The Unconquered City

by K A Doore

  “You are wasting time,” said Heru, words clipped. “Your friend is stable. We must go.”

  “Canthem needs another minute.”

  “You do not have another minute,” snapped Heru. “And they will die as surely as you will and the rest of this city if the sajaami is freed. Leave them. They can handle themself.”

  “Go,” said Canthem, pushing at Illi with as much strength as a fly. “I’ll find an alleyway to hide in, in case anybody else comes.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  Illi went. The stairs wound up and up and up. They seemed narrower than before, or maybe that was just the sajaami, pushing against the confines of her skin and bones. She hadn’t slept since the other side of the Aer Caäs, yet she felt as fresh as she had during her very first ride on the sands to meet the guul.

  It was Heru who slowed her down. Every full turn of the stairs, he stopped, gasping for breath as he leaned against the metal wall. The fourth time this happened, he gestured wordlessly for her to continue. As loath as she was to leave him, she knew he was right. The sajaami was giving her energy he didn’t have. She could start the rite on her own.

  As she climbed, her back began to itch, then burn. Each individual scar ached as if it were being cut again, line by line and yet all at once. The sajaami thrummed in her chest, a sensation both painful and comforting, not too unlike a cat kneading her with sharp claws. Aside from that and the energy pulsing through her, she didn’t feel any different. She definitely didn’t feel as if she were falling apart. Twenty minutes, Heru had said. How long had it been?

  The stairs ended and the smell of salt and water and murky, living things struck her across the face. The wall stretched ahead, matte gray in the burgeoning dawn. On one side, the pale white of the city. On the other, the metallic glint of so much water, too much water. Any moment the sun would finally crest and light would spill and scatter across the sea. She needed to be done before then. Jaan were weakest during the liminal phases of the day, so it followed that the sajaami would cross over most easily now.

  Illi got to work. She set down the pack she was carrying and pulled out the balls of tinder. She placed them in a circle on the wall, then sat cross-legged in its center. She lit the first tinder, then smoothed the piece of vellum across her knee and painstakingly transcribed the words and symbols on the scroll Menna had given her. She could read some of it, recognized half, but the remaining symbols might as well have been the illegible scribbles of a child.

  She lit another tinder. She finished writing and undid the knot of her water skin. She rolled the vellum into a funnel, then carefully poured the water from the skin across the vellum. The water mixed with the fresh ink, absorbing the prayer. Before it could spill, she directed the flow of ink-stained water onto her wrap. As the water seeped through fabric to skin, even the sajaami’s heat couldn’t keep Illi from shivering. She realized then that she wasn’t wearing white; just a dull traveler’s beige. It shouldn’t matter—color wasn’t a part of the rite—but she wasn’t sure what should matter.

  She hesitated, the striker over the third tinder. What if she’d missed something—a stroke, a word, a movement? She didn’t know enough. Any little piece of this rite could be wrong, out of place. Where was Heru? He should have made it up the stairs by now. Was he really that weak?

  Focus. She had a task to complete and her time continued to fall, each second another few grains gone forever. She couldn’t wait for Heru.

  She struck a spark. It fell. The tinder flared and caught, another spot of warmth in this too-cold place. And as its light bathed the metal wall, footsteps echoed up from within the tower. Finally.

  But the sound was wrong. There were too many steps, too loud, too fast. Metal clanked against metal: armor. Heru hadn’t been wearing armor.

  Illi stood, her hand on the hilt of Yufit’s sword even as Nejm gently admonished her. You don’t need that anymore.

  A figure appeared in the darkness of the tower’s doorway. She wore the thick leather armor of her soldiers, with metal chain around her neck and polished plate across her chest, but her helmet was under one arm, her tangled brown curls trailing free, her glass-bright eyes fixed on Illi.

  Merrabel had arrived at last.

  32

  Kill her.

  The words were more impulse than thought. Illi was already reaching before she even realized what she was doing. Then Merrabel stepped to the side and two soldiers yanked a pale and flustered Heru Sametket through the doorway, hands bound behind his back.

  “Let him go,” said Illi, her breath burning her lips. When had she become so warm?

  Merrabel cast Heru a dismissive glance. “Him? Oh, so now you care about your old master? Perhaps something really did change after you turned on me.” She shrugged, a casual gesture that was betrayed by the tightness in her shoulders and around her lips.

  Illi’s gaze slid past Heru, searching for Canthem. Had they gotten away? Had they been able to hide? Or was Merrabel keeping a worse surprise within the tower?

  But when Merrabel lifted her hand, no one else appeared. Instead, one of the soldiers holding Heru shifted her grip and stance so that she could press a knife to Heru’s throat.

  “These are the terms,” said Merrabel, careful and clear. “Your obedience in exchange for Sametket’s life. I’d rather not extract the sajaami at this time, but I will if I’m forced to. I’d prefer to have it fully under my control, since you’ve already broken my trust once, but you’ve forced my hand.”

  Without warning, Merrabel took three steps forward and struck Illi across the face. The general was back where she’d been standing before Illi could process what had happened, the sting on her cheek the only reminder.

  “You could have stayed,” continued Merrabel. “You could have spared the lives of many soldiers and more, perhaps, by the time this is all over. Together, we could have protected the kingdom of Hathage and all of the Wastes, including your small town. You need never have feared guul or invasion again. But instead you chose selfishness. You wanted the sajaami only for yourself.”

  “I don’t want the sajaami,” said Illi. “I never wanted the sajaami.”

  Merrabel spread her arms. “Wonderful! Then give it here and let’s all go down from this dreary place.”

  The breeze curled around them, biting against Illi’s wet skin. Time spun with the breeze, there and gone, gone, gone. If the rite wasn’t completed soon, it never would be. Illi looked past Merrabel to Heru for any hint as to what to do, but he was dazed, disoriented. He kept closing his eye, as if the faint light were too much for him. The glass eye stared, fixed ahead on nothing.

  When he opened his eye again, his pupil was wide. Concussion, said Mo’s voice, thinned by distance and time.

  Cold anger whirled in Illi, fighting back the rising heat. “What makes you think I’ll keep my word?”

  Merrabel shrugged again. “Honestly, I don’t trust you to. But as we speak, my other soldiers are rounding up your friends. I’ll have plenty of hostages to make certain you obey me. And you will obey me. But you have served beneath me. You know I’m not needlessly cruel. I’m honest and I’m fair. I’m just doing what I must to keep my people safe.”

  Merrabel reached inside her cloak and drew out two pieces of curved metal, one burned to a matte gray, the other a polished silver. The bracelets. Merrabel tossed them to Illi, who didn’t bother trying to catch them. They landed, clanking, at her feet.

  “Put those back on.”

  Illi stared at the bracelets. She couldn’t imagine a future where she was forced to obey Merrabel’s every whim. But she also couldn’t let Merrabel kill Heru. Shards and dust, Heru was supposed to have been the one safe thing in her life, the one person she didn’t care about. He wasn’t supposed to die. He couldn’t die. She curled her hands into fists as rage pumped through, not entirely her own.

  He wouldn’t die.

  “How did you evade the sajaami’s power?” asked Illi, stall
ing for time. “I quieted the guul and I quieted your army.”

  Merrabel smirked. “Seems even a sajaami can’t get through the charms I’ve personally made. I have you to thank for that, and all the experiments we ran together in my lab.”

  Illi’s skin prickled with heat. The water she’d drenched herself in was beginning to evaporate, despite the humidity. Even with the power thrumming through her, she felt thin. She could feel the sajaami’s impatience growing.

  This must end soon.

  Illi agreed.

  She picked up the bracelets. Merrabel smiled, thin and humorless. Illi stared at the bracelets in her hands. Do you trust me? Heru had asked, before releasing the sajaami. She lifted her gaze. Heru was little more than a crumpled old man on the wall, pale as bone and as fragile as a bird, far from the en-marabi that had terrified her the first time she’d found his lab and dared step inside. His fingers were stained black with ink from all the writing he’d done during their journey, all the theories he’d exchanged with Menna while hunched over the fire every night. He’d worked so hard for this, harder than he had on even the guul. And for what—to destroy something powerful, something he’d lusted after himself.

  Heru’s eye met hers. His lips moved, but no sound came out. But Illi could read the shape on those lips and knew exactly what he was saying.

  “Finish it.”

  There was resolve in that single eye and Illi knew, deep in her bones, that Heru had a plan. He was going to outmaneuver Merrabel. He had something up his sleeve. Illi just had to act, and he’d take care of the rest.

  Illi met Merrabel’s smiling gaze and smiled back. Then Illi tossed the bracelets into the sea.

  “No!”

  Merrabel started forward, hand outstretched, as if she could pluck the bracelets out of the air. Then they were gone, swallowed up by the fathomless water with hardly a ripple. Illi didn’t know how much longer she had, but now it would have to be enough. Her skin was as thin as paper, her lips brittle and raw.

  Merrabel snarled and drew her sword. She shoved the soldier with the knife out of her way. Heru grunted as she slammed her hand against his shoulder, driving him down to his knees. Then Merrabel drove her sword through his back and out his front.

  Heru gurgled. Merrabel yanked her sword free, its metal dripping crimson. Heru toppled forward, eye wide. He coughed and coughed again. Red foam spilled from his lips and onto the tagel around his neck, red blood pulsed from his back, quickly staining his white wrap, pooling on the wall around him. It reeked of copper and decay, and Illi was simultaneously on the wall and back in Ghadid, smoke swirling around her, bodies nearby. Everyone she’d loved, gone.

  “No,” said Illi.

  Heru had a plan. He had to. Yet he didn’t move, he didn’t stir. Red spread across his white wrap and Heru just lay there. Not. Moving.

  Merrabel cleaned the blood from her sword with a cloth. “That was unfortunate. As annoying as he was, Sametket did have a few decent ideas. No matter; his blood will be of some use yet.”

  The smell of blood filled Illi’s nostrils, metallic and hot. She pushed back panic. She wouldn’t let Heru die. But first—

  “If you still haven’t changed your mind,” continued Merrabel, “your friends are below—”

  All it took was a brush of her fingers. Merrabel’s eyes stayed wide as she toppled backward, her last words still stuck in her throat. Illi flung her jaani away like a piece of dreck. Then she swelled, her power vast and growing vaster. Nejm unfurled.

  She could feel them all, every soldier of Merrabel’s that had gotten away from her before. They wore charms—simple things around their necks and waists, only enough to keep her from noticing them, but nothing more. They wouldn’t stand against Nejm.

  With a flick, the charms broke. With a flick, she tore away their jaan. She swelled further. She was unstoppable.

  Then the memories crashed into her, their sights and sounds and smells as real as now. The spread of sand below, endless and unquestionable. The sweep of storms that had regularly rolled across the land, bigger then and more frequent. Clusters of green life that she’d once nurtured, guiding the storms to carve these gardens out of the emptiness. The people who had found them, sullied them, destroyed them. The people who had crept into her lands. The people she had snapped like twigs beneath her power.

  But they’d kept coming. They’d forced her and her brethren back with their persistence. They’d braved the storms and survived them, survived everything she and her people could throw at them. And then they’d changed the world itself with their machines, with their metal birds, with their drilling and burning and digging. The gardens died, but they kept coming.

  In the end, they’d come with fire and words. They’d used up all their water and were left only blood. But they had no qualms with blood, especially if it wasn’t their own.

  She remembered the screams of the dying.

  She remembered the feeling of stone, all around.

  She remembered the sensation of centuries passing. Of time wearing at her shell.

  She remembered how her fury had dulled to rage had faded to anger had hardened into resentment.

  She would kill them all.

  Then: pain. It was such a small thing, so cold and precise. It struck her arm and snapped her back to herself. She was amazed that she could still feel pain, that she still had a body. Which meant she wasn’t Nejm; she was Illi. She was human. She was here and she was now and so was the pain.

  Illi touched her arm and stared at her fingers, red with blood. Her gaze met the soldier’s, standing so close with a bloody knife in hand. Illi wondered, distantly: how had she missed this one? But even in her fury, she’d cast wide, hoping to miss those closest to her, to miss Canthem.

  The soldier quailed, stumbled back, whatever courage she’d gathered vanished in that moment. She turned and ran, the other soldier right behind. Leaving Illi alone with two corpses.

  No.

  Illi could feel the pulse of Heru’s life, but it was weakening. He clung on. The sea sloshed to one side. So much water. So close. She could heal him, but—

  But the pain.

  It spread like a crack in glass. Illi stared at the blood on her hands, then the light that poured from her wound. The light spread, crackling up and down her arm. Her skin puckered outward, broke.

  Dimly, she remembered Captain Amilcem. The light pouring from her eyes, the smoke from her mouth. Heat built up inside of Illi, pushing and pulsing against her skin, which could no longer contain her. Contain Nejm. She was going to fall apart. Was this how Amilcem had felt in those seconds before she’d shattered and broke, torn to pieces by the guuli?

  Help me, she said to Nejm. You don’t know what will happen if I fall apart while you’re bound to me. You still need me.

  A rich smugness filled her, completely at odds with her own numbness. I don’t need you.

  Illi didn’t have the strength left for fear. Heru, she needed Heru. She fell to her knees next to his body, slipping a little in the blood. So much blood. Yet for once, she wasn’t drawn back to the night of the Siege. Instead, the present grew sharper, more real.

  She could still feel Heru, a swirl of warmth. Alive, if dimming with each betraying pulse that left him a little less blood. His eye fixed on hers.

  “Go,” he said with one breath.

  Illi shook her head. She grabbed his hand even as cracks spidered across hers. Nejm was roaring in her head like a fire gone wild, but if she focused just on Heru, she could still hear. Still see.

  “Fool.” Heru coughed and blood dribbled from between his lips. “Do … the rite.”

  “I can’t. It’s too late. But you—”

  The cracks widened and Illi felt as if she were burning up, as if someone had placed the sun within her and now her organs were withering, cracking with the heat. But she could feel something else. The water so near. She could still heal Heru, still save him.

  Heru snarled and tried to sit up. Instead he c
rumpled and fell. But he caught himself and kept his gaze fixed on Illi. “Basbowen,” he growled. “If I’ve learned one thing … about you … cousins, it’s how fucking obstinate you are. You’re afraid, but you’re not a coward. Illi Basbowen—perform the rite.”

  And he shoved her. Just a little, not enough to off-balance her, not enough to hurt, but just enough to make his point. She wouldn’t have time to heal him and do the rite. She only had time for one.

  Illi swallowed, or at least tried to; her throat was too dry. She pulled the striker from her pouch with shaking, breaking fingers and struck a spark on the last tinder. The sajaami screamed. Illi’s head felt like it was going to burst. Perhaps it was. Every nerve was on fire, literally. As her fingers fell apart, Illi picked up the burning tinder and breathed in its oily smoke.

  I can save him, promised Nejm.

  She took a step backward, toward the wall.

  I can save you.

  Another step.

  I can save everyone you love.

  Any barrier that had existed between her and Nejm had been wiped away, and although she and Nejm blurred, she could see the truth as plain as if it were her own. Illi had seen the destruction Nejm had caused and now she could see the fear and the loneliness and the doubt, as well as its resolve to live despite, in spite. Humankind had wiped out its people and it would return the favor.

  So she held tight to Nejm, and as the pain overcame every fiber of her, she thought of her parents. She thought of the Siege. The pain and terror she felt now was nothing compared to that night. She had lost everything once. She wasn’t about to lose it all again.

  Another step.

  Nejm fought and Illi watched her hand dissolve. She clutched the burning tinder to her chest with her remaining hand.

  Let me go, pleaded Nejm.

  I will, she promised.

  Then she closed her eyes, held the tinder tight, hummed a prayer, and stepped back and off the wall.

  She fell.

  She hit the water.