The Broken Heavens

by Kameron Hurley

  “Everyone with a shield, start a defensive line!” she called, and demonstrated with two Dhai defenders and their paltry shields. She slammed the bottoms of the shields into the dirt, just a pace away from the shimmering air of the defensive wall. “There will be breaches! Cracks! You will murder every fucking thing that breaches! Nothing will get past you! You are the final line!”

  Zezili was relieved to see the Saiduan had better weapons. She found she needed to pull the ring of fighters back ten more paces, though, because she did not have enough to make a tight circle right up by the wall. She didn’t like that.

  As she pulled them back, she saw a boiling mass of movement at one of the gates to her left. A woman on a bear shouted something and was pushed into the defensive wall so hard her helmet came off, revealing a tangle of black hair knotted in white ribbons. Gray eyes, a rounded face with a broad nose and narrow jaw. Monshara?

  Monshara barked at her troops. Zezili found herself rooted, captivated by the spectacle. Monshara, as if sensing her, raised her head. Their gazes met.

  A beat, no more, and then Monshara turned again, yelling at her troops, forcing them to pour around the defensive wall instead of getting stuck back through the gate behind it. She took hold of someone near her bear’s head and bent over.

  Zezili thought it was a Tai Mora, but no, she recognized his face, too: Ahkio. Monshara shook him.

  How the fuck had Ahkio gotten himself stuck outside the defensive wall?

  Namia darted to Zezili’s side and tugged at her sleeve. Zezili shrugged her off and yelled at two soldiers with a break in their shield line.

  Namia signed at her again, huffed, and ran off.

  Zezili spotted a break in the wall of air and darted over to help the collection of fighters. Six Tai Mora squeezed through, and the line broke up, trying to surround them.

  “Hold that fucking line!” Zezili roared in Dorinah, and switched to Dhai as she plunged into the fray, yelling at her line to reform.

  She slashed the throat of the nearest Tai Mora and heaved the body onto the one behind. The wall had sealed up again. Zezili hamstrung a heavy man and chopped at his head. Her sword wasn’t sharp enough to sever it, but blood gushed from his jugular, and he fell, tripping up the one behind.

  Zezili stabbed the one who’d fallen and landed a palm strike to the woman coming up behind her. A knife glanced off Zezili’s elbow. She knocked the wielder in the chin with her other elbow and dipped forward, stabbing at the fourth attacker just as one of her fighters got a spear into the Tai Mora’s ribs.

  When she came up, sword raised across her body, her fighters stood around the little mound of bodies, staring at her.

  “What are you looking at?” she demanded. “Reform the line!”

  The wall of air behind her knocked into her back. She swore and came forward. The defensive wall was moving.

  “Back ten paces!” Zezili shouted. As the fighters moved, she knelt quickly next to the man she’d hacked in the neck and drank a handful of sweet, sweet blood. It felt magnificent going down her throat, like a restorative liquor. She grinned.

  As she leapt over the bodies to retreat ahead of the wall with her fighters, she noted the pain in her elbow. Brought it up and regarded it. A long slash in her flesh, gooey. It oozed a pale greenish fluid, thick as old blood. Zezili shivered and looked away.

  Whatever the fuck had happened to her, she was going to enjoy the time she had left.

  33

  Refugees from Lilia’s old camp were passing through the gate now, pouring through to the other side. Lilia knew many of their faces, and found herself still looking for Emlee and Tasia.

  Meyna stood just to the other side of the gate, ushering her people through. Lilia caught her gaze; Meyna looked away first. A bruise was forming on her cheek from where Maralah had hit her.

  “Where are Ahkio and Yisaoh?” Lilia called, trying to peer at Meyna through the crowd.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I lost them in the panic. Ahkio took up our child and ran. Yisaoh followed. My husband Rhin found Hasao, but said Ahkio and Yisaoh were being led the other way, by… the Tai Mora.”

  “Hasao was the child he carried into the camp, as well?”

  “My child,” Meyna said. “His and mine. She’s safe.”

  The last of the soot-stained refugees made it past them. “You go,” Lilia told Meyna. “The fighters are next.”

  Meyna glanced back at the ring of fighters. They had moved in ten paces, and so had the defensive wall. Even as they both watched, the ring of fighters moved in another five paces, and the jistas began making their way to the gate, rapidly.

  Meyna nodded and went through. One of her husbands helped her on the other side.

  Big Saradyn came up with some fighters. “Go through,” she told him, but he stood rigid, peering at her.

  “Go!” she said.

  “No ghosts,” he murmured, in Dorinah.

  “Please,” Lilia said.

  “Impostor,” he said, pointing a large figure at her.

  “Who? I’m not… I don’t…” Oh no, Lilia thought, Roh had said the man could tell who was from this world, and who was not. He was far larger than her, muscled and menacing. She had no recourse against him.

  “Roh is my friend,” Lilia said. “If he is your friend too, then we can be friends together.”

  Saradyn’s eyes narrowed. “Patron-killer,” he said. “Wait.”

  Lilia had no idea what he meant, but he turned to watch Roh advancing when he said it.

  The fighters streamed past her. Zezili took up a position opposite her at the gate now, yelling at everyone in Dhai to hurry. “When are we going?” Zezili asked her, because of course they would have to go through together.

  “After Roh,” she said, glad to see that Saradyn was still distracted. “The jistas. They’ll be able to hold the wall.”

  Beside her, Anavha said, “We need to hurry.” The gate wavered, wrinkled and snapped back open, like a blinking eye. One of the fighters lost the end of her spear, which thunked at their feet.

  “Go, go!” Lilia urged the last four fighters, and then they were down to the jistas. Maralah, Roh and Kadaan were just steps away. Taigan stood beside Zezili already, mustering something darkly as the surging mass of Tai Mora spilled from the other gates, so many and so fast that they were a living wall of flesh.

  “You last,” Lilia said to Taigan. “As soon as you drop, they will cut you all off. Maralah, go.”

  Maralah shook her head. Gestured to Roh and Kadaan.

  Kadaan grimaced, but took Roh by the sleeve and dipped through the gate. They continued to hold the defensive wall from the other side. As long as they had line of sight–

  A burst of air knocked Lilia back. She fell against Namia and grabbed the edge of the gate to right herself. The edges of it were a physical thing, like the frame of a window. Maralah burned up six Tai Mora who had broken through the air wall.

  “That’s it!” Maralah said. “Taigan, a burst! Distract and retreat.”

  Taigan smiled, one of his delighted and frightening smiles. “Bird,” he said, “go now.”

  “Anavha,” Lilia said, “come through with me. Keep it open for them. Can you move and keep it open?”

  He nodded.

  Lilia took Namia’s hand and stepped through the gate, stumbled. Zezili came after her, and grabbed her arm to help her regain her balance. She went past Roh and Kadaan, still holding their defensive walls through the rent in the world. Lilia reached back for Anavha. Grabbed his hand and encouraged him to come through. The edges of the gate wavered again.

  Anavha was through.

  Maralah and Taigan blocked the other side of the gate, working a spell in tandem that Lilia could not see, but she could sense. The air on this side was as heavy as the other. The pressure in her ears was so intense it affected her hearing. It was like being underwater.

  Of course Taigan despised Maralah, but then, he despised a good many people.

&
nbsp; He had also fought beside her for over two decades. Not so long, by his reckoning of time, but long when he considered how many other people he had been forced to put up with for any length of time. When it was just the two of them remaining, facing down twelve open gateways pouring hundreds of Tai Mora at them, well, he had an idea of their choices in such a situation.

  She no longer had a ward on him. He could do to her what he liked and walk away, burning through all of these foreign jistas and running off merrily into the woods or swimming endlessly across the sea, if he chose.

  Taigan had a long, bitter memory. In this moment, facing the seething hordes of Tai Mora, he was reminded of Aaraduan, and how the black, slithering plant flesh swarmed the blue walls of the hold, even as the living hold spat and hissed at them. Para, Lord of the Air, had not protected them then. The satellites had abandoned them. The Patron was dead. What were they in this moment, two cursed figures without a country, saving a bunch of pacifist cannibals? To what end?

  Maralah tilted her head at him. The air was so heavy it felt like drinking soup.

  He snorted at her. Raised his hands. Called for Oma, as much and as quickly as his body allowed.

  “Five second delay?” Taigan asked.

  “No,” Maralah said. “One hundred paces out, though.”

  “That will hurt you.”

  “I thought you’d like that.”

  “I do.”

  They called upon their stars, and wove a deadly burst of power in the air twenty paces out, right up against the wall of air.

  Maralah made a sign, most likely to Kadaan, behind them. Taigan recognized it.

  Drop the wall.

  Taigan released his tangled spell, and braced for the blowback.

  A massive blast of heat and air rushed through the wink, sending Taigan and Maralah with it. Lilia didn’t have time to move out of the way. The blast took the nearest of those at the gate off their feet, throwing them ten paces or more away.

  Lilia landed in a tangle of others, ears ringing. She pushed her way back to the gate – it was still open. A great crater of fire consumed everything on the other side, but already figures were moving out of it.

  “Anavha!” she called, but even to her own ears, her voice was muted, far away.

  Anavha was key to everything. Without him they were stuck here, with no time to get back before Para left the sky. How would she manage that? Ships took days, days they did not have, not now.

  Lilia stared out at a great rolling horizon; golden fields of grass as far as she could see. She pivoted, taking in the sheer breadth of it. She had never seen so much open space.

  As she came round again, a farmhouse came into view, or rather, she assumed it was a farmhouse; it looked more like a ship, strung with riggings on which plants twined their way up from sod gardens to insulate the roof. The house itself was half-buried in the ground and carved with totems, like those on the prows of Aaldian ships, but these totems were charred, and the grass on the sod roof, too, had burned, as well as a good chunk of grassland out behind the house.

  She caught sight of Anavha’s brown hair and slender form, and hurried over to him. He lay in the broken grass, staring at the charred house.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Oh no.”

  He got up and ran for the house. Lilia called after him, but he kept running. She would never catch him, so didn’t attempt it.

  Behind her, the gate was still open; smoke and heat poured from it, swirling up and up into the great lavender sky. The Tai Mora lines were advancing, swarming over their fallen comrades.

  “Taigan!” Lilia said. He sat up. His eyebrows were singed, and blisters formed on his hands. Beside him, Maralah was vomiting.

  “Where is he?” Taigan rasped. “He needs to shut this.”

  “He’s run to the house.”

  “Undisciplined children,” he muttered.

  Lilia glanced through the gate. “They’re coming,” she said. “If they know where we are–”

  “They won’t,” Maralah said. She released another wave of fire, less strong than the first, and pulled out her blade. She began to hum softly. Her blade glowed deep red, then violet.

  The attackers on the other side fell; one, then another, a fourth, a sixth…

  The gate winked shut.

  Maralah fell to her knees, letting her blade fall beside her.

  “What was that?” Lilia said.

  “Souls,” Maralah said. She shook her head. “Sometimes drawing on and releasing souls can upset the stability of the gates.”

  “You just… you made a guess about what might work?”

  Maralah snorted. “You didn’t? How did you think so quickly? Most people, even sanisi, panic and freeze. You moved. You knew where each of us were. Knew the strategy for jistas and fighters. Or you just guessed!”

  “I took the measure of the camp when I came in. I was already looking for allies and making plans. That’s… what I’ve been doing for a year now.”

  “What plan?”

  “There is nowhere you can run,” Lilia said carefully. “Have they showed you that yet?”

  Maralah curled a lip at her and turned on her heel. Lilia’s shoulders sagged. She took in the measure of who had made it to the other side.

  Meyna stood apart with her family, directing the Dhai, answering questions. The Dhai from her camp had moved a little apart. The Saiduan collected near Maralah.

  Lilia limped over to Meyna. “There’s a well,” Lilia said, pointing it out beyond the dog pens. “I think there are some sheep on the other side as well. The Saiduan will make neat work of that. But there may be something in the cellars.”

  Meyna did not look at her. “Thank you,” she said, “we are aware.”

  “There aren’t even two hundred people here, Meyna,” Lilia said. “You lost them all. Will you listen to me or not? We aren’t working at cross-purposes.”

  Meyna rounded on Lilia and moved away from the others, so they could not be overheard. “I won’t let my people be used in some–”

  “And how did that work for you?” Lilia said. “I am not here to be spiteful. I will tell you that being left for dead in a bone tree is not great fun. But you see it now, don’t you? They won’t stop until we’re dead.”

  Maralah interrupted them. “Come with me. Roh, Kadaan, you too. And Luna. Yes, I see you, little Luna. The house, there.”

  “I’m coming,” Zezili said, pushing her way through the crowd. “Don’t try to leave me with these Dhai.”

  Lilia followed after Maralah, Namia at her side and Luna trailing after them both. They arrived inside the house, which bore a great charred hole in the ceiling where the sod roof had been burned and collapsed. She did not see any bodies, though, and the place had clearly been ransacked.

  Anavha sat weeping in the back hall. Taigan sat at the great table in the center, eating a raw tuber from a bag. Soot covered everything.

  Lilia went to Anavha and said, “This was your home?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you… see them?”

  Anavha shook his head. “No one. No one’s here.”

  “That’s good,” Lilia said. “That means they probably got away.”

  Roh approached her, gesturing for her to go back to the table with Maralah and the others. He sat next to Anavha.

  “Why waste time with that boy?” Taigan grunted.

  “Without him all of us would have been killed,” Lilia said.

  Taigan shrugged. “I would have been fine.”

  “We need to discuss next steps,” Maralah said. “Where can he get us to next?”

  “Only places he’s seen,” Roh said. “Anavha can’t get us to Hrollief, or anywhere else. We could try Dorinah? But that’s all Tai Mora territory now. Where is there to run? They’ve conquered everything!”

  “No more running,” Lilia said. “You’ve seen what they can do. Let’s stop them now. Aren’t you tired of running? I am.”

  Maralah peered at her. Sooty, weary,
certainly bone tired, after the energy she had exerted on the beachhead. “What’s your plan then?”

  “What’s yours?” Lilia countered.

  Maralah grimaced. She pressed her hands to the table. “If I do this, with you and… Taigan, fine, Taigan, then the rest of my people–”

  “They can stay here,” Lilia said quickly, “if nothing else. We can do that now. It’s as safe as we can make them for the duration. Clearly someone has been through here already. Let’s hope they won’t be back for a while.”

  She recreated the diagram of Tira’s Temple again, this time in the sooty layer of the kitchen table. “Here’s how we do it. We get our people into this fifth temple before Kirana, we control it, we hold it. Here’s what I’d be doing in precisely this moment, if I were Kirana. I’d be getting my jistas, five for every temple, into these other four temples. Immediately. And working to get into the fifth temple by any means necessary.”

  Taigan laughed and slapped his knee. “Fifth temple? It’s teeming with jistas. Likely the Empress herself has given them a visit and pissed all over it to mark it hers.”

  “Give me a minute,” Lilia said.

  Roh approached them, Anavha behind. Anavha was more composed now, but only just. Roh said, “We don’t need to go through there to get to the fifth temple, remember? Oma’s Temple can take us.”

  All gazes turned to him.

  “Because you are the Guide,” Lilia said. “All right, let’s consider that. We just need to get you to Oma’s Temple.”

  “As if that is easier!” Taigan said.

  “With the Worldbreaker and the Key,” Roh said. “Lilia, I know you said you could figure out the mechanism, you could play the role of worldbreaker, but… Li, I just think–”

  “What are you talking about?” Maralah said. “A Key?”

  Roh said, “The Key is… it’s what channels all the combined power from all of the temples, and… I assume the Key is the person who can filter all that, so a worldbreaker can use it. We just need someone very powerful who can withstand that.”

  Lilia glanced over at Zezili, who sat on the rail outside, licking a tuber and wincing. “I thought it might be Zezili, she has this… this symbol? A missing piece that a woman named Kalinda gave me. She said it would help us in the fifth temple. I don’t know. Maybe Zezili could endure all that power. We can find out?”