“In the long run? Nobody starts a riot in the street because of the long run.” I wave at the window. “The people out there were sick of the draft checkpoints, and they didn’t like what happened to Grandma Tadeka. Is your father going to do anything about that?”
“I…” Garo hesitates. “Eventually. But the draft does have to be filled, or else the Jyashtani—”
“Nobody cares if the Jyashtani take some islands we’ve never heard of.” I shake my head. “If this is the best they can offer—”
“It is.” He cuts me off, voice low and urgent. “The best they’re going to offer. Tori, please, this is why you have to help me. We have pushed this as far as we can, do you understand? Right now the government can blame a few bad apples for the draft problems and let us go. If we don’t take this chance, the court is going to have to crush us, just to save face, and that means everyone is going to die.”
“We’ve beaten them so far.” My voice sounds weak in my own ears.
“We’ve beaten the Ward Guard. You saw what happened when the mob attacked the Immortals. If the Invincible Legions march on the city it’s going to be so much worse.” He swallows. “I can’t let that happen. Not to … to you. And the others.”
There’s a long silence, and I hear rising voices from outside, arguments. Garo looks over his shoulder, then back at me.
“It won’t work,” I whisper.
He smiles. “I have to try.”
* * *
The conference room is crowded. Hasaka, Hotara, Jakibsa, and Giniva sit at the table with me and Garo, with the rest of the space packed with whoever managed to fit—red sashes, Grandma’s assistants, people from the mage-blood sanctuary, veterans of the street fighting. Garo looks them over, a fixed smile on his face. The muttering in the room has turned sour in the time the two of us have been alone.
“Comrades,” he begins, and my heart sinks, because it’s going to be his speech in the High Market all over again. Sure enough, he starts to lay out the agreement he’s made with Kuon Naga—amnesty, a shuffling of council seats, and all the rest, and it doesn’t take a Kindre adept to feel the tide of discontent.
“We’re supposed to just go home, after all this?” says a red sash in the front row, a big man with a dockworker’s calluses.
“Of course we are,” Hasaka shoots back loyally, from his seat beside Garo. “That was the point of negotiating. Would you rather end up on a gibbet?”
“I’d rather keep fighting,” the man says.
“Then you’re a fool,” an old man says. I recognize him as one of the veterans from the sanctuary. “The Legions will roll over us like a cartful of bricks when they get here. We have to make a deal now.”
“What do we gain, though?” Hotara says. “We’ll still have the draft.”
“Kuon Naga promised amnesty for rebels,” Jakibsa says. When Garo nods, he says, “That means he didn’t offer it for mage-bloods. If we stand down, there’s nothing to stop him from having us all rounded up.”
Hasaka starts at this, staring at his lover, then looking over at Garo, who frowns.
“I’m sure,” he says hesitantly, “that we could negotiate something—”
“Not to mention,” Hotara says, “the question of whether we can trust that snake. What’s to stop him from turning on us when we disarm?”
Several people shout “Nothing!” simultaneously. Someone in back adds, “Down with the draft! Down with the Immortals!”
“Please!” Garo gets to his feet. “The court is willing to show mercy now—”
“Because we’re winning!” someone shouts back, and there are angry murmurs of agreement.
“—but if we take this further, they won’t be able to,” Garo proceeds, doggedly. “We need to make peace while there’s still a peace to be made.”
“How much are they paying you?” This shriek comes from a woman in the front row, a tall, scarecrow-looking thing in a ragged robe. “How much did you get from selling us out, coward?”
“Traitor!”
“We want to fight!”
Garo looks at me, pleadingly.
I open my mind, just for a moment. Even that much is a mistake. The torrent of raw emotion is too much, the carrion stench of bloodlust and scintillating blue of pride. That day in the market comes back to me, and what happened afterward—the street soaked in blood and charred bodies. If I reach out and try to calm them, I have no idea what will happen.
And the shouts are spreading, down the stairs and out into the road. I can hear chanting begin.
I stand up beside Garo. Hasaka does, too, but the crowd is pressing forward. I hear Hotara shouting for calm, a few red sashes trying to maintain order, but it doesn’t make a difference. I take Garo’s hand and pull him back through the barrack’s curtained doorway. Hasaka, understanding, plants himself in front of it, refusing to move.
Garo has the look of someone in a bad dream as I drag him over to the window.
“I have to … say something.” He looks back at the doorway, blocked by the curtain, the angry chanting rising louder and louder. “I have to make them understand. Tori—”
“You have to go, Garo.”
“Go?”
I gesture at the window. His eyes widen. “You’re not serious.”
“Of course I’m serious!” I grab the collar of his robe. “You’re about five minutes from getting torn to pieces here. I rotting warned you!”
“But—”
“Please. Just get out of here. Go back to your father.”
“What about you?”
I knew he was going to ask that, but it doesn’t make it any easier. “I’m not leaving.”
“They’ll kill you.”
I don’t know which they he means, the rebels or the government. Either seems likely. I shrug.
“No,” he says. “I won’t let that happen—”
“You don’t get a choice,” I tell him. “I have to find Isoka. I’m not going to get a better chance.”
“My father can help, if you come with me.”
He believes it, I can tell that much without my Kindre senses. But Lord Marka isn’t going to have any reason to help me, not if it means going up against Kuon Naga. I shake my head.
“Just go,” I tell him. “Before it’s too late.”
“Tori,” he says. “I love you.”
I shove him out the window.
* * *
An hour later, the safe house is almost empty.
Hasaka was finally pushed aside, and a gang of angry rebels rushed into the barracks, only to find Garo gone. They didn’t pay me much attention, just ran back out again to spread the news. I heard the shouting rise to a new pitch.
I hope Garo didn’t hurt himself in the fall. I didn’t see him on the street outside, at least.
After that, nobody seemed to know what to do next. Some people tried to find Garo. Others fled, assuming the rebellion was finished. The majority, though, looked to the rest of their leaders for guidance, and bit by bit Hasaka, Hotara, and Jakibsa reasserted their authority. The red sashes remembered they were supposed to obey their officers, and went back to preparing for an assault from the Imperial authorities.
Hasaka keeps coming in to ask me what he should do. When I finally manage to rouse myself to go back into the common room—filthy now with tracked mud and debris—Hotara gives me a nod, and Giniva asks if I have any messages that need to be delivered.
Is it Kindre? Some side effect, so subtle I don’t even notice? Or is it just habit, left over from when I delivered orders in Grandma’s name?
I’ve been fourteen for less than a month. Why in the Blessed’s name are they expecting me to know anything?
I want to laugh, or to cry.
If I’d stayed in the Second Ward, like Isoka wanted, none of this would have happened. Or else I’d be cowering there with the other nobles, waiting to see if the rebels are going to kill us all.
Not that there was ever any chance of that. I’m not who my s
ister thought I was. Not who I pretended to be.
Monster. It’s a mocking chant in my ear. Monster, monster, monster.
Downstairs, in the basement, the Immortal captain is waiting for me. The two red-sashed guards have stuck nervously to their posts through all the excitement. When I dismiss them, they hurry away eagerly, and I let myself into the cell. No warnings about the danger this time.
The captain looks at me with a strange expression, almost thoughtful. She seems aged, as though her time in captivity has added years to her features. There are angry red welts at her wrists and ankles where the chains have chafed.
“Hello, little sister,” she says. Her tone is still defiant. “How is the revolution going?”
“I want to know what happened to Isoka,” I say.
“I want to get out of here and see you all hanged,” she says. “Tell you what. Come with me back to Kuon Naga, and maybe we can both get what we’re looking for. He wants you badly, you know.”
“Why?”
She just smiles.
I let my Kindre senses open. Monster. I’m past caring.
My mind reaches out for hers. Defiance, bravado, loyalty, duty, cruelty, a potent, noxious mixture. I exert my will, and my power reaches out, crushing it all into nothing. The captain’s mind shudders and presses back against my unwelcome intrusion, my forcing myself into her most intimate spaces. Then it gives way, with a feeling like tearing flesh. I note, vaguely, that she’s screaming.
Obedience. I give her that, in place of everything else.
After a while, the screaming stops.
“Tell me what you did with Isoka.”
“Sacrifice.” Her voice is dull, now, her eyes heavy-lidded and empty. “For Soliton. A special assignment.”
“Soliton?” I narrow my eyes, confused. “The ghost ship?”
“Not a ghost ship,” the captain says. “Real. Naga … wants. Sent Gelmei to bring it back.”
“You sent her…” I shake my head. “Where is this ship now?”
“Gone. Always gone. Not the first to try, won’t be the last.” She shakes her head, a rope of drool dangling from her chin. “Dead, for certain. All dead. It eats them. Eats them all.”
“She’s…” I pause, examining her mind for hints of resistance. There’s nothing. “Why does Naga want me?”
“Insurance. If Gelmei succeeds. Hostage. Keep her loyal. But she won’t.”
“I have to get her back,” I say. “How?”
“No one comes back. Not from Soliton.”
“If Naga wants me as a hostage, there has to be a way. He must know it.”
“No way…” Her mouth gapes stupidly, tongue lolling. “Dead. Dead, dead, dead—”
“Shut up!”
She stops. I lean on the cell door, heart slamming against my ribs.
I’d hoped that the Immortals would have Isoka in a prison somewhere. Locked in some noble’s basement. Shipped off to the Legions. I’d been prepared for any of that. I’d been prepared—I thought I’d been prepared—to hear that she’d been killed out of hand and dumped in the harbor. But this—
Sacrificed to Soliton? To a ghost ship that’s not even real? Except Kuon Naga thinks it was, apparently.
He has to know something else. He has to.
I have to get to him.
I look up at the captain. If anyone finds her like this, they’ll ask questions I can’t answer.
“Die,” I tell her.
The muscles in her throat spasm, as though she’s swallowed a snake. I wait while she convulses, straining mindlessly against her chains as her face turns first red and then an angry purple. Only when she dangles limp and still in her bonds do I stand up and leave the cell, passing the guards in the stairwell as I ascend back to the common room.
“Tori!” Hasaka says as I come in. “Are you all right?”
I must look awful. I wave a hand, vaguely. “I’m fine. Where are the others?”
“Hotara and Jakibsa went to look at some food stockpiles. I sent Giniva to get a report on the defenses at the northern wall.”
“That’s good.” I stand over the table, looking down at the map of the city, now covered in scrawled pencil notes. “We have a lot of work to do.”
22
ISOKA
“Can you show me?” I ask Silvoa.
Her ghost-image looks nervous. “We don’t have much time before—”
“I know,” I say. “Please. I have to see.”
Her expression softens. She reaches out one intangible arm, and passes her fingers in front of my eyes.
In an instant it’s as though I’m standing high on Prime’s ziggurat, among the rattling strings of bones. I know it must be dark, but I can see, trees and stone outlined in Eddica ghost-light. A stream of walking corpses issues forth from the stronghold’s entrance, lurching, dried-out bodies with twiglike limbs and gray, filmy hair. They shuffle down the ramp in a tide, joining the growing swarm at the base.
Beyond them, in a loose line, are the humans of the Harbor.
The three contingents are separate, but side by side. On the right are the Minders, centered on the hulking shape of Harak, with Gragant beside him. With them are a couple of dozen men and women in gray robes, well-muscled from their years of training, now glowing with the colors of their Wells. On the other side of the line, a phalanx of Cresos warriors in wooden armor stand shoulder to shoulder, anonymous behind their carved face masks. I recognize Toranaka’s armor, with a bit of surprise, right in the center. Their retainers hold their flanks, with bows and spears or Myrkai fire.
In the center, of course, are the crew. My crew. Zarun, spitting-green Melos blade already in his hands, anchors the line. To one side are Jack and Thora—Thora must have overcome Meroe’s instructions keeping her in bed. To the other is Aifin, golden light glowing around him, sword in hand. And the others, everyone who was willing. Even the survivors of the first expedition are there, slim, ghostly Bohtal, bald-headed Kotaga, and the others, Blessed knows why. Meroe stands a few paces behind the line, and my throat goes thick at the sight of her. But of course she’s here. Just because she can’t swing a sword or blast an enemy with fire doesn’t mean she’s a fragile bloom like Tori. I learned that when we fell into the Deeps. You’d think I’d remember it better. Catoria is with her, and Shiara.
The dead move forward, driven by a single will. Among the humans, fire blooms in dozens of hands. As the corpses shamble into a run, bolts of Myrkai energy streak out, blossoming into blasts of flame that send broken bodies tumbling. Blue waves of Tartak force slam into the front ranks, pressing them back as more fire engulfs them. Then, as the swifter monsters close, a handful of Melos blades ignite to match Zarun’s.
The vision dissolves, replaced with Silvoa’s translucent face. “He’s here.”
I blink, and realize my hands are clenched tight enough to turn my knuckles white. In my mind’s eye, I can see Meroe’s face, lit by the flickering glow of multi-colored magic as corpses close in.
This was your idea, Isoka, I tell myself sternly. She has her job, and you have yours.
I wonder what Prime is thinking, if he’s more worried about the small army outside his gates than he is about me. That’s the idea, anyway. Keep his attention divided.
The pair of lizard-birds in here with me certainly don’t look distracted. I stand up, stretch, and smile at them.
The doorway explodes.
Rubble showers the room, bits of stone glancing off the bars of my cage, followed by a rolling cloud of dust. An enormous four-legged shape stalks through it, a canine angel, stone-gray mouth open in a silent snarl. The two lizard-birds, shaking grit from their feathers, charge the angel at once, but their long talons only scrape harmlessly across its side. A paw swats one of the things with the force of a falling boulder, and stone jaws close around the other’s head, crushing its avian skull.
“Hello, Hagan,” I say, as the dust starts to settle.
The angel pads closer, and Hagan’s f
ace appears in Eddica ghost-light beside Silvoa’s. “So far, so good,” he says. “Your way in worked nicely.”
“Of course it did.” Silvoa smiles immodestly. “Now get her out of there. We haven’t got long before Prime tracks us down, even if the battle is taking up most of his attention.”
Hagan nods, and his face disappears. The angel throws its weight against the bars of the cage, the same strength the dredwurm used to tunnel through the decks of Soliton. With a screech, the ship-metal gives way, and I step out of my cell, brushing dust off my armor.
The dog-angel retreats through the shattered doorway, and I follow. Silvoa mutters directions, too fast for me to hear, but Hagan understands. The angel lopes forward, taking the first right turn, and I follow into the labyrinth of the ziggurat’s interior. The corridors, thankfully, are large enough for Hagan’s bulky form.
Most of the rooms we pass are as empty as the ziggurat the crew moved into. A few are packed with bodies in various states of decomposition, from skeletons to nearly fresh corpses. Prime must have salted them away over the centuries, saving them for a rainy day. And apparently today counts, because the bodies are starting to rise.
At the next turn, the corridor ahead of us is blocked with them, a solid mass of walking corpses. There are some of the oldest I’ve encountered, sinewy mummies that are little more than bones and gristle.
In all honesty, I’m glad to see them. Somewhere, the others are fighting, and my palms are starting to itch. I want to hurt something.
“You clear a path,” I tell Hagan. “I’ll clean up behind you.”
The dog-angel lowers its head and charges like a bull. I move into its wake, my blades igniting with a snap-hiss, and start taking the ancient dead apart.
* * *
I really rotting hope Silvoa knows where she’s going, because I am utterly lost.
A pair of corpses lever themselves up. The rotting things are getting cannier, throwing themselves flat to avoid getting crushed by Hagan’s bulk. I let them come to me, their ancient bodies stumbling into a flailing run. At the last moment, I sidestep the first one, bringing my blade around at neck height and letting its momentum do the work. The other throws itself at my midsection, scrabbling at me as my armor raises crackling sparks. Two quick swipes remove its arms, and I kick the shuddering thing aside and move on.
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