Chapter 21 #2
“My mother has given them sanctuary,” I said.
Koque nodded tightly, but her options were limited.
Her only family was in the North already; anyone else in the Imperium would only try to use her to their own advantage.
She was well-loved as the only woman whom Millu ever cleaved to, but now that Tallu was on the throne, I knew many would question her ability to wield the same power.
The cave darkened, the lantern in Vostop’s hand guttering. The air around us seemed thinner, the act of breathing turning painful. I waited, watching Koque, knowing what it was like to have no options.
“If you do not survive killing a legend,” Koque said, her voice as cold as the air around us, “we will go north.”
Tallu nodded.
“How do you plan to get to the creature?” Vostop asked.
“I will not lead you. My loyalty is to Empress Koque, and I will not participate in this. I have watched my cousin go mad, kill our own people, take in an imperial general who experiments on them and turns them into monsters. If you plan to throw your lives away fighting a horror that elders sing stories of, that is your own lives you risk. I will not endanger Koque or her son on such a venture.”
The whispers under my skin grew more intense at his words. How dare he question? How dare he challenge? How dare he seek to defend anything other than Tallu?
The whispers pulled me like a compass, shaking my bones, my blood bubbling with rage.
I could hear the words in my teeth, a murmur of chaos and destruction.
Centipede didn’t want to destroy the world because of what the One Dragon had done to him.
The One Dragon had dropped a mountain on him because he wanted to destroy the world.
He saw beauty in the destruction; he saw holiness in it. And when the world was gone, when he had controlled and consumed and destroyed, he would enjoy the fruits of annihilation.
Sharing Centipede’s consciousness was painful, a knife I wore under my skin, and I wondered how Asahi had dealt with it for so long.
The first time we had been in the mountains, I had been struck by their beauty.
This morning, all I saw was the potential for chaos, the potential for the mountain to come crumbling down on top of us.
Now, with only a guttering lantern to fend off the darkness, and shadows twisting every barely glimpsed object into a monstrous weapon or a dangerous horror, I saw them as something else entirely. This was the lair of the animalia.
The first time I had been bitten by a centipede, back at the Mountainside Palace, I hadn’t felt anything. My body had protected me from whatever venom had become a living creature inside Asahi.
This time, I had no such grace. I could feel it under my skin, small feet crawling up my bones, a mind rubbing against my own, whispering, always whispering.
I wanted to scream, to press my hands to my ears and huddle down, because what Centipede whispered of was impossibly terrible.
Sidestepping, I rested my hand against one of the walls, panting and squeezing my eyes shut.
Distantly, I heard Tallu saying my name, the whisper of blood monks as they argued about whether the curse could even affect me the way it did Tallu and Hallu.
And louder than any of the noise was the echo of sibilant whispers in my head.
What had been different last time?
Why hadn’t this happened before?
The answer hit me immediately. I knew in my bones what was different.
This time, when Centipede had bitten me, I had been afraid. During our first fight at the Mountainside Palace, I had felt alarmed by the small, unfamiliar monsters crawling from a corpse, anxious because I was missing the weapons I needed to kill such creatures.
But I hadn’t felt the bone-deep fear that lived inside my heart now.
Tallu was dying, and I could see no way through.
The curse that had hold of him was written by blood monks, from a sect that had been killed by his own people when we had both been children.
It was seared into him now, as much a part of him as his blood and bones.
More than that, when Na? and I had freed Prince Hallu from a centipede, I had seen what the curse looked like: threads of fate spun by the animalia Spider.
What hope did I have against fate?
So this time, when Centipede and his venom bit into me, it had found the fear it needed to grow its eggs under my skin, in my brain. It had found the fertile soil to nurture the whispers that would eventually drive me into madness, as they had Asahi and Pito Bemishu.
I closed my fist against the wall, feeling my dull nails dig into my palm. No.
I might be afraid, but I was a warrior from the north. I was the son of Queen Op?la, I was a member of the Silvereyes clan, my sister would one day sit on my mother’s throne. I had survived worse than this.
My fist pressed harder into the rough stone wall of the tunnel, and I could feel bits of it scratching my skin, scraping my knuckles. Raising my hand, I hit it against the stone, feeling the reverberation up my arm.
Centipede thought to use me? More fool him. I was a hunter, and I knew how to set a trap, even if it was in my own mind.
He wanted me, and I would use that to find him. Squeezing my eyes shut, I listened, feeling the whispers echoing in the hole inside me that had once held my magic.
I felt myself pulled in Centipede’s direction, felt my bones and blood echo with the vibrations of its burrowing into my brain. More than that, I could see and hear through the dark stones like Inor.
“I can hear him.” My words echoed in the cavern.
“What?” Tallu demanded, in front of me. He frowned, reaching for me, and I let myself lean into his touch.
“I can hear Centipede under my skin. I told you before, and you said you couldn’t.” I remembered asking him and his puzzled confusion at the question. “I’ll lead us to the source of the whispers.”
“He might not hear them, but I could,” Irad?o said, frowning. “And I do not hear them now.”
“I have been listening to them longer,” I said, and even though it was true, it felt like a lie because I knew the real reason for my ability was the poison even now seeping into my veins.
Frowning, Tallu tightened his lips but said nothing more. I could feel the worry even without his voicing it.
Koque looked at Tallu, her eyes narrowing in appraisal. Finally, she reached out, her pale fingers light on Vostop’s dark clothes. “Let us go, Vostop. The longer we wait, the more chance Inor has of finding us.”
“We’ll go at the same time,” I told them. It might give them some grace, some leeway. We would certainly be making more noise since we didn’t know the way. “Good luck.”
“Koque—” Tallu looked down. “Whatever Hallu sees, it is not madness. It was a curse from our father. Do not fear him.”
Koque’s face softened, and she handed Hallu to Vostop, approaching Tallu. Raising her hand, she brushed his hair back from his face, her expression gentle. “I did not fear you, did I?”
He relaxed into her touch and held her gaze for a moment. She took back her son, and Vostop opened his hand, pressing it to the stone. The rock and dirt shifted away from his palm, the whole mountain seeming to sigh.
There was no more speaking, as being heard in the dark was too much of a risk.
Vostop led us as far as where three tunnels met and then pointed in one direction.
He held out his arm, and I took it, forearm to forearm in a near-universal display of comradeship.
Then he turned down one of the branches, Koque a silent shadow behind him.
The twins paused only briefly before following Vostop, and I waited for Irad?o to go with them.
She merely lifted an eyebrow as the light from their lantern faded.
In her arms, Na? was no more than a handful of white scales and fur.
The rocks around us were so dim I had to narrow my eyes in the dark.
But she shoved at my shoulder, and I understood without words: she had spent so long looking for me that she wasn’t about to give me up now that I was in front of her.
I sighed, and she shoved at my shoulder again, harder. Finally, I nodded. I wouldn’t have left her either.
Lerolian’s voice sounded in the dark. “This way.”
One of the monks had gone with Hallu, leaving the rest with us. Three dead and three living against Centipede.
Tallu turned to follow, but I put a hand on his arm, sharing a look with Irad?o over my shoulder. Tallu would walk in the middle with us on either side. Her brows twitched, but soon, we’d boxed him in.
We passed more of the black stones, embedded in the wall, framing doorways, sitting in the ceiling like enormous mirrors reflecting us back on ourselves. Each time we passed, I could feel the whispers grow in volume, turning from murmurs to shouts, echoing inside my skull.
Using the black stones, I could sense a tunnel parallel to ours. Two guards walked, their heavy weapons resting against their shoulders. They did not speak; they did not falter. Their minds were as blank as fresh-fallen snow.
When I opened my eyes, Tallu was next to me, his hand on the back of my neck, his russet eyes wide. He narrowed them instantly, and I shook my head. I might be able to listen in on Centipede, but that didn’t mean we could be careless.
Gesturing ahead, I led us forward, hesitating at a juncture.
I could feel the guards approaching. With a few rushed steps, I got us across the intersection and tucked into the mouth of a cavern just as the guards passed.
Tallu squeezed my shoulder. When I looked over at Irad?o, she was giving me a strange look, Na? her mirror image on her shoulder.
Shaking my head, I closed my eyes again, feeling Centipede’s whispers in my mind: I can burn down his empire so that he can be free, just let me in, little prince. Let me in.