We Dream of Gods, page 13
“All this is because of you?” I said, the question accusatory.
Unus sighed. “Yes. And no. It’s about their old leader, Gideon, as well, I think, but the thoughts are… confusing. Noisy. Very… hurt.”
“We need to get out of here,” Yakono said, watching the gathering dissipate into muttering little groups. “If they’re this angry about you, they could turn on us at any moment, whatever their leaders say.”
“Who was it marvelling at the value of their social something or other just a moment ago?” I said.
“They can have value for their society and still want to kill us, Cassandra. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.” Abruptly he stepped back, loosening his limbs and planting his feet. “Someone is coming.”
Levanti voices murmured outside our door before the translator stepped in. Flanked by two warriors, he truly was the most un-Levanti Levanti I’d ever seen, not just for his long hair, but also his slight frame that looked unused to physical labour. He owned no determined confidence either, just a resigned sigh and a stance that seemed to hope no one would look at him.
“Captain Rah wishes to question Dom Villius,” he said, eyes on Yakono rather than Unus. “Again. His safe return is assured. You’re to remain here.”
“What about me?”
The young Levanti’s gaze slid my way, still managing to look bored though his brows rose. “I don’t know who you are and don’t really care, but he is coming with us.” He pointed at Leo, and his armed companions edged forward. “And the assassin stays.” He turned on the words, stepping back out into the evening gloom. Yakono shifted to a ready stance, all lithe and capable, but I set my hand on his arm.
“Don’t,” I said. “I’ll go with him. Stay here.”
He had no time to argue. Resigned to his fate, Unus was already making for the door, so I hurried after him. The translator waited outside, his expression a weary, so-very-done-with-all-this-shit look that I knew well. “You had better not be intending to get in the way,” he said. “They’re all a bit low on patience.”
“As long as you’re not planning to hurt him,” Kaysa said, riding close inside my mind.
The young man didn’t answer, just led us toward the central campfire. Most of the Levanti had dispersed, but not far enough for comfort. From every shadow, wary eyes were drawn to Unus’s back.
Standing beside the fire, Captain Rah managed the truly impressive feat of looking even more exhausted than Tor. His companions were a collection of fire-lit scowls, but one pointed at me, Miko’s name the only word I understood. At least they seemed to have decided not to hack my head off. Or at least not yet.
Turning from me, Unus became the focus of their attention. None of them looked directly at him, but the captain’s questions were sharp and quick and Unus’s fluent replies begat more questions. Curious, I turned to the young Levanti, still hovering nearby. “What are they asking him about?”
“The Hand want to understand his… condition, is perhaps the word,” Tor said. “His claim of being part of a soul and having… soul brothers. I do not know your words for it.”
I looked around the circle of frowning Levanti as the conversation leapt back and forth, the questions biting and harsh.
“They don’t believe him?”
Tor gave me an indecipherable look.
Why do they care? Kaysa said, the first time she’d sought my opinion since our fight for dominance. If all they want is revenge for the things his brothers did, why seek to understand him first?
It made no sense to me either, but any hope they might forgive him once they understood disappeared upon an angry snarl. A nearby Levanti approached spitting hate, only the captain’s outstretched arm halting his advance. Unus flinched from the man, and Kaysa took over, propelling us into the fray. “What don’t you understand?” she said, the words earning silence. “A soul can be born into more than one body. I have seen his brothers for myself, and I’m walking proof the soul isn’t an immutable thing.”
All eyes turned to Tor, whose translation left them staring at me in disbelief. How easy for them to dismiss the idea, but all my life this had been my reality, their disbelief denying the very truth of my experience. Freak. Monster. Deathwalker Three.
Even now, the ever-present reminder called from a nearby body. The death song washed unbroken around me, until one of the Levanti cleared their throat. “I believe this man is not the same as the one I met while marching with the Chiltaen army,” he said through their translator. “But Dom Villius is too well known for manipulation to accept his… wild explanation so easily.”
“Sometimes the strangest things are true.”
The man lifted his chin, a gesture of acknowledgement that nevertheless had no intention of bending. I sighed. “All right, let me prove it.”
I got up, my blood hot with a lifetime of frustration I’d never been able to express, and strode toward the dead body. It lay singing its empty song from before a shrine of sorts—a pile of stones and branches with symbols painted all over. She looked freshly dead, at least within the last few hours, so kneeling, I set my hand to her forehead.
Your turn, Kaysa said.
“My wh—?”
Untethered, I fell forward. The taste of ash bloomed in my mouth, followed by silence. Stillness. No gasp of breath, no ever-present heartbeat. It is hard to overstate how noisy a living body is, how desperate, until those sounds are gone.
Awareness spread through my new limbs like water seeping through cracks, giving me control first of the eyes and the lips and the tongue, then the arms and fingers and finally the legs. Overhead, voices joined and swirled into a storm of sound, but despite the shouting, Kaysa just sat watching me. A faint smile touched the corners of her lips, and for an instant I was sure she would turn and run, leaving me no way to catch her. She didn’t. She smiled as I twitched each limb, the discovery not unpleasant.
Sitting up was easier than I had expected. Very freshly dead then, and lacking the stiffness age and ill treatment had built up in my body. Around us people gasped, but I had eyes only for Kaysa. She was enjoying watching me experience something that, while terrifying, was also glorious and freeing, a body protected from all harm by already being dead. It was an experience we both shared now, bringing us closer—this a moment of connection piercing the simmering resentment.
“This,” I said, foolishly surprised the voice wasn’t mine, “is actually quite nice. Except the ash. I could do without the taste of ash.”
Everyone stared. I ought to have felt ashamed perhaps, have known myself for the monster they all saw, but while Kaysa smiled at me with my own lips and my own eyes, I could feel no horror. I was what I was, what the world had accidentally made me, and that was not my fault.
As Kaysa had once done in Jonus’s body, I spread my arms for the staring Levanti. “Now do you believe me?” I said, causing a symphony of drawn swords. All eyes darted to Tor, as much accusation as question in their looks.
Their captain was the first to speak, his jaw tense.
“I don’t know what Chiltaens believe about death,” Tor translated slowly. “But to us, until the soul is released the dead are sacred and you are…” He stopped. Captain Rah was speaking again, fast and worried now, sending a ripple of indrawn breaths around the watching circle.
“How are you in there?” the translator said. “You say you have two souls. What have you done with Lepata’s that you can inhabit her skin?”
I looked to Kaysa and saw only the same confusion I felt. Something had changed. The question wasn’t curious but charged with fear—and not fear of a walking, talking corpse as one would expect.
“I… didn’t do anything with it,” I said, looking from Kaysa to the Levanti and wondering if we were going to have to fight our way out after all. “She was dead. There was no soul. Only the body, like… a container.”
The young man started translating to growing outcry, and as the Levanti surged forward, I stepped in front of Kaysa, arms outstretched. The power of my invulnerability was like a whole quart of Stiff, and I snarled at them, daring them to cut down one of their own to reach me. No wonder Hana hadn’t ever wanted to give up her corpse skins, such strength and—
The blade came fast, one moment a mere glint in the weak light, the next it sliced my neck. No pain, only the pressure of it digging into my flesh, of its sharp edge severing skin and muscle and tendon and bone.
Once again I seemed to fly, not detached like a soul but tumbling over and over. I tried to cry out but had no air, tried to brace but had no limbs, could only watch the Levanti spin by until I hit the ground. Lacking pain, the impact was more sound than feeling and I was lying on the grass, numb from the neck down. No, absent from the neck down. Shouts rang about me like they were coming through water. Feet milled everywhere I looked and—
I flew free again, weightless now, into the warm, loud hum of a living, breathing body, endlessly buzzing.
Cass? You’re all right?
I… I think so?
The palpable sense of relief was the most beautiful thing I had ever felt.
“That,” Kaysa said aloud, putting our hands on our hips, “was unnecessary. I can remove my second soul without needing to cut the body open.”
The translator said nothing. The Levanti weren’t listening, were barely moving. Captain Rah stood with blood dripping from the end of his sword, his chest heaving with more than the effort of so easy a decapitation. Abruptly, he knelt and touched the severed head.
“I’m not in there anymore.”
No one seemed to hear us. One by one distressed voices erupted, and the captain rose jabbing a finger at me. I flinched, but he said nothing, just gently gathered up the severed head as though it still owned life.
All eyes tracked him the few steps back to the shrine, where he knelt on the bloodied ground and began to sing. Some of the others joined in, a few loud and clear, some beneath their breath like a prayer.
They really didn’t like that, I said.
No, Kaysa agreed. Honestly, I think you’re lucky to still be here.
You think cutting off the head is enough to dislodge a soul from a dead body when you’ve sat inside one while it rotted?
Thank you for the reminder.
You’re welcome.
“What did you do?” the young translator said, dragging his gaze from his captain’s back with an effort.
“I have two souls in this body,” I said. “I can put one of them inside an empty body for a time. It’s called Deathwalking.”
“But you were released when the head—”
“No, I was pulled back by my other soul. Think of it like two people riding a horse. We take turns who’s driving.”
“You don’t drive horses, and two people on a horse would be—”
“It’s an analogy,” I snapped. “An example. A cart then. Whatever. We can both lift the hands and move the feet and speak to you, and we can switch over. And one of us is a stuck-up, prudish—”
“—and the other is a cranky old whore,” Kaysa finished.
And proudly so.
Tor stared, his expression giving nothing away. Did he believe us? Did it matter?
When Captain Rah finally rose from the shrine, he brandished a blade at our throat.
“Whoa.” I stepped back as the crowd of Levanti jostled and grumbled and hissed. “I was just showing you proof. I meant no harm.”
“You’re like Leo?” he said.
“No! I mean, yes, but no. Only in the ‘our souls are weird’ way.”
With his blade still levelled at our throat, Captain Rah pelted his translator with questions, questions the young man disjointedly passed on. “You’re one of—Do you know… What do you know about Entrancers? Answer—or about the others on the plains—Tell us everything if you wish to walk away from here alive.”
I stared around the fire-lit group. There were more Levanti watching than I could count and no way to push through them and live even if Kaysa would let me abandon Unus. He hadn’t moved from his place before the fire, while at the edge of the gathering, Empress Miko stood with her companions, stony-faced. The shame I had refused to feel under Levanti eyes flooded in. Beneath my daughter’s gaze, I knew myself for the freak I was.
“I… What?” I said, trying to focus on what they’d asked. “What are Entrancers?”
“He means people like me,” Unus said, his dry voice barely audible above the crackle of the fire and the shifting crowd. “He wants to know how to fight people like me. Like us.”
Us. For so long I’d only ever been a me. I’d become an us with Hana, sometimes with Kaysa, but never with someone external to my skin. The sense that maybe I wasn’t alone, that I could find comfort in the understanding of others as one might in a family, momentarily stunned me. Until the captain’s wavering sword tip once again demanded my full attention.
“I don’t know anything about Entrancers,” I said. “I don’t know anything about any other freakish”—I winced at how easily the hateful word leapt to my lips—“abilities, only my own. I can make the dead walk for a short time. The best way to combat that is to incapacitate the corpse, that’s all I can tell you.”
The translator passed on my answer, sending whispers shifting through the crowd of warriors like rustling leaves. Even before he translated the captain’s reply, I caught Torvash’s name and tensed.
“Where can we find the Witchdoctor?”
“I don’t know! He’s more the type who finds you.”
Argument followed, punctuated by Kisian voices—Miko and her companions speaking in quick undertones. No doubt Torvash had made himself well-enough known during his time in Kisia that they’d heard of him too.
Despite the back and forth taking place between Captain Rah and his companions, no more questions came my way, and I stood in the middle of a storm, every word raising the anger around me until I couldn’t make out anything beyond a roar of argument.
What are they shouting about?
I shook my head, looking around at all the angry, fire-lit faces. I don’t know. They’re pointing at Unus as much as at us.
When they’d gathered earlier, they’d been quiet and respectful, but now they all shouted over each other, gesticulating wildly, some spitting as fiercely as the flames that lit the scene. Any moment they were going to tear apart either us or each other. Or both.
“I will take them.” Miko stepped into the centre of the gathering, shouldering her way through the throng of warriors. “I will take them!”
Though only Tor could understand, the gathered Levanti quietened, hissing demands at the young man caught in the middle. Tor spilled hurried words to his captain as Miko shouted again. “I will take responsibility for both of them and remove them from your care.”
I turned on her. “I’m not a problem. I don’t need to be in anyone’s care.”
“Not a problem, just a monstrosity,” she said, a flash of disgust in her eyes. “And if there’s going to be a freak running loose, I’d rather she was in my debt than not.”
“Debt?”
Miko nodded in the direction of the Levanti. “If I don’t take you off their hands, you’ll be dead within two minutes. Unless of course you’re capable of bringing yourself back to life.” She lifted her brows, something chilly and calculating in her look that was so much like Hana my stomach clenched. “Well, Cassandra? Your choice.”
8. DISHIVA
A meeting was called that evening as always, but this time when the first legate strode past the chapel, I drew up my mask and stepped out in his wake. My hands trembled, but I clasped them and walked on, heart beating fast. Murmurs of respect flowed around me with every step, something I appreciated more now that I was making use of the title I’d been given.
It wasn’t far to the meeting tent, where light and murmurs spilled through the thin curtains. A young boy stood outside, seeming to await orders. He blanched at sight of me and stared up at the sky—the only person more nervous of my presence than I was. There was still time to turn around, to walk away, but what would that get me beyond regrets?
With a nod to the boy, I rolled my shoulders and stepped inside. In the moment it took my damaged sight to adjust, I got the impression of a close, warm space filled with flickering lanterns and bright colours—a scintillating display of power. The impression didn’t change as it came into focus, but a flood of relief spilled through me as Secretary Aurus rose from his chair.
“Dom Jaroven, welcome.” As he spoke, he gestured to the chair at the head of the table where Leo sat, giving a start as though surprised to find him there. All conversation ceased. The air chilled. Every eye was on Leo. I needed no clearer proof he had been acting as my spokesperson all this time, that his only claim to power was what Aurus had called a matter of habit.
Expression hidden behind his mask, Leo rose. He spoke a few words in Chiltaen as he unfurled to his full height, and then turned my way. “Am I in your seat, Your Holiness?” he said, the words a soft caress. “Do accept my apologies.” His mask rippled as his tongue moved beneath the fabric, across and back as though licking his lip. He seemed to want to say more, and I held my breath, unable to focus on anything beyond him. After a long pause, he bowed. “Holiness, I look forward to tomorrow’s ceremony, and I will of course have your orders carried out right away.”
Before I could ask what orders he meant, he swept out of the tent, leaving a chill lingering in his wake. One by one the legates and commanders settled, some looking to Secretary Aurus with confidence, others holding on to their wariness. Not recognising them all, I wondered if some had arrived with Aurus’s men, the loyalties present impossible to understand.
“I will lead this meeting as though you are leading it,” Secretary Aurus said, nodding my way. “You will need to speak so it looks like I’m translating, but not too much. We must try not to remind them too often that you’re Levanti.”
