The Midnight Kingdom, page 27
“That’ll take too long,” Risha said. “And I can’t get the hand open without alerting it.”
“Do you really need this weapon?” Val wheedled. “It’d probably be a lot safer to fuck off out of here and find my body instead.”
Risha was almost tempted to do just that. The Sentinel turned and gave her a good view of the massive sword of black opal on its back—the one that could easily erase spirits from existence.
She glanced at Jas’s ghostly edges. The longer it took to get home, the more energy he would expend. She could lose him entirely.
“No,” she decided. “We do this now. We’re just going to have to go slow, and once the hand opens, I’ll grab Samhara and…”
And what? She didn’t know how to use the weapon yet. Didn’t know how much energy it would require, or how it could impact Jas.
The rattle of the Sentinel’s bones came closer. A shiver traveled up Risha’s spine.
“Make up your damn minds,” Val whispered.
Risha gritted her teeth and pulled Val’s sling back on. Before she could stand, Jas walked out ahead of her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
He looked over his shoulder. “Remember: If I’m the general, you’re the raja. If you have to, you can afford to let me go.”
“This isn’t a game of chaturanga! You can’t talk about yourself like a piece on a board. You’re—”
Her throat closed up. His expression softened as he swept away a bit of hair that had fallen into her face. She couldn’t feel his fingers.
“Don’t waste it,” he said.
Then he was running down the slope toward the Sentinel. Her stomach dropped and she wrenched back a scream. But the Sentinel was already turning, rib cage undulating with those hollow clicks, empty eyes fixated on Jas.
Risha slipped and slid down the slope after him, cutting open her palms and knees while her heartbeat jackrabbited in her chest.
“Hey, stop!” Val yelled as she charged after Jas. “He’s distracting it!”
“I can’t let him—” Her breaths were near-sobs, choking her.
The Sentinel didn’t move fast, but its wide leg span more than made up for it. Jas flung his hand out, and a large rock launched itself from the ground. It hurtled past the Sentinel and caught its attention, diverting it to go in the opposite direction.
“See?” Val barked. “He has it covered. Let’s go!”
Risha swallowed her thorny fear and pivoted toward the skeletal arm. Like the abandoned weapons around the field, it, too, had eroded with time and been partially reclaimed by moss and ivy. Risha used the latter to help haul herself onto the wide arc of the radius bone, then crawled across the radial shaft toward the curled fist.
“Gotta admit, for a guy who doesn’t have balls anymore, that’s pretty ballsy,” Val murmured, watching Jas play cat and mouse out of the corner of his eye. The Sentinel was growing ill-tempered, turning quicker and moving faster with impatience. Jas smashed another rock into its rib cage, momentarily stunning it and disrupting its echolocation.
Risha leveraged herself into a kneeling position. She did her best to tune out everything around her and delved into the core of her power, that sweet and cold wellspring. It was tethered to her every sinew, every vessel, every nerve.
Wind picked up around her and she held out one hand. She kept it closed, fingers tucked against her dry, cracked palm. The energy inside her rose and stormed, a painful pull on her organs and muscles. She clung tighter to the bone as her body fought against the urge to restore itself to its normal functions.
Not yet.
The air around her smelled like a crisp winter night. She inhaled and held it in her lungs, then carefully unfurled her fist, focus narrowed on the shifting of tendon and ligament.
Slowly the bones woke and mirrored her movements. They scraped and creaked against each other, the tapered distal phalanges lifting from the jumbled carpals, fingers curving upward until they revealed the open palm, a half claw reaching toward the sky in supplication.
And there, lying across the metacarpals, was Leshya Vakara’s legendary weapon.
Samhara. The conductor of souls. A symbol of creation and destruction.
Risha crawled forward to get a closer look. Everything had been constructed out of bone, even the thin, looping chain that connected the scythes, deceptively delicate. Etchings of marigolds traveled up the humerus-crafted handles to where they expanded out into blades, each of them a curved hook sharpened to a fatally thin edge. Fused along their backs were two rib bones, as well as small decorative skulls refortifying where blades met handles. And where the handles met chain hung eight thin phalanges.
Mouth dry, Risha reached out and touched one of the blades. It was smooth and warm like ivory, and when her hand drifted down to the handle she discovered grooves where her fingers should rest. She didn’t feel overwhelming power, or a connection to the pieces of the four kings Leshya had collected—nothing to suggest this was anything but a simple weapon.
“Uh-oh,” Val said. She looked between the giant hand’s fingers to find that the Sentinel, driven to frustration by Jas, had reached for its sword.
Risha gathered the scythes in her hands. Holding them with the sharp edges facing away from her, she slid down the radius and tumbled back to the ground, Val swearing the whole time. One of her ankles twisted painfully, but she stubbornly ignored it as she ran toward the looming Sentinel.
The scythes were weighted possibilities in her hands. A curse and a gift from her ancestor, a woman made of war and death and royal blood. The tool she would need to cut them out of Mortri and into the land of the living.
But how? She needed something to feed into Leshya’s weapon, and there were no spirits around save for Jas.
“C’mon, hurry up and throw those bones around!” Val urged behind her, voice warbling as she ran.
“But there aren’t any spirits—”
“You don’t need ’em if you use your own magic! That’s what Leshya did in a pinch, same deal as cutting off your disgusting humanly needs!”
Would that really work? If so, it would surely incapacitate her; she was already expending so much of her power on not dying. But considering the alternative, she was fine with giving up the lion’s share of her magic if it meant safely getting everyone out of this situation.
Once she was close enough, Risha slid into the first stance she’d learned of the tandshri: one leg extended forward, the other bent, arms positioned over her head. Only now she held Samhara, the blades forming sickle moons above her, the chain falling against her back.
The torus of her power returned, kicking up dirt and pebbles at her feet. The handles bristled against her palms, the bones waking after centuries of sleep. The phalanges rattled together like wind chimes.
Risha concentrated on the tangle of energy inside her. The blades hummed in response, not quite a sound but more of an echo in her pulse, a bright, startling awareness of her surroundings—the rich resonance of death and spilled blood across the field, shrieking cries and torn flesh layered over forgotten weapons and the scurrying of frightened creatures.
And the call of the Sentinel, ribs rising and falling, sword tip scraping the ground as it hefted the blade upward over Jas.
Please, she thought, focusing on the energy within her. She sensed some of Jas’s threaded through hers, that bizarre yet comforting connection they’d forged. Take what I am giving you and turn it into power.
She inhaled deeply, the ball of energy expanding with her lungs. The handles grew hot against her hands.
Shifting her body, she brought one knee up and spun around quickly, flicking her wrist the way her father had taught her, fingers held in the mudra for air.
Sada—an invitation to dance.
The right scythe flew out of her hand and toward the Sentinel. The chain stretched out between them, impossibly longer than its original length suggested, the bones extending and reshaping as it went. Power seethed along it like the firing of a synapse, guided by her order, fueled with magic that straddled life and death.
The scythe crashed into the Sentinel’s rib cage. It let out an eerie cry as bone fragments rained from its torso. Risha jerked the chain and the scythe flew back to her. She caught it and held it before her face, feet together. Then she moved one leg behind her and spun the opposite direction, her forwardmost leg bent while the other remained extended, balancing on her toes.
This time the left scythe went flying and jammed into the Sentinel’s neck. It staggered back, dropping its sword to reach for the handle.
Risha formed her free hand into the mudra for fire. Vivid, sizzling energy ran across the chain, a brilliant blue like the purest sapphire. But unlike real fire, this was a product of her power—the same grasping, encompassing force she had used to slow her heart, to reanimate Don Soler, to drive spirits out of risen corpses.
Jas let out a hoarse cry, but she couldn’t risk looking away from the Sentinel. She blinked sweat out of her eyes as blue-burning magic ignited in the scythe and traveled across the Sentinel’s body. It shuddered and wailed hollowly.
Risha jerked the chain again, and the scythe pulled itself free. The Sentinel collapsed into a pile of tattered skin and crumbling bone.
She fell to her hands and knees. It felt as if she had run five miles without stopping, every inch of her electric and elastic. Her head spun the way it had after a night of drinking Mariian rum, right before swearing off the liquor for good.
The handle underneath her palm cooled, reducing it to nothing more than the bone of a Mortrian king.
Risha touched her chest and was met with the slowed thump, thump of her heartbeat. She dove deeper and tested the organs she had put into hibernation. Everything was as it had been before, the ball of energy within her not depleted in the least.
“What?” She pushed herself up. “How am I…?”
Val swore, and she looked up.
Jas was making his way over to them. He swayed as a tipsy person would, though his expression wasn’t of vacant delight but weary resignation.
He was almost fully transparent.
Jas lifted a ghostly hand to stop her as she tried to push to her feet. “Don’t.”
“You— I didn’t—”
She had drawn on her own energy to fuel the attack, like Val said Leshya had done. Jas had used his magic a few times against the Sentinel, but not to the extent he would fade this quickly.
Risha clawed at her sternum. The energy within her carried a bit of Jas’s as well. Had Samhara latched on to his instead of hers? Pulled from his spirit to strengthen the attack?
Why hadn’t she thought of that possibility?
“Risha—”
“No,” she cried. “No!”
“Risha,” he whispered, “it’s all right. This is what I wanted.”
She dug her fingers into her hair. Her face grew hot from tears even while the rest of her shuddered with cold.
When she had made her desperate plan to kill the heirs and the gods along with them, Jas had begged her not to. But she hadn’t been able to see any alternative except an inter-realm war. In making her decision, she had deprived the heirs of making their own; she had chosen their fates, including Jas’s, and the weight of it was too much to carry.
“It was better me than you,” Jas said. “If you had used your own energy—”
“Why?” she demanded, looking up. “Why is it better for me to live instead of you? How can you claim my life is more important than yours?”
Voice infuriatingly calm, he said, “Isn’t it? You’re the descendant of a god, the carrier of a holy magic. You can help so many people. You’re still alive.”
“Because you died for me!” she screamed. “I didn’t ask you to do that! I didn’t want—”
He leaned closer, trying to grab her shoulder and failing. “No, you didn’t ask it of me. I chose it, Risha. I chose this.”
“It’s still my fault. How am I supposed to live with that?”
He was quiet a moment. “When my mother died, I didn’t know how life could keep going without her. Some days I thought she would walk through the door and the nightmare would end. But eventually I understood this was real. That I had to go on with this wound inside of me, even on days when it felt impossible.”
He looked at her, through her, past her struggling, sore heart into the fabric of Risha Vakara, not a woman of war and gods and kings but one who wanted a world without sharp edges. Who so desperately wanted to sand them down she ended up cutting herself open in the process.
When she was younger, she thought adhering to her father’s rules would keep everything in order. But now she knew there was no avoiding turmoil—that good people died without reason and those with power misused it. That she had made mistakes while thinking of the greater good, and it had cost not only her, but those around her.
“Staying alive might be the most difficult thing you’ll ever have to do,” Jas whispered. “But for as long as I’m here, I won’t let you do it alone.”
The shield around her grief cracked open. She curled into herself, one hand pressed to her chest and the other wrapped around the scythe’s handle. In the end, it had been forged for the same purpose she had been: as a weapon.
If Jas settled his hand on her shoulder, she couldn’t feel it. Only the chill whisper of what had been lost, and what was left to lose.
XIV
The scent of wood and paper enveloped Angelica as soon as she stepped foot into the archives. She stopped to take in a big lungful of it, and Botan grinned at her.
“It is a rather a pleasant smell, isn’t it?” The imperial scholar gazed fondly at the wooden cubbies and shelves along the walls, displaying scrolls and ancient tomes next to newly bound ledgers. “I never tire of it.”
Cosima didn’t seem to share the sentiment. She was jittery, looking around as though someone would dart forward and tackle her at any second.
“It’s a bit of a personal matter,” Angelica had explained when Botan had asked what they were looking for. “My bodyguard has a brother who was recruited into the Azunese army when he was young.”
“I can certainly do my best to find records of his enlistment,” he’d said. “We believe in upward class mobility here in Azuna. If someone is born with elemental power, they’re typically brought into the military or the Kiyono order no matter their background, and their family profits as a result. It’s not quite the same as with a Mariian immigrant, but the government still affords them housing and certain privileges, especially the higher up in rank they are.”
As Cosima now stared uneasily at the rows of shelving, Botan approached her.
“Do you know which rank your brother currently holds?” he asked in Vaegan.
“Ah… no. But when he was taken”—Botan winced slightly at the word choice—“the soldiers told us he was strong enough to train with the Gojarin-Kae.”
“I will begin my search there, then. From which former colony was he… taken?”
“Seccra. He was about eleven at the time.”
“And his name?”
“Koshi Okai.”
As Botan turned to speak to one of the archivists, Cosima fiddled with the hilt of her sword.
“Are you worried they won’t find him?” Angelica asked.
“Kinda more worried they will find him.”
“Isn’t that the whole point?”
Cosima sighed. “I’m worried that… I dunno… he might be in a bad place. What if he’s in prison? Or some awful Mariian penal camp? Or dead? He could have drowned at sea, for all I know.” Cosima scrubbed her hands over her face. “I do not like emotions, princess. I’m coming to understand why you prefer to be so icy.”
Angelica maturely chose not to rise to the obvious bait. “No matter how difficult it is or what you find out, you’ll feel better knowing what happened. It won’t haunt you anymore.”
“Won’t it?” Cosima shook out her arms and rolled her neck. “I need a distraction. Distract me, Mardova.”
Angelica turned to the nearest wall of scrolls. “How about we look for something on kudei?”
“Not as fun as what I was thinking, but sure.”
Angelica spared her a withering look, then flagged down an archivist to help with the search.
“I take it you have a lesson later?” Cosima murmured while they were led up a shallow set of stairs to a different room.
“Kazue insisted on having one before the festival tomorrow.”
I eagerly await your answer.
Fresh dread rose within her as the archivist showed her to a shelf. She nodded numbly and the archivist bowed away, leaving her momentarily lost.
“Princess?” Cosima waved a hand in front of her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
Cosima crossed her arms. “I’m starting to learn it’s fine means oh Cosima, sweet Cosima, I am in dire need of guidance from a trusted source of great intellect.”
“Can’t imagine who that would be.”
“Cheeky.” She said it like an endearment, low and throaty.
Angelica ignored the flutter in her chest and reached for the nearest scroll. “I was thinking about my conversation with Nanbu Daiji.”
“Let me guess, something happened you haven’t told me about yet.”
Angelica was distinctly displeased at the uncomfortable notion of being known. Still, she held the scroll to her chest and filled Cosima in on Nanbu’s ultimatum, the decision she had to make between the imperial family and the warlords.
Cosima gave a long, soft whistle. “This is what we’d call an absolute shitshow back in Nexus. So this comes down to, what, treason?”
Angelica looked around to make sure they were alone in the dimly lit room. “I don’t know what it is, and I want no part in it. I’m not going to wedge myself any further into Azunese politics.”
“Bad news, you already have,” Cosima pointed out. “Whatever game you’re playing to win this crown, you’re in it for the long haul. Don’t get mad, but why do you even want the crown? What good did Freddy ever do for Vaega?”
