely disturbing a scale of roof tile. The naga peeled away from the tower, making another circle, preparing for a second assault. Mokoya saw the hole it had trepanned into the domed roof.
She landed on the dragon-encrusted tip of the raja’s receiving pavilion. One more leap and she was at the foot of the library tower, on the ground at last. Stairs wound upward, convoluted and too long to climb. Mokoya jumped from window to window, ignoring the tremor in her limbs, ignoring the deadly quake of her heart. The window in the top layer lay broken open, a yawning lobotomy of cracked roof. She clambered through, tumbled inward, rolled on the floor, and got to her feet.
“Wanbeng,” she said, “I know what you’re doing. You have to stop.”
Among the toppled shelves, the shattered glass, the scattered papers, Wanbeng stood straight as a tree, face incandescent with anger. A traveling box was slung on her back.
“Hello, Tensor,” she said scathingly.
The beat of the naga’s wings grew louder. The girl seemed unshakably sure of herself, utterly unafraid.
“Why are you doing this?” Mokoya asked.
She sneered. “Haven’t you figured it out?”
“No, Wanbeng. Why don’t you tell me?”
The girl’s face turned sharp and canny. She squatted, gracelessly, and plucked a book from the shambles of the floor. She flung it at Mokoya’s chest. “See for yourself.”
It was a logbook of some kind, the pages stained with ink, strange dyes. A looping, practiced hand had scrawled observations in thin lines down the pages. There were illustrations, dried samples of things tied in between the sheaves.
The diagrams and results and shorthand were too much to take in, with hell bearing down on them upon ship-sail wings.
“Wanbeng, what is this?”
Wanbeng looked triumphant. “They thought they could lie to me. Keep me from the capital when Mother was dying and hide the truth. They were wrong. I’m not a child any longer. I’m not an idiot.”
Her words weren’t registering. Mokoya could see the naga now, the fire in its eyes. So close its flight tore howling wind into the ruined chamber. “What are you saying?”
Wanbeng’s eyes glittered. “Don’t you see, Tensor? That’s my mother.”
No, Mokoya wanted to say. It was unthinkable.
Yet the pieces were all there: The naga was an adept. The Tensors had to have found a soul pattern from somewhere. And hadn’t Tan Khimyan and Raja Choonghey become close, in the capital, when Raja Ponchak fell ill?
The naga hit the tower again. Everything shuddered. A chunk of wall came away like steamed cake in the hands of a greedy child. A head, massive and serrated, reared into the chamber, bringing with it a wash of heat, of musk. Wanbeng ran toward it.
“Wanbeng, no!” Mokoya started after her.
The naga lowered its head, and before Mokoya could react or deflect the blow, she was hit in the stomach by a raw fist of air. The ground met her spine, hard.
Pain screamed from her knee to her hip as she scrambled to her feet. Wanbeng had climbed onto the naga’s massive head and was sliding down its neck, looking for a place to rest. “Wanbeng—listen to me—”
The naga beat its wings, trying to drive Mokoya off her feet again. She gritted her teeth and pushed back against it, preparing to fold the Slack. She’d be gravesent if she let the girl run off with this wild creature.
Opening her mindeye this close to the naga, she finally noticed the unnatural alterations that had been done to it, the thing grafted to its soul.
Mokoya’s fold carried her onto one of the naga’s hind legs as it took off into the sky. Its skin was hot and rough, and it stank with the musk of a hundred horses. Her feet held against its leathery texture. She climbed upward.
“Get lost,” Wanbeng shouted from the top of the naga. “You can’t change my mind!”
Was this what it was like, being on a boat at sea? One foot slipped, and Mokoya barely caught herself in time. Below she could see the glint of water reflecting flame and moonlight. Wind tore at her as the naga flew onward, away from the city.
“Leave me and my mother alone,” the girl cried.
“It’s not your mother,” Mokoya said, over the howl of wind and sand. “This isn’t—” She sucked in a breath. “Look at it! It’s a beast, a wild animal.”
“You’re wrong.”
In her words, Mokoya heard the echoes of her arguments with Thennjay about Phoenix. “I’m not.” She kept climbing. “Trust me, Wanbeng. I know what you’re feeling. I know what it’s like.”
The girl understood her meaning, but she wasn’t swayed. She shouted, her breaths harsh, “Just because you’ve given up on your daughter, doesn’t mean you’re right!”
“Your mother is gone,” Mokoya shouted back. “You have to accept that.”
Wanbeng’s features crumpled in rage. “You stay away from me!” And she struck outward with earth-nature, hitting Mokoya in the chest.
She stumbled. The naga pitched, and Mokoya lost her grip on its skin. Something struck her head hard. The
world exploded in flashes of black as she felt herself in free fall, the shape of the naga receding, Wanbeng’s cry of “Tensor Sanao?” pulling away to silence. The cold embrace of water slapped around her, and darkness took her as the oasis folded over her head.
ACT THREE
THE RED THREADSOF FORTUNE
Chapter Fifteen
MOKOYA WAS FALLING, SLIDING, running up a rocky slope, red dirt in her eyes, her fingernails, her mouth. Her chest hurt like a shot wound, but there was no blood, just panic.
She knew what was happening. She knew, and she couldn’t stop it.
Her desperate knees and feet found the top of the slope, found the great plateau of the battle, found the source of the death smell. Blood. Guts. Burnt hide. The naga, stricken: mouth open, sides heaving, hole torn so deep its white ribs gleamed. And Rider, crumpled there: eyes half open, neck broken-angled, blood tracing calligraphy on their face.
“Rider!” Mokoya scooped them up, pulled them in, shook their senseless form. Found them heavy, inert, limbs dangling, skull dragging against rock. Slackcraft flared across their skin, tattoos stirring awake, burning through dead flesh and onto bone.
Mokoya folded in half and screamed.
Thennjay said, “I’m sorry, Nao. You know you couldn’t have changed anything.” There was blood on his robes, a weapon in his hand, a sorrowful expression on his face.
Had they been in battle? Why was he here? Why was she here?
Someone called her name. Like an herb bag being pulled out of soup, everything rushed away from her.
She woke to pressure on her back and hips, a sour taste in her mouth, and a symphony of pains and aches she could not begin to catalogue. Shock and fear forced her body upright anyway. She knew this place, this quiet cavern, with its light and warmth and sounds of soft water.
“Mokoya.” Rider appeared in her field of vision, an almost-blur of gray and cream. A jolt to her being—Rider was here, alive and unbroken. They were trying to keep Mokoya down on the soft fabric that made up a bed.
Mokoya pushed their hands away, struggling to get to her feet—to do what? She got halfway up, then sat back down. Her clothes had a stiffness to them that told her they’d recently dried out. How was she still in one piece? She should have shattered. She should have died.
Rider looked exhausted, their face bloodless and fragile as cracked porcelain. “Mokoya,” they whispered. “Thank the heavens.”
Behind Rider, Bramble was curled on the ground with her wings folded in, observing them. Bataanar and its destruction felt very distant. “What happened?” she asked.
They reached a hand toward Mokoya’s face, reconsidered, withdrew. “Where should I begin?”
“Wherever you can. Just tell me what happened.” She kept her voice gentle. She did not scream, although she wanted to.
Rider pulled at the joints of their fingers and wrists repeatedly. “I had time to think. I regretted what happened between us. So I came back to Bataanar. I did not expect the attack. It took me by surprise.” They bit their lip, looked away.
“You saw the attack. What then?”
“I saw the attack. I saw you fall into the water. We saved you, but you would not wake. I brought you back here.”
“How long has it been?”
“One sun-cycle.”
“That’s too long.” The city was in ruins, the princess in the wilds with that beast. Alarm pushed Mokoya to her feet against the protests of her body. A wave of dizziness overtook her. She staggered, and Rider’s arms were there, holding her up. Mokoya sagged. She felt like she had been running up cliff faces for hours.
They were almost cheek and cheek. Rider’s face brimmed with emotion, and all Mokoya could see was that same face, ashen and blood-glazed. She looked at the ring of characters circling their neck and remembered them flaring to life, branding themselves upon ribs and vertebrae as Rider slipped irretrievably away from her.
She’d had a prophecy for the first time in four years. She didn’t understand why the visions had chosen to come back to her now. But one thing was certain.
Sometime in the near future, Rider was going to die.
She let Rider guide her back down onto the bed. She cupped a hand against their cheek as they tried to draw away. Rider blinked. “Mokoya?”
She inscribed circles on their cheekbone with her thumb, haunted by the butcher-fresh memory of their viscera heavy in her arms, their chest cold and still. Words choked her throat like weeds.
Rider pressed their forehead against hers. All the fear Mokoya had seen earlier was gone, replaced by guilt. Their skin was damp, radiating heat.
“It was the princess behind it all,” Mokoya said.
“Yes.”
“And you knew.”
“Yes.” A shiver ran through their body. “I hid it from you, Mokoya. That was my decision.”
“Why?”
They sat back on their heels, drawing themselves out of her grasp. “Mokoya,” they said, the syllables a heavy sigh. “I did not trust you. We had only just met. I could not be certain what you would do if I told you the truth. And I still believed that the princess could be reasoned with. I believed I could overcome her stubbornness.”
“But you were wrong,” she said quietly.
“I was, on both accounts. When I saw the ruins of the city, when I saw you plunge into the oasis, I thought, I’ve killed her. If I had just told her, I would not have—” Their voice grew small. “I would not have lost her.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Mokoya said. “We’ve all been fools here.” There had been no greater conspiracy at work, no nefarious plot to destroy cities or bring down empires. Just a heartbroken young woman who missed her mother.
She reached forward and grasped Rider’s hand in hers. Rider looked down at the jade tones of her pebbled skin. “Green is for sadness,” they said softly.
“You remembered.”
“It is my fault.”
“No.” Mokoya withdrew her hand. “Not exactly.”
Rider studied her intently. “You had a vision before you woke.”
“Yes. A prophecy.” Mokoya hesitated, then reached for her belt and withdrew the still-warm pearl from her capture box. She could feel the vision trapped in it, the thick sourness of death solid in her palm.
Caution had entered Rider’s voice. “What did you see?”
Mokoya weighed the blood-soaked future in her hand, pressing her lips together. Unable to put words to any of that horror, she held the pearl out to Rider.
They took it. Brightness and color blossomed in the Slack as they read what was stored within. Their eyes went wide as they watched the vision replay. Then their brows creased. “I see,” they said softly.
Rider got up, turning away from Mokoya, still holding the pearl. They paced wordlessly with the sluggish movements of one walking through a storm.
Mokoya got to her feet, much more slowly this time. The dizziness came again, but she let the star-tainted wave of it wash over her and remained standing. “Rider? Are you all right?”
Rider gazed at the break in the roof of the cavern, where the sky revealed itself in brilliant tones and the cascade of the oasis sang and caught the sun, unperturbed by the troubles of humankind. Finally they turned to Mokoya, haloed by daylight, face made invisible by the glare. “So be it,” they said. “If that is to be my fate, then I embrace it.”
Rider sounded glad, which frightened her. Mokoya crossed the space between them. “Rider, I don’t—”
“No.” Rider put a hand to her lips. “It is a good thing. It means we kill the creature. The city can be saved.”
“A good thing?” Mokoya managed.
“A good thing,” Rider repeated, softly. Mokoya leaned forward, collapsing the weight of her head on Rider’s, her breaths coming in sharp and painful spurts. They placed their hands, palms flat, against Mokoya’s damp cheeks. “You survive. You carry on. Someone who will remember me the way I want to be remembered. It’s a good thing.”
“Rider—” Mokoya’s shoulders shook. She wanted to tear Rider out of the Slack, rip them from the threads of fate they had been woven into. She felt entombed by the cruelty of the fortunes, trapped in an endless, formless darkness.
“We must return to the city,” Rider said. Their voice was calm, the melancholy in it stripped away. “There is much left to do.”
Chapter Sixteen
THENNJAY AND AKEHA MET them in front of the city. Bataanar, remarkably, still appeared whole, and the tent city had the same chaotic energy as fabric being woven. Busy figures, cloth-wrapped to the point of anonymity, cleared away debris. Chatter filled the background, indistinct and constant like the sea upon the shore.
“We thought you were dead,” Thennjay said, after she slid from Bramble’s back onto the sand. His skin had a pale, ashen aspect to it, like a layer of dust had settled permanently on him. She knew she was just imagining it.
Akeha said nothing. He simply enveloped Mokoya in a rib-grinding hug and held her there until the tremble in his breathing dissipated. Mokoya wasn’t sure how she could comfort him. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words “I’m all right, I’m alive.” Both parts of that sentence felt like a lie. She was a ghost, her feet not really touching the ground.
When he let her go, she said, “We must speak with the raja.”
Akeha started to laugh, a sound dry as bones rattling in an urn, a small hint of mania bubbling underneath. She hoped he wasn’t breaking as she had broken. “The raja’s busy. He has an interrogation to conduct. But come. Let’s provide him some company.”
* * *
They had imprisoned Tan Khimyan in the rock under Bataanar. The jail was windowless, artificially lit, smooth- and dark-walled. Iron latticework stood between the prisoner and the raja, and a damper hummed in her half of the cell. The device pulled distractingly and disruptively on the Slack in irregular cycles. No slackcrafting their way out of this room. Mokoya felt herself unraveling in its lull.
“This is gross injustice,” Tan Khimyan said. She had a paleness that spoke of injury, not delicacy, and her hair and clothes were in disarray. “After all I have done for your family—”