Chapter 42 Samson
SAMSON
Do not grieve, my son. It does not do well to dwell on the past when the sea is ever-changing. Endure. The Great Serpent waits for us to bring justice in tow.
—from The Lament of Seshar: A People’s History
The night bled into the dark sea so that Samson could not tell where the sky ended and the sea began. Before him, the world lay thick and opaque. Full of unknowing. The abyss stared, but Samson could feel it already gnawing its way within him, carving a hole full of—nothing.
Samson Ruru Kytuu, for once, felt nothing.
He had already swallowed his tears until they burned to numbness. He listened to the susurration of the sea until he could no longer hear Chandi’s scream. His grief, which had felt so enormous, so overwhelming, was now a cold, wet thing.
He stared bleakly at his reflection and the black waves beyond.
Within the hour, they would arrive at the pit.
He knew he should get up. He knew he had to leave this room, but all Samson could see was the pit waiting, ready to unhinge its jaw and swallow him whole should he fail.
He reached for his Agni and felt its small, uneven edges.
Was this what his mother had warned him of? That his fire, his curse, would eat him up until he was an empty husk of a man, powerful and brutal, yet withered and hollow? Alone in his power. Alone in his misery.
Someone touched his shoulder. Samson turned.
Elena stood behind his chair, her hands pressing into his shoulders, holding him down, holding him in place. Her hands were firm. Full. She was not empty like him. Her Agni, so bright and sharp, flickered in his mind’s eye, beating back the abyss.
I am here, it said. I exist.
Before, he had been jealous of her Agni’s abundance, but now he latched on to it with tired relief, leaning into her hands and basking in her warmth.
She stared out the window, and Samson watched their reflections on the glass.
“When this is over, what’s the first thing you’d like to do?”
He was startled by the stark normality of the question. What’s the first thing you’d like to do? As if they were discussing their plans for an ordinary day. As if, when this was over, they would survive. Walk out, hand in hand, the Butcher and the Burning Queen.
“I…” The words danced in his mind. The traitors. Slippery whenever he needed them. “I—I…”
I don’t deserve an ordinary, mundane day. Men—monsters—like him were the reason days twisted into horrors. So he relied on memory, on the past. It was only there he could find refuge.
“I would like a plate of cloud cookies,” he answered finally. “Raspberry and black currant flavored.”
He thought of Yassen, how they had shared tea on a balcony overlooking a garden. His bright eyes underneath the midsummer sun. The cool wind against their cheeks. If Samson had known that would be his last unremarkable day, maybe he would have held on to it longer.
“And some tea,” he added. He disliked tea, but it fit. “Vermilion. With a dab of honey.”
In her reflection, Elena’s lips trembled. “That was Yassen’s favorite.”
“I know.”
She began to pull away, when he asked, “What about you?”
“The same,” she said, her voice breaking. “But with two dollops of honey. It’s better that way.”
“Is it?”
She searched his reflection in the window, and for a moment, he saw her. He saw the same grief in her eyes, the exhaustion pulling down her mouth, the ache quivering in the soft muscles of her throat.
He stood to face her.
“Elena—” he began.
“Don’t fling yourself into the sea.” Her voice thickened. “I can’t swim. I won’t be able to save you. But when this is all over, we’re going to have tea. Vermilion. With lots of honey. And then—and then…”
He made a choked sound, between a gasp and a laugh. She nodded, beginning to turn, but slowly, slowly, he raised his hand, the back of his fingers lightly brushing her cheek.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He stopped. But she did not leave. His hand hovered along her cheek, barely touching, and she did not push him away. Her dark eyes fixed on him, and he saw that strange light flicker in their depths.
He had fought hard for her friendship, and he knew he should be happy with it.
He knew he did not deserve her love. Even if she had any left to give, he would only receive scraps of it.
But he had always been a hungry man. He stood rooted.
Unable to find the words, unwilling to relent.
And in the silence, the weight of the unspoken bore down until Elena finally freed them.
“The men are ready for you.”
She left then, and he watched her go, his hand still hovering in the air.
Samson clicked his armor into place and wrapped his urumi around his waist. On the deck below, his few Black Scales and the Yumi stood at attention. The rest listened, the comms sharing his message to the other ship. But what would be his message?
Fight for Seshar? Fight for azadi?
What was the use of freedom when the men beside him may not live to see it?
His soldiers gazed up at him. There were ten of them, ten of the sixty that had left Magar, but he saw their ghostly faces in the spots where they would have stood. Chandi, Akiri, Akino, the rest.
Of his officers, only Visha stood before him now, her face stony if not for the muscle fluttering in her jaw.
She and the others were all dressed in black, their eyes rimmed with kohl and urumis laced in their hands.
His angels of death. Samson felt a sudden, fierce pride for their composure.
He knew they were hurt, mourning, and angry, but they remained stalwart like the soldiers he had trained them to be.
Visha stood at the front, expectant. His gaze fell on her.
“When I was a boy, my mother told me that Seshar had been made by the Great Serpent.” His voice slipped underneath the hiss of the waves, reverberating across the deck.
“She said the Serpent descended from the sky and made a resting place where She could sleep. And that when She left, She anointed warriors to protect Her home. Warriors made of the sky and sea. My mother told me that one day, the Great Serpent would return. But what will She find there now?”
He looked beyond the horizon where Seshar, in all her beauty, in all her misery, awaited.
He saw Chandi plunging into the water chamber.
He heard Akino and the trapped miners screaming his name.
And he saw the Jantari zeemir above it all, hanging like a guillotine over their necks. His voice hardened.
“You will find murderers in Seshar. Men with pale eyes and awful zeemirs. They slaughtered our warriors. Our families. And, to rub salt in the wound, they took us, young and helpless, to make into their work mules.
“But we will change how they perceive us. We will capture and slaughter those Jantari thieves and spike their heads on our flag. We will enter Tsuana’s waters with their killdoms in tow, soaked in their blood.
And then the world will forever know our names, but not because we are fighting for our freedom.
” He laughed, high and caustic. “No matter our loss, no matter the wrongs done upon us, they will always see us as filthy Sesharians, fanatical Ravani, and paganist Yumi out for blood and revenge. They will see us as villains.”
A ripple among his soldiers. A shifting of shoulders, quiet glances, soft murmurs. He let it pass and then continued.
“But we must become what we have to be. Make no mistake. We are bringing a war. A great war. One that will forever change the face of this world. Some of us may not live to see its future, its end. But…” He gripped the railing, leaning forward.
“We do it in the name of our families. Our fathers. Mothers. Brothers and sisters who were so carelessly slaughtered. We do it”—he glanced at Daz—“to protect our home from invaders, and”—his gaze went to Elena—“to save the home we once lost.”
Samson unwrapped his urumi, the blade slithering against the floor.
“I will not ask you to fight for me. I will not ask you to fight for your god or against the villains who destroyed your temples. Because our fight, your fight, is much greater than that. Your fight today is for you.
“For the future you. The one who, in a far gentler world, gets to put your daughter and son to bed. Who enjoys a late-night drink and watches the twin moons rise among the stars. Who falls asleep in your chair and wakes up the next day to do it again. The one who gets to live a full life.
“So fight for that version of you. The non-warrior. The ordinary man or woman who would rather spend a night watching their children sleep than seeing them murdered. Go. For they have always been waiting for you.”
Samson raised his urumi, and like a beautiful melody, all forty men and women answered his call with a roar that reverberated through the ship and the sea and the sky beyond, where even the gods were compelled to listen.