Chapter 16 Rasha
Rasha
Langzu – in the wilds
After the Shattering, while Kluehnn was hunting down the gods, one of them, Ophanganus, appeared in a Cressiman market, hooded and veiled.
Witness accounts say that when he reached the center of the market, he threw off his hood and veil and all the mortals drew back at his countenance – his long, furred face and antelope’s horns.
And then he drew two swords and began murdering mortals indiscriminately, crying out that they’d destroyed the world.
He slaughtered forty-six men, women, and children before Kluehnn’s godkillers came and put an end to him.
My hand tightened on a nearby stone, my fingers curling around its sharp edges. The bird was close. I wouldn’t miss like Khatuya had. It didn’t move, its head cocking as it watched me lift the rock.
Was it the same bird that had heard me arguing with my cohort? Why stand so close to me? Its feathers ruffled. It hopped a little bit closer.
This wasn’t an ordinary bird. Somehow, in the dead of night, with my cohort asleep, I felt more sure of this. I let the rock go. “Hello,” I responded.
For a moment, I felt intensely foolish. I must have dreamed the bird talking, and now I was talking back to it like it could understand me. But then its little throat moved.
“Rasha,” it said. “Godkiller.”
I waited, feeling as though I were floating above my body, watching this scene play out through someone else’s eyes.
“You were right,” it croaked, its voice soft. “What you said. If the gods could get back below, they would retake their homeland.”
I gave it a long look. “They.”
The crow bobbed its head, let out a little caw. “We.”
A shapeshifter god. A cohort as green as mine wouldn’t get sent after one of these, not yet.
For one thing, they were the hardest type of god to find.
We could scent their magic each time they shifted, but if they didn’t shift, it was difficult to pinpoint their location.
And each time a cohort found a shapeshifter, the shifting meant the god had two very good options: shift into something big and strong, or shift into something fast and small.
Both ways meant they often escaped capture.
Godkillers did defeat them, just not as often as we did the others.
I was breaking the first precept yet again. We were forbidden from speaking to gods. I could be excused the first words I’d spoken to this bird, when I hadn’t known for sure what it was. Anything I said past this point would be yet more blasphemy.
I’d broken the precept once before; could I really be condemned any further than I already was? Slim justification – I knew it. “Kluehnn tells us you wish to take over the surface, that you wish to rule the mortals and the world above.”
The bird shook its head. “All we want is to live.”
It felt like a dzhalobo was making its nest in the hollow of my body, tearing away at my insides. “No. The stories say nothing of that. There were gods who wanted more, who wanted to conquer. What about Ophanganus, who went about murdering mortals indiscriminately?”
“Our stories tell a different tale of Ophanganus. A tragedy.” The bird’s beak snapped as it caught a bug, swallowed it down. “One we could not prevent. But even if your stories were completely true, are all Kashani the same? All Cressimans?”
I pressed my lips together, annoyed. “No, we aren’t. But we do share a culture.”
“And you think our culture—”
“Glorifies death. Conquest. Oppression.”
Another head-tilt. One black eye, reflecting flame. “That is how you see us? All of us? No god has ever done a good thing, lived a decent life?”
“Only Kluehnn.”
“Ah.” The crow watched the fire, my cohort beyond it. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t shift. It wasn’t here to fight. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was here for.
It shook out its feathers. “I never know what to say to that. Imagine if you were told there was only ever one good Kashani. What would you do with that information? Would you submit yourself to death as you surely deserved?”
The gems of my cohort’s daggers winked in the darkness.
A dead tree curled over their bodies, its branches like reaching fingers.
I tried my best to keep my voice soft. If Khatuya and Naatar woke now, I couldn’t blame them for turning me in.
“We are not the same. You’re twisting my words.
This is why we’re not meant to speak to gods. ”
“For which the punishment is death. I know.” It hopped from one foot to the other. “I do appreciate that you’ve spoken to me at all.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. I should have kept my silence, but something drove me forward. “Tolemne went to the gods and asked for help. Only Kluehnn answered. No other gods did.”
“Perhaps that is true. I wasn’t there. But if one god can make such a decision, who is to say others cannot? If one god can work with mortals, why not others?”
My fingers curled around the stone and I hurled it. The crow let out a caw and leapt into the air. My rock landed in the brush. Instead of flying away, the bird landed in the tree above Naatar.
Naatar stirred on his bedroll, his tail slipping from beneath his blanket, brown scales shining by firelight.
The crow waited in the tree, watching me, as I did my best to pretend it didn’t exist. I slid my copy of the Aqqilan stories from my bag.
I wasn’t supposed to have it, but what was the shapeshifter going to do?
Tell Kluehnn about it? And I needed a way to stay awake, especially with a god watching over us.
The stories inside didn’t all view the gods favorably – they made mistakes, they acted in petty ways, they hindered as well as helped.
The middle pages were frustratingly clipped in the middle to hold the smuggled gems, so I couldn’t quite tell what those stories were about.
I flipped the book this way and that, as though that might help me figure out what had lain there.
I’d nearly forgotten the crow was even there by the time I went to wake Khatuya for her shift.
She slept with her arms curled by her head, knees to her chest, as though she was trying to fit herself into a spot that was smaller than she was.
Her face was so much softer when she slept.
When she was awake, she always had a firm set to her jaw, as though ready at any moment to make a rebuttal.
I remembered the way she’d stood against Shambul, even when she knew she’d pay for it later.
I remembered the way she always tried to protect Naatar, whose family didn’t afford him as much grace as hers did.
I didn’t want to fight her. I’d keep these doubts to myself. For both our sakes.
I reached to shake her awake.
“You cannot continue to believe two different things,” the crow said from above.
Startled, I spoke louder than I intended to. “I can believe whatever I want.”
Khatuya rolled over in her blankets, her black eyes blinking. “What?”
My breath caught. Had she heard that whole exchange? “Nothing. I was talking to myself. It’s your turn for watch.”
She pushed herself up to her elbows.
The scent hit us both at the same time.
I didn’t know what it smelled like to Khatuya or Naatar; I’d never asked. But it smelled like a dung fire to me, it always had. That scent I so closely associated with home, with safety. It carried on the wind, fainter than a true aether scent, something lighter but something I could follow.
A god using magic.