Servants of the Sands, page 80
A presence, like silk over alabaster, stirred the air at Idisio’s back. “I’ll handle this, s’e,” Moir said quietly. “Thank you. You may go.”
Idisio turned to face the northern priest as the released servant hurried from the room. “I thought you went with Seg,” he said, scowling at the man. “Got bored already?”
“What are you doing, ha’inn?” Moir said, ignoring Idisio’s gibe. He stood straight-backed, his hands folded over his stomach, watching Idisio with a disconcertingly perceptive gaze.
“Not your concern, s’iope,” Idisio retorted. “Go away before you get hurt.”
Moir smiled, an oddly dark expression on his lean face. “I’ve been hurt before, ha’inn. Are you planning to attempt a rescue?”
“She deserved better than this,” Idisio said roughly. “This is wrong.”
“There are many wrong things in this world,” Moir observed, not moving. “Interfering with this situation, as I understand it, could destroy this entire Fortress and everyone inside. Is that less wrong?”
Idisio’s chest went tight, a hard heat rising to his face as he remembered: Broken bodies, smoke, shattered buildings, huge boulders tumbled about like pebbles—
“She doesn’t deserve this,” he said, nearly whispering the words. “I have to try.”
“I think you already know you do not have to do anything,” the priest said. “You stopped to talk to me. You want to be talked out of this, ha’inn.”
Idisio turned to stare at the shallow pool, his breathing thick in his chest. There—
He saw it now, a faint haze at the bottom, where sand seemed to be moving in random patterns, as though disturbed by something below. He could leap, one long jump, land on that spot, push through, as he’d done at the Wall.
Broken bodies, shattered buildings—
I can’t be responsible for a second disaster like that. A third, if you count what happened here once already.
The ha’rethe had asked: Do you care for the northern girl? I see the answer, you need not reply.
Idisio had never been entirely sure what answer the ha’rethe picked out of his head.
Stop worrying about her so much, Deiq had advised. You’ll likely forget about her within a tenday after we leave.
I did. I completely forgot about her until I came back here. Well—not entirely. Another fragment of conversation—with his mother, this time, rose in memory:
We’re friends.
Friends. But you’re going back to her? The innkeeper thought you were... going back to her. Going south. One day.—Do you love her?
I don’t know.
He’d gone on to tumble a servant girl by way of distracting himself from that question, and that ended badly, to say the least.
Scratha’s opinion had been equally brutal: Feelings like love are a vulnerability that first-generation ha’ra’hain do not have. Ever. For anyone.
Everyone seems to think I can’t have human emotions, even though I’m half-human and grew up believing I was human. Just because I’m going to live a little longer—
Deiq’s sour comment rolled through his memory: By the time you start to slow down, Riss’s grandchildren will probably be long in their graves.
—Not that she’ll ever have grandchildren, now—
Idisio sank to his knees, caught between a sob and a howl of fury, and wrapped his arms around himself, as much to stop himself from moving as for reassurance.
“Ha’inn,” Moir said, circling around, kneeling in front of Idisio. His calm voice came as a relief after the array of sharp, tumbling memories. Moir regarded Idisio with naked sympathy. “I’m sorry, ha’inn. I know this is a painful choice: To save an individual who has touched your heart, or to protect a wider community. There is never a good answer.”
“There has to be a way,” Idisio whispered. “There’s an answer. I’m just not seeing it.” He rose to his feet, new determination flushing through him. Sitting on his arse wouldn’t bring the answer to him. Time to go find the solution. Make a solution, if all else failed.
“Ha’inn,” Moir said, looking up at him. “Sometimes the answer we like the least is the true one—”
“Oh, shut up,” Idisio said, and leapt for the hazy spot in the pool.
Chapter 105
Corridors blurred past. Wall-hangings, statues, and other decorations were barely a blip of color in her peripheral vision as Alyea ran. She dodged around more than one startled servant without pause. Her strides felt impossibly fluid and powerful. It was a heady, exhilarating feeling to move this fast, this confidently—almost like being in the clee trance that had taken her from Scratha Fortress out into the middle of the desert.
Don’t think about that, damnit, Deiq snarled. Don’t think about them. A hard push in her mind redirected her attention away from the past and back to the moment just as a very solid form stepped out in front of her.
She dropped a shoulder and kept going, intending to shove the obstacle from her path. The person stepped aside, hands locking onto her, turning, and threw her back up the corridor. Her own momentum carried her, tumbling and cursing, a good thirty feet. By the time she gathered herself back upright, two small hallway tables and a vase of flowers lay smashed and her left shin was ablaze with pain from smacking into something unyielding along the way.
Seg stood still, arms crossed, regarding her with a definite frown. He made no attempt to cross the distance he’d put between them. “I cannot allow you to harm Lord Scratha,” he said.
Water from the vase seeped across the floor, casting a flat tang into the air, the crushed flowers adding bitter, grassy notes. She balanced on her right leg, trying not to show how much pain she was in. The unyielding, rolling drive had faded with the interruption, leaving her half-sick with conflicting thoughts: What the hells had she been thinking? She’d been on her way to kill a man who hadn’t done anything wrong—yet, it was the safest thing for the entire Fortress, the entire southlands—but there must be another way—
There isn’t, Deiq said, impatient. Godsdamnit, we can’t let Scratha wake up! Tell him that!
“We can’t let Lord Scratha wake up,” Alyea said aloud.
Seg’s expression hardened. “I’m well aware of that, Lord Peysimun. That doesn’t require killing him.”
“Idiot,” Deiq said from behind Alyea. She startled, turning to face him, yelped, then backed away several steps before she caught herself.
Raised black and red lines swirled around his body in patterns all too reminiscent of the child at the Qisani. His eyes, devoid of pupil, held a pale, opalescent sheen that made her think of Teilo. He seemed larger than she remembered—broader—harsher.
He didn’t even glance at Alyea, his attention entirely fixed on Seg. “One last chance, s’e-kath.”
Seg shook his head, eyes narrowing, and didn’t move.
Alyea blurted, “Wait—” The word emerged far too late. Deiq had already begun moving. Seg unfolded his arms, raising his hands in a defensive posture; Deiq slammed into him, knocking the servant backward into a solid wall not far away. Stone cracked, blood splattered, and Seg fell, limp, head at a sharply wrong angle.
Deiq turned and met Alyea’s gaze. “Go,” he said, then leapt into motion once more, headed elsewhere—leaving the matter of Cafad Scratha to her.
She swore under her breath as multiple guards crowded into the hallway both ahead and behind her, weapons ready, faces darkening with anger at the sight of Seg’s crumpled body.
“Don’t make me kill you,” she said, flattening her voice to a dead calm, then threw sharp command into the next words: “Get out of my way.”
The guards staggered aside, expressions bewildered. She dodged through them before they could recover. Lord Scratha’s rooms were around the next corner, guards at the door already raising their weapons. She ordered them aside as she had the others. They didn’t move, but their muscles froze for a heartbeat, two, three. Then she was past them and into the room, door closed behind her, warded shut, turning to face motion to her right—
A tall woman with very short hair stood with back pressed against a wall, eyes wide. Two more faces, one with starkly bloodshot eyes, peered out around the edges of a curtain-covered doorway, expressions equally worried.
“Don’t hurt us,” the woman said, voice shaking. “Don’t hurt him. Please. Please.”
The fear in her face and voice stopped Alyea more effectively than slamming into a stone wall. She opened her mouth, trying to find words, caught between the insistence Deiq’s command drilled into her very bones and the overwhelming refusal rising from deep within herself.
“I can help him,” the woman said into that pause. “I can reach him. Please. Let me try. He doesn’t—you don’t have to hurt him. I can—”
Something stirred, a rippling in the air, heat and cold layering against her skin: “Alyea?” Lord Scratha said from the doorway to his bedroom. He leaned against the frame, seemingly still half-asleep, frowning at them. He was naked, and apparently unaware of that fact.
The door to the hallway shook under a barrage of blows. Alyea could feel cracks beginning to form in the light wood, tearing tiny gaps in her determination that it stay shut.
“Cafad,” the woman said, and the complex emotion in that one word struck Alyea dumb all over again.
The desert lord straightened, slowly, his face smoothing into a harsher cast. His gaze never left Alyea. The other woman might as well have been invisible. “Ah,” he said. “So. Betrayal. I’ve been expecting this.”
“Caffy, no,” the nameless woman blurted, taking several steps toward him. “Don’t think that way—”
He ignored her. “I always knew they’d send an assassin when they decided I was too bothersome,” he said to Alyea. “I didn’t think it would be you.” Contempt swirled in his voice, rich and dark.
Cracks spread, met, and began splintering. Alyea stepped sideways, taking refuge in a corner as the door yielded to the determination of a dozen angry guards.
“Stop!” the woman cried, turning as the doorway filled with the glint of weapons and the dark of outraged expressions. She pointed imperiously, motioning the men back. “Get out. Out! You’ll make it worse—let me handle this—”
“Lichni, move aside,” Scratha said, a quiet counterpoint to the woman’s passion, and pointed at Alyea. His eyes took on an unholy yellow tint. “Kill her.”
“No—” The woman moved forward a step, her arms outspread as though to sweep the guards out of the room.
The guards hesitated a scant heartbeat, then shouldered her aside, their attention fixed on Alyea, watching for her least twitch, sharp edges ready to respond in a fraction of a heartbeat.
Alyea drew in a long breath, watching them as they watched her. Knowledge shifted, turning like a leaf in a strong wind, giving her a wild array of unforeseen options. Choosing the simplest, she pressed back against the stone wall, felt it yield, and simply stepped away—moving through a blurred moment of rock dust on her tongue and a rough scraping against her skin to emerge into open air thick with dust and the complaints of startled chickens.
A dozen of the small birds scattered as she took a few bewildered steps forward, blinking grit from her eyes and searching for threats. An abrupt drumming overhead brought her gaze up to a thin metal sheet that shuddered overhead, stung by heavy rain.
Moments later, water began cascading from the edges of the roof, cutting ridges into the sandy ground beneath, stealing the dust from the air. The air beyond the overhang turned hazy with rain, pools and rivers forming briefly, then draining along neatly-concealed pipes.
The chickens clustered around Alyea’s feet, clearly unhappy at the downpour, hop-fluttering past her and up steep ramps into hen-houses to either side.
She stood still, staring out at the grey air, lost in a long moment of fey introspection.
I could have killed them all.
She waited to hear Deiq’s sour response, but no answer came. She didn’t need to hear his voice, though. She already knew what he would say.
A sharp cry came from beyond the wall Alyea had stepped through: a woman’s voice. “Caffy—don’t—!”
The words cut off, a wash of ugly death spilling through the air in its wake. Alyea moved further from the wall, shivering with abrupt horror and a bone-deep desire to get away from this array of unfolding atrocities. Whoever that woman had been, she’d clearly cared a great deal for Scratha, enough to sacrifice her life in a failed attempt to bring him back to sanity.
Alyea held no desire to seek out Deiq, or Idisio; no interest in remaining anywhere near this grief-haunted pile of rock. And I don’t have to stay here. I can use Deiq’s power to move as he does—just enough to get clear of Scratha lands, and then he goes his way and I go mine—I can’t be a part of this any longer.
Where she would go after stepping clear, how she would survive, with north and likely southlands closed to her, at least one furious ha’ra’ha on her trail—none of that mattered at the moment. She would rather take up life as a fisher, or cook, or—anything—anything other than this insane, complicated tangle.
Is fear a reason to allow another to die that you may live? Juric’s voice, clear and cold, came back to her, laden with memories of still air and the smell of scorching-hot sand.
“I’m not afraid,” she muttered. “I’m choosing to walk away. This is impossible.”
The test of Comos is the test of the self. It is a test of the ego, to see if you can set your own wants aside for the larger good... You cannot be a leader if you listen only to yourself... The desert is harsh, and life is not fair. A cowardly or arrogant leader would cause many deaths.
Alyea shut her eyes, pressing the heels of her hands against the closed lids, and swore viciously. The words fell limp and weak under the torrential downpour a stone’s throw from her nose.
If you pass all the trials and become a desert lord, what then? another voice asked, accompanied by memory of a echoing, dark stone cavern. Is your purpose worth dying for?
Nothing is worth dying for, she’d said in answer. You can’t help anyone or anything if you’re dead. Her original assurance now rang hollow, facile and weak.
The test of Ishrai is the test of life, the ishrait had said. It asks you to weigh the value of living. A desert lord’s life is a sacred trust and must be treated with the greatest respect.
Micru’s voice came next, words resonant with new meaning: The trial of Datda teaches you that there are times you must kill for the larger good. She heard the words behind the words now, the part she’d missed entirely the first time through: There are also times you must die for the larger good.
Which path to follow, which voice to heed? Never mind Deiq’s wishes—the promises made, the intentions laid down, the plans set into motion. I am a desert lord. What does that mean to me, what is the truest thing I can do in this moment to hold to the threefold oath I took so willingly? The oath seemed a lifetime ago, and still only yesterday. Time tilted in her head, turning her around to face her earlier, innocent determination to conquer anything that stood in her path.
Gods, I was an idiot. The thought flitted by, rueful awareness of the many side glances she’d ignored, the half-hidden, tolerant smiles.
Eredion’s voice rose next, a bleak, cynical rasp: You don’t understand yet. But you will. Give it some time... Nothing looks quite the same when you realize you’ll outlive most of the people around you... I’ve just had to get selective, over the years, on what things to care about.
“I’m beginning to understand,” she whispered. “But he’s a desert lord too. His life is just as important, his oaths the same as mine—we shouldn’t even be going against one another!”
She bent her head, stretching taut neck muscles, rubbing at the headache forming around ears and temples. Oaths, promises, and commitments tumbled through her mind like misplaced puzzle pieces settling uncomfortably askew, scattering, settling, scattering—and finally, finally clicked into a coherent pattern, threaded through with a single word: mercy.
Alyea raised her head, staring out at the rain. A liquid calm washed through her entire body. “Yes,” she said aloud. “I understand now.”
Turning, she swung sideways to the sideways and moved elsewhere with dizzying, weightless, joyous grace.
Shapes formed, voices broke the not-space into real dimensions once more: human perceptions, human reactions far too slow to register her as more than a flicker of movement, she dodged around animate and inanimate alike. There—
She wrapped one hand around a bony arm, lifting the targeted human from his feet even as she slid, dancing, through the space between moments: reached out and grasped another, softer arm, tugging that human along with as little effort as the first.
The first breath of an outraged bellow tickled the nape of her neck. She concentrated ferociously, checked her hold on the two humans, then leapt—like water thrown up by a heavy stone dropping into a deep well—far, far north, to where the lines in the air felt thin and grey.
The outraged bellow hung in their wake, a scant whisper. More immediately to hand, an agonized screech arose, drilling into Alyea’s sensitive ears. She shoved that human roughly aside without thinking about it, deposited the other more gently, then moved back, blinking water from her eyes, only then realizing she stood in a torrential downpour.
Gria looked up at her, face as close to green-white as southern-dark skin could reach. Her eyes were wide and rimmed with red. “What?” she said, raising one hand to shield her eyes from the rain, and squinted at Alyea, emanating raw, chaotic shock. “What?”
“That’s not your line,” Alyea said absently, turning her head to make sure Scratha hadn’t broken anything when she pushed him clear. He hunched in an undignified sprawl on the rough ground, still screaming. She judged that his throat wouldn’t last much longer at that volume.
She tried to still his voice: his screaming ratcheted up into an even more piercing squeal until she relented, allowing the original howl to resume. Gria would just have to put up with the noise.
