Chapter 28 Sirsha
Sirsha
Almost before R’zwana had fallen, the Jaduna from Kin Deshma had tackled Sirsha to the floor with magic and bound her. Ma knelt beside R’zwana, shaking her eldest daughter, calling her name, as if doing so would wake her.
I’m sorry, Ma. Sirsha tried to speak, but all that came out was a moan of despair as she watched her mother sink her head to R’zwana’s shredded chest, her body shaking in grief.
The Deshma lifted and dragged Sirsha out of the Darakt and through the shaded paths of Kotama.
It was night, and lanterns winked at her from all sides.
She heard voices distantly and was confused at the laughter, the calm.
Soon the news would spread. The death of a Raan-Ruku—and a Raani’s daughter at that—was no small thing.
Especially at the hand of a girl who wasn’t even supposed to be in Kotama.
“You killed her,” Sirsha finally whispered to Div, who trotted alongside the grim-faced Jaduna guards. Sirsha didn’t care if they heard. They were going to throw her in prison anyway. What did it matter if they thought her mad? “She was—my sist—”
“She was your tormentor and abuser,” Div said. “Don’t shed any tears over her, little witch. You have more important things to think about. Look around you. What do you see?”
“I see a monster—”
“No.” Div’s voice had lost its vicious slink. She wasn’t friendly, nor was she hostile. She sounded urgent. “Look.”
Dead. Dead. Her sister was dead. Sirsha was an only child.
And this death she could not blame on Div alone.
For she, Sirsha, had lost control of her will.
She had wished harm upon her sister. She’d asked Div to help her.
Made a deal with the creature, however unintentional.
And Div had honored her part of it. She’d struck down R’zwana—and eaten her heart in exchange.
Whatever poison lay between Sirsha and R’zwana, whatever grievances and resentments—they would never be healed. R’zwana would be an open wound within Sirsha’s heart for as long as she lived.
“Look, S’rsha Inashi-fa!” Div used her full name so rarely that Sirsha did as Div ordered.
She peered beyond the phalanx of guards surrounding her.
Caught the familiar sights of Kotama. Earthen paths and wider cobbled roads, all winding through and beneath the lamplit, thick-boughed Gandafur trees.
Carved wooden bridges swayed between the branches, and voices drifted down as people headed to their homes for the evening.
“I see Kotama,” Sirsha said. “I see a valley with nearly a quarter of Jaduna’s population, all going about their business because they don’t know the demon that walks among them.”
“Look at the shadows, little witch.”
The wind rose, pulling at Sirsha’s hair, and though she didn’t reach for her magic to interpret it, too wary of Div’s taint and her own tenuous willpower, she sensed that the wind was saying something.
She saw homes that had collapsed. The rotting trunk of a fallen tree, half-hidden by the cheerful tents of a night market.
They approached a stable, where a prison wagon awaited Sirsha. She hardly noticed it, instead focusing on the binding the Jaduna had used on her. The constraints were weak. Frayed. It surprised her enough that she risked calling her own magic. She pushed through the binding easily.
Immediately, her head spun, her body betraying her with fatigue so consuming she hardly had the will to breathe: Div’s taint. But she forced herself to feel the earth, the wind, the water.
She understood then what she hadn’t before.
“Do you see now, little witch?” Div whispered. “Do you see the truth of your people?”
Sirsha thought of the decay in the Inashi Darakt, the rotting flowers. She thought of the Jaduna who’d said, We have bigger problems to deal with. She hadn’t understood then. Now she did: something was wrong with the magic that ran through Kotama.
On the hours-long wagon journey to the Jaduna prison, Sirsha tried to make sense of it, but her mind circled R’zwana’s death, her mother’s failed binding, the way Div had manipulated Ma’s magic so easily.
The Adah coin felt cold at her throat and Sirsha thanked the skies for it. If Div could use the bond between a parent and child to her advantage, skies only knew the horrors she could inflict on Quil through the Adah bond.
It was deep night when they reached the prison, which rose southwest of Kotama in a lush, high ravine that opened to the Bay of Tears.
The cells sat along the cliff wall, hundreds of feet above the ground.
They were crafted from ropes of thick, barky vines that twisted unnaturally, merging with stone to create cells and hallways and storerooms.
The walls of the ravine were honeycombed with tunnels that led to more cells.
It was impossible to navigate unless you were one of the prison guards—but most of them were from Kin Khind.
Only the bloodworkers could manipulate the living prison so that even the most powerful Jaduna was bound tight, magic and senses dulled.
Sirsha hated it. For it was here that she’d awaited her sentencing when she was twelve. Now, as she was led through bark-choked halls and up stone steps soft with fallen leaves, she thought back to that day nearly nine years ago when her own family dragged her here.
She could practically smell the dust and sunshine of that little Brijnan village. She could see the broad-shouldered, gray-bearded Songma who came with them on that journey.
“The little boy will cause great destruction if we do not bind him, S’rsha,” the Songma said. “Tomorrow, you must choke his magic completely so that he does not harm anyone.”
“But he’s just soothing animals and bringing rain. Why must we—”
“You will do as the Songma has ordered, daughter.” Ma had heard Sirsha arguing, and her voice was forbidding. “It is not for you to ask questions.”
After they’d left Brijna and arrived in Kotama, Sirsha had been tossed in the Vines.
She hadn’t known what would happen, whether she would live or die. She’d waited in this place for a week while the Raanis decided her fate. No one spoke to her then. No one visited.
Never had she been so alone.
Sirsha closed her eyes against the rest of that memory. It would not do to dredge it up now.
Just like then, the verdant trees and high canyon walls pressed at her, a smothering embrace.
By the time the prison guards had thrown her in a cell, her body shook.
They’d shoved her deep in the heart of the Vines, where she couldn’t see the sky or stars.
The only sound was the scream of a sea wind through the branches.
Div appeared the moment the Jaduna left, pacing about the cell, restless as a wolf.
“This is an abomination, you know.” Her lip curled as she took in the cage and the ravine that stretched into darkness below. “Your people are wrong to use the trees this way. They simply wish to climb and grow. To be free. Not to imprison and cause suffering.”
Sirsha didn’t think Div had much room to stand when it came to abominations. She shot the creature a dark look and sat heavily on the wooden cot.
“I’m never getting out of here,” Sirsha said. “Because of you and your meddling.”
“What would you have done if you had escaped?” Div curled her lip. “Run to the jinn, expecting them to answer your questions? Asking them to fix everything the way you can’t seem to?”
Sirsha paced the cell herself, ignoring Div’s mockery and trying to think.
You must know her. Loli’s words echoed through Sirsha’s mind. Knowing Div was the only path left. The realization was hard, for Sirsha had always found solace in movement, whatever it might be: walking, tracking, hunting, cooking.
But with Div she had to remain still. She had to look into Div and keep looking, no matter what horrors she saw.
“When Ma was trying to bind you”—Sirsha turned to the creature—“you said you wanted to understand what it is for a mother to betray her child. Why?”
“Because I am a monster, fool girl.”
The wind rattled through the Vines, and the dead branches clacked against each other like bones.
“Is that kind of betrayal something you have…experience with? Something you’ve done in the past?”
The creature retreated to the shadows of the cell. Her teeth flashed in the dim torchlight. “You ask me for my story, little witch. But what is yours?”
Unease swept through Sirsha. That old memory, that old guilt. The village in Brijna. The courtyard. The boy. Her orders were to learn his magic and then bind it. Skies, how she wished she hadn’t.
“My story doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does,” Div says. “But fair enough, you do not wish to tell it. If you could retell your story, what would it be? If you could make it whatever you wanted?”
“That’s easy,” Sirsha said. “I’d never have gone on that ill-fated mission to Brijna.”
“I can make it so.” Div’s voice coiled about Sirsha like smoke. “I can make it so you are welcomed back into the bosom of your family, whom you love. I can make them forget. I can even make you forget. There is little I cannot do, Sirsha.”
“You can’t undo the past, Div,” Sirsha said. “Even if you made us all forget.” The dead flashed in her memory and she shuddered. “No matter how many times we try to retell our story, there is one truth the universe knows. And it lives in our bones. My mind might forget. But my body would not.”
She looked up at Div’s face to find neither malice nor cunning but other emotions, swift as shadows. But not so swift that Sirsha missed them: Fury. Helplessness.
“Hear my truth, the truth of ‘The Old Man and the Village,’ ” Div whispered.
“Once, long ago, I was not woman nor orator but a simple old man who wished only to enjoy the forest where I lived.
My magic was strong. My wisdom was great.
But the nearby villagers were closed-minded at the very idea of sorcery.
“I did not wish to leave. But one night, a storm found the village. It was the heat of summer. Rain lashed the trees and wind whipped at my legs. My enemies came for me and they made sure I died very slow. But I made sure I would come back.”
Sirsha groaned. This story was as much a fabrication as the others.
And yet she wondered. Perhaps Div’s stories weren’t entirely true.
But some part of them might be. In all of them, she was the victim.
She’d been wronged. Usually by someone more powerful.
And when she completed each tale, she always appeared vulnerable. Young and wounded.
“Div,” Sirsha said, and it was difficult to speak calmly. She reminded herself of how the earth spoke to her, and the wind. Of how the water moved for her. Carefully, delicately. “Who hurt you, Div?”
“Everyone, girl.” Div turned away, staring out the vine bars of the cell.
“Your pain is hungry,” Sirsha said. “That is why you wish for hearts. Don’t—don’t you wish for that hunger to end?”
“There is no end to my pain,” Div said. “And so there will be no end to my hunger. I will feed, whether you like it or not. I will wear down your willpower. All those close to you will suffer. Everyone you love. But,” she purred, “let me feast upon the Jaduna you don’t know.
Those who are not in your family, for instance. Then those you love will be spared.”
“Why do you want the Jaduna?” Sirsha pressed. She wouldn’t be distracted by Div’s excesses. Because that’s what Div’s blustering was. A distraction from her pain. Sirsha would know—she’d done it herself many times.
“There are other people with magic,” Sirsha said. “Why is it the Jaduna you wish to taste so badly?”
“The ghosts of our misdeeds seek vengeance,” Div said in a strange, singsong voice. “And they will have their due.”
Sirsha went still. She’d said those words to Quil. But that conversation had been through the Adah coin. There was no way that Div could have heard it.
“What are your misdeeds, little witch?” Div said. “More importantly, what are the misdeeds of your people?”
Sirsha could feel she was getting close to something essential. She leaned forward.
“Why did you choose me, Div?” Sirsha said. “Back in that Ankanese prison when I thought I’d killed you. Why not one of the nearby seers, or one of my companions?”
“Because our wounds are the same, little witch,” Div said. She didn’t sound mocking or vicious. She sounded resigned. “And so is our rage.”