18. Chapter 18 #2
Izumi shook her head, clearly not threatened.
“You won’t destroy this encampment. General Warrick told me in his letters of your rule—the way you were ready to hand Calix power through marriage because you couldn’t bear to see the people go hungry.
You wouldn’t sentence hundreds of women and children and horses to death to achieve your ends. ”
“And you would?” I spat. Izumi’s accusations cut me deeper than any sword, but I knew she was right.
I carried within me destructive power and seemingly bottomless anger, but in my efforts to avoid unleashing it on those who didn’t deserve it, it so often turned inwards and ate away at me, hurting those closest to me.
Izumi hesitated, then she pressed her lips into a hard line. She could have slit Erix’s throat as he lay unconscious in the temple, but she hadn’t.
Still, she lifted her chin. “I will do what is necessary. Kelvadan is an affront to the ways of the desert, even more so now that it has become a home to foreigners who do not respect our ways.”
“General Warrick and his men are foreigners too.” They would not fight our war with no expectation of a benefit in return. Perhaps they would steal our horses as well—or maybe they planned to occupy Kelvadan in Calix’s stead.
“The enemy of my enemy is my ally,” Izumi insisted. “And they would rather see Kelvadan destroyed then in the hands of the enemy where it might give them an advantage.”
“And you think they will peacefully leave us to our ways after this battle? That they won’t seek to find some advantage of their own?” I demanded.
“He might, now that I have found what Lord Alasdar and his Viper kept from me for all those years. A power that even an army the size of Warrick’s could not stand against.” Izumi reached into her sash.
When she opened her fingers to reveal her prize, a heavy weight settled in my gut, rooting me to the ground.
The two broken halves of the Heart.
“I found it in your sash when I went to dress you—thank you for that by the way,” Izumi commented with a wrinkle of her nose.
I might have been embarrassed by the state in which Izumi found me and Erix if my mind wasn’t racing faster than Daiti galloped.
I didn’t know what Warrick might have told her about the Heart—I had barely been conscious in the courtyard to know what he had heard from Calix and Erix in their confrontation.
I couldn’t think of a story to spin to extricate myself from this mess.
Lies were not my strong suit. I preferred a sword.
Taking a deep breath, I clutched on to Badha’s assurances that Izumi was not a bad person, just driven to save the desert. And now, she held in her hand the one thing that could truly save us all, even if she didn’t know it yet.
“Lord Alasdar and Erix were wrong not to tell you,” I admitted.
“The stone you hold in your hand—the Heart of the Desert—it is the reason the desert suffers. Their purpose in taking Kelvadan was to acquire it, so it could be restored to its rightful place at the ocean. The temple you found me in is where it belongs. It needs to be healed, so the desert can be at peace. It is the true reason our home is angry. Alasdar kept it a secret, told you half-truths, because he knew people would covet its power. But now you have the opportunity to fix it.”
Izumi stared at me, her dark eyes flinty even as something flickered across her face. It seemed to waver between anger and disbelief before she hardened her jaw, and her face became impassive once again.
“And how do I fix it?” she asked.
Even as hope sparked in my head that Izumi might see reason, I shook my head. “I don’t know. That’s what we journeyed here to figure out. But leaving it broken will only lead to further strife. Destroying Kelvadan will not bring you the peace you seek.”
A muscle ticked in Izumi’s jaw. “My sister died for a broken rock?”
“And many more will if we don’t fix it.”
Izumi’s eyes flashed, and I could tell her anger had gotten the better of her.
“Maybe the people of Kelvadan deserve to die, if they were the ones that broke it. Maybe you deserve your fate, if you were the one to let foreigners into our desert,” she spat.
“And would you not deserve even worse a fate, for subjecting hundreds to the same losses you’ve endured?” My voice rose, and I winced at the sharpness I found there. Antagonizing Izumi when I asked for her aid did not seem wise—but I had rarely been wise—only honest and determined.
Izumi’s face twisted into a snarl, but not before I saw a flicker of something like doubt flash in her eyes. “Don’t think me soft just because I let you kill Lord Alasdar to save the Viper that night in his tent. I will do what is necessary to please the desert.”
Before she left, she pulled a packet from her sash and dumped it onto the brazier that lit the inside of the tent.
Then, she stormed out and I watched the canvas flap flutter in the wake of her hasty retreat.
I had almost forgotten how her hands on my shoulders loosened as I lunged for Erix’s blade on the floor.
Weak as I was, she easily could have stopped me before I drove the blade through Lord Alasdar’s chest to save Erix from his torture.
She hadn’t, though.
The din of an active encampment drifted in through the tent flap. Hundreds of soldiers from Doran had arrived on our shores by Izumi’s invitation. The memories mixed fitfully, just as hope and dread mixed in my chest in equal measures.
I sighed deeply in frustration, only for the strange scent of the smoke to fill my nostrils. Whatever Izumi had put on the fire, it was what she had used to render Erix and me unconscious before.
I began to cough and struggle, and a bolt of panic shot through me.
The darkness pulled me under, and memories of being kept drifting on the edges of consciousness in Kelvadan’s infirmary flooded my mind.
I tried to tug on the tether with Erix, but it slipped through my grasp as my consciousness rushed away.
“We’ll convince her,” Badha’s voice sounded as if very far away. “We have to.”