Page 2 of The Merciless Ones
“What does it matter what they do?” The woman surges closer, grief having pushed her past all semblance of fear. “Before, there were rules. We knew how to live. How to survive. Now, there is nothing. I have nothing because of you. I am nothing because of you.”
She falls to the ground at her daughter’s feet, sobbing uncontrollably. “My girl, oh, my beloved girl.”
Beside me, Nimita, a towering white deathshriek who has been assigned to our group, sighs with annoyance. Five deathshrieks accompanied us today – Katya, my former bloodsister, among them, of course, her red-spiked form distinct beside the others, whom I don’t know as well – not that I’m making the effort. So many people have died over the past few months that sometimes it seems pointless to try to forge deeper connections.
“We do not have time for this, honoured Nuru,” Nimita says, her voice a deep rumble.
Like all deathshrieks, she speaks in growls and hisses, but I understand her as perfectly as I would someone speaking Oteran. Another benefit of being the Nuru: I can understand all the descendants of the Gilded Ones and even force them to obey my commands if I wish.
I angle my head towards her. “What do you suggest we do, incapacitate her and leave her out here with all the beasts?”
“That’s always an option.” As with most Firstborn, those alaki who were born during the time of the goddesses, Nimita is a creature of expediency. Dying and resurrecting as a deathshriek has not changed that part of her.
“I will not leave her.” When I freed the Gilded Ones from their imprisonment in the mountains, I promised I would fight for the women of Otera – all women, not just the alaki. I return my attention to the old woman. “You cannot return to your home, and it is dangerous here. If you wish, I can have you taken to Abeya, the city of the goddesses. You’ll be safe there.”
“Safe.” The woman hisses out the word. “There is no safety anywhere – not any more. Between you lot and Elder Kadiri” – she spits as she speaks the name of the Southern high priest who’s now gathering the jatu armies together from all across Otera – “there’s no place any woman can hide.”
“Then how about freedom?” These words seem to catch the woman by surprise, so I quickly elaborate, using an echo of the speech my former instructor, White Hands, said to me over a year and half ago. “In Abeya, you can do anything you wish, be anyone you choose. All you have to do is make your way there.”
I give her a moment to make her decision. “Now then, will you go? Or will you remain here for the beasts to devour?”
The woman’s jaw juts. But then a small, barely yielding nod. She’ll go.
“Very well.” I turn to Chae-Yeong, a small, sleek black deathshriek with a nub where her right hand should be. She was injured before her blood turned gold, and that injury followed her across death to this form. “Return with her to Abeya. We will continue on.”
“But, honoured Nuru—” she begins, glancing at Nimita for guidance.
When the older deathshriek shakes her head, it takes everything I have not to clench my fists. I may be the Nuru, I may be the one who freed the mothers and ushered the One Kingdom into a new era, but to the Firstborn, I’ll always be only seventeen years old – a blink of an eye to their kind, who have seen countless millennia. Add to that all the deathshrieks I killed before I knew what I was, and they and many other deathshrieks will never forgive me. Never truly trust me.
So I always have to prove myself. My dominance.
I step forwards. “Now,” I insist, not even looking at Nimita.
“Yes, Nuru.” Chae-Yeong genuflects, doing the small, swift kneel I’ve become so used to, before she approaches the woman. “Come, human,” she growls, even though she knows the woman can’t understand her. Deathshrieks tend to have very little patience with humans, but I don’t blame them: it’s hard being patient with people who always want you dead.
“Follow her,” I say to the woman. “You won’t come to any harm. I vow it.”
“No.” The woman quickly steps back. When I sigh, annoyance rising, she adds, almost timidly, “Not till they have been buried. I…lack the strength to pull them down myself.”
I still, shame rising inside me. How could I forget such a simple human need? I’ve hardened much over the past few months if I cannot even recognize the need of a mother to properly bury her child.
I turn to Chae-Yeong again. “Bury them first,” I say quietly. “Then take her to Abeya.”
“Yes, Nuru.” Chae-Yeong genuflects again.
The woman nods her thanks to me, but I am already striding forward, my attention focused on the others. Time is short, and I cannot afford to spend any longer here than I already have. “Onward,” I command, pointing at the spires of the blood-red temple rising above the jungle’s mists. “To the Oyomosin.”
It takes three hours to climb up the cliff leading to the Oyomosin, the temple named in honour of Oyomo, the false god I once worshipped. It’s an uncomfortable journey, given that the cliff sits atop a dormant volcano, the heat rising through its stones to plaster hair to skin and armour to body. I ignore my bodily discomfort by revisiting all the things the woman from before said to me about what life is like now for women in Otera. Each of her words is a painful reminder of all the ways I’ve failed since I freed the mothers: I may have defeated that first army of jatu attacking their mountain, but dozens more are already emerging. In the six months that have passed since I woke the mothers, the jatu have gathered up almost every able-bodied man in Otera and pressed them into service. Even boys with barely a chest hair to their name aren’t safe.
It wouldn’t be so worrying if we’d already conquered Hemaira, the seat of the jatu’s power, but they still control the capital, still have its gates firmly locked against us.
And now, they throw a new bloodsister from the walls every week.
Such a horror I have never before imagined, the screams of all those innocent girls as they plummet to their deaths. The jatu choose them at random from the training grounds across Hemaira. Every day, I’m certain it’s going to be someone I know, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it – not now, at least. The walls of Hemaira truly are impenetrable, but not for the reasons we were always told. Something lives inside them, a force that repels any would-be invaders with the heat of a thousand flames. It’s called the n’goma, and it’s an arcane object, an artefact from the time the mothers ruled Otera that contains remnants of their once-vast power. There are several such objects littered across Otera, but the n’goma is the most powerful of them all. It releases terrifying blasts of heat that peel the flesh from your bones the second you venture near the walls. In the days after we first freed the goddesses, I tried several times, but the n’goma was too strong.
All I could do was stand there helplessly, watching the bodies of those girls being stripped of flesh over and over again while the jatu looked down, unmoved by their cries. Worst of all, the Gilded Ones, who built Hemaira’s walls themselves, can do nothing.
Millennia of imprisonment have starved the goddesses of the worship that once fed their power. They can’t tear down the walls or even rain fire down on the jatu, as they would have in their prime. Now, they just spend all their time sleeping, absorbing prayers. The only way forwards is to either negotiate with the jatu or find a method of helping the goddesses regain their power faster so that we can rescue our sisters. Which, of course, is the reason I’m here, climbing this unscalable cliff.