by Evie Manieri
he murmured, keeping his eyes on the two men. The miner was speaking and Faroth was listening intently.
He didn’t answer her. He was watching the miner place something into Faroth’s hand, something small enough to disappear when Faroth squeezed his fingers shut around it.
he answered, his eyes still glued to Faroth.
The interview appeared to be over. Faroth made his way back through the roofless hall and walked up to the Mongrel. ‘All right, we’ve had enough talk,’ he said. ‘We know what we have to do. The sun will be down in a few hours, and we need to get ready.’
The Mongrel looked around at everyone. ‘If you do as you’ve been told, you will defeat Frea, that I promise you.’
The crowd began to break up and Eofar walked up to them. he told Isa.
Isa said nothing.
Rho knew better than anyone how hard she had worked learning to fight, and better than Isa herself the extraordinary extent of her natural talents. It wasn’t fair.
Daem sauntered over as soon as the others had gone.
said Daem,
Rho, taken aback, grabbed his cloak.
he answered truthfully,
Everything around Rho slowed suddenly and he drew in a long breath of the warm, sand-scented air. A glimmer of hope danced around Daem’s words: the faintest possibility of escape.
Rho pressed his forearm against his side as another twinge of pain shot through him.
He felt Daem relax.
He clapped Daem’s shoulder gratefully and followed him into the shadows of the broken palace wall. But as they joined the others he couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder at the Shadari, and he couldn’t help noticing that Faroth still held the miner’s gift in his clenched fist: a coin, maybe. The colour of rust.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jachad followed Meiran out of the ruined hall into a labyrinth of crumbling foundations scarred by wind-worn Norlander graffiti. The ruins were silent except for the occasional scratching of a lizard scuttling over the stonework. Wherever a fragment of wall cast a large enough shadow, a triffon lay in morose repose and watched them pass with dull eyes.
Once they had left the others well behind, Meiran stopped to take a drink from the wineskin she’d acquired during their brief visit with the Nomas, and he seized the moment. ‘When I was convincing my people to fight against Frea, I had the idea that you actually wanted to win this battle.’ He tugged the scarf from around his head and wound the colourful silk – a gift from his mother – around his neck. ‘And then I heard your battle plan, if you can call it that. I expected you to come up with something brilliant, something infallible. You can’t possibly expect to defeat Frea like that – Eofar and a few dozen triffons have no chance against her.’
‘I don’t care about Frea, or the battle,’ she informed him, wiping the excess wine from her mouth. Her Shadari eye sparkled with that same wild, greedy look he remembered from Shairav’s room in the temple.
‘But you told the Shadari they’re going to defeat her.’
‘They are.’
‘Of course – you took the elixir, so you know that already,’ he observed darkly. He rubbed at the bristly stubble on his chin. ‘I’ve met a lot of fortune-tellers, seers, diviners, whatever. They all have one thing in common: they all make their living telling people what they want to hear.’
‘It’s all happening just like it’s supposed to,’ she continued as if he’d never spoken. ‘I was right, Jachi. It’s all happening.’ She walked over to the wall, yanked a loose stone free and restlessly tossed it aside.
‘And what will you be doing while the rest of us are out fighting Frea? I noticed you left yourself out of the battle plan. Faroth noticed, too.’
‘Faroth is a moron. He thinks I want his son.’
‘Can you blame him? Everyone else wants him.’
‘If I wanted him I’d have kept him when I had him,’ she said pointedly.
A dry, dusty breeze skittered through the ruins. He swallowed. ‘I didn’t think you had forgotten about that, but you can’t blame me – you had a knife to his throat. What was I supposed to think?’
In a flash her grey cheeks lost their brief colour and the energy animating her gestures drained away. ‘The same as everyone else,’ she answered flatly. She took another drink of wine and an uncomfortable silence settled in between them.
Into this silence he finally said, ‘I asked my mother what you spoke to her about.’
The expression on her face could have been dread or expectation, or some bastard mix of the two. ‘And?’
‘And she told me to ask you.’
She exhaled and turned back to the crumbling wall. Laying the wineskin down on top, she put both her hands on the dusty stones and stretched her arms out straight.
‘So,’ he said, realising with a sinking heart that he had brought them to the very moment he’d been dreading, ‘you’re still not going to tell me what you’re doing here?’
‘No,’ she replied dully, still looking down at the ground.
He moved behind her. ‘All right. I’m through playing this game with you.’ He brushed some of the tangled black hair back away from her ear, as if he wanted to be sure that she wouldn’t miss a word of what he had to say. She flinched at his touch – only just, but he saw it. ‘I’ve pretended to follow you around; I’ve played the unwanted suitor, the bothersome child. I’ve let you pretend that you’d just as soon be rid of me. But we both know that isn’t true
. The Shadari may have hired me to bring you, but we both know you brought me here and not the other way around. Merciful Shof, I still don’t know why, but you wanted me here.’
Into the pause that followed, Meiran said in a voice that plunged straight into his heart, ‘I still do.’
He steeled himself. ‘Then tell me why you’re here.’
She shut her eyes. ‘No.’
‘All right, then you give me no choice. I’m leaving you.’ He spoke louder than he meant to, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘I convinced my people to join this fight, and fight is what I’m going to do. Omir and his crew are going to defend the north edge of the city, by the temple, and I’m going with them. You can do whatever you came here to do – it’s of no interest to me. I know which side I’m on.’
The afternoon sun glanced off the grey skin of her shoulder, warming it to bronze. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. Her voice was no louder than the whisper of the hot, dry wind. ‘You can’t change anything – no one can.’
‘You keep saying that, but which one of us are you trying to convince?’ He flexed his hands as sparks danced around them. ‘Well. We’ll see.’ He turned away from her and started back towards the city.
‘Jachi.’
The sun had begun to slip behind the mountains. Long shadows stretched over the ruins as the warm light faded; the battle was near at hand. The stones around him still pulsed with the day’s heat but the air was suddenly cool. He could see Meiran clearly – he felt like he was seeing her clearly for the first time since she’d come back into his life.
After a moment she dropped her head. Whatever impulse had made her speak had passed.
‘The great Mongrel. The undefeated warrior,’ he said, smiling through the pain raking his heart. Before he walked away, he added, ‘Well, don’t take it too hard. No one wins them all.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Harotha woke with no idea where she was; the darkness was impenetrable. She couldn’t remember where she’d fallen asleep, or what she’d been doing just before. Had they been flying? She was so tired, and nothing felt quite real, not even her own body. As she looked around she could see the faint glow of Eofar’s skin, so he was with her – but the void robbed her of all sense of distance.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, but he didn’t respond. ‘Eofar?’ she said again, and then sighed. ‘You’re still angry with me for wanting to stay, aren’t you? Or is it because I went back to the temple to find Dramash? Or because I took the elixir?’
‘None of that matters now,’ he said.
‘No. No, you’re right,’ she agreed quickly, sweet relief flooding through her. ‘It doesn’t matter; we left all of that behind us. It’s just us now.’ She could still see the glow of him, but she wished he would come nearer. She remembered how wonderful it felt to be near him, the way the rest of the world disappeared when they touched. She wanted to feel that now. She walked towards him – had she been standing all along? – but he must have been much further away than she assumed because when she reached out for him there was nothing there.
‘Eofar?’ she called to him across the darkness. Her voice echoed strangely. Were they back in the cave? The last thing she remembered was the old palace, getting ready for the battle. ‘Where are you? Can you see me?’
‘I’m here by the window.’
‘What window?’ she asked, confused. But she turned, and then she did see a little rectangular window – she had seen a window just like that before. Where was that? The reddish-gold light flooding in was very beautiful, suffused with the rich colours of sunset. She went towards it, eager for a closer look, but her feet were heavy and slow, and with each step she grew more and more uneasy. Eofar offered no reassurance; his eyes were turned away from her, focused on whatever he was seeing through the window.
‘I’m sorry about the Shadar,’ he said to her.
She looked down at the burning city spread out below her and caught her breath. ‘No,’ she cried. ‘No!’ Dereshadi with ragged wings swept low over the little domed houses. She could hear people screaming, and bodies, bloody and dying, were lying in the streets. ‘What’s happening?’ She reached out for Eofar, but her hands jerked oddly and touched only air.
‘The Dead Ones are attacking, see? Those are their ships in the harbour, over there. Come on, you remember all of this,’ said Eofar, only now he spoke with Daryan’s voice. ‘This is what happened when you were a baby.’
Baby.
Her hands flew down to her stomach. It was flat, taut. ‘Eofar, where’s the baby?’ she shrieked in terror.
‘Don’t you remember? We gave him to my sister. It was your idea.’
‘I don’t remember anything! I would never give away our baby,’ she shouted. She was shaking him now, but he remained as impassive as a statue. ‘Where is he? We have to find him!’
‘Oh, it’s too late for that,’ he remarked, still unperturbed. He turned his attention back to the window. ‘Almost time. We’d better go up now.’
‘Up where?’
His silver eyes blinked at her. ‘Up to the roof, of course. It’s time to jump.’
Harotha awoke with a jerk of horror. The room was pitch-black, and for a moment she was afraid that she was still trapped in that terrible nightmare. But her hands flew to her stomach and with dizzying relief she felt the familiar heavy bulge. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but at least now she remembered where she was – an ordinary sleeping chamber, in an ordinary house, on an ordinary street: worn cushions on the floor, fire-pit in the centre, a cistern of water by the door. It had its very ordinariness to recommend it as a hiding-place. The Mongrel hadn’t offered any explanation for her choice when she’d deposited her there with Dramash, and Harotha hadn’t asked for one. As long as the Mongrel wanted to keep Dramash out of the fighting and away from the White Wolf, Harotha would do as she asked. And right now, that meant doing absolutely nothing.
She tried to take a deep breath, but a heavy ache sat on her heart, and she felt trapped, suffocated. She looked down at Dramash sleeping deeply beside her
Moving quietly, she slipped into the main room and saw she’d foolishly left the lamp burning. She snuffed it out and the room plunged into darkness. It took just a few moments for her eyes to adjust and she made her way over to the cold fire-pit and looked up. The bit of sky she could see through the chimney-hole had turned from hazy lavender to deep indigo and the stars winked brightly. She took a deep breath and pressed her hand against her chest to ease the ache.
It was night: the White Wolf would have begun her attack by now. Somewhere up there, Eofar was already fighting for the Shadari – for her. He had been trained to fight since childhood, like all the Dead Ones, and he and Aeda had routinely triumphed in the aerial tournaments the governor had enjoyed prior to his illness. He was older than Frea, bigger and stronger, he had an imperial sword and she had an ordinary one – but he had never taken a life. And now they were expecting him to kill his own sister.
She found herself staring at the curtain separating her from the street outside. She’d tied the fastenings herself after the Mongrel had deposited the still-sleeping Dramash in the inner chamber and departed. Now she walked over to the curtain and ran her fingers experimentally over the rough, heavy cloth. She thought she smelled smoke, but it was hard to tell; she herself still reeked from the fire in the stables. Muffled sounds reached her ears from the street outside: shouts, and running feet.
Surely it wouldn’t matter if she just glanced outside—?
‘Aunt Harotha? Is that you? Where are you going?’
Her heart leapt into her mouth and she turned to see Dramash standing in the doorway of the sleeping chamber, blinking his eyes.
‘Dramash! You startled me. I thought you were still asleep,’ she said, laughing to cover her consternation. She walked quickly to him and knelt down in front of him. The baby rolled heavily to one side and she wondered briefly if she was going to be able to get back up again. ‘Don’t w
orry, I’m not going anywhere. Why don’t you go back to sleep? It’s not nearly morning yet.’
‘Oh, I’m not tired any more,’ he informed her, and marched past her into the room. ‘Why is it so dark in here?’
Her heart still pounding, she picked up the flints and methodically re-lit the lamp. Her mind raced furiously. The night had only just begun, and if he wouldn’t go back to sleep, how was she going to keep him inside until the battle was over? ‘You must be thirsty. Would you like some water?’
‘No.’ He looked around. ‘Where are we? This isn’t my house. Why are we here all alone? What—?’
‘Dramash,’ she started, holding up her hand. She tried to mimic Saria’s motherly tone. ‘You and I are going to stay here until morning, remember? Then we’ll go meet your father and the others.’
‘And Mama?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, with barely a pause.
‘And Rho?’
Something was going to have to be done about his unreasoning attachment to that soldier. ‘And Rho.’
‘Why can’t we go now?’
‘Well, we just can’t,’ she told him firmly. ‘They’re very busy right now. They have important things to do, and we’d only be in their way.’ She pulled a cushion over and patted the space beside her. ‘Now, come over here. You know, the night will pass much faster if you go back to sleep.’
He looked down at her, pouting. ‘I think I’ll go outside and look for them,’ he announced, and sauntered past her.
She struggled back to her feet. ‘Dramash! Stop!’ He paused in front of the curtain and turned back to her. ‘Listen to me: you and I are going to stay here tonight. We are not to go outside. Do you understand?’
‘Why not?’
She tried to stifle her anger. It had not occurred to her when she agreed to this that she knew nothing about children, but she had never imagined that leading a rebellion would involve handling the moods of a precocious nephew. In a sober voice, she explained, ‘Your father, Daryan, and all of our friends—’