Blood's Pride

by Evie Manieri

  “He knows that,” the tall Shadari told Binit. He was looking down at Daryan, frowning thoughtfully. “She was going to kill you,” he told Daryan, “but your first thought was for her. Not yourself.”

  “I just—” began Daryan, but then he saw Rahsa’s eyes fix on him. Her lips moved and dark blood bubbled up at the corners of her mouth—he bent his head closer to hear what she was trying to tell him.

  “I did it … for you,” she gasped out.

  “I know,” he said, trying to reassure her, though he still had no idea what she meant. “I know you did.”

  Tal picked up Eofar’s knife from the floor. “There’s blood on this!” he announced, holding it up in the torchlight.

  “Daryan, are you hurt?” Omir asked.

  “No, no,” he answered, watching Rahsa’s face as she struggled to form more words.

  “She’s burning now,” she whispered. “I wanted us to watch together.”

  “We will,” Daryan assured her, then he realized what she’d said. “Burning? Who’s burning? Rahsa?”

  “The blood’s on the handle, not the blade,” said Tal, running his fingertip over the hilt of the knife and then holding it close to his eyes. “It’s all right, it’s not Shadari blood.”

  Daryan looked down at Rahsa’s right hand, which was resting on his chest. Her fingers had left a bloody handprint on the front of his robe: a blue handprint.

  “Who’s burning?” He pulled her closer to him. “Rahsa!” he cried as her eyelids fluttered, “Rahsa! Who’s burning?”

  As suddenly as if a string had been cut, her body went limp and heavy in his arms. Her head smacked down on the stone floor: she was dead.

  “Poor girl,” Hakim said, staring at her. “Temple madness, I guess. I’ve seen it before. And now with Shairav leaving she won’t even get a real funeral. She’ll have to stay shut up in the Dead One’s tombs—”

  Daryan rocketed to his feet, crying, “That’s it—the tomb! She said ‘burning’—the sun—the sun shines on the tomb. She’s there—she’s burning—”

  “I don’t—” Hakim started, but Daryan had turned to Omir and was clutching his robe.

  “Find Shairav—get to the stables; I’ll meet you there. Go!” He grabbed Eofar’s knife out of Tal’s hand.

  “Daryan, what—?” Omir called out after him.

  “Go!” he yelled back, running as hard as he could for Eleana’s tomb.

  Isa was burning.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She had to move—but the body that she inhabited no longer belonged to her. She couldn’t feel her heartbeating. She couldn’t feel the stone beneath her. Her eyes were open, but looking through them was like looking through a window; she could only guess that the wheezing gasps that occasionally broke the silence were the sounds of her own breathing; if she still had lungs, she couldn’t feel them.

  Her mother’s letter lay open on the tomb a few inches from her face, shifting gently back and forth in the breeze from the skylight above. There was a bright light near her knee which might have been the sunlight glancing off her sword. She thought she could remember putting it down there just before she’d perched on the edge of the tomb to read the letter. But mostly she could see her left arm. She didn’t want to look at it, but she couldn’t turn her head away, and she was afraid that if she closed her eyes, she would never open them again.

  She had to move: she knew that. But she knew the reason she couldn’t move was because she couldn’t feel, and the reason she couldn’t feel was because she didn’t want to, not since she’d woken up screaming, convinced that someone was pounding her hand over and over again with a hot poker.

  The sun had been blazing down on her hand and forearm. It had taken just a few frantic heartbeats for her to realize that the pounding was the rhythm of her pulse. Then the pain had stopped; it hadn’t gone away—she wasn’t stupid. She knew it was waiting for her, daring her to acknowledge that the mangled thing connected to her shoulder still belonged to her. And as unbearable as the pain had been then, by now it would be far worse, for all this time the sun had been beating down, it had also been steadily creeping over the tomb, and by now it was past her elbow. The skin on her forearm was bubbling with inky-black blisters; shortly, the flesh would begin to char away and poisoned blood would seep out, as it was already doing on her wrist and the back of her hand.

  She had to move, and soon, if she wanted to survive this. She didn’t want to die—not like this, not facing an afterlife as pointless and insignificant as her mortal one had been. Only warriors who died by the sword were admitted to Onfar’s celestial hall. The Book of the Hall relegated the murdered—and she was being murdered; she knew that—to the same shabby realm as accident victims, children and others of marginal status. Even worse, she had been killed by a slave, some scrawny creature who had snuck up behind her and smashed her in the head with something and then left her lying in the sun to burn without her having lifted even a finger in her own defense. The shame of it would haunt her through eternity.

  But to live—that meant to feel the pain, and this pain terrified her. She’d never known such fear. Whatever courage and fortitude she’d built up over her lifetime were laughable, mewling little things in the face of this. Was a little more life worth so much suffering? Death would find her, sooner or later; right now it would be so easy to close her eyes, just drift away. Already she could feel gravity’s hold over her lessening, and lightness filling her, pulling her upward, like a glistening soap bubble …

  Her reverie was interrupted by a sharp cry, then her vision blurred as she was lifted up. There was a babble of unintelligible words, and a crash, followed by another shout, and finally cool shade poured over her like balm. Away from the hateful sun, her eyes were able to focus again: she could see the doorway of the chamber, and her sword, teetering on the edge of the step next to the oozing lump of flesh that had once been her left hand. The crash had been the sound of the sword, falling from the tomb.

  She didn’t see him until he ran to the doorway, and then ran back to her. She wanted to say his name, to tell him that she was glad he’d found her. She wanted him to hold her—that most of all.

  “Can you walk, Isa? Do you think you can walk, if I help you?” His face was close to hers, though she couldn’t feel his warmth. She saw her right wrist in his hand—he was feeling her pulse—but she couldn’t feel his fingers. “You’re so warm. We have to get you out of here. Frea’s soldiers, they’re—”

  They’re here, she thought. She could sense them in the hallway, a moment before they entered the chamber, both talking at once.

  <—saw him go this way, if we follow him—>

  <—sure it was him? They all look alike to me. I don’t—>

  <—he’ll lead us to Eofar—>

  <—care about Eofar! We should be looking for the Mongrel. If we—>

  Daryan leaped up as they entered and placed himself between her and the two men. He had a knife—Eofar’s knife—but even in her present state, she could tell by the way he held it that he had no idea how to use it.

  “Stay away from her!” he shouted to them, his voice breaking in the middle with a kind of squeal. But the soldiers weren’t looking at him; they were looking at her.

  said one of the soldiers after a pause in which Isa could feel the full brunt of their horror.

  the other replied in disgust.

 

  his companion replied, and they stepped toward Daryan with their swords drawn.

  Air sliced into Isa’s lungs and feeling tingled back into her limbs—but not the pain, not yet, though she could feel it pushing, ready to explode. She had just a few heartbeats before her brain awoke to the truth. She reached across her body and closed her right hand around the hilt of her sword. She felt the coldness of the metal: it was the clear
est, most vibrant sensation she’d ever felt in her life.

  She tried to stand up, but her legs weren’t ready and instead she found herself sliding down the steps until her feet hit the floor. She used the momentum to rock herself upright. The left side of her body felt ridiculously heavy, as if it were weighted down by sandbags. Her right arm was too weak to lift her sword any higher than her knees, but she staggered forward. She could feel the pain beginning to claw its way over the barrier.

  she demanded as she pulled herself across the room toward the two guards. She knew them: the shorter one was Finlas, the taller one Varnat. Daryan turned to her and called out her name. Somewhere she found the strength to lift her sword up. She pointed it at her adversaries.

  Either one of them could have taken her down; together, they could have done it with laughable ease—but instead, they backed toward the doorway.

  stammered Finlas as he crashed into his companion.

  They were afraid of her, Isa realized with a sick kind of relief. Afraid of her. And she thought of what she must look like to them, with her burned arm, and black blood, viscous as paint, dripping down and spattering the dusty floor. She was a monster, a thing out of their nightmares—an affront to the gods. She was an abomination.

  she roared, and the two men fled from the room.

  And then the pain, as if knowing the battle was over, finally broke free.

  “Dar—” she gasped, expending the last ounce of her strength. She didn’t feel herself falling, but she did feel his arms as they came around her and she felt his warmth—no longer burning—as he pressed his cheek against hers. In her head she was screaming, but he couldn’t hear her and she was glad of that, because then he might have stopped telling her that everything was going to be all right, that he loved her, that he had always loved her, that he wasn’t going to let her go.

  But there was something she needed him to know. “Rahsa,” she coughed; all she could manage, but it would have to suffice.

  “She’s dead,” Daryan reassured her, without understanding that the danger she feared was for him, not herself. “She was mad; I should have known. I should have made sure—”

  Now she wanted to reassure him, but she had no more strength for words. She could feel the pain beginning to ease again, but this time, instead of embracing the numbness, she fought it. She tried to feel the coarse cloth of Daryan’s robe under her fingers, his arm beneath her, holding her up. She tried to feel the ache in her head where she’d been struck, but it was all slipping away. She heard the sound of swordplay, sounding very far away, and the last thing she saw before the room went dark again was her brother’s face swimming in the doorway.

  Moments passed, or hours; she couldn’t know. The pain existed outside of time. But she knew when she felt the pain again that she was coming back, moving closer to reality. She heard the sound of voices, but the words were garbled, as if she were under water. She focused all of her efforts on dragging her eyelids upward.

  She found herself looking up through a dark gray haze at the point of a sword. The sword was suspended over her heart, like a stake, and the white-knuckled hands that held it belonged to her brother. Then something streaked by the corner of her vision and slammed into Eofar, knocking him and his sword against the side of the tomb.

  “No! No!” she heard Daryan grunting.

  She could no longer see either of them, but she could hear them grappling somewhere behind her. “I won’t let you do it!”

  “There is no other choice!” Eofar’s voice sounded flat, but emotions too complicated for Isa to parse were cascading from him.

  “There is! Find it!”

  “Tell him!” Eofar pleaded to someone Isa couldn’t see. “Tell him the burns are poison—it’s too late for her. Tell him she’s dying!”

  The person he was addressing didn’t answer, but a moment later Daryan made a funny choking sound and cried, “Wait! I know what to do—Rahsa—her father—” Then in a different tone entirely, he said, “I know what we have to do. We cut off her arm, just like they do with the mining accidents.”

  “No—No!” Eofar barked. There was a long pause and she knew he was talking to someone in Norlander, but she couldn’t quite follow it—

  “Speak Shadari, damn you!” she heard Daryan demand. “I’ve had enough secrets for one day.”

  With a shock, Isa heard Lahlil’s voice coming from the other side of the room. Her emotions were so suppressed that Isa would have never known she was there if she hadn’t spoken. “He was reminding me what that will make her: an outsider. An outcast. He said that of all people, I should understand.”

  “Your arm didn’t make you an outcast,” Daryan told her pointedly. “Your mother did that when she shut you up in a room.”

  “How dare you!” Eofar rasped.

  “No—listen to me,” Daryan said, “you’re not worrying about Isa; you’re worrying about how people will treat her, and that’s not the same thing. All of my life, people have treated me like I’m useless, and a coward—but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I believed them.” His voice broke. “Isa isn’t like that. She’s better than me—better than any of us. The only one who’s going to decide whether she lives or dies is her. We’re not going to stand here and make that decision for her.”

  “Taking her arm won’t save her,” Eofar argued. “She’s not Shadari, she—”

  “It might,” said Lahlil quietly, “if we do it now.”

  “You don’t know that. You couldn’t—”

  “Did you see that?” Daryan asked sharply. “Her eyes just opened. Isa!” She felt his hands on her right wrist and she managed to open her eyes again. The blurry face bobbing in front of her eyes said, “There, look! Isa? Isa! Can you hear me?”

  She couldn’t answer him—she didn’t have the strength, not even to speak her own language. The pain was draining everything, and soon there’d be nothing left.

  “Here—give her this.” Lahlil’s voice was much closer now.

  Isa heard a metallic scraping sound. Then a pause.

  “How much?” asked Daryan.

  “All of it.”

  “This won’t hurt her, will it? You wouldn’t—”

  “It won’t hurt her. It won’t save her, either, but she’ll be able to decide for herself. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “What about you? Don’t you need this?”

  She didn’t hear an answer, but a moment later something hard pressed against her lips and a warm liquid dripped into her mouth. Her throat convulsed, but she forced herself to swallow. She could feel the liquid, whatever it was, spreading through her—first hot, then very cold, pushing back the pain. Isa pushed, too, half-hallucinating that she was pushing her shoulder against a door, holding it against an angry mob trying to shove their way through from the other side. Her sight began to clear and now she could see Daryan, kneeling beside her with a metal flask in his hand. Lahlil was standing next to him, and on the other side she could see Eofar’s dark boots.

  She tried to speak, but her lips were too dry. She wet them, and croaked, “Cut it off.”

  Daryan jerked up. “You heard that! You heard what she said?”

  “No,” Eofar said again, “I can’t—“

  She didn’t have the strength to explain, and she wanted them to understand, in case … “Paper,” she whispered.

  Daryan leaned closer. “What did you say? Paper?”

  “I think she means that,” said Lahlil, pointing at the letter lying ignored on the tomb.

  Daryan disappeared from Isa’s sight for a moment and then reappeared with the letter in his hand. “This is Norlander,” he said after a moment. “I can’t read this.”

  Isa told Eofar.

 

 

  She knew that only Lahlil’s medicine was making the pain bearable, and she wondered how long it would last. The room was already da
rker than it had been a moment before. Was the sun going down already, or was lucidity slipping away from her again?

  Then she heard Eofar. It was strange, how hearing her mother’s words spoken aloud in Shadari brought the memory of her back to Isa more vividly than anything else that had happened today.

  Eonar,

  I am going to find her. I am taking the girls with me. Our son I leave with you, but I fear he will be of no consolation to you when you learn what I must tell you now.

  You can never return to Norland. Not you, nor I, nor any of our children. Your bloodline is tainted. The emperor has received proof that your real grandfather was a servant on the Eotan estates, a man of the very lowest clan. To save you the humiliation and the court from scandal, he sent you here and agreed never to make it known, provided we never left the Shadar. He made me his conspirator on our wedding day. He made me pledge to keep you here.

  I kept the secret, believing I was protecting you. I thought that by hiding Lahlil I was protecting her, too. Now I see that in both cases, I was only protecting myself. I was afraid to do what I knew in my heart to be right. I was afraid of what I would lose. Now I can see that what I had was not worth keeping. I should thank you for that.

  I’m glad this happened. I’m going to find a place where I can make up these wasted years to Lahlil and the girls. No more secrets. No more hiding.

  For the love I once felt for you, I will try to understand what you have done. Someday, I may find a way to forgive you. As for now, Onraka forgive me, I want you to suffer.

  Do not try to find us.

  Eleana

  Eofar slowly folded the letter and laid it back down on the tomb.

  “You see,” Daryan said hoarsely, “she saw it, too. What’s the point of trying to hold on to a life that doesn’t want you, that has nothing to give you? Because you’re too frightened to look for something else? What are you afraid of?”

  “This is about Isa, not me,” Eofar replied. “And I am not afraid.”