Page 74 of The Merciless Ones
“We’ll get you all out of here in one piece,” he promises.
Britta, meanwhile, glances at me. “Ye ready, Deka?”
“As I’ll ever be,” I say, lifting my atikas. And then it’s onwards to the next cavern, where the battle is already nearly over, the karmokos and Gazal having easily cut their way through the last few jatu while Lamin and Li protect the exits, ensuring that none escape.
Deathshrieks bristle at the centre of the cavern, all of them chained to the enormous wooden wheel that powers the bellows stoking the hearths. These must be the strongest of the lot, chosen for their heft and bulk. Rattle, the silver-quilled deathshriek I once practised my voice on, snaps and hisses at a wounded jatu who stumbles near her. Belcalis swiftly dispatches him, ending the battle with a decisive blow.
When Ixa notices my arrival, he tramples on a nearby jatu, cheerfully breaking the man’s bones, before he transforms back into kitten form and scurries up my back to nuzzle in the crook of my neck.
Ixa did good? he asks, looking up at me for approval.
You did very well, Ixa, I say, scratching his ears.
As he thrums, delighted, I glance across the forge. I quickly spot Karmoko Calderis standing next to one of the hearths lining the walls of the cavern, muscles bulging, single blue eye squinted in concentration as she presses a struggling jatu to the coals. Once the man goes silent, the screams strangling in his throat, she tosses his lifeless body aside, then picks up a pair of pliers from the ledge of the hearth and uses it to crack her chains open.
“About time you came,” she grunts, waddling to the nearest corner, where familiar gigantic suits of armour line the walls, kaduths emblazoned on their breastplates. The Forsworn’s armour. So this is truly where it’s made.
The karmoko pushes the deathshriek armour aside to reveal three smaller golden suits, complete with helmets. She takes the nearest one, which is barrel-shaped to accommodate her short, bulky form.
As she puts on her armour, she glances at me and humphs. “Didn’t expect you, though, Deka of Irfut, progeny of the Gilded Ones.” She gestures a newly gauntleted hand around the room. “This is all your doing, you know.”
Guilt stabs at me when I see the group of scrawny, soot-covered alaki huddled in the back of the room, Gazal and the uruni helping to unlock their chains, which are made out of thick iron instead of celestial gold. These must be the weaker girls, the ones the jatu forced to help them work the forges. I run over to them, swiftly slicing my palm in case any of the chains still have ichor in them, but relieved cries are already rising from the bloodsisters as they throw off their chains to embrace each other. One is immediately familiar, her dark skin glowing against the warm, pulsating yellow of the forges: Jeneba. Gazal – who oversaw Britta’s and my common bedroom when we were neophytes along with Jeneba – swiftly wrenches away the chains binding her, then sweeps her off her feet, kissing her so hard, there’s no air left between the two.
As the pair stare at each other, love and relief in their eyes, Britta comes to stand by me. “Well,” she quips drily. “That explains a lot of things.”
I nod. No wonder Gazal was so desperate to get into Hemaira, and no wonder she and Jeneba got along so well when we were here. Gazal is one of the surliest people I have ever met, and Jeneba the nicest, yet they always seemed to complement each other. The sight of the two feeling such obvious joy so moves me, I clasp Keita’s hands when he walks over, smiling as I feel their warmth next to mine. This isn’t the romantic atmosphere I imagined when we first left Abeya as false newly-weds, but somehow, it’s just as sweet.
You have to savour these moments when you can, because if not— The sound of sharp, clipped drumming outside breaks through my reverie, but it’s just the announcing of the new hour: ten beats for ten at night.
“We’ll go take the drums over,” Jeneba says immediately, extracting herself from Gazal’s arms as Gazal nods in agreement.
“My thanks,” I say, squeezing her shoulder in greeting as she and Gazal pass. I wish we could have more time for reunions, but if there’s any lapse in the drums’ rhythmic beating, the jatu on the walls will suspect what has happened and call for reinforcements.
I turn back to the karmokos. “So,” I say, “how do we transport everyone out of here?” That part of the plan I was never clear on, as Karmoko Thandiwe had no idea of the state of the Warthu Bera’s stables.
“With the wagons,” Karmoko Calderis replies.
I blink. “The wagons?”
“The ones parked beside the Warthu Bera’s walls,” Keita explains. “They have the kaduth painted on their sides.”
“They’re the only things that can go in and out of Hemaira now, I imagine,” Karmoko Calderis says airily.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “What do you mean, they can go in and out?”
She shrugs. “The jatu on the walls use them to not be affected by the thing that’s there. The one that burns people.”
I blink. “Wait, you mean the n’goma?”
She snaps her fingers. “That.”
Keita and I look at each other in shock. “So you mean to tell me that all this time,” he says, wiping his hand over his face in frustration, “the jatu were using the kaduth to evade the n’goma. And we’ve been going in circles, but it was right in front of our noses this entire time.”
Heart racing, I whirl towards the Forsworn armour, the kaduth emblazoned on each one. Strangely, the symbol only mildly irritates me now. After all these weeks spent confronting it, it only induces a slight itching behind my eyes now rather than a full-on headache, which is just as well. Now I finally have one in front of me, and now that I know what it can do, I have even more questions. Just how many uses does the arcane object have? And was it created to affect me, or the mothers, or both?
Only one way to find out. I reach out and touch the symbol with my bloodied hand.
Images immediately flash into my head: a small blond man falling under the edge of a sword, only to wake up in darkness what feels like mere moments later, slithery shapes reaching through the dirt for him. The more panicked he becomes, the more my thoughts merge with his.