Chapter 58 Jaya
JAYA
The most valuable soldier is not the warrior, medic, or leader. It is the strategist. She who sees the field and can turn it with the slightest touch.
—from The Gamemaster Manual
Jaya slipped onto the stone bridge and checked over her shoulder.
The streets were empty, the canal below full of only darting fish, not boats.
Janoon was a network of canals and alleyways that resembled the flowing locks of the goddess Tsuan, mother of the sea and the namesake of Tsuana.
A goddess of peace, she was said to have ordained her followers to make a white city.
A pure city, full of equality, justice. But the Tsuani guards had prodded Jaya like a market fish, and when they had finally let her deboard, she heard them whispering behind her.
“I’ve never seen a clipped Yumi,” they had said.
Cheeks burning, she had left the port.
“Any alms for the poor?” an old woman had asked her. She sat on the corner, brown limbs wrapped in a faded white shawl. An old headpiece of shells and rusted chains covered her rheumy eyes as she looked up at Jaya.
Jaya snorted. “Equality my ass,” she muttered and slid out her smaller pulse gun.
The woman’s eyes widened as Jaya pressed it into her hands.
“Now go off whichever bastard forced you to beg on the streets, ma,” Jaya had said.
The woman stared at Jaya, and then smiled. Jaya grinned back.
She had headed north then, past the twisting canals, beyond the merchants and tourist quarters. The streets began to widen. Quieten. Jaya had checked to see if someone had followed her, just in case, but there was no one else when she stepped onto the appointed bridge.
There was a strange silence in this part of the pearl city, the white buildings like stoic, luminescent knights in the falling sunlight, too still, too perfect. She wondered if they were waiting for the sword to fall.
Across the bridge, a small temple chimed softly.
Jaya held her breath. Celestial ikara adorned the marble walls of the temple, their scales flashing iridescent then gold as the sun shifted behind the buildings and cast the street into a pale, silver shadow.
Jaya waited. Slowly, the stone fish began to move.
They rose and fell like the crest of a wave, spinning gold in their wake. The bridge began to rumble. Jaya took in a long, deep breath before the stone pulled back and she dropped into the canal.
She plummeted, down, down, down.
So long, she thought it would never end.
But then she crashed into a tiny but deep pool, coughing and sputtering, and Akaros looked down, unimpressed.
“Did you close your eyes again?”
Jaya clawed herself up onto the tiled floor. A strand of seaweed stuck to her hair, and she attempted to grab the slimy tendril, but her fingers slipped over its oily surface.
“I thought you said you cleaned the chute,” she said, attempting to sound angry, but her voice came frail, cracked. She rubbed her chest, trying to remember the sensation of warm wholeness before the drop had sucked the air out of her.
“If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little busy.” He held out his hand, and with a sour grimace, Jaya took it. Gently, Akaros untangled the seaweed from her hair and threw it aside.
She followed him down a dark hallway, boots squelching with each step. Moss furred the walls. Jaya tried not to think of what else skittered in the shadows before they came to a steel door.
Akaros rapped thrice.
The door hinged back with a screech, and Maya stood in the entryway. Behind her, Jaya spotted the bank of panels, the glass wall, and her heart trembled at the thought of what lay beyond.
“I trust you weren’t followed,” Maya said.
Jaya shook her head as she took the offered towel. “No. I spent four fucking hours wandering around this stinking city, bored out of my mind. The Yumi are depressed on the ship, the Black Scales too drunk in the city to care.”
“Good. Elena and Samson are still in the palace, so we have a few hours before they notice you missing.” Maya turned as the door to the adjoining glass chamber slid open, and a thin, dark-haired man entered. “Taran has command.”
Jaya and Akaros snapped to salute, their fists slamming against their chests. “Master Taran.”
The leader of the Arohassin fixed them with red eyes and smiled. “I have waited a long time to see you three.”
“Everything is in place, sir,” Maya said.
“Our agents have secured the Jantari ships, sir,” Akaros added with an earnestness Jaya had never heard from him before. Gone was his carefully relaxed composure. He stood ramrod straight, arm stiff and angled like a tanker wing.
“And you, Jaya?” Taran asked. His accent was Ravani, western Rani to be specific, where sandscrapers gave way to the wide, rolling dunes.
It sounded like a soft desert wind, the one that lulled you into the basins before the sands shifted and a sandstorm erupted.
Even after all these suns, his voice still prickled her skin.
She had never heard him raise his voice, never seen him without his hair tied back in a neat ponytail or his black velvet jacket without a gulmohar flower, crimson like his eyes, in its third button.
“I—I am ready for whatever task you have for me, sir,” she said.
Taran studied her. “Show me what you’ve collected so far.”
Jaya nodded vigorously, jamming her hand into her pocket.
She withdrew her holopod, only she gripped it so tightly that her dry skin stretched over her knuckles, cracking.
“It’s in here. All—most—whatever I could manage.
” She stopped suddenly, frustrated at her sudden anxiety.
Her lack of control. Taran always made her feel just outside of her depth, though through no fault of his own.
It was just that she had seen his game designs, his battle flows, drawn so exquisitely—so ingeniously—that she felt a choking cry of jealousy, not of him, but to be like him.
Poised, perfect—flawless. Taran Arya was the most gifted and creative gamemaster she had ever come across, and no matter how hard she tried, no matter how many times she wrung herself to find creative gasps of genius, her talent paled in comparison to his.
It had annoyed her—until Taran used those same designs to help her brother.
He smiled kindly and took the pod. “Well, let’s see what you’ve got.”
He placed it on the panel, and the holos decoded, then sprang up around them.
Footage of Elena’s and Samson’s Agni, their temperature readings, the flashpoints of their fire, the pattern of their flames, the speed at which they traveled—it was all there.
Taran studied the holos, and she studied him, her heart thumping so loud it was a miracle they all did not hear it.
“Jaya,” Taran began, and she thought suddenly, despairingly, I fucked it up. He hates it, he hates—
“This is marvelous work. Did you get this all from your lotuses?”
She blinked. Her throat had run awfully dry. “Y-yes?”
A slow smile spread across his face, his eyes wide with wonder. “Ingenious.”
Pride—warm, fierce—bloomed in the pit of her stomach. She did not need Taran Arya’s validation to know the worth of her work, but still.
But still.
Div would joke that she had a professional crush, but it wasn’t like that.
She did not crave Taran. She did not crave anyone, except maybe the alarmingly beautiful, devious vishkanya with eyes so sharp, so intelligent, she put the masters to shame— Jaya shook her head.
Her cheeks had suddenly gone hot, and Taran had noticed.
“No, truly,” he said. “This is splendid, Jaya. You should be proud of your work.”
Akaros rolled his eyes, and Maya smirked, but Jaya knew they hung on to every word, as if, just by osmosis, they could be touched by his benediction.
She smiled, despite herself. Taran continued studying the holos, the blue light washing over his face, making the shadows under his eyes deeper, starker.
She began to point out how she had used the Janani Game Theory to capture Elena’s signature heat flare when Taran said, softly, “Then we are ready.”
At this, Jaya froze. Akaros had heard, and she saw him stiffen, saw Maya realize the truth behind Taran’s quiet exclamation. He never raised his voice. But they heard his excitement, so rare these days, and the fact sobered them.
He turned to her. “I want it to be you.”
Her hand trembled. “M-me?”
“Out of the four of us, it must be you to play the game.”
“B-but why not you?” Jaya said, her voice hitching.
She could stage the field, draft game designs, stun her fighters.
But play the game herself? No. There was a reason it was Samson’s blade that cut through Afira and Rhumia, not hers.
She looked to Akaros for help, then Maya.
“You were on the ship with Elena, Maya. You fought those Jantari bastards alongside her. Surely, you could—”
“There’s still Samson, Jaya,” Akaros said. “He would never play with Maya in the field. She fucked that up a long time ago.”
“Oh please.” Maya scowled. “If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t have learned he was Fireblood as early as we did. Maybe if you had done your job better, we could have used the two of them long before—”
“Enough.” Taran’s voice, spider soft, echoed like the ring of a sword against a metal beam.
They stilled. But Jaya could feel her heart thumping wildly, in her chest, her wrists, her head. She was no warrior. Why did they expect her of all people to carry out the worst?
“S-sir, if I may,” she said. “I believe I can speed up the process in awakening the asset. All I need is a reading of Elena and Samson’s intertwined Agni. Then Div—I mean the third…”
She trailed off as Taran gave a sympathetic smile.
“Ah, I’ve forgotten how long it’s been. A sun now, hasn’t it?”
Jaya swallowed, her throat suddenly tight. “One sun, four months, nineteen days, and two hours.”
Her voice floated through the air, up into the haze of the shimmering holos. Taran held out his hand.
“Come, child. See your brother.”
Jaya took his arm, her heart ratcheting up to a roar as they approached the glass wall. In the chamber below, two metal tubes were attached together by three pipes: oxygen, microfluids, and blood.
It ran like a slow, steady river between the two coffins, and in one of them, through the small glass pane, Jaya saw the face of her brother.
Her parents had thought they were going to have another girl, and so they chose Divya to match Jaya.
Radiance and victory. With both in our household, why would we ever want for more?
her mother had said. But when her sibling came out kicking with a scream so loud it frightened the solpriest, Jaya had said, almost without thought:
“Div.”
Later, when they had cleaned and wrapped him, she held him for the first time. He looked like an alien, forehead wrinkled, nose smooshed, lips puckered and twisted for another cry. Jaya had never seen such an ugly thing. He was perfect.
And he still was, albeit he looked gaunter than she had last seen him, skin sucked tightly along the curve of his cheekbones and the line of his jaw.
His long dark hair blossomed like a flower around him, the strands soft and luxurious.
He had never had the heart to wield it like a weapon.
Were it not for the tubes and the holos before her, Jaya would have thought Div was asleep. Lost within peaceful dreams.
“He is doing well,” Taran said gently. “They both are. Had Div not been his blood type, we would have lost the asset. But soon, we’ll be able to wake him. We can reconstruct Div’s body with your sands and his fire. We can give him a better life.”
Jaya nodded. Her throat suddenly felt too hot, her chest too small to speak. Her gaze traveled to the second tube, and she felt a tightness lace up her shoulders, her spine—a buzz building in her ears with the sound of a thousand ringing swords—as she met the glazed golden eyes of the third.
She did not believe in destiny. Fate was a religious man’s dream, and chaos his bitter reality.
She had lost her faith the day it had crushed her mother and father into a tangle of severed limbs, and she had come to learn the world held no reason.
But power? Power controlled chaos, and she knew better than most how even the slightest advantage could turn the field. And the third Agni was control itself.
She pressed her hand against the glass. Div slept soundly, peacefully. When he woke, she would tell him how their past had been a bad dream, that his new body was a testament to all they had suffered, all they had survived. She removed her hand, leaving smudges on the glass.
“The reading,” she began, and Taran shook his head, almost good-naturedly, or as much as a crow could manage a grin. He pressed the pod into her hand.
“If you insist, then get it. But it should not come in the way of your mission, Jaya. Remember: Be clever, be wicked, be ruthless.” The old adage of the first gamemasters, the first Ravani. “Come home safe, and we’ll wake the asset together.”
She met his red gaze. “And then Div.”
It was not a question.
Taran nodded, his smile edged. “And then Div.”
She fisted the pod. “Tell me what to do.”