Page 82 of The Merciless Ones
“So ye really think the mothers were speaking through her?” This abrupt question comes from a now fully awake and fully recovered Britta, who’s been listening to my explanation of what passed with Melanis, concerned.
The others are still asleep, Ixa’s soft snores rustling the braids in my hair, so I try to keep my voice to a whisper as I reply, “It was almost like I could see them behind her eyes. And I could feel their power – I’d know it anywhere.”
“Why do ye think they don’t want ye to speak to Idugu?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I have my suspicions.”
Britta reaches out, touches my hand. “Will ye be all right, Deka? If the mothers have really kept something even bigger from ye – bigger still than everything we’ve discovered so far? Will ye be able to handle it?”
“Will you?” When Britta frowns at me, I explain. “This affects you all as much as it does me. If the mothers are hiding something even bigger from me – I won’t return to them… Which means they might not allow any of you to return to Abeya, since you’d also be considered traitors.”
The knowledge sits like a weight on my chest, suffocating me. I’m taking the others from their home, preventing them from returning to the only safe place we have now.
I move closer to Britta, suddenly desperate. “You don’t have to come with me. You can just return home, and the mothers will accept you. They’ll take you back.”
“Really, Deka?” Britta snorts, rolling her eyes. “Ye really think I’d leave ye? Home is where ye are, silly girl,” she says. “It’s where ye all are. Even when we were at the Warthu Bera an’ things were terrifyin’, it was home because ye were there.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Belcalis says, rolling around so her body faces mine. It seems she’s awake too. “You lot might be infuriating, and you might be foolish, but you’re still my family.”
“Same,” Adwapa grunts from her position squashed at our feet.
Tears are stinging my eyes now, tears of happiness. “I love you idiots,” I whisper. “You’re my home too.”
“That’s certainly true now that the Warthu Bera is in flames.” Britta sighs wistfully. “It was a shite place filled with shite people, but it was ours for a time, was it not?”
I chuckle. “Remember when Mehrut’s entire team got flayed and we made fried sweet puffs to cheer them up?”
Britta smiles at the memory. “We stole all that nut flour from the kitchens.”
“Matron Nasra was so angry, she was spitting fire for weeks.” Adwapa laughs.
“Bludgeoned us all with her rungu, but none of us ever told. Those were the days.” Britta sighs. “Things were simpler then. Brutal, but simpler.”
“Hopefully, one day soon they’ll be simple again – without the brutality,” I say as the wagon rumbles on, approaching the temple proper now.
Around us, more and more hoofbeats pass, urgent shouts and commands accompanying them. The jatu from the temple are deploying to Hemaira’s wall, trying to stop the alaki and Warthu Bera deathshrieks who are exiting, as well as the bloodsisters from the other training houses following them. A few jatu shout at Acalan for being in their way, but he ignores them, keeps the cart moving steadily onward until finally, the shouts fade into the distance and the cart begins to slow. When the wheels stop, I stiffen, tension cording my muscles. We’re here.
The temple is almost quiet when we emerge, the first few rays of sunlight barely a whisper on the horizon. We began fighting at the Warthu Bera early last night; now it’s finally morning. The temple’s last few jatu and Forsworn deathshrieks have long exited the gates, headed for Hemaira’s walls, which loom in the distance, ablaze with light and sound. Now that the Army of the Goddesses has kaduths at their disposal, they’re entering Hemaira, ready to aid all the fleeing alaki, to liberate any and all women who might want liberation. It’s the perfect time for us to sneak into the Grand Temple.
Once Acalan leads us to a small back door, I turn to the others. “Ready for this?” I ask.
“As we’ll ever be,” Keita says, squeezing my hand.
I fidget, hesitant. “I don’t know what we’ll find,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter as long as we’re together,” Britta says, squeezing my other hand.
I nod uncertainly, then glance down at Ixa, who’s already hopping about the ground in nightflyer form. Lead us to Idugu? I ask.
Deka, he replies, fluttering through the door the moment I open it.
I follow, confident he’ll lead us to the correct place. Ixa’s attuned to divine presences. He’ll know where to look.
The guards in the small corridor jolt when they see us coming, but Nimita’s on them before they can scream, claws slicing through their armour faster than a knife through butter. I’m almost amused by the lack of foresight, actually. All that divine gold the priests invested in armour for the Forsworn deathshrieks and they didn’t even think to make their own guards any. Ixa continues on ahead of us, eyes sharp as he glides through the halls of the temple, carefully avoiding groups of priests and acolytes making their rounds and praying under their breath. Acalan informed us that all the higher-ranking priests will have either joined the jatu on Hemaira’s wall to bless their efforts, or are too elderly to move about at so late – or rather, early – an hour and are therefore fast asleep, which is a relief. While I’m not averse to killing priests, most of those left here are acolytes, youths barely past their first chin hairs, who tend the temple’s fires in the dead of night, and lower-ranking priests.
The deeper into the temple we go, the more ornate the ornamentation becomes – carvings embedded in the walls, shelves and shelves of scrolls crowding every corner. Try as I might, however, I can’t spot the carvings I saw earlier when I was inside the doors. The ones with the golden tether that kept niggling at me. Perhaps they’re nearer to the inner sanctum, which, I assume, is where Idugu rests. If he’s anything like the mothers, he’ll be waiting there for us, having detected our presence the moment we entered the temple grounds. Thankfully, however, he doesn’t share their love of setting traps, but given the fact that the entirety of Hemaira is his domain, he doesn’t need to.
After flying for a time, Ixa swerves towards a dark corner that turns out to be a staircase. I frown at the steps spiralling up into the darkness, the dim torches there only barely keeping the dark at bay.