Days passed, and she heard the beat of hooves in the distance, coming closer. The faint jingle of bridles and headgear, the soft neighing of the horses. She didn’t move. Not even when she heard the loud shouts, the voices of men. A shadow passed over her face, but she gave no reaction. Someone spoke to her; others gathered around, casting her in shade. She could use it as a temporary relief. A soft pat on her cheek became a slap.
She sighed.
Strong hands lifted her from the stone, wrapped her in light cloth. She let it happen. Harsh questions in a harsh language she didn’t understand. Someone splashed her face with water, then held a water skin to her lips. She drank a little. Some precious water ran over her lips and down her chin. It was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted.
Someone sat her on a saddle, and after lying on those jagged rocks for such a long time, sitting upright was hard. She let her head loll against the man behind her. He stank of sweat and horse and human. What she smelled like—she couldn’t say.
A circle of riders around them. Riding somewhere. Who cared where to? It didn’t matter. The maiden was freed eventually, if she remembered the tale correctly. The bounce on the saddle jolting and uncomfortable. What happened to the maiden afterwards? What happened to her hero?
“Death,” the Blade whispered. “They all died.”
Nora thought about this, pressed up against the rider, aware of the beat of his heart, the pulsing life in his veins, and reaching out with her mind, she heard the horse’s heart, the horse’s blood pumping through its veins.
“We could stop their hearts,” the Blade said. “All of them. All the riders. They probably deserve it.”
A dull throb began to build behind Nora’s forehead. She should probably warn these people. Tell them to just leave her in the desert. That it wasn’t safe to come near her. But her throat ached, and when she opened her mouth to speak all that came out was break crack slash who would believe you? you’re just a madwoman they found in the desert. So she closed her eyes and mouth again, and went back to the stone and the ring of fire in her mind.
She must have slept.
She woke to the sound of children’s voices nearby, and realized that the riders were riding into a fortified place. Children ran alongside the horses, chattering at the riders excitedly, and most of them answered demurely or snapped at the children. None slowed down. Instead, they passed a wooden palisade, and then underneath a guarded gate that closed when the last rider passed through.
It was an old army fort, Nora thought, looking around. It had the standard imperial layout with the straight lines and efficient buildings that at least a dozen others shared, all spread along the wavering borderlands between the empire, the queen of Shinar’s realm, and the Rheged province. High stone walls meant that it was a longstanding fort—temporary ones usually just depleted the woodlands surrounding them before rotting and being reclaimed when the forts were abandoned. This one had not yet been abandoned. The small company of soldiers who had picked her up seemed to be part of a single unit, so maybe a hundred men remained stationed here. The fort was a bit shabby and run down, like a soldier nearing the end of his years of duty for the empire.
On the south wall, a large watchtower loomed like a sentinel over the no-man’s land, but Nora could only see one guard standing up there, and he had turned to watch the comings and goings on the inside of the fort. The fort itself was large enough to hold a garrison of about five hundred soldiers. Six longhouses that Nora guessed were barracks ran in straight lines with imperial discipline along the eastern wall. Other, smaller buildings stood along the western walls. These looked more like utility buildings, storehouses, stables, workshops, and the like. She couldn’t hear any sounds of industry. The huge forge in the open smithy had not been lit.
On the other hand, children ran across the training yard. Washing lines hung between the buildings, and domed tents with bright patterns, very like the one she’d seen in the domed house, had been erected in the shadows of the whitewashed buildings. She had heard that camps of people would often accompany an imperial unit, little sworn-in communities that made their living around the soldiers’ forts: cooks, brewers, and whores. But living inside the fort was surely not allowed for those people, and next to the clarity of the army buildings, the organic mess of the tents looked much like a new cancerous growth between the orderly lines. There was a babble of people, children, and domestic animals, and wherever Nora looked, everyone looked harrowed and gaunt.
Displaced people with no place left to go—so they went where there was shelter and safety and spread their tents there.
She was gently helped down from the horse and given into the care of a group of women. Two wore black garments and were hung with gold. Wives, not whores, then. Or widows now, perhaps. They tutted when they saw the state she was in. They bathed her in a corner of the fort, screened off by sheets, dousing her in water again and again, scrubbing her skin with a milk-scented soap, talking at her first, then switching over to talking amongst each other when she didn’t answer.
Run away, Nora wanted to tell them. Leave me, take your children, and run for your lives. But she said nothing, and calmed her fear lest the Blade smelled its scent and came bursting forth upon these people. She said nothing, simply gazed ahead, ignoring everything and everyone.
The two older women in black shared a few looks over Nora’s head, and then shaved her hair off.
Again.
Every time she came south, she had her head shaved. Never mind, she told herself, as the black mat fell onto her shoulders, tickling her nose. She could regrow it anytime, in the blink of an eye if she wanted. They gave her a black veil to wear instead, and she took it against the heat and to wear dispassionately over her face when their looks became to much to bear.
She was finally clothed in clean linen, guided to a sleeping nook in one of the domed tents full of women and children, and she lay there, only a little sad that she couldn’t see the sky anymore.
There was a small shrine to the god Shinar in the tent in which Nora slept, and on the first night, she waited until everyone slept, and dismantled it, burying the ritual golden dagger of Shinar in the manure heap next to the stables. She did it again the next night, after the women had spent their afternoon rebuilding the shrine. They never found the dagger.
The third night, though, a wiry matron who had seemed to be sleeping prostrate before the shrine snatched at her wrist as she carefully, skillfully now, took the gilded pieces apart.
“I know you,” the old matron whispered, her grip like steel. “I recognize your face. You are the girl who dared defy our queen in the arena, Noraya Smith.”
Nora’s heart skipped a beat at the old lady’s words.
Kill her, the Blade urged. Do it now, and no one will ever know.
The old lady worked herself up to a sitting position, leaning against the shrine. Nora fell back onto her haunches and waited.
“You will leave the shrine alone, and you will leave this tent tomorrow,” the old woman hissed, her dark eyes reflecting the golden warmth of the solitary candle burning in remembrance of the Eternal Flame, Shinar Himself. “We have done you kindness, child, washed and clothed you, welcomed you into our midst, shared our food and water with you. I haven’t told my daughters who you are, else they would kill you. And who would mourn another dead woman in these woeful times? It’s a shame. A bitter shame. All this death.”
“You can’t kill me, grandmother,” Nora whispered. There was an edge buried within, a warning.
The old lady shrugged. The gold bangles around her slender wrinkled wrist jangled quietly in the night. “I didn’t say I wanted to.”
“Why not? I spit on your queen. And Shinar?” Nora gestured at the candle that sputtered with the movement of the air. “Your god can’t protect you anymore. Shrine or no shrine. He’s dead. And Suranna’s led you all to believe that somehow she will resurrect him. She won’t. She’ll never get the Blade. Never be able to perform her s
ick rituals. The sooner you let go your ill-placed faith, the better for you. For all of us.”
The old lady sighed and shook her head.
“You know so little, child. Hatred has clouded your judgment.”
“I know what I saw in Shinar,” Nora hissed. “Tell me about hatred, grandmother. Did you let your children be offered to Shinar’s fire? Tell me whether you ever chanted with the other so-called priestesses, and watched one of your sisters being defiled. Tell me about judgment.”
“If I did, would you kill me for it?”
The old woman smiled, her black eyes twinkling in the dim light. She leaned in closer. Her fingers trailed across the candle flame, and though her skin was singed, she did not pull her hand back.
“Let me tell you about grief, child. I will never return to my temple. I will never see the many pillared halls of my youth again. You cannot imagine how much it broke my heart to see the gates sealed shut behind us. Do you understand the loss of one’s home, one’s life?
“But we go forth, as missionaries. All of Shinar’s people. Our queen has scattered us far and wide so that we might enkindle the whole world with the glorious light of Shinar reborn. What do broken hearts and a few lives matter in view of the eternal light before us?”
“Your queen is a fucking cunt. There is no Shinar reborn.”
The old lady laughed quietly. “I have seen the child our queen has born of our Most Holy Lord with my own eyes. Kill me, if you want to, child. But I will not allow you to touch the shrine again.”
The old lady gasped when the candle’s flickering fire sputtered, winking out. It turned into wisps of smoke and then a light rain of soot. And in the darkness that followed the loss of the eternal flame, Nora still sat there, staring at the wrinkled face.
Nora raised one hand and was surprised to find an obsidian-black knife in her fist, ready to strike the lady down, right here in the middle of the tent full of sleepers. And not just the woman who had dared stop her, but everyone else, too. Burn down every tent in this fort. Burn down the entire south. Burn out the corruption. The defiled stench of Shinar. How dare they? How dare she? She, the bitch queen, Suranna. The false goddess. Usurper.
No.
Nora ground those thoughts to a halt.
Remember Arrun. The little girl clutching her mother’s foot. Remember who you are. It took tremendous effort to sheathe the dagger in Nora’s hand. She made it retreat into her palm, wincing at the pain of the cut. But she knew her body would heal. She wouldn’t kill these people, these women and children. She would pity them for putting their trust in someone to whom they were simple pawns.
“I am still me,” Nora murmured to herself, and she pictured the charcoaler’s spade in her mind, while her hands curled to fists. This is who you are. A charcoaler. A transformer. She looked up at the shrine and wrapped its golden poison into an intense, but contained heat. It withered in the charcoal clamp. Molten gold foil dripped with a hiss on the cool ground, and the wood beneath the gold burned into charcoal.
The old lady watched wide-eyed, her lips moved silently in prayer to her god. But there was no answer.
“You monster,” she whispered when Nora had destroyed the shrine, reduced it to a heap of ashes and a charred lump of glowing metal.
“Nanna?” A small, sleepy voice from behind the old woman whimpered. “I heard voices. They said terrible things in my head.”
“It was a dream, my love. Go back to sleep,” the old lady answered, and to her credit, her voice didn’t even tremble.
The child’s head sank down again, and Nora and the old lady sat in the silence for a while.
“Leave us,” the woman finally said, her voice bitter.
Nora remained for a moment longer, just to show she could, then she rose and walked out into the cold night air.
Chapter 9
The fort’s gates were pulled shut for the night. This didn’t pose much of a deterrence for Nora—the gates were made from thick planks of oak, probably transported out here from the inner realm of the empire every now and then, to maintain its stand against the onslaught of heat, wind, and sand. It would be simple to tear them from their hinges or blast them into a conflagration, and standing before the tall gates, Nora ignored the litany of ideas the Blade poured forth to char break tear and decided to simply wait until dawn when the guards would open the gates again. She caught the eye of the gatemen, ambled over, and greeted them.
One of them stiffened slightly when she approached, but the older guard remained relaxed. This was supposed to be a military fort of the Kandarin Empire, but it seemed that with the influx of the refugees, security had become slack.
“When will you open the gates?” Nora asked the older guard.
He yawned and stretched. The blanket over his shoulders shifted and nearly tumbled to the floor, but he adjusted it as he spoke.
“When the commander tells us to or when enough people come a-knocking on the other side, I suppose. What are you doing out here on your own, girl?”
“Had a bad dream,” Nora lied. Although … it was kinda true.
But the gateman nodded as though he’d heard that before. “Mess hall’s through the gatehouse. Maybe they’ll be up already and making breakfast. How about you help them?”
“Because I’m a woman, and that’s what women do—serve you breakfast?”
“Careful, desert wench, that’s a sergeant you’re talking to,” the younger guard bristled.
The older gateman raised his hand for peace, cocked his head at her, taking her in. The desert wench. The girl who had survived in the desert for gods knew how long, and arrived here half dead a few days ago. Well, she had been called worse.
“Mess hall’s staffed by our men, girl. They have been serving me breakfast for years now, and it’s always the same old warmed up horse fodder they say is gruel. I only suggested the place because it’s cold out here,” the older guard tugged at his blanket, “and we’ve a few hours till dawn comes. And I figure, it’d be nicer to be doing something, keeping your hands busy in there, than if you paced about out here in front of the gates like a cat that wants out of the house after taking a fright.”
The younger guard clearly wanted to add to his sergeant’s words, but he bit back whatever his impulsive blurt would have been, and clenched his teeth. Nora watched him, and in her mind’s eye she saw herself snap her fingers and the younger guard’s head explode in a mist of blood and gore, spattering over her face as the crimson liquid pumped out of his torn throat and he sank to his knees. The vividness of the picture made her breath falter a little. She had become used to the constant singsong of crack tear rip break and had learned that, for the most part, she could ignore it. This foreshadowing of what it could do was new. It was detailed, too, and didn’t feel like she had prompted it in any way except a vague annoyance at the younger gateman. Crack rip tear slash open
She took a deep breath and tried to shake the feeling of someone behind her, watching, waiting. She knew if she turned—however rapidly—there would be no one there.
“Yeah, I’ll go,” she told the older gateman, and set off.
The gateman called something after her, but she only heard the words without really understanding them. It didn’t matter, anyway. The gateman had it right. Keeping herself busy would help her feel better.
The mess hall was efficiently run by a small team under a tyrant of a man, who yelled and barked his orders and tolerated no talking back.
“Have you eaten already?” he yelled at her. “No one works in my kitchen without having eaten.”
She shook her head. He huffed and cursed and ladled her a steaming bowlful of oats which she ate quickly. He sat opposite her, occasionally shouting an order at one of his guys, then looked up and down Nora, then straight through.
“You need to help, eh?”
She nodded.
He grabbed her wrist and wrapped his thumb and forefinger around it. Grunted. He squeezed her upper arm, grunted again. For a mome
nt, Nora was sure he’d make her open her mouth so he could check her teeth, but he didn’t. He set her to pounding dough for bread at one of the working stations. A man worked next to her who spoke not a word, but merely beat the risen dough into submission methodically, arms the size of Nora’s waist. Then, just as the bread man took over forming the dough into loaves, slicing them with his sharp knife, and Nora was looking for a knife to follow suit, the tyrant whisked Nora away from that station and a butter paddle was pressed firmly into her hands.
She grinned at the young man with the other butter paddle, and he grinned back. They set to churning, and the young man, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his forearms carved like stone, began to chant a lewd song under his breath and in time with the paddle, about a man and all the things he wanted to bugger. The refrain was simple enough, and Nora found herself falling in. The young man’s grin grew wider, and they kept at it for a while. It was monotonous, backbreaking work to make butter for an entire hundred-man-strong unit and additional hundreds of refugees, but calming, too.
The uneasiness of the Blade rose and fell like a wave in her mind. It gathered strength from the depths, but then found itself bored by the mundane tasks Nora had set before her. After the butter, she stirred the bubbling cauldrons, scraping along the bottom, so nothing was burned.
The pressure built again, but then she found herself outside, and the dawn was breaking, and a long row of soldiers in uniform looked surprised to see her open the mess hall’s doors. Then after the soldiers, the refugees came, women and children, and the level of noise rose. She bustled along the rows of tables, clearing dishes, handing out jugs of water, until the kitchen tyrant came over to her, shoved her outside into the heat of day, and demanded the apron back.
“Did well, desert wench,” he said. “Bet you’ll sleep better tonight. But if you don’t—well, come back tomorrow morning.”
And just like that she stood alone before the mess hall, in front of the now open gates, and the Blade swept up, clawing at the insides of her skull in a frenzy. She stared at the margins of the wilderness just beyond the gates. On the fringes of the wavering horizon a new group of people came tramping towards the fort by way of the dusty road, but behind them, there was something else coming, drawing closer. She felt it as though a towering cloud loomed black behind the travelers, as though the wind had brought a familiar scent with it—only there was no breeze in the oppressive heat and not a cloud in the early morning sky.
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