Kyros fell silent.
An hour or two later, Alibek shouted wordlessly and pointed to the sky. In the distance, I saw a speck of something dark. It moved too steadily to be a bird—it could only be a palanquin. As I watched, squinting my eyes against the glare, I realized that I could see more than one—it was a cavalcade of palanquins. “They’re coming closer,” Tamar said.
I gripped the spell-chain Kyros had made. One newly freed djinn had transported an entire pack of bandits for me, once. If I didn’t care whether they lived or died, I could be a match for whatever we faced. Maybe. Of course, the bandits hadn’t had any djinni of their own.
“They’re closer, but they’re not heading for us,” Alibek said a few minutes later. “They’re following the palanquin.”
“You hope,” Tamar said.
“No, I’m sure of it.” Alibek shaded his eyes with his hand. “If they were coming for us, they’d be closer by now.”
Zivar was watching, too. “He’s right,” she said. “They’re not stopping here. They’re going to keep going.”
“Do you think they’ll catch up with it before it reaches the army?”
“Hard to say,” Zivar said. “The empty palanquin was moving awfully quickly.”
We watched a bit longer; the distant palanquins faded into the sky.
“They’ll come back looking once they catch up with it,” Zivar said. “Looking for people on foot.”
“Maybe,” Tamar said. “Or maybe they’ll be distracted by the rebellious army if our message arrives.”
“That’s not the biggest problem,” I said. “We need to get to the gate before they do, or they’ll set guards over it. We won’t be able to destroy it.”
“Well, they’re ahead of us now,” Alibek said. “How are we going to manage that?”
“They’re not going to go straight there. If we send our djinni out to find something we can ride in—it doesn’t have to be a palanquin, an old wagon or something will do—we can probably get there first.”
“You’d have us ride in a wagon?” Zivar said.
I took out my spell-chain. “Listen, I need you to go get something and bring it back here,” I said to the djinn. “We need something that all of us can sit in and be carried by you. It can be a palanquin, or a wagon, or a sky boat, or a giant stew pot. Anything with sides and a bottom, sturdy enough that it won’t fall apart while we’re riding in it, and light enough for you to carry. Go and find something and bring it back as quickly as you can.”
Zivar shook her head in disgust. To her own djinni she said, “Go find a palanquin and bring it to me.”
“We might as well keep walking,” Tamar said.
My djinn, to no one’s surprise, was back before either of Zivar’s. It carried an ancient, desiccated fishing boat. The hull was intact enough to ride in, but there were gaps between the shrunken boards big enough to slip my hand through. I climbed in and checked it over: it was sturdy enough to serve. As everyone else watched dubiously, I spread out the silk cloths we’d raided from the palanquin, using one to line the bottom and one to stretch over the top to keep grit out of our eyes. “This will do,” I said.
Tamar shrugged and climbed in, making herself as comfortable as she could. Alibek half lifted, half shoved Kyros in, then climbed in himself. I looked at Zivar.
“Not a chance,” Zivar said. “I’m waiting for a palanquin.”
“If we wait for a palanquin, we’ll be too late,” I said.
“I’m not saying you have to wait. I’m saying that I’m going to wait.”
There wasn’t time to argue. “We’ll see you later, then,” I said.
“Good luck,” she called as the djinn lifted up our boat.
I had traveled once in a djinn-borne wagon. It was not a comfortable way to travel. Traveling by palanquin was much easier—the sturdy sides protected riders from falling out, while the silk cushions and other padding made it comfortable to sit still for the hours (or days) of travel. The wagon had no padding, and neither did the boat. The boat’s sides sloped up sharply, and the four of us sat along the bottom edge, leaning against the sides.
We’d thrown away most of the silk cushions from the palanquin, and I regretted that as I tried to get comfortable. There was a missing board near my head; it let me see out, which was a pleasant surprise, if disconcerting when I first looked down at the ground far below us.
Through the afternoon, I watched the textures of the ground change. The steppe was a muted brown-green carpet; we passed over more arid places where the green gave way to the gray-brown linen of dust and sand. Then the ground became more rugged; first I could see ripples in the earth, then rocks like breaking waves, and finally the climbing crags of mountain foothills. Near the end of the afternoon, I saw what looked like a blue silk ribbon caught in the rocks. I looked closer, and caught my breath. The river. I’m seeing the river.
Here, far from its source, the frantic flood had slowed to a more manageable flow—rapid, and swollen like you’d see after a very heavy spring rain, but still, not too bad. It had fallen into the old track like a foot into its boot. I wished I had told the djinn to follow the course of the river so that I could have met the returning waters as they came toward us.
I thought about the djinn, bearing us steadily toward the drowned city. “Thank you for your help,” I said softly. It didn’t answer. “I want you to know that I will free you when this is done.”
That brought a response. “Why?”
“I don’t keep slaves. When we get to the drowned gate, I mean to destroy it, so that it will be impossible—or at least much harder—for my people to enslave yours. I can’t do that without your help—not quickly enough, not with the Weavers trying to stop me. There’s no way. But once that’s done—I will free you.”
Silence.
I shrugged, and rolled over a little, trying to get comfortable. I lost my view, but my shoulder felt bruised; it was time to bruise the other shoulder, or my back. I stared up at our makeshift silk roof for a while, closed my eyes to rest them from the glare, and dozed off.
I had expected to see the waters again, but instead, I saw a battle.
There was no warning; I was thrust into the heart of it. I heard the screams of the dying, and smelled acrid smoke; I saw the blur of a horse passing me and flinched away even as I realized that this was a vision and I was not truly there.
I was lifted up, giving me a vulture’s view of the battlefield. Sword sisters and sword brothers fought together against the Greeks. As I looked over the battlefield, I saw a familiar face—Ruan. She had a breastplate strapped on over her black vest, and a helmet salvaged from some previous raid. Her bow was in her hand, and she stood up in her saddle, her horse at full gallop, to fire on the Greeks. There was a bottle of arrow-poison on her belt but she was firing so quickly she wasn’t using it—or maybe she’d run out. She was laughing, or snarling—then someone else surged forward, hiding her from my view.
Is this happening now? I wondered. Or did this already happen? Had our message reached the Greeks, and had they believed it?
Somewhere beyond the Greeks I heard a rumble, then a roar. I knew what it was, even if no one on the battlefield did. The river. It’s coming.
The floodwaters descended like the hands of the gods, sweeping away everything in their path. The heart of the water reminded me of the collapsing temple. It might be a wall of water, rather than rock, but it would strike with the weight of a thousand boulders. Shallower streams spilled out from the edges, tearing away bushes in their wake.
The wall of water struck the camp of the Greek army.
One moment, I could see the tents, the horses, the wagons of supplies, the livestock—the next, nothing but churning water. Here and there I saw a horse struggling to swim in the deluge, or a person desperately clinging to floating debris. Everything else was underwater or swept away.
The battlefield was at the edge of the flood; the waters rose up around the ankles of the horses, but
not high enough to drown them or knock them off their feet. Ruan clung to her horse, looking down at the water, then over at the river; everyone else was similarly transfixed. “The river returns,” I heard someone shout. “The river returns.”
I woke, my stomach churning. The river returns echoed in my ears even as I thought, death, so much death. How many people had been in the path of the river? How many cities had been swept away—was Elpisia even still standing? I thought of all the people I’d known growing up, from nose-picking Brasidas to the stablegirl in Kyros’s stable. If Elpisia had been swept away like that Greek camp, none of them would even still be alive.
Elpisia made me think of my mother: her death is my fault, too. When I closed my eyes a moment later, instead of the flood, I saw my mother, weeping as Kyros cut her throat with his knife. I could kill him. Neither Alibek nor Tamar would care. I glanced at Kyros; he lay beside me, his eyes closed, his hands bound in front of him. We’d forgotten to give him the syrup, but it was broad day and he was unlikely to find anyone he needed in the borderland. If I killed him in his sleep when he’d been a quiet, obedient prisoner, would that make me as bad as him? It hardly matters, with all the blood on my head for freeing the river…
I could do it. Alibek’s sword is within reach. I could probably hack his head off with a single blow. I didn’t get to kill Sophos, but I could kill Kyros.
I had killed before—not often, but I’d done it. But it had always been in battle, when fear was surging through my body and giving strength to my arm. To slaughter a man like an animal—even Kyros—I didn’t want to do it. I thought about waking Tamar or Alibek and offering to let them do it, but somehow that seemed even worse.
We’ll take him with us to the Alashi and let them deal with him, when we’re done here.
I looked out the gap and saw that we had reached the edge of the valley. “Slow down,” I said to the djinn. “I want to take a look outside.” I pushed the blanket aside and crawled up the edge of the boat to take a look.
The sun was low in the western sky; we were deep within the mountains, and the sun had fallen behind the edge of the mountain, putting most of the valley into shadow.
When I had seen the reservoir before, it had looked to me like a vast black bowl from the side; from above, the water had been blue. It had been smooth, barely rippling in the breeze, and it had been vast. Sea gulls had circled overhead, scolding us as we’d approached in the palanquin, and when Xanthe had pushed me in, I’d realized that I would drown if I tried to swim for the shore.
Now, I saw an endless mudflat. The valley was black with mud and silt. I could see the ruins of the city rising from the bottom of what had been the lake. The buildings jutted upward, coated in waterborne weeds, slick black mud, settled dirt, dead fish. Nothing had dried yet—the valley was a vast swamp. I wondered how long it would take before people could live here again. Years? Generations? Or perhaps it looked worse than it was and would dry out in a month of summer sun…
I had explored only a tiny portion of the underwater city; it was vast. The djinn must have had Xanthe push me out at precisely the right spot. With the water gone, had I looked for the gate with just my eyes, it might have taken me weeks of searching to find it again. But I could feel its tug within me, its gate calling to my own. “That way,” I murmured.
Tamar and Alibek climbed up next to me and looked out as well. “It looks so desolate,” Tamar whispered. “Our people really lived there? Do you think the Alashi will want to live there again?”
“Not anytime soon,” I said.
“It will dry out, eventually,” Alibek said. “The soil here will be fertile—excellent for farming.”
“It looks burned,” Tamar said. “Though it doesn’t smell burned.” She inhaled. “It smells pretty bad, though.”
Alibek took a whiff. “It could be worse. The ruined temple was worse.”
“Nothing’s worse than that…”
The gate was ahead. It stood at the top of a hill that rose high above the rest of the city. Steps led up to it, and a marble floor lay at its base. The crumbled remnants of walls surrounded it. “There,” I said, and pointed. “That’s it.”
“That archway?” Tamar asked.
“Yes.”
The stones were as blackened from dirt as the other buildings, but had fewer weeds growing on them. In the sun, I saw a glint, and realized that the entire gate was built from karenite. Tamar studied it for a long moment, then said, her voice hesitant, “I can’t see through the gate. Is that a trick of the light? I should be able to see the mountains on the other side, but there’s just…”
“Darkness, yes,” I said. “That’s not a trick of the light. Don’t go sticking your hand into it to see what happens or anything. I only sort of know how I got back from the other side.” I leaned against the edge of the boat. “Take us close,” I said to the djinn. “But don’t you go touching it. I swear I will free you when I’m done here. To free your people from mine forever, we have to destroy this, and we need firm ground to stand on.”
The djinn brought the boat so that the base rested on the floor in front of the gate, then held it there, balanced for us. I could feel the pull of the gate; I felt that if I tripped, I would be swept through like a gnat in a wind. Surely the djinn feels it. But it either chose to stay and help us, or was powerless to let the gate sweep it away.
“We need a hammer,” Alibek said. “I don’t suppose you have one at hand…”
“Lay the boat down gently,” I said to the djinn. It let the boat settle onto its side. The upper side of the hull curved up behind us, while the lower side made a squishing sound as it settled into the mud. We stood on the inner curve of the hull, looking at the gate. “Bring us some rocks we can swing to destroy the gate. A hammer, if you can find something like that. Hurry.”
“Can we use something as a rope and maybe try to pull it over?” Tamar asked.
“You’ll have to do it,” I said. “I’m afraid that if I get too close, I’m going to be pulled through whether I mean to go through or not.”
We took the silk we’d used as a roof, twisted it, and Alibek and Tamar passed it around the back of the gate; it was just long enough to work. They grabbed the ends and we pulled as hard as we could, but the gate didn’t budge.
The djinn returned with a shower of useful things: three large rocks, a hammer, a sledgehammer, an axe, a sword, and a perfectly new bow and quiver of arrows. I blinked at the bow and arrows for a moment, puzzled. Xanthe must have cleaned out Zivar’s palanquin on the way back to Penelopeia, after she threw me into the water.
Tamar strung the bow while Alibek picked up the sledgehammer and took a swing at the gate. It rebounded; the gate didn’t break. “Let me try,” I said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Alibek said. “If I fall through the gate by accident, I’ll be of no use to them. You’ll never get away from them again.” He took another swing, with no discernible effect.
In the distance, I heard a voice shout, “Stop!” And then, “Stop them!”
“Protect us,” I said to the djinn, and we dived behind the shelter of the boat’s hull. I heard a deafening rattle like hail against a metal roof and risked a quick peek up; the djinn had formed a rigid shield against a rain of arrows. Some way off, still, I could see a palanquin.
“It’s the Sisterhood Guard,” I said. “The djinn is protecting us from their arrows.” I straightened up, feeling my face flush with defiant delight. The arrows rained down again, but they bounced off the djinn like a brick wall. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You won’t regret this.”
Tamar fired an arrow, wounding one of the people leaning out of the palanquin. Alibek picked up the small hammer and tried swinging that at the gate instead; no use. Kyros stayed hunched in the hull of the boat, clasping his bound hands, which was just fine with me. Alibek tried the sledgehammer again, and must have swung it harder. It rebounded with a sharp crack, but still didn’t so much as chip the stones of the gate. Another ha
il of arrows came down. Tamar flinched as she saw them coming, but gripped her own bow and fired an arrow back.
“Let’s try having the djinn pull on the rope,” Alibek suggested.
“I don’t think it can do that and shield us at the same time…”
“We can shelter in the boat while it tries.”
He and Tamar each picked up an end, then held them together. “Djinn—pull,” I said, and we ducked behind the hull as the rope stretched taut. I heard the fibers creak. The gate looked undisturbed. “Pull harder,” Alibek said under his breath. “Come on.”
The djinn gave a sharp yank, and the rope snapped, the ends flying out to the sides; Alibek threw himself backward to avoid being hit, and almost fell. “Shield us again!” I shouted as the arrows rattled against the hull.
Alibek gave me a grim look. “Now what?” he said. The palanquin was much closer. Alibek struggled back to his feet, his sword in hand. “I’ll do what I can if they get in here,” he said, his tone saying, and that won’t be much, not against that many people.
“We can use Kyros’s djinn to do something with them—all of them—”
“That’ll only work once. And there must be more coming.”
Weavers or no Weavers, this was starting to feel futile. Do we need a bigger hammer? An anvil to swing? How did they destroy gates in the past? I remembered that they used human deaths to bind the gates and destroy them—but this gate had received the opposite treatment. Someone had built a physical doorway out of karenite to keep it from collapsing. To bind it to the spot and force it to stay open, so that it never slipped quietly shut like the gates left by people like me.
The Weavers’ palanquin stopped with its djinn just beyond my reach. They took out planks, and I realized they aimed to climb onto our boat without ever coming close enough to let me free their djinn. Tamar nocked an arrow; Alibek’s hand tightened on his sword.
“Protect us if you can,” I whispered to our djinn.
The planks stopped in the air, and then spun away, dropping into the mud some distance below. I turned back to the gate, desperately trying to think of a way to destroy it.
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