Chapter 18 Rasha
Rasha
Langzu – Bian, the dried-up lakebed
There is a parable told in Langzu to children: “Barexi and the Clan Son”.
When Barexi came to visit the clans in disguise, a young man cornered him at a party, bloviating on topics he knew nothing about – namely Unterra and the gods themselves.
Each of his supposed facts was wrong, which grated on Barexi’s nerves.
When the young man dared to speak on Barexi himself, the elder god could take it no longer and laid his hands on the young man, sending him back in time to a mewling babe.
While it appeared in the present to others as though no time had passed at all, the young man seemed to retain some memory of being sent back in time and the offense that caused it, because from then on, he spoke much more carefully, especially in the presence of his betters.
The lesson children were to take from this was that it was important to know one’s audience before speaking.
The black-winged god stood at Hakara’s shoulder, but all I had eyes for was my sister. She wore brown work clothes, a clan crest embroidered onto one shoulder. But the sword strapped to her side and the spear at her back told a different story.
It seemed like forever since we’d last seen each other. It seemed like it had only been a moment.
She seemed unable to move, her gaze fixed on me as I approached, Khatuya and Naatar flanking me. The black-winged god took her arm, pointed into the distant darkness.
Hakara’s mouth firmed. She didn’t turn away from me, but the man and woman accompanying her stepped to her sides as she backed slowly into the lakebed. I gestured to Khatuya and Naatar, and they spread out, rushing forward to follow.
My sister drew her sword. “Rasha, this isn’t your fight.”
“Leave the god. I’ll let you go if you leave the god.”
The look she gave me reminded me of the time I’d tossed an entire egg into a stew instead of breaking it. “Which one?”
What did she mean?
She let out a bitter laugh at my expression. “We’re both chasing gods, Rasha. Only I’m chasing the one that’s working with Kluehnn.”
I pulled my dagger free, the light from the violet gem in the hilt outlining my fingers. “Kluehnn doesn’t work with gods. He protects us from them.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Khatuya said. “She’s lying.”
Hakara thrust her hands to the sides, nearly dropping her sword. I wanted to tell her to hold it tighter. “Why would I lie?”
“To turn her from her faith!” Naatar spat out.
This was why I shouldn’t have spoken to that god.
Doubts could stay my hand. Doubts could make me fail.
Part of me wanted to listen to her. I’d told Hakara we were different now, and we were, but when I looked at her, I felt like that little girl again, curled up in the blankets of our tent with my older sister a bulwark against the cold.
The words she would whisper to me in the dark, the way, for those small moments, she seemed to forget she was responsible for me, and in that shared space we could laugh over terrible jokes, half delirious with exhaustion.
Hakara glanced back into the darkness and swore.
“She’s still there,” the black-winged god said.
My sister extended her free hand. “Rasha, you may never forgive me, and I made my peace with that. Don’t really have any other choice.
But if I’m not out here chasing one of Kluehnn’s aspects, what do you think I’m doing?
” She waved an arm toward Khatuya and Naatar.
“They’re free to answer too. Go on, then. ”
“What does it matter what you’re doing?” Khatuya snarled, her dagger free.
“It matters because the truth matters!” Hakara shouted back.
Naatar closed in on the man with the curved sword. “If Kluehnn is working with a god, he must have his reasons.”
Hakara dipped a hand into her pouch. I lifted my blade. She didn’t swallow a god gem; she threw it into the darkness.
Its red glow illuminated the shape of a mountain goat limping away, a bolt in its haunch.
“What do you think I’m doing chasing a goat into the night?
Think! You’re smarter than this. If it’s a shapeshifter god, what do I care?
I’m not a godkiller. The only reason I could care is if that god is working with Kluehnn.
And if that’s not a problem for you, when the tenets of your faith tell you that there is only one true god, then what is the point of your faith? ”
I wanted to tell her to shut up, but my tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. And then I looked to Khatuya and Naatar, closing in on Hakara’s compatriots. “The point is that I belong somewhere, and that is with my friends.”
No doubts. No hesitation.
The goat disappeared into the darkness, fled beyond the small circle of light provided by the god gem.
“You’re making a terrible mistake.” Hakara’s voice was anguished. Her hand dipped into her pouches again, and this time she did swallow a gem.
Fine. This was always the way it was going to end, ever since Kluehnn set me to this task. “Kill the winged god,” I said. Khatuya and Naatar moved at the same time I did.
Hakara lifted her arms to block me, just as the scent of a dung fire hit my nostrils. Another set of smoky limbs enveloped her arms.
We felt evenly matched with her enhanced strength, her feet digging into the ground. I pressed my dagger down toward her and she pushed back. I was so much taller than her now, and something about this change disoriented me, made my limbs feel unfamiliar.
Too much weakness. Too much indecision. She shoved and I faltered.
Both of us knew she should have pushed the advantage, and yet she didn’t. She hung back. Only a brief moment, but enough for me to get my feet beneath me again.
The two of us tossing rocks toward a pit in the sand, laughing when we missed and lifting our arms in triumph when we didn’t.
The yellowed sky, the distant scent of smoke.
The gritty feeling of crushed seashells between my toes.
And then the day I’d caught her throwing stones at a distant branch, and watched her hit it every single time.
She’d let me win some of those games and I’d never even had the courage to tell her that I knew.
After that, I’d only pretended at triumph each time I won, my heart catching in my throat.
“Fight!” I screamed, slashing my dagger at her. She leapt back, barely quick enough to avoid the blow. “You always thought I was weak, but now which of us is stronger?” I struck out again and felt my blade catch her sleeve, hissing past to kiss the skin beneath.
Blood darkened her shoulder, and though I gritted my teeth against the feeling, a part of me still wanted to brush the cloth aside, to clean the wound, the way I’d done so many times before when she’d cut her hands and feet on the roughness of barnacles.
I wanted to erase our history, and the only way I could do that was to end her. I had to.
I lifted my blade again, noting with a dizzy, distant feeling the smear of red across the metal. Behind Hakara, the black-winged god was setting something onto the ground. He was stepping toward the fight between Khatuya and the russet-haired woman.
If I didn’t get past Hakara, I couldn’t help my cohort. I redoubled my efforts.
She let out her breath. “I never said you were weak,” she panted between blows.
She tried to push past my guard, using the length of her blade to her advantage.
I kicked at her torso. She grunted, but moved with the blow, her blade falling away.
“You never said it, but you showed it. You never let me go to the shore with you. You kept me at our tent. You let me win all our games.”
“Rasha!” The scolding tone of her voice sent me reeling into the past. “You were a child.”
“So were you!” I struck at her again, and our blades clashed, hers barely lifted from her side. I shoved forward, knowing that if I got close enough, I could slip my blade past hers.
“Mimi told me to watch over you before she died. Not Maman. She told me. Some days, that was all I had.”
My cheeks were hot, a prickling sensation at my eyes. In my mind, Mimi was a round, soft shape with kind eyes, blurring into some indefinable background. “I never asked for that.” My blade moved incrementally toward her thigh.
“I did the best I could. I did what I thought was right.”
With a grunt, I dug my feet into the earth and pushed. Hakara gave way, flowing to the side. It took two fumbling steps for me to regain my balance. Sloppy. I’d let her distract me the way I’d once distracted Shambul. Should have known better. She pulled another gem from her pouch.
“Rasha!” Khatuya shouted, her voice panicked.
I caught glimpses in the dark of black wings, of a looming shape. She and Naatar had moved toward one another and stood back to back. The flash of a curved blade, Naatar flinching away. And the click of a loading crossbow.
I pushed past Hakara. The sharp impact of something entering my body. I couldn’t move, every limb frozen. “Ah, shit. Shit shit shit.” My sister pulled her sword free from my gut, dropping it, frantically placing her hands over the wound.
“I told you not to hold back,” I breathed out through the pain.
And then she was swallowing something from one of her pouches, her eyes wild and confused, her hands waving over me as though she was unsure of what she should do.
The scent of aether whiffed into the air above me, a shimmer between our faces.
Her expression changed to one of certainty, and she lowered her palms, pressed her fingers to my shoulders.
Something changed.
I heard the click of a loading crossbow. I pushed past Hakara.
She thrust her sword at me and missed. I wasn’t sure if she’d missed deliberately.
My gaze was focused on my cohort. We’d all heard the whispers of the black-winged god in the depths of the den, tearing the godkillers apart as though they were paper puppets. We’d killed gods before – quickly, efficiently. But this one was different. Bigger, stronger, older.