Chapter 17 Hakara
Hakara
Langzu – inner Bian
Rumenesca, the Mother, always roamed the surface world with the intent of enacting some grand, sweeping plan.
Instead, each time she found herself collecting orphans.
She gave them a choice: stay here on the surface or come with her back to her home, where they would be fed and happy and would live out the rest of their days.
Nearly all who were asked went with her, and she loved and coddled them and gave them the best her territory had to offer.
There are accounts of a few who refused her – too afraid of a place they did not know, of a decision that would define the rest of their lives.
But each of those few recalled, to their dying days, the kindness in Rumenesca’s eyes.
“It won’t be easy,” Sheuan said, handing me some workers’ clothes.
I stripped without pretense, ignoring the uncomfortable glances from Mull and Thassir.
We didn’t have time for blushing modesty.
Each of our plans was threadbare, hastily crafted in moments.
I’d only been able to bargain three of the filters off Sheuan; she’d insisted that was all she could spare before someone might notice.
I’d taken another off Mull, leaving him with only one.
Four was at least enough to cover the mortals on my team, plus one extra.
The tunic and pants Sheuan gave me were plain, brown, a bit scratchy at the seams, but a fair bit cleaner than what I’d been wearing. I pulled my hair into a tail, combing through some of the tangles with my fingers.
“Doesn’t bother me. If I wanted easy, I wouldn’t have joined the Unanointed.”
“What exactly are you looking for in the castle?”
I opened my mouth to lie, but Mullayne spoke first. He’d pulled some of the cushions from the workshop chairs to make something of a mattress, and he was laid out on them, a hand to his head.
“Lithuas. The elder god. They’re chasing her.
She’s aligned with Kluehnn. She’s helping him enact restoration, and if they kill her, they disrupt his plans. ”
I glared at him, but he only shrugged. Maybe it was better he was going to the den, that he was doing what he wanted to. Couldn’t have expected any loyalty from him. I plucked several filters from the counter and handed them to Thassir. “We’re taking these too.”
“Lithuas is… alive?”
“Yes, and there’s a third aerocline. Nothing makes sense anymore.
” I tried and failed to keep my gaze from sliding over to Thassir.
Or Nioanen. Somehow didn’t feel right to call him by that name, not when he’d so thoroughly failed to live up to its epithet.
“She made some sort of bargain with Kluehnn to keep her own life. And now she’s holed up in the castle.
If we flush her out, we can take her in a fight. ”
I said it a lot more confidently than I felt. We could take her if Thassir used all his godly might against her. But I’d not seen him glow with an aura or summon his blade, Zayyel, to his hand. I wasn’t sure how much of that was his disguise and how much was who he had become.
Thassir held the filters awkwardly in one hand, the basket still tucked beneath his other arm. Didn’t exactly look godly at the moment.
Sheuan straightened the collar of my shirt. “I’ll have to convince the guards that you’re from Mull’s workshop, and that I need you in the castle for something important. Maybe a repair. Just don’t say anything. Let me do the talking.”
I caught Thassir’s gaze. “Thassir?”
He shook his head. “She’s not on the move, not yet. She’s still inside.”
Sheuan scratched absent-mindedly at her back. “I’ll come back for you, Mull. You two – follow me. Stay close.” She walked with purpose out of the workshop.
I halted next to Mull before I left, hesitated.
He’d made it clear he didn’t want any part of the Unanointed, but what kind of leader would I be if I didn’t try to recruit people who could help our cause?
“If you can’t find a way out yourself, we’ll come up with an extraction plan. Just… stay alive.”
He nodded, his gaze distant. Wasn’t sure how much he heard me, and how much he was thinking about that tomb.
Thassir and I filed into the streets behind Sheuan.
To my surprise, no one even bothered to stop us.
A few patrolling enforcers looked our way and then quickly glanced away again.
Sheuan never stopped to show her papers or to pull rank.
She just walked toward the castle without ever even making sure we were still there, her silk skirt flashing by lanternlight with each step, the pearls in her hair glinting.
Funny how just looking rich meant you could go wherever you pleased.
We found Alifra and Dashu at the tea house across the street from the castle, lingering over a still-steaming pot. Alifra bit into a millet cracker, frowned, but took another bite.
The proprietor watched us as we approached, but said nothing when we took seats at the same table, even though he was clearly closing up for the night. I should have walked around with a beautifully dressed woman more often.
Alifra tossed a few more coins onto the table. Perhaps it was the money that was staying his tongue. “We’ve been watching the castle. Nothing yet,” she said. She eyed Sheuan. “Is it my imagination, or did our noble friend get a fair bit prettier since we saw him last?”
“Mull had more filters in his workshop, so I took them. Couldn’t convince him to join us, but we got what I wanted. This is his cousin. The Sovereign’s wife.”
Dashu’s eyebrows lifted. “She’ll get you inside?”
“That’s the hope.”
Alifra sipped the tea and let out a pleased little hum. Then she sat bolt upright. “Thassir? What is it?”
His gaze was locked onto the palace. “We don’t need to get inside. She’s changed again. She’s approaching the servants’ entrance.”
We rose to our feet as one. Sheuan’s hand darted out, catching my forearm. “Wait.”
I buzzed with energy, my heartbeat pounding in my throat. This could be it. This could be the chance to kill Lithuas. Finally. But I let Sheuan talk.
“If you see your sister again, tell her…” She swallowed. “Tell her that I’m sorry. That I wish the world was different. That I wish I was different.”
Before I could pry, or ask her exactly why she was sorry, Thassir darted toward the castle, his step surprisingly quiet. I shrugged Sheuan off and followed, Dashu and Alifra on my heels.
He stopped at the corner and held up a hand. Then he pointed, slowly and carefully. I crept to his side and peered around the wall.
There was a servant, her clothes as plain as her face. She walked alone down the street; the only enforcers in sight were manning the walls of the castle, their gazes out on the city at large.
She hadn’t seen us.
I beckoned Alifra and Dashu closer. We could take her by surprise if we were careful. Thassir stood still as a statue, unblinking, every muscle in his body tensed. I was out of gems in my pouches, so I reached toward the basket he held, surreptitiously lifting the lid.
A yowl pierced the night.
Lithuas’s head whipped toward us, her eyes glittering. Before I could even process what was happening, she’d shifted into a hawk. High above us, enforcers shouted, running across the wall, disappearing down stairs.
Alifra’s crossbow clicked. Her aim was true, but Lithuas shifted again into a deer, falling from the sky before the bolt could reach its mark, and bounded down the street toward the empty lakebed.
I grabbed Thassir’s wing hard enough to pinch as I pulled him after me, enforcers behind and Lithuas ahead. “Keep that crossbow loaded. Keep her on the ground,” I called to Alifra.
We chased her into the alleyways of Bian. Above us, lanterns brightened windows, sending stray beams of light trickling into the darkness. The moon above was a sliver, the stars barely visible past the lights of the city.
“You,” I huffed at Thassir, “you brought a cat with you?”
He clutched the basket to his chest, a disgruntled growl emanating from it with every jolting step he took. “Rumenesca,” he said.
And now that he said the name, it all made a horrible sort of sense.
He’d named her after one of the dead elder gods, and if the stories were correct, they’d once been friends.
That awful, spitting beast was his favorite, and he wasn’t about to leave her behind again.
I’d thought we might not be able to rely on Thassir to kill Lithuas.
I hadn’t counted on not being able to rely on him because he thought nothing of bringing a goddam cat with us while we chased after her. “You could have warned me!”
“You would have told me to leave her behind.” His voice was annoyingly steady.
“Would you have listened?”
The echo of hoofbeats ricocheted from the walls.
Was the sound fainter or was I imagining it?
Swearing, I lifted the flap of the basket and grabbed for the pouches of gems. A hiss, the flash of a paw, and a searing scratch across the back of my hand.
But the pouches were in my grasp. One was much smaller than the others.
I loosened the top and saw a glow of yellow.
Utricht had shown me the yellow gems once, when he’d explained what they all did.
These ones allowed the user to manipulate time, though he hadn’t told me exactly how.
They were too rare for regular use. I tied the pouches to my belt.
The alleys opened up. I caught a glimpse of the deer cutting past a corner.
Two more turns and the warehouses at the edge of inner Bian met my gaze, the boulders that ringed the edge of the dried-up lakebed.
We could lose the enforcers in the boulders.
If we weren’t wandering around in the city, they had far less incentive to chase after us.
My breath was ragged in my throat, my chest tight. We were so close.
Lithuas shifted again into a mountain goat as she hit the boulders, leaping from rock to rock with a grace I knew we couldn’t manage. “Alifra!” I called.
She stopped, took aim.
Her bolt hit the goat in the haunch. Lithuas stumbled, disappearing into the lakebed.
We rushed forward, picking our way through the boulders until we were out into the dusty bottom.
“She’s not running anymore,” Thassir panted. A dark shape moved ahead of us, limping across the barren landscape. I reached into the pouch of gems.
“Hakara!” A voice rang out behind me. It was like I’d been struck by one of Alifra’s bolts. Everything in my world just stopped. Even the breath in my ears went silent.
Rasha.