Page 46 of The Merciless Ones
Ixa, I gasp. What is this? What’s happening?
Something similar to a shrug twitches through Ixa’s body. Well, our body, that is. Ixa and Deka one, he answers simply.
This answer so stuns me, I almost don’t even notice that Ixa’s saying actual words instead of just my name, something he’s only done on a very few occasions. I’m immersed in his mind now, he and I tightly intertwined, although we’re somehow still individual entities. This has to be one of the strangest experiences of my life. The closest I’ve ever felt to this is the time I spent in Melanis’s memories, but that was a completely different situation. When I was in Melanis’s mind, I became her. But with Ixa, it’s almost as if there’s a space in his mind just for me, one that allows me to be myself.
Deka want see? he asks me eagerly.
Yes, I say, understanding him clearly. I want to see the square.
I force myself to remain calm as he manoeuvres his – well, our body – dizzyingly closer to the square. The Forsworn deathshrieks look frighteningly enormous as they drag screaming citizens out of their homes while lines of jatu stand by, waiting, that jatu-leader deathshriek standing there with them. As before, they and the jatu are all wearing infernal armour with the kaduth on it, only it doesn’t affect me this time. Doesn’t so much as elicit a tingle in my mind, as if being in Ixa’s body protects me from the symbol.
The deathshrieks force the citizens to the centre of the square, where two wagons stand, one brightly decorated with the kuru, Oyomo’s sun symbol, the other heavily armoured and reinforced with iron – a prisoner transport. My eyes return to the first wagon when two jatu open the door and kneel in deference to the three figures emerging from it. Only one, a plain temple maiden with short, tightly coiled hair and blue-black skin, is unfamiliar. The other two I know all too well: Elder Kadiri and Elfriede.
“Deka. Deka!” Keita’s voice sounds panicked but far off in the distance, so I ignore it as I watch the elder and Elfriede walk to the middle of the square, those jatu guarding them while the deathshrieks herd everyone nearer.
The elder holds out his hands in a revoltingly pious display of welcome. “Honoured citizens of Hemaira,” he calls to his reluctant audience. “I am Elder Kadiri, high priest of Oyomo. I greet you in the name of Idugu. May He shelter and deliver you.”
“May we be sheltered. May we be delivered,” the crowd answers nervously, glancing at each other.
“My deepest apologies for pulling you from your evening duties, but today is a most auspicious day.” His eyes travel across the crowd. “You see, today, the most favoured daughter of the Gilded Ones, the Nuru, Deka, is here, hiding among you.”
I nearly fly into a wall, I’m so shocked.
Ixa fly, Ixa chirps, swiftly taking back control of his body. Unlike me, he’s not bothered by what’s happening below us. As I’ve suspected many times before, he doesn’t truly understand what’s happening – only that it’s bad.
Ixa quickly settles on the edge of a roof, and we watch the proceedings below, where shocked whispers are now building in the crowd.
Elder Kadiri taps his lips in a mockery of thoughtfulness. “We must entice her out, but how? She won’t emerge just for your sakes. Even if we threatened to put you to the sword, the supposed Deliverer” – he says this word with all the condescension he can manage – “would not risk her immortal life for your human ones. So we must lure her from her hiding place.”
He nods to a nearby jatu, and the hulking man walks towards the heavily armoured wagon I saw before, the prisoner transport. What’s in it? I wonder, my heart suddenly beating faster and faster. Or rather, who?
Elder Kadiri points to it. “Before she was revealed as the Gilded Ones’ daughter, the Nuru, Deka, had another family. A human family. I think it’s time we facilitate a reunion.”
My world narrows as the jatu opens the wagon door and wrenches out the person inside it – a frail, thin man, body hunched into itself, tattered and stained rags hanging from his body. The sight of him is so shocking, my mind jolts out of Ixa’s body and back into my own.
“Father,” I say, suddenly breathless. “It’s Father.”
I’m in such a state of shock when I return to my body, it takes some moments before Keita can calm me. “Deka? Deka, are you all right?” he whispers, rubbing his hands up and down my back. “You’re having some sort of episode.”
I turn to him. “It’s Father,” I repeat. “I was in Ixa’s body and I saw him – oh gods, they have him!”
“What do you mean, they have him? And…Ixa’s body?”
I’m so far gone now, I can barely string two words together. Everything comes out as a babble. “I wanted to see the square, and Ixa, he just – I don’t know – he allowed me into his body, and I saw Father there, in the middle of the square with Elder Kadiri and Elfriede. They have him – oh, stars above, they have him. Ixa, take me back!” Take me back!
When I repeat this command silently, Ixa’s voice comes, as it always does, in my mind. Yes, he says, and just like that, I’m in his body again, and we’re hovering high above the crowd, where those jatu are now leading Father over to Elder Kadiri.
Dismay has my wings faltering when I near him. He’s changed so much over the past year or so. He was already sickly when last I saw him, but now, his once thick blond hair is so sparse, it forms little patches on his scalp, and his body is barely more than a skeleton underneath the rags fluttering about him. Chains clank loosely from his emaciated wrists and ankles as he shuffles towards the centre of the square, his head bowed, eyes fixed on the ground. When he struggles to catch his breath, something shatters inside me.
I thought, after I woke the goddesses, that I would never feel anything for him again – this man who betrayed me, handed me over to the priests, and then cut off my head, but now that he’s here, kneeling on the platform below me, it’s all I can do to keep from running to him, holding him in my arms and protecting him from the world.
Deka all right? Ixa asks, concerned.
I’m all right, I answer, saddened. Fly closer.
Ixa obligingly descends to the branches of a nearby amarul tree, and then we both watch as the jatu bring Father to Elder Kadiri, who points a condemning finger. “This man – this beast – who is an offence to our eyes and Oyomo has something to say to you all.”
He nods, and one of the jatu brings forth a metal horn and shoves it in front of Father, who then shakes his head pleadingly at Elder Kadiri. The elder, however, is unyielding.