Page 76 of The Merciless Ones
“But who, precisely, will you free them from?” Rattle asks.
I stiffen. “What do you mean, Rattle?”
The deathshriek doesn’t answer. Her eyes are gazing off into the distance. “We will escape this place today, yes?” she muses. As I nod, confused by this sudden change in subject, she clacks claws the size of butcher knives together. “Once we leave Hemaira, I doubt I’ll ever see you again, Nuru to the goddesses. I doubt I’ll ever see any of my sisters again. Say goodbye to Fatu for me, will you? Tell her I love her with all my heart, but I’ll kill her if I ever see her again. Not that she’ll ever remember what she did. What she was. They made sure of it, didn’t they? They tried to do it to me too, but the madness… The madness, it breaks through.”
The more Rattle speaks, the more rigid I become. “They?” I whisper, even though I already know the answer.
Rattle blinks at me as if surprised to find I’m still watching. “The Gilded Ones. Our mothers – if you can call them that. Mothers are supposed to love their children, aren’t they? But Fatu wasn’t what they wanted, and she was their firstborn. A mistake, in their eyes. She tried so hard. So very hard. Poor Fatu. Pity it led her where it did. Pity it made her abase herself to the false gods.” Now Rattle’s eyes bore into mine, sharp and accusing. “They’re all false, the gods, all of them cut from the same cloth. That’s why they hate each other. It’s in the blood – they can’t help it.”
By now, an eerie sort of light-headedness has taken ahold of me. “What do you mean, Rattle?” I ask, but the deathshriek is already walking away, mist wreathing her footsteps. I run after her. “What do you mean, in the blood? Rattle? RATTLE!” I call out desperately as a sudden image flashes through my mind of that carving I saw on the wall of the Grand Temple, the one with the four warriors, all of them connected with a golden string.
Tethered, just like the indolo.
Rattle turns back to me, irritation flashing in her eyes. “Rattle… That is not my name,” she says. She shakes her head as if thinking. “Sayuri,” she declares finally. “That is what I was called, once upon a time: Sayuri the Wise.”
And all the breath escapes from my body. “Sayuri,” I repeat. “As in the third war queen, the third eldest of the Firstborn?”
“Is that what I was?” Sayuri inclines her head. “I suppose, once upon a time, it was true. But now I am Sayuri no more. I am a deathshriek – nameless, faceless, forgotten… I will join the others of my kind and leave this place to its ruin. Goodbye, Nuru to the goddesses. May fortune go with you. You’ll need it.” She chuckles darkly.
And then she’s gone.
I remain there, reeling from shock, until Britta beckons me over to where the karmokos and Keita are huddled, swiftly making plans. The time for reunions has ended. It’s time to escape the Warthu Bera and head for the temple.
My mind is so filled with all the things Sayuri said, it takes me a while to notice how eerily still the air is when Britta and I stealthily exit the caverns, the karmokos and a few others beside us. The moment I direct my gaze to the battlements, the breath catches in my throat. Weapons and armour gleam, a gilded river in the night. The entire Warthu Bera has been surrounded, jatu and Forsworn deathshrieks bristling from every inch of the walls. An entire army of them.
“Mothers preserve us,” Britta breathes, unnerved.
Keita glances from her to me, tense. “How many?” he asks.
“Every jatu in the Warthu Bera, it looks like,” I reply, squinting to confirm. “And a few Forsworn as well.”
Keita swears harshly under his breath.
“Outside reinforcements?” he asks, disturbed. I shake my head.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Those deathshrieks came earlier today,” Karmoko Calderis confirms, referring to the Forsworn. “They came for the newest shipment of armour.”
“And unfortunately for us, they remained to aid with the pincer manoeuvre,” I say, sighing, as I stare at the forces lining the battlements – the forces that have arranged themselves in a very familiar semicircle.
I’ve seen this tactic enough times to spot it immediately, the two opposing lines that gradually squeeze in until your target is caught in the pincer. Unfortunately for the jatu on the walls, however, they’re missing a considerable number of their troops. The jatu who were down in the forges are all dead – although they probably don’t know that yet. Jeneba, Gazal and a couple of the other girls have been drumming every fifteen minutes, relaying false messages. As far as these jatu are concerned, their compatriots in the forges are still holding fast, which is probably why they’ve retreated to the battlements, where they have a clear view of the entire Warthu Bera in case Gazal and the karmokos run their way.
“Looks like they’ve decided to start the cleansing early,” Karmoko Thandiwe says grimly, their eyes scanning the battlements. They can’t see as clearly in the dark as we can, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had excellent night vision. “If we want any hope of escaping this place, we need to engineer a reverse siege.”
I nod, acknowledging the battle-strategy master’s plan. “My bloodsisters and I can dodge their arrows on the way to the walls, but the moment we try to get near them—”
“You’d get shot down,” Keita says, shaking his head. “And that’s assuming they don’t just pour oil on you and burn you alive.” He nods to the battlements, where large, oil-filled barrels have been pushed next to the edges.
As I shudder at the sight, Karmoko Huon taps her lips thoughtfully. “Well, they can’t burn you if you’re protected…”
I glance at her. “What are you thinking?”
“The vats in the forge,” Karmoko Calderis gasps, already understanding. “I used them for mixing the cursed gold—”
Acalan awkwardly clears his throat. “We’re calling it the divine gold now,” he says.
“Bully for you,” the karmoko replies, all sarcasm, then she continues: “The vats are made of Efuana steel – dense, impervious to other metals—”