by Teresa Rook
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say quietly, my hands in my lap.
“Yes, you do. I’m a monster, Darga, aren’t I? I’ve pushed an entire tribe to extinction. Last night I killed your ally, and yet you sit here and listen to my story. It helps you feel better about your own deception.” She laughs and shakes her head. “Admit it. Or don’t. But we can sit on this wall for years, and I won’t agree to burn it. It keeps the world out.” She prepares to hop down. “And it keeps the monsters in.”
She leaves me alone atop the wall. I don’t think she’s right. I don’t think this is about me. At least not just.
I look out over the desert, bright and yellow in front of me. I wonder what Riksher and Ennis are doing, if they’re still with the Irals. If they’re helping with the body.
Yes, I’m desperate to humanize Jerena. But it’s not to justify the lie I’m telling Riksher and Ennis.
It’s for the lie we all told about the witches.
#####
It’s well past dark by the time I make it out of Yural. Riksher, Ennis, Korde, and Chloje are back at the camp where we first met Chloje and her husband. Korde paces around the fire. Chloje stares into it. Ennis hovers, prepared to sweep in with condolences at any opening. Riksher broods well away from the rest.
Fariq’s body is nowhere in sight.
Chloje watches my approach with a blank face. I remind myself not to be bitter towards her. She just lost her husband. “You and your companions are not welcome here.”
I swallow before asking the question I came to her for. “Why Yural? Why is that where you want to live?”
“It’s my home,” she says automatically. “The wall kept us safe for years.”
“So, if the only way to take the village back was to destroy the wall, would you want that?”
She’s silent. I go to Riksher, who looks past me with a distant frown. How many has he killed?
“We’re not burning it,” I say.
He looks at me incredulously. “Yes, we are. Yural is proof. Look at what their wall did. What the runes did. I don’t know how you can still have doubts. We’re burning that wall.”
“We’re not. The Yurals don’t want us to, and neither do the Irals. This isn’t a Dead City. People live here. We can’t just do whatever we please.”
“You forget we’re doing this for everyone,” Riksher says, unable to hide his annoyance. “What’s more important, two small tribes or the fate of every Carnigan in the nation? Because we can save them all. We can save everyone, Darga. But we have to make the hard calls.”
“I know, and I’m making one now. I won’t take away what little autonomy these tribes have. That’s the thinking that gets a people wiped out, remember.”
“The witches had a choice,” he growls. “We don’t. Our people are dying.”
“What is this one village going to mean, in the end?” I ask. “Do you really think this will be the tipping point? With all the Dead Cities, the tech in Yural will be what holds us back?” I cross my arms. “This place doesn’t matter to us. It matters to them. So it’s their call.”
“Either you’re in you’re out,” he says. “We’re burning that wall. Are you with us or against us?”
“It’s not that simple. We’ll find other tech, but I’m not with you on Yural.”
“You realize, Darga,” he says, “that the tech is what’s starving your tribe?”
“No,” I say coolly, “that would be the Chiral tax.”
A vein bulges in his forehead. “You have no idea of the losses the Chirals took on your behalf. On behalf of every tribe in Carnigai. You needed someone to stand up and we did. Or else where would you be now?”
“Good question,” I shoot back. “Where would I be now? What exactly have you saved us from, O Great Chiral? Because I’m no expert, but it seems to me like everything is a lot worse than it was before.”
“They were taking over, stealing land, forcing us into cities where we didn’t belong. Where we couldn’t keep our tribes. Your tribe is not the first to suffer!”
“So, it wasn’t about halting this drought? Or have you just conveniently forgotten than detail, now that it’s backfired so strongly?”
“It was about a lot of things! You still have a farm!”
“Barely.”
We stare each other down, and eventually Riksher sneers and steps away. He leaves me and pulls Ennis aside, and they have a conversation out of my hearing where they both gesture to me several times. Riksher jabs a finger in my direction. At one point, Ennis puts a calming hand on Riksher’s shoulder, only for Riksher to knock it away and storm off. Then Ennis approaches me.
“Thank you for trying,” he says. “It’s my turn.”
#####
Chloje won’t speak to me, but maybe Korde will. I have something to tell them before we leave.
I find him close to the tracks, sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest. He stares out across the desert, the opposite direction of Yural, and doesn’t look at me when I sit down. His face is blank, but not the careful sort of blank Riksher masks himself with. Korde just looks empty.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
He just shrugs. I trace a swirl in the sand between us, searching for something to say that will ease his pain. It puts Barnab into context, at least. This particular grief isn’t something I have experience mitigating.
“Listen,” I say, “I want you and your mother to go to Barnab.” He shrugs again and I push on. “Tell them Darga sent you, and that you’re farmers. They’ll find you a place to stay and they’ll bring you in. The Yurals won’t stop coming for your resources. You need to become part of a community. They’ll look after you.”
“Without us, your new friends won’t have anyone to steal from.”
I wince. He sounds like his mother. “I’m on your side, Korde.”
“Then help us get Yural back.”
I can’t do that. Yural is too big for two people. We won’t displace an entire tribe, regardless of how unscrupulous they may be, to make two people happy. Not when there’s another solution for those two.
“Just go to Barnab, okay? I know you love this place—”
“Really? Do you know that? Have you every loved a place, really loved it?”
His accusation nearly makes me narrow my eyes. I take a few deep breaths and remember that he’s hurting more than I am right now. “I love Barnab,” I say. “That’s why I’m out here. My tribe is dying, and I’m out here looking for a way to save it.” I ball my fists and fight down the lump in my throat. “But there’s only so much I can do. Everything I have goes to saving Barnab. If you’re there, that means I’m working to save you, too. But I can’t help you all the way out here.”
I watch Korde’s face as he mulls this over. Finally, he stands up.
“This is my home,” he says. “You’re not the first person to say life would be better if we did it your way.”
His words sting as he walks away. I stay by the tracks a few more minutes, trying to let it go. Telling myself I’ve done what it’s reasonable to do for Korde and Chloje. If they don’t want help, I can’t force them to take it. I have to let it go and move on.
I return to the Iral camp and find Riksher and Ennis ready to leave one last time for Yural.
#####
When we go back, Jerena is waiting for us at the one small archway in the wall. Yurals pass in and out of view behind her, going about their lives, moving on. “There’s nothing for us to talk about. Leave.”
“Hear us out,” Ennis says. She waves her spear at him, but it’s an empty threat. I don’t believe she wants to hurt us. I think she’s sick of fighting.
“You’re not burning it,” she says. I curl and flex my fingers into exasperated claws. “We need the wall. It keeps us safe.”
“The wall is killing you,” Riksher says. “Every day that passes, you will get weaker and weaker. Your children will continue to grow frail and stunted, and the fog you
feel inside you will only spread. This wall does nothing to save you. It will be your death, I swear it.”
“What do your friends Tribe Iral want, pup? Do they want to see it burned? It protected them too, don’t forget.”
“Not from you,” I say.
“I’m not having this conversation again.” Jerena turns to duck through the low opening in the wall, the one place people are supposed to get in and out. “Leave now and we won’t hurt you.”
But Ennis steps up. “Jerena, wait.”
She pauses at Ennis’s voice. “Yes? What is it, Nirokean prince?” She says this with no small amount of disdain. It takes me a moment to understand what she’s talking about. Ennis’s lie. One of the few things we didn’t touch on atop the wall, mostly because I’d completely forgotten.
“We need our horses. We can use them to travel to the Dead Cities and focus on the tech there. That’s the only way we can allow your wall to stay.”
“Pardon me?” Jerena says, echoing my own surprise. Ennis, giving ultimatums? His voice is steady, no tremor of fear. Riksher looks sharply at him, not impressed with the terms of this deal, but not interfering. “Are you threatening us now? You forget you’re outnumbered.”
“At the moment, yes,” he says. “But we’ve sent word to Salis where there are enough of us to outnumber you one hundred to one. If we’re not heard from within the week, they’re to send another party out to deal with this wall. They know we can’t leave it intact, and they won’t take kindly to the tribe who murdered the wolfsons.”
She sneers. “Empty threats. Your new Wolf won’t listen to you. You have no power anymore, or you wouldn’t have left Salis.”
“Not every Chiral has great love for my brother,” Riksher says. “There are many loyal to us, and they believe in this mission. Destroy us, and more will appear in our place. The Chirals will never stop coming after Yural.”
“Unless,” Ennis says, “you give us our horses, plus one for the mare you killed.”
“You killed.”
“You crippled her,” I interject. “She was suffering. As good as dead.”
“We have no other horses,” she says.
“You’re lying,” Ennis responds. “Give us our horses, and we leave, and that’s the end of it. You keep your deadly wall, and we leave.”
“This is no kind of deal,” she hisses.
“This is your game. We play by your rules. You want to keep your wall, you give us the horses.”
seventeen
“When the Chirals killed the witches,” I ask Ennis as we ride, “where did the rest of the people go?”
We’re six days out of Yural. They’ve been tense, with little to see and less to talk about. On the fourth day, it rained, only for a few minutes. The ground absorbed it immediately and dried right back out, but I managed to catch a few drops on my tongue, and Riksher collected some in a collapsible drum. That went to the horses.
I prod with my tongue at a shred of mealworm stuck in my teeth.
Ennis frowns and looks to Riksher. “You lived through it. What happened?”
“They didn't go anywhere. They stayed in the Dead Cities.”
“But the Dead Cities are unlivable,” I say.
“We didn't know that at the time. And we obviously didn’t call them that.” He clicks his heels against his new horse, a stallion, setting him to a trot. “Come on. We'll be able to see Akisir soon.”
“Hold up.” I pull into a trot beside him. He looks straight ahead. “Once everyone figured out what was happening. Where did they go then?”
“Everyone seems to think that's our problem,” he says. “We didn't make the Dead Cities unlivable. The witches did.”
“So you take no responsibility for the people displaced by the war. People like Tribe Yural, who then went on to ruin other lives. You don’t think you played a part in setting this in motion?”
“We were all nomads before the Witches. Now we've returned to our roots.”
“But you live in Salis.”
He waves a hand. “Not me specifically. There needs to be a central organization to keep everything running smoothly. To keep everyone safe.”
“You did a bang-up job of that with Tribe Iral.”
“It was out of our hands!” he yells, then kicks his horse into a canter. It whinnies and complies. I fall back beside Ennis.
He speaks before I can. “Go easy on him.”
“Pardon me?”
Ennis holds his reins in steady, posturally perfect hands. That razor-focused gaze is practiced straight from Riksher. It would be chilling to see on Ennis if he could pull it off a little better, but it just feels like a performance. Ennis doesn’t have his brother’s stoicism, or his confidence. “None of this is his fault. He’s doing the best he can.”
“No, he’s not. He’s ignoring the problem.”
“He’s out here risking his life to stop it. Defying the Wolf, wandering into the desert.”
“Yet he refuses to consider the part he played in creating it.”
“I’m twenty,” Ennis says abruptly. “How old are you?”
I pause. “Somewhere between nineteen and twenty-two.”
Ennis breaks his forward stare to raise an eyebrow, but then he shakes his head to dislodge the distraction. “You and I were born at the end of the war. Riksher is thirty-eight. He was fifteen when it ended. How much of what happened around you was your fault when you were fifteen?”
“A fair bit,” I say with something of a sneer. “I lost my first animals that year. Two sheep. I’d left their stall doors loose, and the barn door wide. They got out, and coyotes got them. It was my fault, and I’ve spent the years since then caring for the animals that are left.”
“Okay, but do you think you’d have had any say in a genocide?”
“I’d feel better about it if he’d even use that word,” I grumble. But I see his point. “Fine, so Riksher was a kid. But he’s not a kid now. And I’m not asking him to see the future. I’m asking him to look at the present, at the people who are hurting now, and to take responsibility. I don’t know how you can both pretend none of that blood is on your hands.”
“You really believe people are their parents, don’t you?”
“Don’t give me that tone. I think it takes work for people not to be. Some people are willing to take on the work. Some aren’t.”
“You sure know a lot about Riksher for someone who’s known him only a few weeks.”
I swallow each of the ten retorts that come to me in an effort to let Ennis have the last word. When we’ve ridden in silence for a few minutes, I ask a different question.
“Do you remember any of it?”
Ennis takes a deep breath and collapses into a slouch. “Snatches here and there. I remember the chaos in Salis after Riever. It went on for years.”
Riever. The name rings a bell, but I can’t place it. I shake my head.
“Wolf Riever,” he says. “The one before Iskielle.”
“Your father.”
He nods, unsure. “Not really. He died the day Iskielle brought me home. And it’s not like we’re bound by blood. Iskielle is…” His face changes and he trails off, as though he’s just remembered anew. Iskielle is gone.
“I’m sorry.” I reach out and brush my fingertips against his shoulder.
“Iskielle raised me. That’s why she’s my mother. I am who I am because of her.”
“Whereas Riever had no effect on you.”
He breathes out a bitter laugh. “I wouldn't say that. I’m a Nirokean. Outside, Riever was waging a war against my homeland because they refused to give up their witches. Inside, his son waged that war against me.”
“Dyren.”
Ennis nods once and clears his throat before speaking. “Dyren was eight when I came home. In one day, he lost his father and gained this Nirokean baby instead. He resented me for suddenly being his brother, and once I stopped trying to win him over, that resentment started going both ways.”
Ennis smiles, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “No. Riksher was against Dyren from the start. He’s a lot like our mother. He defended me at every turn. That's another thing I stole from Dyren. His big brother.”
“And now Dyren’s the new Wolf. What does that mean for the rest of the world?”
“You know what happened when Riever was Wolf.” He gestures about us at the barren desert. “We're still dealing with the consequences of that reign.”
“You and Riksher seem to disagree slightly on the nature of those consequences.”
He cocks an eyebrow, perhaps thinking we’d dropped it. “Riksher was older when it happened. He saw more of it than I did. He knows more than I do. So, he feels more strongly about it.”
“And you trust that this is the right thing to do? To destroy the tech?”
He scratches his ear. “We have to do something, don’t we? Or else who will.”
“So you don't buy into it either!”
“Look around us, Darga. What about the people who were here before the witch cull? Did they grow up in a desert, too? Or do they tell stories of lush meadows and deep forests?”
“The latter,” I admit. “There’s one man at Barnab, Old Man Wells. He rode the trains for most of his life, leading the trading missions that went to Niroek. When I was a kid, he would tell us stories about his travels. Seemed more like fairytales at the time. Niroek, he said, has water everywhere. Just pouring with streams, and everyone got around on rafts. When our storehouse was raided, the wagon? It was painted with green. Pictures of big plants, of green wrapped in green...I’d never seen anything like it, but it made me think of Old Man Wells’ stories.”
“I think I’d like to meet this Old Man Wells.”
“You wouldn’t. Not anymore. He doesn’t tell stories, hasn’t since I was a girl. He speaks in fragments, and mostly to himself.” I bite my lip. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe I’ve just become a shitty listener.
“In Carnigai, though, I mean. Remember the trunks around Salis? Even Carnigai was forest once.”