Chapter 61 Samson
SAMSON
To awaken the Great Serpent, first you must sing a song. Then you must give a gift: one of blood, or one of fire. Choose wisely. For a gift given can never be saved.
—from The Legends and Myths of Sayon
Samson sat on the seashell-studded beach as the moons climbed the winter night.
He buried his hands in the sand and closed his eyes, attempting to focus more on the rough grains brushing against his skin than his own traitorous heart.
But even behind his eyes, he saw her. Why could he not rid himself of her as easily as she had cast down his hopes?
Samson flung open his eyes and stared intently at the horizon.
The killdoms were docked within the harbor, their metal hulls glimmering in the moonlight.
He could just faintly make out the black burns streaking down the bow, the portside, and he thought of the men he had lost to capture those ships.
Deep down, he had known that the council would fail.
That freedom through peace was but a hollow promise.
He had forgotten his own instincts in favor of hope, that vile, capricious thing, and actually believed.
Even when he had left those miners, even when he had abandoned his men, he had believed—desperately—that there was a reason behind all of this.
Samson clenched his hands into fists, squeezing so tightly he could feel the grains of sand digging into his fingernail beds.
They had destroyed the mines to pressure Farin, taken his ships to prove their strength—and for what?
For him and his like to be considered terrorists?
He had hoped for Sesharian azadi, but then Elena had yanked it away with her simpering platitudes, and he did not know if he felt sorrow or anger or disgust or heartbreak. Perhaps all of it.
Perhaps this was grief—not a grief of loss, but a grief for what could have been. He wished he had never dreamed of a softer future, a happier one, when she had rested her hand on top of his and asked him to be brave. He wished he had never learned of two dollops of honey.
It was nearly dawn by the time Samson rose to his feet.
Sand sprinkled down his arms. Merchants and dockhands were slowly returning to the docks, their voices rising into a swell, louder than before, but he ignored it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the golden emblem of Tsuani palace guards.
They were watching him. Normally, Samson would reach for his urumi, but it was within the palace, and frankly, he could care less about piss-pant Tsuani.
Samson looked out across the horizon and ached for home.
Seshar was but two days’ journey from Tsuana.
He had always imagined returning to his birthplace with the promise of azadi unfurling from his tongue like a ribbon for all to see.
Music would fill the streets. They’d pour wine into the sea for the ones they’d lost and then drink their sorrow and happiness into the warm depths of the night.
They would eat until their stomachs swelled from gluttony and not famine.
They’d drink and sing and laugh and cry, and then do it all over again the next day.
No man or woman would look over their shoulder for the glint of a zeemir.
He would not be called a rustblood. He would be deemed a hero, worthy of his promise.
But his promise was worth nothing now.
Samson turned away from the sea and began to walk up the beach when he heard a shout. Visha and another figure were running toward him.
“What is it?” he asked, panicking.
And then he recognized her companion. His throat closed. “Akino?”
The master of arms drew to a stop as Visha bent over, sucking in air loudly.
“We were looking for you,” she panted.
“H-how?” he asked Akino. “How did you escape? The miners—were they—”
“They declared me dead when they pulled me from the rubble, but by some twisted grace of the skies, I lived,” Akino said softly. “I was not fit to mine, so they sent me to work the killdoms.”
Heat leached from Samson’s face. He did not know what to say. How to make up for the lost time, or his own failings.
“I…” he tried.
Akino stared, quiet. An awkward silence stretched between them, large and unwieldly. Even Visha shifted uncomfortably, her quick smile forgotten.
“I…” he tried again.
“It’s like you hoped,” Akino said, his voice edged, but there was warmth beneath it, a soft yielding. “I lived, Sam.”
Without warning, Samson pulled him into a fierce embrace. Akino squawked in surprise. Samson gripped him tight, his voice trembling.
“I’m sorry, brother. I shouldn’t have left you behind. You were right—”
“Sam, Sam, I need to breathe,” Akino laughed, and when he pulled back, a small smile lighted his lips. “I’m here now. We are free.”
Samson let him go, dropping his hands. “We are not. It seems I keep failing, brother. Seshar is lost—”
“Lost?” An enormous grin split up Visha’s face, radiant as lightning. “Where have you been? Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?” he said, looking between them both.
“Elena called an emergency session last night. Apparently, Farin signed a treaty with her to retreat from both Ravence and Seshar, starting next week.”
She grinned up at him, expectant, but he only stood there, bewildered. Visha sucked her teeth.
“Gods damn it, Sam! We’re finally free! Seshar and Ravence are free!”
“It’s true, Sam,” Akino said softly. “It is done.”
He stared at them in stunned disbelief. He could not think of a reason for Farin to suddenly change his tune.
Visha laughed at his silence. She grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him gently as she said, “Farin cannot afford a long war. He bled his treasury dry trying to feed his armies and quell rebellions at home. And then we destroyed his mines. And then we took his two killdoms! He caved.”
“Farin does not cave,” he said.
“Apparently Elena imposed a threat he could not ignore,” Akino said.
“Do you think they struck an under-the-table deal?”
“Sam, wake up!” Visha shook him hard. “We are free! The treaty is signed, Tsuana has approved, and Farin has already sent out the orders. It’s official! We will have azadi on the fifteenth of next month.”
“Fifteenth?” His heart trembled. The fifteenth of next month was his name day.
“Elena specifically requested it,” she said, waggling her brows. She then touched his cheek, her voice softening. “You should find her.”
Samson stood there, caught between the fraying edges of his pride and his hope.
He had spent the entire last day furious and grief-stricken, and honestly, he felt unwilling to give up on the bitter addiction of his self-pity.
But Visha’s grin only grew wider, and he heard the first pops of fireworks breaking through the city.
Colors lit up between the white towers. It was only then that he noticed the change in the voices of the merchants, the new energy and urgency that seemed to charge the air.
“Special deal on this special day!”
“Historic low prices, just for today! Two for one!”
“Newly minted fireworks with vivid new colors! Celebrate in style!”
He turned in a slow, stunned circle, gawking as the merchants hawked their old wares with a new gusto, as a Sesharian immigrant dockhand sat on his parcel, drinking rather than working, with two other dockhands.
Samson stumbled up the beach, gasping as he saw holos in the beach storefronts showing Elena and Farin over a table, signing on rare paper with the honorary red fountain ink meant solely for treaties.
“Do you believe us now?” Akino said.
“No,” he said, his voice floating through the air, “I don’t.”
Visha elbowed him, and he found himself unable to grimace any longer. A smile snuck across his face. This was real?
This is real.
“I have to find her,” he said.
“There’s going to be a big celebration tonight with all the rulers and their attendants.
And we’re invited, not as Ravani dignitaries, but as Sesharian representatives.
” Visha shook her head in disbelief. “Can you believe it? They wouldn’t even recognize us at the council, and now we’re seen as our own. ”
“‘ Change can be swift like a tempest, and just as ruinous,’” Akino intoned.
“Let us hope this is not ruinous,” Samson admonished.
“Ruin for Jantar, not us!” She grabbed his elbow, pulling him forward. “Come on!”
He followed her and Akino into the city and marveled at its gleaming marble towers.
Had it always been this bright, this beautiful?
Or was this a reflection of how he felt?
Everywhere he turned, Samson saw exuberance: in the golden rays of the sun bouncing off the spires; in the musical notes of small boats puttering through the canals; in the people who seemed no longer to be uptight and righteous, but friendly, warm.
He was appalled. Overjoyed. And even a tiny bit afraid.
Hope burbled in his chest with a contagious effect.
He had gone for so long without it that he did not know whether to trust its phantomlike wings beating within his chest. He allowed Visha to steer him through the city until they arrived at the palace.
As Akino hailed a guard, Samson saw movement on the right, and then Elena walking through the western gates, alone.
“I’ll be just there. I need to—” he said, catching a flash of Visha’s smirk and Akino’s knowing gaze as he turned away. He hurried into the courtyard, his boots striking against the warm stones.
Elena turned, stiffening. “Samson.”
There was something odd in her voice, something that made him slow and come to a stop just before her.
Purple veins ringed her eyes, as if she had not slept, and her face seemed slightly puffy.
She wore no regalia, no color. Even her white kurta seemed ill-fitting, hanging off her curves rather than hugging them, her dupatta draped haphazardly over her shoulder rather than with the stylish deftness he had seen her wear before.
The wings within his chest stuttered, and alarm snuck into his voice. “Elena, what’s wrong?”
She looked up at him for a long moment, her face shuttered, her eyes dark and unreadable. She looked exhausted. She looked despondent. She looked as if she had lost someone, and he could not imagine why, on the eve of their victory.
He softened his voice, hoping to put her at ease. “Are you all right?”
She blinked, slow, long. Then Elena took a quick shuddering breath as if to expel unwanted thoughts.
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“I heard about the emergency meeting,” he said, watching her face. “About the treaty. Did—did you really free both Ravence and Seshar?”
“Yes,” she said, “I did.”
“How? What did you say to make Farin agree? What happened in the meeting?”
“I gave him an offer he couldn’t back away from.” Her words were forced, short, as if it took enormous effort to say them. “With the pressure we put on him, the mines, the ships, the council, he folded. Seshar is free now, Samson.”
Different emotions rang through him, each enormous and powerful, but within the clamor of his elation, guilt laced up his throat again.
He remembered their last argument. His brusque, harsh words; her bright, wet eyes.
They were always arguing, and he found himself powerless and wounded to be caught in the same vicious cycle again where, at an impasse, he felt the brunt of his shame, the knife of her judgmental silence. Samson flexed his hand, unsure.
Elena watched him, quiet, unmoving.
Finally, after a few beats, she spoke, her voice thick and coarse. “You should go and find the Black Scales. Start arranging for your journey to Seshar.”
“What about you?” he asked. The thought of returning to Seshar without her after all they had done, after what she had done, depressed him into a thick gloom. “Where will you go?”
“Home,” she said, her voice hollow. “We both have to return to our homes, don’t we?”
He hesitated. She was right, and she was wrong.
Seshar could be her home, just as Ravence could be his.
They had fought and bled for each other for so long, and so much, that he did not where his began and hers ended.
They were interlinked. Viciously, horribly—ravishingly.
He knew Elena at her worst, just as she knew him in his deepest, darkest throes.
No. He could not leave it like this. It was a disservice to their nations, their men, themselves.
“Come with me,” he said suddenly, urgently. “Ravence and Seshar—they are both yours. Seshar would love to meet the queen who freed them.”
“Don’t say that,” she whispered. Why would she not meet his eyes? “Seshar is not mine. It will never be. Please, Sam. Go home.”
“Seshar is your home too.” He paused. Cold sweat broke out on his arms, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
There it was again, that question, lodged in his throat, refusing to move.
Elena turned, and his heart ratcheted a few degrees as her eyes dragged up his face.
Maybe it was fool’s courage, or maybe it was his frustration overpowering his hesitation, but Samson found himself reaching out and raising her face to his. “Let me show you.”
“Sam—”
“Marry me,” he said.
Her eyes crashed into his. “What?”
“We were already engaged. Why not take it a step further? Marry me, Elena, and Ravence and Seshar will become one kingdom. We can rule it together, you and I. We will make sure Farin never again comes for our homes, our people—”
She pulled back. “I can’t.”
His heart wrenched. Silence beat in his ears, and then, in a soft voice, “Can you honestly tell me that you have not considered it? Power, absolute. People, worshipping at your feet. Our feet. You and I will make the most wondrous, powerful team, Elena.”
“I— Ravence is my home. I must go back to it first.”
“And Seshar.” He smiled. “You must see it. The wide beaches, sand so white it feels like pearls spilling between your fingers. We’ll have fresh nut-roast coffee in Ajgar. There’s a mangrove forest, not too far from my home, filled with little pools of fish so beautiful—”
“No,” she said, voice cold in its finality.
He stopped, his bite-sized hope fizzling out like a snuffed flame. “Elena, what is it? Why are you suddenly so— What have I done wrong?”
“This isn’t about you, Samson,” she snapped. Her anger slid into him with its familiar pain, its lasting sting. He felt himself beginning to rise to it, like a puppet jerked by a string, bound to his old habits, but he caught himself just at the end.
“Think about it, Elena.”
“Go to Seshar. Leave me be,” she said.
He watched her go, entrapped by a sudden feeling of helplessness to know he could say nothing to call her back.