Chapter 34
SULLHA
Sullha hadn't bitten her nails in twelve years despite having had plenty of reasons to do so during that time, and yet here she was, sitting on her bench at the playground and worrying about Yaaf, with her left thumb in her mouth and a small, ragged edge between her teeth.
She lowered her hand and looked at it, made a soft noise of disgust, and wiped her thumb against the leg of her coveralls.
Despite washing her hands multiple times after her gardening shift this morning, there was still a little dirt at the base of her cuticles where it had just refused to come out.
She hadn't even bothered to bring a book because she was too nervous to read.
Today was the day of the assassination.
She did not know exactly when it would take place. It could have been done already, or it might still be in progress, or it might have failed.
If something had gone wrong inside the harem, Yaaf might be dead, and so might his teammates, but Sullha wouldn't know until it became clear that he wasn't coming. She would just sit on this bench, and hour by hour her hope would fade along with the sunlight.
She bit her nail again.
In the sandbox, Tomek and his two friends were building a giant castle complex.
They had been at it for over an hour, and the castle already had three towers, a moat, and a row of small flags Tomek had constructed by sticking twigs through scraps of leaf.
Pol was packing wet sand into one of the old tin molds.
Ronan was making his fourth trip to the bathroom with a dented can clutched in his hand to get water for their construction.
She watched them, but her mind was on Yaaf.
If he didn't come, she would have to somehow keep going despite how devastating that would be.
But how?
Without Yaaf and his teammates, there was no escaping the island, and she would have to deliver the bad news to Asira. She hadn't even told the girl that she'd singled her out because her brother had asked her to do that. How was she to tell her that her brother was gone?
She bit the nail down past where there was nail to bite, and the pain made her stop. She lowered her hand and tucked it under her opposite arm to keep it away from her teeth.
The displacement of air behind her was so slight that she almost missed it despite listening for it for hours.
She whipped her head around and found Yaaf materializing in front of her eyes the way he always did when he released his thrall on her.
She knew that he wasn't really forming shape and that it was only an illusion her mind produced, but it was nevertheless startling, and her hand came up to her chest.
"Thank heavens you're all right," she said, the phrase sitting much better with her than 'praise Mortdh,' which was what she was expected to say.
Mortdh wasn't her god, but she needed to thank something, and heaven was a generic enough term that could be applied to fate or providence or whatever higher power existed in this universe.
"I was so worried," she added.
Yaaf came around the side of the bench and sat beside her, so close that his thigh was pressed against hers.
Sullha didn't feel the urge to inch away. On the contrary. She savored the warmth, the solidity of him, the fact that he was here with her, alive and well.
"It is done," he said. "Everything worked out perfectly according to plan. Once the news spreads, everyone will believe that Lord Navuh killed his sons for breaching his sanctuary."
He'd sounded so matter of fact about it, as if the execution of three Brotherhood leaders was nothing more than an information-gathering mission.
She didn't know if he'd killed before, or even if he'd been the one who'd actually done it, or if it was one of his teammates. If it was his first time, he must be struggling with guilt, and she didn't know how to help him.
"Are you alright?" she asked quietly.
He seemed confused by her question, looked down at his pristine uniform, then looked back up at her. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"
"Have you killed before?"
He nodded.
Sullha hadn't known that. She'd assumed Yaaf hadn't killed anyone because he'd told her he'd not been deployed, but maybe it was during the rebellion?
"I'm asking if you are alright because killing must be hard on the soul. At least I think it is. Maybe I'm wrong."
He arched an eyebrow. "Haven't you ever imagined killing the men who hurt you?"
The question hit her like a slap.
She'd imagined it many times, lying in her bed after a rough session and fantasizing about stabbing those who'd hurt her while they looked at her with horror on their cruel faces, realizing that she was the bringer of their death.
Sometimes she'd imagined that she died and returned as an avenging angel, killing everyone who had ever hurt her or any other girl. She would have felt no remorse, no guilt, she would have been doing the work a benevolent god should have done.
The fantasies had helped her get through many rough nights.
"I have." She looked into Yaaf's eyes. "Plenty of times."
"Sometimes the killing of the few is a mercy to the many.
If those three managed to take rule of the island from Losham, they would have torn it apart.
The army would have splintered, and everyone would have suffered, including the women in the enclosure, those working in the kitchens, tidying the rooms, and even those working in the brothel.
The vulnerable are always the first victims of upheaval.
By eliminating those three, we saved many lives and prevented a lot of suffering.
I do not regret any of the killings I have done, and I do not regret these.
Those three were evil, and the world is a better place without them. "
Given that Yaaf could have entered their minds and read their thoughts, she didn't doubt his assessment of Navuh's sons.
She didn't even want to know what he'd seen in there because she had seen enough darkness in her life and didn't need to add even worse things to the sludge sitting at the bottom of her chest cavity.
Still, was Losham any better?
She let out a slow breath. "You must have a lot of faith in Losham."
He shrugged. "He's the lesser evil because he's at least logical and he's not a sadist."
"That's not an enthusiastic endorsement."
"It's not, but that's the best we could have done for the island. Someone needs to hold things together, and there is no better alternative that we can think of."
She didn't have an opinion on that because she knew next to nothing about the power structure on the island, other than that Lord Navuh ruled everything and everyone with an iron fist. But now he was gone, and Losham had replaced him, and Yaaf was saying that there was no one better.
She let out a breath. "How are the others?"
"The others?"
"Your friends. Your team. After the operation. Are they all right?"
He tilted his head. "Why do you care? They are strangers to you."
She blinked. "They are your friends. I care about your friends because you do."
He said nothing, so she continued. "I'm working on saving their mothers and sisters. They're not strangers anymore."
"They are grateful," he said.
She nodded. "Tell them that I'm happy to do that."
"They are saying that you are very brave. They appreciate that you are willing to take the risks you are taking for people you don't know."
Something about what he'd said, or rather the way he'd said it, prickled her mind, but she couldn't put her finger on it. "That's very kind of them," she said. "Tell them I said thank you."
"I will."
She watched the sandbox, and the prickle got more incessant.
They are saying that you are very brave. Not they would say. Not they think. Not I told them and they were impressed. They are saying, as if the saying were happening now.
She would have dismissed it as a figure of speech if she hadn't heard him say things like that before.
He'd told her that he was the spokesman for his team, but she'd assumed that what he'd meant was that he was their representative, speaking the things that they had agreed on before.
But thinking about it now, it didn't make any sense.
They couldn't have agreed on what to say ahead of every conversation because not everything could be planned.
"Is it you saying those things or are you quoting them?" she asked.
"They are saying that."
She remembered other instances when Yaaf had talked about the others as if they were right there with them, just mute, and he was talking for them. Perhaps as their spokesman, he was used to that kind of expression even when he wasn't representing them directly.
"You mean that they said that."
He nodded, but something passed across his eyes, the kind of flicker that she remembered from Yaaf the boy when he'd been lying about something or not telling the entire truth.
"What are you not telling me, Yaaf?"
He snorted. "Many things."
She slapped his arm. "Stop doing that. Talk to me. You know you can trust me. You told me about your escape plan, and you told me about assassinating three powerful Brotherhood leaders, but you are not trusting me with whatever this is?"
He let out a breath, and his shoulders sagged. "It's about my teammates. They are much more than that. Much more than friends or even brothers."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Something happened to us while we were imprisoned and experimented on with powerful drugs."
"You told me. That's how you developed the ability to thrall other immortals."
"Yes. But there is more. The reason we are so powerful despite being so young is that we merged our minds. It's not eight people working in coordination with each other. It's one mind made from eight components that is much more powerful than the sum of its parts."
Sullha struggled with the concept, mainly because the implications were chilling, but she didn't want to jump to conclusions before understanding what Yaaf was trying to tell her.
"I don't understand. How do you merge your minds? Do you all sit together in a circle, close your eyes, and let your minds wander to some place where they can meet? Do you do that before going out on a mission? Or is it something you do every day?"
Yaaf's shoulders sagged further. "It's not an on and off thing. We are always joined. Right now, they are telling me that I'm making a mistake by telling you because you are not ready to hear this yet."
Sullha felt as if he'd punched her in the stomach. "They are talking to you right now?"
"Yes."
"And they hear everything I say?"
"Yes."
"And it has been that way from the first time you talked to me?"
"Yes, but usually they retreat a little to give me some space. They are present, but they are at the edges. Right now, they are mostly silent." He lifted his hand and rubbed the back of his neck. "They all like you a lot, and they are grateful to you."
"Yeah, you said that already."
All that intimacy she'd imagined growing between them hadn't been real. Her Yaaf was no longer hers. That Yaaf was gone despite the glimpses she occasionally caught of him. He was one of eight now.
"What do you call yourselves?" she asked.
He smiled. "Dave."
"Dave? Why Dave?"
He shrugged. "It's a name from an old movie about a computer and a human at odds with one another. The human's name was Dave, and he prevailed in the end. We wanted to remember that in case we ever forgot our humanity and thought of ourselves as a machine."
His words touched and saddened her at the same time. She couldn't imagine what these eight young soldiers had gone through to become this one entity. They'd merged to protect each other, to lend each other strength.
Her eyes welled up.
The choice of the name Dave was endearing in a way she had not expected. Eight young males had been taken apart and put back together into a single entity, and they'd given that entity the name of a fictional man who had refused to surrender to a machine.
It was so achingly human.
They might have become powerful, but they had paid a hefty price for what they'd gained. They'd had to sacrifice their individualities, but the name they'd chosen was a constant reminder that they had not started that way.
"Are you okay?" Yaaf was looking at her intently. "Are we still okay?"
She made herself smile.
"It's a lot to digest."
He chuckled nervously. "I know."
She turned to look at him, and his pained expression made her eyes well with tears again.
He was waiting for her to tell him whether what he had just told her was going to break them.
Sullha turned inward to examine the question.
He was still her friend, and she still needed him to escape the island and give Tomek a life.
But those nascent feelings she had allowed herself to feel toward Yaaf, that sense of intimacy she'd felt, that had been an illusion.
There was no intimacy with seven constant spectators sharing every moment with them.
Yaaf was still waiting for her answer.
She nodded. "Yes, of course, we are still okay. You will always be my friend, Yaaf. That will never change."
COMING UP NEXT
The Children of the Gods Book 109
Dark Chains: Third Link