Page 15 of The Merciless Ones
Britta is waiting impatiently when I enter our shared chamber, a large, airy room triple the size of the common bedroom we slept in back at the Warthu Bera. Unlike our beds in that grim place, the one here is large enough that a single, dimly glowing lunar tree thrusts through its middle, separating it into two. The sprawling branches act as canopies, enclosing my side and hers in curtains of leafy green threaded with gold veins. As if that weren’t enough, the towering glass doors at the furthest end of the room open to a balcony that looks out across Abeya, the white stone buildings of the city of the goddesses twinkling on the mountainside below us. It’s like we’re at the top of the world, able to reach wherever we desire.
She waves me over to her side of the bed. “Come on, Deka – talk!” she urges, pushing aside the branches so I can enter.
“I need a moment,” I groan as I slip past the leaves to sink into the blessedly soft mattress. After my conversation with the mothers, every muscle in my body is corded with tension.
Britta flops down beside me. “That bad?” she asks, flipping a pebble across her fingers like a coin. For a moment, I feel the barest hint of a tingle.
It disappears when I frown. “Worse. They want us to capture Elder Kadiri.”
“I thought that was what ye wanted too?” Britta seems perplexed.
“I did, but that isn’t why I’m tense.” I sit up, then quickly explain the situation to her. Britta’s eyes grow wider and wider as I speak.
“So they’re dying?” she gasps. “The Gilded Ones, the goddesses of Otera – they’re dying?”
“Shh, stop repeating that word.” I press my fingers against her lips to stop the awful refrain. Then I curl into myself. “It’s all my fault,” I say, wrapping my arms tighter across my body as all that guilt, all that shame comes surging back.
Britta quickly gathers me close, her arms soft and comforting, and gently strokes my hair. “Shh…Deka, shh,” she says soothingly, until my muscles finally loosen. Then she pulls back, looks at me. “How is it yer fault, what’s happening?”
The words flood out of me in a rush. “If I hadn’t imprisoned the emperor here, the angoro wouldn’t have awoken, the mothers wouldn’t be dying, all our sisters wouldn’t be imprisoned in the Warthu Bera, Adwapa wouldn’t be so angry all the time, the women in Otera would—”
“Wait, ye truly think all these things are yer fault?” Britta cuts through my panic, her blue eyes bright with concern.
She’s flipping that pebble again, and the movement sends tingles rushing up my spine, though I don’t know why.
“All right, let’s play this out. Let’s say ye hadn’t defeated the emperor. Wha would have happened?”
I look down. Think. “We’d still be at the Warthu Bera. Half of us would be dead.”
“An’ all the women in Otera?” she prompts.
“Would still be where they are,” I finally say. “But the jatu wouldn’t be killing them the way they are now.”
Britta pins me with a stare. “Wouldn’t they? An’ how many women were beaten to death by their husbands or families, or just disappeared into thin air when ye were in yer village?”
I think back, remembering now all the rumours, the whispers of the fates that befell women back in Irfut. I remember my former friend Elfriede, whose father nearly beat her mother to death for producing a daughter with such an unsightly red birthmark on her face. Or even my father’s youngest sister, the one no one ever spoke of, because she disappeared after marrying a man the family disapproved of – the same sin my father committed, only he was a man, and men are exempt from such punishments.
Or are they?
The more I think back, the more memories emerge. The boys who were beaten for being too “feminine”, all the children they left out on the hill for having shortened limbs, curved spines and the like. The yandau – all those people who were neither male nor female – they drove away or forced into the temples. All of them living, breathing human beings who were punished, ostracized, killed because they didn’t fit one expectation or the other.
I look up at Britta. “I see your point.”
She nods, takes my hand. “There is such a thing as too much guilt, Deka.”
I nod, then bury my head in a pillow. I wish so much that Keita were here. He’d put his arms around me, tell me everything would be all right. “I miss our uruni,” I whisper, nuzzling the pillow.
“Ye mean ye miss Keita,” Britta humphs. She pushes me off the pillow. “We’ll have none of that! Yer not moonin’ over yer sweetheart in my bed, an’ yer certainly not sleepin’ here with yer smoky robes an’ dirty, filthy feet. Go wash, filthy foots. Go on, then.”
I sigh, rising. “I’m washing, I’m washing.”
What would I do without Britta?
“Evening greetings, honoured Nuru.” The words follow Britta and me early next evening as we make our way into the Hall of Reverence, the chamber where Melanis’s welcome feast will take place.
The hall is packed when we enter – alaki, deathshrieks and humans waiting impatiently for Melanis and the Gilded Ones. Since our initial victory against the jatu, we’ve had precious little to celebrate. There’s always another battle to fight, another village to liberate, another leader to kill – even now, we’re readying for our attack on Elder Kadiri one week from today, during the Festival of the Half Light. White Hands chose this timing because the elder’s jatu guards are sure to be so drunk because of the Festival, they’ll be practically useless. But even if it wasn’t that, there’s always the ongoing siege of Hemaira, which we constantly have to rotate soldiers in and out of. It’s always something these days. No wonder the past few months have blended into each other, a blur of blood and gold and violence.
But now, Melanis is here, and now, there’s hope, wonder – worship.