Chapter 25 Samson
SAMSON
It is foolish to believe that I am now among friends. The world has changed around me, and I find myself irrefutably altered with it.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
Samson stood between the open gates and waited for the enemy to appear. Ahead of him, alone in the wide entrance, leaned a limp white flag. He knew who would come. He had known as soon as Visha had uttered those godforsaken words: The Arohassin are here.
But still. It did not dampen the blow.
A tall man appeared behind the flag. In the low light, his face was smooth, serene.
Beautiful even, with dark eyes and soft, polished curls that fell too neatly across his forehead.
A trim beard hid the burn on his cheek, but Samson remembered its shape—curved, sallow, like a dying moon.
He smiled, revealing teeth too perfect, too white.
“Hello, Sam.”
The same voice from the metal lotus, the same one that had haunted him from the Arohassin to the dark, miserable depths of the mines. A wild roaring built in his ears as he felt something ancient and rotten stir within his chest like a slumbering beast awakened.
“Akaros.”
Akaros folded himself into one of the chairs beside the flag and gestured to the other. “Sit.”
Stiffly, Samson sat. He dared not speak again, afraid that whatever would come out would somehow be radioactive, horrid. Akaros watched him closely. A light smile ghosted his long lips, his eyes still and yet always moving, always observing, always, always, finding his faults.
“So your little bird has gone and fled the coop?”
Samson bit back his reply. Elena’s sudden departure and her message had thrown him, but he’d barely had the time to process before finding himself here in this sham of a parley. So he said nothing.
Akaros sighed. “That’s the thing with these royals, Sam. Try as hard as you can, coerce them, break them, shame them—love them—and they’ll still choose themselves. Yassen learned that lesson. I’m surprised you haven’t sooner. You’ve worked with rulers longer than he worked with them.”
Carefully, Samson dug his forefinger into his palm, focusing on the sharp, uncomfortable pinprick of pain rather than the sudden vision of Yassen dying on the mountain, abandoned by Elena. Or of himself, watching the tanker disappear into the night.
“Hmm. Well. You boys were both self-sacrificial to a fault. Suppose she doesn’t come back. What are you going to do? What are you going to tell her people?” Akaros paused, his eyes sliding coolly to him. “How will you ever take those mines without her Agni?”
Samson’s throat ran dry. In the time between Elena’s departure and the Arohassin’s arrival, he hadn’t the time to consider that question. His confusion must have shown, because Akaros leaned back in his seat and smiled, and that alone destroyed Samson’s resolve.
“She’s coming back,” he said hotly. She is, I know she is. “She wouldn’t leave Ravence alone to me. She’s going to raise an army, to help us in our war against Farin—”
Akaros barked a laugh. “Listen to yourself. ‘Raise an army to help.’ Help? Help who, Sam, you or her? Your men answer to you. They’re devoted to you.
If she marches in with her own army, you think they’ll lie down and swear fealty to your sword?
Gods above, I didn’t realize time in the desert has made you so… desperate.”
The word ripped into him deeper than Samson anticipated, and he smarted. “Desperate? You’re the one who has come to my door, seeking my help.”
“Oh no, Sam,” Akaros said in a chillingly soft voice. “We were invited.”
At this, Samson stilled. He thought back to when they had discovered the man of sand, of how Chandi had insisted they at least consider the offer. Don’t you see? We can use them.
A bitterness festered within him, a ripening fruit growing on a gnarled and twisted plant.
“Don’t blame your commander,” Akaros said, watching his face.
“She made the right decision. Now that your greatest ally has left you, I have become your greatest friend.” He leaned forward.
“Without Elena’s Agni, you can’t take Farin’s mines.
But we know how to destroy them without her. All I ask in return is amrithi.”
“But I do not have it.”
“Yet we both know only you can activate it.”
Samson inhaled sharply. “What do you know of amrithi?”
“‘A metal so fine it can cut through steel.’ A metal that can only be harvested by the god’s cursed son. You.”
“I am not giving you amrithi,” he growled. “Who knows what you intend to use it for—”
Akaros spread out his arms. “I don’t see anyone else coming to your aid. It’s a fair deal, Sam. Take it, or lose the mines. Take it, or watch Elena come back the conquering hero. Take it, and win.”
Samson felt a hundred things at once, all of it dark, all of it hateful, burning into a black ball that lodged between his lungs and his throat.
He wished he could think of something clever, something that could push him out of this corner where, deprived of friends, he was forced to make do with his enemy.
But only Akaros sat before him. Only his old tormentor offered him a hand.
When he spoke, Samson’s voice was dry, weak. “How?”
Akaros grew still, eyes unmoving, perfect as a statue, and Samson had the feeling that if he somehow touched him, he would have felt rigid as stone. Then, slowly, he unfolded from his chair, all angles and long limbs separating and opening like the elegant legs of a spider.
“Look,” he said simply.
So Samson stood and watched. There, beyond the wall, multiple men crawled down the canyons.
No, not men, Samson thought. Things. It was as if someone had dissembled the man of sand, then put him back together—but with none of the grace or heed of the natural order.
There were arms. There were heads. They were people—of a sort.
But they were wrong. Made of limbs that bent unnaturally and moved too fast. A great swath of darkness multiplying and building while the eerie susurration of sand filled the air.
And they kept coming. Soon, they filled the gates and the canyons beyond, watching him with eyeless sockets.
Samson stared out at the unnatural army and thought, distantly, that if they succeeded, then a new kind of warfare would begin. One of fire and sand and nothing of mercy. He stood at the precipice of this distant future, and he could not see its end.
“We can send this army to overwhelm the Jantari while we take the tunnels,” Akaros said.
“When?”
“Whenever you need.”
Samson turned to him, remembering his promise to Yassen all those suns ago. I’m going to kill him, he had rasped. Akaros watched him, his face purposefully blank.
“How do we control them?”
Akaros turned, and a shape detached from the wall. At first, Samson thought it was one of those unnatural men, but as it came closer, he realized with a start that it was a woman. No, not a woman. A Yumi, with eyes of gold and hair so long and lethal he took an involuntary step back as she neared.
“Samson, meet our chief gamemaster, Jaya.”