Chapter 32 Samson
SAMSON
Gods breed guilty heroes.
—a Sesharian proverb
Samson stood underneath the darkened eaves of the palace courtyards as Syla spoke with his advisors.
They had counted the ore. Fifty payloads.
Fifty. Months’ worth of work, of blood and sweat and prayers.
He should have felt vindicated—victorious—seeing the respect in Syla’s eyes and the quiet unease in his advisors’.
They feared him, as they should. But his pleasure was short-lived, his pride blunted by the thick shame that roped his stomach and left burns on his skin.
He could still hear their screams.
Four hundred miners. Four hundred of his own kin, trapped by his own hand. Samson looked up at the bright, clear sky and wished the heavens could reflect at least some of his inner turmoil, but the gods were infinite in their cruelty.
The blue hills of Goldor rolled sleepily into the distance, the emerald palace glimmering in the sunlight with a radiance that made his eyes hurt.
Clouds pillowed the hills. Above them, the infamous shards of Nymia’s heart rose into the sky, floating islands of trees so verdant, so lush, it felt as if the earth meant to swallow the sky.
There was an unusual warmth hovering over the palace, trapped in by the sensors above, but Samson found it too moist, too sticky. His eyelids were hot and feverish. He wondered if it was illness—or guilt. Perhaps both.
Syla dismissed the advisors and motioned Samson forward. He came, though much to his chagrin. He felt like a summoned show dog, made to run and hunt and come limping back to parade his kill.
I have enough deaths for the both of us, he thought. An involuntary, high laugh escaped his lips.
Syla gave him a strange look. “Are you well?”
I am mad, Samson thought. I am the god reborn.
“I’m all right,” he said dryly.
Syla studied him a moment longer before continuing. “I have received word from Kirri. He and Queen Elena are on their way to Goldor.”
Samson nodded, though his chest heaved. The very mention of her name brought back a flood of bitterness.
She would see past his victory and attack him for leaving the miners, for abandoning his people.
Butcher, butcher, butcher. If she called him that, Samson did not know what he would do, and the thought frightened him.
He pulled at his collar, swallowing his irritation. Skies above, it was too damn hot.
“Have you heard from Farin?” he said, changing the subject, as Chandi and Jaya entered the courtyard. Akaros took his time, his movements slow, relaxed, no doubt already making note of the guards along the hall. Samson felt a cold heat lick the back of his throat as they came.
He searched Chandi’s face, but she had said nothing about Akino’s disappearance, or the lack of miners, as they flew back to Cyleon. She had merely asked for his urumi. She held it now, the steel pristine and spotless, almost blue in the sunlight.
“Ah, there you are.” Akaros stooped into a low, mocking bow. “Your Majesty.”
“I never imagined an Arohassin to break his back before a king.” Syla regarded him stiffly, his lips thin. “Have you brought your chief architect?”
“Gamemaster.” Jaya spoke up. “Though, I haven’t officially received my certification from the boards.”
“No, I imagine your superiors delayed that when you destroyed Rani.”
Jaya fell silent as Akaros heaved a long, dramatic sigh. “Sordid bureaucratic entities hardly deserve to be saved, Your Majesty. They’re just buildings, taking up space. Not actual men and women trapped within.”
Samson stiffened as Akaros’s eyes slid to him.
Syla cast him a look, as did the servant boy, as did the others, the guards, the heavens, and Samson felt the invisible ropes tighten around his chest, biting into his skin.
He wanted them to stop looking. To stop judging.
They hadn’t been there, they did not know, could not even begin to understand—
Chandi’s hand brushed against his. “Here.”
Samson took his urumi, wrapping his fingers around the hilt, and the familiar weight of his sword comforted him. In the twin blades, he caught his reflection: high forehead and sharp cheeks, eyes too blue.
You were born a god, he reminded himself. So why, then, did he feel such pain?
“Have you heard from Farin?” he asked again.
Syla hesitated. His face darkened.
“You have,” Samson said. “Tell me what he said.”
“Farin asks to bargain,” Syla said.
“So then why don’t you look happy?”
Syla paused. He glanced at his advisor, who opened another holo. “It’s best you see for yourself.”
Samson stared in horror as he saw the reports, the images, the fires.
Soldiers raided Sesharian homes on the islands.
They flung out clothes, knickknacks, priceless family heirlooms. A man screamed as a soldier grabbed his child and threw him across the threshold.
The child tried to get up, but he wasn’t fast enough.
The Jantari yanked him by the hair and pulled him away from his family.
They boarded them on trucks. Children only. Wide-eyed and soft-cheeked, many who had only heard of the cruelty of the mines but never seen it for themselves.
“These children must be protected. Shielded from the evils of terrorist influences,” Farin said in a news comm.
“It starts from their own homes, from their parents who have been poisoned by such ideologies. Effective immediately, all Sesharian children aged between five and eighteen will be given admittance to mining colonies here in Jantar. They will be given an education in trade and commerce. They will be kept safe. These terrorists believe we are hurting Sesharians, when they themselves killed over four hundred brave men and women in the mine attacks. These children are at risk, and it is our responsibility to see to their welfare.”
Soldiers marched the streets, keeping back the wailing parents. Some charged the lines, yelling, cursing, and a zeemir flashed, grey and bright in the sun. It came singing down. A woman screamed as it cut into her hip, down her thigh, out her leg. She tumbled, wailing.
Her blood was the same crimson red as the fires.
Samson dropped the pod and stumbled back. He blinked rapidly but the images would not go away. The boy with eyes wide like the twin moons, holding the guardrails of a tanker. The father screaming himself hoarse.
He looked to Chandi, who had gone pale.
“What have we done?” she whispered.
“He cannot do this,” Samson said. When the king did not respond, Samson charged forward and gripped his collar. “How can you just stand there!”
The advisor shouted for the guards, but Syla merely met his eyes with a chilled disgust.
“If I recall, Butcher,” Syla said, “it was you who left those men and women behind.”
Samson staggered as if struck. Syla smoothed his collar, his voice maddeningly calm.
“We have gotten the attention of Farin and the other kingdoms. They will attend the council now. But do you understand Farin’s intent?
He is coming to the table with blood. And he knows you will react accordingly.
You will go blood for blood, but you will lose, Butcher.
Because that is what Farin wants. You will only prove that you are the villain he warns us against.”
Samson swallowed. “You think I shouldn’t react.”
“You should,” Jaya said.
“You shouldn’t,” Syla answered.
They stopped and glared at each other, the old king frowning, the gamemaster narrowing her eyes shrewdly, but it was Akaros who spoke first.
“You can’t run away from this, Sam. Not this time. Even gods have to fall on their own swords.”
Samson knew that look in his eyes, that astute calculation and withered pragmatism, and suddenly he felt like a boy again. Lost and angry. Willing to do anything if only to stop hurting.
“I think it’s time we focus on amrithi,” Akaros said.
“Akaros,” Jaya warned.
“Amrithi?” Syla asked.
“Sam,” Chandi called.
But all he could hear were the miners’ desperate pleas for help and Akino’s cry of anger. Guilt, black and shameful, furred his throat like a parasite.
Samson swallowed. “No. Not yet. We haven’t exhausted all our options.”
At this, Akaros smiled, slow and cold. “You have, Haku. And one of them was Yassen. Why do you think I sent him to you?”
They sat in a courtyard underneath stars that shone like uncut gems. Yassen remained silent and still as Samson asked him about the special steel, but when he spoke, his voice came out rushed.
“No,” he said. “My father never knew anything about the steel.”
He was lying, but Samson loved him enough to accept it.
Samson knew Akaros loved to play mind games, and he remembered the torture he had endured at the cost of his shrewdness. The cost Yassen had ultimately paid.
“Yassen’s father never found the amrithi. Yassen didn’t know where it was either,” Samson said, his voice tight, but the look on Akaros’s face made him stop.
He thought then of Elena escaping through the tunnels, of the presence she had felt. His Agni always grew more aware whenever he traveled into the heart of the Sona Range. A metal so fine it could cut through steel.
He had spent suns trying to find it. Building paths underneath Chand Mahal, sending free Sesharians to work his tunnels and reassuring himself that it was better than the mines.
That when they returned, they were still free men.
And once it was done, he would journey through the dark, because if they found it, when they found his godhood… well.
Then the world would fear Seshar.
“Farin is getting closer every day,” Akaros said. “Better we find it first than him.”
“How close are they?” Samson said.
Akaros smiled at his eagerness.
His anger came, lightning fast, and when it struck, its sheer power frightened even him. Samson tucked his trembling hands behind his back and forced himself to remain calm before his old master.
“How close are they?” he repeated.
“What is amrithi?” Syla demanded.
“A legend,” Chandi said, a warning in her eyes. “There’s nothing there, right, Sam?”
“Oh, give up the hoax, Commander,” Akaros said.
“You never told me about this,” Syla said, turning to Samson.
“I wouldn’t trust anything that comes out of the Arohassin’s mouth,” Chandi spat.
Akaros laughed. “Would you rather waltz into a death trap of a council? Farin won’t let you out of there alive. Not unless you go with a royal. But yours is missing, isn’t she?”
“Farin could not lock me up if he tried.”
Samson froze at that voice. He turned, heart rushing to his throat, to see Elena striding toward him.