Chapter 10
· YEMI ·
The tunnel did not so much “let out on the coast” as run interminably along it, forever narrow and stifling.
They trudged onward well into the daylight hours as evidenced by the bright and glittering ocean visible through a line of small holes they encountered crossing the underside of a land bridge.
They lingered here awhile, desperate for the fresh air and the illusion of coolness in the breeze whistling through the holes.
Cutter announced that the sun’s positioning put them at midmorning.
It’d been the first thing anyone said for miles. And then they kept moving.
Yemi couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been this thirsty.
Her throat was still sore from the bizarrely strong choking Dahlia had given her.
Despite herself, she kept thinking back to the sinking blackness of her eyes in that moment, certain she hadn’t imagined it.
The anxiety and adrenaline had long worn off, and the heat of the tunnel compounded her fatigue.
She wasn’t so much walking now as dragging herself after Nova.
After what had to be another few hours, the tunnel grew loud and Cutter’s feet shuffled to a stop. He handed Nova the torch and bent beneath an overhang that halved the height of the tunnel. There was grunting and banging on what sounded like wood, as if he was trying to move something.
Nova plucked a dusty old box out of a cubby similar to the one they’d found with the matchsticks in the beginning. Only inside this one was a sizable satchel of gold coin.
“You need help?” Nova asked, her voice hoarse as she jingled the bag.
Cutter’s reply was a torrent of muttered obscenity as he adjusted his footing into a squat position and pressed on the ceiling with his back until something moved and Yemi saw sunlight.
“Ha!” he barked and climbed up. Nova followed, and they both pulled Yemi up after.
They were standing on a narrow cliff face overlooking a sheer drop-off and the rocky shore a hundred feet below.
To their left, a waterfall streamed from a source another hundred feet overhead, and to their right, rocky stairs led to what looked like the last vestiges of a collapsed lighthouse.
“Watch your footing,” Cutter called over the roar of the water and started up the stairs with a bit more pep in his step.
Nova handed him the bag of coins and followed behind Yemi.
Her skin prickled, awash in sea spray as they climbed.
Her legs burned, and Nova was audibly cursing by the time they reached the surface, where miles of lavender and wheat fields extended into the sun-drenched distance, separated by the odd dirt road lined with telephone poles lacing wire through the countryside and ending at the occasional tiny house.
A fast-flowing river poured over the edge of the cliffs.
They followed Cutter to some point along it where he promptly stuck his head right into it while the others drank from their hands.
“Where are we?” Yemi asked, the alkaline taste of her own dried blood in her mouth rekindled by the new moisture.
“Miles west of Chairre,” he said. “Walking’s not going to get us to Muris. Neither is starving. We’ll rest here for now. See what we can come up with when we’ve had a second to catch our breaths.”
Thirst sated, they spread out in the long grass under the sun, grateful for the cool wind rising off the sea.
Cutter stayed beside the river, counting coin and tinkering with the salvage of his spear, while Nova walked off wordlessly toward the cliffs and the lighthouse ruins and disappeared when she sat among the long grass.
Yemi followed her, wanting to talk about the night, about next steps, about Dahlia’s eyes and the prescient visit from the sea witch.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Nova replied. Her face was scrunched into a frown, eyes bracing against the brightness of the sky after so long in the dark.
Her tall boots collapsed in the grass beside her, and she peeled off her shirt to rinse it in the river, revealing bruises and blood-crusted lacerations wherever her subarmor didn’t cover her.
The shirt itself was stained and peppered with singed bullet holes over the torso.
Yemi forgot why she’d come over as she stared at it.
“So, I know you meant well,” Nova started, but looked out over the ocean instead of at her. “But running off to fight Dahlia? Don’t do that shit again.”
“Excuse me?” Yemi scoffed.
“I mean it, Yemaya. You knew as much as we did about what you were walking into. You put yourself at an unnecessary risk, and for what? Revenge? She had one of those hand cannons. If she’d spotted you a second sooner, you’d have run right into her bullet.
You saw what one of those rounds does to our steel.
She’d have caved your chest all the way in. ”
“Listen, I’d wasted too much time not beheading the snake of this thing already—”
“But it’s not a fucking snake, is it?” Nova was nearly yelling now as she looked up at her.
“These are people. They’re capable of functioning independently.
You’d have killed her, and guess what? One of those other clowns could have stepped up to replace her.
All they had to do was take you out, and you’d have made it easy for them.
He’s not going to say anything, but do you know what that would have done to Cutter?
Losing both your parents and then you on his watch?
What it would have done to me? The position I would have put myself in if I’d seen them cut you dow—” She stopped, flexing her hands in an agitated strangling motion before appearing to calm herself.
Yemi was silent awhile, listening to the drone of the falls, embarrassed by how foolish Nova had found her. Had she been holding on to this anger their entire walk through the tunnels?
“Look, you’re queen now.” Nova’s voice, quieter, more tired, brought her back. “There is no one else. For the country or for me.”
Yemi sat beside her, watching dolphins jump the glittering waves in the distance, plucking the grass for want of something to do with her hands. She’d rubbed raw the groove of her finger where her ring had been hours ago and it was an angry, flaking red.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I could end it. I was tired of losing… everything, Nova. They’ve taken everything from me.
” Furious tears began to well in her eyes, and she laughed them off bitterly.
Nova just watched, letting her speak. “My grandmother was so enamored with these people. She told me every story about how odd and interesting and beautiful they were to a restless sea princess. She cursed herself to be up here, to walk among them. Cursed my mother. Cursed me. But I’ve learned the lesson they never could: These people—Men, Ixians—they can’t be ruled by love or adoration.
They don’t want it. They need fear. And I intend to be terrifying. ”
Nova nudged her with her knee. “Listen, I don’t know if you’re right.
I don’t know if everyone’s hopeless or just most of them, or if we’re better or worse than the Mer.
But I told you, wherever you go, I go. You don’t end this, we do.
We can get your throne back, we can paint the streets with the blood of your enemies, or we can go on a much easier, preferably extended vacation. ”
Yemi laughed, grateful for Nova’s tact. But leaving her throne was never an option. Her entire family had fought and been killed for it, and if she owed anyone anything, it was them.
Nova got to her feet. She looked calm but weary. The night had been a trauma for them all.
“Give me your shirt; I’ll go run it through the river,” she said to Yemi. “And get some sleep. We’ll probably move again at night.”
· NOVA ·
Nova had killed before. It was part of her training as queensguard.
Alongside memorization of the tunnels and threats of the geopolitical landscape, she was to study the effects of various weapons on flesh.
How to extract specific outcomes with different methods, how to break or end people or even just delay them.
By age sixteen, she was required to be experienced with taking a life and remain well-adjusted afterward.
If she’d failed at either, she wouldn’t have been allowed to become Yemi’s personal guard.
The first man she’d killed had been in his forties, and the law said he deserved it.
Nova had cut his throat with little urging but didn’t sleep for a week after.
She had nightmares where she woke up screaming.
Her hands shook. She’d had to relearn wielding weapons afterward.
Yet Yemi had done it all so easily last night.
Nova didn’t know what that meant. She was too tired to pursue it very far, but the thought was still on her mind.
Maybe Yemi’s childhood trauma of watching her father’s murder made violence easier to commit.
Maybe there was something in Yemi’s Mer blood, the same something that fed the gruesome legends of the Bear Queen.
In the years since her training, the experience revealed itself to be worth it.
Being Yemi’s protector was worth it. Seeing her every day, being allowed to love her, making her smile, was worth it.
Maybe Yemi had simply found the value in death faster than she had.
The Amblers’ train system was the country’s single most reliable means of transport, connecting Ixia’s far-flung towns, agricultural villages, and quarries to the capital. It was clean, quick, and refined. In fact, a train either left or arrived in Chairre’s central station every fifteen minutes.