by May, K. C.
Another man knocked before entering, an officer with three stripes on his sleeve. Two other officers and an adept were with him. One officer handed Turounce Boden’s journal, opened to a particular page. “Two pages have been torn out,” Three Stripes said.
The adept stepped forward and handed him two handwritten pages. “He burned them, but I took the liberty of transcribing the missing pages.”
Jora looked over Turounce’s shoulder. What she read there was downright disturbing, but it wasn’t until she came to the final passage that she truly understood.
I believe the march commander and the other officers of our company are knowingly permitting the smuggling of godfruit to our enemies. If this is true, if someone within the Legion command is profiting from the deaths of soldiers in order to keep the war going, then someone needs to take the matter to the king. And if the king won’t stop it, then the people of Serocia should hear about this reprehensible business. It’s unconscionable, and it must stop.
I’m afraid to speak out to other soldiers, because I’m now Relived. My next death will be my last, and the march commander has already proven willing to kill his own soldiers to protect this secret. The returned soldiers of Kaild might have some valuable insights on the matter—especially if they knew about the smuggling and were also afraid to speak out.
She cursed under her breath, remembering what Boden had told his three killers. The Legion itself was selling godfruit to the enemy to help fund the war.
“Something wrong?” Hebb asked.
Everything was wrong, but she told him no. As a former Legion soldier, he might have known about it. Could she trust him? Or would he turn on her like those men who’d killed Boden? Jora shuddered, almost afraid to advance the stream forward again, but she already knew Boden’s ultimate fate and that of her town. What could be worse than witnessing the horrors she’d already seen?
Turounce shuffled the pages to read the second page the adept had given him. And then the commander exploded. He threw the papers down, stood, and began cursing and screaming about Boden’s foolishness, insubordination, and failure to learn his lesson the first time. He went on for a time, hollering and cursing and threatening Boden with a painful death.
Jora paused the stream to read the second page the adept had transcribed.
Jora, read the page in the front of this book with the dolphin in the top right corner, written three days ago. Hope you can put that information to good use.
Challenge the god! Boden hadn’t been killed for what he knew but for what he’d written in his journal. For what he’d told her to read.
The commander asked, “Adept Orfeo, has this Jora woman read it yet?”
“One moment,” the adept replied. The man’s brows knitted. “I... How odd. She’s a novice, and yet I can’t observe her. It seems someone has taught her the barring hood.”
“What in the hell is that?”
“It’s how Truth Sayers prevent others with the Talent from observing them. The skill is taught only to disciples. I can’t see whether she has read the journal or not.”
The commander paced for a moment, shushing the officer who started to speak. Finally he said, “Inform the Justice Bureau. I want her put down.”
Jora’s eyes flew wide. Put down. Like a sick animal. Her stomach turned. If she hadn’t escaped when she did, she might have been dead by now. She’d assumed her greatest danger was from Elder Sonnis’s wrath. No wonder he’d been so desperate to see her. He wanted her books back before he murdered her.
“Sir, there’s no way to know she’s seen the journal,” said Three-Stripes.
Turounce resumed his pacing. “It’s only a matter of time. If she sees it, she’ll tell someone. We can’t let that happen. She’d probably send a message to—” He snapped his fingers. “She’s from Kaild. Damn it. We have a bigger problem than we’d first thought. Who’s her elder?”
“That would be Elder Kassyl, I believe,” Orfeo said.
“Impress upon Elder Kassyl the danger here,” Turounce said. “If she breathes a word of what she’s read in this journal, we could be facing a civil war.”
Elder Kassyl. That meant this conversation had taken place shortly before his death. Before his murder.
She advanced the stream forward, unable to find a reply until the following day—the day Elder Kassyl had been found dead.
“I’ve an answer from the bureau,” Adept Orfeo said. “They say she’s too valuable to put down, and so they’ve issued a cull order and assigned you to see it carried out.”
Jora felt sick. How could these men, sworn to protect Serocia, be so willing to commit mass murder against their own people? Even if they had no compunction about butchering innocent women and children, did they have no loyalty to the returned soldiers?
“Damn it.” The commander took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, get Bakston in here.”
A few minutes later, the assassin Jora thought of as Mouse Ears entered the building.
There was no question Turounce had sent those men to slaughter her people, but who had given Turounce that order? It had to have come to him by way of the command boards.
Jora searched the threads in the Mindstream for that of the boy sitting in the command room that day. She watched Sonnis, still in his green robe, enter the room and hang a small piece of paper on the board marked forty-four.
Novice too valuable. Cull order: Kaild
Jora’s stomach knotted. It had been Sonnis’s idea, not the Legion’s. Captain Kyear had argued against the cull order. Then she realized that Sonnis had killed Elder Kassyl so that he could issue the cull order and save Jora’s life instead.
It didn’t matter. Every murder was wrong, whether it was one person or two thousand. The Justice Bureau, the institution that was supposed to honor truth and uphold the law, was part of the problem. Left up to the Order, there would be no justice for the people of Kaild.
She had the aid of Po Teng, and she knew what she must do.
Dusk was falling when Jora and her two companions arrived at what used to be Kaild. What had once been family homes filled with laughter were now blackened skeletons of buildings. Jora couldn’t bring herself to enter any of them, knowing the charred remains of people she’d known and loved lay within. She circled the town and headed to the beach while Hebb and Turro went into the town center to see if anyone had managed to hide from the assassins.
Her stolen dinghy was right where she’d left it, as was the body of the fallen murderer. She climbed down from the painted horse, untied her satchel, and placed it and the sack of food Mira had given her into the boat. Wearily, she withdrew her flute and called to Sundancer, but the dolphin didn’t come.
Jora sat heavily on the sand out of the waves’ reach and contemplated her life, her next steps. What lay ahead was too big, too frightening to grasp, and so she considered the step immediately in front of her: to leave Kaild. For that, she needed Sundancer to pull the boat. There was no possible way for her to row all the way back to Jolver.
Sundancer’s words came back to her. “When I am not here, you can use ally pull boat, one like man I drowned.”
The drowned assassin was an ally. How he’d become one of those creatures from the other helix, as Sundancer had called it, was still beyond her understanding. When this other business was finished, when she had exacted her... no, not revenge. When she’d dispensed justice, she could sit and ponder the mystery of it. For now, she had to continue forward, one step at a time.
Hebb joined her on the beach, sitting on the sand beside her. Somewhere behind them, Turro was retching. “We didn’t find anyone alive,” Hebb said, “though we found plenty. All died as you said, some with their throats cut so deep, you can see—”
“Please,” Jora said, putting up one hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I saw what they did. That was enough horror for a lifetime.” She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, gripping the flute in both hands against her s
hins.
“Right. Sorry. There’s not much to salvage, except for a plow and some wagon hardware. We’ll hold a vigil for the dead and lay them to rest in the proper way.”
“Thank you, Hebb.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. These people didn’t deserve what they got. Babies and children.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Why was this... this horror brought down upon them?”
She looked into his eyes, darkened in the approaching dusk. “Please don’t ask me to tell you. If I do, if word spreads, then you and your family and all of Three Waters could suffer the same fate. I can’t have that on my shoulders, too.”
“This wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You didn’t do this. You didn’t order this done.” She heard a note of Gunnar in his voice, and her heart broke a little more.
“No, but it was because of me that the order was issued. It was because of what I know.”
He nodded and looked out to sea. “Where are you going from here?”
For a moment, she considered her reply. Elder Sonnis would get his due, but first, the man she sighted along her arrow of justice was March Commander Turounce. “To the Isle of Shess.”
Hebb lifted his chin toward the dinghy. “You going to row all the way there with those scrawny arms of yours?”
Jora snorted a half-hearted laugh. “No, I’ve got something else in mind.”
“Need any help?” Turro asked.
Jora turned to look up at Turro, walking up behind them. “Actually, yes.” She stood and assessed the sun’s position over the mountains to the west. It would sink below the peaks soon. She would need to be ready. “I’m about to do something I’ve only done once before. If you don’t mind, keep an eye on me.”
“Um, all right. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to travel the way betwixt and the gate between.”
“The twixt? What’s that?”
She smiled. “It’s the empty space between the realms of perception. I’m going to take control of another ally, a creature from the same helix my ally is from—another realm of perception. This one’s going to pull the dinghy so I don’t have to row.”
Jora took off her boots and waded, flute in hand, into the water until she was about chest-deep. Turro came with her, sucking in his breath at the cool temperature when it reached his crotch.
“What do I do?” he asked.
“Just make sure I don’t slip under the water and drown.”
Closing her eyes, she opened the Mindstream and played the command Sundancer had taught her.
“Open way betwixt and gate between helix and its twin.”
In her mind’s eye, the darkness deepened like a sky without stars. She saw a reddish glow appear as it had when she’d first found Po Teng. The color brightened to orange and then yellow and then blinding white. Her instinct was to shield her eyes, but it wasn’t a white she was seeing with her eyes. She stepped forward, proceeding through the inky darkness she’d come to associate with the Mindstream, and found herself in a watery world, afraid to breathe in case she’d stepped into the deeper water of the sea in the physical world.
All kinds of creatures swam around her, some like fishes with a tail that flicked back and forth, others with a long, snake-like body that wormed their way through the water. One of them, a sleek, silvery being, drew her eye.
It had a snout like a cow’s and a sleek body that wriggled like a sea snake with thick tail and fins, and it paddled through the water with four webbed hands. It shied away from her as if it were afraid. She swam toward it, but it flitted away, moving in a blink to a position behind her.
Her lungs were starting to ache with the need to breathe. Others swam around her, pausing flirtatiously as if they wanted to be chosen, but she’d set her sights on the speedy one, the one that would get her to the Isle of Shess the quickest. She began swimming toward it once more, intent on not letting it get past her again.
It tried to slip by, but she managed to grab hold of its tail fin. It took off, dragging her through the water from side to side as it fought to escape her grasp. Her lungs were burning now, and it was all she could do to hold on and not gasp for a breath, certain she would drown if she did.
The creature slowed and stopped. It turned its torso and bared long, needle-like teeth at her. Jora hung on, refusing to give up. It took off once again, yanking her back and forth. Her lungs screamed at her to breathe. Tiny spots appeared in her vision, blocking out the sight of the creature.
Just when she thought, This is it. This is my death, the creature stilled, giving in. She closed the Mindstream and opened her eyes.
She was underwater. In the distance, she heard the muffled sounds of men shouting her name. With a few hard kicks, she broke the surface and gasped for breath, then choked on the salty water.
“Jora!” one of the men cried. He swam the few yards to her, hooked his arm under her own and across her chest, and took her to shore. All she could do was cough and gasp for breath.
At last, she was in the shallowest water, crawling up onto the beach, coughing and vomiting water. Someone slapped her back, and little by little, she was able to fill her lungs enough to calm the coughing. She turned and sat, exhausted. Did it work?
“We thought you were drowned,” Hebb said. “You just... vanished.”
She looked at him curiously. “Vanished?” Could she really have left the helix physically? Then she realized that she’d been there all along but in the other realm of perception where they couldn’t see her.
“Yah, like that.” Turro snapped his fingers. “One second you were there, playing your flute, and the next, you were gone.”
“My flute,” she said, suddenly realizing it wasn’t in her hand.
“Here it is,” Hebb said. He reached down and picked up what had looked like a stick. “You dropped it. It got wet, but it should dry out.” He handed it to her, and she took it gratefully.
“Thank you.” She climbed to her feet and put the flute into the dinghy where it wouldn’t get wet or lost, then she took a few steps into the water, wading to her mid-thigh. Had the ally beaten her? She didn’t relish the thought of having to repeat her effort at sunrise, but she would if she had to. By then, with another night’s sleep behind her, she would be better equipped to wrestle one of the creatures into submission.
A shick-shick sound caught her attention. Something bumped her leg, something long and silvery that floated under the surface near her right hip. Its webbed hand stroked her leg as the being circled her body. It was both grotesque and intriguing to behold.
“What is your name?” she asked softly.
“Zho...kaw,” it said when its cow-like face peeked above the water’s surface.
“What the hell is that thing?” Turro asked.
Jora smiled. “This is my new ally.”
Jora bid Hebb and Turro goodbye, thanked them for their aid and that of the people of Three Waters, and climbed into the dinghy. The two men pushed the boat off against the small waves of the ebb tide, and Jora rowed out far enough for Zhokaw to swim.
In order for the cow-faced fish-snake to pull the boat, Jora had to tie a loop in the rope’s end that fit over the ally’s face. The loop settled into place on Zhokaw’s head about halfway between the end of its snout and its eyes.
“Zhokaw, pull the boat out into the sea.”
Waving at the two men on the beach and the three horses, she started off. Though the water was a bit choppy, it wasn’t the rolling voyage that had rocked her stomach when she initially left for Jolver with the two Truth Sayers. She thought back to that day, when her nightmare began.
The first week had been the worst, as she missed her family terribly, but once she started learning about her new role and new life, she had to concede that Elder Gastone hadn’t been wrong. Life in the Order was not unpleasant, especially those few days she got to spend with Elder Kassyl.
He was another whose death had come too soon, murdered by Sonnis. When she finished with
Turounce, she would bring him to justice, too.
But justice wasn’t the word Sundancer had used. She had called it revenge.
No, it wasn’t revenge. Was it? There was a difference. She hadn’t killed the assassins or the enforcers for selfish reasons. She’d killed them to protect herself and the people of Three Waters. She’d done it to prevent future wrongs committed by men who acted mindlessly upon the orders of others. Men who killed without knowing why, and without caring. They’d had to be stopped. They’d had to be...
Punished.
Death wasn’t a punishment. Her parents and teachers had taught her that everyone was entitled to a death, but they were also entitled to a life. Two thousand lives had been cut short because five men chose to follow orders to kill people they were supposed to protect. The people of Kaild were punished for something she hadn’t done. Letting the murderers go, letting them live so that they could do it again to another town wouldn’t have been right. It wouldn’t have been just.
Zhokaw pulled her past Jolver as the sun was coming up. Jora couldn’t help but wonder what tone the Spirit Stone was emitting now.
Of all the things she’d experienced during her life as a Mindstreamer, that was the most spiritual, the most compelling, and the most beautiful. It was unlikely she would ever get to feel the tones again or experience the daily changing, and that saddened her. No use mourning a sensation. She had more important things on her mind, one of which was to not be spotted by those who sought to kill her.
Ahead, she saw a small cove, littered with rock formations, where she might be able to hide the boat. It appeared to be well shielded from any roads as well. She could sleep and rest, perhaps take some time to read Elder Kassyl’s book of tones, before she set out once more under the cover of darkness.
“Zhokaw, pull me to that beach on the right,” she told the ally. It changed course and swam toward the shore. When the boat was in shallow water, she hopped out and removed the rope from around its snout. “Return to your home. I’ll call for you tonight.” She pulled the boat onto the beach behind a large rock in the shallow water so that it wouldn’t be easily spotted by passing boats. She went to another large rock on the beach and, beside it, spread the purple robe on the sand to lie on. There she slept until the sun stole her patch of shade.