by Devin Madson
Beside Gideon, Leo smiled.
“No,” I growled, pushing out into the crowd. “You can’t take this from us. I won’t let you.”
Confused Kisians watched on, jostled about amid the raging crowd. Lines of them stood between groups of Levanti, Lord Edo in the centre of it all, keeping his soldiers calm in what could easily have turned into a brawl, if not a massacre.
We reached the stage as a pair of axe-wielding Kisians managed to make their way through, only to find Sichi blocking the stairs. With her arms thrown wide she scowled like a protective hawk, the fluttering of her robe like ruffled feathers. She was shouting, not only at the Kisian executioners but at Gideon, at the crowd, at all who would listen, and though I could not understand her words, they rang with vehemence.
“Gideon, remember that day you named me ambassador,” I said, not caring who heard me. “You told me you were afraid this would happen. Afraid of what he would make you do. This is exactly that moment and you need to fight it! Please!”
He was listening. Staring. Intent. Almost I could see the battle rage behind his eyes. Could see his struggle. Against the voice. The peace. The weight of everything that was Leo inside his head. And even before he spoke, I knew he would order their release. That he would win this fight. That he could. He was Gideon e’Torin. Our emperor. Our herd master. Our chosen one.
Until he turned. And met Leo’s gaze.
“Kill them.”
“No!” I screamed. “Stop! I challenge you, Gideon e’Torin, for the right to lead this herd.”
The words were out, leaving my whole body thrumming with the knowledge of what I had done. What I had said. All around me Levanti stilled in a moment of silence.
I dared not look at Leo. Dared not look at Yitti and Himi and Istet and Lok, knowing too well their lives now sat upon my shoulders. Upon my voice and my soul. Upon my ability to speak to my people and earn their respect.
“Do you accept the challenge?” someone close to the stage demanded of Gideon.
He had to. Had to accept the challenge or forego his position. No matter what Leo could make him do or say, those were our laws, and whatever had changed in the way we lived, those laws were so ingrained in all of us that no Levanti could follow a herd master who did not abide by them.
“Yes,” Gideon said, so completely without thought that I wondered if Leo could have altered his reply had he tried, or if there was some deep, incorruptible part of us even he couldn’t reach. “I accept the challenge.”
Noise rose as the Levanti spread, shouting for a fire to be built, while the Kisians all looked at one another in confusion. The axe-wielding soldiers sweated as they looked from Gideon to Edo and back, unsure what they ought to be doing, while the crowd around them dispersed.
“Except.”
Such a small word. He didn’t shout it, yet it froze all who heard it, even the Kisians, their hands reaching for their weapons.
“Except,” Gideon repeated, Leo ever a statue at his side. “That Dishiva e’Jaroven, by the very laws she claims to challenge me by, is not allowed to make such a challenge. She is no captain. No matriarch. No member of a hand. She is, as Defender of the One True God, not even Levanti anymore in the eyes of our gods, and as such she cannot challenge me. Kill them.”
The words seemed to reverberate, quietly spoken yet the loudest sound I had ever heard, vibrating their meaning down through my limbs and into the very ground on which we stood. Behind the Second Swords, Gideon’s most loyal supporters stepped forward. I made it two steps toward the platform before one plunged a blade into Yitti’s side. Yitti threw his head back, his shock and pain mirrored on the others’ faces as Levanti, people who ought to have been their friends, their allies, stuck blades into their backs and sides and throats. Hands bound, Yitti fell to his knees, wide eyes staring as blood spilled from a slash across his neck. For a moment he seemed to stare at me, but his gaze slid out of focus and he toppled. The thud of his body hitting the wooden platform echoed upon silence—the sound of Levanti Kisia’s ruin.
17. RAH
The castle’s great entrance hall was full of soldiers, each one sitting cross-legged or kneeling on the stones, even their leaders. I had never seen a stranger training session. A few hundred Kisians crammed into the space repeating Levanti words and phrases loud enough to echo to the high stone ceiling. They had not taken to the idea with any enthusiasm, but what had started as a mumble had eventually become a disciplined shout.
“Wait!” they cried in unison when Minister Manshin, standing a few stairs from the bottom, shouted the equivalent in Kisian. Tor stood beside him, but he hadn’t needed to correct the minister for the last ten minutes. Perhaps there was a chance we could do this after all.
“Close attack!”
Amun leaned close and whispered, “You think they’ll remember once we’re out there in the dark?”
“I hope so.”
He grunted. “At least if we don’t pull it off, we’ll be too dead to look stupid.”
I tried not to think about it. Going through Grace Bahain was the only way we were getting to Kogahaera. Since the run-in with Yiss en’Oht’s Swords, riding to Kogahaera to free the Levanti still in thrall to Gideon had become a goal for many, and one I could encourage. They didn’t need to know I had a different reason for wanting to get there.
“Down!” the soldiers shouted. It seemed to have become something of a competition who could shout it first and loudest, and however strange it was listening to Kisian men chant Levanti commands, at least they were taking it seriously.
“Full chaos!”
They seemed to like that one best. Tor hadn’t told them it was a distraction of last resort and not something they were likely to enjoy.
“Do you think the elders who created ekkafo ever thought we’d teach it to outsiders?” Amun said.
“We aren’t teaching it to them. We’re just using them as extra sword arms because we’re short-handed.”
“They’ll want to learn it once they see it in action.”
He was probably right, and though I was proud of our ways, the thought of teaching the sounds to anyone not of the plains made me twitchy. I couldn’t say why, but it felt wrong. It was one thing to make use of it under our command, but to gift it to others? I hoped Empress Miko wouldn’t ask.
I thought of her standing before me in the stables, her hands on my chest as she stretched up to grant the kiss I had wanted all too much yet known I ought not take, because no matter what Gideon was attempting or what we had achieved in this hall, there was no place where Levanti and Kisia met. We were two people from vastly different worlds with different views, two people who couldn’t even understand each other properly. Yet I could tell myself that a hundred times, could believe it with my entire being, and one look at her little scowl of determination had me wishing it untrue. It had taken all my self-control to hold back, to let her make the choice, only for Manshin to walk in. She had been right in front of me, offering comfort and affection and warmth and wanting all I had in return, until she had stepped away and taken that warmth with her.
“Silent!” The word rang to the high ceiling, and trying to think of anything but their empress’s lips, I looked out over the miniature sea of Kisian soldiers and wondered which ones would be heeding my commands tonight. I could only hope they were as good at fighting as they were at memorising. And that my body wouldn’t let me down. The wound in my leg still ached.
Seeking somewhere to sit, I turned toward the great staircase. Ezma was there in its shadow, and before I could look away, she beckoned. I’d managed to avoid her since saving the deserters at Otobaru Shrine, unable to trust myself to be respectful knowing she’d had me drugged to keep me out of the way before taking the opportunity to leave me for dead. She seemed to have forgotten those details, bestowing a smile on me as I joined her.
“Whisperer,” I said. She deserved no respect, but I would not demean myself by calling her anything else.
�
��Captain Rah,” she returned, perhaps for the same reason. “Do you really think this travesty is going to work?”
I clamped my teeth together, loosening the bite when a sharp pain ripped through my ear. It was gone as soon as it had begun. “What travesty? A horse whisperer hiding in the shadows?”
I was beginning to really hate her mocking look. “Or a Levanti captain making eyes at a foreign empress. Whatever will our Swords say when they discover they are really fighting for your cock?”
“They are fighting to protect themselves and their people. Show me how my cock makes that untrue.”
Ezma folded her arms, looking me up and down.
“What do you want, Ezma?” I said. Behind me, the chanting of Levanti words went on. “Why are you here? Why try to get rid of me?”
“I’m keeping the oath I made when I became a horse whisperer,” she said, ignoring the second question. “That’s all I have ever sought to do.”
“You swore to lead when whisperers should never do so? And to leave Levanti who threaten your control behind to die? That’s not the oath I was taught.”
Ezma tilted her head. “You were taught?”
I looked away, annoyed with myself for having said so much, but her mere existence seemed to make my blood hot.
“Who taught you the oath of a horse whisperer?”
There was no going back now. “Whisperer Jinnit,” I said, meeting her gaze squarely. “When I was his apprentice.”
Ezma took a step back, annoyance passing unchecked across her face. “You?” she said. “You were an apprentice? When? How?”
“I was chosen at nine years old, the same as all apprentices. Because I had all the ideal traits.”
“But you failed him.”
“No. I was a good apprentice. He said I would make a famed horse whisperer one day. It just… wasn’t what I wanted.” I had only ever admitted that to Gideon. The shame of having run away, of having let down my herd, had trapped me in silence. It was a weapon she could use against me, but doing so would mean having to admit to others I had the makings of a whisperer. The sight of her expression changing from a sneer to a snarl as she realised this gave me a fierce, angry joy.
“A false whisperer,” she said. “To add to your other crimes.”
“I am not a false anything. But you are. Why were you exiled?”
Her eyes narrowed. “That is no one’s concern.”
“You don’t think so? What crime can have been so bad you were sent away, not just for a cycle, but for ten?”
“What makes you think I didn’t just choose to stay, as Gideon did?”
“Abandoning your duties. I don’t think that’s any better.” I stepped closer, all too aware of the tight skin over my healing wounds hampering my movement. “These Levanti have followed you because they want someone to believe in; they don’t ask questions because they fear the answers would return them to a state of hopelessness. You think it’s because they trust you, because they love you, because they need you.” I shook my head. “You’re wrong.”
She lifted her chin. “Threatening to challenge me?”
“Only if you force my hand,” I said, Amun’s warning that it would be all too divisive still fresh in my mind. She ought to know as well as I did how greatly it would weaken us.
Behind me the gathered soldiers shouted, “Down!”
I disliked the smile gathering at the corners of her lips. “There’s a lot more going on here than you have any idea of, Rah e’Torin. Consider that a warning. I won’t let you get in my way, nor your empress.”
I left her in the shadows, telling myself it was all bluster, yet her warning gnawed at me as I walked away. As I reached the base of the stairs, the Kisian soldiers rose from their places, stretching and talking and making their way toward the meagre sunlight offered through the open door. The sunshine called to me too, reminding me that Jinso was in the stables and it had been too long since we had ridden out together, but with an army on the way there was nowhere safe to go.
Two men had joined Tor and Minister Manshin on the stairs. One was called Moto, I had learned, and led most of the soldiers. The other was General Ryoji, commander of the empress’s personal guards, and despite his penetrating stare, she seemed to trust him the most.
He was speaking to Minister Manshin, Tor watching but not translating, leaving me caught between confidence it was of no importance and an intense desire to be reassured. I managed to settle on the former until Empress Miko’s voice made my gaze snap to the top of the stairs. She descended, her pale robe reminding me of the one she had worn while trekking through the mountains. It had no longer been white by the time we’d reached the inn, but the unexpected collision of memory with the current moment set my skin on fire.
The empress glanced at me only to look away as fast. Clasping her hands before her, she spoke to her generals while beside me, Tor still said nothing. It wasn’t until I nudged him that he said, “They’re talking about the ambush plans. The minister is pleased with how the soldiers did today and hopes with a brief revision before setting out they will be able to do their job well enough. Like there can really be such a thing as well enough in an ekkafo.”
“We’ll make it work,” I said, quietly enough not to interrupt the flow of their conversation. But Empress Miko turned at the sound of my voice as I had at hers. She looked away again, leaving me all the more attuned to her presence than I had been before. To the proud way she stood and spoke to these experienced men, to the sleek way the robe fitted her body, drawn in at the waist by a crimson sash like a slash of blood, to the way she kept her head turned toward me enough that her profile all but glowed against the dark walls beyond.
The conversation went on, and I clenched my fists and released them again, irritation building. I had come up with this plan, yet here I was standing awkwardly on the outside of the conversation. I knew, logically, they could not always leave time for translation, that it was a lot of work to heap on Tor’s shoulders, but that didn’t help the tension growing in my body like a stretching bowstring.
“They don’t agree on how to divide the soldiers or where the empress and her archers ought to be,” Tor said eventually. “But they do all seem to agree there’s nothing more to be done right now and everyone should eat and rest.”
They all watched Tor finish his translation, and having so many eyes on me did nothing to ease my annoyance. I stared back at each Kisian general, only the empress’s apologetic smile keeping me from snapping something I would be glad they could not understand.
“Rest is good,” I said. “But why are they all staring at me?”
Tor shrugged. “To see if the great Levanti leader has any words of wisdom? They’re talking like they’re so kind in deigning to listen and consider your plan, and in letting you and the rest of the Swords fight for them. You should probably thank them if you want them to like you.”
I shot him a look. “No. Tell them my people will need good food and rest, as well as adequate supplies to ensure their weapons are in the best condition. Tell them we will gather at sunset to go over the plan.”
A smile flickered across Tor’s face as he translated this. I watched them bristle, petty joy warming my heart. Miko twitched her own amused smile, and I fought not to grin back.
At an order from the empress, we were dismissed. General Moto and Minister Manshin stepped away together, while with a lingering look my way, the empress and the head of her guard made their way back up the stairs, leaving Tor and me at the bottom, the room around us far emptier than it had been ten minutes before.
I watched the empress until even the sweeping hem of her robe was out of sight.
“Remember the phrase I taught you,” Tor said. “Say after me: Ao gasho te remeste mot, kaa lo kiish ao falachu sho loa-da.”
“I am not so lacking in either honour or pride. You, however, lack respect.”
“Respect for who? I assure you I respect the empress enough to wonder what she sees in you when
you can’t even talk to her. The great Captain Rah e’Torin, exotic piece of manflesh.”
“Respect for me,” I said coldly.
“Why, because you’re leading the collective Swords tonight? So what? You’re not my captain, because I’m not a Sword of the Levanti. I’m just a useful mouthpiece.” He walked away.
“We can fix that, Tor,” I said. “We can fix that right now if I can find the right tools.”
The unmade Sword stopped, glancing back over his shoulder. “You could, but it’s too late. How can I give my life, my soul, in service to something I don’t believe in anymore?”
What was there to say? His words hurt to the core, but my pain was nothing to his. When had he realised how he felt? That the person he had been born and the person he had been forced to grow into no longer matched? Was there any bottom to that well of grief?
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
“I’m still sorry it happened. And that if there was something I could have done, I didn’t.”
After a moment’s indecision, he walked away and I let him go, as much because I couldn’t think of anything to say as because he needed time and space to be alone. And I needed to rest.
Shivering from a combination of cold and lingering exhaustion, I set my foot on the first step and began to climb to the castle’s heights. Most of the Levanti had refused rooms inside, preferring to sleep in tents or beneath the stars as herds were used to, but I had been by myself too long, without my herd too long, and had grown used to being alone. To silence. To the inside of buildings rather than braving the rain and the cold air. Perhaps I was slowly losing everything that made me Levanti and would soon feel like Tor. I told myself there was much more to feeling Levanti than sleeping on the ground. If only I could believe it.