The heat from the bowl of rice seemed hotter to her, somehow. It was less the actual heat and more the rage in her heart for having been so foolish. It didn't take too much thinking to figure it out: Tenhaim had gotten the information, probably from Honu, and raced ahead to not only get the Blade, but Kimhan, too. If that were the case, Jarah didn't doubt that Honu was tortured, dead, or tortured to death. The only thing that Jarah couldn't quite figure out was how they had gotten to Nan before the trio. Kimhan slumped against her leg, entirely unconscious now.
Jarah didn't see a way out. "Of course," Tenhaim was saying, "I won't kill you quickly. Eye-pays-for-eye, as the saying goes." He gestured at his marred face. The wound was still fresh, despite the time between the injury and now. A more thoughtful person would have covered it with a patch or some head bandages. Tenhaim knew how shocking it was, its red, gruesome river carving from above his eyebrow and twisting down, through his eye, and into the cheek below. Stitches sutured the flesh, adding to the terror. "And I promised you, didn't I? That I would do the same to you but worse?" He grimaced--or maybe it was supposed to be a grin. "And what better way to do that than with this?" He reached behind him and pulled out the Blade. Jarah's heart almost stopped. He had found it. So Honu had betrayed them, as Jarah had suspected. How else had the man known what to look for? "Yes, there's an irony in this, isn't there?" He held it up, letting the curved blade--jade and crimson and cerulean, all depending on how the light licked its edge--glitter. Jarah remembered holding that blade, plunging it in deep…her great mistake, held by this vile man was enough to make her scream. She held it in. "As I understand it, this thing means something to you. It is a beautiful weapon, I won't deny that. And that it has a history with you--as Honu explained it to me, you are the one I have to thank for giving me such a broken world." He bowed his head in mock gratitude. "So I think it's only fitting for me to break your own world with this. "After all," he continued, "you tore apart my home. You stole my belongings. You ran from my justice." He clucked his tongue as he paced in front of them. Despite the calmness in his voice, Jarah could tell that there was a fury burning inside of him. Rihn shifted, lowering his hands ever so slightly. "Don't think I don't remember a traitor, Rihn," said Tenhaim, his cold anger shifting from Jarah to her travelmate as he slid the Blade into its sheath on his side. "You lied to Rall. He told me what you said you'd do." "I was--" Tenhaim held up a hand, cutting off the former fighter. "I'm not interested in your words, Rihn, just your screams." "But you forgot something," said Rihn, shifting again. Jarah couldn't tell what he was trying to do, though it was clear he was angling to get into a different position. "You're not talking about this, are you?" Tenhaim held up a vial--a familiar one, as it happened: Jarah remembered Rihn taking that specific vial when they were at the safe house. "This little trap you set up to give you, what…a distraction?" Jarah looked at Rihn as his ragged face collapsed. "Um, yeah. That's what I was thinking about," he mumbled. Tenhaim flicked the vial at Rihn, who caught it out of surprised instinct. "You thought to use the God of Distraction to…" and Tenhaim snorted in disbelief "…distract us if something happened?" He clucked his tongue. "Not much use if you can't control when to Invoke the god, Rihn." "What's to keep me from Invoking Paudra now?" Rihn asked, thumb over the plunger. "I could drag him in now and then what?" "I'd take him from you. Clearly, Rihn, you aren't a good thinker." Rihn grimaced. "I got away from you." "Comparatively. I caught up." "Impressive, considering your girth," said Rihn. Tenhaim merely laughed. "If you're trying to shame me because I know how to eat during the End Times, you are doing that about as well as you Invoked your trap." He flicked his fingers at Jarah. "Did you think I wouldn't learn something from the last time I tangled with this walking problem?" Rihn sighed and looked at Jarah. "I forgot that you'd done something similar." She didn't respond, her mind flicking through the possible actions she could make. Her best chance was to inject some ichor again: Invoking a deity around Tenhaim was a waste of energy. His ability to syphon away a teka's emotional control was too much to overcome. The only way she could imagine doing that is if she had two or three deities under her control at once--and no one she knew of could do that. She certainly couldn't. So long as there was a goddess or god who came from Theopolis under the emotional Invocation of a teka, Tenhaim could put a stop to that same Invocation. It was as simple as that. She could throw herself against the guards. It was unlikely that the fight would last long, as she doubted they would exercise much restraint and not attack to kill. Their boss was right there; they would protect him with lethal force if given half a chance. What else could she do, especially with an unconscious Kimhan next to her? The girl breathed deeply, oblivious to the world. The idea of her waking up back in Tenhaim's sweaty clutches was enough to make the fire of fighting swell within her, but ultimately the fire turned to ash as she realized the futility. "There's nothing we can do," she said softly. "I'm glad you came to that realization so quickly," said Tenhaim. "I was afraid we'd have to ruin this fine man's…what do you call this dirt hill? A home?" He glanced at Lylen, who sat in one corner, watching the conversation with wide, horrified eyes. "This is pointless," said Rihn, tossing the vial into the fire in an expression of frustration. "We surrender." He stood up, holding his hands high above his head. The six guards that surrounded him stepped back, their qiang points quivering. Jarah ground her teeth at his presumption, though she didn't necessarily fault him. What could she hope to do? Fight? Yes, fight and lose. She couldn't see a way out of the situation. Holding the slowly cooling bowl of rice, Jarah realized that Rihn was right: Surrendering was the only logical choice. Still, she couldn't get herself to say the words. "You three, take him outside. I want him back at the compound as soon as possible. He can act as labor to repair what's been destroyed. Then I'll kill him." "Yes, Tenhaim-khan!" shouted one of the three assigned guards. They obeyed, escorting the man into the darkness outside. "You," said Tenhaim, fingers flicking at one of the guards standing close to Jarah. "Take the girl." The man raised his qiang and stooped to scoop up the Athakar. The man touching Kimhan's flesh was too much--she couldn't go without a fight. Flinging the hot rice into the man's face, she rolled over Kimhan's body and kicked the screeching guard as hard as she could in the man's gut. Bones cracked and he fell to the ground, cradling his stomach and making the most pathetic groans of attempted breathing that Jarah had ever heard. The other two guards leaped forward, each one shoving their spears at her with lethal intention. She dodged the first, took a glancing blow from the second--her armor beneath the cloth of her half-cloak holding up enough to protect her--and grabbed the shaft when the first made a second attack. Shoving back, she popped the man in the stomach, which loosened his grip. Flipping it up, she caught the man in the mouth, cracking his jaw hard enough that he spat out a tooth as he crumpled to the ground. Armed, Jarah spun the qiang about, scarcely missing the last guard, trying to gain some space for herself. A large hand caught the spear right where the shaft met the blade. Tenhaim held the polished staff, his eye burning with fury--probably at her impertinence. With a smooth gesture, he unsheathed the Blade and cut through the spear as easily as if he were chopping through silk, then flung the severed spearpoint at Jarah. This time, her armor didn't help, and the blade sliced through cloth, metal, and flesh, a ribbon of blood jetting from her shoulder. Jarah cried out in pain, dropping to her knees at the sudden sharpness of the injury. Before she could store that pain away enough to keep moving, a knee--meaty, yes, but not with fat--crashed into her face. Blood ruptured from her nose amid a spray of stars in her vision. She felt a disembodied emotion of weightlessness, only to have it come into painful focus as she landed on her back. Air shot out of her lungs and she struggled to breath through the blood and suffocation. "You really should learn your lesson," said Tenhaim as he straddled her, holding her hair with one hand and rearing back with the other. Behind him, the still-standing guard swept Kimhan into his arms and headed toward the exit. "You can't beat me." He punched her once, straight into the face. Jarah felt something bend in her nose and a fresh wave of pain accompanied it. "You can't stop me." Another thud. Her vision was dimming, but she fought against that. No, she wouldn't let him win. She couldn't. "You can't win." Another punch. "And I will make you regret ever entering my home…" "One thing," said Jarah, her eyes rolling in her head and her brain feeling as mushed as her face. The comment drew Tenhaim up, surprising him. "You didn't learn as much from my first trick as you thought." Tenhaim stared, his eye widening as he suddenly realized what she meant. A burst of light came from the firepit, a wave of scalding heat and roaring sound, an energy too much for her mind to process or her body to handle. Tenhaim's body shielded most of the explosion as the fire belched out a god, the Invoked deity's entry into the mortal world aided by the energy of the flames. The concussive wave of his arrival knocked Tenhaim hard enough that he was lifted off of Jarah's body and tossed against the ground. It wasn't enough to send him through the wall--though it did that to Lylen, who was trying to run out of the door the moment Paudra, God of Distraction entered. Part of the roof began to cave in, sending rushes and timbers collapsing on the still-injured guards, Tenhaim, and Jarah herself. Instinctively, she curled up to minimize the damage to her body, though a heavy beam landed on her side, bruising her ribs. Were it not for her armor, she probably would have two broken bones as a result. Instead, it just hurt…along with everything else. From the swirl of dirt, dust, ash, sparks, and other debris, rose one of the most bizarrely shaped deities in the entire catalogue. Jarah watched as the mostly-human shaped form of Paudra stretched, his body from the neck down looking like a male's skeleton wrapped in yellowish skin. Nude, every jutting bone and ossified knob was visible. Then he turned his head. The face was human like, save that writhing waves of tendrils, all the color of flesh, writhed on his head. A single blue eye, normally shaped, stared out from the left side of his face. An unnaturally shaped, bulging, enormous eye--also a dark blue--swelled out from the other side of his face. Paudra tipped his head to the side, staring at first Tenhaim and then Jarah. "Silly mortal woman," said Paudra, his voice a discordant tripartite harmony, one voice whispering, one speaking normally, one shrieking. "You shouldn't be sitting around when there are so many things to do instead. Don't let me distract you." Summoning whatever reserves she had inside of her, Jarah forced her pain-wracked body up and out the crumbling walls that led outside while Tenhaim gathered his feet to fight the god. Jarah was only a half-dozen feet from the remains of the building when hands grabbed her, hauling her to one side. She tried to fight them off, but her body gave out before her will did. "Stop, Jarah," whispered Rihn fiercely. "Come on, we have to go." "Kimhan," said Jarah, the depth of her fury and despair at what she'd lost surfacing in that one word. "They've already taken her away," said Rihn, dragging her into the darkness of the nearby forest. "But it's not over. Not yet." Jarah, furious at herself, stumbled along with Rihn until he arrived at a buckboard. Helping her in, he took the reins and, within moments, had the horses pulling the wagon into the night. "He has my Blade. He stole Kimhan." "Don't worry," he said as Jarah stared at the receding village, her heart aching more than any of her injuries. "We'll get her back. We'll get them both back." "How?" Rihn didn't answer immediately. At last, he said, "I don't know. But we will. I promise."
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They walked into Lylen's single-room home. A curtain made of thin linen sequestered what was likely the man's sleeping mat. A modicum of privacy to separate the man's life into something approximating different components. Two trunks on the side wall of wooden home, closed and locked with banded iron, appeared to be the most expensive items. Hooks held cooking utensils and pots and pans; in the corner was a scythe and a handful of agricultural tools. A couple pairs of boots sat together near the entrance, one looking much finer than the other. Lylen, for his part, was currently wearing sandals that laced up his feet, keeping his humble farmer trousers from getting in the mud. He also wore a large vest-like robe over the linen tunic he wore. Humble circumstances, indeed.
"Sit," he said, dropping the torch into the firepit at the center of the home. Kindling, already awaiting, snatched up the flames and a warm fire began to crackle pleasantly. "You said you were hungry?" "Yes," said Jarah. "We have only had cold rations for the past three days." "Where do you hail from?" asked Lylen as he busied himself in the pantry--a wooden chest that Jarah had missed when she'd first scanned the room--pulling out a bag of rice and measuring some water into a pot. "Gallhin," said Rihn. Jarah almost smacked him, but decided against it. He was dressed in the kind of style that would place him as a city-dweller. And her clothing was far too unusual to come from anywhere else, especially in a three day march. Lylen grunted, glancing out the front-facing window as he stooped to pick up some tealeaves. Turning, he brought both the pot of uncooked rice and a kettle of water over to the flames. Setting them on iron tripods, he set about preparing the individual cups of tea. As he worked, a handful of tealeaves left his hand and landing in the fire. A bright billow of green flames shot upward, making all four of them yelp. "What are you putting in our drinks, friend?" asked Rihn, smiling through his nerves. It had startled him enough for him to visibly flinch. "Sorry!" said Lylen, who had fallen backward in surprise. "I don't know what happened there. They're new leaves--I just got them the other day--and I didn't realize they were so…um, vibrant." Jarah felt her unease grow. "Do you live here alone, Lylen?" asked Jarah, hoping to shift the conversation toward the man and away from them. "Yes. Never managed to find a wife." "And you've lived in Nan since birth?" "That's right." "Which life are you on?" "Third, I think. I may have had a previous one, but I never had anything trigger the memory. So third that I remember." He bobbed his head as he returned to the pantry, rummaging about for a couple of pots that he then brought with him to the fire. He added a pinch of the spices from one and a heaping spoonful of the other to the rice, stirring the concoction to disperse the flavors and then letting the food cook. "Were you a farmer every time?" Lylen shook his head. "Spent one life as a prostitute. That ended shortly. I became a clerk in the government of Lower Sowell for my second life. Third was here…and, I suppose, it might just be my last." "You seem old enough to remember before the world broke," said Jarah. "How did that affect you here?" "You mean, how did losing all of our crops, having nothing to trade for rice, seeing the water become polluted with constant sandstorms, and the dangers of roving bands of robbers affect me?" Jarah looked into the flames, rather than his face. "Poorly," he said by way of answer. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said softly. "Not your fault," he said. Rihn, next to her, stifled a response when she shot him a venomous look. "What are your plans, then?" Lylen shrugged as the water in the tea kettle began to boil. He pulled out a thick cloth that he used as a pad to pull the kettle free and pour the hot water into the waiting cups. "Same as everyone, I'd guess: Do what I have to and survive." "I hear that," said Rihn softly. "You look like you're a survivor," said Lylen to the former Tenhaim guard. "Yeah, not much of one," said Rihn around a snort. "You come across someone who didn't like you? Is that why you're on the lam?" "Something like that," said Jarah. The urge to drink the tea was almost overpowering, but not only was it slightly too hot for her preferences, but she wondered at what Lylen had done and said. How much could she trust a guy who had changed his mind so rapidly before? "Well, if I didn't need your coin so badly, I would have asked you to leave immediately. But since you're paying, I can give you this meal and you can bed down in here, around the fire. It isn't much, but it's better than sleeping outside." Lylen paused, looking distant as some memory played through his mind. "That much I can vouch for." Rihn, who had drained the cup of tea, spoke, tiny puffs of steam flying from him mouth, "We appreciate that, friend." Kimhan sipped at her tea, looking around the room with an open curiosity and innocence. Idly, Jarah wondered if Kimhan could remember her previous lives, then remembered that she was too young; she would be a new soul, as no old souls had been born since… A stirring behind the curtain drew her attention. "What was that?" she asked, accepting the bowl of steaming rice in her cold hands. It, too, attracted her with its odor. Whatever he had put into the rice smelled incredible. Still, she did not eat, watching the curtain of the bed and Lylen with equal measure of attention. "Huh?" "The curtain just moved." "Oh, that." Lylen chuckled and cleared his throat, passing the next bowl to Rihn, who tucked in with chopsticks--hidden where, Jarah couldn't say--immediately. "There's a hole in the wall. Sometimes a breeze will blow through, making the curtain move." "I see," said Jarah. Lylen chuckled again, handing over Kimhan's serving. "Yes, it's one of those things that I hope to change once I get some of your money." He shook his head as he settled down, cross-legged, on the other side of the fire, his back to the curtained area. "That sounded greedy. I simply meant, it's one of the many repairs that I will be able to afford to make." "Starting tomorrow?" asked Jarah. She made as if to drink, letting the liquid pool on her top lip but not actually imbibing. Wiping her face with the back of her hand and ignoring the sharp pangs of hunger in her guts and the ache in her mouth as saliva built up, she gestured at the house. "You'll start tomorrow, correct?" Lylen's confused expression dissolved into a thin smile and he said, "Right. Yes, of course." "Is that because of how much I will pay you, or how much Tenhaim will?" Lylen's smile disappeared. "What…what do you mean? Who's Tenhaim?" "The man to whom you're selling us out," said Jarah, still holding her bowl of steaming rice. Lylen glanced at the door behind Jarah, then back at the woman's face. "I…I don't know…" "What are you talking about?" asked Rihn as he scraped the bottom of the bowl with his chopsticks, chasing the last couple of grains of rice. "You think this is a trap?" Jarah gestured to the boots behind her. "Those are too big for your feet, yet you live alone." She gestured at the curtains. "There's someone back there that you're hiding: Clearly if there was a hole in the wall above your bed, you'd move it to the other corner, which has tools in it, but no gaps that would allow sand to blow in and disturb your sleep." She pointed at Kimhan, who was almost unconscious as she slouched against the teka. "You put some sort of sleeping potion in the tea and, possibly, in the rice, too." Lylen stared in continued shock as the catalogue of his mistakes cascaded over him. Rihn, to her side, snorted. "Really? Was that what I was tasting?" He grunted. "Well, that seals it, then. Do we kill him?" Lylen raised his hands, but before he could speak, the door slammed open with an accompanying rush of guards who crowded the room. Before she could move, Jarah had five or six qiang points bristling at her back. Rihn, shocked, held up his hands in instinctive surrender. "No," said a voice--a familiar, unfriendly voice--from behind the curtain. The rings of it clacked against the rope that held it up. Tenhaim himself stepped out from the corner. "But I think I will kill you." Approaching the city limits proved easy enough--too easy, to Jarah's suspicious mind. Still, she wasn't about to begrudge her own blood's luck at this point. Sneaking through dark streets was fairly simple when she was by herself. Having to worry about a young child and an almost-invalid in the full light of day made it a different prospect entirely. Jarah was grateful that she hadn't had to kill anyone, though--that much, at least, was nice.
Leaving Gillhan was not the same as getting to the exit. The city was an island, with multitudinous bridges that jutted over the river like spines from a fretful porcupine. The Bridge North was their best bet, as it gave them the least amount of difficulty in travel after departure. It was also, unsurprisingly, the best guarded. "Let's go around," said Rihn, his face looking terrifying in the bloody hue of the midmorning light. "Find another way off the island." "Any time we spend going around is more time between now and when we find the Blade. The sooner we get that, the sooner we can meet up with Honu and figure out how to fix the world." "I don't disagree, Jarah, but there are--" and Rihn poked his head around the corner of the building behind which they hid, his eyes flicking back and forth "--about twenty Tenhaim fighters between us and the gate." Jarah grimaced. She'd seen them checking everyone going out--the opposite side of the gate that led to the bridge, on the right side, was unencumbered. They weren't, after all, looking for some people sneaking into Gillhan. There were enough women and men standing watch that Jarah knew she couldn't get past them. Not without a major distraction, and though Paudra, Goddess of Distraction might prove useful here, dispatching a goddess--especially one with such an obvious domain--would be a clear indication that they were there. "Do you really think the ferries and other bridges won't likewise be crawling with your former mates?" "It's possible. Tenhaim may feel like he owns the entire island, but there are enough aspiring slumlords who might see helping us as a way of hurting him. We can take advantage of that, right?" "Do you know of anyone who would be like that? And how they could help?" Rihn looked down. "I have a couple of ideas, but they're on the other side of the city." Jarah shook her head. The longer they stayed in Gillhan, the greater the chance they had of getting caught, of having to fight free. She didn't need Tenhaim pursuing them every step of the way. If she had just killed the man when she had the chance, if her blade had just been a fraction faster, they wouldn't be in this mess. Well, regrets fed no god (an old saying; like all old sayings, it wasn't true at all: Po was the Goddess of Remorse, and regret was close enough a feeling that she could be Invoked with it). Jarah had to focus on the task at hand. She slipped past Rihn, accidentally brushing against his arm. She was surprised at how knotted with muscles it was. She'd found some spare clothing before they'd left the safe house, allowing the man to dress in something other than bloodstained acolyte garb. But she hadn't watched him clothe himself; she hadn't realized just how muscular he was. Pushing the bizarre observation away, she popped her head out for another check. "They're leaving," she said, her voice soft. "What?" Rihn took a peek himself. "Bloody drops, where are they going?" "Watch your language." "What?" "Kimhan is listening." "I can testify that she's heard worse than that, Jarah." "Stay focused, man. Why are they all leaving?" "I don't know." "Is it something with your training? That you can't stay out in sunlight for too long or something?" "What? That's madness." "Okay, fine. But why are they doing that?" "I don't know." "You're no help." "I notice you're not generating any explanations." "I made one!" "The one about sunlight? That's insanity. Are you sure you weren't the one with the punched-in face?" Jarah put up a hand, ending the conversation. "Pull back. Quick! Hide!" The three immediately scurried behind some stacks of empty crates that were in the alley with them. The heavy pounding of feet on stones as the Tenhaim fighters marched away washed over them. Jarah held her breath for no other reason than instinct. She knew that they wouldn't be able to hear her breathing. They marched south, heading toward the central pagoda that defined the skyline of Gillhan--still standing even after yesterday's theopolemic. Before the Breaking of the World, the city's bureaucracy had run from that pagoda. The Breaking had upset all governments, leaving the city a tangle of chaos for a number of months. At last, men like Tenhaim exercised what had once been their black market skills, taking advantage of the lack of centralized power, and divvying up Gillhan for themselves. The slumlords had fought ferociously at first, not realizing that the Breaking of the World also meaning that no one could be reincarnated. After that fact became well known, the violence had reduced throughout the city, slumlords staking out territories and holding onto them with a brutal hand. It was possible that Tenhaim's fighters had been called in to deal with a border dispute. The theopolemic likely broke through tenuous alliances and killed people that were supposed to be under the protection of one of Tenhaim's enemies. Judging from the number of people being held up by the search to leave the city, Jarah felt certain that there were plenty who had had enough of the dangers of Gillhan and were at last striking out. Now was her chance to do the same. "Blend in with the crowd," she said, tugging her hood over her head and adjusting the goggles--a spare set found in her safe house--on her face. "Let's go fast, before people realize they're not being searched and they start a stampede out of the city." Kimhan held her hand; Rihn remained to her side and slightly behind her. They wove their way through the mass of people, begging pardon when someone sounded upset and insisting on their way through when the person appeared more complacent. It didn't take long before the entire group began to push forward, anxious to take advantage of the missing guards. A half hour later, they were away from the city and traveling the north road with few encumbrances. "That was strange," said Rihn as they walked beneath dead trees and sand-blasted stone…the typical look of the Broken World, Jarah had to admit. "Any ideas why they would have abandoned their posts en masse like that?" "Not really," said Rihn with a sniff. "I'm not going to groan about it." "Neither am I," said Kimhan. The unexpected chirp from the girl made Jarah smile. "You're safe now, you know." Jarah hesitated. "Well, safer than you would be if we'd stayed in the city." "Will we get to our new home soon?" asked Kimhan, looking up at the adults with a hopeful expression on her round face. "New home?" asked Jarah. "Isn't that where we're going?" "We're getting my Blade. It's…about a day's journey, I think. A lot of walking, but we should be able to get to it." "And what will we do once we find it?" Jarah's throat went dry at the thought. "We'll have to see," she said at last, forcing a smile onto her face. "Heal the world, I hope." Kimhan took this information and mulled it over in her mind, the thoughtfulness clear on her face. They traversed the main road until a rural route opened up, leading them northwest. By midday, the city was an indistinguishable blur on the horizon, only the ridged angles of the pagoda scarcely visible as a black thorn. The rested for a full hour to repast on some of the canned food from the safe house, then resumed their march. It was tiresome, boring, and sweaty work. The one consolation was that no sandstorms blew in during that day. Night proved difficult to march through, so they rested some distance from the path. Though she and Rihn split the watch, nothing of note happened to them. As they set out for the second day's hike, Jarah couldn't help but feel like something was distinctly wrong. "Do you see anyone behind us?" she asked before a midmorning rest. Both Kimhan and Rihn turned the direction they'd come and squinted. By now, the relatively flat, dead landscape close to Gillhan had wrinkled, with hills and valleys making up most of what they traversed. They headed toward a valley far ahead, the mountains framing it looming in the distance yet. "I don't see anything," said Kimhan. "Neither do I," said Rihn. "Why? Did you?" "No. That's what has me worried." Rihn snorted. "You're paranoid." "That's why I'm still alive." Rihn didn't have an answer to that. "No, it just…it seems too easy." With a laugh, Rihn sipped some water they'd bottled when they'd happened across a fresh spring. "I, for one, am grateful for a break. Hiking with a broken face isn't the most pleasant experience. I'm content not having to worry about my life while going on a days-long nature walk." "My feet hurt." Jarah patted Kimhan on the head. "You've been wonderful so far, Kimhan. Thank you for being such a great walker." She turned her attention to Rihn. "It doesn't worry you at all that we were able to escape the city with such ease?" "Surviving a beating and a theopolemic isn't what I call easy, Jarah. But, no, it doesn't worry me that things are working out for a change. I'm actually pretty happy about that." "What about…" But Jarah trailed off. It was like trying to describe the taste of salt: She knew that something felt wrong, but she couldn't find a way to explain it. With a wave of her hand, she dismissed the conversation. "No," said Rihn, shifting the bag of supplies he insisted on carrying from one shoulder to the other. "No, tell me. What's got you suspicious?" "Nothing," said Jarah, irritated. "I'll feel better when we find the river." "Why?" asked Kimhan. "Because that will mean that we're almost to the valley. Come on." They continued their march. What Jarah had anticipated as a day's walk ended up taking almost three. Throughout all of that time, Jarah's suspicions never faded, in part because they never saw another person throughout the time. Wandering through the sandblasted wastelands was never something people normally wanted to do, but commerce still had to happen, trade still progressed. Jarah hadn't spent a lot of time out of Gallhin, so she couldn't speak to any specific examples. Nevertheless, she assumed that they would have come across some other travelers. Rihn passed off the happenstance as such, content that things were going smoothly for once. When they arrived within eyeshot of the valley that Jarah had spotted in Honu's map, daylight was fading. At the base of the valley was a small town--a half dozen buildings interspersed with homes attached to farms of some sort. The trees were all denuded--sandstorms had a habit of stripping the leaves--and the viable acreage was clearly connected to the river. Most food grew quite close to water, though often there were stormbreaks inside of fields closest to natural springs. Essentially, keeping the water and growing crops free from the sand was the farmer's primary duty. This town was no different. Night had almost fully settled by the time the three arrived at the southernmost building, a squat home with a triangular roof. Jarah hiked to the door and clapped her hands--the common way of signaling a visitor when one was in the countryside. A moment later, the door opened up slightly. A yellow shaft of light came through, making a silhouette of the speaker. "Who are you?" "Travelers," said Jarah, not even needing to feign weariness. "Footsore and tired. We seek the inn--or perhaps lodging and food here. We have coins to pay…" "No," said the person--she sounded female--as she closed the door. "No, no more…" Whatever else she was going to say was lost behind the metallic thumps of a lock falling into place. Jarah shot Rihn a confused look. He shrugged. "Some people don't like strangers," he said. As they drifted through the village--which, based upon a sign she spotted on the way in, was simply called Nan--the three were rejected at every stop. Even using Kimhan as a way to gin up support at one home wasn't enough to get them past the threshold. At last they arrived at the single governmental building. The central government had, long before the Breaking of the World, installed large, easy to identify buildings in many of the villages throughout the former Empire of Gar. Nan, it seemed, was one of those. Pagoda-like, it sat behind dilapidated walls, the sharp curves at each corners in similar disrepair. The tiles on the roof were missing in most places. Huge swells of sand crowded in the joints of the windowsills and courtyard. A couple of wild chickens clucked in fury when the trio pushed open the disused gate. "Cozy place," said Rihn. "What happened here?" asked Kimhan, her voice subdued. "Most of the central government's holdings were abandoned when I…when the world broke. I would have thought that the mayor of the village would have moved in--or some other enterprising person, I suppose. It looks like this one was left behind…" "What are you doing here?" The voice came from behind them, startling Jarah. She inwardly berated herself for allowing the person to sneak up on them, chalking the oversight to her own fatigue. She and Rihn turned to see a handful of villagers all huddled behind a large man who bore aloft a torch. "You're not invited here." "We have business in the nearby area," said Jarah, stepping forward while Kimhan shifted so that she would be behind her. "We don't mean any harm or hassle." "Why are you going there?" demanded the man, gesturing at the building with the torch. "We don't need any other visitors." "We aren't planning on staying long," said Rihn, trying for his charming smile, but failing because of the facial injuries. At least, Jarah realized, it was a slightly more endearing expression than what she'd grown used to. "You aren't staying at all," said the man. "We're done with visitors from the city." Jarah frowned, thinking. "Do you have a lot of them?" The man nodded, glowering. "As if you didn't know?" Jarah opened her hands, as if demonstrating her ignorance. "I just got here. I'm looking for a warm meal and a soft cushion to sleep on. It needn't even be soft, honestly. We're tired. That's about it." A whisper drifted from behind the speaker for the mob. Jarah couldn't catch anything that was said, but the way the man's posture changed, she could see it wasn't a good thing--for her, at least. Grimacing, he asked, "You said you have coin? You're willing to pay?" The question took her by surprise. Why did he look more hostile to them, yet he was asking in a way that pointed in the opposite direction? Jarah immediately had her guard up, but Rihn, it seemed, didn't. "We do. We can pay handsomely." He jabbed a thumb at Jarah. "Well, she can, at least." "Rihn!" Jarah wanted to punch him in his abused face. "Shut your face slit." "What?" He appeared genuinely confused. "You can." "Come with us," said the man. "Who are you?" asked Jarah, following the order reluctantly. "I'm the poor fool who was asked to talk to you. You can call me Lylen." He raised his torch slightly higher. "We're farmers here. We eke out a living. Subsist. But we may have a bite or two to spare." To Jarah's surprise, the small crowd dispersed, retreating to sundry homes--some of which she had visited before--as Lylen guided them, his circular hat pushed back off his head and bouncing with each stride, toward a squat building at the north part of the dirt road that coursed through the village proper. She watched each person as carefully as she could, trying to note their expressions. Most looked fearful. Jarah couldn't put a finger on precisely why, but she had a very bad feeling about what was going on here. Wordlessly, she followed their guide, Kimhan holding onto her hand as she went. Jarah prayed to her own blood that she wasn't making a mistake. Most of the food in the safe house was spoiled or eaten by vermin. Jarah found some cans that were still good, however, and with those she had something resembling a meal for herself. She really wanted a bath--and Kimhan needed one--but she would have to go out to the communal well to draw any. Or she could go to the river, but that was a walk of several blocks and she didn't have the energy or desire to do that. Invoking always drained her emotionally, but today she'd been in a difficult fight, too. That made it much harder to do what she had to do; it simply took too much effort.
So, instead of hauling water, she settled herself on the floor with some of the bound manuscripts she'd left in the safe house. They contained the long history of Elisius, of mortals' dealings with the divine, and even some of the explanations of the various nations that crowded the world. While it normally made for fascinating reading, Jarah couldn't get her mind to focus. She was simultaneously too tired and too energetic for sleep or for concentration. A calming cup of tea would help, but that put her back on the path of getting more water, which she couldn't seem to get her body to want to do. Sighing, she got up from her place by the fire and retreated to the storeroom. Her safe houses were never large, though she'd always tried to make them comfortable. Being an inheritress for a small swath of city real estate had given her not only freedom to select her homes, but also the wherewithal to furnish them well. In the back room, then, she lit a low candle with her taper before setting about to restock some of her equipment. To her disappointment, she didn't have an exact replacement for her blackened blade, now most likely melted into slag by Kinn, Goddess of Anger. Instead, a bulkier set of butterfly swords--each about as long as her forearm, their hilts angled at ninety degrees, with one going up a fingerlength of the blade while the other doing the same down the hilt--that she could mount on the small of her back caught her eye. They were larger, obviously, but they also had more stopping power. Her hand hesitated over the weapons. She had started her infiltration with the distinct desire not to kill. Then she'd slit the throat of Tenhaim's brother with hardly a pause. She'd not only ordered Kinn to melt Rall and his fellow fighters, but she had urged the goddess to do so. What did it matter if she were a reluctant killer--wasn't she still a killer? Her thoughts flittered to Kimhan. The girl needed protection; she was sought after by the most powerful slumlord in Gallhin, with the divine and the mortal trying to get her back. Inadvertently, Jarah's rescue of Kimhan may have started a war. In war, people died. People killed. It's what happened in the End of Times--a state that Jarah herself was responsible for having created. Did she really think that she could break the world and then claim she was no fan of violence, of killing? Jarah stared at the weapons for a long time, her thoughts drifting between concrete arguments and a vague torpor of a mind fearing what would happen if it allowed itself to answer questions honestly. Her stomach growled. Grimacing, she snatched up the swords, as well as a pouch that already had throwing daggers inside of it, to replace those she'd lost. She would do what she had to, that much she knew: How she felt about it was a different matter entirely. The day pushed into night. The sounds of the theopolemic had long ago faded, and though Jarah wanted to know what had happened to Honu and her men, she didn't dare investigate. The point of a safe house was to remain safe. Drawing attention to her location at all was foolish--yet another reason she couldn't worry about either the rain cistern or a trip to the well. Besides, maybe there were some barrels of stored water somewhere… She passed some time searching for additional food and water, smiling when she stumbled upon some more cans--this time, of beans--and potable water. Taking her finding back to the bedroom, she prepared a simple meal of heated beans and a cup of water, polished off with a serving of peaches. She had eaten her fill at Honu's bounty, but this food tasted better for all its simplicity. All she lacked was a pinch of salt, but she couldn't complain. Eventually, she fell asleep. Rihn was awake and sitting up when Jarah awoke, stiff and cold. The fire had died out. Jarah had spread out on the dirt floor, a cushion beneath her body to keep her somewhat warm. The sharp ache of having done too much exercise the day before made her gasp when she moved. She looked around. The purple of a new day was tickling the slats over the windows. Rihn picked at a scab on his face. "Do you have anything else to eat?" he asked. Jarah nodded, then, with a groan, opened a can of fruit for the man. She served herself, then, as she arose, Kimhan, too. Jarah stoked a new fire, lighting some tapers in the process. Then, as they ate, Jarah explained her plan. "I guess it will work," said Rihn, his voice as cracked as his lips. His left eye was swollen, but not so much that he couldn't see out of it. The gashes on his cheeks and the corner of his mouth were angry and raw, but they didn't appear to be infected--a minor miracle, that. Bruises on his jawline disappeared into the abundance of his beard. "How are you feeling? Up to a journey?" "I'd rather sit here and slurp canned fruit for a week," he said. "But I reckon that isn't very safe." Jarah shook her head. "We've been lucky--far too lucky--thus far. If we want to get to the Blade, we have to move quickly, before Tenhaim can rally and broaden a search for us." Kimhan shifted, her small hands wrapped around an earthenware cup. "Search for me, you mean." Jarah bobbed her head, then reached out to Kimhan. Rubbing the girl's arm, she said, "You may be what they're after, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let it happen. Okay? You'll be safe with me. I promise." Kimhan nodded, not meeting Jarah's eyes. "Well," said Rihn, standing. "Where's the head? After some relief, I think I will be ready to go." Jarah nodded, pointing him in the right direction. Once he was gone, Kimhan asked, "Do you think he's all right?" "He took a lot of abuse." Jarah shot a glance toward the door through which he'd passed. "More than I expected him to be able to shrug off." She shook her head. "He's probably hurt a lot worse than I think, but he's putting that aside." "Because of me." Jarah had long had a policy of never lying to Lillah. The only daughter of her lives, Lillah had always deserved to hear the truth…or so Jarah had believed. The only lie she'd ever told her was… Well, she'd rather not dwell on that. At any rate, it was against her parental instincts--even if Kimhan wasn't her literal daughter--to lie. So she nodded. "Yes. We have done a lot for you. Sacrifice is sometimes necessary." "Why you, though?" asked Kimhan, at last meeting Jarah's gaze. "It's how it turned out, I guess," said Jarah, not really believing her own explanation. "Sometimes you have to sacrifice and that's all there is to it." "I haven't sacrificed," said Kimhan fiercely. "You have." Jarah chuckled. "There's no such thing as sacrificing others. That's merely selfishness. You can only ever sacrifice yourself--your time, your abilities, your wellness. It's the only thing you have that you can give up. At this point, no, you haven't sacrificed. Rihn and I have, but not you." She squeezed the girl's arm. "You know what, though?" "What?" "That's not a problem. You are a child; Rihn and I are adults." She paused, her own thoughts materializing almost as she spoke them. She didn't know she'd felt this way until she'd opened her mouth. "It's our job to see you have a chance to become one." Kimhan looked at her thoughtfully. Rihn chose that moment to return, some of his former bluster restored, though there was a thin undertone of pain that Jarah could hear in his voice: "I'm leaked and loaded. Shall we go?" He hesitated. "Where'd you get those?" Jarah looked at where he was pointing. "The butterfly swords? They're part of my stash." "You have a weapons stash?" "Yes." She gestured with her chin in the right direction. "Next to the head." "May I, then?" Jarah shrugged, then nodded. "If it makes you happy. I'd like to move out in the next ten to fifteen minutes." "Excellent." He took a taper and headed away, humming. Jarah didn't know if it was for show or because he was honestly excited. It probably didn't matter either way. While he was gone, Jarah shed her clothes and stepped back into the armor. It was beaten up and compromised, but it was a fair sight better than a ruqun. That silk- and cotton mess would get her killed faster than if she ran around naked. If she were naked, she'd at least make for a distraction that might throw some of her pursuers off. With a flowing robe and bulky skirt, she'd only get tripped up. "You are pretty." Jarah started at he comment as she finished pulling the light armor onto her legs. She looked at Kimhan and smiled. "Thank you. You are a pretty girl, too." "I don't look like that." She gestured at Jarah's upper body. "What?" Jarah looked down. "What, these?" She pointed. "Yes. The lines." Jarah nodded, then pulled on her chestplate. "Scars are only proof that you lived, Kimhan." "Oh." Kimhan thought carefully. "Have I lived before?" "I don't know," said Jarah honestly. "I'm on my fourth life, personally. But we haven't had a lot of old-births since the Breaking of the World." She strapped on the butterfly swords, adjusting them so that they crossed each other on the small of her back, the handles pointed downward. Friction--and a small leather clasp--held them in place. "But if you figure it out, you should let me know." "Okay," said Kimhan. "I will." Jarah flashed her a smile. Rihn appeared in the doorway, arms overloaded with gear. "You didn't grab hardly anything!" he said, dropping the equipment to the floor with a clatter. "There are packs, short swords, this javelin…thing." He picked up a scattering of caltrops, their needle sharp points glinting in the dim firelight and rising red sun. "And these? What are these for?" "Hurting people," said Jarah, settling her belt more comfortably over her hips. "Most of them would be your former friends." Rihn grunted as he rooted about. "Former coworkers, more like." He pulled out a slender box. "Is this…" Jarah snatched it from him. "They're here!" "What is it?" asked Kimhan, tugging on Jarah's arm so that she could get a better look. "More vials," said Rihn, standing. "Are they filled?" "Three of them are," she said, handing one to Rihn and replacing her lost theomantic vials on her belt. "Two are empty." "I still have some that I harvested," said Kimhan, rooting about beneath the tatters of her clothes. Jarah grimaced, shooting a look at Rihn. He hadn't noticed what the girl had said, much to Jarah's relief. "We'll handle those later." Refining divine ichor into something that could be used as a conduit for Invoking was a complicated process, one that she wasn't in the mood--or with the sufficient equipment--to do. "Are you ready, Rihn?" "Just another minute." He clicked the token, tipping it so he could read the rune on the dial's window. "That's pretty good. I can use those." "Great. Shall we go?" A few minutes later, the three were once again on the deadly streets of Gallhin. Jarah didn't even need to look at her token: She had it selected and ready. Shoving the anger--undistilled, unleavened, wild--into the vial as she drove the plunger down, she hurled the ichor in between her and her opponents. Rihn, fortunately, lay off to one side, while Kimhan was a dozen paces behind her.
The glass broke. Ichor--a few drops, really, hardly anything at all--splattered over the rooftop. The fighters pulled back, fearing and knowing what had just happened. Nothing came. Jarah swallowed. Big Boy laughed, his bearded face painted with vestiges of the pain he'd suffered. "Your god must be in the queue," he shouted, his voice strained over the sound of the whipping wind. Jarah took a step back. "She's a goddess," she said, more to herself than to the attacker. Rihn groaned, putting a shaking hand on his abused face. Rall picked up the knife he'd discarded--her knife--and gripped it tightly. He grinned a chilling smile of death. A bruise started to form on the side of his face where she'd kneed him. Jarah wished she'd hit him even harder. "Looks like--" Jarah never learned what anything looked like: An enormous circle, made of stone, burst out of the ichor puddle, the mist of an Invoked deity materializing against the direction of the wind. Like a bucket drawn from a well, Kinn, Goddess of Anger rose out of the building. Unlike Liool or some of the other deities she'd Invoked recently, Kinn was one of the few that truly towered over most of creation. The goddess continued to grow, her stone chariot made out of massive, concentric circles that rotated about her constantly. Her helmeted head covered her features, and a sheet of death-gray fabric wound about her breasts and middle parts. Pale arms extended outward as she rode her chariot ever higher. As it broke free of the ichor-pool, gears began to spin, extending long spars like wings. Her legs ended in a flurry of feathers that shone with a golden resplendence in the sandy-red light. "Kill," whispered Jarah, rushing over to Rihn's side. Kinn was only too happy to oblige. Light collected at the peak of her helmet, where an asymmetrical spire stretched. The dazzling rainbow coalesced into a prism of hardened light, shimmering like a diamond. A beam shot forth, scorching the air. The side of the building disappeared beneath the onslaught. Jarah pulled Rihn over her shoulders, grunting at the pain of not only hefting so much weight, but also the ache of her wounds. The radiant heat from the ray made her wince, too. "Kimhan! Come!" The two words were enough to get the stunned child out from behind her hiding place and toward the lip of the building. Jarah leaned on one leg, peering over the edge and then grunting in disappointment. It was too far for her to drop him. Her best bet was to make a sling and carefully lower the unconscious man to the alley floor. Behind her, Kinn stopped her attack, the heat and light disappearing almost as fast as they'd arrived. Jarah glanced over her shoulder and saw that there was only dark ash and charred rubble to indicate that the fighters had been there at all. She couldn't think of it happening to more deserving people. "What are we going to do?" asked Kimhan, sensing why Jarah hesitated. Jarah bit her lower lip, adjusting Rihn on her shoulders, her mind flipping through options. She didn't have the strength to go too much longer, but unless she was completely addled, there was a safehouse not far from here. She could get there, provided she got off this roof first… Kinn's anger spiked through her and she almost tossed Rihn over out of furious resignation. Jarah caught herself before making the mistake, however. She'd forgotten just how easy it was for Kinn to reverse the roles on that teka that Invoked her. Most deities only consumed the emotion of their domain. Kinn, on the other hand, liked nothing more than pushing back, taking advantage of a distracted teka. It was a lesson Jarah had learned early on: Kinn, Goddess of Anger, was a powerful tool, but a conniving one. But she was powerful…and enormous, too. Easily three times taller than the building they stood on, Kinn towered over the landscape. Her immense, gear-worked wings had a span even larger than her body's height. Jarah could easily fit inside one of those gargantuan hands… "That's it," she said, thinking of snapping her fingers, but unable to because of Rihn's body. "What is?" asked Kimhan, her face puckered in confusion. "Kinn! Get me down!" The command was unusual; Kinn normally spent her time smashing, killing, and fighting. She rarely used her divine powers to do something as unremarkable as assisting a mortal down three stories. The emotional backlash was about what Jarah expected--which meant that she was nearly taken to her knees by the anger that roiled in her mind. Nevertheless, Jarah pushed back, insisting that the goddess was under her control and that Kinn must do what was demanded of her. The mystery of divine obedience transpired; Kinn spread open her hand at Jarah's feet. "Get on," said the teka. "But--" "Don't stall! Go!" Kimhan, her eyes wide with fright, obeyed. Kinn purred at Jarah's spike of angry emotion. Jarah stepped onto the hand. She expected it to feel like a human hand--spongy yet resilient, with a shifting layer of skin over the muscles and bones--but was surprised when she couldn't feel anything. She knew she was standing on the goddess' hand. The "ground" was firm, however, and as unremarkable as standing on a cobblestone road. The goddess shifted only slightly so that she could lower her cargo to the alleyway floor. Kimhan scampered off as quickly as she could, a whimper deep in her throat. Jarah got off slowly, making sure she didn't ruin her knees by carrying so much weight. As soon as the two mortals were off her hand, Kinn pulled back, almost as if she'd been scorched by their presence. Jarah closed her eyes and pictured Kinn departing, dismissing the Goddess of Anger with greater ease than the emotion ever left her own heart. The familiar feeling of the divine's departure filled her mind and her ears thundered as the being disappeared, the air filling the sudden vacancy with a clap louder than a sandstorm-- --which they now needed to avoid. Being caught out in a sandstorm was never a good idea, as last night had shown her clearly enough. "Let's hurry," she said between gritted teeth. "I don't want to lug these guts all night." "Okay, Jarah-khan," said Kimhan, following after the teka with surprising attention. Then again, maybe the Athakar wasn't interested in getting lost in a labyrinthine city in the middle of a sandstorm while her former slumlord sent gods and men, goddesses and women out to capture her. They pressed on through the harsh weather, the sand scrubbing their skin and getting deep into their mouths and ears. The going, as a result, was slow. By the time they'd arrived at the right place, Jarah was ready to collapse. "Open the door, Kimhan," she said, angling her hip so that the girl could see the key dangling from the belt. "Do you know how?" "I'm not an idiot," said the girl, unclasping the item and inserting it easily into the lock. She twisted it and it the door popped open, the hinges creaking loudly. "In." Jarah didn't really have to urge Kimhan to do so, as the little girl was already scampering in. Gently depositing Rihn on a low couch in the receiving room, Jarah straightened with a groan, her hands on the small of her back as she arched it, twisting about to try to ease the pain. The stiffness of the ichor-healed wounds was nothing compared to the steady ache she'd incurred by hauling Rihn's unconscious body three blocks. Reaching into a nearby drawer, she pulled out a match with which she lit a taper. Moving about the room, she illuminated the different lanterns hanging from the tapestry-lined walls. Her footsteps faded into silence as she walked over the plush, warm carpets. Jarah had selected the designs of her décor herself, appreciating their symmetry and beauty. They helped to calm her, which she sorely needed now. Moving between the wooden columns, she arrived at the hearth. A stack of kindling and fresh peat lay in the fireplace. A moment later, a warmth began to permeate the room. "By my blood," whispered Rihn, his voice gravelly. Jarah started in surprise, but kept the shock out of her response. "Glad to hear you're awake." "Wish I weren't." He grunted; Jarah looked over her shoulder to see why. "Blood and prayers," Jarah swore, setting the taper in an empty candlestick and hurrying over to Rihn's side. "You damn fool, why'd you stand up?" "So that I'd stop bleeding on your carpet." "That doesn't matter right now," said Jarah, throwing one of his arms about her still-aching shoulders. "You need to rest." She stumbled with him to the more comfortable position of her bed. She hadn't slept in it since the Breaking of the World--the dust on its surface testifying to that fact--but its proximity to the fire was always a plus, as she seemed to recall. "Stay down." "Where are we?" Rihn spoke through the pain, wincing as he lowered his no doubt throbbing head against the stiff pillow. "My safe house." Kimhan came into the room, giggling. She had found a shabby blanket that Jarah couldn't remember ever using before. "Is this for me?" "Uh, sure. No problem." Kimhan laughed, shaking her head. A shower of sand sprinkled free. "You need a bath," said Jarah, though she was speaking as much for herself as to Kimhan. Kimhan frowned. "Why?" "Getting stuck in a sandstorm leaves you gritty." Jarah could feel the way the sand ground against the enamel of her teeth as she talked. Her eyes stung and her nose felt full of sand. There were few feelings she hated more than sand in her eyes. Without her goggles, it had been a difficult storm to weather. "Will you close the door?" asked Jarah, as she followed Kimhan's example and took off the scarf and half-cloak. Sand clattered to the hard-packed earth. Kimhan stared at the room, her mouth slack in surprise. "Kimhan?" The girl's eyes traced over some of the artifacts hanging from the safe house's walls, most of which came from before the Breaking of the World--weapons, mostly, though some other pieces of the day-to-day minutiae from Jarah's previous lives. Dust coated all of the items. Maybe that's what she was gawking at: Her poor housekeeping skills. "Kimhan, please close the door, making sure it's locked." Jarah spoke more forcefully, the tone cutting through the girl's inattention and bringing her to attention. Kimhan scurried to obey. Turning to her own task, she stripped off the light armor that she'd worn beneath her half-cloak. The belt with its dangling tokens, each filled with a bit of ichor, clinked as she removed it and set it on a table. As the layers dropped free, she heard an uncomfortable sound. Darting a glance over her bare shoulder, she saw an embarrassed expression on Rihn's ruined face as he looked away. Rolling her eyes at his prudishness, she finished disrobing. It was her safe house. She could dress--or not--as she willed. In the reflection of a burnished shield, Jarah caught a glimpse of her back. Stepping closer and pivoting her body--a painful movement--she could see a scar from Tenhaim's blade. It was puckered and pink--fresh, certainly, but whole--and a touch from her finger made her hiss. Still sensitive. Facing the reflection, she finally saw the damage that Rall had done to her torso. One scar was just below the ribcage, on the right side. Another was a long gash across her sternum. The third was on her left breast. She was lucky to be alive. Shaking herself free of the worry that usually accompanied a close brush with death, Jarah massaged and scratched at her scalp, the short black hair framing her face shedding dead hairs and sand. "I will be back in a moment to tend your wounds," she said, rummaging through a trunk for a ruqun she remembered once liking. It was unassuming--a skirt with a voluminous upper garment, and though an upper skirt was often worn, too, she decided against it--and comfortable. And, now that she saw it again, she thought it rather too unassuming. Getting blood on it would be no great loss. She had other clothes. Stepping lightly out of the bedroom and across the short hall, she arrived at the kitchen. She hadn't thought about the possibility that she wouldn't be able to get water down here. Placing a dusty bowl under the spigot, she gave it a twist. To her surprise, water belched out, splashing into the bowl, filling it, and then stopping entirely. The rain-catching cistern on the roof must have been open, but it hadn't rained in quite some time. This was all that was left. Taking the copper bowl into the bedroom, she set it over the fire and then returned to the kitchen to fetch some rags. A few minutes later, she was carefully clearing the clotted blood off of Rihn's face. He made no comment; he'd passed out again. "I like him," said Kimhan from behind her as Jarah dunked the pink cloth into the reddish water. "Oh? Why is that?" "He was always nice to me." Jarah arched an eyebrow at the Athakar, then returned her attention to cleaning out the sand-ridged cuts on Rihn's cheeks. "What, with Tenhaim?" Kimhan nodded. "He wasn't a shouter, like the others. He never gave me strange looks that I didn't like. He didn't make me scared." "Is that why you trust him?" "Yes," said Kimhan softly, pulling herself onto the edge of the narrow bed and curling up with the blanket. "That is why." Jarah thought back at what Rall had said. Rihn had lied to his fellow fighters. Rihn was an undisclosed teka. Rihn wanted…what did Rihn want? Jarah couldn't say, exactly, which was also worrisome. A man who had hidden motives was a danger. Jarah knew that as well as most women. "Well, we'll see how good a man he is when he wakes up." "Will he wake up?" asked Kimhan around a yawn. Though the day was only slightly more than half over, the girl looked exhausted. Jarah was too, now that she thought about it. Invoking goddesses, running from killers…it was enough to take the wind from anyone's lungs. "Yes, I imagine so," said Jarah, finishing her ministrations. She had some herbal compounds, but their efficacy was likely gone. At this point, she had to let Rihn rest, as he had done for her. "What will we do next?" asked Kimhan, her head lolling in the comfortably warm room. "Rest, for now. And then we'll find that Blade." Rihn swore with such creativity and vigor that, despite not being religious, Jarah felt a flush of embarrassment that Kimhan heard him.
"What did I tell you yesterday?" asked Rihn, looking at the leader of the pack. Jarah followed his sightline and nearly jolted in shock: Rall, the man who had carved her up and left her for dead, led the three other fighters. "Leave us alone." "I talked it over," said Rall, sheathing his curved dao. "With some of the others." He gestured at the three--two women, both armed with sai and throwing darts, bristled and twirled their weapons; the other man, large and impressive, held an ornately covered square hammer, which he slapped into his open palm with a steady rhythm--and then spat. "They seem to think I made a mistake in leaving you." Rihn shifted, his posture underscoring what he wasn't saying. Jarah felt her uneasy suspicion sharpening into a murderous certainty. "Rihn, what is he talking about?" asked Jarah, her hand drifting toward her tokens. Better prepared than regretful. The bearded teka tried again with that stupid smile that Jarah knew he thought was charming. "He's upset with me that I talked him out of taking Kimhan back the first time." "You aren't taking her to Tenhaim, are you, Rihn?" asked Rall, unsheathing a dark blade, a familiar blade. Jarah realized with a start that Rall had kept her weapon after nearly killing her with it. Her emotional control slipped--not much, but some. "I told you yesterday, she's safe with me." "It isn't about her safety now." The sound of the theopolemic had long since become a background noise to Jarah's ears, but the timely cracking of a building and distant roar of an infuriated goddess was enough for her to realize the truth of Rall's words, even if he had said them with a different intention. "It's about getting back the slumlord's property." "She's not going with you," said Jarah, her left hand somewhat hidden behind the half-cloak she still wore, despite the dirt and bloodstains on it. Her hands brushed past the empty sheath and onto one of her small pouches, fingering open the flap with a practiced ease. Rall tipped his head back and laughed. "You left the whore alive, did you, Rihn?" Rihn gritted his teeth, as if the insult to Jarah's honor were something personal to him. Strange, considering the way things looked now. "'I will take care of both of them' were your exact words, as I recall," said Rall. "You were going to 'take care of me', were you?" Jarah growled more than spoke. "You didn't leave Tenhaim at all. You were looking for a chance to betray us." "No, that's not--" Jarah tightened her grip on one of the tokens, feeling the grooves with her thumb. No, not that one. She clicked it. Not that one, either… Rall laughed again. "You suckered her well, I'll give you that. But the ruse is over. You're not a traitor to a slumlord like Tenhaim, are you, Rihn? No, because you knew that if you wanted your debts erased, you couldn't do something as stupid as betray the man who controlled every aspect of your life. Right?" Jarah felt the iron taste of betrayal in the back of her throat. She had trusted Rihn--maybe not fully, but enough. He'd watched over her while she recovered from infusing herself with ichor. He'd paid for the room at the inn. He'd thrown away his livery, wearing instead the robes of an acolyte to a religion he likely didn't believe in. Yet here he was, confronted with the reality that he was, in fact, a double agent. Click. Still not the right one. With this many gods and goddesses already out, she knew she wasn't likely to be able to pull off a random toss, the way Rihn had with Liool. Still, she didn't like the way the odds were shifting. Four of Tenhaim's fighters were one thing; a traitor who was a teka, too? That made it all the more complicated. The roof was an expansive one, with crenellations on three sides and only some stored barrels and the boxes on which Kimhan sat. The four fighters had originally swarmed up a single ladder, coming with such speed that Jarah had hardly even noticed the time between one arriving and the next. The wind stirred and the air gained the thick taste that she always associated with an impending sandstorm. A group of people screamed as the sound of an attacking deity tore into their ranks. She put her scarf up over the bottom half of her face and adjusted her goggles. Jarah's entire body tensed. Click. That one? Maybe… "You're right about one thing," said Rihn, who refused to look at Jarah as he spoke. "I would do something that stupid." Rihn jerked his hand, a motion that made Jarah flinch as surely as it did the fighter he'd aimed it at. The fighter--one of the sai-wielding women--slapped the object out of the air. It shattered, spraying her with tiny shards of glass. She yelped in surprise and pain, the action spurring the remaining three fighters into a frontal attack. Jarah pulled out her three darts, holding one in between each of her fingers on her left hand and tossed one at the uninjured woman. She wasn't expecting that--too focused, as she had been, on Rihn--and took the dart to the flesh in her leg. "Cheen!" shouted Rall, his attention splitting as he saw what happened to the woman. Click. Yes. That one. Rihn sprinted forward, armed with nothing but his fists, and squarely punched the distracted Rall in the face. The blade skittered free, spiraling across the roof's surface. Jarah threw a second dart at the large guy, who had started a harsh swing toward Rihn's head. The dart glanced off his shoulder, hardly doing any damage, but throwing off his aim. The square hammer's gold-and-bronze head missed Rihn's by a finger's length. Glass Girl picked free one of the shards that had stuck in her face, then sprinted into the fracas with a scream. Jarah hurled the third dart--a slender metal shaft with a sharpened point…crude, but effective--and was unsurprised that Glass Girl deflected that one with her sai. Jarah scarcely managed to dodge the return volley as Cheen let loose with one of her own darts, drawing Jarah's attention from Glass Girl. Then things became complicated. Rall regained his feet faster than Rihn had expected, hurling himself forward and tackling the double agent in the midriff and pulling him to the rooftop. Big Boy regained his balance enough to focus on Jarah, who was now out of projectiles to throw. Glass Girl was almost within striking distance. Cheen had rearmed herself and rushed forward. Jarah took in a deep breath and released her worry. Yes, fear still pounded through her mind; yes, concern about what she would do tugged at her attention; yes, her heart thundered like a sandstorm in her chest. But these things were accepted, rather than dwelt upon. She let her body move according to action and reaction, not according to plan or expectation. She moved like smoke. Attacks from Glass Girl were blocked by twisting Cheen's weapon into the path of the sai. A quick kick to Big Boy's knee sent another would-be killing blow into the rooftop, causing the entire structure to echo with the force of the hit. Slashes from both women were dodged with a duck or an unexpected jump. Fists and feet flashed out as she expertly combatted three exceptionally talented fighters. Sweat rolled over her body, fogging up her goggles to the point that she had to tear them free just to keep from being punctured by a sai. Big Boy proved the easiest to avoid--his speed was proportional to his size, which Jarah took as a blessing of her blood that she at last could battle someone who conformed to his stereotype. She dodged between his legs, punching up as she did and scoring a direct hit to the man's crotch. He groaned and dropped as if he were a marionette with cut strings. Glass Girl shrieked with fury as Jarah rolled away, moving back into a more defense posture. Jarah's arms hurt from blocking so many blows and her legs ached from too much moving, too much jumping, too many kicks. Cheen's damaged leg still gurgled blood, and though it was clear she wasn't about to let it stop her, Jarah could tell that there wasn't much time left before Cheen's body disagreed enough and the fighter would drop. That left Glass Girl, whose fiery eyes were intense with a kind of hatred that Jarah rarely saw from a stranger. She circled carefully, new respect for her enemy clear in her body language. Jarah could see Big Boy trembling as he struggled to get to his feet. There wasn't much time left. Kimhan screamed. Jarah looked past her own fight and saw that things were not going well for Rihn. He was on his back, Rall on top of him, pinning the other man's arms to the ground, and was rearing back for another bloody-fisted punch into the already tenderized face. She could remain engaged with her three, or go help Rihn. Rihn had conflicting loyalties. Maybe he was getting his comeuppance. If she left Rihn to die, she wouldn't have to worry about maybe having to kill him later. Big Boy was fully on his feet now. Glass Girl feinted, probing for a weakness. Cheen pulled a dart out from her belt, bracing herself to be able to throw. Kimhan's shriek cut through her focus. "Help him, please!" Decision made, Jarah broke away, sprinting as fast as she could toward Rall, her half-cloak whipping behind her. The gravel crunched beneath her thin boots. The early winds heralding the impending sandstorm whistled into her ears. "Rall! Look out!" It sounded like Cheen, but it could have bene Glass Girl. A heavy thud struck her hard in the back, on her right shoulder, but her armor held. Whatever hit her--probably a dart--bounced off, doing little more than causing her to slightly stumble. The wind shoved as her legs pushed. The distance seemed interminable. Another dart whistled past, likely missing due to the sandstorm. Jarah thanked her blood for that mercy. Rall didn't hear the second shout, which was muffled by the increasing winds anyway, and so he wasn't expecting Jarah to knee him in the ear while running at her maximum speed. The wet crunch of smashed cartilage was audible despite the weather, and Rall fell off of Rihn with a shocked grunt. Jarah had to admit, that felt good. A wave of satisfaction washed through her, which she tamped down. She couldn't get distracted by one good hit. She looked at the victim; Rihn didn't move. Jarah took a single step toward him from where she'd slid to a stop, only to barely manage to wrench her way out of the path of Glass Girl's sai. If nothing else, the woman was a fast sprinter. The deadly weapon flickered and shimmered as it gouged the air about her. Jarah knew she couldn't dodge indefinitely, yet Glass Girl's defenses were almost as good as her offenses. Every time Jarah thought she had an opening, Glass Girl would parry the blow. Once, Jarah got a solid punch in, but since she was still unarmed, the effect was negligible. Big Boy lumbered forward, swinging wildly as Jarah ducked beneath one of his blows, blocked one of Glass Girl's, and dove forward, rolling in between them. She glanced over. Rall was standing, blood trickling from his right ear. She'd likely deafened him permanently. Sand began to kick up, getting caught in her eyes. Far away, a goddess roared in pain. Chest heaving, sweat pouring despite the wind, Jarah knew she was beaten. There was nothing else she could do. And that made her angry. The easy part was getting out from the Underdwelling. The hard part proved what to do when they arrived topside.
All around them gods and goddesses warred. Tenhaim's women and men had come in large numbers--enough, Jarah thought, that there was something else going on besides her inadvertent rescuing of Kimhan to inspire such a force--and currently battled the escaping acolytes. More than a half dozen deities raged against comparable quantities on the other side, meaning that Tenhaim had deployed some of the teka loyal to him, while there were a handful of the acolytes who knew how to Invoke. Jarah wondered if Honu knew: After all, Invoking was considered blasphemous by most of her cult. She had pulled them free of a trapdoor in the floor of an empty cellar, then crept to the top of the stairs to look out at the street. It was there she saw and heard the chaos of a theopolemic in multiple levels. Llodan and Kurnos--the Goddess of Anticipation and the God of Vigilance--were locked in a battle of tentacles. Llodan's wolf head lashed out from inside a coil of smoky-white curls, her snarl dancing around teeth easily as long as Jarah was tall. Claws darted free of the whirl of ribbon-like tendrils to scratch at the lumbering form of Kurnos, whose body looked like it had been assembled by leftover roots. Green eyes glowed malevolently from within the dark depths of the human-like head of the god as he caught the extended claw that had swept toward his eyes. With a growl, Kurnos twisted his massive green-black body, the sound of trees bending in a sandstorm filling the air. Llodan crashed against a building, pillars of debris and powdered mortar billowing in multiple directions. Kurnos raised a foot half the diameter of the street's width and dropped it on Llodan's snarling head. Jarah flinched as plumes of ichor erupted out from both sides of Kurnos' feet. Turning behind her, she gestured. "Come on, we're clear." By the time all three were out of the cellar, however, her assessment was no longer true. An acolyte, his red-and-white robes flaring about him, screamed as a qiang drove into his guts. The Tenhaim fighter pushing the spear screamed as well, pinning the acolyte to the wall as the poor man's lifeblood gushed in unseemly gouts to the ground, staining his robes a darker red. Kimhan stared, her eyes registering the viciousness of the death. Despite the likelihood of having seen something similar during her time with Tenhaim, Jarah could see the sight shocked her. She put herself between the girl and the Tenhaim guard, who jerked the qiang free, letting the acolyte slump to the ground and finish his ignominious death unwatched. Behind the fighter, two gods--Hajit, God of Sadness versus Anj, God of Awe--smashed into each other. Hajit's dark, spindly arms wrapped around the almost-human shape of Anj's body. Anj drove his head--which was nothing but two mighty horns growing out of a swirl that, looked at too long, gave her vertigo--hard into the pale, mask-like face of Hajit. The God of Sadness' face cracked amid a shower of ichor. He fell back, pulling the God of Awe out of view. The ground trembled a moment later as the two fell to the ground. Glass shattered from windows at the concussive force stormed through the street. "Another acolyte," growled the guard, his bald head shining with sweat in the red sunlight of the afternoon. Blood--and not just from the slaughtered man at his feet--drew crazy lines across his face and dangled in his beard. The austere cut of Tenhaim's uniform looked even more dangerous with its golden trim lost amid the bloodstains. "And a girl that may just be what I need." Jarah dropped into a defensive posture. This man outweighed her by about one dan of muscle--nearly twice her weight, if she had to guess-and held his gory qiang with a determination that made Jarah swallow hard. She could take him…probably. But to do so, she'd have to kill him, as she'd done to Tenhaim's brother and the other guards that Tenhaim had sent after her. Violence wasn't always the answer… …but sometimes she couldn't see any better way. Before she could move, a glitter passed in her periphery, moving fast and toward the approaching man. A vial broke in between his feet, with the ichor inside of it reacting to the air and swirling out and upward. From the dark mist a long hand shot out, grabbing the guard by the head and flexing. The crunching sound turned Jarah's stomach. Out of the puddle of Invoked ichor crawled a long-limbed goddess--Liool, whose domain was concern--her unsettling form making Jarah's uneasiness even worse. Liool looked like a woman dressed in a sheer gray slip, but everything about her was wrong. Every part of her seemed to be pulled out with pseudopodia writhing at every edge. She looked like a hedgehog whose quills all ended in a sharp mist, rather than anything tangible. Liool turned her blank eyes toward the trio. As she moved in a lurching, stumbling gait, the streamers of misty spikes lingered after her, making a ghost-like trail. Liool smiled--a mixture of pleasure and worry that couldn't survive on a human face--and her lips oozed a red blood that mingled with the streaks of her face. She gurgled and reached out a bloody hand--she had dropped the mess that she'd made of the fighter's head--as she flopped forward. Jarah took a step back, not sure what emotion she had enough of that she could fling to fight this goddess. Which tokens did she even have? Did she have time to glance down and take stock? "Stop," said Rihn, the command in his voice drawing Jarah up short. She shot him a confused, angry glance. What did he want her to do, let them get destroyed by this goddess? She realized that Rihn wasn't looking at her. He was looking at Liool. "My blood," whispered Jarah as understanding dawned. "You're a teka, too!" Rihn grimaced and nodded, his attention on Liool. "Stop. You need to go fight out there, not come after us." Liool paused, the smile fading into a perplexed expression of concern. "Do it," insisted Rihn. Liool gurgled again, then obeyed, stumbling out of the alley into which the cellar had deposited them. With an uncanny screech, she launched herself at the closest deity--Anj, from the quick glimpse Jarah managed. Jarah swallowed, turning. "When were you planning on telling me?" Rihn shrugged. "It's not something I like to noise about, you know?" Jarah scowled. "We'll discuss what this means later. For now, we need to get out of the city and head north." Rihn nodded. "I can see through Liool's eyes that any attempt going that way--" and he pointed in the direction the Goddess of Concern had gone "--is suicide. The fighting seems lightest to the north." He gestured to his right. "We just have to get out of this section." A shriek as a deity--moving too fast for Jarah to see what it was--soared overhead and crashed on top of a building. The structure began to tumble, the sound and throbbing of the falling deity and bricks was enough to make the ground shake. "I'll take care of us, then," said Jarah, pushing past Rihn toward the dead end of the alleyway. "Um," said Rihn. "There's no way we can--" Jarah took a short run, then leaped upward, kicking off one wall, the other, at last reaching high enough to catch the lip of the roof. A moment later and she was bracing herself with the rope lowered down to the alleyway floor. "Put Kimhan in the loop," she ordered. "I guess that can work," said Rihn. He put the Athakar into the makeshift loop and Jarah hauled the girl up with two or three quick heaves. Jarah toyed with the idea of leaving Rihn, but before she could let the thought germinate, she dropped down the rope again. Rihn was significantly heavier than Kimhan--a detail Jarah didn't spare in relaying to the man. "I'll do my best to be lighter next time," he said. "Follow me." Jarah began a trek across the rooftops, dropping down only to reach up and help Kimhan down whenever needed. Occasionally, Kimhan would hold onto Jarah's shoulders so that they could leap over a narrow alley. As they ran, Jarah watched the theopolemics in the distance. Most gods were half again as large as a man like Rihn--assuming the god took a human-like form--while goddesses tended to be a touch taller than that. Some gods took animal-like forms, many of which were significantly larger than their mortal counterparts. And then some were enormous. Two enormous deities tore into the homes of countless people in Gallhin. Below them, she could see them streaming from houses and businesses, their lives shattered by the divine crashing through them. Unless she missed her guess--and Jarah hadn't done that in a lifetime, at least not in terms of identifying deities--Orgos, God of Rage burned with molten lava in a writhing mass of tendrils that made the form of Llodan, the wolf-headed Goddess of Anticipation, seem like a stick. Orgos battled the six-armed Goddess of Despair, Lythra, their two bodies smashing into each other almost as much as they broke down the dwellings about them. Jarah was grateful they were far enough away to avoid those two. "Good call on choosing Liool back there," said Jarah as they navigated a tricky rooftop--it was collapsing on one side and the exposed ribs of the building felt rotted. The smell of something dying (besides the people and the gods and goddesses) was particularly strong here. Jarah regretted starting up the conversation as the smell began to push harder into her nostrils. "Oh. Um. Thanks. Why was that a good call?" Jarah shrugged as she kept a guiding hand on Kimhan's back. "You know: Liool Invokes really quickly and she isn't so large that we'd be crushed when she arrived." "That was…pretty much all luck." Jarah glanced over her shoulder. Rihn was concentrating on where he put his feet, the pink tip of his tongue visible through the forest of his beard. "Luck?" "Yeah. It just so happened that her symbol was already selected on the token. I thought I was summoning her--I mean, I had to be sending the emotion, which was ready enough--but I wasn't really sure I had remembered the symbol." He arrived safely at the far side of the ruined roof. "It looks like I did." Jarah grunted. "I thank my blood for your good luck." "Amen to that," he said. In the distance, a fountain of ichor streamed into the bloody sky as Orgos ripped one of Lythra's arms free, sending the Goddess of Despair to the ground. Jarah turned away and focused instead on getting them northward. They moved slowly, yes, but it was safer than being on the streets with the rivers of terrified people fleeing the theopolemic. Jarah hadn't seen this many deities in a single place since the Breaking of the World. Since she had broken the world. "How do you do it?" Kimhan's question pulled Jarah out of her reverie. The teka looked down at the Athakar, startled that the girl even had to ask. "Invoke gods and goddesses?" "Yes." Jarah blew out a breath. She straddled a narrow gap between two roofs, hefting Kimhan up by the armpits before setting her down on the gravely rooftop. Rihn hopped over, then extended his hand. Jarah took it and he helped her shift weight from one foot to the other. "It's simple," said Rihn, taking up the question that Kimhan had asked Jarah. "You focus an emotion that fits with the deity's domain, shove it down, and then let it loose." Kimhan gave Jarah a confused look. Jarah laughed. "The first step is knowing what each symbol is." She hunkered to Kimhan's height, then unclipped one of her tokens. She pointed at the small window on the top of the token, then turned the wheel, its multitudinous edges pressing against her skin in that too-familiar pattern she'd come to know. The icon in the window clicked away, showing the next, then the next. "See? Each one corresponds to a different god or goddess." "But why does that matter? Isn't the ichor the same?" Jarah sniffed, then held up the vial. No longer than her thumb, the black, viscous liquid sloshed lethargically as she shook it up. "It is. Well, at least, normally it is. After the Athakar harvest the ichor--that is, once it's had some time to be in the mortal realm, but no longer exposed to the air--it denatures to the point that it acts simply as a conduit for any Invoked deity. The symbol and the emotion that the gods and goddesses feed upon--we call it their domain--are what let the deities know if they've been Invoked or another one." Kimhan gave her a blank look. "Emotions?" Jarah sighed and stood. She returned the vial to its place on her belt, then continued across the rooftop, doing her best to ignore the sounds of chaos below them. It was incongruous, to say the least, to be having a discussion on theology while a theopolemic raged about them, but if it kept Kimhan from being scared, so much the better. "Think of a wheel with eight spokes. Can you picture that?" Kimhan nodded. "Inside of those spaces reside the fourth-tier emotions--the deepest, most refined feelings a person can have." "Like love?" Jarah smiled. She remembered asking the same question the first time she had learned some theology, now two lifetimes back. "No, love is easy. That's a first-tier emotion. Fourth-tier are feelings like rage, ecstasy, or terror. They are deep, fast, and powerful." "Unless the fifth-tier goddess is real," added Rihn from behind her. Jarah rolled her eyes. "That's myth. It doesn't make sense to have four tiers and eight emotions in each, only to have a fifth one that surrounds them all." "I don't understand," said Kimhan. "That's all right, Kimhan. Don't worry about Rihn's idea. It's a fringe one anyway. So, as I was saying, the fourth-tier--" "I always learned it the other way around," interrupted Rihn, bending over to steady a plank of wood so that Kimhan could cross over a missing patch of roof. The girl walked with her arms extended outwards, wobbling enough to make Jarah's heart hop in fear. But Kimhan arrived safely on the other side without a problem. Jarah and Rihn made the jump without the need of the plank. "What do you mean?" "Well, I mean, there are eight emotions on each tier, right? First-tier emotions are things like love and submission. You combine those two and you get acceptance--a second-tier emotion. Refine that second tier emotion--personalize it, is what I always think of--and then you have trust." "That's a third-tier?" asked Kimhan, frowning with concentration. "Right." Rihn smiled at her. "Take trust, deepen it with conviction and you have…" "Admiration?" Jarah raised her eyebrows. She hadn't expected the girl to intuit that particular derivation. Rihn clapped his hands; Kimhan smiled. "So you do that all the way around the eight circles?" asked Kimhan, obviously trying to imagine it all in her mind. "Right. You get better at discovering the nuances of your feelings as you go along." Jarah shrugged as they picked their way over a sloped roof, moving carefully to avoid slippage. "Eventually you get to the point of being able to truly differentiate between what you're going through. The next step is to do to your feelings what you've done to the ichor: Bottle it up for use later." "How does that work?" asked Kimhan, pulling herself up with a windowsill as a handhold. "I picture it as a ball," said Jarah. "I wad it up and shove it down. Then I can pull it out later, as needed." "I think of what evokes that emotion in me," said Rihn, hissing as he tugged out a splinter he'd picked up from their climb. "Like, I'm not a fan of insects, so that's an easy way to Invoke Gorbaj, Goddess of Fear." "So…you throw the vial after feeling afraid?" "Only once I've selected Gorbaj's icon on the token. But, yes, that's pretty much how we Invoke." "Not everyone can do it," said Jarah hastily. The last thing she needed was Kimhan Invoking a god and making their lives miserable as a result. Jarah only knew of a handful of people like Tenhaim who could syphon off a god or goddess' domain and Dismiss the deity without having Invoked it first. "It takes a lot of practice and mastery of your emotions." "The better you control your feelings, the better you can control the god or goddess," said Rihn. "You're connected to them. Right now, I can see that Liool is about to die…" He stopped walking, his eyes closed and his brow furrowed. "Okay, I Dismissed her." Kimhan stared at Rihn with an expression of admiration that, for some reason, caused a spike of jealousy that she tucked away. She could reduce that to a feeling of contempt or annoyance and store those for a later Invocation, if she wanted. "You can just…send her away?" Rihn nodded. "It's easy to Dismiss a deity--the hard part is getting them here. They don't belong in the mortal realm. It's really only the emotional 'food' that they get from the teka that gets them here in the first place." "Others can feed it, though," said Jarah, looking over her shoulder at the still-fighting Lythra. There were certainly a lot of people feeling despair right now--no wonder the goddess continued the theopolemic. "It will keep the deity around longer." "Sure," said Rihn, "but the teka has last say." "Why would you send her back?" asked Kimhan, sitting down on an abandoned stack of crates to catch her breath. "I mean, why ever Dismiss a god?" "Like mortals, wounds hurt them, even kill them. If a god or goddess dies in the mortal world, their power is dispersed into the AfterWorld. It takes some time before the deity can be Invoked again." "But doesn't that mean that your enemies couldn't use it?" "Yes," said Jarah, again impressed at the speed with which Kimhan understood theology. "And there is only one of each deity, so two people can't both summon, say, Lythra." "What she means to say," said Rihn, plopping down on the gravel next to Kimhan, "is that, because there's only one of each, the teka have to be certain that they can have access to whichever one they need for the moment." He paused, waving a hand at the destruction that they had left behind. "You can use gods or goddesses for something other than punching another deity to death. If they've 'died' then they are out of the equation, as it were." "So, it's selfish?" "Basically." Kimhan frowned. "It seems like there aren't a lot of things that a teka could do…what if another teka elsewhere were using the goddess you wanted, Jarah? How would you know?" Jarah grunted. "The vial would break and nothing would happen. It's one of the risks of theomancy." "Before the Breaking of the World," said Rihn, "things were different. The deities would manifest themselves differently, depending on the teka. Back then, there could be multiples. It's only been the last, what, twenty years that we've had to 'share' the deities? Something like that." Jarah looked away. She knew he wasn't saying that to blame her, but she felt the sting anyway. "Look, we can't sit around forever. We're not out of Gallhin yet. We should get going before anyone finds--" Almost as if they had been awaiting her words, four of Tenhaim's fighters charged onto the roof, weapons bristling. From the corner of her eye, Jarah saw Kimhan push through the beaded curtain. She did so with a silence that impressed the teka. The girl had all sorts of surprises, didn't she? Without a word, Kimhan orbited past Honu and behind Rihn, settling down on a cushion with her legs crossed. From what Jarah could see, both Rihn and Honu were too preoccupied by the map to notice the intrusion.
"Well, I would prefer not to die in a war between a slumlord and whoever it is he's presently bothered by," Honu was saying. "Agreed," said Rihn, gesturing at the map. "Anyway, the purpose of this isn't to discover Tenhaim's plans, but to find the Blade." Rihn's comment drew Jarah's attention. The last time she'd held the Blade, it had been on the Plains of Gar, a broad steppe leagues to the north. She scanned the map until she had located it, then traced southward, hoping--likely a vain hope--that it would turn into something significant. To her surprise, she found a strangely pulsing light, nestled in a low valley some seventy leagues south of where she had broken the world. A river coursed nearby, which could explain why the item was there…assuming the pulsing light was what she thought it might be. Squinting, Jarah tried to get a better view. The map shifted, flying inward like a descending hawk. Jarah blinked and reared, startled. The map returned to its previous scale. Neither Honu nor Rihn had noticed the change. Cautiously, Jarah repeated her tactic. The results were the same. Maintaining her focus on the pulsing point, she squinted again, as if more carefully considering the loops and whorls on her own fingertips until she could see the sparkle of sweat on the ridges. The map continued to grow in her vision until it felt like she were in a tree overlooking the valley she'd espied. The pulsing item glowed like a star on a moonless night. Her breath caught. It was, indeed, the Blade--she'd recognize its sloped edge anywhere. Blinking, she sat back as the map reoriented itself. Curious, Jarah found Gallhin and focused her attention as she'd done before. Could she figure out where she was? The map swelled again, dark shapes as defined as clouds rushed past her as the teeming mass of streets, rivers, and people went in their multitudinous ways. Jarah bit down on a gasp as she saw the streets well enough that she could identify them. There was the alleyway where she'd been attacked, the Standard Inn… …and the approximate location of this underground room. Above it, according to her guess, was an entire squad of people. The distance was too great to recognize them, but the distinctive cut of their clothes let her know to whom they were beholden. "Tenhaim," she said softly. "What?" asked Rihn, his face looking concerned. "What about him?" "He's here," said Jarah, blinking and losing the enhanced view of the map. "Above us." "Impossible," said Honu flatly. "If he were nearby, we would know--" An acolyte rushed into the room, the same runner as before, an expression of frantic fear playing over his features. "Honu-khan, there's trouble!" Honu shot a distrustful look at Jarah, then turned to the messenger. "Get everyone out. Send off the emergency: We need to vacate immediately." The messenger looked shocked at his leader's quick response, but he followed orders. "We need to leave, too," said Honu. She reached for the cube, only to gasp when Jarah snatched it away before the zealot could touch it. "We'll take another way. I think I know where the Blade is." "You do? How?" Honu shook her head as she rose. "Never mind. That's immaterial. You can leave Kimhan with me and go--" "No," said Kimhan, stepping closer to Jarah. "I want to stay with Jarah." "It will be dangerous," said Honu, turning an imploring eye to Jarah. "Surely it would be better if we kept her with me, where it's safe." Rihn raised a finger. "You know that we're about to be attacked by Tenhaim's people, right? That isn't particularly safe." Honu growled and gestured. They followed her out of the room and into the labyrinthine hallways. Had not Jarah spent plenty of time there in the past, the turns would have quickly become dizzying. As it stood, she still had to pay attention to where they were going, trying to keep up with Honu as other acolytes and other Underdwellers scurried to escape paths or hiding places. "I don't think it's wise to take her away from some sort of stability," Honu said as they walked. "She's important." Kimhan tightened her grip on Jarah's hand. "Yes," said Jarah, "I think so, too. That's why I want her nearby; I won't rest easy if I think she might be in danger. And--" she continued, despite Honu making an attempt at interrupting, "--if I can't see her, that will mean she's in danger. I want her with me. She wants to stay with me." "And Rihn!" she added. Jarah shot a look at the girl, then one at the former guard, now acolyte-clad stranger. He shrugged, then smiled. "Are you certain?" Kimhan nodded. "I don't want you to be alone." "But I'll be with you," she said. When she saw Kimhan's fierce expression, Jarah decided to drop it. "Kimhan, Rihn, and I will head toward the Blade. You keep that map out of Tenhaim's possession." Honu looked furious, but before she could say anything, a scream from the hallway some three dozen or so paces ahead cut through their conversation. A loud crack, like the sound of stones breaking, and a belch of fire crashed into them. Some of the acolytes soared into the air, flying back into the crowd behind them. Others turned down adjacent passages, fleeing whatever it was. "Gunarchers," said Rihn. "I'm almost positive." "This way," said Honu, turning down a narrow corridor and then sprinting toward some distant target. Jarah had no choice but to keep up, eventually swinging Kimhan into her arms so that they could run with less resistance. The injuries of the night before burned beneath the sudden pressures, and her vision swam with a dizzy wave, but Jarah pushed through. Ichor withdrawal was never pleasant, but she'd gone long enough that she was almost fully mended. Another day or so and the scars would be the only remnants of the attack in the alleyway. Three people--two women and one man--burst into the slightly larger hallway they were traversing through. All three wore the colors and clothes of Tenhaim's slum. The women brandished short daggers--ideal for fighting underground--while the man carried a device cradled in his arms. The open mouth of the long tube was bedecked with swirls of iron in the shape of the face of Gorbaj, Goddess of Fear. From the temples of her head sprang the two arms of a bow, crafted to look like horns. The butt of the contraption, nestled against the man's hip, had a strand of smoking twine. Jarah had never seen a gunarcher before. But she could recognize a threat when she saw one. Honu dove to one side, and, behind her, she could hear Rihn doing the same. Holding Kimhan's head against her shoulder, Jarah followed suit, throwing herself into the wooden door of the closest room. The wood snapped easily beneath her force, though not without making her shoulder flash with pain. Behind her, a roar like an invoked god echoed, and a bright flash accompanied the thunder. Pieces of the corridor's wall mysteriously pulverized, small holes appearing where they hadn't been before, and the grimy dust of the ruined stone wafted in the air. "Reloading!" shouted the man. Jarah could hear Honu yell and then a woman was standing in the doorway. She had arrived so quickly that Jarah hadn't had the chance to regain her feet. The woman grinned, her face from the forehead to her nose blackened by paint so that only the whites of her eyes were visible. Blood dripped from the dagger she wielded, though Jarah didn't think that it was Honu's. The scrappy zealot wasn't likely to have been slit by a woman of this melodramatic fashion. It would be far too insulting. Jarah rolled over and gave Kimhan a push, clearing the girl from her arms. The Athakar yipped but took the hint and rolled under her own power. The knife came down, stabbing deeply into the wood of the door on which Jarah and Kimhan had just been lying. Seizing the opportunity, Jarah kicked out with her left leg, catching the woman hard under the ribs. A grunt and whoof of air expelled from her at the same time. The woman crashed against the wall, knocking down a shelf that was laden with crockery. Jarah spun to her feet, then leaped forward, catching her knee against the woman's unsuspecting nose. There was a distinct crunch, pop, and howl as blood squirted from the woman's face. Jarah stepped back, then swept her foot as hard as she could at the attacker. Boot met cheek and the woman slammed to the floor, breathing but unmoving. Jarah put out her hand. "Come on." Kimhan obeyed, though she stared at the still form of the attacking woman until they were out in the chaos of the hallway. Rihn was engaged with one of the attackers; Honu was nowhere to be seen. The gunarcher was also gone, the stench of burning saltpeter thick in the air. Jarah didn't know which way the attackers had gone, but she decided it wasn't worth sticking around for. She squeezed Kimhan's hand and started down the direction they'd taken before being attacked. "Rihn!" said Kimhan, planting her feet and skidding to a stop. "Go help him!" "He can handle himself," said Jarah, looking at the former guard as his acolyte robes fluttered about him. He tossed the attacker to the floor, then wrenched her arm hard enough to dislocate the shoulder. Then he stomped down on the screaming fighter's face, knocking her unconscious. "See?" Rihn caught up, sweat clear on his face and his breathing halting. "You two all right?" Jarah nodded. "Where's Honu?" "I was going to ask the same of you," said Jarah. "Well, how do we get out of here," he asked, "if we don't have Honu to guide us?" "There's an emergency ladder not far from here. It'll take us to one of the entrances aboveground." "If you say so." He gestured. "Lead the way." Jarah pulled on Kimhan's hand. "Come. It will all be all right." She met Rihn's eyes. "Let's go." Rihn gave a low whistle. "It's rare that you get to sit at the side of someone with such a knack for melodrama."
Jarah threw him a dirty look. "Listen--" Honu put up a hand. "Jarah, stop. He doesn't know." "And you do?" Jarah could feel her heart roaring, her temples throbbing at the idea of rearranging Rihn's smug face. "Do you have any idea how much guilt I feel? How hard it is for me to do anything, knowing I'm responsible for all of this?" She gestured furiously, as if trying to take in the world around them with a sweep of her arm. "We live under the bleeding ground, Honu." The woman, if she were offended by Jarah's swearing, didn't show it. "And I'm the one who broke the world." Rihn held up a hand. "Wait, you're serious?" He barked an incredulous chuckle. "You really are? I thought it was a joke." He glanced from woman to woman. Kimhan stared at the adults as she sucked on a rice ball. "No, Rihn," said Honu. "The Breaking of the World happened, in part--" and she gave Jarah a pointed look as she emphasized the words "--because of Jarah." The wave of guilt--always a steady tide in her mind--threatened to grow mountainous, and Jarah had to redirect the conversation, lest she drown in her regret. "My Blade and I played a decisive part. And…" She paused now, looking at the cube. "You're saying that we can get to the Blade again?" Honu nodded. "All we need to do is refer to the map." "Let me make sure I'm on the same riverboat here," said Rihn, leaning on the low table. "If we get this map, we can use the cube as a legend to determine where the world-breaking Blade is and, with it, we can repair the damage that was done at the Breaking of the World?" Rihn clapped his hands. "Then let's do it! Where's the map?" Honu waved a dismissive hand. "That isn't the hard part of this," she said, plucking a piece of fruit and chewing it. "The map is in my quarter aboveground." Rihn paused, his mouth ajar. "You already have it?" Honu nodded. "It was why I was trying to find this piece in the first place. Little Kimhan here has spared us all a great deal of effort." Kimhan shifted and looked at Jarah, an indecipherable expression on her small face. "Let's do this, then," Rihn said, snapping his fingers. It was an irritating gesture, Jarah felt. "Why wait?" "We don't know what we're getting into yet," said Jarah. "First step is to decide on where this map leads us. Only then can we decide what to do after." "I can have some of my acolytes fetch it," said Honu, "while we finish our meal." Both Rihn and Jarah agreed, and Honu called out for a servant. She delivered the order, then turned to the food. As she ate, Jarah said, "You never mentioned you were a minister." Honu bobbed her head as she chewed a rice ball. "You never asked." Jarah snorted and sipped some tea. "So what kind are you? You don't worship the gods, do you?" Honu shook her head. "The goddesses?" Honu sighed and sat back. "I am part of the Singular Cult. I--and my acolytes here--all believe that the powers of the deities should not be utilized by human kind. We believe that the All-Creator shaped the lower goddesses and gods, as well as human beings, as part of Its great self. The purpose of reincarnation is supposed to be to teach us how to live with others--having literally been someone else for however many lives, this ought to be easy." She wiggled her jaw, thinking. "Of course, we can see that this isn't the case, even before the End of Times began." "Do you think that the Breaking of the World was a good thing?" asked Rihn, surprising Jarah with his bluntness. After all, most people spent their last life trying to elongate it--few would think that they could never be reincarnated was actually the better option, that they only had one life to live and could never try again. Such a belief was fundamentally hopeless, so far as Jarah could see. Who would answer Rihn's question in the positive? "I think the Breaking of the World has helped us to better recognize what we have while we have it. The world, however, isn't healthy. There are gods and goddesses leaking into our mortal realm constantly--sometimes without even being Invoked. If we don't do something about that, our world really will end. Humans can't resist the unchecked power of the goddesses and gods." Jarah frowned. "I don't disagree," she said, "but what would that 'something' we're supposed to do look like?" Honu fingered the cube, contemplating the intricate designs. "I think that's what I'm hoping to find out when the map arrives." The table fell into an uneasy silence as everyone finished their meal. Some time passed before an acolyte--breathless and sweaty--rushed in through the beaded curtains, a long tube cradled in his arms. "Did you have any problems?" asked Honu, her eyes flashing with worry. The acolyte nodded, too run-stricken to even gasp out his story. Honu stood and helped the man--boy, really, probably no more than fifteen years old--to the table where she poured him a cup of ricewine. He drank it gratefully, breathing deeply, while acolytes rushed in--moving based on some unseen signal from Honu, Jarah guessed--and cleared the table. Honu unfurled the map, using saucers of tea and a plate to hold down the large section of parchment. "There were men," said the runner, once his breath returned, "that were scouring aboveground. Looking for the girl." He glanced at Kimhan, who hid behind Jarah at the attention. "They were wearing colors like his," he said, gesturing at Rihn. Rihn glanced down. "Maybe I should find a change of clothes," he said, rising. "Do you have anything?" Honu nodded. "When you're ready," she said to the messenger, "take our guest to find something that suits him. We don't need him drawing attention to himself, if we can help it." Rihn smiled as the runner reluctantly got to his feet and led him out. "Now," said Honu, "let's see what this can do." She picked up the cube. Kimhan whimpered. Jarah glanced down, but the girl didn't meet her gaze. Whatever it was that was bothering her, it had to do with that cube Honu held. Honu settled the cube on an empty square drawn in the bottom right-hand corner of the map, twisting it until it was perfectly set inside the box. Jarah noticed the intensity with which Rihn regarded the map. She squinted, trying to see something as well. "What are we looking at?" asked Rihn finally. "Um…" said Honu, her brow furrowed. "I'm not…I'm not sure what's going on." She reached out and shifted the cube, spinning it from one face to another. "It's supposed to work," she muttered under her breath. Kimhan stirred, tugging on Jarah's elbow. The teka leaned down, one eye still on Honu's map. "I need to use the privy," said Kimhan softly. "Oh. All right." Jarah hesitated, then began raising a hand to beckon an acolyte. Kimhan caught her sleeve. "No. You." "You want me to help you?" "Show me where it is." Jarah sighed. She didn't want to miss the map working, but Kimhan was clearly insistent. "Okay. Let's go." With something approaching an apologetic nod, Jarah excused herself and her ward. The other two didn't pay any attention to her, too busy leaning over the map and puzzling out the problem. Rihn was trying to explain why he should be able to try doing what Honu had just done as the curtain beads clacked behind Jarah and Kimhan. "The head is over here," said Jarah, pointing. "Show me." Jarah started down the hallway, bumping past more than one acolyte. To her surprise, Kimhan's small hand slid into hers. At first, Jarah thought of releasing the girl. After all, she hardly knew her, and it was strange to have a child's fingers within hers again. But the memories of Lillah's grip--freshened by the presence of Kimhan--made Jarah's heart thud with an almost-forgotten love. Unwilling to let that feeling go--not even to file it away for the future Invoking of Sophon, the God of Love--Jarah tightened her fingers over Kimhan's. When they were out of earshot of the room, Kimhan stopped. "It's just down this way," said Jarah, turning in confusion. "I don't need to go." Jarah frowned. "Why did you pull me out of the room, then?" "I don't want the map to work." Jarah pushed against the flare of irritation. "Kimhan, this isn't a time for games." "I don't know what games are," said Kimhan. Jarah hesitated. In the End of Times, what child did? "Tell me plainly what's going on. I don't have the patience for you to speak otherwise." "I don't want the map to work. I don't want to know where the Blade is." "But it's how we'll fix my mistake," said Jarah, trying to understand why the young girl wouldn't want to improve the world. Of course, when Jarah thought of it that way, it was obvious that Kimhan wouldn't understand that. How could she? The only world she knew was one where souls came into bodies only once, where gods and goddesses leaked out of Theopolis, where slumlords ruled and most people burned their minds out on the slumlords' product of choice, the hotflower. It could be frightening to try to imagine a world so different from the one she knew. Jarah dropped to one knee so that she could see Kimhan eye to eye. Explaining this to her might be difficult, but the girl needed to understand… "I don't want to die." Tears bubbled on Kimhan's lower eyelids. "I don't want to see the Blade." "Kimhan," said Jarah softly, pulling the girl into her arms. Inwardly, she chided herself--Kimhan was not Lillah, no matter how much they looked alike, regardless of how desperately Jarah wished otherwise--for being so weak as to let some drops of salt distract her. "I won't let you die. I promise you that." "You can't keep that promise," said Kimhan, her voice cracked and soft as she buried her head in Jarah's shoulder. "Yes," said Jarah, surprising herself with her own forcefulness, "I can. And I will." Kimhan pulled back and looked at Jarah for a long moment, the tears rolling down her tan cheeks like pearls rolling toward a cliff. "You promise?" "I already said I did. You'll be safe so long as you're with me." Kimhan sniffed and nodded. "Then you need to use some ichor." "What?" The comment was one of the last things she'd expected the young girl to say. "The cube. It'll only work with some ichor in it." Then Kimhan detached herself and walked past the teka toward the head. Jarah blinked, then turned, thinking of stopping the girl. She even raised her hand to try to forestall her, but stopped herself. Apparently the girl really did need to use the lavatory. Jarah contemplated what Kimhan had said. Ichor? Of course. There was even a low indentation in one of the sides of the cube--Jarah remembered that now--where a drop or two of divine blood could be put. But why would she have thought of that? Who would bother to use it like that… Jarah's eyes widened and she hurried back to the curtained room. As she walked in, Rihn folded his arms and sat down with a huff. "Quit pouting," Honu said, turning to see who'd entered. "It's unbecoming." "What's going on?" asked Jarah, taking her place at the table and scooping up the cube. "Did you get it figured out?" "No," said Rihn. "Madam-I-Know-Everything here won't let me try my idea." Honu gave Jarah the kind of long-suffering look of one who has spent too much time in the presence of fools. "He wants to break it open." "It makes sense!" he said, pointing at the cube with one hand. "There are insignias all over it, most of them simply artistic. But there's the one side with triangles, the points of which touch the edge of the die." Jarah spun it in her hand until she could see it. "And?" "Well," said Rihn, shooting a frustrated glare at Honu as he spoke, "it should fit snugly into the map's square." He pointed at the spot. "See how it's slightly raised? That should be where the cube fits in." "Yes, I see that," said Jarah, putting the cube down in the correct spot. The slightly raised lumps on the box on the map made it clear it was in the right position. Jarah pressed lightly on the upward facing indentation on the top face. "I don't see how breaking it open will help anything." "It's like an egg, right?" "Help me martyrs," whispered Honu. Rihn ignored her, leaning forward with an eager smile. "I mean, there's even the word egg right there on the side opposite the triangles. It's a clue. We crack it open like an egg and that will let us see what's supposed to--" Jarah pulled out a vial of ichor--she only had four left, having used more than she'd anticipated since last being at home--but decided it was worth it. Popping free the wheel-like token, she put on the needle accessory. Without explaining herself, she cracked the vial and allowed the blood to puddle in the concave surface. "What are you doing!" said Rihn, shifting in alarm, his hand dropping to his belt. "Jarah, you're not Invoking are you?" Honu sounded angry and insulted. Belatedly, Jarah realized that, for a member of the Singular Cult, Invoking a god or goddess could be considered almost blasphemous. Jarah didn't know for certain, but she guessed that, since Honu commanded the respect of so many converts, she was probably devoted enough to want to worship the deities of Theopolis. That idea made Jarah's stomach knot--gods weren't there for worship; they were there for servitude--but Honu was too powerful and useful an ally to reject simply because they differed on the purpose of the divine. Still, it wouldn't have hurt anything to warn Honu what Jarah was going to do. Jarah didn't need to answer: The cube began to pour forth a thick cloud, crawling across the surface of the map, filling in the long roads that connected the many parts of the continent. The mountains in the far west, the forests of the north, and the sprawling steppes in between all began to grow, as if the real world were being recreated in miniature. Along the roads, small people, animals, farms, and towns began to grow. Charging through the vastness of the plains were multiple herds of horses, including some who bore riders of the Empire of Gar. Jarah's eyes widened as she absorbed what she saw. "This isn't a map," she said, her voice soft. "It's the world." "Impossible," said Rihn, leaning closely enough to stare more closely at the map. His breath audibly caught. "My blood. It's my hometown!" He pointed at one area that Jarah didn't recognize. "You can barely see it, but there is the home where I lived. The pastureland behind it…" He trailed off, staring so intently that Jarah thought he might fall onto the map itself. "How did you know to do that?" Jarah swallowed. The thought of telling them that Kimhan had the idea first crossed her mind, but there was something about Kimhan's reaction to Honu that made her doubt the wisdom of that. "I noticed the concavity," she said instead, pointing at the cube. "And I thought, Why would Tenhaim have this piece? What does he have that would make this worthwhile? And it became clear…" "He's a slumlord. He sells hotflowers." Rihn frowned. "I don't get it." "Not just hotflowers," said Honu, nodding at Jarah, "but also ichor." "Right. Part of the reason he's so successful is that he has multiple revenue streams. Brothels, 'flowers, ichor, weapons…the man has control of a great chunk of the city." "And since he has ichors you thought that maybe the cube was, what, powered by it?" "It's not the sort of thing that would be useful to someone like you, Honu," said Jarah with more sharpness than she intended. She held up a hand to forestall the response that was obviously on the woman's lips. "I'm sorry. What I mean to say is that he would not have it if he didn't think he could use it. And the power of the deities seemed like the first step to try." She paused. "Also, there was a flake of dried ichor in the edge of the cube." Rihn chuckled. "Nice work. Especially considering how Tenhaim doesn't like it when people know that he's been working…" Rihn's words faltered. His mouth dropped into an O of understanding. "That explains his recent behaviors!" "What do you mean?" asked Honu, sitting up straighter. Rihn looked at the map, his eyes clicking about with a focus and alacrity that Jarah hadn't expected from the former (could she consider him that yet? The speed with which she trusted him made her leery of her own judgment) guard. He began to point at appropriate places. "We've been getting envoys and shipments from up and down the river. Strange stuff, since we normally don't deal with the Empire of Gar, yet we have a couple of caches of gunarcher weapons stashed away now." "Tenhaim has gunarchers?" Rihn nodded. "They've been training for a couple of weeks. The weapons are complicated and require quite a bit of practice." He pointed to the south. "The Princedom of Lesser Sowell and the Kingdom of Greater Sowell both have had official representative come speak to him." Jarah's mouth began to dry as Rihn spoke. What had she done, half-blinding a man like this? Jarah had known of Tenhaim's reputation and power, but she hadn't believed most of what she'd heard. Rumors, after all, made for poor evidences. It was clear she'd underestimated the man. A mistake like that wasn't likely to just go away. "I could go on, but the point is this: Tenhaim is preparing for a war." "With whom?" asked Honu into the stunned silence. Rihn shook his head. "I don't know. But I don't think we want to be a part of it." As Jarah said, "Wait, you know him?", Rihn pointed at Jarah and said, "Wait, you know her?"
The beads framing Honu's face clattered as she moved her head from one side to the other. The turquoise accents amid the shifting brown colors that comprised most of her clothing glittered in the dim light of the Underdwelling. A warm waft of scented air floated past Honu, who stared at them with her mouth wide, a slight smile that was simultaneously enigmatic and encouraging gracing the edges of her lips. "Yes, yes, I know you both. Obviously. Come in, come in." She shot a slightly confused look at Rihn. "Though I didn't expect to see you in the Underdwelling." "I didn't know you had, uh, residence here." He bobbed his head at the décor as he stepped in. Jarah watched his eyes flit over the silver pitchers, candlesticks, and vases, the highly-glazed porcelain plates and miniature dolls, the shimmering weapons that hung from the walls. Jarah herself couldn't help but notice the wall-scrolls--complete with precisely calligraphed poetry accenting the thin-lined drawings and vibrant colors--that adorned most surfaces. They weren't quite as nice as the polished possessions of Tenhaim, but they were still nicer than ninety percent of the dwellings beneath Gillhan's bustling streets. Jarah wasn't one to criticize how a person spent her money, but she couldn't avoid the feeling that maybe Honu was compensating for something. "I…acquired it not too long ago," said Honu. Jarah stiffened. That was a lie--she'd known about this place shortly after her memories of prior lives had returned to her. It was a stronghold for rebels. Honu and her devotees had taken control of it sometime between Jarah's third death and fourth birth. But what purpose did lying serve, especially when Honu knew that Jarah would catch it? Jarah frowned. She caught Kimhan's eye and gestured for her to come to her side. "Be careful, young one," she said softly as Kimhan's immense black eyes soaked in all of the finery. "There's more happening here than I can see." "I don't like her," said Kimhan, much to Jarah's surprise. "Oh? Why not?" Kimhan wrinkled her nose. "She smells." "That's just the incense. They burn those around corpses." Kimhan gave her a blank stare and Jarah shook her head. Perhaps she'd be better off leaving the jokes to other, more capable tongues. "Keep your eyes open and don't drift from me," said Jarah, patting Kimhan on the shoulder. "It should all be fine…eventually." Honu led the trio to a private room, separated from the rest of the residence by a beaded curtain. They sat on cushions on the floor, each one sitting cross-legged--which Jarah rarely disliked, though now it made her aches more acute. "Why are you here?" asked Honu, her gaze clicking from Jarah to Rihn until alighting on Kimhan. The young girl recoiled, tucking her head behind Jarah's protective elbow. "Things did not go the way I had planned," said Jarah. "I thought you were going to arrive yourself," said Rihn. Jarah turned to Rihn. "What did you say?" Rihn turned to Jarah. "What did you say?" Despite the obvious discomfort she felt at the situation, Jarah heard Kimhan giggle quietly. "Perhaps one at a time?" asked Honu. Jarah felt a spike of irritation. Honu was a powerful woman--not to the levels of Tenhaim, but not someone to treat lightly; everyone knew that--but that didn't mean that Jarah appreciated being spoken to in such a condescending tone. Rihn spoke first. "You told me you were going to be there last night and that you would so cripple Tenhaim he couldn't come after me." Jarah looked at Rihn, surprised at the heat in his voice. "Not only did you not show up, but we were attacked by some of Tenhaim's guards in an alleyway. We're lucky that we survived." "I think…" began Honu, only to be interrupted when Jarah jumped in. "I don't know what he's talking about at all. I thought you said that there would be 'something in Tenhaim's possession that would fix the way the world works'. Those were your exact words. Correct? You remember that, don't you?" Honu leaned back, putting one hand on her leg and the other on the low table that sat between them. "Those are…" "By my sweat and blood," swore Rihn, "you didn't send her in your place, did you?" "I--" "What's wrong with sending me?" asked Jarah, her face heating at the insinuation. "Nothing specifically," said Rihn, dodging the fire in her eyes by looking away. "I just…wasn't expecting you to be the one…" "Listen…" Before Honu could continue, Jarah turned to face the man who had surprised her in the alleyway. "What, you thought that Honu has the skills to infiltrate a slumlord's compound?" "Hey!" It was Honu's turn to sound offended. "She has a reputation that I wouldn't doubt. So, yes, I did." He licked his lips and tugged his beard, the tattoos on his arms looking like dark scratches in the pale lantern light that illuminated the room. "I was under that impression." "So sorry to disappoint," said Jarah, turning away and finding something else to look at--which was precious little in the room. Surrounded as it was by rice-paper walls and dark wooden frames, the room was comfortable if a tad bland. A servant--or, and Jarah hadn't noticed this before, an acolyte, at least judging by her clothes--came in with a tray overladen with dates and prunes, grapes and raisins, skins of wine and water, as well as a steaming kettle for tea and some balls of sauced rice. She set it down in front of the party, then whisked away, the beads clacking softly in her wake. Without waiting for permission, she picked up a date and began chewing her irritation into it. "Can we start over?" asked Honu, twitching her eyebrows at the breach of decorum. "Please, help yourselves and let's lay this all out clearly." Jarah sucked in a breath. "You were my source in yesterday's attack on Tenhaim's compound." "Correct." "And you gave me a map, even, of the place. Right?" "Map?" asked Rihn. "The one I made for you?" With that, it became clear in Jarah's mind. "You were her inside man?" "Why do you sound so incredulous?" "Because…well…" Honu smiled. "Rihn has been looking for a way out from Tenhaim's grasp for quite some time." Rihn returned the smile--his "I-presume-this-is-charming-so-I-will-keep-using-it" smile--and scooped up a rice ball with the provided chopsticks. "I'm eager to find a new way of living my life." "Yes, well," said Honu, shifting at his intense look, "that remains to be seen." "Let me get this perfectly straight," Jarah said around another date. "You--" and she pointed at Rihn "--came to her--" this time, she pointed at Honu "--with information about Tenhaim that you--" again, a gesture at Honu "--then shared with me. Yes?" "That is true," said Honu, pouring a cup of hot water into her cup and gently stirring her tea. "I did that very thing." "And you said you'd help Rihn if he gave you that information?" "Right." Jarah turned to Rihn, who chewed another rice ball as he watched, amusement on his face. "And so you helped me in the alley because of her?" Rihn shook his head. "No, I did that because I was in the neighborhood and thought that maybe you could use some help." Jarah made a disgusted noise. "You just so happened to be in the right place after a person broke into your master's compound?" Rihn's face immediately darkened. "He's not my master now." Jarah waved the distinction away. "You aren't perhaps missing some key component here, Rihn? Some connection between me and Honu?" Rihn shifted uncomfortably. Kimhan took another helping of sweet grapes--the fare was significantly fresher than Jarah would have expected, which made a dark part of her mind suspicious enough to note it but not enough to worry--and busied herself with the repast. Apparently, the food they'd bought of the merchant hadn't satisfied the girl. And, now that she thought on it herself, Jarah could stand some more sustenance herself. "I will be honest," Honu said, spreading her hands out wide. "I sent you to Tenhaim's compound to find a particular object that I thought was in his personal quarters. I used Rihn's advice and knowledge of the place to set you in the right direction. I thought that you had enough skill and sense to avoid getting spotted." Jarah bristled at the tone. "Honu, this may be one of your homes, but I am not one of your acolytes." She sniffed at even the idea of such a thing. "I have the skill. I used my skill to infiltrate Tenhaim's home. He didn't have anything worth purloining." "Except, what, this girl?" Honu laughed a forced laugh, making it a point not to look at Kimhan, who was staring into the darkness of her tea. "I found the girl, yes. She was an…" Jarah trailed off. She had no reason to share the fact that Kimhan was actually an Athakar. Honu was a holy woman--though of what Jarah hadn't ever bothered to find out--and might take the fact that the girl harvested godly ichor as many did: A sign of Kimhan's innate wickedness. Jarah cleared her throat. "She was an unexpected presence in the room. I killed Korl, Tenhaim's castrated brother. Then, before I could--" Honu held up a hand, her face grave. "Wait, did you…did you say that you killed Korl?" "Yes." "Did you…" Honu shook her head, as if trying to process all of the information and its implications at once. "Does Tenhaim know you did it?" "Yes." Honu put a hand over her eyes. "I did not know you'd done that." "You don't know what I did at all! You weren't there!" "My blood and tears," said Rihn under his breath. "I'd appreciate it if you'd stop swearing in my presence," said Honu, though it came across more of a habit than with any real force. "Sorry," he said. To Jarah's surprise, he looked genuinely remorseful. "Look," said Honu around a large sigh, "this complicates things. You took Kimhan from him. You killed his brother. At least you didn't take anything from his room." Jarah frowned, a question forming on her tongue only to be lost when Kimhan perked up. "I took something!" "You did?" asked Jarah. "You did?" asked Honu. "You did?" asked Rihn. Intimidated by the sudden attention she'd gained from the adults, Kimhan recoiled. Jarah, shoving her irritation into a mental container so that she could harvest it later, if needed, she put a soft hand on the back of the young Akathar. "Could you explain what you mean?" Kimhan looked about uncertainly, her face one of fear. "I don't want you to get mad." "I won't," said Jarah, doing her best to force out a genuine smile. "I promise." Kimhan reluctantly nodded. Reaching beneath the table and her grimy tunic, Kimhan pulled out a cube--not big enough to take up Jarah's entire palm--and set it on the table. Each of the six sides was carefully carved with the most intricate calligraphy that Jarah had ever seen. The runes themselves didn't make any sense to her--she couldn't tell what each one was saying, and she had three other lifetimes of language and reading to rely on. Maybe it was simply decorative? "By the deaths of the martyrs," whispered Honu. "Hey! You're swearing now," said Rihn, a slight smile on his lips to show he was teasing. Honu ignored him. "Kimhan," said Honu, "do you know what this is?" "Tenhaim would look at it. A lot. That's how I knew he loved it." Kimhan touched it lightly with a slender finger, then put her hands back into her lap. "He said it was all that he needed to keep everything going." "Why would he talk to you, child?" asked Jarah, the sense that something was wrong not formulating fully in her mind but being incapable of teasing out why. "Well, I'm an Ath--" Jarah sat up straight, one hand slapping the table. Honu gave her a puzzled look while Rihn leaned back, as if afraid she had some disease that he didn't want to catch. "The point is," said Jarah, frantically trying to think of an excuse for her behavior, "you know what this thing is. Why don't you explain it?" Honu shifted in her seat and glanced from adult to adult. At last she said, "Very well. It is a legend." Rihn frowned. "What, like a story?" "No, like for a map." Jarah felt her skin prickle and she glanced to make sure the acolyte wasn't standing too close to the beaded curtain. "Ah," said Rihn. "This, Jarah…" Honu paused, considering. "This was what I was hoping you would find in Tenhaim's quarters." Jarah let the spike of irritation season her next words. "Why didn't you bloody well say that, then?" Honu shook her head. "I wasn't certain it was there. Rumors only, you know. Suppositions. That's why I sent you in to try to find something. I didn't know what it might be." "Why do you need a legend?" asked Rihn, leaning forward to peer more closely at the cube. "Because," said Honu, "that's how we'll get to the Blade." Rihn raised an eyebrow. "The…blade?" He gestured at his belt. "I've a blade here, if you really want it…" "Not a blade," said Jarah, her heart stuttering in her chest at the thought. "The Blade." Rihn stared for a moment, then widened his eyes. "You mean--" Honu nodded. "Yes. The Blade that ushered in the End Times. The Blade that broke the world." "My Blade," said Jarah into the stunned silence. |
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