by Sam Sykes
And Kwar was not moving.
Hatchet in her right hand, knife in her left, body smeared with earth and sweat, she stood over Kataria. Her roar was loud, loud enough to match the yiji’s baying cry. And yet, still not as loud as her Howling.
That Howling found its way into Kataria’s ears, louder than any fear, any thought, any instinct. It traveled down her shoulder, into her arm, and bade her draw. She leapt to her feet, pulled the arrow back, and aimed.
And when she fired, she did not miss.
The arrow sailed and struck the yiji square in its eye. The creature’s cry turned into a short, shrill scream and turned its charge into a limp crash of suddenly bloodless limbs.
The beast bucked forward as it fell dead to the earth, launching Shekune from its back. But Shekune didn’t so much as cry out as she struck the earth in a tumble and came up standing. Her mask had fallen from her face, baring a snarl whose teeth matched the grin of her spear. And it was leveled right at Kataria.
But before she could so much as reach for another arrow, Kwar was there: screaming, charging, slashing. Her hatchet lashed out at Shekune, but found only the thick haft of her spear. It sank into the wood as Shekune brought it up before her and caught the blade in it. With a quick twist of her spear, she tore the hatchet from Kwar’s hand.
Not that this seemed to bother Kwar.
Not while she still had a knife.
She lunged at Shekune, lashing out wildly with her blade. She jabbed for Shekune’s throat, cut at her legs, tried to leap forward and jam it right in her chest. But every attack was met with Shekune’s spear batting away the blade, Shekune’s feet dancing away, Shekune’s body twisting out of the way.
A dozen times, Kataria saw Kwar overextend herself, make a sloppy move, let her fury leave her open. And a dozen times, Kataria saw Shekune dance away, twist away, letting each opportunity slip away as surely as she slipped away from Kwar’s blows.
She’s sparing her, Kataria thought. Why?
Curiosity turned to concern as a sharp cracking sound filled her ears. Kwar lunged forward, Shekune flipped her spear about, brought the blunt end of it up, and smashed it against Kwar’s chin. The khoshict’s head snapped backward and she went tumbling to the earth, unmoving.
“Kwar!”
She whirled on Shekune, an arrow drawn and aimed. But it didn’t matter.
Shekune was already upon her.
She tackled Kataria about the midriff, brought her low to the ground. Her breath fled her as Shekune’s weight dragged her down. The chieftain leapt to her feet and slammed a foot down upon Kataria’s chest as she tried to rise. She stared down the length of her spear leveled at Kataria’s throat, her blank expression a stark contrast to the saw-toothed grin of her spear’s head.
And still, even as she stared death in its grinning metal face, she looked toward the unmoving body not far away.
“Kwar …” she whispered.
“Do not worry.” Shekune flipped the spear in her hands. “She will be safe.” She raised it high above her head. “I will protect everyone.”
The spear came down.
Its butt cracked against Kataria’s forehead.
And she fell to the earth and moved no more.
SEVENTEEN
THE TENDERNESS OF FLESH
Somewhere, among all the blood and metal he had left behind in the wilds, Lenk had forgotten how to dream.
He had memories, of course: quiet nights under an endless sky of stars where he had slept soundly, dreams and nightmares that visited and haunted him alternately, those all-too-rare and gone-forever moments when a breeze would blow over him and a chilly body beside him would growl in her sleep, pull the blanket up around her, and draw closer against his chest so that the tips of her ears brushed against his nose.
But that was a long time ago.
That was many evening ambushes, many long night watches, many cold dawns and tired eyes from sleepless nights ago.
Somewhere between the time he had first picked up a sword and the time he couldn’t remember how to put it down, sleep had become a reflex. Just another thing he did, just another thing that happened.
Somehow, he had hoped that when he finally got to put the sword away, the dreams would return.
Not this night, though.
Because this night, as he lay in his tent, his eyes opened from an empty sleep and he sat up in his bedroll for no reason.
No reason but the fact that a small, wordless voice—the same voice that never told him how to put down a sword—whispered something in his ear.
He crawled out of his bedroll and poked his head out of his tent. The night was warm and quiet. They had made their camp at a nearby oasis, and the scarce insects that buzzed around the scarcer greenery were humming a quiet night chorus. Fires burned dimly across the low plain. The Chosen stood around the camp in twos and threes and fours, as they had every night.
It was quiet. A nice night. The sort of night made for shutting out little noises and falling back to dreamless slumber.
But it had been a long time since Lenk had seen a nice night.
How could he have known that he should have gone back to sleep?
He slipped back inside his tent and found his trousers, boots, and shirt in short order. His eyes lingered on his sword for a moment, and an itch crept into his palm.
“No,” he whispered to himself.
If he was ever going to learn to put it down, there were times he would have to force himself to. And there was nothing wrong with tonight, he told himself. He was restless. He’d take a walk, clear his head, then return.
The sword wasn’t going anywhere.
He walked out of his tent and into the night air. The Chosen didn’t look up at his presence, as they usually did. Nor did they really seem to notice him as he walked through them. They weren’t talking, weren’t reveling, weren’t tossing with each other in torrid embrace like they usually did.
They were just … standing there.
Like freaky bastards.
And normally, that wouldn’t bother him—expecting creatures made perfect by a demon’s touch to not be freaky bastards would be asking too much—but there was something about them, this time. They stood still, silent, staring not at each other but up at the stars or down at their feet or at something so far away Lenk couldn’t even see. They used to seem so alive.
But now …
Lenk’s eyes went across the sands to Shuro’s tent, situated at the far end of camp. It hung quiet, with no Chosen even looking at it, let alone lingering near it. Shuro was likely still there, sleeping—after all, where would she go with chains around her wrists?
She’s fine, Lenk told himself. You go over there to check on her, you’re just going to hear her cursing at you again, like always. He glanced at the Chosen. Besides, what are you worried about? This isn’t the first time they’ve done something insane.
He stared at them for a long time as they swayed gently in the breeze.
But it’s the first time they’ve done this insane thing …
And, without realizing it, he turned and began to walk toward Shuro’s tent.
For all of two steps, anyway.
He staggered to a halt as a great shadow rose before him, his hand instinctively leaping to his shoulder for a sword that wasn’t there. He tensed, ready to leap backward, before he realized the shadow wasn’t moving.
The shadow wasn’t even looking at him.
The male Chosen stood over him, arms hanging limp at his sides, swaying just slightly in the breeze. But his glassy eyes stared over Lenk’s head, toward some far distant sight, and his mouth hung open, a soft breath escaping through his lips. Lenk hadn’t even noticed him, all seven feet of him, so still had he stood.
“Uh, hey,” he said.
The Chosen said nothing to him.
“Are you all right?” Lenk squinted at the man for a moment. “Do you need … water? Or … or …” He scratched his head, quite unsure what sort of assi
stance one offered someone this weird doing something this weird. “Uh, are you all right?”
The Chosen said nothing to him.
Unless one counted a thin trail of saliva oozing out the corner of his mouth as something.
Lenk did not.
Keeping his eyes on the Chosen, he stepped around the looming man and headed toward Shuro’s tent with a little more urgency.
Part of him wanted not to. Part of him wanted to spare himself her gaze, her judgment, the painful knowledge that she was right to give him both. But that was the part that wanted empty hands and empty dreams, the part that wanted long nights with someone wearily settling into bed beside him to rise up for a beautifully dull and monotonous job in the morning.
That part of him was getting used to being disappointed.
The other part of him, the part that settled at the back of his neck and kept an eye on every smiling stranger’s sword hand, however, was used to being listened to.
And it was for that part’s sake that he went toward Shuro’s tent, reached for the flap, pulled it back, and—
“It’s a pleasant night, isn’t it?”
He dropped the flap and whirled around, like a child caught with his hand in a pastry. Mocca stood nearby, hands folded behind his back and eyes on the stars overhead.
“When they cast me down from on high, I resented my station.” There was no bitterness in Mocca’s voice. His sigh was heavy with sentiment, his eyes dark with memory. “The deserts were barren of life. The jungles were rife with sickness and humidity. I thought it an insult to be sent here to watch over the withered creations that crawled from the muck.
“I don’t think I really recognized what I had missed until they cast me into the pit,” he said softly. “I never missed the deserts or the jungles, but the nights …” He gestured a hand out toward the sky. “I visited my fellow Aeons in the north once or twice, but I somehow never thought to look up. Is the sky there as full of stars as here?”
Lenk followed the eyes of the man in white toward heaven and the long smears of stars across the midnight sprawl.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think I remembered to look up, either.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Mocca replied. “When I think back, I can recall a hundred thousand nights like this, but only in the unsleeping hours, the frustrations, the lives lost, and the many, many things I had to do. I can only barely remember the stars.”
“You came down from heaven and crawled out of hell,” Lenk said. “I mean, the stars are pretty and all, but comparatively?”
Mocca shot him an annoyed look. Lenk returned a sneer.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “All I’m saying is that someone who went through what you went through should have slightly higher priorities than looking at stars.”
“A point.” Mocca raised his brows. “But tell me, do you not look forward to the night you have no higher priority than looking at stars?”
Lenk fell silent for a moment. A heavy weight settled on his shoulder where his sword should be.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“What I went through was long years of blood, of fear, of people weeping and begging and screaming in the night.” Mocca held his hands out, helpless. “Just as you went through. I merely had several thousand years longer to experience it.” He sighed. “Our priorities are likewise the same. But our work may not be done for a long time. It may be some time before we’re able to savor a night like this again.”
Lenk looked up at the sky, at all the innumerable stars painted across an endless indigo. And some part of him that he thought had been burned out of him long ago felt an urge to try to count them all.
He didn’t say it. But something in the way he tried to lean all the way back to see every last star must have told Mocca he agreed with him.
“May I ask, then …” Mocca’s voice was painfully soft, a silk cord tightening around a throat. “Why you would ruin it by going to see that woman?”
And just like that, he snapped back upright.
When he looked at Mocca, the eyes of the man in white were as bright as the night sky. But they were alive with something keen and piercing, something that shined light where light was not meant to shine.
“Do you desire her scorn? Her hatred? Her ignorance?” He gestured toward Shuro’s tent. “You will find nothing else beneath her eyes. She doesn’t understand. She never will.”
“I wanted to check on her,” Lenk said. “The Chosen are acting …”
His eyes drifted over Mocca’s head, toward the Chosen. The nearest cluster hadn’t moved from their spot. But once he laid eyes upon them, their bodies trembled with a sudden shudder. Their necks slowly twisted as, one by one, they looked toward him with those empty eyes.
And smiled.
“The Chosen are … still coming to terms with things,” Mocca said, pulling Lenk’s attentions back. “It was mere days ago that they were broken, bereft of hope or even a concept of a future. And now, they are alive and vibrant. The world and all its wonders are open to them, all at once. It can be overwhelming.”
“Yeah …”
Lenk’s eyes drifted back to the Chosen. In the plains beyond, another pair of them looked in his direction, so slowly he could almost hear the vertebrae of their necks cracking. And, in the darkness, he saw the white of their teeth as, one by one, their lips curled into broad smiles.
He forced himself to look away.
“Fine.” He glanced back to Shuro’s tent. Mocca was right. There was no reason to check on her outside of getting cursed at. “Just tell them to keep away, all right?”
“Of course.” Mocca’s smile was echoed by a dozen more opening in the darkness as more Chosen looked in his direction, their faces splitting open with the same grin. “They will be certain to respect her space.”
“Okay. Good.” Lenk frowned out over the field of the camp, with all the Chosen staring at him with their dark eyes and bright smiles. A shudder ran down his body involuntarily, shook a curse out from his lips. “I don’t think she’d appreciate waking up and finding these freaky bastards standing over her.”
He had barely had a breath behind his words. The closest Chosen was at least thirty feet away. There was no way any of them could have heard him.
And yet, somehow, they did.
One by one, their brows knitted into scowls. One by one, their bodies followed their heads as they turned to face him. One by one, their smiles creaked as they turned upside down and became deep, snarling frowns.
Lenk’s blood ran cold. His hand ached for his sword. He took a cautious step back, looking toward Mocca for aid.
And Mocca stared back at him wearing the same scowl as they did.
“They aren’t,” the man in white whispered.
“What?”
“They aren’t.” His voice became a hiss. The flesh around his jaw twitched. “After all they’ve been through, all they’ll go through, all they’re prepared to sacrifice for, how can you still not understand?”
“Oh, come on.” Lenk laughed, but it was a nervous, quavering thing. A dying animal on shaking legs. “I understand you’re proud of them, but they’re still—”
“They are perfect,” Mocca said. “They gave everything for me. They forsook family, home, deaf gods, and more to come to me, to believe in me. I gave them much already, but I would give them everything to protect them. I will not let you slander them.”
A twitch of movement at the corner of his eye. Lenk glanced over the Chosen. They trembled with the last spasms of a motion he had missed. Had he imagined it? Or were they getting closer? He took another step backward.
“Calm down,” he said.
“I am calm.”
The reply was soft, gentle, perfectly even-tongued. And it wasn’t the words, so much, that made Lenk’s eyes go wide and his heart go still.
It was the fact that, over Mocca’s shoulders, hundreds of lips twitched in echo of his words.
“I am
calm …” the Chosen whispered.
“… am calm …”
“I am calm …”
“I apologize for alarming you.”
Lenk’s eyes went back to Mocca. The anger of the man in white ebbed away on a long breath. His eyes returned to a comfortable darkness that failed to warm Lenk’s blood.
“They’re precious to me, my Chosen,” he said. “I will ask so much of them in the coming days. I try to spare them whatever pain I can for now. But I assure you, it won’t happen again.”
Mocca offered Lenk a smile. A smile that Lenk had seen a thousand times before, one he was sure he had once seen as reassuring, at some point, somewhere. But something had changed. When he looked at Mocca now, the smile didn’t look reassuring. It looked like a mess of angles, all painstakingly arranged to show something that wasn’t there.
And when he looked over Mocca’s shoulder, to the many Chosen staring at him, he saw that same smile.
Carved a hundred times across a hundred perfect faces.
And that little voice at the back of Lenk’s head, the one that hadn’t let him sleep, the one that told him to get out of his tent, the one that had always been whispering a wordless warning since he had awoken, now spoke a single, perfect word.
Shit.
“Pardon?” Mocca asked.
“You …” Lenk’s words had not the breath to be accusatory. His arm had not the strength to point at him. He could only think of backing away. “You’re controlling them.”
He saw the briefest flash of something play across Mocca’s face—the beginnings of a soothing reassurance, a honey-sweet denial, a complex explanation, or maybe just the stillbirth of a lie—but these, ultimately, faded in a few breaths.
And a deep, solemn frown creased Mocca’s face.
“Not exactly.”
“The fuck do you mean?” Lenk said, voice tense as his body. His muscles bunched up instinctively, suddenly aware of all the glassy stares set upon him.