Page 68 of The Merciless Ones
When the karmoko looks at us, shocked, I shrug. “We are alaki,” I say. “We are deathless.” As the others nod in agreement, I turn back to the gate. “Shall we?”
Karmoko Thandiwe nods, grabbing the torch that waits just inside the caverns and then lighting it with a flint. “Unlike you lot,” they remark, “we humans actually need light to see in the dark.”
“Us too,” Kweku adds, raising a finger.
The karmoko nods as they walk inside. I quickly follow, and then I’m engulfed by gloom.
It’s dark in the tunnels, and so mildewed, the decay seems to reach cobwebby fingers down my nostrils.
Britta huffs out a breath. “Why does it smell like something died down here?”
Karmoko Thandiwe nods to the group of skeletons scattered along one side of the tunnel.
“Oh,” Britta replies.
The karmoko leads us down the passage until finally, they stop at a heavy wooden door, which jingles with chains when they shake the lock, which is melted – as are the door’s hinges, I note when I glance closer at them. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a stone wall behind the door, they’ve taken so many precautions to keep it sealed.
“And this,” Karmoko Thandiwe huffs, “is why I haven’t been able to slip back in. Commander Xipil blocked every possible entrance.”
“Not to me,” Britta says eagerly, cracking her knuckles. She waits until I stretch my senses out to hear if there’s anyone nearby and then, when I give her the all-clear, wrenches the door off its hinges with one swift tug.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a wall there too, but Britta punches through it with one blow.
“Well,” Li whistles in the admiring silence that follows. “Remind me never to arm-wrestle you.”
“As if you ever could.” Britta laughs, her smile brightening when he does the same.
I peer past the two into the dark recesses of the caverns, which are, as I expected, clear of people. I hear no footsteps in the vicinity, thankfully. It’s quite likely that no one heard us. And, as I slip into this new portion of the tunnel, which, much to my relief, has some fresh air wafting through, I silently hope it’ll remain that way.
“All right,” Karmoko Thandiwe says, after I give them an all-clear nod once more. “This portion of the caverns runs underneath the training fields, so we should be far away from everyone for now. First order of business: we find either Huon or Calderis, acclimatize ourselves, and then go for the girls.”
“For Mehrut,” Adwapa reminds them.
“For Mehrut,” the karmoko acknowledges.
And as they walk ahead of us, Britta and I breathe and glance at each other, a silent message: No matter what we confront here, we will rescue our friends. We will help our bloodsisters to safety. We will finally free the Warthu Bera.
Even before it became the most feared training ground for alaki, the Warthu Bera was infamous in certain circles as the place where girls trained to become Shadows, the emperor’s personal assassins. Most of them were unwilling – poor children forcibly removed from their families as early as age four to be taught how to spy on or assassinate the emperor’s enemies. That, of course, explains why the Warthu Bera was built the way it was. In addition to all the pitfalls and other such traps hidden across the grounds, the training complex has two walls, an outer wall and an inner one, separated by a stagnant moat filled with brutally sharp stakes. Those lucky enough to get past the first wall either drown in that moat or impale themselves on those stakes before ever reaching the second one. And that, of course, is assuming they get past all the traps and such, not to mention the contingents of jatu that patrol the battlements every hour upon the hour.
I try to keep this thought in mind as I emerge stealthily from the cavern’s entrance, my ear open for any jatu who might be lurking about. Other than the guards patrolling the walls, the entire complex seems unnervingly desolate – the training buildings cloaked in darkness, the red dirt paths choked with bushes that only months ago would have been ruthlessly pruned into obedience. Even the torches have been dimmed, and now, rows and rows of heavily covered carts rest, neatly lined up, against the inner wall where once my fellow neophytes and I loitered whenever we could, hoping to evade the attention of Matron Nasra and all the other watchful eyes.
Every step I take now has my breath on edge and my muscles tightening.
Where are all the bloodsisters? Are they still shackled in the caverns under the main hall, as Karmoko Thandiwe informed us? Are they still alive? Unharmed? And what about Karmoko Huon and Karmoko Calderis? Karmoko Thandiwe told us the new jatu commander had recently separated the pair to ask questions about all the mysterious deaths happening in the Warthu Bera, the ones they and Karmoko Huon had caused as a way to protect the bloodsisters from lecherous jatu, but they never found out where they were taken, exactly. They had to run before the new commander sealed off all the Warthu Bera’s exits.
What if the other two karmokos are dying even now, bleeding on the cavern floors? What if—
“Look, Deka.” Karmoko Thandiwe points at a nearby building, where a lone light flickers in one of the rooms.
The combat-practice building, where I spent months learning the finer points of battle forms and physical manoeuvres. Karmoko Huon, the combat instructor, chose the location very carefully. It’s far away from the rest of the Warthu Bera and isolated enough that if you break a bone or two, no one can hear you scream.
Lots of us broke multiple bones in our first few months of combat practice. Thankfully, they always healed.
Keita stops next to me. “If I wanted to isolate and interrogate someone…”
“That’s where I’d put them,” I say, finishing his thought.
I hold up three fingers in the signal for stealth as I move towards the building. We must not alert the jatu guards there to our presence, especially if there are a lot of them, as I expect there will be.