War of storms, p.5
War of Storms, page 5
“I want to watch the truth unfold,” she says. “Your name will be remembered for ages, but the truth of your story will only happen once. I want to be there for it. Others will get the story in pieces that will be diluted or distorted with each retelling. I want to be the first to tell your story, if I live.”
“Oh, really?” The corners of my mouth twitch, but I can’t quite smile. “And how are you planning to distort the truth?”
“I think I will make you taller,” she says with mock seriousness.
Tessen laughs. I straighten in my chair, pulling my shoulders back and lengthening my neck. “I’m not tall enough already?”
“Definitely not for someone about to become a legend.” She winks. “Maybe I will also give you glowing eyes and claws that extend like a cat’s and rip your enemies to shreds.”
“Ridiculous.” I smile and relax again. “No one will believe you.”
“I’ve met you. I believe it,” Tessen says. Rai, Etaro, and Nairo immediately agree.
“See, Khya?” Soanashalo’a nods at my supposed friends as she gets up to check on the food. “Besides, I can be very believable.”
“That I believe.” And I do, but the lightness of the moment is already beginning to fade as the problems of tomorrow fill my head. What would Tyrroh or Tsua do if they were here? What questions would Yorri ask? I tap a rhythm on my knee and try to think. We’re already on the only path I can see. “When we reach Jushoyen, we’ll warn the Jindaini like Osshi wanted us to originally. The Ryogans must have a way to send out alarms in times of emergency.”
Soanashalo’a sighs. “We will probably have to convince them to release Osshi, too, or rescue him ourselves if they refuse.”
Rai snorts. “Why the bellows would we want to do that?”
“He abandoned us, Lo’a.” I shake my head. “Then he helped the tyatsu spy on us. The ambush his choices led us into killed someone in your family.”
Tessen nods, expression grim. “He’s caused us enough trouble. We don’t need to invite him back to cause more.”
“My family’s debt to him was cleared weeks ago.” Soanashalo’a stirs the contents of the large pot. “But you still owe him a favor.”
“Why is that?” Sanii’s voice is unreadably even.
“For introducing you to me.” Her smile makes it hard to tell if she’s serious or joking. “His trip to Shiara also made it possible for you to get here, and his research helped guide your journey to find a weapon against immortals. Plus, as many problems as his decision to leave caused, you have to admit he was not entirely wrong.”
I don’t have to admit anything. “I’m more worried about beating Varan to Jushoyen than I am about finding Osshi.”
“Speaking of worrying, what about the Ryogans’ little spies?” Etaro looks up even though Tessen would’ve warned us if there was anything hiding in the trees. It had taken us moons to realize the Ryogans had hidden garakyus in the trees at strategic points throughout the land, a way to monitor their people and the strangers who pass through their territory. Those magical spies were how they found us over and over again, but Tessen eventually learned how to spot them before they spotted us. He should still be searching for them…unless he forgot about the danger; I almost had.
The more decisions I make, the deeper the truth settles on my shoulders—I shouldn’t be in command. There’s so much more I needed to learn before becoming the nyshin-ma of a squad, but one by one, those who had been leading us have died, and Zonna—who by age, experience, and right should be in charge—refused to take over. It’s fallen to me, even though I can’t even keep something as important as the network of garakyus in mind.
Exhaling heavily, I rub my forehead and try to focus. “I don’t want to make it easy for the tyatsu to find us, or warn the Jindaini we’re coming, but speed seems more important than secrecy. Ryogo has bigger things to worry about now than us, don’t you think?”
Yes, but if a tyatsu watcher sends a force after us, that will tell us something, too. If, in the face of Rido’iti’s destruction and Varan’s push toward the capital, the Jindaini sees us as an equal threat, then meeting with him is going to go even worse than I expect.
And I’m already expecting it to fail. Explosively.
Chapter Four
A loud gust of wind slams against the wagon. It rattles and begins to tilt. I slam my hand against the wall, barely catching myself before the wheels reconnect with the ground and the whole box jolts. For the last hour, the wind has been blowing crosswise to our path, and sometimes the blasts have been so fierce it felt like we’d be lifted off the ground and slammed into the trees.
“Am I imagining things, or does it look like all those trees are beginning to slant?” Tessen grips a shelf and leans closer to the window. It’s open to give him a better chance of spotting incoming trouble, but I warded it against the storm.
The caravan has been traveling north for about three days, and the landscape has become increasingly hilly. The trees, though, have always jutted straight toward the sky, no matter how tall they grew or how steep an incline they were rooted into. Here, the trees are tipping over, some nearly uprooting from the land sustaining them. This whole swath of the hillside looks one strong gust away from tearing loose and tumbling down.
“That can’t be good,” I murmur.
“If the forests are rotten and tearing out of the ground, the farms have got to look like lakes with bits of green trapped in them.” Worry etches itself deep into Tessen’s brown skin. I wonder if he’s asking himself the same question I am—if a land so green is suffering under this onslaught of rain, how much worse off is Shiara right now? Then he shakes his head. “Even if we figure out how to push Varan back out to sea, I don’t know how this land can recover from what he’s done to it, Khya.”
Surprise quickly congeals into frustrated hurt and spreads through me too fast to quell. My hands clench. “And what, exactly, am I supposed to do about that?”
Tessen’s eyes dart to mine and then away. Around us, everyone else has stopped. I haven’t been truly angry at Tessen in a long time, since before we left Shiara. I am now.
He knows I’ve been floundering for days, trying to get someone to take some of this responsibility from me, yet he’s telling me about another problem, one I doubt the Kaisubeh themselves could solve, as though I’m supposed to slot it into my plans and fix it somehow?
Expression unreadable and eyes fixed on mine, he clears his throat. When he speaks, his tone is awkwardly cautious, like he thinks I’m standing on the edge of a precipice and the wrong word will push me over. “No one expects you to do anything about it. But we already decided to tell the Jindaini about the rot in the forests. This is just another sign of the same problem, and knowing about it before you face him can only help.”
I close my eyes and force myself to take a long, slow breath. A vicious voice in my mind wants to throw my question about Shiara at him to make sure he’s thinking about home with the same worry, but what will that help? We can do even less to help Shiara than Ryogo.
“Feeling everything fresh,” Zonna had said, but in this moment, I realize I haven’t just been suffering from the cold. Every experience and emotion has been more powerful, the good and the bad, and they’ve been harder to push aside. Rido’iti didn’t just crack my foundations, it left gaping holes I’m only now seeing, only now understanding I don’t know how to fill.
And my uncertainty is making me lash out at Tessen. I verbally throttled him, and almost said worse, for no reason. There’s no excuse, not even what I saw in Rido’iti; he saw the same thing, and he saw it with more clarity and in sharper focus than anyone else.
“You’re right.” I say it quietly. The words are intended for him, not the rest of the squad, but the others are too close to avoid overhearing. “I’m sorry.”
Tessen nods, but his expression is still blank except where the corners of his mouth are turned down. Is he angry with me? I can’t tell, and I hate not being able to read him. What’s worse is feeling like he’s purposefully hiding his thoughts from me. I could push this and force him to react so I can tell if he forgives me, but I won’t when we have an audience. That he really wouldn’t forgive, so I take another breath and force myself to walk away.
With all ten of us stuffed in the wagon, it’s not easy to move without getting in someone’s way. Everyone shifts aside for me now, though. Quickly. As I pass, Etaro watches me with a wariness I don’t like seeing. I drop my gaze to the floor, avoiding looking at anyone else as I climb up to the higher bed and push myself into the corner.
The domed roof makes it comfortable to sit upright in the center of the bed. In the corner, my head brushes the roof unless I curl into a ball and rest my forehead on my knees. Strangely, I feel a little better once I’ve wrapped my arms around my knees to block out the light.
Get a grip. They’re all counting on you, so you had better not fail again.
All of us have lost too much already.
The bed shifts under someone’s weight, and the warmth of another body settles at my side. It can only be Tessen. I don’t think anyone else would willingly put themselves this close to me right now. Even Tessen keeps a few inches between us and stays silent for far longer than I expect him to. Minutes pass with only the sound of our breathing, and then he exhales, the breath so long and slow it sounds more like a plea for patience than anything else.
“We’re only a day out from Jushoyen, Khya.”
“I know.” It comes out almost like a whine. I curl myself tighter and bite my tongue.
“Then that’s how long you have to find a way to get your head out of Rido’iti.”
“You really think that’s possible?” I lift my head to glare at him, and I don’t even try to keep my tone level. “Have you forgotten it?”
“I didn’t tell you to forget it. None of us will ever forget, but we’re not living on that ledge, either.” He runs his hand over my hair and pulls me closer, letting me hide against his broad chest instead of in the circle of my own arms. “You aren’t responsible for what happened in Rido’iti. If we could have done something to stop it, we would’ve. That day is not a failure, and it’s not a sign that someone else needs to be in charge. You’ve been leading us since before we left Shiara, Khya. Tyrroh just never bothered to tell you.”
That makes me pull back. “What are you talking about?”
“When did Tyrroh last give you an order? Honestly, he’d been treating you like you were equals for moons.” Tessen runs his fingers over my hand, his eyebrows raised. “You looked to him for permission out of habit, but he never told you to do anything you weren’t already thinking would be a good idea. He also never disagreed when you came to him with a plan.”
Is Tessen right? I never saw it like that, but I can’t deny it’s objectively true. Tyrroh’s motivations, though, can only be guessed at, and it’s hard to believe he’d leave me in charge of even a single person if he were still here. Forget an entire squad.
“He had faith in you, Khya.” He isn’t smiling, but the disconcerting blankness is gone from his face, and that eases my mind as much as his words. “He believed in you, and so does everyone else. You’ve got one day to figure out how to make yourself believe, or at least hide the fact that you don’t.”
Tessen is right, but out of every challenge he’s ever thrown at me, this one is asking so much more, and I don’t have the first clue where to begin.
Chapter Five
Jushoyen has walls. The thick stone barrier rises at least sixty feet and cuts a misshapen circle through the city. From our hillside to the south, we can see the roads running in concentric circles and spreading outward. Inside the wall, the layout is far less organized, with closely packed buildings shoved between roads that twist with the same unpredictability as roots. Inside the wall, the buildings seem to be mostly white with sharply sloped black wood roofs. Outside, the buildings go from small, unpainted structures that look unstable even from a distance, to sprawling, carefully maintained compounds hidden away behind their own walls and surrounded by swaths of land.
The wall and the division of the city is completely unlike every other Ryogan city we’ve seen. Because of course this place must be made of the unexpected. I spent the rest of yesterday trying to do what Tessen suggested, centering myself and erasing as many of the doubts disturbing my mind as possible. I couldn’t clear away everything, but I managed to quell the worst of my fears. Now, seeing Jushoyen, much of my work is breaking down and washing away.
Most of the cities we’ve passed since Rido’iti have either been empty or in chaos as people fled, but gray-clad tyatsu patrol Jushoyen’s streets, directing the stream of citizens into the walled portion of the city. There are far more people than could possibly live in the surrounding buildings, many of them with massive packs on their backs and more bags gripped in their hands, and they’re being herded behind Jushoyen’s walls as though they’ll be safe there.
I grind my teeth, hating the very sight of those towering stone barriers. They’re not enough to stop an army like Varan’s, but they are one more thing slowing us down when we’re already running out of time.
“Walls?” I look at Soanashalo’a, eyebrows raised in silent question. I hadn’t thought to ask her about defenses before—no other city has had any—but she also hadn’t mentioned them. “The other cities barely seem to be guarded by tyatsu, let alone walls.”
“Their leaders live here. This is the one place they actively protect,” Soanashalo’a says as we study the city from a mile away. “The palace where the Jindaini and his councils live is surrounded by another set of walls. Not as high or as thick, but still formidable.”
“What about using one of the rivers to get in?” Tessen points toward the wide strip of water winding up to and straight through the city.
“Usually, that route is better guarded than the main gates.” Soanashalo’a narrows her eyes. “The Ryogans care more about taxes than visitors most days.”
“It looks like they’re checking every visitor today.” I don’t know what taxes are, but unless it’s a type of protection the Ryogans use on the river gates, they don’t matter. What matters are the city’s three entrances, the guarded gates, and the dozens—maybe hundreds—of armed tyatsu on the wall. Swarms of people are being let into the city, yes, yet at the gates themselves, the line slows to a crawl as the guards stop every person to talk to them. No matter what we’re wearing or how well we’ve managed to learn Ryogan, we will never pass as locals.
Digging the heels of my hands into my eyes, I try to see the city like a puzzle. The problem is I was never very good at puzzles. I’m not my brother.
What makes the situation complicated isn’t just the wall but the city itself. To reach the Jindaini, we don’t just need to get into the city unseen, we need to get through it, too. I’m not sure if even Yorri would be able to find a way to walk to the Jindaini’s palace without catching any attention. Not on a day when everyone is on high alert and the streets are so packed I can’t use my wards to hide us from sight. After all, invisibility doesn’t make us any less solid.
It’s too bad we can’t fly. Tsua might’ve been able to get us to the palace by lifting us over their heads, but Etaro isn’t as strong as she was. Although ey could get us over the outer wall, there’s no way ey could keep us aloft all the way to the palace.
The sounds around me shift, snagging my attention. Underneath the wind is a whispered conversation. Zonna and Soanashalo’a are standing close together, their heads tilted toward each other and their expressions intense. A second later, Tessen’s focus snaps in their direction, his eyes narrowed and his head cocked. When he strides toward them, I follow.
“Yes, but how sure are you it’s gone?” Zonna is asking as we get closer.
“How can I be sure of anything?” Strain adds lines around Soanashalo’a’s eyes and wrinkles to the narrow bridge of her nose. “This all happened before my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother was born, and no one in my family has ever set foot in Jushoyen!”
“What aren’t you sure about?” I hold my breath and hope.
Soanashalo’a rubs her temple. “A rumor of an ancient tunnel running for a mile and connecting the Kaisubeh Tower in the center of the city and the palace in the northern quarter.”
“And the Kaisubeh Tower,” Zonna begins, stressing each word, “sits on the bank of the river, which is the only way we’ll get into the city unseen. It’s the best plan we have.”
It’s the only plan we have, I almost point out.
“Only if you can find the tunnel. And you still must get through the gates on the river, which is not going to be any easier than the land gates,” Soanashalo’a insists, “so unless you can hold your breath long enough to walk more than a mile underwater, you need a better plan.”
“Why does anyone need to hold their breath?” Sanii asks, just as the same realization sparks in my mind. “Khya’s already figured out how to bring air underwater.”
I have, but I never thought I would use it like this.
Moons ago, we tried to get Yorri off Imaku, the barren prison island Varan had trapped him on. The only escape left was over the edge of a cliff and straight into the ocean. The only reason we survived more than a minute was because I’d managed—barely—to shape a shield that would keep water out and a bubble of breathable air in.
Then, the bubbles of air had been at the mercy of the currents. I didn’t have the power to direct them and only had Tessen and Sanii with me. Now, given Etaro’s skill as a rikinhisu, directed control and decent speed might be possible. Even if the gates guarding the river extend below the waterline, which is how I’d order them built if this were my city, it won’t stop us for long.
Soanashalo’a is waiting for an explanation, so I tell her the story of our escape from Imaku. By the time I’m done, everyone else is leaning in to listen, too.
“So, we have a way in through the river,” Sanii says once I’m done. “What exactly will we be looking for once we reach the tower?”
