Page 53 of The Merciless Ones
I’m almost impressed.
“I stand by my words, Nuru Deka,” he intones, that irritating look of piety still shining in his eyes. “You are the beast foretold in the Infinite Wisdoms. But Idugu sees fit to reason with you. He sees potential in you, even though I think you should burn in the Fires.”
“May you burn in the Fires.” Elfriede repeats this malignant prayer in a hushed whisper.
I whirl to her and she squeaks again. Annoyed, I use the tip of my second atika to lift up her mask, toss it away. She scrambles for it, and I sigh. Even in this instance, she’s ashamed to show her bare face in front of a man.
Fanaticism is the very worst of diseases.
I grab her arm before she can reach it, then kick the mask away. “No use for that any more,” I say coldly as it shatters against the wall. “All the men who were here are already dead, and he” – I nod to Elder Kadiri – “will soon join them. There’s no one here to bow down to any more. It’s just you and me now.”
Trembling, Elfriede straightens, turns to look at me. And finally, I see her face, the face of the girl who was once my only friend.
She hasn’t changed very much in the year or so we’ve been apart. Her hair is still that dull, lanky brown, although it’s now brutally pulled back, as though any glimpse of it might cause offence. That mottled red mark still blooms across the left side of her face, but it’s grown brighter now – or perhaps it’s that the skin around it has grown paler. That’s what happens to Northern women after only three or four months of wearing the mask. Any colour they once had leaches away, leaving only pale skin that’s almost transparent from lack of sunlight.
Elfriede’s green eyes, however, are still as bright as they ever were.
I keep Elder Kadiri in my periphery as I step closer to her, that coldness still freezing my emotions. I don’t bother keeping my atika on him any more – he and I both know there’s no way he can outrun me. “What about you, Elfriede?” I whisper. “Do you still hold fast to the words you said earlier? Both here and on that platform? Do you still think me an abomination?”
Fear flashes in her eyes, but to my surprise, it’s quickly pushed back by defiance. My eyebrows rise. A spark of bravery. Who knew the girl who used to run in fear every time a spider crept past had backbone in her?
She gestures around the bloody alley, nostrils flaring from the stench. “Can you not see, Deka, the monster that you’ve become?”
She sounds so self-righteous, a bitter laugh bursts from my chest. “I’m the monster, Elfriede?” I repeat, incredulous. “Elder Durkas, Elder Norlim – those village elders executed and tortured me for months on end for nothing more than being born as I am, and I’m the monster?”
She sneers. “You’ve always been one, and if they were wise, they would have killed you before you damned yourself and everyone around you to the Fires!” The words rip out of her, as stinging as the wodama leaves Belcalis sometimes applies to her poultices, but I’m not even slightly moved by this display.
I’m beyond any emotion now.
“I’m not damned, Elfriede,” I say calmly. “I am the Nuru. I was born of gold and ichor. I am as immortal as my mothers.”
“And you will burn in the Fires with them when this is all over,” she hisses, the malice so sharp in her voice, it’s almost like a dagger. “Just as all the other girls did.”
I blink. “The other girls?”
“The other alaki. We burned them everywhere we went,” she says smugly. “I told the priests to do it, you know. I told them that if you were in the crowd, you wouldn’t suffer it. That you’d reveal yourself if others of your kind were in danger.”
“You…told them to do it?”
“Of course. They wouldn’t take me seriously otherwise.” She looks away, seeming uncertain for only the barest moment. Then her eyes meet mine again, a silent accusation. “They wanted to keep me chained, so I had to show them that I was a true believer. That I wasn’t like you, no matter what everyone said.”
I’m shaking so hard now, I can’t even hear the rest of her explanation.
Elfriede suggested that the priests kill other alaki. She herself threw other girls on the metaphorical and even physical pyre. I should be used to it now, the way women sometimes betray other women, the way they align themselves with men, if only to guarantee their own safety, such as it is, but I can’t fathom it. I can’t fathom that the girl I once shared all my deepest confidences with is the same one oh-so-casually revealing that her commands led to the deaths of others.
I may be the Nuru – I may even be the monster she says I am – but never once in my life have I hurt someone who I didn’t think deserved it.
Elfriede tsks softly when she sees the horror in my eyes. “You’ve always been tender-hearted, Deka, even for a demon. It’s a strange thing,” she remarks as she marches back to Elder Kadiri. She holds out her hand to him and turns back to me: “May you burn in the Fires,” she intones triumphantly.
But the elder doesn’t repeat the words, and he certainly doesn’t take her hand, only looks down at it with barely concealed disgust. The irony of it almost makes me want to laugh. Even surrounded as he is by his most dire enemies, Elder Kadiri won’t lower himself to follow a woman’s lead, to even touch her hand. I wonder if he’d ever lower himself to sleep with a woman, but somehow, I can’t picture him doing that either.
I catch Elfriede’s eyes as I nod towards the elder. “He doesn’t touch your hand, do you notice, Elfriede?” When she glances down, startled, I continue softly: “Even now, both of you so near death, and he doesn’t even offer you the simple comfort of touch. Do you know why that is, Elfriede?” I ask, walking closer. “Because to him, you’re not even fully human; you’re a lesser creature. One not even clean enough to touch. He sees you as barely more than an animal. Even though you’ve sacrificed the lives of others, your own conscience, your own sanity, for his benefit.
“Say what you will about the mothers, but what kind of god do you both worship that he would deny you simple human decency even at a time like this? What type of god doesn’t consider you equal to your counterparts?”
“A true one,” Elfriede hisses, enraged. “The true god, instead of a pretender, like your bitch moth—”
Her head goes flying.