2. Kessa
Kessa
Rhazek should be dead before we reach the gate.
I’m not being dramatic. It’s a practical assessment based on the amount of blood soaking through his torn armor and dripping onto the sand, leaving a trail behind us.
Dark drops. Too dark. Almost black where they hit red dust. Anyone losing that much blood should have the basic decency to collapse before I have to decide whether he’s a prisoner, a patient, or a problem with shoulders.
Somehow he keeps walking anyway. Weaving, slowly, but walking.
Renn took him off of me, which is good because Renn is taller, stronger, and not fighting the urge to shove our guest off the nearest ledge.
Guest is the wrong word. Prisoner might be closer, but not quite.
Warning feels closest, which is inconvenient because warnings aren’t supposed to bleed on your floors or look at you like they already know all your secrets.
Syin leads us back through the eastern gate while dozens of wary watchers spy on us from hidden niches.
We’ve become practiced at swallowing fear, but shock still ripples through the onlookers.
An alien has come from the sky. He’s not Zmaj, Urr’ki, or human, he’s other.
Other means hunger, chains, invasion, or death.
“Clear the lower east passage,” I say to Penr, who has somehow survived and made it back before us because panic gives his legs ambitions his brain can’t approve. “No crowd. No rumors. Tell Ila to move ration line three to the inner hall.”
Penr’s eyes flick to Rhazek and stick there. “Is he...”
“Dangerous? Yes. Dying? Also yes. Move.”
He moves. Rhazek’s good eye tracks him, then slides back to me. The look shouldn’t feel like a touch. It does, though, and that gives me one more thing to hate about him.
“You command without title,” he says.
“You bleed without permission.”
Renn coughs like he’s trying not to laugh and failing nobly.
Rhazek gives Renn a dry look. “Your people are odd.”
I frown, staring at him. Dying and still being snarky. Great. I shrug.
“We have a sky corpse insulting us at our gate. We’re adapting.”
“I am not a corpse.”
“Give it time.”
Syin turns on us. “Enough.”
The word is loud enough to echo. The Zmaj stop moving. The humans freeze even faster. Rhazek doesn’t. He looks at Syin like stillness is something other people do when danger is close.
That may be the worst thing about him so far.
He’s not reckless. Reckless people are easy to understand.
They fling themselves at problems and become examples.
Rhazek is controlled in a way that makes violence feel like a decision he’s already made and has held in reserve for a time of his choosing.
Syin points toward the inner route. “Council chamber. Now.”
“He needs Merra first,” I say.
“He needs a cage.”
“He needs to not die before the Council hears whatever warning this Arcan fellow sent.”
At Arcan’s name, a few of the older Zmaj rustle their wings and tails. It’s subtle, but definite. They all know something that I don’t and that irritates me even more.
The copper sphere is still clutched in Rhazek’s hand. No one has taken it from him. Not because anyone trusts him. Because nobody wants to be the first fool to touch an off-world device after a ship exploded and a zemlja emerged under our feet.
“He walks to the council chamber,” Syin says, his nostrils flaring.
“He bleeds out in the council chamber, that’s on your tally.”
“This isn’t your decision, Kessa.”
“No, but it’s my floor he’s dripping on.”
It goes quiet in the specific way that means I’ve gone too far and everyone is waiting to see if Syin removes my head with ceremony or without. I don’t care. I’m tired and frustrated. Syin bares a hint of fang.
Rhazek laughs. It’s barely a sound, more breath than humor, but it lands like sparks in dry grass. Syin snaps his head toward him. Rhazek straightens off Renn’s shoulder with a visible cost. Sweat slides down the side of his face, cutting tracks through soot and blood.
“She is correct.”
I start to protest, then stop. I don’t need him defending me. I especially don’t need him being right while doing it.
“You do not speak here,” Syin says, narrowing his eyes.
“I speak while I can still stand,” Rhazek says. “If I fall, your healer will cut armor from a dead male, and your council will have a copper ball, a wrecked basin, and no answers.”
“Then answer.”
Rhazek lifts the sphere. There’s a single tremor in his arm that shakes the sphere before Rhazek forces it still.
“Rosalind first.”
The name sounds different in his mouth, weighted with debt or history instead of familiarity. I don’t like either option. I’m collecting dislikes at an impressive pace.
“I am here.”
Her voice comes from the upper stair and everyone turns.
Rosalind descends with Visidion at her back, and for one breath the whole space reorganizes around her. She’s not tall compared to a Zmaj, not armed like Syin, not loud like Adran, who is already hurrying two steps behind her in a robe belted wrong, but she still takes the room.
Age has carved lines at her eyes and mouth, but not weakness. Her hair is bound back. Her expression is calm. That calm is why half the City obeys her before she gives orders and the other half resents obeying her after she does.
Visidion’s wings are folded tight, but the instant he focuses on Rhazek, he looks unsettled, though I can’t tell why. I don’t think it’s recognition but I could be wrong.
Rosalind stops three paces from Rhazek and looks from the copper sphere to his face, then to the blood running down his side.
“Krix,” she says.
The word means nothing to me. It means something to Rosalind. To Visidion. To the older Zmaj whose wings rustle with a leather rubbing against leather sound.
Rhazek’s mouth tightens.
“Krix owned me. It did not make me.”
The words are sharp enough that even Syin doesn’t answer at once. Rosalind’s gaze changes.
“Then what are you?”
Rhazek holds her stare, squaring his shoulders despite the wounds and blood loss.
“Voraxxian.”
Another word I don’t know, but many in the room do. I hate hidden knowledge and I’m getting very tired of being the person in the room who understands the least while still being expected to help keep everyone alive.
Visidion’s wings shift once, a controlled movement that somehow feels like a blade being drawn halfway from its sheath.
“Vorraxis.”
It’s not a question. His intonation carries weight that goes far beyond the syllables. Rhazek’s good eye cuts to him.
“I have not heard my world spoken cleanly in many years.”
There is grief in his voice, but also anger, old and controlled. I can’t tell which hurts him more before he shuts both away.
“Arcan gave me the sphere,” Rhazek says. “I came from Krix. That is all that matters.”
It’s clearly not all that matters, but it’s just as clearly all he’s willing to give. Visidion’s voice drops low enough that my skin prickles.
“How did you come by Arcan’s sphere?”
“He gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“To make you listen before you killed me.”
“That remains undecided,” Syin says.
Rosalind holds out her hand, palm up.
A dozen guards tense. Rhazek looks at her hand, then at her face. Rhazek studies her differently for a second. Recognition, maybe, but not her or her face. More of the kind of person who can ask for a weapon in a room full of fear and expect to be handed it.
Slowly, he places the copper sphere in her palm. Nothing explodes, but nobody breathes for a moment anyway. Rosalind closes her fingers around it.
“Council chamber. Merra will meet us there.”
Syin’s jaw tightens. “He should be contained first.”
“He is contained,” Rosalind says.
“He is walking freely.”
“He’s surrounded by armed Zmaj, bleeding heavily.” Rosalind’s eyes dart from Rhazek to me then back to Syin. She reads too much in that single glance. “And he’s standing in a City he can’t navigate without Kessa.”
I regret being volunteered immediately. Rhazek’s eye cuts to me again.
“Kessa.”
The way he says my name makes it sound like he’s picked it up, tested its edge, and found it serviceable.
“No,” I say. Rosalind looks at me. I look at her. She says nothing, which is worse than an order because it gives me room to argue with myself and lose. “Fine,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “But if he collapses, I’m stepping over him.”
Rhazek’s mouth moves. “Liar.”
I glare at him. “Bleed quieter.”
A ghost of a smile passes over his mouth. I glare, shake my head, and lead the enemy deeper into the City. Every step feels like choosing a route through a collapse, except this time I cannot tell whether Rhazek is the danger, the warning, or the thing both of them are hunting.