Page 81 of The Merciless Ones
A hand pulls at me. Britta, awake again and trying to get me back to the safety of the Warthu Bera’s grounds. “Come on, Deka!” she says, dragging me back into the smoke.
I follow her through the still-blazing fires to the courtyard, where a group of the Warthu Bera’s deathshrieks stand guard as the karmokos and a short, ruddy jatu, as well as two others I can’t quite see, marshal girls into those carts, four, five to each one.
Once there, I stare at Britta with bewilderment. “What’s happening?” I ask, still in shock. “What was that? All those deathshrieks?”
“Sayuri.” The reply comes from Melanis, who’s limping over, her wings dragging behind her. “She’s called all the deathshrieks in the Warthu Bera to her. Even in such a bestial form, she remains loyal to us. She would never let her sisters fall to jatu hands.”
I stare at her. “To us?” I repeat coldly. “There is no us. I refuse to be companion to someone who lies to me, to everyone around her.” I don’t bother to address how she spoke about Sayuri, since I know she wouldn’t begin to understand what I’m objecting to.
I understand Melanis now, understand how her mind works. There were so many clues, so many little things she said that I brushed off, believing they were only the relics of her age. But they were all part of a much larger picture, a much more damning one: in Melanis’s eyes, there are those who matter, and those who do not. The goddesses, the alaki – only they have worth to the winged Firstborn. Everyone else can burn.
Melanis shrugs. “Sometimes, lies are for your own benefit. They prevent you from falling prey to those who mean you harm.”
“Like Idugu, you mean?”
“Like him,” she acknowledges.
“So you admit he exists. That you know him, that you’ve always known of him.” Which means the mothers have as well…
Melanis merely blinks, and all my suspicions are confirmed. She and the Gilded Ones have always known of Idugu. Have always known of the male deathshrieks. But they never told us, and they sent us to Zhúshan to take Elder Kadiri and the angoro.
But what is the angoro, truly? And why are they so desperate to have it that they’d risk my going after it? I know now that it’s almost certainly not what they told me it was – some sort of arcane object that steals away their power. Is it some sort of weapon, as we thought before? Even a person, perhaps? Does it have something to do with the cataclysm, the one White Hands still can’t remember?
Even worse, why did the mothers assume I would just hand it over once I found it?
The necklace… The words slither into my mind, a condemnation. The Gilded Ones were never worried about what I’d do, because they placed a collar on me – one that ensured I was always obedient, always theirs. But now, I’ve taken it off.
I take another step towards Melanis. “Idugu may be a monster, he may be an evil that preys upon our kind, but at least, as far as I know, he’s never lied to me.”
“Your point being?”
“My point being, there are things I do not know, and only one deity who seems willing to tell me.” I inhale, knowing the words I speak next are almost certainly going to irreparably sever me from the mothers, from all the things I’ve come to know. “I’m going to go speak to Idugu,” I say. “I’m going to find out what it is the mothers aren’t telling me.”
“So you would abandon your bloodsisters on the battlefield just so you can pursue a selfish cause?” There’s a strange glitter in Melanis’s eyes now, and I know, almost without a doubt, that the mothers are watching through them. I can feel them, a distant power, although it no longer has the same effect on me it once did.
I glance back at the inner wall’s courtyard, where those shrieks grow quieter with every second that passes. The Forsworn might be massive and overwhelming, but even they cannot withstand the sheer number of deathshrieks in the Warthu Bera, the decades of their built-up resentment and aggression. They’ve already lost the battle.
“What battlefield?” I say finally. “All I see is a graveyard. The fight is over, as is this conversation.”
Melanis grabs my arm so fast, I don’t even see her move. “If you do this, you will never be welcome in Abeya again.” Her voice comes in layers, almost as if the mothers are speaking through her.
I look down, slowly, pointedly pull her fingers from my arm. “I am the Nuru, the only full-blood daughter of the Gilded Ones. You will not tell me what to do, and you will not condescend to me. Only the mothers can revoke my welcome to Abeya, and you are not them…are you?” This question I add purely as a challenge.
When no reply comes, I walk away. I’m done being manipulated by the mothers, done being their puppet.
“Deka,” Melanis calls out from behind me, her voice still layered, her eyes still glittering. “Deka! Do not do this!”
But I no longer hear her. I no longer hear them.
I stop by the karmokos, who are almost done loading the girls into the wagons, helped by Rustam, Karmoko Calderis’s lover, that short, ruddy jatu I saw before, as well as Keita’s friends Chernor and Ashok. It seems they’ve had a change of heart, which is good. I’d hate to have put them to the sword.
“I expect this is goodbye,” Karmoko Thandiwe says when I near them.
“It is,” I reply. I nod respectfully to them and the other karmokos. “It was wonderful to see you all. I hope we will meet again, under better circumstances, but I must continue on. For now, lead the girls out of the city and help any other training grounds you can on the way. There is something I have to do.”
Then I turn to my friends. “Let’s go,” I say firmly. “Idugu is expecting us at the Grand Temple. We should oblige him.”
The streets are in chaos by the time we begin ascending the hills towards the Grand Temple. Asha is accompanying Rian, Mehrut, Gazal and the other bloodsisters out of Hemaira, where the Army of the Goddesses waits, ready to receive them and the karmokos. I’ve instructed them all to tell the army’s commanders about the plan to attack Abeya, since I have a feeling Melanis didn’t stop to warn anyone. What they do with that information is up to them. At the moment, all the girls and deathshrieks in my group are huddled inside a pair of carts we took from the Warthu Bera, careful to remain as still as we can under the stiffened cloth cover while the boys drive us to our destination, led by Acalan. Since he knows the Grand Temple in and out, he’s the most obvious person to guide us there. And the most eager as well. After everything we’ve been through in the past few days, he’s finally ready to go back to the house of nightmares, where so many of his worst memories took place – finally ready to confront his demons. And it’s just as well, because if our time at the temple goes the way I expect it to, he’ll need all the courage he can muster.