Chapter 56 Rasha
Rasha
Langzu – in the wilds
Just between you and me, Dagino, while I admire the explorers who have managed to delve deep into the honeycomb of tunnels beneath our feet, and I am happy they have brought us descriptions of the bioluminescent flora that lives beneath the aeroclines…
why the fuck have none of those adventurers thought to cut some of the vegetation free and bring it back?
I swear, they are a different breed than you and me, who are rich with curiosity about the plants and creatures that share this world with us.
The explorers go there, they come back (sometimes), and for what?
So they can say, “I have been there?” I will never understand their lack of thought about anything other than this.
My bond with Hakara pulled us south, farther and farther away from the den and from Naatar.
We’d been given the best provisions and more money than I’d ever seen in my lifetime.
We were to take as many wagons and horses as possible, to rest well in inns.
He’d marked two other dens that we could stop at on our way, along with a note that we were to be given the use of two cohorts.
The gods hadn’t killed anyone during their raid, but they’d injured a fair few, and Kluehnn wasn’t willing to spare anyone from the den near Bian.
If he made this mission easy for me, he’d whispered in my ear before we’d left, and I still could not complete it, then I would have no one to blame but myself.
I already blamed myself.
My gaze found a crow on the afternoon we left, circling above. Khatuya caught the direction of my gaze, her lips pressed. Then she shook her head, scooped up a rock, and threw it at the bird, screaming out her frustration.
Mull was imprisoned back in the den and Naatar was firmly in Kluehnn’s grasp, waiting to find out his fate. I’d made such a mess of things, and still I had so many questions – ones I knew my god would not and could not answer.
Khatuya treated me with silence for the most part.
It was like traveling with those two cohorts to Bian – she barely looked at me, refused to use my name.
I wasn’t sure what she was thinking. But I knew how she was feeling, and I’d never seen her so angry, not even with Shambul, the boy who’d bullied us all before we’d left him to die.
Finally, when we’d passed Bian and were on foot for a bit, I dared to speak to her directly. The sun beat down on the back of my neck, the walking making my leg ache. “I don’t know how to make this right.”
She wheeled on me. “You should have told me what was going on. I didn’t know what you were doing in the archives.
You didn’t tell me! Naatar confessed to Kluehnn, and you didn’t even tell him, you just let him find you with that spy and asked him to keep your secrets.
From everyone. From me. And you know Naatar.
You know he would do anything to keep us from fighting.
He tells me everything, but he would not tell me this.
And it’s your fault.” Tears streaked her rough brown cheeks, though I didn’t think she even knew she was crying.
I wasn’t sure how to tell her that in those moments – when Mull and the crow had let me sit with my doubts, had allowed me to question – I’d felt more like myself, like the person I’d always wanted to be.
Someone who wasn’t afraid to dig into her faith, even if it meant she found her faith or herself lacking.
Khatuya was lifting her hands as though in supplication.
“Why didn’t you tell me? You should have trusted me.
We were your cohort, we were meant to trust one another, even with the hard truths.
It was the only way we got out of the trials together, and alive.
You said you’d get us all out, and I trusted you even when it looked like you’d betrayed Naatar.
I put so much trust in you, Rasha, and you couldn’t do the same for me. ”
Was she truly so blind to everything she’d said to me?
“I never told you because I knew how you’d react.
You want to know the hard truths? Fine. Kluehnn is lying to us.
I found another way back to Unterra, in our very den, and he didn’t want to hear it.
Did you know the gods want to go? They don’t all want to fight.
We could send them back to their homeland if we only let them pass peaceably through the den.
Kluehnn says he cares about us all, that he loves us all, but he would send us to our deaths instead of coming to an agreement with the gods. ”
She stalked toward me, until I could see the whites ringing her irises.
“The gods lie to you. Kluehnn doesn’t. How can you believe that?
This is why we are forbidden from speaking to the gods.
What have they done for you? Nothing. Kluehnn and the dens have done everything.
You wouldn’t have a family without him. You wouldn’t have a place where you belong. You wouldn’t even be alive.”
Her words cut me deeply, because they were true. I wouldn’t have anything, and I knew how this all made me look – ungrateful and petty. “Do I owe him my unquestioning faith in return?”
“Yes! It’s the bargain we all made. Is it that hard for you to just do as you’re told? To trust the one god who has always been there for you?”
“He hurt me. He took my horn.” I pointed to the empty space on my scalp, where the skin still itched.
“And you deserved it!” She thrust her face toward mine, her hands in fists.
Khatuya had no idea what I’d been through while Kluehnn had been sending them off to fight the gods.
I knew she had to care. I trusted that she did.
“Of course it’s been hard for me to do as I was told.
I love you and Naatar. It killed me every day knowing you were out there fighting alone while I was trapped in the archives.
You know why I first talked to the gods?
Why I wanted to make a bargain with them?
If we could stop fighting, it meant you would be safe. ”
“We cannot be safe until all of them are dead.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
She stared at me, her face close to mine, strands of hair come loose from her braid, brushing against her cheeks. “Is this because of me and Naatar?”
“What?” I leaned away. “No.”
“It’s because we have something between us, isn’t it? Something you’re not part of.”
I gritted my teeth. Yes, it had shaken me.
Yes, it had spurred me toward helping Mull.
But that wasn’t the only reason, and she wasn’t listening.
“If you ever cared about me at all, then know I’m telling you the truth about this.
There are books that Kluehnn is altering, changing to say other things, sometimes the opposite of what they said before. ”
“And how would no one notice?”
I lifted my hands. “I don’t know! He’s doing something with them.
But there’s more – there’s a tomb. There’s writing by Tolemne in there.
It says he didn’t stay in Unterra. It says he came back to the surface and that his family was still alive when he left.
It says the gods had children with mortals and that Tolemne was one of their descendants. It says there are three aeroclines.”
“And did you read these things yourself?”
I faltered. “Well, no. Mull translated them.”
“The spy translated them, and you would believe him over your own god?”
I grabbed her shoulders. “Listen to me for just one moment! Kluehnn is lying. He is lying. I saw the books with my own eyes. What reason did Mull have to lie to me?”
“To turn you from your faith!”
“So he risked his life and spent all this time mistranslating things just to get me to turn against my god? I’m not that important.
None of us are. And if Kluehnn loves me so much, why did he hurt me so much?
Even if I deserved it? I don’t know if the gods have told me the truth, but I know that Kluehnn hasn’t. ”
Khatuya bared her teeth, white against the oak-brown of her skin. “You say that one more time…”
“I am here, doing what you want. I am telling you the hard truths. Kluehnn lies.”
With a shout, she attacked me. It should have been an easy fight for someone like me, with my superior strength and height.
But Khatuya, when she was angry, fought like a cornered bear.
She wouldn’t let up, she wouldn’t stop hitting and kicking and biting.
And I didn’t want to hurt her. I seized one of her wrists, and then the other, and still she came at me, undeterred, her fingers curling so her claws could mark my skin.
“Stop!” I cried out. Our feet kicked at the road, sending up clouds of dust. A cart moved in the distance, heading south.
“Or what?”
There was no Naatar here to come between us and say reasonable words. I didn’t even know what he would have said in this moment; he was already angry with me. Khatuya on the other hand was a spitting fire, oil tossed onto a burgeoning flame.
I pushed her away and she pulled her godkilling blade free.
I unsheathed mine just in time to block her attack.
There was nothing graceful about the movement.
It had been a long time now since I’d held a blade.
Too many things had happened between then and now, and I’d not even had the chance to spar.
Khatuya pressed her advantage, darting back and swiping at my arm.
A thin line of red welled up, my robe cut cleanly by her blade. I’d never been the full focus of Khatuya’s anger. Why did she think I should have told her the truth when this was simmering beneath at all times? She didn’t trust me. Naatar didn’t trust me. Kluehnn and Mull didn’t trust me.
What did I have, without that? What lay beneath, if I stripped away all those relationships and my faith besides?
I screamed back at her, no longer caring if I hurt her.
I may have taken the first step away from our cohort, but she’d wandered the rest of the path without stopping to see if I was still there.
All that mattered to her was that I obeyed Kluehnn.
I whipped my blade about, cutting through the air as though it was doing me some wrong by standing between me and her.
Khatuya leapt back, and I pressed my longer reach. She stumbled.
Just as she did, my injured leg caught a rock.
I went down with her, my knife falling from my hand.
I seized her hand with the blade, landing on top of her.
Her eyes were unfocused, and I slammed her hand against the ground – once, twice – until her fingers opened and I threw her blade into the grass.
Her other fist met my cheek.
It was a glancing blow, with her non-dominant hand, but the world still turned briefly red, my ears ringing and the sky spinning above. She wriggled out from beneath me even as I tried to hold her still.
“You want to make things right?” she gasped out. “You don’t tell me all these things you think you’ve learned. That doesn’t help either of us and I don’t want to hear it. The only thing that will make it right is killing Hakara. We follow your bond, we kill her and get this over with.”
I pressed my hand to my cheek and rolled onto my feet, choking on the dust from the road. All my certainty, my anger fled. “I don’t know if I can.”
“It’s the only way we’ll save Naatar. You have to.”