Chapter 21 #2
“Oh, you were, you just didn’t know it. You bow down to anyone who will give you orders. Altan pulled on your fucking heartstrings, played you like a lute—he just had to say the right words, make you think he loved you, and you’d run after him to the Chuluu Korikh like an idiot.”
“Shut up,” she said in a low voice.
But then she saw what this was all about now. This wasn’t about Vaisra. This wasn’t about the Republic at all. This was about Altan. All these months later, after everything they’d been through, everything was still about Altan.
She could give Chaghan that fight. He’d fucking had it coming.
“Like you didn’t worship him,” she hissed. “I’m not the one who was obsessed with him. You dropped everything to do whatever he asked you to—”
“But I didn’t go with him to the Chuluu Korikh,” he said. “You did.”
“You’re blaming me for that?”
She knew where this was going. She understood now what Chaghan had been too cowardly to say to her face all these months—that he blamed Altan’s death on her.
No wonder he hated her.
Qara put a hand on her brother’s arm. “Chaghan, don’t.”
Chaghan shook her off. “Someone let Feylen loose. Someone got Altan captured. It wasn’t me.”
“And someone told him where the Chuluu Korikh was in the first place,” Rin shouted. “Why? Why would you do that? You knew what was in there!”
“Because Altan thought he could raise an army.” Chaghan spoke in a loud, flat voice.
“Because Altan thought he could reset the course of history to before the Red Emperor and bring the world back to a time when Speer was free and the shamans were at the height of their power. Because for a time that vision was so beautiful that even I believed it. But I stopped. I realized that he’d gone crazy and that something had broken and that that path was just going to lead to his death.
“But you? You followed him right to the very end. You let them capture him on that mountain, and you let him die on that pier.”
Guilt coiled tightly in Rin’s gut, wrenching and horrible. She had nothing to say. Chaghan was right; she’d known he was right, she just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
He cocked his head to the side. “Did you think he’d fall in love with you if you just did what he asked?”
“Shut up.”
His expression turned vicious. “Is that why you’re in love with Vaisra? Do you think he’s Altan’s replacement?”
She rammed her fist into his mouth.
Her knuckles met his jaw with a crack so satisfying she didn’t even feel where his teeth punctured her skin. She’d broken something, and that felt marvelous. Chaghan toppled over like a straw target. She lunged forward, reaching for his neck, but Kitay grabbed her from behind.
She flailed in his grasp. “Let me go!”
His grip tightened. “Calm down.”
Chaghan pulled himself to a sitting position and spat a tooth onto the ground. “And she says she’s not a dog.”
Rin lunged to hit him again, but Kitay yanked her back.
“Let me go!”
“Rin, stop—”
“I’ll kill him!”
“No, you won’t,” Kitay snapped. He forced Rin into a kneeling position and twisted her arms painfully behind her back. He pointed at Chaghan. “You—stop talking. Both of you stop this right now. We’re alone in enemy territory. We split up from each other and we’re dead.”
Rin struggled to break free. “Just let me at him—”
“Oh, go on, let her try,” Chaghan said. “A Speerly that can’t call fire, I’m terrified.”
“I can still break your skinny chicken neck,” she said.
“Stop talking,” Kitay hissed.
“Why?” Chaghan sneered. “Is she going to cry?”
“No.” Kitay nodded toward the forest. “Because we’re not alone.”
Hooded riders emerged from the trees, sitting astride monstrous warhorses much larger than any steed Rin had ever seen.
Rin couldn’t identify their uniforms. They were garbed in furs and leathers, not Militia greens, but they didn’t seem like friends, either.
The riders aimed their bows toward them, bowstrings stretched so taut that at this distance the arrows wouldn’t just pierce their bodies, they would fly straight through them.
Rin rose slowly, hand creeping toward her trident. But Chaghan grabbed her wrist.
“Surrender now,” he hissed.
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
She jerked her hand out of his grip. “That’s likely.”
But even as her fingers closed around her weapon, she knew they were trapped. Those longbows were massive—at this distance, there would be no dodging those arrows.
She heard a rustling noise from upriver. The Hesperians had seen the riders. They were trying to run.
The riders twisted around and loosed their bowstrings into the forest. Arrows thudded into the snow. Rin saw Augus drop to the ground, his face twisted in pain as he clutched at a feathered shaft sticking out of his left shoulder.
But the riders hadn’t shot to kill. Most of the arrows were aimed at the dirt around the missionaries’ feet. Only a few of the Hesperians were injured. The rest had collapsed from sheer fright. They huddled together in a clump, arms raised high, arquebuses unfired.
Two riders dismounted and wrenched the weapons out of the missionaries’ trembling hands. The missionaries put up no resistance.
Rin’s mind raced as she watched, trying to find a way out.
If she and Kitay could just get to the stream, then the current would carry them downriver, hopefully faster than the horses could run, and if she held her breath and ducked deep enough then she’d have some cover from the arrows.
But how to get to the water before the riders loosed their bowstrings? Her eyes darted around the clearing—
Put your hands up.
No one spoke the order but she heard it—a deep, hoarse command that resonated loudly in her mind.
A warning shot whistled past her, inches from her temple. She ducked down, grabbed a clump of mud to fling at the riders. If she could distract them, just for a few seconds . . .
The riders turned their bows back toward her.
“Stop!” Chaghan ran out in front of the riders, waving his arms over his head.
A sound like a gong echoed through the clearing, so loud that Rin felt her temples vibrating.
A flurry of images from someone else’s imagination forced their way into her mind’s eye.
She saw herself on her knees, arms up. She saw herself stuck through with arrows, bleeding from a dozen different wounds.
She saw a vast and dizzying landscape—a sparse steppe, desert dunes, a thunderous stampede as riders set out on horseback to seek something, destroy something . . .
Then she saw Chaghan, facing the riders with his fists clenched, felt the sheer intent radiating out from his form—we’re here in peace we’re here in peace I am one of you we’re here in peace—and she realized that this wasn’t just some psychospiritual battle of wills.
This was a conversation.
Somehow, the riders could communicate without moving their lips. They conveyed images and fragments of intent without spoken language directly into their receivers’ minds. Rin glanced at Kitay, checking to make sure that she hadn’t gone mad. He was staring at the riders, eyes wide, hands trembling.
Stop resisting, boomed the first voice.
Frantic babbles erupted from the bound Hesperians. Augus doubled forward and yelled, clutching his head. He was hearing it, too.
Whatever Chaghan said in response, it was enough to persuade the riders that they weren’t a threat. Their leader lifted a hand and barked out a command in a language Rin didn’t understand. The riders lowered their bows.
The leader swung himself off his horse in one fluid motion and strode toward Chaghan.
“Hello, Bekter,” Chaghan said.
“Hello, cousin,” Bekter responded. He’d spoken in Nikara; his words came out harsh and twisted. He wrenched sounds out of the air like he was ripping meat from bone, as if he were unused to spoken language.
“Cousin?” Kitay echoed out loud.
“We’re not proud of it,” Qara muttered.
Bekter shot her a quick smile. Whatever passed mentally between them happened too fast for Rin to understand, but she caught the gist of it—something lewd, something violent, horrid, and dripping in contempt.
“Go fuck yourself,” Qara said.
Bekter called something to his riders. Two of them jumped to the ground, wrenched Chaghan’s and Qara’s arms behind their backs, and forced them to their knees.
Rin snatched up her trident, but arrows dotted the ground around her before she could move.
“You won’t get a third warning,” Bekter said.
She dropped the trident and placed her hands behind her head. Kitay did the same. The riders tied Rin’s hands together, pulled her to her feet, and dragged her, stumbling miserably, toward Bekter so that the four of them knelt before him in a single line.
“Where is he?” Bekter asked.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Kitay said.
“The Wind God. I believe the mortal’s name is Feylen. We are hunting him. Where has he gone?”
“Downriver, probably,” said Kitay. “If you know how to fly, you might catch up!”
Bekter ignored him. His eyes roved over Rin’s body, lingering in places that made her flinch. Hazy images came unbidden to her mind, too blurry for her to see more than shattered limbs and flesh on flesh.
“Is this the Speerly?” he asked.
“You can’t hurt her,” Chaghan said. “You’re sworn.”
“Sworn not to hurt you. Not them.”
“They’re under my charge. This is my territory.”
Bekter laughed. “You’ve been gone a long time, little cousin. The Naimads are weak. The treaty is shattering. The Sorqan Sira’s decided to come down and clean up your mess.”
“ ‘Charge’?” Rin repeated. “ ‘Treaty’? Who are you people?”
“They’re watchers,” Qara murmured.
“Of what?”
“People like you, little Speerly.” Bekter pulled off his hood.
Rin flinched back, repulsed.
His face was covered in mottled burns, ropey and raised, a mountainous terrain of pain running from cheek to cheek. He smiled at her, and the way the scars crinkled around the sides of his mouth was a terrible sight.
She spat at his feet. “Had a bad encounter with a Speerly, didn’t you?”