The Never Tilting World

by Rin Chupeco

  I grinned, watching her face turn red. The goddess was an innocent. It was almost cute.

  “I never had anything like that. Not even a letter, or a poem.”

  “No one you liked?”

  She paused. “There is one guy. Vanya Arrenley. He’s polite, for a noble.”

  I snorted. “Dumbest name I’ve ever heard.”

  “You’ve never even met him. He’s very kind, and he won’t lie to me just to make himself look good!”

  “So marry him already,” I snapped back, my irritation growing.

  She quieted. “I don’t know. He’s the only choice I can stomach—but I don’t think he’ll side with me against Mother, no matter how sympathetic he is.”

  I grunted. My opinion of Latona had gotten worse the more I heard about her. What mother forced that kind of marriage on her daughter? Haidee could be annoying, but she deserved more than settling for some sycophantic idiot. “Your mother’s a real piece of work. Never met her in my life and have no plans to, but seems like you’re too compassionate about other people to be anything like her. If I didn’t think you were a good person, I wouldn’t have tagged along, either.”

  She shot me a startled glance that barely registered in my head. I was too busy gazing out at the sands, frowning at some specks of black in the distance that hadn’t been there before. “And that’s odd. . . .”

  “What’s odd? Oh!” She straightened. “Parrick? What’s wrong?”

  One of the dolugongs was working itself into a near frenzy, swimming back and forth in panic. The other dolugongs stirred as well.

  “I think they’re sensing something within the sands,” Haidee said. “Do you think it might be a predator?”

  I hoisted myself halfway out the hatch and fished out my spyglass. “Tell your friends to get to the other side of the rig. I’ll cut off the ropes to give them room to move. And get ready to run.”

  There was—movement—to the west. Sand was churning three hundred paces away, in a quasi-whirlpool that was starting to grow in diameter, and anything that could whip it up into that kind of froth would have to be impossibly large, and therefore undoubtedly dangerous. There was even more activity farther off. I squinted through the glass and swore under my breath.

  There were rigs out there, four in total. And they were heading our way.

  “We’ve got company!” I snarled down at Haidee. “Gun the engines, we gotta—”

  And then I forgot what I was about to say, because some hideous thing burst forth from the sand near us, twisting and turning in the air before falling back into the grit-sea. It was a long son of a bitch, sharp and angular in all the worst ways, from the swordlike spikes sticking out along its back to the hollow gaping mass that was its mouth, devoid of any observable teeth but as deep as the ends of the earth and stinking to the highest heavens despite the stretch of sand between us, though that was shrinking fast. It didn’t have any eyes that I could see, but somehow that was worse, because I had a sneaking suspicion it could see us anyway.

  A heavy grating sound filled the air as our sand buggy lurched to life, barely escaping the sudden tsunami once the monster hit the sand again, its immense weight sending wavelike ripples crashing against our vehicle. The dolugongs were clever enough to get out of the way, and we followed quickly in their wake.

  I traded my spyglass for the Howler, set my sights in between the horrific creature and the other sand buggies that were coming our way. They weren’t Hellmakers. I didn’t recognize these assholes.

  They brandished rusting metal hooks, whirling them in the air—and sending them toward the monster.

  They were worse than the Hellmakers.

  The creature wriggled away from the hooks, slipping back easily beneath the surface, but they tried again when it reemerged, one wrapping around its spiny head.

  “Explains the mesh around Shepard,” I muttered. Whoever they were, they were used to fishing the Sand Sea for their food, including huge-ass monsters that no one should have any business trying to catch, but I didn’t want to stay around long enough to compare hunting methods. Haidee was doing a good job putting distance between us, but a couple of the nomads had already spotted us. They veered around the still-thrashing monster, leaving their comrades to deal with the monstrosity and setting an intercept course toward us.

  I opened the hatch. “Faster!” I roared out, letting Fire bounce around my Howler into lethal levels, though I knew trying to outrun them was pointless. The nomads had built their rigs for speed and efficiency and would soon catch up.

  Haidee was trying to steer the buggy and yell at the dolugongs at the same time. “Get out of here!” she screeched. “Leave! Dive down!” But some members of the pod lingered, unwilling to go without us despite their urgency.

  I concentrated on the two rigs bearing down on us. Each had a man clinging to its side, sharp harpoons trained in our direction. I had enough firepower to take down one; the guy on the right already had his arm thrown back, a second away from launching his attack.

  My aim was true, but the man had done this before; he and his partner dove out seconds before my attack hit, turning their rig into a burning wreck of metal that sank quickly down into the Sand Sea.

  A scream, coming from neither of us. The man in the second buggy launched a harpoon through the air with terrible efficiency. One of the dolugongs, Parrick, screamed again, and the others ducked their heads underneath the sands as one and swam for their lives.

  An inhuman howl burst from Haidee’s lips, and she scrambled onto the rig’s hood, pulling at the ropes to bring the injured animal closer to her as I killed the engine. One look, though, told me that there was nothing else we could do.

  “Haidee.”

  She was sobbing, clinging tightly to Parrick, who was now floating belly-up in the sand, bright blood seeping through the wound and staining the sand around us a dirty, muddy scarlet. I could hear cheers rising from the direction of the remaining buggies, and my vision turned red.

  I shucked the Howler off my wrist.

  Fire burned along the length of my arm, running down into the center of my stump. Without the protection of the barrel, I had to grit my teeth against the heat.

  The man chucked another harpoon at me. Streams of fire encased my arm like a sleeve, blazing higher and brighter, sapphire-bright and brilliant, and I flung my arm out in a wide arc, sending those beauties flying, blue wildfire shaped like lightning bolts.

  The harpoon melted in midair, the metal liquefying into a useless curled lump as it flopped back onto the sand. The lightning spiraled farther on and struck one of the nomads’ sand vehicles. Liquid bubbled up and sizzled as parts of the hull disintegrated, its driver screaming as he jumped off. The harpooner did the same as the rest of my inferno consumed their buggy. When everything settled, soot and ashes clung to the now-unsalvageable wreckage.

  I cursed, dropping to my knees. Mother Salla had warned me about the costs of blue fire, of using it too frequently. My forearm felt tender to the touch, small blisters starting to form, but I was lucky—I’d suffered worse than this in the past.

  The other rigs avoided the fiery onslaught that had taken out their buddies. The displaced men were still flailing chest-deep in the sands, but more vehicles were speeding our way. I tried to build more Fire to muster a second shot, but I was way too exhausted to channel that intensity again.

  Haidee lifted her suddenly red hair, her eyes alight with both anguish and fury. The wind was growing stronger, and it wasn’t because we were moving.

  “Haidee,” I panted, trying to retake the wheel. “I’m sorry about Parrick, but we have to move.”

  Another small whirlpool had appeared between us and our pursuers, but the monster was no longer its cause. The wind was a hell of a lot fiercer now, and I had to grab at the hatch to retain my balance.

  I’d annoyed Haidee on occasion, made her seethe enough to get into dumb arguments with me. But I’d never seen her this furiously, unequivocally, terrify
ingly angry, and a part of me was glad I’d never riled her this much.

  Haidee screamed.

  A sandspout shot out from the sea, wild and spinning, and hell, Haidee wasn’t thinking again because we were way too damn close to the thing not to get caught up in its deadly spiral. I could actually see fire mixed with lightning shooting in and out of the flying dust, watched it char the surrounding sands in seconds. One of the men shrieked as he was hit, his body pitching forward into the sands while his clothes caught fire.

  The rest of the bandits were yelling, swerving away, and it occurred to me that Haidee could no more control the hurricane she had generated than she could control those men. I grabbed hold of the wheel again, grimly twisting it to the side in hopes we could break free.

  One of the sand raiders continued the chase, however; he was a fierce-looking man with an eye patch. The tornado swerved his way but he flung an arm out, and a sudden wall of sand lifted out from the ocean, slowing its approach. He leaped out of his rig, and I swear to every goddess that existed he floated, using the tornado’s own momentum to push himself away from the worst of the winds. Was this fucker part bird?

  “Haidee!” I hollered. Despite the tornado around us the girl was deathly still, her eyes trained on the spout, with the fiercest and also the most heartbreaking look on her face. It wrung my own heart dry. “Haidee!” I shouted. “Snap out of it! Damn it, woman, don’t make me have to slap you!”

  She blinked, and just like that, the sandstorm was gone.

  Not so the Sand Sea.

  The sudden dissolution of the sandspout didn’t stop the large wave that came crashing over us, upending everyone in the process—the men’s rigs, ours, me. I plunged headfirst into the thick sand and kept sinking through the grit. My throat clogged up as I gasped for air—I no longer knew which way was up.

  I’m not going to die like this! Not breathing in sand like a desert neophyte, just because some damned goddess couldn’t manage her—

  Something nudged at my side, and I clung to it on instinct. And then I was moving. Fast.

  I scrunched my eyes shut and buried my face against the slightly rough texture of whatever it was I had latched on to, which was better than having to keep eating the millions of grains of sand that keep trying to force their way into my windpipe—

  I was thrown abruptly out of the Sand Sea and into the blessed burning air, my breaths coming out in wheezes as I landed, sprawled against the edges of the dust-ocean, holding on to the firm ground like it too might disappear on me at a moment’s notice.

  Firm ground. We’d reached the end of the Sand Sea. Hell.

  I devoted a few more minutes to coughing out the rest of my lungs before I mustered enough sense to assess where I was.

  The sand buggy was gone. So were the men. So was Haidee.

  Crap.

  A chittering sound to my right. I turned and spotted a rock-eye peering hopefully up at me. “Shepard,” I muttered. Another pair of eyes popped up beside it. Its mother. “Madeline. Where are we?”

  Most of the pod had escaped unscathed, but there were no signs of Haidee or the rig anywhere. I gulped, a sudden heavy lump forming in my throat, replacing all the sand I’d just spewed out. There was no way—Haidee hadn’t caused all this trouble only for her to—

  If she died, I was going to kill her.

  The book.

  A swirl of a cloak, inches from my splayed fingers. I looked up.

  The mirage stared down at me, closer than it’d ever let us get, and I instantly regretted trying to before. Its face was still swathed in shadows—until I realized it wasn’t.

  There was no face underneath that hood.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Odessa the Life-Giver

  CATHEI WAS STILL DEAD.

  They laid her out on a small stone slab some distance away from camp, as if they were ashamed to look too closely. They’d stretched an old cloak over her body, tucked it around so no stray breeze could shake it loose. But even with her face covered, I fancied she was staring through the cloth and up at me, sad and accusing. I thought you’d protect me, I could almost hear her say. Is this all I get?

  Catseye Sumiko was busy with her examination of the long-dead ranger’s bones. “It’s difficult to ascertain how she died,” she said, “but my best guess would be a stab to the head with some sharp weapon.”

  “How can you tell?” Gracea had been making a pest of herself, elbowing people aside for a better look.

  “The skull remains intact, and there’s a lengthwise break along the side of the temple indicating a knife, or something very similar. It’s too clean a wound to have been caused by jagged fangs, and death must have been almost instantaneous.”

  “We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” Holsett said. “What was this ranger doing so far from home?”

  “The wildlands actually housed flourishing villages and communities before the Breaking, sir,” Janella said meekly. “It wasn’t the desolation you see today.”

  “I know that,” the Seasinger snapped. “What I would like to know is what she was doing so far away from Asteria’s domain then, which would have originally been west of here.”

  “The corpse has been here sixteen, seventeen years. No more than twenty.” Sumiko glanced at Lan for confirmation, and the latter nodded.

  “About the same time as the Breaking,” I surmised. “Killed by Asteria’s sister’s faction, probably. Or a traitor.”

  “No honorable ranger would turn against their own kin.” Lan looked shocked by the very thought of it.

  “Too many variables to be sure,” Gracea said dismissively. “Give it a burial. I’ll take the brooch.”

  “No,” I said.

  The Starmaker’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a useless trinket, Your Holiness.”

  “If it’s such a useless trinket, then why insist on having it? This poor corpse once served my mother, and you know it.” The rumor in camp was that this had been one of Asteria’s Devoted before the Breaking—a colleague of Gracea’s. But only I had the guts to say it to her face. “Don’t you want to find out who this was? It could have been a friend!”

  Gracea plucked the brooch from my grasp. “I am the leader here. I have more experience in my smallest toe than you have in your whole body. Goddess or not, my Devoted will follow my orders, because I follow Asteria’s. Your presence here is ample proof that you do not.”

  She strode away, and the rest of the Devoted followed, looking at me and trading uneasy glances with one another.

  I’d always found Gracea overbearing in the past, but only now did I realize just how tyrannical she could be. How had Mother allowed her to get away with so much for this long? When I assume my throne in Aranth, I vowed, silently seething, she’ll be the first to go.

  “Odessa,” Lan whispered.

  “Bury the bones well, Lan.” And I too moved away.

  Conversation around the fire was muted, sober. I refused the warmth, choosing to stay with Cathei. Gracea and Lan were in another argument. The Starmaker was nearly shrill; Cathei was the first death under her watch, but she was more concerned about who else was to blame.

  Janella had been of little help; she remembered nothing before her disappearance, and Gracea would have tried to throttle the answer out of her had it not been for Lan’s intervention. The Catseye herself was the complete opposite; grim, angry, terse.

  I watched them plan our next move—Lan wanted to return to Aranth and abandon the mission altogether, a failure Gracea was not willing to accept.

  More of the clerks were sporting suspicious bruises and injuries they sought to conceal with their clothes. I remembered Lan announcing days ago that such actions would not be tolerated from the Devoted, but the problem was that Lan was far too nice. She believed calling people out was enough for them to do the right thing on their own.

  Maybe I was just as naive, never having thought about the abuse going on because I’d been insulated in the Spire for so long. It took this journ
ey for me to understand just how insidious the Devoted’s control was. But you can’t have Asteria for a mother without picking up on a few tricks yourself.

  Lan was attempting to be diplomatic; I chose bluntness. Earlier on I’d taken Gareen to one side and told him in no uncertain terms that any fresh wounds I saw among the clerks the next day I would return tenfold to their masters starting with Holsett, brushing aside the boy’s halfhearted protests at innocence. The Devoted don’t know me well enough to be sure whether I’d follow up on that promise, but knowing that I knew would make them more cautious. It was the best I could do for now.

  I despised Gracea, but I had to be patient. I had to be patient. As strong as I was, I could not underestimate the Starmaker, and the other gate-users who would rather fall in line than admit responsibility.

  I laid my hand carefully on Cathei’s leg. She felt solid underneath my fingers, but in the darkness I almost expected her to dissolve into smoke.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her still form, wishing there was some way to turn back time. Lan was right. My visions had told me they would die if I didn’t go with them, but they never said that they wouldn’t still, if I did.

  But I’d seen Lan with the silver brooch, with Janella. Which meant I did have Mother’s visions now; they were real. I was right to travel with them, even if they were too stubborn to see. It was bitter vindication.

  “Your Holiness?” Catseye Sumiko hovered by my shoulder, worried. “Would you like me to heal you today?”

  “Lan already did, but thank you.”

  “I don’t mean that, Your Holiness. You’ve had a trying experience, especially for someone who has not been so long outside the Spire, much less outside the city. There is healing for the body, but there is also healing for the mind. One can be at the peak of health but mentally and emotionally drained, especially in the face of traumatic incidents.”

  I looked down at Cathei again. The one who’d suffered the most trauma was her, not me, but I nodded all the same.