by Devin Madson
I stared back as emotionlessly as I could until he turned away, his fleeting look of disappointment impossible to miss.
Powerless to do anything but watch, I soon escaped back to my room. There, I paced my frustration. Whatever those Swords had been made to believe, I had seen the deserter camp. They were not traitors, were not planning to attack us or destroy all Gideon had built. They just wanted to go home. I knew I ought not to doubt the intentions of those under Yiss’s command, ought not to even doubt Yiss, but too well could I remember the sense of peace Leo had given me, and how much I had wanted to cling to it even as he stripped it away. I had thought myself weak for having succumbed, but if Gideon could fall under his spell, what hope was there for any of us?
Hot panicky breaths made my face sweat beneath the mask, and glad to be alone, I untied the strings.
“Dishiva?” Lashak stood on the threshold, wary. “Or should I call you Defender of the One True God?”
“No!” I said, goaded to speak before I could stop myself. “I mean, yes, you should. It is my position and I am proud to—”
But she closed the door, half a dozen steps bringing her close enough to grab my loosened mask. The fabric fell from my face, leaving me meeting her stare without its protection. And with the feeling of one made naked and vulnerable, I knew the depths of my own fear.
“Oh, thank the gods,” Lashak hissed, and letting the mask drop she gripped my face in both hands and planted a kiss upon my lips. “I had begun to fear I really had lost you.” She kissed me again, a little laugh coming out as she drew back. “What the fuck are you doing playing that little shit’s game, Di?”
“He will kill all my Swords and our horses if I don’t. I have to pretend, to protect Gideon and you and everyone. I have to do this. I have to be this.”
Lashak stepped back, looking me up and down as though hoping to see the lie writ somewhere upon me, and finding none, she pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. “Fuck, you mean it.”
“Yes.”
“And the deserters?”
“Have to be destroyed or we all die. Us or them.”
“Surely he doesn’t mean—”
“He does, Lash, he does.” I gripped her shoulders. “Don’t you underestimate him for a moment. He can read minds. He can control your thoughts. He is like the sickness taking over back home except he’s a person.”
“Then we ought to kill him.”
“I did.”
Again, she leaned back, assessing me head to foot, and before she could speak, I went on in a hissed whisper. “I killed him, Lash, I did. Just before you were sent to Mei’lian to oversee the burning. And when I came back…”
“His god really is bringing him back to life?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t know how he does it, only that he does and there’s no stopping him. And now that you know, you’re in danger.” I pressed my hands to my face. “We all are. Oh shit, Lash, he’ll know I told you and he’ll kill everyone. Even our horses. We’re so fucked, oh I wish you hadn’t come.” My breaths came fast, too fast for comfort, and the room began to spin. “We’re all dead now. What are we going to do?”
Pain radiated through my chest and I couldn’t feel my legs, every breath fast and shallow.
“Calm down, Dishiva, hush, it’s all right, we won’t let him. Breathe now, come on, try to relax.”
I dropped onto the reed matting, my vision sparking and my attention skittering at every sound outside the door, sure he was coming, sure any moment we would be dead, the sense of doom so heavy it pressed me into the floor.
“No no no, breathe with me, Dishiva, breathe,” Lashak said, kneeling before me now. “You are stronger than this, you can do it. Take a breath and hold it.”
I tried to do as she bade me, but the air rushed out of my lungs as if loath to stay. I couldn’t blame it. I was a death sentence to all who came near me now.
“Breathe in,” she said, rubbing circles on my back like we did for injured horses. “Hold it just one second and let it out, then try to do two the next time.”
“He’s coming for us, Lashak, he’s going to kill you and kill me and kill all of us and—”
She struck my cheek and I flinched, holding a breath from the shock. It was enough to ease the tension in my chest.
“We are the Swords that hunt,” Lashak began to chant, stopping at the end of the line to take a breath and slowly letting it go with the next words. “So your hands may be clean.” Another breath. “We are the Swords that kill.” Breath. “So your soul may be light.” She nodded encouragement as I breathed with her this time. “We are the Swords that die. That you might live.” Nodding again she started over, and little by little, focusing on the words and my breath, my body let some of the tension go and my panic eased enough for me to sit and face her across the dim, unlit room. Out in the yard, the rest of the Levanti went on about their tasks unaware.
“Now, let’s get one thing straight, Dishiva,” Lashak said before I could speak. “No more apologies. No more blaming yourself for putting me in danger. You aren’t doing that, he is, got it? Besides, I’d rather be in danger and here for you than leave you to bear this alone.”
Her words made tears prick the corners of my eyes. I blinked them determinedly away, hating the way crying always made saliva thicken in my mouth like date paste.
“You are my friend and that’s more important than my life, all right?” she went on. “Now, we are pretty clever, you and I, so what are we going to do about this? And no, ‘nothing’ is not an option.”
“You have to go to the deserters and warn them,” I said, and already having said too much I dared more. “They have a horse whisperer.”
Lashak stared at me. “A horse whisperer?”
“Yes. Exiled here, before our time, I think, but still a whisperer and the closest we have to the sort of help we need. We can’t let her die.”
“I can send someone—”
“No. You have to go.”
She tilted her head, her way of asking silent questions.
“You can’t risk telling anyone else about this.” My words were so low I wasn’t sure she could hear them. “Leo has people everywhere. You ask someone else to go, you risk them being one of his. It has to be you. You’re already in danger, and whatever you say, I don’t want to be responsible for your death. That’s not something a friend should have to bear.”
She blew out a breath and nodded, her mouth a grim line. And without her having to say so, I knew what she was thinking, that to abandon her Swords was the height of dishonour for a captain. But there was a horse whisperer, and there was no overstating the danger she would be in if she stayed.
I didn’t tell her she would have to stay with the deserters. I didn’t have to.
“I’m sorry, Dishiva.”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll get rid of him, won’t we? We’ll kill him? Properly.”
“We will.”
A single, sharp nod, and she turned to look at the door. “I had better go before anyone gets suspicious.”
“Right.”
I didn’t want her to leave, didn’t want to be alone, but to stay risked too much. “If you can get Shenyah or Esi away from watching eyes, one of them can guide you in, but I don’t know how you’ll do it without being seen and—”
I could feel the panic building again. Lashak gripped my arms. “Really? You’re choosing this moment to doubt my skills? Shame on you, Dishiva e’Jaroven.”
That made me smile, a pained, twisted thing, but all I could do was nod and trust her. With a parting kiss she left me to my solitary fears, to my pacing and my panic, sure any moment Leo’s reprisals would come.
Hours passed. Yiss and her army filed out through the gates, leaving the yard quieter than it had been in a long time, and I began to hope I had gotten away with telling Lashak after all.
Until I peered out my door in the evening and saw, pinned to the wall opposite, a Mask
of God. Its eye slits watching me.
A warning. I doubted there would be another.
I paced through the night, expending my nervous energy. I had been untethered from my own life, left to float in the same space I had occupied but without purpose. My Swords gathered in the kitchen for their evening meal, but I was no longer their captain. Levanti sat around fires out in the yard, but I was no longer welcome. And whatever the needs of my body, I could no longer find a partner to satisfy them with. I was alone. But it was all the worse for being alone while surrounded by my people.
There seemed no way out. Leo had found out about Lashak, and next time there would be consequences. But what was I to do? Sit in my room and accept myself beaten?
Giving up felt wrong, and I paced all the faster, wishing there was a simple answer and knowing there wasn’t. Anything I did risked the lives of others. Risked our horses and our future, but every time I didn’t speak let Leo get one step closer to possessing us completely.
“No more apologies,” Lashak had said. “No more blaming yourself for putting me in danger. You aren’t doing that, he is, got it?”
How much easier to have been riding toward battle. Every Sword rode knowing they might never come back, but at least they had chosen to ride. Here the choice was all mine. Doing nothing would lead to our enslavement. Yet the weight of all their lives, their futures, would fall upon my shoulders. My scales. And like the deaths of Swords in battle, I had to make peace with that.
But first I had to test how far Leo would let me stretch my freedom.
The following morning, adorned in the regalia I was not allowed outside without, I strode to Empress Sichi’s door and tapped on the wooden frame. Voices inside stopped abruptly, and when the door slid it was with a degree of wariness. Nuru peered out. She flinched and stepped back, jaw dropped.
“Hello to you too, Nuru,” I said, loud enough to compensate for the mask. “I’m here to see Empress Sichi.”
At least my tone must have been unchanged, for her surprise soon became a scowl. “Empress Sichi already has a visitor, Capt—Def—Dishiva.”
A spike of fear it was Leo flared and died as I peered around her. A dark-haired young Kisian sat with her, keeping his gaze to his tea bowl. From inside, Sichi spoke and Nuru answered with my name, and with a heavy sigh, she drew herself up.
“Where is the Motepheset Shrine?”
“What?”
Nuru rolled her eyes. “I want to be sure it’s you. Where is the Motepheset Shrine?”
“A day’s ride east of the Hamat Grove. If you climb onto the roof you can see the ocean.”
“And where does the whisperer conclave meet?”
I stared at her a long moment. “I don’t know. Only whisperers know that.”
Nuru spoke over her shoulder, and Empress Sichi’s answer was somewhat resigned. Nuru stood aside to let me in.
I had wanted to take the damn mask off so many times since Leo had first tied it around my head, yet somehow Sichi’s calm scrutiny as I entered was almost what broke me. I tightened my hands to fists and bowed. “Your Majesty.”
“Captain.”
In anyone else I would have excused the error as a lack of Levanti vocabulary, but I was coming to realise Sichi was a smart woman who never did anything without good reason.
The man with her turned, and I was surprised by the sight of Grace Bahain’s son. I had never spoken to him, only knew him by sight—a gently spoken young man with a soft smile. This he favoured me with, though his gaze skittered about my face, trying to find some feature of the mask to settle on.
“Dishiva,” Nuru said, having closed the door and joined us. “I don’t think you’ve met Lord Edo Bahain. He is Grace Bahain’s son and heir, and Sichi’s cousin.” Nuru spoke to Lord Edo in much the same tone, and I heard my name as he must have heard his.
“Do remove your mask and join us, Captain Dishiva,” Nuru said for Sichi, gesturing at an empty cushion beside the table.
It was a test. I could see it in the steady way she watched me. If I complied, they knew I was still myself. If I didn’t then I was Leo’s puppet. Well, I had wanted to see how far I could push my freedom. I was not outside. I could not be expected to drink tea with it on. And Leo never wore his in Sichi’s presence. Time to see if I was to be held to his own standards.
I slid the mask down around my throat as he often did, my heart thumping hard. “I will kill every one of your Swords and their horses. I will butcher even your dear Itaghai, and I will make you eat him.”
Sichi’s smile was grim, but she nodded as I knelt to join them, my knees weak. She poured me a bowl of tea and slid it across the table, speaking all the time.
“I am glad to see you have some mind of your own,” Nuru translated. “But tell me, why agree to that ceremony?”
“You speak like I had a choice,” I said sourly, but at least she hadn’t assumed me lost as so many of my own people had. “I’m afraid I’m endangering you by being here.”
“As I am endangering you by letting you stay. He is watching me. Ever since he came back.”
Nuru finished translating this as Sichi refilled Lord Edo’s bowl, a brief exchange between them going untranslated.
“He knows what we did,” I said.
“He does,” she agreed through Nuru’s lips. “But he doesn’t dare harm me or seek to use me. We think it’s because his hold on everything here is still too tenuous to risk Grace Bahain’s wrath.” She gestured at Lord Edo. “Edo tells me my uncle is very unhappy with Dom Villius’s current position.”
I turned to Lord Edo. “He doesn’t trust Leo? Can we use that to be rid of him?”
The young man looked to Nuru, the speed of the conversation frustratingly slow. “He has tried talking to His Majesty,” came his eventual answer. “Tried pressuring. Tried just shutting the man out, but Emperor Gideon is tenacious in holding on to him.”
I thought of the peace that had come over me, of how easily he had been able to make me do whatever he liked, but no sooner had I thought to tell them than I couldn’t. It made no sense. Easier to believe I had been dehydrated and starving. But how else to explain the change in Gideon?
“Have you noticed that Gid—Emperor Gideon has been… different recently?” It was a risky question, but it was risky even being present, and the opportunity for allies could not be passed over.
Sichi and Nuru shared a look. “We were going to ask you the same question,” Nuru said. “Sichi has not seen him since the ceremony and does not know him as you do.”
“He was your captain.”
This she conceded with a shrug. “I was only a saddlegirl, and the Gideon I knew back home isn’t the same man you got to know here.”
“Was he ever one to take advice? Or orders?”
Nuru considered this a moment before shaking her head.
“Then I have no doubt Leo is doing something to him,” I said.
Both Sichi and Lord Edo had watched our exchange, and Nuru quickly summarised it for them in a few lines of Kisian that made both look all the more grim. When she finished, I gave voice to the question I could not answer. “What does Dom Villius want?”
At Nuru’s translation, Lord Edo shrugged. “Power,” Sichi said. “Control.”
“But doesn’t he already have that?”
This time Lord Edo spoke.
“Lord Edo says the political situation in Chiltae has always been very complicated,” Nuru said, rather than translating his ongoing speech word for word. “He says they don’t have a central ruler like Kisians, and access to… being a ruler? I think they must have many, decided by money. Yes, nine high rulers, the nine wealthiest men in any given cycle.”
“Why must it always be men?”
Nuru shrugged and went on as Lord Edo continued in his soft voice. “The… second tier?… are the next nine wealthiest men, and while the top three haven’t changed for a long time the rest move around a lot, and they fight to be in the Nine. Trade wealth is everything.
”
“What about the church?”
Again Lord Edo gave his little shrug. “That’s even more complicated,” Nuru continued, staring at his lips. “The church is relatively new but has gained such popularity with the common people that some members of the Nine defer to the hieromonk rather than risk… I think he’s saying the common people attacking them, but we don’t have a good translation for that. An uprising is perhaps the closest, the whole reason we have a challenge system.”
“So he wants real power and he’s taking it through Gideon.” I sighed. “And he’s died some of the same ways as Veld in their holy book, which will make people think he is also a god. He can read our minds. And if we kill him, he comes back. Excellent.”
In the silence, Sichi refilled everyone’s tea bowls. “Do we have any other allies?” she asked, having blown the steam from the top of her tea three times. “Or is it just us?”
It was my turn to shrug. “If they knew all this and believed it, the Levanti would be against Leo. Especially if he’s getting into Gideon’s head. There’s…” I spun my bowl slowly on the table. To speak of Levanti affairs to outsiders felt strange and wrong. “There’s something like it going on back home,” I said, unable to meet their gazes as Nuru translated. “Gideon calls it a sickness. It’s why we’re here. Both why we were exiled in the first place and why he’s trying to build us a new home. Our herd masters seem to have been infected with… something that turns their minds far from what’s best for their people. If they knew it was happening here too…”
I couldn’t finish. I wasn’t even sure what most of them would do. My own feeling was one of suffocating dread and helplessness, not anger. And if I wasn’t alone in that, perhaps knowledge would not spur the Levanti to do something, but to fracture and break.