thirty-two
There were sounds, and there were visions, but neither meant much to Mira in the following days as she pieced together what happened—and what would happen soon.
The sounds wanted her to know that it wasn’t her fault.
How could she have known? And the sounds wanted to constantly drag her back down into despair.
The sobs of loss. The moans of pain. Any survivors from the attack, including two of the mercenaries who survived the julah response, were rushed to the biggest hospital in the county.
Mira had been so out of it that she could not help with the teleportation efforts to ensure that victims were seen as soon as possible.
But it was the visions that followed her into her dreams when she was forced to sleep.
Visions of blood, gaping wounds, and pale faces that had lost their lives.
Sulim’s haunted her until she finally cried into a pillow.
She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know if she was in her room in Gardiah Estate, in an inn, or even her childhood bedroom, for when she finally came to, she teleported to the Temple and asked what she could do to help.
Nobody had anything for her. They wanted her gone.
Staying meant facing the funeral preparations.
All of Harksplit was in mourning, and even those who did not particularly care for the Gardiahs kept a respectable silence as they went about their business and made room for blubbering friends and scared children.
For while Harksplit itself had not been attacked, knowing that Cerilynian mercenaries had descended upon their part of the county sent the fear of death through every Arrahite.
People demanded answers. Investigators from Dassil were sent to make sense of it all.
Dead mercenary bodies were collected for a mass burial in an unmarked location, while the maids and ranch hands at the estate who met the most untimely ends were handed back to their families or, if that wasn’t possible, prepped for burial in Harksplit.
As for the family…
Mira didn’t know how many days had passed since that terrible moment when she beheld her beloved, her soulmate, dead in a pool of her and her husband’s blood.
They were so… slaughtered… Unceremoniously, even.
Wherever they were trying to hide, they had been caught.
Sulim was shot through the back, and Sonall in the head.
Both had died “almost instantly,” according to the local coroner, and the julah healer Joiya demanded come tend to this, but Mira knew that only one of the mercenaries was responsible.
One had been shot before the other. One had been spared from suffering, while the other knew what was coming.
Deep in her heart, she knew Sulim had been killed first.
That murderous bastard… The man she had ripped off Heary, no doubt.
One of many to die that day, and Mira knew that she was the one who had killed him.
Death begets death. That was something her mother had told her when Mira was originally brought in for the sorceric murder of the chief of Second Tribe.
But Second Tribe, this was not. Mira told the investigators that she knew Second Tribe’s style, and this wasn’t it.
“This has the haphazard go-in-and-shoot markings of First Tribe.”
Mira was stunned and aghast by that detail alone.
Bad enough that so many people had been needlessly killed that day.
To know that it was the people often hired to fill out army ranks around the Federation blew her mind, because who hired the wretches of First Tribe to finish what Second Tribe couldn’t?
Usually, it was Third Tribe who dealt in assassinations.
But, Mira supposed, if so many had to be killed… across two different locations…
So much money had been put into this, and for what? Who had hired these people? And why did Mira’s brain stop working when vengeance was on her tongue? Why was she only capable of sitting in a pew in the Harksplit Temple, staring through dry, red eyes at the voya-yantrak, which mocked her grief?
She sat in the same spot that she had occupied for the wedding, which felt like a lifetime ago now.
In the front row, on the other side of the aisle, was Kema, who sat with her head in her hands and her elbows digging new trenches into her thighs.
Joiya stood by the altar, contemplating the stained glass windows depicting the First Dance of Life as they overlooked the two bodies lying on two tables covered in white sheets.
Kanhith crept through a side door so nobody would be disturbed.
The Temple was currently closed to the public as the funeral was being prepared, but there was a delay in the reception of Lord and Lady Gardiahs’ bodies.
They had been taken into custody by local Qahranian guardsmen, from what Mira understood, and the julah that Joiya had sent to fetch them were bogged down in Federation bureaucracy.
“Lady Joiya.” Although he kept a hushed voice, Kanhith’s words echoed in the cavernous Temple.
He stepped up onto the platform where Joiya kept watch over the altar and the bodies on their slabs.
“I’ve just returned from Qahrain. I have guaranteed the return of the other bodies this evening, which means we can proceed with the funeral preparations.
Joiya reached out for his arm, steadying herself as she stepped down from the altar. “What of Graella? How is her condition?”
He shrugged. “No news, I’m afraid. She’s been unconscious since the attack, but her body lives.”
“The poor dear… I will stop by at my earliest convenience. You saw Janush there, did you not?” She referred to Master Vallahar, an old friend of hers from the Academy and a Master Healer in his own right. Whenever Joiya needed a medical favor, she called Janush.
“Yes, but…”
“I know. Bodily life does not guarantee brain activity.”
They quieted, Kanhith retreating to his office. Joiya stood between the slabs, first gazing at Sonall, then Sulim, the two of them separated by the two yards she occupied.
“I just don’t understand,” she said. “Such senseless loss…”
Her voice trailed off as she gazed at the voya-yantrak again.
Mira, who had been halfway between prayer and rejecting the worship of the Void, leaned forward and braced herself on the pew in front of her.
“They were sent to wipe out anyone who could claim legal inheritance,” she said, her voice cracking and croaking from tears and disuse.
“The staff were just auxiliary. They’re allowed to kill them, too, but they have to pay a fine for every person they kill who isn’t part of a contract. It’s just…”
Mira couldn’t believe she was talking about this in front of her soulmate’s body. “Stupid. I hate that place.”
Joiya studied her through a mother’s soft eyes before clearing her throat. “Someone made this happen, though. I want to know who.”
She can’t be serious. Had Joiya been that absorbed in her research?
“One of the last things Sulim told me was that the night before…” Mira got up so everyone could hear her better, even Kema, who had faced her distant cousin with puffy eyes. “Marco di’Flare asked her to run away with him. And he’s nowhere to be seen since that night.”
Joiya showed the hardest sign of life as she stomped down from the platform and approached her daughter. “You’re right. Nobody knows where he is.”
Something flashed on her face before she disappeared, teleporting away somewhere even Mira could not guess.
With women like Joiya, there were often no slammed doors, no rattling portraits, and certainly no thrown possessions.
She teleported at the slightest whiff of conflict, and that was especially true now that she had given up any pretense that the tattoo did anything to suppress her abilities.
“Do you think Marco is the man behind this?” Kema asked as Mira stood nearby. The hopeful look in her visage searched for answers, but even Mira knew that she would not get anything satisfying by asking such questions.
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good for him.”
Kema fell into another fit of tears that she attempted to hide behind her handkerchief. Mira, whose well was dry, stepped up beside Sulim’s slab and forced herself to look into the peaceful—if not pale—face of a woman whom she had held only a few days ago.
Whoever had fixed her up for viewing had dressed her in the same yellow blouse she had worn the day she went into town and danced with Mira before they made fools of themselves in the restroom.
Her hair was combed down around her brow and tucked behind her ear, blush applied to her cheeks, and a faint hue of eyeshadow to give more color to her closed eyelids.
Mira reached behind her neck and unclasped the necklace she wore every day of her pilgrimage. The zatbah stone soon rested atop Sulim’s breast as Mira latched it into place.
Her hands lingered on Sulim’s shoulders. The only warmth came from clothing, but when Mira grazed her knuckles along blush-painted cheeks, the first time she touched her soulmate since discovering her body, she swore she felt a hint of breath beneath Sulim’s nostrils.
No. It wasn’t possible. She was dead.
A single tear threatened to fall from Mira’s face, but she refused to leave anything behind besides love and adoration. So she wiped the tear away, thankful that Kema was elsewhere.
“I’m sorry,” Mira whispered, afraid to let go of the stiff body beneath her hand.
“I should have been there sooner.” She blamed herself for much, even when she rationalized that there was no way to know that the house would be attacked again.
Let alone on the day of Graella’s wedding back on Qahrain. “I’m so sorry.”
She fell forward, smothering her face in Sulim’s abdomen, the butterfly pendant and the simple wedding ring cutting into her skin. She refused to move—she wanted to feel even a sliver of the terrible pain her beloved must have experienced when a laser cut through her body.
Here. It was right here. Mira pushed her forehead against Sulim’s stomach. The mark of death was here. Her soul left her body here. If Mira covered it, if she prayed over it, would it bring back her soulmate?
My soulmate… She only got one. Knowing that they had such limited time together—time to get to know one another more, time to build a home, maybe a family—spurred Mira to start the next phase of her life.