This was the other gift of the soldiers’ long experience: they responded without hesitation, seizing their weapons and gathering for Aadet’s hurried commands. Ree gripped the hilt of her sabre and looked at Mevreš. “How good are you at fighting?”
“Not good enough. Go—don’t worry about me.”
She went.
Up the slope to a tall tree, where one of Aadet’s people had already fixed a rope to a thick branch. A handful of daredevils were swinging across the knife-cut of the ravine to the other side, because they hadn’t had the time to circle around and flank the rebels in any sane fashion. The soldier before her slipped on landing and skidded down into the ravine; Ree’s gemer half, always present no matter the moon’s phase, whispered that she stood a pretty good chance of breaking both of her legs. Her seimer half answered back, Then I’ll fight with the limbs I’ve got left. Ree took the rope and launched herself across.
She didn’t break her legs. She did wrench her knee, but after the first flare of pain she forgot the injury in the rush of battle. The other soldiers were already charging headlong for the exit from the ravine; Ree, following them, caught glimpses below of the fleeing rebels. It all depended on whether Sihpo Teglane was the sort to lead the escape, hoping to outrun Aadet’s forces, or the sort to advance more cautiously and keep the flight from turning into a rout.
Ree didn’t know. All she could do was stop as many of his men as possible. As the ravine rose to meet the surrounding terrain and the gap between the two groups shrank, a rebel came charging up the slope at Ree, machete in hand. She dropped into a slide and took out his hamstrings as she shot past, his blade whistling harmlessly over her head. Then she was down among the fleeing rebels and thought went away, lost in the chaos of battle.
It wasn’t the kind of fight that had a clear end. She fought until nobody in sight was wearing armor marked with red rosettes; then she went toward the nearest sounds of steel and gunfire and fought some more. After a while Aadet’s people began forming up into larger and larger groups, and then eventually there were no more red rosettes to find: they all lay dead or wounded, or had escaped into the forest.
Not all of the dead and wounded belonged to the Red Leopard. Aadet lost more than a tenth of his force in the hasty assault, and more than half of those who survived were bleeding or nursing twisted joints. Ree had a gash across her ribs she didn’t remember taking. But Aadet himself had survived; her heart felt three times lighter when she glimpsed his familiar back through the trees. And Mevreš was alive, too, already tending to the wounded as they staggered or were carried in. Would he have known if I died?
The rebels were brought in, too, but not to be cared for. Aadet paced their ranks, examining faces and murmuring comments to one of his men, who made notes with a charcoal stick on a creased sheet of paper. Ree didn’t recognize any of the captives, but Aadet picked out a few, officers from the previous army, high-ranking members of lineages that had supported the usurper. The rest were ordinary Solaine: leftovers from the old regime or youths who didn’t remember a time before Valtaja.
“Did you get him?” Ree asked when he was done. “Is Sihpo Teglane among the prisoners?”
“No,” Aadet said. “But there’s at least a few I think were probably his lieutenants, so if nothing else, we cut off his arms.”
“What about the turncoat? Was there one?” Mevreš had said there was, but until they had proof, it was nothing more than a theory.
Aadet sagged with weariness and disgust. “Sendje Teluo. He’s dead—I think I’m glad.”
Because that meant Aadet didn’t have to confront him. Sendje Teluo; after a moment, Ree put the name to a face and a history. He’d been a low-level officer in Kaistun’s guerilla force, always angling to be given a higher command, not a good enough tactician to merit the promotion. But he used to carve little animals at night out of scraps of wood, burning them in the cook-fire the next morning, and he’d guarded Aadet’s back during the assault on Veiss.
Better for them all that he had died, rather than living to face the king’s justice. Ree said, “So we just have to find out where Sihpo Teglane went.”
“Maybe Mevreš can find out,” Aadet said.
But the other archon shook his head when asked. “I can ask the Day Lords whether there will be more trouble in the future, if you like—once I’m done helping the wounded. But it won’t point you in the direction he went.”
In the end, they didn’t need the Day Lords. Aadet’s soldiers, retrieving the last of their dead from a fern-choked hollow, found the rebel commander among them, unconscious from a blow to the head. Aadet, obedient to his king’s wishes, tried to carry the man out of the mountains, but he died without ever waking up. In the heat of a Solaine summer, nobody wanted to be lugging a corpse, and it wouldn’t be fit for public display by the time it got to Taraspai. Instead they cut off his head and pickled it in a barrel brought for the purpose, and left the body for the carrion-eaters.
Ree hung back as the soldiers moved onward with their prisoners, waiting to see if Vranatzin came. But if the black jaguar claimed her last tribute, she did it after Ree was gone.
* * *
“You don’t have to go,” Aadet said. “Without you, we wouldn’t have found the rebels, not that quickly. He’ll forgive you overstaying his decree.”
Ree wanted to believe him. It would have been nice to go back to Taraspai with Aadet and his soldiers and enjoy the fruits of their efforts: the praise, the gratitude, the free-flowing beer. But she couldn’t risk it. “He’s still establishing his power. Having an archon thumb her nose at his decree only a month after he made it . . . that wouldn’t look good, no matter who I am. He’ll be forced to show he meant what he said.”
“He won’t kill you. He can’t. Not when you’ve helped him so many times.”
She shrugged. “So he exiles me instead, and I can’t come back to Solaike at all. It’s better, but still not good. Look—” She laid a hand on Aadet’s shoulder. “I’ll wait in Cheot, just across the border. If Enkettsivaane invites me back for a parade, send a message and I’ll come like a shot. If not, I’ll move on. You’ll see me again next year.”
Aadet laid his hand over hers, gripping it tight. “Sooner than next year. I’ll bring the message myself, one way or another.”
There was never any question about whether Mevreš would leave. They all knew the king would be less inclined to grant leniency to him than to Ree. He’d said his goodbyes to the Nevati before he left to hunt the Red Leopard; he was already looking ahead, to the next group of Korenat. Still— “We owe you as well,” Aadet said to him. “Who knows whether that cat would have led Ree to the camp without your prayers? I hope you’ll come back someday.”
Mevreš spread his hands. He was already masked, preparing for the journey north. “Perhaps. So long as the Nevati remain here, or any Korenat, there is a chance of it.”
It’s a good thing Aadet isn’t the type to hear that as a threat, Ree thought. Because the reverse was also true: if they drove out the Nevati—or killed them—then that was one less archon they had to worry about in this land.
The two of them went north together, because Ree couldn’t think of a good reason to separate, and wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to anyway. Mevreš asked her for stories of her time with the revolutionaries; she told them, grateful for the safer topic. The unsaid words hung between them, and by the time they’d crossed the border, Ree was tired of carrying that weight.
On the outskirts of Cheot, Mevreš stopped and faced her. “Well. I will not wait around to hear whether the king will allow me back into Solaike; even if he does, it will likely be grudging at best. I suspect the courteous thing to do would be to vanish before his invitation arrives.”
“Don’t vanish just yet,” Ree said, wondering whether he meant the word literally. Stranger things are possible. “I have something to tell you.”
Mevreš waited. If he’d looked too expectant, too smug, she probably would hav
e said “to hell with this” and walked away. But he only looked curious.
She ran her fingers down the loose edge of her sash. Blood is the fundamental fact of the Korenat world. This was what her blood had turned into, on the island of the Lhian: a strip of red fabric, an icon of her identity.
“The first time I saw you,” Ree said, “on that quarry road, my body—it does this sometimes, not just around you. A feeling, like lightning in the blood. I felt it again when you counted the days, and when you talked to the king about what you are. About how the Korenat view the world.”
If he’d guessed that already, he did a good job of hiding it. Very quietly, Mevreš said, “That is how the Day Lords speak to me—to any daykeeper. As I count the days, they answer with a feeling like that. I know their answer by where I feel it in my body: right side for male, left for female; the front of my body for the present, the back for the past, and so forth.”
Ree had felt it all over, moving until it was almost everywhere at once. She looked away, into the green reaches of the mountains. “I believe what you said. Up here.” She tapped her head. “But it doesn’t feel right. It should resonate, shouldn’t it? All I get is silence.” Bitterness twisted the words. Mevreš embodied the blood ties that bound the Korenat together, and standing beside him, she felt more alone than she ever had.
“Come with me,” he said. In her peripheral vision, she saw him twitch, as if he’d halted the impulse to touch her. “Spend time among your people. You know who they are, and have the freedom to join them; how many archai can say the same? You may begin to remember.”
If he’d been confident, he would have said “you will remember.” Ree turned back and met his gaze. “You feel it, too. There’s something off.”
He didn’t deny it, which was admission all on its own. But Mevreš was undeterred. “Whatever your story is, the Korenat are the ones who told it. You belong with them.”
Ree backed up a step; she couldn’t help it. The word “belong” struck like a knife between the ribs. “You don’t get it. So maybe I’m Korenat: that’s nice. But I don’t belong anywhere. I can’t. What you’re offering me—most people wouldn’t say that’s a home, not in the usual sense. It isn’t a country or a town or even a house to call my own. But I can’t sleep three nights in the same bed, and I can’t have a home. Not with them, not anywhere.”
Now she was the one planting a knife between his ribs. He wanted her to join them, with all the profound force of his nature. She couldn’t accept for reasons just as profound. And however long he’d been in the world, however strong his gifts were, she would win that fight.
“Varekai,” Mevreš said.
He’d never used that word in her hearing before. No one among the Nevati had, which meant she had no way of guessing its meaning. But it rang a bell deep within her mind, as if she’d heard it in another life. Apart from the blood, it was the one thing that felt anything like right. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a term we use—a name of sorts. For those of the Korenat who go their own way, instead of walking with their kin.” Mevreš nodded at her. “Like you.”
Maybe she’d found the Korenat in ages past, and recognized herself as one of them. Or been recognized, by Mevreš or someone else, whether she felt the connection or not. But someone, somewhere, had called her Varekai before. In more than one lifetime, she thought.
“If you need me,” Mevreš said, “then find any caravan of our people and tell them to write my name on a slip of paper, wet it with their own blood, and burn it. I will know. And I will be there if I can.” His gaze was steady and full of compassion. She wanted to shake it off like a fly, and cling to it at the same time.
He smiled, regretful and soft. “I hope you find your right path, Ree Varekai, wherever that may lead you.”
Ree just nodded. She didn’t trust her voice. Mevreš bowed to her in the Korenat style, then backed a few steps away. Then he was gone, vanishing just like he had said, his body curling away into smoke.
* * *
She waited in Cheot until it was almost the new moon again. Aadet arrived on the last afternoon and found her sitting on the rim of the fountain at the center of town, picking leaves out of its waters.
“Let me guess,” she said before he could even speak. “I’m not invited back.”
“It was like you said,” Aadet admitted. “He praised you for your obedience—you and Mevreš both. Exiling you would have been a display of power, but it would have made him look ungrateful. By leaving, you reinforced his authority.”
“Well, I’m glad to be useful for something.”
It wasn’t the new moon yet, not until dawn the following day, but something of her gemer cynicism was already creeping in, brought on by her conversation with Mevreš. That side didn’t rule her yet, though, and she had something to say before it did. “Besides, I have somewhere else to go.”
“Off with Mevreš?”
She turned to look at him so fast, she almost fell off the fountain. “What?”
Aadet looked amused—and sad. “That thing you said, about him claiming he knew what you were. I figured it out, after that business with the cat. He thinks you’re—”
“Don’t say it.” Ree cut him off, more weary than angry. “Yes. He does. And I think he’s right, but . . . I don’t feel it. He’s gone his way, and I’m going mine.”
“So if you aren’t staying with him, then where are you going?”
She shook off one last, damp leaf, then wiped her fingers dry on her shirt. “Krvos.”
The name meant nothing to Aadet, of course. “Where’s that?”
“No idea,” Ree said. “It’s wherever the Korenat used to live, before they were driven out. Mevreš told me some stories—enough to figure it out, I think. I’m going to Krvos, or whatever the place is called now, and I’m going to see what happens when I get there.” If that doesn’t make me remember, then nothing will.
Aadet absorbed this in silence. Then he grinned. “All right.”
His tone spoke of more than just understanding. Ree looked at him sharply. “You aren’t going with me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re the king’s wife. You have duties—”
“And he owes you. Since you weren’t there to collect, I got his permission to come find you and give you whatever help you needed. Even if it meant leaving Solaike for a while.”
It might be more than just a while. Ree opened her mouth to say she didn’t need any help, but the words wouldn’t come. She couldn’t have a home, and she couldn’t have a people . . . but she had a friend.
“Thanks,” she said quietly. Then, driven by new energy, she sprang down from the fountain’s edge. “It may be a long hunt. We’d better get started.”
About the Author
MARIE BRENNAN is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She is the author of several acclaimed fantasy novels including A Natural History of Dragons; The Onyx Court Series: Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire; Warrior; and Witch. Her short stories have appeared in more than a dozen print and online publications.
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Also by Marie Brennan
Cold-Forged Flame
THE LADY TRENT MEMOIRS
A Natural History of Dragons
The Tropic of Serpents
Voyage of the Basilisk
In the Labyrinth of the Drakes
Within the Sanctuary of Wings
DEEDS OF MEN
Midnight Never Come
In Ashes Lie
A Star Shall Fall
With Fate Conspire
Warrior
Witch
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
1
About the Author
Also by Marie Brennan
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
LIGHTNING IN THE BLOOD
Copyright © 2017 by Bryn Neuenschwander
Cover art by Greg Ruth
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Miriam Weinberg
All rights reserved.
A Tor.com Book
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ISBN 978-0-7653-9143-8 (ebook)
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First Edition: March 2017
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Marie Brennan, Lightning in the Blood
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