Chapter 8 Hakara
Hakara
Langzu – the sinkhole mines west of Ruzhi
The Bay of Barexi is littered with the ruins of the pre-Shattering civilization, rusted metal struts emerging from the water like strange, dead trees.
Over the years, the salt and water have slowly caused them to disintegrate, their surfaces covered in algae and mussels, while some have been hauled away by scavengers in search of useful scrap.
I rifled through the man’s pack like a monkey in a garbage heap, tossing irrelevant things to the side.
A pot, an extra flask of lantern oil, a measly ration of uncooked rice, and one sorry-looking side of dried fish.
Alifra watched over my shoulder with bright-eyed attention while Dashu hovered nearby, shifting his weight forward and then back as though he were trying to decide if he should stop me.
I ran my hands down his person. Dashu finally spoke up. “Should we not leave him with his dignity intact?”
“Eh, calm down. I’m not going to rob him of his virtue.
” I heard a little breathless noise behind me.
Alifra, silently laughing. I found the small leather folder that held his identification in a pouch at his belt and flipped it open.
His clan seal, a dragonfly, was affixed to one side.
A piece of waxed parchment lay in the other side, his name and affiliation written in rich black ink.
Mullayne Reisun. Not one of the royal clans, but one of the noble ones. The very same man who’d invented the setting machines now in use at the mines. I dropped the folio onto the pile. “Well, that settles it.” I looked to Dashu and Alifra. “We can’t kill him.”
Dashu eyed the man on the mattress, his fingers smoothing his goatee. “Were we considering that? You did go through a good deal of trouble to retrieve him.”
I lifted the filter Mullayne had been wearing on his face, my thumb rubbing the inside.
There was some silk in that cloth blend, but I wasn’t sure what else.
“Nah, I meant we definitely have to keep him alive, now we’ve got him.
” His chest rose and fell, but sweat beaded at his brow, his mouth whispering words I couldn’t quite hear.
I leaned in until his breath tickled my ear.
Even then, it took all my concentration to figure out what he was saying.
“Do not trust what is written.”
I frowned and stepped away, his litany becoming a hushed blur once more. What kind of mad nightmare was he trapped in?
“Should we send him back to Bian, where he belongs?” Alifra asked. She sat cross-legged on a cushion, slouched over her feet in a way that I was sure would make my back ache after only a few blinks. She stretched forward, her spine a liquid thing.
I held the filter up to the light streaming in through the hole at the center of the tent.
The sun brightened the cloth. Air could get through this.
But aether could not. What a novel thing.
“We need to stop Lithuas. What happens if she flees through a barrier? May be a simple enough matter for a god, but not for us. We’d lose precious time.
But this… this could help us, if it works. ”
“He’s still aether-sick,” Alifra pointed out. “Not like it blocked it completely.”
I waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah? And he’s still alive.
We don’t know how long he was down there for.
” I studied Mullayne’s sleeping face, the hollows of his cheeks, the streaks of gray in his beard.
“Man is smarter than the three of us combined. We take him with us, he makes more of these face things for the Unanointed.”
Dashu shook his head. “He’s a noble. He won’t want to help us.”
“He can be persuaded.”
His frown deepened. “Hakara, I do not like where this is headed.”
“What do you think I’m going to do, torture him? Come on, torture is messy and disgusting. Am I really messy and disgusting?”
Their faces mirrored one another, long gazes from beneath low brows.
I threw up my hands. “Look, he’s a noble, right?
He should have had an entourage, but he didn’t.
He was alone down there. He’s been through something.
I don’t know what, not yet. I don’t know what he was doing down there at all.
But do you think the clans aren’t afraid of restoration too? We should be working together.”
“Tell that to the clans,” Alifra muttered.
Altani swept into the tent, carrying a bowl of some truly awful-smelling brew.
Dashu and Alifra were suddenly occupying themselves with some side conversation, their gazes steadfastly avoiding both me and Altani.
And I was at Mullayne’s bedside, caught.
Annoyance pricked beneath my skin. Where were my pest and vine now?
I knew they’d sensed the tension between me and my old setter, and they were doing nothing to protect me from it.
Altani approached and I shuffled awkwardly out of the way. Should have just ignored her. Maybe she would have ignored me too, and we could have gone on pretending we’d never known one another, had never pressed lips and hands together in the privacy of a darkened tent.
I gestured to the bowl. “Is that supposed to help with aether sickness? Glad I wasn’t really awake when they were pouring that down my throat.”
She only grunted as she lifted the back of Mullayne’s head with the air of a bitch taking a hold of a puppy by the neck.
She tipped the brew, bit by bit, down his throat.
He coughed, sputtered, but drank it without opening his eyes.
We had no way of knowing how bad his aether poisoning was, how long he’d been down there, how long it had been since his invention had failed, and how much aether he’d breathed in.
Could be he’d live. Could be that he’d die.
“Giving me the silent treatment when you left me to rot with that godkiller? You could have said something, distracted her. I would have gotten away.”
Altani let the empty bowl drop to the floor, her shoulders tight. “Gods below, you are such a piece of shit, Hakara. Just think, for one second, about everything that led up to that point.”
I wanted to fight her. It was easier to fight. I was better at jabbing and darting away, at finding the places I could sink in a blade. Better at pushing people away than bringing them in close.
I could feel the quick glances from Dashu and Alifra, watching, pretending not to watch. I wasn’t the type to hold things together, as much as they wanted me to be. I… didn’t know how.
Oh, that was a lie. I knew where to start, didn’t I? I let my shoulders relax, faced Altani full-on, my hands at my sides, palms open. “You’re right.”
She crossed her arms, the muscles tensing and relaxing. “Right about what?”
Felt my eyes narrowing before I could stop ’em, but I squeezed them shut and shook my head, hoping that was enough to banish the impulse.
Deep breath, my gaze focusing on the wall of the tent.
Maybe I’d grown, but I hadn’t grown that much.
“I was always walking a thin line between life and death, and I kept making you walk with me. It wasn’t… it wasn’t fair.”
Altani’s gaze was like a weight, pressing me into the rug beneath my feet.
“Aye. You think I didn’t care about your sister or your need to find her?
I just wanted you to care about more than that.
You have to know, if you’d shown me any consideration at all, I’d have taken it, even the smallest morsel.
I would have been at your side, no matter the cost to myself. ”
“Would have followed me to the Unanointed too?” I said it like a joke, but she didn’t even crack a rueful smile.
“You don’t know the effect you have on others, do you?”
I had no idea what she meant. I reached out and took her hand. “I truly am sorry. I’ve been an ass.”
“I believe you.”
“About me being sorry, or me being an ass?”
Her lips curved then, and she opened her mouth to respond.
Thassir ducked into the tent. His gaze flicked between me and Altani, then down to our clasped hands. He didn’t say a word.
I pulled my hand away. “Ah, I was just apologizing to Altani. We were partners…” Partners? Why had I described it that way? “That is, she was my setter and I was her diver. I always pushed myself too far and left her to clean up the mess. Wasn’t right of me.”
His raven-dark gaze trailed up from where our hands had been clasped, to my face. “Don’t stop whatever conversation you were having on my account. There is… You are… You can do as you wish. It’s not my place to limit you.”
I wiped my palms on my pants, the sweat leaving dark trails on the cloth. “Oh, you’re not limiting me. I mean, I know what my limits are. Ah, let’s leave it.” I was still sweating.
“Leave what?” Thassir’s dark voice filled the tent. His face was expressionless.
“Shouldn’t you… not be here?” I attempted, weakly.
He held out a letter to Alifra. “A report from one of our spies in Bian. A full assessment of the current political situation in Langzu. She said she would spread word to others about our location, so we should be able to re-establish contact with our network with some time and effort.”
His attention focused on me, and then Altani, and then back again before landing, steadfastly, on the tent wall. “You can do as you like, Hakara.” As though he’d not just said the same less than a minute ago.
Why did I want to reach out to him, to reassure him? He was right. So we’d shared one kiss. We could share a lot more without being bound to one another.
Except we were bound to one another. I thought, unbidden, of Gamone and Keka, a bruiser and her arbor, their heads bowed together, their bond obviously stronger than just the magical link between them.
Nothing about this had to be inevitable. I was only making it that way in my head.
Alifra cleared her throat. There was my pest, finally. I met her gaze. She said nothing, only pointed past me. I turned to see Mullayne Reisun laid out on the mattress, his hands clasped beneath his chest, his dark eyes red-rimmed but open. “I’m alive?” He sounded almost… disappointed.
Me? I was relieved – not just that he was alive, but that I was freed from fumbling my way through further conversation with Thassir. “Seems so,” I said. “Though you really shouldn’t be. Had Irael’s own luck, it seems. Now tell us – what in all the gods’ names were you doing down in that hole?”