Page 50 of The Merciless Ones

I put my hands under him to lift him up, but another sob chokes my throat. He’s all skin and bones. I’d noticed it before, but to actually feel it… He’s so airy now, he might float away, might disappear for ever, if I don’t hold him close. A tear trickles down my cheek, and I blink, startled by it.

“I’m going to take you away from here,” I say, determined.

But as I rise, a skeletal finger wipes away my tear. I look down to find Father’s eyes glowing feverishly.

“There’s no use, Deka,” he whispers. “It’s already too late, you know that, don’t you? And even if it weren’t…” He turns wearily towards the fortress’s walls, where that pummelling has been replaced by the low thudding of massive bodies a gainst stone.

Thankfully, the fortress doesn’t budge. Doesn’t so much as shake. Britta truly did build this fortress with all her strength. I’m dimly aware of her stirring now, watching us with tears in her eyes.

I return my gaze to Father. “No,” I say to him. “I can get you to a healer. I can get you to safety.” All my resentment, all my anger – all of it has fallen away, leaving only this desperation, this strange, fierce certainty.

All this time, I thought I was angry at him, but really, I was sad. He was my father, and he threw me away. The moment the priests came, he abandoned me, betrayed me when he should have loved me – when I loved him. The thought chokes me, a realization a little too late to accept.

This entire time, I loved him.

I thought I was strong, that I’d replaced every memory, banished as much of him as I could from my mind, but in fact I’m still the same little girl I was, seeking his affection. His love.

Father shakes his head, the movement so weak as to be nonexistent. “There’s no time any more, no cure – not for something like this.” He pulls aside the top of his robe, and the smell intensifies.

I gag, my eyes watering when I look down and see the wound in his chest, darkened at the edges, round and deep. Something white wriggles inside. Maggots. Vomit rushes to my throat, and I hurriedly set him back down on the ground before I rush to the furthest side of the shelter and hurl up all the food Lamin stole for us earlier. When I’m done, I wipe my mouth, hands trembling, and return to him, studiously ignoring the thudding of jatu bodies against the shelter, the distant shrieks, the enraged commands of Elder Kadiri. If I focus on the here, the now, it’s like they don’t exist. Like they’re not even here.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it, the light,” Father whispers. He’s staring towards the last few trickles of light coming through one of the shelter’s cracks, but it’s not clear how much of it he’s actually able to see. It’s like he’s already halfway gone, his spirit ascended but his body still here.

Then his eyes wander back towards me. They’re oddly vacant. Even in the gloom, I can see that. “I know I don’t have any right to ask this, but could you come sit by my side again, Deka? Please,” he whispers.

I do as he asks, every muscle in my body trembling so hard, it’s as if I’ve been thrown into a freezing lake and held under until my body turned to ice.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last year,” he whispers, his voice barely a rattle now. “A lot of time to pray, to reflect. To repent.” He reaches his hand towards me, and I take it, trying not to notice how thin it is, how easily I can feel the bones rolling inside. They feel fragile, like I could crack them as if they were eggshells.

“I’m sorry for not protecting you, Deka,” he rasps. “I’m sorry for not being a good father… I have no excuses. None that would ever justify how I treated you. When your blood changed, I should have spirited you away, should have run with you. Even in that cellar, I should have turned my sword on the elders, but instead I turned it on you. My only child. My only daughter.”

The words echo through me – a reminder: “Father,” I begin, heaviness settling in my heart. “I think there’s something you should know. I’m not your true—”

“I knew you weren’t my blood.” Father’s eyes gaze into mine, piercing despite their vacancy. “The moment Umu put you in my arms, I knew you weren’t mine. You looked like me – even acted like me – but something deep inside me told me you were unnatural. That you were like her.”

The words are no less than a sword through the heart.

Tears burn my eyes as I try to pull my hand from his, but Father’s grasp tightens, strangely strong for someone so weak.

“I loved you all the same. Both of you.” He smiles sadly, his eyes filled with tears. “I loved every part of you – every breath you ever took. It didn’t matter what you were, Deka. You were mine, and I should have protected you – I should have saved you. But I listened to the Wisdoms. Went against my own deepest inclinations because of what those scrolls, what the priests taught me. I was a coward, a fool unworthy of the gift I had been given, and for that, I am sorry. So very, very sorry.”

He rummages in the tatters of his robe and pulls out something, which he presses into my hand.

When I open it, the breath leaves my throat. It’s Mother’s necklace, the one he took as I lay dying on that cellar floor. He places it in my hands, then leans forward, so his forehead rests over them like a prayer.

“Can you ever forgive me for what I did, Deka?” he whispers. “Not now, but perhaps one day in the centuries to come – can you forgive the weaknesses of this foolish and prideful man?”

“I forgive you.”

The words gasp out of me so swiftly, I immediately know that they’re true. I forgive Father for everything he’s done. I forgave him the moment I saw him in that square, bowing to a crowd that reviled him, protecting me with the last breaths he took, even though it went against his nature to stand up to others.

“I forgive you,” I say again. “I forgive you.”

“I am glad,” Father replies, the words less than a sigh now. His eyes are even more vacant, and I know they can’t see anything any more. “I am glad I am forgiven. Now I can go be with Umu again.”

I blink. “But I thought—”

“I see her sometimes,” he whispers, his grip slackening, that rattle suddenly even more prominent. His fingers are cold, so very, very cold. “She watches me from the edge of the village. She always looks the same as she used to, my Umu. Always so beautiful. Unchanged from how I remember her. She’s alive, you know. Alive here.” He pats his chest, then smiles at me, the beatific expression wreathing his face. “Sometimes she whispers to me at night, gives me messages for you. She says to tell you that she’s alive, that she’s waiting for you in Gar Nasim…”