If only I could catch it, I would crack its skull like a walnut.
“We were betrayed by our neighbors. We had left to broker an alliance. When we returned, the palace of Shinar was silent. We found only half-eaten corpses.”
The thing darted toward my aunt. She looked at it and its bones broke, the big dome of its skull caving in on itself as if stomped.
“Look outside,” she said.
I stepped onto the balcony. A vast plain unrolled before me. An army charged at me. Shaggy, huge armored mammoths; strange beasts, their hindquarters striped, their heads too large for their bodies, their jaws filled with oversized hyena teeth; creatures for which I had no name; and people in armor. I glanced behind me. The dark room was gone. My aunt strode onto the field in front of her troops. She wore blood armor. Her loose hair streamed in the wind. Behind her the emerald standards snapped, pulled taut. She began to run, at first slowly, then picking up speed. The troops behind her broke into a charge. To the right, a man in blood armor on a white horse raised a spear and shouted. His horse reared and I saw his face, impossibly handsome and alight with magic. Father . . .
My aunt charged across the field, magic twisting around her.
The first line of the enemy was almost to her.
Erra opened her mouth. Power tore from her, an unstoppable blast that sent the armored mammoths flying.
At the other end of the field, my father raised his hands. The earth split, swallowing the enemy.
The two armies collided. A sword landed next to me. I grabbed it.
“This is also you,” Erra said next to me. “This is the wrath of Shinar. They who thought they would murder us, take our cities, and eat our children, they met our anger and it consumed them. It consumed us too, but not before we obliterated their very memory from history. We wiped them off the face of the planet. It is as if they never were.”
Around me the battle raged. My father spun in the center of a magical maelstrom. Behind him the earth shuddered and broke loose. A creature of metal and magic, a beautiful golden lion a hundred feet high, burst onto the field. My aunt twisted and sliced the head off an invader. It went flying.
“This is what you are asking me to betray,” Erra said into my ear.
I closed my eyes and imagined the weight and warmth of a child in my arms. When I opened them, my son looked back at me with Curran’s gray eyes. The battle was gone. We sat in the pavilion again.
I held my son out to Erra. “This is what I’m asking you to save.”
She took the child from me and looked at his face.
“I just want him to live a happy life,” I told her. “The war is terrible. It will never end, as long as my father is allowed to be free. He can’t stop. Maybe a part of him wants to, but even if it does, he doesn’t know how. Someone has to end it.”
A woman appeared behind us, regal, tall, her wrists heavy with golden bracelets, her flowing dress a deep emerald green. Black kohl lined her eyes, her eyelids and lips dusted with gold. Semiramis reached down, took my son from Erra’s hands, and smiled at him.
• • •
THE GARDENS FADED. The grip of the magic released me, its pain an echo in my bones. The arcane inferno died down. Semiramis withdrew, revealing Erra.
“He created an order of assassins to kill me,” she whispered. She had seen sahanu in my memories. There was something almost vulnerable in her face.
My grandmother reached for her, wrapping her ghostly arms about her daughter. Magic swirled around them.
“I know,” Erra whispered. “I understand.”
She turned to me, all tenderness vanishing from her face like a mask jerked aside.
“You will do two things for me. Once this is over, I will choose the burial place for myself and my mother. You will move us there.”
“Done.” I would’ve done it anyway.
“And you will abandon the city.”
“What?”
“You will agree to never rule the land you’ve claimed.”
I opened my mouth. Everything inside me rebelled at the idea. It was my city, my land, my people, mine . . .
No. It was not mine. I took it, but it was never mine.
I raised my hand.
It was so hard. I wanted to charge across the room and beat her head against the stone until I saw the color of her brain for even bringing it up.
This wasn’t me. I wouldn’t become my father.
I could lie.
I crushed the thought.
“I promise that the day my father is dead or contained, I will walk away from the land I claimed.”
It hurt to say it.
“Not good enough,” Erra said. “I don’t want you to walk away. I want you to swear to never rule it. You’re a queen like your grandmother and her mother before her. Swear to me in the true language.”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
“What’s the matter, little squirrel? Want to kill me for daring?”
Yes. Oh yes. So much.
I needed to reach deep down and find the strength to do it.
“Your land or your lover and your son. Choose.”
It wasn’t even a choice.
“I swear . . .” Each word was impossibly heavy. The room around us shook. Little chunks of mortar fell from the ceiling. “. . . to never . . .” It felt like all the ligaments in my throat would tear. The tomb shuddered. “. . . rule the land I claimed.”
It hurt so much.
“The word of Sharratum is binding,” Erra said. “So witnessed.”
The room stopped shaking.
A cool rush swept through me. Suddenly the air felt lighter.
“The Shar is a persistent bitch,” my aunt said. “Giving up the land you claimed is the first step. Watching it being taken by another is the second. Letting them live is the third. If you survive, we will do this over and over, until you reach your equilibrium or it drives you mad.”
“Thank you.” Universe help me, I meant it.
My aunt waved her hand. “Why did he let you live?”
“According to him, it’s because I’m his treasured daughter, his Blossom, the precious one, the one he loves above all others.”
I heard my own words and cracked up. Erra guffawed. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The laughter came and came, pouring out, until I had tears in my eyes. We stood there and laughed and laughed.
“Oh, that’s good.” Erra sat on the steps. “That’s good.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard. My stomach hurt. I must’ve needed it.
“Why do you think he let you live?”
“I have no idea.”
“There must be something.”
“I don’t know. He tried to kill me before. He said that he loved my mother and promised her that he would give her a child like no other, but then foresaw that I would become like Kali, the destroyer of worlds, and so he tried to kill me but failed. He glossed over that part.”
Erra pondered it. “If Im tried to kill you, you would be dead. He must’ve reconsidered. But why?”
“I don’t know. Also he inscribed the language of power on me in the womb.”
“And you didn’t start with that? Let’s hope your lion has some brains, otherwise your child will be a dimwit.”
Semiramis moved.
“Yes, I know, Ama. Your grandmother says that in this day and age, you could do worse. Show the inscription to me.”
“I can’t. It only shows up in certain moments. When I claimed the city, for example. He can make it appear by touching me, but I can’t.”
“Do you know what it says?”
“No.”
She rose and touched me. Her hand went through mine. She waved her hand back and forth through my arms. I’d tell her that it felt like being pa
ssed through an icy cheese grater, but she would only do it more.
Erra swore. “Being dead has its problems. Although it does give you a certain clarity. I felt my mother when I awoke. I asked him about it and he told me he had left her by the banks of the Tigris. I told him then that if he lied to me, he would regret it.”
“He will regret many things by the time I’m done.”
“Find a way to record the words and show them to me,” Erra said. “We must learn why you’re still alive.”
“Okay. I will.”
I turned to the doorway.
“Where are you going?” Erra demanded
“I’m escaping,” I said. “He’ll probably arrive in the next few minutes.”
Behind Erra the purple blaze of Semiramis flared.
“Yes,” Erra said, pronouncing each word very clearly as if talking to someone very stupid or hard of hearing. “That’s why you have to take me with you. Because you’re an idiot and you need help and I’m the bigger idiot for promising it to you.”
I stared at the mass of her bones. “How?”
She turned away from me. “It’s time.”
Magic raged through the chamber, a furious tempest, filled with grief. The walls shook. I curled into a ball, trying to hide, but it was everywhere.
“I won’t be long,” Erra whispered, melting into the magic, her voice carrying through the room. “I’m coming back, Mother. And then I’ll take you out of this awful place.”
My grandmother wept.
I clamped my hands over my ears, shut my eyes, and tried to keep calm.
The room shook and shuddered. My body bounced off the floor.
Suddenly it was quiet. I opened my eyes. A dagger had sprouted from the center of my aunt’s bones, a wickedly curved double-edged blade with a bone hilt. A thin line of blood-red script crossed the plate substance of the blade. My aunt’s name.
I reached out and took it. It came free with a light snap. The bone flower fell apart into dust.
She’d molded her bones and blood into a dagger and sunk her soul into it. I could never let my father see this knife.
“Hurry up,” Erra’s voice snapped. “I can feel him coming.”
I yanked my spare knife out and slid the dagger into the sheath. It didn’t fit exactly, but it would have to do.
“Thank you, Grandmother.” I bowed my head and took off.
At some point the fact that I was carrying my aunt the City Eater in my knife sheath would likely hit me and then I would have a nice nervous breakdown. But right now, we had to get out of here.
Outside, red lightning split the dark sky. Wind tore at my clothes and hair. I yanked the canister with the moth out and shattered it on the stone. The tiny insect floated up, growing brighter and brighter, a green spark against the darkness.
Come on, Sugar. Come and get me.
The gates of Mishmar’s wall flew open. A sphere of fire and light rolled onto the bridge and broke apart, revealing my father. His face was dark. A blood spear formed in his hand.
“YOU DISOBEYED ME AGAIN, MY DAUGHTER.”
I’d never seen him this pissed off. Not even when I fought with him at his castle. I pulled Sarrat out of its sheath.
Behind us, Mishmar trembled and bellowed like a tornado. I turned around. The tower shuddered. The strange birds took to the sky, their guttural cries swallowed by the noise. Car-sized chunks of concrete and stone broke loose and tumbled down.
“SHARRIM!” My father’s voice rippled with magic. If the bridge had been metal, it would’ve melted in fear.
“It’s not my fault!” I yelled back.
“STUBBORN, IGNORANT, IMPERTINENT CHILD! I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME HERE. I WILL KEEP YOU HERE UNTIL YOU LEARN TO OBEY ME!”
Oh crap.
Thunder punched my ears. A massive crack formed in the tower’s wall. The purple inferno of my grandmother’s magic splashed and coiled within it.
I turned back to my father and saw the familiar winged shape behind him diving toward me.
“Can’t talk now. Grandma wants to see you.”
My father snarled, pointing his spear at me. A chunk of Mishmar the size of a small house rolled off the top and plunged down. The entire tower rocked. The purple magic spilled out, its fury mind-numbing. The prison rumbled, threatening to collapse.
My father swore, each curse word charged with magic, and planted his spear on the bridge. Golden light burst from it, battering against the purple.
I charged past him.
Sugar landed and ran toward me across the bridge. I sprinted to her. She turned, stopping for a heartbeat, and I jumped and landed on her back.
Behind us the gold and purple magic tore at each other.
The pegasi took off, huge wings beating. I pulled all of my magic out of myself, trying to shield us.
The two spheres of light exploded.
“Higher, Sugar. Higher!”
The pegasi’s powerful muscles rolled under me. She beat her wings, climbing higher and higher. Below us the glow of magic splayed out, as if a second sunrise burned down below. The edge of the explosion expanded toward us. I held my breath. The glow fell a few yards short.
“Did he kill Grandmother?” I whispered.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Erra’s voice said in my ear. “She is already dead. Besides, your grandmother was the Shield of Assyria. Even if he committed every drop of his power to it, he couldn’t stomp her out of existence. She’s buying us time. He’s got a busy night ahead of him.”
“North,” I told Sugar. “Fly north.” He wouldn’t look for us in that direction.
The pegasi turned and fled north, as fast as her wings would carry her.
“And for your information,” Erra said. “I wasn’t always the City Eater. That’s the name our enemies gave me and you won’t use it.”
Oy. “What were you called before you were the City Eater?”
“The Rose of Tigris. Now shut up and make this horse go faster.”
CHAPTER
11
ERRA WAS RIGHT. The Shar was real. I felt the familiar pull when I crossed into my territory. I hadn’t realized how much it was wearing me down, until I had to slide it back on, like a tired plow horse who was being put back into her horse collar.
All of me hurt. My back was probably bruised from being thrown around. My stomach wound ached. I wanted to get home and sleep.
Sugar unloaded me in front of my house. I hugged her and gave her another sugar cube. “Thank you.”
Sugar neighed, bumped my face with her head, and took off into the night.
I didn’t make it more than two steps into the house, before Curran appeared out of the living room and hugged me to him. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled me over, wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed until my bones groaned.
He smelled of blood. I probably smelled worse. My whole body hurt and being hugged felt like being run over by a car. And there was no place I wanted to be more than right here.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he said.
“I . . .” I resurrected my aunt who tried to kill you so hard, you were in a coma for eleven days. “. . . I’m glad to be home.”
“I’m glad you’re home, too.”
“How did it go?”
“The degenerate is at the Guild,” Curran said. “Regenerating.”
“Did any of your people . . .”
“No,” he said. “King’s got broken legs and Samantha was burned, but we got out alive.”
He rescued Saiman and got them out alive. I exhaled.
“How was it?”
“It was okay,” Curran said.
“We did okay,” Derek said from the living room, almost at the same time.
Curran opened his arms, but I held on to his hand. Not y
et. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure he’d made it back in one piece. I still needed proof for a little while longer.
In the living room Derek sprawled on the floor on a blanket, his eyes closed, his body human, corded with hard muscle, and covered only with a strategically placed towel. Julie knelt by him, long tweezers in her hand.
“What’s going on?”
“Quills,” she said. “Very thin quills. There was a magic plant and he decided it would be a good idea to give it a hug. Because he is smart that way.”
So they had taken Julie with them. Considering where I’d gone and what I did while there, I didn’t have room to talk.
Derek didn’t bother opening his eyes. “I wasn’t giving it a hug. I was shielding Ella.”
“Mm-hm.” Julie plucked a thin needle from his stomach. “You shielded her really well. Because it’s not like we didn’t have Carlos with us.”
Carlos was a firebug. The plant must’ve gotten torched.
“We’ll need to work on mixed-unit tactics,” Curran said. He looked tired. It must’ve been hell. “So what did you do in Mishmar?”
Umm. Ehh. In my head I had somehow expected Erra to stay in Mishmar.
“I saw my father,” I said. Start small.
“How was that?” Curran asked.
“He’s a little upset with me.”
“Aha.”
“I broke Mishmar a little bit.”
The three of them looked at me.
“But it was mostly my grandmother who did it.”
“How much is a little bit?” Derek asked.
“There might be a crack. About maybe seven feet at the widest point.”
Derek laughed.
“And what else?” Curran asked.
Perceptive bastard.
“And this.” I pulled out the dagger and showed it to him.
“You made a magic knife?” he asked.
“Yes. In a manner of speaking.”
“But you still have to get close enough to stab Roland with it,” Derek said.