We Cry for Blood

by Devin Madson

  At this, both Levanti turned their gazes around the table to await a response. They acknowledged the men, but ultimately settled their attention on me as the decision maker, and I had fought so hard all my life to have my opinion even noticed, let alone respected, that their calm acknowledgement of my authority made my heart thud all the more fiercely.

  “How many soldiers would you need?” I said, forestalling my advisors’ questions.

  “As many as you have. But they must be able to take orders from us without question or delay.”

  “Are we seriously considering this option?” General Moto said with a little laugh. “Seriously considering risking the lives of our soldiers on… singing?”

  “It is not just singing,” Tor snapped. “It is a… precision man… manu… strategy that would have you shitting your pants and running if we used it against you. It’s been cloudy. There’s little moonlight. They won’t be able to see a thing without lighting torches, and that’ll only make them a bigger target. It’ll work even better if you have a lot of men who are good with bows and can pick off any sources of light.”

  I could lead the archers. Rah could lead a manoeuvre no Kisian army would ever expect. Together we could do this. Could salvage success from disaster. A sense of hope flared within me, all the more intoxicating for being him and me, like we were a foretold force that together could change the course of history.

  Minister Manshin cleared his throat. “We need to know more about how this works, Your Majesty, else I cannot advise it. We need Grace Bahain to bow to you or be bartered back to the false emperor, alive, and we cannot simply”—he glanced at the scowling Tor—“trust they have a plan that will work.”

  “I don’t intend to,” I said though I bubbled with excitement. “They will explain the plan in great detail, and we will execute it. No, General Moto, I will not take the safer route when retreat would give my people little reason to follow me. I have had too many losses. Too many retreats. It’s time to make our enemies fear us.”

  16. DISHIVA

  It was no unified herd we led back to Kogahaera, each day upon the road more divided than the last. I swung hourly between pride that so many Swords looked upon the chained Torin and saw it for the horror it was, and wanting to shake them all until they could see their enemy wasn’t Gideon, but Leo. Leo and the Swords who were taking the opportunity to revel in cruelty. They gathered around Yitti and Lok and the twins, harrying them to walk faster and hissing at them for traitors. It was an ignominy no Levanti ought to bear, but the Torin stood proud and walked in silence.

  Keeping to the back of the cavalcade, I watched the movement of Swords, gathering to mutter and whisper, an endless dance of hooves upon the road. At our head, Gideon rode, paying no heed to any of it, and I couldn’t but wonder what was going through his mind. The part of his mind that was still him.

  I watched and I worried and I waited until the shadow of Kogahaera City came into view, our walled compound sitting like a duckling beneath its wing. With our destination in sight, I urged Itaghai to a trot and, moving onto the grass, passed the staring, muttering mixture of troubled Levanti and wary Kisians.

  Gideon didn’t so much as turn his head as I reined in beside him.

  “Defender Dishiva,” Leo said, greeting me with an inclination of his head as though he had been the emperor. In every way that mattered he was.

  “Your Majesty,” I said, ignoring Leo like the annoying fly I wished he was. “What do you intend to do about the unrest caused by your plan to execute the Torin?”

  A flicker of expression crossing Gideon’s face rewarded my bluntness, yet it was in an emotionless voice he said, “Anyone to whom the execution of traitors is a problem is themselves a traitor.”

  “Ah, so this is going to be a very large execution then. It is going to take you quite a while to take the heads of at least half your supporters.”

  “Burying them will be easier.”

  I knew they were Leo’s words, but could not stop disgust flaring through me at such calm dismissal of our beliefs coming from Gideon’s lips. “Of course,” I bit back. “I’m sure Rah would agree with so reasonable an efficiency.”

  The moment the words were out of my mouth I wished I could call them back. Even as Gideon’s eyes closed in pain, Leo smiled the most self-satisfied smile I’d ever seen lips produce, physical distance all that kept me punching it off his face. Not a moment went by when I did not wish Gideon strong enough to fight back, but in all too real a way, he was our shield, forcing Leo to focus on him so completely that he could not turn his ability upon the rest of us. And I had hurt him for it.

  To push my point further would be to fight with Leo through Gideon and achieve nothing, so I let Itaghai fall back.

  Returning to Kogahaera brought mixed emotions. The heavy sense of dread I had expected, but the relief of homecoming I had not. When had I started thinking of it as home? As a safe place I understood, at least when compared to the Kisia outside our walls. After the conversation with Secretary Aurus, I even had some small degree of hope for the future. Hope that whatever threats Leo made, whatever he was forcing Gideon to do, he was fallible. He had weaknesses. And we had allies.

  The gates swung open upon a familiar yard. A yard that might have been a comforting sight but for Yiss en’Oht standing in the centre, a leader welcoming us home. Had any other captain stood thus, my sense of hope would have swelled, but Yiss had refused to question Gideon’s orders, had led an army against peaceful deserters, and I could not but eye her return with misgiving.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, saluting as Gideon rode in through the gates. “Your return is well timed. I was on the verge of sending a messenger after you.”

  “You have news of the deserters?”

  “Yes, but that can wait.” Yiss’s feet shifted, something uncomfortable in her stance. I braced myself for bad news. “Traders from Risian report a Chiltaen army is camped a few days west of here, making a nuisance of themselves among the refugees from Mei’lian who went north. The news is all over Kogahaera, and many of the refugees who came here are already leaving. Some of our… Kisian allies are also… conspicuously absent as of last night.” She looked to Edo as she spoke. He would need it all translated, but when it was he would surely feel the same slow sinking sensation I had felt with every new pronouncement. She hadn’t even reached the outcome of her attack on the deserters yet.

  “A Chiltaen army?” Nuru said as she accompanied Sichi’s travelling box into the yard. “West? Not the ones we just came from near Kima?”

  Yiss turned a sneer on her. “Not the same ones, saddlegirl. I am not a fool.”

  “They may not be the same, but we have equally no cause to be concerned by them,” Gideon said, reining in. “They are allies of Dom Villius and are not our enemies.”

  I thought of Secretary Aurus’s warnings. Leo’s army. An army he could use against us if we didn’t do what he wanted, if Gideon rebelled. If I kept getting in his way.

  Gideon dismounted before his most loyal Sword captain, the yard slowly filling around him as the tail of his cavalcade made their way through the gates. “And your mission, Captain?”

  “I request to discuss it in private, Your Majesty.”

  “No.” Gideon seemed to enjoy the damning syllable, standing before her with a slight smile while one of the serving boys led his horse away. “Here. Either you have successes to be celebrated by your herd, or failures to bear to them.”

  Yiss drew herself up, and I couldn’t but feel sorry for her, whatever her mission had been. “The deserters got away, Your Majesty,” she said, meeting his gaze so intently she need not see the gathering crowd, need not see them turn grimaces to each other. “They were warned we were coming.”

  “By who?” Leo this time, but she kept her gaze on Gideon as she answered.

  “By Lashak e’Namalaka.”

  I hoped it was only my imagination that made it feel as though many eyes turned my way.

 
“There is more,” Yiss went on, seemingly inured to her fate now and determined to have it all out despite the talk growing around her. “They have an exiled horse whisperer.”

  The words dropped like broken water barrels onto the stones, a gasp spreading through the Levanti. They hadn’t known. Of course they hadn’t known. And now each of them had to contend with the confusion such a discovery wrought within them as I had done. An exiled horse whisperer.

  “She called a Fracturing,” Yiss said. “We lost many and had no choice but to walk away once we were outnumbered. Rah had Kisians with him as well, and fighting them seemed… unwise.”

  “Rah?” Once again, Gideon snapped out his name as a question before Leo could quell it, a desperate flicker of fear twitching his features.

  For the first time since beginning her report, Yiss looked around at the crowd of Levanti onlookers, her gaze a question. Was he really sure he wanted her to speak in front of so many? However unwise it was, Gideon’s desperation to know what had become of Rah would keep him from fighting Leo’s seeming desire for nothing but chaos and disunity.

  She cleared her throat. “Yes, Your Majesty. It would appear he continues to be a thorn in your side. I don’t know in what way he is allied with the Kisians who threatened us, but the Fracturing was instigated on his words.”

  While she spoke, the last of the cavalcade had been riding through the gates, leaving the arrival of the chained Torin Swords ill timed. Or perfectly timed, perhaps, if divided Levanti was Leo’s current goal. Yitti led them in, head proudly raised, and all the muttering and whispering that had followed us back from the Chiltaen camp erupted again, leaving Gideon and Yiss the centre of a hissing sandstorm.

  “Keep them under guard,” Gideon said as Levanti stepped aside for the prisoners to be brought through.

  “That’s it?” Yitti called after Gideon, his voice hoarse. “That’s all we get? No discussion? No appeal? You call us traitors, but you are the very greatest traitor of all, and the gods will ensure you suffer.”

  Gideon had stepped toward the manor doors, but he looked back over his shoulder in a way so aloof and uncaring I felt cold to my bones and had to remind myself this wasn’t our Gideon anymore. This was just Leo’s Gideon-shaped puppet now.

  “Prepare for their execution at sunset.”

  I found Jass in the caves, packing supplies into half a dozen satchels. At the sound of my steps he looked up, hand skimming to his sword hilt. “Dishiva.” His hand dropped as he stood, the pair of us closing the space between us with hurried steps. “You’re back.”

  Our arms slid around one another, and there with our chins upon each other’s shoulders we clung tight to this fleeting comfort, this one thing that hadn’t been taken from us. Need held us there long after we ought to have parted, like starving animals eating their fill.

  When at last I stepped back, unable to keep the smile off my face despite all the news I carried with me, I gestured at the satchels. “Jass en’Occha’s rescue service is going well then?”

  His sombre expression split into a grin. “I should start demanding payment in jerky. I’ve helped about a dozen through so far, too terrified to walk out through the gates lest they be hunted down like the deserters and—”

  “They survived. The deserters. There was a Fracturing. And Rah was there. And Kisians.”

  “Hold up, slow down, Di.” Jass gripped my arms, his firm hold steadying me. “Start at the start.”

  I told him about Yiss’s news, about the Chiltaen army and the envoy and the Torin Swords condemned to execution that night, and as it all spilled out of me I had the doubtful felicity of watching his expression run a full gamut of emotions from surprise to horror, relief to fear. At least I no longer felt alone.

  “I think I’m about to get a lot more people through here,” he said when I finished. “What a mess. I’m sorry, I know you really believed in him. In this.”

  “The worst is that I still do. There’s a way through this, a narrow, difficult path like that—” I pointed to the crack between the first and the second cave, barely wide enough to squeeze through. “It’s so close I can feel it. If I can just get rid of Leo for good, then Gideon could do this.”

  His smile was a pitying thing. “I wish that was still true.” He let me go and turned around, staring out into the dim cave. “Gideon has to go.”

  The words echoed around us unchallenged, and only once they had faded did Jass turn back to face me. “You know it’s true. It’s been true for a while. Even if you could get rid of Leo. Even if Gideon was still the same man. Even if you could convince everyone it was all Leo’s fault. Gideon’s reputation is too damaged. People might still believe in his ideals, in his plans, but not in him.”

  I closed my eyes, but couldn’t block out the truth of his words, a truth I had known and yet refused to accept or acknowledge. In continuing to shield us from Leo, Gideon had sacrificed everything.

  “We can’t kill Leo without him coming back,” Jass said, softly now. “But we can kill Gideon.”

  Such a suggestion ought not to have been able to come from Levanti lips, but so much had we changed, had we been shaped by the need to survive and by the Kisians around us, that I was not even surprised. It was the easiest way. The neatest fix, and yet I shook my head. “No. He deserves better than that. He brought us this far. Sacrificed so much. There has to be another way.”

  Jass pressed a sad smile between his lips. “I’m sure there is, but how is the fighting against Leo Villius thing going?”

  I’d had such hope, yet the answer was terribly. Horses and Swords had been sacrificed to his increasing warnings, but all I had achieved was a vague peace with a Chiltaen who wasn’t even a threat, and further division. I had risked the lives of others, yet when it came to sacrificing Gideon’s to the greater good of my people, I recoiled. I had believed in him, in his vision, with every shred of my being.

  “If Gideon died, Leo would just turn his focus on whoever next opposed him,” I said, staring into the shadows as I worked my way through an idea coalescing in my mind. “If I’m right and he can’t focus his… manipulation on more than one person at once, then—” I snapped my gaze to Jass’s worried face. “I should have done this days ago.”

  “You’re going to challenge him.”

  “I’m going to challenge him.”

  Jass blew out a long breath and ran his hand over his face. “It’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had—”

  “Thank you.”

  “—but it’s close. All you would really be doing is exchanging Gideon for yourself. Why not let this dream die? Why not go home?”

  “Because I’m not ready to give up on us. On this, and neither should you.”

  It wasn’t a good answer. I knew it wasn’t, but I couldn’t put into words the complex depths of my feelings. About our herd masters on the plains. About fighting for the right to exist. We deserved a future no less than any other people—that a fight to which I would give my life.

  My hands trembled, and I closed them to fists. “You don’t have to stand with me,” I said. “You can leave if that’s what you want, but you can’t talk me out of doing what is right. If we can split Leo’s attention, if I can—”

  “I get it,” Jass interrupted. “I don’t like it, but I get it. It’s very… you.”

  “I can’t tell if you mean that as a compliment or an insult.”

  “Neither can I.” His laugh was strained. “Either way I’m not going anywhere. Having almost died, and helped you carry a very broken body out of your room, I feel like it would be pathetic to walk away at this point. If you’re trying to push me into leaving, you might have to be more aggressive. I’m a stubborn bastard and I like you. So don’t die. Or become Leo’s puppet.”

  Reciprocal words hung on my tongue, but I could not speak them, too close would they be to a promise I couldn’t make.

  “I’ll try,” I said instead. “I should go. The sooner I do this thing the sooner I can order
the Torin released and try to pull us all through this in one piece.”

  Jass’s smile had a wry edge, my lack of response not having gone unnoticed. He saluted. “May the gods watch over you, Captain.”

  Captain. It was a retreat to a former formality, one I had to accept because there was no time to do anything else. Somehow I had become the Levanti empire’s last hope.

  No guards stood outside Gideon’s rooms. It was a bad sign. I knocked, just in case, and receiving no answer, slid the door to peer in. Empty room, empty table. The room hardly looked lived in at all—a very Kisian space in which Gideon temporarily existed.

  Standing in the doorway, I ran through all the places I might find him with evening drawing close. It no longer mattered that Leo would be with him too, the beauty of the challenge that regardless of what Leo might want, Gideon could not refuse it without forfeiting his position outright.

  Running steps broke upon my thoughts, and I turned as Nuru came pelting along the passage, skidding to a halt out of breath before me. “The execution,” she said, bending double and gasping. “They’ve brought it forward. It’s… it’s happening now. Outside.”

  “What? But it’s not—”

  “I think Leo must have thought you would try to stop it. Come! Now!”

  He already knew my plan.

  No more time to think, only to run. Along the passage and down the stairs, blindly sprinting in Nuru’s wake out into the bright daylight. I blinked, seeing nothing but brightness and flickering shapes, shapes that slowly coalesced into figures—Kisian and Levanti alike—gathered in a mass before the low stage. Noise hit me like a sandstorm, nipping and tearing at my skin. Groups of Levanti were shouting at Gideon, at Keka standing at his side and the Second Swords of Torin upon the stage, even at each other—this moment the knife edge upon which our future stood.