by Devin Madson
By the time the Chiltaen army had been defeated, I had no energy left for joy or satisfaction, only a numb sense of gratitude that it was over. I had done nothing, but it was over. Yet my work was only beginning. All too soon Whisperer Ezma stood before me, tall and blood spattered and menacing in her crown. She was enormous atop her grand horse, but rather than dismount, she spoke down to me. “Your Majesty. Where is Gideon e’Torin?”
“I understand he was dead before the Chiltaens attacked,” I said, shaken from my stupor. “Killed by Leo Villius, but the story is… confusing. You have my thanks for arriving when you did.”
“Your thanks is not required. I have much to see to.”
Other Levanti swarmed around, some familiar, others not, all on their great steeds, stopping only to greet one another and check their mounts for injuries. One or two had started on the heads of their fallen, and there were enough dead Levanti scattered through the courtyard that they would be at it for a while.
“You will have to tread carefully,” Edo said, drawing close and speaking low as he watched Ezma depart. “Don’t demand the loyalty of those who fought for my father yet.”
“Why not? Without Emperor Gideon there is no other ruler to rally behind.”
“Not unless you force them to elevate one. They are wary of your Levanti.”
“Say the people who sided with a Levanti emperor.”
“And had great cause to regret it, and no reason to think the Levanti Gideon called enemies are their friends. It’s complicated.”
I bristled, disliking his paternal air. “I am a Kisian, fighting for a Kisian Kisia, what does it matter who my allies are?”
“Would you say the same if someone allied themselves with the Chiltaens?”
“No, but they are our enemies.”
“And the Levanti have not been?”
“The Levanti have no power here anymore. There is no reason to fear them.”
His look was full of disbelief. “Just… leave it a few days. Prove what sort of leader you are. Give them some time.”
Time during which Minister Manshin could turn them all against me. Panic flooded ice through my veins, and clenching my hands to keep them from shaking, I said, “I could have every one of them executed if they refuse.”
“To what end?” he said calmly. “So you can rule through fear? That isn’t the sort of leaders we wanted to be, Koko.”
The very softest of his words were a punch that left me winded and speechless, ashamed to the depth of my soul. He could have kept speaking, could have moralised and crushed me, but instead he smiled, a weak, disappointed thing, which was almost worse.
“I will leave you to consider, Your Majesty,” he said, bowing. “There is a lot to do here before the sun goes down.”
He walked away, and only then did I see Minister Manshin standing close by. How much had he heard? Enough, I thought, by his scowl.
“That was a disaster,” he said without preamble as he approached. “But I am glad to find you safe, Your Majesty.”
“And you, Minister. Our alliance with the Levanti bears further fruit.”
Around us, everyone was busy. Wounded soldiers were being carried or tended in place, broken piles of stone were being picked through for signs of life, horses were everywhere in an ever-spinning dance of velvet skin, and through it all Kisian and Levanti congregated in their separate groups, some exultant, some sombre, but always separate.
Despite the noise and the people and the activity, no one came near us. He looked at me as I looked at him, left to imagine all the things he wanted to say. That he had warned me not to attack. That we ought not rely on the Levanti. That their arrival had been lucky, not the outcome of good planning.
He said none of it, just “My daughter?”
“Here. Safe,” I said. “She chose to surrender herself, and I have accepted her into my custody. I intend to pardon her and dissolve her marriage if she wishes, but have not made any plans yet for her future.”
“You haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t.”
Somehow, I managed to keep my voice steady. Somehow, I looked him in the eye and did not flinch. Did not bend. Did not break.
“Very well, Your Majesty,” he said, and with a stiff, cold bow, he turned away. With the regal stride of a man robbed of his vengeance, of an object upon which to vent his fury, the man who had once been my most trusted minister walked away.
26. RAH
We left the sounds of conflict behind, but replacing it with the echo of our steps and ragged breaths was hardly an improvement. The journey in through the caves with Jass had been a special sort of nightmare, all dark shadows and low, jagged roofs and the feeling of weight pressing down on me, enormous and inevitable. It was almost a blessing to be able to focus on Gideon, no matter how heavy and awkward he was.
Jass ambled ahead, disappearing at intervals to double-check the path before returning. I envied his ease.
“You’ve been through here a lot,” I said as he strolled back to us, his lantern hanging unheeded from his hand. I held mine high, my arm tense.
“Quite a few times,” he said. “Mostly I carry messages and supplies. And help people escape.”
“For yourself or for Dishiva?”
He lifted a brow as I caught up with him. “Both?”
“Are you one of her Swords?”
“Technically she doesn’t have any anymore, but before that yes, and before that no.”
At my side, Gideon staggered on, dragging his feet. He leaned heavily against me like the effort of being upright was too much.
“But you help her anyway?”
“It’s complicated. And honestly, due respect and all that, but I don’t owe you an explanation.”
He went ahead again, not looking back as he slid through a narrow crack into the next cave, turning dark to light with a swing of his lantern. His humming echoed in the next chamber. I could ask him to help me get Gideon through the narrow opening, but I already felt like a burden he didn’t want to deal with.
“I’m sorry,” Gideon said, the words an airy warmth against my cheek. “You don’t have to do this.”
I hadn’t planned to talk to Gideon until we were out of the damned caves and maybe not even then, maybe never, but his words triggered a burst of anger that made me hot from head to foot. “Oh yes?” I snapped. “And what should I do instead? Leave you here? Good. Excellent. I hadn’t thought of that, what a grand idea.”
The ground shook. A distant roar stampeded toward us like a galloping herd. Lightning cracks echoed, and the shaking became more violent, sending us stumbling back from the opening. Ahead, Jass shouted, but it was just useless noise beneath the rumble and crack of tumbling stone.
“Get down!” I shouted, pushing Gideon before me. He stumbled a few steps and fell as a fist-sized rock smacked into the ground near his feet. More came down around us. Fear spiked like cold knives, and I dragged Gideon into the arch between caves, stopping as a waterfall of dirt poured from the ceiling in the hollow behind us.
“Shit!”
Still clutching the lantern, I threw myself on top of Gideon and curled over him as best I could, tensing. Small stones hit my back, nothing to the crack and roar of shifting rock that lasted both a heartbeat and an eternity. Until slowly, it began to fade. The last stones to hit me bounced off, and I heard them fall. Heard Gideon’s breath. Felt him alive beneath me though every breath tasted of dirt and dust.
I coughed, but it didn’t help. Dirt seemed to clog my throat all the way down.
Somehow the silence was worse than the roar, every small, close sound serving only to intensify it. I lifted my head. My lantern lay half buried in the dirt slide, illuminating a thick curtain of golden dust filling the space. A small space, enclosed by a slope of dirt at one end and at the other by fallen stones. A large rock had wedged across the narrow arch between caves, protecting us from skulls full of rock. Although if we couldn’t get out, dying slowly from thirst or hunger
or both was unlikely to be an improvement.
I swallowed a shard of panic and took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. Gideon hadn’t moved. I rolled him over. “Are you all right?”
“Great,” he croaked, punctuating it with a cough. “Is that daylight?”
I looked up and gasped as a sharp and increasingly familiar pain stabbed into my ear.
“Rah?”
With a hand to my head, I examined our new ceiling. There did seem to be a glimmer of daylight above. Too far to reach, even with the right tools.
“Rah?”
“I’m fine.” I dropped my hand. The pain in my ear subsided to a mere constant ache.
Carefully I got to my feet, dirt sliding off my back. Three strides took me to the lantern and I pulled it out, blowing dirt off the glass and cleaning it with my sleeve. Anything rather than look at Gideon.
Despite his silence, I was sure he was watching me.
I looked back up at the glimmer of daylight overhead, that tiny hole the only ingress of air into our small, dirt-filled hollow. “Well, we’re fucked,” I said, kicking away some dirt at the base of the slope. More slid to take its place. “There’s no saying how much rock is between us and a way out.”
I thought of Jass and then very deliberately stopped thinking about Jass. Most of the cave-in seemed to be behind us, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking.
Gideon sat up, one arm curled around a bent knee, the other stretching and bunching fingers in the soft dirt beside him.
“At least we have some food and water.” I patted the small satchel I’d been carrying and silently thanked Dishiva for her foresight. “So we can live longer and not miss a second of this thrilling stuck-under-a-mountain-of-rock experience—”
“Rah.”
“—although it will mostly be just sitting in the dark once the lantern burns out. But maybe we’ll be lucky—”
“Rah.”
“—and the roof will collapse on us and end our suffering.”
“Rah, I’m sorry.”
I rounded on him. “Sorry for what? For killing Yitti? Or for killing Himi? Or is it Istet you’re sorry about?”
He sucked a sharp breath and let it go, followed by another and another, beginning to tremble. It wasn’t really him, I told myself. It wasn’t really him. I ought to sit with him or apologise or do anything at all except stand and watch him suffer, but even when he gripped his hands together so tightly his fingers turned white, I didn’t move. All I wanted to do was shout. He had been willing to do anything to achieve his ends. This had only happened because the cost had always been too high.
It wasn’t really him.
I backed against the opposite wall and slid slowly to the floor, our feet barely a pace apart. Being present was the best I could do.
While tears leaked silently from his eyes, I concentrated on my own breathing, seeking to keep down my panic. Perhaps we would be able to dig our way out. Perhaps Jass would get help.
I risked another look at Gideon, scrunched into a ball and shaking. It was like looking at a different man. My Gideon was bold and sure, expressive and capable, my First Sword, my idol. This Gideon was a mess.
But he’s still your Gideon, a traitorous part of me said, and trying not to think about Yitti and all the Swords I had failed time and again, I shuffled over to him. I had no comforting words, but I had an arm I could lay over his shoulders as he had once done to me.
Gideon leaned away with a wet sob, but I held him in place, wrapping my other arm around his chest and locking my hands together. Habit took me the next step, sitting my chin on his shoulder, my nose finding its old place pressed to the side of his head. We’d spent long evenings sitting so around campfires back home, the jut of my throat against the curve of his shoulder—two shapes that did not fit and yet felt so right.
I ought to have pulled away but didn’t. He smelled of dirt and blood and sweat like he might have done after a hunt, and for a moment we were home on the plains waiting for the cooling winds of the Eastbore to roll in. When they came, we would strip off our tunics and let it chill the sweat from our skin, before tying up our sacks of meat and riding back to the herd. But we weren’t home. We were stuck beneath the ground outside a Kisian city, far from where I’d planned to die.
“Do you remember the day you taught me how to skin?” I said, speaking to the side of his head, prickly with short regrowth. “We rode so far from camp that I worried you’d gotten lost.” I breathed a laugh. “But you had thought far enough ahead and found a nearby waterhole for when it got messy. Enthusiastic, I think you called my knife skills at the time. It had been such a hot summer, I don’t think you even tried to persuade me not to jump in, did you?”
We had stayed all afternoon, splashing each other and sitting in the water, able to talk and laugh and just be in a way that wasn’t always possible when constrained by responsibilities. At the time I hadn’t considered I could have learned to skin in camp, that it had not been his responsibility to teach me, that it was yet another occasion Gideon had gone out of his way for me. And even now as I considered it for the first time, Gideon trembling in my arms, I told myself it was just how we had always been, nothing more. He’d made an impulsive young man’s promise to my dying mother to look after me. It hadn’t been his job, and no one would have held him to it, but he had.
Because he loves you! Sett had spat the words at me back in Mei’lian, and I had been avoiding thinking about them since. Love meant a lot of things in a herd.
“You weren’t a very good swimming teacher though,” I went on, because continued avoidance of difficult topics seemed safest. “You wouldn’t even get in the water that summer we spent with the Sheth. I know you said you didn’t like their games, but it was because you liked to be the best at everything, wasn’t it?”
Gideon didn’t answer. He was still shaking, but his breathing had eased to a more natural pace. I reached for the water skin Dishiva had packed. “Here, you might feel better.”
Yes, because a drink of water could absolutely help wash away feelings of guilt, I thought, and immediately chided myself. It hadn’t been him. But I had been me when I had given Sett his death sentence. Did Gideon know? He must; there had been so many witnesses.
He took the water skin but didn’t pull the stopper. “Not because I wanted to be the best,” he said, making no effort to free himself from my hold. “Because you were having plenty of fun without me.”
A more pathetic admission had probably never passed his lips, and for a stunned moment I couldn’t accept that confident, glorious Gideon had ever thought it, let alone believed it.
“That Sheth girl was very pretty,” he went on, still not moving. “What was her name again?”
“I don’t remember.”
He pulled the stopper. It took three goes to get it loose, but at last he managed and tipped the skin to his lips before handing it back to me. I’d thought to save my first sip until later, to stretch the water supply, but suddenly my mouth had never felt more dry.
I let him go and took a sip.
“Lahta,” Gideon said abruptly. “Her name was Lahta.”
I got up and strode the length of our tiny prison before spinning back to face him. “Why? Why does it matter? That was… ten cycles back. More!” I turned on the rocks piled between us and freedom. “What the fuck are we just sitting here for anyway?”
I dropped to my knees and, fuelled by a furious energy, began picking up rocks and throwing them aside. The rockslide was full of sharp edges, but I kept digging, dirt clogging my fingernails and stones scraping my palms. My fingers soon ached from being jammed into the pile, like the sheer force of my desperation would get us out of there.
After a time, Gideon took off his crimson surcoat and joined me. He knelt an arm’s length away and pulled stones off the pile, his movements so slow and disinterested it was all I could do not to shout at him again. He was exhausted. He needed rest and care. He would get neither if we died here.
“Don’t you want to get out of here?” I snapped when he took a particularly long time between lifting one stone and throwing it onto the pile we were building.
“Not really.”
The unexpected answer drew my attention. “What?”
His gaze didn’t shy away, his dark-ringed eyes full of fatigue and hurt and a frightening determination. “It would be easier not to, don’t you think?” He picked up another rock and threw it aside. “You think you’re hurting. You have no idea what it even means.”
My heart felt too constricted to beat anymore. “I’m… I’m sorry about Sett,” I said, the words the most useless things I’d ever spoken.
“Me too.”
Gideon didn’t look up, just set another rock aside, his fingers trembling. I had expected him to let his anger out on me as I had with him, but he just slowly moved rock after rock like he hadn’t heard.
You think you’re hurting. You have no idea what it even means.
With every rock I moved, more dirt and stones cascaded to take its place, a never-ending barrier between us and freedom. If any freedom existed on the other side at all.
When my fingers began to cramp, I sat back, stretching them with a frustrated growl. The ache in my ear had remained throughout, and I wondered if it was possible for a body to fall apart from misuse.
Gideon stopped too, but I worked my fingers and forearms like he wasn’t there, bending and stretching and rubbing my tense limbs.
“Here.”
He held out a hand. He’d never asked before, always just started working my muscles, but nothing was ever going to be the same again.
“I’m fine,” I said, and he lowered his hand with a twitch-like shrug.
I kept pressing my thumbs hard into my forearms, annoyed by how skilled I knew Gideon was. Somehow I managed to hate myself as much for wanting him to offer again as for being angry he had offered at all. None of my thoughts were fair or kind, but I couldn’t help what spewed from my heart. Even my own guilt over Sett could not detract from what he had done.