Chapter 16 Samson
SAMSON
There are silences that litter the heart, fill it with a longing that kills.
—from the dairies of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
At the ring of metal, his hand flew to his urumi. The people closest to them jerked back, and someone in the crowd shrieked.
But Elena held out the slingsword, palms up, and when her gaze met his, he saw the question in them.
The challenge.
“Do not be afraid, Prophet. It won’t bite.”
Around them, citizens chuckled. Samson cursed himself for being so reactionary. He was a Prophet, their Prophet, not some weak-bellied Jantari cadet.
But perhaps that was what she wanted him to seem.
Fearful. Impulsive. He knew she still smarted from her people’s growing disregard of her.
Was this her way of rebalancing the power scale through optics?
Or was this a part of the strange Ravani tradition of egotistical gift giving, like Chandi had explained?
If you want the people to love you, you need to make a grand gesture bigger than hers.
The Ravani loved beauty, but they treasured romance above all. The more adoring, the better. And what would make the people love him more than if he played the humble, tender Prophet sent to save them?
So what if Akiri had fashioned the anklets from stolen jewelry locked in the old Jantari safes?
So what if Visha had hidden small trackers in them to monitor their queen’s comings and goings?
So what if, when he touched Elena’s skin, his Agni flailed with such desperate vehemence that it ruined his voice to a rasp?
“Thank you, my rani,” he said.
Elena’s smile only deepened, and something sharp tugged in his chest. “Read the inscription.”
Carefully, he took the slingsword. The blade gleamed with fresh oil, the trigger hilt cushioned in soft rubber that smelled faintly of a dying fire. It was light, balanced. He would have admired it, had he not seen the inscription. A Phoenix seal soared at the tip of the blade. Beneath it glared:
The queen is the protector of the flame, and I its servant.
The first line of the Desert Oath. He would recognize it anywhere. He had sworn it in that gleaming throne room with his friend and sealed their disastrous fate. But it was the very last word, etched deeper than the others, that made him want to smash the blade into pieces.
Servant.
He was no servant. He was a free man, a general with an army, a god of Agni. They bent to him.
Elena moved closer as he held the blade, the back of his knuckles brushing her chest. “A Prophet of Ravence deserves a slingsword gifted by his queen and protected by the Desert Oath. You have blessed so many of us. Let me bless you, on behalf of the Ravani.”
Her smile was broad, warm, and more infuriatingly, he heard people murmur in agreement.
“Let us return the favor, Prophet.”
“Yes, let us thank you.”
Fear and annoyance sparked within him, but deeper still was the churning ocean of black rage; a wrath only born from a lifetime of bitter subjugation under a screaming zeemir and ruthless overlords; a mad, howling, frothing fury that flooded him until he tasted ash on his tongue.
He was no fucking servant.
His oath to Leo had been necessary and temporary. Oaths were made between people of different levels of power, a ruler and a servant, a superior and someone inherently inferior. But I am equal to you now, he thought viciously.
He would give her no oath.
“You forget, my rani, that I serve no one,” he said, struggling to make his voice level, calm. The people could not see him break. “My only oath now is to my god. To our land.”
“What greater thing to serve than Ravence itself?” she said. “You once told me to make Ravence my god. If you are Prophet of this land, is it not yours too? Surely, you will not rebuke this gift, for it is from the people as much as it is from me.”
He could feel their stares, their whispered confusion, their growing doubts. Damn her. Elena had pinned him, trapped him so effortlessly that he could not help but feel a vague sense of respect beneath his resentment. Had he been her, he would have done the same.
“Besides,” Elena said, dropping her voice so only he could hear, “you said you would do this if I trained with your urumi.”
The strangled scream died in his chest. His Agni grew weaker while hers remained so temptingly strong.
Even now, he could feel it. The damn fool still did not know how to hide it from him.
It flickered within his mind’s eye, a torrent of strength and abundancy.
His Agni had been like that in the beginning, bright and vicious and plentiful, and he yearned to feel like that again.
To fill the empty, aching parts of himself.
After all he had bled for, fought for, sinned for, he deserved it.
Because he was a god, and gods devoured one another.
And great skies above, he was tired of staving off his own hunger too.
Samson swallowed thickly. Then, before his army, his friends, and the people of Ravence, he bent to Elena.
“I will take this oath, then, my rani.”
There were no white sands this time. No fire. Elena took the sword and tapped it on his shoulders and crown, her voice sonorous, his clipped and flat, as he repeated after her.
“The queen is the protector of the flame, and I its servant.
Together, we shall give our blood to this land.
I swear it, or burn my name in the sand.”
Roars erupted around him, deafening. The Ravani flung their cursed powder and coated him with crimson as dark as blood.
Elena returned the slingsword to him, smiling, laughing, and he hoped, for her sake and her people’s, that she was innocent.
That this was not a play meant to demean him, but a genuine effort to upraise the Ravani. He hoped.
It was a fragile, broken thing.
Visha tugged on his sleeve. “General, a tanker is approaching.”
“Enemy tanker?” he rasped, watching Elena.
But Visha shook her head, her voice tight. “Cyleoni.”