Chapter 46 Jaya
JAYA
A short-lived game is the fault of only, and solely, the gamemaster. It is a reflection of poor planning, poor execution, and—most importantly—a weaker mind.
—from The Gamemaster Manual
Jaya slowly slackened her grip as the ship stilled. She glanced at the sensor boards. Their radars were still off, but their comms flared back. One by one, the alarms cut.
“Phoenix Above,” she whispered. “It’s gone.”
She rushed to the window. The storm had finally cleared, and the sea stretched around them, dark and opaque.
She did not know how long they had been caught in it.
Only that the waves had risen impossibly high to reveal a beast—an incongruous amalgamation of unnatural angles and sharp teeth.
It had struck. And then she remembered a cold, strange feeling, like a wet blanket wrapped around her bare skin, pulling tight.
“What happened?” Rhumia croaked.
Her hair released from the floor, softened into locks. Jaya eyed the indentions she had made but decided against complaining.
“I’m not sure,” she said instead.
Daz rubbed his head, blinking blearily, but then he started. “Elena. Samson!”
He bolted outside. Jaya ran after him, Rhumia bringing up the rear. They found Samson standing at the bow. He did not turn at their approach.
He simply stood there, rooted to the spot, his eyes fixed on the sea as if it held all his secrets, all his guilt.
“She’s gone,” he said in a voice so bare, so empty, Jaya wondered how the wind had not taken him.
“Elena?” Daz prodded. He turned to the other Yumi. “Were any of you able to bring her inside?”
As Daz spoke to the Yumi, Jaya crept toward Samson. There was a dark bruise creeping underneath his hairline. His shoulders hunched forward as if he were tensing for an attack.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly to not spook him.
His eyes were vacant, forlorn. When he finally turned to her, Jaya saw that they were also wet, his cheeks already streaked with the passage of tears. How long had he been standing here, weeping?
“I lost her to the sea,” he said.
“Great Mother.” Daz ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck. Fuck.”
“How will we appear before the council without her?” Rhumia said.
“The council is the least of our worries,” Jaya said. “What about the killdoms? How are we going to take them?” They had already lost half their manpower. And now without Elena, they had lost half their firepower too.
She turned to Samson. “Can you still… wield?”
When he did not respond, she dropped her voice. Prodded him gently. “Sam? How long have you been standing here?”
“Hours.” His voice cricked like a rusted saw. “It’s been hours since it took her.”
Jaya remembered the beast in the storm… No.
She shook her head. There had been no beasts.
It had been a figment of her delirium, her fear, and she must have hit her head when the ship tilted.
She was a woman of logic, of strategy. There was no evidence of beasts in the pit, only fierce winds and undersea volcanoes that blocked their sensors and scrambled their data. Hence, the pit. There were no monsters.
There are no monsters, she thought. She clutched the stylus in her pocket. Only the monsters men make.
“Sam, listen to me carefully,” she began. “I need you to come inside. You need to rest. We’ll be out of the pit soon and on the killdoms. And when we find them, I need you to be ready. Okay? Sam?” She looked him in the eye. “Focus. Don’t let Chandi’s sacrifice be in vain.”
He stared at her, and slowly, slowly, she saw him remember. The glazed look faded from his eyes, and his mouth quirked down into a frown. He really would be a handsome devil, if he weren’t such a tool.
“Good.” She smacked him on the shoulder. “Now move.”
Back on the bridge, Jaya surveyed the field. A comms light blinked, and after making sure she was alone, she opened the line. Akaros’s voice broke through the static.
“What the fuck was that?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Jaya said, gazing out the window to the other ship as she flicked her stylus. “How are things on your end?”
“Dead as Leo. We lost three men to the storm, two Black Scales and a Yumi. We need more men on this ship. Where’s Elena?”
“Akaros, they wielded. Together.”
She heard him inhale sharply. For a while, he said nothing, and then, “Were you able to get a read?”
Jaya hesitated. Her stylus flickered in and out of her hand, a blur.
“Jaya?”
“No.” It took an enormous effort to push out that word. She stopped whirling her stylus and set it down. “I—I wasn’t on the deck when they melded.”
Silence. And in that silence, Jaya tried not to fixate on the past, on her shortcomings, but it was like picking at a festering pimple.
Perverse, and borderline obsessive. While the Yumi were able to latch down with their hair and escape indoors, she had clutched the railing for dear life, her useless hair flapping in the wind.
Never more had she wished to be born a full Yumi.
Never more had she wished to be born braver, like Div, or more fearless, like her mother, or more clever, like her father.
They wouldn’t have failed. They would have turned and forced their way to the bow.
They would have activated the metal lotus and taken a reading of the intertwined flames.
Instead, she had cried like a child. And when Rhumia grabbed her, pulling them both inside, she had clung to her like a wet rag doll, eager to be saved.
“So.” Akaros’s voice could cut through flesh. “We’ll never learn how to tap into the third, then.”
“I gave her the lotus,” Jaya said hurriedly. “If she’s still alive—”
“Alive? What happened to her?”
Jaya glanced up as Samson entered. “Elena went overboard. Isn’t that right, Sam?”
He flinched. Silence on the line, and then, “Did he throw her over?”
Samson reared, anger rippling across his face. “Did I what?”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“You fucking bastard. How could you even imply—”
Jaya slowly closed her eyes. She knew what Akaros was doing—his subtle provocations to reveal information.
Samson had fallen into it so easily, so quickly, she had the urge to rescue him from his own demise, but she had already erred herself.
So she stayed quiet. Forced herself to listen. She thought of home. Of Div.
“—that I would toss her over?!” Samson gripped the edge of the panel, blue sparks snapping precariously. “She was of Agni. She was my rani. I would never betray her.”
Akaros laughed, cold and slow. “Did you siphon her Agni?”
“She gave it to me,” Samson said, and Jaya snapped up.
“I’m sorry. She gave it to you?”
“So her Agni is yours, then?” Akaros said.
“No, no,” Samson said, dropping his head into his hands. He tugged on his locks. “I—I took too much—at first, I couldn’t help it—but then I tried to stop. I withdrew so she could have control, but then the ship pitched and she—she…”
“But you connected.” Jaya tried to hold back the eagerness in her voice, but something, hope perhaps, delirium even, rustled in her chest. Maybe she could get a reading.
Maybe she could save Div after all. “What was it like? For how long? Did you feel the third, out there somewhere? Did you overpower her, or did she—”
“Jaya.” Akaros’s voice was edged with warning.
But Samson had stilled. Something shifted. It was as if every part of him had sharpened, and the desperation in his eyes, the sorrow heavy on his shoulders, had ground into a weapon. Even his band of fire had silvered, and Jaya tasted the slight metallic charge of electricity in the air.
“What do you mean about the third?”
Ice pricked her ribs as she realized her mistake. Jaya took a step back.
Daz entered then and stopped short when he saw Samson with fire on his wrists. “Prophet—”
“What about the third Agni?” Samson repeated, his eyes on hers.
“You said it yourself, Sam. There is no third,” Akaros chimed in.
“I never told you that,” he snapped.
Daz looked at her. “There’s a third Agni?”
“It’s nothing,” she said quickly, but Samson slammed his hand against the table, and she jumped.
“What. Third.”
He rounded the table toward her, but Daz blocked his way. “Samson, enough,” he said. “We need to find the killdoms—”
“Elena is gone,” Samson snarled, but his voice broke under the weight of her name, under the unsaid. He pushed Daz away and stood before Jaya. His flaming hand a fingerbreadth from her own on the panel. “How do you know about the third?”
Her pulse hitched. She looked to Daz for help, but the Yumi watched her with a keen vigilance, as if prepared for her to bolt.
She thought quickly—perhaps a white lie?
Subterfuge? A gentle touch, like arranging the pillars in the field just so, so that the players were forced to close upon each other—but all strategies fled her mind as she watched Samson’s flame lengthen, barely kissing her knuckles.
Jaya trembled but stayed her hand. She could not show weakness to the players, or else they would turn against her.
She forced herself to look Samson in the eye.
“There is a third Agni. And we think it’s here.
In our world, hidden somewhere. And I—I thought that, if only, well, if you and Elena…
” She trailed off, blood pounding in her ears.
Thought what? She could not give him the truth, the whole truth.
It would ruin all that they had built, all that she had built. It would end Div.
Suddenly, the flame launched forward and bit her flesh.
Jaya yelped, yanking back her hand. Ash ringed her skin, and a welt was already rising.
But Samson had not moved. Had not even blinked.
He stood still and alert, and there was something uncanny about his stillness, in the way his eyes tracked her.
Like a butcher, studying a cornered animal.
“Lie to me again, and it’ll be your whole arm,” he said.
Daz fidgeted but said nothing.
For the first time, Jaya felt dread, cold and thick, wrap around her spine. She cradled her hand to her chest and thought, This is why the gods took away Agni.
“You and Elena can awaken it. If your Agnis are strong enough, melded enough, it’ll call to the third.”
Samson’s hand trembled. “Who is the third?”
“I—I don’t know.”
The flame flashed, and heat seared her face. White-hot pain exploded down her neck. Jaya cried out, stumbling back, as a burn lacerated her skin in thick, heavy ropes.
“I DON’T KNOW.”
She felt her skin tightening, twisting, and she bit back a scream as her burns cooled. When it was done, she raised a trembling hand to her neck and found it smooth, unblemished.
“Well.” Samson winced as he pulled back the flame, but if he felt any remorse, she did not hear it. “I suppose your third will remain hidden forever, then.”
Jaya lowered her hand. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, and she rubbed them furiously, fighting to calm her trembling breath.
“You—you had no right to burn me,” she said.
Samson said nothing for a long moment. He stared at the red light of the comms line, and then, in a soft voice, said, “We are not friends, Jaya. You are here because I had no other option. You’d do well to remember that.”
He turned to go.
“But I am of worth to you,” she said, and he stopped.
She did not want to help him. Let Samson suffer. Let him waste. She regretted ever feeling pity for the Butcher, but Jaya thought of Div, lying in his metal coffin, breathing on borrowed breath, and she thought of the glorious, vicious justice she’d have watching the Butcher sail to his doom.
“You lost your men, but I still have my Sandsworn. You lost your queen, but I still have a battle strategy that will help us win despite that. You don’t get to walk away from me, Samson Kytuu, because we are not friends.
You stay, because you need me.” She flicked her stylus, opening the comms. “And because my operative Maya is already on the Lord of Sea.”
Samson blanched, and Jaya felt a cold, petty vindication in seeing unease creep across his face.
“How—”
“We’ll be on them in half an hour. So brace yourself, Butcher. We have Jantari to hunt.”