Читать книгу Schisms - James Wolanyk - Страница 12

Chapter 5

Anna had never known how opulent a kator’s capsule could be. It was a pastiche of gold leaf and swaying velvet drapes and aged, varnished wood, thick with the scent of rosewater. Lanterns sustained by rattling vials of sparksalt solution and magnetic beads bathed the capsule in an otherworldly crimson glow. It stood in opposition to the cramped, rusting furnaces Anna remembered, which she hadn’t experienced since leaving Malijad. But wealth alone seldom brought comfort.

They’d been gliding along the impeccable Nahoran rails for well over two hours, and during the kator’s occasional stop, Anna glimpsed cities that grew more lavish and clean, gleaming in the sunlight like diamonds pressed from portico and vibrant greenery. Cities so stunningly adapted to the rugged mountain passes and damp, grassy lowlands that they made Zakamun seem like a Hazani outpost.

Across the divide of a low table and four-armed silver hookah, Konrad adjusted the cushions lining his rattan sofa. He exhaled a thick coil of smoke and shifted himself into a wider stance, settling his boots on the silk covering and splaying out his arms. Without a neck sleeve, his rune was a pale, blinding distraction.

More fittingly, it was an accusation. Anna stared at its precise cuts, searching for the faded fingerprints of a girl she could hardly recall. Memory was a damning stain of guilt, a constant reminder of crimes once committed using her face, her hands, her mind. At times, especially when in the depths of meditation, she was overcome by the sense that she’d inherited her flesh from a monster. The same flash of panic came over her as she recognized her marks.

“If only you knew how long I’d been waiting,” Konrad said in flatspeak, jarring her. “Most of the others were certain they’d find your bones dangling from the rafters in some Gosuri den. But I—well, you know me. I had faith.”

She didn’t know him. Not really. “Faith can be dangerous.”

“Once a wise girl, always a wise girl.” Konrad took another inhale and peered at Ramyi, who’d barely touched her tea or flat pistachio cakes. He seemed to take some delight in the girl’s shyness, in prodding her with his eyes and coy words, much like a hound with its crippled prey. It wasn’t malice, but his nature. His truth of the world. “Is she your servant? A droba, maybe?”

“No,” Anna said. “Treat her with dignity.”

That provoked some latent curiosity in him. “Do you speak any Orsas?”

Ramyi shook her head.

“Do you speak?” he asked, venting the smoke out through his nostrils with a smirk. “She learned well from you, panna.”

“I remember you,” Ramyi whispered.

“Is that so?” Konrad asked.

“You were a captain,” Ramyi said, unblinking and tense at the edge of her chair. “Sometimes you waved at us when you patrolled with your men.”

Konrad shot a curious look at Anna. “She’s from Malijad?” A tincture of worry, thinly veiled as surprise, laced his words.

“One day you even brought pears for us,” Ramyi continued. “I liked you. We all did.”

Anna flashed the girl a warning gaze, but it went unnoticed.

Ramyi leaned closer. “We remember your name, and your face hasn’t changed much at all.”

“Southern vitality.” He gave a shaky laugh.

“None of us forgot about you,” Ramyi said. “Especially not me.”

“Huh.” Konrad stroked his bare chin. “Anna, come off it. Was she an Orzi’s babe?” He met Ramyi’s gaze directly, but it unnerved him in a way Anna had never witnessed. He fussed with his shirt and picked at the silk around his legs, fidgeting as though Ramyi’s stare had hatched spiders between his fingers. “Is your father a saltman? Forgive me if I can’t nail a name to your flesh. It was a while back, after all.”

“We always thought it was strange that a paper-skin would come to Hazan for fortune,” the girl said, picking up her tea for the first time. “Maybe you just don’t have a home anywhere.”

Sighing, Konrad propped his chin up with his hand. “This girl thinks she knows the way of the world,” he said to Anna. “Doesn’t it grate you just a bit? You were humble when you had her years. Who is she?”

“What do you want in Nahora?” Ramyi pressed. “Do they feel like your people, or are you just a greedy whorespawn?” Even as Konrad began to speak, uttering a retort that was buried beneath the kator’s chattering, Ramyi’s eyes remained piercing. “Maybe they’re the same thing.”

“Oh, she’s precious,” Konrad groaned.

“And you’re pathetic.”

Leaning more heavily on his arm, Konrad yawned. “We have some catching up to do, Anna. Don’t you think?”

Ramyi’s frustration was plain, but no more telling than water on the surface of the sea. Her sentiments ran deep, and even Anna hadn’t probed their depths. But it wasn’t worth exploring them on a whim. Anna nodded somberly at the girl.

“Eat with the others,” Anna said quietly. “I’ll fetch you soon.”

“Anna,” she hissed.

Anna tilted her chin toward the door. “It’s all right.”

Those words settled the girl somewhat, at least outwardly, and she tucked both her hands and her gaze into her lap, then rose and moved to the egress. Though it took some effort, she worked the swinging mahogany door open and slipped out. The silence was charged now, bursting with every rustle and muted thump of the cogs.

“Sharp wit on that one,” Konrad said.

“Did you earn your rank, or is Ga’mir awarded to all of the traitors?” Anna asked.

His lips stirred, but didn’t part. “Are you still bitter about Malijad, Anna?”

“I’m not here to work with you.”

“Oh?” he prodded. “It’s curious that you chose to come to us now. Something must really be stoking the fire under your boots.”

Anna thought of the scroll case in her pack, wondering if the Ga’mir’s smugness had anything to do with leaked missives. But there was a time and place to play her hand, to bargain for what she wanted once they’d glimpsed what they needed.

“Whatever you might think of me,” Konrad continued, “I’ve proven myself as a tactician.”

“The fact that your troops are sharing this kator with innocents is a testament to your discretion.”

“You’re saying the Council ought to seize civilian infrastructure.”

“No,” Anna hissed. “But you’re not taking this fight seriously. None of your masters are.”

“Have you considered that it’s not so serious?”

“Our breakers have been following your diplomacy. You haven’t even reached out to Kowak. They’re the last foothold you’ll find in Rzolka.”

Konrad cocked his head to the side. “Volna hasn’t declared war on Nahora. As of right now, it’s neighborly bickering. It’s nothing new.”

“This many cartels and krev lines have never been joined under one banner,” Anna explained. It was a parroted report from one of the Azibahli analysts in Gideon’s company, but it concisely demonstrated Volna’s core threat. The fact that Volna had been able to alter the title of a bloodline to a southern analogue, krev, was proof of their permeation. “And what have you done about the Toymaker?”

Konrad’s smile faltered. “Where’ve you heard that name?”

“We’re not sheltered fools.”

“Through my eyes, it’s a peculiar sight,” Konrad said. “You marched across western Nahora, banging your pots and pans the whole way. Don’t you think it’s time to stop playing soldiers?”

It was difficult to keep the hot, pulsing anger out of her face. She couldn’t read him, not at all. He seemed to wander the world with no roots, no sense of guilt, no curse of lineage nor knowledge of eternity’s true span. Nothing moved his heart. “Rzolka is burning,” she said finally.

“And midnight is dark,” Konrad said. “After three years, it’s a struggle to keep holding your breath and waiting. At least our Council sheared the wool. The state’s flourishing without all of those extra blades, you know. Think of how many resources are being put to use in the fields and shipyards. Malchym and Kowak always shouted that into the soil.”

Anna drained the burning air in her lungs, then straightened. “At the very least, you could give up on provoking my people.”

“They’re a people now. Conspicuously similar to an army, though.”

“I’ve learned where practicality is needed,” Anna whispered.

Konrad snorted, taking up another hookah pipe and puffing. “Who’s that little fawn you’re dragging around?”

“She’s a scribe,” Anna said. She drew a breath and held it at the apex of her inhale, letting the silence settle and drift down like the dust motes suspended in lantern light. Clarity was a rare gift, but an illuminating one: She noted the vicious curl in Konrad’s lip, the way his back straightened and spasms worked through his brows.

“A scribe.” His tone wasn’t angry, but perplexed. “One of the cartel’s apprentices?”

“She was, is, a foundling.” Anna watched Konrad’s face darken and his lips draw tighter. “Whatever she is now was done by Nahora, and it’s not something you can justify. But you should understand her mind, why she acts the way she does.”

“It’s not strange for a young girl,” Konrad said, winking, “but it’s strange for you, panna. I half-expected you to tear my throat out on sight.” His grin shifted. “What happened in Malijad was never about you. You, Anna, I mean. It could’ve been that girl, or it could’ve been some Gosuri worm. But it was you, and that’s unfortunate.”

“It’s unfortunate that you know a young girl’s mind so well.”

“This is how it was meant to be, Anna,” Konrad said, clouding the air with a roiling exhale and coughing. His stare ran up and down her body, lingering on the folds of her tunic. “Nevertheless, you’re not a young girl anymore, are you? Whatever communion you have with the stars must be working, because you’ve sprouted into a particularly stunning young woman.”

Woman. Panna. The terms felt vapid as he inspected her, unearthing the same disgust she’d felt in Malijad or Bylka before it. She’d sought those titles for so long, but their true forms—their burdens, as it was—were revealed entirely too late.

“How long till we reach Golyna?” Anna asked.

Konrad glanced at the hourglass set into a brass apparatus. “After a bout of beauty rest, you’ll be staring at its main station. Quite a sight as you’re passing from the mountain tunnels to the Crescent.”

Anna set her teacup and saucer down, rose, and moved to the door.

“Before you go,” Konrad said, “where’s our old friend? Bora, wasn’t it?”

Anna rested a hand on the doorknob. “My people will be retaining their weapons and conducting their own patrols.”

“Naturally, fine. Now, what about the scrapper? Granted her death wish, or is she hunkering down in your invisible palace, or whatever it really is? Has she got any babes?” He sat upright. “Oh, and that nagging little Huuri boy too. How’s he faring?”

“Have you heard what they call me, Konrad?”

“Kuzalem.” He cackled, filling the air with the wet popping of a smoke-stricken throat. “It’s a fierce title, but death? The Anna I know was afraid of wasps.”

She imagined that the southerner’s Anna, who she hadn’t seen in years, was shriveling under mounds of Hazani sand and pulverized stone. Without turning back, she opened the door.

“Don’t you find it a tad funny, Anna?” Konrad asked.

Anna stepped into the tapestry-laden hallway and shut the door slowly. “Call me Kuzalem.”

* * * *

In the honeycomb arrangement of bunks that filled a bulbous, towering sleeping pod, Anna found most of the fighters drinking out of their ration bundles’ tin cups. They sat in clusters around the strange, ever-burning lanterns, murmuring and shushing one another as Anna searched the various passageways for Ramyi and the others. None of her unit had been in the lavish, sweet-smelling dining pod, nor in the communal bathing pod, which featured braziers with burning turquoise stones and petal-dusted water that swayed to the cylinder’s leaning. In their place she’d found crowds of calm, curious Nahorans that gestured and whispered, none of whom had the look or armaments of fighters. But Anna’s own fighters were apt to wander; Ramyi’s absence was the concerning one.

She ascended the zigzagging stairwells to the uppermost level of the pod, which resonated like a leaf in the wind and seemed possessed by an eerie whistling. Still holding Konrad’s sickening grin in her mind, she found the bunkroom’s soft amber lighting and laughter maddening. Everybody except her could relax, be reckless, live. Perhaps they truly didn’t care for her presence. It wasn’t that being ignored upset her, really, but it disturbed her. It was a reminder of a time before she’d been known by her runes, when she barely had a name or any legacy at all. And as swiftly as that torrent of infamy had washed over her in Malijad, it now seemed to break and fall away, promising the same insignificance she’d spent so long trying to retain. It felt foolish, if not self-absorbed, to fear it so much. The things we want are seldom what we truly want. A wise, recurring Kojadi motif, easily drowned under the terror of survival.

Ramyi sat on a mound of cushions with an assortment of Mesar’s men and Jilal fighters, whose lips and eyes were ringed with ritual scars. Her head was thrown back in a giggling fit, her cheeks flush and eyes clenched. One of the Jilal fighters was babbling, amusing Ramyi and the others, making her swing her tin cup and spill its contents across the rug.

Further back, almost consumed by shadow, Khara hunched over her cup.

“. . . and the widow didn’t know them!” the fighter finished, howling the final words.

Moving to a metal column, Anna paused and observed. Two bottles of arak and an empty flask of grain liquor sat on a nearby table. Yatrin was sitting upright in a wooden chair, grimacing at Ramyi’s antics. Before she could edge closer, the easterner spotted her and stood, skirting gracefully around the gathering to approach her.

“They’re drunk,” Anna said.

Yatrin’s lips shifted. “Most of the others refused to touch the dishes and drinking water.”

Anna sighed. Others had a pointed meaning, in that context: Those who weren’t Nahoran by birth.

“They’re suspicious of everything,” Yatrin explained.

Anna bristled at that; it was yet another setback to cooperation, even if she harbored her own misgivings. An army with hairline fissures could only hold until first contact with the enemy. “Where’d they get it?”

“Ramyi marked one of the southerners. I’ve never seen the rune before, but it made nectar flow from his palms.” Yatrin watched one of the Jilal fighters swaying on their cushion. “Sweetness alone is too boring for some of them.”

“Is she drunk?”

“If she isn’t now, she will be. Something about your meeting put her in a huff. Should I pull her aside?”

“No,” Anna said. The surest way to seal off a child’s heart was to scorn them. “Let her drink if she wants to, but keep a blade out of her hands.” She glanced around. “I haven’t seen Mesar lately.”

“He’s meeting with some Chayam captains.”

“He never told me,” Anna sighed.

“Do they make you nervous?” Yatrin asked. But they was too vague, in Anna’s mind. “Those who serve the state,” he added.

“Not so nervous.” They were just one tier on a hierarchy of mistrust, but they were far below Volna, the nationalists in Kowak, and the various hired blades setting up shop in Hazan and the plains.

“Those bearing the state’s blood are trustworthy,” Yatrin said. “I’m not speaking about Konrad, of course, but I know my people. You can breathe.”

“I trust you,” she said honestly. “And that’s enough.” But her mind was fixed on an endless track. “I ought to find Mesar.”

Yatrin took her arm gently. “Sit, stay. He can handle the logistics for one evening.” He gestured to Khara, who was poring over the depths of her cup with distant eyes. “They need you.”

The monotony of recent years washed over her with the phrase one evening, with all of the death and sleepless nights and empty words revived as a hideous, wasted mass. Joy had become a foreign thing. The world had done its part to assure that, but how much of it stemmed from her own mind? A need to be busy, to be so forward-thinking and wary that she would’ve earned Bora’s rebuke. Be here, be now. Easier said than done.

With some effort, she smiled and met Yatrin’s creased eyes. “You’ll need to teach me how to breathe.”

Yatrin laughed. “Hasn’t meditation taught you that?”

“I’m forgetful.”

“Whatever they’re drinking seems to help,” Yatrin said.

Some of her fighters, too deep in their cups, had copper-red cheeks and glassy eyes. “I’d like to think too.”

“One cup won’t put you under,” Yatrin said, the corner of his lip peeking out through black hair. “So, what do you say?” He went to the table, took a pair of tin cups, dunked them into a small tub and pulled them up full, and returned to Anna. The liquid within reminded her of honey wine her father had once kept in the rafters. “If you’d rather not, I understand. But maybe we—you—deserve it. When was the last time you really lived, Anna?”

“The Kojadi said that pain is living,” she said, arching her brow.

“They had their time,” Yatrin replied. “Nahora savors peacetime, and it always has. We refuse to linger in wariness like our sisters. Give bliss a try.”

Over the past years, brooding in dugouts and hayat-woven bunks and underground tents, she would occasionally recall the offer she’d received in Malijad. Yatrin and his fellow easterners had proven everything Nahora had offered, including the serenity she’d seen in meditation, and it was chilling to consider that she—a half-forgotten, untrained, broken girl—had damned the path of every future self by refusing their aid. But it wasn’t too late to right things. Anna took the cup, gulping in spite of the throat-burning fumes and bitter tongue-prickling.

With every sip, it became less repulsive.

She drank until she hardly thought of Konrad.

Soon Anna was dancing like everybody else, adrift in the strange melody of flutes and small, hard drums, though she couldn’t recall when she’d decided to join the others or set her short blade on the tabletop or pull Yatrin closer. Within Yatrin’s shadow, where the air was humid and dark and tinged with peppermint, she was more vulnerable than she’d been in nomadic encampments or bathing chambers. It was worrying to lose caution in that place, but even more worrying to find comfort. Her feet swept in quick, synchronized rushes beneath her, and her hands grew slick upon Yatrin’s tunic, upon the fabric she rustled as she felt along the small of his back and all of its hidden scars. Then her eyes were closed and her lips sensed warm, damp pressure, even as her mind revolved with coordinates and wicked names and—

“Are you all right?” Yatrin asked.

Reality’s fragments slid back into place, returning her to the pod’s ethereal oscillating and the pockmarks across the easterner’s cheeks. “Yes,” she said, surprised—but not alarmed—by the lack of control in her voice. “Keep dancing.”

Yatrin’s hands moved back to her hips. She heard every clinking tin, every rising word that warned of violence. Anna pulled away.

“Yes, you,” Khara barked, stalking closer to Ramyi. Her eyes were wild, purged of their usual Nahoran composure.

Ramyi too had her brows scrunched and fists balled, but Khutai grabbed her wrist and pulled her back just before Khara came within striking range. The girl grunted, spun around, and nearly tripped on her own ankles.

“I wish it had been you,” Khara said. “You wretched little worm.”

Ramyi tore at Khutai’s grip, ignorant to the spectacle forming around them.

“How dare you cast your foolish words at the state?” Khara continued.

“I hope it burns,” Ramyi said.

“Your breed knows nothing about sacrifice,” the easterner said. She carried on as Yatrin hurried toward her, hissing his commands in Orsas. “The Halshaf should’ve let you shrivel.”

Yatrin took the woman’s shoulders and led her aside, but it was too late. Shouts and slurs were breaking out among the fighters, some of whom were still drinking from their tin cups; in fact, many rushed to scoop more from the trough. Drunken barbs overtook the music:

“The state? Fuck the state.”

“Uz’nekkal, you coward! Show me your teeth!”

“Control your runt.”

“Will you bleed, or just bitch?”

Their voices swelled until Anna could no longer tell Nahorans from Hazani, old comrades from new, youths from elders. Pale and bronze and black, their flesh melded together in a dizzying blur. There was no way to calm the storm, especially with Anna’s mind so unfocused, so clouded—

“What’s going on?” Mesar’s voice, though weaker than his men’s, stilled most of the quarrels. His bone-white robes glowed like a beacon in the shadows. Two of his picked fighters wandered ahead of him, gently parting men about to exchange blows and lifting bruise-eyed stragglers from the rugs. Mesar wore a father’s mask of disappointment; it cut deeper than any curse or shout. “Is this how we treat our hosts? Brothers, I address you with particular severity.”

The Alakeph in the crowd, who’d become indistinct from their fellow fighters by shedding their robes, bowed their heads.

“Even those beyond the fold,” Mesar continued, glaring pointedly at Anna. “Have you come here to preserve life, or grapple like children?” When he regarded Ramyi, he grew crestfallen. “And you, a blossom of our order. Must we be your keeper at all hours?”

Ramyi paid it no mind. She was busy muttering curses, thrashing at Khutai’s arms and broad chest, on the verge of tears she smothered with rage.

Summoning her composure, Anna approached the girl. “We’ll take her,” she said to Mesar. No matter how much authority she conjured, the others would see her as incapable, scrambling to make amends with their leader. Ramyi’s mindlessness was her burden. That burning realization bled into her hands as she seized the girl’s shoulder and pulled her away from Khutai, nearly bruising her shoulder as she did so. They left in silence.

Later, in Anna’s personal quarters, she knelt before an oval-shaped window and the blackness beyond it. Kneeling was all she could do. Meditation had always been her place of refuge, unchanging in spite of the chaos surrounding her practice. Now it was her prison, trapping her with words of rebuke and stinging memories, too painful to be surveyed in long stretches. Every so often she opened her eyes to Ramyi’s reflection and felt that same spark of anger, however old and conditioned it was. The girl had fallen into an immediate slumber on the sofa, long before Yatrin was able to fetch blankets to cover her, but it made no difference: Her shame was Anna’s and there was no simple way to release that. Nor was there any way to repair the rifts she’d surfaced, if not created, within the unit.

Yatrin’s touch chilled her; she sensed it before her eyes shot open, before she saw his silhouette looming behind her in the glass. He gently squeezed the sides of her arms, forceful enough to lure her out of focus without alarming her.

“This will pass,” he whispered. “You ought to get some sleep.”

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it?” Anna asked. “Everything will pass.”

“And what?”

“They’ll walk right over me in Golyna.” She shrugged her arms to loosen his grip, staring at her reflection and the passing black shapes that framed it.

Yatrin settled himself beside her. “Mesar’s a cunning man, but a good one. He has my trust.” In fairness, that meant a great deal. “Do you know what you’ve managed to assemble under your banner? All of those creeds, those strains of blood? They—we—left our homes and families for it. For you. So nobody is walking over you. We won’t allow it.”

Anna tried not to dissect the easterner’s words. He meant well, after all. She flashed a smile and put her hand atop his. “I wish trust came easily.”

“Anna.” His smile was monumental amid the scars and blemishes. “History remembers grand figures, but none of the advisers and stepping stones that made their vision possible. You ought to remember that.”

“I’ll try.” She glanced back at Ramyi, watching her blankets softly rise and fall. “And in the meantime, what do I do with her?”

Yatrin shifted closer and kissed the back of her neck. “Breathe.”