Servants of the Sands, page 54
“Meaning teyanain. Which teyanain is the question. I assume you already know about their split?” Even as he said it, he felt foolish. Of course she did, she’d been trapped and crippled by Evkit’s opponents, after all.
Her lips pulled back over yellowed teeth in a half-snarl, half-laugh. “Of course I do. I was Evkit’s guest recently, if you can call it that.” Her voice held acrid venom.
Oh, shit. Deiq blinked witlessly for a moment, then said, “So—you’re not on good terms with Lord Evkit...?”
She turned an incredulous expression his way. Wind splayed loose tendrils of hair against her face; she pushed it aside impatiently, then snorted as it plastered right back across her cheek. “Are you joking?”
“Uh....” He resisted the temptation to smooth the hair aside himself. He probably had enough power to bid it stay in place in spite of the wind, but this didn’t seem like a particularly wise time to offer a gentle touch.
“What have you done?” she demanded. “Quickly!”
He felt both his hands clench into fists at her peremptory tone. At the same time, an uneasy itch rippled up his spine, warning of impending danger. Half-distracted, looking out at the turbulent sea, he said, “I... I made alliance with—”
“You godsforsaken idiot!”
The wind abruptly stilled, all sound ceasing. Deiq turned to find all crew members simply fallen over, apparently asleep—although some had dropped from the rigging or onto something sharply edged, and were more likely unconscious. The scent of blood teased past his nostrils. He blocked awareness of that as best he could, given his rising anxiety.
A huffing chuckle pulled his attention sharply back around. Two athain perched on the rail, one to either side of him. Their triple-split braids were dyed a bright blue and interwoven with owl feathers. Various warding sigils covered their faces, necks, and bare torsos, from wrist to shoulder to waist. He had no doubt the designs continued all the way around their backs. Some of the designs were tattoos, others more temporary, but the lines wove together in graceful, nearly hypnotic patterns—
He blinked and turned his head away with a grunt of annoyance.
“Greetings, old mother,” the left-hand athain said with grave courtesy. Deiq could just make out a scattering of flat, dark moles across his face, nearly hidden underneath the tattoos. “We are glad to find you well this day.”
“Greetings, ha’inn,” the right-hand athain said, as solemnly. The timbre of his voice was distinctly higher, very nearly feminine: a jarring contrast to his broad, heavy-browed face. “We are glad to find you well this day.”
“No thanks to you,” Teilo said sharply. “What do you want, athain? To drag me back to your Calcen? Even now, I think, you’ll find that difficult.”
“Calcen Evkit is displeased with your abrupt departure from his care,” the left-hand athain said. He scratched at his ear, smiling. It looked like one of the subtle code signs teyanain used, but not one Deiq was familiar with. “He is also troubled by your choice of traveling companions. But no. We are not here to summon you back onto teyanain lands. You took a binding oath never to return once you departed. We honor that.”
“The old mother has been disruptive,” the right-hand athain said, his gaze steady on Deiq. “She left Lord Evkit’s care without consideration or courtesy, in the company of his enemies. You have been very helpful in rooting out those same enemies, and we could not have located the old mother without your assistance. Lord Evkit sends his gratitude for your help.”
Deiq turned a disbelieving glare on Teilo. “You sided with the—”
“Shut up, child,” she said harshly, her back stiff and chin up, arms folded, jaw tight.
“They tried to use me as a weapon!” he snapped. “I could have destroyed hundreds of innocents because of their manipulation!”
“And who told you that?” she inquired, her mouth twisting sourly.
“... Evkit,” he said after a moment, and looked up at the black clouds, still swirling although the air around him remained dead still. “It made sense at the time, damnit. It still does.”
The athain on the left cleared his throat gently, tugging at one earlobe. “We should discuss obligations,” he said. “Old mother, you have stepped away from the Agreement multiple times in the past year alone. You no longer bear the protection of the Jungles. Calcen Evkit accepted you as a guest despite that, and attempted to aid you in a time of great need. You chose to reject his aid and flee with his enemies. This places a discourtesy debt upon you.”
“He took my child,” Teilo said, throat taut with the force of her words. “And he broke the Agreement long before I did!”
“Calcen Evkit’s actions before your arrival do not impact the obligation incurred from your behavior during your visit,” the left athain said, his gaze unwavering. Deiq realized that each athain was pointedly addressing only one person, as though the other barely even existed. “He accepted you as a guest. He rescued your child from unfavorable circumstances and saved your life.”
“He tried to kill me!” Each word emerged as a distinct, heavily accented shout, more than one flecked with spittle.
“No, old mother, he did not. If he had wished to kill you, as you lay birthing your child, he would have simply allowed the birth itself to destroy you. He saved your life.”
A visible ripple of rage shook her shoulders and neck. She snapped, “The only reason I was at risk was because of—”
The athain on the right turned his head sharply, frowning. “Old mother,” both teyanain said in unison, “be still.”
Teilo stood mute, her mouth working, chin tilting up as she fought to refuse the compulsion.
“You must discuss such details with Calcen Evkit,” the left-hand teyanin said. His companion returned to watching Deiq with a blankly serene gaze. “We are not authorized to hear or speak further on that matter. Old mother, your voice is released back to you.”
Teilo sucked in a harsh breath, her chin lowering nearly to her chest. She made no attempt to speak, and neither did Deiq, too shaken by what he’d just witnessed. They were surrounded by ocean on all sides, far from any proper source of power. Even crippled, Teilo should have been by far the stronger, with her ability to draw on the water in the air. Unless—
His stomach turned sour. “Oh, no,” he said. “No. You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
The athain smiled, serene. “We do as the Calcen commands,” the left one said. “Always and forever,” the one on the right added.
“Didn’t do what?” Teilo demanded crossly, turning to squint past Deiq’s right shoulder.
Deiq bit his lip, wishing he could check other-vision, but his eyes still refused to shift over. The athain on the right held up a warning hand, bidding silence, and said, “First Born. You are, yourself, sworn to deliver punishment for several of the actions the old mother has taken in recent months. For one, she removed the collar of a sworn desert lord, the one who is now your wife.” His mouth twitched into a brief, distinct smirk. “She broke the Agreement in that moment, above and beyond anything else she has done before or since, and her status as the mother of the Agreement gives that breach severe weight. What are your intentions?”
Deiq drew in a long breath, pushing that smug grin into the forgotten pile to quell his anger. His voice emerged rough with unexpected emotion. “I won’t kill her. I won’t allow you to kill her, either.”
“We are not tasked with punishment,” the right athain said. “If the Calcen wished the old mother destroyed, he could handle the matter himself at any time he wished.”
“Not bloody likely,” Teilo snapped.
The left athain tilted his head, a smile twisting the patterns on his face. “You have not realized yet?” he said, stroking the curve of his left ear with a thumb—definitely one of the teyanain coded signals this time, but Deiq still couldn’t interpret it. “Ah, the Calcen will be pleased to hear our work was so well crafted.”
“What work—” Teilo stopped abruptly; stood stone still, her eyes shut, then sucked in a deep, shocked breath. “He dared put full chains on me?” The words emerged in a basso roar of outrage. “Me?”
Deiq let out a long, quiet sigh at the confirmation of his suspicions.
“Calm yourself, old mother, before we do it for you,” the athain on the right said, looking directly at her for the first time.
Teilo trembled, milky eyes wide with rage, but slowly stilled to a tight-lipped silence.
“After your many offenses and breaches of the Agreement, you no longer have your Chosen status to protect you, old mother,” the left teyanin said gravely. “That ended the moment you parted ways with the Jungle and chose to move among humans once again. You became the old mother to us: the mother of the Agreement, your original role and one that cannot be stripped from you. And in teyanain eyes, when the one who founded the Agreement in her own blood and her own pain walks away from that compact, it lies broken for all.”
“Oh dear gods,” Deiq said, utterly appalled. “I honestly think that is the single most dangerous thing I’ve ever heard a teyanin say aloud.”
“We have long been ready for the ending of the Agreement,” the athain on the right said. “The Jungles, from disciples to ha’reye, are occupied with immediate matters. They are not looking or listening to the rest of the world right now.”
“What have you done?” Teilo said, her voice scarcely a whisper.
“The Jungles are burning,” the athain on the left said, unblinking.
Deiq caught Teilo as she staggered back a step, trembling violently. She thrust herself upright again and said, voice cracking with emotion, “You dared breach that sanctuary?”
“We have dared only to preserve humanity. You, and many many others, would be dead right now if we had not begun distracting the Jungles the moment you defected, old mother,” the left athain said. “And the chains you both bear protect you as much as they bind you. We crafted them with care. Lord Evkit is able to assist you in time of need through those chains. None may use them against you save ourselves, and that only through the will of Lord Evkit. Ha’reye and ha’ra’hain and disciples will not see these chains. This work took great effort, and harmed some of our own in the crafting. All this despite your discourteous departure with enemies of the Calcen. For that safety, and in the face of such forbearance, you owe the Calcen a life bond.”
Teilo lowered her chin, her shoulders rounding like a bull readying to charge. The athain watched her, waiting, impassive. Eventually, Teilo muttered, “I accept that obligation. I will offer my word to no longer aid those of his people who have turned against him, in return for freedom from these chains.”
“Your word means little, old mother,” the left athain said. “You are an oath-breaker, after all.” He smirked. Deiq’s hands curled briefly into fists. The athain on the right caught his eye, shaking his head in warning.
Deiq made himself relax. He wasn’t up to fighting two athain who could freely draw on Teilo’s power—and regardless of how well he acquitted himself, Teilo would be dead at the end. That thought nagged at him, as though he’d missed something important.
“Back to my first question, then,” Teilo said harshly. “What do you want?”
Freely draw on Teilo’s power, that was the part that wasn’t quite right—oh—
“Wait,” Deiq said abruptly as a phrase rolled over in his mind. “The chains we both bear—I’m bound to Alyea, not to—”
He looked at the twin smirks before him with a dark disbelief.
“Your perceptions are very much dimmed by the tey-b’stibik, First Born,” the right-hand athain said gravely, even as Deiq turned vision inward, searching urgently, narrowing vision again and again and again. The words came from farther and farther away as he focused. “Calcen Evkit set the bond between you and your wife. He still controls those chains. He controls you.”
There. A crimson line, snaking along the inside of veins and arteries: thin, light, and comprehensively intertwined with every major and minor organ.
Deiq opened his mouth and let out an ear-shattering roar, fury turning his torso molten. Thought slid sideways under emotion. Wood creaked and splintered, glass shattered, and metal screamed as it bent, the whole ship listing dangerously to one side. Teilo dropped to her knees and curled into a ball, hands over her head. The athain regarded Deiq smugly, apparently unaffected by the chaos and the tilting deck alike.
Deiq’s bellow cut off as his throat simply closed. He gagged and went to his knees, clutching his neck as dramatically as he’d ever seen a human do when choking. A moment later the block lifted and he sucked in deep, trembling breaths, anger transformed to disoriented shakiness.
“As I said,” the athain on the right said, “the Calcen holds control of you, and through his will, we hold control of you both. I am directed to say something that might calm your temper: Remember that your wife is also held by the chains, and so is also subject to the Calcen’s control.” He smirked.
“That’s supposed to calm him?” Teilo muttered sardonically.
Deiq rose to his feet slowly, rubbing his throat, still breathing in great gasps. “I made an agreement with the Calcen,” he said, his voice refusing to rise above a whisper. “There was no need to bind me, much less to involve my wife. I was already a bound ally, under the law of peh-tenez—”
“You were not in peh-tenez, First Born,” the teyanin on the right said. “That much we can speak to absolutely. We are involved in every peh-tenez. We would know. Whatever your discussion with the Calcen, peh-tenez was never declared. If you made an incorrect assumption, that is nobody’s fault but your own.”
Deiq sucked in a sharp breath, feeling his throat loosening and healing. “That. Little. Fucker.” Another phrase turned over in his head, connecting pieces in a different order than before. “Wait. Did he—did he lie to me? Did he set Kippin after me, to put me in a position where I thought I owed him my life?”
“We do not know, First Born,” the athain on the right said. “You must ask the Calcen these questions. We are here to talk of other matters.”
“Oh, I’ll talk to him, all right,” Deiq said, feral rage building once more. “If he lied to me about that—”
“—It wouldn’t be in the least surprising,” Teilo cut in sharply. “You’re both doing a great deal of talking and not getting to the point, athain. I ask a third time and bid you to answer: What do you want?”
“The Calcen wishes your assistance in subduing a formidable enemy of the teyanain and of humanity as a whole,” the left-hand athain said readily. “The last of the ha’reye capable of being bound to human service is the unstable one at Scratha Fortress. It must be destroyed.”
Deiq gaped at the athain. “That’s madness. You can’t ask that of us—of us, for the love of the gods—you can’t!”
“There are no gods, First Born,” the athain on the right said, unsmiling.
“This shouldn’t surprise you in the least,” Teilo said tightly. “Not after what he’s already set up with the teyanain ha’rethe.”
“What?” Deiq turned to stare at her, bewildered. “It’s dead!” The twin smirks on the faces of the athain put a hard knot in his throat.
The athain on the right tilted his head to laugh up at the sky for a few moments, then, still smiling, shook his head. “No,” he said. “We have not lost our ha’rethe. We have merely rearranged the relationship.”
“Meaning it’s enslaved,” Teilo said, voice cold and dark as the depths of the sea.
Deiq stared, the words simply not registering as sense for a long moment, then turned an incredulous glare at the athain. “What?”
“Evkit reversed the bond during his blood trial,” Teilo said. “He now controls the teyanain ha’rethe.” She glared at the sky as though blaming it for the transgression; or, more likely, as reflexive avoidance of provocation.
“That’s not possible,” Deiq protested. “It would destroy him, mind and body together. Humans simply can’t master that much power!”
The athain smirked. “One human cannot,” the one on the right said. “Many humans working together can.” He spread a hand over his chest, fingers splayed wide, his smug grin even wider.
“He’s gone insane.”
Neither athain took offense at that. “The Calcen is dedicated and passionate in his beliefs,” the athain on the right said gravely. “He is working for the freedom of the world, First Born.”
“Spare me the sermon,” Deiq said. Their eyes narrowed, a sign that he’d finally nettled them with that petty insult. “Evkit wants to be in control of the world, not to free it!”
“The one does require the other,” the right-hand athain said. “Those who do not understand the vision will be swept aside soon enough, driftwood on the storm waves.”
“We have served the ha’reye for millennia,” the athain on the left said. “Now they will serve us, or they will be destroyed.”
“It may help to understand that this task will earn you both your freedom from the Calcen’s control,” the right-hand athain offered. “He will never again attempt to bind you to his will.”
“He’ll not get the chance to bind me twice,” Teilo said through her teeth. “So that’s a facile promise!”
The athain shrugged, their attention on Deiq.
“What happens if I say no?” Deiq asked, scarcely audible even to his own ears.
Both athain tilted their heads to one side in unison. The one on the right said, very softly, “Then you will be destroyed, First Born, here and now, along with your wife and the old mother. We will take your power from you and accomplish the task ourselves.”
“It would be an inconvenient solution and a less graceful answer,” the athain on the left observed, his tone pragmatic. “The pattern the Calcen seeks to build would be more complete with your willing involvement. But the pattern will be built, regardless of who falls along the way.”
“I cannot raise a hand directly against any ha’rethe,” Teilo said. “My oaths have been in place for a thousand years. I offer to refrain from interfering.”
