Page 73 of The Merciless Ones
“Gilded gods, Deka, what did you do?” This awed gasp comes from Belcalis, and when I turn, she and the others are watching me with strange expressions, some of which look close to fear.
I follow their eyes to the floor, which is now littered with bodies and slippery with blood and gore. Fifteen – no, at least twenty – jatu corpses surround me, all of them cut down so quickly, their corpses are still in the attack position. Even stranger, some are at opposite ends of the cavern, so far from each other, I shouldn’t have been able to reach them.
“You killed them in seconds – less than that, Deka,” Belcalis says, her eyebrows gathering. “It’s almost like you were there one moment, gone the next.”
“No,” Britta says, frowning. “It was like ye were using doors.”
“Doors?” I echo, frowning. Is that what that was?
Suddenly, my conversation with White Hands comes flooding back. What she said about my abilities… I look down at the floor, my frown deepening when I notice there’s barely even any sign of struggle on the men I killed. I slaughtered most of them before they could even mount a defence, something I’ve never been able to do before. Something I could have done only if I was moving so fast, I was flashing from one point of the cavern to the other. Memories bombard me – how I seemed to pinch the air together, tightening the distance between myself and my opponents. I didn’t think anything of it then, but now… It’s almost like I’m developing divine gifts, except I’m the Nuru, so any gifts I have, I was born with. The memories, the doors – they were all hidden inside me, locked. And yet now, they’re surfacing, just as White Hands said. Is it Hemaira, being here, that’s making my abilities expand? Or is it that I’m away from the mothers, their influence curtailed by the presence of Idugu and all those kaduths. The thought reminds me why it’s so important I journey to the Grand Temple after this, peer at those carvings and speak to Idugu, if I can.
I glance back at the others. “Free the bloodsisters,” I command. To Nimita, I say, “Go search the caverns, open all the deathshriek cages. Ensure that every single one of them is freed.” I can sense them even now, their distress causing clouds of mist to waft into the air, but they must be gagged. I’m not hearing any shrieks, even when I strain my ears.
I turn to Katya. “You remain with us, help open the cages.” I know the bloodsisters have been told the truth about deathshrieks by now, how they’re resurrected alaki; still, it’s better that when they meet a deathshriek, it’s one they already know.
When both nod, I continue: “There’s time to ponder what I just did later. For now, let’s get to it.”
As Nimita nods again, slipping into the darkness, two dark figures swiftly overtake me: Adwapa, Asha just beside her. They’re both headed to one of the more crowded cells, where a short, round girl has pressed against the bars, hope lighting her dark brown eyes. Mehrut.
“Adwapa?” Mehrut calls hoarsely. “Adwapa, is that you?”
“It’s me,” Adwapa replies, relievedly grasping Mehrut’s hands through the bars. “It’s me, I told you I’d come for you.”
“Let me out,” Mehrut cries, desperate.
Adwapa and Asha nod. Swiftly they work together to bend the cell’s bars and then wrench Mehrut’s chains out of the wall, allowing Adwapa to enfold the plump brown girl in her arms and kiss her with all her might. “Mehrut, Mehrut!” Adwapa repeats.
“You’re here,” Mehrut whispers, tears dripping from her eyes. She doesn’t even seem to notice Asha carefully removing the bloodied pipes from her limbs. “I knew you’d come. I knew you’d come.”
“Always,” Adwapa says, growling with frustration when the chains still binding Mehrut’s hands and feet don’t budge as she tries to remove them.
I walk over, the chains’ familiar whitish gleam telling me everything I need to know. They’re made out of celestial gold. There’s ichor in them. No wonder the karmokos couldn’t figure out a way to break their chains: any metal imbued with ichor is unbreakable.
Except by me, that is.
I tap Adwapa aside. “I’ll do it,” I say, kneeling down towards Mehrut’s chains, and slicing open my palm.
The minute I bleed onto them, the chains start weakening. No memories flash into my mind, likely because the mothers’ blood is too diluted here, so I rip them apart, then move on to the next girl’s, and the next, and the next. I’m so absorbed with my task that when I finally look up, the cells are empty, the bars bent beyond recognition, and those hateful glass pipes in smithereens. Britta and Rian are leading injured bloodsisters out of the cells, they, Belcalis, and the others carrying the ones too weak to stand. I search the crowd for people I knew, like Jeneba, the novice who was our guide in our first few days at the Warthu Bera, but there’s no sign of her dark, good-natured face, or anyone else’s. Most of the girls here are new, neophytes who were just entering the Warthu Bera when the others and I headed off on campaign, which means the novices – those here for a year or more – must be elsewhere.
I notice that the girls are now staring at Katya. All of them seem unnerved, so I put on my gentlest smile. I don’t know if they’ve been told yet that deathshrieks are fallen alaki, so I have to break the news as easily as I can.
“This may come as a surprise to you all,” I say, “but when alaki experience our final deaths, we resurrect as deathshrieks.” As shocked whispers fill the air, I gesture to Katya. “Does anyone here remember our bloodsister Katya?”
Katya waves shyly.
A few of the girls’ eyes widen, but some of them – the neophytes or novices in the Warthu Bera when I was there – gasp in recognition.
“Katya?” a bony, sickly-looking girl says, coming forward. “Is that truly you?”
A few seconds pass before I recognize her: Yumi, one of the friendlier bloodsisters from the common bedroom next to ours. Her body was once covered in sleek muscles, but now, her ribs protrude through her skin like knives, and her straight black hair has fallen out in patches from malnutrition, same as most of the other girls. Only a few, like Mehrut, don’t appear on the verge of collapse. When Katya nods, holding out her outstretched arms, Yumi rushes towards her. That’s all it takes. The other bloodsisters from our year swiftly gather around Katya, tentatively stroking her red quills, gasping at her enormous size.
It’s almost strange, watching them come to terms with something I’ve so deeply understood for almost a year. To learn that creatures we once saw as our enemies were actually our sisters, ourselves – it’s a lot to take in.
I watch the girls and Katya for a few seconds more before I finally clap for their attention. “We can have our reunions later,” I announce. “For now, we have the jatu in the forge to deal with, as well as novices we must free.”
“Not to mention we need to escape this awful place,” Adwapa says angrily, her arms still tight around Mehrut.
Rian quickly makes his way to the front of the girls. “Behind me and Katya, and please keep silent,” he says in soothing tones. He’s surprisingly adept at dealing with frightened people. No wonder he and Katya are so well suited. Before she became a deathshriek, Katya was very much the nervous type.