“Khosa!” Donil’s voice comes again, and I turn to see him running, Vincent at his side. I fall to my knees, head in my hands and my screams echoing back off my fingers as I’m torn, half of me wanting Donil, the other half demanding the sea.
I scream and I scream until my mouth is filled with salt water.
CHAPTER 70
Vincent
I HIT THE GROUND, AND SOMETHING RIPS INSIDE MY SHOULDER AS I roll, a white-hot pain that leaves my hand tingling. Still I run, sand kicking up behind me as I cross the distance between the dancing girl and me, yelling her name. It’s echoed from the side, and I see Donil running from the castle, our paths meeting in a shared goal.
She stops for a moment, dropping to her knees at his voice, and I feel no jealousy, nothing but a pure relief that her dance knows a pause. Her laughter has stopped, as has her song. There is only screaming that is like terror unleashed, her throat surely tearing under the strain. We are strides from her when a wave knocks her to the side; her white dress is lost in the froth.
“Khosa!” I am in the water, feeling it break around me and tug at my feet, wanting to tear them from the bottom and drag me out to sea. Yet I feel no fear for myself, only a deep conviction that if I lose her now, I will let it take me as well.
Something glances on my legs, a soft wisp that could be seaweed or a fish. I plunge into the water, blindly groping, and come away with a fistful of her hair. I go under again and feel her arms, moving with the tug of the tide. I pull her up, and we break the surface, her body collapsed against mine.
Donil comes for us, his face twisted in a rage I’ve never seen painted there before. I almost drop Khosa to defend myself, but he passes us by, eyes pinned on Dara. I drag Khosa toward the castle and the people now pouring out of it, drawn by the cries of the Elders as they swarm on the beach.
We are on the shore, yet the castle seems far away as I drag Khosa, seawater foaming from her mouth. Hands meet us, ones withered with age and dark spots, and I welcome the help as I fall to all fours, crawling away from the depths that nearly claimed us both.
My mother is at my side, hauling me to dry sand when she screams, the sound splitting my head as I turn to see Donil wrap his hands around his sister’s neck and force her under the waves.
CHAPTER 71
Dara
AS DONIL CUTS THROUGH THE WATER TOWARD HER, DARA sees he has no thoughts but death. The girl he attacks is not Indiri, not his sister, not the other half of his self. She is only an enemy, a threat to something more dear to him than their shared blood. Dara makes no move to defend herself, and not a word passes between them as he closes his hands around her throat.
Vengeance is something she understands.
CHAPTER 72
Vincent
MoTHER SCREAMS AGAIN, TEARING AT MY CLOTHES AS she points up the beach.
An army advances, shining silver beneath the moonlight. They’re far away yet, their footfalls silenced by the wind and the spray, their spears in the air like a massive sea-spine come to end us. An Elder falls to his knees, hand on his chest, at the sight. Khosa is unconscious in the arms of one of her guards, the other hauling the Curator from the water, where he is screaming at Donil to spare Dara. My people are falling apart, my kingdom is about to perish, my friends are killing each other in the sea. The familiar anger rises in me, a rage so deep I welcome its power and the fearlessness it gives me.
I grab my mother’s shoulder, turning her toward me. “Take Merryl and Khosa,” I tell her. “Go to the tunnels in the library and close them behind you.” She nods, terror replaced with action as her blood is called to duty.
I call for Rook, sending him to the guardhouse to sound the alarm, bringing any who can come to our aid. I know they will die, torn from their beds with a storm in their faces and an enemy they can’t fathom marring their beach. My only hope as I plunge back into the water is that the Curator will live to write it all down. We will make an ending on the last page of Stillean histories that can be read with awe by those who conquer us.
I crash into Donil, tearing his feet out from under him as Dara comes up for air, fists swinging. I catch one of her punches, but the second lands its target, sending her brother beneath the tide. He comes back up with a dagger in hand, ready to swipe at me to get at her. I stand between them, a hand on each, a wall between two animals that want nothing more than to tear each other to pieces.
Donil spits salt back into the sea. “Stand aside, Vincent.”
I shake my head. “No, Donil. We need her.”
They see the army at the same time. I feel them both tense, each under a different palm, their anger turned away from each other to a shared target. Dara unleashes her blades, flinging seawater from them in two arcs. Our feet hit sand just as bells begin pealing from the castle. Cries erupt as men pour from the guards’ barracks.
“The Feneen,” one of them shouts when he spots me. “The Feneen are burning the gates!”
Pillars of smoke confirm his words, twin spires gray against the night sky, the flames beneath illuminating panicked men on the parapets. Too few.
I grab Donil by the shoulder. “The volunteers from the city will go to the front gates to fight. They need a good man to lead them. Get to the guardhouse; send as many as you can to the beach.”
“We can’t hold both for long,” Donil says grimly.
“Then we’ll hold them both for a short while,” I say, shoving him toward the castle. “Go!”
He glances from me to Dara, who’s still dripping water he would have drowned her in. “Go, brother,” she says. “If I don’t die on a Pietran blade, you’ll have your chance.”
He’s gone, the wind tearing his response from my ears as the sound of the approaching army looms. Feet falling in time, a rippling mass of shining armor and stone shields that churns the sand so that I don’t know what is land and what is water. Men are gathering behind me, guards in half their armor, some in less, armed with what they slept with. I see a few spears, a handful of swords; one man carries his bedside table for a shield and a shaving knife as a weapon. They are three deep behind Dara and me when the Pietra are close enough for us to see their faces.
“Dara . . . ,” I say, but the words I mean to come after her name stop in my throat. Words of love and hate, mixed together in a fetid tangle that won’t be spoken.
“I know you’d see me dead,” she says, eyes on the Pietra. “Let me kill a few of them first.”
And then she charges the entire Pietran army, alone.
CHAPTER 73
Witt
THERE IS NO GLORY IN THE MARCH, NO PRIDE IN WITT’S heart as panic takes the castle. The Stilleans are like ants suddenly exposed when their rock overturns, their milling bodies a mass of chaos. A small group is forming on the beach, one that will be crushed easily by only a handful of Witt’s men. He leads them on, Pravin by his side.
A figure breaks away from them, a wild shriek tearing through the night that sends a chill down Witt’s back colder than river water. He misses a step at the sound, stumbling against Pravin.
“That’s . . .”
“An Indiri,” Pravin says. “Filthy fathoms, that’s an Indiri.”
Witt holds up a hand, and the entire army halts, their last step echoing off the walls of the castle, the Indiri’s cry filling their ears. Blades slash wind as the first line draw their swords at Witt’s command.
The cry comes again, and Witt can see that the Indiri is a girl, her speckled face twisted in fury, fiery eyes focused on him. Her hair is a black cloud in the wind, her blades shining bolts of light as she bears down on his army with no hint of fear.
Pravin pulls his bow from his shoulder. “Shall I?”
“Wait,” Witt says, transfixed at the sight of her.
Then she is lost in shadow, the only thing that remains the lights in her eyes as a wave as high as the castle walls blocks the light of t
he moon.
CHAPTER 74
Vincent
THE PIETRA HALT AS DARA RUNS TOWARD THEM. I SCREAM her name, and am following her through the sand when I’m thrown facedown on the beach by one of my own men. I swing at him as I come up, my blade slicing open his tunic before he grabs me by the shoulders, forcibly turning me to look at the sea.
A wall of water rises, high as the moon. Its death roar fills my ears, and I’m screaming at Dara, screaming at my men, screaming the only thing I can think of.
“Run.”
CHAPTER 75
Witt
WITT ORDERS HIS MEN TO RUN, KNOWING IT IS ALREADY too late. The armor meant to save them from an arrow or blade will drag them to their deaths in the water. Men trained to hold formation their entire lives break rank at the sight of the wave, some of them following Witt’s order to run, some too awed to do anything but stand and be taken. Pravin drops his bow, grabbing Witt by the hand and steering him to a copse of trees at the beach’s edge.
“Climb, my Lithos,” Pravin shouts at him when they reach the base of the tallest one, offering a hand for Witt to step on. Witt jumps, grabbing the lowest branch and curling his legs around it. He reaches down for Pravin.
The wave hits the beach, knocking men down like reeds. Arms are torn from bodies by the force of the water, armor no longer covering chests blows though the air like leaves. Pravin’s fingers brush Witt’s for an instant and then all the Lithos feels is the cold grip of the ocean.
CHAPTER 76
Vincent
I’M LOST TO THE SEA, JUST AS MADDA SAID.
It doesn’t have me yet, but I’m lost all the same, unable to tear my eyes from the wet death that will claim me. It’s magnificent, and in this moment, I can understand Khosa’s dance and the smile that lights her face when she performs it.
Dara slams into me with a snarl, knocking me to the ground and then dragging me back up again. “Run, you witless filthy depth of a fool,” she screams into my face.
I grab her hand, and we run together, stride for stride, a roar in our ears and the wet grabbing for our backs as our feet hit the paving stones in the garden outside her chambers. We’re under an arch when she shoves me, and I crash through her door into the hall, my hands emptied as the water tears her away from me. It fills her room, flowing into the hall and sweeping me with it.
I’m pushed all the way to the great hall and slammed into the wrought iron of a table leg before the roaring wave is gone. And what comes next is worse.
Silence.
CHAPTER 77
Vincent
THE WAVE RECEDES, TAKING WITH IT BLADES AND BOWS, furniture it wrapped watery fingers around from the lower levels of the castle. It took soldiers and scholars, the young and the old, tore Tangata cats from trees and replaced them with fish drowning in air. It left behind a young monarch, broken and entangled in metal, his childhood friend struggling to set him free.
“Vin, bend your arm back the other way,” Donil says, face red as he pulls against the unmoving table leg.
“Can’t,” I say.
“Then I’ll do it for you,” he says, and I find strength left in me to scream as he jams my arms back through the metalwork. I lie heaving, taking a moment of rest in a pool of water on the flagstones.
Donil helps me to my feet, and we make our way down the beach as a second wave rolls in, much smaller than the first, the cries of people cresting along with it. Stilleans race to the surf, grabbing outstretched hands where they can, holding on when the wave pulls back. Donil drops me to the sand and strides forward to stand firm in water that breaks around his knees, pulling out a Pietran soldier, who nods to him, walks five paces inland, and collapses. Five are saved this way, Daisy among them, her blue eyes big and vacant as she clutches the guard who saved her. The moon lights up the sand, the shadows of unmoving armor and drowned men cast long.
“Khosa?” Donil asks, her name barely a whisper.
“Safe inside, with my mother,” I assure him, before saying darker words. “I lost Dara. She pushed me into her room and . . . I don’t know, Donil. I don’t know.”
“We’ll find her,” Donil says, but his face is grim.
We walk the beach, pulling Scribes to their feet while I hear reports from the guards. The Feneen fled at the roar of the wave, and the men in the castle celebrated their victory for a brief moment before turning to see their brothers on the beach swept away.
“Nothing like it,” one man says to me, his legs shaking so violently he cannot stand. “They were there, and then they weren’t.”
“I know it,” I say, wincing as a healer binds my broken arm to my chest. “And while we feel our losses keenly, the Pietra lost an entire army.”
“They did, my king. That they did,” the guard says, with no hint of celebration. “Wiped the beach clean. The Pietra army stood strong, men upon men. And then there was nothing.”
“We’re gathering the dead on the beach, wherever they hail from,” Donil reassures him. “They’ll know respect, in the end.”
I am needed everywhere, and Donil is at my side. Decisions need to be made about the living Pietra the waves returned to the beach, and the surviving Stilleans need care. The moon sinks and the sun rises, and still the sand bristles with the dead and the choked cries of the living just discovering them.
Sweat is beading on Donil’s brow as we move through the gathering crowds on the beach, shouldering past a group of Scribes who are bringing damp scrolls out to the sun. A few are perched like birds on a rock, their pages flattened as they furiously write the stories brought to them by all who were there, capturing it with ink as well as they can.
A hand claps on my shoulder. “You saw, my king, did you not?” the Scribe asks.
“I saw the wave, yes,” I say, but the Scribe shakes his head.
“No, did you see the Given? She called that wave, she did. Brought it in from the rim of the sky and delivered us from the Pietra scourge.”
“She . . .” My voice dies as the Curator approaches, shutting the Scribe’s book and delicately sending him in another direction.
“What was that?” Donil asks us. “Khosa wasn’t even on the beach when—”
“Shhh,” the Curator whispers, one finger to his lips. “You know that, and we know that. Yet a story that hurts no one and redeems her entirely is being born here this morning. A quick mention, an implication, a buried word. I’ve planted them, and they grow on their own.”
The Curator rests a hand on my arm, walking with us along the surf. “Already if you asked ten people eight of them would claim to have been on the sand when the wave hit, yet you know there were only three.”
“Four,” Donil says. “Dara was with us.”
“Yes,” the Curator notes the correction. “The Indiri girl has not been found.”
Donil’s throat constricts, and he looks to the waves as if he might see a flash of speckled flesh in the froth.
“My men are working,” the Curator continues. “But already fact and fiction are braided together; some would argue the weave is stronger for it. I counsel you, my king, to take advantage of the situation. Yes, this wave was a horror, but nothing like the one in the histories. That wave dragged most of Stille out to sea, tore whole houses from the ground. This one barely brushed the castle, taking with it an entire army about to spill our blood. This wave didn’t destroy us. It delivered us.”
“And so Khosa will be seen as a hero rather than a sacrifice?”
The Curator smiles, hands in the air. “Who is to say that the Given was never cursed, but a blessing? One that needed the right mixture of elements to deliver its boon.”
“That’s your story, then? The Given called the wave that claimed the Pietra?” I keep my eyes on the sea as I think, the weight of a simple lie insignificant against the possibility of Khosa’s death sentence being lifted. “What country would demand
the death of a beautiful girl who saved them from annihilation?”
“Indeed.” The Curator smiles. “I think instead they would make her their queen.”
CHAPTER 78
Vincent
I ANSWER QUESTIONS AND ASK THEM; I PULL ASIDE DEAD BODIES and shake living hands. I set fires in rotting flesh and wash wounds that will heal. I am everywhere and everything. I am the king.
Mother comes to me, face still pinched against the smell of Cathon’s body in the tunnels where she locked herself and Khosa. She tells me that Merryl discreetly added the Scribe’s corpse to a pile on the beach.
“Rotted flesh mixed with old milk. I’ll not thank you for that memory,” she says, shading her eyes against the sun as we gather the last of what remains on the beach. A broken chair. A shattered washbasin. The guards keep their distance, allowing us some privacy.
“You’ll explain about the body later,” Mother says.
“I will,” I assure her. “There was good reason.”
“There usually is,” she answers, and I imagine I see her hands clench a poker that isn’t there. “Have you spoken with Khosa?”
“Not yet,” I say. The Curator has moved between us all, spinning lines of conversation and murmured agreements that have made a web strong enough to hold Stille together and bind Khosa to me.