by Sam Sykes
“You did a shit job of it.”
“No, we were thorough. We were huge. And we did it. Over and over. And every time, they would just rebuild it bigger than before. Until finally, we came in and saw that their houses stood bigger than us.”
“A tall house burns the same as a small house,” Gariath replied. “It just has a longer way to fall.”
“Idiot Rhega.” Kharga slumped back against the wall, his chains settling against his scales. “Your breed was always stupid. You look upon something and think only of how you can break it. We Drokha looked upon their city and saw something else.”
“Weakness.”
Kharga did not reply.
“Cowardice.”
Kharga remained silent.
“Coin you’d sell your blood for, boots you’d eagerly lick, your own stupid shame reflected back at you.” Gariath rushed toward him, snarling through bared teeth. “Tell me. Tell me what you saw.”
“It’d be hard to explain,” Kharga replied. He smiled broadly. “Maybe you should ask your monkeys what they saw when they entered it.”
Gariath narrowed his eyes and snorted. He turned around and stalked away, ignoring Kharga as he called out after him.
“Even better, ask them what they saw after we painted the city with them,” Kharga bellowed, laughing. “Are they trying for another Uprising? Did they tell you how it ends?”
Gariath stalked to a nearby stake that had been used to tether a gaambol. He seized it in both hands and pried it out of the ground.
“I don’t want to spoil anything for you,” Kharga said as Gariath turned around to face him, “but after we sent their little rebellion running, I was picking pieces of them out of my toes for—”
Bone cracked. Splinters flew.
The hide of the Drokha was legend. Thick, armored scales that could turn aside blades, arrows, and the harsh sun of the desert. Some might have found it hard to believe that a large stick could hurt them.
But just as legendary was the philosophy of the Rhega. Which stated that nothing was impossible, just so long as one hit it hard enough.
Admittedly, as Gariath struck Kharga again and again with the stake, he knew this might not be seen as the most graceful argument. And as it splintered with each blow, leaving shards of wood embedded in the Drokha’s face, he knew he had not refuted any of Kharga’s points.
But Kharga was no longer talking. And in a few moments, Kharga was no longer conscious. And that, Gariath figured, still counted as a win.
But when the last few splinters fell from his hand and Kharga lay on the ground, unmoving, Gariath felt no better. And he couldn’t get the sound of Kharga’s laughter out of his head.
Nor his words.
Ask your monkeys what they saw.
He stalked out of the warehouse.
Are they trying for another Uprising?
He walked into the setting sun of Jalaang.
Did they tell you how it ends?
And he trudged through the streets. The tulwar raised their fists to him, the reek of their anger peeling off them, their chants booming from their voices. Gariath couldn’t smell them, or hear them. And he did not dare look up at them.
He knew he would only see corpses.
FOUR
A GIFT FOR A DEAD CHILD
Thua had always been an honest boy.
He had no talent for lying, like his sister. He did not like to play hiding games and often cried if he went too long without finding his playmates. He did not like to be teased, either, though, so he often tried to play them.
But he had no head for deception, no tongue for lies, no patience for sitting still and waiting. Whenever it was his turn to hide, he would find it too much to sit still and would frequently come out of hiding with an explosion of nervous laughter, happy that the game was over, even if he had lost.
And as his father looked down at him, lying so still and peaceful beneath the blanket, he was tempted to lift the cloth and look under. There was some part of him that thought, if he did, his son would still be there, giggling that he had been able to sit so still for so long.
There was some part of his father that made his fingers brush against the cloth. But it was not enough to make him raise it.
Sai-Thuwan knew what he would see underneath.
He stepped back from the pyre. He saw the heaped, dry sticks beneath the swaddled body. He saw the still, motionless shape beneath the cloth. He saw the small bundle resting at the top where the head should have been, separate from the rest. Sticks and cloth; he tried to tell himself that this was not Thua, that this was not his son.
That he didn’t have to do this.
That he hadn’t caused this.
But Sai-Thuwan had been trying to tell himself that for days now, and the lies tasted more bitter in his mouth each time.
He walked wearily to the nearby bonfire. The sand crunched beneath his feet. Wind wound its way through the dunes of the desert, moaning softly to herald the falling of the sun. He pulled the torch from the fire and began to walk back to the pyre.
Halfway there, the wind kicked up. The torch’s light sputtered out in his hand. He sighed and went back to the fire, lighting it once more. And when the wind blew it out again, he sighed deeper and went back. But by the third time, when it began to blow again, he was weeping.
“Please,” he whispered to the wind. “Please. I don’t deserve it. But he does. He is such a good boy. He never did anything to deserve this.” Tears stung his eyes, were blown away by the wind. “Please. Let him have this. Please.”
The wind did not hear him.
But someone did.
A shadow fell over him. An arm draped across his shoulder. He looked up. A woman’s face looked back at him: middle-aged, wrinkles tugging at the corner of her eyes as she smiled. Her long, pointed ears quivered—four notches in one length, five in the other.
And he felt his own quiver in response.
And Sai-Thuwan knew this woman, this shict.
Shekune. Spear of the Ninth.
The torch rekindled to faint life, shielded by her body. Together, they walked slowly to the pyre, keeping the torch alive. Together, they stood beside Thua’s pyre. And when Sai-Thuwan’s hand faltered, Shekune took him gently by the wrist and together, they set his son to the flame.
As the sun sank in the distance, they stood together and watched. Thua’s pyre glowed brighter as the sun disappeared. And when it had fallen behind a distant dune, he was one more bright star in the night.
And only then did Sai-Thuwan speak.
“It’s my fault.”
He had thought that finally saying those words, after so many days of thinking them, would feel a little better. He was wrong.
“Every parent says that about their child,” Shekune said. Her voice was vast and deep like a river. “And every parent is right.”
“He was such an honest boy. Too honest for this world and its monsters. When he was little, he would always try to tell me things, but he spoke so plainly, without a thought, that I never listened.” His head sank. “I never listened to him.”
Shekune, her long and hard body wrapped in furs and leathers, did not move. She only barely looked at him. Her eyes were on the pyre.
“Thua was so unlike his sister,” Sai-Thuwan said. “She was always causing trouble, always picking fights, always making life hard for her mother. He was always so quiet, always wanted to play by himself. We didn’t look at him enough … we didn’t …”
The tears came once again, sliding down his cheeks. He tasted salt at the corners of his mouth.
“But he cried,” Sai-Thuwan said. “He cried so easily. Whenever he fell down, he would cry. And his sister would tease him for crying and he would cry more. I worried he would grow up weak. And so when he cried for me, I pretended I didn’t hear him and … and …”
He looked to Shekune. For what, he didn’t know. Absolution, maybe: some assurance that it wasn’t his fault. Or at least damnation: some
assurance that it was. She didn’t look at him. But her ears, long like spears, were aloft and open.
She was listening.
“But even as she teased him so much, he loved his sister.” Sai-Thuwan looked back to the pyre, could barely see it through the tears. “I remember … when they were growing up, we found his sister in a tent with Janashi, our neighbor’s daughter, under a blanket, in each other’s arms. His mother was furious, said there was something wrong with her. And I didn’t know what to do. But Thua …
“Thua came to us. He begged us to listen to him. He told us about his sister and how she … who she loved. His mother was still angry, but I listened. I tried my best to. And somehow, after a long time, we all understood.”
Sai-Thuwan looked at his hands. “His mother died fighting the humans,” he said. “Back when we were building Shicttown. I was so scared of losing him and his sister that I tried to make peace with the humans, even after all they had done. His sister hated me for that, but I thought that was fine. She could hate me, so long as we had peace and I did not have to lose her. And then she ran away. And we did not have peace. And the humans took …”
He looked at the pyre as the fires crackled. Was his son still somewhere in there, he wondered?
“And now … I have lost them all. It’s my fault.”
“It is not, Sai-Thuwan.”
Now Shekune spoke. Now her dark eyes were upon him. Now her ears were flattened against her head and her overlarge canines were bared.
“You tried to protect your children, your family, your tribe,” she said. “Any shict would have done the same. You thought you could have peace with the humans and their city.”
“I was a fool.”
“You were a father. You were a chieftain. You were trying to protect your people. That is not foolish, Sai-Thuwan.”
“But they attacked us. They killed us, burned down Shicttown, sent my tribe scattering and—”
“And they were always going to attack us. They are humans.” She hissed the words. “This is what they do. They build their cities and tell us that they own our land. They hunt our game and tell us that they own our meat. They push us into the desert and tell us that we belong there. And they will not stop until we are all dead. Or until they are.”
Sai-Thuwan felt his ears rise up, open up, let in a sound. No earthly sound of wind and voice and sand. He heard something dark, something furious, something born from a hard place from Shekune’s heart that filled his ears with all her anger and all her hatred and found his buried beneath his sorrow.
Her Howling. The true language of the shicts, unspoken and impossible to ignore.
“You have lost a wife, Sai-Thuwan. You have lost a son. How much more will you lose? Your people? Your land? Your daughter?”
He shook his head. “My daughter is already lost.”
“She is gone. But she will come back, Sai-Thuwan. She waits for you to be her father again, to protect her.”
Shekune extended a hand to him. He stared at it, his ears full of Shekune’s words and his heart full of her anger.
“How?” he asked. “How do I protect her?”
“Your tribe knows Cier’Djaal. Your tribe knows these lands. Find them. Gather them. Add them to mine. Show us the ways into the city. And we will make this world safe for them once more. Safe for her.”
Sai-Thuwan looked into her eyes. Dark and wild, like a beast’s, Shekune stared at him without blinking. And like a beast, there was no lie in those eyes. And what she said, he wanted so desperately to be true. And what her Howling spoke, he could feel so keenly.
And as he reached out and took her hand in his own, the sound of her rage brought him to his knees.
From all the way up here, they no longer looked like people.
The color had drained from their faces, along with their fears. Their screams had been torn from ragged throats until their mouths simply hung slack. Whatever had been in their eyes had along faded, leaving behind glassy, vacant stares.
They no longer looked like people. Merely corpses who hadn’t realized they were dead yet.
Kataria was not so far away that she could not see that.
Far below, down the sloping dune, the tulwar knelt amid the wreckage of their caravan. Their wagons were shattered into splinters; their gaambols lay bleeding out on the sand. Those few that remained were on their knees, silent and empty, patiently waiting for what happened next.
The khoshicts seemed no more hurried. Short, slender, dark of skin and hair, they walked silently among the wreckage. Their long, pointed ears trembled as they spoke to each other in their own Howling. Their faces were hidden behind leering grins of the wooden masks they wore, visages twisted in silent laughter as they poked through the rubble in search of what had survived their attack.
A few trinkets, a few bars of raw metal, a nice bow or two.
This, they decided, was all that was worth preserving.
And, with that settled, they quietly took their knives out and began cutting.
No begging or crying. When the khoshicts’ blades slid across their throats, the tulwar simply slumped over. They seemed less like bodies and more like bladders, air leaking out and leaving a deflated skin behind. They did not make a sound more than their bodies hitting the sand.
What good would it do? Kataria wondered. Not like khoshicts would listen.
It was hard to tell, what with their masks and all, but even the khoshicts seemed to be finding this routine. The desert had always been alive with trade before, and shict raids on tulwar and human caravans were not unheard-of. But these were not raids. Raids left people alive.
What the khoshicts were doing—what Shekune was doing—could not be described in so tame a word.
She meant to cleanse this desert of every nonshict. Too long had her tribe suffered in the shadows of human cities, at the blades of tulwar warriors. Too long had she indulged ideas that they might one day share this land. Too many of her people—Kataria’s people, all shicts—had died in pursuit of that farce.
Shekune knew this. Many shicts did.
But not many shicts knew what would happen afterward.
It seemed as though only Kataria realized just how many more humans there were than shicts. It seemed as though only Kataria knew what humans would do once they considered the shicts more than mere raiders. And it seemed only Kataria wanted to stop the massive retaliation that would inevitably follow Shekune’s war.
Not like khoshicts are interested, she thought bitterly.
As if in response to that, a khoshict’s ears twitched far below. A wooden grin looked up toward her position. She quickly ducked back behind the dune and held her breath. When she heard no sounds of pursuit, she slid down the dune’s slope.
Her boots, bow, and quiver lay in a heap at the base of it. She collected them up and went treading lightly across the sands, balancing on her toes as she did. Wind and darkness would conspire to make her tracks harder to distinguish from those of the roaming yiji packs.
Or so she desperately hoped.
The desert, of late, had little room for things that weren’t desperate.
She made her way across indigo sands, careful to keep to the shadows cast by the dunes beneath the rising moon, lest there be eyes upon her that she hadn’t noticed. Though the possibility of that diminished with each step—after all, any eyes cast her way would likely have been followed by an arrow.
And it wasn’t like a shict with skin as pale and hair as blond as hers would be particularly hard to pick out in the darkness. But with each breath that passed out of her mouth and not out of an arrow wound in her lungs, she ran a little faster, left a few more tracks, until she was outright sprinting as she rounded the corner of a dune, where the dying embers of a campfire greeted her.
“We can’t stay long.” Kataria dropped to her rear and began pulling on her boots. “There’s a war party not far from here. I don’t think they saw me, but they’ll find my tracks, eventually.”
&
nbsp; At the edge of the halo of fire’s light, a figure lifted its head.
“They attacked a tulwar caravan. Heading to Jalaang, I think. This is the sixth one I’ve seen destroyed.” Kataria clambered back to her feet, dusted sand from her leggings. “Shekune’s getting bolder. Humans, tulwar, soldiers, or peasants; she’s attacking everything.”
The figure lowered its head again and cast unseen eyes back to the fire.
“It’s worse than I thought. The tulwar are gathering. They’ve been leaving their villages in droves. If Shekune draws them into her war, every shict is going to be in danger. Humans are one thing, but fighting humans and tulwar?” Kataria attached her quiver to her hip and slung her bow over her shoulder. “The yijis are nearby, right? We’ve got to get out of here if we’re going to—”
“Who cares?”
The figure spoke in a muted voice, as though from some place in a deep ocean, lungs filling with salt water.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The fire crackled. The glow illuminated Kwar’s face: dark eyes that had once not sunk so low, sharp dark-skinned features that had once not been so dull, lips that had roared instead of whispered into the fire.
“It doesn’t matter, Kataria.”
She was not the woman Kataria remembered: the woman she had met so long ago in Cier’Djaal, the woman who had loved her, cursed her, kidnapped her, begged her for forgiveness. That woman was wild. That woman roared.
That woman had died when her brother had.
That day, she had watched Thua’s blood paint the sand, heard his last words. That day, her face had been painted with horror. And in the days that followed, she had screamed her voice dry and her throat raw. But sorrow and fear, these were precious to shicts, something they did not spare often and had too little of to begin with.
And they had drained from Kwar’s heart and her face and left her stare as numb and empty as the masks her people wore. The hollowness of her eyes seemed to reach out and Kataria found herself turning away, just to avoid being sucked in.