Siege of Rage and Ruin

by Django Wexler

  The Returners—the Followers of the Blessed’s Return, as they call themselves—have been growing steadily since the Sixteenth Ward burned. It’s not just here. There’s at least a dozen big temples throughout Kahnzoka that have been converted into camps, with thousands of people seeking shelter behind their fences. They’re nearly a city within a city, and whether they fall under the authority of the Red Sashes is … disputed.

  A single guard waits at the temple gate, though what a guard who has sworn not to fight is supposed to accomplish is beyond me. She’s dressed in a gray robe with a white belt, like all the Returners, and she bows deep, her freshly shaven scalp gleaming.

  “Miss Gelmei,” she says. They all call me that. “Welcome.”

  “I need to see her,” I say.

  “Of course.” The guard straightens and looks at my escort of Blues. “Your companions will have to wait outside, or surrender their weapons.”

  She seems serenely confident that I’ll obey, and I feel no hint otherwise from her mind. It’s one of the reasons I have trouble dealing with these Returners. I’ve grown too used to hypocrisy; sincerity is unsettling. I send a Kindre signal to the Blues, and they stand back, blank faced. The guard smiles and leads me into the complex.

  There are people all around, in the tents that sprawl over the grass. I can see them staring at me, and feel the suspicion rising in their minds. Most of them are still in civilian clothes, rather than Returner robes, and there are a great many children. I wonder how many desperate families have ended up here, terrified mothers gambling that sheltering on temple ground is a safer bet for their kids than helping the Red Sashes. In all honestly, they’re probably not wrong.

  We head for the ancient part of the temple. The doors are polished wood, carved with scenes from the Blessed One’s life rubbed into illegibility by centuries of fingers. Inside, the floors are old-style reed mats, the walls pure white, hung with ancient paintings. We’re not going into the main worship hall, but into the warren of chambers that adjoins it, where the supplicators of the Temple lived and worked.

  “The Teacher has instructed that you be admitted to see her at any time,” my guide says, when we reach a small sitting room. “Please wait here, and I will tell her you’ve arrived.”

  She bows again and bustles off. There’s no furniture, just cushions on the floor. Even by the standards of the Third Ward, this place is old-fashioned, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. I sit, years of etiquette lessons falling into place automatically, and give a polite smile to the boy who comes in with a steaming pot of tea.

  Kosura arrives a few moments after that, the boy holding the door open and sliding it closed behind her. She wears a rough black robe, belted in white, and the beautiful hair I remember is shaved peach-fuzz close. Her injuries have mostly healed, but there’s a patchy white scar beside her left eye. Though she moves with her customary grace, there’s still a detectable limp. I suspect there always will be.

  My heart does a queer flop in my chest, as it always does when I see her. Kosura was my best friend at Grandma Tadeka’s. She was the only one I trusted enough to talk about my encounter with Garo, and I can still remember her blushing face as she teased me about opening my shirt to help out a boy. Her starstruck certainty as she declared Garo must be in love with me.

  It’s hard to imagine the young woman in front of me giggling about a flirtation. There’s a quiet calm to her that belies the horror she’s been through. She was captured by the Immortals, along with Grandma and the rest at the hospital, and was one of the few who survived the attentions of their interrogators long enough for us to rescue them. Even then, bruised and broken, she’d seemed more hurt by Grandma’s death than her own suffering.

  And now she’s running a cult, with all these fanatics calling her Teacher. The cynical part of my mind can’t help but sneer.

  “Tori,” she says, kneeling on the cushion opposite me and settling back on her heels. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “You too,” I say, already feeling awkward.

  “You’re well?”

  “Well enough.” I scratch the back of my head. “You?”

  “Well, by the Blessed One’s grace. We live each day in hope of His imminent return.”

  “Right,” I mutter. “That.”

  Theology isn’t my specialty, and I never paid as much attention to my supplicator as I probably should have. As best I understand it, some accounts of the Blessed One’s life record that before his ascent to Heaven, he said he would be reunited with believers. While most supplicators have held this to mean that we would go to him, if we were good enough, the Returners have decided it’s the other way around—that the Blessed One is coming back, to punish the wicked and reward the righteous. There are prophecies, apparently.

  “You think I’m misguided,” Kosura says quietly.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I know you, remember?” She smiles, and just for a moment she looks like the old Kosura again, laughing as we do laundry. “Stay here with me, Tori. Just for a few days. If you read the texts yourself—”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have a few days.” I rub my eyes with my palms. It’s barely noon, and I’m already exhausted. “The Legion is coming, the militia is already pressing us, and we’re running out of food.” I fix her with a level stare. “I need you to open the temple granaries. The soldiers on the wall are on short rations as it is.”

  Kosura chews her lip for a moment, then shakes her head. “I can’t.”

  Anger flares in my chest. “This is no time for everyone to start looking out for themselves.”

  “It’s not about looking out for ourselves. If the temples are well-supplied, it’s because people have entrusted that food to us knowing it would be used in accordance with the Blessed’s principles. If those in need come to us, of course we will help them, but only if they abide by the proscriptions the Blessed One laid down in his teachings.”

  “That they don’t fight, in other words. That they don’t defend the city against Kuon Naga’s rotting Immortals.”

  “It’s not just fighting, but yes.” Kosura closes her eyes, and rubs at her scar. “I know better than anyone what the Immortals can do. But answering violence with violence is not what the Blessed One would have of us.”

  “Easy to say when the rest of us are fighting for you,” I snap, and grit my teeth. “Do you really think Naga’s going to respect the sanctity of the temples when he takes the city? He’ll have the Grand Supplicator and all his acolytes ready to condemn your lot as heretics.” I take a deep breath, and soften my voice. “You’re all going to die, Kosura. We all are, unless we win this.”

  “We’re all going to die, regardless,” Kosura says. “All humans do. That is the will of Heaven. What matters is what happens afterward.”

  What happens afterward is that you lie in the dirt and rot. I take another deep breath, fighting down frustration. I can feel Kosura’s mind, burning with a pure certainty, and—

  —it would be so easy to reach out to it. Just a touch, a twist, an adjustment. She would agree with me. She would be happy about it.

  No. I swallow hard. No, no, no.

  There has to be a line I won’t cross. That even monsters won’t cross. Kosura is my friend. She was tortured because of me, because I came to Grandma’s and drew Kuon Naga’s attention. If I do that to her, I might as well twist the whole city into puppets and be done.

  I dream about that, most nights. Puppet strings running from my fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” Kosura says. “I know this is difficult for you. I wish I could help you find peace.”

  “Yeah, well. That seems unlikely.” I let out a sigh. “I don’t want to threaten you, so please don’t take this the wrong way. But if things get worse—and they will—and rumors go around that the temples still have food, sooner or later people’s respect is going to run out. When that happens, you and your followers could get hurt.”

  “If that happens,
it will be as the Blessed One wills.” Kosura inclines her head. “Before his return, we are taught there will be a time of trials we must endure. What is all this if not the fulfillment of that prophecy?”

  “Fine.” I’ve taken about as much of this as I can stand, and I get abruptly to my feet. “Good luck.”

  “There is no luck,” Kosura says. “Only the Blessed’s favor. I pray that it go with you as well, Tori.”

  * * *

  There’s more to do. Posts to visit, reports to listen to, decisions to make. I don’t have the faintest idea what I’m doing, of course, but what I’ve come to understand is that it hardly matters. The answers to many questions are obvious; the important thing is that someone make the decision. That’s half my role—not a figurehead, exactly, but the person who officially tells everyone to do what they know they should be doing anyway.

  By the time I get back to my rooms, night is falling, and exhaustion has thickened into a headache that throbs in a ring around my skull. The three Blues who have accompanied me uncomplaining throughout the day are still by my side. I make a mental note to rotate them out, lest someone collapse in the middle of the street.

  More Blues guard my quarters. They’re the only people I can really trust. I’ve taken over a small building on the same square as Red Sash headquarters, in a row of shops and houses now occupied by rebel officers. A couple of dozen Blues stay there with me, while the rest are spread throughout the city. When I close my eyes, I can feel them, a net of linked minds like a spider’s web.

  The ground floor was once a pastry shop, but the shelves and tables have all been ripped out and replaced with bedrolls. A dozen Blues wait there, watching me silently as I clomp up the stairs to the apartment above. There’s not a lot here. My own bedroom, at the back, and a small common room with a table and cushions. A second bedroom, which we use as a holding cell.

  A whimper reminds me that the cell is occupied. One more duty to perform before I can put my head down for the evening. Two Blues, a man and a woman, both well-muscled, watch the door. At my mental command, they slide it open. The girl, Krea, is sitting in the back corner, pressed against the wall as if she wants to worm her way through it with her shoulder blades.

  She really doesn’t look much like Isoka. It’s just something about her hair, her build. I can feel the fear in her mind, the stink coming off her like rotting meat.

  “What do you want from me?” she whispers.

  “Nothing, really.” I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her. My head throbs.

  “Then let me go.” Her voice is soft. “Please. I didn’t hurt anybody. I just want to get out of here before—”

  “The problem,” I cut her off, “is that if we let deserters go free, pretty soon everyone would desert.”

  “Because we don’t have a chance.” Her voice is a hiss. “What’s the point of fighting if we’re just waiting until the Legion gets here?”

  I resist the urge to shrug. Anger rises for a moment in her mind, then dies, smothered by fear.

  “What are you going to do to me?” she says.

  “You’re going to help me,” I tell her.

  “How?”

  “Like this.” And I reach out to her mind.

  I’ve done this often enough, now, that it’s routine. I can feel the structure of her thoughts, the overwhelming fear, with little coils of other emotions beneath it, joy and lust and hate and all the rest. My power presses down with the force of a drop hammer, grinding everything beneath into dust. I flatten her out, smooth all the delicate intricacy of her humanity into flat nothingness, and then on that clean canvas I sketch out what I need.

  Obedience, first and foremost. Eagerness. Fearlessness. And the little twist that lets a mind receive my mental commands, linking it in to the rest of the Blues, another node in the spider’s web.

  My artificial fanatics. After the fall of the Sixteenth Ward, the rebellion nearly collapsed. We needed people we could trust, people who would fight on no matter the odds and help inspire others to do likewise. At first I’d thought of using volunteers—but people who would volunteer for this are exactly the sort of people who are unlikely to need it, aren’t they? And then a whole company of Red Sashes plotted to open the gates to the Immortals. Giniva’s informers turned them in, and we had to figure out what to do with them.

  At first I made excuses. Only prisoners, only people who’d committed crimes that would otherwise see them hanged in the square. Deserters, traitors, murderers. The longer this goes on, though, the more I only keep to those rules out of habit. It’s hard to convince myself to care anymore. No one is going to forgive me, either way. Monster.

  Krea has stopped her trembling. She sits calmly, now, looking at me with the same respectful patience as the other Blues. I can feel her mind, smooth and untroubled by doubts.

  “There,” I mutter, pushing myself to my feet. “Better than a short, sharp drop, right?”

  She doesn’t answer, because I haven’t instructed her to.

  * * *

  In my nightmare, I’m climbing a mountain of corpses.

  They’re slick and cold beneath me, uncertain footing. I stumble, going down on my hands and knees. I feel someone’s face under my palm, features contorted in pain. A hand by my foot, fingers curled and stiff in death.

  I get back up, and take another step, and another. Bone gives way with a crunch under my boot. I grab a loose kizen for a handhold, and the fabric tears. I snatch at a lock of long hair instead, and use it to pull myself forward.

  Ahead of me are men and women in blue sashes, adding more bodies to the pile. It’s not a mountain after all, but a stairway, and they’re building the next level even as I struggle to climb to the top. I don’t look at the fresh corpses, but I know I’d recognize them. Instead I keep my eyes up, looking past the end of the ghastly steps, toward—what?

  There was a reason I was climbing, when I started. I know that, but I don’t remember what it was. I was trying to get somewhere, but now all that’s ahead of me is darkness. And when I look back, for just a moment—

  I wake up with a gasp, ice cold, drenched in sweat, my heart hammering and my breath coming fast. My head pounds, as though someone were sinking nails in it. I fumble for a mug of water beside me, manage to spill most of it on the bedroll, and swallow what’s left. A command ripples out to the Blues for more, inaudible, irresistible.

  Krea glides in a few moments later, mug in hand. She must have been the closest to my door. She’s still wearing the dirty tunic she was arrested in, but she’s added the red and blue sashes all my Blues wear. She kneels down beside me and offers the mug, gentle and careful. I take it with a shaking hand, and manage to get most of the water down my throat this time.

  She doesn’t look much like Isoka, but in the dark I can almost pretend. She bends forward, puts her arms around me, pulls me closer. I huddle against her, shivering, my eyes shut tight against tears, and wait for morning.

  3

  ISOKA

  “Are you all right?” Meroe says, for the twentieth time. She’s hovering over my shoulder, hand out like she wants to touch me but is afraid to.

  “I’m all right.” It comes out too fast, too harsh, and I glance at her face and see the worry. I force myself to take a breath, relax my shoulders. “I’m all right.”

  “We don’t know how much of what they told us is true,” Zarun says. “Rumors get exaggerated.”

  “Indeed,” Jack says. “Why, Clever Jack once overheard a tale of her own exploits she hardly recognized.”

  Another deep breath. “I know.”

  Exaggerated or not, the story the traders had told is enough to get my heart pounding. A rebellion, born out of a gang of rebel mage-bloods and a draft riot, that had not only escaped the control of the Ward Guard but undermined the walls to spread throughout the city. For all intents and purposes, Kahnzoka was under siege by its own government, the rebel-held wards surrounded by camps of Ward Guard and militia troops. That
explains all the traders here in Redtree—the Imperial Army is buying supplies at generous rates.

  And the Sixteenth Ward, my home, the brutal, familiar world of dock scum and kidcatchers, corner noodle shops and rickety tenements—gone. The traders disagreed about who had set the fire—one said it was the rebels, the other the Ward Guard—but were certain that it had consumed everything between the wall and the waterfront.

  I wonder, briefly, how many of the people I remember died in the conflagration. If there’s anyone left who remembers me.

  Later. I press the feeling down. Focus, Isoka.

  “Tori’s house is in the Third District, on the north side of the city,” I say. “The traders said that was definitely still on the Imperial side of the line. We just have to get there.” And hope that she’s still there, that she’s okay, that—

  Enough. My fists clench, Melos power throbbing under my skin, as though my blades want to emerge of their own accord. First, get there.

  Meroe sits down on the narrow bed, brow furrowing. We’re in one of the upstairs rooms of the Redtree Inn, rented for a few hours for an exorbitant fee. It’s about the size of a coffin, with a bed that wouldn’t fit two of us. Zarun and Jack lean against the door, and I pace in what little room is left.

  “That’s not going to be easy, I think,” she says. “I can’t imagine they want loose civilians wandering around.”

  “The traders are going somewhere,” Zarun points out.

  “There’ll be a system of passes,” I say. “The Ward Guard loves passes. Can’t get from here to there without the right bit of paper and the right stamp.”

  “Could we fake one?” Meroe says.

  “Not easily.” I frown. “Not without getting ahold of one, anyway. And if we can do that, we might as well just use it for ourselves.”

  “That makes things easy, then,” Jack says. “The town is teeming with fine fat fish. We just have to catch one and pluck its feathers.”