“Tori!” I see Giniva fighting through the crowd of civilians and Red Sashes and waving in my direction. She’s thinner than I remember, hollow-eyed, but smiling. “You’re up!”
“That’s what I thought, too,” I say. “But I’m starting to doubt it.”
She glances at the dismembered-giant-bug operation and chuckles. “I suppose it does look a bit … off. Your sister had a hard time convincing everyone at the start.”
“My sister did all this?”
Giniva nods, and fills me in—the ration shortage, Kosura’s change of heart, and the arrival of Soliton. All the strange food is from aboard the ship, apparently, including the monstrous-but-edible beasts Isoka calls “crabs.” They still look more like giant bugs to me, but I don’t press the point.
The sudden influx of food has done wonders for morale. I turn to take in the square beyond the cooking stations. It’s packed, Red Sashes and civilians mingling in a way we wouldn’t have dared allow before. People are singing and even playing instruments, and makeshift dance floors have opened up. Apparently everyone has been saving a bottle of something or other, and they’ve all come out now, passed freely from hand to hand. In the center of it all, a skinny woman with faded purple hair is dishing up bowl after bowl of the stuff from the kettles, what looks like soup thick with shredded bits of crabmeat.
I have to admit, it smells delicious. But …
“It’s not going to change things. Not in the long term.” I frown and look at how much meat is left on the thing Giniva called an “angel.” At best it buys us a couple of days. Without what we had stored in the Fourth Ward—”
“I know,” Giniva said. “Jakibsa tried to enforce rationing, but once everyone saw what was happening, we couldn’t keep them away without turning it into a bloodbath. Isoka decided we might as well make a party out of it.”
Isoka decided. I suppose I should be glad she listened to my plea to help the rebels, but … No but, I admonish myself sternly. This is what I wanted.
“We need to talk,” I tell Giniva. “Hasaka, Jakibsa, Isoka, whoever else needs to be there.”
“Agreed,” Giniva says. “We’ve been waiting for you to wake up. Are you sure you’re ready for it?”
I nod. “Where’s Isoka now?”
“Not sure,” Giniva says. “Ask Zarun—the Jyashtani, there. I’ll round up Hasaka and the others.” She hesitates, then puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s good to have you back.”
“Thanks.” For Giniva, this counts as a significant show of emotion. I smile at her, then head for the cook pots.
The Jyashtani is helping the purple-haired woman distribute soup. I remember them, vaguely, from when Isoka arrived, but drugs and terror have mostly reduced that day to a blur. They obviously recognize me, though, and they both smile broadly as I come over.
“Brave Tori!” the purple-haired woman says. “Stalwart Jack is relieved to see you returned to us. Even so sturdy a soul as she quailed at the prospect of your absence!”
“Jack … did?” I glance around. “Who is Jack?”
“She’s Jack,” Zarun says. He’s handsome, with an easy smile and a Jyashtani accent. “She’s just weird.”
“Honest Jack freely accepts the label, which is bestowed by a society insufficiently advanced to appreciate her better qualities.”
“I’m Zarun.” He bows, awkwardly. “It’s good to meet you properly.”
“Likewise.” I look dubiously at the bowl of soup in his hand. “You can really eat this stuff?”
Zarun laughs and hands it to me. “Try it. I promise, I lived on crab soup for years, with nothing but mushrooms and spice to fill it out.”
I’m not as hungry as I was before the Pear Wing, but it has been at least a day since I’ve had anything substantial. I put the bowl to my lips and drink. It’s good, hot and salty, thick with fat. When it’s drained, I pop the chunks of vegetable and crab into my mouth with my fingers, trying my best not to think about where they came from. Pretending it’s ordinary crab, I find, goes a long way toward making it palatable.
“Well?”
“Not bad at all.” I raise an eyebrow. “You were on Soliton, then? With Isoka?”
He nods. “I suppose we’re not keeping that secret anymore, with the ship in the harbor.”
“Mysterious Jack no longer needs to conceal her origin story!” Jack puts in.
“And you were all … friends?”
“Well … eventually.” Zarun glances upward, ticking off points on his fingers. “First she wanted to kill me. Then she agreed to work with me, then she rutted with me, then she drugged me and betrayed me, then we locked her up and were going to execute her. Then she saved everybody on the ship a couple of times and I decided I was done second-guessing her.”
“I see,” I manage.
“It’s a little more complicated than that, of course,” Zarun says, “but I’ll leave it to her to explain. Jack and I just came to provide backup when she rescued you.”
Jack grins and nods along. I shake my head.
“Where is Isoka, anyway?”
“Last I saw, over there.” Zarun points toward one of the dance circles. “Do you want me to fetch her?”
“You’re busy,” I tell him. “I’ll find her.”
I don’t have to push through the crowd. With my faithful Blue silent at my shoulder, they open in front of me and close behind, a bubble of awkward discomfort and murmured apologies as people shuffle aside. I make my way to the dancing and find my sister is standing at the edge, watching with rapt attention.
It’s not hard to see what she’s staring at. There’s a girl about her age among the dancers, with the dark skin of a southerner and an elaborately wrapped green dress, a silver bangle on one arm gleaming in the light of the fires. The dance is an energetic one, all spinning and bouncing, not the carefully formal style I was taught as part of my Third Ward education. Circles of dancers rotate and split, according to some scheme I can’t fathom, but Isoka’s eyes never leave the girl in green as the music whirls faster and faster.
Finally, it reaches a breathless crescendo and crashes into silence, and the dancers shout and raise their arms in unison. Then the group is breaking up, laughing, partners stumbling away with arms around one another’s shoulders. The girl in green runs to Isoka, who takes her in her arms and hugs her tight. They kiss, thoroughly enough that I feel my cheeks flush.
That’s … new. I’d known a few of Isoka’s lovers, when we’d been on the streets together. Mostly she’d chosen them by what they could offer us, street kids forging alliances like the most ruthless politicians, picking partners with money or connections or skills they were willing to teach. I’d always assumed she’d continued in that vein after she installed me in the Third Ward. They’d all been boys, though. And she’d never looked at any of them the way she looked at this girl, as though for a moment there was nothing else in the universe.
The girl in green spots me, and pulls away from Isoka, who looks around. My sister startles, then grabs me in a hug.
“Tori!” she says. “You’re feeling okay?”
I’m already getting tired of everyone asking that. “I’m fine. Just needed some rest.” My eyes must have gone to the girl in green, because Isoka gives another start and then a sheepish grin.
“Right,” she says. “We didn’t have much time for introductions. Meroe, this is my little sister Tori. Tori, this is Meroe, my … ah … princess.”
Meroe gives me an elegant bow. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tori.”
“Likewise,” I tell her, feeling a little intimidated. For someone who’s just been whirling madly on the dance floor, Meroe is perfectly composed, skin damp with sweat but otherwise barely mussed. She gives me a quick, secret smile, and I feel a little warmer.
“This is all kind of a long story,” Isoka says, gesturing at the cook pots.
“I’ve had some of it from Giniva and Zarun,” I tell her. “But we need to talk, all of us, about what comes
next.”
“Yeah.” Isoka scratches her head. “I suppose we do.”
She looks chagrined at the prospect. I try to soften my expression.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “For coming to get me.”
“What?” Isoka grins. “Of course. I’ll always come for you, Tori. I told you that, didn’t I?”
13
TORI
It takes almost an hour before we can extract everyone from the party. Zarun and Jack stay with the crab soup, but Meroe joins us, along with me, Isoka, Giniva, Hasaka, and Jakibsa.
Hasaka does not look well. I still remember him as the burly ex-soldier who guarded Grandma Tadeka’s door, but my enforced absence makes me realize how much he’s changed. He looks like an old man, skin hanging loose on a shrunken frame, eyes deep-sunk in their sockets. Jakibsa walks beside him, but now he seems like the solid one in spite of his wounds, with Hasaka holding on to him for support. They both perk up a little at the sight of me, and I try to conceal my worry.
The conference room, I can’t help but notice, still bears the scars of the Immortals’ attack. Someone has mopped up the bloodstains, but there’s a burned notch in the table left by Isoka’s blades, and soot on the plaster from a stray Myrkai bolt.
Let’s hope this goes better than last time. There are four Blues in the room, and more all over the building and out in the city. We should have some warning, at least. And it had cost Naga a half-dozen of his precious Immortals to capture me once. I can’t imagine him paying the price a second time.
Isoka and Meroe sit down, and there’s a moment of awkward silence. Hasaka looks between Isoka and me, not sure where to begin. I clear my throat.
“So I’m back,” I tell them. “Yes, I’m okay. Naga was trying to start off playing nice, and I got away before he changed his mind. With Isoka’s help, obviously.” I turn to Jakibsa. “Giniva filled me in on what’s been happening. How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad,” Jakibsa admits. “The storehouse in the Fourth Ward had a lot of rice and flour we were counting on for staples. Kosura’s sharing what she can, but the temples didn’t have as much as we assumed.”
“Unless she’s lying to us,” Giniva puts in. “But I don’t think she is.”
I nod. Kosura might refuse to feed people, if she thought it served some higher purpose, but I doubt she’d actually lie. I need to ask Isoka how in the Blessed’s Name she talked her into helping. It rankled, a little. Or maybe Kosura just knew I wouldn’t turn the mob loose on her.
Jakibsa continues. “The food we brought up from … ah, Soliton”—there’s a hitch of disbelief at the name of the legendary ghost ship—“also helps. But since we haven’t been able to ration it—”
“Didn’t have a choice,” Isoka says gruffly. “Not unless you wanted me to start slaughtering civilians.”
“I understand,” Jakibsa says apologetically. “And it’s done wonders for morale. But it hasn’t increased our overall stocks much. It’ll take a little while to organize the supplies, but if we stay on short rations, we have maybe a week or so. Longer if we go to half, or cut the civilians out altogether, but…” He glances at Hasaka for a moment. “I think we learned that’s not sustainable.”
“And the walls?” I address Hasaka directly. “Are we having any problems holding them?”
He blinks, slowly, and shakes his head. “Not at the moment. My people are…” He mumbles something, and frowns. “They’re holding.”
He’s broken. Whatever happened while I was gone, the toxic combination of hunger and stress has eaten away at him, and now he’s a shell of his former self. He might recover, with enough rest, but I don’t know if we have the time. I’ll have to talk to Jakibsa. Get someone else to take over.
“There haven’t been many attacks,” Giniva says, cutting through the embarrassing moment of silence. “I think the Imperials shifted most of their reserves down to the waterfront once Soliton docked. Everywhere else they’ve been content to just sit and wait.”
“I told Naga that I would have Soliton destroy the city if he stopped us from leaving the palace,” Isoka says.
“Can you actually do that?” Jakibsa says.
Isoka shakes her head. “He’ll figure it out eventually. But for now it may be holding him back, and that buys us time.”
“Time for what?” Hasaka says. His voice is shaky. “To wait until the Legions get here and squash us?”
The words hang in the air for a moment, ugly and awkward, like a fart at a funeral. Giniva, again, hesitantly breaks the silence.
“That may be why the Imperials haven’t attacked,” she says. “If the Legions are coming, and now we have the unknown power of Soliton, then why risk a bloodbath?”
“That’s one way to think about at it.” I take a deep breath. “But I think there’s another possibility.”
Everyone looks at me, my sister included. Her eyes are hooded, though Meroe gives me an encouraging smile.
“What if the Legions aren’t coming?” I ask them. “What if Naga is holding back because this is all he has, and now he doesn’t know if it’s enough?”
Another silence.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Hasaka mutters. “Of course the Legions are coming. That’s the point of them, to defend the Empire.”
“It does seem like a bit of wishful thinking,” Jakibsa says.
“It was the draft that set off all of this,” I tell them. “And they were drafting rowers for the fleet because Naga wants to go to war with Jyashtan, in the south. Maybe all the soldiers he can rely on are down there, and militia and Ward Guard are all he has to throw at us.”
“What if they are?” Jakibsa says. “What difference does it make?”
“It makes all the difference.” I put my hands on the table, pushing myself out of my seat. “We’ve all been so sure the Legions were coming for us, we spent our time worrying about how long we could hold out, just like Naga wanted. But if they’re not coming, then it’s Naga who should be worried, not us. And I think he is.” I remember his casual threats, the brief break in his façade. He’s getting desperate. “We need to attack.”
“We can’t attack,” Hasaka says immediately, rubbing his hands against his forehead. “We don’t have the strength…”
“If the Imperials aren’t pushing on the walls, we can strip men from the quiet sections. Go back into the Fourth Ward and push all the way to the outer wall again, take back the storehouse. That solves two problems in one step.”
“For a while—” Jakibsa says.
“Then the waterfront,” I go on, face flushed with excitement. “We pulled back because the Navy could land troops anywhere along the shore, and we couldn’t stop them. But Soliton is keeping the Navy back, now. All we have to do is retake the walls to the shoreline, and every soldier in the Sixteenth will be cut off. We can starve them out. And once they retreat or surrender, we’ll have access to the bay again, and we can fish.”
“Most of the fishing fleet burned,” Giniva muses, “but I’m sure people can improvise. Plenty of material with all the ruined buildings.”
“It’s not possible,” Hasaka moans. “We’ll be crushed.”
“The alternative is that we sit here until we starve,” I snap. “And Kuon Naga is laughing at us for being scared of our own shadows.”
Isoka coughs, and everyone turns to her. She hesitates a moment, then shakes her head.
“I agree with Hasaka,” she says. “It’s too much of a risk.”
You agree with Hasaka? I blink. For a moment, it feels like someone’s elbowed me in the stomach, taking my breath away. That doesn’t make sense. Hasaka and Isoka have been at odds since she got here, and Giniva said that continued after I left—that Isoka was always the one pushing for more action, while Hasaka carped and hesitated.
Calm. I take a deep breath. I’m sure she has her reasons.
“Those angels,” I ask her. “You said you can’t use them to destroy the city. But you got that humped one to carry meat.
Could you use it in a fight?”
Reluctantly, Isoka nods. “Commanding just one of them takes all my attention, though.”
“One would be enough. With that thing leading the way, we could take the Fourth Ward back easily.”
“And Naga would know I was bluffing,” Isoka says. “Once he sees we’re using the angels, but only one, he’ll understand. If he orders an attack on the walls, he could take the city.”
“If he has the strength. If he figures it out in time.”
“It’s too big a risk.”
We stare at each other. Part of my mind, a distant part, marvels at my behavior. Talking back to Isoka! I never would have dared, before. Not even dared, it wasn’t out of fear; I never would have wanted to, couldn’t have imagined the circumstances that would make it necessary. Isoka knew what was best, always.
But she doesn’t, now. She hasn’t been here since the beginning, however much she’s been giving orders while I was kidnapped. And if we’re too afraid of taking action, we’ll end up like Avyn, stuck in his library and afraid of his own shadow.
I look away from her and take a breath. “I need to talk to my sister,” I tell them. “Jakibsa, work on better numbers for the food we have left. Giniva, give me an estimate of how many soldiers we’d have to work with if we reduced all the defenses to the bare minimum.”
Everyone mutters agreement. They leave with unseemly haste, sensing the tension between me and Isoka. Meroe stays behind for a moment, exchanging a glance with Isoka, then follows the others out. Only the Blues remain, as silent as furniture.
“We have to attack,” I tell her. “If we don’t take the Fourth Ward and the waterfront, we’re going to starve.”
“It doesn’t do us much good to take them if Naga storms the city,” she says. The anger in her voice makes me flinch, but I try not to show it. “If we stay quiet it might buy another week before he figures out I was bluffing.”
“And in that week, he’ll get that much stronger, and we’ll get that much weaker,” I shoot back. “Right now, everyone’s bellies are full of crab soup, and they believe we have a chance. Let that leak away and we’ll never get it back again.”
Siege of Rage and Ruin Page 21