Chapter 78
Abass’s muscles protested as he lifted the disi. It was almost as long as he was tall, but it didn’t seem as heavy as it should have been. He let it fall back to the ground, watching as the flowers burst into miniature clouds of dust when the blade touched them. It made his stomach turn, to think of how many lives the disi had taken. And Maq would have killed me too, Abass thought. For the blood of a god. Whatever that means.
He had some idea of what it meant. A recollection of fire washing over his body, of floating in a sea of light. Abass pushed it to the back of his mind. Nothing would come of worrying about the past. It was time to look to the future.
With one bloodied dagger, Abass knelt and cut long strips from Maq’s robe. When he finished, he stopped to examine the man he had known so briefly, but who had changed his life. Blood no longer ran from Maq’s throat, but Abass dug around and found the salt-metal chip and placed it on the old man’s chest. No point taking chances—the old bastard had been Renewed, after all.
Taking the strips of cloth with him, Abass returned to the disi. He lifted it, surprised again by its weight. If anything, the massive blade felt even lighter than before. He fashioned a set of ties from the strips of cloth and lashed the disi to his back. Maq had wanted the blood of a god, and he had decided to use the disi to take it. Others would want the same thing—or, if not the blood of a god, then at least its weapon. Abass would not let the disi out of his sight until he was well away from Khi’ilan.
The air stirred around him, redolent with the flowered perfume. “Are you alright?” Abass asked. He did not need to turn to know it was Fadhra.
“Fine,” she said. “You?”
He nodded, back still to her. He finished tying the last strap, and then found his hand gripping the hilt of the disi, knuckles aching. “You went with Serhan,” he said. “When he went to check on Segi and Scribe.”
No answer. All Abass heard was the cries of the former sacrifices as they began to make their way up the sloped floor of the cavern. Their voices echoed off the stone spears, danced around him like the voices in the street he had heard that day. A blending of voices that was terrible in its meaninglessness.
“Did you know?” he finally asked.
Fadhra stepped in front of him. “No,” she said. She was still so beautiful—her fine, dark hair framing those deep eyes. So much life shone in those eyes. Her black shirt was torn, revealing a wound on her side that was already half-closed thanks to the dew. “But I suspected. He was so much faster than I. It was like I didn’t have dew at all. When I caught up to him, he was standing there, and they were bleeding out on the floor. I think I knew, even if I wouldn’t admit it to myself.”
As he looked into her eyes, Abass forgot the voices ringing on the stone around him, forgot the field of unreal flowers and the too-light disi strapped to his back. She stepped toward him, one hand raised.
Abass stepped back, the moment passed. “You should go,” he said. “It will take time for the eses’s power to unravel. If the other lap-esis is still alive, they might not fall apart at all.”
Fadhra froze. He could see the pain in her eyes. “I saved you,” she said. “Maq would have killed you. I freed you from the prison. You’re alive, they’re alive,” she gestured to the people climbing toward them, “because of me.” She spoke so softly that the words barely reached him.
“I’m sorry,” Abass said. “Thank you for what you’ve done.”
“That’s it then?” Fadhra said. “A thank you? After what we’ve shared? We could make this city a better place, Abass.”
“It will be what it will be,” Abass said. The distance between them, her betrayal, was as wide and dark as the cavern around them. “I have other things to attend to.”
Tears gathered in those dark, vibrant eyes. “Eyl died,” she said. “Fighting a Renewed. A woman. He saved you too, and he’s dead now. What do you owe him?”
“I owe him my life,” Abass said. “Just like I owe you. But I carry the weight of what I did here. That is burden enough.”
Two heavy tears fell, staining the petal of a mottled orchid. Fadhra disappeared with a burst of displaced air. Abass wanted to sink to his knees, to sob. Loneliness washed over him as the events of the past few days flooded back. Fear, betrayal, pain. Those last final moments when he thought he was dying. The weight of having killed his god. And then to face Fadhra, after all of that, and not be able to say the words that he wanted to say. That he still loved her, even though he could not understand her, even though she betrayed him. That that love was a knife inside him, and it cut the deepest because he could not let that love rule him. Because he knew her, better than anyone, and because he loved her, he could not be with her, because he could not trust her near the disi. His newfound responsibility weighed him down like a stone around his neck.
Abass staggered a few paces up the slope, trying to turn his thoughts to something else. The edge of the disi pressed against him through his torn and tattered clothes. He would have to have a sheath made before he left Khi’ilan. Perhaps find a better way of transporting it. A wagon and a special case.
He fell to his knees at the base of spreading hydrangea, its ice-blue petals shivering to fall and brush his cheeks. Abass found his hand gripping the disi again, trying to find focus in the pain. He stirred his anger, searching for relief.
Something caught his ear. A voice. A laugh, smooth and warm. He turned in disbelief.
A beautiful young woman, paler than she had once been, leant her shoulder to another woman, helping her ascend the flower-covered slope. Hair like flame-touched gold fell in waves to her back. She leaned closer to the old woman, listening to something that the babble of the frightened crowd masked.
Isola.
Abass was on his feet somehow, pushing against the mass of people, ignoring their plucking hands and querulous voices. The warning edge of the disi against his flesh was distant. With each step, the years between them swelled, resisting the collapsing distance. Memories crowded in, filling the space that kept them separate. The look of pain in her eyes. The sound of her tearing flesh. The feel of the hilt as it left his hand. He wanted to be responsible, to tell her how sorry he was, but fear gripped him. She could never forgive him, no matter what Qatal said.
He stopped, letting the crowd carry him back into darkness.
Isola’s head came up, her eyes searched the crowd. Abass met her gaze and flinched. He froze, unable to tear himself away from summer-forest eyes.
With a low cry that cut through the murmur of the crowd, Isola staggered toward him, the other woman forgotten. Abass stood still, trapped by that unreadable gaze, a stag caught in brambles as the hunter approached.
She trembled as she reached him. For a single heartbeat, the last hand’s breadth between them was wide and deep as a dozen years of pain. Then she embraced him, and the years and the grief and the distance fell away.