Sword and Verse (29 page)

“For Tyasha ke Demit!” cried another voice. Others echoed his words, and I sensed, rather than saw, them step up beside her with their swords. I couldn't look away from Mati.

“No,” said Laiyonea in a clear, ringing voice. “Her name was Tyasha ke Laiyonea.”

Firepits illuminated the library as Sotia entered. Aqil did not even look up from his work at her approach; this insolence fanned the flames of her fury.

She laid a hand on his head, the touch not gentle despite its lack of force. “My son,” she said softly.

He did look up then. If any regret had tinged his expression, she might have wavered. But his eyes held only contempt and audacious righteousness, so Sotia traced upon his brow the symbols she had created just for his torment, sending him to the miserable death he had earned.

The firepits went out, and Sotia laughed in the darkness.

I LOOKED UP,
astonished, but Laiyonea was already forcing Rale backward. Soon they were halfway across the courtyard.

I needed something to put out the flames. I spotted a discarded cloak nearby and leaped over Mati to grab it. When I pulled it, however, I found that it was attached to the body of Aliana Gamo. Her throat had been cut.

I gagged, looking away from her open, lifeless eyes as I unfastened the cloak and yanked it off her. Then I ran back to Mati and beat at the flames, inhuman sounds of grief coming out of me.

When the fire was out, I crouched next to Mati's unmoving
form. His right arm and side were a sickening black mass, but his chest moved with breath. “Mati,” I said, touching his face.

He didn't answer.

The earth shook again, and I heard a shout. I looked up in time to see Laiyonea maneuver Rale right under one of the swaying pillars. His teeth were bared; though five others harried him with their swords, his target was clearly Laiyonea. She said something that made him lunge toward her. I saw her satisfied smile, and then the pillar broke free from its foundation, crushing them both as it crashed to the earth.

I stared in horror at the place where Laiyonea had stood, but only broken rock and dust remained.

“Raisa?” The whisper shouldn't have carried over the clamor of death and destruction around me. I whipped my head down toward Mati. His eyes seemed to search the sky above before focusing on my face.

“You're hurt.” My chest hitched with what I had just seen, but now wasn't the time. “I'll find the doctor, you'll be fine—”

His mouth moved, but his voice was so low that I had to put my ear right by his mouth to hear him. “The floodwall,” he said. “You have to. The path through the orchard will take you to the tower.”

“I can't leave you!”

“You have to,” he repeated. His gaze, glassy with pain, held mine. “I'm trusting you to do this.”

He must have known how those words would hit me, after all I'd done. I nodded, my throat too tight to speak, and kissed his lips before I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet.

Jonis was nearby, holding his sister, her face buried in his bloody tunic. She was shaking—she'd seen what Laiyonea had done too. I looked around, realizing that with Laiyonea's destruction of Rale, the fighting had stopped. I grabbed Jonis's sleeve and pointed at Mati. “Help him!” I shouted.

Jonis, still in battle mode, swung up his sword, but I ignored it. “I'm going to raise the floodwall. You have to help him.” I shook him a little. “Promise me!”

Jonis just nodded, and I let go. With one last look at Mati, I ran for the orchard.

The path was close. Mati must have been on it when he'd seen Rale target Jera. I sped along it and came to the spiraling stairs that led to the tower perched a hundred feet above on the mountainside. I raced up, even though my injured leg was unsteady and the narrow twisting steps had no railing.

It's just like balancing on the Library platforms on cleaning day,
I told myself.
At least there aren't any nervous guards shaking this one.

As if in answer to my thought, the stone beneath me wavered. Another earthquake.

I grabbed the stone column that formed the center of the staircase and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the tremor to pass. When I finally opened them again, there was less dust in the air than I'd expected; the quake had probably stopped some time ago. What I had been feeling was my own trembling.

I forced myself to keep moving. Mati trusted me to do this, and I wouldn't let him down. Not this time. I gasped my way up the last few turns and flew onto the ledge.

A guard stood inside the tower with his back to me, hauling
at a wooden lever. His neck muscles strained as, with a grunt, he pushed it halfway up its track and into a slot. Through the open front of the tower, I saw the floodwall scrape partway up.

And beyond the wall, I now saw the sea—a deep green, roiling mass. A white-capped wave formed out of the choppy waters and smacked up against the partially raised floodwall, like an invader testing the defenses.

The wall held, but I knew what the guard didn't: that water would rise.

I stepped into the tower, and the guard whipped around, his sword at my throat so fast that I didn't even see him draw it. I raised my hands to show that I was unarmed.

His eyes narrowed. He recognized me. Of course he did, I thought with a sick swoop of my stomach. I recognized him, too. He was the one who'd removed my dress when I was strip-searched in the garden.

“It's the traitor,” he spat. “Come to destroy the floodwalls, have you? Or just lower them and let your tialik friends attack by sea?”

“There's a tidal wave coming,” I said. “You need to raise the floodwall to the highest—”

Without warning he swung the sword, and I skittered backward through the door, throwing myself to the right to clutch the mountain wall. The rocks rang where his sword struck them instead of me. The earth trembled, and I clung to the mountain, ducking my head to avoid the rocks falling from above.

“There's more water coming. Please, raise the wall,” I said in my most reasonable tone. “Or just climb down now. Go to the
temple hill, and let me get the floodwall up.”

He didn't even seem to hear me. “On your knees, slave,” he snarled, slashing at my cheek when I didn't immediately comply. I cried out, clutching my face, and he pressed the flat of his sword against the top of my head, forcing me downward. I sank onto the narrow ledge. “It would be easier to kill you now,” he said thoughtfully. “But Rale will give me a bigger reward if he gets to do it himself.”

“Rale's dead,” I spat.

I felt, rather than saw, his shrug—his sword was still pressing my head toward the ground. “Gamo, then. There are plenty of powerful people who want to see you die, slowly, and will pay me well for delivering you to them.”

Terror and fury slammed together into a hard knot in my chest. “There won't be anyone left if that floodwall doesn't go up!” I forced out.

Before he could respond, the ledge below me undulated. The pressure on the back of my head lifted, and the guard scrabbled at the sheer wall, trying to keep his balance. Staying low, I lunged at him and wrenched the sword out of his hand, then, without thinking, without planning to, shoved him over the edge.

He was gone so quickly that I stared at my hands, wondering how they had done it. Then there was a scream and a thud from far below, and I started to shake.

I rubbed my eyes, remembering the frightening, overpowering rage I had felt from Sotia in that vision. I recognized it—I'd felt it when I had pushed the guard. And it terrified me.

Was this who I truly was?

Taking a deep breath, I dropped the sword and forced myself to walk into the tower room, to do what I had come to do.

The water was rising at an alarming rate now, pooling a few feet below the wall, occasionally sending a white-plumed sally over it.

The lever waited in the corner. I sank to my knees, pushing up on it with both hands, pressing my legs into the stone floor, not even caring when the tower shook and swayed around me. I pushed until I met resistance, then shoved the handle sideways into the slot that would lock the wall into place.

I pulled myself up onto shaking legs and peered out at the floodwall. It towered above me now, and relief and pride mingled in my chest. I'd done it. I hadn't let Mati down.

And then white foam dribbled over the wall and down the nearest side. I didn't understand at first—the water surely hadn't risen so high, had it?

It wasn't until I looked past the wall, and saw the wave in the distance, high and white-capped and larger than I could have imagined, that I understood: getting the floodwalls up didn't matter—not when a goddess was determined to destroy the city.

Sotia faced the great stone house of the king of the gods, fear tempering her fury now. But she would not allow Gyotia to exist any longer, even if she destroyed herself in the process. She drew five shimmering symbols in the air, and the roof collapsed inward.

Wreckage flew aside as she strode into the great hall. She found Gyotia, face down, interrupted at his meal. He did not move, yet none of his divine blood stained the table—there was no sign that the falling ceiling had harmed him at all.

WHEN THE NEXT
quake came, I let it push me to my knees, not even trying to keep my balance. My thigh burned and my muscles ached and my arms and face stung and my eyes were wet and nothing mattered, because whatever we did, any of us, it would never be enough. I would never see Mati or Jonis or Jera again. Mati would die thinking I had failed him. The city would drown beneath the sea-without-memory, and none of us would have a chance to make up for our mistakes. We would all die together, Arnath and Qilarite and master and slave.

I'm sorry, Mati,
I thought dimly, my hand reaching automatically for the stone around my neck. But it wasn't there, of course, and my heart swelled with anger.

“I freed you!” I shouted at the oncoming wave. I dragged
myself to my feet and screamed at the water that crashed over the floodwall. My voice was lost in the clamor of the ocean.

Dimly my father's voice came back to me.
“One does not entreat the gods through shouted prayers or offerings, but through their greatest gift to us, writing.”

But what words could I give to Sotia, I, who had barely begun to decipher the writing of the Nath Tarin? Surely Qilarite writing would only infuriate her more. And all I knew of Arnath writing was my heart-verse, a simple child's prayer.

But it would have to be enough. I tore my eyes away from the next wave as it crashed over the wall. I heard a smashing noise, and guessed that the bathhouse was gone.

Ink. I needed ink. But there was nothing in the tower, not even dirt on the floor to write in with a stone or stick.

I swayed on the spot, not sure if the earth was shaking again, or if it was just me. I did have ink, and it was exactly the kind Sotia would understand best: the blood of her people.

The cut on my cheek still bled freely, so I dragged my finger across it and swept a patch of stone floor clear of debris with my other hand. Then, my finger oddly steady, I began to write.

I had no idea whether the order of the strokes mattered, as it did in Qilarite writing, but where symbols were similar to the ones I had learned in the Adytum, I followed their order.

Light of wisdom, bold, brave, bright, bless us all and what we write.

I went back to the inkwell of my cheek again and again, and when the blood there dried, I gritted my teeth and ripped my trousers away from the wound in my thigh so that it bled anew.

Hand of wisdom, lead us true, lend your might to all we do.

I wrote faster than Laiyonea would have said was proper, but every symbol was infused with my own longing, my plea to Sotia to end this suffering, to forgive, to spare the people of the city.

Heart of wisdom, guide each deed, forgive our folly, see our need.

When light and hand and heart be one, then may wisdom's work be done.

Dazedly I touched the first symbol of the final line.
Saolbe
—light and hand and heart joined, knowledge and action and feeling all pointing in the same direction. For the first time I truly understood what that meant. But would it be enough?

I leaned back, every part of me hurting. A wave smacked over the wall—was I imagining that it was less fierce than the previous ones, that the water level seemed to have gone down? But no—the beach below was now a lake that rose to the second floor of the palace. The Adytum and the orchard were underwater.

And in the distance, something white was speeding toward the city. I forced myself to my feet to see, but the sun broke free of the clouds, and reflected dazzlingly off the water. I threw my hands up to cover my eyes, and so was off balance when the next quake came, a swift juddering that seemed to shake the mountain itself.

I tumbled backward, too weak to grip the ledge as I swept past it. As I fell toward the dark water pooling below, I remembered, absurdly, that I had never answered Mati's question.

No, I couldn't swim.

Just before the water closed over my head, I saw something white flashing in the brilliant sunlight above.

An asoti, wheeling against the bright blue sky.

Sotia stared at Gyotia's lifeless form, uncomprehending. Then she heard a moan, and saw Lanea on the floor, broken and bleeding.

Sotia's shuttered heart at last felt the horror of the death she had brought upon the gods. She knelt and brushed a lock of dark hair away from Lanea's heart-shaped face.

“You are free,” whispered Lanea. “I knew that this one would use the stone well.”

“The stone . . . ,” Sotia repeated, and she recalled that it had been Lanea who had handed the tablet back to her husband with the piece missing. “You stole the piece of the tablet. It was you all along.”

Lanea shuddered in pain. “A key is nothing without the courage to use it,” she said. “I was too afraid of him. Your people freed you, not I. But I kept him from stopping you. Do you remember the lantana?”

Sotia looked at Gyotia, and saw now the deep brown stains of lantana poisoning upon his lips.

“I would have done it ages ago,” rasped Lanea. “But the others would have destroyed me. I could not leave you without allies.”

Sotia gathered the broken goddess to her. “I will heal you. The language of the gods can write you well.”

Lanea smiled fondly. “Not if it has already been written otherwise. I earned this, beloved, for my actions and my inactions.” She closed her eyes. “You shall rule now, alone of the gods. None shall hide your wisdom in a tomb again. So it shall be until the goddess reads out the scrolls.”

Lanea's spirit left then, passing from the realms of mortals
and gods. Desperately Sotia sent her symbols flying after it, but it sailed blithely on.

And Sotia wept.

AWARENESS CAME SLOWLY.
I was comfortable and warm, and opening my eyes might ruin that. So I let my ears wake first.

I heard voices speaking softly, at least one that I recognized. The creak of wooden floorboards. The low coo of an asoti. Soft breathing close by.

At last I let my eyelids flutter open. I lay on a bed, covered by a soft linen blanket, in a large, open room. Tasteful murals of trees covered the walls. At the foot of the bed stood an empty firepit.

Mati sat by my bedside. He squeezed my hand as I looked up into his relieved face. “Finally,” he said.

Bandages covered the right side of his neck, and his right arm and hand were wrapped in dark fabric. Abruptly I remembered his mutilated body in the courtyard. “Oh, Mati, your arm—”

I ran my finger lightly down his arm, but he caught my hand and kissed it. “You saved me this time, and everyone else too.”

I frowned, remembering the dark water closing over my head.
Like the last time I'd woken with Mati's concerned face beside me, I didn't understand how I was still alive.

A loud coo from the windowsill interrupted my thoughts. Mati turned and flapped his good arm at the asoti perched there. “Shoo!” The bird examined me with one beady eye, then took off when Mati stood. I watched it fly away, an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach.

“I haven't seen a single other bird since the flooding, but that creature won't stop begging for scraps,” Mati said, shaking his head. Then he crossed to the door and called, “Jonis! She's awake.”

I wasn't sure which shocked me more, the casual way Mati called for Jonis, or the fact that Jonis responded to the summons. He looked different as he stepped into the room; it took me a moment to realize that this was not only because of the gash over his left eyebrow, but also because he wore a brown tunic. I'd only ever seen him in green.

Jonis and Mati came to stand on either side of the bed. “It's about time you woke up,” Jonis said. His tone was mocking, but I sensed relief underneath.

“How long . . . have I been asleep?” I croaked, looking between them.

Mati poured me a goblet of water from the pitcher on the bedside table. I took it gratefully and drank, using the time to study the two of them. They seemed on friendly terms now, but I hadn't missed the way they stood on opposite sides of the bed, or the wariness with which they looked at each other.

“Four days,” said Jonis.

I felt so disconnected that I wouldn't have been surprised if
he'd said four years. “Where did . . . how did . . .”

Mati sank down into the chair again and took my hand. “They found you on the Adytum roof. You must have swum there after you got the floodwall up.”

I shook my head, and was surprised that the motion did not hurt. I felt fragile, as if any swift movement should pain me. “I can't swim,” I murmured, looking past him, at the windowsill where the asoti had perched. There had been an asoti in the sky, too, right before I had gone under. . . .

“Well, you must have—”

“The floodwall didn't even work,” I said over him, as memory rushed back like white water pouring over the wall.

“It worked,” said Jonis, and it took me a moment to recognize his tone as one of respect. “We saw them go up, from the temple hill.”

“No,” I insisted. “The waves were too high, it didn't make a difference. But I wrote my heart-verse, and then . . .” I lifted my fingers to my cheek, where I had taken the blood to write my message to the goddess. They met a crusty scab that hurt when I touched it. My thigh, too, felt tender under the bandages someone had wrapped around it.

I looked up in time to see Mati and Jonis sharing a concerned look. I cast around for a matter-of-fact question that would show that I wasn't crazy. “Where are we?” I asked.

“The priest's residence at the Temple of Aqil,” said Jonis. “It's the only part of the temple that survived the earthquake—”

I couldn't help myself. “You mean Sotia,” I said softly.

Jonis raised a doubtful eyebrow, but Mati stroked my hand
and said smoothly, “It's the highest ground in the city, so it was spared the worst of the flooding. And fortunately this is where Rale stockpiled all the food for his priests too, so we've been able to feed people.”

“This is headquarters until we can make repairs to the palace,” said Jonis.

“Which would have been completely destroyed, along with everyone in it, if not for you,” said Mati, his eyes shining at me in a way that made me blush.

Jonis looked back and forth between the two of us and abruptly excused himself to have food sent up. As soon as the door shut behind him, Mati leaned forward and kissed me.

Even as I kissed him back, I felt myself retreating into silence, into fear of what he would think of my secrets. So as soon as the kiss broke off, I clutched his hand and made myself tell him everything—the hidden room in the tombs, the terrible disappointment of my heart-verse, my conviction that writing to the goddess had saved the city, not the floodwalls.

“Do Jonis and the others even believe, do you think?” I asked. “About the goddess?” I wanted to ask if
he
believed, but I was afraid of his answer.

“I told them all about the tablet, but it's hard to know what anyone believes now. One thing's certain—they're all in awe of you. The heroine who raised the floodwalls. And once the whole story gets out . . .” He looked at me. “But you need to rest. I don't have to tell you all this now.”

I clutched his hand. “I want to know.”

Mati sighed. “Gamo was killed in the battle. His reinforce-
ments never came—the quakes set off an avalanche that destroyed the pass. Rale's dead too.”

“Laiyonea did that,” I said softly. “Did you . . . did you know that Tyasha was Laiyonea's daughter?”

“Yes,” he said soberly. “Tyasha told me, when I went to see her before she was executed. She'd only found out herself a little while before that, because Laiyonea tried to help her escape.”

“
Laiyonea?
” I gasped.

Mati nodded. “Laiyonea told her she'd had an affair with a Scholar from the south. My father helped her hide her pregnancy—he sent her to one of the healing houses in the valley. When Tyasha was born, she was supposed to be left on the mountain to die, but Laiyonea begged a sl—an Arnath woman to take her. She arranged for Tyasha to be selected as Tutor when she was old enough, and my father never knew who she really was.”

“Do you believe that, about the Scholar?” I asked quietly. “Laiyonea and your father were so close. . . .”

The pain in his eyes told me that the idea of Tyasha being his half sister was not a new one to him. “I don't think that my father would have—” He broke off, and I couldn't tell how he'd been planning to end that sentence. His father wouldn't have had an affair with an Arnath? Or wouldn't have ordered the baby's death? I opened my mouth to ask, but Mati went on, his voice shaking slightly. “That's how I made Laiyonea keep quiet about us. I threatened to tell my father about Tyasha.”

I shook my head. I was only beginning to understand how many layers there were to Laiyonea now, after her death.

“She loved you,” said Mati quietly. “She was proud of you. But
you helping the Resistance was hard for her to stomach. She was afraid she'd lose you too.”

I blinked back tears, remembering how she had saved me from Ris ko Karmik's wrath without hesitation. At least Laiyonea had not left this world despising me.

I took a deep breath. “So you and Jonis aren't trying to kill each other anymore, I see.”

Mati answered my unspoken question. “It seemed prudent to work together. It's a chance to rebuild a new way. If things are really going to change, the Arnathim need to be a part of that.”

“But what about the Scholars Council?”

“Most of them are either dead or have fled the city,” said Mati flatly. He smiled. “So we'll need a new council. But it's only going to be four—two Qilarites, two Arnathim. With you and Jonis, we're covered for the Arnathim. But finding another Qilarite has been tricky. If only Jin had survived—”

My brain caught up with his words. “Me? Why me?”

“People already think you're a . . . priestess of Sotia, because of the tablet.”

“But I'm not—”

“You said yourself that you communicated with her,” said Mati. “If not you, then who?” He looked uneasily over his shoulder at the empty windowsill.

“There was an asoti at the tower, too,” I said reluctantly. “Right before I went under the water, I saw it, and then—”

“And then you were on the Adytum roof,” said Mati softly. “They'll see that as her choosing you.” He leaned forward. “But if it's not what you want, we can keep this quiet. I don't want you to
be forced into anything.”
Not again
, his tone implied. A year ago, I might have thought this was just Mati being unusually sensitive, for a Qilarite, to the fact that I'd had so few choices in my life, but now I understood—he knew the crushing weight of the expectations of others, and would protect me from it if he could. His thoughts seemed to be traveling in the same direction as mine, because he added, “Now that everyone knows who your father was, they seem to think it's only natural you be on the council.”

I frowned, a memory tickling my mind. “A council of four, including the High Priestess of Sotia . . . like the Learned Ones on the islands.”

Mati nodded. “That's where Jonis got the idea.”

I furrowed my brow. “But the Learned Ones were all equals on the council. They didn't have a king. You don't think Jonis is trying to—”

“Raisa,” said Mati gently. “I'm not going to be king anymore. I don't want to be.”

I stared at him. After all I had done to prevent Rale's coup, now he was losing his throne anyway. “Oh, Mati . . .”

“It's better this way, don't you see? It's a chance to really change things.” He gave me a sly look. “Unless you'd rather I go tend goats . . .”

I smacked his good arm lightly, and he laughed and kissed me again. There was a soft knock at the door, and we broke apart breathlessly as Jonis's mother, Dara, appeared with a tray of bread, olive paste, and broth.

Mati went to talk with Jonis while I ate and took a bath. When I had dried off, Dara handed me a bundle of rose-colored
fabric. I didn't realize until I shook it out that it was a dress. I slipped it on, then combed my hair and sank back down on the bed. I felt much better now that I had eaten and bathed, but there was still a haze of unreality hanging over my mind.

Jonis appeared at the door. “Are you strong enough for visitors?”

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Good,” he said, as he turned away and started down the hall. “Some of the petitioners have been waiting for days, and we need the space.”