Chapter 54 Hakara
Hakara
The Sanguine Sea
Pizgonia was once ruled by a council of elders, one from each province.
But year after year, the youth of the realm complained that their elders moved too slowly, were less invested in the future, did not have an understanding of the problems the new generation faced, and were too stuck in old ways to see clearly.
One account, from an irritated elder, says they all just got tired of the complaining and changed their governance (one cannot be sure if this was written in jest or seriousness).
Today, the council consists of one elder and one youth between the ages of twenty and thirty-five from each province.
It’s far from a perfect system, but it has held for over a hundred years.
Thassir and I darted for the stairs, him bare-chested, me desperately tying my shirt closed again. I got there first, his wings a hindrance in the enclosed space. As soon as I stepped into the light of day, someone knocked me over. We both fell to the deck.
For a moment, all I could feel was an intense confusion. I recognized Dashu’s face – his sharp cheekbones, his goatee, his dark brown eyes. I lifted my hands instinctively, though I wasn’t sure why. And then I saw the glint of a knife in his hands. His mouth stretched into a grin.
I grabbed for his wrist and found his strength greater than mine, the blade lowering toward my belly. Toward where the corestone lay.
Not Dashu. Lithuas.
Clawed hands seized her by the shoulders, tearing her away from me.
She flowed into her natural form as she tumbled across the deck, rising in a smooth movement, her feet firm beneath her.
I reached for the sword at my side and swore.
I hadn’t exactly been expecting to fight aboard The Birdeater, so I’d left it by my hammock.
I pulled the godkilling knife free instead.
I was better with the sword, but this was the sort of weapon I needed to put her down.
Thassir stood at my side, claws at the ready. I reached for my belt again. Right. Gems weren’t there either. Well, we could manage without. Hopefully.
Alifra came hurtling toward Lithuas from my right. “What did you do with him?” she screamed, her knives drawn. “Where is he?”
She threw herself at the goddess with a ferocity I’d never seen from her before.
Always, Alifra had hung back in our fights, acting with a cool head, strategically, picking off enemies or hassling them at just the right time.
Now she fought like a raccoon caught in a trap.
Her russet hair, tied back, bobbed as she moved, her blades flashing. Even Lithuas seemed taken aback.
Thassir and I strode forward together, moving toward and around the fight, judging best where to find an opening. We were without Dashu, and perhaps Thassir was diminished from his state as an elder god, but the three of us could still take her on, I was sure.
Lithuas shifted, two more arms sprouting from her ribs, both seizing extra blades from her belt and thigh.
She seemed somehow able to hold all three of us off at once, backing toward the prow of the boat, putting the captain’s cabin at her back.
Where was Talie when we needed her? Probably snoring in a hammock – it was daytime after all.
I was going to give her an earful if we got out of this.
I hammered at Lithuas’s defenses, the glow of the violet gem drawing patterns in the air. Every blow I tried to land she turned aside. Even Thassir set his jaw, earning only a slash across his shoulder for his efforts.
“Tell me where he is!” Alifra darted in, thrusting a dagger through the upper part of one of the goddess’s primary arms. Lithuas grunted but didn’t relent, switching her sword into a single-handed grip. She could just shift again, give herself another arm.
The door of the captain’s cabin opened with speed, slamming into Lithuas’s back.
Falin tumbled past, having put his whole weight into it.
Lithuas lost her footing and I swept in under her guard, knocking one of her knives away.
Thassir seized the arm holding the sword and I pivoted around her, holding the godkilling blade to her neck.
She went deathly still, her chest heaving. Her remaining hand opened, the knife clattering to the deck.
I nodded at our erstwhile captain. “Look at that, Falin. Who’s not getting involved now? You’ve just clobbered one of the seven elder gods.”
His face turned the color of a cloud at mid afternoon. “I don’t want any part of this. Just didn’t want her to come after me next.”
I let the blade part Lithuas’s skin, a shimmer of blood appearing at the wound. “She won’t.” Everything had happened so quickly. Now that we were at a standstill, I felt Dashu’s absence keenly. When had Lithuas taken him? How long had she been aboard? “Tell me where Dashu is.”
She let out a throaty laugh. “So you can kill me?”
I should have killed her. Shouldn’t have stayed my hand, let this become any sort of standstill. Just the quick cleanness of her blood spilled on the deck. We’d find Dashu. We had to. And this was more important than one man’s life.
I leaned my mouth close to Lithuas’s ear. “Bringer of Change, they called you. Is that why you joined with Kluehnn?”
She wriggled a little in my grasp, but found it firm. Thassir dug his claws into her wrist.
“Lithuas,” he said. “I know what you told me, all those hundreds of years ago, before the Shattering, before you and Kluehnn drove us from our home. You believed in what he said. That the crimes of the mortals deserved punishment. That our crimes deserved punishment. Have we all not suffered enough? You changed during your years with Kluehnn. Is it not time to change again?”
“Change? Like you? Is that what you wish? For me to weaken myself? Look at you, Nioanen. What in all the realms have you become? I let you live and this is how you repay me? You wish to kill me now, when you have the advantage and not me? Fine. Do it.”
I clenched my jaw. “He’s not the one holding the knife.”
“What a pathetic way to die,” Lithuas said beneath her breath.
“At a mortal’s hand.” No matter what had happened in the interim, no matter what the gods had suffered, she still hated us.
Was this all that existed in some of the gods?
Hate for the mortals? But what did I have in return?
I certainly hadn’t thought highly of them, even if my thoughts toward them weren’t as poisoned as Dashu’s.
What would happen when we returned to Langzu?
What if the gods followed Thassir and they defeated Kluehnn?
Could he hold them back from wanting to kill the mortals who’d spent hundreds of years hating them and turning them over to the godkillers?
Thassir made no attempt to stop me. He would let me kill her, if I deemed it necessary. It was what we’d crossed the barrier to do. What we’d fought for. My gaze found Alifra’s, and the terror in her eyes was enough to stay my hand.
A little bit disgusted, with both Lithuas and myself, I eased the blade from her skin.
Someone had to start being merciful, and it looked like that sad sack of shit was going to be me.
I started with something simpler. She’d said it would be a shame to kill such an artist as Dashu. “Is he still alive?”
She hesitated, but seemed to decide that withholding every scrap of information wouldn’t go well for her. “He’s alive.”
I rubbed at the back of my neck, looking to the ships that slowly passed in either direction. “She put him on another boat.”
Alifra finally sheathed her knives, her hands trembling.
“I think she meant to ambush you, Hakara. I went to talk to him, and he didn’t seem to remember that we’d argued.
She must have stolen aboard with the goods in Dashu’s form, when everyone was distracted with the fighting at the hideout.
We thought she intended to take over the Godless, but she made the move we least expected.
We… we were lucky. This could have gone differently if Dashu and I hadn’t been at odds.
” She lifted a hand to her throat. “Oh gods, what if those were the last words I said to him?”
I eyed our prisoner, an idea occurring to me. “We tie her up. We take her with us.”
Thassir frowned. “And how do we stop her from doing magic? She could easily shift and escape.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of Mull’s filters. “You can summon aether all you want, but if you can’t breathe it, you can’t do magic, can you?” I strapped it on over her head as Alifra found some rope. “It keeps the aether out.” Damn near cleverest idea I’d ever come up with.
Alifra tied the rope a little tighter than necessary, keeping both sets of Lithuas’s arms behind her back. “And Dashu?”
Our team was broken. We’d been broken again and again; I couldn’t seem to hold them together.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s alive.
I believe Lithuas that much. She’ll have sent him somewhere back in Langzu.
Probably to a cohort of godkillers and then into the depths of a den.
If she was so fascinated by his fighting style, they won’t kill him.
They’ll want to study him. You should go find him, get him out.
I won’t keep you here.” Xiazen loomed in the distance, the sails of the docked ships like flecks of white paint scattered across a wash of blue.
I knew what it was like, knowing someone I loved was in danger, being too far away to help them. I wouldn’t do that to her.
Alifra swallowed. “No. We can’t afford to split any further.
We need to see this through together. We take Thassir, Lithuas, and Talie to their brethren.
We get back to the Unanointed, see if we can convince them to ally with the gods.
Dashu…” Her voice broke. She swallowed. “If anyone can survive in a den of godkillers, it’s him.
He wouldn’t want me to come for him, not now, with so much on the line.
I stay with you.” She nodded to Thassir, her face grim. “And you.”
“Fine.” I brought my fingers together in a fist, tried not to think about the brightness of my bond with Rasha, growing looser by the moment. “When we raided the den, when we took that corestone, we started this war. Now we finish it.”