Chapter 7 Karinna
Karinna
“Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The scar-faced Martial fighter—Khunnor, he was called—lunged toward Karinna Veturia with all the grace of a honey-drunk bear. She dodged him with a sneer, cutting his feet out from under him with a quick sweep of her scim.
He grunted as he fell to the rocks of the training ground, his breath steaming in the chill night air of the Nevennes Mountains.
Three dozen or so Resistance fighters ringed them, a mix of Scholars and Martials all dedicated to ejecting the loathsome Kegari from the Empire.
They groaned in unison when Khunnor fell and cheered rabidly when he scrambled to his feet.
Karinna ignored them and watched Khunnor with the trained eye of a warrior. He had a stiff hip and a weak left hand. But what irritated Karinna was the way he looked at her—as if beating her was a foregone conclusion. As if he were better.
“Come on, Khunnor!” said a lank-haired, sneering woman called Bhadboo. “You can’t let Keris’s spawn beat you.”
Karinna’s jaws hardened at the insult. Bhadboo had called her worse, but that one stung. Keris Veturia was Karinna’s grandmother and a former general, school Commandant, and Empress. She’d been murderous and sadistic. Invoking her name was the deepest insult.
Khunnor smiled when he realized the disrespect had gotten to Karinna. “Aw, don’t like remembering Granny, sand-rat?”
Karinna thought of her father’s old mantra, the one his grandfather had taught him. The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.
She let Khunnor’s comment fade and focused on the duel.
Dodging his lumbering blows was as easy as ducking under a tree branch.
For all his talk, he didn’t have a chance.
She’d been trained by Aba, a former Mask and the finest fighter in the whole of the Empire.
Khunnor looked like he’d been trained by wild, intoxicated lizards.
Karinna grimaced, glancing between Khunnor and a glowering Bhadboo.
“How do either of you call yourselves fighters with a straight face? I’m a foot shorter than you and half your age and I could defeat you both with a blindfold on.”
“Go back to hawking rugs in the desert—” Khunnor lunged again, but this time, Karinna sidestepped him, kicked him to the ground, and pinned him there with the tip of her blade. He strained against it, so she dug it in until he was gasping. Another chorus of groans from the fighters.
“Get up, Khunnor,” one of them called out. “I put three marks on you!”
“Do you yield?” Karinna inquired, frowning when Khunnor only growled in response, spittle dribbling into the rock.
“Do get on with the yielding, Khunnor,” an icy voice cut through the hubbub. Musa of Adisa—leader of the Resistance’s northern chapter. At his withering glare, the spectators quickly dispersed to the caves that speckled the mountains around them.
“Move, sand-rat!” Khunnor squirmed beneath Karinna’s blade, but she held it firm.
“You haven’t yielded,” Karinna said. She didn’t understand why he didn’t follow the simple rules of the fight. If she had lost, she would have yielded.
Not that she ever lost.
“Let him up, Karinna.” Musa nudged her scimpoint away from Khunnor’s throat. “Or I’ll never hear the end of his moaning.”
Karinna did as Musa asked, grinding her teeth all the while.
When Khunnor had finally slunk away, no doubt to weep into Bhadboo’s arms, Musa gestured for Karinna to walk with him.
“You’ve been here what, two weeks?” Musa said. “Have you found any friends?”
Friends. Karinna never had friends. She struggled to make them and on the rare occasions she did, she struggled to keep them. Once, she’d grown close to a Mariner boy in Nur who made her laugh, but after they kissed, he’d grown too free with his hands, so she’d threatened to gut him.
As for others—she winced—they said Karinna was too abrasive, too blunt, too belligerent. Somehow, she’d always driven them away. Even Aiz, may she one day burn in the hells, had seemed friendly at first. But soon enough she only wanted to hang all over Quil.
You’re just different, Kari, Ruh had once told her, when she’d angered yet another group of friends.
She’d wanted to belong. But the ringleader said that Karinna’s sister, Zuriya, who was studying to be a Tribal Fakira, didn’t deserve the position.
An outsider won’t understand our traditions.
Karinna had thumped her, and the rest of the group shunned her after.
Ruh had been her friend, even if he had been her little brother, too. He and Aba were the only people who seemed to accept Karinna as she was.
Well, just Aba now. Ruh was dead. Ruh, whom Karinna had never avenged, who had been the best of all the Veturia children.
No matter what Karinna did, how many fights she won, how many Kegari she killed, he would never come back.
Despair rose within her at the loss, threatening to drag her to the bottom of a dark sea.
Karinna forced her mind to Musa—to his insistence that she make nice with the other Resistance fighters.
She’d tried to be friendly. Truly, she had.
When she’d first arrived in the Nevennes Range two weeks ago, she’d expected to find like-minded warriors, ready to give the Kegari hell. Ready to take back their Empire.
Instead, she’d found a hard, hostile mix of Scholars and Martials, most of whom were much older than her, all of whom were convinced they knew better.
“You need to make allies, Kari.” Musa walked with her away from the now-abandoned training ground and toward the woods. He stopped by an apple tree, picking one for her.
“They’re not a friendly lot,” Karinna said to Musa, not bothering to keep the surliness out of her voice. “I’m a better fighter than all of them combined.”
Karinna followed Musa to a couple of boulders on the banks of a nearby river. She had known him all her life. He was a frequent visitor to the Tribal Lands and friend to her parents. He settled on a rock, took a bite of his own apple, and considered her, his face puzzled and a bit dismayed.
That expression was familiar to Karinna, though usually, it was on Ama’s face.
A sort of sad bemusement, as if Laia of Serra didn’t quite know what to make of her secondborn.
The first time Karinna saw it, she was four and had insisted her father teach her how to use a scim along with Quil and Sufiyan.
It was there again when Karinna was ten and she’d gotten in a fight with that fool boy from Tribe Rahin who’d called Ruh strange and dull-witted.
He was a foot taller, but Karinna laughed as she knocked him on his arse.
Karinna’s father had clapped her on the back in pride. Her mother had shaken her head.
She’d seen that puzzlement yet again two months ago.
Her family had ridden from a refugee camp in the Serran Mountains to Serra, after Empress Helene and Quil had reclaimed it from the Kegari.
There, they’d met with Quil, Sufiyan, and Arelia.
A few days later, on the night of Karinna’s seventeenth yearfall, she told her parents she was going to Antium to join the Resistance.
Ama’s face turned the color of rice pudding. She looked at Karinna as if she were a stranger. But this time, the puzzlement transformed into anger. Absolutely not! Ama rarely shouted—so when she did, everyone listened.
It hadn’t changed Karinna’s mind, though.
Ever since that horrible night her little brother, Ruh, died, she’d done as Ama asked.
Ama said, Stay close, so Karinna never left their wagon train.
Ama said, Help me, so instead of traveling with Aba to hunt Ruh’s killer, Karinna helped with the chores, tried to keep Zuriya company, and refused to let Sufiyan pick fights with her.
Then the Kegari attacked. Karinna had already failed her little brother. When the sky-pigs came and wreaked havoc, she did nothing. Again.
By the time her seventeenth yearfall came around, the insatiable desire to act overwhelmed her. She needed to do her part.
Karinna Veturia was done being safe.
“Kari.” Musa brought her back to the present. “You’re a fine fighter and have the makings of a good strategist. But these rebels have been battling the Kegari for months now—”
“And yet we’re still occupied.”
Karinna bit her lip as soon as she said it. After all, it was Musa leading the northern chapter of the Resistance. If his fighters hadn’t been successful, it came down to him.
But Musa only nodded. “It will be a long fight,” he said. “Our enemies’ firepower is considerable. That’s why it’s important we work as a unit. I depend on Khunnor to carry out my orders. And he trusts his fighters to carry out his. That includes you.”
“Don’t I have to trust him to not be a bleeding idiot? On the last raid we went on, he told me to hang back and watch and learn. Then Sana took that wound to the leg! If I’d been there—”
“Khunnor didn’t just leave you behind,” Musa said. “He gave you a job, which was to watch for Kegari approaching from the south.”
“Any child could have done that.”
“And yet”—Musa’s voice hardened—“you failed to notice three Sails until they were nearly upon our fighters. If Khunnor hadn’t had a backup lookout, we would have lost more than a dozen soldiers to a Kegari bomb. You were so busy seething over your role that you failed to be useful to the team.”
Karinna took a vicious bite out of her apple. Of course Musa wouldn’t understand. He was a leader—his job was to make sure everyone got along and carried out their missions.
“I didn’t notice the Sails and that’s on me,” Karinna said. “But it was only because Khunnor put me in the wrong spot. That was a failure of leadership.”
“I don’t like Khunnor,” Musa said bluntly.
“He’s manipulative and prejudiced. But he’s also a canny warrior—whatever you might think—and has carried out more successful raids than any other rebel.
Including you. We’re on our knees here, Kari.
I need every fighter and I need them to work together.
You’re not doing that. Which means you’re not much good to me or the Resistance. ”
Karinna froze, her apple halfway to her mouth. “You’re kicking me out. Me? But, Musa—”
“Commander Musa.”
“Commander Musa, you can’t punish me for being better—”
“You came here to fight for our people,” Musa said. “But your parents also hoped you might learn restraint. Humility. Control.”
“I haven’t punched Khunnor in the face yet. If that’s not restraint, I don’t know what is.”
Musa didn’t so much as crack a smile.
“You’re angry, Karinna,” he said. “About the Kegari, certainly, but about Ruh most of all, I suspect. Skies know I’m angry too.
But you let your anger rule you. And that makes my job harder.
I told your father I would give you a chance, despite your obvious…
challenges getting along with others. I told him that because I believe in you.
But I also hoped you might use your other skills in service of the Resistance. ”
He gave her a significant look.
“It’s a stupid power,” Karinna muttered, grimacing as a wight chose that precise moment to tweak her nose. She swatted at it angrily and it flew off, chittering in the dark. “No offense.”
“Much taken,” Musa growled, but then his tone softened. “You must learn to use your magic correctly. It’s no small thing to be able to speak to the creatures of the world. What about her?”
He nodded to the shadows of the path before them, where two green, glowing eyes winked out.
Abzi. She was a gorgeous gray-and-brown-striped cat who hissed at everyone except Karinna.
She seemed to consider Karinna a larger and slightly more incompetent feline, whereas she looked upon the rest of the Resistance as interlopers in her territory and thought frequently of attacking them.
Sometimes she marked her territory—usually near Khunnor’s bedroll.
This made Karinna like Abzi a great deal.
Karinna knelt, her face softening. “Abzi’s different.”
“Because she hates everyone but you.”
Abzi emerged from the brush and trotted languidly toward them, nudging her soft head against Karinna’s waiting hand.
Hello, Two-legs, Abzi greeted her. You hurt?
The message wasn’t made of words, exactly. More like body movements that translated to ideas. Karinna still struggled to understand them. But at least she could make a guess. She didn’t understand the wights at all.
No. Not hurt. Karinna’s own ability to communicate with Abzi was probably the equivalent of a kitten yowling. But she tried. Abzi said something Karinna didn’t understand, then gave her another nudge before hissing at Musa and disappearing into the forest.
“Abzi’s interesting,” Karinna said. “Even if I don’t always understand her, she’s patient.
And she knows things. Most creatures want to babble about flowers.
Or nests.” Karinna had been deeply disappointed at the sheer amount of brainpower that birds wasted thinking about nests.
“The wights are impossible—they get offended because I can’t remember their bleeding names. ”
“I don’t know, Karinna, how would you like it if someone called you Kadoofa?”
“But they all look the same! And sound the same. And they detest me.”
Musa sighed. “I thought they hated me too, once. You must get to know them. You don’t even try. And that, Karinna, is why I do not think you belong with the Resistance. I don’t have time to coddle you anymore, nor to make excuses for your inability to follow orders.”
Skies, he really meant it. Karinna’s stomach dropped out. She’d failed to save Ruh. Failed to help her father hunt his killer. Failed at using her magic with every creature but a cat who, for some reason, seemed to like her. She couldn’t fail at being a bleeding Resistance fighter, too.
Musa looked at her for a long moment and tilted his head. “I have a mission that needs a deft hand. Defter than yours, most likely.”
At that, Karinna bristled. She was impetuous, perhaps, and yes, her superiority in both battle and strategy might occasionally come off as a touch arrogant.
But she was not inept. That she knew.
Still, she held her tongue. She’d pushed Musa already, and what she wanted more than anything was to be part of something. To not always feel so different. So alone and unmoored. Musa was giving her a chance. She could at least listen.
“If you complete it to my satisfaction,” Musa went on, “then you can stay. If not, then you’re done with the Resistance for good, and you will leave without a fight. Do we have a deal?”
He offered his hand. She shook it without question. Whatever the mission, she vowed to herself, she would not fail.