Page 10 of The Merciless Ones
Even now, more and more of them gather, their massive equine profiles gleaming against the moonlight. Equus are some of the most magnificent creatures in Otera – a compelling mix of human, horse, and predatory bird. They resemble humans from head to midsection and horses thereafter, except, that is, for their powerful talons, like raptors’, which stand in the place of hooves. Those equine features and their close bond with the animals are why they’re also known as horse lords. Children follow them – mostly orphans or runaways who no longer wish to follow the path of Oyomo. Then there are the girls we’ve rescued from nearby villages, young alaki whose blood has not yet changed from the red of humanity to the gold of the divine.
They’re the reason deathshrieks kept attacking Oteran villages: they can smell an alaki’s true nature even before she begins her menses, so they try to rescue all the young ones before they’re caught by the Ritual of Purity…not that the Ritual means much any more. Now that most everyone in Otera knows what alaki are, women are bled on the streets if there’s any hint they might have divine blood in them.
Even before Melanis lands, the crowd is surging around her, happy tears flowing as they gather. The other Firstborn haven’t seen her since the jatu rebelled centuries ago and took her and countless other Firstborn as prisoners, but they’ve told stories about her, passed down countless tales to all the young alaki and deathshrieks here, so that everyone in Abeya knows her legend. “Melanis! Melanis!”: the happy refrain rises in the air, and the winged alaki quickly disappears under the weight of a thousand embraces and kisses, as well loved now as she was in days of old.
But to my surprise, White Hands isn’t one of their number. She stands there stiffly, watching as Melanis basks in her extravagant welcome.
I pull my attention from her when a few bloodsisters call out in welcome to me as well. “Greetings, honoured Nuru,” they murmur, but this greeting is warier, more reserved.
Most of the newer bloodsisters on the mountain don’t like spending too much time with me if they can help it; my abilities frighten them. It’s one thing for me to conquer the Hemairan emperor and his men but another completely for me to have the ability to take over my bloodsisters’ minds if I choose. Then there’s the way I see people’s weaknesses using the deep combat state. It’s a relatively new trick of mine – White Hands taught me how in the months after we settled into Abeya. Still, no one, especially the deathshrieks, wants to be around that – around someone who not only can see your body’s vulnerabilities but also can make you do things you don’t want to – especially since that someone used those exact abilities to kill untold members of their kind.
The reminder of it has guilt flooding my mind. I killed so many deathshrieks while I was at the Warthu Bera. So many. I didn’t know what they were at the time; I just believed what the priests told me: that I was a demon and deathshrieks were monsters I had to annihilate in order to gain purity. Back then, I would have done anything to be pure, would have destroyed any monster if it meant I could also destroy the demonic parts of myself. Little did I know that all the things they called demonic were actually markers of divinity.
I glance across the mountaintop at all the people gathered together, and suddenly I feel so very alone. Everyone here has their group: human, alaki, deathshriek, equus. Even my friends Britta, the twins, Belcalis and Katya all have each other. But I’m not like them. I’m not alaki – not truly – and I’m certainly not deathshriek. I’m just the Nuru, a being created to free the mothers and enforce their will.
And that’s exactly what I will do, I remind myself, shaking off my melancholic thoughts. I can’t change the past – not even the mothers can perform such a feat. All I can do now is move forward: ask questions instead of being afraid, take the actions I think are just instead of mindlessly following what others tell me. Be a better person – my own person.
That in mind, I catch White Hands’s eyes across the crowd and signal with battle language: We need to meet. It’s urgent. Tell all the generals.
She nods, gestures subtly towards the Temple of the Gilded Ones as she leads the delegation onward. I swiftly follow, my worrying questions about the symbol, the jatu and that chamber all circling my mind until a familiar sleek white figure canters over to me: Masaima, with Braima at his side. Masaima leans forward and experimentally nibbles at my hair, as is his habit. One taste and he jerks back, a wrinkle of disgust on his elegant muzzle.
“You reek of smoke, honoured Nuru,” he says.
“I was in a very smoky place,” I reply solemnly.
“Then you should bathe,” Braima informs me with a haughty toss of his black-striped mane. That’s the only difference between him and his brother, that black stripe. Otherwise, the pair are perfectly identical. “Bathing is very good for alaki.”
“I had not thought of that.” I try to hold back the smile tugging at my lips.
No matter how bad things are, Braima and Masaima always manage to lighten the mood.
When the pair trots away, my smile fades to a grimace as I remember: I don’t have time to be dawdling like this. I have to inform White Hands and the other generals of everything I’ve just experienced and then seek the counsel of the mothers. If Idugu – or whatever is pretending to be him – truly does exist, we need to figure out what it is immediately, not to mention what happened with that waking dream I experienced.
I hurry into the shallows of the lake, relieved when I see the water rising, hardening and solidifying until it becomes a clear bridge to walk across. The planks wobble slightly when I step onto them, but they hold firm, the fishes and other creatures caught inside watching me with a wary annoyance. Anok, the craftiest of the goddesses, made the water bridge so that it forms only for those loyal to her and her sisters. It’s a test, like almost everything surrounding the mountain now: the river of glass that explodes out of the sand when enemies approach; the jungles filled with predators that eat anyone the mothers deem a threat. More and more adult humans have been joining us in the past few months – not just women fleeing forced marriages or servitude in the temples and brothels but men as well, all tired of living their lives according to the constrictions of the Infinite Wisdoms, tired of the lie that is Oyomo.
Before, the jatu would massacre those who tried to make their way up here, but now, they try to disguise themselves among them in a bid to infiltrate the city. This tactic never works, however. The water bridge knows. The water bridge always knows. And anyone it releases from the safety of its confines is quickly snapped up by the creatures that swim below. I look at the large, dark shapes slithering under me and shudder.
Britta and the others fall into step with me as I enter the temple, and together, we quickly make our way to the war room, the most remote and forbidding place in the complex. Whereas the rest of the temple has been restored to its former glory – gleaming stone halls, their walls threaded with gold and buttressed by columns that reach up to the sky, lush gardens brimming with all sorts of strange and marvellous plants and creatures – the war room remains as formidable as ever, a stark black box of a chamber that can be reached only by crossing a stone bridge overlooking the deepest, most turbulent part of the lake. Lightning crackles over the water, thunder booming with chilling regularity. This is another of Mother Anok’s inventions – assurance that no unwelcome ears, however sharp, can listen in on the conversations that happen in the war room.
“How did she get here first?” Britta grumbles when she sees White Hands waiting by the stone seats that line the chamber’s walls, her black gaze as inscrutable as always. Last we saw, White Hands was still hovering about Melanis and the rest. She must have used a secret passage to get here quickly. Hundreds of them riddle the temple – a precaution in case the jatu ever break through.
“You know she has her methods,” I reply, walking over the thick glass floor.
I shudder when an eerie shadowy figure moves underneath it. There’s a cell under the war room, a secured chamber completely surrounded by stone and water for which there’s no entrance or exit. Just standing on top of it unnerves me, but White Hands, of course, doesn’t even glance at it as she comes to meet me halfway. She never concerns herself with things that are beneath her notice, especially not the single occupant of the cell underneath us. It’s one of the many things I find fascinating about her.
When I first met White Hands, I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, her body shapely, yet small of stature, her skin the deep black of a midsummer’s night. Even her aggressively short, tightly coiled hair only served to highlight her breathtaking features. Then I saw her eyes, those black pupils so large, they covered almost all the whites. White Hands’s eyes are the most frightening part of her; look into them long enough and you can see the weight of all her centuries reflected in their gaze.
“Well, honoured Nuru?” she says once the deathshrieks shut the heavy stone door. “What did you see that was so urgent we needed to gather the generals?”
I glance across the room, ensuring that I make eye contact with both the alaki and the deathshriek generals. This news concerns us all.
“I saw a jatu go into the gilded sleep and then resurrect.”
The room bursts into an uproar.
“Impossible!” Nalini, a barrel-chested grey deathshriek with sharp quills all the way down her back, hisses. She signs in battle language as she speaks so the alaki generals can understand her. Unlike me, none of them can fully understand a deathshriek when she speaks. “The Nuru’s eyes deceive her – you know she does not sense things as well as she should. That she does not understand things the way she should.”
I look down, shame flooding me, as it always does, at this pointed reminder about what I did, all the deathshrieks I killed. But that has no bearing on what’s happening now, I remind myself, quickly lifting my head. If I must constantly atone for the wrongs I committed against others of my kind, I will do so by protecting them, even if it’s against threats they don’t believe in.